“But... but... but—”
“Get over here on the double, you clown!” She hung up.
A little word started bounding about in the back of his mind. It was made of fat little letters, fabric letters, stuffed. NINNY. The fabric, curiously, was the same shade of pink as the face of the lecher rabbit centered on Miss Farnham’s gossamer funsuit. He squared his shoulders. He walked carefully around the broiling brutal confusion of cops, sailors and horse players in the front of the lobby, deaf to the resonant tock of hickory against bone, and took the single cab in front.
As they pulled away, the driver said, “Like they got Saturday night on Monday afternoon in there, huh?”
“What?”
“The riot, man!”
“Sorry, I didn’t notice it particularly.”
After a long silence the driver said, “I don’t know what the hell kind of date you got, mister. All I know is I wisht I had it.”
He had trouble finding the address. It was a crooked little bayfront street, more alley than street. The building had been added onto in random fashion over the years, and each segment of it seemed to sag in a different direction. Apartment Four, when he finally found it, was one flight up, via an open iron stairway bolted to the side of the building. The door was painted an orange so bright it seemed deafening. Over the bell was lettered b. sabbith. He was tempted to press the doorframe with his thumb an inch below the bell, wait ten seconds, then flee down the staircase. “Ninny,” he whispered and pressed the bell. There was a tiny porthole in the door. A green eye looked out at him. The door swung open.
“Come in and look at this creepy place,” she said. She was in stretch pants again. Plaid. And a sleeveless blue blouse. Barefoot. Cigarette in the corner of her mouth. Toffee hair in harsh disarray.
Most of the apartment was a big studio room. He saw a kitchen alcove and a single door which had to lead to a bath. Glass doors opened out onto a tiny breakfast porch.
She stood, hipshot, and included the whole decor in one wave of her arm. “Observe. Rugs to your ankles. Strategic lighting. Cutie little hearth with, for God’s sake, a dynel tiger skin in front of it. Any chair you sit in, you need a helping hand to get out of. That damned bed is nine by nine, and twenty inches high. I measured it. The little library is all erotica. Seventeen mirrors. I counted. Thirty-one pillows. Counted them, too. In the way of groceries, one-half box of stale crackers, one-half box of stale puffed wheat, twenty-one cans of cocktail goodies, two bottles gin, fourteen bottles wine. Make a wild guess, Winter. What is Bernie’s hobby?”
“Uh... philately?”
She spun and grinned at him. “You come on slow, but sort of nice, Kirby. I figured you for a fatal case of the dulls. Maybe not. I recommend this couch over here. It’s the only thing you can get out of without a hoist. It must have come with the place.” She sat down, patted the place beside her and said, “The detailed report, friend.”
He told her all, with a little editing here and there. She seemed quieter, more thoughtful than the last time he had talked to her. “What’s the stuff you had stored?”
“Just personal junk. Books, records, photographs. Tennis stuff. Hunting stuff. Even a pair of ice skates.”
“That’s a nice touch. Ice skates. That’ll make them very happy. But we are forwarder. Now you know for sure they want something. Uncle’s personal records. The clue to the edge he had over the competition. And you say there aren’t any records at all. Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Could the Farnham broad have something tucked away? She sounds desperately loyal.”
“I doubt it.”
“Charla and Joseph are going to be very irritable, Kirby. But I think they’ll think you’re still the best link to what they want. And I don’t think they know exactly what they do want. But they want it bad. Badly enough so they shouldn’t treat you too badly. You sure you didn’t give them my address? While drunk?”
“If I had, they wouldn’t be trying to find out.”
“They don’t want us to get together on this. They’d rather deal with a goof, not somebody I’ve toughened up for them.”
“I don’t care much for that word, Betsy.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, be honest with yourself. If I hadn’t planted the seeds of suspicion, Charla’d have you on a leash by now, trotting you around, scratching you behind the ears, tying your new ascots, and giving you the slow strip and tease routine, until you wouldn’t be able to remember your name if somebody asked you quick.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“You just don’t know Aunt Charla. Hell, where are we? I think you ought to trudge on back there and play cute. Make out you know what they’re after. Admit you tricked them. Say you’ll listen to an offer. Maybe then we’ll get a better clue as to what they really want, if they know.”
“I don’t think I’m very good at this sort of thing.”
“I know you’re not very good at it. But hang in there. I think we might get some volunteer help. Bernie’s coming down soon with a crew and some models and so on to do some commercials here. Mad ones all. Maybe they’ll help us add a little more confusion to the deal.”
“Do we need more?”
“Poor Kirby.”
“The thing is, in eleven years you get sick of dealing with people you know you’ll never see again. I kept wanting to get out. I had this idea of maybe finding a town way off a main road with maybe twenty-eight people in it, so I would know them and they would know me, tomorrow, next year, ten years from now. I could stop trying to remember names and faces. And I’d know where I was before I woke up in the morning, instead of figuring it out afterward.”
“With me,” she said, “it’s a dream of being back in that school. I was there for six years, you know. From nine to fifteen, the longest I’ve ever been anywhere. And I dream a class is leaving and I have to leave too, and I’m crying. But then they take me out of the line and I know I can stay, and it’s the most wonderful thing. All the others are marching away, but they’re going to keep me.”
“But they didn’t.”
“Charla came in a car big as a freight engine, with a driver in uniform and an English Lady Something with her who made a horrible snorting sound when she laughed. I was supposed to be in a play at school, but they didn’t give a damn. They drove me to Paris and bought me a lot of clothes. We met some other people there, and then we all flew to Cairo.”
“Sometimes you have more accent.”
“I can get rid of every trace of it when I have to.”
“Could Charla have arranged to have my uncle’s places — robbed?”
“Why not? It isn’t her usual style. It’s a bit crude, and probably quite expensive. But she has the pragmatic approach.”
“They won’t be able to get that letter.”
“They can afford to wait a year. And all you got was a keepsake.”
He took the watch from his pocket. She reached over and took it from him. “A real grandpa kind of watch.” Before he could stop her, she looked through the little gold telescope.
“Happy days,” she said in a tired voice. “Don’t let Bernie see this. It’s all this apartment needs. There’s room on that wall for a mural.” She took another look. “They make this junk in Japan. A girl in school had a candybox full. Hers were all set in rings.” She handed the watch back to him. Just as he put it back into his pocket, she leaned toward him, reached toward him. Because of his humiliating flight from Wilma’s apartment, he had resolved to fight fire with fire. He reached toward Betsy. His aim was defective. His palm slid into and across an abrupt nubbin of breast, frank and firm under the blue blouse as an apple in the sun. And he saw a glimpse of teeth in something not a smile, and something flashed and smashed against the left side of his face. The sudden pain filled his eyes with tears. She was a blur. As vision cleared he saw her looking gravely at him as she sucked her knuckles. With the tip of his tongue he isolated the metallic crumb in his mouth, moved it out to his lips, plucked it out and stared at it. It was a piece of filling. It made a small clinking sound as he dropped it into the ashtray.