Max Collins - Scratch Fever

Then a voice. Ron’s.

“Hey!”

Feet ran on gravel.

He tried to get on his feet; maybe he could hop faster than he could crawl.

He never found out.

A foot was on his back, and then he heard Ron say, “You ain’t goin’ no place,” and she grabbed him by his bound ankles and dragged him, face down, back to her car.

HAROLD TOOK off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was sitting behind the metal desk in the small paneled office at the rear of his and Julie’s club, the Paddlewheel. He was waiting for the phone to ring.

The Paddlewheel was a big place, an old converted warehouse near the banks of the Mississippi, in Gulf Port, Illinois; it contained a restaurant, several bars, several dance floors with stages, and a casino. But Harold’s office was small.

Harold, of course, was big, a big man who felt uncomfortable in his small office, physically uncomfortable, psychologically uncomfortable. This small office was just another unspoken insult in his life with Julie. But he loved her. He loved her. And if she didn’t love him back, well, she didn’t love anybody else, either. Except Julie, of course.

Julie had a large office upstairs, with a huge wood-topped desk, bulky old-fashioned safe, file cabinets, chairs, bar, television, stereo, a couch where she slept sometimes. Almost an apartment, and she did use it as a place to go, to stay, even overnight — when she wanted to get away from him for a while, Harold knew.

They lived together in a big white house with pillars, a near-mansion built ten years before by a wealthy farmer for a beloved wife who divorced him a year later. The place was several miles outside Gulf Port, in the midst of rich farmland that Julie now owned, one of several investments she’d made with the money they were earning from the Paddlewheel. It was a four-bedroom home that required a housekeeper to come in three times a week, filled with antiques Julie picked up (her only hobby); they slept in separate bedrooms, though he was allowed to join her in her bed for love-making a few times a week.

As for his small office on the basement level, she claimed it was a ploy of sorts; it was obviously necessary to keep considerable cash on hand for the casino and, she said, she wanted a certain amount beyond that in case the day came that they should need to leave in a hurry. So the big old safe in her office, in which a few thousand was kept, was a decoy; the safe containing over $100,000 was in the floor of Harold’s small office, a little vault in the corner, under the carpet.

It had been a long and disturbing evening. What it should have been was a pleasant night out — dinner at the Barn, followed by scouting the band there for possible fill-in at the Paddlewheel. But then this Jon kid turned up out of Julie’s past.

Julie had taken the money from that bank job and turned it into the Paddlewheel, from which had come land holdings and a sporting goods store in Burlington and... and Jon and Logan would want their share, now that they knew she was alive. Julie claimed they’d want even more — revenge, she said. But Harold didn’t really buy that. He knew Julie well enough to know that if there was one thing Julie loved besides Julie, it was money; that was the only fever in her, and she wouldn’t do the smart thing, the right thing, and call this Logan and the kid Jon in and admit her deceptions and cut them in for a share. No way in hell. She’d do anything but that. Harold knew that only too well. He knew only too well what Julie was capable of, for money.

He sat rubbing his eyes, waiting for the phone to ring. It was almost two in the morning, and he was exhausted. He wanted to go to his room at the house and sleep. Just sleep.

But he had to wait till the phone rang.

Those two guys Julie had contacted, the ones her Chicago connection put her onto, should have called by now.

He didn’t like being part of this. He didn’t like being any part of killing. It wasn’t the first time she’d got him into being part of something that was directly opposed to everything he’d ever been taught, that he’d ever believed in. He didn’t understand it, how he could have come to believe in one thing, live for one thing: Julie. The few nights a week in her bed, doled out like a child’s allowance; the occasional tender look; those few times a week she’d squeeze his arm and smile, or touch his face. He lived for those. He didn’t believe any of them, but he wanted to. And he took what he could get.

And then there were those rare, real moments when she got blue and came to him for some emotional support. When she needed a man to lean on, and for a while, a short while, he’d be a man to her, and to himself.

The phone rang.

It was the long-distance operator with a collect call for anyone from Mr. Smith. Harold accepted the call.

A young, out-of-breath voice said, “This is Infante.”

“I was told I’d be speaking to a Sal,” Harold said.

“Well, you’re speaking to Infante!”

“I better speak to Sal.”

“You can’t! You can’t... he’s dead. Sally’s dead.”

Dead. So it was starting, Harold thought. It was starting again.

On the other end of the phone, Infante seemed to be sobbing.

“Are you all right, Infante?”

“I’m fine!” the young voice said with defiance.

“Where are you?”

“Some restaurant I’m at a restaurant. Denny’s.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Port City? I’m using a pay phone.”

“In a booth?”

“It’s a kind of stall.”

“Well, keep your voice down, then, Infante.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“What happened?”

“We had the guy’s girlfriend. We were waiting for him. But he came in and surprised us. He killed Sally. With a knife! With a goddamn knife!”

“Please. Why did you leave the Quad Cities?”

“I couldn’t stay! He knows who I am, this Logan or Nolan or whatever. He’d come after me.”

“Then you better go someplace where you have friends who can hide you.”

“I’m not hiding from that son-of-a-bitch! I want him. He killed Sally ! Don’t you get it?”

“Look. Infante, is it? Go to your friends—”

“ Sally was my friend. He was all I had! That fucker Nolan, I’m going to kill him!”

You better decide whether you’re going to kill him or run from him , Harold thought But he said, “What are your plans, then?”

“I’m coming to you.”

“Infante, I wouldn’t...”

“I don’t care what you’d do. I’m coming. You owe me money.”

“That’ll be taken care of...”

“It sure will. And you can put me up somewhere. While we wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For Nolan.”

Harold rubbed his eyes again.

“Yes,” he said into the phone, “I suppose you’re right He will be coming, won’t he?”

Harold gave Infante some directions and hung up the phone.

Harold rarely drank. It was a holdover from his football days; he’d taken training very seriously. And he still took vitamins, watched his diet, worked out at a spa. He was into his thirties, and most men of his physical type would have gone to fat by now. Not Harold.

But right now he felt like a drink. He’d have to go out to that parking lot, where Julie was dealing with that crazy lez, and tell her about Infante. Thinking about her with Ron gave him a sick feeling; thinking about what Infante had told him, and how Julie would react to it, made him feel sicker. He went to the bar just outside his office and unlocked the booze and mixed himself a Manhattan.

Despite his not drinking much, he could make a hell of a mixed drink. He’d been a bartender for three years, after all. That’s what he’d been doing when Julie came back into his life a century ago. Last year.