“O.K., shoot.”
“Not on a party line.”
“It’s not no party line.”
“Look, I’m loaded and friendly, but at the same time I must show my power. The disease seems to be catching. I won’t talk on the phone, so—”
“You gaw dayum fool, you—”
“Get up here.”
“On my way, Duke, right now.”
I met him at the door with her sweater and slacks, to bug his eyes, and they bugged. I told him I’d misjudged her when I told him she backslid, and these things would give him the idea. He kept stretching the sweater, as though there must be some trick, and I led him into her bedroom, where he stared at the rest of her clothes, still not able to believe it. I told a little about it, the fight she’d made, my part in it, and Val’s reaction, which of course brought some remarkable cussing. Then I said: “However, that’s not why I called. On that I’ll make it quick. Yesterday, after you left, I had a talk with your sister, and it turned out you were right. About me, and how she feels toward me. I didn’t respond, which made her a little sore. But even allowing for that, she’s one hundred per cent nuts about me.”
“Aw, Chrisalminey!”
“Shall I go on Bill, or not?”
“What you getting at, Duke?”
“Right now, at the start, I’m making you take what I say. Dishing it out at you. Some of those things you said yesterday, they slightly got my goat. It came to me, the squat you’d have done in jail if it hadn’t been for me—right in this very room, when you let heave at Mr. Commissioner, and—”
“I took it back, didn’t I?”
“Not too loud, however.”
“I take it back—is that better?”
“And apologize.”
“Listen, goddam it—”
“I said—”
“I apologize.”
I said take it easy and listen what I told him. I took up the diet again, and explained: “It’s had a peculiar effect. She wants to kick up her heels. Like a heifer, she says. She was a fat girl, a good girl, too long, and now she wants a change. To whoop and holler and laugh, to run and dance and sing. To cut up—especially with me. I’m the guy that showed her how, the one that set her free.”
He cussed at me, but I wouldn’t let up. I said: “I just want you to get it straight, the kind of hand I hold. Right now I’m in her doghouse. As I told you, she made like friendly and I made like scram, quick. But there’s nothing griping her that one good pass won’t fix. You got all this straight, stupid?”
“If you’re after dough, I got none.”
“I’m not after dough.”
“Then what is it?”
“I told you I thought it over, all that you said yesterday, and the proof that I did is I do make like scram. On all but one or two points I think you were right. I think, considering the husband she’s got, the setup here and all, I’m not the guy she should have. You just as well know, I’m just as nuts about her as she is about me—if she is. Just the same, I’ll bow out. On one condition only.”
“Which is?”
“You know that officer, Daniel?”
“The one that took you in?”
“You acquainted with him, Bill?”
“We get along, yes.”
“I want that confession he took.”
“For that you’d blow?”
“Bill, never mind how she feels about me. If you ever repeat what I told you, I’ll make you wish you hadn’t. As to what I feel about her, I couldn’t tell you, see? There aren’t that many words in the language. Spite of that, to get that confession I’ll blow. From that you can get an idea how I feel about jail. It’s a deal. You get that for me, I’m gone.”
He thought for some time, without cussing or anything. Then: “I know this Daniel, Duke. I’ve known him, I’ve done him some favors. Maybe he listens to reason, maybe he hands it over. But suppose I don’t get it, what then?”
“I still blow, but different.”
“How different?”
“I take her.”
He’d been walking around, and now wheeled to hit me. I paid no attention and said: “If that’s what’s waiting for me, this eight-ball Daniel has, if that’s what Val has on me—O.K., that’s it. But before he gets me, I’ve had a fling with his wife. Maybe I’d like to cut up. Don’t make any mistake, Bill. I mean business, and it could happen tonight.”
He did no more wheeling, but sat down to the phone, dialed, got Marlboro, got the county police, got Daniel, and started to talk. It was about me, my summer’s work, and my reform, with nothing said about favors, only what I deserved. Then he listened, for quite some little time, to talk from the other end. Then, very glibby, he said: “Will you, Danny, for me? Will you do that little thing? Believe me the guy’s all right, in spite of his one mistake. He’s got it coming.”
