The Hunt

Not a bad way to spend Saturday afternoon, he thought.

“How much time do we have?” he asked.

She looked past him to the Westclox alarm clock on the night table.

“Forty minutes,” she said.

“Time for another quickie.”

She straddled his legs and leaned over him, brushing her nipples lightly against his.

“I don’t like quickies,” she whispered, “they always leave me wanting more. Why don’t we go to the dance at the Y after dinner tonight—and leave early. You can think about it while we’re eating.”

“I spent fifteen minutes longer at the hairdresser than usual this morning because everyone wants to hear about Anthony Adverse,” Louise said as they finished dinner. She had been first on the list when the best-seller arrived at the public library. “And all they want to hear about are the She looked over at Roger.

….. bawdy parts.”

“What’s bawdy parts?” Roger asked.

“The love parts,” she answered quickly. He made a face and lost interest. The boy fingered the two-inch-thick stack of Cops ‘N’ Robbers bubble gum cards carefully wrapped with a worn and dirty rubber band that lay beside his dinner plate.

“Tommy’s got two John Dillingers. Two! And a Melvin Purvis,” Roger complained. “And he wants live of my cards for one of his John Dillingers. Don’t seem fair.”

“Doesn’t seem fair,” Louise corrected.

“It’s business, son,” Ben Scoby said. “Called the law of supply and demand. He’s got the supply, you’ve got the demand.”

“But he’s my friend!”

“Don’t count in business matters,” Scoby said.

“Doesn’t,” Louise corrected.

“Doesn’t,” Scoby said with a frown.

“You and Fred do business at the bank ‘with your friends,” said Roger.

“Different,” Scoby said, and started explaining collateral and interest and payments to the seven-year-old, who quickly tuned him out and concentrated on how he was going to get the Dillinger card away from Tommy Newton without severely depleting his own collection.

“Which card is worth the most?” Fred asked.

“Oh, John Dillinger by far,” Roger said. “‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd is second, but he’s nowhere near John Dillinger.”

Scoby sighed. “Here I am in the banking business and my son’s primary interest in life is to acquire a gum card with the face of the worst bank robber in history.” He shook his head. “What’s the world comin’ to?”

“It’s supply and demand,” Roger answered, and they all laughed.

Dinner at the Scobys’ was routine. The conversation centered around Roosevelt and how he was handling the economy, and the baseball season, and the county fair coming up in two weeks, and what the Dillinger gang was up to now, and whether Jack Sharkey had the stuff to whip the German, Max Schmeling, for the heavyweight championship of the world. That was about as close as they ever got to German affairs. After all, Europe was half the world away from Drew City.

“Tell you what, Rog,” Dempsey said. “I’ve got to go up to Chicago this weekend and see my mother. Maybe I can find you a John Dillinger up there.”

“Really!”

“Maybe. Can’t promise but I’ll check around.”

“Why don’t you take the Buick,” Louise offered. “I won’t be using it and you can get back a lot earlier on Sunday.”

Dempsey reached in his pocket and took out the makings of a cigarette. Roger watched with rapt attention as he pulled a sheet of the thin paper from the packet and curled it with his forefinger into a little trough, then shook tobacco out of the package along the length of the curve of paper, rolled it into a tight cigarette and licked the paper and sealed it.

When Dempsey took out his lighter, Louise held out her hand. He put it in her palm. She loved the sensual feel of its smooth, gold sides, rubbing her thumb up and down its length and across the unique wolf’s head on the top, before she snapped it open and lit his cigarette.

Dempsey finally shook his head. “I’ll take the Greyhound like I always do,” he said.

He walked home in the cool spring rain and when he got to Third Street he stopped across the street from the old Victorian house that sat by itself in the middle of the block. Shoulders hunched against the rain, his hands stuffed in his pockets, he stared at Miss Beverly Allerdy’s parlor, where the shades were always drawn and you could hear the loud, Negro blues music playing inside the jaded walls and men sneaked in the back door and there was a lot of laughter. Women’s laughter. He wondered how far the ladies would go in this small town. He could not risk visiting the house. As he stood there he felt the familiar urge again, felt the familiar tightening in his crotch and the anger building up.

Dempsey had invented the story of an ailing mother in Chicago when the familiar urge had first come over him. Since then he had taken the four o’clock bus to Chicago every six or seven weeks, checked into the Edgewater Beach Hotel and employed one of the most expensive party girl services in the Midwest, girls who were willing to