Dead on the Level (13 page)

“You didn’t write,” she said at last. “I thought you was dead. I burned candles by the church.”

“I came close to being dead a couple of times. I was in the war.”

“That’s what John said. When you went away without saying a thing to nobody he told me, ‘Don’t expect Casimir to come back. He’s gone to war.’ But I looked for you to come back anyway. I always looked; but you didn’t come.”

She was on her feet now but Casey hadn’t moved closer and she didn’t leave the table, maybe because she needed it to lean against. He felt terrible to be standing there like that, but what’s to be said when you’ve gone so far away there’s no returning except with the body? Casey clenched his fists. He shouldn’t have come back. He should have stayed away and let Ma burn her candles, they might give her some comfort. But then, suddenly, she was coming around the end of the table and standing very close to him, measuring, feeding on him with her eyes. Not until she was very close did he realize that her eyes were wet.

“You’re bigger,” she said.

“I guess I did put on a few pounds.”

“You look fine. You feel all right?”

“Sure, Ma. I feel great.”

“You didn’t get hurt in the war?”

“A few scratches. I was lucky.”

“I burned candles,” she reminded.

She was still measuring him, but now her eyes narrowed and Casey could see the questions forming even before she spoke.

“You’re in trouble?”

“No trouble, Ma.”

“I seen you in trouble before. You look the same way.”

“There’s no trouble, I tell you! I was just passing through—”

But now she wasn’t even listening; she was staring at something behind his shoulder. Casey turned around. For a few minutes he had actually forgotten Phyllis, but here she was standing in the kitchen doorway with a lost, lonely look in her eyes. She tried to smile, then walked over and slipped an arm through one of his own. Casey cleared his throat.

“Ma,” he said, “this is Paula. (They had decided on that name back in the car.) This is my wife.”

It was the first time he used that word and it gave him a peculiar feeling. He expected Ma to say something, anything, but she didn’t. She just stood there staring at Phyllis until he felt a swift surge of panic that she might have recognized her from the pictures in the newspapers. But Ma’s eyes weren’t good and she never read anything but the community news in the Polish-language press.

“How do you do, Mrs. Morokowski,” Phyllis managed. “I’m so happy to meet you at last.”

Ma touched the outstretched hand with limpid fingers. “I’m Mrs. Posda,” she said curtly. “Casimir should have told you.”

“We’ve only been married a few days,” Casey said quickly.

“So?”

They were all standing under the bright overhead light of the kitchen, and there was no way of hiding what Ma was staring at so intently. Phyllis wasn’t wearing gloves and the third finger of her left hand, placed so conspicuously on Casey’s arm, looked naked without a wedding band. It was an oversight neither of them had noticed before. Phyllis had done well to provide herself with a groom on such short notice, let alone a ring, but it was exactly the kind of thing Ma would see and keep to herself along with her own suspicions. Casey pulled away and tried to change the subject.

“You’re looking good, Ma,” he said. “John’s looking good, too. I guess the place keeps him busy.”

“You need money?” Ma asked.

There really was no reason for that question to be so embarrassing. It was Ma’s way to blurt out whatever she happened to be thinking, and what if Phyllis did hear and smile to herself? What was that to Casey Morrow? “I don’t need a thing!” he snapped. “I told you we were passing through. If you don’t want us we can leave!”

And now he’d done it. The suspicion wouldn’t leave Ma’s eyes now, not even to make room for the hurt. He’d lashed back and betrayed himself, because Casimir never fought unless he was cornered. Ma knew that better than anybody in the world. It was then that Phyllis, quiet and watching through this whole ugly scene, stepped forward and slipped an arm about the older woman’s thick waist.

“Don’t mind him,” she said gently. “We’ve been driving all day and he’s tired. I’m afraid he’s just a regular bear when he’s tired. But of course we won’t stay if it’s going to put you to a lot of trouble.”

Now, at least, Casey knew enough to keep his mouth shut. Ma suddenly softened and grew misty about the eyes. She fussed with her apron and stared at the linoleum, but the bite was gone from her voice when she answered. “We don’t have nothing fancy,” she said, “but Casimir’s room is just like he left it. I guess maybe you could make out.”

