The Neon Jungle (12 page)

“Don’t enjoy thinking of how bad the dreams are.”

“You know too damn much, Paul.”

“I don’t know enough. Yet.”

She stood up and moved a bit away from the rock so she could look down at him. She saw the way he looked up at her, and saw the way his mouth changed in that first look of awareness of her as something desirable. It was something she did not want to see, particularly at that time, especially from Paul Darmond. To cover her own momentary confusion she awkwardly put her hand out to help him up and said, “Rise and shine, you parlor philosopher. I’ve got to go to work.”

His hand was hard and warm, and she made a mock show of tugging him to his feet. He stood and he did not release her hand. With his other hand he cautiously, gingerly touched the bright sheaf of her hair, smoothing it tenderly back from her temple, cupping then her cheek warmly with the hand’s hardness, bending and kissing her lips while she stood, making no sign of movement, stood with a stillness all about her and in her heart.

And, with sudden self-hate, with a kind of tortured despair, she pulled at him and thrust her body insolently against him and widened her lips, burlesquing desire and feeling only a deadness within herself. He pushed her away and his eyes had gone narrow. His hand came up and she stood, awaiting the blow. He held his hand poised for a moment, then scrubbed the back of it against his mouth. She watched his anger go away quickly.

“Why did you do that?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“Isn’t that the reaction you wanted?” Her anger came quickly, shaking her “You, you’re so goddamn brilliant! What do you want? something winsome? Should I blush and simper, for God’s sake? What difference does it make to me? Take anything you want. The merchandise is free. This is a nice handy place. If you want something quick and al fresco I’ll be glad to—”

She didn’t hear the slap. It came as a hard red explosion inside her head. She saw the flick of his hand. She stumbled sideways and caught herself. The sharp sting made her eyes water and she looked at him, shocked. He stood, calm and tired-looking, watching her with a certain remote curiosity.

She ran by him, ran down the path toward the road. As she reached the road she slowed down. She stood still for a moment and then crossed and got into the car. She looked out at the fields on that side of the road. She heard the scuff of his shoe on asphalt. The door latch clicked and the car tilted a bit under his weight. The car door chunked shut. She saw his hand as he reached across her knees and punched the glove-compartment button with his finger. It fell open and she saw the blue and white of the box of tissue in there.

She reached in and took several and shut the glove compartment. He started the motor and said, “Cry or don’t cry. But don’t sit there and sniffle.”

“Shut up.”

The tires squeaked as he U-turned on the narrow road. He spoke in a quiet conversational tone. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. I mean the original kiss. I suppose part of it is due to the body making its normal demands. I haven’t touched a woman since Betty died. And another part is due to the way your hair looked in the sun. That’s a fine color with gray eyes. You’re a handsome woman.”

“Dig, dig, dig. Poke and pry. Why do you have to take everything apart? And why all the damn fuss about a kiss, anyway?”

“It was an improbable act, that’s all. It startled me.”

“Good God!”

“It was perhaps subject to misinterpretation.”

“The Preacher!”

“The Preacher. That’s right. Sociology with overtones. I’m of the opinion, Bonny, that’s it’s all just a mass application of moral codes that are constantly in a state of flux. But in any time, in any race, there are certain standards. Humility, decency, generosity. We all have some of that in varying amounts. And we’ve all got the reverse side of the coin, too. Fear, loneliness, evil.”

She dropped the balled tissue out the window. “How much of those first three things does Rowell have?”

“A good amount, actually. He had just oversimplified his thinking. There’s the good guys and the bad guys. In his book you’re one of the bad guys, Bonny. If you should go for a walk in the evening alone, he might very possibly pick you up for soliciting. And they’d find a five-dollar bill in your purse with the corner torn off, and one of his boys would swear that he gave it to you. And it wouldn’t bother him a bit that it was faked. You’re one of the bad guys, so anything goes. Could you take that?”

She hunched her shoulders. The day suddenly seemed cold. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I could take that.”

“He thinks I’m some kind of a crackpot. Once a crook, always a crook. He says he can almost tell them by looking at them. Like all successful cops, he has a group of informants. He despises them. He shakes and gouges and bullies the information out of them. But they have a grudging respect for him because he never betrays a source, and never breaks his word, once it’s given.”

