Ed Gorman - Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool

“Hey, you little prick,” he said.

“She’s dead, David. You could at least be decent to her folks.”

He straightened his jacket and T-shirt and gave me the squinted-eyes routine again.

“Just get out of here, McCain.”

“She’s dead, David. Her parents deserve a note of condolence.”

“They’ll just throw it away.”

“Even if they do, it needs to be written.”

The sullen face was all his own. “All the shit I’ve had to go through.”

“That doesn’t give you any right to treat women the way you do.”

“They know what they’re getting into.”

It was a bad movie line. The desperado.

The rebel no woman could tame. You could hear it coming through a tinny drive-in speaker now.

“You’re taking your life out on them, David, and they deserve better. Sara and Rita and Molly are good young women.”

“They hire you to say that?”

I said, “I don’t want to represent you anymore, David.”

He came off the car and said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“There are other lawyers in town. I’ll arrange for one of them to help you. But I’m done.”

“That’ll make it look like I’m guilty.”

Then, “You can’t do this, McCain. You really can’t.”

“You going to write that note to the Griffins?”

“All right, God, if that’s what you want me to do.”

“That’s a start. And knock off the heartbreaker bullshit. Everybody knows you love ‘em and leave ‘em, David. But you may have to face a jury here pretty soon. And you’re gonna need all the friends you can get.”

He smirked again. “Maybe I should wear a cassock and a Roman collar.”

“It wouldn’t hurt, David.” I got sick of him from time to time-his childhood hadn’t corrupted him but his reaction to his childhood, his self-pity, certainly had-but I hadn’t ever been as sick of him as I was at this moment.

I walked away to my ragtop.

“I knew you were bluffing, McCain. I knew you wouldn’t really drop me.”

I said nothing. Just drove away. Leaving a bad imitation of James Dean standing alone in the muzzy yellow light of the gas station drive.

In the rearview mirror, I watched as he slipped his hands in his back pockets, pure James Dean. And now, unfortunately, pure David Egan.

I’d been in my apartment only a couple of minutes before there was a knock on the inside door. Mrs. Goldman.

“I baked some cookies,” she said, “and thought you might like some.”

“Say, thanks.”

She handed me a plate with a dozen chocolate-chip cookies on them. Mrs.

Goldman is a widow. She lived in this house for years with her husband and then decided to rent out the upstairs when he died. Lauren Bacall can only hope she looks as good at fifty as Mrs. Goldman does. In her crisp white blouse and blue skirt, she looked thirty-five. An envelope was tucked inside her right arm. “I’m also delivering this. I found it on the porch. I don’t know why they didn’t put it in the mailbox.”

The phone rang. Mrs. Goldman smiled.

“I’ll let you catch that, Sam.”

“Thanks for the cookies.”

On the phone, Mom said, “I really had a good time at the game today, dear. I just wanted to thank you.”

“My pleasure. Did you enjoy it?”

“Very much. Even though I didn’t exactly understand a lot of what was going on. There are an awful lot of people on that field at one time. It gets confusing.”

I smiled at the thought of Cliffie’s cheer, “Kill those bastards!” If people would have shouted it, I think Mom would have mentioned it.

“Well, I’m glad you had a good time.”

“You sound sort of rushed, dear. Is everything all right?”

“Just got in the door. Haven’t even had time to get my sport coat off.”

“Well, I’ll let you go. But I just wanted to thank you for the tickets. That halftime show was great. I think that was my favorite part.”

In the interest of good health, I fixed a peanut butter, mayo, and mustard sandwich before plowing into the cookies. That particular sandwich recipe probably doesn’t sound all that good but you should give it a try.

I watched Mike Hammer with Darren

McGavin, which was pretty good; and a Lone Wolf rerun with Louis Hayward. It was always sort of sad to see once-prominent actors have to resort to humiliating cheap-O Tv shows. I wondered if fading Tv stars worried about me the way I worried about them.

I’d inherited three cats-Tasha,

Crystal, and Tess-f a girl who’d left them with me while she went to La to become a star.

She was waitressing in Redondo Beach and the cats were still mine. I’d never been what you call favorably disposed to felines but they’d grown on me.

They were nice enough to give me a portion of the bed around ten o’clock. The stuff on Tv looked bad so I picked up the Steinbeck I was rereading, In Dubious Battle, and lost myself in the bleak rage of the early labor movement. For me it was his best book.

I was asleep by eleven-thirty. The phone rang at just before midnight according to the glowing hands of my alarm clock.

One of these nights it’s going to be Natalie Wood telling me how lonely she is and that she’s always wanted to see Black River Falls, Iowa, and couldn’t she please come out and stay with me a few months.

It was Molly Blessing, who barely took time to introduce herself.

“I’m really scared, Mr. McCain.”

“What about, Molly?”

“David got real drunk tonight.”

“Where is he?”

“That’s the thing. I’m not sure. And that’s not the worst part, he’s going to drag tonight.”

“Where?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He said the cops always check out the spots everybody uses, so they were going to find a different place.”

“Why didn’t you go with him?”

“He said he was going to pick up that bitch Rita. I’m a lot better for him than Rita is. I try to get him to stop drinking and drag racing. She just encourages him to keeping doing them.

I know I sound like a goody-two-shoes but if you really love somebody, Mr. McCain, shouldn’t you want them to do the right thing?”

“I agree, Molly. But right now the important thing is to find David.”

“He said you two had had an argument tonight. That you threatened to dump him.”

“I got pretty mad, I guess.”

“You’re the only one he can rely on, Mr.

McCain-if you didn’t represent him, I don’t know what would happen to him, I mean a lot of people think he killed Sara.” Then, “I’m at the AandW. At the phone booth. Could you pick me up and we’ll go looking for David?”

“Yeah, maybe between us we can figure out where he went.”

“He’s so drunk, he’s-”

“All we can do is hope for the best. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I really appreciate this.”

“I appreciate your calling, Molly. We need to stop him.”

She waited on the corner for me. Even given the sudden autumnlike turn in the temperature, the AandWill was crowded with cars, kids, and brave short-skirted carhops on roller skates.

Molly got in quickly. “I’m glad you put the top up. I’m kinda cold.”

She wore a white sweater, jeans, and a rust-colored suede car coat that only enhanced the copper tones of her hair. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“May I see some Id?”

She laughed. “Believe it or not, I still have to sneak around. At home, I mean. My father found a cigarette that had dropped out of my jacket one night. He grounded me for four nights and I was seventeen.” She used the dash lighter, inhaled deeply, exhaled a long blue stream of smoke. “I don’t even know where to start.”