He didn’t believe it. But he looked, finally, and there was the quarter, gleaming brightly. It’s not a hard move. A little business with the right hand takes his eye out of the picture, and a quick flip from the left hand puts the coin in his pocket. He was leaning forward, so it was easy to drop the coin in without his feeling anything. He shook his head in amazement and gave me a dollar.
“Jesus,” he said. “You do this for a living?”
“It’s just a hobby.”
“You’re good at it, though. Real good.”
After a while he left me alone. He refocused on the television show and I again lapped at my drink. I sat there and thought about a lot of things. I tried to figure out Murray’s angle, and I tried to figure out just how I was going to play things with Barb, and I tried to figure out what the hell I was doing in this town. I didn’t come up with any answers. Maybe there weren’t any.
On Monday morning Murray Rogers left jail. I was sitting at my desk when the phone rang and Joyce told me he was on his way home. I told her to be careful, she asked of what, and I mumbled something and put the phone down. Be careful of everything, I thought.
I had some calls to make, some people to see. There was a pack of index cards on my desk, all of them typed out neatly and precisely, and there was a long sheet of legal-size yellow paper with a dozen more names and addresses copied down in someone’s neat handwriting. I thumbed through the cards and surveyed the yellow sheet of paper and decided I didn’t want to call anybody. There were three morning and afternoon appointments listed in my date book. I called two numbers, cancelled out. The third party didn’t answer.
I shrugged him off and closed my datebook and left the office. I settled behind the wheel and drove about at random. After a while I hit a red light, stopped for it, lit a cigarette with the dashboard lighter.
The job, the life, the world—weren’t working. It was a good job, something I could do, something that brought in the money. And it was a good enough life in a good enough world, and for anybody else, maybe, matters would have been fine.
But not for me.
You see, when you’re a freelance operator on the periphery of the underworld, you never have to worry about dropping into a bind. You aren’t confined, aren’t tied down in the least. My business card, if I had one, would go something like this:
WILLIAM MAYNARD
card mechanic and hustler
No Fixed Address
No fixed address. Got a frail hanging on your neck, a broad who won’t let you go? Pack your toothbrush, slide into your car, go. Go anywhere because every town has men in it who play cards for money, every town has an angle ready for an angle player. Anybody giving you a hard time? Your room rent overdue? A batch of debts scattered around? Anything like that?
Pack the toothbrush, pile in the car, scram.
You start to function in those terms. Even if you’re legit—a traveling show biz type, a carnie roustabout, a salesman on the road, an outdoor construction worker—even then you tend to operate in this manner. You become used to living your life on the move, and when a situation turns sour you run from it and into something better. But if your life runs on illegal tracks to begin with, you find it just that much easier to work this way. Scruples never come along and trip you up. If you’re a con man, or a card cheat, or any sort of a thousand hustlers, you’re fully accustomed to milking the parks and hunting greener pastures.
Now I was starting to put down roots. A job, sure and steady. A bank account. An apartment with a lease. A circle of friends, most of whom had been born in the area, and who would die there. A girl, a boss, a friend, a friend’s wife—
I was in the Ford and the Ford was hurrying along Main Street past Olga Road. A while ago we had crossed Cherry Avenue, the city line around there. If I stayed on Main Street long enough I would wind up in the state capital some three hundred miles away. Or, if I made a right turn in a quarter mile, I could take the big ribbon straight on to New York, a few hundred miles of perfect roadway. I didn’t even need my toothbrush. Toothbrushes aren’t all that hard to come by, and I had never developed any great sentimental attachment to mine. Just swing the wheel soft right, pick up a ticket at the toll gate—
But I couldn’t, and that was the hang-up. Not now, not with Murray’s case all up in the air. So far no one had given me much of a second glance. If I skipped town now, someone would start thinking.
I pulled the Ford off the road, lit another cigarette, smoked a little of it. When the traffic thinned out I whipped the Ford around in a U-turn and drove back into town.
I made my apartment in time to answer the phone. I picked it up, said hello, sat down in a chair. It was Murray, and for a second or two the sound of his voice threw me. I’d almost forgotten that he was out of jail now.
“You’re a hard man to find,” he said. “I tried you at your office. No luck. Been keeping busy?”
“Fairly busy.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Listen, Bill, I’d like to talk to you. Got anything doing right now?”
I didn’t, but I had no overwhelming desire to rush over there. “I’ll be tied up for an hour or so,” I said.
“And after that?”
“I’ll be free.”
“Good. I’d ask you to come over here, but I’d rather go some place where we can be alone. I’m not under house arrest, you know. I’m just supposed to stay within city limits, something like that. Where can you meet me?”
“Anywhere.”
He thought it over for a moment. “There’s a little lunch counter at Washington and Plum,” he said. “Sort of a central location, and the coffee’s not bad. All right with you?”
“Fine with me.”
“About an hour?”
“Right.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”
I hung up and found a bottle of Cutty Sark with a little left in it. I poured a small shot and tossed it down. Murray Rogers wanted to see me. I didn’t know why.
The hour dawdled along. I smoked a few cigarettes and listened to mood music on the radio. I had another shot of scotch. Then it was time to go. I found Washington and Plum. The lunch counter was diagonally across the street from me on the northwest corner next to a drugstore.
I crossed Washington, waited for a light, crossed Plum. I stepped into the lunch counter and sat down on a plastic-covered stool and leaned on the Formica counter. I asked for black coffee and a ham sandwich. The coffee steamed in front of me about the same time Murray appeared.
No jailbird he. He was wearing a suit some expensive tailor had made. There was a fresh white carnation in the buttonhole. His tie had the Countess Mara crest, his shoes had a mirror shine, and the smile on his face would have done justice to an upstate politician. Confident eyes, a firm stride, a quick and strong handshake.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said to me. “Just coffee, and black,” he told the counterman. He eased himself on to the stool next to me, took a cigar from his jacket pocket, cut the tip, put it in his mouth and lit it. He blew out a cloud of smoke. We both sat there. He watched the smoke and I tried to guess what this was all about.
He said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you, Bill. But I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“About Joyce. Have you seen her at all?”
Easy now. “Once or twice, since—”
“Since I was arrested?” I nodded. “Then you probably know what I’m getting at,” Murray said. “How did she seem then?”
Anxious to be laid, I thought. And worried that you, Murray, might wiggle off the hook.
“She seemed all right,” I said. His eyes were studying my face. “A little—well, worried, of course. But she didn’t believe you were guilty and she was sure everything would work itself out.”