It was a problem, and Richie gnawed worriedly at it as he wandered down the street from the bar where he hadn’t been served. Life had been comparatively sweet for him the last couple of months. With neither the cloying demands of his mother or the harsh demands of the Air Force to contend with, he could live at his own slow pace. He had no duties, no responsibilities. But now, with Honour Mercy on the one hand growing away from him, and on the other hand becoming more insistent that he should find a job, life was getting complicated again, and Richie, as usual, didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do about it.
He was walking east on 77th Street, toward the park. Central Park West was straight ahead, at the end of a row of brownstones. When he got to the corner, he hesitated, wondering where to go next. The park was loaded with frantic, round-eyed boys who kept trying to pick him up, and that made him nervous. To the right was midtown, where he could probably find a bar that would serve him if he looked long enough and hard enough. To the left was home, eight blocks away, but this was Thursday afternoon and Honour Mercy would be at the hairdresser’s.
He wanted something to drink, but he didn’t feel like braving the histrionic weariness of any more bartenders. On the other hand, he could buy a six-pack of beer in any grocery store, take it home, and wait for Honour Mercy to come back.
All right, that’s what he’d do. He walked uptown, on the side away from the park, and turned left at 85th Street. The apartment was in the middle of the block, and a tiny grocery store was two doors farther down. He walked slowly, having nothing in the world to hurry for, and when someone said his name as he was passing his building, he almost fainted.
He froze. He stood still, staring down the empty sidewalk toward Columbus Avenue, and the voice ran round and round inside his head. “Richie Parsons?” A strange voice, one he’d never heard before, and there had been a questioning lilt on the last syllable.
It was Authority. It had to be, nobody knew him here, nobody wanted to know him. He froze, and wished desperately to disappear.
The voice repeated his name, still with the rising inflection, and Richie forced himself to turn and look at the Authority that had descended upon him.
But it didn’t seem to be Authority after all. There was a black Lincoln parked at the curb in front of the building, and there was a man in the driver’s seat, looking out at Richie. He was middle-aged, black-haired, with dark and deep-set eyes, a thin-lipped wide mouth and a heavily lined face. He seemed Stern and he seemed Successful and he was obviously Rich, but he didn’t look like Authority.
He didn’t look like Authority because his expression was one of polite curiosity, the expression of a man who has asked a not-too-important question and is waiting for the not-too-important answer. Such was not the expression of Authority.
Richie hesitated, wondering what to answer. Should he deny the name, go on down to the corner, go to a movie, wait until this man had given up and gone away? Or should he admit that he was, in fact and in essence, Richie Parsons?
The man had called him by name. He could have gotten the name only from one of two sources: Honour Mercy or Authority. The latter, despite his expression, seemed the most likely. Authority, in a Chinese-eyed Lincoln?
The man broke into his hesitation by smiling and saying, “Don’t worry, Richie. I’m not the law. I’m a friend of Honour Mercy’s.”
“Honour Mercy?” he echoed. He was at a complete loss.
“Hop in,” said the man. “I want to talk to you.”
“Talk to me?” When Richie was confused, more than usually confused, he was in the habit of repeating what was said to him, turning it into a question.
“Don’t worry,” said the man. “I’m not going to turn you over to the Air Force.”
Richie stared at him, and fought down the urge to say, “Air Force?” Instead, he said, “How do you know about it?”
“Honour Mercy told me. Come on, hop in. I’ll explain the whole thing.”
Richie couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he hopped in. He walked around the Mandarin front of the Lincoln, opened the shiny black door, and sat tentatively on the maroon upholstery.
The man immediately started the engine, which purred at the lowest threshold of audibility, and the Lincoln pulled smoothly away from the curb.
For the first part of the ride, the man was silent, and Richie followed his example. They went directly across town first, and up a ramp to the Henry Hudson Parkway, where the speedometer needle moved up to fifty and hovered, while the city rolled by to the left, and the Hudson became the ocean to the right. They dipped into the Brooklyn Battery tunnel, emerged on the Brooklyn side, and headed almost due east.
Brooklyn was, as usual, snarled with traffic. Their ride was hyphenated by red lights, and the man began to talk. “My name is Joshua Crawford,” he said. “I’m forty-six years of age, I’ve got two children, both of them older than you, I’m a well-to-do lawyer, and I’ve believed in the straight-forward approach all of my life. I want you to know this about me, I want you to know anything you want about me. For two reasons. First, I know at least as much about you. Second, I want you to have the full facts in the case before you make your decision.”
“My decision?” Richie was confused again.
“Just hear me out,” said Joshua Crawford. “I’ve known Honour Mercy now for about two months. You might say we were business acquaintances. Her business, not mine. Something — I’m not sure what — made me think of Honour in an unbusiness-like way. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t make a habit of befriending whores. This time, something is different. I can’t define it any closer than that.”
A traffic light ahead of them switched from green through orange to red, and the purring Lincoln stopped. Joshua Crawford looked over at Richie Parsons. “Has Honour Mercy mentioned me at all?” he asked.
“No,” said Richie. “She doesn’t tell me much about her — about her work.”
“Good,” said Crawford. “That’s just another example of how she’s different. Practically any whore, if she gets a steady customer, and she and the customer are friends, she’ll go around boasting about it. Honour Mercy’s different. She isn’t a whore by nature. She shouldn’t be in such a business.”
His words hung in the air between them, the light switched back to green, and the Lincoln nosed forward again.
“I want to help Honour Mercy,” said Crawford after a minute. “I want to put her into what might be called semi-retirement.”
“Your mistress,” said Richie, beginning to understand at last what this was all about.
Crawford nodded without taking his eyes away from the traffic-filled street. “My mistress,” he said. “I have plans for Honour Mercy. A good apartment — better than where she is now. Money of her own, charge accounts at a couple of the better stores. She would, in every sense but the legal, be my wife. There’s a woman out in Dobbs Ferry who is my wife in the legal sense, and that’s all.”
While Richie waited for what he knew was coming next, Crawford spun the wheel and the Lincoln made a right turn. They were on a wider street now, with less traffic, and the speedometer needle inched upward again.
“I have plans for Honour Mercy,” repeated Crawford. “But you don’t fit into those plans. You were apparently willing to share the girl with all takers. I’m not willing to share her with anybody.”