He hung up, squinted down at his feet in a way that reminded me of her, said: “He’s going to look for it. Tonight he’ll try and find it. That, and the gun he took off you. ... Why would he need all that looking?”
“Doesn’t he know where he put it?”
“Duke, one thing hit me funny. He said he’d been busy as hell, hadn’t thought of it lately, all kind of stuff like that. But in between, he’d say: ‘It was really Val’s idea.’ What do you make out of that?”
“Nothing I like. One damned bit.”
“We better go into this.”
He dialed again, got the Ladyship, asked for a Miss Coulter. When she came on he acted mysterious. He said he represented the “credit company,” and wanted more “information” about “that note you signed, Miss Coulter—just a few questions I have, so—” However, he didn’t finish, as she screamed back very loud, and he cut off. He put the receiver back, said: “That was Danny’s girl, that’s all right except she likes clothes, and got herself into trouble. She gave a note to Val, meaning he made her give it, to cover a shortage she had, then commence paying back. He’s all the hell on restitution, Val is. Well, the way she talked, she’s clear. If she hadn’t been, ’stead of bawling me out that way, she’d have been scared to death and showed it. Only one thing would have made Val give her note up, and that’s something he’d rather have. If your confession was his idea, that’s it and that was the deal. To get her back that note, Daniel sold you out. The reason he’s got to look, and the reason he won’t be able to find it, is that it’s passed to Val.”
“Then Holly and I—”
“Not so fast, Duke. You said it once.”
He dialed again, and then was talking to Marge, down at Waldorf. He caught her up pretty quick, what the thing was about, and then: “Marge, Duke is O.K. He knows it’s time to go, and feels he’s earned the right. He’s done Val’s work all year, so there’s hardly any work left. He’s done all kinds of things for Holly, along the line I told you, but it’s better than we had any idea—simply terrific, I’ve seen her clothes. She’s a normal girl at last, and it’s mainly due to Duke. Besides all that, he’s gone straight himself. He wants out, but what’s hanging it up is this thing Daniel has apparently given to Val. Without that Duke is worried, and I for one don’t blame him. Baby, what can we do? Once again, it’s the bassid against the rest of us, but there must be something to do!”
If he was expecting some nice, friendly advice, that’s not how it turned out. For the second time since we started, a woman was sounding shrill, but this time he couldn’t cut off. He had to sit there and take it, which he did, saying mostly: “I see,” and having no back talk at all. At last he hung up, crossed to the sofa, wiped his brow, and said: “Marge says Holly can get it, if anyone can. If anyone can, Marge said.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“Listen, Duke, if to get it Holly has to love that bassid up, that may be tough, but you should have thought of it when you hijacked the filling station.”
I thought that over, said: “Well, this is not so good, but at least it’s plain. However, I think I told you I’m in the lady’s dog
house. Would Marge speak to her for me?”
“Not as she feels now.”
“Something she holds against me?”
“Duke, you heard me just now, the way I put it to her, explaining your idea about it, and giving her reasons I thought were better than the ones you gave. She didn’t go for it. Fact of the matter, she was shocked. She’s kind of caught on, as I tried to tell you yesterday, that Holly and you are in love. And she calls it love, not nuts or something like that. On top of which she’s got these ever-and-ever approaches to stuff like that. So she’s shocked. She thinks you should stick.”
“Get myself sent up to the Maryland Penitentiary, and then Holly’ll be waiting when I get out—she will like hell. If Marge wants a cure for love, that’s it.”
“I’m telling you what she said.”
“What do you say?”
“I’m for Holly, that’s all.”
“That’s no answer.”
“You got one, tell me.”
