Uhl type, to the tough guys with a weakness, the big talkers who somehow would never come through. But George had just a little bit more going for him than those other bums; he had just enough strength so that he really did act every once in a while. And he’d acted now, all right. He’d done something and he was in it up to his neck. He wouldn’t tell her about it when they talked on the phone, but she knew once she saw him again in the flesh she’d get the story out of him. She always did. And all she hoped was he hadn’t dug himself into too deep a hole this time. Better a live bum than a dead hero.
She came out of the shower at last and toweled herself vigorously till her skin flushed red. Then she hung the towel over its bar to dry and went naked into the bedroom, where a man with a gun in his hand was sitting very casually on the edge of the bed.
He smiled at her. “That’s a nice way to say hello, honey,” he said.
She recognized him. He was the guy who’d come around yesterday wanting to get in touch with George. He’d given her a phone number to pass on to George, he’d said his name was Matt Rosenstein, and he’d left. When she’d told George about it he hadn’t seemed upset. In fact he said something about calling Matt to see what he wanted.
Barri thought, George, did you get me into something bad? She said, “What do you want, Mac?”
“I want George,” he said. He was medium height but very broad, massive in the shoulders and chest and neck like a weight lifter. He had a square head with a mean-looking face and a way of smiling that was somehow very nasty.
She said, “I told George you called. I gave him the number.”
“I know you did, and that was real nice. But now I want George in person. I want to go talk to him.”
The sight of the gun in his hand was making her feel very cold, but she was afraid if she went to put a robe on or anything he’d take it as a sign of weakness. She was terrified to show him weakness, as though he were a vicious dog that had to be faced down. She said, “I don’t know where he is.”
He got to his feet, taking his time, that nasty smile drooping on his face. “For your sake, honey,” he said, “I hope that isn’t the truth. Because I’m going to start on you now, and the only thing on God’s earth that’s going to make me stop is when you tell me where George is.”
Three
Paul Brock sat on the floor in the middle of the living room, and tears streamed down his cheeks. He felt he couldn’t go on; he felt it was all too much for him; he felt everything was lost and doomed and beyond recall. I just don’t have the energy, he kept thinking.
Matt had told him to come back to the apartment at five o’clock on Friday afternoon, and Matt would phone him there. “Parker won’t be hanging around there anymore by then,” he said. “But keep an eye out for him anyway.”
So that’s what he’d done, coming downtown from the hotel half an hour early, both to be ahead of the worst of the rush hour and to have a little time in the apartment, and what had he walked into?
It was criminal. It was like murdering a person, what had been done here, just like beating the life out of a human being. The apartment had been raped, viciously, violently raped, and then kicked to death.
All the time he’d put into this place, all the time and thought and energy and pride, all of himself, poured it into this apartment for three years now, and look what had happened. His home, his home.
What would Matt say? Matt wouldn’t really care, would he? Not really, not deeply, not the way Brock cared. Matt had never been all that interested in the apartment, in the plans for it. “You do it, baby,” he’d say, grinning that grin of his, and pat Brock on the cheek and talk about something else instead.
He was alone with his grief. His rage. Grief and rage. There was no one on earth who would really, truly sympathize, understand, share this horrible experience with him. Never before in his life had he realized just how totally, miserably, incurably alone he really was.
The phone rang.
Startled, he looked at his watch, and it was five o’clock. Had he been here half an hour already? He’d come in, he’d seen the living room, he’d wandered like a zombie through the rest of the apartment, stunned and dazed by it all, and had finished in the living room again, his mind just refusing to comprehend what had happened. And then he’d fallen to the floor; he’d been sitting here like that ever since.
And here it was five o’clock already, and the phone was ringing.
It was on the floor now, over to his right. The upper air just seemed too high, too far up toward the ceiling, the top of the room; he couldn’t get all the way up there, stand all the way up there. He got to hands and knees and crawled across the carpet to the phone and sat down again beside it. He picked up the receiver and in a strengthless, hopeless voice said, “Yes?”
“Paul?” It was Matt’s voice, strong and confident.
“Yes.”
“What’s the matter? Something wrong there?”
“Oh, Matt.” Brock shuddered and felt for a second as though he couldn’t go on, he couldn’t tell any more, he didn’t have the strength to hold the phone anymore.
“What the hell’s wrong?”
He took a deep breath. “He was here, Matt.”
“Who, Parker? You saw him?”
“No. It was before — Matt, he wrecked the apartment!”
“He did what?”
“It’s all — it’s all — ” Brock gestured wildly at the wreckage around him, as though Matt could see his waving arm and strained face. “He just — killed it, Matt. Everything broken, everything — “
