Madball (5 page)

"That's all there is in the Mystery of Sex show?"

"Practically all. There is also a pair of flashy wall charts of male and female anatomy in cross section, no doubt to show, in the case of the female, where a fetus comes from and, in the case of the male, how it gets there. And there is also and more important, a table with a stack of sex books on it. That's where the profits come from. It's why the unborn show has the low admission of one thin dime, that's to get the marks on the inside where they become a captive audience for Burt's pitch. The books sell for two bucks apiece. But they tell everything, Burt says."

The lieutenant closed his notebook
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n which the only thing he'd written was Dr. Magus's real name
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and stood up.

"That's my next stop," he said, "so thanks for the briefing."

"Have you met Burt?"

The lieutenant shook his head. "Nope."

Dr. Magus grinned. "If you tell him I sent you, he might tell you what time it is, if you ask him nicely. Otherwise
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say, he's probably still in the chow top. I got back from there just before you came and Burt had just come in."

"Okay, I'll look there. How'll I know him?"

"The guy who gives you the dirtiest look."

"Seriously."

"All right. Let's see. Medium size, about forty, getting bald on top but he's got his hat on so that won't help you. Dresses fairly well. Oh, I remember. He's wearing a brown suit, tan silk shirt, solid color maroon tie."

"Good," the lieutenant said. "But listen, Doc, will you try to remember who it was told you Irby got a settlement from an insurance company?"

"I'll try, but why are you interested?"

"Because I can't find, or haven't found yet, that anybody here communicated with him while he was in the hospital, but somebody must have or how'd it get known around the lot? Some of 'em even knew the amount."

"But, Lieutenant, it would matter only negatively, wouldn't it?"

"I don't get you, Doc."

"I mean that if whoever did have the word direct intended to kill Irby for his two thousand dollars, the last thing he'd have done would have been to spread the news that Irby was coming back loaded. He'd have kept that news to himself so nobody would beat him to it."

The lieutenant rubbed the back of his neck. "Maybe you got something there. Well, be seeing you."

After the lieutenant had gone, Dr. Magus went over to the little table and sat down by it. He felt thoughtful but he didn't know what he was thoughtful about.

Certainly not about what had puzzled Lieutenant Showalter; he could have told Showalter exactly how the insurance money story had started and exactly how and it had become more specific.

A week or more ago Mack Irby had sent Burt a postcard. It had told Burt that he'd be back before the end of the season to pick up his possessions but that he didn't expect his job back, and added that he was getting a good settlement from the insurance company. Burt had showed or mentioned the card to several people. But why should Dr. Magus have told the lieutenant? If Burt wanted to tell him, he would.

And the same went for Barney King. He'd had coffee with Barney an hour ago and Barney had told him how Mack Irby had stopped at the ticket booth last night and had talked a while, mentioning two grand as the amount of the settlement he'd received. And Barney, an hour later, had mentioned it in the poker game in the G-top.

So the lieutenant's curiosity would be satisfied if Burt and Barney chose to tell him those facts, and the lieutenant was heading for the unborn show now. If they didn't choose to tell him that was their business.

But that wasn't what Dr. Magus was feeling thoughtful about. Nor was it, quite, wondering who really had killed Mack Irby. Except as a matter of curiosity, and idle curiosity at that, he didn't care a rideboy's damn who had killed Irby. But something was stirring at the back of his mind and he wanted to know what it was.

He pulled over the madball, the two-inch diameter crystal in its silver stand, and polished it lovingly with a square of black velvet. He smiled a little, thinking how descriptive was the carney slang word for it, madball.

He stared at it, but not into it, musingly.

Round like the world, he thought. Like the world, sometimes seeming transparent, easy to see through; like the world, at other times mysterious and a little frightening. Not that he ever really saw anything there except once in a while when he was a little drunk and then it always scared him, but looking into it helped him to concentrate.

Usually, that is. This time it didn't. Whatever the thought that he'd been on the verge of thinking, it slipped farther and farther away.

