Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

Barnes asked, “Who else are we expecting?”

The fat girl giggled. “Only me. I always say that.”

A waitress appeared. The witch ordered orange juice, Stubb coffee, and Candy corned beef hash with a fried egg. Barnes asked for a cream waffle with sausage. “It’s very nice of you,” he told the witch, “to pay for my breakfast. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gotten one.”

She shrugged. “This vile hotel pays. I shall charge everything to my room.”

“But if we find Mr. Free’s treasure …”

“Yes, if . None of you, not even Mr. Stubb, will devote himself as I. I will seek ceaselessly, for the rest of my life if necessary. Nevertheless, I know how unlikely it is that I shall succeed.”

“I’m more of an optimist,” Stubb told her.

“I know you are. So are most, and that is why they prefer roseate dreams to the great, hidden truths.”

“We’ll see who hangs in longest.” Stubb looked across the table at Barnes and Candy. “Have we got this partnership settled?”

The witch said, “Nothing is settled, Mr. Stubb.”

“What the hell does that mean? Those were my shares. Don’t I have a right to give them to these two if I want?”

“No. The thing has become preposterous. I do not understand why you wish to have these people involved with us, and I do not believe they will be of the least use. But if we are to have them, let us by all means arrange it as the fat woman originally suggested: on equal shares.”

Candy said, “No offense taken, but I’ve got a name. I’d appreciate it if you called me by it.”

“As you wish.”

“Equal shares it is.” Stubb grinned. “That’s decent of you, Madame S.”

“I have two provisos, however. No other partners are to be taken in. Nor are our shares to be redivided among ourselves. Each will claim one quarter.”

“All right with me,” Stubb told her.

“Very well; now we must see that there is something to claim. Miss Garth, I know that Mr. Stubb wishes to question you about all that passed between Mr. Free and yourselves. Before he begins, however, I have one or two questions I will ask.

“Last night the telephone rang, and you answered. You spoke in such as way as to suggest that it was Mr. Free who called. Specifically, you said: ‘Hello. Yes, it is me. I am staying with her. Okay. It was real nice hearing from you again, you know? We thought something might have happened to you.’ I assume that the ‘her’ with whom you said you were staying was myself. Who was the caller?”

“You’ve got a really wonderful memory,” Candy said.

“I could imitate your voice as well, should the occasion arise. But that is neither here nor there. You have refused to answer my questions regarding the caller on the grounds that we had not agreed on a partnership, and thus you felt entitled to keep for yourself whatever information you possessed—this despite the fact that the instrument was in my room, and thus the call was presumably for me. Now we have come to an agreement; specifically, to precisely the agreement you demanded. Your grounds avail you no longer, and should you find new ones, I shall consider our agreement voided at once—not by my action but by your own. Who was the caller?”

“If your memory’s that good, you ought to remember I said it was for me.”

“I do. I did not believe you then, nor do I believe you now. Who was the caller?”

Candy grinned. “A guy who works here in the hotel. His name’s Joe. Last night a bellhop tried to take us to see him, then Ozzie hooked onto that girl from the magazine, and Jim called again, and we never did see Joe. That’s why I said we were afraid something had happened—Ozzie and me had waited around, and he never showed. On the phone he asked for you, then he recognized my voice and said was I the one that had been singing in the club. That’s why I said yes, it was me.”

The witch pursed her lips. “Go on.”

“So he wanted to know what I was doing in your room, and I said I was staying with you.” Candy looked apologetically at Stubb. “It just slipped out, Jim. I don’t think he’ll rat on us, because he sounded so damn glad he didn’t have to talk to her. He asked me to tell her—that’s why I said it was for me.”

“Tell me what?”

“That there was some trouble about the money he owes you, but he was trying to raise it, and he’d pay you tomorrow night—that would be tonight now—for sure.”

“And you said you would?”

“Yeah. That was when I said okay. And don’t tell me I didn’t do it, because I just did.”

“Very well. A second question, and I will be finished. A blanket is hardly sufficient to cover you, and last night I observed you to rise and take a fur from your little bag. When you were asleep, I rose also and examined it. It is very soft and rich, and much, much larger than the pelt of a single mink.”

Barnes interrupted. “I saw it on her bed at Free’s!”

“This I have confirmation, though I did not require it. I was about to say that though it is so large, it is the skin of a single animal; the tail has been cut away, but one sees where the legs were. Mr. Free gave that to you, I should guess, and thus we know why you returned to his house when the police released you. Am I correct?”

Candy nodded. “It filled up my AWOL bag, almost, but I didn’t want to leave it.”

“Nor would I. Did Mr. Free tell you what it was?”

Candy shook her head. “He just went downstairs and came back with it. He said here keep this, I want you to have it, and I said it was pretty, and he said valuable too, you hang onto it. That’s everything, honest.”

“I believe I know what it is,” the witch said. “It is the pelt of a beaver. Yet I cannot guess what it means, or where he got such a thing. Can anyone?”

No one spoke; as the waitress brought their orders, Stubb rapped his glass with a spoon. “Maybe we’re going to find out. I want to hear about Free from both of you. Not just the skin, everything you saw or heard. After that, I’ll have assignments for everybody.”

Outside, the morning sun shone as though winter had never come. The snow, already churned to gray sludge along the middle of the sidewalk, had frozen hard in the night, but at the edges of this beaten track a white margin pure as the plastic flakes lingering in the corners of the department-store windows remained to reflect the sunshine and blue the shadow of each passerby.

Hurrying along, stumbling and slipping sometimes in the frozen gullies, tripping and sliding on the icy ridges, Barnes yearned for good boots and thick stockings, for a sweater too, and gloves. He was cold—nearly frozen, he told himself—despite his threadbare topcoat and his hat. Hocking the coat was out of the question until better weather arrived. After a big breakfast and innumerable cups of coffee, he was not hungry, but the need for money was like a hunger in him; he longed for it as a prisoner in some Siberian camp might long for bread.

As he walked, he watched the sidewalk and the gutter. In his mind’s eye, he could see plainly a bill lying in the snow where it had been dropped by someone paying off a cab, a coin trodden underfoot like a pebble. He watched the people who hurried past as well; it seemed possible—indeed, it seemed likely—that one of them would require some sudden service. He saw himself snatching a child from beneath the wheels of a truck for a fortune, collaring a runaway dog for a dollar.

His fingers toyed with the three locker keys in his pocket, but he did not go directly to the bus station. The branch post office that had served Free’s house while that house yet stood was only a block out of the way; he waited patiently in line there to reach a window. “You were supposed to hold my mail,” he told the bearded young clerk. “The house was torn down.” He gave the address.