“But the papers said that her car—”
“Was home! So she said, and her mother, and her friends. But I know what I saw, don’t I?”
She gave an impassioned account of the accident, especially her companion’s heroism in pushing her out to safety, though held himself by his seat belt. She wound up: “What brought me to, lying there on the bank, was a sound, of a car door being shut, and I made myself open my eyes. At that moment lights came on, and her number was looking at me.”
“But, Buster, wait a minute. At a time like that, there’s such a thing as hallucination—people think they see things that they don’t see!”
“And prevarication, as the cops are trying to say.”
“And— What was that, Buster?”
“They’re making a thing of it, that I knew whose number it was before they gave it out! O.K., maybe that was dumb, talking to those reporters there in the hospital room, and saying I already knew who the number belonged to. Well, I ought to know, oughtn’t I? I picked up her plates for her when he asked me to, and she was too shiftless to do it—last March this was, and I stood in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. What’s the big deal in that? I saw her number, I tell you! There in the dark of the night!”
On this subject she was obviously somewhat unbalanced, and he didn’t pursue it further. Uneasily he asked: “O.K., but where do I come in?”
“In regard to the number, you don’t.”
She opened her bag and took out a paper, an insurance policy, he saw. Handing it over, she said: “This he took out for me, couple of years ago—could have been three, I’m not sure. It’s life insurance, Mr. Lockwood, but a special kind, that’s cheap. Term insurance it’s called, and the idea of it was I would be protected, if something happened to him, until his father would die, and he would come into the money, so a new deal would come. He could settle with her, marry me, and not need this kind of insurance. So his father did die, with some help from her, as he thought, like I told you the other night—and a new deal came indeed. Because believe it or not, he turned around and became grateful for what she did—he began to wonder, Mr. Lockwood, if taking her back wasn’t cheaper than making a settlement. At least I got that idea! Well, I said so before, didn’t I? So that’s what the row was about, out on the parking lot. But how this thing comes in, this policy you have in your hands: he meant to let it lapse, as it had no point any more. The premium’s due in October, and she’s trying to make out I had until then to kill him if I was going to cash in. She says I made him go up the ladder to check the stuff in the Lilac, the overhead rails they put in, so he’d fall and break his neck. So he did go up and he fell, but he didn’t break his neck. An electrician caught him, and no harm was done. But then she says, when that didn’t work, I went with him on that ride and—”
“Wait a minute! How do you know she says that?”
“Didn’t you hear me? She told me so!”
“Over the phone? She said that?”
“She screamed at me a half hour, until I really had to wonder if she wasn’t off her nut.”
“... O.K. And I?”
“It would help me if I could refer them to you, and you’d say you were the one, not I, who told him he had to climb up. And make sure those rails were level.”
“The police? Of course refer them to me.”
“You remember telling him that?”
“I certainly do. You can count on me to the limit.”
She thanked him, started pulling on her gloves. But he had opened the policy and now started reading it. And then suddenly he exclaimed: “But this thing is in force! You stand to collect twenty-five thousand bucks.”
“That’s right—if I put in my claim.”
“If you put it in? You’d better put it in! Not putting it in would be tantamount to admitting you had some reason not to.” And then, suddenly rattled and licking his lips: “Or at least so I would think. Unfortunately I don’t know—neither one of us knows. Buster, what you need is a lawyer.”
“Oh, sure—I’ll get one, right away.” Her tone was ironical, and she continued pulling on the gloves.
“Hold everything.”
Every place has its ace criminal lawyer, and Channel City’s was Nat Pender, whom Clay knew pleasantly enough, as a fellow club member. He rang him now and, after recalling himself, said: “Nat, a friend of mine’s in trouble, and I’m wondering if I can send her to you.”
“Why, I think so. Who is she?”
“Name’s Buster Conlon—that girl who—”
Oh, yeah, the one that was with Alexis. Say, she is in trouble, Clay—it could be, unless something is done. According to my grapevine, there’s an insurance angle and—”
“Yes, that’s why I called you, Nat.”
