The Cocktail Waitress

  He stood there, stared, and then took out his wallet. He counted out two tens and a five, and tossed them on the bed. I snatched them up and threw them at him. “Tom,” I said, in a way that really meant business, “you get out. You get the hell out, do you hear?” He picked up the money, took out his wallet once more, and put it back in. At the bedroom door he turned back.

  “I don’t understand you. Starting with the night at the Wigwam. If you’d pushed me away as soon as we walked through the door, all right. But you didn’t. You can’t tell me you didn’t want me. Or you can tell me, but I know better—you were hot wet, and let me tell you, a wet—”

  “Tom!”

  “All right, let’s say a woman’s body, then—a woman’s body doesn’t lie.”

  “At that moment, Tom, I wanted you with every fiber of my being. So much so that I didn’t even mind you taking me to that rotten place so long as it made possible what we both wanted. But Tom, there’s something I wanted more, and I can’t have both.”

  “And that’s what?”

  “Another man, one who will marry me—”

  “Who said I wouldn’t marry you?”

  “—and provide for me, and what’s more important, for my son, in a way you never could. I’m sorry, Tom, but it’s so. You never could, not if all your projects succeeded, every one of them.”

  He nodded, said no more, and walked out the bedroom door, shutting it quietly behind him. I finished changing my clothes, then went back to the living room. He was sitting there waiting, and got up, very formal, when he saw me. I said: “Are we ready?” Then I remembered and called Bianca, to tell her I wouldn’t be in. I could have just come late, the meeting with the lawyer wouldn’t run more than an hour I was sure, but with what I had on my mind, an evening of serving drinks was more than I could face. She was upset, but had to say O.K.

  Not much was said on the drive over to Marlboro, except for his answers to some of my questions as to who Mr. Eckert was and what I needed to ask him—all I could think of was, would I lose my house, but Tom reminded me that other things had to be asked, like how much time did we have, and actually what would be done, on a “play-by-play basis,” as he put it. “I would think the sheriff figures in it,” he told me, in a hesitant, guarded way, “and we ought to find out first how he goes about it, whatever it is that he does. Could be we have to cooperate—or something.”

  I had a sudden vision of walking into a police station and finding Private Church there, suspicious as always and ready to jump on me at the least little sign of anything askew. I took some comfort from the distance between Hyattsville and Marlboro, but not as much as I would have if there had been a county line separating them. I almost said we should turn around and I’d take my chances, losing the house if need be, but by the time I’d reached that point we’d arrived.

  Mr. Eckert turned out to be a youngish guy in lounge coat and gray slack pants, who shook hands, looked at me quite sharp, and came around the desk to seat me in a chair beside him. When he’d motioned Tom to a chair facing him, he sat down, and read what it said in the paper, which Tom still had in his hand. “Yes,” he told us, nodding. “I heard about it and heard about the young girl who had no more sense than to go Jim Lacey’s bail—which nobody else would do, considering the guy he was. Jim’s wild, that’s all that can be said— and the kindest thing, I guess, is to leave it at that and get on. Now hold everything while I check on how things stand.”

  He picked up his phone and called, then asked: “Sheriff’s office? Dwight Eckert calling—about the Lacey case. Will you put somebody on that’s familiar with it?” Apparently someone came on, a deputy from what Mr. Eckert said, and for a time it was nothing but all sorts of questions, the date of the warrant, what was being done to serve it, the officer in charge of the case, and: “So, what do we think, where is he?”

  Then: “Oh, you have no idea at all? But don’t you fellows know Lacey well enough …?”

  Pretty soon he hung up, and reported: “They’re on the case, they’ve been given the bench warrant to serve, the one the judge signed this morning, for Lacey’s arrest, and they’ll bring him in when they know where he is. But that’s the catch: They don’t know where he is, and being ‘short-handed,’ as that deputy said, they have no one detailed to find him. Now I’ll leave you to decide if that’s really the reason or if the fact that Lacey was the engineer who worked on building their new station house has anything to do with it. He hung around the station plenty, glad-handing and ingratiating himself as best he could. They all knew him.”

