“I’m looking for Walter Surface,” I said.
“I’m taking messages,” said the woman. She was either looking good for fifty or bad for thirty-five, and the latter seemed the safer bet. She turned to face me and her feet came off the desk, which left a scuff in the otherwise perfect coat of dust that covered it.
“I need to see him,” I said. “And I’m in a hurry.” I put my photostat on the desk.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“Can you call him?” I pointed at the telephone. The dust over it was just as thick as the dust on the desk.
“I don’t want to get him out of bed,” she said. “I’ll take a message. You should have come sooner. He could have used you a week ago.”
“What happened?”
“You didn’t see the blood in the lobby, I guess. Walter got hit. He can’t see visitors now. I think you understand.”
“Who are you?” I asked her. She didn’t seem to notice the questions. I guess she’d spent a lot of time around inquisitors.
“I just used to help Walter out with things,” she said. “I guess I will again if he gets up out of that bed.” As she spoke, her eyes detached from mine, without seeming to focus on any new object, and her voice grew dimmer and dimmer.
“You and Walter are close,” I suggested.
She said yes, but it was mostly just a sigh. I realized that she was like the desk or the phone; what happened a week ago had put the three of them out of business, and they’d been gathering dust ever since.
“I really need to see him,” I said. “Why don’t you take me there yourself, make sure he’s all right. You don’t need to stay here.”
Her eyes brightened somewhat. “No one ever calls,” she said. “It’s like they already know.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I might as well be with him,” she said, but she was talking to herself. Then she looked up at me. “He’s not good.”
“I understand.” I let things get quiet for a minute, waited while she blinked away her tears, and then I said: “Listen. Walter was doing a very important job when he got hit, trying to help someone who really needed it. Still does. If I can talk to him—just for a few minutes—maybe I can pick up where he left off.” It sounded nice, but it was a little inaccurate. Angwine was already frozen, and it was stretching the truth to imply that Surface’s involvement, as I understood it, anyway, had been doing anyone the least bit of good. But it was certainly what his girlfriend seemed to want to heat.
I went and got her coat off a hook on the wall, then took a step towards the door. “I’ll follow you in my car,” I said.
“It’s just a few blocks,” she said softly, and got up from behind the desk. She was careful not to brush up against me as she slid her arms into the coat. I got my license off the desk and wiped the dust on my pants leg, then we went down in the elevator together.
I parked half a block behind her, and watched as she went up the porch of a shabby green clapboard house. She turned and looked back at me from the steps, and I waved her in. When the door shut behind her, I got the mirror from the glove compartment and tapped out a line of make and sniffed it up.
I finished the make, put away the mirror, and went up the steps to the door. Surface’s girlfriend hurried over when I came in—I guess she would have put my coat on a hanger if I’d taken it off. Instead she just sort of hovered. When my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I wished they hadn’t: the place was a sty. There wasn’t any comparable delay for my nose, which had begun picking out the acrid components of the smell the moment I inhaled. Surface or his girl kept an animal of some kind, and they hadn’t done too good a job of cleaning up after it the last week or so. The house badly needed an airing. I could forgive them, but my nose couldn’t. It was all opened up from the fresh make, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to carry on a conversation with Surface without making faces. So I got out my cigarettes. The woman saw what I was doing and dug a blackened ashtray out from under a pile of soggy newspapers and handed it to me.
“Thanks. Where’s Surface?”
“In there.” She pointed. “He was asleep again.” She didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t have to.
I went in. It was a big room full of a chair and a dresser and a big double bed. The only light was the television. It was tuned to the Muzak station, where aquamarine triangles did an endless soporific dance against a translucent, watery background. The white blue light of the tube glowed over the dark form stretched out in the middle of the bed.
I stepped up closer. The body in the bed seemed awfully small. When he turned his dark face up from the pillow, I realized Walter Surface and I didn’t have as much in common as I’d hoped, or feared. The animal in the house was Surface. He was an evolved ape. The surprise of it took my voice away for a second, but at the same time I didn’t doubt for a minute that this was the guy I was looking for. His face was human enough to look weary with trouble, creased with the contemplation of things most humans, let alone most apes, never see. If he were a man, I’d have said he was a tired fifty years old. For an ape I couldn’t or didn’t want to figure it out.
“You’re Surface,” I said when I located my voice.
“Right.” His thin lips barely moved, but the voice purred out of him surprisingly loud.
“My name’s Metcalf. I’m working in connection with the Stanhunt case.” I didn’t extend my hand because I didn’t really want to hold his, even for the duration of a handshake. The smell was coming from him. I could tell when he rustled the bed sheets. I guess his girlfriend was used to his stench the way she was used to questions. Love is sometimes more than just blind.
Surface closed his eyes. “Nancy let you in.”
I said yes.
“She said you wanted to ask me some questions.” He pursed his mouth and blew air through his nose. “You got to understand, Mr. Metcalf. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you want.” The television flickered out, and we were thrust into darkness. I thought he’d accidentally dropped the remote control, but when the light came back on, he had a gun in his hand. It was a nifty stunt.
“Move and I’ll make you breathe funny,” he said, his leathery mouth all stretched out at the corners. The gun looked pretty comfortable in his little black paw. “I’d be pleased to teach you how to blow red bubbles out of your shirt,” he went on. “It’s a little trick I learned last week. I can dish it out as well as take it.”
“And you ought to,” I said. “Only I’m the wrong guy. I didn’t dish it out, and I don’t want to take it. Lay off the heat.”
“Sit down, put your hands in your lap, and shut up. I heard enough to tell me I don’t want to hear no more. I’ve got the gun and I’ll ask the questions. I’ve got a license for both.”
I sat down, set the ashtray on the arm of the chair, and put my hands in my lap like he said.
“Where’s the kangaroo? He’s the one I want to plug.”
“That makes two of us, Surface. I wouldn’t be seen walking around with the kangaroo unless somebody cut his hide into a nice pair of shoes.”
His ape face squinted into some kind of bitter smile. His teeth were yellow. I thought about apes killing kangaroos, and maybe kangaroos killing sheep. Dr. Twostrand’s evolution therapy was a real hit. He’d really lifted the animals out of the jungle.
“All right,” said the ape. “What can you say to make me think you don’t work for Phoneblum?”
“Probably nothing,” I said. “Let’s, forget it.” The door behind me opened. It was Nancy, carrying a couple of glasses, playing hostess. She’d put herself back together while she was away, but when she saw the gun in Surface’s hand, she got teary again.