What time was it? It seemed like I’d been in that damned room six or eight hours, but I’d checked in at around eleven and the sun was shining straight down in the dirty areaway my window opened on. Could it be only noon? I went out to the desk and past it, looking at the kitchen-type electric clock on the wall over it as I went by. It was a quarter after twelve.
I decided to walk a while before I went back to the room with a bottle, kill some time first. God, the time I had to kill before eight o’clock. I walked around the court house and over to Spring Street. I’d be safe there.
Hell, I’d be safe anywhere, I thought. Except maybe right in that one block of Fifth Street, just on the chance the police did have the milkman staked out in or near that building. And with different clothes, wearing a hat, he probably wouldn’t recognize me anyway. Billie the Kid had panicked, and had panicked me. I didn’t have anything to worry about. Oh, moving out of that block, changing out of the clothes I’d been wearing, those things had been sensible. But I didn’t have to quit my job at Burke’s – if it was still open to me. Burke’s was safe for me. Nobody at Burke’s knew where I’d lived and nobody in the building I’d lived in knew where I worked.
I thought, why not go to Burke’s? He’d have the sign out in the window, now that I was an hour and a half late, but if nobody had taken the job, I could give him a story why I was so late and get it back. I’d gotten pretty good at washing dishes; I was probably the best dishwasher he’d ever had and I’d been steadier than the average one. Sure, I could go back there unless he’d managed to hire a new one already.
And otherwise, what? I’d either have to look for a new job of the same kind or keep on taking money from Billie for however long I stayed here. And taking money from Billie, except in emergency, was out. That gal named Honor back in Chicago was getting to be a pretty dim memory, but I still had some self-respect.
I cut back to Main Street and headed for Burke’s. The back way, so I could see if anyone was working yet in my place, and maybe ask Ramon what the score was before I saw Burke.
From the alley doorway I could see my spot was empty, dishes piling high. Ramon was busy at the stove. He turned as I walked up to him, and his teeth flashed white in that grin. He said, “Howie! Thank God you’re here. No dishwasher, everybody’s going nuts.”
The bandage was gone from his forehead. Under where it had been were four long scratches, downward, about an inch apart.
I stared at the scratches and thought about Ramon and his monkey and Mame and her monkey, and all of a sudden I had a crazy hunch. I thought about how a monkey like Ramon’s could make a man do anything to get a fix. I moistened my lips. Ramon’s monkey might claw the hell out of his guts, but it hadn’t put those four scratches on his face. Not directly.
I didn’t say it, I’d have had more sense; my mouth said it. “Mame had sharp fingernails, huh?”
Death can be a sudden thing. Only luck or accident kept me from dying suddenly in the next second or two. I’d never seen a face change as suddenly as Ramon’s did. And before I could move, his hand had hold of the front of my shirt and his other hand had reached behind him and come up with and raised a cleaver. To step back as it started down would have put me in even better position for it to hit, so I did the only thing possible; I stepped in and pushed him backward and he stumbled and fell. I’d jerked my head but the cleaver went too wild even to scrape my shoulders. And there was a thunking sound as Ramon’s head hit a sharp corner of the big stove. Yes, death can be a sudden thing.
I breathed hard a second and then – well, I don’t know why I cared whether he was alive or not, but I bent forward and reached inside his shirt, held my hand over where his heart should be beating. It wasn’t.
From the other side of the window Burke’s voice sang out, “Two burgers, with.”
I got out of there fast. Nobody had seen me there, nobody was going to see me there. I got out of the alley without being seen, that I knew of, and back to Main Street. I walked three blocks before I stopped into a tavern for the drink I really needed now. Not wine, whisky. Wine’s an anodyne but it dulls the mind. Whisky sharpens it, at least temporarily. I ordered whisky, a double, straight.
I took half of it in one swallow and got over the worst of it. I sipped the rest slowly, and thought.
Damn it, Howie, I told myself, you’ve got to think.
I thought, and there was only one answer. I was in over my head now. If the police got me I was sunk. B.A.S. or not, I’d have a hell of a time convincing them I hadn’t committed two murders – maybe three; if they’d tied in Jesus Gonzales, they’d pin that on me, too.
Sure, I knew what had really happened, but what proof did I have? Mame was dead; she wouldn’t tell again what she’d told me about her little episode with Jesus. Ramon was dead; he wouldn’t back up my otherwise unsupported word that I’d killed him accidentally in defending myself.
Out of this while I had a whole skin, that was the only answer. Back in Chicago, back to respectability, back to my right name – Howard Perry, B.A.S., not Howard Perry, bastard, wino, suspected soon of being a psychopathic killer. Back to Chicago, and not by freight. Too easy to get arrested that way, vagged, and maybe by that time flyers would be out with my description. Too risky.
So was waiting till eight o’clock when it was only one o’clock now. I’d have to risk getting in touch with Billie the Kid sooner. I couldn’t go to her place, but I could phone. Surely they wouldn’t have all the phones in that building tapped.
Just the same I was careful when I got her number. “Billie,” I said, “this is the Professor.” That nickname wouldn’t mean anything to anybody else.
I heard her draw in her breath sharply. She must have realized I wouldn’t risk calling her unless something important had come up. But she made her voice calm when she answered, “Yes, Professor?”
“Something has come up,” I said. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to make our eight o’clock date. Is there any chance that you can meet me now instead – same place?”
“Sure, soon as I can get there.”
Click of the receiver. She’d be there. Billie the Kid, my Billie. She’d be there, and she’d make sure first that no one was following her. She’d bring money, knowing that I’d decided I had to lam after all. Money that she’d get back, damn it, if it was the last thing I ever did. Whatever money she’d lend me now, plus the other two sums and enough over to cover every drink and every cigarette I’d bummed from her. But not for the love and the trust she’d given me; you can’t pay for that in money. In my case, I couldn’t ever pay for it, period. The nearest I could come would be by being honest with her, leveling down the line. That much she had coming. More than that she had coming but more than that I couldn’t give her.
The Shoebox is a shoebox-sized place. Not good for talking, but that didn’t matter because we weren’t going to talk there.
She got there fifteen minutes after I did; I was on my second drink. I ordered a Manhattan when I saw her coming in the door.
“Hello, Billie,” I said.
Hello, Billie. Goodbye, Billie. This is the end for us, today. It’s got to be the end. I knew she’d understand when I told her, when I told her everything.
“Howie, are you in—”
“In funds?” I cut her off. “Sure, just ordered you a drink.” I dropped my voice, but not far enough to make it conspicuous. “Not here, Billie. Let’s drink our drink and then I’ve got a room around the corner. I registered double so it’ll be safe for us to go there and talk a while.”