Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

“Uh-huh.”

“Penn explained to Fox that he had a problem. As a former military man, it was his custom to wear a dress sword. He didn’t think of it as a weapon. For him it was an article of dress and he felt incomplete without it, but he was concerned that other members of the society might not look at it that way. He didn’t want to offend his new friends, and at the same time he felt funny giving up his sword, and he didn’t know what to do.”

“Yeah, that about says it, doesn’t it? What did Fox tell him?”

“Fox thought about it for a few minutes, and then he smiled and said, ‘Why don’t you wear it as long as you can?’”

“Far out.”

“So all I can say—”

“I get it. ‘Wear it as long as you can.’ Hey, thanks, Guthrie.”

A few days after that Guthrie was leaning against a rock eating a cheese sandwich when Dingo hunkered down next to him. “Great day, huh?” he said. “Say, Guthrie, something I wanted to ask you.”

“Sure.”

“Well, it’s this,” Dingo said. He held up the Iron Cross that hung from a gold chain around his thick neck. “I been wearing this thing a long time,” he said. “The bro who gave it to me was good people, man. His name was Robbo, he was a North Florida boy. He hauled my ass out of the fire a time or two, and I guess I did the same for him. And he gave me this.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Robbo, he died some years back. We’d gone down separate roads by then, but you hear what happens to people. He wiped out coming around a turn coming down the coast road from Carmel heading into Big Sur. He just lost it and spread hisself and his hog over a mile of rocks and ocean. If there’s such a thing as a good place to die, I guess that’s it. If there’s prettier spots, I haven’t seen ’em yet.”

“I know the road.”

“Then you can dig what I’m saying. Anyway, that’s the farm for Robbo. An’ I been wearin’ this ever since he gave it to me, but since he died it’s not just for myself, but it’s more or less of a memorial to him.” He drew a breath, ran a hand over his shaved head. “An’ now I don’t know if I should keep on wearin’ it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, do you know what it is, man?”

“It’s an Iron Cross, isn’t it?”

“You got that right. It’s a Nazi thing, they gave it out to soldiers for heroism in battle and shit like that. Bikers love Nazi stuff, man. They go nuts for it because it drives the citizens crazy. ‘How can you wear a swastika after what those people did?’ Plus the Nazis had great fucking designers. I used to have this Luftwaffe dagger and it was beautiful. I wonder whatever happened to it.”

He shrugged. “The thing is,” he went on, “there’s people here I wouldn’t want to freak out, you know? And it’s a Nazi thing, and the Nazis did a lot of evil shit, man. You wear a Nazi medal around a Jewish person, you’re saying, hey, fuck you, and fuck your whole family that went up in smoke in the camps. And a person wouldn’t have to be a Jew to pick up negative vibes off Nazi stuff.”

“So you don’t know how you feel about wearing it.”

“Well, I don’t know how everybody else feels, Guthrie. I don’t know how many years I wore this thing, never taking it off, and then the other day I took it off and put it in my pocket. And that felt funny, so I put it back on, and that felt funny, so I took it off again, and it feels funny no matter what I do.”

“I know what you mean,” Guthrie said. “Let me ask you something, Dingo. Do you know who William Penn was?”

“Shit, yes. I used to smoke his cigars. Cheap little fuckers but they didn’t taste too bad.”

“He was also the founder of Pennsylvania.”

“I been there. Philly, Pittsburgh. McKeesport.”

“Before he left England, Penn was a military man. Then he converted to the Quaker religion and joined the Society of Friends.”

It was a cinch, he thought, to be a leader of men. All you had to do was find a good story and tell it whenever the occasion arose.

Mark stood in the doorway. A chambermaid, her back to him, was making one of the beds. The skirt of her yellow uniform was tight on her round little ass.

A Day’s Inn outside of Ardmore, Oklahoma. Not his room, not even his floor.

He said, “Miss?”

She straightened up and whirled around. “Oooh,” she said. “You scared me for a minute.”

“Nothing to be afraid of.”

“I just din hear you come in. I’ll be through in a minute, or did you want me to come back?”

A Mexican girl, Indian planes in her broad face. A fine shape to her. Straight glossy black hair, cut in Egyptian simplicity. A dark red full-lipped mouth.

He said, “I wouldn’t want you to take this the wrong way.” She looked wary. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars just to take off your clothes and let me see you.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I mean it,” he said. “A hundred dollars. I won’t touch you, I won’t come near you. I just want to see you.”

“I never did nothing like that,” she said.

“I just want to look at you,” he said. “You’re beautiful, I want to see you.” He took out his wallet, drew out a hundred-dollar bill. “Here,” he said. “Take it, it’s yours.”

She looked at the money, at him, at the money again. She said, “Close the door. Lock it, push the little button.” She took the money from him, folded it, tucked it into a pocket of her uniform. “This is crazy,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

Because it beats scrubbing out toilets for four dollars an hour, he thought. He watched, delighted, as she reached behind her to grapple with buttons and snaps, then shrugged the garment off her shoulders and stepped out of it. Her white bra and panties contrasted sharply with her rich copper skin. She hesitated for just a moment before uncoupling and removing the bra, then looked questioning at him.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “The panties too.”

She grinned. “Why not?” She wriggled out of her panties and tossed them aside, then stood watching him watching her. She said, “You like me, huh?”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Yeah?” She struck a pose, then another. “ Playboy magazine,” she said. “Too bad you din bring your camera.” She posed with her knees together, her hands cupped beneath her breasts as if offering them to him. “Ta-dah,” she said, imitating a drum roll, and put one foot up on the bed, turning to display her private parts.

What a little minx she was! Once he’d given her an excuse to get out of her clothes she was as eager for the game as he was. She gave him good long looks at her firm young flesh from every angle, and before it could occur to her that the show had gone on long enough, he got a second bill from his wallet.

“I’ll give you another hundred dollars for a kiss.”

He could have had the kiss for nothing, and more along with it. She was so hot from the posing that he hadn’t had to offer her more money. Still, she pretended to consider the offer. “For a kiss?” she said. “You want to kiss me?”

“Just a little kiss. I want to hold you in my arms and give you a little kiss.”

“Welllll,” she said, and then grinned saucily, snatching the bill from his fingers. She put it on the table, weighted it down with a glass ashtray, and came into his arms.

She kissed with her mouth open, gave him her tongue almost at once. He tasted her mouth, felt her fine warm body against him, and almost reluctantly settled his hands around her throat.

#72.

He retrieved his two hundred dollars, one bill from her pocket, the other from the table, being careful not to touch the tabletop or the glass ashtray as he did so. He put her shoes and clothing in a lower drawer of the dresser, and he left the little sweetheart wedged into the closet, where she’d be a jolly surprise for the first person to open the door. He wiped his prints from the surfaces he might have touched; outside, he rolled her supply cart down the corridor and left it in front of another room.