The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (73 page)

I killed a few more minutes worrying about that and I had the answer. Maybe not
the
answer, but at least an answer that made sense. Maybe I was just mildly cockeyed, but this off-the-cuff figuring I’d been doing
did
seem to be getting somewhere.

It was possible, I reasoned, that Mame hadn’t been the first person through whom Gonzales had tried to make a contact. He could have approached another junkie on the same deal, but one who refused to tell him her contact. Her? It didn’t have to be a woman, but Mame had been a woman and that made me think he’d been working that way. Say that he’d wandered around B-joints until he spotted a B-girl as an addict; he could get her in a booth and try to get information from her. She could have stalled him or turned him down. Stalled him, most likely, making a phone call or two to see if she could get hold of a dealer for him, but tipping off her boyfriend instead. Killing time enough for her boyfriend to be ready outside, then telling Gonzales she couldn’t make a contact for him.

And if any of that had sounded suspicious to Gonzales he would have been more careful the second try, with Mame. He’d get her to her room on the obvious pretext, make sure they were alone and hadn’t been followed before he opened up. Only, between The Best Chance and Mame’s room, he must have discovered that they were being followed.

Sure, it all fitted. But what good did it do me?

Sure, it was logical. It made a complete and perfect picture, but it was all guesswork, nothing to go to the cops with. Even if they believed me eventually and could verify my guesses in the long run, I’d be getting myself and Billie the Kid into plenty of trouble in the short run. And like as not enough bad publicity – my relations with Billie would surely come out, and Billie’s occupation – to have my father’s clients in Chicago decide I wasn’t fit to handle their business.

Well, was I? Worry about the fact that you want a drink so damned bad, I told myself, that soon you’re going to weaken and go down and get another bottle. Well, why not? As long as I rationed it to myself so I would be drinking just enough to hold my own and not get drunk, not until after eight o’clock anyway . . .

What time was it? It seemed like I’d been in that damned room six or eight hours, but I’d checked in at around eleven and the sun was shining straight down in the dirty areaway my window opened on. Could it be only noon? I went out to the desk and past it, looking at the kitchen-type electric clock on the wall over it as I went by. It was a quarter after twelve.

I decided to walk a while before I went back to the room with a bottle, kill some time first. God, the time I had to kill before eight o’clock. I walked around the court house and over to Spring Street. I’d be safe there.

Hell, I’d be safe anywhere, I thought. Except maybe right in that one block of Fifth Street, just on the chance the police did have the milkman staked out in or near that building. And with different clothes, wearing a hat, he probably wouldn’t recognize me anyway. Billie the Kid had panicked, and had panicked me. I didn’t have anything to worry about. Oh, moving out of that block, changing out of the clothes I’d been wearing, those things had been sensible. But I didn’t have to quit my job at Burke’s – if it was still open to me. Burke’s was safe for me. Nobody at Burke’s knew where I’d lived and nobody in the building I’d lived in knew where I worked.

I thought, why not go to Burke’s? He’d have the sign out in the window, now that I was an hour and a half late, but if nobody had taken the job, I could give him a story why I was so late and get it back. I’d gotten pretty good at washing dishes; I was probably the best dishwasher he’d ever had and I’d been steadier than the average one. Sure, I could go back there unless he’d managed to hire a new one already.

And otherwise, what? I’d either have to look for a new job of the same kind or keep on taking money from Billie for however long I stayed here. And taking money from Billie, except in emergency, was out. That gal named Honor back in Chicago was getting to be a pretty dim memory, but I still had some self-respect.

I cut back to Main Street and headed for Burke’s. The back way, so I could see if anyone was working yet in my place, and maybe ask Ramon what the score was before I saw Burke.

From the alley doorway I could see my spot was empty, dishes piling high. Ramon was busy at the stove. He turned as I walked up to him, and his teeth flashed white in that grin. He said, “Howie! Thank God you’re here. No dishwasher, everybody’s going nuts.”

The bandage was gone from his forehead. Under where it had been were four long scratches, downward, about an inch apart.

