Harsh was amazed when the man capped the fountain pen, put it away, tucked the blank paper in his pocket, and strode purposefully to the door. He was going to leave, the crazy fool, twenty-five dollars was going to walk out the door.
“Hey, Mister! If you insist, I’ll take your money.”
Again the man seemed not to hear, and walked out the door, leaving Harsh watching the door and waiting, hardly believing the fellow was gone. Harsh watched the door for some time. His arm, which had been giving only mild pain, now started hurting in earnest. It felt as if a cat was crouched on it, eating away. No one came through the door, not Brother, not Vera Sue, not the policeman, not even a doctor or a nurse.
What should he make of this Brother anyway, he wondered.
Several hours later when Vera Sue did appear, he saw she had been up to something. She was as warm and contented as a baby who had found a full breast, and she was wearing a new dress with the new hat. “Oh, Walter, he is just slightly terrific, isn’t he?”
Harsh scowled at her. He did not know who she was talking about, but he would bet it was somebody who wore pants with well-filled pockets. “Where have you been all day?”
“Don’t be sore. Someone had to show Mr. Brother around, after he came all the way out here to Missouri from the east just to look you over. And you should see what he came in. Walter, you should see it! He has a big private airplane all his very own.”
“Is Brother still around here?” Harsh lifted up on the bed. “The way he took out of here as if he’d been turpentined, I figured school was out. Did he leave for good?”
“And what an airplane, Walter. Instead of just seats for passengers, private cabins and a private office and a private television set. Inside, it’s all lined with velvet that’s a kind of bedroom purple and the two fellas flying the thing for him wear liveries the same purple color.”
Harsh was speechless with rage.
Vera Sue lifted on tiptoes and did a turn in front of him. “Walter, notice anything new has been added?”
“Goddamn it!” His voice shook with fury. “I asked you, is the guy still in town?”
“Yes. Didn’t you notice my new dress?”
“The hell with the new dress.”
“Walter, I wish you wouldn’t be nasty. I like to hear you say nice things about my clothes, and not growl at me like a bear.”
He wanted to grab hold of her, shake some sense into her—but he forced himself to grin weakly instead. “Sure, honey, I know. It’s just that I lie here not knowing what’s going on and it makes me blow my top.”
“Well, it isn’t very nice.”
Walter bit back a curse. “I’m nuts about you, honey, you know that.”
“You’re awfully sweet when you want to be, Walter. I wish you would want to be all the time.”
“Kiss me, honey.”
She kissed him and he discovered her mouth tasted of eight-dollar-a-bottle Benedictine. So she had gotten her hands on more than just what it took to buy the new dress and the new hat. The Benedictine was a giveaway, because on special occasions she would buy a bottle and carry it around in her purse and nip at it. He suspected that someone had once told her Benedictine was the
“Vera Sue, I hope you didn’t go making any deals with this Brother guy. We can’t until we know more than we know now.”
“How do you mean, Walter?”
“He gave you some dough, right?”
She stroked her hair with her hand, and the innocent expression on her face told him she was trying to think up a lie.
“Look, Vera Sue, it’s all right with me for you to latch on to his money. I got no kicks, I want you to have dough, only you should talk it over with me first.”
“I was almost broke, Walter, and you were acting snotty.”
He controlled his fury with difficulty. “Well, like I say, I got no kicks. But baby, the only thing is, you and me are in this together, and we got to keep our eyes open. I know how to handle guys like Brother, so you better let me handle him. I’ll give you a sample of how I would handle him. He wanted me to give him some references, see, but he’s not going to get any names from me for nothing. I’m going to make him pay me five dollars a name. If he wants five names, it will cost him twenty-five bucks.”
Vera Sue’s expression became odd. “How much for each name, Walter?”
“Five dollars. He pays five bucks, or he won’t get a single name.”
Vera Sue’s mouth started twitching, and suddenly a shriek of laughter escaped her. She laughed so hard that she had to lean on the bed for support.
Harsh glared. “What’s killing you now?”
“Walter, you sure are some whiz-bang businessman.”
“Huh?”
She picked up a corner of the bed sheet and wiped the tears of mirth out of her eyes. “So, you can get five dollars a name. Five dollars.” She blew her nose in the sheet.
“Yeah, at least that much.”
“I got one hundred dollars, Walter. That’s what I got apiece for five names. Five hundred dollars. You say you can get five a name, but I got one hundred. What do you say to that?”
Harsh tried to sit up but his arm shot pain through his body and he lay back gasping. “You got five hundred?” What was there for him to say? He could not remember when any news had made him feel so sick and defeated. He swallowed some of his own saliva, and it tasted like gall. “Hand over my share.”
“What?”
“Hand over my share of what you got, baby. My half.”
She withdrew a step. “Your share is half of twenty-five bucks, Walter, if you got any share coming.”
“Don’t start pulling stuff like that, Vera Sue.”
“Listen, lover boy, I talk to dumb clucks any way I want, and you’re a dumb cluck, and also a cheap cluck. You’re a five-dollar cluck, that’s what you are.”
He struggled to a sitting position on the bed, ignoring the pain from his arm. “You watch out, or I’ll bat you one.”
She laughed nastily and buttoned the new coat over her new dress. “If that’s the way you feel, you can go to hell.”
She left the hospital room, not bothering to close the door. He fell back on the bed, causing his arm to hurt violently, and looked silently at the ceiling. Presently, when the nurse put her head in the door and looked at him and saw the expression on his face, she gasped and came in and thrust the thermometer in his mouth and took his pulse. She carried the thermometer to the window to examine it and shook her head, murmuring that if visitors excited him so much, he would just have to stop having them. Harsh bellowed at her, “Jesus God, get out of here and leave me alone!” This made the nurse angry, and instead of leaving the room, she forced him to take a drink of water, jamming the glass against his teeth hard enough that it grated. He swallowed some water. She placed the glass on the table and snatched an object off a chair. “Who left this here?”
Harsh looked and saw that she had picked up Brother’s briefcase. He had not noticed Brother had left it behind.
“They left it here for me to look at.” He turned his face away from the nurse so she would not see he was lying. “Why don’t you get out of here?”
The nurse shrugged, put the briefcase back on the chair, and left.
Harsh did not move a muscle for a while, thinking she might come back. He was furious about the five hundred dollar thing. He had as much right to the money as anybody, but getting it away from the greedy bitch was another thing. He found it incomprehensible that Brother should pay five hundred dollars for five names which Harsh had offered to give the man for nothing. It proved one thing, he decided, it proved Brother was no insurance company detective. No insurance company would hire a man who threw their money around in such a crazy way.
