All The Bells on Earth (34 page)

She began to cry, and set the pitcher on the counter. “Never mind me,” she said, waving her hand. “An hour ago I had a stove, a cream pitcher. I had my d … d … dignity.” She bleated out a sob, and Henry moved to her side, putting his arm around her shoulders.

Bentley closed his eyes, and Walt got the idea that he was counting, that maybe he would have to count several times.

“I was wondering,” Henry said softly to Walt. “Maggie’s Buick has been acting up, and she hates to take it over to Pinky’s Garage again, not after what they soaked her for last time. Maybe you’ve got some idea … ?”

“Acting up how?” Walt asked. Bentley turned away, cutting the air with little slashes of his hand, as if he were reading his congregation a hellfire sermon.

“Overheating,” Henry said. “Isn’t that it?”

She nodded, sniffling a little and fingering the cream pitcher again.

“She can’t drive it ten blocks,” Henry said. “She’s lucky to make it to the All-Niter.”

“Probably just the thermostat,” Walt said. “Nothing to it. We’ll pull the hose and pop it out. We can run the thermostat down to Chief and swap it for a new one. Won’t take a second, won’t cost a cent.” He winked at Mrs. Biggs, who had gotten her composure back.

“I’d be obliged,” she said. “And I wonder if you’d pop into the Satellite for a few groceries, too? I know it’s only a block down, but my sciatica …” She grimaced, and straightened her back with what was apparently a monumental pain and effort. “Here.” She offered Walt one of his twenties back, but Henry stopped her.

“
We’ll
take care of it,” he said. “You buy yourself another one of these vessels.” He pointed at the cow.

Bentley stepped to the door, opened it, and went straight out without saying a word.

“Pissant,” Mrs. Biggs said. “That’s the only name for a creature like that. And he calls himself a man of God.” She shook her head sadly, as if it were a shame. “I’ll make out the grocery list while you look to the car. There’s some tools in the garage, but not many.” She inclined her head at Walt. “Leave ‘em as clean as you find ‘em. That’s what I always told the help at the Paradise.”

“Good policy,” Walt said. “Leave it to us.”

He followed Henry out the door again. It only took a few minutes to get the top hose off the radiator and pull out the thermostat. But the hose had gone mushy, so Walt took it, too, and then pulled the bottom hose just to be safe, letting the green radiator water run down the driveway and into the gutter while Henry diluted it with hose water. They’d have to buy clamps before it was over, and a gallon of antifreeze. Still, unless the radiator itself was shot, the whole thing wouldn’t cost more than twenty-five bucks, and maybe another twenty for groceries, give or take, and if that was the end of Maggie Biggs, they’d have gotten off cheap. Bentley had sat in his car the whole time, staring out through the windshield while Walt worked on the Buick. He popped the trunk from inside when Walt rapped on the window, and Walt dropped the hoses and thermostat inside.

“How much?” Bentley asked when Walt and Henry climbed in.

“How much what?” Walt asked.

“How much more of this damnation extortion till we’re out of the woods? I tell you I’ve seen a few hard cases in my day, but she takes the cake, every blessed crumb of it.” He pulled away from the curb, shaking his head darkly. “And I’ll tell you what—you give these people an inch of rope, and they’ll hang you. Velma Krane and her dignity! I’ll bet you a shiny new dime there never was a Velma Krane. And that cow pitcher! Prewar Germany! That was a piece of plaster of Paris she bought down at Pic ‘n Save, and she soaked us for fifty bucks! What did she take you for, altogether?”

“Pull in here at the bank,” Walt said, digging out his automatic teller card. It’s your call, Henry. Shall we see this through?”

“Absolutely,” Henry said. “Damn the expense. If she calls Jinx …”

Walt hopped out of the can and drew five twenties from the machine, then handed three of them to Bentley when he got back in. “There’s grocery money and enough left over to cover the thirty you put out for the cow pitcher. Drop me off at home, will you? I’m late already to get the kids, and I don’t want to get in dutch with Ivy.”

