A Hell of a Woman (Crime Masterworks) (2 page)

The phone was silent for a moment. Then he laughed softly.

"Not too much time, Frank," he said. "Why not put in a little extra effort, eh, as long as you're working over? Use that shrewd brain of yours. I can't tell you how delighted I'd be if you could bring that Hendrickson money in the morning."

"Well, that makes two of us," I said. "I'll do the best I can."

I said goodnight, and hung up the receiver. I drank the rest of my beer, not enjoying it very much.

Had he been giving me a hint, a warning? Why was he bearing down so hard on this one account? Hendrickson was a dead beat, sure, but practically all of our customers were. They seldom paid unless they were made to. They traded with us because they couldn't get credit anywhere else. Why, with at least a hundred other skips and no-pays to pick on, had Staples jumped me about this one?

I didn't like it. It might be the beginning of the end, the first step toward the jailhouse. Because if he caught me tapping one account, he'd figure I'd tapped the others. He'd check on all the others.

Of course, he'd done things like this before. Kind of like this. You'd knock yourself out and have a pretty good day maybe, and instead of a pat on the head you'd get what I'd got tonight. You know. Maybe you've worked for guys like that. They just slide over what you've done, and needle you about something else. The first damned thing that pops into their minds. That has to be done, too, and what the hell are you waiting on?

So…so that must be it, I decided.! hoped that was it. You couldn't satisfy Staples. The more you did the more you had to do.

I went up to the bar and paid my check. I walked to the door and looked out into the rain. Turning up my coat collar. Getting ready to make a run for my car.

Night was setting in early, but it wasn't quite dark yet. I could see pretty good, and I saw him down near the end of the building. A big husky guy in work clothes, standing back under the eaves of the building.

I couldn't get to my car without passing him.

I guessed I'd stopped a little too close to that greenhouse.

I went back to the bar, and ordered a quart of beer to take out. Gripping it by the neck, I sauntered out the door.

Maybe he didn't see me right away. Or maybe he was just trying to work his nerve up. Anyway, I was almost parallel with him before he moved out from under the eaves and placed himself in front of me.

I stopped and backed up a step or two.

"Why, Pete," I said. "How's it going, boy?"

"You sonabitch, Dillon," he said. "You get my chob, hah? You get chob, now I get you!"

"Oh, now, Pete," I said. "You brought it on yourself, fellow. We trust you and try to treat you nice, and you-"

"You lie! Chunk you sell me. Suit no good-like paper it years! In chail you should be, chunk seller, t'ief, robber! A fine chob I get, and because I no pay for chunk, you-you-I fix you, Dillon!"

He lowered his head, clubbed his big hands into fists. I moved back another step, tightened my grip on the bottle. I was carrying it back behind my thigh. He hadn't seen it yet.

"Jail, huh?" I said. "You've hit a few jails yourself, haven't you, Pete? You keep on fooling around with me and you'll land in another one."

It was just a guess, but it stopped him for a moment. You couldn't go very far wrong in guessing that a Pay-E-Zee customer had made the clink.

"So!" he sputtered. "In chail I haf been, and my time I serve. Dot has nodding to do mit dis. You-"

"What about a sentence for rape?" I said. "Spit it out, goddamn you! Tell me you didn't do it! Tell me you didn't have that poor, sick, starved-to-death kid!"

I moved in on him, not giving him a chance to deny it. I knew damned well that he had and it made me half-crazy to think about it. "Come on, you ugly, overgrown son-of-a-bitch," I said. "Come on and get it!"

And he came on with a rush.

I sidestepped, swinging the bottle like a bat. My feet slipped in the mud. I caught him squarely across the bridge of the nose, and he went down sprawling. But his right fist got me as he went by. It landed, skidding, just below my heart. And if I hadn't bounced back against the building I'd have gone down with him.

I was doubled up for a moment, feeling like I'd never breathe again. Then, I got pulled together a little, and I staggered over to where he was.

