The Bitch

You might have called it a fine morning—a morning like any other morning here on the west coast of Florida. It was a Tuesday in May. Warm sunlight cascaded across the city, burnished the tops of sky-washed buildings, fused brilliantly with the limber green fronds of tall royal palms, and scattered like drops of white wine in the block of giant banyans over on Bay Shore Boulevard. Fragrant winds roofed Tampa Bay, clear from the Gulf of Mexico; and down on Central Avenue, sweet young things in flowered skirts and bright shorts pranced through giddy laughter toward hilarious noon. As I say, you might have called it a morning like all mornings. If you had, you would have been wrong—dead wrong, for me.

There was no sunshine in my morning.

I sat there in the office of the Morgan Private Investigations Agency behind my desk and looked out the window, and half listened to Sam’s feet prowling the carpet. They weren’t exactly nervous feet, understand. Sam wasn’t the type to show nervousness that way. But something troubled him.

Sam was my brother and he was all right.

I was the guy who was wrong. Tonight I would step onto the other side of the law, into a robbery deal that could wreck Sam’s life. Yet it was something I had to do. It was a lousy thing to live with, and when tomorrow morning rolled around it would be that much worse. The step would be taken, then. Only I had rationalized it, strained it through all the pain—Janet’s and mine. It was the way it was going to be. Sam or no Sam. Tonight.

“Uh—Tate?”

I’d been waiting for something of the kind. The subtly cleared throat, the now-I-don’t-want-to-appear-too-anxious-but … tone of voice.

“Yes?”

“What’s on for today?”

“Nothing in particular. Wiped off that shadow job last night—the Remly thing. Wild goose. Silly as hell. Remly was just going to the library every night, like I thought. He’s working on some invention—he’s kind of crack-pot. Some new type of fishing reel, near as I can figure. He didn’t want his wife to know, is all. She’s the suspicious type. Wanted to surprise her when he made his fortune.”

“I see. Did you tip him?”

“Hell, no. Betty’s typing up the report right now.”

We both listened, because that was the thing to do. The staccato rattle of Betty’s machine stoned the partition between the office and the waiting room.

“Anyway,” Sam said, “that wasn’t what I meant.”

“How new,” I said. “How fresh and sparkling.”

I kept my eyes on the window all this time, not seeing anything. Then I looked across the desk at him. He stood with his back to me, tall, broad in the shoulders, straight, solid—wearing a gray suit. Sam always wore a gray suit. He had black hair with tiny flecks of salt among the pepper. He turned then and I looked straight at him, wishing to hell I’d kept on watching the window.

“How
is
it going, Tate?”

“All right. No complaints.”

He kept staring at me.

“Do you like it here?” he said. “I mean, do you like the agency—all that?”

“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t make it difficult, Tate.”

I didn’t say anything. My brother Sam has one of these stolid faces, heavy in the jaw, slow and steady in the eye. Not crafty—just deeply thoughtful. I turned my chair around and the swivel creaked, the spring whined. I looked at the window. I could feel those damned black eyes of his on the back of my neck. Like bugs with tar on their feet.

“Tate?”

I still didn’t speak.

I heard him turn and walk slowly across the room to his desk, and I visualized every move he made. Lithe, contained, patient. Around the desk-corner, turn the chair, sit down—and stare—at me.

“Tate?”

“What?”

“I want to know how you feel.”

“I feel all right.”

He didn’t sigh, or anything like that. I could hear his fingers on his desk, though, drumming faintly, slowly—
rat—tat—tatatat … rat—tat—tatatat….

From the other room, Betty’s typewriter clattered with bright viciousness. At the end of each grinding line, the machine’s bell clinked.

“Look, Tate. Talk to me, will you?”

I turned my chair slowly around and looked at him over there behind his desk. He started to grin, then let it go, and leaned back in his chair. He spread his hand flat on the desk.

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Take it easy,” he said. He spoke softly, watching me, with the sound of Betty’s typewriter racketing. “I just want to talk, that’s all. Is that asking too much?”

We watched each other across the room. I kept thinking about Thelma Halquist, and how I had to meet her in a little while. It was like lead in my stomach.

