"What are you talking about?"
"Nothing really. Maybe an idea; I don't know."
"Would you like some coffee?"
"No thanks. I want a bed more than anything else." He looked at her for a moment, saw no response in her eyes and started to turn away.
"Mitch-"
There it was, a good sound. Soft, familiar. He turned to look at her again.
"What?"
"God, I miss you."
"I miss you too."
"Then don't go," Barbara said. "Stay here."
"I'm sorry." He wasn't sure how to say it, but he knew he was going to try. "I'm really sorry I hurt you. I don't know why-it was a dumb thing I got into."
"I know." Barbara nodded slowly. "Let's not talk about it anymore, all right? Let's go to bed."
12
Janet came into his office and placed two accounting ledgers on his desk. She went out and came in again with his stock portfolios, insurance policies, bank books and trust fund agreements in plastic folders.
"Martin wants to know," Janet said, "if you're blowing town."
Mitchell looked up at her. "That's what he said, uh? Blowing town?"
"He said, 'What's he going to do, take the money and blow town?'"
"Tell him I'm going to Hazel Park," Mitchell said. "I'm going to quit gambling on machine parts and put it on the horses."
"I don't believe he'd believe you."
"Martin doesn't believe anything unless it's on a balance sheet."
Janet held a long piece of calculator tape curling in her hand. She reached across the desk to give it to Mitchell. "That's the total. Martin says you couldn't possibly raise any more than that before April of next year."
Mitchell looked at the total, at the bottom of the tape. "That's all, uh?"
"I can ask him to come in if you want to talk to him."
"No, that's fine. Did he put it all on one sheet?"
"It's there on top. Itemized."
"Very good."
Janet waited. "You're not really going to the track, are you?"
"No," Mitchell said, "I'm going to run away with a seventeen-year-old go-go dancer. Listen, I want you to go to the bank after lunch." He picked out a personal checkbook from the stack of folders and portfolios. "Here, and get me ten thousand dollars."
"Ten thousand?"
"In hundreds. That'll fit in a number ten envelope, won't it?"
"I don't know," Janet said. "I've never put ten thousand dollars in an envelope."
"When you get back, try it," Mitchell said. "Number ten manila." As she was going out he said, "And get me my home." He waited for the sound of the buzzer and picked up the phone.
"Barbara… yeah, it comes to fifty-two thousand. That's it till next spring… Yes, I'm going to talk to him, if I can find him. He's the one to talk to. But I'll have to go to the other guy first, Leo… No, I won't. I'm going to give it some more thought and probably later on, if I can get away, see if I can find him." He paused. "Barbara, I still miss you… God. Barbara, it's going to take more than one night, you know, to get back where we were, but I can't think of a better way to do it… I know, it's like starting over. It's a good feeling. Listen I'll call you later, let you know if I'm going to do anything… Okay, I'll see you."
He missed her again, or still missed her, right now. That was the good feeling, wanting to be with her, wanting to touch her. He had said to her it was like starting over. Or like coming home after a long business trip. Last night, undressing together in the bedroom had reminded him of that, of coming home and going up to the bedroom, no matter what time of the day it was, and making love, not doing much fooling around but getting right in there and doing it, feeling the sweat breaking out on their bodies. There were other times for fooling around and being naked together and making it last. Though she didn't have to be naked to arouse him. She could sit down in a chair, holding her skirt to her thigh as she crossed her legs, and he would want to make love to her. She could be sewing a button on his coat and look up at him, over the top of her reading glasses, and he would want to make love to her: undress her in the stillness of a Sunday afternoon with sunlight framed in the bedroom windows and the phone pulled out of the jack and make slow love to her, feeling her make her gradual change from lady to woman. Dressed, she was a lady. In bed she was a woman. Cini had been a girl, dressed or naked. Cini seemed a long time ago. And if she were alive she could be forgotten. But because she was dead he had to remember her.
He had to see Leo again and talk to him. Speak to him quietly, sincerely, and watch for reactions when he offered a bait. He had read books on customer and employee relations, how to win friends, close deals, improve your personality and make a million dollars. He hadn't finished most of them. He was not a salesman or a joiner or a joke-teller. He was himself. He relied on common sense but was not afraid to gamble. He gave his word, and delivered. So he would take it a step at a time and maybe Leo-if he was one of them-would reveal himself and maybe he wouldn't.
It would be simple if he knew who they were and he had a gun. Walk in and shoot them and walk out again. There, that's done; now back to work. He could see himself doing it: pointing the gun at three men in a cramped office full of nude photographs and pulling the trigger. It was funny he pictured Leo's office. But he could also picture himself with a cannonball tennis serve and a flawless backhand, or the forty-five-year-old rookie hitting a fastball into the upper deck at Tiger Stadium. Picturing had nothing to do with doing it. Nor was killing a man in an FW-190 or a Messerschmitt at three hundred yards the same as looking in a man's face and pulling the trigger. He told himself he would never be able to kill like that, coldly, impersonally. Still, he wished he had a gun. Just in case he was wrong.
He walked out of the office that afternoon wishing he had on his old loose sagging sport coat too. He was wearing a gray knit suit that was tailored to fit snugly and he was conscious of the thick envelope against his chest in the inside coat pocket. He put his cigarettes in a side pocket, checked the other one to make sure he had his car keys, and told Janet he'd see her tomorrow.
She said good night and watched him go down the halclass="underline" three-thirty in the afternoon and ten thousand dollars in his coat pocket.
Out in the plant the shifts were changing. Mitchell nodded to employees, calling some by name, looking around, being the friendly approachable boss as he walked toward the rear door and the parking lot outside. He noticed, over in the snack-bar area, a number of employees from both shifts, by the vending machines and the big Silex coffeemaker. Second-shift men standing and sitting around the pair of long cafeteria tables drinking coffee. That was all right; they had some free time yet. But there were first-shift men hanging around who ordinarily couldn't get out fast enough to go home or stop at a bar.
There was a guy in a raincoat at one of the tables sitting with his back to Mitchell. When he turned to say something to John Koliba and a couple of others at the end of the table, Mitchell recognized him.
Christ. That's all he needed right now.
Mitchell walked over.
Ed Jazik, the Local 199 business agent, was saying, "What does he give a shit? Closes the plant, lives like a fucking king on what he's got in the bank, what he's been stuffing in the bank while all the hourly assholes are busting their balls to make car payments, washing machine payments, trying to save something for a pair of shoes for the kids, maybe a new dress for the wife once in a while."
Mitchell stood there listening a moment. He was thinking, Where has this guy been? And why do I have to get him? He hadn't heard union management people talk like that in fifteen years.
Mitchell said, "Excuse me." And when Jazik turned and looked up and John Koliba and the others saw him, showing some surprise, he said to Jazik, "I don't want to interrupt anything important, but you happen to be talking to my employees on my time, that I'm paying for. If you want to make a speech then go rent a hall somewhere and let's see how good you do."