Coglan stared at his empty glass. “You put it pretty hard, Sam.”
“We’re telling each other the truth, that’s all.” Terrell glanced at his watch. “Does anybody know you’re here?”
“Just my wife. Stanko said get out of town for ten days and stay quiet.”
“Okay, you just sit tight. I’ll call you tonight — around eight-thirty. I’ll tell you where to go then. Everything will be arranged for you. We’ll put what you’ve told me on tape, and then let it fly.” Terrell hesitated, looking down at Coglan. He said, “Have you got your gun?”
“Sure, I don’t travel without it.”
“Good.” Terrell stood and walked to the door. “Just one other thing. I can’t promise it, but Mike Karsh might fix things so you don’t miss that pension. He can spend the paper’s money with real talent.”
“I’ll take my chances. I don’t deserve anything for what I’m doing.”
“Okay. I’ll call you at eight-thirty.”
“Sure, Sam.” Coglan smiled and put out his hand. “I’ll be waiting. I’ve got nowhere to go...”
Terrell was back at the paper by five that afternoon. Karsh’s office was empty, and Tuckerman told him he was at the track. Terrell went to his desk, and looked through his mail. He called Karsh’s apartment at six, but the maid said he wasn’t in. Terrell ordered coffee and smoked a few cigarettes, trying to shake his mood of depression; the session with Coglan had left him feeling tired and bitter. At seven he called Karsh again, and this time the maid said, “Just a minute, please.”
Karsh said, “Hello, Sam, what is it?”
“I’ve got something good.”
“That’s what the touts were saying all afternoon. It cost me six hundred bucks.” Karsh sounded sharp and irritable. “What is it?”
“I found Paddy Coglan.”
“Who said he was lost?”
“He got sent out of town in a hurry after testifying. But I found him. He’s at the Riley in Beach City. And Mike, he’s willing to talk for publication. The whole story. Who he saw leaving Caldwell’s, who ordered him to lie about it.”
“Oh, brother,” Karsh said softly. “Get over here fast, Sam. We’ve got our story now. Get moving...”
Terrell reached Karsh’s suite around seven-thirty, and walked in on the disorderly beginnings of an impromptu party; Mayers, a bookmaker, was on the phone ordering food and liquor sent up, and two blondes sat cross-legged on the floor looking through record albums. A couple of county bailiffs stood at the bar free-loading with efficient relish, and Karsh’s mistress, Jenny Patterson, was talking with Nat Clark, a fight manager. They had all been at the track together and their mood was animated and gay. Except Jenny’s, Terrell noticed; she had been crying, and Nat Clark was patting her hand.
Karsh wasn’t in sight. Terrell joined Jenny and Nat Clark and said, “Where’s Mike?”
“In there with Gloria,” Jenny said, staring with large, martyred eyes at the hallway and door that led to Karsh’s bedroom. Gloria was Karsh’s ex-wife, and she wouldn’t have set foot in his apartment unless she had a grievance, Terrell knew; and her only grievances were financial. He glanced at his watch, twenty minutes to eight. Still plenty of time for his call to Coglan.
“She came bursting in here like a fishwife,” Jenny said, dabbing at her eyes. “He took her in there because he hates scenes. She knows that.”
“What’s her trouble?” Terrell said.
“One of Mike’s checks bounced,” Nat Clark said, shrugging. “Those things happen. Mike wouldn’t know an overdraft if it bit him in the ankle.”
“She just wants to embarrass him,” Jenny said. “She likes to make us all seem cheap and dirty.”
“Now, now,” Nat Clark said.
“It’s true,” Jenny said, in a breaking voice. “Mike and I want a life together — but she won’t get married because it would cost her his alimony. I know her kind.”
Jenny was attractive, dark and slender and well-groomed, but Terrell found her almost intolerable; she was everlastingly shifting from one emotional crisis to another, eternally suffering from fancied slights and injured feelings. And she was shrewd enough to make Karsh feel responsible for all of her troubles. She played like a virtuoso on his compassion, and his rather old-fashioned sense of guilt. It sickened Terrell. She wanted to be innocent again — this was what she plagued Karsh with, her nostalgic and wistful yearning for virtue. According to Jenny, Karsh had turned her into a creature of dreadful sophistication and wickedness. She could never go back to the sweet, simple person she was before she met him; the bridges were burned.
All of this kept Karsh uncomfortably off-balance. She had persuaded him to make a ridiculous charade of domesticity for her parents, and when they were in town he was dragooned into taking them to the zoo and the automat, and in general behaving as if he were acting out cozy scenes for magazine covers. This complicity was a confession of guilt, and Jenny made him repeat it each time her family attacked his flanks.
But Karsh put up with it. He obviously got something from her in return. She was the shadow of a woman, at least, and a certain involvement with the human situation. Was that enough? Terrell wondered. Or was it all he could get?
Mayers covered the phone with his hand and called, “All right now, lemme try to get this straight. Who wants steak? Don’t shout. Just raise a pinkie like good little boys and girls. One, two, three, four — that’s what I figured.” And into the phone: “Yeah, four steaks, all medium-well, and three chicken curries. And don’t just dab on the chutney. Send up a bottle. What? Yeah, Mike Karsh, that’s right.”
Jenny was saying to Nat Clark, “Honest to God, I never knew what the word meant until I met Mike. I mean, I’d never heard it used in a sentence. I never knew people — well, like you, for instance.”
“We’re a desperate bunch,” Nat Clark said, sighing.
Terrell excused himself and went into the guest bedroom which was generally used as a cloakroom during parties. He wanted to wash his hands; he felt grimy, not so much from five hours on the road as from five minutes with Jenny.
As Terrell entered the room a man named Diddy turned quickly toward him, a bright smile flashing on his small, shrewd face. “Hi, Sam, how’s it going? Long time no see, keed.”
Diddy had been in the act of putting an unopened bottle of whiskey into the pocket of a camel’s hair overcoat. Terrell stared at him for a few seconds and Diddy wet his lips. “We may be going out later, Sam. Mike likes a drink when we’re driving. So I thought I’d take one along for him.”
“Where did he find such thoughtful friends?” Terrell said, shaking his head slowly. “You’d better take some money, too. He keeps that in his wallet. He might want to look at Lincoln’s picture while he’s driving around.”
“Very funny,” Diddy said gently. He straightened up, not smiling any more. “What’s it to you, Sam? It’s not your booze.”
“Ownership interests you? I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Very funny indeed,” Diddy said, but there were spots of color in his cheek. He walked out of the room carrying the bottle by the neck and muttering something under his breath. Terrell went into the bathroom and washed his hands. He was surprised by his appearance; his face was pale and his eyes were hard and bright with anger. Where did Mike find these slugs, he thought, wadding up a towel and flinging it aside.
When he left the bedroom he almost ran into Karsh and his ex-wife, Gloria, standing together at the front door. Karsh looked harassed and weary, but Gloria, a chic, tiny creature with fantastically drawn eyebrows, seemed in a good mood.
“Sam, love,” she said, putting out a hand. “We simply never see each other any more. Why have you crept out of my heart?”