“You ought to stay,” he said. “I’ll tell you, I’d like to have dinner with you tonight. I have to get moving now, I’m late for an appointment as it is, but I’d like to go over this with you and perhaps get a fuller picture. It might be worth your while if you spent an extra day here.”
“Well—”
“And there’s a really fine restaurant out on Route 17. Marvelous food. Could you stay?”
He talked me into it. He signaled the waiter and took the check. I didn’t fight him for it.
I divided the rest of the afternoon between a barbershop down the street from the hotel and a tavern next door to the barbershop where I nursed a Würzburger and watched a ball game on television. When I got back to the hotel there was a message for me to call Mr. Gunderman. I went to my room and called him.
“Glad I reached you, John. Listen, I’m in a bind as far as tonight is concerned. There’s a fund-raising dinner that I’m involved in and it slipped my mind completely this afternoon. Then I thought I could get out of it but it turns out that I can’t. They’ve decided that I’m the indispensable man or something.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I was looking forward to it.”
“So was I.” He paused, then swung into gear. “I’ll tell you — I really did want to see you, and now I’ve gone and gotten you to stay over and all. How would it be if I sent my secretary to sub for me? I don’t know if you noticed, but she’s easy on the eyes.”
“I noticed.”
He chuckled. “I can imagine. Now look — you don’t have a car, do you?”
“No, I flew in and then took a cab. I could have rented a car at the airport, I suppose, but I didn’t bother.”
“Well, Evvie drives. She’ll pick you up at your hotel at six, is that all right? And then you and I can get together in the morning.”
“That sounds fine,” I said.
I spruced up for my date. I remembered the dark brown hair and the brown eyes and the shape of that long tall body, and I combed my newly trimmed hair very carefully and splashed a little after-shave gunk on my face. I took off the blue tie and put on one with a little more authority to it.
There was a Western Union office down the block, sandwiched in between the Southern Tier Realty Corp. and a small loan company. I got a message blank and sent a wire collect to Mr. Douglas Rance at the Barnstable Corporation, 3119 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
I wired: ALL GOES WELL. PROSPECT DUBIOUS AT FIRST BUT HAVE HOPES OF SUCCESSFUL TRANSACTION. STAYING IN OLEAN OVERNIGHT. JOHN HAYDEN.
Then I went back to the Olean House to wait for Evvie.
Two
It was the tail end of July when Doug Rance dropped around to see me. I didn’t even recognize him at first. It had been a good eight or nine years since we had seen each other, and we were never close, never worked together. Now he was about thirty-three to my forty-two. Before, when I’d known him, he was just a raw kid and I was an old hand.
It was a Wednesday night, around twelve-thirty. I was working the four-to-midnight swing at the Boulder Bowl, and the night had been a slow one. The bowling leagues ease off during the summer months and open bowling only gets a heavy play on the weekends. By eleven-thirty the place was just about empty. I rolled a pair of unimpressive games, helped the kid with the mop-up, and made a note for Harry to call AMF in the morning and tell them one of their automatic pin-spotters had died on us. I locked up a few minutes after twelve, had a short beer around the corner, and walked the rest of the way to my room on Merrimac.
When I got there, Rance was waiting for me. He was sitting on a chair with his legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. He got up when I walked in and gave me a large grin.
“The door was open,” he said.
“I don’t lock it.”
I was trying to place him. He was about my height with a lot of curly black hair and a smile that came easy. A very good-looking guy. Ladies’-man looks. He crossed the room and stuck out his hand and I took it. “You don’t make me, do you? It’s been a while.”
And then I did. The first image that jumped into my mind was of a young, good-looking guy standing up straight and listening pop-eyed while Ray Warren and Pappy Lee bragged about a sweet chickie-bladder con they had pulled off in Spokane. He wasn’t that young now, or that fresh. Well, neither was I.
“You’re looking good,” he said.
“Well, thanks.”
We stood around looking at each other for a few seconds. Then he said, “Say, I picked up a bottle around the corner. I didn’t know what you’re drinking these days but I got Scotch. Is that okay?”
“It’s fine.”
“If you’ve got a couple glasses—”
I found two water glasses and went down the hall to the john and rinsed them out. He poured a few fingers of Cutty Sark into them and we sat down. He took the chair, I stretched out on the bed and put my feet up. It was good Scotch.
I asked him how he’d found me.
“Well, I was in Vegas, Johnny. I asked around, and somebody said you were here in Boulder. Something about your working at a bowling alley. I went over to the place but I didn’t want to bother you. One of the kids told me where you were living and I came on over.”
“Why did you come?”
“To see you.”
“Just to talk over old times?”
He laughed. “Is that a bad idea?”
“It’s a funny reason to come this far.”
“I guess it is. No, I’ve got business with you, Johnny, but let’s let it wait for now. I was surprised as hell when they told me you were here. I’ve never been to Colorado before. You like it here?”
“Very much.”
“How’d you happen to pick it?”
I told him I’d grown up not far from here, just across the border in New Mexico, a smallish town called Springer. “Like elephants, I guess. Going home to die.”
“Nothing wrong with you, is there?”
“No, I was just talking.” I worked on the Scotch. “I would have gone to New Mexico, maybe, but I’ve got a record there and it didn’t seem like a good idea. This is about the same kind of country.”
“A hell of a lot of mountains. I flew to Denver and drove up in a Hertz car. Mountains and open spaces.”
“You can get pretty hungry for open spaces.”
“Yes, I guess you can. Was it very bad, Johnny?”
“Yes, it was very bad.” He offered me a cigarette. I took it and lit it. “It was very bad,” I said.
“I can imagine.”
“Have you ever been inside?”
“Three times. Twice for thirty days, once for ninety.”
“Then you can’t imagine,” I said. “Then you can’t have the vaguest goddamned idea about it.”
He didn’t say anything. I reached for the bottle and he gave it to me. I poured a lot of Scotch in my glass and looked at it for a few seconds before drinking it. I felt like talking now. I’d been out for eight months, and ever since I got out of California I hadn’t run across anybody who was with it. Conversation with straight people is limited — you can’t talk about the library at San Quentin, or about the first long con you worked, or about any of the things that made up your life for so many years. You can drink with them and gab with them, but you have to keep a lid on the major portion of yourself.
“I was in Q,” I said. “I did seven years. You couldn’t know what it was like. I didn’t know, not until I was in. San Quentin’s a model prison, you know. Recreational facilities, a good library, and the guards don’t beat you up at night. There’s only one thing wrong with the place. There’s this cell, and there are these iron bars, and they lock that door and you have to stay inside. That’s all. You have to stay inside.