This time the laugh was throatier. “You don’t hide your irritation very well.”
I smiled. “I’m sorry. You’re sitting here with a lump on your head and I’m being less than gentlemanly. My apologies. Now how about your story.”
“Well, let me try to organize it. I guess the simplest way to say it is that Karen Hastings used to come into the Embers in Cedar Rapids. I grew up on a farm near Cedar Rapids and started taking night classes to get a college degree. The tips were good at the Embers and I liked the people so I’ve been there for three years. I’ve got two years of college behind me now. Anyway, Karen always came in and ate. She was so beautiful I could see why she’d attract all her men. Then I started to see that she kind of rotated through four different men over and over. There was a pattern there. And they ran to a type. Twenty years older, obviously well-to-do, and very taken with her. Sort of courtly, in fact. She was like the pretty little girl that all the uncles wanted to shower with gifts. The funny thing is, she always looked lonely. I guess I picked up on that because I’m the same way myself. I have a lot of opportunity for dates but most of them just make me feel worse than better. The guy I was seeing is in the Marines. Last winter they sent him to Viet Nam. Have you ever heard of it?”
“I know we’re sending more and more troops over there is about all.”
“Anyway, so I’m lonely and she’s lonely and one of the nights she came in alone, she asked me if I wanted to have a drink after I got off. That’s how we got to be friends. The place she lived in—I’m a farm girl, I’d never seen any place like it. I’d never seen a sports car like hers, either. She didn’t ever say it—she wasn’t much for talking about herself at first—but I caught on that these men were keeping her somehow. I wasn’t sure of the arrangement right away but it got to be clear. And then they started getting jealous of each other.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“Carlson?”
“Peter Carlson?”
“Yes. I was in her apartment one night when he started banging on the door. She was terrified of him. We had all the lights off. But he was so drunk, he just kept pounding. I asked her why didn’t she call the police? Later that night she explained her arrangement with the men. I could see why she couldn’t call the police. Then she started hearing from her brother. The first time I met him I couldn’t believe they were even related. Quiet little guys like that I usually feel sorry for. But not him. He scared me. He was four years older than she was. She told me he used to force her to have sex with him all the time they were growing up. He wasn’t as meek and mild as he liked to seem. Anyway, what he wanted her to do was start shaking down these men. He knew that with Carlson acting the way he was, the whole thing was going to come apart very soon. But he saw the opportunity with Ross Murdoch running for governor to really collect one big blackmail payment. He said that since he’d set this whole thing up he was entitled to half of it.”
“Did he ever threaten her?”
“Oh, sure. A lot. She was afraid of him. She told me that she’d tried to hide from him several times—she lived in New York and Miami twice each—but that he’d found her both times.”
“Was she planning to run away this time?”
“I think so. But I’m not sure.” She paused. “She didn’t want me around any more. When I called, she’d get me off the phone as quickly as possible. And the same when I saw her on the street one day. She said she was busy. But I could tell that something else was going on.”
“But you didn’t know what?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t.”
“How long did this go on?”
“Oh, a month or so I’d say. Obviously something had happened.”
“Did she seem scared?”
“Not exactly. More like anxious, I guess. But not scared. I even asked her about that, if there was anything I could help her with. She just said no and then got off the phone right away.”
“And you have no idea what she was doing?”
“Afraid I don’t.”
From the center drawer of my desk, I took the restaurant receipt. Handed it over to her.
She smiled. “I’ve seen several thousand of these over the years.”
“Take a closer look at it, would you? Her brother put some significance on this that I haven’t been able to decipher.”
She studied it. “The date—I was in Chicago that whole week. I had a lot of vacation saved up.”
“So that isn’t your ticket?”
“No. The initials for the waitress are CG. That’d be Callie George. Very nice young woman. And there’s a 10 in the upper right hand corner.”
“I noticed that. What’s that signify?”
“What we call a ‘friend’ discount. If you wait on a relative or close friend, you’re allowed to give them a ten per cent courtesy discount.”
“You think there’s any way Callie might remember who this ticket was written for?”
“Well, it might be her friend or my friend. We switch stations a lot. I take hers on her nights off and she takes mine. So we pretty much know each other’s courtesy discounts. I can ask her when I see her today. I’m on my way to work now. I can call you from there if you want me to.”
“I’d sure appreciate that.” Then: “This has sure been helpful.”
“Well, I guess I was right to be worried, anyway. She always thought she was so—tough, I guess you’d say. That’s one of the reasons she was so interesting to be around. She always had all these little plans going. You know, ways she could take advantage of this person or cheat that person, things like that. Never big things. Never like robbing a bank or anything. And I was fascinated. I thought she was sort of cool. But then the more I got to know her—she started to scare me. I’d always assumed she was putting on the toughness to some degree. But she wasn’t. She really enjoyed tricking people. And that’s when I started pulling back.”
“But you kept calling her.”
“You’re going to laugh.”
“I could use a laugh.”
“I was trying to get her to go to this Bible class I take once a week. I got dumped by this guy—and this class saved my life. I’m not a real religious person but it gave me some perspective. I thought maybe it would help her, too. I planned to arrange it so we’d go on separate nights. I didn’t want to see her any more. But of course she wouldn’t go. She just thought the whole thing was a joke. She said, ‘God, you really are a farm girl.’ She’d always said that I wasn’t as unsophisticated as I thought.” She shrugged. “We didn’t end up very well. I still feel sorry for her, though. Having a brother like that—” She checked her watch. “Well, I need to get to work, I guess.” She stood up, offered a slim hand. We shook.
A few days ago, I would’ve thought about asking her for a date sometime. She looked bright, earnest and sweet. But somehow as we’d been talking, I began to realize my need to be with a woman. And the woman who kept coming to mind was Mary.
I saw Janice Wilson to her car and said good-bye.
EIGHTEEN
THERE WAS ANOTHER GATHERING downtown. On the steps of the Catholic church. No candles because it was daylight. Everybody in kind of a hurry because it was the end of the day and home sure did sound good. The spouse, the kids, the food, the TV, the furnace kicking in and sounding good and smelling good as it did so—heat having its own very particular smell—no wonder they said there was no place like it.
Again it was a cross-section of people, the old woman wearing the bulky winter coat she’d bought ten years ago, threadbare now; the young businessman in his camel’s hair topcoat and white silk scarf; the day laborer with his Oshkosh winter jacket, the collar lined with union buttons; the prim middle-class housewife in her smart royal blue dress jacket and dark blue jaunty hat; and the ancient Negro man, a face rutted and ruined by so many small losses and humiliations and modest dashed dreams that there had to be a few moments here and there when the notion of nuclear destruction didn’t sound all that bad.