Artie started the car, pulled onto the road. “You bastard,” he said, “if we’d have cleaned out the Delts, we’d be in clover.” Suddenly Judd had fallen into silence, moody. He hadn’t wanted Artie to start the car just then. And he hated to have Artie drive his car. Artie began a kind of act. “Listen, Mac, next time we go out, you do the way Charley says, or I get me another partner.”
Judd took it up. “For crissake, Charley, if not for me, you’d have got us both pinched. I saved you from getting caught.”
“Yeah? Mac, I pulled plenty of stuff and I never got caught. You’re just so goddam green you’re scared of your own shadow.”
Judd seized the flask. There was still some left.
“You didn’t even get a kick out of it!” – Artie was getting querulous again – “that’s why you wanted to stop.”
“Well, not the same kind of kick you get,” Judd said. “To me, it’s more of a stimulant than a gratification.”
Artie might not have heard. “I think I’ll get me a goddam date for New Year’s Eve,” he said. “You’re just a wet blanket.”
Judd drew in his breath. He must remain in full control of himself now; everything depended on it. Artie was teasing, that was all. Teasing. “New Year would be a hell of a night for a haul,” he observed.
Artie gave him a sidewise glance. Maybe he’d let Mac in on some more jobs; maybe they could pull some real stuff together instead of chickenshit. Only Mac had to know who was boss.
“Well,” Judd said quietly, “Mac, if I do what you want, you’ve got to do what I want. That’s equitable.”
Artie turned his face to him, this time, and there was the Dorian smile. “You want to make that a deal?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, we could make it a kind of a deal.”
Their eyes held together, in the bargaining. Judd felt himself almost unbearably quickening.
And then, in that same instant, a blur crossed the corner of his vision, something on the road in front of them; they were going through a small town, a figure was crossing the street. Judd cried out, and jerked the wheel from Artie. The car slid around the bundled figure – some goddam drunk; the car skidded, wavered. Artie gave Judd a terrible shove with his elbow, and somehow managed to put the car under control. “You goddam stupid sonofabitch, what did you do that for?”
“You didn’t see him! You’d have run him down!”
“I saw him.”
Artie was dead serious, sober, cool.
“You could have killed him.”
“So what? Who’d have known?”
Judd was silent. His mind worked around Artie’s words. Artie could do things, say things, flashing in an instantaneous reaction understanding, that he, Judd, had to attain in several steps of thinking. It was true again – by everything his intellect accepted, Artie was right. And yet he felt as though he had made some great, shivery effort, dragging himself up to a peak, an icy peak, alongside his friend.
“How about it, Mac? You want to make the deal?” Artie said, and the teasing note was there, just an edge of it.
“If we’re agreed on the terms,” Judd managed, quietly.
“Yah. But Charley’s the boss. What he says, you do. Life or death.”
Judd nodded. Yes. In any action, one had to be the master. And the slave, a slave.
Artie accelerated. The car swayed but held on the slippery road.
But not a slave to grovel. A slave of sure reward, the golden slave, his sword protecting his master, his beloved master, of long ivory limbs.
“Only, not for kid stuff,” Judd stipulated. “I don’t have to obey if it’s crap.”
Artie laughed at his apprehensiveness. “No, this is for real stuff.”
“Any crap, Mac has a right to refuse.”
“Wait a minute, Mac. If you start refusing every time I get a hot idea, what the hell.”
They defined it. Only things that might make Judd look ridiculous could be challenged. But if once he refused to go through with a serious thing, then they’d be finished. Artie would get someone else.
“But Mac has a right to question an order,” Judd insisted.
“Okay. But Charley has the last word. If Charley says so, it’s so.”
It hung between them for a moment. “Hey, Jocko, let’s make that the signal,” Artie said. “When I say ‘Charley says so’, that means no more questioning. ‘Charley says so’, you’ve got to do it, no comeback.”
It was like handing over his life. A fluttering elation went through Judd. “Okay, Dorian,” he said. They squeezed some last drops from the flask. Judd heard something like a giggle coming out of himself, the high girlish giggle he used to have when a kid. And just then the car skidded. It whirled completely around and landed in a ditch.
Judd sat rigid for a moment, but Artie lay back, laughing. Then Judd got out and walked around the car. They had been lucky; the ditch was quite shallow. He could pull out, he felt sure.
He came around to Artie’s side. The laughter had stopped. Artie’s head was against the back of the seat; his eyes were closed.
“Move over. I’ll drive.”
Artie swayed over, limp and warm-feeling in his racoon coat. Judd slipped in and closed the door.
It was one of those times when you couldn’t tell if Artie had really passed out or was only letting things happen. The deal.
In Michigan City, a diner was open. Artie, in high spirits, gabbed of the stunts they could pull off, now and then letting a word like “hi-jack” escape loud enough for the waitress to hear. There was Ned White’s house in Riverside. His folks had a cellar full of the best stuff straight from Canada. A couple of cases would be worth a couple of centuries. Maybe they could let Ned in on the job. No, Judd objected, Ned was a pet hate of his – a bore. Okay, Artie had a better idea: let Ned in on the job and then plug him. He was a snot anyway.
Then they started on pet hates, who shouldn’t be allowed to exist. They took turns naming candidates, beginning with Morty Kornhauser. And the blackballing president of the chapter, Al Goetz – Artie said they ought to shoot his balls off. And they named a prof or two, and William Jennings Bryan. And how about including females, Judd said, the old bitch who had spoiled his all-A average with her B in Medieval History. Sure, Artie said, and his own bitch of a governess, Miss Nuisance, he had always wanted to kidnap and torture her, “Cut her tits off!” Judd said. And it was like splashing, splashing, and he was tittering, and Artie said in a solemn voice, “Kidnapping, that’s the thing to do – pull off a snatch. That would be the real trick, a snatch for a big wad.”
“How about Myra?” Judd suggested, seeing the German soldiers, the French girl dragged by the hair. “And rape her for the hell of it.”
“Rape?” Artie laughed suggestively. “She’d beat you to it.” Then serious again: “A boy is better. A kid.”
And suddenly now in his room, as Judd sat waiting, his blood pounding with the exciting remembered images, the lights snapped on and a rough voice demanded, “Okay, Steiner, where’s that typewriter?”
He didn’t show, he knew he hadn’t shown, the leap in him. Yet it had been a dreadful leap of fear, before he told himself it was Artie.
Judd said, “What took you so long, you sonofabitch?”
Artie said that Myra had called just as he was leaving – she was alone, so he had to stop by and give her one. A man had to keep his girl serviced. He was in high humour. “Boy, you should have been at the house for dinner!” He told of his mother discussing the big murder. “The murderer ought to be tarred and feathered and then strung up, she said! I nearly stood up and announced, ‘Mater, I cannot tell a lie, it was me!’”
“Why didn’t you?” Judd said, his voice soft, Artie’s nearness almost uncontainable to him. “They wouldn’t believe you anyway.”