Afraid to Death

by Marc Behm

Get behind them rocks, Lieutenant. I’ll cover you.

  Thanks anyway, Sergeant, but you’d better come with me. You don’t want to be caught out here in the open either.

  Yes, sir.

  There was a shopping center at the end of the block.

  He hid there for an hour, drifting in and out of the stores, watching the entrances.

  Who was that bozo, sir?

  A tenderfoot I used to know in civilian life. He can ruin me because of a mishap I was involved in back East.

  What are you going to do about it, Lieutenant?

  There’s nothing I can do. Except pray.

  The situation is in the lap of the gods as they say. Is that what you mean?

  Exactly.

  He took a taxi back to Mountain View.

  ‘Leopold just called,’ Maxie told him. ‘He says he saw Grayson on Paradise Road.’

  ‘Who is he kidding?’

  ‘He’s desperate. He has to convince everybody that Grayson is still alive. Not only that, but he wants me to report it to the police. Which makes me an accessory.’

  ‘Leopold is becoming a monumental pain in the ass. How long is he going to be in Vegas?’

  ‘He was on his way to the airport when he phoned.’

  She climbed out of the pool and he took her by the hand and led her into the apartment.

  ‘Again?’ she laughed. ‘This cannot go on. Poker all night and poke her all day. We’ll be basket cases!’

  They didn’t bother with the bed. They made love against the wall, surrounded by the headlines.

  On Christmas Eve they went to the dull show at the Sahara, then walked around the Strip with the hordes of holiday visitors.

  They met Milch, in drag, cruising the hotels. They invited him to have a Yuletide drink with them.

  ‘I don’t want your charity!’ he sneered. ‘Just give some bread so’s I can get back in the game.’

  ‘What about your long-going hoodoo?’ Maxie asked.

  ‘I got your long-going hoodoo dangling! Get me into 707 and I’ll wipe out those motherfuckers!’

  ‘They’d never let you into 707, you know that.’

  ‘They let him in!’ he snarled at Joe. ‘What’s so special about him?’

  Maxie was furious. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she yelled. Look at you! You’re a god-damned disgrace! Why do you behave like this? Are you retarded or what?’

  She walked away.

  ‘Rah! rah!’ he barked after her, thumbing his nose. ‘Up yours! Up yours!’ Then he grabbed Joe and dragged him into a doorway. ‘Your goose is cooked, wise guy!’ he smirked. ‘All I gotta do is say the word. One word from me and your goose is cooked.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘What’re you talkin about,’ he mimicked him. ‘What’re you talkin about. You know what I’m talkin about, jerk. I’m talkin about your blond girlfriend that’s what I’m talkin about.’

  Las Vegas suddenly became icy. Joe froze.

  Milch went capering off across the street, skipping and giggling like a tipsy matron. On the opposite pavement he turned, lifted his skirt, kicked his short legs like a cancan dancer. ‘Tra-la-la-la!’ he sang. ‘Tra-la-la-la-la!’

  Now Joe knew why coming to Vegas had bothered him. There were people here who knew him, opponents from thousands of games who could put the finger on him. Naturally, she would stake them out too, just as she had Nellie and Ada. He cursed himself for not having been aware of this in time. Now it was too late.

  She’d gotten to Milch. And maybe even to Maxie!

  ‘Maxie.’

  ‘What?’

  It was Christmas afternoon. They’d slept till eleven and were in the living room now, sitting by the tree, listening to carols on the radio.

  ‘Remember, years ago, that blond woman you met in Des Moines, Utah, the one who was asking about me?’

  ‘Des Moines is in Iowa.’

  ‘Wherever.’

  ‘No.’ She was reading the sports page of the LA Times. ‘I loathe football. It’s so uncouth and crude. Yes. The Vogue blond. Sure.’

  ‘Have you ever seen her again?’

  ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact. In Indianapolis, about three years ago. Did I tell you I have a penthouse in Indianapolis?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Bigger than this place, five bedrooms.’

  ‘Where did you see her? In the street or what?’

