“And to me,” I said.
“Come in, boys,” she said. “I’m—going out, but I could mix you a drink. I bought some liquor, too, this morning.”
“Aren’t we rich?” I said.
Mike said, “I’ll wait in the car. Everything’s all right here, Miss Gallegher?”
“Of course,” she said. “What do you mean?” She was frowning.
“Nothing,” Mike said. “I’ll wait in the car, Worden. No hurry.” He went down the steps.
She looked at me. “What’s going on?”
I came in and closed the door. “Nothing. Where are you going when you’re going out?”
Her face showing nothing, and then showing a smile. “Jealous?”
“I could be, at that. Am I going to kiss you in that yeller dress.”
“With that box in your hand? What’s in that box?”
“A rag I picked up.” I set it against the wall and said, “Come here, Irish.”
Her thighs I could feel against mine, her breasts against my chest, and the moist warmth of her rich mouth. And her reserve I could feel, despite all that, and the damnedest, most ridiculous rage went through me, and I pulled away.
My voice I kept even. I tried to keep it casual, but that I couldn’t manage. “As it must to all lovers, competition has come to Pete Worden.”
“What makes you think so? Would it bother you?” She was standing very straight and looking very cool.
“I guess it would, Irish. But that wouldn’t be your worry. That would be mine.” I picked up the box. “Who is he?”
“Who is who? What makes you so damned sure?”
“I know you, baby. From your pinkies to your scalp, I know you. Across the breakfast table and at the Troc and in the hay, I know you well. And we never lied to each other.”
She didn’t say anything for seconds, some moisture in the blue eyes now. Then she said, “Maybe this man you’re imagining is only that, in your imagination. And maybe he’s a man with more serious intentions. Maybe I wouldn’t be crying every night. Maybe if you’d brought a ring instead of a rag I’d never cry again.”
“Don’t cry for me,” I said. “Is this an ultimatum or a kiss-off?”
“It’s the first of some overdue needles. You know, damn you, all you have to do is whistle. The only move you have to make is to reach. But while there’s these few feet between us, why don’t you stop and think for a second?”
“I’m not the thinking type,” I said, and turned, my new Harris tweed sport coat in my hand. Turned, and headed for the door, waiting for her to call me.
Out the door and down the steps. One step, two steps, three steps—a girl doesn’t change overnight. Not Ellen. Not that ripe and ready lovely, oh, no, not Ellen—
And then I was at the bottom step and I left the smell of paint behind and I was crossing the street, hot and cold, dry and trembling.
Mike said, “Well, that was a quickie. Where now, pigeon?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I could use a drink, couldn’t you?”
“Beer’s all I drink,” Mike said. “I could use a beer.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “We’ll get a case of beer and a fifth, and we’ll go to my modest domain. You play canasta, Mike?”
“If I got nothing better to do, and it looks like I haven’t. Go up to Sunset; I know a guy’ll give us a price.”
The dry wind blowing, the Merc humming, and Mike quiet. “If you’d brought a ring, instead of a rag—” The girl had a point. But why like this, without a feint or a lead, why the Sunday punch without warning?
And who could it be? Who did she have a chance to meet these past months? And how did she know I wasn’t bringing a ring? That, she’d know all right. I’d made myself clear on that.
“To the right here,” Mike said. “You can turn on the red.”
“Can I, really? I’ve only been driving in this town for fourteen years.”
“We’re hot again,” Mike said. “You would be something to live with, Worden.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
Mike’s voice was suddenly very soft. “I’m short and I’m fat, but when I was your age, I went eight rounds with Mickey Walker. So kind of keep your goddamned temper to yourself, hot-shot. I’m not getting paid for taking your lip.”
And I laughed. I said, “Okay, slugger. My girl’s got a date. Did you want me to sing Christmas carols?”
“Aw,” Mike said. “We could go back, you know. We could wait for the jerk. Between us we could fix him, but good.”
