Never Love a Stranger (45 page)
Friends? Maybe. But I learned a long time ago I couldn’t afford them if I was to get what I wanted. For everything I gained, I had to give up something else. Besides, friends don’t give you what I got.
I turned my chair around towards the window and looked out. Across the river the lights of New York flickered tantalizingly in my eyes. It was funny. There was nothing I really wanted across the river. Maybe it was the pull of invisible chains restricting my actions that made it seem important. I got out of my chair, lit a cigarette, and stood near the window looking over at New York.
Ruth would have to come and see me just at the time she did! I wondered why? Did Jerry really send her? I had found out you couldn’t afford to take chances in this business. Your first mistake was generally your last.
But still if Jerry hadn’t gotten that job things might have been different.
The phone rang. I went to the desk and picked it up. It was Allison. “I’ve got the Tanforan report for you.”
I looked at my wrist watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. I didn’t think it was that late. I was tired and hungry. “O.K.,” I said, “what are they?” I listened to him and then hung up.
New York was still just across the river.
I sat there for a moment wearily; there was one thing I had to do before I could leave. I took Allison’s personnel record from the top drawer of my desk, where it had been since the day before, and looked at it. Then I pressed the buzzer for him.
He stood in the doorway. “Yes, sir?”
“Come in and sit down,” I told him. “I want to talk to you.”
A puzzled look crossed his face. In a second it had gone. “Yes, sir,” he said, crossing to the chair in front of my desk and sitting down.
I held up his service record for him to see. “I’ve just been looking over your record,” I said. “It’s a very unusual one.”
He tensed slightly in his chair. “In what way, sir?” he asked. Despite his efforts to control it, his voice betrayed some perturbation.
“You can drop the ‘sirs’ and ‘misters’ when we’re alone, Allison,” I said. “That’s a lot of crap, anyway. People only use titles of any sort to disguise their own feelings about the people they’re talking with. Everyone calls me Frank.”
He nodded. “My name’s Edward. Ed.”
I looked at him. He was no dumbbell. No matter how much he wanted to know the answer to his question, he threw it away when he saw I didn’t reply. Just that afternoon
his jaw had impressed me. Now I saw other lines of strength in his face: the set of his mouth, his eyes, blue and determined, the furrows on his brow.
“You don’t care much for this sort of job, do you?” I asked. “With the background you have, it seems odd to me that you should have stooped to working in a place like this, for a guy like me.” I read from the record. “Columbia School of Business ’31, Columbia School of Law ’34.”
“A fellow has to eat.” He smiled at me, feeling more sure of his ground. “Hunger is no respecter of degrees, especially college degrees.”
I liked that. I found myself liking the man in spite of what I knew about him. I liked the way he didn’t deny my allegation that he was sinking below his standard. I liked his saying what he had instead of something like: “Oh, no, Mr. Kane! This is just what I want!”—or something equally stupid. I smiled back at him. “Don’t tell me that, Ed! Your folks seem to have been pretty well fixed.”
He tried another tack, seeing the first hadn’t gone over. There was a mocking tone in the back of his voice. He tried to give the impression that I had him. “I wanted to do something different,” he said. “I didn’t want to go into the dull routine of an ordinary law or business office.”
“So you came here.” I smiled. He nodded. “Yes.”
“And was it?” I asked.
“In a way,” he answered. “But it wasn’t quite what I expected.”
I laughed aloud. “What did you expect—blood on the carpets? Be your age, man, this is a business, just like any other.” It was my turn to be mocking. He was beginning to show the slightest signs of having a temper. I made a mental note of that. He didn’t like to be laughed at. I changed the subject. “How long have you been working here, Ed?”
“About eight months,” he answered. I saw he didn’t call me Frank, but then he had dropped the “sir,” and “Mr. Kane.”
“How much do you get?”
“One hundred a week,” he said.
“What would you say if I made it two hundred?”
He looked a little surprised. “Why—why I’d say thank you.”
I laughed again. It was a good answer. “What would you do for it?”
He was puzzled again. “What do you mean, sir?” There it was back again.
