Crooked Hearts (7 page)

“Cholera. At least it was over quickly; he didn’t suffer.” She dabbed at her eye with a dainty knuckle.

“Tsk-tsk. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

“Carpe diem,”
she snuffled.

“O tempora, o mores,”
he countered.

“To everything there is a season.”

He looked beaten for a second, then held up his index finger and declared, “Time is money.”

Grace had no choice but to incline her head in gracious defeat.

Another lengthy pause. When she couldn’t take any more polite, mutual staring, she stood up, and all four Croakers, plus Winkie, clambered to their feet in her wake. “Why don’t I go and tell Mr. Jones you’re here?”

“Thank you, ma’am,” they said in chorus, bowing her out.

Upstairs, beyond the bathroom door, Reuben was singing the falsetto chorus to “Rally ’Round the Flag”: “The Union forever, hurrah, boys, hurrah—”

“Mr. Jones?” Grace called softly, giving the wood a discreet rap. The door opened abruptly and she fell back a step. He grinned at her through a face full of shaving soap.

“Hi, Gus.”

“You have visitors,” she got out, breathless, unprepared for the sight of his naked chest and long, strong, hairy legs, and the intriguing strip of white towel in between.

“Who is it?”

“It’s the Croaker brothers and Winkie.”

His grin went from cocky to sickly; under the shaving lather she thought his cheeks paled. But all he said was, “Tell ’em I’ll be down in a second, will you?”

“Okay.” She studied him, not moving. “Everything all right?”

“Sure. Hunky-dory.” He held up his razor, waiting for her to go. Unable to think of anything else to say, she finally did. But she rejoined the Croakers uneasily, and their bovine courtesy didn’t amuse her anymore.

“Lincoln!” Reuben exclaimed a few minutes later, with every evidence of hearty pleasure, bounding down the stairs with an athletic stride and advancing on the head Croaker with his hand out. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

“Likewise.”

“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you quite this early in the day.”

“Yeah, well, you know what dey say about the oily boid an’ all.”

“So true, and so profound. Did you meet Mrs. Rousselot?”

“Yeah, we already had dat pleasure. An’ now, we was wonderin’ if we could speak wit’ youse in private, like, if the widow don’t mind.”

“The widow?”

“Of course,” Grace said quickly. “It was lovely meeting you all.”

“Lovely,” they echoed sincerely.

She sent Reuben a look, one he probably didn’t understand because she wasn’t sure what it meant herself, and took her leave.

Upstairs, she walked briskly into the bedroom, removed her shoes, and tiptoed back down the short hall to the top of the steps. But the masculine bonhomie below had suddenly grown subdued; try as she might, she couldn’t make out anyone’s words, although from the cadence of the voices, Reuben’s and Lincoln’s, she gathered they were having a rather jovial argument. Suddenly the talk broke off; she heard sounds of movement, and a second later the click-squeak-click of the door to the alley opening and closing.

She crept down the stairs, listening intently. “Mr. Jones?” No answer, and when she reached the bottom step, she saw that the house was empty. Everybody was gone.

The suspicion that Reuben had run out on her came and went speedily. He wouldn’t have left without taking a single possession, and certainly not without his beloved wine collection, no matter what the inducement. He’d gone out for a while, that was all, with his peculiar friends, to do whatever men without regular jobs did together during the day. Well, fine. Leave her here all by herself, then, with no money, nothing to eat, and nothing to do. She’d find something to do.

She cracked his desk and searched it. The locks on the drawers made her laugh; she picked them with a couple of hairpins as easily as picking dandelions. What she found inside, arranged, filed, and organized with admirable neatness and attention to detail, were the records of a half-dozen bunco games and confidence schemes, operating simultaneously from seven different city post office boxes.

Among other things, Mr. Jones ran a bogus clipping service—Readiclip, Inc., was its current name, although it periodically went out of business and reappeared as something else. He sold fake lottery tickets and Irish sweepstakes chances, sometimes forged, sometimes nonexistent. He dabbled in the rightful-heirs swindle, a complicated genealogical-investigation fraud that Henry used to work years ago, she recalled. But Henry had given it up because it had gotten too dangerous.