“Well, then, if you’ll have her come in—?”
“This afternoon, maybe?”
“Yes, but let me look at my book.”
“O.K., Nat, but first things first, and before you do any looking, what’s this going to cost? I mean, as a down payment, like?”
“Clay, with you I’d hardly ask—”
“Nat, I’m no different than anyone else.”
They backed and filled through the immemorial politesse, but presently Mr. Pender admitted that “in a case of this kind, where she’s not actually charged and it’s mainly a question of getting the cops off her back, I let you off light— I feel it rates a thousand-dollar retainer, but I don’t take your shirt. That comes later.”
“She’ll have the check in her hand. Now look at your book and let’s set it up—what she does and what you do.”
When Mr. Pender had looked at his book, his manner was somewhat different, he obviously meaning to give value for value received. He said: “Clay, I have an hour I can give her, by shifting some things around, if she’ll be here promptly at two. And what I’ll do is have my girl call headquarters and leave word for the men assigned to this case that if they want to talk to her then, she’ll be here to answer their questions—in my presence, and I’ll decide which ones. But, Clay, for your information, and so she cooperates, I’ve found it’s smart at this stage of the game to have her answer them all. They know, as they’ve dealt with me many and many’s the time, that after that she clams—they’ll have to come to me. That brings on a new phase. But I’ve also found that it’s smart to have the reporters come, so after the cops are done they have a go at her, and perhaps are given a statement. Then, Clay, I hope you get the point: That’s it! Unless she’s charged, there isn’t any more, because they can’t stay on her back and just twiddle their thumbs. Do you get it, Clay? And will you explain it to her? So she doesn’t think I’m playing the deuces wild? When it’s not bottled up any more, it can’t explode in her face!”
“I do get it, and I’ll see that she does.”
Going down the hall to the “office,” he wrote the $1,000 check and put it in an envelope, which he marked: “Mr. Pender, Kindness of Miss Conlon.” Then he sealed it and went back to the living room, where he sat down with her and explained Mr. Pender’s plan. She seemed to get the point, and then he handed over the envelope, telling her: “First of all, give this to Mr. Pender.”
She took it, glanced at it, said: “You’re supposed to leave it open when you say ‘Kindness of Miss Conlon.’ Sealing it’s not polite.”
“Unless Miss Conlon is nosy.”
“How much is this check; Mr. Lockwood?”
“It—sweetens the pot, that’s all.”
“I want to know. If I do make a claim and it’s paid, I can pay you back—and I want to. Now say: How much?”
“Buster, you mind your own business.”
She came over and sat in his lap, patting his cheek and kissing him. “You don’t know what it means,” she whispered, “having a friend like you.”
“I don’t like it, you being kicked around.”
“Mr. Lockwood, you make me want to cry.”
“Now! There’s nothing to cry about!”
“Oh, yes, there is. We’ve been so busy, talking them first things first, I haven’t told you all. If things should start breaking for me, thanks to you, Mr. Lockwood, it would be heaven right on this earth. Like if I get the money, I could do things for my folks, up in Havre de Grace, like taking the mortgage up that’s hanging over their heads. And I got job offers too, now that my picture’s been in and everyone’s talking about me—even Mike will put me on. I used to strip, Mr. Lockwood, and I can go back to that trade. If I do say it myself, I look good in my G string. Wait! I’ll show you—”
“No, please! Not now, and not here!”
“O.K., but when I start ecdizzying around— Mr. Lockwood, there’s a word and a half, ecdysiast. Who invented that? Do you know?”
“Mr. Mencken, I think.”
“Who’s he?”
“Writer. Dead now.”
“Well, he did something for our business. Because you play around with it, it’s a laugh—oh, I’ve used it often. Two of them, specially—you leave off the T and—”
“Never mind, I can imagine!”
“It comes out—”
“No!”
“Funny!”
