Boldt (22 page)

I just stand there and look at him.

“Only Joan, that's what I worry about. If anything happened to me, you know how she'd take it. So all I'm saying is if the shit's about to fly, let me know, will you, so's Joan and me can get to take that couple of days in the mountains I keep promising her.”

“Don't fret, Sammy,” I tell him. “Nothing'll happen here. That I promise.”

“That's good enough for me,” says Sammy. “You say that, that makes it right. I'm only sorry I spoke up.”

“Don't worry about it, Sammy,” I tell him and begin to turn away again but Sammy's still got something to say.

“Only,” he says, “I chose this time, see, while Joan's in back, so she won't see me talking like this, and she'd maybe get a little mad the way you took care of one or two things while I was away that time...”

“We never talked, Sammy.”

“Yeah,” he says, and laughs and goes back down to the bunch at the other end of the bar.

“What's Sammy got to say?” Murdock asks.

“Forget Sammy,” I tell him. “If I was a gambling man, I'd have put you asking that question second.”

“All right, all right,” Murdock says. “So let me have it.” I tell Murdock what I've just heard.

“Well,” says Murdock, “there you go. Styles sends the girl out to do some shopping.”

“And it's got to be her who takes home the groceries to wherever Styles is going to be on the day.”

“Styles isn't going to be wherever that may be for more than approximately thirty seconds.”

“And the handover will be as close as it can be allowing for delays.”

“Yeah. Before or after; when's he going to be there?” We sit there for a moment or two looking at our drinks.

“I sure as hell hope it's before,” Murdock says. “I'd hate to be just one footstep behind him.”

That's another one that doesn't require an answer.

“What about Fleming and Copeland?” Murdock says. “They can't stay on their feet the next thirty-six hours.”

“They don't need to. Nobody's going to play find the lady with that rifle until they have to. No, it's from the moment my brother hits town we start worrying. Then we can use them. With equipment so we look as though we're playing out our parts in this charade. I'll talk to Jack later and meet him and fit him out.”

“Well, okay, but make sure he's sober enough to use the stuff.”

“They're both fine. They're not like us; they deny themselves while they're working.”

“Yeah, but they don't do our work, do they?”

I sit in the car outside the Chandler and wait for Murdock. Today's heat seems hotter than yesterday's and the haze seems hazier and I wish to Christ Murdock'd hurry up. He must have made it clear by now; he's too good to make a meal of it. I just sit there with an unlighted cigarette in my mouth staring at everything and nothing, wishing I was in my tub just soaking away the day's dirt. Then Murdock finally appears and the two members of staff he's got to deport his stuff heave it into the trunk except for the couple of suits that Murdock takes the trouble of laying out on the back seat himself; why he bothers doing that, I'll never know. So when he's finally in I say to him, “Like the old record says, should I book you for overacting?”

“I did it right,” Murdock says. “Don't crap all over the interior.”

I pull away from the curb and drive back to my place. I give Murdock a hand upstairs with his stuff and once it's in there and the doors closed behind us, Murdock being Murdock starts right in unpacking and carving himself out a little segment of my living area So I think what the hell, and lay the divan out for him and go and get some sheets and blankets and dump them down on the divan.

“Thanks,” Murdock says, turning around from trying to find a place to hang one of his shirts. “Don't bother making it up. I'll do that myself.”

“You don't say,” I reply, and go into the bathroom to begin running my tub.

When I get back to Sammy's, Sammy isn't around, just Joan, and the bar's empty of customers. She smiles the same smile she always does as if I had no relation whatsoever to the person who's tried to get her in the sack on several occasions.

“Twice already,” she says when I got to the counter. “You trying to turn us into an ‘in' place?”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “I need the commission.”

“Not from what I heard,” she says.

“One to you,” I say.

She keeps her smile going and gets my drink for me.

“Where's Sammy?” I ask her.

“Lying down,” she says.

