The Grifters (6 page)

He addressed her tonelessly, his lips barely moving.

"You goddamned silly-looking pig! Driving a goddamned circus wagon! Why don't you paint a bull'seye on it? Hang a couple of cowbells on the bumper?"

"Now, Bo. Convertibles are quite common in California."

"Convertibles are quite common in California," he mimicked her, weaving his shoulders prissily. "Are they as common as two-timing, double-crossing whores? Hah? Are they, you sneaky little slut?"

"Bo"-she looked around quickly. "Hadn't we better go some place private?"

He drew back a hand as though to slap her, then gave her a shove toward the car. "Get with it," he said. "The Beverly Hills. I get you alone, and I'm going to pop every pimple on your pretty pink butt!"

She started the car and drove out through the gate. As they joined the stream of town-bound traffic, he resumed his tight-lipped abuse.

Lilly listened attentively, trying to decide whether he was building up steam or letting it off. Probably the last, she guessed, since it had been almost three weeks since her blunder. Murderously angry, he probably would have taken action before this.

Most of the time she was silent, making no response except when it was asked for or seemed urgently indicated.

"… told you to watch that fifth race, didn't I? And, by God, you really watched it, didn't you? I bet you stood there grinning clear to your ankles while the dog comes in at a hundred-and-forty per!"

"Bo, I-"

"How much did your pals cut you in for, huh? Or did they give you the same kind of screwing you gave me? What the hell are you, anyway-a stud-horse with tits?"

"I was down on the nag," Lilly said quietly. "You know I was, Bo. After all, you wouldn't have wanted me to bet it off the board."

"You were down on it, huh? Now, I'll ask you just one question. Do you want to stick to that story, or do you want to keep your teeth?"

"I want to keep my teeth."

"Now, I'll ask you one more question. Do you think I got no contacts out here? You think I couldn't get a report on the play on that horse?"

"No, I don't think that. I'm sure you could, Bo."

"That nag paid off at just the opening price. There wasn't hardly a flutter on the tote board from the time the odds were posted." He lit a cigarette, took a couple of quick angry puffs. "What kind of crap you handing me anyway, Lilly? There ain't enough action to tickle the tote, but you claim a five-grand win! Now, how about it, huh? You ready to fly straight or not?"

She drew in a deep breath. Hesitated. Nodded. There was only one thing to do now, to tell the truth and hope for the best.

She did so. Justus sat turned in the seat; studying, analyzing her expression throughout the recital. When she had finished, he faced back around again, sat in deadpan silence for several minutes.

"So you were just stupid," he said. "Asleep at the switch. You think I'm going to buy that?"

Lilly nodded evenly. He'd already bought it, she said, three weeks ago; suspected the truth before he was told. "You know you did, Bo. If you hadn't, I'd be dead by now."

"Maybe you will be yet, sister! Maybe you'll wish you was dead."

"Maybe."

"I laid out better than a hundred yards for a screwing. Just about the highest-priced piece of tail in history. I figure on getting what I paid for."

"Then you'd better do some more figuring," Lilly said. "I'm not that kind of punching bag."

"Real sure about that, are you?"

"Positive. Give me a cigarette, please."

He took a cigarette from his package, and tossed it across the seat. She picked it up, and tossed it back to him.

"Light it please, Bo? I need both hands in this traffic."

She heard a sound, something between a laugh and a snort, anger and admiration. Then, he lit the cigarette and placed it between her lips.

As they rode on, she could sense the looks he slanted at her, almost see the workings of his mind. She was a problem to him. A very special and valued employee, one whom he actually liked, had yet erred badly. It was unintentional, her one serious mistake in more than twenty years of faithful service. So there was strong argument for forgiveness. On the other hand, he was showing unusual forbearance in allowing her to live, and more hardly seemed to be indicated.

Obviously, there was much to be said for both sides of the debate. Having forgiven so much, he could forgive completely. Or having forgiven so much, he need forgive no more.

They were almost at the hotel before he reached his decision.

"I got a lot of people working for me, Lilly. I can't have things like this happening."

"It never happened before, Bo." She fought to keep her voice level, free of any hint of begging. "It won't happen again."

"It happened once," he said. "With me, that's practically making a habit of it."

"All right," she said. "You're calling the shots."