She laughed as she flirted with him, playful as a puppy. But then suddenly she wrapped an arm on his head, held his face up to hers, and said: “I’m making it up to you—this check you wrote, I mean. But there’s one thing I’d like understood: I loved that guy—Alec, I’m talking about. Maybe I wasn’t a saint, the way I treated him, but in my heart I loved him. And he loved me, Mr. Lockwood. O.K., the money was there, and sometimes it went to his head, so foolish ideas got in it. But he loved me. Well? What do you call that? Pushing me out that night—”
“Greater love hath no man—!”
“That’s right! And he did lay down his life!” She waited a long moment, then reverently whispered: “For me!”
“... Are we done?”
“Did you hear me? I’ll make it up to you.”
“Thanks, Buster.”
“You want me to call?”
“Well, why don’t I ring you?”
“I mean, today? Tell you how I make out?”
“Oh, by all means! Please!”
“Well, on that other—of course you have to call me.”
“O.K., we’ll leave it like that.”
At last he got her out and shortly after went out to lunch, eating in the drugstore. Then he came back and began marching around, looking at his watch, drying his hands on his handkerchief. Around three, when his phone rang, he jumped for it. “Clay?” said Mr. Pender. “It’s all over—the boys did their stuff, police, reporters, and a faceless silent guy that looked like an adjuster. She’s in the clear—they really had nothing on her. The insurance, of course, would be bad, back to back with something else, but when nothing else was there, it didn’t mean a thing. So she’s happy as a lark, having a bath in mud. She’s putting her claim in and is going to collect, I think. And next week she goes to work for Mike Dominick, in a show he’s putting together to take the place of the magic—ecdizzying, she calls it, and I’m sure it’s going to be dizzy.”
But Clay’s conscience stirred, he not wanting Buster to bear any part of the cost his act had caused her. He said: “Swell, Nat—you’ve covered yourself with glory. But what’s the tab? On that claim. What are you charging her?”
“Oh, I have nothing to do with that.”
“I thought you’d taken it over.”
“She doesn’t need a lawyer, may be better off without one. Of course if there’s trouble about it, then I’ll step in, of course. But so far it’s her affair, and you’re all paid up, boy. If that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“I’m paid in full, Clay. And thanks.”
“Hey, I bet that’s ethics.”
“It’s good for the grass, makes it grow.”
He had hardly hung up when the phone rang again, and this time Buster gave her account, at somewhat greater length, but even more cheerfully. He gave his congratulations and listened to more of her thanks. She wound up: “I’ll be waiting for your call.”
“I’ll look forward to it, Buster.”
“I’ll make it up to you. Nice.”
“O.K., she’s a sweet, harmless thing, and you clobbered that snake but good. All’s well that ends well, and now get on with your life.”
19
HE GOT ON WITH his life by asking Grace to dinner and taking her to the club, the first time she had ever been there. She was still in her mood of elation, though resentful of “that girl—why, the nerve of her, showing up as she did at the funeral, and after accusing Sally.” To his mouth came a hot retort, but he caught himself in time and said mildly: “Oh, well, it’s been a dreadful time for everyone, and for her too, no doubt. At least she mourned him—she was sorry he was dead, which was more than Sally could say.” It was more than Grace could say, as she had already confessed, in bitter shame—which may have been why she changed the subject to the blue haze on the water. “Do you see how it blots out the shoreline, on the other side of the bay, so everything seems suspended between heaven and earth, day and night, yesterday and tomorrow, in kind of a smoke-blue Nirvana?” But Nirvana got a jolt when three children fetched up against her, all in bathing suits, and a mother called out her apologies. Indeed, the place swarmed with children, and he apologized too. “It’s the pram race they had today,” he explained, “but if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. It goes on all summer this way, but I assure you that after Labor Day it’s a wholly different place.”
