The Player on the Other Side (3 page)

‘Archer? Come in, damn it!' At the incredible words from the unbelievable voice (for Robert York, though capable of waspishness, never swore and never shouted) Walt swung the door open.

‘No, Mr. Robert, it's me. Mr. Archer says he'll be right here.'

‘Well, I should hope so,' snapped York.

Silently Walt padded through the house, through the second of the kitchen's two rear doors, through the breezeway to the garage, then between the superannuated Buick and Percival York's rakish, ruined Ryan (by special arrangement; Percival's garage had gone up in smoke as the result of an innocent neighborhood delinquency and Percival had never found the loose capital to rebuild it), up the back stairs and, after unlocking it, through the door of his own quarters. He locked the door behind him, turned on the light … and was greeted by the dry rattlesnake buzz of the annunciator.

Walt turned his round eyes on it, his face giving no expression to the indignation he felt. All Walt wanted was to read his precious new letter, and here was Percival York summoning him from all the way diagonally across the Square. If he toyed with the idea of ignoring the buzzer, it was for a microsecond; he murmured, surprisingly, something about ‘I know the quality of your obedience' and went to the writing table, took out his keys, unlocked the middle drawer, deposited the letter far back in the drawer, carefully locked it, went to the door, canceled the annunciator, unlocked the door, passed through it and locked it behind him, went down the stairs and out through the garage's rear door (which he also locked behind him) and, taking the driveway rounded Robert York's castle and cut across the little private park to Percival York's castle.

He went around to the rear and entered through the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open and an empty ice-cube tray lay on the floor in a grayish puddle, its crippled separator lying over by the door where it had been thrown or kicked. Walt picked up tray and separator, set them on the table and went down the hall to what was, in this castle of the four, a living room, though in Robert's it was a library, in Emily's a deserted cavern, and in Myra's something like an old curiosity shop.

As Walt touched the doorknob, there was an undignified scuttling inside. The door swung open on a tableau consisting centrally of a love seat, with Percival York at the instant of rebounding from the curved back at one end and, at the other end, an overfleshed blonde girl with one too many buttons undone, and a face like a molded-by-the-thousands kissing-crying-wetting doll crowned with cotton-candy hair.

‘Walt, God,' spat Percival. To the girl he said, ‘It's only the handyman.' To Walt again, ‘Mrs. Schultzer, or Scheisser, or whatever her disgusting name is, defrosted the refrigerator and there's no blasted ice.'

‘Mrs. Schriver,' Walt said.

‘About that I don't give a damn. Just get some ice.'

‘Mr. Robert has ice.'

‘Tell him,' said Percival York, wrinkling a gray nose on which the first red ruts and runnels of its ultimate condition were beginning to show, ‘tell him,' Percival said, with rummily underlined irony, ‘tell him I'll return it, every cube, plus six per-bloody-cent.' Percival York's eyes, like salamanders looking out of sacks, sought and found the girl and demanded tribute, which she delivered in a hoarse immediate cackle.

Walt returned to the kitchen. He checked the refrigerator setting, picked up the ice-cube separator, effortlessly straightened it, sighted down its length, straightened it a tiny bit more, then rinsed separator and tray. From a closet beside the refrigerator he took a string mop and blotted up the puddle on the floor. He opened the back door, hung the damp mop on the railing outside, returned to the kitchen, washed his hands and dried them on a paper towel (with which he whisked up the few spatters on the sink edges before he threw it away), took the ice tray he had repaired and another from the refrigerator, canted the latter's contents carefully into the drain (so it would not splash) and went out, shutting the door quietly behind him.

He recrossed the park and went around to the kitchen door of Robert York's house, which now he had to unlock. He rinsed the ice-cube trays he was carrying and filled them at the cold-water tap and set them on the table. He removed two trays from Robert York's refrigerator and replaced them with the two from Percival's. Then, just as he eased the refrigerator door shut, he was arrested by the sound of angry voices from the front of the house.

‘I didn't hire you to make childish mistakes!' (Mr. Robert, more angry than Walt had ever known him before.)

‘I don't concede that it is a mistake, and if it is I wouldn't call it childish!' (Mr. Archer, who had never talked back to Mr. Robert before.)

