“I guess I could put a stop to that,” Fleck said.
Mama turned then and looked at him, her eyes absolutely without expression. It occurred to him that maybe it was him she meant. He studied her, wondering if she recognized him. If she did, there was no sign of it. She rarely did in recent years. Well, he would stay and visit anyway. Just keep her company. All her life, as far back as Fleck could remember into his childhood, Mama had had pitifully little of that.
“That girl there’s got on a pretty dress,” Fleck said. “I mean the one on TV.”
Mama ignored him. Poor woman, Fleck thought. Poor, pathetic old woman. He stood beside the open door, examining her profile. She had been a good-sized woman once—maybe 140 pounds or so. Strong and quick and smart as they come. Now she was skinny as a rail and stuck in that wheelchair. She couldn’t hardly talk and her mind was not working well.
“How about me giving you a push?” Fleck asked. “Would you like to go for a ride? It’s raining outside but I could push you around inside the building. Give you a little change.”
Mama still stared at the TV. The angry woman on “The Young and the Restless” had left, slamming the door behind her. Now the man was talking on the telephone. Mama hitched herself forward in the chair. “I had a boy once who had a four-door Buick,” she said in a clear voice that sounded surprisingly young. “Dark blue and that velvety upholstery on the seats. He took me to Memphis in that.”
“That would have been Delmar’s car,” Fleck said. “It was a nice one.” Mama had talked of it before but Fleck had never seen it. Delmar must have bought it while Fleck was doing his time in Joliet.
“Delmar is his name, all right,” Mama said. “The Arabs got him hostage in Jerusalem or someplace. Otherwise he’d come to see me, Delmar would. He’d take care of me right. He was all man, that one was.”
“I know he would,” Fleck said. “Delmar is a good man.”
“Delmar was all man,” Mama said, still staring at the TV set. “He wouldn’t let nobody treat him like a nigger. Do Delmar and he’d get you right back. He’d make you respect him. You can count on that. That’s one thing you always got to do, is get even. If you don’t do that they treat you like a goddamn animal. Step right on your neck. Delmar wouldn’t let anybody not treat him right.“
“No, Mama, he wouldn’t,” Fleck said. Actually, as he remembered it, Delmar wasn’t much for fighting. He was for keeping out of the way of trouble.
Mama looked at him, eyes hostile. “You talk like you know Delmar.”
“Yes, Mama. I do. I’m Leroy. I’m Delmar’s brother.”
Mama snorted. “No you ain’t. Delmar only had one brother. He ended up a damn jailbird.”
The room smelled stale to Leroy. He smelled something that might have been spoiled food, and dust and the acidic odor of dried urine. Poor old lady, he thought. He blinked, rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes.
“I think it would be nice for you to get out in the halls at least. Get out of this room a little bit. See something different just for a change.”
“I wouldn’t be in here at all if the Arabs hadn’t got to Delmar. He’d have me someplace nice.”
“I know he would,” Fleck said. “I know he’d come to visit you if he could.”
“I had two boys, actually,” Mama said. “But the other one he turned out jailbird. Never amounted to shit.”
It was just then that Leroy Fleck heard the cop. He couldn’t make out the words but he recognized the tone. He strained to listen.
But Mama was still talking. “They said that one turned fairy up there in the prison. He let them use him like a girl.”
Leroy Fleck leaned out into the hallway, partly to see if the voice which sounded like a cop really was a cop. It was. He was standing beside the receptionist and she was pointing down the hall. She was pointing right at Leroy Fleck.
Elkins had always told him he was naturally fast. He could think fast and he could move like lightning. “It’s partly in your mind, and it’s partly in your reflexes,” Elkins had told him. “We can get your muscles built up, build up your strength, by pumping iron. But anybody can do that. That quickness, that’s something you gotta be born with. That’s where you got the edge if you know how to use it.”
He used it now. He knew instantly that he could not let himself be arrested. Absolutely not. Maybe he’d come clear on the Santillanes affair. Probably not. Why else were those two Indian-looking cops dogging him? But even if they didn’t make him on that one, as soon as they matched his prints, they’d make him on something else. He’d worked for Elkins on too many jobs, and been on the prowl in too many airports and nightclubs, to ever let himself be arrested. He’d survived only by being careful not to be. But now the Fat Man, that fat bastard, had put an end to that. He’d have to get even with the Fat Man. But there was no time to think of that now. Within what was left of the same second, Fleck had decided how he would talk his way out of this. It would help that the Fat Man wasn’t here to press his case. The receptionist apparently had orders to call the law anytime he showed up, but she was minimum-wage help. She wouldn’t care what happened next.
Fleck moved back into the room and sat on the bed. “Mama,” he said softly, “you’re going to have some more company in just a minute. It’s a policeman. I want to ask you to just keep calm and be polite.”
“Policeman,” Mama said. She spit on the floor by the television set.
“It’s important to me, Mama,” Fleck said. “It’s awful important.”
And then the policeman was at the door, looking in.
“You Dick Pfaff?”
It took Fleck the blink of an eye to remember that was the name he’d used when he’d checked Mama in here.
Fleck stood. “Yes sir,” he said. “And this here is my Mama.”
The policeman was young. He had smooth, pale skin and a close-cropped blond mustache. He nodded to Mama. She stared at him. Where was his partner? Fleck wondered. He would be the old hand on this team. If Fleck was lucky, the partner would be resting out in the patrol car, letting the rookie handle this pissant, nothing little complaint. If they thought there was any risk at all of it being serious they would both be in here. In fact, Fleck suspected the police rules probably required it. Somebody was goofing off.
“We have a complaint that you caused a disturbance here,” the policeman said. “We have a statement that you threatened to kill the manager.”
Fleck produced a self -deprecatory laugh. “I’m ashamed of that. That’s the main reason I came today—to apologize for the way I behaved.” As he said it, Fleck became aware that Mama was no longer watching the television set. Mama was watching him.
“That’s a pretty serious offense,” the officer said. “Telling a man you’re going to kill him.”
“I doubt if I really quite said that,” Fleck said. “But you notice how it smells in here? My Mama here, she hadn’t been properly cleaned up. She had bedsores and all that and I just lost my temper. I had told him about it before.”
Clearly the policeman was aware of the smell. Fleck could tell from his face that he’d switched from cautiously hostile to slightly sympathetic.
“If he’s got back yet, I’ll go out there and apologize to him. I’m sorry for whatever I said. Just got sore about the way they was treating Mama here.”
The policeman nodded. “I don’t think he’s here anyway,” he said. “That woman said he was off somewhere. I’ll just check you for weapons.” He grinned at Fleck. “If you didn’t come in here armed, I’d say it’s a pretty good argument on your side since he’s about four times your size.”
“Yes sir,” Fleck said. He resisted the prison-learned instinct to spread his legs and raise his arms. The cop would never find his shank, which was in the slot he’d made for it inside his boot, but getting into the shakedown stance would tip off even this rookie that he was dealing with an ex-con.