“Who booked it?”
I just looked at him.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “I’m checking you, not the bookie.”
“It still puts him in the fire. Some day you’ll be looking for bookies and you’ll have this.”
“Phone him,” he said, “and ask him how the race came out. I’ll hear his answer.”
I couldn’t find Manny listed so I looked up the Ridge Club. The bartender answered the phone and I told him my name and asked if he’d call Manny to the phone.
Manny’s “Hello” and I said, “Pete Worden, Manny. How did my horse finish?” and handed the phone to the Sergeant.
He said, “Thanks,” and hung up.
“Well?” I asked.
“Finished out of the money.”
The cinch, the mortal lock, the boat race. Oh, yes—Hovde was looking at me strangely. “Why do I string with you? Why do I believe in a man with your reputation?”
“You don’t seem to. You’ve just finished checking me.”
“Routine,” he said. “I’ve checked you a hell of a lot more than that since this nightmare broke.”
“That’s why you believe in me, then. You’ve found out I’m clean.”
“Clean—that’s some word to use for you. Clean.” He started to put his hand to the back of his neck and changed his mind. “Well, you’ve told me some things. I’m going to back-track on that knife if I can. I’ll be seeing you, Worden.” The door slammed behind him.
I had ten dollars and no money coming in. Jake had given me a cinch. Jake was one of Nick’s boys and Nick’s boys were fixing me up but good. Why? Assuming Jake was lying about what he knew or believed, why pour it to me? To get me down, down low enough to sign on the dotted line?
I wondered, going back in my mind, if that had been an accident, meeting Jake at Tony’s. There’d been a pattern ever since. The crap game they hadn’t figured, but where was that money now? Jake had taken care of it.
Maybe he’d really believed it was to be a boat race. But out of the money, not even close? Don’t try to figure it, fall guy.
Somebody rang my doorbell and I said, “Come in.”
He came in and closed the door behind him. Wide-shouldered lad with brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Art Shadow, one of Tommy’s friends. Art Shadow, Westerns.
“Tommy’s dead,” he said, and I nodded.
“Jesus,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
I was sitting on the studio couch, and a wave of dizzy nausea shook me for a second.
He went over to sit in the upholstered chair. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. His hands dangled. He looked lost. “Died before he was born. What a talent gone to hell.”
I said nothing. There was a pressure behind my temples.
“Never had a chance,” Shadow went on. “Always three jumps ahead of the sheriff.” He seemed to sway in his chair, and then I saw it was a trick of my vision. “What does the law think?”
“It’s tied up with what happened here; that seems clear.” I felt a throbbing in my temples and rubbed them with the heels of my hands. “I—oh, hell—”
“Don’t blame yourself,” he said. “I think Tommy was asking for it.”
The vision of him wavered, and I couldn’t see his mouth move, but his voice came through.
“I think he knew who killed Calvano. And I think he was out for the big buck.”
“Blackmail? Tommy? Oh, no.”
The vision cleared and the honest, earnest face of Art Shadow came into focus. “Tommy, yes. What did he know but money? Who gave him a chance to learn anything beyond it?”
“Tommy?” I said. “What did Tommy know? What didn’t he know?”
“You don’t know what you read. You know what life teaches you. In our field, there are only two kinds of stories—the salable and the unsalable. Our highest acclaim is a two word sentence—‘It sold.’ That’s what I mean about Tommy and money.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “You’re running off at the mouth.”
“You’d like to believe. And so would I. But he told me he had a chance at a real wad and inferred it had to do with this business in here.” He shook his head. “I could use a drink.”
I went and got the partially empty fifth. “Just tap water, or would you like a beer?”
“Just a nice, clean shot without water and some beer to chase it home. If you don’t mind?”
I poured it for him, and he asked, “Aren’t you going to join me? It’s your liquor.”
“I’ve just tossed my cookies,” I said. “I don’t want any now.”
