Alice

by Howard Fast

  “But you can go to where it is.”

  I finished my Strega and grinned at him. “What’s in the box?”

  He smiled back. “Come, come, Mr. Camber. You really don’t want to know what is in the box, do you?”

  “I do,” I said smugly.

  “Why, Mr. Camber? Aren’t you sufficiently involved? Is it sensible to involve yourself further? It has been suggested to you that what is in that box is there through illegal circumstances, to place the narrowest construction upon your laws. Smuggling is an ancient profession, but it is illegal, Mr. Camber. There might be diamonds in the box, emeralds, rare stamps, radium, a priceless painting—any number of things, Mr. Camber. But how will it profit you to know? If smuggling is an ugly word, then murder is an uglier one.”

  “I told you it was an accident.”

  “Of course. So we will think about the key rather than the box. I am a man of expensive tastes, Mr. Camber—tastes far too expensive for a small, poor country such as mine. I must augment my income, an endless burden placed upon me, but solvable in this great country of limitless wealth. Only the generosity of Americans exceeds their wealth—”

  “I’m not wealthy,” I muttered sadly, overcome suddenly by a wave of pity for myself.

  “Then be gratified that you have the key, Mr. Camber,” he nodded. “I did not for a moment propose that you should have gone through this annoyance for nothing. There is enough for all. But first the key.”

  I shook my head stubbornly.

  “Just consider my offer, Mr. Camber,” he said, pointing a cone-shaped finger at me. “Not by any means a kingly sum, for while the contents of that box are valuable, there is a limit to all value, but nevertheless a ripe, round figure. Ten thousand dollars, Mr. Camber. I consider you a gentleman of perception and taste, but I would be a fool if I had failed to inform myself concerning your financial status and circumstances. You are a draftsman, Mr. Camber—am I right?”

  He poured me another glass of Strega, and I clenched my fist on my chest, forced back the tears that welled into my eyes, and said, “Draftsman!—here, Mr. Montez, here beats the heart of an architect, the soul of an architect—”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps. But for the moment you are a draftsman—with what wages? Seven thousand, eight thousand a year? What you call the upper white-collar level, not small enough to be poor, not large enough to be comfortable. How many debts do you have, Mr. Camber? How long is it since you ate in a good restaurant, sat in a nightclub, made love to a smart and gracious woman, a woman like my wife—for instance? How long, Mr. Camber? I offer you ten thousand dollars—tax free. Cash. You can have it in ten dollar bills if you wish. Almost a year and a half’s wages. Think of what you could do with it!”

  I thought and swayed drunkenly and wiped the tears out of my eyes. Upstairs, Lenny, the pure flower who had the tragic misfortune to be married to this gross and sexless man, lay sprawled on an Empress Josephine bed, whatever that was; and here was I, sodden, weeping for myself, and trying to preserve my pride and at the same time explain that I was not a hero and that there was a certain man of whom I was afraid, a man who carried brass knucks and a beer-can opener. He, too, wanted the key.

  Montez thought about this and smiled. He put the fingertips of his fat pink hands together, and he nodded at me. “None of us are heroes, Mr. Camber. A civilized man employs heroes, he does not emulate them. Please wait here for me.”

  He rose from the table and tiptoed out of the room, and I sat there, staring at the smoke from the panatela, reposing in a thick cloud of stomach-heavy satiation, and thinking hazily of a thousand, tax-free ten dollar bills.

  In a few minutes, Montez returned, and with him was the thin-faced man who had followed me in the subway and had threatened me.

  “Mr. Camber,” Montez said, “I want you to meet Angie. He will go with you to get the key.”

  4: Angie

  The car was a custom-built Cadillac with two jump seats in the rear, a telephone, and a heavy glass plate to block off the chauffeur. The chauffeur was slim and suave, tiny mustache and gimlet eyes, and next to him a uniformed footman who looked like his brother. I sat in the back with Angie. There was bowing and scraping as I left the Consulate, and I was pleased with my ability to walk steadily with no sway or tilt. I shook the meaty paw of Montez, and he repeated his assurances of reward, pleasure, and profit.

