Retnick flagged a cab and gave the driver Evans’ Tenth Avenue address. It was a run-down rooming house crowded in between a small factory and a dead storage garage for automobiles. He talked with Evans’ erstwhile landlady, a plump middle-aged woman with an orderly enthusiasm for detail. Evans had been with her for a month to the day, and had checked out a week ago. He was a man who kept mostly to himself; she saw him only when he stopped by to pay his weekly rent. But he kept his room neat, which wasn’t surprising since he seldom slept there. She didn’t know where he slept.
“Is he in some kind of trouble?” she asked him at last.
Retnick smiled. “Just the opposite. We’ve got some money for him on a damage claim he filed last year.”
“Oh. Well, I wish I could help you.”
“Did he send his laundry out in the neighborhood?”
“Yes, I believe he took it around to the Chinaman’s. That’s in the middle of the next block.”
“Thanks a lot,” Retnick said. “If I catch up with him I’ll tell him to send you a box of candy.”
She smiled cynically. “That’ll be the day.”
Retnick walked down to the Chinese laundry, playing a hunch; Evans hadn’t used his room at night, which suggested a girlfriend. And in that case he might have had his laundry sent to her place. The laundry man was small and young, with smooth blank eyes. Two children played behind the counter, and a woman in a shapeless dress and slippers was ironing shirts on a table against the wall. The room was warm and smelled cleanly of soap and fresh linen.
The young man remembered Evans. Yes. He had work shirts and dress shirts, lots of them. He dropped them off himself, usually in the morning, and his oldest boy delivered them. No, not down the block, but over on the East Side.
Retnick’s fingers were trembling slightly as he wrote down the address and apartment number.
“You a cop?” the young man asked him then.
Retnick smiled at him, letting him believe what he wanted, and the young man sighed and nodded. “Good job,” he said.
Retnick thanked him and left. It was almost ten o’clock, the time he’d agreed to meet his wife at Tim Moran’s. He hesitated on the cold, slushy sidewalk, staring at the address he had got from the laundryman. That would keep for a bit. The session with his wife wouldn’t take long.
5
Retnick walked into Tim Moran’s saloon a few minutes after ten. The bar was crowded then with longshoremen who had been skipped over at the morning’s shape-up. They were smoking and chatting over their beers, killing time until they could shape again in the afternoon. Several of them glanced curiously at Retnick as he moved to a vacant spot at the bar, his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat. Tim Moran waved a greeting and came to meet him, a tentative smile touching his small red face.
“Has my wife been in here this morning?” Retnick said.
“I haven’t seen her, Steve.”
“I’ll take a booth. Send her back, will you?”
“Sure. Can I bring you something to drink?”
“No, never mind.”
Retnick walked to the rear of the big noisy room, moving down a narrow corridor formed by the crowded bar on his left and the line of brown wooden booths on his right. He hung up his hat and sat down in the last booth without bothering to take off his overcoat. From here he could see the length of the bar, the front doors and the big plate glass windows that faced the avenue. It was snowing again and the wind was higher. The big soft flakes rushed past in fast formations, straight lines of white against the windows.
Retnick lit a cigarette and stared at two longshoremen who were regarding him with simple curiosity. They turned away, confused by the cold anger in his eyes, and went back to their beer and talk. He settled down in the booth then and watched the smoke curling in slow spirals from his cigarette, isolated from the cheerful noises of the bar, by the dark and bitter cast of his thoughts. He glanced up when his wife came in. She closed the door quickly against the rush of cold air that swirled into the room, and stood indecisively for an instant, a small uncertain smile touching her lips. Her cheeks were flushed from the wind. She wore a gray tweed topcoat with a flaring skirt, and flakes of melting snow glistened in her close-cut, curly black hair. Moran saw her and waved, and she went to the bar and shook hands with him, moving with a quick light grace that seemed appropriate to any place or occasion. The men at the bar made room for her, grinning sympathetically as she stamped the snow from her small black pumps. There was a quality of direct, unself-conscious friendliness about her that put them completely at ease. A pretty picture, Retnick thought, staring impassively at her clean warm beauty. Charming the simple souls with a quick smile, the turn of a slim ankle. No wonder she looks good, he thought, putting out his cigarette. She’s had five good years. Big good years. Anger twisted in his breast like the turn of a cold blade. She hadn’t missed anything, anything at all.
She smiled at something Moran said in parting, and then walked quickly toward the rear of the room. But the smile left her face when Retnick stood up and she saw the look in his eyes; she faltered for an instant, as if a heavy weight had suddenly been placed on her shoulders.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, sliding into the booth. “There weren’t any cabs. Have you been waiting long?”
The words meant nothing; they were defensive little flurries against the barrier in his face and eyes.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
She was silent a moment, frowning at the backs of her hands. Then she sighed and looked at him. “Last night was all wrong, Steve.”
“What did you expect?”
“I thought we could talk to each other, at least.”
“We talked,” he said.
“We just made noises,” she said. “There was no more communication than you’d find between a Martian and a... a Zulu.”
“Did that surprise you?”
She stared at him for a few seconds, studying the lines in his hard face. Then she said slowly, “Do you hate me so much you won’t even listen to me? I want to explain what happened. Don’t I deserve that much of a break?”
Retnick laughed shortly. “A break,” he said. “That’s very funny.”
“It isn’t funny,” she said, with a sharp note of anger in her voice. “Who says I’m dirt on the floor? Who treats me like God’s greatest slut? You, the final judge! But you won’t listen to my side of it. You’ve made up your mind and the case is closed. I can go whistle.”
Retnick lit a cigarette and flipped the match aside. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”
She put her hands over his suddenly. “I want a break and I don’t deserve one. Is that so terrible? You’ve got to have some compassion left. They couldn’t change you that much.”
“I’m not interested in forgiving people,” Retnick said.
She withdrew her hands from his slowly. “Forgiving your enemies isn’t optional,” she said. “It’s something you’ve got to do. There’s a direct order, isn’t there? ‘Father forgive them’. Or maybe that’s not it. You could check with Father Bristow.”
“I’ve got nothing to talk to him about,” Retnick said.
“This is just a waste of time then,” she said slowly.
Retnick’s hands burned from the touch of her cool fingers. He swallowed a tightness in his throat and said, “Sure, it’s a waste of time.”
She looked down at the surface of the table and moistened her lips. For a moment she was silent. Then she said dryly, “That’s that, I guess. If you want to play it like the great stone face, all right. What I wanted to talk to you about was this: I saved some money while you were gone. About six thousand dollars. I’d like you to take it and go away and do what you want with it. Go fishing or hunting, or go to Florida and lie in the sun, or get drunk for a year if you like. Then come back. Maybe we could talk by then. Would you do that, Steve?”