“Well … heck,” Bentley said. “Never mind the thirty for the cow pitcher.
I
broke it.” He tried to hand two of the twenties back, reaching his hand over the top of the seat.

“It’s not your fight,” Walt said, waving them away. “Thanks for going along. If you can see this grocery list through to the end, you’ve done a day’s work. Keep your money.”

“Maybe it
is
my fight,” Bentley said. “I came around this afternoon looking to enlist the two of you in this little affair of mine, didn’t I? I thought I was up against a pretty formidable dragon, but now I’m inclined to believe that Maggie Biggs gets the brass ring.” He stopped at a red light at Shaffer Street, in front of Coco’s, and tucked the two twenties into Walt’s shirt pocket. “In for a penny, in for thirty bucks, as they say. Keep your money. It’ll all come out even in the end.”

“That’s the truth,” Henry put in. “And by heaven I’ll reimburse both of you after the sales party. That lingerie will
sell
. You’ve got nothing to worry about there. Vest will have delivered it by now.”

“
That’s
good news,” Walt said, imagining the lingerie party for the first time, actually picturing it in his mind—he and Henry hauling foundation garments and knickers and brassieres out of a cardboard box, a dozen neighborhood women grinning at them, going into the other room to try these things on….

The picture was absolutely insupportable; he saw that clearly now. There would be no recovering from such an ordeal. If he was lucky he would merely be a laughingstock. More likely he’d be considered a world-class pervert. Bentley braked to a stop in front of the house. There was no box on the porch yet; Vest apparently hadn’t arrived. Bentley was talking to Henry like a Dutch uncle, giving him advice, waving his finger. Walt tuned them out, his mind consumed by his sudden horror of the lingerie, of the party over on Harwood. God bless Henry, but sometimes he was like a doomful prophecy in an old Greek myth. Oedipus is humiliated at a lingerie party. What else
can
he do but gouge his eyes out?

The popes, Maggie Biggs, Sidney Vest—it was all too much. And it was his own fault, wasn’t it?—letting things go on too long, full of futile hope. Well, this was it. Push had come to shove. Something had to be done right now. There was no more putting it off.

Then the answer came to him, like a radio signal from a distant planet. Out of nowhere he recollected Vest’s chatter at Coco’s, the talk about selling the vice presidencies, cashing out, moving back to North Carolina. It was all suddenly easy: Walt could put one over on fate and do Vest a favor at the same time. He made the wish right there and then: send Vest home now, he thought, talking to the bluebird. Kill the lingerie deal right this instant and send Vest back to Raleigh.

I
VY TURNED LEFT FROM
Palm onto Batavia and headed north, on her way to check out Argyle’s lots. Within a couple of blocks the neighborhood changed from residential to industrial. There was almost no open land at all throughout the downtown area, and the few lots still available had gotten expensive during the boom years in the eighties when the price of real estate had quadrupled. For a couple of years it just hadn’t been prudent to buy, and prices drifted downward. Now, with diminished interest rates, things were starting to come back around, but very slowly. Argyle might have moved his two properties quick five years ago and done pretty well, but now prospective buyers would be looking hard for a bargain, and the money he wanted for the parcels didn’t look like a bargain to Ivy. Selling them would be a long haul.

She turned into the driveway of an auto parts warehouse and pulled into a stall at the lonesome end of the parking lot, adjacent to one of the parcels, and then sat for a minute looking over the paperwork in the manila envelope, glancing up now and then to get some idea of the place. The dirt lots had turned into mud holes with all the rain, and there was a lake covering half the acreage.

She got out of the car and stood in the cool breeze, leaning back against the hood. This whole thing was baffling: suddenly she was at the edge of making real money, as if a door had opened for her. It was hard not to think of all the what-ifs, to start spending the money in her mind—and not just this commission, but those that might follow. It occurred to her suddenly that she had been treating Argyle a little hard, probably because she didn’t want to fight with Walt about him. It was easier to let Walt have his way sometimes, although if she was going to do the kind of serious business with Argyle that it looked like she might do …

At the back of one of the lots were a couple of heavy old eucalyptus trees, the loose bark peeling off and littering the ground along with broken-off limbs. Kids had nailed boards to the trunks of the trees, and there were planks up in the lower limbs, half hidden by leafy branches. Somebody, anyway, would be disappointed if the lots sold and the trees had to come down. Such was progress. Out near the street, someone had dumped an old washing machine and some other trash—that would all have to be cleaned up. And she’d have to get a sign, too, which would be covered with graffiti in under a week.