I had none or I wouldn’t have called him, but in spite of how I’d been jawing, my face was getting hot, from the way Marge had felt. Because in the first place I thought she had more brains than the rest of us put together. And in the second place there it was, the loyalty I knew she had, not only for Bill, but for everyone that she loved, so she had to be one hundred per cent right. It was some time, after I simmered down, before I got going again, so we just sat there, he on the sofa, I on the love seat, like a couple of buzzards. But then, creeping into my mind, came the realization that a split had taken place in the corner across from mine, that he favored one thing, Marge something else. I said: “In other words, if I measured up to her standards, Marge would be on my side.”
“Too late for that, I’m afraid.”
“Then I’ll stick.”
“Damn it, you promised to go!”
“If you got me that paper, and on that you’ve been no use at all.”
“I found out who has it, di’n I?”
“And in the second place, on anything of this kind, Marge is the one that’s smart. I string with her, regardless of how she feels just at this moment.”
He held his face in his hands, and I think he wanted to cry. In his secret heart, what he hated most of all was that his sister would get mixed up in something, specially something in stripes. But in a minute I bulled on. I said: “Tell Marge I’ll thank her for the opinion she had of me once, and say I’ll try to get it back. Tell her, on sticking, it’s what I want to do, and on love, no one could have any more. Tell her, regardless of pride, what it costs me, or anything else, I’ll proposition her sister-in-law, on my knees if that’s what it takes.”
CHAPTER XIII
SO I DID, AND SOON, but in a way I didn’t expect. After he left, Homer came, to haul the Jacks off to town, and I had to load him with care, so the wiring wouldn’t get busted. When he left, it was one, and two when I finished eating, the little bit that I did. But I kept having a feeling, of things about to pop, and of having to hug the bag, so as not to get caught by surprise. I decided on some repairing, a reasonable thing as I thought, since at that time of year, except for spinach, pumpkins, and other late stuff of that kind, nothing was growing at all, and there was no field work to be done. I went out to the implement shed and rolled the harrow out. Then I got my kit of tools, sat down there in the patio, and began tightening bolts. I’d been at it some little time before movement caught my eye, and through the living-room windows saw her car stop out front. I kind of made with my back, so she would have to speak first.
But who spoke was a man, and I almost jumped out of my skin when his raspy voice called: “Hey! Hey you, back there!”
I turned and saw a guy in racetrack clothes, a million miles from anything you’d connect with her. He was in the open living-room door, so she’d apparently brought him in, then asked him to speak to me. He came strutting back, a medium-size man around thirty, with a pasty citified face, a small eyebrow mustache, and a look in the eye that said underworld. I don’t remember speaking, but must have asked if there was something that he wanted, as he said: “I? No. But the lady would like some service.”
“She tongue-tied she can’t ask?”
“She asked me to tell you.”
I walked to the house, trying to make allowance for the state she was in, but still all crossed up as to why she’d be here with this jerk, or give him the idea I was in some way hard to handle. I followed him into the living-room, and there she was on the sofa, still in her hat, still in her new brown suit, looking over brochures that were all spread out on the table. They seemed to be about liquor, from the pictures of bottles and all, and I suddenly remembered what Val had said last night, and had a hunch who this guy was. She looked up and, in a hoity-toity way that wasn’t like her at all, said: “Oh, Duke. Will you take Mr. Lippert’s things? Just put them in the breakfast nook.”
I took his fawn hat, blue scarf, and tan coat, went to the alcove, dumped them on the table, and kept on to the kitchen, trying for a little control. I walked around some minutes, still minding my message to Marge, and telling myself the parade was all hung up until I put the thing over with Holly. It was tough, as Bill had said, but still I had to grin. When I thought I could risk it I went back in the living-room and, as pleasantly as I could, asked if there’d be something else. By then he was on the sofa, sitting close beside her, explaining about some bourbon. He seemed to be making the same pitch Val had spoken of, one to get the Ladyship account. She said: “Please, Duke, a fire. It’s a little chilly in here.”
