Soft touch (19 page)

I edged out of the throng to a quiet corner where I could stand with my back toward the illusion of safety of taut worn canvas, and looked back the way I had come, looked back toward the garish temporary arch, waiting for them. I remembered how they had looked coming across the highway, swift and black under the poisonous yellow of the lights—as unreal as Dick Tracy. And in the same directness, their look of purpose was the same thing I had seen in front of the air terminal as they had come toward Vince and Zaragosa. I wondered if they were the same. Sweat began to dry. Breathing became slower. My legs did not tremble as much. I lit a cigarette. And watched.

The girl appeared suddenly beside me. I had not seen her approach me. Red bullfighter pants. Soiled ankles. Hair bleached hard and white. Mouth painted square. Big breasts swelling a white satin blouse. Broad patient face and practiced bovine eyes. Seventeen or thirty, or anything in between. Red purse with sequins, many missing.

"Maybe we both got stood up, hey?" she said, her voice deep and rough.

"Maybe," I said. They would look for a man alone.

"My name is Bobbie."

"Hi, Bobbie. I'm Joe." 144

"Hi, Joe."

We weighed and studied each other for that timeless moment, that ancient recognition. What passes for pride had been eased by the trite gambit of the approach.

"I got a trailer," she said.

"That's nice. That's handy."

She had looked at my clothes, my shoes. "Twennyfi' bucks."

"All right."

"I like a guy don't try to argue and chisel the price."

I wanted to tell her there was something refreshing about such directness, after Tinker and Mandy. I went with her. She had found my hand and we walked holding hands. When we came to a narrow place, she went ahead, her fleshy hips rolling in an exaggerated way in the tight red fabric. We went out of the lights to a back area, between ropes and stakes and guy lines. A group of men sat around a packing case playing cards in the hard white light of a gasoline lantern.

When we passed close one of them said, "Good evenin', Bobbie," his voice slow and deep and dignified.

"Hi, Andy," she said. They continued their game. No jeers or whistles. To each his own function and occupation.

The trailers were clumped fifty yards away. There were lights in some of them. I heard the jackal voice of a comedian, and then the prolonged roar of studio applause and laughter. Her trailer was aluminum, and small and road-weary. It was off the hitch. A gray sedan was parked next to it. She knocked on the door, listened to the silence, and then unlocked it, turned on a light—a big bulb in a vivid orange shade. Like being inside a musky pumpkin. She latched the door behind us, adjusted Venetian blinds to close out all of the night.

"Make yourself comfortable, Joe. We got some bourbon. You want a drink?"

"No thanks. I've had all I can handle."

"Well, you don't act it. Mind if I fix myself one?"

"Go right ahead." I sat in the only chair. It was small and uncomfortable. She knelt in front of the tiny kitchen

unit, put two cubes of ice in a green plastic glass, dumped bourbon in liberally, carried her drink to the bunk and sat on it, facing me.

"Here's lookin' up your address," she said. She drank and sighed and said, "I needed this one."

"Do you drive and haul this trailer around?"

"They won't let me drive. I'm a lousy driver they keep telling me. That's Charlie and Carol Ann. Charlie is Carol Ann's boy friend. Charlie owns the Whip and the Caterpillar. I tell you they're the only honest to God friends I ever had. They've been swell to me. There's nobody taking a slice off the top so I get to pick and choose. I wouldn't wanna bring no bums in here, you understand. No rough stuff. I liked the way you looked, you know."

"Sure. Thanks."

"That's okay. You're welcome." She set the empty glass aside, yawned and began to unbutton her blouse. "You want we should have the light on?"

"Hold it, Bobbie. That isn't what I have in mind."

She tensed and her eyes turned hard and suspicious. "What the hell do you have in mind? I don't go for any specialties, buster."

I took out my wallet. I found a five and a twenty and handed her the two bills. She took them and said, "Now what?" She was still suspicious.

I took out the claim check on my car. "I want you to do me a favor. I'll give you another twenty bucks."

"What's on your mind?"

"You know the Sidewheeler?"

"Sure. Just down the road. I never been in it."

