One On The House (16 page)

“There’s nothin’ for it but to call Beauty Boy…I can see that!” Mrs. Feeley finished the last of the pile of fish balls. “Twelve-sixty o’ this is tips…do we leave it in?”

Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen nodded.

Angel opened the door. “I came…”

“Ain’t a drop left,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Not a drop.”

“I came to give you a lift home,” he said. “Got the car outside.”

Mrs. Feeley glanced at her friends.

“That was decent of you. But it’s only a step, hardly worth openin’ the car door.”

Angel looked into the back room. Then he went down to the basement and came back almost immediately.

“If there was even any cots here, I’d say you were sleeping right on the place.”

“Any harm in that?” Mrs. Feeley asked.

“Not on the floor?” Angel said.

Mrs. Feeley shook her head:

“Under the bar…an’ on top of it.”

“Good God! At your age!”

“What do you mean, our age! I hope you’re half as rugged when
you’re
thirty! Chronic-ological age ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. Hell, boy, it’s interest in life that makes you young. We’ll be protestin’ strong, kickin’ the lid off the damn box, shoutin’ ‘They can’t do this to us!’ when they mourn our untimely death at a hundred an’ five!”

“We live every moment to the fullest,” Miss Tinkham said. “Tomorrow? Why, To-morrow I may be Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand Years!”

“I have that in a book at home,” Angel said. “It’s true you can’t take it with you.”

“Then I ain’t goin’!” Mrs. Rasmussen said with finality.

Angel shook his head.

“See you later.”

“We gotta get some sleep. We’re closed.”

“See you later,” he said.

Mrs. Feeley shrugged:

“Never kiss a buzz-saw, I always say.”

Mrs. Rasmussen was straightening up the kitchen and Miss Tinkham was in the washroom. Mrs. Feeley still sat at the table, thinking. “We’ll take a kinda light half-day tomorra an’ Sunday we’ll go see Timmy.”

“Splendid!” Miss Tinkham looked lovely in her black chiffon negligée. In the hot weather, she wished she had removed the bands of fur that trimmed it, but it was such a pity to take off the lovely strips of mink. The moth-furrows were hardly noticeable. “It takes so little room to pack,” she said, “and gives one the illusion of glamour and elegance while away from home. So satisfying! Like that dear woman in
Vogue
who carries the silk chaise-longue cover with her everywhere she goes, to throw over her clothes, neatly folded, of course, on the chair beside her bed. Even in hotel rooms, we must have gracious living!”

“Ain’t that carryin’ things a little far, as the feller said when he pushed his hernia in front of him in a wheelbarrow?”

“Age cannot wither, nor custom stale, dear Mrs. Feeley, your infinite variety!” Miss Tinkham got ready to crawl in under the bar when there was a noise at the door.

“Don’t bother,” Mrs. Feeley said as Miss Tinkham drew her diaphanous robe closely around her, “It’s only Ol’-Timer.”

It was the redheaded policeman.

“I told you I’d see you,” he said.

He rolled in a compact foldaway bed with its thick mattress folded up in the middle.

“Now you’re an angel,” Mrs. Feeley said, “an’ I don’t mean in the name only! But, love, we can’t one of us have a bed an’ the rest sleep on boards; we don’t never do things that way.”

“All cops aren’t stupid, Mrs. Feeley. It’s only in murder mysteries. Some of us can count as high as four.”

“Where on earth did you get ’em? All clean an’ new!”

“Sergeant loaned ’em to me from the jail!” he said.

“We was bound to sleep in them beds, one way or another,” Mrs. Feeley laughed. “If it hadn’t a been for this place, you might have made our acquaintance down at the hoosegow! Miss Tinkham, come out from under the bar…you’re decent. Come out an’ see what Guardian Angel brought us…an’ not a drop o’ beer in the house to treat him!”

Angel rolled one of the beds into the back room. Then he opened two more in the bar. Putting his hand on the last bed, he turned to Mrs. Feeley:

“I’ll be running along now. Where do you want this one?”

Mrs. Feeley smiled blissfully at him.

“Under me dimpled butt, boy! Under me dimpled butt!”

S
UNDAY
AFTERNOON
FOUR EAGER FIGURES STOOD
in the front rank of the group waiting to enter the hospital ward the moment that the nurse gave the signal. The nurse opened the doors and looked at the card in Mrs. Feeley’s hand. “Rafferty, third bed from the end.”

The group approached Timothy Rafferty, Mrs. Feeley at the head of the column like the bass drum.

“Hi, Timmy!” she said cheerfully, extending her hand.