‘Any fool could see than gum fluoresce! You've gone and saddled me with a lot of damned Seebeck reprints!'

‘Those are not Seebecks! I have Borjian's word on it!'

‘Borjian! Borjian! Don't stand there and give me Borjian! Borjian once sold me a forged —'

‘— a forged penoe,' and Tom Archer's voice cut in by shouting as loudly as he could. ‘I know the whole miserable story by heart, including the fact that Borjian returned your money and that plenty of other stamp-wise people were fooled, too!'

‘Now you listen to me —'

‘You listen to me! I won't have you bawling me out like a naughty kid over a measly forty bucks' worth of stamps!'

‘It isn't the forty dollars!' (Mr. Robert was shouting as loudly as he could now.) ‘It's the idea of a
mistake
! If you can make a little mistake you can make a big mistake, and I will not tolerate
any
mistakes!'

‘And
I
will not tolerate' (now Mr. Archer was mimicking Mr. Robert to his face, and he was doing it rather well) ‘being spoken to in this fashion! Tomorrow morning I will take those goddamn Salvadors down to Jenks & Donahue, and I will have those goddamn Salvadors put under the parallel-beam microscope, and I will pay for the inspection out of my own pocket, and I will come back here and accept your apology when you find out they're really genuine!'

‘You come back with proof that they are Seebeck reprints and I will accept your resignation!'

‘Give me those stamps. We'll damn well see. Good
night
!'

The library door slammed thunderously. Someone hard-heeled up the stairs, obviously Mr. Archer. Mr. Archer's door overhead, though it was much farther away, slammed even louder.

Walt did not quite shrug or raise his brows; there was a flicker of tension in the controlling muscles and that was all. He picked up the two trays of ice cubes, took them out on the back porch, set them on the railing, softly closed and locked the door, picked up the trays again, retraced his steps to Mr. Percival's kitchen, found a double-walled pewter bowl on a shelf, released the ice cubes at the sink, placed them in a bowl and carried the bowl up the hall.

Mr. Percival, having heard the musical decanting of the ice cubes, stepped out of his living room into the hall, pulling the door to modestly. Mr. Percival was in his stockinged feet and he was holding his unbuttoned shirt together with one hand. ‘Where did you go for that ice,' he rasped, taking the bowl, ‘Little America?'

‘No, Mr. Percival. I got them out of Mr. Robert's refrigerator.'

‘Arrgh,' said Mr. Percival. He slithered back into his living room, kicking the door shut with his heel.

Walt about-faced and passed through Mr. Percival's kitchen and out. The hot eagerness deep within him, to sprint across the park and up to his room, he contained. He wanted more than anything to tear open this new letter, plunge himself into its promised ‘…
exact instructions for the first of the great tasks which I have planned for you.
' But he had been chosen because of what he was; and what he was was deliberate, meticulous, careful and obedient — above all, obedient. He bore the pain of the waiting proudly, like a Christian martyr, as he paced off the way back to his room. For ‘
Let no one know that your destiny has come to you
.'

The short heavy man had a cigar. The short thin one had acne. They were in the office too early for the phones to start ringing, but the short heavy man liked it that way, so that was the way it was. He lay back in the swivel chair, with his feet on the desk and his cigar aimed at the ceiling, and he dozed.

The short thin man made a happy sound, a short thin hum.

The man with the cigar moved only his eyeballs, which somehow managed to be both deep-set and protruding. ‘What you got?'

‘Well, it don't pay off at Hialeah,' said the thin one detachedly. He dropped his pencil, gathered up some yellow sheets, stacked them, then spread them again and picked up the pencil. ‘Or at no other regular track. But it sure whips a harness meet if you go all the way through.'

‘A system? You?'

‘On'y on paper. I don't put down a deuce myself, not me.'

‘You're like a bartender. Don't make like a customer.'

‘Only on paper, I told you.'

‘It's the same thing, you're tasting. Quit before you get hooked.'

