Night My Friend (34 page)

“Just Rita.”

“Get her in here. I’ve got one of the bums covering the floor. Tell her to put the out-to-lunch sign on her booth.”

Craidy nodded and went back to the girl with his message. A few moments later they were gathered in the tiny, sweaty office where Arnie conducted his business affairs, talked to popcorn salesmen, and slept on lazy afternoons. “Where is he?” Rita asked.

“Come out, Frank,” Arnie said, and Wayne appeared suddenly from a battered wardrobe that stood against the outside wall. He was unshaven and looked tired, and his eyes still held that beaten expression Craidy had seen the night before on the canvas of the ring.

Rita O’Blanc went to him, and held out a hand to touch him tentatively. “You did it,” she said, as if she hadn’t really believed it till that moment. “You killed him.”

Wayne nodded his shabby head. “I did it. Every cop in town is looking for me.”

“How long have you been here?” Craidy asked.

“Since early this morning, when Arnie opened up. I slept on the beach last night, under one of the piers, but I was afraid to stay there in the light.” Then he added, as if feeling it necessary, “Listen, I didn’t mean to kill him. You know that. When Sam told me I had to take a dive in the second round I thought he was kidding at first. I never had to do anything like that before.”

Arnie nodded sadly. “I told you it would come to that. I know these operators like Sam Seffer. Always out for the fast buck.”

“But why did you do it?” Rita asked. “Why did you take the dive?”

Wayne ran a bruised fist over his growth of gray stubble. “Up until the minute I did it I wasn’t sure I could go through with it. And then, after it was over, I opened my eyes and saw your face only a couple of feet away, looking at me like you could read my mind. It was too late then to change things in the ring, but I wanted to make damned sure that punk kid didn’t get the idea into his head that he could really floor me. I waited for him outside and caught him on the way to his car. He couldn’t figure out what the hell I wanted. Even after I hit him, he just seemed to stand there. Finally he started to fight back, and I just got him into a corner and kept punching. I was waiting for him to go down but he couldn’t, with the wall behind him. When I stopped punching and let him fall, I saw that he was…”

Arnie ran a hand over his sweating forehead. “Maybe you shoulda gone after your manager instead.”

“Sam? He owes me too much money. If I had my pay from the fight I could get out of town.”

“We’ll get it for you,” Rita said suddenly, and Craidy shot her a startled look. “You stay here, under cover.”

“And how do you intend to get any money out of Seffer?” Craidy asked.

“I’ll go to see him. He must know Wayne’s in a bad jam.”

“Sure. And he knows he can be in one too, when it comes out in court that he forced Wayne to take a dive.”

“That’s just why he won’t want Wayne around. He’ll give him the money just to get rid of him.”

“Maybe,” Craidy said doubtfully. He wasn’t inclined to trust Sam Seffer very far. Then, because he’d already been carried along so far, he heard himself saying, “But if anyone goes to see Seffer it’ll be me. I can handle myself a bit better than a girl.”

“He doesn’t even know you,” she objected.

“He knows me as well as he knows you. Besides, Wayne can give me a note or something.”

“Sure,” the fighter agreed at once. “Give me a pencil and some paper and I’ll write it now.”

“I’m going too,” Rita insisted. “We’ll go together.”

Arnie was quick to agree. “Don’t worry about the place. I’ll take care of things. Just get the money.”

“How much does he owe you?” Craidy asked.

“Five hundred,” the fighter replied, licking his dry lips. “He promised me the extra hundred for taking the dive.”

“You did it for a hundred dollars?” Craidy asked, and then was sorry he’d said anything.

“Sometimes that seems like a lot of money. Sometimes, at my age.”

From outside there came the familiar clamor of youthful roughhouse. Some boys were vigorously attacking one of the machines, claiming they’d lost a dime. “I better get out there,” Arnie said. “You two get going. Wayne, you get back under cover.”

Craidy and Rita left a few minutes later. He was unhappy about having the girl along, just as he was unhappy about the whole mission. He couldn’t imagine how he would get the five hundred dollars out of Sam Seffer, but he knew the task would be no easier with her along. He thought about his room, and the dead dandelions, but he didn’t say anything.

“I know where we can find him,” Rita said as they walked quickly along the boardwalk. The beach was crowded, and they were constantly dodging the onslaught of screaming children bound for ice cream or balloons.