I leave that one where it is except to say, “Listen, if you've got things to do, I'll be fine. I'm waiting for a call so I can just sit here and read the paper. Don't worry about me.”

“Well,” she says, “if you don't mind, I guess I might just go and see if Sammy needs anything. You sure?”

I nod my head and there is a slight flickering of her eyelashes then she turns away and goes out through the door. I take my drink down the bar a way close to where the phone's kept and take a look at the sports page and while I'm doing that the phone rings. I lean over the bar and lift the phone from its cubby hole and when I've put it down, I lift the receiver and I hear Joan on the extension asking who's calling. Fleming's voice begins to ask if I'm in the bar but I cut in and tell Joan it's okay; I'm on the line and I hear the extension click and then I say to Fleming, “It's okay, you can go ahead.”

“He's back home,” Fleming says. “Or should I say, down home?”

“How long?”

“Ten minutes ago.”

“Right, well, you and your helper can take the rest of the day off.”

“You mean we've got that long left?”

“If you play it the way I tell you, yes.”

Then I give him the outline and tell him what to do and how and where to be in town tomorrow, and when I've done that I put the receiver down and put the phone back in the cubby hole. After that, I look at the door that Joan went through then I slide off my stool and go back to Murdock.

“Do you mind if I open the window?” Murdock says.

“Help yourself,” I tell him.

“I can't stand a stuffy room.”

Murdock gets up from the armchair opposite me and pushes up the window. On his way back, he pauses by the table and freshens up both our drinks then sits down. I reach out from my own armchair and take a sip of my drink. I think that it needs more ice but I can't be bothered to reach out again and take the lid off the ice bucket. A minute or so later Murdock sits up and says, “You want more ice?”

I watch him take the lid off the bucket.

“Only a couple of cubes left,” he says. “You want some?”

I shake my head. Murdock drops the cubes into his drink and then gets up, picks up the bucket, goes through into the kitchen and I can hear him refilling the bucket. When he comes back, he takes out a couple of cubes and drops them in the glass I'm holding as he passes by the chair.

“I hate to see a man make a martyr of himself,” Murdock says, and sits down again.

“I guess the Chandler spoiled you a little bit, George,” I say eventually.

“It didn't exactly do you a whole lot of good,” Murdock says.

I look at him and say nothing. After a while I drain my drink and get up and put on my coat.

“Where're you going?” Murdock says.

“Somewhere where the help doesn't talk back.”

Murdock grins. “Have one for me while you're out.”

“Fuck off,” I tell him, and close the door behind me.

Clark's is bursting at the seams. Even Moses's select court on the raised part seems to be crowded but I guess he won't mind too much. The drinks I've had already don't help the feeling the shoving crowd gives me, and I wish to Christ at least the crowd'd sway the same way I'm swaying. I beat my way to the bar and, of course, while I'm waiting the seventy-five years it takes for me to get attention, I begin to wish I'd stayed at home with Murdock instead of touring the bars after I'd found Jo-Ann and the spade were engaged all night. While I'm thinking that thought I start getting attention, only it's not from one of the bartenders; it's from a hand that's slipped between my legs from behind. Even if it wasn't accompanied by the “Hi” I get from Agnes, I'd still be able to guess at who the fingers belonged to—not that I'd ever experienced them before, but handling is what you'd expect from someone like Agnes. The bar is so crowded that Agnes's attentions go unnoticed, not that anybody'd care anyway.

“You feeling good?” Agnes says, as she slides around to lean against me as much as against the bar, and the hand now slips between me and the bar.

“You certainly are,” I tell her.

“I know it,” she says. “No good being modest about it.”

“This is modest?” I say to her. “In any case, where's your partner. I thought that you worked as a pair?”

“As a pair, not always. With them, all the time.” I get an extra bit of pressure to accompany that remark, and then she unzips me and her hand slides inside.

“Christ,” I tell her, “you want Moses complaining about the mahogany getting stained?”