“Tate. You’re avoiding me. We’ve been busy, I know that. I’ve just been wondering how things are going with you—how you feel. That’s all. That much to ask?”

“You said that, before.”

“All right, I say it again. Is it?”

“No.”

There was the impulse to get up and walk out of there. I didn’t do it. It wouldn’t pay, not in the long run. There was no chance of Sam suspecting what I had in mind for tonight, but that was no reason for me to give him suspicion for anything. I felt bad enough about the thing as it was. I knew how he felt, why he was saying these things. But I had nothing to say to him.

“How’s Janet?”

“Fine. She’s fine. How else?”

“I just asked, Tate. Look, we’re running this agency together. It’s our agency. Everything we’ve got is tied up in this thing. I want it to
go.
But I want it to go
right.
Understand?”

“Sure. I understand.” I leaned forward on my desk, folded my hands on the blotter and watched him over there. He didn’t move. “What you really want is a daily report on how things are with me—that it? Assuring you I’m not going to take off for Tibet or someplace—right?”

“I didn’t say that, Tate.”

“You didn’t have to. You started this agency. You asked me if I wanted in. I told you I did, and we’ve done all right. I like it. I’m not running out on you. Janet’s all right, too. Why don’t you stop around and see us?”

He shrugged, looked over at the window, then back at me. He shrugged again.

“She’s always talking about you, Sam.”

“Take it easy. Everything’s
going
to be all right—now you’ve tamed down.”

“Sure—tamed down.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Sam said. “All I mean is, we’ve got to talk once in a while. Listen. For three days we haven’t spoken a word to each other—and don’t tell me there’s nothing to
say. I want to know how you’re making out—in here.” He
tapped his chest with his thumb.

“For Chirst’s sake,” I said. I rocked back in the chair and right then the office door opened and Betty poked her head around the jamb.

“Safe to cross the firing line?” she said.

Sam looked at me. “Forget it,” he said.

“Come on in,” I told Betty.

She looked at Sam, then moved swiftly across the room to my desk with a neat sheaf of papers in her hand. Sam began fussing with his paper clips.

“Here’s the stuff on Remly,” Betty said. “Shall I file it?”

I looked up at her. She was a tall redhead. Her blue eyes were set too far apart, her mouth was too broad, she smoked like a green wood fire, the polish on her fingernails was always chipped, and she was a very wonderful person. Just now she had on a crisp white linen suit, with a smudge of typewriter-ribbon ink across the skirt. Betty was efficient as a secretary, as close-mouthed as a turtle, tops as a woman.

I motioned toward Sam’s desk.

She looked at Sam.

“Never mind,” Sam said.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “You’d better check them. You’ll only come back after we close, and go through the files and check them anyway.”

He didn’t say anything.

Betty stood there, looking a little uncomfortable. She dropped the papers on my desk, clicked out of the office and softly closed the door.

“That’s a hell of a thing to say,” Sam said.

“I’m sorry.”

We sat there for a time. There were things to do, not big things, just little bits here and there. But we sat there.

Sam yawned, started to get up, then didn’t.

“How’s the Halquist thing coming?”

“Fine,” I said, a little too fast. He didn’t seem to notice. This was the one thing I didn’t want him to press; the one thing I’d been waiting patiently for him to bring up and get over with.

“Any sign of it winding up?”

“Not for a while.”

“How is it—interesting?”

“Tiresome as hell.”

“Want me to take over?”

“I guess not. A lot of facets, I’ve got it under control. It’s a slow one.”

My palms were sweating. I wiped them on my trousers under the desk and kept my face straight. A trickle of sweat worked down my side and began to itch. I rubbed it with my elbow.

When either one of us was on a case, we never told the other what it was about unless we needed help. We’d always worked it that way. If it had been any other way, what was going to happen tonight probably wouldn’t even have been thought of.

“I’ll try and get over and see you and Janet one of these nights,” he said. “Do that.”

“Maybe we could all go out to dinner—take in a show.”

“Let’s.”

“I could ask Betty.”

