He seemed to have forgotten the two of us. He was staring down at the table top, motionless. Something about him made me think that perhaps this pseudo-hearty little man was not entirely ridiculous. Cornered creatures fight, and many have sharp teeth.
He looked at me, unsmiling, and said, “Just one thing. Is that your decision? Nothing can change it?”
It was not my decision. But it was so strong a hunch that I was able to state it too calmly for him to doubt it.
He smiled vaguely and got up. “It’s your stock, I suppose. Too bad. I’ll be back, Hildy.”
“I’ll try to conceal my impatience, Colonel.”
“Great little kidder,” he said, and patted her shoulder mechanically, taking no notice of her instinctive flinch. I watched him go. He went out the side door of the Copper Lounge, the one that opened onto the flight of wide stairs that led to the lobby.
Hildy ceremoniously offered her small hand. “You upset the Colonel. You made him very unhappy. It was very nice to watch. Does that make me a sadist?”
“I’ll tell you all about that later. Right now I think the Colonel is off to make a phone call. If he makes it from a booth, we’re sunk. But I think he may make it from his room. Are you chummy with the switchboard gals?”
“They love me,” she said, and got up and hurried off, looking back just long enough for a conspiratorial wink. Her quick mind needed no blueprint. The soft brown hair bounced against honeyed shoulders, and her skirt swung with the quickness of her stride.
It took her five long minutes. She came back and slipped into the chair opposite me. “From the room like you thought. Here.” She slid a slip of paper over to me, with a number written on it. Redwood 8-7171. It meant nothing to me.
“Now I sing again.”
“Thanks for this, Hildy.”
“Poo. Thank me by keeping me advised. Write it in invisible ink on the back of an old tennis player.”
“It might not mean anything.”
“Then come back when you know, Gev.”
I listened to one good song, then went up to a lobby booth, inserted a dime and dialed the number. The line was busy. I lit a cigarette, waited a minute, and tried again. It rang twice and was answered. “Hello?”
I replaced the receiver on the hook and stepped out of the booth. The voice had been unmistakable, fruity, unctuous. The resonant, noble voice of Lester Fitch. I checked the book and found that it was the number for his residence.
It was predictable. It was nothing that would be meaningful to Hildy. To me it meant a possible confirmation of Lester’s larcenous instincts. I realized I should have taken steps to find out if the Colonel made other calls. Too late for that now.
I had convinced Dolson, and he had passed on the information, and I had the feeling that I had set something in motion. I didn’t know what, or how big it was. But something had started to move.
I suddenly realized how very tired I was. The day had been full. It was incredible that this was only my third evening back in Arland.
The situation was becoming too complex. It was like one of those backlashes you sometimes get on a fishing reel. They look as if tugging one strand would free them. But you tug one strand and peel off some line and find another tangle farther down, and that one conceals two more.
I went to bed. I lay in darkness and watched a merry-go-round. All the gay horses with their noble wooden heads, surging up and down carrying the riders — carrying Mottling and Dolson and Fitch and Granby and Hildy and Perry and Niki and a faceless LeFay — with an empty saddle where Ken had ridden. They went around and around, and the music was a banjo jangle, but I didn’t know the tune.
On this same evening, at dusk, the tarpon were in the big hole near the channel off Boca Grande, and the charter boats would be drift-fishing the hole. They would hit and the reels would sing. It was simple savagery more easy to comprehend and combat than the civilized variety which hides the teeth behind a smile.
I fell asleep wondering how Perry would react to a hundred and forty pounds of tarpon glinting high in the moonlight and falling back.
Chapter 12
Friday morning was rainy, blustery. Soggy papers whipped around River Street in tight spirals trying to paste themselves against your ankles. I stopped at a corner store and bought a plastic raincoat.
The night’s sleep hadn’t done me much good. Too much tension makes too many dreams. Niki, Perry, Hildy, Lita, Alma — all of them had twisted through my dreams in perfumed confusion, saying things I couldn’t understand. At one point Mottling had been carefully explaining to me that a D4D was alive, and if you looked closely enough, you could see it breathe. He forced my head down against it, and under the metal skin I could hear the thud of a great slow heart. It felt oddly warm against my ear, and when I straightened up I saw it was a gigantic breast, and I had been listening to the woman-heart. There was a second breast in the shadows off to the right, and beyond them a foreshortened sleeping face. My midget feet sank into the rubbery skin and Mottling was gone and I ran in terror and fell from the sleeping body into darkness...
So when I awoke I felt tired and drained and odd, with sour mouth and aching joints.
River Street paralleled the river, but the warehouses blocked the view of it. Freighters off-loaded at the river docks into the warehouses for trans-shipment by rail and truck. Huge trucks were parked on the west side of the street, tailgates against the loading docks, cabs swiveled at right angles to the trailers to let traffic edge by. Men wheeled hand trucks into the trailers, and forklift trucks were hurrying with insect intentness. Wildcatters dickered for loads with warehouse agents, and assorted hangover victims huddled in doorways, watching the wan morning world, flinching at too much noise. The early bars were open, smelling of stale beer.
I found number 56 on the east side of the street, a narrow doorway with a flight of stairs leading up. The doorway was between a bar and a marine supply store. Just inside the door, fastened to the wall, was a series of small wooden signs. There was a studio of the dance, a Russian bath, a twine company, a watch repairman, a skin specialist, a Spanish teacher, and Acme Supply. The Acme Supply sign was newest. It indicated the fourth floor of the narrow building.
The wooden steps of the three flights were dished by fifty years of wear. Dun plaster had crumbled off the wall exposing small areas of naked lath. It was a strange location for a company that could be grossing as much as a quarter of a million a year. On the second floor landing I heard voices chanting, “Yo tengo un lapiz.”
On the third floor a tired samba beat came through the door that announced the studio of the dance. A sailor stood in the hall talking in low tones to a miss in black velveteen slacks and a cerise blouse. Neither of them looked at me as I went by. She was shaking her head dully. His lips were an inch from her ear.
Acme shared the fourth floor with the skin specialist. On the opaque glass of the upper half of the aged oak door was painted, without caps: acme — industrial supplies — c. armand lefay, president.
There was a mail slot in the door. I knocked. No answer. I looked closely at the knob and saw dust on it. I tried the knob and found the door was locked.
The skin specialist’s door was not locked. A sign said COME IN. I went in. A girl in white behind the desk looked up at me with visible annoyance. She was blonde and sallow and her eyes were set too close together. There was a book propped up in front of her, an historical novel with a mammary cover, and she had been filing her nails as she read.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked. Her voice was colorless and nasal.
“I don’t want to see the doctor. I was wondering how I could get in touch with your neighbor across the hall, Mr. LeFay. How often does he come in?”