Peter Rabe - Benny Muscles In

Benny felt tense, but he merely shrugged and smiled. She had come very close and her blowing skirt kept touching his leg.

Then her smile dropped away and she stepped back. “Florida’s fine,” she said. She was talking to the help again. “I’ll call you when the bags are ready.” She went into the building.

Benny took a deep breath and leaned against the car. He took his cap off to wipe the band. Then he jammed it on again. “I’ll call you when the bags are ready-” that high-assed little bitch. To look at, there wasn’t much wrong with her except for those goddamn brassy manners. She didn’t look her twenty-three years.

“Tapkow! You may pick the bags up now.” She was at the window, three flights up. “Ask the girl at the desk for a pass and she’ll show you the way up.”

He got upstairs, his manner as it should be, and gathered up the luggage.

“When you have the bags stowed, wait for me in front of Administration. Some last-minute plans. Well, go on, Tapkow We’re in a hurry, aren’t we?” She ran from the room, leaving him with her bags.

He waited in front of Administration for close to an hour. His hands had started to itch and he rubbed them along the steering wheel with an irritated movement. At first, when he heard the voice, he didn’t move.

“Hi. She’ll be right along.” Somebody opened the rear door of the car.

Benny turned. He felt jumpy.

A youngish woman sat in the back, smoothing her lumpy seersucker suit, which could have fitted any size from bean pole to matron. She had an artless permanent that flattened out her head, rimless glasses, the wrong lipstick. Her legs weren’t bad, not counting those shoes, and even her face wasn’t bad, except that she didn’t know what to do with it.

“You got the wrong car, sister. Beat it.”

She blinked at him, unable to move. “I’m-I’m sorry, but I think-”

“Come on, come on!”

Then she got her strength back and scrambled out of the car. Outside she hesitated, turned, and came to the window in front. “I’m sorry, but isn’t this the Pendleton car?”

“What’s it to you?” Benny was tense, too tense.

“Well-” she tried to smooth things with a queer laugh-”the truth is I was asked. I was invited.”

“What’s this?”

“Didn’t Pat tell you? She’s taking me along. To Florida. I’m Nancy Driscoll.”

Some last-minute plans, she had said. Some last-minute plans to screw up a million-dollar deal-and then he saw Pat coming.

“Well,” she called, “you got here before I did. Have you two met? Our chauffeur, Benny Tapkow; Miss Driscoll.”

“We met,” Benny said. He got out of the car, picked Miss Driscoll’s bag off the sidewalk, and put it into the trunk. The two women were standing by the car, chatting. Not a word out of the Driscoll dame about what had happened. She was that kind. Much too scared to make a fuss, and much too proper to complain.

“Miss Driscoll works in the Dean’s office,” Pat said. “I’ve been in the Dean’s office so often, we got to know each other quite well, didn’t we, Nancy?” Pat laughed, and Nancy managed a pinched smile.

“It was so good of you to ask me,” she said. “And at the last minute, too. Why, if it had been fifteen minutes later I would have been on my way to Mother’s.”

“You can see her all summer,” Pat said. “Let’s get in.”

“I have to be here for summer school.”

“Come on, Nancy.”

They got into the back and Benny started the car. He took off with a fast burst, careening down the mountain road as if he were driving a getaway car. No such luck, though. What he wanted to get away from was sitting right in the back, one smug bitch who thought she was society and one dumb spinster who thought she was going to have a vacation. They were both going to get the surprise of their lives.

“Your Mr. Tapkow drives just like a gangster,” Miss Driscoll said, and she tried her laugh again.

Pat threw her head back and really laughed. She couldn’t stop for a while and then she leaned forward and tapped Benny on the shoulder. “Hey, Tapkow, did you hear that?” She was laughing again. “God, did you hear that, Tapkow?”

“Have I said something funny?” Miss Driscoll looked expectant.

“Funny?” Pat was overdoing the laughter now. “Funny!” and she started to fumble with her handbag. She pulled a pint out, unscrewed the top, and took a drink. “Nice,” she said, and handed the bottle to Miss Driscoll. “Come on, come on, Nancy, or I won’t tell you the funny story.”

While Benny started to sweat, they argued a while longer about the drink and then Miss Driscoll had one and said she enjoyed it. “And now the funny story, Patty.” She handed the bottle back.

“Did you ever know any gangsters, Nancy?”

“Of course not,” Miss Driscoll said.

Pat sat back in her seat and made her voice confidential. “Darling, don’t breathe a word of this, but you have met one.”

“I have?”

“Tapkow, here. He used to be one.”

Miss Driscoll’s mouth turned into an O and then they both had another drink.

“He claims he never was a gangster himself, but he chauffeured for one. Tapkow, tell Nancy about it.” Pat laughed again.

“You don’t want to ask me those things.” He tried to make it sound offhanded. He wished they’d shut up and let him think. Between now and St. Petersburg he’d better come up with a sharp answer, because when he stopped at Orangewood and Ninth only one dame was going to be in the car, and that was going to be Pat.

“Tapkow, say something. Tell us about that time you worked for the gangster.”

“There’s nothing to tell.” He sounded curt. “I just drove for him. Picked him up at the office and drove him home. That’s all.”

“He’s a little shy about it,” Pat said to Miss Driscoll, “so I’ll tell you. Do you know what he really did, Nancy? He pimped for that man!”

That crazy bitch, what was she up to? And how’d she know about that part?

“You don’t say!” Miss Driscoll sounded breathless. Benny couldn’t tell whether she was shocked or merely interested. “Why, Patty,” she went on, “is your father aware of this-this background? My heavens, this-” and she ended with nothing. They exchanged the bottle.

Pat was liking the game. “You don’t have to worry about him, Nancy. He only does it for pay. What’s the current price, Tapkow? How much would we fetch?” and she gave her cold laugh.

“You shouldn’t talk like that, Miss Patricia.” It came out evenly, not showing the effort it was costing him to hold his temper. One more crack out of her and he’d give her an answer.

“Take Nancy, here,” Pat went on. “Or let’s put it this way: Would you take Nancy, here?”

Nancy answered that one herself. “Patty! I forbid you to talk that way. Why, in all my years-” She hiccuped.

“How old are you, Nancy?”

“Why-”

“Is she too young, Tapkow?”

“Christ, no,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

There was only a sound from Miss Driscoll, but Pat took it up. “Too old, then,” and Benny knew there’d be that smirk on her face.

There was a weak “My heavens” from Miss Driscoll and Benny could hear the bottle clink. “She’s not too old,” he said. “The disposition’s what counts, Miss Patricia. The nice disposition.”

There was silence from the back, and before Pat could give an answer Miss Driscoll started to cry.

Pat put her arm around the woman. “Nancy, what’s wrong? Here, Nancy, have another drink.”

But Miss Driscoll just kept sobbing and hiccuping, shaking her head from side to side. Then she leaned back into the cushions of the seat and gave a deep sigh. A minute later she was out cold.