“Can’t I make it my business?”
“You’re a lush. You can’t stop thinking about liquor long enough to have any other business.”
His shoulders sagged. “Okay, okay. I’m wearing the clothes you bought. You’re the boss.”
“Let’s go. I need a drink.”
He pulled on his suit coat and I looked the door behind us.
Chapter Four
Delivered — One Corpse
We walked over to State and went into a cocktail lounge, sat at a small circular red leather booth in a corner. Mirrors on the walls disguised the essential cheapness of the place. I glanced at Eric. He was very pale. He held onto the edge of the table so tightly that his knuckles were as white as the napkins.
“Martini for me,” I said. “What do you want, Eric?”
“Ginger ale,” he said in a hoarse voice.
The waiter went away. “Virtuous, aren’t you?” I said.
“A drink would — upset me,” he said carefully.
I laughed. “That’s a good word for it.”
When the drinks came, I took a sip of mine, shoved it over toward him. “Eric, I think they use cheap gin in their Martinis. Take a sip and see what you think.”
His hand flashed out and he grasped the stem of the glass. He half lifted it and then set it down again. I could see that every nerve end in him was screaming for the warm embrace of alcohol. Slowly he loosened his fingers. “I couldn’t tell.”
Slowly I drank the rest of it. His eyes stayed on the glass until the last drop of amber fluid was gone. He swallowed thickly.
“Damn you,” he whispered. “Damn you! You know what you’re doing!”
“Doing? Me?” I asked with mock surprise. “What on earth would I be doing?”
“Let’s get out of here,” he said hoarsely.
I gave him a ten. He paid the check and, when he tried to give me the change, I told him to hold onto it.
I made him take me to two more cocktail places. Each time, as I drank, perspiration put a sheen on his high, pale forehead, on his upper lip. His pale blue eyes were haunted. I began to worry for fear that by the time two o’clock came around, be would still be stone sober, Sam wouldn’t care for that.
I was too nervous to eat very much. He had a heavy meal, seeming to gain strength from it.
“Now what?” he asked when we had finished. I glanced at my watch. Eight thirty. Five and a half hours to go.
“Your choice,” I said, trying to smile.
“We’ll walk.”
Down River to State. Down State to the docks. Over the waterfront alley between the docks and the warehouses. One long pier was empty.
“Let’s go out there,” he said.
Our heels made hollow sounds on the big planks of the dock after we got beyond the concrete. The river ripples made lapping sounds against the piling. The wind off the river was cool and moist. Far out in the channel two barges towed by a tug were going up the river. Their running lights had red and green halos formed by the mist.
“You’re quiet,” I said. I spoke too loudly.
He started. “Guess I am. A lot to think about, Lorene. A hell of a lot. When you go a long time without thinking, there’s a lot to catch up on.”
It’s not fair, I thought. It’s not fair. You are not supposed to think. You have been a symbol. You have been something I rescued from one death in order to give you to another.
I shivered. “Cold! Let’s walk some more.”
Something in the night had given him strength. He walked with his chin up, his hand firm on my arm. His strides were long and he seemed unconscious of my difficulty in keeping up with him.
When we passed a street light I looked at my watch. A few minutes after ten. I stopped. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“A girl can only walk so far. One more block and you’d be carrying me.”
“I feel strong enough to do that, too.”
“Me for a drink.”
He hesitated. “A movie maybe?”
“A drink, pardner. Foot on the rail stuff.”
We were three blocks from River. I led the way and he followed along meekly. The place looked all right. Pickled pine. Shining brass. I led the way back to a rustic booth in a darkened corner.
The waiter came over. “Ginger ale for me,” Eric said. “How about you, Lorene?”
I knew what I had to do. “Straight rye. Water chaser.” I had never tried to drink straight liquor in my life. I knew I was right by the look in Eric’s eyes when I placed the order.
The waiter brought it, along with the check.
Eric looked at the shining shot glass as he sipped his ginger ale. I didn’t look at him. Slowly I pushed the shot glass over to him. “You better take this too, Eric. It’ll do you good.”
My hands were resting on the edge of the table. His thin hands slipped across the table. He grabbed my wrists so tightly that he hurt me. He looked into my face. He was white and his eyes were like the blue flame that plays over hot coals.
He spoke through clenched teeth. “Funny aren’t you? Funny like a new boil.”
“You’re hurting my wrists!”
He didn’t hear me. “Why are you doing this to me? Why?”
I lifted my chin. “Because you can’t take it.”
His fingers relaxed on my wrists. He picked up the shot glass with a steady hand. He lifted it to his lips, sipped. His eyes had a strange look. He held the sip of rye in his mouth, deliberately took out the handkerchief I had bought him and spat the sip of rye into it.
He took my wrists again, and his touch was gentle. “Lorene, we despise what we are. Both of us. Please, Lorene, listen to me. We hate what we are. This is a way out for us. For the two of us. You just saw how strong I can be when I’m with you. You’re the only chance I’ve got, Lorene. Please. I can get a job selling. You wouldn’t know it right now, but I’m a good salesman. People like me. I can get a job. Let’s get out of this crummy town together. The two of us.”
His face had lost that blurred, indistinct look. The loose lines around his mouth had firmed.
“Darling, life has done something foul to both of us. I want to marry you.”
How is it, Ellen, to sit across the table from death, and death has warm fingers on your wrists, death has a look of life in its eyes that will soon be shut forever? This thing you have created, this body that you have given life and hope.
I looked into his eyes and I was suddenly horribly tired. There was no thought behind my words. “You have no right to talk like this.”
“I know I haven’t,” he said humbly.
“You don’t even know what I mean! You don’t even know what I mean!”
Suddenly my voice was shrill and the tears were running down my cheeks. The tangled, fumbling words came out. Slowly as he made sense out of them, the look went out of his eyes; they went blank and dead. They became the eyes that I had seen when he picked himself up, bleeding, from the sidewalk.
He let go of my wrists and leaned back. “Lorene isn’t your name, then?”
“My name is Ellen James. I work as a secretary.” The tears were suddenly gone and all emotion was drained out of me. We were strangers again.
“And you were supposed to turn me over to these people so they won’t make a fall guy out of your brother. They would have killed me instead of him?”
“Yes.”
His smile wasn’t a good thing to look at. “You were doing so beautifully up until now, Miss James. Why did you suddenly decide to tell the truth?”
“I don’t know.”
“When I made my silly offer a few minutes ago, I thought I was making it to Lorene Vernon who has a room in the Barton. Instead I was making it to the very proper Miss James. The homicidal Miss James.”
“Don’t,” I said weakly.
“Relax, Miss James. We’ll call it a temporary lack of balance on my part. Where was this two o’clock transfer supposed to take place?”