  “You don’t mean they’d let him get away?”

  Eckert shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe not; maybe they didn’t even like him. Most people who got to know him didn’t. But if they did, and if they’re short-handed anyway, it could be they just wouldn’t choose to put the few men they do have on his case. No one could fault them—you have to remember, it’s not a regular criminal case. Still…” He looked me over in a way that made me feel like I was wearing my work uniform rather than my gray wool suit… “… it wouldn’t surprise me, if a good-looking lady were to go over and talk to whoever’s in charge over there and explain what she had at stake, that might light a fire under them. They’re human too, after all.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Eckert. How much am I going to owe you?”

  “… For our chat today, nothing. If you want me to stay on the case, put it on my calendar—oh, shall we say two-fifty?”

  “Two-fifty’s fine. Thank you.”

  I wrote him a check for $250, thanked him again, and led the way out, Tom following. “Which way is this new station house your friend built, if you know?” I asked him.

  “Across the street from the courthouse.”

  “Then we can walk.”

  The sheriff’s office was in a big room off the street, but shutting it off when you went in was an elbow-high counter with desks on the far side, girls seated at some, uniformed men at the others. We leaned on the counter, and Tom rapped with his knuckles. A girl came, and when she heard what case it was, called a deputy in the back of the room. He came, and remembering what Mr. Eckert had said, I put on a bit of an act, playing the poor, upset little girl who’d gotten charmed into putting her property at risk—which wasn’t so far from the truth, of course. “I went bail for a man who has skipped,” I said with my friendliest smile, “and I’ve come to find out what I can do, what the Sheriff can help me to do, to bring him back so I don’t lose my house.”

  “… On that,” he said, eyeing me close, “I’d take it very serious.”

  “I do take it serious,” I assured him. “If it was your house at risk, I think you’d take it serious too. But you seem to mean more than you’ve said. Give. What’s your name?”

  “Harrison.”

  “Deputy Harrison, I’m listening.”

  “Mrs. Medford, it’s so rare for bail actually to be forfeited that I can’t remember its happening. But most bail is signed for by bondsmen, professional bondsmen, who have tremendous political clout. They’re not supposed to have it, but do. In the case of a woman who signed the bond as a friend, who has no particular clout—or do you have?”

  “Not the slightest.”

  I aimed that at Tom, and saw him wince. “In that case,” Deputy Harrison went on, “I’d say you could be in trouble. You could be the human sacrifice offered up, to prove the law takes its course— without fear, favor, or finagling of any kind.”

  “… And is that so, that the law takes its course without favor?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m told Jim Lacey was well known around here, built this building for you.”

  At that, he snorted. “Oh, yes. He was known. Sheriff had to tell him three times to stop trying to give the men bottles ‘for after hours.’ Don’t worry that he’s got friends here, Mrs. Medford, for he hasn’t.”

  “O.K.”

  “But that’s not entirely the good thing you might think it is.”

  ?
??Oh?”

  “If he did have friends here, they might know where to find him. Now, we’ll do all we can, but it’s not a case with men detailed to search—we just haven’t got the men. What that means, in practice, is you’ll have to find him yourself. The good news is, you might be able to where we couldn’t. After all, I’m sure he does have a few friends somewhere, who wouldn’t help us, but who might shoot off their mouths to you. You see what I’m saying? If you can get them to tell you anything, we’ll be on it right away, if you give us the barest hint. To help a young girl like you, who made a mistake and now is in a jam, we’ll act and act quick—but we have to have something to act on.”

  “Well, then we’re at a dead end, because I don’t have the barest hint to give you.”

  “But why?” He looked genuinely baffled. “Why wouldn’t you know where to find this guy, or at least his friends?”

  “… Me? Why would I?”

  “You went his bail, didn’t you?”