  ‘Right there in front of my high rise on English Avenue. She said, “Hi, Maxie.” No she didn’t. What she said was, she lowered her voice, “Good evening, Mrs. Hearn, do you live here?” Very formal and dignified. Like the head waiter at Ma Maison. At first I couldn’t remember who she was. Then I recognized her. “Yeah I live here,” I said. And I asked her if she was still trying to get in touch with you.’

  ‘And what did she say to that?’ As if he didn’t know!

  ‘She said yeah she was. And I said, “So am I.” Imagine running into her twice! Is she …’

  The phone rang.

  He went into the kitchen and drank a glass of grapefruit juice. He wasn’t worried about Milch. The little fucker was too conniving to blow the whistle on him. He’d try something else first, just to see how far he could push his advantage. Blackmail probably. A few grand now. Later a few more. He wasn’t used to having the upper hand. He’d play the situation for all it was worth.

  ‘I know,’ Maxie was saying in the other room. ‘He told me that too. I didn’t believe him. Grayson in Las Vegas hah! It sounded just too convenient. Okay, we’ll be in touch.’ She hung up and ran into the kitchen. ‘That was the sheriff in Niskayuna. Leopold’s been arrested for Frank’s murder.’

  42

  ‘Did Maxie tell you about our accident?’ Milch asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Joe said. ‘On the San Diego Freeway.’

  ‘The Santa Monica Freeway. We was goin to a bridge game in Pasadena.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me you were with her.’

  ‘Well I was.’ He was immediately on the defensive, whimpering peevishly. ‘I didn’t have a car. I still don’t. Whenever I gotta go somewhere I gotta bum a ride. Is that something to be ashamed of? Huh?’

  They were in the coffee shop of the Hilton. He was wearing a wrinkled and stained yellow suit and a cowboy hat. But he didn’t look any more outlandish than the rest of the tourists having lunch.

  ‘She rammed into a truck, the dumb bitch.’ He chewed his steak, open-mouthed, making clicking noises. ‘I was all banged up. I was in extensive care for a month.’

  ‘Use your napkin, Milch. Wipe your chin.’

  ‘Then one night …’ he closed one eye, grimacing, going into an unpleasant flashback. ‘In the hospital …’ the memory confused him. ‘I woke up and she was standing there, bending over me. She was blue.’

  ‘Blue?’

  ‘Because of the lights. Blue. I thought it was one of the nurses. But …’ he scowled, the memory still fluid. ‘She said … that’s when I knew it wasn’t one of the nurses. When she talked, I knew all their voices. They was always yappin at me.’

  ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘She said, “You’re not goin to die, Milch. Just tell me where Joe Egan is.”’

  Joe crossed his legs under the table. His feet were cold. He looked out the window. A woman passed with a large police dog on a leash. Then three men carrying golf bags came by. Then several children. Then a group of tennis players. Sometimes he felt as if he belonged to another race. Another species.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘She left. And about a week after I got outta the hospital I gotta telegram. Just a phone number with a 213 code. I called up a couple a times. Always an answerin machine.’

  ‘Did you leave a message?’

  ‘Yeah. I said I didn’t know where you was.’

  ‘Good.’ He picked up his cup of coffee to warm his hands. ‘Now listen carefully, Milch.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘This woman is dangerous. I don’t want to have anythi
ng to do with her. I don’t want you to have anything to do with her either. Just call that number again and tell her you still don’t know where I am.’

  ‘In a pig’s ass! Why should I cover for you?’

  ‘You’re not listening, Milch. Dangerous, I said. Just as dangerous for you as she is for me.’

  ‘What’s she got on you anyhow?’

  ‘Never mind that. Just stay out of it.’

  ‘Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.’ He was impressed, his face quivering with indecision. There was something about the whole thing – the blue woman, the telegram, the oddness of it all – that made him leery. ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘Maxie’s going to get you into Suite 707, for old time’s sake. If you promise not to make a fool of yourself.’

  ‘I know how to be just as phony as anybody else!’

  ‘And I’m going to give you some money to bail you out of your misery.’

  ‘How much?’

  There it was! His beady eyes were brimming with greed. He was back in the game.