“Supposing I were to tell you that the Department of Justice was trying to find someone in the office close enough to me to give them a line on my activities. Supposing you were that guy—I might be able to fix it. Would you send them the reports I would O.K.?” I looked over at him quietly.
He stood up and looked down across the desk at me. “Then you know?” he asked. He leaned forward against the desk, his hands gripping the edge, his knuckles white from their pressure.
“Know what?” I asked, softly.
“That I’m from the Department of Justice,” he said. There was a sense of failure in the sound of his voice.
I felt a little sorry for him. Why did I always have to feel sorry for the wrong people? If I hadn’t caught on to him, he might have been able to hang me higher than a kite. “Oh, that!” I spoke lightly, as if it were unimportant. “I knew that when I hired you.”
“And yet you hired me?” His voice was still tense.
“Of course!” I smiled, seeing the surprise on his face. “I needed a secretary.” He tried to say something. I wouldn’t let him interrupt. “Sit down,” I said, in a slightly bored manner. “There’s no need for dramatics. I’m not going to have you bumped off—that isn’t the way I operate. I told you just a minute ago that this is a business.’
He sank back into the chair silently.
I continued. “You’ve been here eight months. In that time you’ve learned nothing on which your department can base a case. I run a business. The business has many and diversified interests, as you already know. We operate and have interests in various industries, such as coin machines, juke boxes, clubs and restaurants, and small manufacturing. I like to gamble a little. Who doesn’t? All my profits from all phases of my activities are properly reported on my income tax. I commit no crimes. There, in a simple form, you have a picture of my company.
“It’s just what the name says on the door: ‘Frank Kane, Enterprises.’”
He was silent for a moment, then he looked directly up at me. The hidden things—the things that had made me distrust him, that I had sensed rather than seen on his face— were gone. They were replaced with a reserved kind of candour. He smiled. “I’m rather glad that’s over,” he said.
I laughed and lit a cigarette. I was too. If he could have known how close he had come! But that was something else. It wasn’t until yesterday that I had known about him, and with all this breaking now, I would have wound up behind the eight ball. I was silent.
“I guess I might as well go now.” He stood up.
“Suit yourself.” I watched him move slowly towards the door before I spoke again. “I could still use a good secretary.”
“What do you mean?”
I was deliberately vague. “You might turn in your badge and work for me. Or, then again, you might continue on the old basis; I really don’t care what you tell them about me.”
He looked incredibly young as he stood there. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?” I asked. “No one but ourselves need know what we spoke about.” “No,” he said, “it wouldn’t be fair.”
Fair, hell! What did he think spying on me was—fair? I laughed. “It’s up to you,” I said. He went out.
I turned around in my seat and looked out across the river.
New York was still winking at me, giving me the old come-on, come-hither look.
I
T
wasn’t until I had gone half-way across the bridge to New York that I began to realize just how much of a fool I was.
I had left the office about ten forty-five and had gone to the garage for my car. Then it happened. “Mike,” I asked the old garage man, “have you a car I can borrow for the evening?”
The ten-dollar bill I pressed upon him with my question brought a ready assent. “Sure thing, Mr. Kane!” His smile showed toothless gums. He went off into the garage and in a few minutes came back driving a small Plymouth sedan.
I got into the car behind the wheel and looked at the dashboard. There was a full tank according to the gauge. “By the way, Mike,” I asked, before I drove off, “whose car is this?”
He cackled, “The boss’s. It’ll be O.K. I’ll tell him.”
“Thanks, Mike,” I said, putting my foot on the gas and driving off. I went to the bridge, rather than the ferry, which was closer. I didn’t want to park where I might be recognized.
I slowed down as I came to the drive-way leading down town. I turned off Riverside Drive at 135th Street and went to Broadway. I parked there for a few minutes while I went into the drugstore on the corner and looked up Ruth’s address. I ran my finger down the page.
“Cabell, Ruth—100 E. 40th St.—Murray Hill 7-1103.”
A few minutes later I pulled up in front of the building. It was a large, white apartment house on the corner of Park Avenue. I went into the lobby of the building and looked at my watch. It was a few minutes past twelve. I pressed the button for the elevator.
