Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

Schiller had promoted himself a large house on the post not too far from the Snake Hill area of cheap bars at Fort Sam’s south end. He lived there with his wife, Ruby, an accomplished legal-engineering secretary who made more money than Schiller, something that never bothered him in the least.

The major looked like a soldier. He was tall, carried himself well, wore his uniform beautifully, and had spent most of World War II in London and Paris on what he called a “sensitive assignment.” He had a bachelor’s degree from a small college in Pennsylvania and when he was drafted in 1941 he was selling time for a radio station. Before that, he sold Willys cars. When asked about his civilian experience, Schiller always said that he had been “involved” in “radio promotion” and prior to that he had been “involved” in “the management side of the automotive industry.”

He had a nose that just missed being a beak, a high, intelligent-looking forehead, thick black hair, a good, thin-lipped smile, and puzzled, blue eyes. He also had boundless enthusiasm for any project at hand, a remarkable ability to forget past failures, and a bad case of satyriasis. He tried to screw anything in skirts and often as not succeeded.

They had decided to discharge me from the army in late May of 1953 despite my lack of points. It was mostly because they didn’t know what to do with a nineteen-year-old master sergeant. I had been hanging around the hospital ward, waiting for them to make up their minds, when Schiller dropped by to see me. He came by once or twice a week, usually to borrow ten or twenty until payday. He was always broke.

“Well, I fixed it, son. You go to work next Monday morning.”

“I go to work where?”

“In PIO. You’re my new civilian assistant. Thirty-six fifty a year. How’s that?”

“Lousy.”

It didn’t faze the major. “Well, it’s not too hot to start with, but I can probably jump you a grade or two after a few months.”

“In a few months I’ll be back in school. I told you that.”

Schiller made one of his more expansive gestures with a new swagger stick. He had six of them, his wife later told me. “Well, hell, Lu, take it for the summer. What else have you got to do?”

“What’ll I have to do at PIO?”

“Just what I said. You’ll be my assistant.”

“What do you do?”

Schiller looked around the ward to see whether anyone was listening. They weren’t. They were reading Captain Marvel as usual. “Just between you and me and the gatepost, not a hell of a lot, but I have a good time doing it.”

“What’ll I have to do?” I said again.

“Well, you’ll accompany me on my appointed rounds. We check into the office about nine, leave for coffee at ten, then lunch at the officer’s club at twelve, back to the office at two. Downtown to the newspapers at two-thirty and then to the Gunther Hotel for a refreshing bottle of Pearl beer and to review the day’s activities. How’s it sound?”

“Exhausting,” I said.

“We have a staff car.”

“What else?”

“A WAC driver.”

“You screwing her?”

“Not anymore. She’s all yours.”

“Thanks.”

“But now the piece of resistance.” Despite Paris, the major’s French was nonexistent.

“What?”

“You live with us.”

“With you and Ruby?”

“I’ve already talked it over with her. Room and board for only seventy-five bucks a month and you supply your own liquor. Or most of it.”

“That house only costs you eighty-five.”

“Home-cooking, Lu. Ruby’s own.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“What else have you got to do until September?”

“I know a guy in New York. I should go see him.”

“See him in September. And by the way, there’s an added attraction.”

“I’m already underwhelmed,” I said, stealing a line from somebody. But even a stolen line was wasted on Schiller.

“Weekly poker with the brass. I don’t mean captains and lieutenants and light-colonels. The real brass. Nothing less than a bird colonel.”

“Except you.”

“I’m in public relations,” Schiller said, as if that sliced through all social barriers. I don’t know, maybe it does.

“I’m an EM,” I said. “You know, an enlisted man, the people that the Pentagon designs uniforms for with the nicely padded hips and the carefully narrowed shoulders so that we’ll keep on looking ridiculous.”

“As of Friday at 1500 hours you will be a civilian and as such outrank any man in the army,” Schiller said, and his sincerity was as thick as hot fudge. That was the trouble with Schiller. He was too sincere about everything. His other trouble was that he was a compulsive gambler.

I moved in with the Schillers a week later and Ruby gave me the room with the southeast exposure on the second floor. The army hadn’t yet gotten round to air-conditioning its post houses and I welcomed the breeze at night. San Antonio is hot in May.

Ruby and I got along well enough after I made it clear that I wasn’t to be her prime source of information about her husband’s philandering. She was a short, slim brunette in her early thirties, quite attractive in an elfish sort of a way, far more intelligent than her husband, and a fine cook. I found her to be excellent company, imagined that she was extraordinary in bed, and thought that Schiller was a fool for chasing his roundheels. I spent quite a few summer nights with Ruby as she manned the nightwatch for the wandering major. We sat there on the screened porch and looked at fireflies and drank while I told her stories about Shanghai. She liked the stories, but I never did develop a taste for Coke and Southern Comfort, which was all that Ruby drank.

Each time that Schiller strayed she would pour her last drink around midnight and say to me, “I’m going to leave that rotten sonofabitch in the morning,” and about that time Schiller would turn in the drive with the top down on his 1949 Ford and a story of impossible misadventure that only a child would believe. Sometimes, if he had had enough to drink, he would play the piano and sing songs from the thirties and forties such as “Deep Purple,” “I’ll Never Smile Again,” “Dancing in the Dark,” and “Together.” He had natural pitch, knew all the words, and his piano playing was, I suppose, enthusiastic. He sang to Ruby, partly to mollify her and partly because she was the only woman available just then. By one o’clock they were on their way upstairs, sometimes arguing bitterly, but by one-fifteen the creaking bed springs either lulled me to sleep or kept me wide awake. It all depended. Ruby never did get around to leaving him in the morning.

I met Colonel Elmore Gay at the fourth weekly poker session that I attended, this one at the house of a two-star general whom I’d taken the week before for $195. They played pot limit and four raises. No wild cards. Check and raise was not only permissible, but expected. It occasionally got hairy and more than once Schiller wrote a bum check. He usually covered them by rushing down to the finance company the next morning to see how much they would lend him on his Ford convertible. When the Ford was already in hock, he borrowed from me.

Colonel Gay played dull, dispassionate poker. The fifth man in the game was a buck general. They were all good, but I found that the one to beat was Colonel Gay. He was thin and tall with extraordinarily wide shoulders, an amused mouth, and questioning dark gray eyes, the kind that always add up the check and count the change. It was his deal and he dealt five-card draw.

“They tell me, Mr. Dye, that you were reared in Shanghai.”

“That’s right,” I said, watching the deck. It was one of a number of things that Smalldane had taught me. “No matter if it’s the bishop himself dealing, kid,” he’d said. “Keep your eyes on the deck when it’s dealt.”