He wasn't completely out, but there wasn't any more fight in him. There was no sense in socking him again or giving him a kick in the head. I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him over against the side of the building. I propped him up so that he was kind of out of the rain and wouldn't get run over. And then I knocked the beer open on a rock and pushed it into his hand.

It wasn't the kind of treatment he'd expected. Or was used to. He looked up at me like a beaten dog. On an impulse-or maybe it was a hunch-I took five ones from my pocket and dropped them into his lap.

"I'm sorry about the job," I said. "Maybe I can turn up another one for you… Like to have me do that? Let you know if I hear of anything?"

He nodded slowly, brushing the blood away from his nose. "I like, yess. B-but-but vy, Dillon? Mis-ter Dillon. Vy you do dis an' den you do-"

"No choice," I shrugged. "The company says get the money, I have to get it. You say you want to fight, I fight. When I have my own way, well, you can see for yourself. I treat you like a long-lost brother. Give you dough out of my own pocket, try to find another job for you."

He took a drink of the beer; took another one. He belched and shook his head.

"Iss badt," he said. "Vy you do it. Mis-ter Dillon? Soch a nice man, vy you york for bad peoples?"

I told him he had me there: I guessed I was just such a nice guy that people took advantage of me. Then, I told him to take it easy, and headed for home.

My ribs ached like hell, and! couldn't get Staples off my mind. But in spite of the pain and the worry, I laughed out loud.. – What a character! If people kept on telling me I was a nice guy, I might start believing them. And yet-well, what was so damned funny about that? What the hell was there to laugh about?

I'd never hurt anyone if I could get out of it. I'd given plenty of people breaks when I didn't have to. Like today for example; just take today, now. Pretty good, huh? You're damn well right it was! How many other guys would have passed up Mona, and given a hand to a guy who'd tried to murder 'em?

Pete had the right dope. It wasn't me, but the job. And I didn't know how to get out of it, any more than I knew how I'd got into it. I- Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for a living?

You kind of grin and look down your nose at him. You think he's nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn't have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy… You've got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition- man! you've got it. You're young, I guess you'd call thirty young, and you're strong. You don't have much education, but you've got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that-with all you've had to do with-this is as far as you've got. And something tells you, you're not going much farther if any.

And there's nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can't stop hoping. You can't stop wondering…

… Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn't see yourself spending forty years moving up from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a nice little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something that looked better. And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities. You bought the old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn't so good. Fifty or sixty a week, well, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind agas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were just standing still. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren't a kid any more.

So you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it. This sounds like a right job; this looks like a right town. So you take the job, and you settle down in the town. And, of course, neither one of 'em is right, they're just like all the others. The job stinks. The town stinks. You stink. And there's not a goddamned thing you can do about it.

All you can do is go on like those other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manure. Hating it. Hating yourself.

And hoping.

All it took was for us to move in.

I went inside, taking off my coat and hat. I laid them down on my sample case-at least it was clean-and took a look around. The floor hadn't been swept. The ash trays were loaded with butts. Last night's newspapers were scattered all over. The.. hell, nothing was as it should be. Nothing but dirt and disorder wherever you looked.

The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes; there were soiled sticky pans all over the stove. She'd just got through eating, it looked like, and of course she'd left the butter and everything else sitting out. So now the roaches were having themselves a meal. Those roaches really had a happy home with us. They got a hell of a lot more to eat than I did.

I looked in the bedroom. It looked like a cyclone had struck it. A cyclone and a dust storm.

I kicked the bathroom door open, and went in.

It was one of her good days, I guess. Here it was only seven o'clock at night and she'd actually got some clothes on. Not many; just a garter belt and some shoes and stockings. But that was damned good for her.

She drew a lipstick over her mouth, squinting at me in the medicine cabinet mirror.

"Well," she drawled, "if it isn't the king! And just as polite as ever, too."

"Okay," I said. "You can hop back into your nightgown. I've seen you before, and I still say there's better ones on sidewalks."

