William McGivern - Savage Streets

“Malleck? No.”

“Well, he’s a solid joe, for my money. Funny, I met him last year when I was serving time on that membership committee at the club. He walked in out of the blue and asked if he could join the club. Said he had a couple of kids who’d enjoy the pool, and he and his wife were thinking of taking a crack at golf now that they were out in the suburbs. Well, my first thought was that he was hardly our cup of tea, if you know what I mean. He’s rough-looking and he gives the English language a real bouncy ride. Of course he wasn’t eligible to join the club because he didn’t own a home in Faircrest. I explained that to him and he took it just fine. I mean he wasn’t embarrassed, didn’t tip his hat and scrape his feet on the carpet. He’s got dignity without class, if you know what I mean.”

“One of nature’s gentlemen?” Farrell said.

“That’s it,” Detweiller said. “Well, he’s heard about the trouble we’re in because his sons go to Rosedale Consolidated. And Malleck by the way owns some trucks that operate in the garment district of New York, and I get the impression he’d shove back fast and hard if anyone tried to push him around.”

“So what was on his mind?”

“He’s willing to help out, that’s all.”

“Help out? Help out with what?”

Detweiller looked rather embarrassed. “Well, first of all, he suggested that we don’t talk too much about it. Keep it in the club, so to speak. But if we need help, Malleck is with us.”

“The mist rises,” Farrell said. “So he wants to join the Faircrest vigilante and popover society.” He sighed. “Are you still playing around with that idea?”

“Damn it, I don’t want trouble for trouble’s sake. You know me better than that. It’s only that...” Detweiller ran a hand through his hair. “Well, nobody’s going to push me around.”

“You’re not being pushed around,” Farrell said irritably. “And let me give you a piece of free, unsolicited advice: tell this character Malleck to mind his own damn business. He sounds like a fine species of genus busybody to me. He smells a brawl and he wants to get into it. I’d suggest you tie a can to him and forget this other nonsense — that’s a buzz saw you’re reaching for, Det.”

Occasionally Detweiller responded amiably to blunt criticism; it seemed to Farrell that he enjoyed playing the turbulent youngster in need of a firm hand. It probably made him feel youthful and irresponsible, he thought, a yeasty buck in a pasture of timorous jades. Now Detweiller smiled ruefully and said, “Well, maybe you’re right, John. But it’s the old Detweiller curse — we’re just not cut out to be spectators when trouble comes along. We’re the dummies who aren’t smart enough to play it cozy and look the other way when somebody yells for help.”

“Well, our family curse was liquor,” Farrell said. “So how about coming in for a beer?”

“I’ve got to finish putting a high gloss on this heap. It’s more the finance company’s than mine, so why I bother I don’t know. Anyway we’re seeing you and Barbara in the morning — brunch around noon. Chicky cued Barbara and it’s all set.”

“Fine. Many thanks.”

Farrell went into his house. He was in a disturbed, worried mood, and when Barbara called to him from the second floor he realized there was a curious, vague fear twisting through his thoughts.

“Hi there,” he called up the stairs. “I’m just about to open the first of what may be an innumerable number of beers. You want one?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m coming right down. I want to hear about...” Her voice faded away as Jimmy came out of his room. Farrell dropped his coat and hat in the study and sat down with the morning papers. He thought about the beer but decided he didn’t feel like it.

Farrell slept late the next morning. He had coffee and orange juice at nine, a cigarette and then another hour of sleep. When he woke Barbara was looking through her clothes. “What shall I aim at?” she said, glancing over her shoulder as he sat up in bed. “Glamor or worthiness? Red toreador pants with black felt slippers, or my nice little PTA suit?”

“What’s so special about this party?”

“Well, they’ve asked Dick Baldwin, and Chicky obviously wants everyone to live up to him.”

“We can only try,” Farrell said, as he got into his robe. “I’ll read Walter Lippmann after I shave.”

Dick Baldwin was a special friend of the Detweillers, a reporter on a news magazine, and they wore him like a decoration. He was thin and intelligent, and cared little for anything but his work, a preference he made abundantly clear to most people he met; with all the inside dope at his fingertips, Baldwin ostentatiously refrained from discussing news stories with anyone whose information came only from the press, radio and television. Occasionally, if his audience were properly humble, he would draw aside the curtains of propaganda and official double talk and show them what really went on behind the scenes. But this did not happen too often, and for that much Farrell was grateful.

The Detweillers quoted him frequently, apparently as proof that they were more sophisticated than the Faircrest crowd.

Baldwin found Faircrest preposterously dull; he was of the city, alert and knowledgeable, and it was his view that suburban mores and problems were a trifle absurd, freshly minted country-squire elegances and arbitrary inconveniences created simply to give empty-headed commuters something to talk about.

Farrell realized that his dislike of Baldwin was not very reasonable. Baldwin was always pleasant to him, and as for the barbs at life in Faircrest, they were probably sharpened up by Chicky before she let them fly at her friends. The thing that irritated Farrell, he decided as he got under the shower, was that Chicky’s friends seemed to take such a bubbling pride in being patronized by Baldwin.

“I decided to compromise,” Barbara said, when he came out of the bathroom. “Worthy glamor.” She was wearing a blue wool jersey and a full tweed skirt that matched her dark brown pumps. “The exciting look of good health — that’s what I’ve managed, don’t you think?”

He smiled at her. “Better than that. Perfect health anyway.”

The Farrells were not the first to arrive at the party. Dick Baldwin was there, severely neat in black flannels, chatting with Sam and Grace Ward before the fireplace. John and Nadine Sims, a heavy and hearty couple who had been blessed with three children after twenty years of marriage, stood in the small, enclosed terrace admiring and sampling Chicky’s display of cheese dips, cocktail sausages, and mushrooms jacketed in crisp bacon.

Wayne and Janey Norton came in as Farrell was giving his coat and hat to the maid. Janey was wearing a blue maternity frock with a big black grosgrain bow tied at her throat. They talked for a moment. She was a gentle, smiling woman with curly dark hair and softly happy eyes. She was the sort of woman other women kept saying they adored: she belittled her own efforts and was seemingly awed by the skills of all her friends. As they talked about children, Farrell decided that this was why no one ever had an unkind word for her; she simply cut herself down to size before anyone else had a chance. He drifted away when Wayne led her to a chair and asked her about drafts.

There was something wrong with the room, Farrell thought, and he looked around trying to figure out what it could be. The green leaves and fresh flowers, the wedding-gift trays and lighters, the correctly imaginative colors — orange and green to match the Picasso print above the mantelpiece — it was all lovingly done, but it struck him as slightly absurd. It had a parody look about it, as if some cruel and clever person had designed the room to spoof a certain kind of gracious living.