“You can’t make that fit.”
“That’s like a guy whistling going by the cemetery. You know I can make it fit you like a glove. Now, relax. Be a good guy. I did you a favor. You do me a favor. That’s the way the world works. And when you do me a favor, just to show you there’s no hard feelings, we sweeten you for ten thousand. And you get the job, too. You ask me, I don’t see how you have any choice. Any choice at all, at all.”
“It could break Jennings and Ryan.”
“So it does, and I’m crying myself to sleep.”
“I...I’ve got to think it over, Lew.”
“Now you sound like sense. No more of this thief talk. Go on and think. Tomorrow you take a long lunch hour. Come to the City Club. Ask for Mr. Vogeling’s table. Can that hurt you? To eat with the guy?”
“I... guess not.”
“Fourteen years ago I’m maybe your age. I got a handbook and a cigar concession and a lease on an empty store. Seventy bucks is a good week. But I’m watching those angles every minute. Now I’m worth a million and a half bucks. Is that bad?”
“No.”
“In this world, Stevie, you eat or you turn into a meal for somebody else. Now if I didn’t like you I could cross you on this whole deal and still get you to shift that equipment to Ricky. But I like you, and I’m going to play square all down the line. I expect the same thing from you.”
Lew and Vogeling were waiting at the table for him at the City Club. Steve had expected Ricky Vogeling to be a reptilian type. But instead he was a hefty redhead with a youthful face, scarred fists, and a heavy laugh. Until the afterlunch coffee came the talk was about horses and poker hands.
“So let’s get to work,” Lew said. “Stevie isn’t making his mind up overnight, and I don’t blame him for that. Hell, we don’t want a man who jumps too fast, do we?”
“So long as he jumps eventually,” Ricky said. “So we’ll just make like you aren’t in, and you aren’t coming with us. That suit you, Dalvin?”
“Yes. It does.”
“So I’m just a curious competitor. It doesn’t hurt Jennings and Ryan one damn bit for you to tell me. casual-like, what you have on order, does it?”
“No. That couldn’t hurt.”
“And maybe tell me when it’s due?”
“All I can give you on that is an approximation.”
“You got it all in your head?”
“Yes. The orders we’ve placed represent one sixth of our total current inventory of heavy equipment.”
Ricky took out a pencil and notebook. “Okay, Dalvin,” he said.
Steve took a hasty sip of his coffee. They were watching him carefully. They had the same expression in their eyes. Watchful, wary, and yet semi-amused. Steve thought of the kids going back to live with Ellen’s people, back to that great dim house, full of age and quietness and the smell of lavender.
Quietly, in a flat voice, he began to enumerate the equipment on order, giving model numbers, estimated delivery date, and the method of delivery. He paused now and again to let Vogeling catch up.
When he had finished. Ricky Vogeling snapped the notebook shut and put it back in his pocket. “Say, Lew, did you book that strip act into the Christopher Club? I caught it last night. That’s quite a blondie.”
“Isn’t she something? Stevie, you ought to go park your tired eyes on that chassis. Make you forget all your troubles. Anybody have a brandy with me?”
Steve knew he was late, but he stayed on recklessly and joined Lew and Ricky in a brandy. He waited for his chance and then, as casually as he dared, said. “If I want to rest my tired eyes, I want to rest them on that nurse of Doc Dressner’s. That Gloria Hess.”
“Stay away from that,” Lew said firmly, fastening his cold stare on him.
“Is that an order, Lew? Want me to say ‘Yes, sir’?”
“Don’t be wise, boy. Just don’t be wise. It’s advice, not an order. That one is all sewed up. By the Doc himself. That’s his little nurse and playmate. He can get real sore about something like that.”
“Funny. It seemed to me that they had a pretty professional relationship. I know he called her Gloria, but he was sort of formal.”
“You ever hear of fooling the public?”
“She’s very nice.”
“So she’s built nice and she’s Doc’s nurse and she’s got an expression like a deep freeze, but you heard me — stay away from it.”
Steve flushed. “You still make it sound like an order, Lew. And I’m not where you can give me orders. Yet.”
Lew studied him. He slapped his shoulder. “So you’re all tightened up, and you get sore at Lew. Hell, I was just trying to save you some time. You want some fun, I got a girl wants to date you. That Reds. She only sees you once, but she likes you. How about tonight? I’ll fix it for you.”
“No, thanks, Lew. I’ve got work to do And right now I’ve got to get back.”
“You’ll like Reds. For her, life is strictly for kicks. You finish up, come over to the house tonight. She’ll maybe be there.”
Steve shook hands with Ricky and left. He felt as if he were being drawn inevitably into the vortex of a whirlpool. He had slipped over the edge. It was impossible to return. The only possible future was to go around and around — and steadily down. Lew, Ricky, Reds. Irene — a whole new conscienceless environment where the only standard was hunger, and the only position that of the eater or the eaten.
He left the office early, and he knew it was another childish gesture of defiance. He drove through town and parked, on impulse, near a strange bar. He went in and ordered a highball. He sat alone morosely and thought of the trap he was in. He told himself he wouldn’t be committed until he actually took the first definite step that would result in one piece of equipment being diverted to Vogeling Brothers. And yet, in all practical aspects, he knew he was already committed. He had more to drink, and found he could not get Gloria out of his mind. The doctor’s playmate. Her face was vivid in his mind. The highballs jangled in his head, roared in his ears.
He got change and went to the phone booth. He phoned Valley Vale. A woman with a rusty-sounding voice answered. “Let me speak to Miss Hess,” he said thickly.
“I am sorry, but she is not on duty. Who is this, please?”
“Personal call. Steve Dalvin calling. Where can I phone her?”
“Just a moment. I can give you her private number, sir.”
She gave him the number, and he repeated it after her. He dialed that number. The phone rang five times before Gloria answered it. Her voice was sleepy.
“Yes? Who is it, please?”
“I’m making a survey of imaginary butterflies. Counting them, one and all.”
“Steve! What’s the matter? You sound so odd.”
“I sound a little drunk, you think? You know, come to think of it, I might sound a little drunk because I happen to be a little drunk.”
“Don’t get like that and phone me, Steve. Please.”
“Point number one. It has occurred to me as I sit here, immersed in sorrow, that there is no one to talk to. No one to tell my troubles to. So I must tell them, perhaps, to the person I thought you were. Does that make sense?”
“Troubles, Steve?”
He laughed a bit harshly. “You and that happy crew you’ve signed up with are experts in the trouble department. Tell them, darling, that I’m disobeying Lew Prade’s direct orders to stay away from you. Tell them that. He says you are the doctor’s hobby.”
“You are drunk,” she said tartly.
He was suddenly vastly annoyed. “Little Miss Innocence. All the time you knew. While you were thanking me for the lovely flowers in your cool and lovely voice. And in the miraculous drugstore. Every minute you knew. You are a cold cookie, Gloria. A little thing like death doesn’t touch you nurse-types. does it? Now, back off a little, because I am about to hang up with one hell of a bang—”