"Oh-yeah?" Her eyes flashed. "You rotten bastard! When I think of all the good guys I passed up to marry you, I-"

"Passed them up?" I said. "You mean lined 'em up, don't you?"

"You're a goddamned liar! I n-never-" She dropped the lipstick into the sink, and whirled around facing me. "Dolly," she said. "Oh, Dolly, hon! What's the matter with us?"

"Us? What do you mean, us?" I said. "I'm out knocking myself out every day. I work my can off, and what the hell do I get for it? Not a goddamn thing, that's what. Not even a decent meal or a clean bed, or even a place where I can sit down without a lot of cockroaches swarming all over me."

"I-" She bit her lip. "I know, Dolly. But they just keep coming back, those insects, no matter what I do. And I can just work from morning until night and this place always looks the same. And, well, I guess I just get tired, Dolly. There doesn't seem to be any sense to it. There's nothing here to work with. The sink keeps stopping up, and there's big cracks in the floor and-"

"So what about the other places we've lived? I guess you kept them all clean and pretty?"

"We've never lived in a really nice place, Dolly. Any place where I had a chance. It's always been some dump like this one."

"You mean they got to be dumps," I said. "After you lazed and loafed around and let everything go to hell. You just don't give a damn, that's all. Why, dammit, you should have seen what my mother had to work with-how nice she kept the place we lived in. Seven kids in an east side coldwater tenement, and everything was as shiny and spotless-"

"All right!" she yelled. "But I'm not your mother! I'm not some other woman! I'm me, get me? Me, me!"

"And you're bragging about it?" I said.

Her mouth opened and closed. She gave me a long slow look, and turned back to the mirror.

"Okay," I said. "Okay. You're a princess charming, and I'm a heel. I know you don't have it easy. I know it would be a lot better if I made more money, and I wish to God I could. But I can't and I can't help it. So why not make the best of things as they are?"

"I'm through talking," she said. "I might have known it was no use."

"Goddammit," I said, "I'm apologizing. I've been out in the rain all day while you were lying in the sack, and I come home to a goddamned pig pen and I'm sick and tired and worried, and-"

"Sing 'em," she said. "Sing 'em, king."

"I said I was sorry!" I said. "I apologize. Now, what about chasing your pets out of the grub and fixing me some supper?"

"Fix your own damned supper. You wouldn't like anything I fixed."

She laid down the lipstick and picked up an eyebrow pencil. A crazy, blinding pain speared through my forehead.

"Joyce,"! said. "I said I was sorry, Joyce. I'm asking you to please fix me some supper, Joyce. Please, understand? Please!"

"Keep on asking," she said. "It's a pleasure to refuse."

She went on making with the eyebrow pencil. You'd have thought I wasn't there.

"Baby," I said, "I'm telling you. I'm kidding you not. You better drag tail into that kitchen while it's still fastened onto you. You screw around with me a little more and you'll have to carry it in a satchel."

"Now, aren't you sweet?" she said.

"I'm warning you, Joyce. I'm giving you one last chance."

"All hail the king." She made a noise with her lips. "Here's a kiss for you, king."

"And here's one for you," I said.

I brought it up from the belt, the sweetest left hook you ever saw in your life. She spun around on her heels and flopped backwards, right into the tub full of dirty bath water. And,Jesus, did it make a mess out of her.

I leaned against the door, laughing. She scrambled out of the tub, dripping with that dirty soapy scum, and reached for a towel. I hadn't really hurt her, you know. Why hell, if I'd wanted to give her a full hook I'd taken her head off.

She began drying herself, not saying anything at first, and I kind of stopped laughing. Then, she said something that was funny as hell, and yet it was kind of sad. She said it sort of thoughtful and soft-voiced, as though it was the most important thing in the world.

"That was my last good pair of stockings, Dolly. You ruined my only pair of stockings."

"Aah, hell," I said. "I'll give you another pair. I've got some in my sample case."

"I can't wear those. They never fit around the heel. I guess I'll just have to go barelegged."

"Go?" I said.

