Джо Горес - Cases

But this was one problem he’d never take to Drinker. Penny loved him, they were faithful to one another. He was thinking only of himself here; what must she be going through right now?

Back at his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, he thought of his writing. Even now, that had to come first. Ultimately there was nothing he wanted to be except a writer. With a baby, that dream would be gone. He’d end up like those college professors who “someday” would write the great American novel. On the other hand, he wasn’t alone. There was Hemingway in Paris with a wife and baby, back in the twenties.

His thoughts kept colliding, he kept grappling with them, ignoring Mickey, crouched farther away from him on the counter than usual. As if everything roiling through Dunc’s mind was a betrayal of all that was small and vulnerable.

On the desk was the green blotter, on the blotter were Drinker’s elbows. Within easy reach was a bottle of Jim Beam.

Drinker asked the empty office, “Optimist or pessimist? Is the bottle half-full or half-empty?”

The office answered not. He poured Beam, fired it down. He just wanted the dilemma to go away. It wasn’t going to.

On one side was April. When he’d entered the bedroom after she’d slapped his face, she was nude, caught between negligee and underwear in the middle of getting dressed, and swung around to face him, eyes blazing. But then she simply fell back on the bed, arms and legs wide, totally open to him. Taking her had been the most erotic experience of a long sinful life. His back still burned where her claws had raked him when she’d come.

Beautiful, insatiable, immoral, greedy April.

On the other side, her husband.

No contest. Except...

He gulped from the neck of the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. On his blotter he laid two photos side by side. The one he’d found in her wallet. And an old, faded, tattered black-and-white snapshot of a very large man in marine fatigues with a captain’s double bars on his shoulders. Dark unruly hair and a big nose, the face half masked by light and shadow laid across it from jungle foliage overhead.

“Too goddamn close to call,” he said at last as if he were studying the photo finish of a horse race.

This faded snap was all he had of the marine who had saved his life on Iwo Jima eight years before. What kind of odds would make him Harry Wham? Even if he was Harry, did it make any difference? Marines were trained to carry their dead and wounded off the battle-ground with them. You could say that Drinker’s life had been saved not by a man, but by a conditioned reflex.

“Goddammit” he said aloud.

The phone rang. “Drinker,” April’s voice purred in his ear, “guess who’s waiting all naked in your bed?”

He hung up without speaking, put the bottle back in its drawer, picked up the photos — and crumpled them in his fist. On the way to his car he dropped them in a corner trash can.

Dunc served subpoenas and worked himself closer and closer to a self-righteous decision about what he would do if Penny turned out to be pregnant. When he trudged up the office stairs two mornings after her call, Sherry was waiting to pounce, her normally cynical eyes hot and angry.

“Dunc, you got a minute?”

Sitting beside her desk was a slight woman in a summer blouse and peasant skirt too light for winter. Her mousy-brown hair was streaked with blond and her narrow face had a delicate pointed chin that was bruised and swollen on one side. The skin around her left eye was a faded mustard color. Another bruise was visible above the collar of her high-necked blouse.

“Dunc, this is Julia Demchuk — Mrs. Stanley Demchuk. Her husband is a journeyman machinist at Kleist Tool and Die down in the Mission. As you can see, he’s good with his hands.”

“Glad to meet you, ma’am.” Dunc said awkwardly.

Julia Demchuk bobbed her head at him, quickly.

“Mrs. Demchuk’s pastor has advised her to move out of their apartment. She can stay with two girlfriends from work who have a big flat out in the Avenues near the V.A. Hospital.”

Julia raised her head. “I’m afraid what he’ll do if he comes home when I’m... when I’m packing up my... my things.”

Sherry said, “Julia, hon, why don’t you go down and wait in Dunc’s car?” Julia left with Dunc’s keys. Sherry said, “Her hubby keeps a collection of porn under the bed. Grab it, okay?”

He didn’t know why she wanted it, but he said, “Okay.”

It was a third-floor walkup at Hyde and Jones, with a liquor store underneath. Dunc parked two doors down. Julia insisted on taking only her clothes and personal items; he carried them downstairs and locked them in the trunk of the car.

Julia came out of the bathroom with a shoe box full of cosmetics when Dunc came out of the bedroom with the cardboard box of porn. Nothing erotic or artistic about them, just people pumping away. She dropped the shoe box, flushing bright scarlet.

“No! No, oh please... You mustn’t...”

Dunc was blushing by this time, too, but he said, “He’s the one to be ashamed, Julia, not you. Let’s get out of here.”

A key turned in the lock. Dunc thrust Julia behind him. Stanley Demchuk was like another Stanley — Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Marlon Brando in a torn T-shirt. This guy was in a leather jacket and jeans and metal-toed work boots. He reeked of booze and his eyes were red and a bit unfocused.

“Hey, who the fuck’re...” Then he saw his white-faced wife behind Dunc. He roared, “ Julia! What’re you an’ him—”

“She’s moving out,” said Dunc.

“The fuck she is!”

He put an unexpected hand in Dunc’s face, shoved him aside, starting for his wife. Dunc swung him around, put a foot in the small of his back — and shoved with all his might.

Demchuk crashed face-first into the couch. Dunc squeezed his keys into Julia’s free hand, pushed her toward the door.

“Go! Lock yourself in the car.”

Demchuk bellowed and scrambled to his feet. But Dunc was between him and the door and was a lot bigger than his wife. He skidded to a stop. Cunning entered his bloated red face.

“I’m swearing out a warrant against you, wise guy. Come in here, take my wife, attack me...”

“I’m a licensed private investigator, protecting her while she exercises her constitutional rights.”

“Shit, you think I won’t find her? And when I do—”

“We’ll take photos of you following her around,” said Dunc. “We’ll put a listening device on her phone so we’ll have you on wire. We’ll get court orders, we’ll haul your ass up before a judge and” — he showed Demchuk the box of smut — “introduce all this shit into evidence with your fingerprints all over it.”

“Hey, listen, you can’t—”

Dunc simulated masturbating with his right fist. “The guys at the machine shop’ll get a kick out of going through it. Unless...” He paused. “We understand each other?”

Demchuk choked out a strangled “Yeah.”

Driving Julia to her new home, Dunc realized how smart Sherry was. He shuddered. Was this where marriages ended up? He gestured at the carton of porn on the backseat, said to Julia, “When you file for divorce, use that stuff in court.”

“Oh, I could never do that!”

But there was a new speculative gleam in her eye. Who was it had said that getting even was the best revenge?

He had been back in the office for five minutes, regaling Sherry with his exploits and feeling almost human again, when the phone rang and it was Penny. He went back to his desk, sat down, heart pounding. Made himself breathe deeply and easily to keep all tremors out of his voice, then picked up.