"You got any kind of long coat in the car? Anything you can wear home over your clothes?"

"No." A dull ache came into her stomach.

He hesitated, then said it didn't matter. He'd lend her his raincoat. "Ought to be right in style out here. Goddamnedest sloppiest- looking women I ever seen."

She stopped the car at the hotel entrance, and an attendant took charge of it. Bobo handed her out to the steps, then courteously gave her his arm as they entered the building. They crossed the lobby, Bobo holding himself very erect, and entered the elevator.

He had a suite on the fourth floor. Unlocking the door, he motioned for her to precede him. She did so, letting her body go limp, preparing herself for what she knew was coming. But you could never prepare for a thing like that-not fully. The sudden shoveblow sent her hurtling into the room, stumbling and tripping over her own feet. And finally landing in a skidding sprawl on the floor.

As she slowly picked herself up, he locked the door, drew the shades, and entered the bathroom, emerging immediately with a large towel. Crossing to the sideboard, he took a number of oranges from a bowl of fruit, dropped them in the towel and pulled up its ends to form a bag. He came toward her, swinging it loosely. Again, Lilly tried to brace herself with limpness.

She knew
the oranges
. She knew all such gimmicks, though never before had she been the victim of any. The oranges was an item from the dummy-chuckers' workbag, a frammis of the professional accident fakers.

Beaten with the fruit, a person sustained bruises far out of proportion to his actual injuries. He looked badly hurt when he was hardly hurt at all.

But he could be hurt. If he was hit hard enough and in certain areas of his body. Without feeling much pain at the time, he could have his internal organs smashed. Used in just the right way (or the wrong way), the oranges produced much the same effect as an enema or douche of plaster-of-paris.

Bobo drew closer. He stopped in front of her. He moved to one side and little behind her.

He gripped the towel with both hands. And swung.

And let the oranges spill harmlessly to the floor.

He gestured.

She bent to pick up the fruit. And then again she was sprawling. And his knees were in her back and his hand was against her head. And she was pinned, spreadeagled, against the carpet.

A couple passed in the hallway, laughing and talking. A couple from another planet. From the dining room-from another world- came the faint sound of music.

There was the click of a cigarette lighter, the smell of smoke. Then, the smell of burning flesh as he held the glowing coal against the back of her right hand. He held it with measured firmness,just enough to keep it burning without crushing it out.

His knees worked with expert cruelty.

The cigarette burned into her hand, and his knees probed the sensitive nerves of her spine.

It was a timeless world, an endless hell. There was no escape from it. There was no relief in it. She couldn't cry out. It was impossible even to squirm. The world was at once to be endured and unendurable. And the one possible relief was within her own small body.

Scalding urine spurted from her loins. It seemed to pour from her in a flood.

And Bobo stood up, releasing her, and she got up and went into the bathroom.

She held her hand under the ice-water tap, then patted it with a towel and examined it. The burn was ugly, but it didn't appear to be serious. None of the large veins were affected. She lowered her slacks and swabbed herself with a slightly moistened towel. That was about as much as could be done here. The raincoat would cover up her stained clothes.

She left the bathroom, crossed to the lounge where Bobo was seated, and accepted the drink he gave her. He took out his wallet, and extended a thick sheaf of new bills.

"Your five grand, Lilly. I almost forgot."

"Thanks, Bo."

"How you making out these days, anyway? Stealing much from me?"

"Not much. My folks didn't raise any stupid kids," Lilly said. "I just clip a buck here and a buck there. It mounts up, but nobody gets hurt."

"That's right," Justus nodded approvingly. "Take a little, leave a little."

"I look on it this way," Lilly said, shrewdly enunciating his own philosophy. "A person that don't look out for himself is too dumb to look out for anyone else. He's a liability, right, Bo?"

"Absolutely! You're a thousand percent right, Lil!"

"Or else he's working an angle. If he doesn't steal a little, he's stealing big."

"Right!"

"I like that suit, Bo. I don't know what there is about it, but somehow it makes you look so much taller."

"Yeah?" He beamed at her. "You really think so? You know a lot of people been telling me the same thing."

Their amiable talk continued as twilight slid into the room. And Lilly's hand ached, and the wet clothes burned and chafed her flesh. She had to leave him feeling good about her. She had to make sure that the score between them was settled, and that he was actually letting her off so lightly.

