The Damned (5 page)

“Brother, you’re giving me a chance to get off this side of the river. I love you for it.”

John Gerrold turned toward Bill. “I’d better get back to her. She’s in the first store at the top of the hill. I’ll be there with her.”

Bill saw the tears gleam behind the lenses of the glasses as the boy turned and looked out across the river. John Gerrold said, “She’s always been such a good sport about… things like this ferry business. She called them adventures.”

“She’ll be O.K., Johnny,” Betty Mooney said emphatically.

He turned without a word and went striding up the hill, long legs scissoring slowly, head bent.

“Is she pretty bad?” Bill asked the Mooney girl.

“Whatever it is, it sure isn’t a common cold. Mamma’s boy is giving his wife a hard time. Seems to sort of blame her. And here’s a kick, Mr. Danton. That pair are on a honeymoon. With Mamma along. Tie that if you can.”

She seemed unwilling to leave. He gave her one of the cheap cigarettes, lit it for her. She took a drag, clutched at her throat, and coughed. “Sabotage!” she said in a husky voice.

“Delicados. You have to get used to them.”

She took a second drag, cautiously. “Say, they stand right up and talk back, don’t they? You live in Mexico?”

“We’ve got a farm, my dad and I.”

“You make a living off it? I’ve seen some pretty tired land around here.”

“It gets better when you get off the highway. And we’re in the flats, so we don’t get all the wind and water erosion of the boys who slap those vertical fields against the sides of the mountains.”

“Some of those fields that are almost straight up and down look weird.”

“Weird, all right,” he said quietly. “It takes fifty thousand years for nature to stick a little topsoil on those slopes and nail it down with a decent root system. So some little joker clears it, plants it, wears it out, and it washes away and blows away in three years. Most of the good land in Mexico is washing out to sea. Or blowing up in the air to make pretty sunsets.”

“We came through a dilly of a dust storm up in the mountains.”

“Treated right, this land will pay off.”

“You really knock yourself out when you think about it, eh?”

He gave her a slow grin. “Take it a little serious, I guess.”

“What do you think of that Benson?”

“Friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“No. I just met him when the old lady got sick.”

“Why do you want to know what I think of him?”

“Well, you pushed him around a little.”

“I guess I just don’t like that kind of guy very much. Those boys weren’t hurting him any. He just likes to beat on people.”

Pepe came over and said, “Observe the tarp, Beel.”

“That’s good. Let’s back it up the hill. Wait, I’ll back it up. You stay here and make certain no one tries to steal our place. Want to ride up, Miss Mooney?”

“I’ll walk, thanks.”

Bill swung the truck out of line, put it in reverse, leaned out the door, and backed it up the hill. There was more blue in the tree shadows, and some of the brassy look had faded out of the sky.

AS THEY had made the turn off the Pan-American Highway at Victoria, to head toward Matamoros, the police sedan had halted them.

The twins, Riki and Niki, in the back seat of the big gun-metal Packard convertible, had been amusing themselves with a bottle of golden tequila, and had been passing it up to Phil Decker just often enough so that he made a serious attempt not to breathe into the face of the mustachioed cop.

Phil’s kitchen Spanish turned out to be pretty inadequate and the cop had no English, and so the cop had taken them across to a restaurant where there was a man with respectable English.

When he got the word, Phil held a conference with the twins. They were identical twins, a pair of sleek show-girl blondes wearing identical blue denim play suits. Tequila had made the four blue eyes a bit glassy.

“Like this,” Phil said. “There’s some kind of delay at the ferry about a hundred miles down the road there, and the cars are getting across too slow. If we stay at the hotel here, we can probably get across in the morning with no trouble. Or we can go to Laredo to cross, which is no dice on account of the one-week stand near Harlingen. We stay overnight, we got to fly like big birds to get settled in and straightened away from Harlingen tomorrow night.”

“Woops, we’re marooned,” said Riki.

“We can take a chance on the ferry, but when these kids say something is bad, it’s usually worse.”

