“I see.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I wish I knew you,” she said. “I only wish I knew you. But I don’t know you at all.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Who are you, Bill?”
“You know the answers.”
She shook her head very gravely. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so. There’s something about you that doesn’t make any sense to me. It doesn’t fit. I wish I could put my finger on it. You just came to town and slipped into a slot and fitted in perfectly, but there’s a part of you that doesn’t fit. I—I wish I knew more about you.”
“You’re making a big thing out of nothing,” I said. “I’m just another ordinary Joe, that’s all. You can’t make me into a romantic figure any more than you can call yourself a call girl. We’re ordinary people, Barb.”
I tried to kiss her. She pulled away, shaking her head. “Not now,” she said.
I finished my drink. She changed the subject, somehow, and we talked for a few moments about trivia. The trivia didn’t grasp us all that firmly and the conversation ran out of gas. The silence that followed was uncomfortable, awkward.
Then Barb said, “You can always tell me. Whatever it is, you can tell me, Bill. You know that, don’t you?”
“Even if there’s nothing to tell?”
Deep eyes cast downward. “There is,” she said. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
14
I spent Sunday night in the little neighborhood tavern where Joyce and I had swigged Black and White and first doped out the way to separate Murray Rogers from his money. I went to the bar sort of by accident. There was dinner in a diner, then aimless driving while the sky went from gray to black in a slow fade. I kept driving, and I worried about Murray and played games guessing how much he knew, and the Ford found that particular bar. There was a handy parking space, I had a thirst. The Ford rolled into the space and I found a stool for myself in the bar.
The same bartender was on duty, the same show on television. I finished one drink and let the bartender pour a new one for me. He took a dollar away and brought back a shiny quarter. I picked it up, held it between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand. I moved my right over it, letting the coin drop into my palm at the last minute. I plucked empty air with my right hand, made a fist.
“Pretty,” the bartender said.
I had forgotten he was there. He was looking at my hands with something approaching interest.
“Do it again,” he suggested.
“It’s nothing.”
“Lemme see.”
So I did it again.
“Jesus,” he said. “Could swear it’s there.” He tapped my right fist. I opened it, empty, then opened the left one and showed the coin.
“Again,” he said. “If I don’t see it this time, the house buys a round.”
This time I did take the coin in the right hand. He thought he had it cased and tapped the left one. I showed him he was wrong. He clucked admiringly and poured a fresh shot in my glass.
“That’s a talent,” he said.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s a real talent,” he said. “Try it again for a buck?”
So what the hell. I was quick and smooth this time and when he tapped the left hand I opened it and the right hand at the same time. There was no coin in either hand. He stared at me.
“Try your shirt pocket,” I said.
He didn’t believe it. But he looked, finally, and there was the quarter, gleaming brightly. It’s not a hard move. A little business with the right hand takes his eye out of the picture, and a quick flip from the left hand puts the coin in his pocket. He was leaning forward, so it was easy to drop the coin in without his feeling anything. He shook his head in amazement and gave me a dollar.
“Jesus,” he said. “You do this for a living?”
“It’s just a hobby.”
“You’re good at it, though. Real good.”
After a while he left me alone. He refocused on the television show and I again lapped at my drink. I sat there and thought about a lot of things. I tried to figure out Murray’s angle, and I tried to figure out just how I was going to play things with Barb, and I tried to figure out what the hell I was doing in this town. I didn’t come up with any answers. Maybe there weren’t any.
On Monday morning Murray Rogers left jail. I was sitting at my desk when the phone rang and Joyce told me he was on his way home. I told her to be careful, she asked of what, and I mumbled something and put the phone down. Be careful of everything, I thought.
I had some calls to make, some people to see. There was a pack of index cards on my desk, all of them typed out neatly and precisely, and there was a long sheet of legal-size yellow paper with a dozen more names and addresses copied down in someone’s neat handwriting. I thumbed through the cards and surveyed the yellow sheet of paper and decided I didn’t want to call anybody. There were three morning and afternoon appointments listed in my date book. I called two numbers, cancelled out. The third party didn’t answer.
I shrugged him off and closed my datebook and left the office. I settled behind the wheel and drove about at random. After a while I hit a red light, stopped for it, lit a cigarette with the dashboard lighter.
The job, the life, the world—weren’t working. It was a good job, something I could do, something that brought in the money. And it was a good enough life in a good enough world, and for anybody else, maybe, matters would have been fine.
But not for me.
You see, when you’re a freelance operator on the periphery of the underworld, you never have to worry about dropping into a bind. You aren’t confined, aren’t tied down in the least. My business card, if I had one, would go something like this:
WILLIAM MAYNARD
No fixed address. Got a frail hanging on your neck, a broad who won’t let you go? Pack your toothbrush, slide into your car, go. Go anywhere because every town has men in it who play cards for money, every town has an angle ready for an angle player. Anybody giving you a hard time? Your room rent overdue? A batch of debts scattered around? Anything like that?
Pack the toothbrush, pile in the car, scram.
You start to function in those terms. Even if you’re legit—a traveling show biz type, a carnie roustabout, a salesman on the road, an outdoor construction worker—even then you tend to operate in this manner. You become used to living your life on the move, and when a situation turns sour you run from it and into something better. But if your life runs on illegal tracks to begin with, you find it just that much easier to work this way. Scruples never come along and trip you up. If you’re a con man, or a card cheat, or any sort of a thousand hustlers, you’re fully accustomed to milking the parks and hunting greener pastures.
Now I was starting to put down roots. A job, sure and steady. A bank account. An apartment with a lease. A circle of friends, most of whom had been born in the area, and who would die there. A girl, a boss, a friend, a friend’s wife—
I was in the Ford and the Ford was hurrying along Main Street past Olga Road. A while ago we had crossed Cherry Avenue, the city line around there. If I stayed on Main Street long enough I would wind up in the state capital some three hundred miles away. Or, if I made a right turn in a quarter mile, I could take the big ribbon