When he said “Labor Day,” he remembered, all of a sudden, what he had quite forgotten: the hotel reservation he had, the one Miss Helm had got him, the following week in Atlantic City. It seemed like a thing from another century, but he had it, just the same, and in a moment he said: “Grace, forget the kids. Speaking of Labor Day, I happen to think of something else. Pat Grant kept after me to go somewhere and relax, so they have this beauty contest down at Atlantic City, and I thought: ‘Once in a lifetime, why not?’ So I’m reserved. I have a sure-enough suite—sitting room, bedroom, and bath—forty dollars a day. How’d you like to share it with me?”
“... Are you propositioning me?”
“Well, you’re pretty enough. Yes, I am.”
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Get thee behind me, please!”
“You sound almost as though tempted.”
“Tempted? I’m practically a gone duck!”
“O.K., then, it’s a date?”
“I didn’t say so. Not—yet.”
Thoughtfully she ate her crab soup and after some minutes went on: “Clay, I never concealed from you how you made me feel, even that first night. That first—evening. ‘Night’ sounds so damned intimate—no doubt I betray myself. Well, I owned up, didn’t I? And I might have landed you, have stolen you away, even from luscious Sal, if I had made the try. I couldn’t, I was bound. By—what I felt I must do, the campaign I had to start. But you know what it was, we’ve been all over that. Now, however, that’s changed. The main thing holding me back, as I said the other night, doesn’t exist any more—Alec’s dead, and I don’t have to fear for him the way I once did. And she seems, the way she talks, just as cold on you as you seem to be on her. So, I’m out of my vows! I’m free—to work my wiles on you.”
“Then, you’re going?”
“Well—I didn’t quite say that.”
“Listen, make up your mind: yes or no?”
“Clay, I have made up my mind. Darling, it’s yes—with beating heart and head all full of thoughts. If, as, and when you up your offer.”
“How can a proposition be upped?”
“It can be done if you try.”
She looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes, her mouth puckered a bit, for some time. Suddenly he knew what she meant. He looked away, took in the wholesome scene of childhood slapping around half bare; of motherhood sipping martinis; of fatherhood smoking cigars; of the smoke-blue Nir
vana tinting the sunset with peace. Then a hunger possessed him, for wholesome, clean things, and he reached out a friendly finger to touch the back of her hand. “O.K.,” he said, his eyes growing soft, “I get the point: a proposition is upped when you make a proposal out of it. So consider it upped. But—you made your little speech. Now I’d like to make you one.”
He thought, then went on: “I never concealed from you how I felt that evening. You have to admit I made passes from the start—whatever they are. I’ve never quite known, really, but whatever they are, I made ’em, at you, and meant ’em. So, our stars weren’t in conjunction, and nothing came of it then. But I knew who was good for me, who the deepest part of me wanted, who the best part of me wanted. And that’s why, when we both were going through hell, you because you were decent, I because I wasn’t, at least for a while, that same part of me wanted you and thought of nothing else. Then I woke up. The lightning struck and opened my eyes, so at last I was free too—of my vows, or insanity, or whatever it was. So I hereby up my proposition, from wanting to, and with no regrets at all—especially for anyone else. I propositioned you, with all kinds of thoughts, and for them I don’t apologize. If they don’t go with the package, the rest of it’s not worth much. Just the same, I want you to promise me something. When I take you home tonight, I’ll really give you an earful, begging to be asked up. I want you to tell me no. I want our marriage to be strictly on the beam—the way it is in the books, absolutely according to Hoyle. Do you hear what I say, Grace?”
“I hear you. I’m touched.”
“This is Friday night. We can’t be married tomorrow, as everything’s closed up, license bureau and all. We can’t be married Monday. Tuesday we can be. Is that O.K. with you?”
“Then, Tuesday it’s a date.”
“I’m happy about it. I hope you are.”
“Beautifully happy, Clay.”
When they got out at Rosemary Park and stood hand in hand once more, listening to the crickets, he whispered: “Maybe they’re happy too.”
“It’s a sweet sound, isn’t it?”