Niki turned owlish. “Think of our public, Phil. Leave us lay in supplies, advance on the ferry, and picnic as we wait. A hundred miles from now some of the sting ought to be out of this sun.”

The suggestion was carried by a vote of two against one, the twins against Phil, and with resignation he procured a picnic of sorts from the hotel. When he got back to the car he found that Riki and Niki had done a bit of foraging, and the bottle supply was once again up to par.

As they had started down the highway, the twins had started to sing again. There were not enough of them, nor was there enough quality, to make it come out Andrews or Fontaine, but it came out lusty, with a nice drive to it.

Phil Decker drove doggedly. The long run at the Club de Medianoche had filled up the kitty, and Sol had lined up enough stands between the border and New York so that they ought to be able to arrive with the kitty maybe a bit bent but not busted.

And this time, he told himself grimly, they were going to make the TV idea work. Sell it to somebody. The kids were young and had talent. And he wasn’t getting any younger. The routines would have to be cleaned up, but that wasn’t hard. Wangle a few guest spots, and pray. This time the Triple Deckers ought to come through.

He had no illusions about himself. He knew he was a baggy-pants comic with an ugly face, a heavy left hand on the piano, and a sense of timing and pace learned the hard way, learned in crumby clubs from border to border. It was the kids who were going to clinch it for him. A piece of luck finding the kids right when Manny got so sick and had to quit. A pair of Cleveland gals who’d won an amateur contest and had been booked around with a poor act of their own devising. He’d watched them, made the offer, sewn them up, gone to work on them. Now they had a bag of tricks. The gutty singing, and the duet strip. It had been tough talking them into the strip, but after they’d gone through the paces that first night in New Orleans, awkward and damn near blushing all over, the gals had been convinced that he was right. And they had the milkman skit, and the sorority-house skit, and that blackout business with the violin. A fast, rough show, with plenty of long slim legs, and plenty of double-talk that wasn’t too coarse.

Well, this was going to be the gamble. The big time, or crawl away on your belly, Phil boy. And the nagging fear came back that maybe the gals had too much class. Somebody would step in and take over and cut him out. Well, the contract was as tight as he could make it, and they’d have to do a lot of scrambling around, but if they wanted to get out of it, they could probably fix it up somehow. He had learned about contracts the hard way, too.

There was one way you could tell real class when you ran into it. Riki and Niki were not going to let anybody’s bed get in the way of ambition. They never let themselves get separated, and the two of them could certainly handle any pair of eager guys.

He realized he had made a fool of himself in New Orleans, but it had worked out all right. He certainly hadn’t wanted to mess with either or both of them, because he knew that could foul up an act quicker than anything. And he knew that neither of them had intended to tease him along, but living like that, having to go into their room, having them get so casual with him that it was as if they thought he was one of those boys they fix up so they won’t make trouble around a harem—it had got a little too much to take. And so he’d made that fast pass at Niki and she’d blown up in his face and there had been a lot of yammering and then the big conference, at which he apologized very abjectly and they promised to comport themselves in such a way that he wouldn’t be so likely to lose control in the future.

They had been good for quite a while, but lately they’d been getting careless again. Now it didn’t seem to bother him so much though. He guessed he was worrying too much about how they’d do in New York. Or maybe just getting too damn old. In the Mexico City hotel he’d been talking to Niki one afternoon and Riki had come out of the bathroom wearing a big yellow towel knotted around her waist. Riki hadn’t seemed to be aware of herself, and you couldn’t blame the kid, because there is certainly nothing like a strip routine done for better than a year to make a shambles out of the modesty department. But Niki had remembered and told Riki to go put something on, and Phil had heard himself saying that it didn’t make any difference. But she went and put a robe on anyway.

Good kids, and once they’d had a chance, they began to show a natural instinct for timing. Hell of a job at first, because they kept throwing away the best lines, and chopping laughs right down the middle. Had to start right from the beginning. Teach them how to walk as if they were coming down the ramp at the Diamond Horseshoe. Teach them how to push the voice out from the diaphragm, push it out round and heavy enough to bounce off the far corners of the noisiest joint. Riki had a nice talent for the dumb-blonde routine, wide-eyed, mouth a button of shock and surprise. Niki could do the best with a suggestive leer. The Mexican customers as well as the tourists had eaten it up.

