Beggarman, Thief (30 page)

“Here you are, dear lady,” Healey said, courtly Virginia gentleman, “I have a pack right here in the pocket.” He crossed the room to where his shirt was hanging over the back of a chair. He took out the cigarettes and matches, then started to take the shirt off the chair.

“You don’t need to get dressed for Doris,” Doris said. She wiggled her thin shoulders and smiled girlishly at Healey. “I’m a married woman. I know what men look like.”

She
did
mean it, Wesley thought, when she gave Healey the signal during the day.

Healey gallantly lit Doris’s cigarette. He offered one to Wesley. Wesley didn’t like cigarettes but he took one because he was in Mr. Kraler’s house.

“God,” Doris said as she puffed at her cigarette and blew smoke rings, “I’m back in the land of the living. Poor Max. He wasn’t much when he was alive, and he turned up dead for his one moment of glory. Boy, the bishop had a hard time making poor Max sound like something in his speech.” She shook her head commiseratingly, then looked hard at Wesley. “Are you as bad as
they
say you are?”

“Evil,” Wesley said.

“I bet,” Doris said. “With your looks.
They
say you’re a terror with married women.”

“What?” Wesley asked, surprised.

“Just for your information,” Doris said, “and because I think you’re a nice boy, you better tell a certain Mrs. W. that she’d better get to the mailbox every morning before her husband.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Wesley asked, although he could guess. Some neighborhood gossip must have noticed the U.M. bike parked in front of Mrs. Wertham’s house more than once and blabbed to his mother.

“While you were out you were the subject of discussion,” Doris said. “First of all that you were so different from Max and not different better, I can tell you that.”

“I can guess,” Wesley said.

“Your mother did not have many kind words for your father, either,” Doris said. “He must have been something, if half of what she said was true. And you’re following in his footsteps, she said, arrested and all in France for nearly killing a man in a drunken brawl.”

“Hey,” Healey said, “good for you, pal.”

“And,” Doris went on, “a virtual sex maniac like the old man. What with that disgusting Mrs. W., who’s old enough to be your mother, and God knows how many other houses you go to and deliver more than the groceries.” She giggled, her droopy breasts quivering under the transparent nightgown.

“Hey, I have a good idea,” Wesley said. He felt he was being choked in the small room, with the loops of cigarette smoke and the coquetting, almost-naked malicious girl and the leering soldier. “You two obviously have a lot to talk to each other about …”

“You can say that again, Wesley,” said Healey.

“I’m not sleepy,” Wesley said, “and I could use another breath of air. I’ll probably be an hour or so,” he said warningly. He didn’t want to come back to the room and find the two of them in his bed.

“I may just stay for another cigarette,” Doris said. “I’m not sleepy yet either.”

“That makes three of us,” said Healey.

Wesley started to stub out his cigarette, when the door was flung open. His mother was standing there, her eyes stony. Nobody said anything for a moment as Teresa stared first at him, then at Healey, then, for what seemed minutes, at Doris. Doris giggled.

“Wesley,” his mother said, “I’m not responsible for the conduct of Mr. Healey or Mr. Kraler’s daughter, who is a married woman. But I am responsible for
your
conduct.” She spoke in a harsh whisper. “I don’t want to wake up Mr. Kraler, so I’d appreciate it if whatever you do or say you do it quietly. And, Wesley, would you be good enough to come downstairs with me?”

When she was formal, as she was now, she was worse than when she was hysterical. He followed her downstairs through the darkened house to the living room. The flag from the coffin was folded on a table.

She turned on him, her face working. “Let me tell you something, Wesley,” she said in that harsh whisper, “I’ve just seen the worst thing in my whole life. That little whore. Who got her in there—you? Who was going to lay her first, you or the soldier?” In her passion her vocabulary lost is pious euphemisms. “To do that on the very night that a son of the family was laid to rest after giving his life for his country.… If I told Mr. Kraler what’s been going on in his house, he’d take a baseball bat to you.”

“I’m not going to explain anything, Ma,” Wesley said. “But you can tell Mr. Kraler that if he as much as tries to lift a finger to me, I’ll kill him.”

She fell back as though he had bit her. “I heard what you said. You said kill, didn’t you?”

“I sure did,” Wesley said.

“You’ve got the soul of a murderer. I should have let you rot in that French jail. That’s where you belong.”

“Get your facts straight,” Wesley said roughly. “You had nothing to do with getting me out of jail. My uncle did it.”

“Let your uncle take the consequences.” She leaned forward, her face contorted. “I’ve done my best and I’ve failed.” Suddenly she bent over and grabbed his penis through his trousers and pulled savagely at it. “I’d like to cut it off,” she said.

He seized her wrist and roughly pulled her arm away. “You’re crazy, Ma,” he said. “You know that?”

“From this moment on,” she said, “I want you to get out of this house. For good.”

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “It’s about time.”

“And I warn you,” she said, “my lawyer will do everything possible to make sure you don’t get a penny of your father’s dirty money. With your record it won’t be too hard to convince a judge that it doesn’t make any sense to put a fortune into the hands of a desperate murderer. Go, get out of here, go to your whores and hoodlums. Your father will be proud of you.”

“Stuff the money,” Wesley said.

“Is that your final word to your mother?” she said melodramatically.

“Yeah. My final word.” He left her in the middle of the living room, breathing raucously, as though she were on the verge of a heart attack. He went into his room without knocking. Doris was gone, but Healey was lying propped up on the bed, smoking, still bare from the waist up, but with his pants on.

“Holy shit,” Healey said, “that lady sure barged in at the wrong moment, didn’t she?”

“Yeah.” Wesley began throwing things into a small bag.

Healey watched him curiously. “Where you going, pal?”