“And he’s kind to dogs and children,” Bonny said bitterly.

“He’s a working cop. He’s a club society uses to protect itself. A weapon?”

“And it’s all right with you if he goes around framing people? If he arrested me the way you said?”

“I’d go over his head and get you out of it.”

“Then be careful crossing streets, Paul. Because I couldn’t take that.”

“Yesterday you couldn’t. Tomorrow you can.”

“Is that your handiwork?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Just leave me alone, Paul. Just leave me alone.”

He parked in front of the market and turned so that he faced her, one arm resting along the back of the seat.

“Bonny, I act more confident than I feel. It’s a habit, I guess. I’ve tried to act as though slapping you across the chops was excusable. It wasn’t. I’m very sorry.”

“It’s all right. I needed it.”

“You didn’t need it, Bonny. I’d like to see you… nonprofessionally.”

“Remember the old joke, Paul? Your profession or mine?”

“Is that an answer?”

“I’d like to see you. I’d like to go out there again.”

When she was in the market she turned and looked back. He was just starting the car. He grinned. She raised her hand half timidly.

Jana said, “Gee, I’m glad you’re back.”

“Give me a minute to change, huh?”

Bonny went up to her third-floor room and closed the door and leaned against the closed door for a moment. There was no sense to it. It was absurd that at this moment she should feel more alive, more vibrantly alive than at any time in too many years. Steady on, girl. Easy, there. Don’t start hunting that old myth again, because it always drops you hard.

THE PLACE was called Artie’s Dayroom, and, except for the fish, it was a very ordinary place. It was a single narrow room with a sturdy dark bar, six plywood booths, twelve unanchored bar stools, a vast turbulent jukebox, framed licenses, a framed dollar bill, a simple liquor stock, a large beer trade… and the fish.

Where there had once been the traditional mirror of the back bar, Artie had a built-in tank installed, indirectly lighted, and stocked with tropical fish that were like mobile costume jewelry and bits of gay ribbon darting and drifting among their weeds, snails, and castles. Artie was a pork-bellied leathery man with vague eyes and a high-pitched voice. When trade was slack he watched the fish. Good business came from the loners. The ones who would claim a stool and drink steadily and watch the fish. More restful than TV, Artie said. Vern could see what he meant. He had been in the bar since nine, waiting for the slow minutes to pass until ten o’clock. Monday-night business was slow. A bar-stool couple sat with their thighs touching, murmuring, their noses an inch apart, their eyes looking drowned. Two loners watched the fish. A habitué of the place, Rita, fed coins to the jukebox and jiggled slowly in front of it, snapping her fingers. She had the puffed, forgotten face of the alcoholic.

The music stopped and she came over to her glass, beside Vern’s. She took two long swallows and said leaning against Vern’s arm and shoulder, “Din that one get you, Vern? Din that send you?”

“I wasn’t listening.”

“You just got no ear, baby. No ear ’tall. My God, that one’s bedroom music. Vern.” She turned and yelled down the bar, “Gimme another drink and some nickels, Artie.”

The soft pressure was removed from Vern’s arm. She got her fresh drink and the nickels and went back to the machine, bending over to study the labels in her nearsighted way.

Vern took another sip of his drink. He turned and looked through the glass of the door. The street gleamed wet in the night rain, and green neon across the street was reflected against the shiny black. It was a night to nurse a drink. It was a night to sit and feel a funny knot in your middle. This thing had, all at once, got out of hand. He sat relaxed on the stool. He could hear Rita, behind him, snapping her fingers over the music beat. He thought of the packed jars, nested in the tamped earth.

At three minutes of ten Vern picked up his change, leaving half a buck for Artie, and said, “See you.”

“Folding early, kid?” Artie asked.

“Long day,” Vern said. He made himself move slowly. He felt all knotted up inside. The rain had stopped. He turned right and walked in the direction he had been told, thinking of how it could be a setup, of how it could be a nice neat way of protecting the list of peddlers, of how he could be meat for the quick identifying spotlight and the short burst that would tear him apart inside. But they didn’t like it rough any more. Now things were legitimate, with the syndicates settling disputes over area and territory. If they decided you were a handicap, it was a lot easier to wire your ankles to a cement block and put you in forty feet of water.

