Джеймс Холдинг - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 24, No. 3, March 1979

“I need seven thousand three hundred dollars, Mother,” I said after we had gone through the amenities and settled in the rather large living room. “I have never seen fit to call on you like this before and have kept you well segregated from all of my activities — the Quatorze, for instance, not being aware that I do have a family or, more strictly speaking, that I have you.”

“What do you need seven thousand three hundred dollars for?” she said quietly. I twitched on my chair. My mother has always intimidated me. The only person who has ever really been able to stand up to her is my stepfather but my stepfather is unfortunately often out of town for reasons of his own. “Sit up straight,” she said. “Address the question. Don’t look at your shoes.”

“I have had business reverses,” I said.

She laughed, a laugh that sounded oddly like that of the Quatorze. “You have no business,” she said.

“You have no idea what I have. Our lives have not exactly been closely touching these many years.”

“And a good thing too,” she said, adjusting her glittering spectacles, little flickers of ruined light bouncing from the fluorescence off the lenses. “A very good thing. Seven thousand three hundred dollars. That is an extraordinary amount of money.”

“It is half the price of a new Cadillac. It is a third of a year’s income for a steelworker. It is not —”

“You are not a steelworker and you don’t own a Cadillac. Business reverses!” she said. “I know what it is.”

“I do not come to be lectured—”

“It’s the wheel of fortune, that’s what it is!” she said, and laughed until she began to cough. She quieted herself into little sobs and chuckles with a cigarette. She is not a woman of endearing habits. “You’ve been into all that stuff again, the horses and the dice. You probably never stopped.”

“Will you help me or won’t you?” I said. I paused. “This is not easy for me, you know. In fact it is rather humiliating.”

“Life is a humiliation,” my mother said. “The sooner you accept the fact that you like it that way, the better off you’ll be.” She took off her glasses, took a sip of coffee. “Seven thousand three hundred dollars,” she said. “How very strange. How very odd that you would think that I would give it to you. Where did you get the idea?”

“Lend it to me. At interest.”

“Lend it,” she said. “Ah yes, lend it. Of course.” She shook her head. “Your father was right about you. It was the only thing that man said that I agreed with but he was right. You’ll never change, will you?”

“You have the money,” I said. “I mean I know you have it around. In here, in the house. You always kept twenty or thirty thousand dollars around. You said you believed in the cash on hand, that you never knew the value of money or how to respect it unless you could have it in your hands.”

“That was a long time ago. Things have changed. Besides, I wouldn’t keep that kind of money around with your stepfather in the house. Totally untrustworthy. Half a crook if I must tell you the truth. I made a mistake with that man but what can I do?”

“You can lend me seven thousand three hundred dollars.”

She clasped her hands. “Absolutely not,” she said. “In the first place I don’t have it in the house, and in the second place I don’t have it, and in the third place I wouldn’t give it to you on principle. You’re twenty-nine years old. It’s time you accepted responsibility for your condition.”

“You’re like the Quatorze,” I said.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Everybody knows what I should do. Everybody has the answers. But none of you know the pain.”

“I know the pain,” she said, looking at me keenly. “For one thing I have a son like you and you had a father like that man down in Florida now. I know pain, believe me.”

“I’m going to be in bad trouble if I don’t get the money,” I said. “I have nowhere else to turn. Those people are serious. They talk in funny sentences and they kid around a lot but the Quatorze is not the fourteenth of his generation because he wears plaid jackets or talks out of the side of his mouth. The Quatorze is dead serious. And so am I.”

“And so am I. No.”

“I can’t speak for what could happen to me.”

“You can go away,” she said. “You can disappear. You got here, didn’t you? You say they don’t know about me, right?”

“It’s different,” I said. “I cannot go away, not any more. And surely if they don’t know I am with you at this moment they would have ways to find out. So you’re involved whether you like it or not.”

“There is nothing more to say,” she said. “I was going to offer you cheesecake and coffee for old times’ sake — you are my only son after all, my only child — but there is no reason for it. You are hopeless. I want you to leave now.”

“I want the money. Where is the-money?”

“I won’t tell you. Anyway, it’s not here.”

“You had places,” I said. “You had a few places. I used to look when I was young. I would never take, almost never anyway, but I would look. I figure I could find it here from a standing start in an hour. It isn’t that big a house. And you’d keep it close to your bed. I’d find it all right.”

She stood, pushed her glasses under the cushion. “This is enough,” she said. “This is quite enough—”

“I’m in bad trouble, Ma. I’m in real bad trouble.” I had not called her Ma for years but the appeal had no weight. The woman simply has very little humanity and this is the truth. Maybe if she had been different I would not have turned out this way, although of course I do not wish to look for excuses. “I’m hurting,” I said. “I’m hurting badly.”

“So am I.”

“All you ever thought of was how you were being hurt. You never thought of other people at all.”

“I’ll make it a police matter,” she said. “That’s what I’ll do, that’s how serious I am. I want you to leave.”

“You used to threaten to call the cops on me, Ma. You used to threaten all the time. When I was six or seven you’d even go to the phone and pretend to dial. Do you have any idea what that kind of thing can do to a young kid growing up? The fear?”

For once she was quiet. She stood looking at me.

“You had no compassion, Ma,” I said. “I looked for compassion for a long time but it was never there. Then I started to look for it elsewhere. From toteboards and people like the Quatorze.”

She shook her head. “It’s too late,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “I know it’s too late.”

I stared at her. These people aren’t clowns in rubber suits, I thought, the plaid jackets and the language does not make them unwilling to kill. It is that kind of a world. It is a killing world. Underneath the rubber masks and noses it’s murder.

My mother said, “I’ll never give you the money. I’d rather die than give you the money. It’s as simple as that.”

“I know,” I said. “I know. I know how you feel about money. You taught me the importance of it and that it was worth anything to try and get it. Anything except feeling, that is.” My palms were sweating slightly. Her eyes fixed on me.

It’s six to five, I thought. Six to five and pick ’em, vigorish either way which means that it’s a ten percent cut off the top or maybe five because I am a great customer but still a losing proposition booked up all the way. Six to five. Six to five.

“You won’t do it,” she said. “You won’t do it.”

“Don’t bet on it, Ma,” I said quietly. “I might book it myself.”