James Cain - The Cocktail Waitress

I said: “But then you’ll let the girl go? I made a promise to the person who told us where to find him, that we’d keep the girl out of it.”

“Why not? All we want is the money.”

Then, we began “setting it up,” as Mr. Christopher called it, how we would do the next day. They were concerned that if he saw Tom, Jim Lacey I’m talking about, he’d do what Tom had said, blow, but fast, and take the girl and the money with him. I was for Tom’s wearing dark glasses, but he smacked it out at once. “You’re practically advertising you don’t want to be recognized, if you dress like that indoors. It’s all Jim would need to take a second look.” It was Christopher who came up with the idea of making Tom older, by having him put on a gray wig and darken the lines on his face with pencil and wear a jacket one size larger than he normally took. We had a look in the yellow book, and found a wig place right there in Wheaton that served men as well as women. Then he and I drove over there, though Mr. Schwartz cautioned us: “Be sure and check in again, so I know, so the both of us know, what you’re going to look like.”

The wig place was called Helga of Sweden, and the salesman was awfully nice. I was jolted the least little bit that a simple gray wig that looked as we wanted it to would cost thirty dollars, but Tom insisted he couldn’t pull off what he was supposed to without it, and I put up the money. I had eye-liner in my bag, and I used it to put some wrinkles across Tom’s forehead and deepen the creases on either side of his mouth. Suddenly he was sixty years old-“except for your walk,” said the salesman, laughing. “You still walk like a young man.”

“He means put some lead in your tail,” I said.

“This way?” he asked, making a stab at middle-age sag.

“That’s it.”

Passing me close, he whispered, “Maybe I should have done this sooner, it seems to be the age of man you prefer,” and I pretended not to have heard. It was the only word he’d spoken all day that hailed back to our standoff the night before, but it showed his feelings were still on a boil, even if he’d put a lid over the pot.

On the way back to the IRS office, I shelled out another twenty dollars for a loose-fitting jacket and five more for a pair of eyeglasses with plain glass in the frames. I let Tom go in first, alone, and at least from across the room Mr. Christopher didn’t know him. “Yes, sir?” he asked, very polite, coming to the counter. “What can we do for you?”

“All we want is the money,” Tom told him, and Mr. Christopher’s eyes opened wide. Then he called Mr. Schwartz over, and though Schwartz saw through it, he nodded seriously and pronounced the disguise “good enough.” We lined it out then, what we would do the next morning at the airport-how Tom would take a seat in front of United Airlines, open a magazine, start to read, and peep over the top. They would take positions at either side of the room, and the moment Tom saw either Mr. Lacey or the girl, he’d get up, walk past, and close the magazine as he went by. If Lacey was with the woman it would all be very simple. If not, it might get complicated. I, meanwhile, would be in the back of the room watching from a distance, dark glasses having been deemed sufficient cover for me, as first of all they are less unusual on women indoors than men and second of all, as Tom put it, “he only saw you once, for half an hour, at midnight in a bar after being let out of jail, and he spent most of the time looking at the gap in your blouse anyway, not your face.” And the girl, of course, had never seen me at all.

With this all set, Tom and I started to go, but Mr. Schwartz reminded me I’d better call Marlboro and let Deputy Harrison know how things stood, so he could come to the Airport Police office at once when he arrived, and not search the waiting room with his men and possibly get spotted by “the quarry,” as they termed Lacey.

We got home a bit after four, and took stock of what we should do. Tom sat by the window again, and pretty soon began to talk: “First thing, Joan, at least as I see it, is that we get where the action is-to a motel somewhere near National Airport, so we’re not fighting traffic tomorrow morning and maybe we arrive too late. So-hold everything.” He got the Yellow Pages, looked, and found a big motel that might not want to be named, on account of what happened next day, so I don’t say which motel it was. He went on: “O.K., we go there- but not together. We go in separate cars, arriving at different times. I take a single with bath. You take a suite.”

“… Suite?” I asked. “Why?”

“So we can see each other without being seen. Suppose Jim’s staying there too? If he sees us in the lobby or some other public area like that-?”

“But why a suite? What does that have to do with it?”

“In a suite, you can have anyone up that you choose, male, female or neuter. They assume that with a sitting room it wouldn’t occur to you to do things you might be tempted to do, if all you had was a bedroom.”

“Are you sure that’s the rule?”

“Well? Call them, why don’t you? And ask.”

“… That’s O.K. I trust your superior knowledge of motels.”

*

He went in his car to pack his things, and after I threw a bag together, I drove on down to the motel, a big one in three sections. At the registration desk I asked the price of a suite, “bedroom, living room, and bath.” The clerk didn’t seem at all surprised by a woman registering alone, and said: “We have them from thirty-seven fifty up.”

“Is thirty-seven fifty outside?”

“All our suites are outside. The thirty-seven fifty tier looks out on the airport. For forty-five seventy-five, you can look out on the river.”

“Airport’s fine.”

He gave me a key and told me how to go. I took my bag to the elevator, went up, followed his directions down a hall, unlocked a door, and suddenly was in my suite, feeling guilty and excited and a little dry in the throat. I went through the rooms-they were done in pale green, with darker green furniture to blend, and everything so recently cleaned you could smell it. I tried not to look at the beds, of which there were two, “though of course,” the clerk had explained, “for two persons the charge is forty-two fifty.”

After I put my things in the bureau drawer, such few things as I had, I went back to the sitting room. Out the window, I could see planes landing and taking off, but they were far enough away that I couldn’t hear them. On one table was a telephone, and I used it to dial the Garden.

“Bianca please, Sue. Thank you.” When Bianca picked up, I said: “I’m going to be out again tonight-and maybe tomorrow, I don’t know.”

There was silence on the line.

“I can’t help it, Bianca. It’s something personal and important.”

“You sick in bed? On death’s door?”

”…No. Not like that.”

“Then you’re not leaving me short-handed two nights in a row, never mind three. You get down here right now, Joan.”

“I can’t.”

After some more silence: “You want to explain to me why I shouldn’t fire you this time? Tom’s not around to talk me out of it again.”

“No he’s not,” I said. “He’s here with me.”

“… Oh!”

“He and I have something that can’t wait. One way or another, it’ll be done tomorrow, and then I’ll be in again like always. But tonight-”

“I heard you, you can’t. I hope you know what you’re doing, Joan.”

“This time, I do.”

Still sounding upset: “… I’ll go tell Liz.”

As soon as I put down the receiver, the phone was ringing, and then Tom’s voice was in my ear: “Just checked in. Feel like going over it again, maybe?”