The Adjustment (14 page)
“Who says I was 4-F?”
“Fallen arches, maybe?”
“I’ll be damned if it’s any of your business. Just maybe I was essential personnel.”
“Say, folks, how about a round on the house?” Norman said.
“What’s your line, Tub?” I asked, trying to salvage the situation.
“I’m an assistant mortician,” he said. I felt a little pity at the thought of him draining the blood out of bodies into a little floor drain in the center of a dark, antiseptic room. I wanted him to get Honey’s favors for the night, to know the touch of a living woman’s hand for a change.
“That’s interesting work. I was in the Quartermaster Corps; we used to furnish the army morticians with all their gear.” I looked at Honey. “It’s more complicated work than you might imagine.”
Stretch squirmed in his chair. “That’s no way for a man to make a living, touching corpses. What kind of woman would want your hands on her knowing where they’ve been?”
“What do you do, Stretch?”
“I,” he said with a drunk’s exaggerated, pious dignity, “am an insurance adjuster.”
“So your racket is cheating people out of money they’re legitimately due at the lowest points of their lives.”
Stretch rose to his wobbly feet and, teetering, grabbed the back of the chair for support. “That’s a damnable lie, sir. I make sure cheats aren’t soaking the insurance company, and I keep everybody’s rates low. That’s what I do, sir.”
“You’re a jackal,” I said, and at that he took a swing at me. I stood and dodged it and gave him the bum’s rush to the stairs. Behind me Honey let out an incredulous whoop as I kicked Stretch in the pants. He tumbled headlong down the staircase and hit his head hard on the door, cracking one of its glass panes. He turned, thrashing, but I had the door open before he could get his feet planted, and when he hit the gravel I gave him a swift kick to the belly while upstairs Honey cackled with delight. He vomited, narrowly missing my shoe.
“Now take a fucking hike before I crack your skull wide open,” I said as I headed back upstairs.
THE ADRENALINE HAD burned off some of the alcohol, and I had Norman pour me another bourbon. The violence had flushed some toxin out of my system and I felt good, really good, for the first time in days. Tub and Honey, his hand up her skirt provoking a heady giggle, seemed to have forgotten about me. They finished their drinks and got ready to leave.
“Mister,” Honey said at the top of the stairs, her hair and makeup wrecked, “you sure gave old Nate what for.”
Norman busied himself with KP and I apologized for kicking Stretch down the stairs.
“That’s all right, I get tired of listening to that son of a bitch anyway.”
“I guess Tub’s going to get himself some tail tonight.”
“You think so?” Norman seemed surprised.
“Are you shitting me? Those two horndogs were about to come to blows over the old floozy.”
“Huh. ’Cause she’s married to Nate, the fellow you kicked down the stairs.” He got the bottle and poured me another, then sat down and grimaced. “My hip. Hurts like a son of a bitch and the doc says there’s nothing to be done.”
“You ought to try some Hycodan. Only problem is you can’t take a shit or pop a hard on.”
“I think I’ll stay away from that, thanks. I knew some hypos when I was young and it never went too well.”
“You don’t have to shoot it up, it comes in a pill.”
“Still and all. One of my few pleasures left in life is my morning dump. And if some dame came in here and wanted me to jump her I’d like to leave the possibility open.”
“Hell, get yourself a whore.”
“I’m not comfortable with the idea of paying for it. Last time I did that I caught myself a hell of a dose.”
After lecturing Norman about the proper relationship between rubbers and harlotry I sat contemplating my glass, feeling the warm elation of the evening’s violence dissipate, replaced by a dull, empty aching. The worst part was the realization that the ache was one I’d been feeling for weeks or months without ever noticing it. “Did you ever want to kill someone?”
“Sure,” he said. “Lots of times.”
“Ever think about really doing it?”
I BID NORMAN good night and drove home woozy. I walked into the house ready to report to Sally the happy outcome of her misadventure at Bellows Furnishings, but it was one-fifteen in the morning and she had gone to bed long before. That was a shame, because I wasn’t mad at her anymore. The new dining room table was still set for dinner for two, which made me think for the first time that evening that I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. I opened the icebox and found two steaks on a plate.
Though my domestic skills were few, I could fry a steak. I got out a cast iron skillet, the same one Sally had tried to brain me with, and melted a couple of pats of butter. When that started sizzling I dropped the larger of the steaks into the skillet and while it was still good and rare slapped it onto a plate and ate it at the head of the dining room table. The wooziness had begun to dissipate by the time I finished, and I crept down the hallway to the bedroom. There I was surprised by lamplight and a neatly made bed. “Sally?” I called out, knowing that it was pointless; she was off somewhere, teaching me a lesson. I undressed and went to bed, and despite my late meal and the unaccustomed amount of bourbon in my belly I slept soundly and without dreams.
ELEVEN
FATHER FLANAGAN CONTRADICTS HIMSELF
T
HE NEXT LETTER was postmarked St. Louis and read:
HE NEXT LETTER was postmarked St. Louis and read:
What kind of man cheats the govement hes’ fighting for in the first place? You have got no shame or humility and you caused heartbeaks. Ill be heading your way soon and youll be none the wiser as to when.
This time he included a lock of black hair, one I assumed belonged to one of my Roman girls and not to the sender himself. I was momentarily at a loss as to how to proceed, and all this was irritating the hell out of me, given all the other grief I was being handed at the moment.
THE MATTER OF Mr. Huff was still on the agenda. Park was concerned about getting ourselves or the boss implicated if he or I did anything illegal or untoward, so I phoned Hiram Fish at his office and arranged to meet him for chop suey at the Bellflower Café downtown. He flinched a little when he saw me walk in the door but had mastered himself admirably by the time I sat down at his booth.