  “I will make all your apologies to Lenny,” he smiled. “I know how the heart beats, but first things must be first. My house is your house.”

  “Thank you,” I nodded. “It was a very good lunch. It was the best lunch I ever ate.”

  “My table is your table,” he said.

  The footman held the door open for me, and I climbed into the enormous car and sat down next to Angie. There was an electric clock next to the telephone, and it said two o’clock. There was a rack for newspapers and magazines and a radio. The footman closed the door and got in next to the chauffeur, and smoothly and gently the big car slid away from the curb and started across town toward the express highway.

  I had expected that Angie would be the silent and withdrawn type, but now we were friends. He opened his heart and took me into his life, explaining that his father was from the old country, not himself—the old country being the fat man’s country—and that in his father’s day they were all meatheads, but now they were swinging. It was a lousy little crumb of a country, but when you squeezed it hard, it oozed gold. Montez knew how to squeeze. Montez was with the smart money in the country, and there was one thing that I should never do. I should never let the fat man fool me with his appearance. Montez, he added, was the president’s cousin. The president had been president for seventeen years. There were still elections, but the only candidate on the ballot was the president.

  “It’s the kind of a place you feel comfortable in,” Angie said. “Someday, when I’m tired of kicks, I go over there and buy me a God-damn castle. I have me a dozen servant girl broads, and I kick one out of bed and throw me the next. And the price is for peanuts. No union, no minimum-wage law, nothing but respect. They got respect. I buy me a castle with horses and dogs. I’m a sucker for dogs. I always say, the way you tell a man’s character is the way he feels about dogs. How do you feel about dogs, Camber?”

  “I like dogs,” I nodded.

  “I’m glad you said that,” Angie nodded. “I see a guy last week, he kicks this dog. So I grab him and push him back against the wall, and just lace his face a little, two or three times, the back of my hand, and he begins to bleat, what am I hitting him for? For kicking the dog, you son-of-a-bitch, I tell him, and I ought to kill you.”

  I nodded. The drink was wearing off. Angie was breathing in my face, and his breath was sour, but I didn’t pull away from him. It might have offended him. He had mentioned how strong his feelings were on the question of respect.

  “I am married to this pig once, maybe six, seven years ago,” Angie told me, his face up against mine, “and I get me a little collie bitch, cute as hell, and smart. Smart. But this pig can’t stand her—no, can’t stand her. So I’m away, and the pig whips the dog, and I come home and see the marks on the collie. Nobody has to draw me any pictures. I tell the pig to take off her clothes. She don’t want to, so I give her a taste of respect, and then she takes off her clothes.”

  I stared at him and he said, “That’s right. You going to teach a pig the right time, get her to take off her clothes. It makes a difference. And I taught this one the right time. I broke every bone in her body. Three months she laid in the hospital. I taught her respect.”

  I asked him whether I could look at the newspaper, and he told me to help myself. The phone rang as I took the newspaper. It was strange to have a telephone ring in a car, but I suppose no stranger than anything else when you are used to it. Angie talked into the telephone in another language, and I leafed through the newspaper. I had glanced at the first part of the paper in the morning, but without comprehending very much of what I read. Now, on
the first page of the second section, I found the story and began to read. After giving the details of the accident in the subway, the newspaper said:

  The dozen people who claimed to have witnessed the accident told conflicting stories. Three of them claimed that the old man was alone when he fell. Four witnesses said that he was embracing another man, who flung him away violently and caused him to fall off the platform under the approaching train. The remaining five witnesses held that he had leaped away from the man he was embracing, stumbled, and had fallen under the train. Under protracted questioning, no witness was able to furnish a reliable description of the man involved, except to agree that his age was somewhere between thirty and forty. The police had not yet been able to identify the dead man. He carried no identification. The only clue to his possible identity is a safe-deposit box key found in one of his pockets. His fingerprints are being checked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Reading over my shoulder, Angie grinned, and said, “How does it feel to be wanted, Johnny boy?”