“You can’t go back, Mike,” I told him. “It gives them the edge.” And thought, You can’t go home again—
I gave Mike the money and he went in to get the liquor and the beer. I held the seat forward when he came out, and he stowed it on the back seat, next to my box from Poole’s.
And we headed for home.
There, as I parked, he said, “You can carry all that, can’t you? I’ve got a feeling—”
“Psychic, huh?”
“Whatever that means. Nick didn’t hire me because of my looks. Can you handle all the packages?”
I nodded, stacked them in my arms, and followed him into the court and over to the steps.
Up the steps, Mike in front, and along the railed walk, Mike in front. I was thinking of Ellen. I don’t know what Mike was thinking of.
“Key?” he asked.
“I never lock it,” I said. “What’s there to steal?”
He pushed the door open, and I saw Brown-Eyes again.
Sitting in the worn upholstered chair facing the door. His brown eyes unblinking on the door, his arms along the arms of the upholstered chair. Waiting for us, it looked like.
Watching and waiting, but he made no move. He would never make a move. I recognized the thing protruding from his throat. It was the handle of my steak knife.
CHAPTER THREE
MIKE’S HAND MOVED, and his gun was out. “Come in quick. Close the door.”
Which I did. In the first shock, I thought of John. I thought of John’s saying, “Keep our name out of the papers, Pete. It’s a good name in this town.”
Or was.
There was nobody else there. Mike holstered his gun again, expelled his breath, and looked at me.
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I stooped and set the beer and the jacket and the whisky on the floor.
Mike went to look behind the open bathroom door and then went to the closet. When he turned to face me again, he said, “We’ll have to dump him.”
“Dump him?”
“Somewhere. You sure as hell don’t want the cops to find him here, do you?”
“That’s exactly where they’re going to find him, Mike. I don’t play cute with the law.”
“And then they’re in Nick’s business again.”
“Not necessarily. I don’t have to tell them I met this man last night at Nick’s. I came home, and here he was. Maybe it’s better if I say I came home alone. Right?”
Mike was clicking his teeth. “Right. They’re going to backtrack, though. But there’s nobody was at that shindig last night’s going to go yelping to the law. Admit nothing. I’ll get to Nick right away, and he’ll get his lawyer on it. Admit nothing, Worden. Don’t let those characters break you down with cigar smoke. Admit nothing.”
“Okay, okay. Hell, I’m innocent. What have I got to be afraid of?”
Mike shook his head. “I’ll say you’re innocent. You’re simple, Worden. I’ll get to Nick right away.”
Mike left, and that brown-eyed bastard sat there, staring at me, as I went to the phone. Who killed him, or why he was killed were questions that never came to mind in the initial shock.
I couldn’t find the phone book; I dialed operator and asked for the police.
• • •
The body was gone. The reporters were gone, at least from the apartment. The photographers were gone with their incessant flashing.
But Detective-Sergeant Hovde sat in the
chair Al Calvano had been sitting in, and I sat on the studio couch. Calvano had had a knife in his throat; the sergeant’s knife was in his voice.
“That’s some story. That’s a wing-dinger.”
He was a big man, looked like a Swede. He had short, blond hair and high cheekbones and eyes like Minnesota ice. His short hair seemed to bristle as he stared at me.
“It’s my story, Sergeant.” I lighted another cigarette, despite the burning dryness of my throat. “Would you like a can of warm beer, Sergeant?”
He shook his head. “Peter Worden—a Worden. John Worden’s your brother?”
I nodded, and put out the cigarette. I’d taken two puffs of it.
“You’ve been in the papers before if I remember right. A couple fights, and for speeding, trying to outrun a traffic officer.”
“I did outrun him. I’m not asking for publicity, Sergeant. I didn’t invite the reporters in and the photographers. I don’t need their support.”
“Smart, too, aren’t you? Think your name will take you through anything, don’t you? Think it will hush a murder.”
