The Anatomy of Violence (9 page)

Outside, the sun pounded down on my head and the sidewalk sent waves of heat up my legs.

I hurried across the courthouse lawn, past the greening statue of Jules’ great-grandfather. I entered a block of abandoned buildings whose blank windows mirrored the sun. A police car turned the corner, and I ran up a short flight of grass-grown steps and pushed through a peeling door. My nostrils filled with the odor of rotting wood and I heard rats’ feet scurry above me. Then Sergeant Johnson drove by, his head swiveling like a searchlight.

The first bar I came to was cool, musty and dim inside. I waited while the bartender served three cardplayers at the end of the bar, then I asked about Ann. He knew her, he said, but he hadn’t seen her for three-four days. That’s the way it was with Ann, he said—on tap every night for a couple weeks, then gone for days like she’d got religion.

I thanked him and left.

The next bar was cleaner and emptier, and the bartender had red hair which formed a fuzzy halo around a gleaming scalp. Ann was a regular, he said, polishing a glass; but her patronage was as unpredictable as summer rain. He held up a glass and squinted through it. “You’re Laurie Crewes, right?”

I stiffened and turned away. “Thanks for the information.”

“Now wait. You look like you’re about to crack up, if you don’t mind a stranger’s opinion. Sit down over there and I’ll bring you a drink.”

“I haven’t time,” I said. But I didn’t leave. He came out carrying a bottle of beer and a glass of amber liquid. I followed him to a booth in the corner. He waited with his hands folded across his apron while I sat and sipped the bourbon. I felt my twitching nerves relax and smiled at him.

“It’s on me,” he said. “Take your time. Nobody will bother you here.”

After he left I lit a cigaret. It was cool and dim in the booth.

A flat, nasal voice broke into the quiet. “Heard you was looking for Ann.”

I looked up to see the blond boy Koch had beaten in the station. My fingers tightened on the glass. “You know where she is?”

“Nah. I just got outa jail.” His tone held boredom and disgust. His eyes, the color of faded blue jeans, had the same defensive alertness I’d seen in Richard. Except for a skinned nose, he seemed undamaged, and his heavy shoes were rounded and scuffed at the toes.

“I just thought …” He shoved his hands into the pockets of khaki pants and looked down, conscious of my scrutiny. “If you find her will you tell her I said good-bye? I been
advised
to leave this town, but I gotta get gas money for the old hoopee first.”

“Sit down if you want to,” I said, waving across the booth.

He slid quickly into the booth and grinned at me. “I been looking for some of my old drinking buddies to borrow some gas money from. That lousy judge musta looked in my billfold because the fine took all I had.”

I saw him glance at the untouched beer and slid it across to him. “Take it all. I don’t drink beer.”

“Yeah?” His eyes narrowed. “I saw you before some place.” He shrugged, tipped the bottle and drank in huge swallows then he set the bottle down and belched, his face slack. “Ooops, sorry. You forget manners in the coop.”

“How long have you been going with Ann?”

“Year, when I’m in town.” He tipped the beer glass with the rim of his bottle and watched the pale liquid run down the side, filling the glass without foam. He grinned up at me. “I like Ann. She’s a real kick in the pants on a party. But I gotta say this—if you’re gonna buy beer for all her friends, you better carry a lot of money.”

“I know.” I was no longer surprised at Ann’s far-reaching reputation for “friendliness.” “But she had one particular boy friend didn’t she?”

“Now,
that”—
he pointed his finger at me—“is something I’d like to know myself. We’d be having a helluva time for a few days—you know Ann never held nothing back. Then one day she’d just not show up for a date. Four-five days later she’d look me up and say she’d been out of town, and if I’d ask no questions I’d hear no lies. Now I figure”—he pointed again—“Ann’s got some married john on the hook. When he can break loose from his old lady, he calls Ann up and she takes off like a speckled bird. Saturday night she did it right in the middle of a date.”

“What time?”

“Ten-thirty.”

That would have been right after I saw her at the Barn. “Did you see her talk to anyone?”

The boy shook his head and looked down at his glass. “I don’t guess I’ll see her again. I ain’t coming back here while that fat lieutenant is alive. He got mad when I wouldn’t sign a complaint against that guy for taking my car.”

Richard.
I felt a surge of warmth for the boy. “You don’t think he took it?”

