“Should I?”
“It’s ghastly.”
He looked at her, unsure for just a second, but her expression told him she hadn’t after all been suggesting a quiet corner in which they could bump about together. The idea, in fact, hadn’t occurred to her; she was really a very simple straightforward girl, appropriate to the town and the library.
Out of habit, and not to offend the child’s feelings, he went on with the routine, pitching it slow and simple and without double meanings. “There must be something to do around here after the sun goes down.”
She pursed her lips to show disgust; all her movements and expressions were a little too heavily done, as though she hadn’t figured out the fine tuning of her personality yet. “Everybody just watches television,” she said.
He said, “I tell you what. I don’t know if I’ll be tied up with business tonight or not, but give me your phone number and if I can get free I’ll call you. We’ll see what good old Tyler has to offer.”
“Oh, I can’t tonight,” she said, and this time came on too heavy with the disappointment.
Just as well, he thought. “Maybe later in the week,” he said.
“All right. Fine.” Very eager. “You want to write it down?”
He couldn’t think what she wanted him to write down. “Eh?”
“My number.”
“Oh! Of course.” He produced the memo book and ballpoint pen, and stood like a reporter in Front Page. “Fire away.”
She told him seven numbers and he wrote them down, and she said, “I really am sorry about tonight.”
“Well, you’re a good-looking girl,” he said. “I could hardly expect you to be free at a moment’s notice. Especially on a Friday night.”
She twinkled again. “What a sweet thing to say.”
“I can’t tell a lie in a library,” he said, to make a transition, and looked around, adding, “About the newspapers . . .”
“Oh, yes!” She became suddenly efficient, but again the effect was too heavy. Pointing with large arm movements, she said, “They’re right there, on those shelves. The newest are on the top, and then the older ones are below. And the indexes are those books on the bottom shelves.”
“Fine. Thanks a lot.”
“Well,” she said, and flashed a meaningless smile, and made a couple of awkward hand movements. “I’d better let you get to your work.”
“See you later.” He gave her a nod and a friendly smile, and waited for her to leave.
She bounced away, more emphatically than necessary, and Grofield turned his attention to the microfilm files of the Tyler Times-Chronicle, the city’s only remaining morning newspaper. The most recent bound index gave him three references to Lozini himself, and half a dozen promising-sounding references to organized crime. He took the proper boxes of microfilm from the top shelf, lined them up next to the reader, threaded one in the machine, and sat down to start reading.
Alan Grofield was an actor: always and everywhere, not merely in a play on a stage. Movie background music played in his head as he moved through his life, accenting and heightening everything he did, altering everything to melodrama—even the melodrama. Sometimes he was a bomber pilot, World War Two, bringing the crippled bird home over the Channel, the rest of the crew dead or dying at their posts. Sometimes he was the same pilot, downed in France, being hidden by the beautiful farm girl in the low-ceilinged, dirt-walled basement with the stone archways. Sometimes he was the foreign spy, on his way to the meeting where he would turn over the plans for the new submarine. And always the appropriate music played in his mind, giving him a rhythm to move to, so that he gave an effect of unconscious grace and catlike sinuousness—charged, dynamic and utterly artificial.
The sound track running through his mind right now, though, was not exactly music. He was in a Dennis O’Keefe movie at the moment, made around 1950; a federal agent, he had volunteered to pretend to be a crook and thus to work his way into the inner circle of the counterfeiting ring. So here he was at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.—the dome of the Capitol would have been visible in the background in the establishing shot showing him trotting up wide stone steps—studying the files on the known members of the gang, preparing himself for the infiltration. And instead of background music, the sound track was filled with the stern tones of an off-screen narrator. “Agent Kilroy studied the men he would soon—” The rest was fuzzed, the voice without the words but ringing with authority.
For two hours Agent Kilroy studied the men. Adolf Lozini. Frank Faran. Louis “Dutch” Buenadella. Nathan Simms. John W. Walters. Ernest Dulare. Joseph “Cal” Caliato, from whom much had been expected until his mysterious disappearance two years ago. And the names of businesses, linked with the men. Three Brothers Trucking. Entertainment Enterprises, a vending-machine company. The New York Room, a local nightclub. Ace Beverage Distributors. Each name led to the next, back and forth through five years of local newspapers, until at last a pretty good general layout of the local mob was spread out before him. His notebook was full, his eyes were tired, and his back was sore from bending for so long into the opening of the microfilm reader.
He got to his feet, put the final microfilm spool back in its box and the box back on its shelf, rubbed his eyes, rubbed his back, pocketed his memo book and pen, and headed for the exit.
The girl was on the lookout for him, and came tripping out from behind the main desk as he was going by. She gave violent hand signals to attract his attention, and when he stopped she hurried over and whispered, “It turns out I’m free tonight after all.”
She’d broken her date; headache, no doubt. Feeling vaguely sorry for the young man, and both irritated and guilty toward the girl, Grofield said, “That’s wonderful.”
“So if you’re free—”
“I certainly hope I am,” he said, and suddenly realized that although he now had her phone number, he didn’t have her name. “I’ll call you the second I know,” he said. “My name’s Alan, by the way. Alan Green.”
“Hi, Alan. I’m Dori Neevin.”
“I’ll call you, Dori.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
He grinned into her big-girl smile, and left the library, and went back to the hotel, where Parker was standing at his room window, looking down at the mayoral banner flapping over the street. He turned when Grofield walked in, and said, “Lozini says no.”
Grofield tossed the memo book on the bed. “Pick a number,” he said.
Seven
Frankie Faran had indigestion. He figured it was probably that Chinese food at Mr. Lozini’s house last night; not that there was anything wrong with Mr. Lozini’s cooking, but just that Chinese food never did seem to sit right in Frankie Faran’s stomach. But of course when you were invited to Mr. Lozini’s house for dinner, you couldn’t show up and then not eat, no matter what kind of food Mr. Lozini was cooking that night.
But boy, had he paid for it all day today. Lived on nothing but Alka-Seltzer and bread until he came down to the club around eight-thirty in the evening, when he had two bowls of the soup du jour, which happened to be onion tonight. Onion soup was supposed to be good for the digestion.
Angie, the waitress he’d been shtupping lately, came back to the office around ten, but he just couldn’t get in the mood tonight. “I’m under the weather, honey,” he said.
“Gee, that’s too bad.” She was tough, but a good girl. Although she was thirty-seven, she was so skinny and bony, it was like being in bed with a teen-ager. She had twin sons, around twelve years of age, both in the custody of their father, an Army man who’d married again and was now stationed in Germany with his family. Sometimes when she’d had too little to drink Angie would get maudlin about those two boys, so far away across the ocean. Faran could live without that kind of crap, but otherwise she was a very, very satisfactory girl, and all in all it was a small price to pay.