A Flash of Green (48 page)

The house seemed very empty. When she paced, her heels made noises that seemed too loud whenever she crossed the areas of bare floor. She turned the television set on and turned it off. Suddenly she remembered her other clothing and went swiftly to the guest room. The skirt was across the chair at the foot of the bed. The pale blouse was on the floor beside the chair. She picked them up. The skirt would do for another day. The collar of the blouse was faintly grimed. She found her bra on the floor between the bed and the wall. A gray ball of dust clung to the elastic when she picked it up. Her brief blue Dacron pants lay across the sandals she had worn to work.

She had picked the clothing up, and quite suddenly she felt so weak and faint that she turned and sat quickly on the side of the bed, near the foot of it, the clothing in her lap. She saw herself reflected in the narrow wall mirror, perfectly centered.

She gave herself a quick, vivid, social smile and said politely, “All dressed up and no place to go.”

She gave herself a comic grimace. “Lo the faithful widow lady,” she said.

And then, in her pretty dress and her perfume, she huddled over, hunched herself over the clothing in her lap, and began to cry, in a choking, gasping, hiccuping way, with the tears coming in a thin, scalding, sour way. As she wept she kept remembering that neither of them had said a word. They had made of it a desperate, silent struggle. And that seemed the most shameful thing of all.

Twenty-three

AT TEN O
’
CLOCK JIMMY WING FOUND
Brian Haas alone at the counter at Vera’s Kitchen. He went in and sat beside him. Brian gave him a casual and rather guarded smile and said, “Our Leader has been beating the bushes for you, pal. That seems to be happening a lot lately. I seem to find myself doing things you should be doing. Are you goofing a little, maybe?”

“Definitely not! Everything I do is constructive. I have been chugging around in the night, making up parables and fables.”

“You look a little bright around the eyes. You get the needle into a vein?”

“Mr. Haas, if a man suddenly went stone deaf and then suddenly got his hearing back again, he would go around listening to the rustle of every leaf. Right?”

“Is that a parable or a riddle?”

“My gears have been locked for a while. I rocked them loose.”

“Okay, it’s a riddle. So now you’re racing your engine. Is that the answer?”

“Mr. Haas, I will try out one small parable on you, one that I made up concerning you. Once upon a time there was a dog who had an undiagnosed case of distemper. Such was the morbidity of the disease that the dog went around blaming his low morale on his condition of doghood. He had black thoughts about dogs and destiny. So, to prove to himself that dogs are no damn good, he strolled over and quietly bit the hell out of the dog next door. It gave him considerable surly satisfaction, but when the disease wore off, he was suddenly very very ashamed of himself.”

Brian Haas put his cup down and swiveled his counter stool and stared at Wing. His eyes were dark and mild under the protective shelf of hairy brow. But there was a glint of amusement in them Jimmy had not seen for a long time. “In the first place, you illiterate bastard, when it has animals in it, it’s a fable, not a parable. In the second place, I know a dog who gets a different kind of distemper. He reaches around and bites hell out of himself. And is equally ashamed. In the third place, Nan wonders when you’re coming around so I can whip your tail with a jazzy new variation of the Ruy Lopez.”

“Tell her soon. I’ve got another one. This is a parable. No animals. This one is real deep.”

“I’ll pay attention.”

“They shot this character into orbit, seven thousand times around the planet, and he took along seven thousand squeeze-bottles full of high-vitamin gunk, one a day. And almost as soon as he was up there, he started thinking about steak. He tried not to. Before the trip was half over, he was breathing, dreaming, seeing, smelling steak. And then he came down and had a steak. He gobbled it down. He gobbled it down so damn fast, my boy, that the only slight taste he got was exactly the same as what had been in all those bottles.”

“So the second steak will be better, eh?”

“No chance. They shot him right back up there.”

“Seven thousand more times around?”

“Aw, no, Bri! For keeps.”

Brian Haas nodded. “You’re right. That one is real deep.”

“Ready for another deep one?”

“Let me get my feet braced. Shoot.”