  “I’m not wanted.”

  “You’re not identified, Johnny boy. But wanted you are. Make no mistake.”

  I stared out of the window at the river, and then we turned up the ramp to the George Washington Bridge. I was not drunk any more. I felt cold and sick and hopeless, and I had stopped dreaming about a thousand tax-free ten dollar bills.

  As the car crossed the bridge and drove westward into Jersey, I confronted myself and thought about myself, and what I saw wasn’t particularly pleasant. I was still dazed with the aftermath of a quick, hard drunk, not yet shaken free of it, not yet unbefuddled, but possessed of that strange, objective clarity that takes hold of a person coming out of the buoyant, jazzed-up illusion that, with a few drinks, he has conquered eternity. I was never a good drinker, and, during the past two hours, I had taken eight ounces of very dry martini, about eight ounces of white wine, and about four ounces of silky dynamite called Strega. It was enough to break the back of a better man than I, and it now began to leave me cold, sick, sweating, and observant.

  I had been characterized as a simpleton—with cold logic that I now refused to deny, even to myself. Confronted with decision after decision, I was consistent only in making the wrong choice. I had been thrown into a panic of fear by a few threats, diddled by a pretty face to which I responded with all the acumen and judgment of a fourteen-year-old, and made gleefully drunk by a fat man who bought me, not with ten thousand dollars, but with a few drinks. If he ever paid ten thousand dollars, he would only prove himself to be as much of a simpleton as I was. The price was too high. Twenty cents was a neat tag on John T. Camber, a fair price. You don’t pay off a loser, and if anyone was ever a loser, it was myself. If it comforted me, I was not alone; I was one of a whole generation of the same species, eaten with a whimpering desire for money, drugged with television, trapped by a lack of talent, real ambition or purpose, in a rat race for things and status and without a philosophy, a hope, a religion, a belief, or a culture, moving from nowhere to nowhere—and afraid, always afraid; afraid of tomorrow, of an atom bomb that would still the last whimper, of losing a rotten job—always afraid.

  It was not Angie or Shlakmann or Montez; it was inside me, and they only served to stir the surface a little. The fear was there all the time. A pair of brass knucks and a beer-can opener defined it without adding to it.

  “You all right?” Angie asked me.

  “I’m not all right,” I replied. “I feel lousy.”

  “Oh?”

  “How do you expect me to feel?”

  “You should feel good. You become Mr. Montez’s white-haired, number-one boy, you should feel plenty good.”

  I slumped into my seat and took refuge in silence.

  “What’s the matter—you sick or something?”

  “Something.”

  “Always with you guys—you want in but you cry. Why the hell don’t you think of that yesterday and give me the key?”

  “I didn’t know I had it,” I muttered.

  Angie burst into laughter and rolled down the window separating us from the men in front of the car. “Hey, Hoyo!”

  “What’s up?” the man called Hoyo asked.

  “I ask him why he don’t give me the key yesterday. What do you think he says?”

  “How the hell do I know what he says?”

  “He says he don’t know he had it.”

  They knew the way. They didn’t have to ask me where I lived or how to get there. They knew exactly where I lived and exactly how to get there, and meanwhile I had existed in a fool’s paradise of supposed isolation and security. Whether they had managed to follow me the night before or whether Montez had managed to get the information out of Sturm & Jaffe, I never discovered. But they knew where I lived and how to get there, and as they approached the street, I said to Angie, “Don’t park in front of my house, because that will only upset my wife. Park here.”

  “You got a suspicious wife, huh?” Angie grinned.

  “Don’t be a damn fool. I don’t want to upset her, that’s all. She doesn’t know anything about this. She doesn’t know about the old man in the subway or about the key either. She’s got plenty of her own problems to worry about, and it’s bad enough for me to come home and walk in on her at this time of the day, without any warning.”

  “You bet, Johnny, I tell you something about myself—I don’t walk in on any pig, unless I want to teach her the right time. You going to teach her the right time, Johnny?”

  His smile remained fixed over his flat white teeth, and he licked his lips.