He rolled the glass in his hands, looking at it. “I can’t get used to the idea of his being dead. It won’t settle in my mind.” He sipped his drink. “Ten million words, and who’ll remember him?”
“You will,” I said. “I will.”
“Ten million words.” He smiled. “Tommy said once that critics should be licensed and one of the qualifications for the license would be that the applicant had to publish two million words first. Then they’d know what they were talking about, almost.”
“Don’t be bitter,” I said. “Think of the guys who drive trucks.”
“Yeh, yeh. Or carry rifles. I’m not bitter. Tommy was bitter but I’m resigned.”
Literary yak. Every place I went, literary yak, from the pulps to Joyce. Words, words, words, words—
“I could use another drink,” he said.
“Drink it up,” I said. “I’m going to try and nap. I’m—sick, Art, soul sick.”
He looked at his empty glass. “It really hit you, didn’t it?”
“That was part of it, only part. Drink it here, or take the bottle with you if you want, Art. Drink to Tommy. I’m sick.” I got a robe to cover me and stretched out on the studio couch.
He was standing at the door now. “Maybe you need a doctor, Pete. You look awfully pale.”
I shook my head. “See you later, Art.” I turned over toward the wall.
I heard the door close. I heard fragments of conversation from the apartment on the other side of me, radio conversation, a soap opera. I had a nagging throb at the base of my skull and alternate fever and chill. My mouth was brassy, my stomach queasy.
I pulled my knees up close to my chest and rubbed at the base of my skull. The Hovde gesture, only my pain was higher, where the skull meets the neck.
Yak-yak-yak, the voices of the radio. Yak-yak-yak, night and day, the knowing and the numb, the informed and the misinformed, the witty and the witless. They all had words, but who had the music?
Tommy Lister had died before he was born, as Art said. And who doesn’t? Only about ninety-nine per cent of us at a conservative estimate. Nausea surged in me and I made the bathroom.
But there was nothing to heave.
The yak-yak louder in here, yak for the yuks. Chills, chills, all chills now. I couldn’t feel any worse and Art hadn’t taken the bottle.
I poured a shot into half a glass of hot water and put her down into the void. Warmth, it had—and reaction? No, not immediately. It had done no harm and brought some warmth.
I went into the bathroom and waited, but there was no reaction except the warmth. I loaded a dry roll with butter and ate it. And stretched my neck and shoulder muscles, and felt some better, physically.
Tommy on the floor, staring. Some wonderment in the dead eyes. Tommy had to be dead before he began to wonder. After the big buck, Tommy? No, they can’t all be corrupt. But was it corruption to try and get some money from a murderer? If you were as hungry as Tommy?
What was the old gag? Go back, you fool. Go back to Tony’s in your mind, and trace it forward from there. Through Jake and Nick and Mike Kersh and Al Calvano, all friends of Nick. And maybe even Ellen had been an Arnold stooge at that time.
Nick, then, the source of all evil.
I wasn’t going to vomit any more; my stomach had lost the queasiness and settled down to a rumble. The pressure behind my temples was st
ill there, but it probably wasn’t physical.
Theories I had, but how much fact? This much fact: I was down to less than ten bucks. And I wasn’t going to John about it. I had enough equity in the Merc, now, to get some money out of that if I grew too hungry. But that would be the last resort, peddling the Merc.
Well, punk, there’s nothing subtle about you; play it the only way you know. Somebody’s been putting the heat to you, and it looks like Nick. Somebody has been pulling strings and Tommy Lister just died next door because of that. If you think it’s Nick, face him. He only weighs about two-eighty.
Christmas decorations practically all the way. From Westwood to the Valley, and I could hear in my mind the newcomer’s complaint: “It just doesn’t seem like Christmas without snow.” There’d been no snow where He was born, but it just doesn’t seem like Christmas without snow, they said.