“This one will be a fable because it’s got a monkey in it. One time there was a man who found himself a trick monkey. For a very small outlay in bananas, this man had himself a monkey who had a very quiet amiable personality. The thing was, this man could boost the monkey over transoms and through tiny windows, and when he was inside the monkey would unlock the house so the man could come in. The monkey thought he was pretty bright, and it was more fun than living in a tree. One day the trick monkey suddenly discovered that the kind banana man was … kicking the hell out of all the other monkeys … and …”

He put his fist on the counter edge and lowered his forehead until it rested against his fist. He heard the aftertones of his voice in the quiet lunchroom and knew he had gotten a little loud, somewhat shrill.

He felt Brian’s hand on his shoulder. “Hey, boy,” Bri said quietly.

Jimmy sat up. “I guess I didn’t get that one worked out yet.”

“It has possibilities. It has a plot line. It needs a kicker. You all right?”

“I’m brisk, Mr. Haas. Brisk and eager.”

“And I’ve got to go make J.J. think I am also.”

“That’s what I had on my mind, Bri. I don’t think you ought to go back there tonight. You ran into good old Jimmy. He’ll help J.J. put it to bed.”

“So we’ll both go confound him with our talent and intellect.”

“I’d just as soon you wouldn’t. Can you take it just like that? With no explanation, please? You go home to Nan. Tell her I love her.”

“I want maybe just one crumb of explanation.”

“If you go up there, there is something you might look as if you were mixed up in, and you wouldn’t be mixed up in it at all, but people might not hang around and listen to any explanations. Okay?”

“I’ve been mixed up in a lot of things.”

“This is mine.”

Brian studied him for a moment. “Just so I’ll know sometime.”

“You’ll know.”

Wing walked back to the newsroom. Borklund looked at him with weary disapproval as he listened to Wing’s story of Brian Haas’s headache. “If you’re as useful as you’ve been lately, James, it’s a damned good thing there isn’t much left to do. We aren’t holding much open.”

He worked with one eye on the clock. Finally he took an incoming call from a drunken woman and faked his end of the conversation, causing her considerable confusion. He went to Borklund and said, “I think I may have something hot, J.J. A man wants me to come down to my car in the parking lot. He wants you to listen to it too.”

“Who is he?”

“A bartender I know. He’s reliable. He says he overheard something that might give us a hell of a news break.”

“It probably won’t be worth a damn.”

“He said to be down there in three minutes. Maybe it’s something good. What’ll it cost us but a short walk?”

Borklund hesitated. “Okay, okay.”

They walked out to the parking lot. “I’m parked way over
there in the corner,” Wing said. As they neared the car, he let Borklund get a step ahead of him. He looked around and saw no one.

Borklund started to turn around, saying, “There isn’t anybody …”

As he got halfway around, Jimmy Wing hit him squarely on the jaw with a short hard overhand punch. The blow opened Borklund’s mouth and staggered him back against the car, his glasses dangling from one ear. As Wing moved quickly to catch the man, Borklund grunted and lifted his fists and struck Wing weakly in the chest. Wing measured him and hit him again. Borklund started to slide sideways along the car, and caught himself. The glasses fell and splintered on the asphalt. Borklund sighed and assumed a brave John L. Sullivan stance and pawed at Jimmy with his left. Jimmy’s right hand was a throbbing lump of pain. In the shadows he could see a dark streak of blood on Borklund’s chin. He had the frantic, nightmare feeling that Borklund would never go down. He hit him again, and the shock of pain that ran up his arm made him gasp. Borklund wavered. He leaned against the car. His knees bent and slid down to a sitting position, lowered his chin onto his chest, and toppled over onto his side.

Brian Hass appeared beside Wing and said, “
What
the holy
hell
are you doing?”

Jimmy took his knuckles out of his mouth and said in an exhausted voice, “I told you to stay the hell away, old buddy.”

“You acted so damn strange I decided to come back.”

“My God, that son of a bitch can take a punch.”

“Are you out of your damn mind?”

“Shut up. You’re getting highly nervous. Here. Take this over there by the light and read it. I’ve got something to do.”

“Like what? Stomp him a little?”

Wing said with great patience, “I am going to tape his little wrists and tape his little ankles and tape a rag in his little mouth and put him in my car for a little while. So get the hell away from here before he comes out of it and thinks you’re in this thing too.”

Brian walked toward the light. Wing taped Borklund up and hoisted him in over the tail gate. Borklund seemed heavier than anyone would have guessed. Wing’s right hand was beginning to puff.