Out of the corner of his left eye he saw the black gleam of the car hood. He didn’t turn. The voice said, “Lockter!”

He turned then and crossed over to the car door. The front door of the sedan opened. No interior lights went on and he noted that and guessed they had been disconnected. The dash glowed faintly green. The Judge was behind the wheel. Locker realized he’d never seen the Judge driving a car before.

He got in and pulled the door shut. He was aware of somebody behind him in the back seat, and as the Judge drove on, Vern started to turn to look back.

“Eyes front,” the Judge said softly.

“Sure.” Vern told himself that this was no time to gabble. Let them do the talking. Act calm. He lit a cigarette. They turned into a run-down residential section where the street lights were widely spaced, and parked where it was dark. The Judge turned off the lights, left the motor on. It was barely audible.

Vern made his hand slow as he lifted the cigarette to his lips. He took a deep drag, snapped the butt out the wing window toward the unseen sidewalk. He realized then it was a one-way street, and that no car could head toward them, throw headlight beams into the dark sedan. “Have a busy day, Lockter?” the Judge asked.

“I certainly did.”

“You started out with that idiotic note.”

“O.K., I was wrong. I admit that.”

“Not so much wrong as stupid. Say it.”

“I was stupid.”

“How did the contact go?”

“I came back after my second delivery. There was a guy hanging around. He came over to the truck when I got out. He said he’d been looking for the Varaki kid. He said she wasn’t in school. He’d checked that. I said she was up in her room. He said I should go make some deal with her to get her out of the house tonight. I said I could do that all right. I asked him what the score was. He said she was going on a trip. He said he’d hang around until I set it up with her and gave him the word. He gave me an address to take her to, about nine tonight. I went in the house and she wasn’t there. I couldn’t figure it out. The old man was acting funny. So funny I didn’t want to get too nosy. Finally I figured that Doris character was the one to ask. She knows everything that goes on. She tells me, in a sort of nasty way, that Teena had had a nervous breakdown and she’s in a sanitarium. The new kid is there. Dover. I finally figured it out that Dover had been brought around by Darmond and that Darmond spotted her and did something about it right away. He always has his nose in other people’s business. So I went down and saw that guy again and told him. Then he came back about five and told me how I should meet you.”

The Judge said softly, “Mr. Darmond had a busy day. Rowell had some of his people pick up the kids the Varaki girl ran around with. One of the boys implicated two pushers. The Varaki girl is in a private sanitarium. Shadowlawn. Run by Foltz. I think, Lockter, you can read what is written on the wall.”

“I guess so. The old cycle. When the cure starts to take she’ll get religion. Then she’ll say I got her some stuff. Then they’ll land on me. I’ll do more time.”

“They’ll want to know where you got it.”

“So I tag one of the pushers they’ve already picked up.”

“And that’s all?”

“Sure. Why should I give them more than that?”

“Because you happen to possess information that can be traded, Lockter, for personal freedom. Understand, it won’t do any more than inconvenience us. But we don’t like being inconvenienced. The stuff is rolling in smoothly, and will keep on coming in smoothly. To guarantee continuity of supply, we can’t cut our standing order. And if we can’t distribute, that means a lot of money tied up in stocks that won’t move until a new distribution setup is arranged.’

“I… see what you mean. If you want me to take a fall, O.K. But she won’t talk for maybe ten days, two weeks. I could run.”

“We don’t like that either.”

Vern heard his own voice go shrill. “Well, what the hell do you want me to do?”

He half heard a shifting behind him, and he managed not to glance back in his sudden panic.

“Don’t get nervous, Vern,” the Judge said softly.

“I’m not nervous.”

“You should be, Vern. We talked about you today. We can’t risk trying to take that girl out of Shadowlawn. It could be done, perhaps, but it isn’t a good gamble. We’d be very stupid to trust you, Vern, because we haven’t got enough of a handle on you. You’re too erratic to be trusted, in any case. Then we discussed killing you. That could be done with minimal risk. I’m sure you can see that.”