a person feel as though someone else were arranging his life for him.”
I didn’t say anything. Her eyes were directed at me but she was staring past me, off into space. Her lips parted slightly. She looked as though she wanted to be kissed and it seemed like a good idea, so I kissed her. She was stiff at first. Then she relaxed slightly and then I let go of her. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. Barb said, “That was—nice, Bill.”
“I’ll call you soon.”
“You don’t have to, you know.”
“I know. I’ll want to.”
“I think I’d like that,” she said.
I turned away and drove home. I would call Barb, of course. The action would be a good cover. If I were dating a girl, people would be less likely to imagine anything between Joyce and myself. So I would call Barb Lambert, and I would go out with her.
In another world I would have married her, and we would have sold beautiful syndications together, and she’d be the beneficiary of my life insurance policy. She was living in that world. I wasn’t.
I slept late on Sunday. It was past noon when I awoke and I was hungry. I made it around the corner and bought breakfast food at a deli, lox and bagel and instant coffee. I ate, showered, and fancied a different set of clothes.
The second-hand Broadway suit was a little tight on me. That was fine. I took off the jacket, dropped it and walked on it. I picked up the jacket, then, and brushed it off and slipped it on again. I tossed the hat down and stepped on it, grinding some dirt into the felt. I straightened the hat out again, wiped it fairly clean. When I was finished, the chapeau looked as though I had owned it for ages.
I knotted the loud tie and toned it down with coffee stains. I stuffed my feet into the broken-down shoes and tied them. I checked myself in the mirror, tugged the hat down over my eyes. I looked shabby and seedy and not at all like me.
In a drugstore I bought a pair of glasses with plain lenses. They added a final touch. I carried my valise a few blocks south and a few blocks east. There were six hotels in a row on the cheap street and all looked appropriate for the second-hand suit and the battered hat. I tried three hotels before I found just what I wanted.
The third one was the charm. It was called the Glade, and the rooms rented for two bucks a night or ten bucks a week. I walked through what passed for a lobby with my head tossed back and my shoulders hunched forward. I leaned a shoulder against the desk and looked at the desk clerk. When I talked to him my voice sounded like all the wrong parts of Brooklyn, and my lips didn’t move much.
“I need a room,” I said. “Only I got no use for stairs. You got anything on the first floor?”
The other hotels hadn’t. The Glade did. The clerk showed me to a room in the back. There was a cigarette- scarred dresser, an army cot, a washbowl, a cracked hunk of linoleum on the floor.
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
Out front the clerk said the room would run me two dollars a day or ten a week, payable in advance. I reached into a pants pocket and came up with two worn dollar bills. He wanted a dollar deposit for the key. “You think I’m gonna run off with your key?” I said. “Hell—”
I gave him the deposit, but not before I had haggled with him for a few minutes to preserve appearances. He passed me a registration card and gave me a ball-point pen. I leaned on the counter, studied the card, tapped the pen on the counter, glanced up at him.
“A few days,” I said, “I won’t have to stay in dumps like this one. A few days and I pull out of this town in a Cadillac. You believe that, Charlie?”
He started to tell me his name wasn’t Charlie, then decided not to bother.
“You better believe it,” I said. “You just better believe it. Little Augie is going to do fine.”
Then I took the pen and filled out the card.
9
I stayed at the Glade for an hour or so, then returned to my place on College Street and belted away some sleep. In the morning I drove downtown and to work.
Two salesmen were at their desks and poring over a brochure, and another salesman was jawing with someone on the phone. Perry Carver was in his private office. I made a few calls, filed three or four prospects under Call-Again-Some-Time, managed to make two appointments for the evening. Then Perry Carver called me on the intercom and I stepped into his office.
“Well,” he said. “How’s it going, Bill?”
“Fine.”
“So fine you have to work weekends?” Carver grinned. “I’m a detective, saw your desk rearranged. That’s always a good sign. This is no business for a clockwatcher, Bill. A man has to be willing to work long hours when the work is there for him and take it easy when the going is slow. I like the way you operate, Bill.”
We said a few more nice things to each other. I took off about eleven, grabbed a cup of coffee at a drugstore soda fountain. There was a men’s mag on the rack with a cover streamer touting an article on how to beat the crap tables at Vegas. I picked up the magazine and scanned the article. It was one of those bonehead jobs pushing the old double-up system—you double your bet every time you lose, and eventually you come out a winner. There was only one little flaw. Sooner or later you were bucking the house limit and the casino had you by the throat. I put back the magazine and crossed over to the phone booth.
Murray’s girl answered the phone. I put Brooklyn back into my voice and told her to let me speak to Rogers. She asked who was calling.
“August Milani,” I said. There was a pause while she checked with Rogers.
Then she said, “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Milani. Could you tell me what your call is in reference to?”
“Sure, honey,” I said. I chuckled lewdly. “Tell Rogers I want to talk to him about Whitlock.”
Maybe Murray’s curiosity was aroused. At any rate, he was on the line a few seconds later, asking what he could do for me. I waited until I heard the receptionist click herself off the line. Then I dropped the Brooklyn accent.
“My name’s Milani,” I said. “August Milani. Sam Whitlock suggested you might be in the market for some life insurance, Mr. Rogers. I’d like to make an appointment with you—”
“I’ve got all the coverage I need,” he said.
“Now, that’s always a moot point. If we could get together for an hour or so, Mr. Rogers—”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not interested.”
I was still talking earnestly when he broke the connection. I put the receiver on the hook and stayed in the booth long enough to light a cigarette. I thought of Murray telling the court that Milani was just an insurance man, a pest trying to sell him a policy, while Murray’s receptionist contradicted him and said that Milani sounded like some kind of gangster.
It was getting cute.
I sat on the Carver office telephone most of the afternoon. One man thought he might buy a half-unit but he wanted to discuss the matter with his wife first. Another was interested but hadn’t been able to read the brochure thoroughly yet. Would I call him in a day or two? I made a notation to do so. By four-thirty I had called everybody I felt like calling. I leaned back in my chair and smoked a cigarette. It would have been nice to call Joyce, let her know what was happening, make some plans and talk out some dreams.
Nice, but also foolish. We wouldn’t be seeing much of each other for the next two weeks. That was the way it had to be. If we were connected, the whole mess would cave in on us.
So I flipped through the phonebook and dialed a number. The phone rang four times before she reached it, and her hello was on the breathless side.
“Hello yourself,” I said. “This is Bill Maynard.”
“Oh,” Barbara Lambert said. She sounded surprised.
“I didn’t know if you’d be home from school yet or not. I thought I’d give you a try.”
