His son had beaten a whore to death, and she'd killed him; and he'd never be able to live it down. Not if he lived to be a hundred and I damned well hoped he would.
I ate part of a clubhouse sandwich, but it didn't seem to set so well. So I fixed another big drink and took it over to the window. I felt kind of restless and uneasy. I wished I could get out and wander around the town.
Fort Worth is the beginning of West Texas, and I wouldn't have felt conspicuous, dressed as I was, like I would have in Dallas or Houston. I could have had a fine time-seen something new for a change. And instead I had to stay here by myself, doing nothing, seeing nothing, thinking the same old thoughts.
It was like there was a plot against me almost. I'd done something wrong, way back when I was a kid, and I'd never been able to get away from it. I'd had my nose rubbed in it day after day until, like an overtrained dog, I'd started crapping out of pure fright. And, now, here I was- I poured another drink…
– Here I was, now, but it wouldn't be like this much longer. Joyce was bound to die if she wasn't dead already. I'd got rid of her and I'd got rid of it-the sickness-when I did it. And just as soon as things quieted down, I'd quit my job and sell the house and Dad's practice and pull out.
Amy Stanton? Well-I shook my head-she wasn't going to stop me. She wasn't going to keep me chained there in Central City. I didn't know just how I'd break away from her, but I knew darned well that I would.
Some way. Somehow.
More or less to kill time, I took a long hot bath; and afterwards I tried the sandwiches and coffee again. I paced around the room, eating and drinking coffee, moving from window to window. I wished we weren't up so high so's I could see a little something.
I tried taking a nap, and that was no good. I got a shine cloth out of the bathroom and began rubbing at my boots. I'd got one brushed up real good and was starting on the toe of the second when Bob Maples came in.
He said hello, casually, and fixed himself a drink. He sat down, looking into the glass, twirling the ice around and around.
"I was sure sorry about what happened there at the airport, Bob," I said. "I reckon you know I wanted to stick with you."
"Yeah," he said, shortly.
"I let Conway know I didn't like it," I said.
And he said, "Yeah," again. "Forget it. Just drop it, will you?"
"Well, sure,"I nodded. "Whatever you say, Bob."
I watched him out of the corner of my eye, as I went ahead rubbing the boot. He acted mad and worried, almost disgusted you might say. But I was pretty sure it wasn't over anything I'd done. In fact, I couldn't see that Conway had done enough to upset him like this.
"Is your rheumatism bothering you again?" I said. "Why don't you face around on the straight chair where I can get at your shoulder muscles, and I'll-"
He raised his head and looked up at me. And his eyes were clear, but somehow there seemed to be tears behind them. Slowly, slowly, like he was talking to himself, he began to speak.
"I know what you are, don't I, Lou? Know you backwards and forwards. Known you since you was kneehigh to a grasshopper, and I never knowed a bad thing about you. Know just what you're goin' to say and do, no matter what you're up against. Like there at the airport- seeing Conway order me around. A lot of men in your place would have got a big bang out of that, but I knew you wouldn't. I knew you'd feel a lot more hurt about it than I did. That's the way you are, and you wouldn't know how to be any other way…"
"Bob," I said. "You got something on your mind, Bob?"
"It'll keep," he said. "I reckon it'll have to keep for a while. I just wanted you to know that I–I-"
"Yes, Bob?"
"It'll keep," he repeated. "Like I said, it'll have to keep." And he clinked the ice in his glass, staring down at it. "That Howard Hendricks," he went on. "Now, Howard ought to've known better'n to put you through that foolishness this morning. 'Course, he's got his job to do, same as I got mine, and a man can't let friendship stand in the way of duty. But-"
"Oh, hell, Bob," I said. "I didn't think anything of that."
"Well, I did. I got to thinking about it this afternoon after we left the airport. I thought about how you'd have acted if you'd have been in my place and me in yours. Oh, I reckon you'd have been pleasant and friendly, because that's the way you're built. But you wouldn't have left any doubt as to where you stood. You'd have said, 'Look, now, Bob Maples is a friend of mine, and I know he's straight as a string. So if there's something we want to know, let's just up and ask him. Let's don't play no little two-bit sheepherders' tricks on him like he was on one side of the fence and we was on the other.'… That's what you'd have done. But me-Well, I don't know, Lou. Maybe I'm behind the times. Maybe I'm getting too old for this job."
It looked to me like he might have something there. He was getting old and unsure of himself, and Conway had probably given him a hell of a riding that I didn't know about.
"You had some trouble at the hospital, Bob?" I said.
"Yeah," he hesitated. "I had some trouble." He got up and poured more whiskey into his glass. Then, he moved over to the window and stood rocking on his heels, his back turned to me. "She's dead, Lou. She never came out of the ether."
"Well," I said. "We all knew she didn't stand a chance. Everyone but Conway, and he was just too stubborn to see reason."
He didn't say anything. I walked over to the window by him and put my arm around his shoulders.
"Look, Bob," I said. "I don't know what Conway said to you, but don't let it get you down. Where the hell does he get off at, anyway? He wasn't even going to have us come along on this trip; we had to deal ourselves in. Then, when we got back here, he wants us to jump whenever he hollers frog, and he raises hell when things don't go to suit him."
He shrugged a little, or maybe he just took a deep breath. I let my arm slide from his shoulders, hesitated a moment, thinking he was about to say something, then went into the bathroom and closed the door. When a man's feeling low, sometimes the best thing to do is leave him alone.
I sat down on the edge of the tub, and lighted a cigar. I sat thinking-standing outside of myself-thinking about myself and Bob Maples. He'd always been pretty decent to me, and I liked him. But no more, I suppose, than I liked a lot of other people. When it came right down to cases, he was just one of hundreds of people I knew and was friendly with. And yet here I was, fretting about his problems instead of my own.
Of course, that might be partly because I'd known my problems were pretty much settled. I'd known that Joyce couldn't live, that she wasn't going to talk. She might have regained consciousness for a while, but she sure as hell wouldn't have talked; not after what had happened to her face… But knowing that I was safe couldn't entirely explain my concern for him. Because I'd been damned badly rattled after the murder, I hadn't been able to reason clearly, to accept the fact that I had to be safe. Yet I'd tried to help the Greek's boy, Johnnie Pappas.
The door slammed open, and I looked up. Bob grinned at me broadly, his face flushed, whiskey slopping to the floor from his glass.
"Hey," he said, "you runnin' out on me, Lou? Come on in here an' keep me company."
"Sure, Bob," I said. "Sure, I will." And I went back into the living room with him. He flopped down into a chair, and he drained his drink at a gulp.
"Let's do something, Lou. Let's go out and paint old cow town red. Just me'n you, huh?"
"What about Conway?"
"T'hell with him. He's got some business here; stayin' over for a few days. We'll check our bags somewheres, so's we won't have to run into him again, and then we'll have a party."