"I've been trying to get away from some people who've been bothering me. I don't want to run into them. I want you to take this claim check to the doorman and ask for my car. I'll give you a full description of it and the license number. He'll probably ask. Tell him the owner is sick and sent you after his car. He'll let you have it. Give him this dollar. Then bring the car back here."

"It is a hot car?"

"No."

"Let me see the registration." I took it out of the wallet and handed it to her. "You're Jerome Jamison?" she asked.

"Yes."

"What kind of trouble can I get into on this deal?"

"No trouble. I just want to get away from those people."

"They'll recognize your car, won't they?"

"Keep an eye out and see if you're followed. If you are, don't come back here with it. Put it in the lot across from the carnival and come back through the midway and bring me the car keys."

She thought it over and shook her head. "I won't do it. Not for twenty bucks."

"What will you do it for?"

"I'll do it for fifty bucks."

"What makes you think it's worth fifty bucks?"

"I'm just guessing."

I took out two more twenties and a ten. Handed them to her. She put the money away and said, "So okay, friend. Only I better be dressed a little different to go up to the front of that joint, don't you think?"

"It might make it easier."

"I got a suit I can put on." She opened the very narrow door of a tiny closet, took out a dark blue suit on a hanger and laid it on the bed. The trailer was so small that I could have reached out and touched her as she stood with her back to me and unzipped the red bullfighter pants and peeled them down. She turned and sat on the bed to pull them off her legs. As she stepped into the skirt, pulled it up and zipped it, she said, "You sure this hasn't got anything to do with the cops?"

"I'm certain."

She tucked the satin blouse into the waistband of the skirt, put the jacket on and gave her hair a couple of quick pats. "Okay?"

"Fine."

I walked out into the night with her. "Which direction will you come from, Bobbie?"

"Over there. You have to go all the way around in back and come in over the railroad tracks."

'Til be waiting," I said.

I saw her go. The night swallowed her. Then she reappeared again in the carnival lights, walking quickly in her blue suit. Five minutes to walk to the Sidewheeler. Three minutes to get the car. Five minutes to drive back. Certainly no more than fifteen minutes if it went smoothly.

I opened the trailer door and turned the orange light out. I closed it and leaned against the side of the trailer. I lit a cigarette. The blare and rumble of the carnival was softened by distance. The sky was clear, the stars bright. Two women with hacksaw voices quarreled in a nearby trailer. You said you did. I never said I did. You wasn't listening or something. I damn well heard you say you did. Oh, shut up, for once. I won't shut up. I heard you tell Pete you did it. I never told Pete nothing.

After about ten minutes had gone by, I moved away from the trailer, snapped the butt away, moved into the deeper shadow by a battered stake truck.

The headlights appeared suddenly as the car came across the railroad tracks. It moved slowly across the open field toward the trailer. I saw that it was my wagon. But I wanted to be certain no other car followed it. It stopped forty feet away from me, next to Bobbie's trailer. She left the lights on and the motor running and got out.

Just as I started to move toward her, she turned and said, "I told you he said he'd wait right here."

"Ssshh!"

I turned to move away as quickly and silently as I could. I tripped and fell headlong across a flat bed trailer into a mass of jangling metal. I scrambled to my feet. I heard the running footsteps close behind me. I tried to dodge away but someone ran into me and we both went down on the rank grass. I struck out at him and hit him once and then there was a great blow against my head, just behind my ear. It flashed behind my eyes like nearby lightning. I did not go out completely. I was aware of being pulled to my feet. I knew there was one 148

on each side of me, that both my wrists were painfully locked against the small of my back. I could walk in a spongy way.

Then we were beside my car. The headlights against the aluminum trailer made a reflected glow. Bobbie said, "What're you doin' to him? What're you gonna do to him? You didn't say you were goin' to . . ."

And a blurred shadow moved quickly and savagely, and I heard the wet crunch of the blow against her face, saw her run backward into the side of the trailer and fall. And heard her begin to whine, a helpless animal sound. I tried to plunge away from them, but they held me effortlessly. The first blow had weakened me.

"Turn him a little. Okay. Hold it."

