A. Fair - The Bigger They Come

‘Well, Mrs. Birks can get her divorce.’

‘Can she?’

‘You know she can,’ I said. ‘And if she wanted to be mean she could drag you into it. She’s got all the evidence she needs. The way she treats you depends on the way you treat her.’

‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ she asked, putting down the buffer and raising her eyes to mine.

‘That’s it,’ I said.

She sighed. ‘You looked like such a nice boy, too. How about a drink?’

‘No, thanks. I don’t drink when I’m working.’

‘You’re working now?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry about you,’ she said.

‘You don’t need to be.’

‘Just what does she threaten to do to me?’

‘Threaten?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Why, nothing. I’m merely telling you things.’

‘Just as a friend, I suppose,’ she said sarcastically.

‘Just as a friend.’

‘Well, just what do you want me to do?’

‘Get Morgan Birks to acknowledge service of this summons or else fix things so I can, make a service on Birks. After all,’ I said, ‘it’s to your interest to have the divorce go through, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she countered, and her face was worried. ‘I wish I did.’

I said nothing.

‘How am I supposed to fix it so you can serve the papers?’

‘You make a date with Morgan Birks,’ I said. ‘Then you telephone B. L. Cool at Main 6-9321. I come over and serve the papers.’

‘And when do I get the pay-off?’

‘You don’t get any.’

She threw back her head and laughed. There seemed to be genuine amusement in her laugh. ‘All right, sweetheart. I wanted to see what made you tick. I’ve found out. Get the hell out of here. Go tell Mrs. Birks she can go jump in the lake. If she wants to mention my name, ask her about her little sweetheart, Archie Holoman. Ask her if she thinks her husband is just a plain damn fool.’

Her laughter followed me out into the corridor.

I went back to where Alma Hunter was waiting for me in the automobile. ‘See her?’ she asked.

‘Uh huh.’

‘What sort of a girl is she?’ she asked curiously.

‘Peroxide blonde,’ I said. ‘Easy on the eyes, and hard on the ears.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She told me to go roll my hoop.’

‘Wasn’t that what you wanted her to say?’

‘Yes, in a way, it was.’

‘Why, I thought that was just what you wanted. I thought you wanted her to get hard and kick you out and then lead you to Morgan.’

‘I gathered,’ I said, ‘that was the idea.’

‘What was it she said you didn’t like?’

‘There are some things about being a detective which go against the grain. I suppose a detective has to be something of a heel. At any rate, she seemed to think so.’

For a long moment, Alma Hunter was silent. Then she asked, ‘Did she sell you on the idea?’

I said, ‘Yes,’ and climbed in the car to sit beside her. After a while I said, ‘We’d better move the car down to that alley. We can watch just as well from there, and we won’t be so conspicuous.’

She stretched out a neatly shod foot and pushed the starter into action. She drove the car down to the alley entrance, backed it in, found a shady place, and parked. ‘You’re not a heel,’ she said. ‘You’re nice.’

‘Thanks for the reassurance,’ I said, ‘but somehow it takes more than words to take the taste out of my mind.’

‘What did you expect the job would be like?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know as I expected,’ I said.

‘Weren’t you attracted to it because of the idea of romance and adventure?’

‘I was attracted to it because of the possibility of getting two meals a day, and a place to sleep at night. I didn’t even know what kind of a job it was when I answered the ad — and I didn’t much care.’

She put her hand on my arm. ‘Don’t feel bitter, Don. After all, it isn’t as bad as you think. That Durke woman is the worst kind of a gold-digger. She doesn’t care a fig about Morgan. She is just playing him for what she can get out of him.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but I just don’t like the idea of being a heel. Not that I’m going to crab too much about it, I just didn’t like it. That was all.’

‘But you did it?’ she asked.

‘I think I made a damn good job of it,’ I said.

She laughed then, a laugh that had a catch in it. ‘You say the most unexpected things, Donald. I guess it’s the way you look at life. Tell me, what happened to you that leaves you so down on the world?’

‘Good Lord! Do I create that sort of an impression?’

‘In a way.’

‘I’ll try to get over it.’

‘But tell me, Don, isn’t it true?’

‘I had a raw deal,’ I said. ‘When you’ve worked for years to get somewhere, overcome all sorts of obstacles, and get what you want, only to have someone knock it out of your hands, you have some readjusting to do.’

‘Was it a woman, Don?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

‘No.’

She sat looking meditatively through the windshield. Her fingers toyed with my coat sleeve.

‘You were disappointed when you found I wasn’t a veteran detective,’ I said.

‘Was I?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Why, I didn’t know that I was.’

I see her profile. ‘Was it,’ I asked, ‘because someone had been trying to choke you, and you wanted my advice on protection?’

I saw her features twist with emotion, her eyes become startled, her hand involuntarily go to her throat as though to shut off my gaze.

I said, ‘Who tried to choke you, Alma?’

The lips quivered. Tears glistened in her eyes. Her fingertips dug into my arm. I put my arm around her and drew her to me. She laid her head against my shoulder and cried, deep sobbing that spoke of tortured nerves. I slid my left hand up around her neck, put the fingertips under the chin, moved the right hand up along her blouse.

‘Oh, no, no,’ she sobbed, and grabbed at my wrist with both of her hands.

I looked down into her frightened, tear-flooded eyes. Her quivering lips were upturned — slightly parted.

There wasn’t any conscious volition about kissing her. I just found my lips clinging to hers, the taste of her tears salt on my lips. She let go of my wrist then, drew me down close to her, half turned her body with a quick twist so that she was clinging to me.

After a moment, our lips separated. I raised my right hand along her blouse, fumbled with the fastenings at the neck, parted it, and drew away the silk.

She was limp in my arms, making no resistance. The sobbing had quieted.

‘When did this happen, Alma?’ I asked.

‘Last night,’ she said.

‘How did it happen? Who was it?’

She clung to me, and I could feel her tremble.

‘Poor kid,’ I said, and kissed her again.

We sat there in the car, our lips held together, her body close and warm against mine. The bitterness and tension flowed out of me. I ceased to hate the world. A peaceful feeling took possession of me. It wasn’t passion. It wasn’t that kind of a kiss. I don’t know what kind of a kiss it was because I’d never had one before like it. She did things to me — things which I’d never before experienced.

Her sobbing ceased. She quit kissing me, gave a nervous, quivering little gasp, opened her purse, took out a square of handkerchief, and started drying her tears.

‘I’m a sight,’ she said, looking in the mirror on the inside of her purse. ‘Has Sally Durke come out yet?’

The question brought me back to realities with a jump. I peered through the windshield of the car at the entrance of the apartment house. It was forbiddingly inanimate. A dozen Sally Durkes could have come out and gone away, and I’d have been none the wiser.