“All it is, is drivin’ a car from here to there. You get paid two C notes.”
“What happens if I’m stopped? I’m on parole and not allowed a driver’s license.”
“A license ain’t no problem if you gotta photo—front view, head ‘n shoulders.”
“I haven’t, but I could get one.”
“Do it fast.”
During his lunch break, Miles walked to a downtown bus station and obtained a photograph from an automatic machine. He gave it to LaRocca the same afternoon.
Two days later, again while Miles was working, a hand silently placed a small rectangle of paper on the ledger in front of him. With amazement he saw it was a state driver’s license, embodying the photo he had supplied.
When he turned, LaRocca stood behind him, grinning. “Better service unna License Bureau, eh?”
Miles said incredulously, “You mean it’s a forgery?”
“Can ya tella difference?”
“No, I can’t.” He peered at the license which appeared to be identical with an official one. “How did you get it?”
“Never mind.”
“No,” Miles said, “I’d really like to know. You know how interested I am in things like this.”
LaRocca’s face clouded; for the first time his eyes revealed suspicion. “Why ya wanna know?”
“Just interest. The way I told you.” Miles hoped a sudden nervousness didn’t show.
“Some questions ain’t smart. A guy asks too many, people start wondering. He might get hurt. He might get hurt bad.”
Miles stayed silent, LaRocca watching. Then, it seemed, the moment of suspicion passed.
‘It’ll be tomorrow night,” Jules LaRocca informed him. “You’ll be told wotta do, and when.”
Next day, in the early evening, the instructions were delivered—again by the perennial messenger, LaRocca, who handed Miles a set of car keys, a parking receipt from a city lot, and a one-way airline ticket. Miles was to pick up the car—a maroon Chevrolet Impala—drive it off the lot, then continue through the night to Louisville. On arrival he would go to Louisville airport and park the car there, leaving the airport parking ticket and keys under the front seat. Before leaving the car he was to wipe it carefully to remove his own fingerprints. Then he would take an early-morning flight back.
The worst minutes for Miles were early on, when he had located the car and was driving it from the city parking lot. He wondered tensely: Had the Chevrolet been under surveillance by police? Perhaps whoever parked the car was suspect, and was followed here. If so, now was the moment the law was most likely to close in. Miles knew there had to be a high risk; otherwise someone like himself would not have been sought as courier. And although he had no actual knowledge, he presumed the counterfeit money—probably a lot of it—was in the trunk.
But nothing happened, though it was not until he had left the parking lot well behind and was near the city limits that he began to relax.
Once or twice on the highway, when he encountered state police patrol cars, his heart beat faster, but no one stopped him, and he reached Louisville shortly before dawn after an uneventful journey.
Only one thing happened which was not in the plan. Thirty miles or so from Louisville, Miles pulled off the highway and, in darkness, aided by a flashlight, opened the car’s trunk. It contained two heavy suitcases, both securely locked. Briefly he considered forcing one of the locks, then commonsense told him he would jeopardize himself by doing so. After that he closed the trunk, copied down the Impala’s license number, and continued on.
He found the Louisville airport without difficulty and after observing the rest of his instructions, boarded a flight back and was at the Double-Seven Health Club shortly before 10 A.M. No questions were asked about his absence.
Through the remainder of the day Miles was weary from the lack of sleep, though he managed to keep working. In the afternoon LaRocca arrived, beaming and smoking a fat cigar.
“Ya whacked off a clean job, Milesy. Nobody’s pissed off. Everybody pleased.”
“That’s good,” Miles said. “When do I get paid the two hundred dollars?”
“Y’ awready did. Ominsky took it. Goes toward what ya owe him.”
Miles sighed. He supposed he should have expected something of the kind, though it seemed ironic to have risked so much, solely for the loan shark’s benefit. He asked LaRocca, “How did Ominsky know?”
“Ain’t much he don’t.”
“A minute ago you said everybody was pleased. Who’s ‘everybody’? If I do a job like yesterday’s, I like to know who I’m working for.”