The side wall of my head tottered and fell in upon itself with a prolonged rumbling crash that turned out every light in the world.

Chapter 14

I woke up in the middle of the night with a horrible headache. I looked at a familiar light pattern on the ceiling and realized that Lorraine had gotten up to go to the bathroom and had left the bathroom door ajar. Wherever the party had been, it had been a dandy.

Best thing to do is roll over and try to go back to sleep. I tried to roll over and I could not. It startled me. As I began to investigate I found that I was fully dressed, that I lay spread-eagled on my bed, wrists and ankles tied somehow to the four corners of the bed.

So the party had been at our house and I had passed out and some comical type had tied me up.

"Lorraine?" Then, a bit louder, "Lorraine!"

No answer. No guarantee that she was even in the house. If the party had moved on somewhere, she would be with it. Maybe she had dreamed up the idea of tying

me up. It would certainly give her more freedom of action.

Try to sleep anyway.

I tried. I could not. I was too uncomfortable. I heard a noise downstairs. Somebody down there.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Hey, anybody!"

And footsteps came up the stairs fast. More than one set. Somebody came in and fumbled around for the light switch and finally found it. I blinked at the sudden brightness and smiled sheepishly and said, "Somebody with a cute sense of humor fixed me up good. Untie me, will you, please?"

Three men had come into the bedroom. I didn't recognize any of them. One was big and beefy and blond. Maybe one of Lorraine's new friends. The other two weren't her type. Small and dark and wiry, and too sharply dressed. Nobody smiled.

"Get me loose, will you? Where's Lorraine?"

The big blond one stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at me. The side of his face looked as though he had recently taken a bad fall.

"That was real cute, Jamison, sending that little tailpiece back after your car. But for another thirty bucks she cooperated very very nicely."

I stared at him blankly. "I don't know what you're talking about. Who the hell are you? Where is my wife?"

"Nice act," the big one said. "We want the money. Where is it?"

And then I got the picture. This was robbery. They had a lot of nerve to come in and tie me up like this. I wondered what they'd done to Lorraine.

"Listen," I said. "We don't keep money around the house. A few bucks, but not important money. You're welcome to what we've got."

One of the small dark ones spoke to the other in a language I couldn't identify. The one spoken to reached into his inside pocket and pulled out the thickest wad of hundred dollar bills I'd ever seen outside a bank. He framed them and said, "We found this much, Jamison. Where's the rest of it?" 150

"The rest of what? You never found that much in this house."

They all looked down at me for a little while, and then they moved away from the bed and talked in low tones. I was worried about Lorraine. If she was still out, she might walk in on this. They might hurt her. She wouldn't know how to handle a situation like this. The smart thing was to let them have what they wanted.

They made a decision. They got a blue plastic sponge out of the bathroom. The bedroom blinds were closed. The big one pressed hard with his thumbs against the hinges of my jaw, forcing my mouth open. One of the others forced the sponge into my mouth. They tied it in place with one of my neckties. They took off my right shoe and sock, and tied my ankle more firmly. One of the dark ones opened a pocket knife, sat on the bed with his back to me, and began to work on my naked foot.

Until the pain began I could not help thinking it was some kind of an involved joke. I was wondering if one of my friends had hired these boys to scare me half to death. But when the pain started, it all became real. I tried to keep it away from me. I tried to push down, so the pain would stay there in my foot. But it came up and it became a part of me and there was nothing but pain. I roared against the sponge. I bucked and screamed, eyes bulging, but he didn't stop. And I swung hard around a dizzy curve and slammed down into darkness. And came to with the tears drying on my face, and they looked at me and he started again, his narrow back hunched over my bare foot. The other two did not watch him. I tore at the bonds until my shoulders creaked and my hands went numb. I made soundless shrieks and passed out again. When I came to the sponge was gone. My foot felt as though I were holding it in a bed of coals, but the pain was dull enough to bear.

"The rest of the money," the big one said.

I had little wind, as though I had run a long way. "I don't know what you're talking about. This ... is some kind of a mistake. You can have anything you want. Don't. . . hurt me again like that."