They discussed several business matters she had handled for him in Detroit and the Twin Cities on her circuitous way to the coast. Bobo revealed that he was only in town for the day. Tomorrow he was heading back east via Vegas, Galveston, and Miami.

"Another drink, Lilly?"

"Well, just a short one. I've got to be running along pretty soon."

"What's the hurry?! thought maybe we could have dinner together."

"I'd like to, but…"

It was best not to stay, best to quit while she was ahead. She'd been very, very lucky apparently, but luck could run out on you.

"I've got a son living here, Bo. A salesman. I don't get to see him very often, so…"

"Well, sure, sure," he nodded. "How's he making out?"

"He's in the hospital. Some kind of stomach trouble. I usually visit him every night."

"Sure, naturally," he frowned. "Gettin' everything he needs? Anything I can do?"

Lilly thanked him, shaking her head. "He's doing fine. I think he'll be getting out in a day or two."

"Well, you'd better run along," Bobo said. "A boy's sick, he wants his mother."

She got the raincoat out of the closet, and belted it around her. They said good night, and she left.

A little urine had trickled down her legs, making them itch and sting, and leaving an unpleasant sogginess in her shoes. Her underpants chafed and stung, and the seat of the slacks seemed to have soaked through. The ache in her right hand grew, spread slowly up into her wrist and arm.

She hoped she hadn't soiled Bobo's lounge. She'd been very lucky, considering the amount her blunder must have cost him, but a little thing like that might spoil it.

She picked up her car, and drove away from the hotel.

As she entered her apartment, she kicked out of her shoes, began flinging her clothes from her; leaving them in a trail behind her as she hurried toward the bathroom. She closed its door. Kneeling, she went down in front of the toilet as though it were an altar, and a great sob shook her body.

Weeping hysterically, laughing and crying, she began to vomit.

Lucky
…

Got off easy
…

Boy, am I lucky!

Women almost always disliked Moira. She was glad that they did, taking it as a compliment and returning their dislike. Men, of course, were invariably drawn to her, a reaction which she expected and cultivated but was emotionally cold to. Very rarely did they appeal to her. Roy Dillon was one of the rare ones who did. In her own way, she had been faithful to him during the three years of their acquaintance.

Roy was fun. Roy stirred her. Man-wise, he was the luxury which she had clutched to herself no more than a half-dozen times in her life. Six men out of the hundreds who had had her body.

If she could put him to practical use, fine. She hoped and believed she could do just that. If not, she still wanted him, and she did not intend to have him taken from her. It wasn't, of course, that she absolutely couldn't do without him; women who got that way over a man were strictly for the movies. But she simply couldn't afford such a loss, its clear threat to her security.

When things reached the point where she couldn't hold a man, then she was finished. She might as well do a high brodie out of the nearest window.

So today she had risen early, knocking herself out to be a knockout. Thinking that by arriving at the hospital at an off-hour, she could see Roy alone for a change and tease his appetite for what he had been missing. It was highly necessary, she felt. Particularly with his mother working against her, and throwing that cute little nurse at him.

And today, after all the trouble she'd gone to, his damned snotty mother was there. It was almost as though Mrs. Dillon had read her mind, intuitively suspecting her visit to the hospital and busting her goddamned pants to be there at the same time.

Smoldering, Moira reached the parking lot. The pimply-faced attendant hastened to open the door of her car, and as she climbed into it, she rewarded him with a look at her legs.

She drove off the lot, breathing heavily, wishing that she could get Lilly Dillon alone in a good dark alley. The more she thought about her recent visit the angrier she became.

That's what you got for trying to be nice to people! You tried to be nice to 'em and they made you look like a fool!

"
Please don't tell me that I can't really be Roy's mother, Mrs. Langtry. I'm rather tired of hearing it
."

"
Sorry! I didn 't mean it, of course. You 're about fifty, Mrs. Dillon?"

"
Just about, dear. Just about your own age
."

"
I think I'd better leave!"

"
I can give you a lift, if you like. It's only a Chrysler convertible, but it probably beats riding a bus
."

"
Thanks! I have my bicycle with me
."

"
Lilly. Mrs. Langtry drives a Cadillac
."

