Ed Lacy: Sin In Their Blood

“But why?”

“Who knows the way of these things? It just is,” I said, sounding like advice to the lovelorn.

She drove expertly through the heavy afternoon traffic. “Aw, Matt, I been looking forward to your coming back. Harry's no good. Sometimes I think he gets more delight out of teasing me, slapping me around, than going with me. You know how I tick, Matt, I got to have a real man.”

“You shouldn't have any trouble finding one.”

“I thought I had you.” Flo sighed. “I don't know, Matt, we should have married and settled down, and by this time I'd be fat and sloppy and with a house full of kids. Now I'm all mixed up. I have money—Harry's good that way, likes to see me dress flashy, the jewels, this car—but it all doesn't add up to anything. Things seem empty. All I think of is how good we had it. Maybe not much real dough, but we were made for each other.”

I don't know if it was smelling her, or hearing her talk and remembering—or what, but I was beginning to run a little temperature. Which was funny, because Flo and I were never romantic, merely good between the sheets.

The idea of kissing her, being with her, made me cold with fear and I said, “Cut the chatter, baby. That's over, forget us.”

“Just like that, two lousy words, forget us, and you think I can get you out of my system? It ain't like that, Matt. We could start over again, I'll give up the car and ice, or if you want, I'll stay with Harry, take his dough and see you till you get started and ready to...”

“You've become quite a gal.”

“You're the one to decide what I'll do,” she said, drawing up in front of this old run-down brick building that was the High Street precinct, parking beside the NO-PARKING sign. “Merely said that, Matt, to show you how much I need you. I'm desperate for a guy like you. Know how hard up I am? Even let that bedbug, Thatcher, have a piece now and then—for comic relief. Ought to see him, he's something, strictly a weirdie.”

“I bet. Aren't you playing close to home? If Harry found...?”

“Who the hell do you think makes me go with that nitwit!” Flo said savagely.

That figured, I didn't think the tin badge would be quite enough to hold the creep. I got out of the car. “Sorry, Flo, but I have my own troubles.”

She said, “Matt, look at me, I've been feeling... dirty... for months. Just seeing you makes me feel all fresh, and wanting you so damn much I have a pain in my guts.”

“Take some Turns,” I said like a dope and she began to cry. I reached in and squeezed her hand. “Didn't mean the corny crack, Flo. You're as pretty as ever and all that but... I can't explain it, baby, but it's over for us. Has to be that way. I don't want to hurt you but that's...”

She bent down and kissed my hand and I yanked it away, said, “Goodbye, Flo.”

“No, we'll talk some more about this. Matt, there isn't any other chick?”

“Nothing like that, it's merely that...”

“Then we'll talk more about us.”

“Maybe.” I waved and walked into the station, looking at the lipstick and spit on the back of my hand, wondering what it would show under a microscope. The desk sergeant was a cop I didn't know and I asked. “Captain Max Daniels in?”

“Who's calling?”

“Matt Ranzino.”

He glanced at me with mild interest and picked up the phone. I asked, “Where's the can?”

He pointed toward a door I should have seen and I went in and washed off her spit, carefully washed my face and hands with strong soap. I was taking out one of my pills when I heard Max's hoarse, “Where is he?” and then he came barging into the John, slapped me twice on the back with his right—knocking the pill out of my hand—and threw a left at my shoulder. I stepped inside the punch and pushed him away, said, “Still carrying your left too low.”

We shook hands like mad and Max said, “You old miserable unbathed bastard, it's great to see you!”

He'd changed a little—his hair was graying along the edges and his face was fatter. But his clothes were still crumpled, he still didn't know how to shave—there were little patches of stubble on his face—and of course there was a big dent where I'd broken his nose.

He gave me the old double slap on the back again, asked, “What we standing here for? Come into my office—not that it looks any better than this craphouse.”

Max's office was a plain room with a battered and butt-burned desk, two chairs—one of them with a broken back—and on his desk were framed snapshots of his fat wife and the two little girls. On one of the green walls there was a small picture of Max in a fighting pose, cut out of the papers when he'd won the Golden Gloves heavyweight title. Max had been riding the gravy train as police department boxing champ for several years till I came along and beat his brains out. It was the start of a real friendship.

Max bent down to get his pint out—why do they always keep it in the bottom drawer? The top would be more convenient—and I said, “Not for me.”

He kicked the drawer shut, tilted his chair, the good one, against the wall. “Matt, I've missed your ugly puss. Going into the agency racket again? You want, I can get you back on the force, being a vet of two wars and all that. Hell, you're only 33, still retire before you're 50.”

“You mean retire to one of these two-bit night watchmen or messenger jobs so I could live on my pension?”

Max sent an oyster of spit into the tin wastebasket. “Going to get your license again?”

I stared at the wastebasket. Max? I'd never thought of that, could be.

He asked, “What's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“What's your plans, champ?”

“To do a lot of nothing. Get a quiet room on the ocean front, take care of myself.”

Max looked at me with troubled eyes, rocked his chair. “Matt, what's wrong? You talk like a washed-up old man. You're still a kid, and you used to be tough as...”

“That's it, Maxie... used to be. They took all the toughness out of me in Korea, and in the hospital. I lay there for months, sweating out dying, losing a lung, fighting with them not to cut away my ribs... give me air.... I don't know, Maxie, I've always had confidence in myself, in my body, but now... I have to treat myself like I was made of delicate glass from now on. I can't risk...”

“What crap! I was in touch with the docs at the hospital; all you have is a scar on your lungs. Why half the people in the world have a scar on their lungs, had TB at some time and never even knew it. For all I know, maybe I have. And I heard about your running out on that goon Tops Anderson today. For Christsakes, what's happened, Matt, lost your grip?”

“Could be. Now I have to figure things like this: if I swing on a Tops, get into a brawl, I might open the scar again, really fix my wagon. Another thing, the docs said I probably got the germ in my lung before Korea—everybody has the germs inside them. So when I look at a Tops, or even you, I keep wondering if this is where I got it, if this bastard is the one who...”

“You've turned soft, sound like a dizzy hypochondriac. Why two years ago you would have slapped Tops loose from his teeth for even looking at you wrong!”

“That was two years ago. Max, why do we make such a big deal of being tough? All we see on the screen, the radio or TV is some joker bragging how tough and rugged he is. I didn't have much to think about in the hospital, so I figured out toughness. It's for the birds. Unless a guy is ready to take a stand—and that means ready to die—on anything, even getting called a louse or a SOB, then being tough is all a bluff, being a coward. And if you're really tough, ready to kill or be killed over a hard look—then you're stupid.”