CHAPTER SIX

MID-EVENING AND SAMMY was glad because Jesse was drinking and when Jesse started drinking on the job he nearly always closed the place early, even if business was fairly good like tonight, and if he closed Sammy wouldn't have to set up any more milk bottles and might even have
th
e rest of the evening to do anything he wanted to do. Sometimes when he was drinking Jesse would go off by himself and he'd tell Sammy to stick on the lot and not get in any trouble but as long as he stayed on the lot Sammy would be free to wander around and see the other games and the shows.

Tonight Sammy was especially glad that they might close early because Jesse was mad at him. Jesse had bawled the holy hell out of him this morning and had been acting mean to him ever since, all because he'd found a man dead and instead of pretending he hadn't found a man dead he'd called people to tell them about it. And it wasn't fair of Jesse to be mad because how could Sammy have known, since he'd never found a dead man before, that he was supposed to go away quickly and let somebody else find the man?

That was the bad thing, you never knew what you were supposed to do when something new happened until it had happened once and you'd learned, but the first time you probably did the wrong thing and so many new things kept happening that you were always in trouble because you'd done wrong on them.

And Jesse was always getting mad and bawling him out for something even though he always tried to do his best for Jesse because Jesse took care of him and Jesse always told him that if
h
e ever quit taking care of him they'd come and put him in a place behind bars because he couldn't take care of himself. And Sammy knew Jesse was telling the truth because he'd been in a place like that once, a place with bars on the windows and the doors always locked. He'd hated it there. And one day there'd been a door open and he'd walked out and there had been a horrible time, he didn't know how many days, with people
ki
cking him around and ordering him away and slamming doors on him when he was hungry, starving to death and hardly able to walk. And then he'd heard music and there was the carnival lot and he'd walked the midway dazzled by the bright colors and the happy music and tortured by the smell of frying hamburgers. And then Jesse had yelled "Hey, kid!" at him and from that moment everything had been all right. Jesse had asked him if he wanted to set up milk bottles and earn a little money and it had been hard for him to learn just how to do it right
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well, it hadn't been hard to learn how to set them up but it had been awfully hard to learn when to set them up, to wait until the man had thrown three baseballs instead of putting back one milk bottle if he knocked it over on the first or second throw. He had to learn to watch and count the baseballs, one, two, three, and after that he could put back any of the milk bottles that had been knocked down. But Jesse had growled and sworn at him until he'd learned. And then after a while Jesse had taken him over to the place where the carney's ate and had bought him a meal and he'd eaten it so fast that Jesse had stared at him and said, "Damn it, kid, when did you eat last?" and when he said he didn't remember Jesse had bought him a second meal and his stomach was finally filled. That night Jesse had taken him to the little green tent that he'd learned was a sleeping top and had said they'd sleep together, and something had happened that night that had hurt him, hurt him bad, but Jesse had fed him and so anything Jesse wanted to do to him was all right, anything. That had been about a year ago, he thought, anyway there had been one winter since it happened, and he'd been with Jesse ever since.

And Jesse bought him all he wanted to eat, always, and if Jesse never gave him any money, that didn't matter much because there wasn't anything he ever needed money for except cotton candy and he could get money for that sometimes by doing errands for other carneys sometimes when Jesse didn't need him. Right now he had fifty cents in his pocket, burning a hole there, that Mr. Linder had given him early this afternoon for going to a store a block from the lot and bringing back some things Mr. Linder had written down on a list for the Store Man to read. But when Sammy got back Jesse had made him start work right away so he hadn't had time to spend the fifty cents. That was another reason he hoped Jesse would close early tonight because then the Cotton Candy Lady would still be in her booth and he could have five big balls of fluffy cotton candy without having to wait until tomorrow for them. The Cotton Candy Lady charged the marks fifteen cents for a cone of cotton candy but she always gave them to Sammy for a dime if Sammy waited till a time when there weren't any other customers there.

And now Jesse took the bottle out from under the counter and drank again and this time he drank the last of the little that was left in it and threw down the empty bottle. And sure enough he said, "Okay, kid, let's knock it off. We done enough today." And it was still early enough that everything else in the carney was running, maybe only about ten o'clock or even earlier. And now if only Jesse didn't want to go to the sleeping top he could have those cotton candies.