He walked slowly over and stood by Brian as he finished reading the last few lines. “Holy Jesus in the mountains!” Haas said in a soft strained voice.

“How do you like J.J.’s nice little initials on it?”

Brian looked at them. “They should pass.” He handed the sheets to Wing. “Where are you putting it?”

“Boxed on the right side of page one.”

“
If
it gets by Harmon and Tillerman and Crawder.”

“It will, with a nice two-column head: ‘Reporter Accuses Bliss.’ And the subhead: ‘Bay-Fill Conspiracy Charged.’ ”

“But what kind of an angle have you got, Jimmy? Where’s your protection? How much cover have you got?”

“None. Nothing. The sword of truth.”

“A sword against heavy artillery, boy. But did you have to put an assault rap on top of everything else?”

“Name another way to handle it?”

“Hell, I could have decoyed him away long enough.”

“Name another way to handle it where there’s nobody in it but me.”

Haas said slowly, “I see what you mean. But I know about it and I’m not doing anything about it, so that makes me part of it too.”

“Go home.”

“They’ll believe two of us quicker than one. Let’s go in there and spread some snow around, Mr. Wing. J.J. went home with a headache and a sore throat. We’ll snow them all, cut out some of the laudatory crud about Palmland and insert this little morsel.”

“You’ll get fired, Bri.”

“I don’t think so. They’ll
have
to fire you. That’ll make me more valuable. I’ll be terrible shocked when I find out you actually struck poor Mr. Borklund, and then lied to me, your good friend. Okay?”

“So let’s go.”

After it was done, they waited around and picked a couple of the first copies off the press run. Brian had phoned Nan so she wouldn’t worry. There was no one to worry about when Borklund came home.

“You better keep him,” Haas said. “Like a rare butterfly.”

Jimmy went to the car and checked and came back. “His eyes are open. He did a little thumping and grunting. I think he’s annoyed.”

“How’s your hand?”

“I have pretty dimpled knuckles. I better not turn him loose until circulation is too far along to be stopped.”

“Want to park him in front of my house for a little while?”

“I better not. I want to keep you clean.”

They stood under the streetlight on Bayou, smiling at each other. Haas said, “You were a sneaky bastard, working for Elmo, you know.”

“The job had small compensations. I got to take Buck’s girl to Tampa and put her on a plane.”

“I wondered what happened to her.”

“She made Martin Cable nervous.”

“When Eloise reads the morning paper, she’s going to be the nervous one.”

“Almost as nervous as Leroy.”

“Mr. Wing, it has been a pleasure being associated with you. In a day when the newspaper business has become about as glamorous as chicken-plucking, you have created a new legend with a nice old-timey ring to it. May I suggest that you seek your next employment in Portland, Anchorage or Honolulu, and as quickly as possible?”

“After I stay and watch what happens.”

“Don’t stay too long. I’ll say goodbye to Nan for you.”

After Haas drove off, Jimmy walked slowly to his car. He had had little sleep, but he did not feel tired. He felt stimulated and mildly reckless, a three-drink condition achieved without drinking. But at unexpected intervals a little streak of fright would flash across the back of his mind, like a penny rocket. He kept thinking of a bloody old joke about a man reputed to be very quick with a razor. Ho, ho, ho, you missed me, boy. Did I, now? Just you try turning your head. Beyond old jokes, and the little gleams of fright, and the problem of what to do with Borklund, and the ache of his bruised hand, were the tangled sensory memories of Katherine, untouched, unsorted—all the jumbled, silky tumbling of her, white long clean lines and the gasping, all untouched, unsorted, and too soon over. For a time there had been one incredible answer to everything, a solution of such curious simplicity it had been overlooked. But, almost within moments, it had become a false answer to all the wrong questions, and she came tapping back in on her tall heels, her face cool, her mouth sucked to an unforgiving tightness, to tell him that little boys who write nasty words on the blackboard lose their chance to attend the school picnic.

He turned to look toward the rear of the station wagon and said, “Borklund, old buddy, what would you like to do? We’re too late for the bars. They closed at two. We lost our chance to pick up a couple of girls. About the only thing to do is ride around. Okay with you? Fine. We’ll just ride around.” Borklund made a muffled growling sound and thumped with his heels on the tin deck of the wagon.