Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (10 page)

     
"I caught her at it."

     
"Damned nigger woman," George
Parks said without heat. "Don't
none
of them have
any brains."

     
"What's the big idea?" Branch
asked.

     
"Wanted to know if she was
coming," the smaller man said. "Don't want
no
trouble around here."

     
"How did you find out about it?"

     
"I heard."

     
"Who told you?"

     
George Parks lighted his cigarette,
cupping his hands about it as if a wind was generally blowing when he lighted
cigarettes. He threw the match at the fireplace.

     
"I heard," he said without
expression.

     
Branch stood in the middle of the room,
looking down at him, and knew that he would never learn anything from this man.
He did not have what it took to impress George Parks or outwit him. He looked
at the sallow, boneless, unshaven face a little unhappily.

     
"I've got her suitcase," he
said. "You know as much as I do whether she's coming to get it. She didn't
tell me.... So don't send any more people digging in my closet, will you?"
As he turned away, the other not speaking, he saw lying in the deep round chair
in the corner, a tan leather camera case with the word
Leica
stamped on the cover. He walked across the porch and down to the road quickly
and away from the house, suppressing the desire to glance back at the upper
windows.

THE
PANEL TRUCK let him off beyond the bridge, the driver apologizing for not being
able to take him by the hotel. Branch walked rapidly through the thin rain and
felt strangely grateful to see the neat, closely spaced houses, and the stores
and the sidewalks. He always I felt like a tourist in the country: a little
ridiculous to those who lived there.

     
He found himself relieved to have this
business of George Parks and the colored woman fall into place with the rest of
it. There was only one man to whom an expensive camera such as he had seen
could be attributed: the stocky detective who worked for the big man, Sellers.
I used two
Leicas
, the detective had said, one for
each film. I ought to get out of here, Branch
thought,
I ought to get out of here, but quick, before the whole thing closes in on me.
He removed
I
his cap as he entered the hotel and shook
the rain from the black, waterproof cover and dried his glasses and went to the
desk. The clerk said there was no message. Then he changed his mind and said
there was a message. Branch stood slowly unbuttoning his damp raincoat while
the man searched for the message. He could hear his heart beating.

     
"A Mr. Haskell," the clerk said.
"A Mr. Frank Haskell, from Evanston, Illinois, was asking for you,
sir."

     
Haskell, Branch thought,
Janet Haskell.
Frank Haskell. "Where is he?"

     
"Room 227," the clerk said, and
changed his mind again. "No, I thought I saw him go in the bar a minute
ago, sir. He came in on the noon bus."

     
Branch turned and strode towards the
taproom, suddenly furiously angry with an anger that was partly bewilderment.
He entered the room and walked without looking to either side between the
half-deserted tables to the bar, his open damp coat flapping about him. As he
gave his order he was aware of being joined by a short man with a smooth,
well-fed stoutness and the pink clear skin of a child.

     
"Lieutenant?"

     
"Yes," said Branch, watching his
drink approach.

     
"Your name wouldn't be Branch, would
it?"

     
"It would," Branch said. He saw
his long dark face sharp and irritable in the bar mirror, and it seemed to him
that he was being silly and he paid the barman and picked up his drink and
turned.

     
"Yes, I'm Branch," he said.

     
"My name's Haskell, Lieutenant,"
the stout man said holding out his hand.
"Frank Haskell,
from Evanston."

     
Branch shook the hand. "I'm from
Chicago, myself," he said.

     
"Yes," said the stout man.
"Mr. Sellers told me."

     
"Oh?"

     
"How about lunch,
Lieutenant?
They told me you'd gone out early and I figured I'd
wait...."

     
"Sure," said Branch. "Sure.
Let's eat."

     
They carried their drinks across the
corridor to the dining room table by one of the fluted white wooden columns
that ran the length of the center of the room.

     
"A lot of phony atmosphere," the
stout man said as they sat down. "And do they charge you for it!"

     
Branch found
himself
suddenly quite happy, and it was like coming home. They called you Lieutenant
assiduously and they gave you cigars and there was sometimes a bottle produced
from a bottom drawer, and they asked you where you came from and how you liked
the Navy, and then, having given you the old line, the old salesmanship, the
old oil, rising abruptly as if recalling that they were busy men, they would
clap you on the shoulder. Well, you'll find everything all right, they would
say confidently, I'm sure you'll find everything all right, Lieutenant,
haha
, and Mr. Blank will take care of you. If you need
anything just ask Mr. Blank, he'll take care of you. And you would go down
there with Mr. Blank and you would make damned sure nothing was being put over
on you or the Navy before you let the material go out.

     
"Are you a friend of Mr.
Sellers?" Branch asked the pink-faced man.