I shook my head. “Sergeant, I phoned the police. I’m not what any sensible man would call a solid citizen, perhaps, but this is one of those deals where I can’t see that I’m to blame. My only crime was not locking my door.”
“How dumb do you think I am?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
“That Calvano was slugged first, knocked unconscious. Then the knife was stuck in his throat. What’s wrong with my believing you did that much before you got panicky, before your guts gave out and you phoned in?”
“It makes a good story,” I said. “You can believe anything you want.”
“Unless you got a better one than that wide-eyed horror you fed me before?”
“I haven’t got a better one,” I said wearily. “I need a drink. If you’ll pardon me?”
He neither nodded nor shook his head. I stood up and took the fifth into the kitchenette. I poured out a jolt and looked at it for seconds, and then decided to add water.
I brought it back to the living-room with me. And the Sergeant was smiling!
“All right,” he said. “I’ll take one. Just like you’ve got yours there, with a little tap water.”
Now I must walk softly. Now his club was sheathed, and he was going to win friends and influence people. Some ham in this Swede.
I mixed him one like mine and brought it to him. “Thank you,” he said with a smile, and crossed his legs.
I went back to the studio couch.
He sipped his drink and nodded. The pose was there but he didn’t look at all like a man of distinction.
“Worden,” he said, “we’re old-timers here. This is our town. Until the trash came out, and especially that Chicago trash, this was a pretty damned good town. Oh, we had our own troubles, but they weren’t anything we couldn’t handle. This imported scum, this foreign trash, is something else. It’s organized, Worden.”
He paused, but I couldn’t think of anything a good end man would be proud of, so I said nothing.
“Went to S.C., didn’t you? Played football there?”
I nodded.
“I’ve seen you play, Worden. That’s a great school. Southern Cal.”
I nodded. Now if he’d start to moan about the Big Ten, he could get a job on the Times.
“A school with a tradition, known all over this country, our city’s school, Worden. Our kind of people go there, and our kind of people support it. Your dad left them money, didn’t he?”
I nodded.
“These people you’ve been hanging around with,” he said, “these people that’ve been getting you into the papers, dragging your good name in the mud—you don’t owe them a damned thing, Worden, not a goddamned thing.”
“Right,” I said.
He leaned back smiling. “So?”
“So I wish I could have thought of a better story, Sergeant, but the one I told you happens to be the truth.”
He pursed his lips. He chewed on a thumbnail. He looked at me and over at the windows, got up and went to the bathroom. I sipped my drink and stared at the rug.
When he came out again, he said, “I didn’t figure you were that dumb. I figured you’d be smart enough to watch your own neck at least. Let’s go.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Where do you think? Let’s go. Come on. Move.” I finished my drink and stood up. “Will I need a razor?”
“All you’ll need is a different story.” He nodded toward the door.
I went out ahead of him and started along the catwalk.
“This time,” he called, “you’d better lock the door.” I came back and got out my keys. “You’re not so dumb at that,” he said. “You didn’t forget to forget the door, did you?” I had no words.
All the way to the west side station I had no words. Nor did Sergeant Hovde, nor the detective who drove the department car.
Down there my words were confined to name and address and the charge, which was suspicion of murder. And then I heard that clang.
I’d heard it before in my young life, but not with the same finality; there’d been no overtone of murder to it before.
It was around five now, and the hum of traffic outside was steady. The cell smelled of carbolic acid and insecticide. The floor was clean, the cot hard, and I was sick.
Not from liquor or cigarettes or hamburger or Ellen or beer. I was just sick of Pete Worden, who couldn’t grow up, who couldn’t go out and peddle insurance or real estate or golf clubs and settle down in Westchester or some equally inane section and become another semi-contented nonentity.
The rest of the boys were doing it; who the hell did I think I was? It was time to grow up and be nothing. On the hundred I got from the estate, and with what a job would bring, I’d get by nicely in the middle-class suburbs.
