Whom Gods Destroy (19 page)

It was almost two weeks after the funeral that Vida collected on Sid's insurance. The next day we were married. I had Vida sell the house and we moved into one of the new apartment buildings north of town.

As long as I kept a heavy hand on Seaward he kept the chief of police and the sheriff in line for me. With that recording, I had Paul Keating in my pocket, so I didn't have the grand jury to worry about. And the money was just beginning to roll in.

I should have been satisfied, but I wasn't.

There was always Lola.

I couldn't forget about her. She wouldn't let me rest. I would lie awake at nights imagining the things that must be going through Lola's mind. For years I had dreamed of having the power to ruin her, and now that I had it I didn't know what to do with it. At nights I'd lie there with Vida beside me, and I'd think: Christ, are you still afraid of her, even now?

I knew that it would happen sometime. I'd make her come crawling—when I found the best way to do it. The very best way. And in the meantime I could afford to wait.

I invested in some Big Prairie real estate. On the south edge of town, down by the river, there was a rundown tourist court—nine frame shacks and a two-by-four wooden box that served as an office—where some of the factory workers lived. I bought it and moved the factory workers out.

The next thing I did was make another visit to the Travelers Hotel and call for Rose.

“Well,” she said dryly, as she came in, “if it isn't the photographer.” She came over to the bed, sat down and looked at me. “Do you know that business almost got me in a jam?” she said. “You didn't take care of the bellhop like you promised. I had to give the pimp twenty dollars of my own money.”

“That's what you get for working in a hotel.” I said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“What you need is another kind of setup. Say a crib, where you could operate in the open and be your own boss. Maybe you wouldn't make as much a trick, but the turnover would be a lot bigger in a crib.”

She laughed harshly. “Now that's a brilliant idea. Sure, a girl can make money on a crib street, but that's one thing you can't get away with in this town.”

“I'll get away with it,” I said. “I'm letting you in on a good thing, if you're smart enough to take-it. I need seven or eight good girls to pay the rent on the cribs, and I'll give them all the protection they need.”

She wasn't quite sure if I was crazy or if I could really do it.

“Where is this place?” she asked finally.

“Down on River Street. The Red Ball Tourist Courts, the place is called. It's near the factories, and you know how factory workers are. I'll have some gambling in one of the cribs, and that'll help draw them in. If the girls want to sell whisky on the side, it's all right. As long as they buy their supply from me.”

“Who will the other girls be?”

I grinned, because I could see that she had already made up her mind.

“I thought maybe you could help me there.”

I visited Seaward next. Barney was out in front when I drove up, spraying some rose bushes at the side of the house. He came over to the car wearing a battered felt hat and loose-fitting overalls.

“Barney,” I said, “I'm going to have to ask a favor of you. I'm taking up a sideline, Barney. I'm opening a few cribs on River Street. I want you to pass the word along to the sheriff and the chief of police that the place is off limits for cops.”

An ugliness began to appear in those quick eyes of his. He said. “I told you once, Foley, that I could be pushed too far. I don't furnish protection for pimps.”

Pimp. It wasn't a nice word, it tastes rotten in your mouth when you say it. I felt that blind anger start working inside me, and I reached over to push the door open. I got out and stood in front of him, my face only a few inches from his. I grabbed the front of his overalls and wadded them in my fist. I think I would have clubbed him to death if he had made a move.

But he didn't move. At some-time—maybe during the long hours of thinking about it—he had lost some of his hardness. When I felt that, I could hold my voice down. I said, “You sonofabitch, I'm tired of handling you with velvet gloves. I can send you to the chair, and you know it. And because you know it, you're going to do exactly as I tell you.” I began shaking him. I shook him until his teeth rattled. “Do you understand that? You'll do exactly as I tell you!”

He still didn't say a thing. Those eyes weren't so ugly now. They were frightened eyes.

“All right, Foley! For God's sake, all right!”

I breathed deeply. The sudden fury began to burn out.

Barney wasn't boss any more. I was.

I said, “I'm glad we finally understand each other. Now about these cribs. Do I get protection for them?”

I loosened my hold on him then let him go. He tried to pull himself together, but it was a tough job. He knew that somehow, there in that fit of anger, he had lost the upper hand.

“Foley, you don't know how it is.” He was almost pleading. “The chief of police would be run out of town if we allowed cribs to operate. The sheriff would be tarred and feathered. The churches run this state, and prostitution is one thing the churches can't stand. Forget it, Foley—try anything else, but forget that.”

“I've decided,” I said, “so there's no use talking about it.”

I got back in the car. He was still talking as I drove out of the yard.

14

“ROY, IS SOMETHING bothering you?”

“Nothing's bothering me. I'm fine.”

Sure I was fine. I had the cribs going, collecting two hundred dollars a day from the girls. I had two dice tables in another cabin and they were averaging a hundred a day. On top of that, there was the whisky, and I was gradually squeezing Kingkade out of Big Prairie.

At this rate I'd have the county in my hip pocket within a year.

Still, for two days I'd done nothing but pace the floor and drink.

“Do you want a drink?” I said.

“All right,” Vida, curled up on the apartment couch, watched me with those slanted eyes as I got ice out of the refrigerator and brought it in to the portable bar in the sitting room.

It was just getting dark outside. I pulled the blinds and snapped on a table lamp, then I downed my drink in one gulp and went back for a refill. I could feel Vida watching me.

“For God's sake,” I said, “can't you look at something else for a minute? You give me the creeps.”

“I'm sorry, Roy,” she said softly. “I didn't mean to disturb you.”