“Like I told ya, there’s some things it ain’t smart to know or ask.”
“I suppose so.” Obviously he would learn nothing more and he forced a smile for LaRocca’s benefit, though today Miles’s cheerfulness was gone and depression had replaced it. The overnight trip had been a strain and, despite the horrendous chances he had taken, he realized how little he had really learned.
Some forty-eight hours later, still weary and disheartened, he communicated his misgivings to Juanita.
8
Miles Eastin and Juanita had met on two earlier occasions during the month he had been working at the Double-Seven Health Club.
The first time—a few days after Juanita’s evening ride with Nolan Wainwright and her agreement to act as intermediary—had been an awkward, uncertain encounter for them both. Although a telephone had been installed promptly in Juanita’s apartment, as Wainwright promised, Miles had not known about it and came unannounced, at night, having traveled there by bus. After a cautious inspection through the partially opened apartment door, Juanita had taken off the safety chain and let him in.
“Hullo,” Estela said. The small, dark child—a miniature Juanita—looked up from a coloring book, her large, liquid eyes regarding Miles. “You’re the thin man who came before. You’re fatter now.”
“I know,” Miles said. “I’ve been eating magic giant food.”
Estela giggled, but Juanita was frowning. He told her apologetically, “There was no way to warn you I was coming. But Mr. Wainwright said you’d be expecting me.”
“That hypocrite!”
“You don’t like him?”
“I hate him.”
“He isn’t my idea of Santa Claus,” Miles said. “But I don’t hate him either. I guess he has a job to do.”
“Then let him do it. Not make use of others.”
“If you feel so strongly, why did you agree …?”
Juanita snapped, “Do you think I have not asked myself? Maldito sea el día que lo conocí. Making the promise that I did was an instant’s foolishness, to be regretted.”
“There’s no need to regret it. Nothing says you can’t back down.” Miles’s voice was gentle. “I’ll explain to Wainwright.” He made a move toward the door.
Juanita flared at him, “And what of you? Where will you pass your messages?” She shook her head in exasperation. “Were you insane when you agreed to such stupidity?”
“No,” Miles said. “I saw it as a chance; in a way the only chance, but there’s no reason it should involve you. When I suggested that it might, I hadn’t thought it through. I’m sorry.”
“Mommy,” Estela said, “why are you so angry?”
Juanita reached down and hugged her daughter. “No te preocupes, mi cielo. I am angry at life, little one. At what people do to each other.” She told Miles abruptly, “Sit, sit!”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure of what? That you should sit down? No, I am not even sure of that. But do it!”
He obeyed her.
“I like your temper, Juanita.” Miles smiled, and for a moment, she thought, he looked the way he used to at the bank. He went on, “I like that and other things about you. If you want the truth, the reason I suggested this arrangement was that it would mean I’d have to see you.”
“Well, now you have.” Juanita shrugged. “And I suppose you will again. So m
ake your secret agent’s report and I will give it to Mr. Spider Wainwright, spinning webs.”
“My report is that there isn’t any report. At least, not yet.” Miles told her about the Double-Seven Health Club, the way it looked and smelled, and saw her nose wrinkle in distaste. He described, too, his encounter with Jules LaRocca, then the meeting with the loan shark, Russian Ominsky, and Miles’s employment as the health club bookkeeper. At that point, when Miles had worked at the Double-Seven only a few days, that was all he knew. “But I’m in,” he assured Juanita. “That was what Mr. Wainwright wanted.”
“Sometimes it is easy to get in,” she said. “As with a lobster trap, getting out is harder.”
Estela had listened gravely. Now she asked Miles, “Will you come again?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced inquiringly at Juanita who surveyed them both, then sighed.
“Yes, amorcito,” she told Estela. “Yes, he will come.”
Juanita went into the bedroom and returned with the two envelopes Nolan Wainwright had given her. She handed them to Miles. “These are for you.”
