"Del, the kid didn't give Lyons any lip. Lyons was looking for it."
"Sure, Charlie, sure." Del's eyes were beginning to rove. Mundin let him go.
He plucked the girl's card out of his pocket and turned it over, bemused. G.M.L. Homes, he thought. Corporate practice. A shrewd, hard cop looking for trouble. It's not generally known that the "L" stands for Lavin.
And a cry for help.
The card said Norma Lavin, with an address in Coshocton, Ohio, and a phone number. These were scratched out, and written in was 37595 Willowdale Crescent.
An address in Belly Rave!
Mundin shook his head slowly and worriedly. But there had been a cry for help.
Chapter Four
It had been a trying evening for Norvie Bligh. When he walked in on Virginia and the girl they had been perfectly normal—sullen. His news about the lawyer, Mundin, and the prospects of adopting Alexandra had produced the natural effect: "You forgot to ask about the inheritance. Leave it to Norvie! He'd forget his Social Security number if it wasn't tattooed on him."
Before he finished dinner he was driven to the point of getting up and stalking out.
It wasn't anything they said. It was just that neither of them said anything to him. Not even when, pushed past the threshold of control, he had shrieked at his wife and slapped the child.
But there was always Arnie.
He killed time for half an hour—Arnie didn't like it if you got there too early; hell, you couldn't blame him for that—and then hurried. He was almost out of breath as he got to Dworcas's door.
And Arnie was warmly friendly. Norvell began at last to relax.
It wasn't just a matter of plenty of beer and the friendly feeling of being with someone you liked. Arnie was going out of his way, Norvell saw at once, to get at the roots of Norvell's problems. As soon as they had had a couple of beers he turned the conversation to Norvell's work. "They must be really beginning to roll on the Field Day," he speculated.
Norvell expanded. "Sure. I've got some pretty spectacular things lined up for it, too," he said modestly. "Of course, Candella hasn't given me the final go-ahead"—he frowned at the submerged memory—"but it's going to be quite a program. One gets a big charge out of doing one's best on a big job, Arnie. I guess you know that. I remember a couple of years—"
Dworcas interrupted. "More beer?" He dialed refills. "Your place has quite a good reputation," he said with sober approval. "This afternoon, in the shop, We Engineers were talking about the technical factors involved."
"You were?" Norvell was pleased. "That's interesting, Arnie. This time I was talking about——"
"Especially the big shows," Dworcas went on. "The Field Days. Say, you know what would be interesting, Norvell? Getting a couple of the fellows to go to one, to see just how the thing looked from the engineering viewpoint. I'd like to go myself—if I could get away, of course; we're pretty busy these days. Might invite a few of the others to come along."
"You would?" Norvell cried. "Say, that would be fine. There's a lot of engineering connected with a Field Day. Like this time a couple of years——"
"Excuse me," Arnie interrupted. "Beer. Be right back."
While Dworcas was gone, Norvell felt actually cheerful. Arnie was so concerned with his work; you didn't find many friends like Arnie. Warmed by the beer, Norvell re-examined his recent blinding depression. Hell, things weren't too bad. Ginny was a bitch, he told himself. All right, so she's a bitch. Lots of men live with bitches and make out all right. Besides, if a woman's a bitch doesn't it say something about the man she's married to? And the kid, of course. Kids reflect what's around them. And as for Candella— he thought briefly about Candella, and retreated to the safer ground. Virginia. Suppose he went back home tonight, not saying a word of anger or reproach—— No, it was better to have things out. Well, suppose he went right up—she'd be asleep—well, went right up and woke her up. "Ginny," he could say, "we've made a lot of mistakes." Cancel that. "Ginny, I've made a lot of mistakes, but I love you. I want to live happily with you." He thought for a second, then amended it: "With you and Alexandra." Maybe he should wake up Alexandra too.
He had almost decided to have a swift cup of black coffee and go home when Arnie came back. Dworcas entered, beaming.
"Well, what say, Emotional Engineer? Want a couple of real live slide-rulers to look over your show?"
"What? Oh, sure, Amie. Just let me get this Field Day out of the way. We'll throw a real party—one of the Friday-night shows. There's a lot of complicated stuff under the stadium; you'd be interested——"
Dworcas was pursing his lips. "I don't know," he said thoughtfully, "if the fellows would be interested in one of the second-rate shows. Maybe we ought to skip it."
"No, no," Norvell said earnestly. "The regular shows are just as interesting technically. Why, just last week something came up. You'll be interested in this, Arnie. We had a broken-field run—barbed wire and castrator mines—and, half an hour before the show started, the director came around crying that he didn't have enough men for the spectacle. Well, Candella—that is, we—put in a quick call to the cops and they sent a squad down to Belly Rave. Got twenty-five volunteers in fifteen minutes. The orderlies lined 'em up and gave them million-unit injections of B1." He chuckled. "Arnie, you should have seen some of those guys when they sobered up. We——" Arnie was shaking his head. "I don't think you understand," he said seriously. "That sort of thing isn't what We Engineers are interested in. It's the big effects."
"Oh. You mean like in the Field Day next week." Norvell thought vaguely about the Field Day. "Yeah," he said uncertainly, "There certainly are plenty of headaches when you run a Field Day. Can I have another beer, please?"
As he dialed another glass, Dworcas said sunnily, "Suppose you can fit us in, then? After all, you've got eighty thousand seats. There ought to be five somewhere that the man who runs the whole damn thing can give to a friend."
"Sure," Norvell mumbled. "Uh—now it's my turn. Excuse me, Arnie. All right?"
When he came back the room wasn't spinning quite so dizzily, but the warmth in his body wasn't so gratifying either.
He stared so long at the glass of beer by his chair that Arnie thought it was flat and pressed a replenishment button. "Oh, thanks," Norvell said, startled.
He picked up the glass and took a sip, then put it down hard. Half of it slopped over. Over the whistle of the suction cleaners draining the spilled beer, Norvell said with sudden misery, "Arnie, I'm in trouble."
Dworcas froze. After a moment, he said carefully, "Trouble?"
"Yes, trouble. The dirtiest, damnedest, lowest-down trouble I've ever been in in my life. It scares me, Arnie. I swear to Cod, if it weren't for people like you—hell, if it weren't for you personally—I don't know what I'd do. Arnie, I think I'm going to go out of my head! It isn't just one thing, it's everything. The job, the wife, that slimy little kid—everything." He told Dworcas about the grisly dinner with his wife and stepdaughter; about the countless run-ins with Candella; about all of the fights and frustrations that had come to him. "The worst was this morning, just before I went to that lawyer. Candella— God, I could've killed him! Or myself. I was reaming out that little punk Stimmens when Candella walked into the room. He must've heard every word I said, because when I turned around and saw him he said, 'Excellent advice, Mr. Bligh, I hope you'll follow it yourself.' And Stimmens just stood there laughing at me. I couldn't do a thing. For two cents I would have gone in and asked him for my contract."