     
"Well," said Haskell
judiciously, "Well, I've done business with him,
haha
.
A case of Scotch now and then and of course the other stuff..."

     
"The
Lalevy
business," Branch said idly, gambling.

     
"Oh, she told you. Yeah,
Lalevy's
shipped through Sellers. Wasn't any other way they
could get stuff through after they got on the State Department black
list.
We didn't like to handle it but, hell, you couldn't
take a chance. If the Nazis had come out on top over there we wouldn't have had
any contacts left if we'd got
Lalevy
down on us. It
was mainly cosmetics, anyway. The Germans let them do it to get the
dollars...." He went on almost without a pause, "I wouldn't say I was
a personal friend of Sellers', no, but when she went off like that I was pretty
sure she'd go to him, so I called him long distance-"

     
"What made you think she'd go to
him?"

     
"Hell, who else would she go to? She
doesn't know
i
anybody in this country except a few
people she met around Evanston while she lived with us." Haskell laughed.
"She'd hardly be likely to go to them, would she? What could she tell
them? After passing out that Free French line for three years she'd look mighty
funny explaining why those birds were after her. Hell, it's a pity they didn't
get her husband at the same time they got her old man, isn't it? I don't know
why she wants to waste time on saving his hide. From what I've heard he's had
five different women in the time she's been over here."

     
Branch watched the waiter put the shrimp
cocktails in front of them. It seemed to him that he had spent interminable
lengths of time, learning a little more each time, while people gradually
worked around to the point of what they were going to say. But the pink-faced
man, although he had not yet got to his own point, was a rewarding source of
information.

     
"I tried to talk her out of it,"
Haskell said cheerfully, filling his mouth with shrimp, but not ceasing to
talk. "For her own good, I tried to talk her out of it. Things are
different now, I told her,
you
don't want to start
stirring things up, baby. Do you know what she did? She tried to blackmail me.
Can you picture that? Trying to blackmail me after we'd kept her for three
years. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Hell, I'd almost got to
thinking of her like my own daughter. But you can't tell about these
foreigners. I remember a guy
Lalevy
sent over
once...."

     
Branch listened and the story led to a
dirty joke about a colored washerwoman which led in turn to a long, involved,
and bitter anecdote about the O.P.A. At last the pink-faced man sat back
comfortably and lit a cigar.

     
"As a matter of fact,
Lieutenant," he said casually, "as a matter of fact, when I checked
back, I found she did have a little money coming to her.

     
"Oh?" said Branch.

     
Haskell nodded. "
Lalevy's
account was in a hell of a shape, naturally, ever since he was killed we've
been trying to... Well, after she'd gone I began to wonder if one of the clerks
maybe hadn't made a mistake, and sure enough, he had." He laughed
uncomfortably. "It I
puts
me in a hell of a spot,
Lieutenant. But she didn't have to call me a crook. She didn't have to threaten
me. If she'd acted sensibly-Hell, anybody can make a mistake and the way the
thing was handled it's no wonder. Well, I don't like to admit I'm wrong,
Lieutenant, I guess none of us do, and I still say she had no right to talk to
me like she did, but...." Be took a plain envelope from his breast packet
and passed it across the table. Branch pulled out the flap and looked at the
bills. My God, he thought.

     
"It's all there, Haskell said
. "
You can count it if you like.
Thirty-seven
hundred and fourteen dollars."
He laughed. "I gave her a break
on the cents."

     
After a moment Branch said, holding the
envelope, "Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with it?"

     
"Give it to her," the stout man
said. "Tell her I said it was a mistake, it was all a mistake."

     
Branch said quickly, "You give it to
her," and held out the envelope.

     
Suddenly Mr. Haskell's pink face had a
very unpleasant look. "Listen," he said, "If I never see that
flat-faced bitch again, it's too soon."

     
 
Branch watched him rise and glance at his
watch.

     
"Think I'll try to catch the three
o'clock bus," the stout man said, and then sharply, "Don't try to kid
me, Lieutenant. Sellers told me all about you. Well, I wish you luck. You'll
need it with that tart."

     
Branch watched him walk way with the
slightly rolling gait of a very young child, or a drunk, or a fat man.
Everybody gives me money, Branch thought, thirty-seven hundred dollars.
My God.
He wished the man had not called Jeannette Duval a
tart. Bitch was merely bad-tempered, but tart sounded knowing and cheap.

     
He went upstairs and, locking his door,
pulled the suitcase out of the wardrobe and put the envelope inside a
drawstring bag containing a pair of high-heeled black suede pumps.

CONSTANCE
BELLAMANN came into the dining room and he watched her hesitate inside the
doorway, wearing again the short high-necked brown print dress, so that at a
distance she looked about fifteen years old. She saw him and came towards him
between the busy table and he rose as she stopped beside him.

