The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (62 page)

Ken shrugged. He tried to sound casual as he said, “Three thousand miles is a long trip. You must have been anxious to see me.”

Oscar nodded. “Very anxious.” He sort of floated closer to Ken. And Coley also moved in. It was slow and quiet and it didn’t seem like menace but they were crowding him and finally they had him backed up against the restaurant window.

He said to himself,
They’ve got you, they’ve found you and they’ve got you and you’re finished
.

He shrugged again. “You can’t do it here.”

“Can’t we?” Oscar purred.

“It’s a crowded street,” Ken said. He turned his head to look at the lazy parade of tenderloin citizens on both sides of the street. He saw the bums and the beggars, the winos and the ginheads, the yellow faces of middle-aged opium smokers and the grey faces of two-bit scufflers and hustlers.

“Don’t look at them,” Oscar said. “They can’t help you. Even if they could, they wouldn’t.”

Ken’s smile was sad and resigned. “You’re so right,” he said. His shoulders drooped and his head went down and he saw Oscar reaching into a jacket pocket and taking out the silver-handled tool that had a button on it to release a five-inch blade. He knew there would be no further talk, only action, and it would happen within the next split second.

In that tiny fraction of time, some gears clanged to shift from low to high in Ken’s brain. His senses and reflexes, dulled from nine years in prison, were suddenly keen and acutely technical and there was no emotion on his face as he moved. He moved very fast, his arms crossing to shape an X, the left hand flat and rigid and banging against Oscar’s wrist, the right hand a fist that caught Coley in the mouth. It sent the two of them staggering backward and gave him the space he wanted and he darted through the gap, sprinting east on Race Street toward Ninth.

As he turned the corner to head north on Ninth, he glanced backward and saw them getting into the Olds. He took a deep breath and continued running up Ninth. He ran straight ahead for approximately fifteen yards and then turned again to make a dash down a narrow alley. In the middle of the alley he hopped a fence, ran across a backyard, hopped another fence, then a few more backyards with more fence-hopping, and then the opened window of a tenement cellar. He lunged at the window, went in head-first, groped for a handhold, couldn’t find any, and plunged through eight feet of blackness on to a pile of empty boxes and tin cans. He landed on his side, his thigh taking most of the impact, so that it didn’t hurt too much. He rolled over and hit the floor and lay there flat on his belly. From a few feet away a pair of green eyes stared at him and he stared back, and then he grinned as though to say,
Don’t be afraid, pussy, stay here and keep me company, it’s a tough life and an evil world and us alleycats got to stick together
.

But the cat wasn’t trusting any living soul. He let out a soft meow and scampered away. Ken sighed and his grin faded and he felt the pressure of the blackness and the quiet and the loneliness. His mind reached slowly for the road going backward nine years . . .

It was Los Angeles, and they were a small outfit operating from a first-floor apartment near Figueroa and Jefferson. Their business was armed robbery and their work-area included Beverly Hills and Bel-Air and the wealthy residential districts of Pasadena. They concentrated on expensive jewelry and wouldn’t touch any job that offered less than a ten-grand haul.

There were five of them, Ken and Oscar and Coley and Ken’s wife and the Boss. The name of the Boss was Riker and he was very kind to Ken until the possession of Ken’s wife became a need and then a craving and finally an obsession. It showed in Riker’s eyes whenever he looked at her. She was a platinum-blonde dazzler, a former burlesque dancer named Hilda. She’d been married to Ken for seven months when Riker reached the point where he couldn’t stand it any longer and during a job in Bel-air he banged Ken’s skull with the butt end of a revolver. When the police arrived, Ken was unconscious on the floor and later in the hospital they asked him questions but he wouldn’t answer. In the courtroom he sat with his head bandaged and they asked him more questions and he wouldn’t answer. They gave him five-to-twenty and during his first month in San Quentin he learned from his lawyer that Hilda had obtained a Reno divorce and was married to Riker. He went more or less insane and couldn’t be handled and they put him in solitary.

Later they had him in the infirmary, chained to the bed, and they tried some psychology. They told him he’d regain his emotional health if he’d talk and name some names. He laughed at them. Whenever they coaxed him to talk, he laughed in their faces and presently they’d shrug and walk away.

