“Jones. Willis Jones. I stick to my room where I am recuperating from a dangerous, contagious disease I contracted in the tropics.” I stuck out my hand to get it shook, but now she wasn’t buying. She backed off down the hall, grinning vacantly.
She hadn’t lied about the weather, though. An early morning fog had squatted with a thick white wetness on Surf Avenue, waiting for the sun to dispel it. I walked about aimlessly, feeling clean as the whistle everyone seems to polish, the Bandaids removed from my face, the aftershave lotion still stinging pleasantly. I figured I had some time to kill before I boarded a train for Port Washington and wound up at Tolliver’s before I realized it. My wristwatch said it was eight o’clock, far too early for anyone to be around.
Only Vito Lucca never seemed to sleep. There was his panel truck, idling at the curb, its parking lights making the mist sparkle with a million tiny leaping raindrops. Vito appeared suddenly out of the grayness, leaned in over the tailgate and straightened up with a cardboard carton. When he disappeared again I walked over to the rear of the truck and waited for him.
He returned without seeing me, reaching in for another carton. I let him straighten and then I bumped him. Surprise more than anything made him drop the carton. It landed at our feet with a great glassy clattering and sprinkled shards of amber glass over the sidewalk. Vito grabbed me and began to curse.
I pushed his hands away and put on my best I’m-boss-around-here voice. “Why the hell aren’t you more careful?”
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Frey. Listen, I thought…”
“I don’t give a damn what you thought. Do you go around breaking bottles regularly like that?”
“Have a heart, Mr. Frey. I’m the only one collecting empties, ain’t I? We always have enough, don’t we? This is the first time ever.” Vito brushed himself off and assumed his mantle of composure once again. “You just scared me, that’s all. I was sure nobody except Sheila was around.”
“You let Sheila watch while you bring in the empties?”
“She knows what’s going on, but… I wanted to talk to you about her, Mr. Frey. I hope I can lay my cards on the table. Sheila ain’t no hot pants like Allison Tolliver, but she’s got what it takes. It’s no secret I like her.”
“It’s no secret she likes you, either.”
“That’s just it. She’s got some fancy notions about honesty and things and doesn’t want me to stay in the business. She keeps threatening she’ll go crying to the cops.”
“Send her to Billy Drake,” I suggested, and smiled.
“She knows about Billy. Sheila’s got a good head on her shoulders. She isn’t willing to take risks to move up in the world, that’s all. What do you think I ought to do, Mr. Frey?”
I didn’t know what Vito should have done. But I knew what Sheila should have done — exactly what I had neglected to do. Hell, Billy Drake was a bad apple, but he didn’t personify the whole police force. Karen was right. They were prowling around every day, digging up facts. It got so there were as many blue uniforms around as proprietors’ aprons, and probably plainclothes men were meandering about with the crowds on Tolliver’s midway. So, Sheila should have gone to the cops. But Sheila was only a kid with mixed-up emotions. Someone with sufficient maturity to make decisions should have taken what he knew to the police. Someone named Gideon Frey. It had been nibbling at the back of my mind all day yesterday but it hadn’t taken a man-sized bite. A different kind of investigation by the police would uncover the moonshine machinery at Tolliver’s. Popcorn and taffy and chlorinated water teamed up to mask the odor of cooking mash, but there had to be a still and a bottling plant someplace on the premises. A few well-placed cops wielding fire-axes would find everything without any trouble. I was betting on the cellar, since it was the only place at Tolliver’s I hadn’t seen.
Then why hadn’t I taken what I knew to the police?
Damn it all to hell, I was in love with Karen, that’s why.
And didn’t want to implicate her. Lovely. Which meant I had to keep Sheila away from the cops, too, until I could make up my own mind.
“Be firm,” I told Vito in fatherly fashion. “Let Sheila know who’s boss. If she threatens you, threaten her back. She’s got a crush on you a mile wide. Tell her you’ll stop seeing her.”
“You can see it, huh? I mean, the way she feels about me?”
“Listen, Vito,” I said. I did not want anyone going to the cops until I decided what could be done about Karen. “We’ve been watching you. If you want to serve up wedges of pizza full time all your life instead of driving a pickup truck for us, just let me know.”
“Honest, Mr. Frey,” Vito pleaded. “I can take care of Sheila. She’s just got to learn a woman’s place….”
“Exactly. Don’t spare the rod.” What a father I’d make, I thought. “And take some, advice, Vito: if you have to choose between Sheila and the green stuff, well, there are other fish in the sea.” Take your own advice, Gideon Frey. I didn’t have to feel guilty about it, at any rate. If Vito decided to make a clean break with Sheila, it would do her a lot of good.
“You mean, get tough?”
“Real tough,” I said. “Whatever you do, don’t let Sheila spill what she knows.”
“I won’t, Mr. Frey. No, sir.”
“Now clean up that glass before someone comes along.”
“Yes, sir.” Squaring his shoulders, Vito disappeared into the fog and swam back into view a moment later with a push-broom and a dustpan. I waved at him cheerily and went off toward the subway. I could catch a Long Island train for Port Washington at Atlantic Avenue.
First I told myself I was eager because Allison said she knew something about Bert. Then I told myself it was because Allison was Allison. Next I told myself it was because I was going to prove Allison didn’t mean a thing to me. I began to tell myself all sorts of things and finally decided to let Allison do the telling when I saw her. You had to feel sorry for her blind husband. He didn’t see a thing.
How right I was.
CHAPTER TEN
ALLISON MET ME at the Port Washington station in another Caddy, a convertible this time, powder blue with cream-colored leather fixings. Sleek.
Allison was sleeker. I caught my breath and for one long happy moment forgot about Bert, forgot about Sheila who I was trying to do a favor, forgot about Karen and what Mrs. McGarity guessed, even forgot about three years in the Army and how Allison ticked incorrectly. She was tanned to a kissable crisp. She wore red-gold hair in an upsweep and green eyes like emeralds against the tawny skin of her face. She’d supported her breasts and made an attempt at covering them with a halter of criss-crossed straps of white. Since the smooth skin of her chest and the dark, shadowy cleavage between her breasts and the rippling flatness of her belly below the criss-cross halter and above the trim white shorts was all of one coppery hue I had to assume she did her sunning in this halter or in no halter at all. Her thighs were broadened against the cream-colored leather of the Caddy’s front seat, with tiny blonde hairs on them catching the sunlight and gleaming with it.
“It’s good to see you, Gideon,” she said.
“It’s going to be a hot day.”
“We’re prepared for it at the Bluff. That’s our home, the Bluff. Trust Gregory to make a joke of his blindness so other people will laugh with him but not at him. We live on a cliff overlooking the sound and Gregory calls our house Blind Man’s Bluff. But let’s not talk about Gregory.”
“Let’s not.” Either the fog hadn’t reached out as far as Port Washington or it had already gathered in its last wraith-like tendrils and departed for the day. The polished powder blue of the Caddy reflected bright morning sunlight like a mirror.