Who Has Wilma Lathrop?

by Keene, Day

  “How about the dishes?” he asked her.

  Wilma gestured vaguely with one hand. “That for the dishes. I’ll do them in the morning.”

  Lathrop followed her down the hall. He was sorry he’d waited as long as he had to marry. Playing the field had been very unsatisfactory. And trying to fathom one woman was much more interesting than attempting to solve the trigonometric functions of ratios of an angle. He liked the intimate give and take of marriage. He liked Wilma, especially this new and brittle facet of her personality. It should prove to be an interesting evening.

  “Know something?” he asked her.

  Wilma looked at him over her shoulder. “What?”

  “I love you,” Lathrop said.

  “I love you,” she said soberly. “You may never know how much.”

  “What kind of double talk is that?”

  “It isn’t double talk. I mean it.” In the living-room Wilma went directly to the combination television and record player. “What will my lord and master have?” She consulted the TV guide. “I’ve Got a Secret’? Or would you prefer music?”

  “Mood music,” Lathrop said.

  “How about Carmen Cavallaro?”

  “Cavallaro will do fine.”

  Wilma stacked the spindle with records and sat beside him on the sofa. “That wasn’t much of a meal, was it?”

  Lathrop laughed and took her in his arms. “You’ve cooked better.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s the matter, baby? Something bothering you? Or is this just one of those days?”

  Wilma’s tensed body relaxed as she snuggled her cheek against his shoulder. “Just one of those days, I guess.”

  “They come to all of us.”

  Wilma fondled Lathrop’s cheek with her fingertips, then sat up and studied his face. “Who hit you? And where are your glasses?”

  “I was not only hit, I was kicked,” Lathrop said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you since I got home. I was in a fight.”

  “With whom?”

  “A couple of guys in a parking lot.”

  “What parking lot?”

  “The one down at the Juvenile Court Building.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Lathrop was patient with her. “I’ve been trying to. But you’ve been so full of the butcher and the high price of coffee and falling down and snagging a new pair of stockings that I haven’t been able to get a word in.”

  “Who hit your?”

  “Two men.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why did you fight with them?”

  “I didn’t. They fought with me.”

  Wilma wet her lips with her tongue. “What about? I mean, why should they fight with you?”

  “I don’t know. I’d just finished my business with Judge Arnst and was crossing the parking lot to my car when a man stepped out from behind a Buick and asked me if my name was Jim Lathrop and if I taught maths at Palmer Square High School. I said that was correct and asked who he was.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said it didn’t matter what his name was, but that he and his partner were friends of yours.”

  “His partner?”

  “Yeah. There were two of them.”

  “Didn’t either of them give you his name?”

  Lathrop shook his head. “No. But they were both big men. About my size. And I had an impression at first that they might be plain-clothes detectives.”

  “But I don’t know any detectives.”

  “That was merely my impression.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “It was too dark in the lot for me to see their faces, but as I said, they were both big men, well dressed.” Lathrop remembered something. “And one of them called the other Charlie. He made some crack about Charlie having fought professionally.”

  Wilma’s fingernails dug into his arms. “What happened then?”

  “Well, I tried to shrug them off and walk on to my car and one of them hit me and knocked me to the ground.”

  It was the first time Lathrop had ever heard Wilma swear. “The bastards,” she said under her breath. “The dirty sons-of-bitches. What did you do?”

  “I picked myself up,” Lathrop told her, “and asked the man who’d hit me what was the idea.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Lathrop quoted the man verbatim. “He said, That was just to show you we mean business. What kind of dumb clucks does Wilma think we are? … Tell her fun is fun, but not when the bite is too big.’ Does that make any sense to you?”

  He felt Wilma as she took a deep breath. “No. No sense at all. Then what happened?”

  “He asked if his partner had the envelope.”

  “What envelope?”

  Lathrop had hung his overcoat in the hall closet. He got the envelope from his pocket and returned to the sofa. “This one.”

  Wilma fingered the bills in the envelope. “They gave you this?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What for?”

  “To give to you.”

  “But there are thousands of dollars in here!”

  “I figured around five thousand.” Lathrop kissed the lobe of Wilma’s ear. “I was hoping maybe you knew the answer.”

  “To what?”

  “To what he said then.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said it was from the Prentiss job. Just to show there were no hard feelings, but that they were getting a little tired of waiting for their cut from the big one. Then he said for you to meet them at Louie’s between one and two o’clock to-morrow afternoon. Then he hit me again and said, ‘Just to impress the time on your memory, here’s a little sample of what will happen to you if she goes on being greedy’.”

  “What will happen to you?”

  “That’s what the man said.”

  “Then he hit you again?”

  “He kicked me.”

  Wilma continued to finger the bills. There was a far-off quality in her voice. “But, darling, it doesn’t make sense. Why should two men neither of us know say such a thing about me, then give you all this money?”

  “I’m telling it just the way it happened.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I fought back.”