"
Not really! But don't you think they're rather common, Mrs. Langtry? I know they're a very good car, but it seems like every overdressed hustler you see these days is driving a Cadillac
."

Moira's hands tightened on the wheel of the car.

She told herself that she could cheerfully kill Mrs. Dillon. She could strangle her with her bare hands.

At her apartment house, she turned the Cadillac over to the doorman, and went on through the lobby to the grille and cocktail lounge.

It was well into the noon-hour now. Many of the tables were occupied, and waiters in smart white pea jackets were hurrying in and out of the kitchen with trays of delicately smelling food. One of them brought Moira an outsize menu. She studied it, hesitating over the filet mignon sandwich with stuffed mushrooms (6.75).

She was hungry. Breakfast had consisted of her usual unsweetened grapefruit and black coffee. But she needed a drink more than she needed food: two or three strong, reassuring drinks. And she could allow herself only so many calories a day.

Closing the menu, she handed it back to the waiter. "Just a drink now, Allen," she smiled. "I'll eat later on."

"Certainly, Mrs. Langtry. A martini, perhaps? Gibson?"

"Mmm, no. Something with a little more character, I believe. A sidecar, say, with bourbon instead of brandy. And, Allen, no Triple Sec, please."

"Emphatically!" The waiter wrote on his pad. "We always use Cointreau in a sidecar. Now, would you like the rim of the glass sugared or plain?"

"Plain. About an ounce and a half of bourbon to an ounce of Cointreau, and a twist of lime peel instead of lemon."

"Right away, Mrs. Langtry."

"And, Allen…"

"Yes, Mrs. Langtry?"

"I want that served in a champagne glass. A thoroughly chilled glass, please."

"Certainly."

Moira watched him as he hurried away, her carefully composed features concealing an incipient snicker. Now, wasn't that something, she thought. No wonder the world was going to hell when a grown man pranced around in a monkey suit, brown-nosing dames who made a big deal out of ordering a belt of booze! Where had it all started? she wondered. Where the beginning of this detour which had sidetracked civilization into mixing drinks with one hand and stirring up bombs with the other?

She thought about it, not thinking in those words, of course. Simply feeling that the times were out of joint with themselves, and that the most emphasis was put on the least-worthwhile pursuits.

What it all boiled down to really was everybody giving everybody else a hard time for no good reason whatever. And the hell of it was that there seemed to be no way of getting on the right track. You couldn't be yourself anymore. If a woman ordered a straight double-shot with a beer chaser in a place like this, they'd probably throw her out. Ditto, if she asked for a hamburger with raw onions.

You just couldn't march to your own music. Nowadays, you couldn't even hear it.. – She could no longer hear it. It was lost, the music which each person had inside himself, and which put him in step with things as they should be. Lost along with the big, bluff man, the joking introspective man, who had taught her how to listen for it.

Cole Langley (Lindsey, Lonsdale). Cole "The Farmer" Langley
.

Her drink came, and she took a quick sip of it. Then, with a touch of desperation, she half-emptied the glass. That helped. She could think of Cole without wanting to break up.

She and The Farmer had lived together for ten years, ten of the most wonderful years of her life. It had been a kind of camping-out- living, the kind that most people would turn up their noses at, but it was that way by choice not necessity. With Cole, it seemed the only possible way to live.

They always traveled by chair-car in those days. They wore whatever they felt like wearing, usually overalls or khakis for him and gingham for her. When it was possible to obtain, Cole would have a two-quart jar of corn whiskey in a paper sack. Instead of eating in diners, they carried a huge lunch wrapped in newspapers. And every time the train stopped, Cole would hop off and buy gobs of candy and cold drinks and cookies and everything else he could lay hands on.

They couldn't begin to eat so much themselves, naturally. Cole gloried in abundance, but he was a rather finicky eater and a very light drinker. The food and the booze were to pass around, and the way he did it no one ever refused. He knew just the right thing to say to each person-a line of scripture, a quote from Shakespeare, a homely joke. Before they'd been in the car an hour, everyone was eating and drinking and warming up to everyone else. And Cole would be beaming on them as though they were a bunch of kids and he was a doting father.

Women didn't hate her in those days.

Men didn't look at her the way they did now.

