I shook my head, no.
“The animal on which the sins of a man were laid and then it was driven off into the wilderness. The fish were his scapegoat.”
She smiled at me. I didn’t smile back.
She said, still smiling faintly: “You see, he once had the pearls, the real ones, and suffering seemed to him to make them his. But he couldn’t have had any profit from them, even if he had found them again. It seems some landmark changed, while he was in prison, and he never could find the spot in Idaho where they were buried.”
An icy finger was moving slowly up and down my spine. I opened my mouth and something I supposed might be my voice said:
“Huh?”
She reached a finger out and touched one of the pearls. I was still holding them out, as if my hand was a shelf nailed to the wall.
“So he got these,” she said. “In Seattle. They’re hollow, filled with white wax. I forget what they call the process. They look very fine. Of course I never saw any really valuable pearls.”
“What did he get them for?” I croaked.
“Don’t you see? They were his sin. He had to hide them in the wilderness, this wilderness. He hid them in the fish. And do you know—” she leaned towards me again and her eyes shone. She said very slowly, very earnestly:
“Sometimes I think that in the very end, just the last year or so, he actually believed they were the real pearls he was hiding. Does all this mean anything to you?”
I looked down at my pearls. My hand and the handkerchief closed over them slowly.
I said: “I’m a plain man, Mrs. Sype. I guess the scapegoat idea is a bit over my head. I’d say he was just trying to kid himself a bit—like any heavy loser.”
She smiled again. She was handsome when she smiled. Then she shrugged, quite lightly.
“Of course, you would see it that way. But me—” she spread her hands. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter much now. May I have them for a keepsake?”
“Have them?”
“The—the phony pearls. Surely you don’t—”
I stood up. An old Ford roadster without a top was chugging up the hill. A man in it had a big star on his vest. The chatter of the motor was like the chatter of some old angry bald-headed ape in the zoo.
Mrs. Sype was standing beside me, with her hand half out, a thin, beseeching look on her face.
I grinned at her with sudden ferocity.
“Yeah, you were pretty good in there for a while,” I said. “I damn’ near fell for it. And was I cold down the back, lady! But you helped. ‘Phony’ was a shade out of character for you. Your work with the Colt was fast and kind of ruthless. Most of all Sype’s last words queered it. ‘The Moors, Hattie—the Moors.’ He wouldn’t have bothered with that if the stones had been ringers. And he wasn’t sappy enough to kid himself all the way.”
For a moment her face didn’t change at all. Then it did. Something horrible showed in her eyes. She put her lips out and spit at me. Then she slammed into the house.
I tucked twenty-five thousand dollars into my vest pocket. Twelve thousand five hundred for me and twelve thousand five hundred for Kathy Home. I could see her eyes when I brought her the check, and when she put it in the bank, to wait for Johnny to get paroled from Quentin.
The Ford had pulled up behind the other cars. The man driving spit over the side, yanked his emergency brake on, got out without using the door. He was a big fellow in shirt sleeves.
I went down the steps to meet him.
GUNS AT CYRANO’S
I
Ted Carmady liked the rain; liked the feel of it, the sound of it, the smell of it. He got out of his LaSalle coupe and stood for a while by the side entrance to the Carondelet, the high collar of his blue suede ulster tickling his ears, his hands in his pockets and a limp cigarette sputtering between his lips. Then he went in past the barbershop and the drugstore and the perfume shop with its rows of delicately lighted bottles, ranged like the ensemble in the finale of a Broadway musical.
He rounded a gold-veined pillar and got into an elevator with a cushioned floor.
“’Lo Albert. A swell rain. Nine.”
The slim tired-looking kid in pale blue and silver held a white-gloved hand against the closing doors, said: “Jeeze, you think I don’t know your floor, Mister Carmady?”
He shot the car up to nine without looking at his signal light, whooshed the doors open, then leaned suddenly against the cage and closed his eyes.
Carmady stopped on his way out, flicked a sharp glance from bright brown eyes. “What’s the matter, Albert? Sick?”
