The Million-Dollar Wound

“We don’t need to have that, anymore, do we?”

“No we don’t.”

“We can’t ever be an item again, so we should live and let live, right? No reason not to be pals, huh?”

“None at all.”

Then I kissed her, and she put her tongue in my mouth, and the sequined dress was coming loose in my hands and then my mouth was on her breasts, frantically switching from one to the other, not able to get enough of either, her nipples startlingly erect, each a hard sweet inch, and her soft generous ass was in my two hands and my trousers were falling to the floor with the thud of a fainting man, and then I was in her, to the hilt, hating myself, hating her, loving her.

The old argument-the dispute that had killed us-had of course been back in her waitress days. We quickly fell headlong in love, or anyway I did, and whenever I wasn’t working we were together, and most of the time had been spent in bed. She was only the third woman I’d ever been with, and the first one I’d ever had a real affair with. And I loved her till I thought my fucking heart would break, which, sure enough, it did.

She always asked for money. Not like a whore. Not right after the act. But before I left her, she’d say she was a few dollars short. Her rent was due. Her mother was sick. Her machinist stepfather was out of work. If I could just help out…

And I would.

But I wasn’t alone. One night they changed my shift on me, and I had a night free I hadn’t anticipated. I went to surprise her, to her little apartment on the near North Side and knocked, and she came to the door, cracking it open, and looked out at me with her wide green eyes and her wide white smile and said, “Nate, I’m afraid I have company.”

I stood outside in the goddamn rain half the night before I gave up the vigil. Whoever he was, he was staying till morning, so fuck it.

The next day’s confrontation was in Rickett’s, where she was behind the gleaming white counter, and I almost lost her her job.

“What was his name?”

Softly, she said, “I see other people, Nate. I never said I didn’t. I got a life besides you.”

“You see other men, you mean.”

“I see other men. Maybe I see women, too. How do you like them apples?”

I grabbed her wrist. “Do they all give you money?”

She smiled at me through gritted teeth, a hateful, arrogant smile.

“Only when I ask them to,” she said.

Now, ten years later, here I was in bed with her again. Or, anyway, on top of a bed with her. A fast frantic fuck, my pants off, my shoes and shirt and tie on; her dress pulled down and up and a jumble around her middle, panties caught on one ankle. We must’ve been a sight.

I pushed off her, embarrassed, ashamed. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at myself.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

She was touching my shoulder. I wanted to shrug her hand off, violently, but I couldn’t. I wanted to ask her to slip her arm all the way around me, but I couldn’t.

“It’s all right, Nate. I wanted it.”

“You’re Nicky Dean’s girl.”

“I’m my own girl, honey. Nicky’s not one to talk. He’s out in Hollywood cheating on both of us.”

I looked at her. “What do you mean, ‘both of us’?”

She shrugged, shot me a crinkly smile. “Me and his wife.”

“I didn’t know he was married.”

“Neither does he, most of the time. She’s a little chorus-line cutie he married back in the early twenties. She’s still pretty cute, for an older broad. Real sickly, though.”

There was no jealousy in her voice. Very matter of fact.

“You mind if we put our clothes on?” I asked.

“Yes I do,” she said, rolling one of her stockings down; the Southern belle at the Rialto had nothing on her. “I want you to strip down and I’m going to do the same and then we’re going to slide under these cool sheets and turn down the lights and cuddle and chat and see what comes up.”

I looked into that cute, mischievous face, trying to see the cold cynical heart that had to dwell behind it somewhere; but I couldn’t find it.

I could only smile back and sit unprotesting as she undid my tie and my shirt, and soon we were two cool bodies between cool sheets in a dark anonymous room.

I thought of Sally (Helen in bed), and wondered if I was a bastard. Well, perhaps I was a bastard, that was almost certainly the case, but Sally had left town this morning, before I even got back. She was on a sleeper plane to California this very minute, flying the same sky that I crawled down out of this morning. There’d been a note of thanks on the bed, saying she’d made her Brown Derby booking and would be back in town next month; she’d try to see me then. That “try” browned me off. But what the hell-Sally was just a sweet memory I’d had a chance to momentarily relive; there was no future for us.

Just as there was no future with the memory I was holding in my arms now. Like Sally, Estelle was the past. But since there were no women in my present to speak of, the past was better than nothing. Let the future take care of itself.

“Aren’t you even interested why I came around?” I asked her. “To see me, of course.”

“That’s true. But I came looking for you for a reason. I’m working.”

She snuggled against me. “You mean, you’re getting paid for this? Why, Nate Heller, you little whore.”

“You’re more right than you think,” I said. “I’m here on an errand. Willie Bioff sent me.”

She pulled away to have a look at me and her smile was open-mouthed and her green eyes amused but mostly she was just surprised.

“But you hate that little pimp! I remember when you busted him…”

“You remember that?”

“Sure! You were ranting about how he slapped some woman around. You were quite the knight in shiny armor in those days.”

“Hardly. It was pretty tarnished even then. You forget how I moved from uniform to plainclothes.”

She waved that off with a friendly smirk. “So you lied on the witness stand. You know anybody who hasn’t?”

She had me there.

She pulled away from me, just a little, to lean on a pillow and half sit up and appraise me. “Willie Bioff, huh? If he’s in town, why didn’t he stop up and see me personal?”

“He isn’t in town. I just got back from a couple days in California.”

Her laugh was a grunt. “He’s making hay while the sun shines out there, that’s for sure. What put the two of you in bed together? Pardon the expression.”

Briefly, I told her about Pegler investigating Bioff’s past and present; that she should be on the lookout for Pegler himself or somebody Pegler might send around.

“Nobody’s been around yet,” she said. “And I don’t think anybody’d get a single word out of me. But I appreciate the tip. Willie must be afraid his phones are tapped.”

“Or that yours are.”

“Possible,” she said, nodding. “These FBI and internal revenue boys are hard to bribe. They seem intent on doing their goddamn jobs.”

“You never met Eliot Ness, did you?”

“Actually, I did a couple times. He raided the 101 more than once. He was cute. You two boys were thick, later on, I hear. The tarnished knight and the boy scout. Quite a combo.”

“Let’s just say he did his goddamn job. I can respect that; can’t you?”

“Why not? What became of him?”

“He’s public safety director in Cleveland.”

She mock-yawned.

“It’s not really all that dull,” I said. “He’s done his share of gang-busting in those parts. He’s the guy that ran