Authors: Stephen King
something to say.
``Call the boss,'' the other painter said. Appearances could be deceiving; he was
apparently the brighter of the two, after
all. He reached inside his grimy, paint-smeared coverall and brought out a little
card.
I waved it away, suddenly tired. ``Who in the name of Christ would want to paint this
place, anyway?''
It wasn't them I was asking, but the painter who'd offered me the business card
answered just the same. ``Well, it
brightens the place up,'' he said cautiously. ``You gotta admit that.''
``Son,'' I asked, taking a step toward him, ``did your mother ever have any kids that
lived, or did she just produce the
occasional afterbirth like you?''
``Hey, whatever, whatever,'' he said, taking a step backward. I followed his worried
gaze down to my own balled-up
fists and forced them open again. He didn't look very relieved, and I actually didn't
blame him very much. ``You don't
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
like it--you're coming through loud and clear on that score. But I gotta do what the
boss tells me, don't I? I mean, hell,
that's the American way.''
He glanced at his partner, then back to me. It was a quick glance, really no more than
a flick, but in my line of work I'd
seen it more than once, and it's the kind of look you file away. Don't bother this
guy, it said. Don't bump him, don't
rattle him. He's nitro.
`Ì mean, I've got a wife and a little kid to take care of,'' he went on. ``There's a
Depression going on out there, you
know.''
Confusion came over me then, drowning my anger the way a downpour drowns a brushfire.
Was there a Depression
going on out there? Was there?
`Ì know,'' I said, not knowing anything. ``Let's just forget it, what do you say?''
``Sure,'' the painters agreed, so eager they sounded like half of a barbershop
quartet. The one I'd mistakenly tabbed as
half-bright had his left hand buried deep in his right armpit, trying to get that
nerve to go back to sleep. I could have
told him he had an hour's work ahead of him, maybe more, but I didn't want to talk to
them anymore. I didn't want to
talk to anyone or see anyone--not even the delectable Candy Kane, whose humid glances
and smooth, subtropical
curves have been known to send seasoned street-brawlers reeling to their knees. The
only thing I wanted to do was to
get across the outer office and into my inner sanctum. There was a bottle of Robb's
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Rye in the bottom lefthand drawer,
and right now I needed a shot in the worst way.
I walked down toward the frosted-glass door marked CLYDE UMNEY PRIVATE
INVESTIGATOR,
restraining a
renewed urge to see if I could drop-kick a can of Dutch Boy Oyster White through the
window at the end of the hall
and out onto the fire-escape. I was actually reaching for my doorknob when a thought
struck me and I turned back to
the painters . . . but slowly, so they wouldn't believe I was being gripped by some
new seizure. Also, I had an idea that
if I turned too fast, I'd see them grinning at each other and twirling their fingers
around their ears--the looney-gesture
we all learned in the schoolyard.
They weren't twirling their fingers, but they hadn't taken their eyes off me, either.
The half-smart one seemed to be
gauging the distance to the door marked STAIRWELL. Suddenly I wanted to tell them that
I wasn't such a bad guy
when you got to know me; that there were, in fact, a few clients and at least one exwife
who thought me something of
a hero. But that wasn't a thing you could say about yourself, especially not to a
couple of bozos like these.
``Take it easy,'' I said. `Ì'm not going to jump you. I just wanted to ask another
question.''
They relaxed a little. A very little, actually.
`Àsk it,'' Painter Number Two said.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
`Èither of you ever played the numbers down in Tijuana?''
``La lotería?'' Number One asked.
``Your knowledge of Spanish stuns me. Yeah. La lotería.''
Number One shook his head. ``Mex numbers and Mex call houses are strictly for
suckers.''
Why do you think I asked you? I thought but didn't say.
``Besides,'' he went on, ``you win ten or twenty thousand pesos, big deal. What's that
in real money? Fifty bucks?
Eighty?''
My mom hit the lottery down in Tijuana, Peoria had said, and I had known something
about it wasn't right even then.
Forty thousand bucks . . . My Uncle Fred went down and picked up the cash yest'y
afternoon. He brought it back in the
saddlebag of his Vinnie!
``Yeah,'' I said, ``something like that, I guess. And they always pay off that way,
don't they? In pesos?''
He gave me that look again, as if I was crazy, then remembered I really was and
readjusted his face. ``Well, yeah. It is
the Mexican lottery, you know. They couldn't very well pay off in dollars.''
``How true,'' I said, and in my mind I saw Peoria's thin, eager face, heard him
saying, It was spread all over my mom's
bed! Forty-froggin-thousand smackers!
Except how could a blind kid be sure of the exact amount. . . or even that it really
was money he was rolling around in?
The answer was simple: he couldn't. But even a blind newsboy would know that la
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
lotería paid off in pesos rather than
in dollars, and even a blind newsboy had to know you couldn't carry forty thousand
dollars' worth of Mexican lettuce
in the saddlebag of a Vincent motorcycle. His uncle would have needed a City of Los
Angeles dump truck to transport
that much dough.
Confusion, confusion--nothing but dark clouds of confusion.
``Thanks,'' I said, and headed for my office.
I'm sure that was a relief for all three of us.
_______________________________________________________________________
IV. Umney's Last Client.
``Candy, honey, I don't want to see anybody or take any ca--''
I broke off. The outer office was empty. Candy's desk in the corner was unnaturally
bare, and after a moment I saw
why: the IN/OUT tray had been dumped into the trash basket and her pictures of Errol
Flynn and William Powell were
both gone. So was her Philco. The little blue stenographer's stool, from which Candy
had been wont to flash her
gorgeous gams, was unoccupied.