I stared at the scratches and thought about Ramon and his monkey and Mame and
her
monkey, and all of a sudden I had a crazy hunch. I thought about how a monkey like Ramon’s could make a man do anything to get a fix. I moistened my lips. Ramon’s monkey might claw the hell out of his guts, but it hadn’t put those four scratches on his face. Not directly.

I
didn’t say it, I’d have had more sense; my mouth said it. “Mame had sharp fingernails, huh?”

Death can be a sudden thing. Only luck or accident kept me from dying suddenly in the next second or two. I’d never seen a face change as suddenly as Ramon’s did. And before I could move, his hand had hold of the front of my shirt and his other hand had reached behind him and come up with and raised a cleaver. To step back as it started down would have put me in even better position for it to hit, so I did the only thing possible; I stepped in and pushed him backward and he stumbled and fell. I’d jerked my head but the cleaver went too wild even to scrape my shoulders. And there was a thunking sound as Ramon’s head hit a sharp corner of the big stove. Yes, death can be a sudden thing.

I breathed hard a second and then – well, I don’t know why I cared whether he was alive or not, but I bent forward and reached inside his shirt, held my hand over where his heart should be beating. It wasn’t.

From the other side of the window Burke’s voice sang out, “Two burgers, with.”

I got out of there fast. Nobody had seen me there, nobody was
going
to see me there. I got out of the alley without being seen, that I knew of, and back to Main Street. I walked three blocks before I stopped into a tavern for the drink I really needed
now
. Not wine, whisky. Wine’s an anodyne but it dulls the mind. Whisky sharpens it, at least temporarily. I ordered whisky, a double, straight.

I took half of it in one swallow and got over the worst of it. I sipped the rest slowly, and thought.

Damn it, Howie, I told myself, you’ve
got
to think.

I thought, and there was only one answer. I was in over my head now. If the police got me I was sunk. B.A.S. or not, I’d have a hell of a time convincing them I hadn’t committed two murders – maybe three; if they’d tied in Jesus Gonzales, they’d pin that on me, too.

Sure,
I
knew what had really happened, but what proof did I have? Mame was dead; she wouldn’t tell again what she’d told me about her little episode with Jesus. Ramon was dead; he wouldn’t back up my otherwise unsupported word that I’d killed him accidentally in defending myself.

Out of this while I had a whole skin, that was the only answer. Back in Chicago, back to respectability, back to my right name – Howard Perry, B.A.S., not Howard Perry, bastard, wino, suspected soon of being a psychopathic killer. Back to Chicago, and not by freight. Too easy to get arrested that way, vagged, and maybe by that time flyers would be out with my description. Too risky.

So was waiting till eight o’clock when it was only one o’clock now. I’d have to risk getting in touch with Billie the Kid sooner. I couldn’t go to her place, but I could phone. Surely they wouldn’t have all the phones in that building tapped.

Just the same I was careful when I got her number. “Billie,” I said, “this is the Professor.” That nickname wouldn’t mean anything to anybody else.

I heard her draw in her breath sharply. She must have realized I wouldn’t risk calling her unless something important had come up. But she made her voice calm when she answered, “Yes, Professor?”

“Something has come up,” I said. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to make our eight o’clock date. Is there any chance that you can meet me now instead – same place?”

“Sure, soon as I can get there.”

Click of the receiver. She’d be there. Billie the Kid, my Billie. She’d be there, and she’d make sure first that no one was following her. She’d bring money, knowing that I’d decided I had to lam after all. Money that she’d get back, damn it, if it was the last thing I ever did. Whatever money she’d lend me now, plus the other two sums and enough over to cover every drink and every cigarette I’d bummed from her. But not for the love and the trust she’d given me; you can’t pay for that in money. In my case, I couldn’t ever pay for it, period. The nearest I could come would be by being honest with her, leveling down the line. That much she had coming. More than that she had coming but more than that I couldn’t give her.

The Shoebox is a shoebox-sized place. Not good for talking, but that didn’t matter because we weren’t going to talk there.

She got there fifteen minutes after I did; I was on my second drink. I ordered a Manhattan when I saw her coming in the door.

“Hello, Billie,” I said.

Hello, Billie. Goodbye, Billie. This is the end for us, today. It’s got to be the end
. I knew she’d understand when I told her, when I told her everything.