     
"Hello," she said, smiling up at
him.

     
"Hello," he said, and he heard
himself ask her if would care to join him; and he seated her and returned to
his chair. She spread a napkin in her lap and looked about the room, smiling a
little, the haphazard lipstick very bright in her pale face. Her short brown
hair on either side, held back from her face with the kind of narrow silver
clips the girls had been wearing the last year of the war.

     
"It seemed silly to pretend I didn't
see you," she said, looking at him suddenly.

     
He could not think of anything to say.
Last night seemed a long time ago, but it was still an uncomfortable memory.
The waiter came with a glass of tomato juice and a plate of hot rolls, and took
Constance
Bellamann's
order.

     
"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings
last night," the girl said presently She crushed a crumb on the tablecloth
with the brief
unlacquered
nail of her forefinger.
"I trying to be clever," she said.

     
"You should have slapped my
face," Branch said. "But good."

     
"Oh, no," she said. "I was
trying to be clever. You had every right to think ..." Her mouth had a
pinched look. "Did they tell you about
... ?"

     
He nodded.

     
She looked up from the tablecloth.
"Well, I'm not crazy," she said. "Even if Paul ..."

     
He was very uncomfortable and he did not
say anything.

     
She laughed quickly. "But we can't
have you thinking that women find you repulsive, Mr. Branch," she said
carefully, glancing at him sideways.

     
He grinned. "Now you're kidding
me."

     
"It was nice of you to come and
apologize." He shrugged his shoulders, uncomfortable again.

     
"I think," she said, "If
you have a cigarette ..." He gave her one and as he leaned forward to
light it for her, she said, "Paul and Mr. Hahn think you are a fool, Mr.
Branch," watching him with a trace of mischief in her small face.

     
He held the match for her and, when she
had got her light, shook it out and dropped it in the ashtray, sitting back in
his chair to look at her. He was glad to feel them getting away from last
night.

     
"What does Madame
Faubel
think?" he asked.

     
"Madame has not yet made up her mind
about you. She says you are politically undeveloped, but that that is true of
most Americans."

     
"And what about
you?"
Branch asked, grinning. "What do you think?"
Constance
Bellamann
glanced at him. "Oh, I don't
think you're a fool Mr. Branch," she said demurely, "I think you're a
very clever man. After all, you never were in
Rochemont
.
You have never been hungry. There is no need for you to hate anybody."

     
He waited while the colored man set their
dinners before them. Then he said, "Don't be bitter, Constance. What am I
supposed to do?"

     
"No one should have to tell you what
to do, Mr. Branch," she said gravely. "It should be very clear to you
what you should do." Suddenly she put down her fork. "You don't
understand," she said quickly. "You don't understand what people are
like after-oh, I don't mean myself. I mean everybody. You don't understand what
it is to hate."

     
He said a little angrily, "I
understand all right. I'm just against it."

     
"Have you ever hated anybody?"

     
"Perhaps not, but...."

     
"Then you simply don't know,"
she said. "People who have learned to hate, Mr. Branch ..."

     
He felt himself vaguely threatened and
said harshly, "That's all right. All I say is that nobody's going to I
shave anybody's head while I'm around."

     
Small wrinkles of bewilderment appeared on
the girl's forehead.

     
Branch said, "It's just an example.
Happened to come up when I was talking to Madame
Faubel
.
What I mean is
,
I don't like vigilantes or lynching or
any kind of mob law at all."

     
The girl carefully separated the flakes of
fish meat from the bones before looking up again.

     
"Even if you had a personal
interest?" she asked. "If you had been-"

     
"All right," he said, "what
is your personal interest? You've all had a hard time and you're sore at the
world, isn't that it? Did you know Jeannette Duval before
...
?"

     
The girl, after a moment, shook her head.

     
"None of you did, did you? Somebody
sicked
you on her and here you are. What's personal about
that?"

     
"The committee..."

     
"What is this damned committee,
anyway?" he demanded. "Does your government know about it?"

     
Her small bright mouth formed a grimace.
"Oh," she said. "
the
government!"
She laughed.

     
He was a little shocked.

     
Presently they were talking about Queen's
Harbor and she told him that it was very much like a small French town that she
had known, except for the Negroes; and he suggested, grinning a little to show
that he was teasing her, that probably all small towns all over the world were
very much alike, fundamentally, even small towns in Germany.

     
Her face showed no amusement, and she
began to tell him wherein the Germans differed from all other peoples. He
listened respectfully, because she had, after all, a certain right to her
opinion; one might even say that she had earned it. He could remember a time
when the Germans had seemed to him different from all other peoples, because no
other peoples had seemed to be able to stop them. But that time was over with.
He watched her asymmetrical small face as she talked and wondered what she had
been like before the war. He thought she had probably been rather a nice girl;
a little opinionated and probably, like most reasonably pretty girls, a little
selfish; but quite nice and it was rather a pity. Somebody ought to do
something about her, he thought, somebody really ought to do something about
her.