“Where? We’re heading for the arena.”

“There’s a bar in the next block where the fight crowd hangs out. I’ve seen him in there before in the afternoon.”

“You reading minds again?”

“No, just guessing.”

“Then maybe you’ll be wrong for once.”

She smiled “Maybe.”

But when they reached the place, the bartender motioned toward the dim back room. “In there,” he said.

The place was a windowless cell large enough for just six booths, where a dim ceiling light cast its pinkish glow over a world where night and day blended into one. It was a place to bring a girl or meet one, not a place for a man who drank alone in the middle of the afternoon.

Sam Seffer, seeming smaller than ever alone in the booth, looked up as Rita spoke his name. “Yeah? What’d you want?” There were four empty beer bottles on the table.

“Frank Wayne sent us,” she said, getting right to the point.

“That damned fool! He deserves whatever happens to him!” Seffer lifted his glass and drained the last of the beer.

Craidy slid into the booth opposite him. “Look, Seffer, we didn’t come to kid around. We want the money you owe Wayne. Five hundred.”

“Who the hell are you? I don’t know you.”

Craidy reached across the table and wrinkled a handful of sweat-stained shirt. “We’re meeting right now. Either you help Wayne get out of town or he spills everything to the cops, including your part in the fix.”

“Get your hands offa me! I don’t know about any fix.”

“Think a jury will believe that? Or the State Athletic Commission?”

Seffer pulled away as Craidy relaxed his grip. “Anyway, I don’t owe him no five hundred!”

“He thinks so,” Rita joined in. “Four hundred for the fight and another hundred for taking the dive.”

Sam Seffer snorted into his empty glass. “Hell, the guy’s gone nutty! Nobody on this earth ever got four hundred at the Beach Arena.”

“Five hundred better be the figure, anyway,” Craidy said softly. “Have you got it?”

“You think you’re tough, don’t you? Ha!”

“Have you got it?” Craidy repeated.

Seffer’s hand went for one of the beer bottles, but Craidy was faster. He smashed it on the edge of the table and held out the jagged edges toward the little man. Behind him, Rita gasped.

“All right,” Seffer said. “I don’t have it with me, but I can get it.”

“By tonight.”

“By tonight.”

“Bring it to Arnie’s before nine. Understand?”

“I understand,” he gulped.

Craidy tossed the broken bottle on the table. “We’ll be looking for you.”

As they walked out the bartender looked up from his task of refilling an empty scotch bottle. “What was all the noise?”

“Dropped a bottle,” Craidy said.

“I don’t like noise. We got a respectable place.”

“Sure. I’ll remember that.”

Outside, the day seemed suddenly chilled, and he walked along for a time without speaking to the girl at his side. He was back in it, back in the mess once more.

“I was scared in there,” Rita said finally, after they’d covered half the distance back to Arnie’s arcade. “I thought for a moment you were going to kill him.”

“For a moment, I was.”

“You’re awful mixed up, aren’t you, Craidy? More than me, even.”

“Let’s go someplace and talk,” he said suddenly. “I don’t want to go back there yet.”

“They’ll be waiting to hear.”

“We’ll phone them.” He found a glassed-in booth along the boardwalk and dialed Arnie’s number, explaining that Sam Seffer had promised to bring the money that evening. Then, when he hung up, he saw that Rita had moved to a nearby ice cream stand. A police patrol car was parked nearby, with two uniformed officers out of it, asking questions of the white-shirted ice cream man.

When Craidy came over, Rita handed him a chocolate cone. “I hope you like this brand,” she said.

“What’s with the cops?”

“Looking for Wayne. Still.”

“Let’s get out of here. I told Arnie we’d be back in an hour.”

“How’re things there?”

“Rough. Police all over the place. They seem convinced he’s still around the beach somewhere.”

Perhaps to escape from the threat of police, or perhaps only to leave the salt-air beach behind for a time, they walked a few blocks inland, to where great old mansions still stood silently on treelined streets.

“This was a classy section once,” Rita said. “Now they’re mostly cut up for apartments.”

“I know. I used to live in a house like that myself, a long time ago.”

“Tell me about it, Craidy,” she said.

“What is there to tell?”

