Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“Two thousand shares,” he said.

“Of what?”

“Smalldane Communications, Incorporated. We just went public. First PR outfit in the country to do it. Maybe in the world.”

“How’s it look?” I said.

“Well, it’s not on the big board, of course; it’s still over-the-counter, but it started at two and it’s only slid to one and a quarter.”

“Encouraging, huh?” I said.

“It’s the big league, kid. By this time next year, I’ll be rich and so will you if you hang on to it. We’ve got offices opening next month in Paris, London and Rome. They’re just desks with telephones now, but they’ll look real fine on the letterhead.”

“Business is good?” I said.

“Terrific. Everyone who’s made more than a million needs a public relations man to get rid of the guilt that the psychiatrists can’t root out. If they see something nice about themselves printed in a newspaper or magazine, they really believe it must be true and their consciences are eased. The potential is unlimited.”

“Thanks for the shares, Gorm.”

“Just hang on to them. They’ll hit fifty before you know it.”

He paused then and looked over my shoulder at something that seemed to be far away. “When’s the last time you heard from Kate?”

“Couple of weeks ago,” I said. “She wrote from Hong Kong, giving me some advice about marriage.”

“She’s dead.”

Tante Katerine was too alive to be dead, of course, and it didn’t register because Smalldane’s words had tripped the switch that brought the automatic denier into operation. It worked for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds before it sputtered to a stop. There must be something else to say besides “no” when you learn of death. I supposed I could have asked “how” or “when,” but instead I denied it, as if the denial would prevent me from having to feel anything, at least for a few more seconds.

“I got a cable yesterday. It was a heart attack. I wasn’t sure that I should tell you. It’s not a very good day for it.”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t, but it’s all right — I mean that you told me.”

“I knew you’d want to know.”

“Yes.”

“She wasn’t really all that old,” he said, as if to himself.

“No, not that way, she wasn’t. I suppose I should ask if there’s anything I can do.”

“Nothing,” he said. “What the hell could you do? It’s just over. She’s dead.”

“Okay, Gorman,” I said. “She’s dead. There’s nothing either of us can do.”

“Well, hell — there should be something.”

“But there isn’t.”

Smalldane shook his head. “You know,” he said, “she was something different — really different. Or the times were.”

“Both probably,” I said.

“I paid her back that eleven thousand dollars, you know?”

“I know.”

“Kate’d tell you to hang on to that stock, kid,” he said.

“I’ll take her advice.” But I didn’t. I sold it two years later when it hit twelve and a quarter. It went to sixty-one and a half before it split two for one. The last time I looked, Smalldane Communications, Inc., was hovering somewhere around eighty-three or eighty-four on the American Stock Exchange.

Beverly and I enjoyed each other for the next four years. She turned out to be the one totally unselfish person that I’ve ever known and I suppose that I took what she had to offer greedily, unable to get enough, fearful that the supply would run out before I was full. It was her love that I took, of course, and in the taking finally discovered that it was unrationed and inexhaustible and that I could spare some myself. It required a year or so before I learned what others had known for years and when I did we became impossibly close.

We lived in a small, frame house that I kept threatening to paint a flat black. It was on the edge of the campus, where a portion of what has been described as the silent generation was enrolled. I majored in Oriental languages and history; Beverly studied anthropology which, she once said, was the polite way of expressing one’s concern for humanity.

Sometimes we would go into Baltimore on weekends, or down to Washington, or up to New York where we could stay free with Smalldane who was becoming impossibly rich as the public relations dodge acquired new tones of respectability. He spent his money, as always, on women, some of whom he even married for as long as a year or so.

The check from the foundation arrived on the first of the month along with the one from the Veterans’ Administration, by courtesy of the G.I. Bill of Rights that had been extended to the survivors of Korea by a grateful Congress. The foundation check was my only reminder of the Section Two scholarship. The colonel, working most of the time in Washington, would sometimes disappear for a year or six months and then pop up unexpectedly with the same question:

“He still beating you, Bev?”

As a joke, his infrequent visits made it wear well enough. He never mentioned Section Two and neither did I.

In May of 1957, two weeks before she was to be graduated and I was to be awarded my Master’s degree, Beverly announced that she was pregnant. She did so proudly, as if it were something she had done quite alone in defiance of overwhelming odds.

“Well, we tried hard enough,” I said.

“But not often enough.”

“Any more often and I’d have had to send in a substitute.”

“I was going to suggest it once or twice, but—”

“My tender feelings?”

“You are awfully sensitive.”

“A weakness.”

“Let’s celebrate,” she said, her gray eyes dancing a little — or even a lot. “Let’s celebrate with louder wine and stronger music.”

“I think you’ve got it backwards.”

“It sounds better.”

“Where?” I said.

“Where what?”

“Where shall we celebrate?”

She glanced around the room as if seeking something that would help her to decide. Then she looked at me and winked. No nice girl knows how to wink like that. “In bed,” she said, “where else?”

We were on our third glass of wine with something by Miles Davis on the record player when the phone rang. For some reason I once liked to answer the phone naked. I don’t know why, but I did. I don’t anymore. It was a station-to-station call before the time of direct dialing and it was the colonel. He sounded bad and his voice was a harsh, bitter croak.

“Get her out, Dye,” he said.

“Where?” I said because I had to make some response.

“That friend of yours — Smalldane. Get her out to him now — they’re—” The phone went dead. I hung it up and said to Beverly, “Get dressed.”

“Why should I—”

“Just get dressed. It was your old man.”

I fumbled through the drawer of the small table that stood next to the bed. I was looking for the .38 automatic that the colonel had given me. I found it, and then I found something to load it with. I had two rounds in the clip when they came in. There was nothing to keep them out. It had been warm and we’d left the front door open with the screen door latched. We did that when it was warm. The screen door latch was only a hook and eye and that hadn’t bothered them.

I held the clip in my left hand and the automatic in my right when they came in the bedroom. They came in fast and both wore dark suits and Halloween masks and revolvers. One was several inches shorter than the other. The shorter one waved his revolver at me and then waved it again before I got the idea. I put the automatic and the magazine on the table beside the bed. Beverly pulled the sheet up over her breasts, up to her neck. She did it slowly. The shorter one held his revolver on me and then nodded at the taller one who slipped his revolver into a coat pocket. He started undoing his buckle and the buttons on his fly. Buttons instead of a zipper. He dropped his pants and shorts, blue-and-white striped ones. Then he ripped the sheet away from Beverly. I noticed that he wasn’t circumsized. I started to rise, but the shorter one prodded me back with his revolver and used it to turn my head so that I had to watch.