James Cain - The Cocktail Waitress

“… But you went my husband’s bail!”

“Yes I did, Mrs. Lacey.”

“Why would you go his bail if you weren’t …?”

As I’ve said, my temper’s my greatest weakness, and I wanted to tell her it was none of her business why, but I made myself remember the one great object today was to find out all that I could, and that to do it I’d have to be friendly, even to this woman. Especially to this woman, as she seemed to know something about where Lacey was, judging from her remark about tropical heat.

“I did it to please a friend,” I told her, after swallowing one or two times.

“What friend?”

“It’s what I was about to tell you when you cut me off before. Your husband and I have a friend in common, Mr. Thomas Barclay.”

“Tom? You know him?”

“I’ve said: I count him a friend.” At least, until last night, I thought; but I didn’t say this to her.

She stepped back a bit, not enough to let me inside, but enough so that it no longer felt like she was trying to use her rigid body to block the doorway. “Jim thought Tom would sign his bond himself. Why didn’t he?”

“He couldn’t.”

“He could have put up his house, as I gather you did.”

“It’s mortgaged.”

“I never heard that before.”

“It’s what he told me.”

“And you signed just to please him?”

“… Perhaps-I had other reasons.”

“You mean you’re sleeping with him?”

“No, I’m not!”

On that, I flashed hot, and at once I saw her take note. Then: “O.K., then you’re sleeping with Jim. It’s the only other reason you could have.”

“It’s not my other reason!”

I was having a battle with myself by now, to keep from going over and letting her have it, as I’d let Tom have it twice now. I stood there blinking at her, so she had to repeat once or twice before I heard what she asked: “What was your other reason?”

“I wanted to do something, something nice if I could, for Tom. Because… I’m marrying somebody else-or at least I think I am.”

“Who is this somebody else?”

“That’s where your business ends, I’m afraid. I’ve told you all you need to know: your husband and I were nothing to each other, not friends, not even acquaintances; I helped him to help a friend, and now it’s backfired and I stand to lose something I can’t easily bear to lose, unless you can help me get on your husband’s trail-as I’d think you’d be glad to do, if you know where he is or where he’s going.”

“It’s not so simple. If he’s not going with you, he’s going with another-” The word she’d been about to use would not have been complimentary and she saw, I think, that I was at my limit already. “… With another woman. And if he were caught and it came out…” She grimaced. “I can bear the shame of being thought the wife of a criminal, even of a fugitive. But to have it written in the papers that he left me for some girl our son’s age-”

“O.K. I understand.”

She looked at me closely, staring into my eyes in a way that made me uncomfortable. “… You do, don’t you?”

“I know something about men, I’m sorry to say. I may be younger than you, but I’ve lived some. I have a child too, and no father for him, though in my case I couldn’t be happier that he’s gone.”

“… Another woman?”

“A culvert wall, at seventy miles per hour.”

She nodded slowly.

“Mrs. Medford, I’m sorry-I saw you and thought you were something worse than you are.”

“Then, I’m sorry too, for getting upset. I have quite a lot on my mind.”

“It sounds like we’ve both had men in our lives who are, to put it bluntly, sons of bitches.”

“To put it truthfully.”

“Well, you’re right that I want my son of a bitch caught and brought back to face the music. And now that I see you’re not sleeping with him but chasing him down, I’d love to give you some help-provided you agree to do something for me. Two things.”

“Yes?”

“Keep the woman out of it-out of the story, I mean. Make sure the news photographers snap him alone, not her by his side. I don’t care how you do it, just that you do. And-keep me out of it, too, as far as the police go.” She saw that I was puzzled. Looking around the block, at the rush-hour foot traffic going past-wholly uninterested, but within range to hear-she stepped back further, allowing me inside at last. She shut the door behind us and, even so, kept her voice low when she spoke. “There were things I couldn’t tell the police, when they came and questioned me about Jim’s disappearance. Had I known what he was planning? Had I seen any signs …? I said no. What woman ever knows that her husband is about to leave her?”

“But you had seen something?”

“When he was in the shower Tuesday evening, the night before he was due in court. I found two tickets in his briefcase-two plane tickets issued under phony names, Mr. and Mrs. James Barnaby, leaving for Nassau at twelve o’clock Friday-tomorrow, in other words. When I shook them in his face, he said they were for us. We’d fly away together. Well, it was half the truth. In the morning, he was gone-and both tickets with him. But how could I tell the police this? That I knew about the tickets and let him hold onto them because I thought I would be taken along?”

I said: “You would have left everything behind? Your house, your son, your life …?”

“My son has been charting his own course for years now, since he turned sixteen, pretty much. My life, in this neighborhood at least, is over and has been over since the day Jim was arrested-I can barely show my face, even among people who were our friends once. As for my house and the other things we have, well … the tickets weren’t the only thing I found in his bag.” She held my gaze firm. “I didn’t count it, Joan, but I worked in a bank before marrying, and I can still estimate by eye. He’s got at least fifty grand in that briefcase, to go down to Nassau with, and lay in the sun for a while. And maybe more.”

“But-if he had that much money-he could have made bail anytime he wanted!”

“Sure, and had less to live on when he got to the islands. Why should he, if he could persuade someone else to put up the money for him?”

“And where did all this money in his briefcase come from?”

A flush of red rose along her cheeks, and I remembered the newspaper articles about the bribes he was supposed to have taken. “I don’t care to speculate. All I can tell you is, here was all this money, and a pair of plane tickets, with the alternative being no money, just a public trial and its aftermath, and I said to myself, sometimes you just have to jump.”

“But then, he jumped without you.”

“Now you’ve got it. And you can see why I couldn’t share this with the police.”

“No, of course,” I said, seeing it perfectly. An officer like Young might have bent the rules for her, but a Church would have had her hunting up bail of her own in no time. “Well, they don’t have to know I heard about the tickets from you. Tom made a pile of calls yesterday, to all your husband’s friends. One of them might have known and told him.”

“Mrs. Medford-Joan-if you can handle it that way you’ll have my blessing and my thanks. All you have to do is look for Mr. and Mrs. Barnaby in the United Airlines terminal tomorrow before noon, and you should find him.”

I stood there blinking at her, trying to realize she had made it possible for me to keep from losing my house. I wanted to thank her, but nothing I could think of to say seemed to cover it. So I just said, “I will,” and turned to go.

As I opened the door, she said: “If you see Tom, give him my love. He’s a good one, if a bit pie-eyed sometimes.”