“Yeah, he probably did. But I been in too many jails myself to go around puttin’ other guys in. Hell, I got the car back undamaged, except it only had about a teacupful of gas left.”

“Did you see him in jail?”

“No. They got him in a segregated cell. I been in ‘em. You don’t see nobody, don’t talk to nobody.”

As he talked I kept seeing Richard as he’d looked when he came into the interrogation room, wary and uncertain. And I saw Koch’s face, purple with anger.

The blond boy had a theory about guys like Koch, he said. They marked drifters like him down in their books as guys to arrest when the public yells for blood. If it wasn’t for guys like him, three-fourths of the crimes in the country would be on the books unsolved.

Actually, he said, he’d been damn glad to get off with a twenty-eight dollar fine after he heard about the rape. He said he felt sorry as hell for the guy they’d charged this morning because he had him figured for a patsy.

“I
know
he is,” I said.

“You
know?”
He squinted at me, then slapped his forehead. “Jesus! I
musta
been drunk Saturday night. You were in there when that fat bastard was pounding on me. You’re the gal, right?”

I nodded.

“And you
know
the guy didn’t do it?” He shook his head in wonder. “Then why is he in jail?”

“I—” There was no point in telling the whole, complicated story. “They dont’ believe me.”

“That’s gonna be a damn funny trial then. I can just see you as a defense witness saying, ‘No, that ain’t the guy.’ How’s a jury gonna convict?” He drained his glass then set it down hard. “Listen, what’s his bond?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

He whistled softly. “Man, he’ll never see the inside of a courtroom. They’ll let him see a chance to escape. Then …” He pointed his finger at me and let his thumb drop. “Pow!”

I gasped as though a real bullet had struck my breast. I remembered that Richard had escaped from prisons twice before. “They wouldn’t!”

He shrugged. “Maybe I’m wrong about this town, but with that fat lieutenant crackin’ the whip …” He hunched over and stared into his empty glass. “If I had money for gas, I’d start burning asphalt right now.”

His fear of Koch made me squirm. I jumped up, found two dollars and sixty cents in my purse and put it on the table. “There, buy some gas.”

“Hey!” he called after me. “I’ll pay you back.”

I walked on without answering. I’d thought of a way to get Richard out.

Five minutes later I walked into the tall white office building that dominated the city’s skyline. I would simply say: “Jules, please put up Richard’s bond.” And since twenty thousand was money, even to a Curtright, Jules might say: “Very well, Laurie. Pull off your pants and get on the couch.” No, he wouldn’t be that direct.

I found Simone sitting at a typewriter in Jules’ outer office. She looked at me as though she’d seen me crawl out of her salad, then ran her fingers through her red-gold hair and said lover-boy wouldn’t be in for half an hour.

I lowered myself into an armchair and said I’d wait. Fifteen minutes ticked by while I breathed the odor of rich carpets and polished mahogany. The cooled air dried the sweat on my body, and my clothes lay cool and damp against my skin.

Simone’s typewriter clicked fitfully. At least once a minute she swore under her breath, caught her lower lip between her teeth and scrubbed with the eraser. Finally she mumbled, without looking up: “Don’t laugh. This is your fault.”

“My fault?” I was startled.

“You turned him down Saturday night; now you’re his obsession. Told me from now on I’d earn my pay sitting up.” She slammed the carriage back and attacked the keys again. A minute later: “Goddamn it!” The carriage shrieked as she jerked the paper from the machine and threw it in the wastebasket. “I wish he’d use the goddamn telephone!”

Her face gradually softened as she lit a cigaret. She got up and walked around the desk, swinging her hips. “What the hell, honey, I can’t really blame you.” She leaned back with her palms on the desk and her feet wide apart. “Jules is such a fabulous lover,” she sighed.

“I’m not looking for a lover, Simone.”

“So what’s new? That’s why he’s obsessed.” She blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Damn! I should have played it cagey like you. Held out on him. I wouldn’t be pounding this damn machine.”

Okay, I’m impressed. You’ve been sleeping with Jules.
“It’s easy to say no.”

She smiled. “You’re new to the club, honey.” She ran her palms down the inside of her thighs and wriggled her hips. “With Jules I can never remember the word.”

A buzzer sounded and Simone jumped as though a wasp had flown up her dress. “And he knows it, dammit!” She stabbed out her cigaret, grabbed a compact from the drawer and touched up her lipstick. She was tucking a strand of hair above her ear when the buzzer started sounding in short bursts.

