The Night People (5 page)

“No,” he answered after a moment. “I won’t worry about her any more. I’ll forget Ida Spain. I’ll even forget about that hole in Bill’s forehead.”

She went back to the kitchen, and he sat silently for a long time. And then finally she said, from beyond the doorway, “You never did get to see her, did you?”

“Who?”

“Ida Spain. You never did get to see her.”

“No,” he said, with a sort of a sigh. “And I guess now I never will….”

“N
OTHING EVER HAPPENS ON
Saturdays,” the city editor complained, his yellowed teeth digging into the pipe stem. “That’s why we have to use gimmicks to sell papers.”

I cleared my throat and nodded in agreement, acting exactly like the cub reporter that I was. “Yes, sir,” I mumbled, because it seemed the proper thing to say.

“Business closes down, Congress isn’t usually in session, the government officials take the weekend off, and worst of all—there are fewer people downtown to buy our papers.”

“You’re right.”

“On Sunday we can sell ’em ads and comics, but on Saturday afternoon it’s rough. And that’s goin’ to be your assignment. You’re goin’ to dig me up a story—every Saturday—for the afternoon edition. A story that no one else has—a story that’s big enough for front-page headlines. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. It’s two-thirty now. You’ve got till ten A.M. to bring in your first big story, kid. Go to it.”

“Thank you, sir,” I mumbled.

“You’ll get a by-line if it’s any good,” he called after me. “Remember, before ten o’clock….”

I nodded silently to myself and went out into the city….

But where to find a story in the middle of the night when Saturday’s dawn was still so many hours away? The bars would have closed at two, and even the drunks would be well on their way home by this time. I stood in the doorway of the
Times-Chronicle
and lit a cigarette, thinking about it.

Perhaps an after-hours joint…. Sure, why not a story about what goes on during the night moments? But that would be feature-story stuff, not for front-page headlines. It wouldn’t sell papers on a damp Saturday afternoon.

What would?

I started walking, turning up the collar of my raincoat against the soaking drizzle that drifted down over the city streets.

“Hello, mister….”

I turned, barely able to make out the girl in the shadows. “Yes?”

“Lonely?”

I figured her for a streetwalker and as she came into the light I had no reason to change my mind. She wore a raincoat open at the neck to reveal a dark sweater. Her lipstick showed signs of fast, irregular repair, and I guessed that she’d already had at least one customer tonight.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not your type.”

“I’m everybody’s type,” she answered, moving closer through the mist.

“Know any place where I can get a little action?”

“My apartment.”

“Different kind. Cards, dice, that action.”

“You a queer?” she asked, watching me more closely.

“I hope not. Come on, where’s some action.”

She sighed and made a motion of resignation. “Slip me a five for my time and I’ll take you to a place.”

“It’s a deal.” I uncoiled a wrinkled fin from my wallet and passed it to her in the night. “How far?”

“Not far,” she said. “Follow me,” and she led the way down a side street where a broken streetlight added to the gloom of the dark. And as I followed her I felt like a hundred other men must have felt, perhaps following her down this same street, though with a different purpose.

I stepped cautiously around the streetlight’s broken glass, half seen in the night’s dimness, and ahead I saw the muted activity of a place that might have been a barbershop or a poolroom. But wasn’t.

We went in, and she nodded to the man at the door, a shifty little runt who looked as if he might not have seen the sunlight in twenty years. “I brought you a customer,” she said. “Remember to tell the boss.”

“Sure, sure,” the runt told her.

Then she turned to me. “No poker tonight. Only dice—okay?”

“Okay,” I nodded.

She led me back further into the bowels of the building, to a wide arena where an intent circle of customers crouched on the concrete.

“You’re faded.”

“Eight’s the point.”

I sneaked in between a bald middle-aged man and a younger fellow with a thin mustache watching the shake and roll of the dice with almost hypnotic fascination. But the man who was rolling, a huge monster with a wicked, terrible face, stopped dead and stared at me. “Who let that guy in?” he said. “Does anybody know him?”