The magazines had taught them to expect snow around Christmas because all the ads showed snow on the windows or snow on the new skis or around the new Buick. The dream was gone, buried in words and snow. Who’d killed that dream? All the dreams we gullibles had cherished, who’d killed them? And what had they given us in place of the dreams? Words. Bitter words, clever words, words of protest and significance, words they had learned from reading other men’s words, who, in turn had learned from other men’s words, ad nauseam. But no dream.
Tommy Lister had published ten million words and died wondering.
Oh, Lord, if You exist, and there is incontrovertible scientific evidence to the contrary, but if You do, how about a Word? Not for the wise or knowing, the bitter or disenchanted, and not through the regular channels. The regular channels are too busy with bingo or major league conversions, amalgamations and new steeples. They took away our rock and gave us words.
A Word we jerks can understand, an understandable word for the ninety-nine per cent of us who die before we’re born. Please, dear Lord, if You can find the time?
The rush-hour traffic had thinned some, but there was a steady stream on Lankersheim, one of the arteries in the fastest growing area in the world. Buy now and get yours; this area is booming. Nothing down and forty-seven dollars a month to GI’s who served their country well and got the proper discharge. A few escrow charges and some waiting and you have eight hundred and fifty square feet of tract home, because you deserve it, having served your country well.
At some small profit to ourselves, of course. We’re not in this business for our health.
Growing dark, and some lights on at Nick’s. The murmur of the Merc died with a sigh, and I was walking up the flagstone path that led from the parking-area.
Paul came to the door. He was smiling.
“Your dad home?” I asked him.
He nodded. “He and Chris are going around and around in the library. Come on in, Pete.”
Words as I came into the living-room, but nothing I could understand though I could feel the heat in them. Chris and Nick going around and around, just out of recognizable hearing.
I sat on a love seat, and Paul sat on the big circular davenport. There was an open book, face down on the coffee table in front of him. He’d been reading, and I wondered what he’d learned.
He said, “Chris wants to quit school and join the army. Dad’s furious.”
“How about you?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Behind the glasses his eyes were grave on mine. “You don’t like me much, do you?”
“I don’t know you very well, Paul.”
“Well enough. I’m standard. A wise punk. I guess nobody likes me much.”
“Maybe your IQ’s too high,” I said. “By the way, what is your IQ, Paul?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had a test since I started prep school. I was the highest in the school there.” He smiled. “I say, modestly.”
The sound of Chris and Nick back and forth.
I said to Paul, “You do a lot of—of sneering. That could be one of the reasons you don’t get along with the yuks. They know they’re inferior without your telling them.”
“Do they? I can’t throw a football or bat over .300 or dance or swim or make light talk with the ladies. All I can do is read and sneer.”
“That’s good training,” I said, “if you’re going to be a writer. Lots of the boys in the game are making a mint on sneering in print.”
“And with reason,” he said.
“Some. Why is Chris so hot on joining now? They’ll get him soon enough.”
“He doesn’t want to be ‘got,’ he wants to volunteer. He says that’s important.”
“To him, now. But after he’s in he’ll learn that only the dupes volunteer for anything. When it comes to war, his Uncle Sam will be glad to take the burden of decision away from him.”
“Oh,” he said, “Chris is—emotional. You know, he’s still kind of gullible.”
I nodded. “I know. You’re not, though, are you?”
“I try not to be. I’m probably just as confused as Chris is, but I don’t see any reason for showing it. As Dad would say, what’s the percentage in that?”
Hovde had said the only consistency in people was their ability to amaze you. Paul hadn’t done that, but he’d shown a new facet.
I said, “You’re not as obnoxious as I first imagined, scholar.”
He smiled. “Thanks, halfback—or were you a quarterback?”
“Tailback,” I said. “Paul, if you can hold back the sneer for one more second, could I give with a bit of real corn?”
“I’m listening.”
“There’s an old gag, sad and lop-eared, you might not have heard. But it applies, I think, to Professor Arranbee. It’s this, ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.’ Don’t believe everything you read or hear, Paul.”
“I don’t,” he said. “And that’s why I’m thinking of joining up with Chris. This one I’d like to see. About this one I’d like to say, ‘I was there.’ But I think I’d better wait until Dad cools off a bit.”