The chop suey tasted like shit, but at the Bellflower that was a tradition and I wouldn’t have wanted it any different. “How come you suppose they serve Chinese food in a place with nary a sole Chinaman on the premises?” he asked.
“Bellflower used to buy scraps from the butchers and fry it up every which way, and calling it chop suey kept people from wondering much what they were eating.”
“I had real Chinese food in San Francisco when I was in the Merchant Marines,” he said. “Wasn’t like this at all. San Francisco, there’s a wide open town, drunks and whores and hopheads all over the place. Hell, I may head out there again. Now that the war’s done there’s plenty of opportunity for a man like me.”
He was talking fast and nervous, one of those people who’s afraid in an awkward situation that a few moments’ silence will reveal something terrible, so I let him babble for a while until he let drop something that made me understand why he was so nervous: He thought we wanted him to spy on old Mrs. Collins.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me she gave a whole troop of Boy Scouts the clap.”
He looked blank for a second. “I don’t know what she did. Usually it’s wives want husbands watched or vicey-versey, so I thought Mr. Collins might want me to keep an eye on her.”
“Hell, let her go to her DAR meetings, Collins doesn’t give a damn what she does.”
“What, then?”
“I want you to get a picture of a guy with a dick in his mouth.”
Again the blank look, followed by a troubled squint. “You mean like via mail order?”
I almost got up and left right there; either he was playing at being obtuse or he was a genuinely stupid son of a bitch. “I need you to follow a particular fellow who means Mr. Collins harm. I have reason to believe this fellow gets his pleasure in Riverside Park late at night, and I want you to sneak up on him in flagrante delicto . . . ”
“In where?”
“In the middle of sucking a dick.”
“Who is this guy?”
I handed him a manila envelope, which he started to open right there, the dumb shit. “Open it later, damn it. His picture’s in there and his address and everything I have on him.”
“I’ll get on it this afternoon. It’ll take me a week or so to establish his habits, get to know his comings and goings, that’s at twenty a day, with a fifty dollar deposit.”
“Don’t hand me that crap, Hiram. This is worth five hundred, but only if you get us a crystal clear picture of the guy on his knees with a pair of balls bouncing off his chin. Until that picture’s in our hands you get doodly squat.”
“If that’s the way you feel . . . ” He started to rise, and when I didn’t try to stop him he sat down again. “Listen, I got expenses. How about twenty to tide me over?”
I handed him the ten I’d been planning to all along, and spent the rest of my lunch half-listening to the cascade of ill fortune he’d been subject to over the last few months.
“It’s because you’re a fink,” I said.
“What?”
“No offense. But you’re in a profession that calls for you to be a fink, and no good fortune is going to come your way until you repent.”
He nodded, expression blank again, and seemed to be reflecting on the surprising news that he was a professional rat. I was glad to have enlightened him, and when it was time to go I magnanimously paid the check and left a princely half dollar on the table for our stick insect of a waitress.
A WEEK LATER Hiram Fish left a message with Mrs. Caspian for me to meet him at his office on North Broadway. It was down a narrow, dark corridor above a camera shop, and he gave a start when I opened the door without knocking. His skittishness was understandable; both eyes were purple and black and his discolored nose was a few degrees off true. A grisly line of stitches ran horizontally beneath his mouth, and his left arm was in a sling. Two of the fingers on his right hand were in splints.
“Sweet Baby Jesus, Fish, what the hell happened to you?”
“I was tailing your man Huff all week. Home, the plant, home, the plant, nothing. Then Friday night he leaves the car parked in the driveway instead of inside the garage. Around eleven-thirty he leaves the house, rolls the car down into the street without turning the engine over. Gets her a little momentum and turns it over real quiet, did a good job. You can bet he’d done that before.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“There’s hardly any traffic so I can’t just pull out and follow without him noticing. But I remember what you said about Riverside Park, so I waited until he was out of sight and headed on over there via Douglas instead of Central, which is the way he was headed.”
He was clearly proud of his initiative and creative thinking, but not wanting to give him a swelled head I said nothing.
“So I get to Riverside Park and I get out with the Speed Graphic and snuck around for a while trying to find him. Well, guess what? That goddamn park is chock full of queers, and one of ’em spots me and the camera. Says ‘What’s the big idea?’ And I didn’t even think this guy was queer, more like your linebacker type. I didn’t know what the hell he’d be doing there that time of night, but I told him I was there to get a picture. ‘Picture of what?’ the linebacker says. ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ I tell him, ‘but all these guys walking around? They’re fairies. One of ’em’s gonna get his picture taken sucking a dick.’ Well what do you know, the guy calls over somebody else, and that guy calls over somebody else, and pretty soon there’s a whole bunch of fairies giving me shit about wanting to take the picture. Then one of ’em hits me, and then another one takes the Speed Graphic and smashes the shit out of it. Pretty soon the linebacker’s kicking the hell out of me, and about the third kick to my ribs I figure out he’s one of ’em. Can you beat that? Hell, half of ’em just looked like regular guys. And even the little ones were punching me pretty hard.”
I gave him my best deadpan stare and waited a long moment before responding. “Then I’m assuming you don’t have the picture.”
“I just told you they smashed the camera! That’s the second one I’ve lost this year, you might recall.”
My expression didn’t change, which was difficult because I really wanted to laugh at the poor dumb shit. “If you don’t have my picture, why did you call me down here?”
“Well, tell you the truth, I was kind of hoping you’d pay my expenses on this. Replace the camera, pay my medical bills.”
“You’re a moron. You stroll casually into a well-known queer hangout, full of guys with a big goddamn secret, carrying the camera under your arm? And without knowing exactly where the mark is, just looking around for him? Are you kidding me? What did you intend to do when you found him? Ask him if he can say ‘cheese’ with his mouth full?”
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