“I brought him,” the girl said quietly but firmly. “He wanted action.”

“Damn! Well, you can just take him somewhere else. This is a closed game. Take him somewhere else.”

“Take him where?”

“To bed with you for all I care!” And a ripple of brief laughter passed over the circle of men.

“Come on,” she told him. “Let’s blow this lousy joint.”

“Okay,” I nodded, following her once more into the outer dampness.

“Men!” she snorted. “I hate every damned one of them. I hate ’em!”

“That’s an odd statement for a girl like you to make,” I observed, falling into step beside her.

“Why, because of what I do?”

“Well, yes,” I admitted.

“What am I supposed to say? That I love ’em all?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me tell you sumthin’, Bud. Let me tell you the story of my life in one short chapter. My father got drunk one mighty night and beat my mother’s head in with an axe. Then he did the same thing to my older sister. I was twelve at the time. I ran out of the house and hid behind the garage and prayed and cried all night, waiting for him to find me there. In the morning I crept back to the house and found him hanging from a beam in the basement.”

“It must have been horrible.”

“At first it was, but I got used to taking care of myself after that.” She turned up her coat collar against the suddenly heavy rain. “Hell of a night, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure you won’t come up to my place?”

“What for?”

“You gotta have a reason?”

“I’m working,” I confessed. “I’m a reporter on the
Times-Chronicle,
after a story for the evening paper. Something big, the editor told me.”

“Something big,” she mused. “We could blow up city hall.”

“Oh, I don’t think….”

“You take everything serious, don’t you, kid?”

“Don’t you?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes not. I take life as it comes. That’s the only way.”

“I suppose so.” The rain was heavier now, and I steered her into a handy doorway.

“What time is it, anyway?” she asked.

“Must be close to four o’clock.”

“What a stinkin’ night.”

“Why don’t you go home and go to bed?”

“Just one more. I need just one more tonight. It’s so damned cold in my room.”

I was silent for a time, not knowing how to answer her. Then, finally, I mumbled, “I’ll come up, just for a few minutes.”

“Thanks, kid,” she said, very quietly, and led the way through the rain once again….

It was, I suppose, the kind of room I should have expected. Dim and damp and dingy, with a single naked light bulb swinging from the ceiling. With a couple of chairs and a table and a rumpled bed.

“Got anything to drink?” I asked her.

“Maybe. A bit of rum.”

“Anything.”

“Look, kid, you don’t have to….”

“Get me the rum, will you?”

“Sure, kid.” And she poured me a stiff shot. “What’s your story, kid? What are you running away from?”

“Got no story. If I did, I’d be a writer instead of a newspaper reporter.”

“Everybody’s got a story.”

“Sure.” I thought about it. “College for a couple of years, the army, and now a job on the
Times-Chronicle.
That’s it.”

“No girl?”

I nodded. “In college. She promised to wait for me, while I was in the army. Two months after I left home she married a football player.”

“It’s a story anyway.”

“Sure.”

“Would you like to sleep with me?”

“I … I don’t think so.”

“It wouldn’t cost you anything.”

I felt sick. “No, I … I appreciate it, but….”

“But you’re working.”

“That’s right. I’m working. Only a little over five hours to find that story.”

“What if you don’t find it?”

“What?”

“What if you don’t find a story? Will the world end?”

“No, of course not. But he expects one. If he doesn’t get it he’ll have to run a story about the weather or something.”

“So?”

“It’s awfully tough to sell papers on Saturday afternoons. He explained it all to me.”

“Yeah.”

“Could I have another drink?”

“I guess so.” There was a tapping on the door and she ducked the bottle out of sight. “Hope it isn’t the cops,” she whispered.

She walked to the door and opened it a crack, and saw what was apparently a familiar face. “What in hell do you want?” she stormed.

A creepy little guy slipped into the room. “Didn’t want to interrupt you, but … have you got a spoon I could borrow? It’s real important.”

She snorted and disappeared into the next room, returning in a moment with a spoon. “Don’t bother to return it.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot. If you ever need anything….”