The furnace worked on a thermostat, so it wasn’t chilly at all, but I went to the cottage, got kindling from the kitchen woodbox, and newspaper from my bedroom. I went back to the living-room, kneeled in front of the fireplace, jammed the paper in, laid the kindling on top. I put a chunk in place, the one Bill had heaved. I put a chunk in front of it and a third one on top. I lit the paper, got up, pushed the fire screen in place. I asked her: “Will that be all, Mrs. Val?”
Instead of answering she let me stand there, turned to him, and asked if the fire wasn’t pretty. He nodded and leaned back comfy. He reached in his pocket and pitched me a half dollar, so it danced on the cocktail table. He reached for her hat, took it off, and dropped it on the sofa. He grinned when she made a face and touched her head to his. I said: “O.K., Mr. Lippert, shove off.”
“ ... You talking to me, punk?”
“Beat it. Out.”
“Why, you poor, dumb creep—”
He jumped and started at me, then stopped and whipped off his coat, like to hang a sign on it he really meant business now. She got off some chatter, in a foolish unnatural voice, that I’d forgotten myself, hadn’t I? I said nothing, as I couldn’t, on account of the hammers starting, as they always did in my temples when I needed them like a hole in the head. He laid his coat, very careful, out flat on the telephone table, then came rocking over, elbows out, feet tracking wide. He said to me: “I don’t want any trouble with you, didn’t from the start. But if trouble’s what you’re looking for—”
With that he started a hook, the kind a guy uses that thinks he’s a barroom fighter, a mean little junior haymaker supposed to land on my button. He didn’t fall quite where I wanted, right at her feet I mean, because instead of doing a Bordie he went down limp like a dish-rag. However, he fell, twitched once or twice, like a dog having a dream, and curled up, like a cat having a nap. I turned to her, but she had already started for me. She said: “You seem to have it when needed.”
“Have what, you bitch?”
“Adrenalin.”
“And I got more, for you.”
The hammers were smashing me up, and I meant to let her have it, if I knocked her clear through the wall. But she stepped in close, dropped her eyes to my mouth, and said: “You hit him for me, didn’t you?”
I almost broke her bones, mashing her to me, and at last we had that kiss, our first one, hotter than we’d ever dreamed. We held close, and trembled, and cared noth
ing for what was on the floor. She said: “How could you? Fix to go off and leave me?”
“It wasn’t like that at all.”
“It was, it was! You meant—”
“There was a hell of a lot more to it than you know, or even dream. Damn it, stop talking about that, so we get on what’s to be done.”
“Don’t you—ever again—”
“That’s all under control! Now—”
She strained still closer, slapped me once or twice, and then at last looked at the sleeping beauty. She touched him with her foot, said: “Oh—oh—what can be done, Duke? I didn’t expect this? What’ll we try to do?”
I knelt down, felt for his pulse, and got it, down deep in the wrist, very weak and thready. I said: “He’s still alive—so far. I’ll call the police—say it’s emergency—let them take over from there.”
I went to the phone, but she grabbed me. She said: “Not yet, Duke, not just yet, no. There must be some other way. We can think of something.”
“Listen, he’s alive so far. But—”
“Come in here. Just a minute.”
She took my hand, led me to her bedroom, sat me on the bed, crouched on her heels in front of me. She started to cry, said: “I’ve just ruined it. I thought it would be so nice. That he’d go running off, with a bloody nose or something. That I’d snap my fingers in some kind of silly way. That you’d be down on your knees, saying you’d learned your lesson.”
“And instead of that—”
“I know.”
I had meant it was the opposite of nice, but she thought I meant knees, and flopped down on hers. She leaned her head to my heart, mumbled she’d been a “dunce.” I held her to me, sank my face in her dress, kissed into her neck. She kept coming back to it, she had thought I meant to leave her. She started crying again, said: “I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t, I couldn’t. I had to make you, make you, take me, hold me, love me. You do, don’t you?”