His first few years in Quentin were spent either in solitary or the infirmary, or under special guard. Then, gradually, he quieted down. He became very quiet and in the laundry-room he worked very hard and was extremely cooperative. During the fifth year he was up for parole and they asked him about the Bel-Air job and he replied quite reasonably that he couldn’t remember, he was afraid to remember, he wanted to forget all about it and arrange a new life for himself. They told him he’d talk or he’d do the limit. He said he was sorry but he couldn’t give them the information they wanted. He explained that he was trying to get straight with himself and be clean inside and he wouldn’t feel clean if he earned his freedom that way.

So then it was nine years and they were convinced he’d finally paid his debt to the people of California. They gave him a suit of clothes and a ten-dollar bill and told him he was a free man.

In a Sacramento hash-house he worked as a dishwasher just long enough to earn the bus-fare for a trip across the country. He was thinking in terms of the town where he’d been born and raised, telling himself he’d made a wrong start in Philadelphia and the thing to do was go back there and start again and make it right this time, really legitimate. The parole board okayed the job he’d been promised. That was a healthy thought and it made the bus-trip very enjoyable. But the nicest thing about the bus was its fast engine that took him away from California, far away from certain faces he didn’t want to see.

Yet now, as he rested on the floor of the tenement cellar, he could see the faces again. The faces were worried and frightened and he saw them in his brain and heard their trembling voices. He heard Riker saying, “They’ve released him from Quentin. We’ll have to do something.” And Hilda saying, “What can we do?” And Riker replying, “We’ll get him before he gets us.”

He sat up, colliding with an empty tin can that rolled across the floor and made a clatter. For some moments there was quiet and then he heard a shuffling sound and a voice saying, “Who’s there?”

It was a female voice, sort of a cracked whisper. It had a touch of asthma in it, some alcohol, and something else that had no connection with health or happiness.

Ken didn’t say anything. He hoped she’d go away. Maybe she’d figure it was a rat that had knocked over the tin can and she wouldn’t bother to investigate.

But he heard the shuffling footsteps approaching through the blackness. He focused directly ahead and saw the silhouette coming towards him. She was on the slender side, neatly constructed. It was a very interesting silhouette. Her height was approximately five-five and he estimated her weight in the neighborhood of one-ten. He sat up straighter. He was very anxious to get a look at her face.

She came closer and there was the scratchy sound of a match against a matchbox. The match flared and he saw her face. She had medium-brown eyes that matched the color of her hair, and her nose and lips were nicely sculptured, somewhat delicate but blending prettily with the shape of her head. He told himself she was a very pretty girl. But just then he saw the scar.

It was a wide jagged scar that started high on her forehead and crawled down the side of her face and ended less than an inch above her upper lip. The color of it was a livid purple with lateral streaks of pink and white. It was a terrible scar, really hideous.

She saw that he was wincing, but it didn’t seem to bother her. The lit match stayed lit and she was sizing him up. She saw a man of medium height and weight, about thirty-six years old, with yellow hair that needed cutting, a face that needed shaving, and sad lonely grey eyes that needed someone’s smile.

She tried to smile for him. But only one side of her mouth could manage it. On the other side the scar was like a hook that pulled at her flesh and caused a grimace that was more anguish than physical shame. Such a pretty girl. And so young. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Well, some people had all the luck. All the rotten luck.

The match was burned halfway down when she reached into the pocket of a tattered dress and took out a candle. She went through the process of lighting the candle and melting the base of it. The softened wax adhered to the cement floor of the cellar and she sat down facing him and said quietly, “All right, let’s have it. What’s the pitch?”

He pointed backward to the opened window to indicate the November night. He said, “It’s chilly out there. I came in to get warm.”

She leaned forward just a little to peer at his eyes. Then, shaking her head slowly, she murmured, “No sale.”

He shrugged. He didn’t say anything.

“Come on,” she urged gently. “Let’s try it again.”

“All right.” He grinned at her. And then it came out easily. “I’m hiding.”

“From the Law?”