  “You hurt them?”

  “I don’t know. I do know I was doing fairly well until one of them caught me by the legs and pulled me down. Then both of them really jumped me. It must have been five or ten minutes later when I came to, lying under a parked car.”

  Wilma brushed his swollen chin with her lips. “You poor darling. What did you do then? Go to the police?”

  “No. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  Wilma protested, “But I don’t know any men like that. And there’s no reason why anyone should want to give me all this money.”

  Lathrop slipped his arm around her waist. “You’re positive that you aren’t blackmailing someone in your spare time, sweetheart?”

  “That’s not funny,” Wilma said. “It’s not at all funny. If you were down at Juvenile Court, there must have been officers around, and you should have gone directly to the police. Why didn’t you?”

  Lathrop told her. “For two reasons. One, I didn’t want it to get into the papers. The Board of Education doesn’t approve of its teachers brawling in public. Two, as I said before, I wanted to talk to you.”

  Wilma met his eyes. “But I don’t know anything about the men or the money.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  “And they said they’d harm you if I didn’t meet them at this Louie’s?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  Wilma laid the envelope on the coffee table. “You’d better go to the police the first thing in the morning.”

  “Will do,” Lathrop said. “But I doubt if it will make any more sense to the police than it does to us. What was the name of that
lawyer you worked for?”

  “Mr. Ramsey. Carl A. Ramsey. In the New York Life Insurance Building on La Salle Street.”

  “What kind of cases does he handle?”

  “Mostly criminal cases. Why?”

  Lathrop toyed with an idea. “Well, one of his clients might think you have knowledge or information you could use against him. You used to type briefs and confidential reports and things like that, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. But I forgot them the minute I typed them. Besides, to make anyone think I was trying to blackmail him, I’d have to ask him for something.”

  “That’s right.”

  Wilma pushed the currency-stuffed envelope to the far side of the table. “Ugh. This has been a day. Would you know the men if you saw them again?”

  “I think so.”

  “Can you describe them to the police?”

  “I can try.”

  Wilma lay back on the sofa. “But I don’t know why we’re being so perturbed. They must have mistaken you for some other Lathrop. There are thirty-two of us in the phone book. I know. I counted them right after we were married.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You do love me, don’t you, Jim?”

  “You know I do.”

  Wilma held his hand to her heart. “And I love you. So much.”

  Lathrop was pleasantly surprised. He had been right about the black net négligé.

  She asked, “Did I show you what I did to my knees when I fell?”

  “No,” Lathrop said, “you didn’t.”

  Wilma unbelted her robe to show him her skinned knees. Lathrop kissed them to make them well. Then Wilma kissed his cut lip. It was two hours later and the stack of records on the player had played through. The machine had been silent a long time before he even thought of the two men or the envelope again.

  He lay content, with Wilma’s head on his shoulder. The narrow couch was wide enough for both of them. He’d never felt so complete, so one with Wilma. The past hours had been beautiful.

  “How come?” he whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Because I love you so much,” she breathed.

  Lathrop patted her lightly. He liked this new Wilma. There were more facets to her character than there were in the three-quarter-carat diamond engagement ring he’d given her.

  Wilma stroked his face with the tips of her fingers. “It’s been beautiful, so beautiful. But if you’re going to the police before you go to school in the morning, I suppose we ought to get some sleep.”

  Lathrop arose from the couch reluctantly. “Goddam those two men.”

  “Damn them,” Wilma agreed.

  Lathrop tilted her chin. “You’re crying.”

  She wiped her cheeks with the hem of the black négligé, then let it drop back to the floor. “All women cry when they’re happy. You don’t know much about us, do you, Jim?”

  “No,” Lathrop admitted. “I guess not.” He laughed. “But where you’re concerned, I’m certainly willing to try.”

  Whistling softly, he returned the currency-stuffed envelope to his overcoat pocket, then made sure the front and back doors were locked. When he entered the bedroom he found Wilma sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing her hair.

  He watched her in the vanity mirror as he put on his pyjamas. He was a lucky man, even luckier than he’d realized. It hadn’t been entirely passion. Wilma loved him. It had been love that had lighted her eyes.

  She fastened her golden pony tail with a rubber band. “You aren’t angry with me, are you, Jim?”

  Lathrop sat beside her. “Why should I be angry with you? You are wonderful.”

  Wilma searched his eyes. “You mean that, don’t you, Jim?”

  “Of course I do.” Lathrop turned down her bed, slipped her slim legs under the covers, then pulled the blankets up to her chin. “Now you stay covered to-night. It’s plenty cold outside.”

  Wilma made herself small in the bed. “I know. Just listen to that wind.”

  Lathrop kissed her eyes, her nose, her lips. “Thank you.”

  She slipped her arms out from under the covers and clung to him fiercely for a long moment. “Thank you. And good-night.

  Lathrop brushed her lips with his. “Good-night.”