“Out of here. Somewhere,” Wesley said. He looked into his wallet to make sure he had the list of names he had been adding to ever since he got out of jail. He never left his wallet anywhere that his mother could find it.

“In the middle of the night?” Healey said.

“This minute.”

“I guess I don’t blame you,” Healey said. “Breakfast is going to be a happy meal here.” He laughed. “The next time the army sends me out with a coffin I’m going to tell them they got to give me a complete rundown on the family. If you ever get to Alexandria, look me up.”

“Yeah,” Wesley said. He looked around him to see if he had forgotten anything important in the room. Nothing. “So long, Healey,” he said.

“So long, pal.” Healey flicked ashes on the floor. “Remember what I said about Paris.”

“I’ll remember.” Silently, his old windbreaker zipped up against the night’s cold, he went out of the room, down the dark stairs and out of the house.

He remembered, too, as he walked along the windy dark street, carrying the small bag, that his father had told him that it had been one of the best days in his life when he realized he didn’t hate his mother anymore. It had taken time, his father had said.

It would take time for the son, too, Wesley thought.

A day later he was in Chicago. He had gone into an all-night diner on the outskirts of Indianapolis when a truck driver came in who told the girl behind the counter that he was on the way to Chicago. Chicago, Wesley thought, was just as good a place to start whatever he was going to do as anyplace else and he asked the driver if he could come along. The driver said he’d be glad for the company and the trip had been comfortable and friendly and aside from having to listen to the driver talk about the troubles he was having with his seventeen-year-old daughter back in New Jersey, he had enjoyed it.

The driver had dropped him off near Wrigley Field and he’d looked at his list of addresses and seen William Abbott’s address. Might as well start somewhere, he’d thought, and had gone to the address. It was about noon, but Abbott was still in pajamas and a rumpled bathrobe, in a beat-up, one-room studio littered with bottles, newspapers and coffee containers and crumpled pieces of paper near the typewriter.

He had not been favorably impressed with William Abbott, who pretended to know a lot more about Thomas Jordache than he really knew, and Wesley left as soon as he could.

The next two days he tried to get a job at two or three supermarkets, but they weren’t hiring people at supermarkets that week in Chicago and people kept asking him for his union card. He was low in funds and he decided Chicago was not for him. He called his Uncle Rudolph in Bridgehampton, collect, to warn him he was coming there, because he didn’t know where else to go.

Rudolph sounded funny on the phone, uneasy, as though he were afraid somebody who shouldn’t be listening in was listening in.

“What’s the matter?” Wesley said. “If you don’t want me out there, I don’t have to come.”

“It’s not that,” Rudolph said, his voice troubled over the wire. “It’s just that your mother called two days ago to find out if you were with me. She has a warrant out for your arrest.”

“What?”

“For your arrest,” Rudolph repeated. “She thinks I’m hiding you someplace.”

“Arrest? What for?”

“She says you stole a hundred and fifty dollars from her household money, the money she kept in a pitcher over the stove in the kitchen, the night you left. She says she’s going to teach you a lesson.
Did
you take the money?”

“I wish I had,” Wesley said bitterly. That goddamn Healey, he thought. The army had taught him how to live off the land. Or even more likely, that cheese-faced Doris.

“I’ll straighten it out,” Rudolph said soothingly, “somehow. But for the time being I don’t think it would be wise to come here. Do you need money? Let me know where you are and I’ll send you a money order.”

“I’m okay,” Wesley said. “If I get to New York I’ll call you.” He hung up before Rudolph could say anything else.

That’s all I need, he thought, the jug in Indianapolis.

Then he decided he’d go to New York. Rudolph wasn’t the only person he knew in New York. He remembered the nice girl at
Time
saying that if he needed help to come to her. Nobody would think of looking for him at
Time
Magazine.

He was on the road the next morning.

«  »

CHAPTER 2

He did not talk to his uncle for almost two months after the telephone call from Chicago.

When he got to New York he went directly to Alice Larkin’s office. He must have looked pretty awful after his days on the road, because she gasped as though someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over her when he came into her cubicle. He had had almost nothing to eat in days and had done his sleeping in truck cabs; he needed a shave, his collar was frayed, his pants were stained with grease from helping a driver change a tire on the big semitrailer outside Pittsburgh; and he had forty-five cents in his pocket.

But after the first shock, Miss Larkin seemed happy to see him and insisted on buying him lunch downstairs even before he could tell her what he was there for.

After he had eaten and was feeling like a human being again he had told her just about everything. He tried to make it sound unimportant, and joke about it, because he didn’t want that nice girl to think he was an overgrown crybaby. She was easy to talk to, looking across the table at him intently through her glasses, her small, pink-cheeked face alert, as he explained why he had left Indianapolis and about the warrant for his arrest and the division of the estate, everything.

She didn’t interrupt him as he poured it all out, just sighed or shook her head every once in a while in sympathy and indignation.

“Now,” she said, when he had finished, “what’re you going to do?”

“Well, I told you, the other time I was here,” he said, “I sort of have the feeling that I’d like to look up the people who knew my father and get an idea of what he seemed like to them—you know—different people, different times of his life. I knew him less than three years.” He was speaking earnestly now, not trying to sound ironic or grown up. “I feel as though there’s a great big hole in my head—where my father ought to be—and I want to fill it as much as I can. I guess it sounds kind of foolish to you …”

“No, it doesn’t,” she said, “not at all.”

“I told you I had a list of people …” He took his wallet out of his pocket and put the worn, creased sheet of paper with the names written on it onto the table. “The magazine seems to be able to find just about anybody they want to,” he said, “and I thought, if it wasn’t too much trouble for you, maybe in your spare time …”