Major Dillingham, the colonel's adjutant, might have been created by a drunken Cruikshank or Hogarth, using the parade-ground sergeant as model. Face bloated and beet-colored, he wobbled up from behind his desk as though floated by the balloon of his belly. He proffered a puffy hand which seemed to compress interminably within Mitch's grasp. Then, he teetered to the door and closed it, his pipestem legs, seeming on the point of snapping at any moment, so thin that their puttees appeared to be wrapped about less than nothing, a kind of embryonic invisibility.
He sat down again. He treated Mitch to what had all the aspects of a sternly penetrating stare, except for the absence of eyes, which were presumably lurking within the puffy foxholes of their lids.
"Mr. Corley," he wheezed heavily. "Mr. Corley. Mr. Mitchell Corley."
Mitch waited, looking at him silently. He could smell something here, something besides the faint aroma of talcum and the osmotic emanations of faulty kidneys.
"Something has come up, Mr. Corley. Something that, uh, must be explained, but which I see no satisfactory explanation for. I was going to take it up with the Colonel, and of course I will have to. There is no alternative, I'm afraid. But hearing that you were visiting Samuel today-a very fine young man, Mr. Corley. One of our best young men-"
"I know that," Mitch said. "What I don't know, Major, is what you're leading up to, and when or if you're going to get to it.
The statement seemed to stun the adjutant. It was meant to. Mitch had always believed that attack was the best defense. He leaned back negligently, as the major puffily collected himself.
"It, uh, came on today's mail, Mr. Corley. Addressed to the Colonel, naturally, but since I am temporarily in charge, I-I find it difficult to understand. Impossible to understand…"
"Go on," Mitch said coldly. But he knew what the trouble was now. "I'm a busy man. Aren't you?"
The major underwent another moment of shock. Then, a faint gleam of malice in his enbunkered eyes, he took an envelope from a locked drawer and pitched it across the desk. Mitch opened it.
There was a picture inside, a blown-up copy of one. A rogue's gallery front-and-profile photograph of a woman; it listed her police record on the reverse side. Sixteen arrests, sixteen convictions, all for the same crime.
There were no aliases. The woman had always used her legal name.
Mrs. Mitchell Corley.
9
Fort Worth…
Cowtown. Where the West Begins.
Take it easy here, and people will do you the same kind of favor. Dress as you like. You won't be judged by your dress. That kind of crummy looking fella in Levi's and boots is worth forty million dollars. Do as you like. Do anything you're big enough to do. But be danged sure that you are big enough.
Neighboring Dallas started an evil rumor about its rival. Forth Worth was so rustic, the libel ran, that panthers prowled the streets at high noon. Fort Worth promptly dubbed itself the Panther City, and declared the lie was gospel truth.
Certainly, there were panthers in the streets. Kiddies had to have somethin' to play with, didn't they? Aside from that, the cats performed a highly necessary service. Every morning they were herded down to the east-flowing Trinity River, there to drain their bladders into the stream which provided Dallas' water supply.
That was probably why them people over in Dallas had so many nutty ideas. They'd take a few swigs of that panther piss, and pretty soon they were thinking that they were just as good as other people… Mitch and his wife Teddy arrived in Forth Worth approximately a month before their son was born. And Mitch- as Teddy declared he must-became the housekeeper for the family. He felt that he just about had to, for the time being and under the circumstances. Teddy's earning power was far greater than his, and
much would be needed for a family of three. Also, he could not dispute with his wife at what he considered a very trying period for her, nor could he ask her to cut down on expenses merely to indulge his vanity.
As a bachelor, living in a furnished room, he had entered marriage with only the vaguest idea of the cost of maintaining a wife and household. A wife like Teddy, that is, and a household governed by her whims. In fact, he never knew, since Teddy did the buying and bill- paying, accepting whatever portion of his earnings he gave her as being "plenty." But it did gradually dawn on him that Teddy was pooping off enormous amounts of money.
Teddy had to have the very best of everything-furniture, food and drink, apparel, living quarters. But that was only the beginning. She would buy a hundred-dollar dress, and discard it after one wearing. She would buy new furnishings, decide that they were "all wrong" and dispose of them for whatever was offered. She would do senselessly extravagant things for Mitch-the purchase, for example, of a dozen pairs of watered-silk pajamas-then pout when he was not properly appreciative.
Mitch had the weird notion at times that Teddy hated money, that she felt guilty about having it and was impelled to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
Well, things were going to change, he told himself determinedly. After the baby was born and she had recovered from her pregnancy- inspired goofiness (as he thought of it), little Teddy was going to get squared away fast.
That's what the man thought. That wasn't what happened. For one thing, he was immediately enchanted by little Sam-named after his father. For another, Teddy was not enchanted by the baby. It annoyed her. She regarded it as an intruder on a situation which had been just about perfect as it was.
"You're my baby," she told Mitch. "You're all I need."
"But you're his mother," Mitch insisted. "A mother should want to take care of her baby."
"I do. I love taking care of you."
"But goddammit-! I mean, look, honey, why did you have a baby if you felt like this?"
"Because you wanted one. You wanted a baby, so I gave you a baby."
"But-but, Teddy-"
"So now it's your job to take care of him," Teddy continued Sweetly. "You take care of your baby, and I'll take care of my baby."
The conversation took place about ten days after Sam's birth, and Teddy had already returned to work. He had awakened in the middle of the night to find her gone from his side and a note pinned to her pillow. He had been so angry that he almost called her employers, and he refrained from doing so only out of fear of embarrassing her.
They didn't know she was married. Her pregnancy, almost undetectable even to Mitch, had gone unnoticed; and she had gotten her needed time off on the pretext of traveling to the deathbed of a close relative. It was the company's policy not to employ married women. Teddy had strictly enjoined him against ever calling or coming to the place.
Well, anyway. Mitch decided to let things rock along as they were for a while. He loved being with the baby. Someone had to earn the living, and he had no job to go to.
So he became the housekeeper for their apartment, and the full-time nurse for his son. He read a lot. He worked with the dice. On nice days, he loaded Sam into his perambulator and took him out for an airing. As time went on, these walks often wound up in hotel locker- rooms and the back rooms of pool halls and cigar stores, or wherever else a crap game could be found.