‘Yeah, but listen,' the thin man said eagerly. ‘You bet any favorite, see, but on'y if his position is number one or two, and on'y if the odds is three to two or less. Otherwise you bet the favorite to place and the challenger to win. And then every race you get your longest long shot and lay on a couple of deuces, and that's it. They won't hit all the time, but they'll pay the freight and maybe the rent.'

‘System,' said the man through his cigar; it sounded like spitting.

‘All right, system! But I done this sixty-six times in a row and from &6.50 I'm up to &208.70.'

‘On paper.'

‘On'y thing is, you got to work from late odds and wear your spike shoes, get to that window last man in the place. You got to
be
there. You got to watch that tote board like it's a dirty movie.'

‘Now you listen to me,' the cigar-smoker began, and then alarm replaced his severe amusement. ‘What's all that?'

All that was a sudden commotion in the outer office. It burst in on them in the forms of a grim, straight-backed maiden lady with a salty frizzle of hair showing from her bonnet and a black-jowled giant whose high tenor voice grew progressively higher as he tried to expostulate with the lady and explain to the cigar-smoker at the same time.

The cigar-smoker held up one hand. The giant stopped, and the lady began.

‘My name is Emily York and you've been taking bets from my cousin Percival.'

The man at the desk slowly took down his feet and rolled the cigar to the side of his mouth. ‘Percival what?'

‘Percival York, as you know very well.'

‘We don't know any Percival York around here.'

The acne with the system put in a word: ‘The sign on the door says Investment Counselors. You got the wrong place lady.'

‘Percival York receives his income quarterly — January, April, July and October,' continued Miss Emily York. ‘His bills to date are already greater than his income for the entire year. The Raceway opens tomorrow, I believe, so that any bet he loses he will not be able to pay. And, of course, any bet he wins you lose.'

‘We ain't making book and we don't know no Percival York,' said the acne.

‘Shut up,' said the cigar. ‘Lady, what do you want?'

‘Don't take any bets from Percival York. And you'd better get in touch with every other horse parlor you know and pass the word along.'

‘Say,' the acne said suddenly, ‘I think this dame —'

‘Shut up,' said the cigar. ‘You his wife, lady?'

‘Good heavens, no,' snapped Emily York. ‘I'm his cousin.'

‘You know what can happen to nosy cousins, lady?'

‘Psst,' the acne said hurriedly.

An interested glint came into Miss Emily's eye. ‘Are you threatening me?'

‘Psst!' repeated the acne.

The black-jowled giant squeaked, ‘Boss, you want I should —?'

‘Because if you are, I think you ought to know that I'm a well-known social worker and that from time to time I call the station in the precinct in which I happen to be working and tell the desk sergeant where I'm going and that if I don't phone back in twenty minutes he's going to send two large detectives for me.'

‘You can get out,' said the man at the desk. But he said it to the black-jowled giant, who precipitately obeyed. ‘Lady, you mean before you came up here you called the cops?'

‘Indeed I did,' said Miss Emily York.

‘Jesus,' said the man at the desk respectfully.

‘That's what I been trying to tell you,' the acne said, waving his arms. ‘She's the one closed up Rosalie's place. Single-handed!'

‘Well,' said the other man. ‘It's a good thing we're not in
that
kind of business. What's the harm, lady? A few bets now and then —'

‘I'm not intending to close you up, if that's what you're worried about,' said Emily York.

‘Oh?' he said.

‘At least, not just now.'

‘Oh,' he said.

‘Because at the moment I have a use for you. You can reach more horse parlors than I can.'

‘You really want this Percy oddballed — I mean black-balled?' asked the short heavy man at the desk. He was now smoking in quick short puffs.

‘Percival. Don't you?'

‘Me?'

‘He already owes you nearly twenty-eight hundred dollars. If he can't bet he can't lose, and if he doesn't lose he might scrape up enough to pay you what he owes. Come, now! You're not a gambling man. The people who call you up on those telephones are gambling men, but you're not.'

‘That's what I been saying,' the man said feebly.

She glanced at her wrist. ‘I must make my telephone call.'

He rose in a hurry. ‘Well, thank you for coming in, Miss York. Not that I know anyone by that name myself, but I don't mind passing the word along to oblige a lady. In case I find somebody to pass it to —'