  I stood there, utterly crossed up, and then at last saw what he meant. I asked him: “You mean there was something personal, as you think, between me and Mr. Lacey?”

  “Well it’s what you would think, isn’t it?”

  “Lacey’s my friend,” Tom cut in.

  “All right, then you must know—?”

  “I don’t.”

  Deputy Harrison looked at Tom in a very peculiar way, and the way Tom looked away, I suddenly felt that he did know something, at least more than he was telling us. I knew also, if I wanted to find out, I had to get him out of there. So I thanked Deputy Harrison, shaking his hand with both of mine. He smiled, nodded, and squeezed my hand extra, as if to communicate that he really wanted to help. Then I drove home with Tom, and asked: “What was that all about? What are you keeping from me?”

  “I thought of someone, that’s all. Jim has a girl. On the side, apart from his wife. I saw her once, leaving his office when I came to pick him up.”

  “And Deputy Harrison thought I was she?”

  “I don’t know that he knows about her. Probably not, and I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. But I guess he thought you might be something like that to Jim. He gave his reason for thinking it, and you can’t say it didn’t make sense—until you were explained, that is. Your connection with the case, through me.”

  “So who is this girl?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know—not her name, not where she lives, nothing.”

  “What do I do now?”

  “Joan, if I knew I’d certainly say.”

  I asked him in and he began making calls, or rather the same call, over and over, to at least a dozen people: “Jack?”—or whatever the name would be—“Where’s Jim? I have a reason for wanting to know… O.K., but if you hear something, will you ring me at this number? Oh, and do you have any idea how I might reach his girl? No, not his wife. You know who I mean…” About the fifteenth call I went out in the hall to put my hand on the receiver, so he couldn’t lift it again. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve had about all I can take.”

  “It’s all I know to do. These people are his friends, and one of them might know something useful—if they’d want to tell me.”

  “O.K., but one more call and I’ll scream.”

  “I’m doing this for you, let’s remember.” He shoved my hand aside and lifted the receiver.

  I didn’t scream, but I began slapping at him again as he sat there at the telephone table, the way I’d slapped him that night at the Garden. He got up, put his arms around me, wrapped me up, and held me until I calmed down. “I’m sorry,” I said, still trembling. “—I have a temper, as perhaps you’ve found out.”

  “Well, you’d better get it under control, Joan, at least where I’m concerned. It’s not my fault Jim skipped.”

  That was enough to set me off again. “Not your fault? Not your fault?”

  I then recited it at him, the whole book, beginning with the first night, what he did to me and what I did to him; then my signing the bond for his friend Mr. Lacey, and then the thanks I got, being taken to a so-called nightclub that was really a hot-sheets motel in flimsiest disguise—I really screamed it at him, until I was hoarse and could hardly talk. When I collapsed into a chair and started to cry, he took his handkerchief out, wiped my nose, and asked: “Are you done?”

  “I guess so. Please, will you go home?”

  “Not just yet I won’t. First off, Joan, on this litany you keep hurling at me. When a woman is really sore, when she hates a man for what he’s done, she doesn’t entertain his offers night after night, she tells him so and cuts him cold.”

  “Not if he’s a long-standing customer and she’s a waitress who needs her job.”

  “O.K.—maybe. But at least, the one night he makes no invitation, she doesn’t proffer one of her own, I think you’ll agree with that?”

  I said nothing.

  “So then we come to Jim Lacey, and why you signed his bail. Well why did you, Joan? Why?”

  “Because you asked me to.”

  “I didn’t at all; I never asked you to.”

  “O.K., maybe it was so you’d know I wasn’t a pauper, so you would stop treating me like some kind of cocktail girl—”

  “You are a cocktail girl!”

  “O.K., I’m a cocktail girl, and to thank this poor waif for helping your friend, you take her to a whorehouse.”

  “I had a reason for that too.”

  “Explain it, please.”