“Just to be left alone, mister, that’s all.”

“Well … thanks again.”

She slammed the door after him. “The stupid slob!”

“What the heck did he want with a spoon in the middle of the night?” I asked in innocence.

“He takes the stuff. Dope, you know. They warm it on a spoon or sumthin’.”

I fumbled for a cigarette. “How can you live in a place like this, anyway? What kind of life do you find here?”

“What other kind of life is there? I could be one of those New York society dolls and only sleep with college boys, I suppose. Would that be better?”

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t really know what to tell her. She needed someone who’d lived a lot longer than I had. She needed a priest, or maybe just a good man. I surely wasn’t a priest, and I was too young to know how good I was.

She poured herself a drink from the bottle and came over to where I sat. Suddenly, all at once, she was old—she might have been the oldest girl of twenty-five I’d ever seen. “I’m trapped,” she told me, settling down on the arm of my chair. “Trapped in a life without beginning or end.”

“I’ve got to be going,” I said. “There’s no story here.”

“No,” she agreed sadly. “Not here.”

I started to get up, but she slid her soft weight down upon me. “I have to go,” I repeated.

“How about a little kiss first?”

“No….” I managed to break free, struggling to my feet. And then I was out the door, casting only a final backward glance at her sad, lonely face. As I went down the stairs I felt for my wallet, but it was still there….

Outside, the rain had settled into an annoying pattern of early morning drizzle, with clouds that hung low over the dim buildings and blotted out the golden sunrise somewhere to the east.

I walked, because there was nothing else to do. No story, no nothing. It was Saturday morning and nothing ever happened on Saturday mornings. Nothing but sleep and regrets for the night that was past.

I stopped for coffee in a little fly-specked lunch counter just opening for the day’s business, trading comments in a monotone of dull improbability with the sleepy-eyed counter man. And then back to the street.

With my footsteps carrying me back toward the apartment where she would be sleeping now, lonely after a damp night of wandering. Why not? Where else did I have to go? Why not back to her, for a few minutes, an hour….

And as I turned into her street I saw the first police car pulling up. And then another, almost as quickly from the opposite direction, its low siren splitting the morning quiet.

And before my running feet reached the house I knew. I knew even as I pushed my way through the wakened tenants, up the stairs to her apartment. I didn’t know how, but I knew what….

“Where you goin’, Mister?”

“
Times-Chronicle.
”

“Okay, take a look.”

The little creep from downstairs was huddled in a corner of the hallway, sobbing and mumbling at the officers who crowded around him. I went into her room and saw what he’d done. Only one leg was visible, bare, hanging across the rumpled bed. The rest of her body had tumbled down between the bed and the wall, out of sight, mercifully. I saw the blood on the sheets and looked no further.

“He do it?” I asked one of the cops.

“Who else? He’s all doped up. Must ’a killed him, seein’ those guys goin’ up to her room every night. Decided he wanted somethin’ too,” he said.

“Yeah.”

I kept going, down the stairs to the street, walking, then running, away from there, back to the solid reality of the city room at the
Times-Chronicle.
I had my story.

All the way up the words tumbled about in my brain, sorting themselves into neat paragraphs of type. And the city room was buzzing when I reached it, clattering with typewriters, churning with words.

“You’re back,” the editor said, raising his head from a pile of wet galleys. “Get the story?”

“I got it. A murder.”

His eyebrows went up and he motioned to the rewrite man. “Give it to me. From the beginning.”

I gave it to him. From the beginning.

When I’d finished he frowned across the desk at me. “Well? Names, man, names!”

“Names?” I felt stupid.

“What were their names?”

“I … I don’t know. Do they need names?”

He sighed and shook his head at the rewrite man. “For a newspaper they need names. There’s no story in a nameless drug addict killing a nameless prostitute.”

“But it is a story,” I insisted. “They were people, just like you and me.”

He just kept shaking his head. “Not like you and me, kid. They belonged to a different world.”

“But the story….”

“Never mind. We’ve got a train wreck for page one. We don’t need any local stuff.”