“Not a smoker, Nate?” Steve asked with his sphincter of a smile. He was fidgety back there. The woman might have been waxworks but for her occasional blink.
“I smoked overseas during the war,” I said. “Gave it up when I got home.”
I’d smoked in combat but dropped the habit when I was recuperating at St. Elizabeth’s. The only time I got the urge in peacetime was when I found myself in a combat-tense situation. That was rare. Even last night, on that wooden bridge, hadn’t qualified.
The Harbor Inn did not have so much as a small body of water to cozy up to, and the only “seafood” served was catfish; it was just a small roadside joint with table and booth seating, a horseshoe-shaped bar, and — for a touch of class — linen tablecloths and bentwood café chairs. For a Monday night, the place was hopping, jukebox blaring and couples dancing. Hagan ordered fried chicken and the rest of us went for the open-face steak sandwich — the menu was limited after nine. Sandy seemed annoyed or maybe frustrated with her sweaty john, who seemed to sense that, sensitive individual he so clearly was.
“Did you say you got a daughter?” Steve asked her. Beer had come for everybody while we waited for the food.
“Yeah. Michelle. We call her Mickey. She’s smart as a whip and cute as hell. Lives with my aunt and me. I’m a good mom.”
“I’m sure you are,” Steve said, nodding, though the only thing about her that suggested motherhood was her neckline. “I hope you’re putting your money away.”
That actually seemed to hurt her feelings a little. “Don’t take me for just another party girl. I already own a farm.”
If this doll owned a farm, bodies were buried on the back forty.
Steve said, “Oh, that’s great. Everybody needs a dream.”
“It’s not a dream! It’s real. Maybe you’d like to go in on it with me. You have a lot of money in that footlocker and suitcase, don’t you?”
Hagan and I exchanged quick looks: here it comes.
“Those are sample cases,” Steve said. “I’m a pharmaceutical salesman. Those are serum samples.”
Nobody brought up that earlier he’d been an insurance agent. Maybe because Sandy had glommed the greenback “serum” in the footlocker.
“Veterinary medicine,” Steve went on. “Animals and humans, what’s the difference?”
She smoothed some edges off herself. “Well, I want to buy a big Guernsey bull. To raise prize show cattle. If you’d buy me a bull, I would be the happiest woman on earth.”
If he bought her bull, Steve would be the biggest jackass on the imaginary farm.
“Maybe I can arrange that,” he said, with a wave of a plump-fingered paw. “Ah. Speaking of cattle.”
The steak sandwiches arrived; so did the fried chicken. The conversation slowed, most of what ensued coming from Steve, who had talked about how he was starving but only ate a few bites. What he had to say, however, was interesting.
“Johnny,” he said to the matinee-idol cabbie, “you seem like a right kind of guy.”
“Well, thanks, Steve.”
“You taxi drivers know a lot of people.”
Which was how Hagan had been able to add me to this little party.
“I know a few,” Hagan admitted.
Very quietly, Steve asked, “Can you score me some morphine?”
Like, Pass the salt.
Hagan was chewing, and obviously wondering how to respond, when Steve said, “My car was stolen, and along with it, my medicine, and all the paraphernalia that goes with it.”
And yet his “sample cases” were still in his possession.
“Look, I’m no damn lowlife junkie,” he said, with a sickly smile. “I just got hooked on the stuff when I was in the Pacific. During the war. When I was wounded. And they gave me more in the hospital, so till I can catch a breath and get some proper medical treatment...”
“I don’t really know of any place where I can get the stuff,” Hagan said with a noncommittal shrug, “but I can ask around.”
“Good! Good. Pick up a number 25 or 26 needle, while you’re at it. You can drop us off after dinner at the Coral Court and go on home. Your missus is probably wondering about you by now.”
“I gave her a call, but yeah. I should get home.”
Steve leaned in and put a hand on Hagan’s. “One more thing. Before you come by the motor court tomorrow morning, rent me a car and buy me a nice leather suitcase and a briefcase.”
That sounded like two things. Or three.
“All right,” Hagan said.
“Dig into that dough I gave you.”
“Sure.”
Sandy, sitting next to Steve between him and Hagan, perked up. “Oh! I love that song. Johnny, come dance with me.”
“Vaya Con Dios” by Les Paul and Mary Ford had started up on the jukebox.
They went off to dance.
A waitress brought another round of beers. The third.
Steve said, “So, Nate — you were in the war, too?”
“I was.”
“What branch?”
“Marines.”
The dull eyes got a little lively. “You’re shittin’ me! Same here! Well, Semper Fi, Mac! Where did you serve?”
“Guadalcanal. Second Marines. I was wounded and sent home. My war lasted less than a year.”
His chest puffed up. “Oh, I was in for the duration... First Marine Division — New Britain, Peleliu, Okinawa campaigns. Made sergeant.”
“What did you do over there?”
“...Oh, whatever they asked me to.”
“What was your job? Mine was trying not to get my ass shot off in a foxhole.”
“Uh... telephone equipment repairman.”
I managed not to laugh. Deadpan, I said, “Where the hell would we have been without communications? Listen, while we have a moment alone...” Sandy and Hagan were dancing to “Crying in the Chapel” by June Valli now. “...we can talk money.”
He folded his hands and tried to look calm, but the eyes were lively again. “Why don’t we?”
“Depends on the nature of the currency,” I said. “Bank money could have some marked bills mixed in, so maybe fifty cents on the dollar. If it’s insurance money, why is it in cash? What’s the story there?”
He merely shrugged. No answer beyond that.
“If it’s out of a company safe and you don’t figure the serial numbers are recorded,” I said, “you can get an even higher return. Much as seventy-five, eighty cents on the dollar. But if it’s something like this kidnapping that’s in the papers, well, that could mean twenty, even fifteen cents on the dollar. Money doesn’t get much hotter.”
Steve’s laugh seemed forced. “You don’t think that’s what this is? Do I look like that kind of guy?”
You do, Steve. You really, really do.
“It’s insurance money, okay?” he blurted. “Everything would have gone fine if this one guy hadn’t made a mistake.”
If Steve was trying to wash the ransom money, did this remark indicate three accomplices? Steve, the blowsy broad he maybe already dumped, and... who?
“Get in touch with your people in Chicago,” he said. “Tell ’em you got a line on a big bundle. Say I want seventy-five cents on the dollar, no questions asked.”
Sandy and Hagan joined us — apparently they didn’t care to dance to the “Theme from Dragnet” by Ray Anthony — and we gathered our things. Hagan used Steve’s money to pay the check and we headed out.
Hagan dropped us off at the Coral Court and Sandy went up the exterior staircase first followed by Steve and then me. I stopped at my door and said good night to them and Steve, who was stumbling drunk now, threw me a wave and Sandy winked at me before they disappeared into 49-A.