Billy was looking his most adult. “I know I look young. Always have. I guess when I get up into my fifties, I’ll be glad. Now it’s a pain in the neck. Anyhow, I’m twenty-five. And I’ll bet you’re not any older.”
She giggled again. “Well, to tell you the truth…”
“Call me Jimmy,” he said.
“All right. I’m Betty Ann. To tell you the truth, Jimmy, I’m twenty-five too.”
She was a good twenty years senior to that, Billy decided cynically.
“How about a drink?”
“We don’t have to go any further than in there, Jimmy,” she laughed, indicating the nearest auto-bar. “You know, I’m glad we met. I think we’re going to have fun. Wasn’t it a coincidence?”
It turned out that he had left his, credit card at home.
She laughed at that, too. At the edge of forty-three, Betty Ann had picked up the bills before. She didn’t particularly mind any more. Her need was for young men and to indulge it she had found long since that the best bet was to haunt the poorer sections of the city—and to be quick and willing to press her own credit card to the payment screen.
XX
He spent the night at her apartment. Not that it did her much good. In spite of his youth, and what she had hoped would prove his prowess as a lover, it was as a deep sleeper that he turned out to be a veritable phenomenon. Betty Ann was disgusted.
In the morning she fed him breakfast, sitting across the breakfast nook from him, taking no more than coffee for herself.
In the light of day, without cosmetics, she was fully her age. Perhaps even a bit older in appearance than reality, for the past ten years had been hard ones, filled as they were with desperate attempt to halt the flight of youth in parties, in alcohol, in hard pursuit of Eros. It was all Billy could do to bring his eyes to her face, even as he wolfed a prodigious breakfast of six eggs, a full quart of milk, six or eight slices of bacon and as many of toast, with butter and marmalade.
He had placed who she reminded him of, now that he saw her in morning’s unkindly light. Ruth Antrim. His mother after playing the late hour shows; tired and disheveled and caring nothing—except for him, of course.
Betty Ann watched him wearily as he ate. “What did you plan on doing today?” she said finally. There was no girlish giggle in her voice now, only the weariness of a middle-aged woman who wouldn’t, who couldn’t, quite give up as yet.
He looked up at her, quickly looked down again. “I don’t know,” he said. Then, slowly, “You’re a lot of fun.”
“No, I’m not,” she said.
“Sure you are. Why don’t we just hang around here today? It’s my day off. We’ll hang around and have a lot of laughs.”
“And tonight you’d spend here again, eh?”
“Well, sure.”
“I’m afraid not, Billy.”
His eyes were blue ice. “The name’s Jimmy.”
“Kids named Jimmy don’t carry guns with the front sight filed away and the forepart of the trigger guard, so as not to get in the way of a quick draw.”
His voice was as level and cold as his eyes. “You seem to know a lot about guns, lady.”
She shrugged, wearily. “I read a lot and watch the Tri-D shows a lot. A single woman my age has got lots of time to watch the shows. I woke earlier than you and watched this morning for awhile. The drawing they show of you isn’t very good, but good enough, Billy Antrim.”
He looked at her, poker-faced, but his mind was racing.
She shook her head. “If you had to be worried about me telling them, I could have done it hours ago. All I had to do was pick up the phone while you were still asleep, after I had checked your clothes and found the gun. I suppose I should have…”
“I don’t like that kinda talk, Betty Ann.”
“… But I didn’t. I don’t know why. You’d better go now, though.”
He looked at her for a long moment. He couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t called the police, either. She certainly wasn’t in love with him; he wasn’t the type to inspire love in a woman. Besides, she hadn’t had time to fall in love with him. And be in love with a seven-time killer on the lam? Not even a woman as desperate as Betty Ann.
His best bet would be to add her to his list. She would have a better description of him than was evidently available thus far. She’d said the drawing they were showing over the air wasn’t so good. She’d be able to improve it for them.
She chose that moment to reach for the coffee pot, wearily. He had seen Ruth Antrim in that exact pose a thousand times.
A thousand times back in those days when there had been only the two of them. And when all the world had been only the two of them. When no one else had counted. Tired she might have been, exhausted from twice the number of shows a performer should have been expected to give—but never so tired that she couldn’t discuss the dream with him.
The dream of their settling down somewhere and of Ruth finding some other manner of supporting them—it had never been quite clear what that might be, since she had known nothing else but show business. And he would go to school, and soon, very soon, such would be his efforts, he would be able to find a grand position of his own, and then Ruth Antrim would need work no longer. And then, indeed, the goal would have been reached. A home of their own, with Ruth to keep it and with Billy faring forth each morning to his labors, and she there to greet him at day’s end.
He more or less knew it now for a boy’s dream and that of a tired woman in her early middle years. Deep within, he knew it had lacked reality. That at best there had been no room in it for his own marriage and eventual children. There had been no room in it for anything or anyone except Ruth and Billy Antrim. But still it was a dream that came back to him.
Billy Antrim didn’t have many dreams.
He shook his head and came to his feet.
“Goodbye, Billy,” Betty Ann said after him.
Ronny Bronston was saying into his portable communicator, “It was him, all right. The description tallied. He’s evidently got Gutenberg’s credit card, but is too smart to use it unless it’s an emergency. He went into a Sauna-Turkish Bath in Norfolk and spent nearly four hours there. Sleeping, of course. Then he told the attendant he’d forgotten his credit card and left a star sapphire ring as a pledge.”
Sid Jakes interrupted him quickly: “You think he’ll go back to redeem it?”
Ronny snorted. “Of course not. I think he’s cunning enough
“You don’t seem to be making much progress,” Jakes chuckled, as though that was amusing. “Ross is beginning to have second thoughts about assigning you to the job.”
Ronny grunted. “At least I know I was right, before. He’s in the Norfolk area. And now, with his face all over town, he’ll be doubly hard put to hide himself. He’ll show. Within twenty-four hours I wager he’ll show. His luck can’t hold forever.”
