Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

A siren howled outside, and he realized with a start that he was still holding Proudy’s revolver. He looked up and down the corridor to make sure no one had seen him and thrust it into the waistband of his trousers. As he was buttoning his coat, a bellman pushing a serving cart emerged from the nearest elevator.

“How disp bdy? Cart?” That was what Proudy had been worried about, the waiter last night. Stubb had told the waiter to go the other way to reach the elevators, and he had done it. Proudy thought he was dead in seven seventy-seven. “Grl” must mean Sandy Duck, who had talked to him on her way out. She hadn’t come home then, or had come home late, or just had not taken her phone off the answering machine while she slept.

The cart held an assortment of covered dishes, two carafes of coffee, silver, and a stack of cups and saucers. Barnes watched the bellman push it into the witch’s room and waited until he left, then went in himself. “Ahoy!” he said.

“Where the hell have you been?” Stubb came half out of his chair.

“Down the hall talking to Sergeant Proudy,” Barnes told him. “You’re a detective, you must know something about guns.”

Candy’s now-scarlet mouth formed a little O at the mention of guns; the witch, who had smiled slightly when Barnes entered, continued to smile.

“Yeah,” Stubb said. “Yeah, I know something. I’m no crack shot, my eyes aren’t that good. But I know one end from the other.”

“That’s great.” Barnes pulled Proudy’s revolver from his waistband and laid it on the table. “You take this. I don’t want it, and I’m liable to shoot myself with it.”

Stubb stared at the gun for a moment, then picked it up with a napkin. The cylinder popped open, and when Stubb pushed the cylinder pin six bright brass cartridges rattled onto the table. He flipped his wrist, but the cylinder would not snap back into place, and he had to push it back with his left hand. After wiping and wrapping the entire gun, he lifted the mattress of the unused bed and pushed the gun far under it. He carried the cartridges into the bathroom and flushed the toilet.

“They go down?” Barnes called. He did not think they would.

“Yeah, probably no farther than the trap, though.”

Candy said, “It’ll plug up now.” She sounded bitter.

Stubb stepped back into the room. “I doubt it. A sewer line like that’s pretty big.”

“He knows everything, Jim does. I haven’t found one single, solitary, God-damned thing he doesn’t know more about than any other dude on earth.”

“All right, it’ll plug up. Madame S. can ask for another room.”

The witch said, “We have been negotiating, Ozzie. We wish to forge an alliance.” She sounded amused.

Stubb asked, “How’d you get it away from him, anyhow? Take it while he was asleep?”

Candy passed Barnes a cup of coffee. “Don’t tell the bastard, Ozzie. If we’re partners, we’re partners. If we’re not, we’re not.”

“I thought we were going to be partners,” Barnes said.

“Partners means share and share alike. Jim wants to give us a lousy ten percent. That for both of us, Jim? Five percent each?”

Stubb said, “Our last offer was fifteen. Fifteen for each of you.”

“Bullshit!” Candy heaved to her feet. “I’m splitting. Thanks for the coffee, lady. Sorry I’ve messed up the eggs, but somebody can still eat them—I’m not poison. Thank you so very much for letting me sleep on your floor. It was comfy.”

Stubb said, “For God’s sake, sit down. Nobody wants your eggs. You might as well finish them.”

“No, what nobody wants is me.” Candy looked for her white raincoat and found it in a corner. She picked it up, keeping her legs straight and grunting at the compression of her belly.

“I want you.” Barnes stood up too. “If you go, I go.”

Candy straightened, her face pink. “Thanks, Ozzie. You’re a decent guy. I go. Come on.”

“Damn it,” Stubb said, “we want you too. Twenty-five percent.”

Candy stared at him. “Ozzie and me each get twenty-five.”

The witch said, “You have not consulted me, Mr. Stubb.”

“I don’t have to. You agreed we’d give them fifteen. That was thirty for them and thirty-five each for us. I’m giving them another ten each out of my share. You have thirty-five; they have twenty-five apiece; I have fifteen.”

“No way,” Candy said.

There was a knock at the door.

For a moment they were silent, looking at one another. Stubb asked, “Proudy?”

Barnes lifted his shoulders. “Maybe.” The witch called, “Who is there?”

“Maid.”

Barnes opened the door. A middle-aged woman waited there with a dust cloth in her hand; behind her was a laundry cart full of crumpled sheets. “You still eatin’?” she asked. “I can come back.”

Stubb rose. “We’re about through, except for Ozzie. We didn’t know you’d be back, Ozzie, so we didn’t order for you.”

Candy told him, “I haven’t finished my eggs.”

“It’ll only take you a minute. I suggest we adjourn to the coffee shop. Ozzie can get a bite there, and this lady’ll have a chance to clean.”

The maid said, “It won’t take long. Just make the bed and vacuum and straighten around a little.”

The witch told her, “I’m afraid you will find the bath rather untidy. I indulged myself in an orgy of towels.”

In the corridor, Barnes said, “It might be better to go the other way.” Stubb nodded, and they trooped behind him. “What does he want?” Stubb asked when they had reached the elevators.

“I don’t know.”

“He thinks we’re up to something, huh?”

Barnes tried to remember everything that had been said in the vacant room. The coffee and cigarette had whetted his appetite, so that as he stepped through the doors his mind vacillated between Proudy and waffles. “He thinks we’re part of some vast, evil conspiracy, I believe,” he said at last. “Just one cell, but an important one.”

Candy said, “You’re putting us on.”

“No.” As they dropped past Six, Five, and Four, he showed them how he had taken Proudy’s gun. “That wouldn’t have worked with you,” he told Stubb. “And I don’t think it would have with Proudy, yesterday. Actually, it wasn’t a question of its working; I just got it out to light my cigarette. It’s a sample novelty. I can take orders for them.”

“Yeah. Let me see it.” As the elevator inched to a stop, Stubb pulled the trigger and inspected the blue flame. “Doesn’t look much like a real gun. Especially at the end of the barrel.”

Candy called, “Come on!” She was already at the door of the Quaint. “They’re just opening up, but they’ll serve us.”

“How wonderful,” the witch replied. She was looking around; and though her dark, handsome face was as expressionless as ever, she might have been sightseeing in the tunnel of some monstrous beetle.

The Quaint was furnished in a style called (in the catalogue of the firm that had supplied its decor) Middle Colonial Double Dutch. Its tables were of thick and irregular planks reproduced in Formica. Its false windows, lit from behind by electric bulbs, were furnished with inutile shutters pierced with hearts and tulips. Its walls boasted hex signs and polystyrene reproductions of long clay pipes.

“We want a booth,” Candy insisted. “A big one—we’re expecting two more people.” When the hostess, who wore a Dutch bonnet, a Dutch frock, and vinyl wooden shoes, had led them to one, Candy said, “You get in first, Ozzie. I’d rather not have to slide over.”

Stubb said, “Still mad?”

“No, not a bit. But you two are on one side and we’re on the other.”