  On the chance that she might need it before morning, he got a spare blanket from the closet and spread it over her bed. Then, after opening the window a few inches, he turned out the light and crawled into his own bed.

  “Good-night,” he said again.

  Wilma’s voice was muffled. “Good-night.”

  Lathrop lay a long time listening to the wind. Promptly at midnight, in the flat above, Dr. Klein turned off his television set and clomped down the long hall for his usual bedtime snack. From time to time, during lulls in the wind, Lathrop could hear cars pass in the square. A horn honked somewhere in the night. Once he thought he heard a girl cry out. Her voice sounded a little like Wilma’s. He tried to rouse himself and couldn’t. Sleep and physical exhaustion had too strong a hold on him.

  • • •

  Morning dawned cold and grey. Fogged with sleep, Lathrop heard the preliminary click of the alarm and groped through the dark to shut off the ringing mechanism before it awakened Wilma. There was no need for her to get up. He could make a cup of instant coffee and have his breakfast later in the lunchroom across from the Shakespeare Avenue Station. He didn’t relish what he was going to do, what he had to do. The officer in charge would think he was crazy.

  The floor was cold to his feet. Snow had drifted in through the partly opened window. Lathrop closed it and looked at Wilma’s bed. Not even the top of Wilma’s head was visible. She was burrowed down under her blankets like some furbearing animal in hibernation.

  And a very nice little animal, he thought.

  Sex attraction might not be the most important foundation for an enduring marriage, but it was the keystone. All else depended on it. For a time he’d been afraid, even a little fed up, he realized, with Wilma’s sweet reserve. Now all that was behind them.

  He found his robe and walked to the kitchen to put the tea-kettle on the stove. While he waited for the water to get hot, he shaved. He felt good. He felt fine. He’d never felt quite so content. If a man was married to the right woman, marriage was a wonderful institution.

  The bathroom window was white with frost. He scratched a hole in the frost with his thumbnail and peered out. It had snowed hard during the night. For as far as he could see, the roofs and alleys and yards were white. The first few hours after a fresh fall was one of the few times when a big city Was really pretty.

  Tiptoeing around the room so as not to awaken Wilma, Lathrop dressed as quickly as he could, then returned to the kitchen and made a cup of instant coffee. It wasn’t as good as the coffee Wilma made, but it was strong and hot. He drink it sitting at the kitchen table, listening to the new day come alive. On the floor below, plainly audible through the kitchen tile, Mrs. Metz turned on the disc-jockey programme to which she listened every morning. Someone down the block was having trouble starting his car. Lathrop hoped his car would start. He didn’t want to be late for school. He didn’t want any black marks against his record. While it might be a poetic truism that two could live as cheaply as one, it was a mathematical certainty that three couldn’t.

  Lathrop considered the possibility as he got his overcoat from the front guest closet. It would be nice if Wilma had a baby. It would be nice to have several children, say one boy and two girls. He slipped into his overcoat, then turned and walked over to the bed. The stillness of the mound of blankets worried him. He lifted the top blanket and his smile faded from his face. Wilma wasn’t in the bed. What he had mistaken for her body was a loosely rolled blanket.

  He said, “Wilma,” stupidly, then called her name aloud. The name bounced around the room and down the hall. The apartment suddenly had a strange, empty feel to it. Lathrop walked back slowly through the flat. Wilma wasn’t in the bathr
oom, the spare room, or the front room. Her black net négligé lay on the sofa, where she’d left it.

  In mounting panic Lathrop opened the guest-closet door again. Wilma had to be in the flat. Both her new cloth coat with the fur collar and her grey squirrel coat were hanging where they should be.

  He made a second tour of the flat, trying the doors this time. The front and back doors were locked. Feeling silly, he looked under the beds and in the closets and behind the television set. Wilma couldn’t be gone, but she was. He was alone in the flat.

  Chapter Three

  SHAKESPEARE, LATHROP thought, was an odd name for a police precinct station. He parked across from the station and sat in his car for a long time, watching the twin green lights on both sides of the door grow dim in the brightening day.

  Such things didn’t happen to people like him. The wives of reputable schoolteachers didn’t disappear between midnight and morning — but Wilma had. He felt in his overcoat pocket, still incredulous. What was more, Wilma had taken the money-filled envelope with her. She had lied to him. She’d known what the two men in the parking lot had been talking about. The candlelight, the pitcher of Martinis, the wine, had been cheap feminine tricks to divert his attention.

  “Did I show you what I did to my knees when I fell?”

  It was a physical effort for him to open the door of his car and walk across the street. He was ashamed to tell the officer in charge what he had come to say. The more he thought of the affair, the more fantastic it became. Wilma was involved in something up to her pretty thighs, and instead of confiding in him, she had lied.

  The police station smelled of wet wool and men and stale tobacco smoke. A heavy-set plain-clothes detective was leaning on the booking counter, checking the arrest sheet. He moved aside to make room for Lathrop.