John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

“How much longer do you give him?”

“You’re pretty sharp, Mike. Oh, maybe a month.”

“This has happened before?”

“Oh, sure. A thousand times. But not with a fella so rich like Troy.”

“Why does it happen?”

She smirked. “You mean like whadda they see in me? Nothing you can’t see right now, Mike. I’m not pretty. But I could always get fellas hanging around. I used to wonder. My God, how women hate the hell out of me! I’m the way I am. That’s all. I like kicks. And I don’t feel a damn bit shameful about the way I am. Like that song, doin’ what comes natcherly.” She swung the dangling leg.

Mike put his empty glass aside. “I better be on my way.”

She didn’t get up. She looked blandly up at him. The gray eyes were slightly protuberant. In the dim light he could see a slow pulse in her throat. “You in a big fat rush?” she asked.

“I’ve got to be getting along.”

“You’re a cute guy, specially when you look nervous like now. I could tell you what you were wondering about. I can always tell. Don’t you want to find out?”

“But Troy might...”

“I told you I do anything I want to do. I wouldn’t answer the door or the phone. I’d have no reason to tell anybody, and you sure wouldn’t want to. Like a bonus, for trying to help your pal.”

He looked at her and felt actually, physically dizzy. Her gray eyes seemed to grow big enough to fill her half of the room. Her voice had been like fingernails being drawn sharp and slow down his spine. It was a persuasive, evil magic — a spell cast by a contemporary witch, a soiled, scrawny, decadent witch.

He shook himself like a wet and weary dog, and made his voice flat and hard and said, “No thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” she said and got up and went to the door with him.

When he was in the hall, safe, like the swimmer caught in an undertow who climbs out onto a sandbar, he turned and said, “It’s messed Troy’s life up, Jerranna.”

“So I’m bleeding? It wasn’t me, Mike. He was ready to be messed up. He was looking for it.”

“What makes you say that?”

She lifted one narrow shoulder. “I just know. I can tell. I knew others like that. They get hooked on me, like on a drug, on account of — like a drug — I can stop them from thinking about anybody else or anything else in the world. I can keep them from even knowing who the hell they are, and maybe that’s what they want me for. But they got to be ready for me. So don’t blame me.”

“You’ve got it all figured out.”

“I’ve been here and there,” she said, and winked with great solemnity and closed the door, opened it immediately and said, “Thanks for the jugs,” and closed it again.

After he had gone down one flight he leaned against the wall for a few moments, his eyes closed. His body felt sticky and there was a bad taste in his mouth and a dull headache behind his eyes. Though not a superstitious man, he felt that he had been in the presence of evil. Not contrived evil, full of plots and connivings, but a curiously innocent and implacable evil. He knew that Buttons should never know how close he had come to an act that would have irreparably changed his own inner image of himself, made it forever hard for him to have looked deep into his own mirrored eyes.

As he reached the sidewalk he saw Troy paying off a cab-driver a hundred feet away. As the cab pulled away, Troy turned and saw him. Troy looked lean and pallid, unpressed, unsteady on his feet. Mike wondered what in hell he could say to Troy. Troy whirled and went around the corner onto Second Avenue, almost running. When Mike reached the corner, Troy was halfway down the block. Mike did not follow him.

A month later, while Bunny was in Reno and her girls were with her people in Rochester, Mike got a phone call one evening from a man in New York named Grady. After he hung up Buttons stared at him, frowning, and said, “Who was that? What about Troy? When do you have to go to New York?”

“It’s a man named Grady. Troy’s at his place, in bad shape. I either go get him, now, or Grady calls Bellevue and has him picked up.”

“So let him call Bellevue!”

Mike looked at her with a fond and crooked smile. “Grady said he had resigned so that left just one friend of Jamison’s. Okay. I’ll call back and tell Grady I can’t bring a mess like that into my home.”

“Darn you anyway,” Buttons said. “I’m going to feel awfully disloyal toward Bunny, but go get him.”

“Bunny would understand how it is.”

It took three and a half hours to drive to New York, and another twenty minutes to locate John Grady’s bachelor apartment in the Village, so it was nearly one in the morning when Grady, a tall young man with big glasses and a harried expression, let him in.

“Mr. Rodenska? Good. He’s in the bedroom. I got worried after I called you, so I got hold of a doctor. He charged me fifteen bucks for a house call.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“Hell with that. Call it my last contribution to Troy Jamison, thank God. I better brief you. Sit down. Drink?”

“No thanks. What did the doctor say?”

“Alcoholism. Malnutrition. He gave him some shots.”

“Can he be moved?”

“Not tonight, damn it. In the morning, when he wakes up. Which will be about ten. If he has the shakes too bad to travel, he can have a two-ounce shot in the morning. I won’t be here. I’ve got to go to work.”

“He’s out of work?”

“Man, he’s about as far out of work as you can get. He left in a big way almost a month ago. I’m with K. F. and S. too. He hired me, as a matter of fact. There’s been talk about him for months, around the shop. His marriage busting up. And when he was coming in at all, he was coming in half-loaded. And he didn’t seem to give a damn. I think they were trying to talk him into a leave of absence. When you get as high up as Troy was, there’s a sort of rule you don’t fire a man. They took Walther Electric away from him. It had always been his baby, a very tender account. They bill three million five. They took it away two months ago. Just about three weeks ago Mueller was giving a presentation to a flock of Walther executives. Jamison came walking in, boiled. Before they could hustle him out he yelled that the new program was tired old crap, that Walther would be better off with somebody else. He busted Mueller a beaut right in the eye and knocked him down. He knocked the projection machine off the stand, then turned and told the executives of Walther he was glad he didn’t have to deal with such lintheads any more. About then they got him out, too late. Walther canceled out. And they didn’t even let Troy clean out his desk. They sent his stuff to the hotel by messenger. It’s a damn shame, Mr. Rodenska. He was as sharp as they come. But he’s dead in this industry forever. There isn’t anybody connected with it from coast to coast who doesn’t know the story by now. He’ll never get back in, and I guess he knows it.”

“Where do you fit in, Grady?”

“Good question. He hired me. I felt some obligation, even though I hope everybody forgets I was hired originally by Jamison. So I’ve been taking care. I got him out twice when he was charged with D and D. After he got tossed out of the hotel he slept here a few times. I’ve loaned him money.”

“He can’t be broke!”

“He gives a good imitation if he isn’t. Lately I’ve been thinking it isn’t going to do me any good at the agency if people find out I’m helping him. Anyhow, he’s been getting worse. And I figure I’ve paid off any obligation. Tonight was the end. He knocked. I opened the door. He staggered in, fell down, threw up on my rug and passed out. He’d told me about you. So I phoned you. I told you what I was going to do if you didn’t feel like taking over. Want to look at him? If you haven’t seen him lately, it’ll be a shock. He looks like any skid row bum.”