“Phone,” Joey said.
“Who?” Marcie asked.
“Do I usually ask who?” Joey barked. “And you can tell the girls for me that this is the last time any of you are getting calls up front. Use the pay telephone. That’s what it’s for.”
“Yes.” Marcie slid past him.
She looked out of place in the club, Higgins decided. Not too innocent, exactly, or too young. Just earnest and humorless and proud. A one-track mind and that track a career. Her eyes were harder than Mamie’s.
She gave Higgins another fleeting glance and walked swiftly through the door. There was a small passageway and then the main room itself. She stayed close to the wall. The tables this far from the floor were not full and no one noticed her.
Joey’s office was a dingy cubbyhole beside the checkroom, furnished with a secondhand desk, a swivel chair, a paint-peeled filing cabinet and a small safe. Joey never spent money where it didn’t show.
Marcie closed the door behind her and picked up the phone, leaning against the desk. For an instant she couldn’t speak, then she drew in her breath and said softly, “Hello.”
“Hello. Marcie?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Johnny.”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“You don’t sound very happy about it,” Johnny said. “Anything the matter?”
“Matter?” The phone trembled in her hand. “Oh, no, nothing’s the matter! Except that you had to drag me into this mess!”
“Marcie, for God’s sake!”
“And don’t you swear at me,” she said shrilly. “This is going to ruin me, do you understand? If I get mixed up in this I’ll never get another chance. Can’t you leave me alone?”
“Of course,” Johnny said. “Of course.”
He hung up quietly. For a minute he stood smiling dryly at the mouthpiece as if it were Marcie herself. Well anyway, thank God there were no policemen listening in to that one.
He walked out of the kitchen, hot damning her or saying to hell with her, simply turning a page in his mind. She wants me to let her alone. So I’ll let her alone.
He went back to Alice and Philip in the drawing room. The three of them had been there all evening. They had been asked not to leave the house, so they had sat talking, discussing, plunging into the uneasy silences, gnawing at each other’s nerves. They had gone over everything Sands had asked and everything they had answered.
“Well?” Alice said.
“I phoned her,” Johnny said slowly, “and she made it clear that I wasn’t to phone again. I think I’d like a drink.”
“You’ll have to make it yourself,” Alice said. “Maurice is in bed.”
“I can ring for Ida.”
She said sharply, “Make it yourself. I don’t want Ida around any more tonight. I’ve given her notice. She’ll be leaving sometime tomorrow.”
“Then she might as well make herself useful tonight.” Johnny rang the bell. “Phil, relax for once and join me.”
“No, thanks.” Philip didn’t raise his head. He was sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair, his hands grasping the arms of the chair, his feet planted firmly on the floor. Only his neck seemed to have weakened sand could not support his head.
He looks ridiculous, Alice thought, so comically dignified. Even though there was no one there to laugh at him she couldn’t let him stay like that. She must sting him into moving.
“Have a drink,” she said. “You won’t sleep well tonight, will you, Philip?” He didn’t move or speak. “Philip, will you hand me...?” She couldn’t think of anything for him to hand her. She put her hand up to her mouth.
Johnny stared at her. “What’s the matter with you tonight?”
Her anger at Philip for looking foolish and at herself for not being able to stop him, instantly transferred itself to Johnny.
“Nothing,” she said gratingly. “Nothing’s the matter with me. I didn’t know anyone considered me human enough to have something the matter!”
“You talk like a damned spinster.”
“That’s what I am! Exactly. A damned spinster. On behalf of my class, Johnny, I thank you, because you’ve done a lot for spinsters. More, I think, than your share, and perhaps not in the approved fashion...”
“Keep quiet,” Johnny said harshly. “If anyone needs a drink you do. I don’t know what’s got into you.”
Alice threw back her head and laughed. She stopped as abruptly as she had begun and when she turned to Johnny the tears were wriggling down her cheeks like bright worms.
“Sex,” she said. “I guess that’s what’s got into me. Go ahead and look pained, Johnny. It’s a word I’m not supposed to know, isn’t it? Everybody else can know it but not Alice. It might interfere with my duties as housekeeper and nursemaid. Well, I’ve had a lot of experience in this house. I could go out now and manage a hotel, an orphanage, an insane asylum or a home for wayward girls! Come in.”
Ida bumped the door open with her rear and bounced across the room. The tray tinkled, the glasses skated, Ida’s breasts rode her in cross-rhythm like twin riders on a galloping horse.
She set the tray down on the small table beside Alice.
“Here’s the drinks,” she said, “ma’am.”
“Thank you,” Alice said. “That will be all.”
Ida had intended to go directly and peacefully to bed, but she felt the crack of the whip in Alice’s voice and it stung her into defiance. She was just as good as Alice was. Alice had no power over her; she, Ida could say whatever she wanted to, and if they tried force to get her out she’d simply go and tell the police. She’d have the law on them.
Though Ida’s alliance with the law was new, having begun that morning when a policeman smiled at her, it was as strong as her allegiance to God. It made her swell with power. She had God and the law on her side, she was strong enough now to stand up to Alice.
But she was too cautious to attack directly. She said, “A terrible tragedy. That’s what the policemen said and that’s what I say, a terrible tragedy.”
She looked expectantly around the room. Neither of the men paid any attention to her.
Alice said curtly, “Have you packed your bags?”
Her voice slapped the blood into Ida’s face. “Well, and if that’s all the thanks I get for my sympathy...”
“You may go to your room. We won’t be needing you any longer.”
“And don’t think I didn’t hear what you said about me being a wayward girl! I could have the law on you! Nobody can ever say anything about my morals.”
“I’m sure of it,” Alice said.
Johnny said gravely, “Morels. An edible fungus found on the twenty-fourth of May.”
Philip smiled slightly. Ida watched them, speechless with rage. They were laughing at her. These people, for all they were on the wrong side of God and the law, were laughing at her.
“You’ll laugh on the other side of your faces,” she said at last. But her voice wasn’t as loud as she meant it to be. To make up for it she swung round with an exaggerated gesture of defiance, a toss of her head, a lift of one shoulder and a little wag of her buttocks.
Alice called her back sharply.
“Ida!”
Ida stopped but didn’t turn her head.
“I don’t want any more threats or hints from you, Ida,” Alice said quietly. “It might help you to keep your mouth shut if I tell you that one of the policemen found traces of morphine on Kelsey’s hands. You know what that means, Ida. It means that she tried to kill herself. And where did she get the morphine, Ida?”
Ida turned and ran down the hall. Alice followed her as far as the door, shouting, “From you! She got it from you! You helped her!”