She ran to the door, paused a moment to smooth the dress over her rump, then pulled back her shoulders and gently opened the door. A moment later I heard her voice, shy and uncertain, now, telling Jules I was here.

“Well, send her in.” Jules’ voice was faintly petulant. “Then go out for coffee or something. I won’t need you.”

I glimpsed a flicker of pain in her eyes when she came back, but she quickly resumed her brittle mask. She walked to his door with her hand on my arm. She whispered, “Handle him right and he’ll give you anything you want.” Then, unable to resist a last reminder, she said, “I used to get whatever
I
wanted. The bastard!”

Huge was the word for Jules’ office. You could have painted lines on the floor and played basketball, if you first removed the green carpet that sunk under my feet like deep forest moss.

Jules grinned and stepped from behind a mahogany desk that could have held a five-piece band. “I’ve got everything ready,” he said, leading me to an armchair.

I sank back, feeling like a child in grown-up furniture. Then I straightened. “You
have?”

He nodded, perching on the edge of his desk. He hiked up his trouser leg, swinging his foot, and I saw that his shoes had ridged, crepe soles. But he’d have changed since Saturday.

“I was expecting you.” He twisted, stretched across the desk, and jerked open a drawer in one swift, smooth movement. He straightened and held up a folder. “Tickets,” he said, grinning. “Confirmation on your hotel suite.” He held up a yellow paper, then his grin widened. “And don’t bother to pack. Well outfit you completely.”

“
Pack?
Listen Jules—” Anger had risen in me as I’d realized what he thought. Simone and the other women had spoiled him. They acquiesced so eagerly he’d come to expect it. “I’m not going to New York with you.”

His dark brows met above his straight nose. “You said when they found the man—”

“The man isn’t Richard.” I reminded myself why I’d come and sank back in the chair, forcing the anger from my voice. “I came to ask a favor, Jules. Could you put up his bond?”

Jules looked down at his swinging foot, and a hint of a smile played at the corner of his mouth. He lit a cigaret with a gold desk lighter that must have cost twice as much as my chiffon formal, then spoke with smoke rolling out of his mouth. “This boy must be a dear friend of the family. Your dad was down at the bank today trying to float a loan for his bond.”

“Did they …?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t okay it. Your dad didn’t have enough collateral. And this boy has the earmarks of a jumper. He’d be in Mexico within twelve hours and”—he lifted his palm and blew over it—“there’d be my twenty thousand. I can think of better ways to spend it.”

He studied the lighter and clicked it on and off. Six times, I counted, and I waited. “I’d rather throw it out the window and watch the citizens fight over it,” he said, and he flicked the lighter twice more. “I like to get some fun for my money.” He looked at me from unblinking gray eyes, his head tilted.

The yellow flame of the lighter held my eyes. I heard the chatter of a typewriter far away. All around me in the building people were working, loafing, sulking, clashing egos. In the oil fields and stations men were sweating, swearing, smearing themselves with grease. But here at the seat of power there was dead silence, as in the eye of a hurricane.

He wants me to offer something.
I pulled my eyes from the yellow flame and saw the couch against the wall, twice as long as a bed and almost as wide.
I should get up now and say, “Jules, I’d do anything to get him out.” Then I’d walk slowly to the couch with just a hint of a sway in the hips. Then I’d sit down and cross my legs, revealing the merest glimpse of thigh, run my fingers over the couch and say dreamily, “Anything, Jules”
So easy for some. I wondered how many times he’d pressed Simone against the rich brown leather.

I saw a light flashing on his desk. He threw down the lighter and it bounced on the carpet as he picked up the phone. After a minute of monosyllables he held his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to me. “I’ve got Harry Riggs at the
Clarion.
How’d you like to stop the publicity you’re getting?”

“Words don’t bother me, Jules.”

He ignored that, holding out the receiver and putting a finger to his lips. When I took it, he walked around to his chair and picked up another phone.

The man who had been Richard’s boss was giving the details of Richard’s arrest. He’d thought something was funny, he said, when Richard had called at four in the morning and quit his job. Jules cut in, wondering if the tie between the case and the Miss Stella contests would arouse public opinion against him as the sponsor. Harry said he’d heard none, adding that he’d just followed the lead of the big papers in playing up the tie-in.