He shook his head. “You better stay out of it. You might get hurt.”
“Nothing can hurt me,” she said. She pointed her finger at the wreckage of her face. Her tone was almost pleading as she said, “Come on, tell me what they look like.”
He shrugged. He gave a brief description of Oscar and Coley. And the Olds 88.
“Check,” Tillie said. “I don’t have 20–20 but I’ll keep them open and see what’s happening.”
She turned and walked out and the door closed. Ken lifted himself from the floor and picked up the candle. He walked across the cement floor and the candle showed him a small space off to one side, a former coal-bin arranged with a mattress against the wall, a splintered chair and a splintered bureau and a table stacked with books. There was a candle-holder on the table and he set the candle on it and then he had a look at the books.
It was an odd mixture of literature. There were books dealing with idyllic romance, strictly from fluttering hearts and soft moonlight and violins. And there were books that probed much deeper, explaining the scientific side of sex, with drawings and photos to show what it was all about. There was one book in particular that looked as though she’d been concentrating on it. The pages were considerably thumbed and she’d used a pencil to underline certain paragraphs. The title was The Sex Problem of the Single Woman.
He shook his head slowly. He thought, It’s a damn shame...
And then, for some unaccountable reason, he thought of Hilda. She flowed into his mind with a rustling of silk that sheathed the exquisite contours of her slender torso and legs. Her platinum blonde hair was glimmering and her long-lashed green eyes were beckoning to say, Come on, take my hand and we’ll go down Memory Lane.
He shut his eyes tightly. He wondered why he was thinking about her. A long time ago he’d managed to get her out of his mind and he couldn’t understand what brought her back again. He begged himself to get rid of the thought, but now it was more than a thought, it was the white-hot memory of tasting that mouth and possessing that elegant body. Without sound he said, Goddamn her.
And suddenly he realized why he was thinking of Hilda. It was like a curtain lifted to reveal the hidden channels of his brain. He was comparing Hilda’s physical perfection with the scarred face of Tillie. His eyes were open and he gazed down at the mattress on the floor and for a moment he saw Hilda naked on the mattress. She smiled teasingly and then she shook her head and said, Nothing doing. So then she vanished and in the next moment it was Tillie on the mattress but somehow he didn’t feel bitter or disappointed; he had the feeling that the perfection was all on Tillie’s side.
He took off his shoes and lowered himself to the mattress. He yawned a few times and then he fell asleep.
A voice said, “Kenneth—”
He was instantly awake. He looked up and saw Tillie. He smiled at her and said, “What time is it?”
“Half-past five.” She had a paper bag in her hand and she was taking things out of the bag and putting them on the table. There was some dried fish and a package of tea leaves and some cold fried noodles. She reached deeper into the bag and took out a bottle containing colorless liquid.
“Rice wine,” she said. She set the bottle on the table. Then again she reached into the bag and her hand came out holding a cardboard box.
“Opium?” he murmured.
She nodded. “I got some cigarettes, too.” She took a pack of Luckies from her pocket, opened the pack and extended it to him.
He sat up and put a cigarette in his mouth and used the candle to light it. He said, “You going to smoke the opium?”
“No, I’ll smoke what you’re smoking.”
He put another cigarette in his mouth and lit it and handed it to her.
She took a few drags and then she said quietly, “I didn’t want to wake you up, but I thought you’d want to hear the news.”
He blinked a few times. “What news?”
“I saw them,” she said.
He blinked again. “Where?”
“On Tenth Street.” She took more smoke into her mouth and let it come out of her nose. “It was a couple hours ago, after I come out of the Chinaman’s.”
He sat up straighten “You been watching them for two hours?”
“Watching them? I been with them. They took me for a ride.”
He stared at her. His mouth was open but no sound came out.
Tillie grinned. “They didn’t know I was in the car.”
He took a deep breath. “How’d you manage it?”
She shrugged. “It was easy. I saw them sitting in the car and then they got out and I followed them. They were taking a stroll around the block and peeping into alleys and finally I heard the little one saying they might as well powder and come back tomorrow. The big one said they should keep on searching the neighborhood. They got into an argument and I had a feeling the little one would win. So I walked back to the car. The door was open and I climbed in the back and got flat on the floor. About five minutes later they’re up front and the car starts and we’re riding.”
His eyes were narrow. “Where?”
“Downtown,” she said. “It wasn’t much of a ride. It only took a few minutes. They parked in front of a house on Spruce near Eleventh. I watched them go in. Then I got out of the car—”
“And walked back here?”
“Not right away,” she said. “First I cased the house.”
Silly Tillie, he thought. If they’d seen her they’d have dragged her in and killed her.
She said, “It’s one of them little old-fashioned houses. There’s a vacant lot on one side and on the other side there’s an alley. I went down the alley and came up on the back porch and peeped through the window. They were in the kitchen, the four of them.”
He made no sound, but his lips shaped the word. “Four?” And then, with sound, “Who were the other two?”
“A man and a woman.”
He stiffened. He tried to get up from the mattress and couldn’t move. His eyes aimed past Tillie as he said tightly, “Describe them.”
“The man was about five-ten and sort of beefy. I figure about two hundred. He looked about forty or so. Had a suntan and wore expensive clothes. Brown wavy hair and brown eyes and—”
“That’s Riker,” he murmured. He managed to lift himself from the mattress. His voice was a whisper as he said, “Now let’s have the woman.”
“She was something,” Tillie said. “She was really something.”
“Blonde?” And with both hands he made a gesture begging Tillie to speed the reply.
“Platinum blonde,” Tillie said. “With the kind of a face that makes men sweat in the wintertime. That kind of a face, and a shape that goes along with it. She was wearing—”
“Pearls,” he said. “She always had a weakness for pearls.”
Tillie didn’t say anything.
He moved past Tillie. He stood facing the dark wall of the cellar and seeing the yellow-black play of candlelight and shadow on the cracked plaster. “Hilda,” he said. “Hilda.”
It was quiet for some moments. He told himself it was wintertime and he wondered if he was sweating.
Then very slowly he turned and looked at Tillie. She was sitting on the edge of the mattress and drinking from the bottle of rice-wine. She took it in short, measured gulps, taking it down slowly to get the full effect of it. When the bottle was half-empty she raised her head and grinned at him and said, “Have some?”