Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938
- Автор: Clark Dale, 12627 Convict
- Год: 1938
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938». Краткое содержание книги:
He laid a hand on my arm. “You theenk Luigi, heesa tight weeth hees liquor, hah?”
“Well, what would you think?”
“A smart boy,” he said, “a smart guy might theenk mebbe Luigi heesa like you, Jerry? Mebbe heesa try saving you more trobble as you already got, hah?”
I just stood there looking at him, not saying anything for a minute because all of a sudden my tonsils felt funny; kind of all knotted up, if you know what I mean. The little guy was telling me he liked me too, and that most of the jams I’d got myself in were on account of red-eye. He didn’t know about the worst one, of course. Nobody did except Big Ed Harmon, the guy I worked for, and a couple more of his boys who’d been in the room at the time. And oh, yes, I’d spilled to Cora, my wife. Luigi and apparently everybody else in town knew about Cora. Just thinking about the little tramp made me see red all over again and I shook Luigi off and went outside to the bar.
The mob had shifted a little so that there was a cleared space about a foot wide. I squeezed in, ordered a rye. Somebody grabbed my elbow as I picked up the drink and I thought it was Luigi again and pulled the old Olsen & Johnson gag. The one that goes: “Get away from me, boys, you bother me.” It turned out to be my wife instead of Luigi and she didn’t think the gag was as funny as Olsen & Johnson did.
She said, “So I bother you, do I?” She was a little tight and her lip rouge was smeared. I wondered who’d been kissing her now. She gave me a baby-faced stare. “Okay, so I bother you. Well, for fifty bucks I won’t bother you any more. Not tonight, anyway.” She smiled then, a mean smile.
The guy next to me said, “Hello, sugar. If your boy friend ain’t got the fifty, see me. See li’l ol’ Georgie.”
No, I didn’t hit him. I’d practically worn out my right fist on other guys’ jaws trying to put an end to cracks like that. It just wasn’t any use. Maybe I was a little tight too; maybe I was just seeing her for the first time. Really seeing her, I mean. Seeing behind her big violet eyes and her cornsilk hair and all the rest of her; seeing the thing that made cracks like this mug’s possible. For a while I’d thought she was just a fool, but now I knew different.
I reached down in the leather bag and got out ten rolls of nickels. Twenty bucks. “Here’s twenty,” I said. “All I’ve got in the world. I wish it was twenty grand and you’d use it to buy a one way ticket.”
She looked at the loaded bag. “What’s the matter, Terry — afraid of Big Ed?”
“No,” I said. My lips felt tight across my teeth. “No, Ed wouldn’t care if I gave you the whole works, only I won’t.” I dumped the ten rolls of nickels in her hands. “Now scram.”
Her voice got shrill. “You heel! What am I going to do with four hundred nickels?”
I said I didn’t care what she did with them. I didn’t, either. All I wanted was to get away from her before I killed somebody. I tossed a quarter on the bar, started toward the front door. Her voice topped the slam of the music against my ears. She was calling the bartender names because he wouldn’t change the nickels into bills.
It was raining again; not hard, just a sort of discouraged drizzle. I stood there on the sidewalk for a minute, letting the rain hit my face. It felt good. A couple of guys came out, looked at me, giggled as they went by. I knew they were laughing at me and I faded back into the shadows. Cora came out. She was laughing too. She was with the guy that had made the crack. I went back inside and hoisted a couple of quick ones.
The bartender looked at me as though he’d never seen me before; the crowd was working hard at having its fun again. Not even a ripple, I thought. Something can happen to you right in plain sight of a couple of hundred people; something that tears the heart out of you and makes you want to get your hands on somebody’s throat and squeeze and squeeze — I looked around to see if I was wrong; see if somebody in that mob wasn’t reading my mind. And then I got the shakes. Read my mind? Was I actually planning on doing it? No, I thought; no, it isn’t me, it’s the liquor. And then I got more scared than ever. If I kept on like this I might get cocked some time and...
The bartender came back with a fresh bottle. He set it down in front of me, started away. I said, “Hey, wait a minute! I want you to see my latest trick.” He looked bored, but waited, leaning his elbows on the bar and watching me. I poured a stiff drink as if it were a very difficult feat. It wasn’t so easy at that. My hands were shaking so that some of the rye slopped over on the bar. I lifted the glass and held it to the light; then, very deliberately, I inverted it and dumped the lousy stuff into a gobboon. I gave him a tight grin. “That,” I said, “is the trick. It’s supposed to be the picture of a guy’s last drink. Pretty good, huh?”
He looked doubtful. He said, “Well, if you pay for it I guess I can’t stop you doin’ what you want with it.” He took the bottle away with him, though. Somebody touched my shoulder and I whirled nervously. It was Slats McKenna.
McKenna said, “I heard that, Jerry. Sounded okay to me.”
Slats McKenna was a dick; a hell of a good one, according to the papers. I wasn’t thinking of him as a dick, though; not even after the tap on the shoulder, exactly the way I’d been expecting it for quite a while now. You see, Slats and I and Big Ed Harmon had all grown up together south of the tracks. Just the three of us for a while. Then big-eyed, skinny-legged Fran had moved into our block. She was Mrs. Ed Harmon now. Funny how things turn out, huh? Big Ed had shouldered his way to the top of the rackets, picking up Frances on the way. Slats McKenna was a dick. And what was I? Well, you’ve got me there. Just a bum, I guess.
McKenna said, “Let’s go outside, Jerry. I want to talk to you. Seeing you dump that slug of rye makes it easier.” He was a tall rangy guy with a pronounced stoop and a dark serious face. He hadn’t changed much in the last ten years. Marriage and a couple of kids on a cop’s pay had given him the stoop, I guessed. The serious look had always been there.
We went out and sat in his car at the curb. The rain was coming down a little harder now. The sound of it on the turret top; that and being with a guy like Slats did something to me; made me feel a little better, somehow.
Slats said quietly, “I’ve been watching you, boy. Ever since you got crocked and married that little Cora tramp. She’s bad medicine, Jerry.”
Well, you wouldn’t think a guy would let another guy talk that way about his wife, would you? I did. In the first place, McKenna was my friend and he wasn’t trying to be funny. In the second place, there was no argument about Cora being a tramp. All I said was a lop-sided, “You’re telling me!”
After a while Slats said, not looking at me, just staring out through the streaming windshield, “Why not try reversing the English for a change, kid? I mean, when Fran gave you the air you got crocked and joined the navy. That was smart.”
“Well,” I said, grinning, “I learned a trade, anyway.”
“I’m coming to that presently, Jerry. You learned a trade but you lost Frances for good. The hitch in the navy kept you out of circulation for quite a spell if you remember. When you finally did get out, and found Big Ed had copped Frances, what did you do? You got crocked again and woke up married to Cora. Smart, huh?”
Well, putting it like that, it didn’t look very smart, did it? Being married you’re supposed to support the gal and so I’d signed on as radio op on a Standard Oil tanker. Yep, that’s the trade they’d taught me in the navy. Only it kept me away from home too much. I’d get back from a three weeks’ trip and find Cora hadn’t been exactly lonesome, if you know what I mean. Not that I was in love with her; not like I’d been with Fran. But still and all she was my wife and a guy likes to carry his head up.