“Howie, are you in—”

“In funds?” I cut her off. “Sure, just ordered you a drink.” I dropped my voice, but not far enough to make it conspicuous. “Not here, Billie. Let’s drink our drink and then I’ve got a room around the corner. I registered double so it’ll be safe for us to go there and talk a while.”

The bartender had mixed her Manhattan and was pouring it. I ordered a refill on my whisky-high. Why not? It was going to be my last drink for a long while. The wagon from here on in, even after I got back to Chicago for at least a few weeks, until I was sure the stuff couldn’t get me, until I was sure I could do normal occasional social drinking without letting it start me off.

We drank our drinks and went out. Out into the sun, the warm sunny afternoon. Just before we got to the corner, Billie stopped me. “Just a minute, Howie.”

She ducked into a store, a liquor store, before I could stop her. I waited. She came out with a wrapped bottle and a cardboard carton. “The ready-mixed wasn’t on ice, Howie, but it’s all right. I bought some ice cubes too. Are there two glasses in the room?”

I nodded; we went on. There were two glasses in the room. The wagon not yet. But it wouldn’t have been right not to have a last drink or two, a stirrup cup or two, with Billie the Kid.

She took charge of the two tumblers, the drinks. Poured the drinks over ice cubes, stirred them around a while and then fished the ice cubes out when the drinks were chilled.

While I talked. While I told her about Chicago, about me in Chicago, about my family and the investment company. She handed me my drink then. She said quietly, “Go on, Howie.”

I went on. I told her what Mame had told me about her guest Jesus the night before she was killed. I told her of the death of Jesus Gonzales as I’d read it in the
Mirror
. I added the two up for her.

She made us another drink while I told her about Ramon, about what had happened, about how I’d just killed him.

“Ramon,” she said. “He has knife scars, Howie?” I nodded. She said, “Knife scars, a hype, a chef. I didn’t know his name, but I know who his woman was, a red-headed junkie named Bess, I think it’s Bess, in a place just down the block from Karas’ joint. It’s what happened, Howie, just like you guessed it. It must have been.” She sipped her drink. “Yes, Howie, you’d better go back to Chicago, right away. It could be bad trouble for you if you don’t. I brought money. Sixty. It’s all I have except a little to last me till I can get more. Here.”

A little roll of bills, she tucked into my shirt pocket.

“Billie,” I said. “I wish—”

“Don’t say it, honey. I know you can’t. Take me with you, I mean. I wouldn’t fit, not with the people you know there. And I’d be bad for you.”

“I’d be bad for you, Billie. I’d be a square, a wet blanket. I’ll have to be to get back in that rut, to hold down—” I didn’t want to think about it. I said, “Billie, I’m going to send you what I owe you. Can I count on your being at the same address for another week or so?”

She sighed. “I guess so, Howie. But I’ll give you my sister’s name and address, what I use for a permanent address, in case you ever – in case you might not be able to send the money right away.”

“I’ll write it down,” I said. I tore a corner off the paper the bottle had been wrapped in, looked around for something to write with; I remembered the fountain pen I’d stuck in my trousers pocket at Mame’s. It was still there.

I screwed off the cap. Something glittered, falling to the carpet, a lot of somethings. Shiny little somethings that looked like diamonds. Billie gasped. Then she was scrabbling on the floor, picking them up. I stared at the pen, the hollow pen without even a point, in my hand. Hollow and empty now. But there was still something in the cap, which I’d been holding so it hadn’t spilled. I emptied the cap out into my hand. Bigger diamonds, six of them, big and deep and beautifully cut.

My guess had been wrong. It hadn’t been heroin Gonzales had been smuggling. Diamonds. And when he’d found himself followed to Mame’s, he’d stashed them there for safety. The pen hadn’t fallen from his coat pocket; he’d hidden it there deliberately.

They were in two piles on the table, Billie’s hands trembling a little as she handled them one at a time. “Matched,” she said reverently. “My husband taught me stones, Howie. Those six big ones – over five carats each, cut for depth, not shallow, and they’re blue-white and I’ll bet they’re flawless, all of them, because they’re matched. And the fifteen smaller ones – they’re matched too, and they’re almost three carats apiece. You know what Karas would give us for them, Howie?”