“No,” he said. “From trouble.”

He started to tell her about it. He couldn’t understand why he was telling her. It didn’t make sense that he should be spilling the story to someone he’d just met in a dark cellar, someone out of nowhere. But she was company and he needed company. He went on telling her.

It took more than an hour. He was providing all the details of events stretched across nine years. The candlelight showed her sitting there, not moving, her eyes riveted to his face as he spoke in low tones. Sometimes there were pauses, some of them long, some very long, but she never interrupted, she waited patiently while he groped for the words to make the meaning clear.

Finally he said, “ – It’s a cinch they won’t stop, they’ll get me sooner or later.”

“If they find you,” she said.

“They’ll find me.”

“Not here.”

He stared at the flickering candle. “They’ll spend money to get information. There’s more than one big mouth in this neighborhood. And the biggest mouths of all belong to the landlords.”

“There’s no landlord here,” she told him. “There’s no tenants except me and you.”

“Nobody upstairs?”

“Only mice and rats and roaches. It’s a condemned house and City Hall calls it a firetrap and from the first floor up the windows are boarded. You can’t get up because there’s no stairs. One of these days the City’ll tear down this dump but I’ll worry about that when it happens.”

He looked at her. “You live here in the cellar?”

She nodded. “It’s a good place to play solitaire.”

He smiled and murmured. “Some people like to be alone.”

“I don’t like it,” she said. Then, with a shrug, she pointed to the scar on her face. “What man would live with me?”

He stopped smiling. He didn’t say anything.

She said, “It’s a long drop when you’re tossed out of a third-story window. Most folks are lucky and they land on their feet. I came down head first, cracked my collar-bone and got a fractured skull, and split my face wide open.”

He took a closer look at the livid scar. For some moments he was quiet and then he frowned thoughtfully and said, “Maybe it won’t be there for long. It’s not as deep as I thought it was. If you had it treated—”

“No,” she said. “The hell with it.”

“You wouldn’t need much cash,” he urged quietly. “You could go to a clinic. They’re doing fancy tricks with plastic surgery these days.”

“Yeah, I know.” Her voice was toneless. She wasn’t looking at him. “The point is, I want the scar to stay there. It keeps me away from men. I’ve had too many problems with men and now, whenever they see my face, they turn their heads the other way. And that’s fine with me. That’s just how I want it.”

He frowned again. This time it was a deeper frown and it wasn’t just thoughtful. He said, “Who threw you out of the window?”

“My husband.” She laughed without sound. “My wonderful husband.”

“Where is he now?”

“In the cemetery,” she said. She shrugged again, and her tone was matter-of-fact. “It happened while I was in hospital. I think he got to the point where he couldn’t stand to live with himself. Or maybe he just did it for kicks, I don’t know. Anyway, he got hold of a razor and cut his own throat. When they found him, he was very, very dead.”

“Well, that’s one way of ending a marriage.”

Again she uttered the soundless laugh. “It was a fine marriage while it lasted. I was drunk most of the time. I had to get drunk to take what he dished out. He had some weird notions about wedding vows.”

“He wasn’t faithful to you?”

“Oh! It wasn’t that. No. He went out of his way to throw me into the company of other men. At first I thought it was odd, but then I found that it was deliberate, calculated. He expected me to compromise myself and then he’d demand money and if I didn’t cooperate he’d beat me. It was a hell of a thing to happen to anyone with any decent ideals. I don’t like blackmail – even now. But then it was mental torture to me. So I got it in the neck either way. I used to have bad dreams about it, and I mean bad. I still have them sometimes, so then I need sweet dreams, and that’s when I reach for the pipe.”

“The pipe?”

“Opium,” she said. She said it with fondness and affection. “Opium.” There was tenderness in her eyes. “That’s my new husband.”

He nodded understandingly.

She said, “I get it from a Chinaman on Ninth Street. He’s a user himself and he’s more than eighty years old and still in there pitching, so I guess with O it’s like anything else, it’s all a matter of how you use it.” Her voice dropped off just a little and her eyes were dull and sort of dismal as she added, “I wish I didn’t need so much of it. It takes most of my weekly salary.”