     
When they got up he asked her what she had
planned for the evening.

     
"I'm going for a walk," she
said, laughing. "Madame told me to go for a walk as soon as it stopped
raining. Every so often she decides that she is neglecting me and thinks of
something like this. I'm only glad she did not suggest castor oil
instead."

     
He looked at her for a moment and
remembered
the
i
money in
his room. "Well," he said, "if you'll wait for me to get my
coat. ..."

     
"If you want to," she said
politely.

     
Something in her voice made him look at
her again. "Only if I'm not intruding," he said with equal
politeness.

     
"Oh, no," she said. "I only
meant
... "

     
"I'11
be
right down."

     
The money was still in the suitcase. He
debated taking it with him, but he did not like to carry nearly four thousand
dollars on his person. The hotel safe was the logical place for it, but they
would want to count it and they would remember it; even if he gave them the
envelope sealed they might remember it and he did not want, not knowing what
might happen, to be remembered too well. He could not make himself feel any
great responsibility for the money, considering the way it had been given to
him and the way the girl had left him, and he thought irritably, to hell with
it, I'm not going to worry about it, and pushed it back in the
shoebag
, closed the suitcase, and put it out of sight in
the closet.

     
When he came down, Constance
Bellamann
was standing by the door, buttoning her shabby
brown jacket, and she started out as he came to her. Outside it had stopped
raining and the wind had started again. The wind filled her thin skirt as she
went down the steps to the sidewalk, and her bare legs looked very cold.

     
"You'll freeze to death," Branch
shouted as, pulling his cap over his eyes, he hurried beside her along the
sidewalk. Bent over to control her dress, she glanced at him, but she did not
speak until they had turned the corner into the lee of the terrace on which the
hotel was built.

     
Then she stopped and looked up at him, the
hair blown against her face by an eddy of wind. "Did you bring it with
you?" she demanded. "What?"

     
 
"The money," she said. "The
three thousand seven hundred dollars Mr. Haskell gave you at lunch."

     
 
Branch did not say anything.

     
Her tongue touched her lips minutely.
"You thought I was getting you out of the hotel so that they could steal
it," she whispered.

     
"How did you know about it?"

     
She shook back her hair impatiently as the
wind plucked at it. "Of course we knew about it," she said bitterly.
"They've been watching him ever since they found out where she was
staying." Her eyes watched him. She was almost crying. "I didn't ask
you to come with me. I only came to your table because it would have been silly
not to. We're not thieves, Mr. Branch."

     
"I'm sorry," he said helplessly.
"Anyway, it's still up there. You can search me if you like.

     
He grinned disarmingly, but she did not
smile but turned away and started to walk against the wind, and he walked
beside her, but she paid him no attention. They could see the river at the end
of each street they crossed. When they reached the main highway she turned to
the right, towards the bridge.

     
On the bridge the wind was icy and the
water below was slashed with white. Over the harbor the sky was clearing but
nothing was out there and the low sun had not yet broken through. The small
distant channel buoys leaned heavily away from the waves the wind blew past
them.

     
Constance
Bellamann
stopped at the end of the bridge to push at her loosened hair.

     
Branch said, "Listen, you're going to
catch pneumonia.

     
"I'm not an invalid, Mr.
Branch," she panted. "Just because I don't like to have men paw
me-"

     
He caught her by the arm as she turned
away sharply. "Listen," he said. Then he released her
arm."What's
the matter with you, anyway?"

     
"I didn't ask you to come with
me," she gasped. He saw that she was crying. She turned away again and he
let her go and watched her run blindly up the road, stumbling a little, and
turn
in among the trees. Now where the hell, he thought
irritably, is she going? And he followed her reluctantly because it would be
dark soon and should she get lost, with no more clothes than he had on, she
quite probably would catch pneumonia. He wondered if perhaps they were now
searching his room; and if not, it seemed to him that he had nevertheless every
right to expect it, and it was nothing to have hysterics about.

     
He found a reasonably well-kept dirt road
where the girl had turned, the deeper holes filled with oyster shells; and he
walked briskly, hearing the wind go through the trees above him and,
occasionally, the steady rushing of the waves against the foot of the bluff
that was to his right, hidden by the trees. Twice he caught a glimpse of the
river when the road traversed the head of a choked ravine. The ruts held pools
of water from the rain.

     
She was sitting on a log at the side of
the road where the woods finally ended; and when she saw him she got up and
brushed the clinging flakes of bark from her dress and stood waiting for him to
reach her.

     
"Are you all right?" he asked,
stopping in front of her.