The routines would have to be cleaned up a bit. That wouldn’t be hard. He hoped they would photograph right for the TV cameras.

Might be able to do something with that knack of Niki’s to imitate people. They were singing again. One of them, he didn’t know which one, leaned forward from the back seat and handed the bottle to him.

Funny how they both started tapping the bottle at the same time. No harm yet. Always sober at showtime. Made you worry a little bit, though. Maybe something was nibbling on them. Something they hadn’t mentioned.

They seemed happy enough. Maybe a little wackier than usual, if anything. The drinking had started about the time that big bruiser had taken a shine to Riki. What was his name? Roberts. Robertson. Something like that. Skipped from Boston to play in the Mex league. A pitcher.

Hell of a thing if one of the twins should fall in love right now. Ruin everything. That night, a week ago, when he went by the room. It could have been one of them crying.

He took a second little knock at the bottle and handed it back. “Take it easier on the singing,” he said gruffly. “Don’t want you hoarse in Harlingen.”

“Are you a little hoarse in Harlingen?” Riki asked.

“Me, I’m a big sheep dog in Denver,” Niki replied.

“Yuk, yuk, yuk,” Phil said sourly.

“That’s his trouble. No sense of humor. Old Mother Decker.”

“Old Mother Phil. How about this? Old Mother Phil went up the hill, to get his poor girls a laugh. And when he got there… hmmm…”

“The hilltop was bare.”

“And so were the girls.”

“Hey, it’s got to rhyme, you,” Riki complained.

“So what rhymes with laugh?” Phil asked.

“Would giggle be better?” Niki asked.

“Try grin. Then you can use gin. Speaking of gin, Mother Decker, how about another kick?”

“Another knock and we all ride in the back seat. Want me to roll this wagon in this countryside?”

Niki stared out the window. She said in an awed tone, “The land that Charles Addams forgot.”

“Hey, write that down,” Phil said. “Put it in the ad-lib book. We’ll use it for snow blindness. You know. Empty joint. Cold crowd. ‘Is that a vulture sitting up there?’ Niki says, looking up, kinda, shading her eyes. We won’t use Addams. Maybe Boris Karloff. Something about him forgetting it or something.”

“Or a crack about the food in whatever joint it is. Too rough?” Riki asked.

“Too rough. Let’s work it around somehow. There’s a gag there someplace.”

The top of the car was up, as protection against the blistering sun. The back window was unzipped. A pair of red sandals followed by long lithe legs came sliding over into the front seat.

“Getting dull back there,” Niki said. “Girl back there thinks she looks like me.” She braced the red sandals against the glove-compartment door.

“Everything O.K. with you two?” Phil asked.

“We don’t make much money, but we have a lot of fun.”

Phil looked in the mirror. Riki had spread herself out on the back seat to take a nap. Niki, beside him, squinted straight ahead at the highway, no expression on her face. Both girls’ hair was tied back with red ribbon that matched the sandals.

“We’re going to kill them in New York.”

“Sure, Phil.”

“You got nerves about it?”

“Not a nerve in my head, lambie. Supremely confident, that’s me.”

He had to be satisfied with that. But he still didn’t feel quite right about the pair of them. Somewhere in the immediate past he had lost control somehow. There was something on their minds, something they hadn’t told him yet. He crossed mental fingers. Here he was with roughly two hundred and forty pounds of female talent, bursting with health and bounce. Enough to make a man suspicious. How lucky could you get? Too lucky, maybe. Hell, one little phone call to Sol and he could put the Triple Deckers into a Bourbon Street joint from now until Dewey turned Democrat. Maybe that would be the thing. Stick to small time. Forget how the pair would look on a Life cover.