Sammy started to lower the canvas front of the booth and he remembered something he'd been wondering.

"Jesse," he said. He'd called Jesse Mr. Jesse at first, like he called everybody else Mr. or Miss but Jesse hadn't liked it and had made him stop.

"Yeah?"

"Jesse, how old am I?"

"Hell, I don't know. Eighteen, maybe twenty. Why?"

"The cop asked me. When he was asking about me finding the man dead. I didn't know but I been wondering. How many is eighteen?"

"Goddam, what you get not minding your own business. You do anything like that again-"

Sammy cringed for fear Jesse was going to get mad all over again and even hit him. He said, "I won't, Jesse."

"Goddam well better not. Aw right, run along and do whatever you wanta, long as you stick on the lot. I'm gonna take the boys with the dice tonight."

Jesse went out under the sidewall.

Sammy straightened things up, put all the baseballs into the foot locker and locked it, picked up the bottle Jesse had thrown down and pushed it out under the back canvas, then pulled out the plug that turned off the lights.

And Sammy was free.

A few minutes later he was eating his first cone of cotton candy and while he ate it he watched the bally of the model show across the way. They were starting to bally again when he got his second cone and with it in his hand he wandered over closer to watch.

Miss Trixie and Miss Maybelle were on the platform in their silk wrappers. They were both pretty but Sammy watched Miss Trixie. He liked Miss Trixie; she gave him quarters for doing errands for her two or three times a week. And she treated him nice. Some of the other women on the lot acted as though they didn't like to have him around but Miss Trixie didn't seem to mind. She was small and had such smooth nice black hair and such red lips.

Her silk wrapper was pulled tight around her and in front there were two mounds that were breasts. Other women had them too and he wondered why. For the first time Sammy found himself wondering why women were different from men. Of course, Sammy and Jesse had breasts too, after a fashion, but not the kind women had. What were they good for? Most men, he knew, liked to see women's breasts and the rest of women's bodies, too; that was why the marks paid money to go in the model show, to see the models take off their robes and pose on a little stage, in only a G-string and a thin cheeseclothy bra that you could see right through, and he knew that in some towns they got by without wearing even the net bras but they always had to wear the G-strings when they posed. But why did men pay money to see women pose that way? He'd asked Jesse once when Jesse had been in a good mood and Jesse couldn't tell him; Jesse had said, "Damn if I know either, kid," and had sounded as though he meant it, although you couldn't always tell with Jesse.

Sammy had never gone inside the model show, not even inside the top when a show wasn't going on, because Jesse had told him not to. But once he'd seen Miss Trixie in just the costume she posed in, the G-string and the net bra. It had been on a hot night, an awfully hot night, a couple of months ago in the middle of summer. It had been one of the nights Jesse had closed early and Sammy had been free and he'd been walking around behind the tops and Miss Trixie, in a robe, had ducked under the sidewall of the model show top and had called to him. She'd given him fifty cents and told him to go to the grab joint, not all the way to the chow top but just to the grab joint, and get her a coney island sandwich with everything on and to get himself one too if he was hungry or else keep the quarter. He'd been a little hungry so he got two coney island sandwiches with everything on and called to Miss Trixie from in back like she'd told him to, and she'd come ba
ck
under the sidewall again and stood with him while they ate the sandwiches. And after a minute she'd said, "Is that a breeze?" and had taken off her robe and hung it over a tent rope and stood there almost naked enjoying the slight breeze that had just come up, and he'd seen her body. It was whiter and smoother than a man's and somehow different in some way. And in two other ways the difference wasn't hard to tell at all. One of those ways was her breasts. Of course he'd known women had mounds there on their chests because you could tell that much even when they were wearing dresses or robes, but seeing Miss Trixie's breasts that close and with only a thin net that you could see right through over them, Sammy realized for the first time that they were breasts like his own except that the nipples were bigger and the breasts themselves were a lot bigger. Like swellings. But they were pretty and he liked them and looking at them gave him a funny feeling, as though he wanted to do something but didn't know what it was he wanted to do.