My eyes returned to the IN/OUT tray sticking out of the trash can like the prow of a
sinking ship, and for a moment my
heart leaped. Perhaps someone had been in here, tossed the place, kidnapped Candy.
Perhaps it was a case, in other
words. At that moment I would have welcomed a case, even if it meant some mug was
tying Candy up at this very
moment . . . and adjusting the rope over the firm swell of her breasts with particular
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
care. Any way out of the cobwebs
that seemed to be falling around me sounded just peachy to me.
The trouble with the idea was simple: the room hadn't been tossed. The IN/OUT was in
the trash, true enough, but that
didn't indicate a struggle; in fact, it was more as if . . .
There was just one thing left on the desk, placed squarely in the center of the
blotter. A white envelope. Just looking at
it gave me a bad feeling. My feet carried me across the room just the same, however,
and I picked it up. Seeing my
name written across the front of the envelope in Candy's wide loops and swirls was no
surprise; it was just another
unpleasant part of this long, unpleasant morning.
I ripped it open and a single slip of note-paper fell out into my hand.
Dear Clyde, I have had all of the groping and sneering I'm going to take from you, and
I am tired of your ridiculous and
childish jokes about my name. Life is too short to be pawed by a middle-aged divorce
detective with bad breath. You
did have your good points Clyde but they are getting drownded out by the bad ones,
especially since you started drinking
all the time. Do yourself a favor and grow up. Yours truely, Arlene Cain P.S.: I'm
going back to my mother's in Idaho.
Do not try to get in touch with me.
I held the note a moment or two longer, looking at it unbelievingly, then dropped it.
One phrase from it recurred as I
watched it seesaw lazily down toward the already occupied trash basket: I am tired of
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
your ridiculous and childish jokes
about my name. But had I ever known her name was anything other than Candy Kane? I
searched my mind as the note
continued its lazy--and seemingly endless--swoops back and forth, and the answer was
an honest and resounding no.
Her name had always been Candy Kane, we'd joked about it many a time, and if we'd had
a few rounds of office
slap-and-tickle, what of that? She'd always enjoyed it. We both had.
Did she enjoy it? a voice spoke up from somewhere deep inside me. Did she really, or
is that just another little fairytale
you've been telling yourself all these years?
I tried to shut that voice out, and after a moment or two I succeeded, but the one
that replaced it was even worse. That
voice belonged to none other than Peoria Smith. I can quit actin like I died and went
to heaven every time some
blowhard leaves me a nickel tip, he said. Ain't you picking up on this newsflash, Mr.
Umney?
``Shut up, kid,'' I said to the empty room. ``Gabriel Heatter you ain't.'' I turned
away from Candy's desk, and as I did,
faces passed in front of my mind's eye like the faces of some lunatic marching band
from hell: George and Gloria
Demmick, Peoria Smith, Bill Tuggle, Vernon Klein, a million-dollar blonde who went
under the two-bit name of
Arlene Cain . . . even the two painters were there.
Confusion, confusion, nothing but confusion.
Head down, I trudged into my office, closed the door behind me, and sat at the desk.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Dimly, through the closed window,
I could hear the traffic out on Sunset. I had an idea that, for the right person, it
was still a spring morning so
L.A.-perfect you expected to see that little trademark symbol stamped on it somewhere,
but for me all the light had
gone from the day . . . inside as well as out. I thought about the bottle of hooch in
the bottom drawer, but all of a sudden
even bending down to get it seemed like too much work. It seemed, in fact, a job akin
to climbing Mount Everest in
tennis shoes.
The smell of fresh paint had penetrated all the way into my inner sanctum. It was a
smell I ordinarily liked, but not
then. At that moment it was the smell of everything that had gone wrong since the
Demmicks hadn't come into their
Hollywood bungalow bouncing wisecracks off each other like rubber balls and playing
their records at top volume and
throwing their Corgi into conniptions with their endless billing and cooing. It
occurred to me with perfect clarity and
simplicity--the way I'd always imagined great truths must occur to the people they
occur to--that if some doctor
could cut out the cancer that was killing the Fulwider Building's elevator operator,
it would be white. Oyster white.
And it would smell just like fresh Dutch Boy paint.
This thought was so tiring that I had to put my head down with the heels of my palms
pressed against my temples,
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
holding it in place . . . or maybe just keeping what was inside from exploding out and
making a mess on the walls. And
when the door opened softly and footsteps entered the room, I didn't look up. It
seemed like more of an effort than I
was able to make at that particular moment.
Besides, I had the strange idea that I already knew who it was. I couldn't put a name
to my knowledge, but the step was
somehow familiar. So was the cologne, although I knew I wouldn't be able to name it
even if someone had put a gun to
my head, and for a very simple reason: I'd never smelled it before in my life. How
could I recognize a scent I'd never
smelled before, you ask? I can't answer that one, bud, but I did.
Nor was that the worst of it. The worst of it was this: I was scared nearly out of my
mind. I've faced blazing guns in the
hands of angry men, which is bad, and daggers in the hands of angry women, which is a
thousand times worse; I was
once tied to the wheel of a Packard automobile that had been parked on the tracks of a
busy freight line; I have even