I was sorry the minute I had said it. I went over to the couch, sat down beside her and put my arm around her. “Maybe I have got a case of nerves at that,” I said. “I didn't mean to blow off that way.”

“It's all right—”

I pulled her close to me and held her. I loved her—I knew that as well as I knew anything. But something else kept gnawing at me, and not even the warmth of Vida's body could stop it.

“Roy—” She was looking up at me expectantly, her damp red mouth parted slightly.

I said, “I guess I don't feel so good tonight,” and got up. I could see disappointment in her eyes as I went over to get another drink. If the gnawing would only stop. What's wrong with me, anyway? I kept thinking. What is it that makes people step to one side when they see me coming, like I had some kind of rotten disease. Hell, I already had more money, more power than Sid had ever dreamed of. But they didn't take me in, the way they had Sid. Seaward didn't even invite me to his parties.

“I think I'll go out for a while,” I said. “Maybe some fresh air will do me good.”

Vida nodded, her eyes still faintly puzzled.

I took her face in my hands and kissed her hard. “I love you, Vida.” Then I went out.

I drove around for maybe a half hour, and an idea began to jell. I figured it out in my mind, deciding just exactly what I would do and what I would say. Then I went to a drugstore and used the phone.

“Hello?” she said, her voice slightly impatient.

“Hello, Lola, this is Roy Foley.”

It wasn't exactly the way I had planned it, but it was effective. I could hear the whistle of her breath as she dragged it in sharply.

I said, “Don't hang up, Lola. If you do, I'll just come out to your house.”

There was a slight jar in my ear and I guessed that she had put her hand over the mouthpiece. Then she hissed, “Speak quickly. What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you. Meet me in a half hour at 1114 River Street—that's the Red Ball Tourist Courts.”

“It's impossible!” she hissed.

“It's about a tape recording. You know the one I mean.”

“Wait!”
The word came like a pistol shot. “All right, 1114 River Street. I warn you, though, I don't have much money, and I can't get any until the banks open tomorrow.”

“Never mind the money.”

I hung up and sat there in the phone booth for almost five minutes, thinking, Crawl, Lola! Goddamn you, crawl!

Finally I went back to the car and headed south toward the river. I felt head and shoulders above the tallest man in the world. I was drunk. But not from liquor.

The cribs were doing a good business when I got there. Four or five cars were parked inside the horseshoe formed by the cabins. I walked straight down toward an end cabin where an overalled factory worker was just coming out.

Without bothering to knock, I pushed the door open and went in. Rose was in her work clothes, black lace pants and brassiere. She was straightening the bed, and she looked up briefly, without surprise.

I grinned at her. “I want to borrow your cabin for a while.”

“When I pay twenty-five a day for it?” she said indignantly.

“All right, I'll knock off the rent for today. Get your clothes on and go to a movie or something.”

She got her dress on, managing somehow to look more undressed than she had in just the pants and brassiere.

“Remember, no rent for today.”

“I'll remember.”

Rose went out and I stayed there in the cabin for a minute. It would be hard to find a crummier place. A nine-by-twelve room with worn linoleum on the floor, gawdy paper on the walls, dirty and peeling. A Lysol-smelling bathroom in one corner. A naked electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling, with a piece of string tied to the end of the chain pull switch. The thin mattressed double bed sagged in the center, and, even before I tried it with my hand, I knew it would be noisy. A cheap dresser and a straight chair took care of the furniture. It was a shock when I looked in the dresser mirror. I had somehow imagined that I would look different simply because it was Rose's mirror—but the face that looked back at me was the same. Clean shaven, hair neatly trimmed, tie straight, collar immaculately white. Instinctively, I touched the lapel of my suit and felt the softness of Oxford flannel. A hundred and eighty dollars worth of suit, cut by an artist, and it gave me a good feeling to know that I had nine more of them in my closet at the apartment.

The half-hour time limit had about five minutes to go when the black Cadillac pulled up in front of the office shack where I was waiting. I walked over and said, “You're on time, Lola. I'm glad of that.”

She grasped the steering wheel as though she were trying to break it, then, she pressed her hands to her face. Suddenly she reached forward to turn the ignition.

I said, “Just a minute, Lola,” and her hand stopped in mid-air. “Give me time to say something, then if you still feel like running, you can run.” I waited while she took a long, shuddering breath. But she didn't make another move toward the switch. “All right, that's better. You know about Sid's murder, and you know the part your husband played in it. Now the thing to do is talk sensibly.”

“What do you want?” she asked tightly. “How much?”

“I don't think we're thinking along the same line. I've got a cabin—maybe we can get it straightened out over there.”

I opened the car door and she got out woodenly. I started to take her arm but she shrank away. “This way,” I said, and started walking toward Rose's crib, Lola following behind me.

Until then, I guess, she had been too angry to realize where she was. But she caught on quick enough when she saw the near-naked girls watching us from the open doorways.

“In here,” I said.

She went in, half stumbling. She grasped the edge of the dresser as I closed the door, fighting her shame. The soundless struggle went on for a full minute or more—then, at last, she got hold of herself. Finally she looked at me.

Her face was distorted with hate, but she was still beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes—a ridiculous arrangement of ribbon and straw sitting almost on her forehead. Her suit was a soft gray shantung, straight-hanging and severely tailored, looking as if its principal function was to conceal the fact that its wearer was a woman. If that was the case, it failed on Lola. She was a woman all right. And, God, how I hated her.

“How much?” she asked, and her voice was cold and steady now. “How much do you want?”

I tried to smile, but my face was like stone.

“... I'm not sure yet. Your reputation, maybe. Your husband's career.”