"Has she been famous long?"
"No. Not particularly. You remember Jane Russell. That big build-up about _The Outlaw_."
"No," Vic said. Ragle also shook his head.
"Anyhow," Black said, clearly perturbed but trying not to show it, "they've got the machinery going. Making a star out of her overnight." He stopped talking and came over to see the magazine. "What is this?" he asked. "Can I look at it, or is it secret?"
"Let him see it," Ragle said.
After he had studied the magazine Black said, "Well, it's been a few years. Maybe she's dropped out of sight already. But when Junie and I were going together, before we were married, we used to go to the drive-in movies, and I remember seeing this _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ that the article mentions."
In the direction of the kitchen, Vic shouted, "Hey honey -- Bill Black's heard of her."
Margo appeared, drying a blue willow plate. "Has he? Well then I guess that clears that up."
"Clears what up?" Black asked.
"We had a theory we were experimenting with," Margo said.
"What theory?"
Ragle said, "It seemed to the three of us that something had gone wrong."
"Where?" Black said. "I don't get what you mean."
None of them said anything, then.
"What else have you got to show me?" Black said.
"Nothing," Ragle said.
"They found a phone book," Margo said. "Along with the magazines. Part of a phone book."
"Where did you find all these?"
Ragle said, "What the hell do you care?"
"I don't care," Black said. "I just think you're out of your mind." He sounded more and more angry. "Let's have a look at the phone book."
Vic got the book and handed it to him. Black sat down and leafed through it, with the same frenetic expression on his face. "What's there about this?" he said. "It's from upstate. They don't use these numbers any more." He slapped the book shut and tossed it on the table; it started to slide off, to the floor, and Vic rescued it. "I'm surprised at the three of you," Black said. "Especially you, Margo." Reaching out his hand he grabbed the phone book away from Vic, got to his feet, and started to the front door. "I'll bring this back to you in a day or so. I want to go through it and see if I can track down some kids Junie went to Cortez High with. There's a whole flock of them she can't find; they're probably married by now. Mostly girls." The front door closed after him and he was gone.
"He certainly got upset," Margo said after a pause.
"Hard to know what to make of that," Vic said.
Ragle wondered if he ought to go after Bill Black and get the telephone book back. But apparently it was worthless. So he did not.
Hopping mad, Bill Black flung open the front door of his house and ran past his wife to the phone.
"What's wrong?" Junie asked. "Did you have a fight with them? With Ragle?" She came up close beside him as he dialed Lowery's number. "Tell me what happened. Did you have it out with Ragle? I want to know what he said. If he said there had ever been anything between us, he's a liar."
"Beat it," he said to her. "Please, Junie. For Christ's sake. This is business." He glared at her until she gave up and went off.
"Hello," Lowery's voice sounded in his ear.
Black squatted on his haunches, holding the receiver close to his mouth so that Junie couldn't hear. "I was over there," he said. "They got their hands on a phone book, a current or nearly current one. I've got it, now. I managed to wangle it away from them; I still don't know how."
"Did you find out where they got it?"
"No," he admitted, "I got sore and left. It really threw me, walking in there and having them say, 'Hey Black -- you ever heard of a woman named Marilyn Monroe,' and then trotting out a couple of battered, weather-beaten old magazines and flashing them in my face. That was a miserable few minutes." He was still trembling and perspiring; holding the phone with his shoulder he succeeded in getting his cigarettes and lighter from his pocket. The lighter slipped from his hand and rolled out of reach; he gazed after it resignedly.
"Oh I see," Lowery said. "They don't have Marilyn Monroe. It didn't get fitted in."
"No," he said.
"You say the magazines and phone book were weatherbeaten."
"Yes," he said. "Very."
"Then they must have found them in a garage or outdoors. I think probably in that old bombed-out armory the county used to maintain. The rubble is still there; you people never cleared it."
"We can't!" Black said. "It's county property; it's up to them. And anyhow there's nothing there. Just cement blocks and the drainage system that carried off the r.a. wastes."
"You better get a city work truck and a few men and pave those lots. Put a fence up."
"We've been trying to get permission from the county," he said. "Anyhow I don't think they found the stuff there. If they did -- and I say if -- it's because somebody salted the ground, there."
"Enriched, you mean," Lowery said.
"Yes, a few nuggets."
"Maybe so."
"So if we pave over the lots, whoever they are will just enrich a little closer home. And why would Vic or Margo or Ragle be poking around those lots? They're half a mile across town, and--" Then he recalled Margo's petition. That possibly explained it. "Maybe you're right," he said. "Forget it." Or the boy Sammy. Well, it didn't matter. He had the phone book back.
"You don't think they looked up anything in it while they had it, do you?" Lowery said. "Besides the numbers they tried to call."
Black knew what he meant. "Nobody looks themselves up," he said. "That's the one thing nobody ever turns to, his own number."
"You have the book there?"
"Yes."
"Read me what he would have found."
Balancing the phone, Bill Black turned the tattered, watercrumbled pages of the phone book until he got to the Rs. There it was, all right.
Ragle Gumm Inc., Branch 25 Kentwood 6 0457
Between 5 P.M. and 8 A.M. Walnut 4 3965
Shipping dept. Roosevelt 2 1181
Floor One Bridgefield 8 4290
Floor Two Bridgefield 8 4291
Floor Three Bridgefield 8 4292
Receiving dept. Walnut 4 3882
Emergency Sherman 1 9000
"I wonder what he would have done if he had happened to turn to it," Black said.
"God only knows. Gone into a catatonic coma, most likely." Black tried to imagine the conversation, if Ragle Gumm had found the number and called it -- any of the numbers listed under Ragle Gumm Inc. Branch 25. What a weird conversation that would be, he thought. Almost impossible to imagine.
six
The next day, after he arrived home from school, Sammy Nielson carried his still-malfunctioning crystal set from the house, through the back yard, to the locked clubhouse.
Over the door of the clubhouse was a sign his dad had got for him down at the store. The man who did the lettering for the store had made it.
NO FASCISTS, NAZIS, COMMUNISTS,
FALANGISTS, PERONISTS, FOLLOWERS
OF HLINKA AND/OR BELA KUN ALLOWED
Both his father and his uncle insisted that it was the best sign to have, so he had nailed it up.
With his key he unlocked the padlock on the door and carried the crystal set inside. After he was in he bolted the door after him, and, with a match, lit the kerosene lantern. Then he removed the plugs from the peep-slots in the walls and watched for a time to see if any of the enemy was sneaking up on him.