The larger envelope contained money, the other the Keycharge credit card in the fictitious name of H. E. LYNCOLP. She explained the purpose of the card—a signal for help.
Miles pocketed the plastic credit card but replaced the money in the first envelope and gave it back to Juanita. “You take this. If I’m seen with it, someone might become suspicious. Use it for yourself and Estela. I owe it to you.”
Juanita hesitated. Then, her voice softer than before, she said, “I will keep it for you.”
Next day, at First Mercantile American Bank, Juanita had called Wainwright on an internal telephone and made her report. She was careful not to identify by name either herself, Miles, or the Double-Seven Health Club. Wainwright listened, thanked her, and that was all.
The second encounter between Juanita and Miles occurred a week and a half later, on Saturday afternoon. This time Miles had telephoned in advance and when he arrived both Juanita and Estela seemed pleased to see him. They were about to go shopping and he joined them, the three browsing through an open-air market where Juanita bought Polish sausage and cabbage. She told him, “It is for our dinner. Will you stay?”
He assured her he would, adding that he need not return to the health club until late that night, or even the following morning.
While they walked, Estela said suddenly to Miles, “I Like you.” She slipped her tiny hand into his and kept it there. Juanita, when she noticed, smiled.
Through dinner there was an easy camaraderie. Then Estela went to bed, kissing Miles good night, and when he and Juanita were alone he recited his report for Nolan Wainwright. They were seated, side by side, on the sofa bed. Turning to him when he had finished, she said, “If you wish, you may stay here tonight.”
“Last time I did, you slept in there.” He motioned to the bedroom.
“This time I will be here. Estela sleeps soundly. We shall not be disturbed.”
He reached for Juanita and she came to him eagerly. Her lips, slightly parted, were warm, moist, and sensual, as if a foretaste of still sweeter things to come. Her tongue danced and delighted him. Holding her, he could hear her breathing quicken and felt the small, slim girl-woman body quiver with pent-up passion, responding fiercely to his own. As they drew closer and his hands began exploring, Juanita sighed deeply, savoring the waves of pleasure now, anticipating her ecstasy ahead. It had been a long time since any man had taken her. She made clear she was excited, urgent, waiting. Impatiently they opened the sofa bed.
What followed next was a disaster. Miles had wanted Juanita with his mind and—he believed—his body. But when the moment came in which a man must prove himself, his body failed to function as it should. Despairingly, he strained, concentrated, closed his eyes and wished, but nothing changed. What should have been a young man’s ardent, rigid sword was flaccid, ineffectual. Juanita tried to soothe and aid him. “Stop worrying, Miles darling, and be patient. Let me help, and it will happen.”
They tried, and tried again. In the end, it was no use. Miles lay back, ashamed and close to tears. He knew, unhappily, that behind his impotence was the awareness of his homosexuality in prison. He had believed, and hoped, it would not inhibit him with a woman, but it had. Miles concluded miserably: Now he knew for sure what he had feared. He was no longer a man.
At last, weary, unhappy, unfulfilled, they slept.
In the night Miles awoke, tossed restlessly for a while, and then got up. Juanita heard him and switched on a light beside the sofa bed. She asked, “What is it now?”
“I was thinking,” he said. “And couldn’t sleep.”
“Thinking of what?”
It was then he told her—sitting upright, his head turned partially away so as not to meet Juanita’s eyes; told her the totality of his experience in prison, beginning with the gang rape; then his “boy friend” relationship with Karl as a means of self-protection; the sharing of the big black man’s cell; the homosexuality continuing, and Miles beginning to enjoy it. He spoke of bis ambivalent feelings about Karl, whose kindness and gentleness Miles still remembered with … affection? … love? Even now he wasn’t sure.
It was at that point Juanita stopped him. “No more! I have heard enough. It makes me sick.”
He asked her, “How do you think I feel?”
“No quiero saber. I neither know nor care.” All the horror and disgust she felt was in her voice.
As soon as it was light, he dressed and left.