SATURDAY WAS A BIG DAY. It was a big day for John, getting ready for the Saturday night trade; it was a big day for Ma, marketing and baking for the week-end, and it was, as it turned out, a very big day for Casey. First of all, he overslept, a result of sheer exhaustion after a night of battling the discomfort of the old reed rocker borrowed from the back porch. (No explanation given.) Phyllis, having enjoyed the comparative luxury of the brass bed, was bright and chipper, as he groped his way into the kitchen. She was wearing the blouse and skirt again, with a bright ribbon tying back her hair, and was elbow-deep in soapsuds.

“Casimir Morokowski,” she scolded the moment she laid eyes on him, “you get back in the bedroom and change that dirty shirt! I’m washing out some things in the sink. I might as well get that, too.”

Casey grinned. If she kept using that tone of voice on him, Ma would forget all about that missing wedding ring. And then he got the big idea. He could hardly wait to eat breakfast and get out of the house.

It was about five blocks from Big John’s to the place Casey wanted to go. It was beyond the supermarket, the secondhand store, and the poultry house; it was beyond the new drugstore, the fish market, and a couple of doors past Nick’s barbershop. It was a little narrow jewelry store that always used to be there, and still was. Casey stood outside looking at a tray full of silver and gold bands and then, feeling as nervous as a bridegroom, went in. He felt considerably better when he came out with the little box in his pocket.

“Casey! Casey Morokowski, you old sonova—”

Casey froze in his tracks. The shock of hearing anybody call him by the name he’d been using these past years was frightening until he remembered, sheepishly, that it was what the gang at school had always called him. Casey. That was how he’d happened to take the name. The rest was simple. At first he was just Moro, but everybody wanted to spell it another way and that was fine with Casey. It made Casimir Morokowski a lot easier to forget.

“I can’t believe it! Hell, fella, I thought you were pushing daisies somewhere!”

The face was familiar. Casey found himself staring at a man who was about his own age, almost six feet tall and about to burst the seams of a topcoat being held over for a third or fourth season. On one arm he held a small boy wearing a snow suit and a candy-smeared face, and the other was extended in greeting.

“Where’ve you been keeping yourself?” he boomed.

Now Casey had it. “Hello, Stan,” he said. “How are things with you?”

“Okay, fine. But what the hell have you been doing all this time?”

Stan—for the life of him Casey couldn’t recall the other name—had lived across the alley and downstairs. They had gone to school together, played baseball together—Stan was as good at sports as Casey was mediocre—and even palled around some after they got out of school. And here was Stan, with a few wrinkles and a suggestion of a double chin, pumping his hand and making like a long lost brother.

“I’ve been in California,” Casey said. “I just got back last night.”

He wanted to get away, but it was hopeless. He had to answer questions, and hear bits about people he’d all but forgotten and didn’t mind if he did. He had to say something flattering about the child with the candy on his face, and let him shake hands with sticky fingers.

“I guess you remember Wanda,” Stan said when a plump young woman came up from behind pushing a cart full of groceries. Remember Wanda? Sure, Casey remembered. She’d been a cute trick in high school, but she wasn’t wearing so well. Now it didn’t seem such a tragedy that he’d never worked up enough nerve to ask for a date. Now he wasn’t a bit sorry that Stan had beaten his time.

“And how about you?” Stan was saying. “Don’t tell me you’re still running around loose?”

“Me?” Casey grinned. This was going to be a pleasure. Little Casey Morokowski, who couldn’t catch a fly ball and couldn’t get a date. “Not quite,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’m on my honeymoon now.”

It was a mistake saying that. He realized it too late. To Stan and Wanda, that kind of news meant meeting the bride with appropriate celebration, and no amount of begging off would talk them out of it.
Damn Saturday night
, Casey thought, finally breaking away.
Damn people who remember faces and can’t mind their own business!
If anybody recognized Phyllis— And then he remembered the way she’d looked with her hair tied up in the bright ribbon, and her arms in the soapsuds, and wondered if anybody, even Casey Morrow, could recognize that girl as the missing Phyllis Brunner. She was different. It was more than a hair-do and a cheap blouse. She was really different.

