Уильям Макгиверн: The Big Heat

“Oh, I’m used to it,” Kate said, standing and smoothing down her skirt. “I’m getting to like it, as a matter of fact. The suspense is pretty heady. Will he come home for dinner? Will he be called out? Where’s my wandering boy tonight?” She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “I’m okay, Dave, don’t worry. I’ve got it good, I think.”

“I’ll hold that over your head someday,” he said.

“How late will you be?” That was as much as she ever asked him about his work.

“Not long, baby.”

“I’ll wait up for you.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Sure, I’m tired.” She looked up at him and smiled. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Okay, I’ll see you in an hour or so then,” he said. “And don’t think I’m not flattered.”

“You should be,” she said.

He kissed her goodbye and went out to his car. He was still smiling slightly as he started back toward center-city...

The Triangle Bar was a small-time nightclub, choicely located between a burlesque house and a State Liquor Store. It was on Arch Street, a dreary skid row that stretched for about twenty blocks between the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers. Here there were shooting galleries, Army and Navy stores and dozens of warehouses, clip joints, and small, weary shops. It was a depressing street, patently, determinedly small-time, with a quality of winking, guilty, rib-nudging lust about it.

Bannion parked under the glare of the Triangle’s neon sign and went inside. The long, oval bar, which imprisoned a colored trio on a tiny bandstand, was crowded with sailors, soldiers, and sharply dressed young men, who were covertly eyeing the chorines from the next-door burlesque house, hard, hennaed, heavily made-up girls who slipped in for a drink and a sandwich between shows. They wore mappers over their shorts and bras, and sat together, talking shop and sipping their drinks. The young men wouldn’t score with them, Bannion knew. The girls were a tough and practical lot, dead-tired most of the time from their four shows a day, and they wanted no part of sailors, soldiers, and nervous young men. They sipped their drinks, minding their own business, but their lures, the mascaraed eyes, the shaved, chalk-white legs, the ladies-of-mid-night aura, all smacking of the illicit, kept the young men hanging around, kept them in a state of noisy, nervous excitement. The girls might go for a calm, sensible fruit-grower from New Jersey, perhaps, or a middle-aged truck driver, who’d treat them decently and not cause trouble, but they wouldn’t go for the nervous young men.

Bannion got the bartender’s eye. “I’m looking for a girl named Lucy who works here. Is she around?”

“What’s on your mind, friend?” The bartender was a large, middle-aged man with a narrow head and slightly protruding eyes.

“I just told you,” Bannion said. He smiled because he never liked to play it tough. “Police business. Is she around?”

“Oh! Oh, sure. She’s down at the end of the bar, this side, last stool.”

“Thanks.”

There was a girl on the last stool, a small, slender girl in a black satin dress, with dark hair cut in bangs above a round, pretty face, and eyes that looked very tired, but still cheerful. There was something appealing in her expression — some attractive blend of boredom and weariness, and the capacity for surprise. She smiled as Bannion approached her, and most of the tiredness left her face. “You must be Mr. Bannion,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry about disturbing you,” she said, sliding off the stool. “Let’s sit in a booth, okay? When the band starts playing you need megaphones here at the bar.”

“Fine.” Bannion followed her to the rear of the place and sat down facing her across a cigarette-burned, drink-ringed table. A waiter came over and Bannion ordered a scotch and soda. The girl shook her head. “Only when I’m working,” she said to Bannion.

“You’re a hostess here?”

“Well, that’s putting it pretty fancy,” Lucy Carroway said, and laughed. “I would take a cigarette, if you’ve got one.”

“Sure.” Bannion lit hers, lit his own, and dropped the match in the ashtray. “Okay. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, as I said, it’s about Tom.” She put a newspaper clipping which she’d been holding in her hand on the table. Bannion saw that it was the story on Deery’s suicide from the latest edition of the Express.

“Okay, what about him?” he said.

“The story’s wrong,” Lucy said, in a tone of uncertain, confused defiance. She looked straight into Bannion’s eyes. “He wasn’t worried about his health, like it says in the story.”

Bannion studied the girl. She struck him as oddly earnest and reliable. “Well, what was he worried about then?” he asked.

“He wasn’t worried about anything. He was never happier in his life.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last week, just five days ago.”

“I see.” Bannion drew on his cigarette, considering this news. It was rather surprising, in its implications, in the light of what he knew of Tom Deery, and, more particularly, of his wife, Mary Ellen Deery. “Supposing you tell me how you happened to know Tom?” he said.

She looked away from him then, and glanced at her hands. “Well, that’s kind of a long story, Mr. Bannion.”

“It could be a long night. Let’s have it.”

“All right,” she said, and sighed. “Well, it was a long time ago, back in nineteen forty-one, that I met him. He had a summer home in Atlantic City, and I was singing there in a club. I started out as a singer. I didn’t get into this racket until my agent finally told me I was heading strictly from nowhere as a singer. Well, that’s another story, I guess. Anyway, I met Tom when he came in one night for a drink and stayed for the show. One of my friends there knew him and introduced us. I liked him right away. He was a nice guy, gentle, if you know what I mean. And he was always worried because the world wasn’t good enough, and because people were such bastards. Lots of times his wife didn’t come over with him — she used to go off on her own, to Miami, places like that, he told me. Those times, when she wasn’t around, I’d go out to Tom’s place after the show. We’d go swimming early in the morning, and then lie around in the sun after breakfast.”

“It all sounds very pleasant,” Bannion said. He tried to sound non-committal, but there was a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

Lucy Carroway shook her head. “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong,” she said. She looked miserable and badgered. “I don’t blame you. I know what it sounds like. A guy tom-catting around while his wife’s away. But it wasn’t like that. Not with him, anyway. Just forget about me in this thing. Maybe that’s the way to make you see it. Check me off as a hustling babe. But he was different. He wasn’t happy about the way we had to do it. Oh, I was happy enough. I’d take him on any terms and feel lucky. But he was married and couldn’t forget it. He thought we were doing something terrible.”

“He loved his wife?” Bannion said.

“No, but he felt responsible for her. That was his trouble. That’s what made him such a sweet guy. He felt responsible for everybody, for me, for his wife, for all the crookedness in the world. He couldn’t just enjoy himself and let the world go to hell. Anyway, his wife wouldn’t give him a divorce. She did everything she could to hang onto him, things most decent women couldn’t make themselves do. She told him she was pregnant — before that she wouldn’t give him any kids. And it was a lie. She said she had a miscarriage, but that was a lie too. Trust her not to risk her figure having a baby. But she made Tom feel responsible for the whole thing — the whole damn bunch of lies.”