Two weeks later. Again a Saturday afternoon—the best time, Miles had discovered, for him to slip away unnoticed from the health club. He was still tired from his nerve-straining trip to Louisville the night before last, and dispirited at his lack of progress.
He had worried, too, about whether he should go to Juanita again; wondered if she would want to see him. But then he decided that at least one more visit was necessary, and when he came she was matter-of-fact and businesslike, as if what had happened on the last occasion had been put behind her.
She listened to his report, then he told her of his doubts. “I’m just not finding out anything important. Okay, so I deal with Jules LaRocca and the guy who sold me those counterfeit twenties, but both are small fry. Also, when I ask LaRocca questions—such as where the fake driver’s license came from—he clams up tight and gets suspicious. I’ve no more idea now than when I started of any bigger people in the rackets, or what goes on beyond the Double-Seven.”
“You cannot find out everything in a month,” Juanita said.
“Perhaps there isn’t anything to be found—at least, not what Wainwright wants.”
“Perhaps not. But if so, it is not your fault. Besides, it is possible you have discovered more than you know. There is the forged money you have given me, the license number of the car you drove …”
“Which was probably stolen.”
“Let Mr. Sherlock Holmes Wainwright find that out.” A thought struck Juanita. “What about your airline ticket? The one they gave you to come back?”
“I used it.”
“There is always a copy that you keep.”
“Maybe I …” Miles felt in his jacket pocket; he had worn the same suit when he went to Louisville. The airline envelope was there, the ticket counterfoil inside.
Juanita took both. “Perhaps it will tell somebody something. And I will get your forty dollars back that you paid for the bad money.”
“You’re taking good care of me.”
“¿Por qué no? It appears someone must.”
Estela, who had been visiting a friend in a nearby apartment, came in. “Hullo,” she said, “are you going to stay again?”
“Not today,” he told her. “I’ll be leaving soon.”
Juanita asked sharply, “Why do you need to?”
“No reason. I just thought …”
“Then you will have dinner here. Estela will like it.”
“Oh, good,” Estela said. She
asked Miles, “Will you read me a story?”
When he said he would, she brought a book and perched herself happily on his knee.
After dinner, before Estela said good night and went to bed, he read to her again.
“You are a kind person, Miles,” Juanita said as she emerged from the bedroom, closing the door behind her. While she had been helping Estela into bed, he had risen to go, but she motioned to him, “No, stay. There is something I wish to say.”
As before, they sat beside each other on the living-room sofa. Juanita spoke slowly, choosing her words.
“Last time, after you had gone, I regretted the harsh things I thought and said while you were here. One should not judge too much, yet that is what I did. I know that in prison you suffered. I have not been there, but perhaps can guess how bad it was, and how can anyone know—unless they themselves were there—what they might do? As to the man you spoke of, Karl, if he was kind when so much else was cruel, that is what should matter most.”
Juanita stopped, considered, then went on, “For a woman, it is hard to understand how men could love each other in the way you said, and do to each other what you did. Yet I know there are women who love each other in that way, as well as men, and perhaps when all is said, love like that is better than none, better than to hate. So wipe out, please, the hurtful words I spoke, and go on remembering your Karl, admitting to yourself you loved him.” She raised her eyes and looked at Miles directly. “You did love him, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said; his voice was low. “I loved him.”
Juanita nodded. “Then it is better said. Perhaps now you will love other men. I do not know. I do not understand these things—only that love is better, wherever it is found.”
“Thank you, Juanita.” Miles saw that she was crying and found his own face wet with tears.
They stayed silent a long time listening to the Saturday evening hum of traffic and voices from the street outside. Then both began to talk—as friends, closer than they had ever been before. They talked on, forgetting time, and where they were; talked far into the night, about themselves, their experiences, lessons learned, their once-held dreams, their present hopes, objectives they might yet attain. They talked until drowsiness eclipsed their voices. Then, still beside each other, holding hands, they drifted into sleep.