  Maxie had some trouble getting him into the suite, but her clout was considerable and they finally admitted him. He played poker there for the first time on New Year’s Eve. Aside from some sneering and snarling, he behaved himself very well. He played professionally, breaking no rules, keeping his voice down, drinking only one scotch. And at midnight he wished everyone a happy new year almost graciously. His hosts found nothing to object to.

  Joe and Maxie celebrated January the 1st by driving into the desert to watch the sun rise.

  An eagle dropped out of the pale orange sky and perched for just an instant on the hood of the car, then flew away. According to Titus Livius, this was a Roman omen.

  Another year. He refused to count them. They made no sense to him. They were like centuries or decades, too massive to contemplate. A calendar was as incomprehensible as a heliographic chart. Only his days and nights mattered. One more morning, one more twilight, an infinity of moments. Time was an illusion.

  But it was nice having someone to share the illusion. He knew that Maxie was a trap, tempting him deeper and deeper into her body, into his need for her. But he couldn’t help himself. She was too appeasing, too satisfying. He’d run away from her once, he wondered if he could do it again if he had to. He was like Hannibal’s army in Capua. Hot baths and soft beds and dancing girls were sapping his will, making him inert and shiftless. When the time came for flight, he might sink.

  In February he became a silent partner in one of her deals. He had no interest in real estate, but she kept insisting, horrified to discover that all his winnings were in his money-belt. So he finally invested fifty grand.

  He gave Milch two thousand a month and paid his rent.

  In March a mob smashed into the Niskayuna jail and tried to lynch Leopold.

  The poker continued, either in 707 or some other hotel. They usually played twice a week.

  Maxie changed her patch every Saturday.

  The winter passed.

  This is turning into a long furlough, Sergeant.

  We need the rest, Lieutenant.

  That we do.

  Maybe we can stay here forever.

  That would be fine. But just the same, keep the horses saddled up so we’ll be able to ride out in the twinkling of a jiffy.

  Nothing happened until June.

  Milch was doing well, playing with surprising restraint, winning small but steadily. He had money in the bank these days and for the first time in his life was out of the red. Joe hadn’t seen him in drag since Christmas. He was considering cutting his allowance.

  But the morning he met him in the Palace bar, he was a nervous wreck.

  ‘She called up last night,’ he bleated. ‘I got her on my answering machine. You wanna hear it?’

  Joe went with him to his grubby hotel room and they played the message.

  ‘Mr. Milch, you know who this is. I’m still very anxious to find Joe Egan and I’m still waiting for you to tell me where he is.’

  Nothing else. Joe felt the old familiar queasiness flooding him with bile, numbing him, making him abject.

  ‘I’m scared,’ Milch whimpered. ‘Why am I so scared?’

  ‘She’s frightening. If a black samba or a shark could talk, they’d sound like her.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’

  ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Fuck her!’

  43

  Maxie had to go to Indianapolis to see a lawyer. He went with her.

  The warning signals began to flash as soon as they arrived at Weir Cook Airport. A blind man tripped over Maxie’s valise. A woman fell on an escalator just in front of them. Their taxi driver was drunk.

  The penthouse was worst of all. It was a superb duplex, with high ceilings and wide walls and a dining room that sat twenty people. But it was forty floors high, surrounded by outer space! Vertigo was lurking behind every window. He made her close all the curtains.

  ‘You get used to it,’ she said. ‘But if there’s a fire, so long!’

  He shuddered. A fire. Jesus. He began looking for escape routes. There weren’t any. Just the stairs and a private elevator.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so squeamish!’ she cried. ‘Doesn’t the altitude make you horny?’

  They made love on a round waterbed in one of the rooms. On the nightstand was the ultimate omen. A framed photo of Frank.

  Later in the afternoon, while she was at her lawyer’s office, he wandered through the warren of rooms, feeling exposed and defenseless. Why? Why would Indianapolis be more hazardous than anywhere else?

  He thought it over, becoming more and more convinced that staying here could be a disaster. She knew Maxie’s address. She’d already been here once before, right out there on English Avenue, reconnoitering the terrain. What if she came back again today or tonight or tomorrow just to see if anyone was home?