A sleepy-looking elevator operator opened the door. I stepped in. “Cabell’s apartment, please.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, sliding the doors back and starting the elevator up. “Doctor Cabell’s on the fifth floor—apartment five-twelve.” He opened the door expertly and watched me walk down the hall. When I looked back at him as I stopped in front of the apartment door, he shut the door of the elevator and I saw the indicator moved down. I pressed the bell.
I put up my coat collar and pulled my hat down over my eyes. What if she weren’t home? I almost walked away.
The door opened. A strange man stood there.
“Miss Cabell?” I asked. I could hear the subdued tone of voices coming from the apartment. From the sound, there were quite a few people there. “I’m from her office,” I added, by way of explanation, “Mr. Coville.”
“Come in.” He stood aside as I passed him. “I’ll tell her you’re here.” He looked at me curiously before he went.
I kept my collar up and my hat on. I was standing in a small foyer. At the end of the
I could hear his voice. “Ruth, some man is here from your office—a Mr. Coville.”
For a second there was silence, then I heard her say: “I’ll be back in a minute. I’ll just go see what he wants.” Then she came into the foyer. Her face was pale. She came directly to me.
“Why did you come here?” she whispered. Her voice was anxious. I smiled. “I’m repaying your visit.”
“You must go. You can’t stay. Jerry’s in there.” She still whispered.
“You wouldn’t leave my place until you saw me,” I said. “I’m entitled to the same right.”
She put her hand on my arm. “But you don’t understand. Jerry’s inside, and if he sees you he’ll have to turn you in. You’ve got to leave.”
“I don’t think he will.” I smiled. I was beginning to enjoy this. You get a feeling of exhilaration from treading where the ice is thin.
“He will,” she said, coming closer to me. There was a scent about her that was faintly nostalgic. At first I couldn’t place it. Then I remembered—Marianne used it. “He will,” she repeated. “You don’t know him.”
“Don’t I?” I asked, recalling my conversation with him of a few weeks ago. “I’ll take the chance.”
She was disturbingly close now. The perfume went ping, ping in my nose. “Please, please go away.”
Then I kissed her. For a moment she was still. I could feel her lips in shocked surprise under mine. Suddenly they were warm and clinging, her arms around my neck holding my lips down to hers. I had kissed many women since Marianne, but I had never felt their kisses inside me, the way I felt Marianne’s. But this—this was different. It was so like, and yet so different from Marianne’s, I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t try. It was tender, warm, sweet, and passionate.
She withdrew her lips from mine. I still had my arms around her. Her eyes were deep blue pools in which I let myself sink. “Now, please go,” she whispered. Her hand was half raised, her finger-tips caressing my chin.
I smiled, more sure of myself than ever. “Not for this kind of pay-off!” I whispered. “Maybe, if you’ll come with me?” … I let the question hang in the air.
She didn’t answer.
I made a motion to take off my coat.
“All right,” she whispered, “I’ll go with you. Now wait outside.” “I’ll wait here,” I said.
She hesitated. “All right, but be careful.” She turned and disappeared into the room from which she had come.
I could hear her explanation through the doors. I could see two shadows coming towards the door. I turned my face towards the wall and examined a small painting hanging there and kept my back towards them. From the corner of my eye I could see it was Marty. He didn’t look at me. I couldn’t hear what he said—he was speaking quietly. I
just caught his last phrase, telling her to be careful. She had a coat thrown over her arm, and I could see her eyes flicking glances at me. She laughed and sent him back to the party or whatever it was, and came towards me.
I smiled. “Can I help you with your coat?”
She looked at me. Her face was troubled and serious. “I’ll put it on outside. The quicker you’re out of here, the better I’ll feel.”
I laughed and held the door open for her.
The elevator boy eyed us strangely as we went out. We were silent all the way down. We walked silently out to the car. I opened the door for her and closed it after her. Then I went around the other side and got in.
Suddenly she smiled. “This car is rather anticlimatic, isn’t it?”
I laughed. “I see what you mean. You must have expected a large, flashy job. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I couldn’t use mine. It’s hotter than a fire-cracker right now.”