By the time he had all that straight, Casey was again climbing the stairs to the flat over Big John’s. From the hall outside the kitchen, he could hear Phyllis chattering away with his mother as if she’d known her a lifetime, and it really wouldn’t have surprised him too much if she’d broken out in a stream of Polish. It was just another of the many things he couldn’t understand about Phyllis Brunner.

“Hi,” she said as he entered the kitchen. “Guess what? I’m learning some of your mother’s recipes.”

“You should have warned me,” Casey said. “I could have stopped at the drugstore and picked up some bicarbonate.”

Her laugh was contagious; even Ma was smiling.
Now
, Casey decided.
Now, while Ma’s looking
. He drew the little box out of his pocket and removed the new wedding ring.

“I told you that I’d have it cut down the first time we stopped long enough,” he improvised, holding it out to Phyllis. He was right. Ma was watching. He laughed. “Funny thing, Ma, we got married in such a hurry that I bought a ring a couple of sizes too large. Paula couldn’t keep the darned thing on.”

It had better fit now! Phyllis was looking at him in a peculiar way, and then she smiled and held out her hand.

“You put it on,” she said.

The ring fit perfectly. He’d been right about her hand; it was small, like a child’s, almost.
With this ring, I thee wed
— Casey didn’t speak the words; he heard them. They came like little bells in his head, and he dropped her hand quickly. It was crazy the idea he found himself getting lately.

But nothing was quite so crazy as the party held that night in Big John’s tavern. Stan and Wanda started it, showing up about eight with some more of the old gang, and Big John, never one to discourage festivities that made music on the cash register, donated the first barrel of beer himself. In addition to the beer, there was plenty of red wine as well as anything else a thirsty throat might crave; and in addition to the juke box, there was a vaguely familiar face named Joe who fingered a wicked accordion.

“First a waltz,” Stan ordered, “and the newlyweds start it out alone!”

Casey was scared stiff. He was scared of the party and of the eager, curious eyes fastened on the girl who had married Casimir Morokowski; but most of all, he was scared of Casimir Morokowski. To Phyllis, the whole thing was a lark; it was a party, and she loved parties. She wore some kind of white flowers in her hair—white for a bride, she’d told him—and a simple dress with a flared skirt and shoulders that defied the law of gravity. She laughed as they touched glasses over the first toast and turned toward his arms when the music started.

“I’m a terrible dancer,” Casey murmured.

Her eyes were laughing yet. “Maybe you’ve never danced with the right girl,” she said.

They couldn’t just stand there with everybody watching and waiting for them to begin. They started to dance, stiffly at first and then smoother and smoother until Casey started wondering why it had never been like this before. After the waltz came a polka; after the polka a waltz, and then Phyllis began to throw in fancy little steps that Casey found himself knowing all about. It was easy to forget, what with the music and the wine, that outside these walls the city was overpopulated with policemen in search of a pair of tailor-made murder suspects. It was all too easy.

The face called Joe had temporarily abandoned his accordion and challenged Phyllis to the one and only rhumba in the juke box when Casey began to get a prickling sensation at the back of his neck. He turned around and stared at the bar. Big John didn’t go in for dim lights, and it was easy to locate the source of discomfort. A pair of sharp blue eyes were boring holes in him from across the room. They belonged to a man wearing a wrinkled gray raincoat and a blue felt hat.

Casey went cold inside. Lieutenant Johnson was a man hard to forget, even if he had seen him only that one time at the hotel desk. What he was doing at Big John’s bar, a long, long way from the natural habitat of Brunners’, didn’t leave much to Casey’s imagination. He wanted to run, to heave caution overboard and run like a kid who’s just contributed to an unscheduled meeting between a baseball and a plate-glass window. But the rhumba was catching on now, and the best he could do was a sort of elbowed shuffle through the crowd. Even so, the eyes seemed to follow.

He saw Ma come out from the kitchen carrying a cup of steaming coffee and head straight for the bar. He saw her place the cup in front of the officer, and then Big John’s roar of greeting thawed some of the ice in Casey’s veins. Maybe he hadn’t been traced, after all. Maybe Johnson was a regular customer. One way or another, running was out of the question now. Now he had to find out.

“Ha, coffee!” Big John snorted. “Why you drink coffee on a night like this? Go ahead, anything you want. On the house.”