  He left the building and checked into a hotel on State Avenue. Then he hid a getaway valise in a locker at the bus terminal.

  He took a long walk and didn’t get back to the penthouse until seven.

  Maxie’s lawyer invited them to dinner. Then they went to a party in a house on Oliver Street. Everyone there was snorting coke and listening to old Harry James records.

  He went out to the back yard and sat down wearily on the steps. His Uncle Joe had been a Harry James fan. When he went off to war he left a whole box of records with Mom. Joe had been three years old when he left. He vaguely remembered VE Day and VJ Day. People cheering and cars blowing their horns and Dad hanging a flag out the window.

  He lit a cigar and watched two guys dancing together in the driveway.

  How was he going to tell Maxie he didn’t want to spend the night on her rooftop? Problems problems.

  Being a couple was difficult. If he were younger, he’d just run. But he didn’t want to lose her. She was surely the very last chance he had not to be alone in the world. His caution these days wasn’t as strong as his dread of solitude. That would probably doom him. We all think there’s safety in togetherness. Like those two chorus boys capering gayly in the moonlight. They thought they were protected by their homo fellowship. But that wouldn’t save them. The Mafia dacoit had his Family, the Catholic his Church, the Jew his tribe, Lou Gehrig his baseball team. And Uncle Joe his 8th Air Force. But in the end everyone dies his own lonely death, as solitary as a mangy old wolf crawling through the frozen woods.

  ‘Joe!’

  That sounded like Ada, calling to him in the blizzard. Better to be dead than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy. Act Three, Scene Two.

  ‘Wake up!’

  Christ! He couldn’t open his eyes! The lids were stuck!

  A hand tapped him on the top of the head. He woke with a start. Maxie and the two gay dancers were standing around him. She introduced them. He didn’t catch their names. X and X. They both had beards and were wearing gold chains around their necks.

  ‘They want to play poker,’ she said. ‘Or wo
uld you rather stay here. There’s an orgy getting underway.’

  ‘No orgy please.’ He pulled himself to his feet. ‘Poker by all means …’ He was still clutching his cigar. ‘Balls! Look! I burned a hole in my pants!’

  The four of them drove back to the penthouse in a Bentley, Maxie and X and X gossiping about people he’d never heard of. She’d evidently been living in Indianapolis off and on for years and was as much at home here as everywhere else. They talked about him as if he weren’t present.

  ‘A business associate,’ she said. ‘We’ve been buddies for years. He’s the only man I’ve ever known who never tried to rip me off. For a while he couldn’t get it up. I cured him of that. Now we fuck all the time. We’ll probably get married. I was always terrified at the idea of growing old all by myself, an elderly hag with lots of real estate and nobody to talk to. That’ll never happen now, thank God. Well always have each other. We’re partners.’

  Joe was touched. She had everything all worked out in advance, like a flight plan. She didn’t know her partner was the Flying Dutchman.

  They played all night and he won twenty-six thousand. At sunrise he lost the last game when he was dealt a pair of aces and a pair of eights. A deadman’s hand.

  He ran.

  She was outside, sitting on a bench on English Avenue, waiting for him.

  44

  After a long ride on three different buses, he ended up in Lafayette, Indiana. From there he flew to San Francisco.

  He lived in Oakland for six months, then moved north to El Cerrito.

  He went back to Vegas only once. His Zephyr wasn’t in the parking lot. It had been towed away. Maxie refused to let him into the apartment. When he met her at the Cafe de Paris she wouldn’t even speak to him. She sent an envelope to his hotel. It contained a cashier’s check for $50,000.

  So much for partnerships.

  Bob, the waiter at the Gold Mine, told him Milch was gone. Nobody knew where. Or cared.

  Flying back to San Francisco, he read in Time that Leopold had been found not guilty.

  He moved south to Alameda, then north to Piedmont, then west to Emeryville.

  He bought a secondhand Monza V8 and spent most of his time driving around the shore of the Bay, going nowhere.