“My name is Linnette Dobbins.”
“So? My name is Frank Kelly.”
“A month or so ago my brother stole a gun from you and—”
Smiles made most people look pleasant. But Mr. Kelly’s smile only served to make him look knowing and dirty. “Oh, the dwarf.” He looked her up and down. “Sure. I should’ve figured that out for myself.”
“The police informed me that they’ve given you the gun back.”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“I’d like to buy it from you.”
“Buy it from me? What the hell’re you talkin’ about, small fry?”
Mr. Kelly was just about to go on when a new pair of lovers bellied up to the gallery counter and waited for instructions.
Without excusing himself, Mr. Kelly went over to the lovers, picked up an air rifle and started demonstrating how to win the gal here a nice little teddy bear.
“A dwarf, you say?”
Aimee nodded.
“Jeeze, Aimee, I think I’d remember if I’d seen a dwarf woman wanderin’ around the midway.”
“Thanks, Hank.”
Hank then got kind of flustered and said, “You think we’re ever gonna go to a movie sometime Aimee, like I asked you that time?”
She touched his shoulder tenderly and gave him a sweet quick smile. “I’m sure thinking about it, Hank. I really am.” Hank was such a nice guy. She just wished he were her type.
And then she was off again, moving frantically around the midway, asking various carnies if they’d seen a woman who was a dwarf.
Hank’s was the tenth booth she’d stopped at.
Nobody had seen the woman. Nobody.
“So why would you want the gun your brother killed himself with, small fry?”
From her purse, Linnette took the plain white number ten envelope and handed it up to Mr. Kelly.
“What’s this?” he said.
“Look inside.”
He opened the envelope flap and peeked in. He ran a pudgy finger through the bills. He whistled. “Hundred bucks.”
“Right.”
“For a beat-up old service revolver. Hell, small fry, you don’t know much about guns. You could buy a gun like that in a pawn shop for five bucks.”
“The money’s all yours.”
“Just for this one gun?”
“That’s right, Mr. Kelly. Just for this one gun.”
He whistled again. The money had made him friendlier. This time his smile lacked malevolence. “Boy, small fry, I almost hate to take your money.”
“But you will?”
He gave her a big cornball grin now and she saw in it the fact that he was just as much a hayseed as the rubes he bilked every night. The difference was, he didn’t know he was a hayseed.
“You damn bet ya I will,” he said, and trotted to the back of the tent to get the gun.
“I’ll need some bullets for it, too,” Linnette called after him.
He turned around and looked at her. “Bullets? What for?”
“Given the price I’m paying, Mr. Kelly, I’d say that was my business.”
He looked at her for a long time and then his cornball grin opened his face up again. “Well, small fry, I guess I can’t argue with you on that one now, can I? Bullets it is.”
The carnival employed a security man named Bulicek. It was said that he was a former cop who’d gotten caught running a penny ante protection racket on his beat and had been summarily discharged. Here, he always smelled of whiskey and Sen-Sen to cut the stink of the whiskey. He strutted around in his blue uniform with big half-moons of sweat under each arm and a creaking leather holster riding around his considerable girth. His best friend in the curly was Kelly at the shooting gallery, which figured.
Aimee avoided Bulicek because he always managed to put his hands on her in some way whenever they talked. But now she had no choice.
She’d visited seven more carnies since Hank and nobody had seen a woman dwarf.
Bulicek was just coming out of the big whitewashed building that was half men’s and half women’s.
He smiled when he saw her. She could feel his paws on her already.
“I’m looking for somebody,” she said.
“So am I. And I found her.” Bulicek knew every bad movie line in the world.
“A woman who’s a dwarf. She’s somewhere on the midway. Have you seen her?”
Bulicek shrugged. “What do I get if I tell ya?”
“You get the privilege of doing your job.” She tried to keep the anger from her voice. She needed his cooperation.
“And nothing else?” His eyes found a nice place on her body to settle momentarily.
“Nothing else.”
He raised his eyes and shook his head and took out a package of cigarettes.
Some teenagers with ducks ass haircuts and black leather jackets — even in this kind of heat for crissakes — wandered by and Bulicek, he-man that he was, gave them the bad eye.
When he turned back to Aimee, she was shocked by his sudden anger. “You think you could talk to me one time, Miss High and Mighty, without making me feel I’m a piece of dog shit?”
“You think you could talk to me one time without copping a cheap feel?”
He surprised her by saying, “I shouldn’t do that, Aimee, and I’m sorry. You wanna try and get along?”
She laughed from embarrassment. “God, you’re really serious aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am.” He put out a hand. “You wanna be friends, Aimee?”
This time the laugh was pure pleasure. “Sure, Bulicek. I’d like to be friends. I really would. You show me some respect and I’ll show you some, too.”
They shook hands.
“Now, about the dwarf you was askin’ about?”
“Yeah? You saw her?” Aimee couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice.
Bulicek pointed down the midway. “Seen her ’bout fifteen minutes ago at Kelly’s.”
Aimee thanked him and started running.
Linnette had a different taxi driver this time.
This guy was heavy and Mexican. The radio played low, Mexican songs from a station across the border. The guy sure wore a lot of aftershave.
Linnette sat with the gun inside her purse and her purse on her lap.
She looked out the window at the passing streets. Easy to imagine her brother walking across these streets, always the focus of the curious stare and the cold quick smirk. Maybe it was harder for men, she thought. They were expected to be big and strong and—
She opened her purse. The sound was loud in the taxi. She saw the driver’s eyes flick up to his rearview and study her. Then his eyes flicked away.
She rode the rest of the way with her hand inside her purse, gripping the gun.
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine her brother’s hand on the handle, on the trigger.
She hoped that there was a God somewhere and that all of this made sense somehow, that some people should be born of normal height and others, freaks, be born with no arms or legs or eyes.
Or be born dwarfs.
“Here you are, lady.”
He pulled over to the curb and told her the fare.
Once again, she found her money swiftly and paid him off.
He reached over and opened the door for her, studying her all the time. Did it ever occur to him — fat and Mexican and not very well educated — that he looked just as strange to her as she did to him? But no, he wouldn’t be the kind of man who’d have an insight like that.
She got out of the cab and he drove away.
Even in a bleak little town like this one, the Ganges Arms was grim. Fireproof was much larger than Ganges on the neon sign outside, and the drunk throwing up over by the curb told her more than she wanted to know about the type of man who lived up there.
She couldn’t imagine how her brother had managed to survive here six years.
She went inside. The lobby was small and filled with ancient couches that dust rose from like shabby ghosts. A long-dead potted plant filled one corner while a cigarette vending machine filled the other. In the back somewhere a toilet flushed with the roar of an avalanche. A black-and-white TV screen flickered with images of Milton Berle in a dress.