“My friends in high school called me Lu. Nobody’s called me that in years though.”
“Lu.” I lifted my gimlet. “Here’s to you. Lu.”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to have so many drinks so early in the day? I’m a bartender. I know.”
“Are you going to accept the damn toast, or not?”
“All right.” She clinked her glass against mine. “Here’s to Lu.”
The house lights dimmed. We looked down and the stage had been cleared, the set put back in place, and the play was beginning.
And that was when I found out who her friend Ruthy was.
She was the lead. Playing the Judy Holliday role in Born Yesterday, which they were doing in ’40s dress and trappings, since that’s when the play first came out, and because people like nostalgia, I guess. She was no Judy Holliday, but she was blond, and well-built, and not a bad little actress, for Des Moines.
She was also Frank Tree’s girl friend.
But then was that so surprising?
After all, Tree himself was sitting at a ringside table. I saw him there when the house lights went up for intermission.
The bitch had brought me along on her goddamn stakeout.
19
Sunday evening was interesting.
I won a hundred some bucks playing draw poker, but that in itself wasn’t particularly interesting. What was was the dealer, the kid with the worried expression and closed mouth and glasses, the one who played stupid every time I sat down at his table, which was every night I’d been there.
So winning a few bucks from him was nothing special. In fact I usually won a little bigger.
But it was unusual to see him wearing make-up.
I don’t mean to imply he was queer or anything (though you never know). I don’t mean he was wearing lipstick or mascara or rouge. It was makeup, flesh-colored stuff, the theatrical-type liquid some women use in place of powder these days. He’d applied it along one cheek, across the cheekbone and down a ways. That side of his face was a little fucked up, a little puffy. The make-up did a fair job of disguising it, and the somewhat dim lighting in the room helped, too. But his face was fucked up, no question, like maybe he’d been in a fight.
Like maybe somebody had given him an elbow in the face.
He didn’t say much that night. He didn’t say much any night. He let his cards speak for him, and they didn’t say much either, except that he was lousy.
I listened to what little he did say, though. You can’t play poker and not let out a few words, now and then, especially sitting in the dealer’s chair. So I listened and tried to match the voice with the voice behind the light that had shined in my eyes last night.
At one point one of the other players commented casually on the bandages on my face. I still had five of them, covering little cuts I’d got from where the lamp caught me. I gave a small speech about how people who use electric razors shouldn’t switch all of a sudden to a straight razor unless they don’t mind looking like chopped meat for a couple days: The various players laughed politely at that. Everybody but the dealer. He just shuffled his cards and said to the man at his left, “Cut them.”
It was the same voice, all right.
I made a mental appointment with him, and returned to my cards.
The other interesting thing that happened Sunday night was Lu (as I was beginning to feel comfortable calling her) had invited me to move in with her.
“Why keep paying for that bed at the Holiday Inn?” she said. “You haven’t been using it.”
“Your apartment’s pretty small. We’re going to be tripping over each other.”
“That sounds kind of nice.”
It did at that.
So I moved in with her, wondering how she was going to manage to watch Tree with me around, knowing that if anyone could find a way it was Lu.
Glenna.
Ivy.
20
When I got there Tree was almost finished with his lunch. He was sitting alone, in a booth, eating a bratwurst sandwich. It was eleven and the lull between breakfast and lunch was just about over; soon the coffee shop would be crowded again, and I wanted to talk to him in private.
I went over and smiled and said, “The swimming pool, when you’re done.”
Tree looked up and his mouth was full but his china blue eyes were empty. He just nodded, looked down again, picked a pickle off his plate and went right ahead eating.
He was a poker player, all right.
The place was a Holiday Inn, but not a typical one. It was situated on the turn-off for the Amana Colonies, which was where some Amish-type settlers had experimented with a crude communistic life style a hundred years ago or so, and the place had affected a rustic look, not unlike Tree’s own Red Barn, though somewhat more authentic. The barnwood walls were decorated with framed photographs of somber, bearded pioneers in heavy dark clothing, their wives in bonnets and drab formless dresses, faces full of hard work and well-earned unhappiness.
Some of the pictures showed children, who hadn’t been around long enough to get glum, though the teenagers in the pictures were well on their way. There were also some examples of authentic pioneer clothing, under glass, and some old farm equipment and, in little roped-off alcoves, antique furniture was visible, with modern versions of similar furniture displayed here and there, with tags telling where in the Amanas the stuff could be bought.
There was a comfortable sofa along the wall, across from the glass wall through which the large indoor pool could be seen. I sat and watched a middle-aged lady doing laps, and wished there were some younger female swimmers to watch. A nice looking woman of about twenty-five, dark hair, two-piece yellow suit, was down at the far end making use of the sun lamp. A man about sixty sat directly across from me on the other side of the pool, his bloated belly like a beach ball on his lap, a thick cigar in one hand, martini in the other, features of his face lost in a wealth of wrinkles. The middle-aged lady had two kids, or grandkids, I don’t know which. One was a boy about ten, the other a girl about eight. They were apparently trying to drown each other. In the glass I could also see my own vague reflection, and that of the wall behind me, with its several framed tintypes of Amana settlers, and various hanging artifacts, ox yoke, pitchfork, wagon wheel, superimposed on the guests enjoying the Holiday Inn pool. Maybe I would have made something profound out of all that, but then Tree was there, sitting down next to me.
He was wearing a stylish sportsjacket, about the color of cigarette smoke, with a dark blue open-collar shirt and white slacks. He smelled of musk cologne and his short white hair was brushed down flat on his head, a butch that had been made to behave. He had the suspiciously sincere smile and hard cool eyes you find in any self-made man. His business could be used cars or gambling, real estate or women, construction or heroin. Whatever. The look is the same.
“I don’t believe I caught your name,” he said, not looking at me, except maybe in the reflection on the glass wall.
“Quarry,” I said.
“That a last name or a first name?”
“It’s just something you can call me.”
“All right, Mr. Quarry. Convince me.”
“Of what?”
“Of all the danger I’m in.”
“You’re here, aren’t you? Doesn’t that mean you’re already convinced?”
“Maybe so. Let’s say I was convinced when you had a gun on me. What I don’t know, yet, is how convincing you are unarmed.”
“If that’s the way you feel,” I said, getting up, “I’ll just be running along…”
He caught my arm. Brought me back down with a strong grip. “One moment. You’re a poker player, Mr. Quarry. I’ve seen you indulging at the Barn, the last week or so. You know, you might have introduced yourself.”
“I’m shy.”
“Let me make my point. In playing poker, as you well know, there are bets made, and raises, and more raises, and then finally one player calls and gets to look at the other man’s hand, before showing his own. Well, we’ve played our little games, Mr. Quarry. In the dark. And me, I’m always sitting under the gun, it seems, keep having to check to your pat hand. Well this time I’m calling.”