“Who?”
“The man you had to kill.”
“Fiest? I don’t think so.”
“Did he have any family?”
“I don’t know.”
“How old was he?”
“About forty.” He glanced at her oddly. “You ought to team up with Brewster, kid.”
“I know it’s none of my business, Barny,” she said, quietly.
“Now don’t be like that. I didn’t mean that it’s none of your business.”
They were silent for a mile or two, and Nolan was overcome with confusion and anger. He had wanted to talk to her tonight, to tell her how he felt about her, but instead he’d got involved with the story of Dave Fiest. Finally he could stand her silence no longer, and he said, almost harshly: “Why do you like me, Linda?”
The question obviously startled her. “How do you know I do?” she said, an undercurrent of laughter in her voice.
“Don’t kid about it,” he said. “You must like me or you wouldn’t see me.”
She glanced at him and saw the strong sullen lines of his face in the light from the dashboard. “We’ve been friends, Barny,” she said, choosing words carefully. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t, is there?”
“There’s fifty reasons. I’m too old for you, you said that yourself tonight.” This wasn’t what he’d planned, he realized, with a feeling close to panic. But he couldn’t stop himself. “You’re educated, you come from a good family, you’re making big money, and I’m a cop, a meat-ball cop from South Philly. There’s a couple of reasons, I guess.”
They were both silent again; and then she patted his hand and said with an attempt at lightness: “Don’t worry about it, Barny. We’ve been friends so far, in spite of all those silly reasons.” She glanced at his brutally strong profile, moody and bitter now, and realized that for all his toughness he could be as easily hurt as a child.
The touch of her fingers on his hand made Nolan feel better. “I’ve been acting like a damnfool tonight,” he said, with a slow smile. “Forget it all, will you?”
“Of course.”
“You know, Linda, things are getting a little better for me financially, and I thought—” He stopped, fumbling around for words. He wanted to tell her he had money, that he could take her anywhere, buy her anything she wanted; but his cop-bred instincts told him nothing could be more foolish.
Linda was looking at him with interest. “Don’t tell me a long-lost uncle has died and left you his fortune.”
“No, nothing like that,” he said. “But things have kind of eased up for me! Maybe we could drive over to the shore Sunday for dinner. Have you been over there since you came East?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, it’s great. The hotels on the Boardwalk are better than anything in New York. I’d like to take you over there some time. You see—” He stopped, suddenly infuriated at his awkwardness. Everything he said led him to a maddening dead-end.
She must like him though, he thought with a swift change of mood.
And that was enough for now. When he put the money to work, slowly, carefully, over the next few months, she’d like him even more. What had she said? We’ve been friends so far, haven’t we? That meant a lot from Linda, as much as going to bed with a man might mean from another sort of girl.
“What are you smiling about?” Linda said, in an amused voice. “One minute you’re frowning like thunder, and now you’re grinning like a boy with a new red wagon.”
Nolan glanced at her and laughed. “I’m just feeling good, that’s all.” He realized that he would eventually need an explanation for his new affluence, and it was easy to devise one that would also account for his high spirits. “I’m through paying alimony,” he said. “My ex-wife is getting married again, so I bow out as Uncle Sucker. That’s good news, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Linda said. Then: “What sort of woman was she, Barny?”
“My wife? She was a—” He checked the word on his lips. “She was a bum,” he said.
“How did you happen to marry her?”
He shrugged. “Who knows?” he said, honestly bewildered. A scowl came to his face as he watched the shining road racing beneath the car. He had met his wife a few months after he was appointed to the Police Department, while he was working at the old Fourteenth at Twentieth and Wolf. She was a waitress at a neighborhood diner, a buxom chattery blonde, who knew all the patrolmen at the station, and, as Barny learned eventually, knew a number of them in the Biblical sense of the word.
They had remained together four years, and then she had gone off to California with their car and three hundred and seventy dollars from a joint savings account. Nolan heard from her later through a lawyer; and eventually she had divorced him and he was ordered to pay her fifteen dollars a week alimony. Nolan knew that she was living with a musician of sorts on the coast, but he actually wasn’t interested enough to do anything about it. He paid the fifteen dollars a week, and felt happy to be rid of her.
“I don’t know why I married her,” he said to Linda. “I was twenty-three and healthy and had a job. I guess I figured I should get married.”
“You’re thirty-nine now, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. A real old man.” He smiled at her tentatively.
“That’s an interesting age. Look at Pinza.”
“Pinza?”
“He’s a very great singer, and he’s at least in his middle fifties. My father took me to hear him in Chicago years ago. He sang Mephistopheles, the devil, you know, and darned near scared me out of my seat.” Linda sat up straighter and glanced at her watch. “I think we’d better start back now, Barny. I’m really very tired.”
“Okay, kid, anything you say.” He slowed the car and began watching for a place to turn around...
Half an hour later he stopped before her apartment house on Walnut Street. She was curled up beside him sound asleep, her head resting against his arm. He looked at her a moment, studying the fineness of her skin and the faint blue shadows under her eyes; and then he put a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.
“We’re home,” he said. His voice was husky; and he cleared his throat and said, “Wake up, kid. End of the line.”
She woke, drowsy and apologetic. “I’m not very good company, I’m afraid. Thanks so much, Barny.”
“I’ll drop by tomorrow night, okay? At the Simba?” He had never been in her apartment. She had never asked him in, and it hadn’t occurred to him to suggest it.
“All right, Barny. Don’t bother getting out, please.”
She slipped out of the car, waved to him and ran lightly up the steps to her doorway. Barny waited until she turned and waved to him again, and then let out the clutch and drove off down the street.
Linda stood with her hand on the doorknob and watched the red taillight of his car disappear in the night. She sighed then, and wondered as she had so many times recently, why she was allowing this essentially false situation to continue. And then she thought: Was it really a false situation? There was something about Barny Nolan that appealed to her strongly. He was a rough-neck, of course, and sullen at times, and uncultivated, and crude. Yes, that was all true, she thought, but there was a sense of power and strength in him that was fascinating. Also, he needed her desperately and that was flattering. He didn’t need her in a conventional physical way, obviously, but he desperately needed her company, her friendship, and most of all, her approval.
Linda sighed again, annoyed with herself. She was usually forthright and honest in her relationships and this present indecision struck her as unwise and foolish.
She entered the foyer of her building and walked down the short corridor to her apartment, her high heels tapping irritably on the hardwood floor...