I nodded. A big silence began to develop, and all of a sudden I felt really lousy about tonight. I wanted to tell him what I was going to do. It was really bad. In the worst way, I wanted to tell him. What I was going to do could ruin him. There wasn’t anything on this earth that meant more to Sam than the agency—it was his dream.

Sam stood up. “Well, I’ve got to check on a guard for that double payroll for tonight” He gave a little snort through his nose. “That’s Halquist, too, you know?”

“You told me a while back. Only your end’s easy on this one.” I stood up, looked at him. I wanted to ask him all about it, only I couldn’t ask him anything. He didn’t suspect anything at all and maybe that’s what made it all the worse. Just the same, I was going to rob that payroll tonight—the whole two hundred and sixty-odd thousand dollars worth. And I had good reason, and maybe Sam was a big part of that, too. Involved in part of it, anyway. My whole life was a part of it. He yawned again.

“I’m getting Hornell for the first shift,” he said. “Since he’s worked it before. Then you’ll relieve him at midnight, just as we planned.”

“Right.”

I had waited for that, too. It had been certain, but if Sam had changed his mind about me working that shift, I would have had to argue him into letting me work it.

“Old man Halquist doesn’t know the trouble we go through for him. But that’s a lot of money.”

I went on around my desk and walked across the office, feeling as if I wore stilts.

“I’ve got to run out to his house, now,” I said. “See you around.”

“Yeah. Take it easy. Sorry about the other.”

“Forget it.”

I went on out, like a horse wearing blinders.

Zachary Halquist’s place was out on Snell Isle, where even the trees seemed to wait until nightfall before they slyly rubbed boughs. On a good part of Snell Isle, privacy was the high point of discovery, bought and paid for with ringing coin. It was a fine place to carry on and exist, if you admired walls. Or if you could afford to admire walls.

The Halquist home was on Lionel Broadway, which was just wide enough to admit one and one-half cars, pressed close together. What would become of the other half car could be detected in deep gouges along the stone, brick, or cement walls.

I turned down this street, doing about twenty in the old convertible, which here gave the illusion of flying. The sun was shining up there, but very little reached the earth through the fine old live oaks, palms, ash, hickory, pine, Spanish moss, and a thick air of rich and subdued discontent.

Halquist lived at the end of a block. He had a red brick wall. The white wooden-slat gate was open, so I turned in and the convertible pulled itself together and staggered up the winding gravel drive. Thick green grass covered a sloping lawn between aristocratic shrubbery and disdainful royal palms.

I parked the car in a brilliant shaft of sunlight by the front entrance, got out, climbed the brick steps and kicked the door on the brass kicking plate. There was no buzzer or knocker. This was probably because in the old days, before banks, they carried their riches home by the armload and didn’t have a finger to spare.

The door opened.

“Oh—it’s you.”

“Where’s the butler?”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

We smiled at each other. Thelma Halquist was a pleasant piece to smile at—to anything at. She had what they call poise and bearing. She had a rich whiskey breath, pleasantly fuzzed blue eyes, thick ash-blonde hair, a mouth that the gods had probably spent generations perfecting, and a tall, rather lush, well-tanned body which at the moment was fairly well hidden beneath a thick, flame-colored beach towel.

“I was sun-bathing,” she said. “Out by the pool. I heard a car in the drive—I didn’t know it was you, Tate.”

“Surprised?”

She reached out with one hand and playfully chucked me under the chin, then turned and moved away into the shadows.

“Come on in—and close the door.”

I did that. Her perfume was that kind you know very well is there, but can only smell when you don’t try. You knew how she moved under the towel, and you earnestly wanted to know more.

She paused at the foot of the curved staircase leading upward through rainbowed light coming from colored glass windows.

“He’ll know you’re here.”

“Can’t we talk now?”

She shook her head. “You go right on up there. He’ll know you’re here and he’ll be waiting. You can tell him I let you in.”

“I want to talk with you.”

She moved her shoulder, pulled the towel tight down on her breasts, holding it together behind her now. She grinned.

“You scared, Tate?”

“No. Why should I be?”

“You should be. I am.”

“I want to talk with you,” I said.

“You go on upstairs,” she told me. “When you come down, walk around the side of the house. I’ll be out by the pool. We’ll talk.”