A black pickup truck nearly as long as a limousine pulled off the road right then, onto the muddy shoulder in front of the farther lot. A man got out and stood looking, maybe fifty yards from Ivy. He was a big man—tall and heavy, like an enormous football player way over the hill. He was dressed nicely, in a coat and tie, and had curly hair cut like Nero.

He reached into the rear of the pickup and pulled out one of those bicycle-wheel measuring devices and walked out onto the lot, pushing the wheel along, avoiding the worst of the mud and heading past the edge of the lake toward the eucalyptus trees. When he hit the fence, he scribbled something into a little notebook and then traversed both lots in the other direction, ending up at the northwest corner. He scribbled again and then headed back out toward the street, along the back side of the auto parts warehouse in a route that would take him right past Ivy.

For a moment she was tempted to get back into the car, start it up, and drive away. There was something forbidding about him, out here in the lonesome afternoon. She felt conspicuous, as if she were standing on a street corner.

She stopped herself. It was simply his size, probably, that intimidated her. And whatever he was doing here, surveying the property like this, she really ought to know about it. It was possible he worked for Argyle.

He saw her and nodded. He was sweating despite the wind, and up close he looked even larger, easily six-five. His shirt, either good rayon or some very nice combed cotton, couldn’t be off the rack; it must have been three or four yards of material. There was a monogram on the pocket, too.

“Beautiful day,” he said. His voice was husky, like a smoker’s voice.

“Isn’t it?” she said. “The rain’s kind of made a mess of these lots, though.”

“They’ll dry out. Nice couple of lots.” He looked back at the ground he’d just covered and nodded his head.

“What’s up with all the measuring?” Ivy said. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but it happens that I represent the owner of the lots. I’m just out here looking things over now that he’s decided to sell them. I’ve got to get a sign up, get things moving.”

“Well, I’ll be,” he said, holding out his hand. “My name’s George Peet. Short for Peetenpaul.”

“I’m Ivy Stebbins—Old Orange Realty.” He had almost no handshake for a big man—all fingers.

“This is a heck of a coincidence. Saves me tracking down the owner myself.”

“Are you interested in the properties?”

“That’s right,” he said. “So don’t bother with the sign. I’ll take ’em to go, if the price is right.”

“I’m sure we can make it right,” she said. She realized then that she must have been smiling like a drunk, but there was no way she could get rid of the smile; that would take some time.

N
ORA AND
E
DDIE CAME
out of the preschool carrying notebooks covered in red and green foil. The other kids had them, too—catalogues of some kind, very ornate and costly looking.

“What’s this?” Walt asked, taking one from Nora as they sat in the parking lot.

“Christmas paper and stuff.”

He opened it up. Inside were two dozen four-inch-square samples of Christmas wrapping paper—embossed foil, printed paper, paper stamped with religious messages. There were photos of Christmas craft pieces, too—wreaths and candles and tree ornaments and garlands. At the back of the catalogue was a price list and a three-page order form with blanks for names and addresses and telephone numbers. “One Day Delivery Guaranteed,” the order form read.

“What’s it for?” Walt asked, spotting the Dilworth logo on the samples page.

“Selling,” Nora said.

“You and Eddie both have one?”

“It’s a fund-raiser,” Eddie said. “To earn money for the school. Last Christmas they bought the dinosaur slide.”

Out on the playground stood a desolate-looking fiberglass Tyrannosaurus, six or seven feet tall, in a sand pit. The thing had little bitty worthless arms like a begging poodle, and sun-faded Orphan Annie eyes. Its back and tail were apparently a slide.