  “Shut up!”

  “Ha! So I get a rise out of you, hey, Johnny. But let me tell you one thing. You go over to your house now and get that key. Bring it back to me. You understand? I give you ten minutes—and no fancy business. Until now, we treat you like a gentleman, best food, best drink, a pretty girl to come get you. That’s the easy way, Johnny, but don’t make no mistakes about us.”

  “I’ll get the key,” I said, and I got out of the car. It was a warm, placid, and sunny day, the shank of March turning into the first breath of April, the jonquils ready to burst into bloom, the forsythia showing a tracery of gold, the privet laced with pale green, the little houses clipped and trimmed and manicured, the small lawns feathered with lime and fertilizer—the new hum of insects in the air and the last few moments of silence before the kids came pouring back from school.

  I walked down the street and turned into our yard, opened the door which was never locked in the daytime, and called out, “Alice! Alice! I’m home! I had to come home—I’ll tell you all about it! But where is the key I spoke to you about this morning? Alice?”

  There was no answer.

  I covered the house quickly, kitchen, breakfast room, dining alcove, our bedroom, and then Polly’s bedroom. Our bedroom had been made up, but Alice must have been in a hurry and had only straightened Polly’s bed. The toys and dolls were on the floor, where Polly had abandoned them, and in the center of the room, so that I almost tripped over it, was the doll house I had given Polly this Christmas past.

  I opened the back door and looked out into the yard. Jenny Harris, who lived next door, was turning a flower bed, and she glanced up from her work and saw me.

  “Hello, Johnny. You’re home early. Anything wrong?”

  “No. But where’s Alice?”

  “PTA dessert lunch. You forgot.”

  “Where’s Polly?”

  “With her, I guess. They’ll be back any moment now.”

  It was just as well. I thanked her and swung back into the house. I would get the key myself and there would be no need for Alice to know anything at all about the wretched business. I tried to think back to our telephone conversation that morning. What had Alice said? As I remembered, I had asked her about the key. She then looked in my jacket pockets and found the key. Then she asked me what she should do with it. Or did she tell me that she was leaving it someplace in the kitchen? I seemed to remem
ber that, but I wasn’t sure. All I could be sure of was that I had told her to hang onto it—but she wouldn’t have taken that literally. My face was wet with sweat now.

  My heart was hammering as I told myself firmly that women do not react that way. Told to hang onto the key, she would not have put it in her purse. Alice was a very calm woman, sometimes frustratingly so. She would look at the key a moment, smile hopelessly at my state of excitement, and then put it down on a shelf or a counter. Where? In the kitchen, or course; it had to be in the kitchen.

  I raced into the kitchen. First the counters—there was no sign of the key. The utility shelves—not there either. I opened the two drawers where she kept the kitchen equipment, knives, potato peeler, hand mixer, can openers, bottle openers, mixing spoons, bottle stoppers, whippers, pastry brush, icing bags, cookie cutters—I emptied both drawers, piling the stuff on the counter, but there was no key. The cookie jar, the bins for coffee, tea, sugar, flour—no, I told myself, this is insane, yet I buried my hands in the flour.

  Panic again. I was losing my head. The plain fact of the matter, which should have been obvious to me at once, was that Alice had done precisely what I asked her to do. I had said to her, “Hang onto the key.” She had done that, and it was safely stowed away in her purse.

  I washed my hands and put the kitchen stuff back, and then I looked at my watch. Just about nine minutes had gone by, and a hammer was throbbing inside my head, but I was at least able to listen as I told myself, “The main thing now is to keep calm. You have let this take hold of you and become a nightmare. It’s a bizarre and unusual situation, but it is not a nightmare, and there is no penalty involved. You will walk camly back to the car and explain the circumstances to Angie.”

  I felt a little better then, and I left the house and returned to the car. Big and black, it was as foreign as its owners to the sun-drenched suburban street. Beyond it, down the hill, I saw the first of the kids returning from school. The air, which had been empty and silent before, now danced and crackled with the sound of their voices.