The boy worked a pale smile on his face. “I’m workin’ double shift. Gorky’s sick. He’s got boils. I guess maybe I didn’t eat enough.”
The tall, brown-eyed man fished a crumpled five-spot out of his pocket, snapped it under the boy’s nose. The boy’s eyes bulged. He heaved upright.
“Jeeze, Mister Carmady. I didn’t mean—”
“Skip it, Albert. What’s a fin between pals? Eat some extra meals on me.”
He got out of the car and started along the corridor. Softly, under his breath, he said: “Sucker…”
The running man almost knocked him off his feet. He rounded the turn fast, lurched past Carmady’s shoulder, ran for the elevator.
“Down!” He slammed through the closing doors.
Carmady saw a white set face under a pulled-down hat that was wet with rain; two empty black eyes set very close. Eyes in which there was a peculiar stare he had seen before. A load of dope.
The car dropped like lead. Carmady looked at the place where it had been for a long moment, then he went on down the corridor and around the turn.
He saw the girl lying half in and half out of the open door of 914.
She lay on her side, in a sheen of steel-gray lounging pajamas, her cheek pressed into the nap of the hall carpet, her head a mass of thick corn-blond hair, waved with glassy precision. Not a hair looked out of place. She was young, very pretty, and she didn’t look dead.
Carmady slid down beside her, touched her cheek. It was warm. He lifted the hair softly away from her head and saw the bruise.
“Sapped.” His lips pressed back against his teeth.
He picked her up in his arms, carried her through a short hallway to the living room of a suite, put her down on a big velour davenport in front of some gas logs.
She lay motionless, her eyes shut, her face bluish behind the make-up. He shut the outer door and looked through the apartment, then went back to the hallway and picked up something that gleamed white against the baseboard. It was a bone-handled .22 automatic, sevenshot. He sniffed it, dropped it into his pocket and went back to the girl.
He took a big hammered-silver flask out of his inside breast pocket and unscrewed the top, opened her mouth with his fingers and poured whiskey against her small white teeth. She gagged and her head jerked out of his hand. Her eyes opened. They were deep blue, with a tint of purple. Light came into them and the light was brittle.
He lit a cigarette and stood looking down at her. She moved a little more. After a while she whispered: “I like your whiskey. Could I have a little more?”
He got a glass from the bathroom, poured whiskey into it. She sat up very slowly, touched her head, groaned. Then she took the glass out of his hand and put the liquor down with a practised flip of the wrist.
“I still like it,” she said. “Who are you?”
She had a deep soft voice. He liked the sound of it. He said: “Ted Carmady. I live down the hall in 937.”
“I got a dizzy spell, I guess.”
“Uh-huh. You got sapped, angel.” His bright eyes looked at her probingly. There was a smile tucked to the corners of his lips.
Her eyes got wider. A glaze came over them, the glaze of a protective enamel.
He said: “I saw the guy. He was snowed to the hairline. And here’s your gun.”
He took it out of his pocket, held it on the flat of his hand.
“I su
ppose that makes me think up a bedtime story,” the girl said slowly.
“Not for me. If you’re in a jam, I might help you. It all depends.”
“Depends on what?” Her voice was colder, sharper.
“On what the racket is,” he said softly. He broke the magazine from the small gun, glanced at the top cartridge. “Copper-nickel, eh? You know your ammunition, angel.”
“Do you have to call me angel?”
“I don’t know your name.”
He grinned at her, then walked over to a desk in front of the windows, put the gun down on it. There was a leather photo frame on the desk, with two photos side by side. He looked at them casually at first, then his gaze tightened. A handsome dark woman and a thin blondish cold-eyed man whose high stiff collar, large knotted tie and narrow lapels dated the photo back many years. He stared at the man.
The girl was talking behind him. “I’m Jean Adrian. I do a number at Cyrano’s, in the floor show.”
Carmady still stared at the photo. “I know Benny Cyrano pretty well,” he said absently. “These your parents?”
He turned and looked at her. She lifted her head slowly. Something that might have been fear showed in her deep blue eyes.
