Robert Alter - Carny kill

"All I'm trying to say, May, is that it won't help us progress by losing our temper. We must remain rational and-"

"Rational!" May cried. "My God, look what they're doing to me! Can't you understand? I'm being framed for murder! My knife, my earring, my husband. My God, I'm as good as convicted!"

I stood up and mashed out my cigarette on a desk tray.

"Well," I said, "this has been pleasant, but I'm supposed to be out on the lot earning the salary you good people pay me."

May dropped her anger and switched back to feminine appeal.

"Darling-I really do need your help."

"Mine?"

"Um. If I ever meant anything at all to you, sweetness, I only want you to do one little thing for me."

I could have told her what she had meant to me but I decided I'd better not. I looked at her askance.

"What is the one little thing?"

"I want you to help me by not telling the law all about our private life. I mean back when we were married. I'm in deep enough, darling, without having all the gory details of the past thrown at me too."

"Ferris already knows we were once married, May."

She shook her head impatiently. "I don't mean that. I mean, for example, that little incident in Decatur."

That little incident in Decatur had damn near cost me my life. That was the night I caught Bill Duff and May making like Ferris' crossed fingers in Duff's trailer. The night Duff lost his eye-tooth. May and I had pitched a beauty when we got back to our own trailer, and then May had pitched a knife at me and thank God I had decided to sit down on the bed just as she did or I would have had a new hole where I didn't need one.

It was pretty plain that a story like that wouldn't do her present situation much good. I grinned at her.

"You mean you want me to withhold evidence?"

"No, no," Franks said hurriedly. "What you mistakenly call evidence isn't germane to Mr. Cochrane's death. It isn't relevant in any sense, except perhaps-"

"Except that it will give the DA a dandy chance to establish May's behavior pattern of throwing knives at her husbands," I said.

Franks looked slightly annoyed. "All Mrs. Cochrane is asking of you, Thaxton, is not to volunteer an old story like that if you don't have to. You see?"

"Uh-huh. Just a slight omission on my part."

"Exactly. And-" he took time out to clear his throat- "Mrs. Cochrane would of course be very appreciative. I-uh, understand you arrived here somewhat strapped for money?"

I cocked my head at him.

"You're offering me a shot at blackmail, Mr. Franks?"

"No," he said. "No no no. Please do not use that term, Thaxton. I had in mind a bonus. After all, you do work for Mrs. Cochrane, and-"

"Oh for godsake, Lloyd." May looked disgusted. "Thax wasn't born yesterday. He called it by its right name the first time." She looked at me. "Will you take it and keep your mouth shut?"

I was almost at the point of asking how much It was, exactly. But I backed off like an honorable little man.

"This may come as a jolt to you, sweetie," I said to her. "But the only money I'm going to take from you is what I earn on the lot. But don't sweat it. I won't tell Ferris you once tried to use me as a bull's-eye." I winked at Franks. "See you two very nice people later."

May followed me to the door. When I got it open she leaned her lithe body against the edge and placed a silvertipped hand over one of mine. She looked up at me with her best, practiced, feline, look.

"Like Lloyd said, darling, I am very appreciative." Her voice was pure cat's purr.

I glanced at her claws and drew my hand out and gave her a pat on the behind.

"Better save it for the jury sweetness," I said. "You just might need it."

I went down the stairs with May's parting comment in my ear.

"Bastard."

A fog-mist rolled in from the sea that night. It was damp but not cold. It felt good on your skin, tingly and clean. It looked nice on the young girls' hair and on their outthrust sweaters. It put a spectacular halo around the high arc lights and made them a bluewhite. It was ghostly. It seemed to make the voices of the children more shrill. People moved through it like stalking specters desperately trying to seek entertainment, excitement, escape.

It was a good night for it. A good night, in fact, for a couple of ideas I had in mind.

The Viking horn went hooo like a dismal foghorn and I gave away my last three orchids to three sad spinster looking females who had librarian or schoolteacher stamped on their tragically plain faces. They were very embarrassed and delighted and childlike about it. Then I felt sad.

I wondered why everybody couldn't be beautiful. If everybody was beautiful, then we would all be so busy making love to one another we wouldn't have time to be frustrated. Then we wouldn't jack-roll or riot or declare war. Maybe we wouldn't even drink ourselves to death.

Nut, I told myself. I closed up my stand and went over to have a smoke with Gabby. He said, "Hop in and have a drink."

I climbed over the counter and helped him close up. A single, naked 200-watt bulb made the place look like an interrogation room. The little white rabbits at the far end appeared to be frozen in their tracks with terror.

At least there were no effigies of Mao or Castro to shoot at. It used to bore me to hell to have to shoot at Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito all the time when I was a kid and would go to a shooting gallery during the war.

Gabby drew a pint from under the counter and passed it to me. It was Scotch and it was good. I passed it back and said, "Coincidence. I was just wondering if beautiful people ever drink themselves to death, and now you tempt me."

"Don't sweat it. You ain't beautiful."

"My mother thought so."

"Mothers are nuts. There ain't any beautiful people."

I think he had something there, as far as the outer flesh goes. Usually the people the world considers as beautiful are sin ugly inside. Like May. But I don't know; I've seen some nuns who looked beautiful and I have an idea they were the same inside. Maybe not. Maybe they were frustrated like any spinster.

"Jesus," I said.

"What?"

"People," I said. "Life. Crazy. All crazy."

"Bet your ass."

"Well," I said, "it doesn't really matter."

Gabby took a good one and wiped his mouth and looked at me.

"Got any ideas?" he asked.

"Um-hm. I'm gonna go look her up in a minute."

"I mean about Rob Cochrane."

"Why should I have ideas about that?"

"Because I understand The Man has started to switch his sights from Mrs. Big to you."

I looked at him. He passed the bottle but I didn't take one.

"Where'd you hear that?"

Gabby shrugged. "Word gets-"

"Yeah, yeah. It gets around. I know. But who gave it to you?"

"Duff. Said it was from the horse's mouth."

I didn't much like the idea that other people besides Ferris were starting to look at me askance, or that Bill Duff was going around saying so.

"I just might decide to send Bill to the dentist again," I said.

"Somebody did that a couple of months ago."

"Yeah? Who?"

"Mike Ransome. They were over at the gambling room and Duff was on the sauce and he started to tell the boys an off-color story about him and May Cochrane. Nobody wanted to hear it because they all liked Rob, but Duff wouldn't knock it off. So Ransome put a fist in his big mouth."

"Huh. Ransome doesn't look like he could whip a Girl Scout."

"You ain't seen him in action. He's fast. Duff has the muscle and meanness but he had no more chance of landing one on Mike than I have of crawling in bed with Sophia Loren."

I said huh again. Then I switched the subject.

"Where is the gambling den? I'd like to look in some night."