“Why don’t you leave me alone? I’ve got my own problems.”
One of them waddled out from the rear of the place. It was Becky, his wife. “You didn’t tell me,” she said. “Did you talk to them like I wanted or didn’t you?”
“I — I didn’t have a chance,” Ben said.
“That’s right, Becky. He got scared off by a corpse.”
“What are you talking about, mister?”
“Bert Archer,” I said. “He’s dead.”
Becky stood there staring at me, her puffy face draining white then flooding red as the blood rushed back. Her eyes narrowed to slits and she jabbed a pudgy finger against Ben’s chest and said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t, that’s all. Are you satisfied now? Do you still want I should go back up to Tolliver’s and ask them?”
“Let me think,” Becky said, wringing out a gray washrag and patting her face with it. “Mister, are you a cop?”
“Ben just asked me that. No.”
“Then you’re working for them.”
“I don’t even know who them is.”
She didn’t believe me. I could almost see the wheels spinning inside her head. It wasn’t hard to see who wore the pants around here.
“My friend is dead,” I told Becky. “Someday the cops will find out how he died, but I can’t wait till someday. I’ve got to find out for myself or I won’t be able to go about the business of becoming a civilian again. You got it so far? O.K., this is where you come in. You wanted Ben to ask them something at Tolliver’s. He wasn’t sure if he’d ask them or not. When he heard about Bert he didn’t walk, he ran. So, there’s a connection. What did you want him to do, Mrs. Lutz?”
She had small, shrewd eyes under scraggly, masculine brows. She stared me down blandly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why don’t you be a nice boy and go away? We’ve got customers.” The teenagers were sipping their sarsaparilla and listening avidly.
I gave Ben a look which said I’d see him later or tomorrow or sometime and he’d best have some answers. On my way out, I heard Becky’s voice call after me:
“See, mister? We mind our own business. You tell them that. We don’t talk unless we’re supposed to. Don’t forget to tell them, mister.”
So she still thought I was grinding someone else’s ax. Well, it might come in handy at that. As I left I heard her giving Ben hell, teenagers or no.
A few tired-looking gals paraded around on the outside runway of the sideshow next door to the Lutz’s place, wiggling and stamping to the sounds of an electric guitar. The pitchman hinted they had a sense of propriety outside and would really cut loose once the show started.
I cut out for Tolliver’s with long strides. The more I thought about Karen Tanner the angrier I got. Men talked about a lot of things in Korean bunkers, with Red artillery fire muted and distant or so close it shook the walls. They talked of good food and better liquor or girls, and the Pittsburgh Pirates who Branch Rickey was supposed to do wonders for but hadn’t yet. Bert Archer had only two things on his mind, though — Karen Tanner and a marriage license. Karen hadn’t even bothered to look sad. The crowd outside Tolliver’s had returned to normal, entering, leaving or just wandering by but no longer milling about to see corpses toted out in baskets. An old couple strolled by munching great yellow ears of corn and gawking at the sights. A fat slob of a kid trailed them, dripping tomato and cheese from a broad slab of pizza pie. Behind him came a buck-toothed girl of sixteen with a pin between her haltered breasts which said LOOK BUT DON’T TOUCH.
Inside Tolliver’s the air was damp and cooler, and smelled strongly of chlorine from the swimming pool, grease and dough from a huge machine which turned out doughnuts on an assembly line, pungent spices from Mama Lucca’s Pizzeria, and people. Another smell seemed to form a kind of sweet-sour base for all of these but I couldn’t place it and figured it might have been the sum-total playing hob with my nostrils.
I nodded at the dark-eyed Italian boy serving up the thin heavy slabs behind the counter of Mama Lucca’s Pizzeria and said, “You’re not Mama.”
“Pizza?” he asked me, ignoring the crack.
“Not now. I’m looking for Karen Tanner.”
“She runs the penny arcade back of the merry-go-round. The place is closed though.”
“Yeah? Why?” I damn well knew why, but I wanted to hear it from one of the Tolliver people.
“An accident. Her partner got killed earlier today.”
“You don’t tell me.”
“That’s right, mister.”
“Fall out of a roller-coaster?” I asked.
“No. Suffocated in a steam room at the bathhouse.”
“You don’t tell me.”
“That’s right. Excuse me.”
The fat slob was back for more pizza, buying a wedge for each hand this time.
A frenzied organ cleared La Paloma from its brassy throat while the merry-go-round spun row-on-row of four-abreast horses in medieval trappings around and around. The carousel was far from full, so most of the riders sat outside mounts and had a chance at plucking the brass ring off its pole. A brass ring won a free ride, a sign said, but you leaned out of your saddle for them at your own risk.
Behind the merry-go-round a door led to the Penny Palace. No one had bothered to close the door, but a placard had been strung across the entrance with the words Closed For Alterations painted on it in blocky black letters. I swung my long legs over the rope which bore the placard and called, “Anybody home?”
“In the back.” It was Karen Tanner’s throaty voice. I wended my way among boxing machines, baseball games, strength-testing devices, machine gun emplacements, kinescope peep shows, foot-easers, horoscope venders and the like. I found an archway and went through it to an office. Window-less and small, it had a desk, two chairs, a small filing cabinet. A stationary fan groaned its need for oil and whipped Karen Tanner’s white-blonde hair back. “Hello, Gideon,” she said. She’d been chain smoking. The butts were strewn in a large bronze pipe ashtray although the fan had blown the ashes out. Bert Archer smoked a pipe and the ashtray was old and chipped in spots and if I were Karen I’d never have been able to use it, not today.
“Hi. Your friend Billy couldn’t make the charge stick. He’s mad.”
“Billy’s all right. He just acts like a kid sometimes, but if you bother him he’ll make trouble for you.”
“I’m shaking like a leaf.”
A single green-shaded light hung suspended from a ceiling chain and swung in the fan’s breeze, throwing grotesque shadows about the small office. In its light I couldn’t tell if Karen had been crying.
“I’m going to need help here now,” she said. “Bert would have wanted it to be you. If you’d still like the job, it’s yours.”
Her composure rattled me. I wanted to hit her and make her scream. I said, “How did Bert die, Karen?”
“I’d rather not talk about it today.”
“Was he murdered?”
“I’m not the coroner.”
“Do you think he was murdered?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Were you going to marry him?”
“I… don’t know. We’d planned on it, but…”
“But what?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sorry Bert’s dead?”
“You… louse!” Her voice caught. She choked on the first word and gagged on the second and I started feeling better. I let her hit me twice, hard, stinging blows with her open palm, then I caught her wrist and felt still better. It affected her after all.
“Get out of here!” she cried. “I asked you to leave me alone before but you wouldn’t listen. What I said still goes, you can work here if you want because Bert would have liked that. It’s strictly business, so don’t expect me to answer any of your questions.”