“Yes. They’ve been dead for years,” she said dully. “Next question?”
He went quickly back to the davenport and stood in front of her. “Okey,” he said thinly. “I’m nosey. So what? This is my town. My dad used to run it. Old Marcus Carmady, the People’s Friend; this is my hotel. I own a piece of it. That snowed-up hoodlum looked like a life-taker to me. Why wouldn’t I want to help out?”
The blond girl stared at him lazily. “I still like your whiskey,” she said. “Could I—”
“Take it from the neck, angel. You get it down faster,” he grunted.
She stood up suddenly and her face got a little white. “You talk to me as if I was a crook,” she snapped. “Here it is, if you have to know. A boy friend of mine has been getting threats. He’s a fighter, and they want him to drop a fight. Now they’re trying to get at him through me. Does that satisfy you a little?”
Carmady picked his hat off a chair, took the cigarette end out of his mouth and rubbed it out in a tray. He nodded quietly, said in a changed voice: “I beg your pardon.” He started towards the door.
The giggle came when he was halfway there. The girl said behind him softly: “You have a nasty temper. And you’ve forgotten your flask.”
He went back and picked the flask up. Then he bent suddenly, put a hand under the girl’s chin and kissed her on the lips.
“To hell with you, angel. I like you,” he said softly.
He went back to the hallway and out. The girl touched her lips with one finger, rubbed it slowly back and forth. There was a shy smile on her face.
II
Tony Acosta, the bell captain, was slim and dark and slight as a girl, with small delicate hands and velvety eyes and a hard little mouth. He stood in the doorway and said: “Seventh row was the best I could get, Mister Carmady. This Deacon Werra ain’t bad and Duke Targo’s the next light heavy champ.”
Carmady said: “Come in and have a drink, Tony.” He went over to the window, stood looking out at the rain. “If they buy it for him,” he added over his shoulder.
“Well—just a short one, Mister Carmady.”
The dark boy mixed a highball carefully at a tray on an imitation Sheraton desk. He held the bottle against the light and gauged his drink carefully, tinkled ice gently with a long spoon, sipped, smiled, showing small white teeth.
“Targo’s a lu, Mister Carmady. He’s fast, clever, got a sock in both mitts, plenty guts, don’t ever take a step back.”
“He has to hold up the bums they feed him,” Carmady drawled.
“Well, they ain’t fed him no lion meat yet,” Tony said.
The rain beat against the glass. The thick drops flattened out and washed down the pane in tiny waves.
Carmady said: “He’s a bum. A bum with color and looks, but still a bum.”
Tony sighed deeply. “I wisht I was goin’. It’s my night off, too.”
Carmady turned slowly and went over to the desk, mixed a drink. Two dusky spots showed in his cheeks and his voice was tired, drawling.
“So that’s it. What’s stopping you?”
“I got a headache.”
“You’re broke again,” Carmady almost snarled.
The dark boy looked sidewise under his long lashes, said nothing.
Carmady clenched his left hand, unclenched it slowly. His eyes were sullen.
“Just ask Carmady,” he sighed. “Good old Carmady. He leaks dough. He’s soft. Just ask Carmady. Okey, Tony, take the ducat back and get a pair together.”
He reached into his pocket, held a bill out. The dark boy looked hurt.
“Jeeze, Mister Carmady, I wouldn’t have you think—”
“Skip it! What’s a fight ticket between pals? Get a couple and take your girl. To hell with this Targo.”
Tony Acosta took the bill. He watched the older man carefully for a moment. Then his voice was very softly, saying: “I’d rather go with you, Mister Carmady. Targo knocks them over, and not only in the ring. He’s got a peachy blonde right on this floor, Miss Adrian, in 914.”
Carmady stiffened. He put his glass down slowly, turned it on the top of the desk. His voice got a little hoarse.
“He’s still a bum, Tony. Okey, I’ll meet you for dinner, in front of your hotel at seven.”
“Jeeze, that’s swell, Mister Carmady.”