“A good idea,” I said.
No more words from the library, and now Chris came into the living-room looking like he’d lost the first round. “Pete,” he said. “Hey, it’s good to see you, Pete.” He came over to shake my hand.
“I came to see your dad,” I said. “Would you tell him that, Chris?”
“Don’t need to,” he said. “Walk right in, Pete. You’re always welcome with Dad.”
Oh, sure. Hell, yes. I went the length of the living-room to the open study door and saw Nick behind a desk in there.
He saw me and stood up, smiling, and I came in. I closed the door behind me.
It could have been John’s place in Beverly Hills. Dickens and the Brontës and Thackeray in the gold-lettered sets. All the trappings of the solid citizens at so much a set. Culture for your shelves.
I wasn’t smiling, and Nick’s faded and his eyes grew thoughtful. He looked like a mountain behind that desk.
I said, “A friend of mine’s been killed, Nick.”
“So. Lots of my friends have been killed.”
“I want to know why, Nick.” Who’d said that? Sherwood Anderson.
Nick sat down and gestured that I should. I did, keeping my eyes on his.
“I don’t know why,” he said. “You mean this man—this—”
“Lister, Tommy Lister. Lived next door to me.”
“Hovde was here about it,” Nick said. “I don’t know why he died, Pete. And I don’t know why Calvano died. Nor who killed them. But I mean to find out.”
Was he lying? His face open, his voice clean, his eyes steady. But with an operator like this how would you ever know unless you caught him in the lie?
“Let’s leave that for a second,” I said. “Let’s get to me. I seem to sense a pattern in the things that have been happening to me. I seem to feel your fine hand in my life.”
“Could be,” he said. “Nick moves in a mysterious way. Come to get me?” He paused and smiled. “Or sign up?”
&nbs
p; “I’m not signing up,” I said. “What in hell do you want me for?”
“You’re just the kind of boy I need. Good name, good brain, loyal, tough, honest.”
“Honest? What the hell would you do with an honest man?”
“Give him a partnership.”
The words went around in my head, making no sense. What kind of talk was this?
He was smiling again. “Not in the whole wad, Pete. Just in the Arnold Sporting Club. I’ll put about a half million into it to start. There’ll be some sugar in it.”
That was some plum to dangle in front of a man down to ten bucks. I said nothing.
“Legitimate,” he said.
I said nothing.
His smile was now a grin. “You can’t have a hell of a lot after that cinch Jake gave you this morning. I’ll bet you think I’m some bastard.”
“You stagger me,” I said. “You’re a mountain of bastardy. And Ellen, too, you worked through.”
He shrugged. “Ellen’s sweet, but even the bright ones love that green stuff. She’d like to see you rich. And she’d like to wear your ring. You can’t do any better than Ellen, Pete.”
Why didn’t he wear horns and carry a pitchfork?
He said, “Legitimate, if anything is. My money’s dirty but all big money’s dirty, isn’t it? What makes it different with me? They played by the rules and I didn’t. But they made the rules. That’ll be the day I play by another man’s rules.”
“Some of the rules are still mine, Nick,” I said. “I can’t go in with you.” I took a deep breath. “I could have, yesterday, but not since Tommy Lister was killed.”
“I didn’t kill him or have him killed.”
“How do I know? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t lie about it if you did. How am I going to know?”
He was silent for seconds. And then, “All right. Listen to this. You want to know who killed them. I want to know. It’s worth money to me to know. I’ll pay you to try and find out.”
“Nick,” I said, “what makes you think—Oh, for heaven’s sake, what do you think I am, Dick Tracy?”
“Mike will work with you. We know some things the law might not know. Mike will handle the heavy work. I just want you with him in case there’s some thinking might be needed.”
“You’re really spinning that web, aren’t you?” I said. “And a fly like Pete Worden can’t be worth that much work.”
Don't Cry For Me Page 9