"I'm leaving. Now. Tonight. I don't want anything from you. I can pawn my watch and my ring-get enough to get by on until I land a job. All I want is to get away from here."

I told her all right, if she wanted to be stupid: those number fives of hers weren't nailed to the floor. "But! think you ought to mull it over a little first. You ought to stick around, anyway, until you run across a job. You know there's no nightclubs in a burg like this."

"I'll find something. There's no law that says! have to stay in this town."

"Why the hell didn't you get a job before this?" I said. "If you'd ever contributed anything, tried to help out a little-"

"Why should I? Why should I want to? I should get out and work for a guy that couldn't even say a nice word in church?" Her voice rose and went down again. "All right, Dolly, I said it all a while ago. I'm me, not someone else. Maybe I should have done a lot of things and maybe you should have, but we didn't and we wouldn't if we had it to do over again. Now, if you'll excuse me… let me get cleaned up a little…"

"Why so damned modest all of a sudden?" I said. "We're still married."

"We won't be any longer that I can help it. Will you please leave, now, Dolly?"

I shrugged and started out the door. "Okay," I said. "I'm going downtown and get some chow. Good luck and my best regards to the boys on the vice squad."

"D-Dolly… is that all you can say at a time like this?"

"What do you want me to say? Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater?"

"D-don't you… Would you like to kiss me good-bye?"

I jerked my head at the mirror. "That?" I said. "Threeguesses, toots, and the secret word is still no."

I went on out, turning my back like a damned fool; and the next thing I knew a scrubbing brush socked me in the skull. It hurt like hell, and the dirty names she was yelling at me didn't exactly help it. But I didn't sock her any more, or even curse back at her. I'd said enough, I guessed. I'd done enough.

I loaded my sample case into the car, and took off for town.

I killed a couple hours, eating and doctoring my account cards, and went back home.

She was gone but her memory lingered on, if you know what I mean. She'd left me something to remember her by. The bedroom windows were pushed up to the top, and the bed was soaked with rain. My clothes-well, I just didn't have any clothes.

She'd poured ink all over my shirts. She'd taken a pair of scissors and cut big holes in my suit, the only other suit I had. My neckties and handkerchiefs were snipped to pieces. All my socks and underwear were stuffed into the toilet.

A real swell kid, didn't I tell you? A regular little doll. I'd have to do something nice for her if I ever ran into her again.

I went to work, straightening things out the best I could, and it must have been two in the morning before I got through and stretched out on the lounge. Worn out, burned up, wondering. Ijust couldn't get it, you know. Why, if she didn't like a guy and didn't want to get along with him, had she gone to so damned much trouble to get him?

I'd met her in Houston about three years ago. I was crew manager on a magazine deal, and she was pushing cigarettes in this dive; and I used to drop in for a ball every night or so. Well, she started playing for me right from the beginning. The way she hung over my table you'd have thought she was the cloth. I couldn't lift a drink without seeing her through the bottom of the glass. So-so one thing led to another, and I began taking her home from work. What's a guy going to do, anyway, when a chick keeps throwing herself at him? I left her at her door a few nights, and then she let me come inside. And she had one of the nicest little efficiency apartments you ever saw. I gqess they had maid service in this joint, and with just herself to look after she got by pretty good. Not that I made any inspection of the place. I had my mind on something else. So I said, howsa about it, honey, and-_boing!_ She hauled off and slapped me in the kisser. I jumped up and started to leave. She started crying. She said Iwouldn't think she was a nice girl if she did; I wouldn't want to marry her and I'd throw it up to her afterwards. And I said, Aw, now, honey. What kind of a guy do you- No, now wait a minute! I think I'm getting this thing all fouled up. I believe it was Doris who acted that way, the gal I was married to before Joyce. Yeah, it must have been Doris-or was it Ellen? Well, it doesn't make much difference; they were all alike. They all turned out the same way. So, as I was saying: I said, What kind of a guy do you think I am? And she said -.. they said – - – I think you're nice. I-… I went to sleep.