As a matter of fact, if I did get a job and settle down, I’d get my share of the estate from John. And my share was half. I had no idea what that would be, but his half kept John in the upper strata, and my half should do as much for me.
And with Ellen I could even take Westchester. There wasn’t any sense in kidding myself; the bed and the dice and the bottle were my symbols and the greatest of these was the bed.
They’d made a vulgarity out of the bed with their false shame and their fear-born standards, but name me a higher ecstasy or a truer communion. Shallow, Pete Worden, superficial, unlearned, vulgar, and aggressive.
And in love.
In love, but would I be? Day after day the same girl? In curlers and cold cream, pregnant or with the sniffles, at the country-club dance or the P.T.A. meeting, making the small daily surrenders, making the big and little adjustments that went into the long haul? With my foul temper, with my insatiable need for affection, could I plod it out without killing it?
I doubted it like hell. Even with Ellen.
I sat in this crummy cell and should have been worrying about my neck. My neck wasn’t that important to me and never had been, but Pete Worden was important to me and what was I? Less than nothing. Most of us are, but that wasn’t my concern. Me was my concern.
I heard footsteps, and then three men came to stand in front of my cell. One was Sergeant Hovde and the other was a cop with a big ring of keys. The third man looked human.
Hovde said, “This is Mr. Jaekels, Worden.”
The name I knew. An assistant D.A. out to build up a name for himself and doing it the headline way, convictions of the names, any kind of convictions. A man indicted for robbery, armed, will gladly plead guilty to simple assault. And you’ve got your conviction—for assault.
“How do you do, Mr. Jaekels,” I said.
He gave with the Carnegie smile. “Good afternoon, Mr. Worden. You do love our jails, don’t you?”
I didn’t think the remark was worth an answer and gave it none.
The cop with the keys opened the door. Jaekels nodded and the others went back the way they’d co
me. Jaekels came in.
“You’re in hot water, you know,” he said quietly. “Extremely hot water.”
“I am?”
He nodded and sat down on the cot. “In checking back over your afternoon, the police have discovered there was another man with you, and there was something about a disturbance at the Triangle Loan office.”
“A gag,” I said. “A small laugh in a dull day.”
“We’ll forget that for the moment. The description of this man leads me to think it could be Mike Kersh.”
His eyes were on me, waiting for a reaction to the name. I said, “Mike who?”
“Kersh, Kersh, Kersh.”
“That’s a strange name,” I said. “Mike Kersh-Kersh-Kersh.”
“Mike Kersh, the right-hand gun of Mr. Nicholas Arapopulus.”
“Don’t know either one of them,” I said.
“Arapopulus is now Arnold, as so recorded in the Chicago register of deeds office—Nick Arnold.”
“Oh,” I said, “the big boy. But this Kersh?”
“I explained who he is. It’s a strange alliance, Mr. Peter Worden, you and Nicholas Arapopulus. I didn’t think he was your kind of people.”
“I don’t know if he is or not. Because of the name, you mean? Don’t tell me you’re a snob, Mr. Jaekels, a man on your salary and in politics.”
“I can’t afford to be, no. But you can afford it to this extent—you don’t have to run with mobsters and pimps and bookies and whores. Your friends are pretty fine people, your real friends.”
I said nothing.
“I wouldn’t give a damn if you were some ordinary rich punk. But your war record and your school record and—”
“Save it,” I said. “Let’s level. You don’t give a whisper of a damn about me. You want to nail Nick Arnold and you’re using this home, heaven, and mother approach to get me to work with you. Maybe I would if I could, but I’m taking up your time. I’ve got one story, and Sergeant Hovde has a copy of it.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it, Mr. Jaekels.”
He stood up, his eyes grave and thoughtful. “God knows where you’re heading, Peter Worden.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe He knows.”
“I surely don’t,” he said.
Don't Cry For Me Page 4