She turned away and walked into an archway and vanished.

I went on upstairs.

Everybody I’d seen today looked like a ghost.

• • •

He lay there in bed, sipping whiskey through a glass straw. As I stood in the doorway, he set the glass on the bed-table and the glass straw rattled. He cleared his throat, folded his hands across his chest, blinked.

“Come in, Morgan.”

“Yes sir.”

I went on in and stood at the foot of the bed.

“Sit down.” He flipped one pudgy hand toward a chair on the right side of his bed. I went over there and sat down. It was one of these old red plush chairs with curling wooden back, and air rushed out the bottom, under the cushion. The room was very quiet. Somewhere outside a bird sang. There was no wind. In the room there was an odor of slain flowers, yet no flowers were in sight. I looked at Zachary Halquist.

His name was known throughout the South—Halquist, the soft-drink tycoon. His largest plant was right here in this city. He always said it was the “-quist” part of his name that sold his drinks. He said it made people thirsty. It sounded like a squeezed orange with fizz added. I had to admit, there
was
something about it. “Pure luck, Morgan,” he’d told me. “Just plain luck—all in my name.”

He hated the taste of any soft-drink.

He looked it.

His face was round and red and he seldom saw the sun. His lips were faintly purple and slightly bulged. His hair was parchment white, his tiny intelligent eyes even blacker in color than my brother Sam’s. Every time Halquist looked at you, you had an impression of adding machines running over-time.

He wore white pajamas, the collar neatly flat around his neck. He lay beneath a single white sheet which still showed creases from the shelves. This sheet had not been slept with—and neither had Halquist. That was his problem, or one of them.

“Is she down there?”

“Yes,” I said. “She let me in.”

“I see. Did you speak with her?”

I shook my head. “Just said I wanted to see you.”

“Fine.” He glanced away, lowered his voice. “You’d better go over and close the door.”

I got up and closed the door and came back and sat down.

“Well,” he said. “What have you to report?”

“Mind if I smoke?”

“No, of course not.”

I found a cigarette and lit up. There was a bronze ash-tray on the table by the bed. I dropped the match in, and kept trying to think about what to say to him. I’d said all the usual things. There was nothing to do but start all over again. Basically, he was a good guy. This didn’t help. Basically, Thelma, his wife, was a bitch. This didn’t help, either.

“There’s still nothing conclusive,” I told him. I looked around the room, at the heavy blue drapes, the high-posted mahogany bed, the old pictures of Dutch kitchens, European flower gardens, castles in Spain that hung on the walls. Nothing helped. The odor of dead flowers was strong. “She has many friends,” I said. “Men and women friends.”

“I’m not concerned with the women,” he said. “You know what I want, Morgan. That’s your job, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

“Sure—but, I—”

“Well, if you know your job, you should be able to come up with something.” He hauled himself up a little in the bed and flung one hand out, pointing toward the door, and downward. “I know that woman, you hear?
I
know her.
Don’t tell me she’s fooling you, tool”

“She’s not fooling anybody, sir.”

“I’m a sick man.” He lay back, panting a little, watching the ceiling, blinking the little intelligent black eyes. You couldn’t tell what this boy was thinking. Not a bit. “I’m a sick man.”

“Easy. You’re doing all right.”

“I’m not doing all right. I’m doing damned well lousy, Morgan—for your information, I’m a mess. I’m old and sick, and she’s young and healthy and she’s in heat.” He groaned a little, down in his chest someplace. Lying on his back, his stomach swelled enormously. When he stood up, he didn’t appear to have that much front. But it was there, all right. “She’s young. You know?”

“Sure. I know.”

“We’ve levelled with each other pretty well, haven’t we, Morgan?”

“Yes-sir. We have.”

He sighed and groaned again. “My young wife,” he said softly. Then his face began to take on that same purple tinge as his lips. “What I can’t stand,” he said, gargling a little, “is knowing she’s out there laying them. Christ, I can’t stand that. Maybe it sounds crazy, but I loved her. You hear that?”

“Yes.”