Here was a game she hadn’t heard of: the Skytop Roof Services Company, Ltd. The handsome brochure offered amazingly inexpensive roofs to people whose only obligation, after the roof was built, was to allow potential new customers to inspect the finished product. The lucky homeowner paid for his cheap new roof up front—and never saw the salesman again.

The ad Reuben took out in newspapers from time to time was a masterpiece of small-time simplicity. It promised nothing, so it wasn’t even illegal. It merely asked readers to send a dollar to a post office address, for “a little surprise in store for you. Who knows?” Grace knew: the surprise was that they lost a dollar.

But her favorite was the “International Society of Literature, Science, and Art,” a combination correspondence course and talent school. Hopeful amateurs sent in their stories, pictures, and inventions, and for thirty dollars Reuben sent back advice on how to “revise” their work, to ready it for submission to a publisher or a patent office. And for a small additional fee, he offered diplomas, plaques, scrolls, certificates, and—she loved this—the privilege of using the initials A.S.L. or M.S.L. after their names.

Leafing through the Society’s correspondence, she was cynically amused until she came upon Reuben’s unfinished reply to the writer of one particularly bad piece of autobiographical prose, a lonely-sounding spinster from Sacramento. He was sending her money back, along with the kind and very gently worded advice that she perhaps try gardening or needlework for an artistic outlet.

In a thoughtful mood, Grace returned the contents of Reuben’s desk to the proper drawers, and relocked them with her hairpins.

A few minutes later, innocently seated on the sprung couch and perusing the newspaper, she heard the door open. Pretending absorption, she didn’t look up until he’d crossed the room, passed in front of her, and turned for the stairs. She only caught a glimpse of his profile, but it was enough to make her jump up, tossing the paper aside, and cry, “Holy saints, what happened to you?”

His answer was garbled; he kept moving, shuffling up the steps at an uneven gait, holding one arm across his middle. At the top of the stairs, he turned toward the bathroom, and she followed him in without hesitation.

“What happened?” she asked again. “You look like a cable car ran over you!”

He went directly to the sink and peered at himself in the mirror. “Unhhh,” he groaned, and she could only echo his dismay: blood trickled from any number of places, most alarmingly from a jagged gash at the side of his mouth; one eyebrow was divided in half, possibly by a flying ring finger; if his nose wasn’t broken, it had at least been grossly insulted.

“Sit down,” Grace ordered, taking his arm in what she thought was a gentle clasp, but he winced and yelped, “Ow!” She jerked back, startled. “What’s
wrong
with you?”

“Mph,” he said, closed the lid to the w.c, and carefully lowered himself until he was sitting on it. “They hung a shanty on me.”

“Who did?”

“The Croakers.”

“No!” She thought of all five of them seated on the couch, like puppies in a humorous photograph. “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it.”

“What happened?” She found a clean towel and began to run hot water into the sink basin.

“Rough story, Grace. Not fit for delicate ears.”

She muttered an indelicate word. “Why did they do it? What have they got against you?”

“Ow!” he yelled again when she held the hot cloth to his eyebrow. “Ow! Damn it!”

“Don’t be such a baby. Sit still, I have to clean it.” She followed his retreating head until it struck the pipe to the overhead water tank, preventing further escape. “Don’t give me any trouble, Jones, or I’ll use alcohol,” she warned darkly.

“Alcohol!” His battered face brightened. “Gus, go into my sock drawer—top right, bureau—and bring me that pint of bourbon at the bottom.”

Without a word, she dropped the towel in the sink and obeyed. In his bedroom, she unscrewed the top to the pint bottle and took a delicate swig. Well, she rationalized, smothering a cough, cleaning blood and gore from a man’s face was no picnic for her either.

“Thanks,” he said when she handed him the bourbon. “Care for a nip?”

“No, thank you,” she said virtuously, “I never touch hard liquor.”

He toasted her and drank deeply. After that, things went a little more smoothly. Reuben grew more talkative in proportion to his acquaintance with the bottle; by the time she’d cleaned his wounds and applied sticking plaster to the worst of his cuts, she knew the whole story.

It had all started about a month ago, when he’d gone to Stockton on “business,” and also to locate a good poker game. Business over, he got into a high-stakes showdown with five men, four of them brothers. He’d figured out after a couple of hands of stud that somebody was cheating, but he couldn’t pin down who; it wasn’t until they were hours into the game that he realized it was all five of them, taking turns. By then he was practically broke.