  “I had the impression that you liked me, that you might want more of my company than you could have just chatting at the Garden. But I wanted to take you somewhere special for it—somewhere where the lights would be dim and the music low, where people would be having a good time. A place where we could be with each other and not be bothered, but with a touch of excitement, too. You may not have cared for the Wigwam, but the fact is, it’s an exclusive club— they’ve hosted some of the most famous and influential people in this town, perhaps even a president or two.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

  “I thought at least it would be nicer than promoting an invite here, or suggesting you come back to my house. That felt too much like— well, like what Liz does, where it’s for money, not because two people want each other so badly they can’t stand it.”

  “You think I wanted you that badly?”

  “I know you did. You admitted you did.”

  “In that moment! I lost my head for a moment. But I woke up quick enough, and when I did I ran out of that place practically naked, just to get away.”

  “It was more than a moment. When I was unbuttoning your pants, who was it helping me? Who pulled your blouse off? And who was it unbuttoned my cuffs? Unless there was a third person in there with us that I didn’t notice, it was you, Joan.”

  Step by step, he took me back over what I had done, from the day of Ron’s funeral on. “You want me to say it plain?”

  “All right, all right, all right—I wanted you, I admit it. I’m human, and the way you touched me I couldn’t help it. I—”

  “O.K., O.K., O.K., now we’re getting somewhere. So the question is why did you run? Why didn’t you hold still for what you wanted, what I wanted, what we both wanted? I’ll put it in three little words: Earl, K, White. I’ll add a fourth and fifth if you like—”

  “… The Third.”

  “The Third. A worn-out, washed-out scarecrow, old enough to be your father and then some, ugly to look at and I bet worse still to touch—but, he’s got money.”

  He stopped then and waited for me to say something. And finally I did. “Don’t knock money. I need it. You need it. Show me the person who doesn’t need it.”

  “I wouldn’t sleep with an old man to get it.”

  “Yes you would. If he’d have you. If he knew the governor and could get you that contract for the goddam nettles. You know you would.”

  A half hour must have gone by, with him at the window, just standing there, loo
king out. The phone didn’t ring once.

  Then suddenly he said: “I was going to suggest we get some dinner, but as I feel now, I don’t want to. If you need me, let me know. I’m in the book.”

  And he left.

  16

  Around seven, I went over to the Royal Arms, had something to eat, then drove back and went to bed. I spent an utterly miserable night, still worried sick over the situation, still up in the air about Lacey, and in pieces at what Tom and I had said to each other. I woke at three and then again at six, at which point there was no sense trying to fall asleep again, so I sat in the living room looking out at the street until the sun came up.

  Tom had tried phoning everyone he could think of the day before, except for one person, leaving her out for an excellent reason—but as nothing had come of any of his calls, it was the only thread left to pull. I had myself some breakfast, put on a dark suit, combed my hair back and pinned it up, then pulled the White Pages from the cabinet and flipped through until I reached the Ls. I was afraid they might not be in the book, what with his being something of a public figure, but there they were. I copied out the address, got into my car, and just thirty minutes later was pulling up in front of their house, a modern split-level home with tile roof and towering shrubs framing the porch.

  The door opened before I even shut off the ignition. The woman standing behind it was thickset and middle-aged, I would say perhaps fifty, with gray hair, and light blue eyes that sized me up as I approached. I said: “Good morning. Mrs. Lacey?”

  “… Yes, I’m Pearl Lacey.”

  “I’m Joan Medford, Mrs. Lacey. You husband and I have—”

  I’d been about to say a friend in common, but she didn’t let me get that far. “Medford! My god. I never expected you to show up here. Well, you surely don’t have to tell me what you and my husband have—I can imagine well enough.”

  “You can’t, as it’s not anything like—”

  “I’ve heard it before, dear, and from ones that looked prettier than you. What happened, he’s not taking you with him? Is it your fragile constitution, you just can’t bear the tropical heat? Or tell me, did he cheat on us both …?”