The miles swept at them and were snatched under the droning tires. They topped a small rise. Phil pumped the brake and they eased to a stop behind a blue Cad. A long line of cars and trucks stretched down the hill to the river bank.

“This is the picnic grounds, ladies,” Phil said. “Here in this natural retreat, surrounded by the beauties of nature…”

“And house flies.”

“… you will drink in the mysteries of…”

“Who said drink?”

Niki and Riki piled out, stretching long cramped legs. They attracted, as usual, open-mouthed attention. When Phil had first taken them in tow, they hadn’t known how to handle themselves while being stared at. They had just been a pair of corn-fed beauties who happened to be twins. Now no one could doubt for a minute that they were in show business. They had the air and the walk, and as far as the stares were concerned, they might just as well have been absolutely alone. They’d never given up their cute trick of walking hand in hand, and Phil hadn’t made them stop it. They told him they were going exploring. He got out of the car and watched them going down the dusty road, hand in hand, heads shining in the slant of the late-afternoon sun. He decided he was very proud of them.

He saw them move to one side to get out of the way of a pickup truck that was backing up the hill. The truck backed all the way to the end of the line, then swung down through a shallow ditch and up to the front of a tired-looking little store.

A tall young guy in glasses came trotting out, glanced at the truck, and trotted over to Phil. “Are you a doctor?” he demanded.

“No, son. Sorry.”

The boy turned on his heel and ran back to the store. There was quite a crowd around, staring in the door. Phil walked over to see what was going on. The big fellow who had driven the truck had gone into the store. As Phil got closer he heard some crisp Spanish and the crowd got out of the way a bit. The big guy and the young fellow came out carrying a stretcher made of a couple of coats buttoned around bamboo poles. There was a gray-haired lady on the stretcher. Phil guessed that if she were awake and on her feet, she’d look like quality.

She certainly looked sick. Face like a washrag. Phil swallowed hard. That was the way Manny had looked when the ambulance came after him. And it made him remember that he was exactly Manny’s age. Forty-nine. The gals thought he was forty-two. Stop using the little brush and the bottle, and his hair would probably be the same color as the lady on the stretcher’s. Damn hard to be a comic, to think of the punch lines, to dress up the routines, when way down in your mind you kept thinking of death. The years go by so damn fast.

The crowd was very still. Kids watched, wide-eyed. A Mexican slowly took off his big straw hat and then made the sign of the cross. The two men eased the stretcher onto the truck. The boy scrambled in with blankets, awkwardly wedged them under her.

The big Mexican fellow looked around. He turned to Phil and the Texas drawl startled Phil considerably as he said, “If you could back that car of yours up, friend, I could drive out to where the ditch isn’t quite so steep.”

“Sure,” Phil said. “Sure thing.”

He went to the car and backed up, giving the truck plenty of room. There was a little girl in the truck now, too. A pretty little bit. Silver-colored hair and a trim little figure. Looked like somebody had given her a bust in the mouth not too long ago. But he couldn’t imagine anybody doing that. Probably she fell.

The big fellow tooled the truck through the ditch, creeping it along. When it turned down toward the ferry, Phil moved the Packard up to the back bumper of the Cad and turned it off. He pocketed the key as he got out. He stood, blinking in the sunlight, a small worried-looking man with clown lines around his big mouth, with simian forehead, wearing an absurdly unsuitable pair of maroon shorts with wide white bands down the side seams. His two girls were two dots of pale blue beyond the dust. Phil hiked up his maroon shorts and set off down the road. He had learned, early in life, how to case a house. This one was a crazy mixture. He hoped he’d never have to play to a house like this one. Some round, glint-eyed little Mexican businessmen. A mess of
paisanos.
A chunky American who looked like a pro athlete of some sort. Another American looking like a banker, sort of a sad-eyed guy. A big redhead with a yellow dress about to bust in front. Some farmery-looking guys. A big tourist family with a swarm of bratty kids. All of them piled up here, just as they’d come along the highway. Down at the head of the line he found a couple of sour-looking flits, one of them with a flattened nose. Recently done. He wondered why people had been getting pounded around here.