On the last hand, he decided to bet Old Blue, a pet name for the faithful, but fake, silver mine for which he’d been carrying around phony stock certificates for years, betting or selling them as the need arose. They were allegedly worth about two thousand dollars. The Croakers beat him again—three aces and a pair of queens to four miserable treys. He handed over his stock certificates and got the hell out of town.

So who did he run into at McDougal’s Card Palace on Kearny Street not two weeks later? All five of them. They’d lied about being Stockton boys for the same reason he had, so their deeds couldn’t follow them home. Not surprisingly, they were annoyed with him. Using his natural charm, however, he’d placated them and bought a two-week extension on his debt. It had come due this morning.

Grace shuddered, remembering the leader’s gravel-voiced solicitousness. “And I thought he was nice. Now I just think he’s spooky.”

“Yes, there is that about Lincoln,” Reuben agreed, rubbing light fingers over his ribs. “But I’m feeling rather fond of him at the moment.”

“What on earth for?”

“He’s the only one who didn’t hit me.”

She shivered again.

“Then too, he was kind enough to grant another extension on the two grand—one more week.”

“That’s not kindness,” she scoffed, “that’s good business. If they kill you, you’ll never pay them back.”‘

“That was mentioned.” He stood up slowly. “I have to lie down now.”

She followed him into the bedroom, and didn’t protest when he lay down on his own bed, even though she’d begun to think of it as hers. “Aren’t you going to take off your shoes?” she asked, reaching for the folded blanket at the foot of the bed.

“Can’t. Too stiff. Would you do it for me? Ah, Sister Augustine, you’re an angel of mercy.”

She remembered the last time he’d called her an angel of mercy, and yanked off his shoes with unnecessary force. “What am I supposed to do while you’re lying here recovering?” she asked crossly. “From wounds you brought on yourself, I might add. Why don’t you have any food in your house? Were you hoping to starve me out?”

He grinned, then groaned when the movement tore at the sticking plaster on his lip. “Around the corner on Sansome,” he said carefully, “there’s a restaurant called Belle’s. Great corned beef, lousy stew, pretty good pie. They know me there. Say my name and they’ll fix you up.”

Her mouth had begun to water. “Thanks. What do I use for money?”

He made a magnanimous gesture with one hand. “Tell ’em to put it on my tab.”

“Okay.” She stood still, reluctant to leave. “Well.” She quit fidgeting with the blanket edge, jerked it up and tucked it around his chest. “You’ll be all right, I assume,” she said brusquely. “By yourself, I mean.”

The brown eye that wasn’t bloodshot winked at her. “Fine. I’m going to sleep. Thanks for the first aid, Gus. You’ve got great hands.”

“Head hurt?”

“Mm.”

“It’s probably the bourbon.”

He stroked the bruised bridge of his nose, wincing. “It’s not the bourbon. Oh, Grace,” he remembered as she turned away. “Be sure to wake me up by three o’clock, will you?”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve still got business to take care of,” he answered importantly.

She leaned against the doorpost and folded her arms. “You want to visit as many post offices as you can before they close,” she guessed silkily. “To see who might’ve enrolled in the International Society of Literature, Science, and Art while you were out of town.”

It was a deep, warming pleasure to watch his mouth drop open. He regarded her for a long time in silent speculation. “You rummied my desk,” he said at last, and there was a gratifying note of wonder in his voice, maybe even admiration.

She smiled modestly.

“What’d you use?”

“A pick and a little homemade tension wrench.”

“Which you just happened to have on you?”

“A girl’s got to be prepared. No,” she chuckled, “I made them.”

“You
made
them?”

“Out of hairpins.”

“I don’t believe it,” he said flatly.

She shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“Three o’clock, Gus, wake me up. And then I want to see you crack that lock. I want to see it.”

She shrugged again, then expanded it into a lazy stretch. “If I feel like it,” she said airily. “Sleep tight.” She closed the door with exaggerated gentleness and tiptoed away.

4

I don’t know of anything better than a woman if you want to spend money where it’ll show.

—Kin Hubbard