Tony Acosta went out softly, closed the outer door without a sound.
Carmady stood by the desk, his fingertips stroking the top of it, his eyes on the floor. He stood like that for a long time.
“Carmady, the All-American sucker,” he said grimly, out loud. “A guy that plays with the help and carries the torch for stray broads. Yeah.”
He finished his drink, looked at his wrist watch, put on his hat and the blue suede raincoat, went out. Down the corridor in front of 914 he stopped, lifted his hand to knock, then dropped it without touching the door.
He went slowly on to the elevators and rode down to the street and his car.
The Tribune office was at Fourth and Spring. Carmady parked around the corner, went in at the employees’ entrance and rode to the fourth floor in a rickety elevator operated by an old man with a dead cigar in his mouth and a rolled magazine which he held six inches from his nose while he ran the elevator.
On the fourth floor big double doors were lettered City Room. Another old man sat outside them at a small desk with a call box.
Carmady tapped on the desk, said: “Adams. Carmady calling.”
The old man made noises into the box, released a key, pointed with his chin.
Carmady went through the doors, past a horseshoe copy desk, then past a row of small desks at which typewriters were being banged. At the far end a lanky red-haired man was doing nothing with his feet on a pulled-out drawer, the back of his neck on the back of a dangerously tilted swivel chair and a big pipe in his mouth pointed straight at the ceiling.
When Carmady stood beside him he moved his eyes down without moving any other part of his body and said around the pipe: “Greetings, Carmady. How’s the idle rich?”
Carmady said: “How’s a glance at your clips on a guy named Courtway? State Senator John Myerson Courtway, to be precise.”
Adams put his feet on the floor. He raised himself erect by pulling on the edge of his desk. He brought his pipe down level, took it out of his mouth and spit into a wastebasket. He said: “That old icicle? When was he ever news? Sure.” He stood up wearily, added: “Come along, Uncle,” and started along the end of the room.
They went along another row of desks, past a fat girl in smudged make-up who was typing and laughing at what she was writing.
They went through a door into a big room that was mostly six-foot tiers of filing cases with an occasional alcove in which there was a small table and a cha
ir.
Adams prowled the filing cases, jerked one out and set a folder on a table.
“Park yourself. What’s the graft?”
Carmady leaned on the table on an elbow, scuffed through a thick wad of cuttings. They were monotonous, political in nature, not front page. Senator Courtway said this and that on this and that matter of public interest, addressed this and that meeting, went or returned from this and that place. It all seemed very dull.
He looked at a few halftone cuts of a thin, white-haired man with a blank, composed face, deep set dark eyes in which there was no light or warmth. After a while he said: “Got a print I could sneeze? A real one, I mean.”
Adams sighed, stretched himself, disappeared down the line of file walls. He came back with a shiny black and white photograph, tossed it down on the table.
“You can keep it,” he said. “We got dozens. The guy lives forever. Shall I have it autographed for you?”
Carmady looked at the photo with narrow eyes, for a long time. “It’s right,” he said slowly. “Was Courtway ever married?”
“Not since I left off my diapers,” Adams growled. “Probably not ever. Say, what’n hell’s the mystery?”
Carmady smiled slowly at him. He reached his flask out, set it on the table beside the folder. Adams’ face brightened swiftly and his long arm reached.
“Then he never had a kid,” Carmady said.
Adams leered over the flask. “Well—not for publication, I guess. If I’m any judge of a mug, not at all.” He drank deeply, wiped his lips, drank again.
“And that,” Carmady said, “is very funny indeed. Have three more drinks—and forget you ever saw me.”
III
The fat man put his face close to Carmady’s face. He said with a wheeze: “You think it’s fixed, neighbor?”
“Yeah. For Werra.”
“How much says so?”
“Count your poke.”
“I got five yards that want to grow.”
“Take it,” Carmady said tonelessly, and kept on looking at the back of a corn-blond head in a ringside seat. A white wrap with white fur was below the glassily waved hair. He couldn’t see the face. He didn’t have to.
Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories Page 18