“You're not going to come, sweetheart,” she says. “When that happens, it'll be the way I want it to happen.”

“In that case, what do I have to do to get a drink around here?”

“Wave the magic wand, baby,” she says and inside of my Jockeys she does just that. The sweat on my brow is not entirely due to the alcohol in my system. But, like magic, a bartender gets free and asks for my order. I tell him and whatever Agnes wants which is the same and then a voice at my ear on the opposite side of which Agnes is says, “Make that three.”

I turn my head and Marcia's squeezed herself in next to me. I tell the bartender to make it three and then Marcia makes the Agnes routine a double act by slipping her hand through and grabbing a piece of the action herself.

“Like I thought,” Marcia says. “I thought I'd recognized a familiar handshake.”

Agnes says, “Well, at least we know now he's got one. All those excuses about Moses weren't just excuses.”

“And balls,” Marcia says. “They always say Boldt's got balls even if they say nothing else.”

I push my own hands down which is a pretty difficult operation considering the kind of crush I'm in but I finally manage it and push their hands away.

“I guess this is what is called a squeeze play,” I say to them, “but however effective it is, it's not going to be effective enough to get me into one of Moses's dens with you two.”

“You don't have to worry tonight,” Agnes says. “Moses has a real friend with him. He only has eyes for him.”

“Yeah, but what does he have for me?”

“You're crazy,” Marcia says. “Tonight we're working for ourselves.”

The drinks arrive.

“Even supposing I could believe that,” I say to them, “how much would it cost me?”

Agnes shakes her head.

“Only the pleasure of your company,” she says.

“Sure,” I say. “And then I'm in there and suddenly it's go down Moses.”

“Listen, one thing Moses doesn't do,” Marcia says. “He doesn't fuck pigs.”

“That's about the only thing he don't do,” Agnes begins to say, but before she can say it all, I've whirled around on Marcia and grabbed hold of her by her neck, just below the upward angle of her jawbone, close to the tendons of her neck. I do this just as she's put her drink to her mouth and she's swallowing; the drink spews out of her mouth and onto my face and the crowd stops swaying and quiets a little bit because nobody's ever seen Marcia handled like this, especially together with the fact that it's going on before Moses's eyes.

“Listen,” I say to Marcia. “Listen, you whore, you're talking to me. If you want to look good enough to turn up for work tomorrow, remember that.”

While I'm saying this a lot of things happen all at the same time. Moses rises from his throne, the heat of his outrage burning a path through the crowd. Moses's boys in the anteroom have had the message passed to them and they come steaming in through the crowd, and Agnes jumps on my back and grabs hold of me by my hair. I push Marcia and the guy she's leaning against away from me and I grab Agnes's arms, leaning forward like somebody heaving a sack of coal, and twist my body to one side, dumping Agnes flat on her back on top of the bar amongst all the glasses. She shrieks and pedals her legs around in the air, trying to get off her back, but I give her a two-handed push and she slides across the alcohol-covered bar and disappears over the opposite edge. By the time that has taken to happen, Montgomery and the boys and Moses as well are almost on to me so I have no choice but to draw my gun and wave it around saying to Moses, “You really want gunshots in here, Moses?”

Moses and the other fellows stop a couple of feet short of me. Now the crowd is very quiet indeed.

“You got no witnesses,” Moses says. “I got plenty. And I got you covered anyhow.”

I hear one of the bartenders take a few steps closer to the spot directly behind me.

“Yeah and there's plenty in here who'd like to make a little bread on telling where I was when I got it.”

“You mean you think somebody actually cares enough?”

“That's for you to decide, Moses,” I tell him.

Moses thinks about that for a moment or two.

“I guess just about anything's possible, even that,” Moses says.

“And the thick ear your guy's thinking of giving me as compensation. However hard he hits, I'll wake up and I'll be coming back.”

After I've spoken, the dead silence goes on a little bit longer and then Moses says, “Leave the pig alone. He's a pig. He's got to live with being one. That's enough.”