“It would be all right if she weren’t my wife. Then I could stand it.” He rolled slightly on the bed, blinking at me. “I tell you, I want grounds for divorce, Morgan. I want you to find those grounds.” He hunched up on one elbow. “Trail her every minute, Morgan. Every minute!”

“Do what I can.”

He flopped back and stared at the ceiling, panting.

“Why won’t she just simply divorce me?” he said softly. “Why—why—why?”

“You know why, Mr. Halquist.”

“Yes. Money.”

I didn’t say anything.

“She’s not going to have it,” he said. “Never.”

I still said nothing.

“Haven’t you found out a thing?”

“Look, Mr. Halquist. Grounds can be manufactured, like your bottles of soda pop. Only thing is—I can’t do it that way. We don’t work that way. If she’s out with—if she has any—if there’s another man in her life, then we’ll find him. She can’t shield him forever—if there is one.”

“If—another man …” He began to laugh. It was really something—not to look at, not even to hear, for that matter. I looked away. He panted and spewed and choked for a while, the bed jouncing. Pretty soon it quieted down. Little noises kept coming from his throat. I sneaked a look at him. He’d been crying, not laughing.

“The way I thought,” he said, speaking quietly, holding himself under control as if he were hanging on the edge of a cliff by his fingertips, “it would be the thing to do. I mean, not just do it—not up and find one like Thelma—not that. It was when my wife died. No family left, you see? My boy was killed in Italy, you see? Machine-gunned, and the shock did something to my wife. So, in a little while she died.” He turned his head away from me and I watched the clutching fingers of his right hand, the nails biting into the sheet.

“That’s all right, now,” I said.

“So she died and there I was—here, in this house, with everything and nothing, you see?”

I nodded, only he couldn’t see me, so I said, “Yes.”

“A fool,” he said. “I was a fool. I’m a fool right now. But I was a fool and I knew it and I didn’t care. It didn’t seem to matter.”

“Does it matter now?”

“No.”

“Then quit worrying.”

“And when I saw Thelma, I wanted her.”

“Plenty men would feel the same. It’s human.”

“Yes. I knew that, too. I know it now. Maybe even you would like—”

“Maybe so.”

“Anyway, we’re levelling, aren’t we?” I waited.

“I thought it would be the thing to do. She seemed to like me. She seemed to have sense, and her share of honesty. There are a lot of good things about Thelma—oh, I don’t blame her. How could I blame her?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I can’t. Not in my heart of hearts.”

“Well, sir. I think I’d better be on my way.”

“Wait. I want to tell you. It’s not just the port wine. I’ve always drunk too much port wine, I admit that. The doctors always warned me. My blood pressure was always too high, anyway—but it wasn’t that. So I asked her to marry me and she did. I wanted somebody around the house, somebody like Thelma.”

“Noble desire,” I said.

“If I didn’t know you, I’d think you were making fun of me.”

“I’m not.”

He turned and blinked at me and held his hand up, held up three fingers. “In three days,” he said quietly. “In three days, I knew what she was—what she was doing.”

“Funny you never caught her.”

“Well,” he said. “You haven’t either, have you? She’s smart. She knows what she wants. She’s having her cake and she’s gorging herself on it at the same time.”

I stood up. “Well,” I said. “I just dropped around to tell you I’ve got a line on something. It should break in a couple days. I can’t promise anything. I’ve got to get along, now—setting something up for tonight.”

“For her?” he whispered.

I leaned across the bed. “For her,” I whispered.

He lay back and grinned, nodding. He was still nodding as I turned away and left the room.

I came along the thickly carpeted balcony until I stood above the stairs, looking down into the first floor hall. For her? That was a laugh. I was doing it because I had to. Janet had said she would leave me if I didn’t do something soon.

“On your own,”
she said.
“You hear me, Tate? Not with Sam’s help—nobody’s help. How long do you think I’ll stand it, knowing I’m married to a leaner—a freeloader—a parasite, living off his own brother’s backbone?”

Maybe it would help remedy all the sour and hellish dreams gone dead. Right or wrong, it no longer mattered.

“Hey—you up there!”

It was Thelma, down there in the hall calling in a whisper. She stuck her tongue out at me.

I waved back to her and started down the stairs.