“Bully-boy started to stir and I opened my coat and sat so the moonlight played on my shoulder holster. I got to my feet and when he started to sit up, I slapped him sharply across the forehead and he tried to kick me and fell over backwards. He was just a big fat soggy slob. He lay there, staring up at me with angry eyes and I knew that slap had left him dizzy. I asked, “What's your story, fat boy? Why the rough and tumble play? Got me mixed up with some other guy?”
“I know who you are.” He rubbed his jaw, touched his stomach. “Jesus, you hit hard.”
“Talk or I'll give you a real going-over. Who the hell are you?” I was sure rusty, I hadn't even frisked him.
“Stay away from Madeline!”
“What? Why, you dummy, I'm only rooming at her house. I'm not...”
“Stay away from her!”
“I never saw her till a few hours ago. I'm not cutting in on your time or...”
“Ain't no time, I'm her brother.”
I touched my holster. “Get up.”
“I warn you....”
“Get up!”
He scrambled to his feet and I looked him over closely in the moonlight and could see the resemblance—the same careless features. I dropped my hand, “Listen Madeline's brother, you got something awful wrong. Told you I never saw her till this afternoon. I was looking for a room and she rented me one. That's all.”
He sighed, worked his jaw, then said, “That's what she said. How come you picked her house?”
“I was-working for Saxton—on the Wilson murders— remembered Madeline's address when I came down here for a room.”
He spit out a glob of blood, straightened his suit and tie. “That lousy bastard, whatcha working for him for?”
“For a hundred bucks. What's your angle in all this, blubber?”
“Hell, let's sit down, I feel shaky, like there's a hole in my stomach. Never even saw that punch to the jaw,” he said, and I followed him across the sand, to a bench.
“A licking; as though I haven't got enough troubles. Got plenty of my own troubles and I got to watch Mady too. She's a good kid, only people don't understand her. She's been hitting the bottle. Don't like that, but I can't blame her too much. She's had a rough time.”
He lit a cigarette, offered me one. I shook my head. I didn't mind listening to his family troubles, I was curious about Madeline.
He said, “I'm Joe, the oldest one, Joe Shelley. Then there's Pete—a few years older than Mady, and her. I was almost a man, about fifteen, when she was born, and I always been looking out for her... you know how it is with kid sisters.”
“I never had none.”
“Pop died two months before she was born—heart attack. Ma died when Mady was ten. Me and the Wife raised her, and Pete. I've been like a father to her.”
“Okay, Pop, so what?”
“Mady's... a good kid, but with a lot of spirit, and that gets her in trouble because guys don't understand it.”
“What kind of spirit—besides the bottled ones?”
“Independence. She's on this equality for women line like some people get religion. See how it was, in Pop's will he left some insurance to see Pete through college, but none for Mady. Suppose she resented that, especially since Pete lit out East when he graduated. Then, Mady was just finishing high school at the end of the last war. Got an after-hours job in one of the plane factories. Did something with the wires on the wings. She's pretty good with her hands and made fine money. She quit school. I was against that but she thought she had a solid future in the plant. But after the war all the women workers were fired and that made her boiling. Just like they wouldn't make her a foreman because she was a woman, even though she knew more about the work than her foreman and...”
“Where does Billy come in?”
“Another tough break Mady got. They started going together back in '45, both about eighteen then. Tell you, I never thought much of him—one of these muscle-happy kids. But they hit if off, a little wild, but in a clean way—you know. Wanted to get married. But first he thought he'd be drafted so they should wait. Then when the war was over his folks wanted him to finish college before marrying. They waited four years, finally married, and a few months later he was taken in the army, killed in Korea. Poor boy was killed a long way from home. Mady sort of went to pieces, turned to the bottle. Along about then she met this louse, Saxton.”
“How?”
“She was working in his factory, clerking in the stock department. After awhile she went in to see Saxton, the big boss, asked to be promoted, that she could do the same work as the men, get the same salary. She wasn't drinking much then, it was only a few months after Billy died and she was taking it out in hard work. She...”
“Know Wilson, too?”
“Sure, just as one of the bosses, but Saxton got interested in her. Mady's kind of outspoken about things... and some guys mistake that for being loose. She ain't. I think she really went for Saxton for a time. Of course lot of people might think it's wrong for a girl to be living with a man like that, maybe it is. But then it was wrong for Mady to lose her husband after a couple months of marriage too, wasn't it?”
“Yeah.”
“Me and the wife thought it was okay, even though Saxton was twice her age. He was single, an important man, looked like what Mady needed. We thought in time they might even get married. That important man! He put her on the bottle, kept her liquored up, treating her like a... a kept woman.”
“You slug him too?”
Joe shook his head, a little sadly. “Wished I had. I went to see him couple months back. Mady wants to live with the guy, well, she's over twenty-one, and that's her business. And Mady isn't the kind you can tell anything. But when she quit work, slobbered around the house, tanked up all day, with him doling out the rent and food money, well, I had a talk with him. He was nasty and right after that—three days after to be exact —my own trouble started. Haven't any proof, but I feel sure Saxton is mixed up in it somehow.”
“You in a jam?”
“I'm a postman.”
“Thousands of guys take exams to get in that kind of a jam.”
“Look, Franzinb, I.....”
“Ranzino, and call me Matt.”
“Matt, I been carrying mail for nearly twenty years, it's all I know. You never get rich and it's no job for a guy with ambition, but I like it. People on my route are my friends. Why, for Christmas they gave me.... Look, three days after I see Saxton and almost get told out of his office, I get a telegram from a Harry Loughlin who runs an outfit called America! America! I go down there and he tells me he knows I was a union delegate in '48, talked about the postmen going out on strike for more pay. He says that makes me a Red, he's going to report me to the loyalty board. I told him...”