Friendliness, the ability to make friends, was The Farmer's stock in trade, of course. Something eventually to be cashed in on through small-town banks via a series of simple-seeming but bewildering maneuvers. But he insisted on regarding the payoffs as no more than a fair exchange. For mere money, a thing useless and meaningless in itself, he traded great hopes anda new perspective on life. And nothing was ever managed so that the frammis would show through for what it was. Always the people were left with hope and belief.

What more could they want, anyway? What could be more important in life than having something to hope for and something to believe in?

For more than a year, they lived on a rundown farm in Missouri, a rocky clay-soiled sixty acres with a completely unmodernized house and an outdoor privy. That was their best time together.

It was a two-hole privy, and sometimes they'd sit together in it for hours. Peering out at the occasional passersby on the rutted red- clay road. Watching the birds hop about in the yard. Talking quietly or reading from the stack of old newspapers and magazines that cluttered one corner of the building.

"Now, look at this, Moira," he would say, pointing to an advertisement. "While the price of steak has gone up twenty-three cents a pound in the last decade, the price of coal has only advanced one and one-half cents per pound. It looks like the coal dealers are giving us quite a break, doesn't it?"

"Well…" She didn't always know how to respond to him; whether he was just making an idle comment or telling her something.

"Or maybe they aren't either," he'd say, "when you consider that meat is normally sold by the pound and coal by the ton."

Now and then, she'd come up with just the right answer, like the time he'd pointed out that "four out of five doctors" took aspirin, and what did she think about that, anyway?

"I'd say the fifth doctor was a lucky guy," she said. "He's the only one who doesn't have headaches." And Cole had been very pleased with her.

They got a lot of fun out of the advertisements. For years afterward, she could look at some nominally straightforward pronouncement and break into laughter.

Beware the wiry zone… Are germs lurking in your nooks and crannies?… You, too, can learn to dance!

Even now she laughed over them. But wryly, with sardonic bitterness. Not as she and Cole Langley had laughed.

One day, when he was trying to dig down to the bottom of the magazine pile, it toppled over, uncovering a small box-like structure with a hole cut in the top. A kid's toilet.

Moira had made some comment about its being cute. But Cole went on staring at it, the laughter dying in his eyes, his mouth loosening sickishly. Then he turned and whispered to her:

"I'll bet they killed the kid. I'll bet it's buried down there under us…"

She was stunned, speechless. She sat staring at him, unable to move or speak, and Cole seemed to take her silence for agreement. He went on talking, lowvoiced, even more impellingly persuasive than he normally was. And after a time, there was no reality but the hideousness he created, and she found herself nodding to what he said.

No, no child should be allowed to live. Yes, all children should be killed at birth or as soon afterward as possible. It was the kindest thing to do. It was the only way to spare them the futile torment, the frustrating and senseless torture, the paradoxically evil mess which represented life on the planet Earth.

Subconsciously, she knew she was seeing him for the first time, and that the laughing, gregarious Cole was only a shadow fleeing its owner's convictions. Subconsciously, she wanted to scream that he was wrong, that there were no absolutes of any kind, and that the real man might well be fleeing the shadow.

But she lacked the vocabulary for such thoughts, the mentality to string them together. They wandered about in her subconscious, unguided and uncohered, while Cole, as always, was utterly convincing. So, in the end, she had been persuaded. She agreed with everything he said.

And suddenly he had started cursing her. So she was a faker, too! A stinking hypocrite! She could do nothing for herself and nothing for anyone else because she believed in nothing.

From that day on The Farmer was on the toboggan. They jumped from the sticks to St. Louis, and when he wasn't dead drunk he was shooting himself full of hop. They had a hefty hunk of loot-rather Moira had it. Secretly, in the way of many wives-although she was not legally his wife-she had been rat-holing money for years. But the substantial sum she had cached wouldn't last a month at the rate he was going, so, as she saw it, there was only one thing to do. She took up hustling.

There was no stigma attached to it in their professional circle. In fact, it was an accepted practice for a woman to prostitute herself when her man was low on his back. But whores
per se
were a dime a dozen, and only girls with "class," the expensively turnedout dames, could pull down the big money. And Cole was infuriated by a classy Moira.

He grew fanatical in his charges that she was a hypocrite and "unbeliever," shouting down her pleas that she wished only to help him. Wildly, he declared that she was a whore at heart, that she had always been a whore, that she had been one when he met her.