“You would have killed Sam Seffer. Did that ever happen before?”

“Not really. I seem to have spent most of my life getting involved with people, pulling myself out of messes. I guess that’s why I came here, for some sort of peace. Fooling with electrical things is the only sort of peace I get any more.”

“You must have had lots of girls.”

“That was a long time ago, when I was a kid. I’m a middle-aged man now.”

“Were you ever married?”

“Engaged. She was killed in an auto accident.”

“You were driving?”

“The mind-reading’s a bit hazy this afternoon. She was with another guy. They were going like hell and the crash killed both of them. Good thing. If he’d lived, I’d have killed him myself, I suppose.”

“Then what?”

“Oh, my family had a little money which they promptly lost to some schemer. He was one of the people I almost killed. I guess that’s why I can feel sorry for Wayne. I guess he only did what I would have done.”

“You wouldn’t have thrown the fight in the first place, Craidy.”

“No,” he agreed. “I suppose not.”

The air was suddenly filled with breeze-blown white fuzz. “It comes off the trees,” Rita explained, brushing some from her dress.

“Fluffy and white, just like the dead dandelions.” He glanced at his watch. “We’d better be getting back.”

“Craidy.”

“What?”

“You know, we’re both a couple of misfits, in our own way. You can’t communicate with people, or don’t want to. And I communicate with them too well. I read their minds. Maybe we’d make a good team.”

But Craidy only shook his head. “I’m too much of a loner for you or anybody.”

“You weren’t a loner today, helping out Wayne.”

“I told you, it might have been me.”

The arcade was there ahead of them again, great and gross and ugly, yet somehow handsome in the afternoon sun. A fun place, and there were so few of them left.

Arnie was sweating over his coin-changing machine when they entered. “Damn thing’s busted! Busiest day of the year and the damn thing’s busted! Can you fix it, Craidy?”

“I’ll see.” He was thankful for something to do, something to take his mind from the day and its too-pressing events. He quickly dismantled the machine and carried the guts of it upstairs to his little room with the window.

Toward evening, the teenagers seemed to gravitate toward the beach for a final swim. Craidy had repaired the coin-changer, and during a lull in things they gathered once more in Arnie’s tiny office. Wayne came out of hiding, looking sick and sweaty with a renewed growth of beard.

“Have you had anything to eat?” Rita asked him.

“Just candy bars out of the machine,” he said.

Arnie wiped the sweat from his brow. “How could I risk getting him food with cops all over the place? I don’t even know how he’s goin’ to get outa here tonight.”

“When it’s dark I’ll make it, don’t worry. All I need is money.”

“He’ll be here before nine with the money,” Craidy said.

“You hope. I might have to go after old Sam with my fists.”

Craidy took out a cigarette. “Like you did with Blaze?”

“I can still floor any man in the state with this right. Don’t you forget it.”

“Come on,” Rita said, stepping between them. “Let’s calm down. It’s after eight already. Seffer should be on his way.”

Arnie walked over to the window. “We’re goin’ to have a damn nice sunset. So nice the kids’ll be lovin’ it up on the beach instead of playing the machines.”

“Don’t complain,” Rita said. “You’ve had a good day.”

Outside, a car pulled up with a screeching of cinders. Then another, and a third. They stood for a split second frozen to the floor, and then Craidy ran to the other window. “Cops!”

“Seffer sent them,” Wayne growled. “I’m getting out of here.”

“Wait!” Rita tried to hold back, but already he’d sprung for the office door, letting in the garish light and the jukebox noises. Then it was happening too fast for any of them to stop.

Wayne hit the first two cops with his bull-like shoulders, on the run, knocking one of them into the glass top of the hockey machine. But already there were others outside, blocking the only routes of possible escape. He stood like a trapped animal as kids and onlookers scattered, as Rita and Arnie and Craidy tried to fight their way through to his side.

Then he ran back, toward the bowling machines and the stairway to Craidy’s room, thinking perhaps in some mad moment that the only escape was up those steps. One of the policemen was unsnapping his holster, and a plainclothes detective already had his gun out.

“Stop, Wayne!” one of them shouted. “We’ll shoot!”

The fighter turned at the bottom step and yelled back, “Shoot then damn it!” But as the nearest cop brought up his gun Rita O’Blanc suddenly hurled herself at him.