Timmy Rafferty’s hand had the texture common to the hands of sick people, the weird feel of something that has been left in the water too long. His face was bleached and drawn. He smiled in a fashion that showed both curiosity and amusement.

“You had a near thing of it! But listen to me rattle…you don’t even know who we are.”

“I can guess,” Timmy said.

“Didn’t know you had so many relatives, did you? But if we’re all children of the same Father, that makes us half-brothers an’ half-sisters at least. I’m Mrs. Feeley an’ this is Miss Tinkham. The one holdin’ the plant we brought you is Mrs. Rasmussen. This here’s our body-guard, Ol’-Timer. If you can get a word outa him, you’re good!”

“I’m glad you came. The message the nurse brought had me stumped.”

“I can see how it might,” Mrs. Feeley said.

“You’re the ones who brought me to the hospital?”

“Miss Tinkham came with you her own self. We went in for a beer, an’ when nobody came to wait on us, we looked behind the bar an’ seen you…more dead than alive!”

“Lucky you did…another couple of hours and they never could have pumped it out of me. You come in every day to keep the place going? Give me a fill-in, will you? I can’t understand anyone doing that for some one they don’t even know.”

“Timmy, dear boy,” Miss Tinkham said, “we were not altogether without selfish motives. As a matter of fact, we were completely on our uppers.”

“We was comin’ in to hit you up for a job, an’ a few beers. Don’t get us wrong: we ain’t do-gooders! Never seen one yet that wouldn’t do you, but good! We got money, incomes. All of us. Just happens right now we can’t get our hands on it. We’re waitin’ for them to mail it to us.”

“From California,” Miss Tinkham explained. “We are from San Diego but were visiting in New York.”

“New York?”

“To make a short story long,” Miss Tinkham laughed, “we spent all our money in our usual headlong fashion…but no regrets! To conceal the fact from our hosts, we got on the train as though leaving for the Coast. Then we disembarked at Newark. That was as far as our money would take us.”

“We was goin’ to find work till our checks come,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “How’s your appetite? Get nothin’ but slops here!”

Mrs. Feeley laughed. “Look at him! So many drains hangin’ out of him that he looks like a colander full o’ macaroni. She’d try to give him prime ribs o’ beef this minute!”

“Do him a world o’ good,” Mrs. Rasmussen said doggedly.

Timmy smiled. “What are you using for stock? My credit’s shot.”

“That’s where we come in, Timmy! That bruiser, Beauty Boy we call him, drives the beer truck? He give me some guff the first day, but I’m allergic to that stuff, like Miss Tinkham says. I put him in his place pretty quick. There wasn’t but a drop left when we took over. Then we got three half-barrels, lessee…that was Thursday. Two more Friday an’ yesterday I had to get three more.”

“How did you make him give you the credit,” Timmy marveled.

“Credit, hell! Paid cash. He had to wait the whole day for his money for the first three. Whitey an’ his gang chipped in twenty-two dollars to buy flowers for you. But we used it to pay for the beer. After that we paid spot cash on delivery.”

“That was swell of them,” Timmy said, “but you did right to pay for the beer.”

“All paid for, includin’ them three barrels that ain’t been touched…well, only a coupla glasses for us.”

“That’s pretty near my turnover for a month,” Timmy said. “Drink all you want…don’t be mean with yourselves.”

“An’ look here,” Mrs. Feeley showed him the inside of Mrs. Rasmussen’s big purse. “Forty-one dollars an’ five cents. We used forty-five cents for our bus fare.”

Timmy’s blue eyes filled with the easy tears of physical weakness.

“Don’t go wellin’-up on us!” Mrs. Feeley scolded. “Nobody never heard o’ no Air-Borne Infantry blubberin’ over a few lousy bucks. It’s the least we could do…livin’ off you. Eatin’ your food, drinking your beer, sleepin’…”

“Blow!” Mrs. Rasmussen handed Timmy a Kleenex.

“In the name of all that’s holy,” Timmy said, “Will you tell me where you found to sleep? One hard canvas cot…”

“Don’t give it another thought!” Mrs. Feeley said. “For the figger, it’s good! An’ you got more friends than you realize, young man. Friday, that darlin’ Angel brought us four lovely beds from the jail! Not from the cells! The good ones the cops keep for the lady love-nest killers.”

Timmy grinned. “All we need is customers.”

“The place is crawlin’ with ’em! Hafta buy more glasses tomorrow!”

“There’s just one thing I’d like to know,” Timmy said. “How did you do it?”

Mrs. Feeley pointed her finger at Mrs. Rasmussen. “Fed ’em! Don’t you know the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”

“There wasn’t money or food enough there for a gold-fish.”

“You don’t know her!” Mrs. Feeley said. “She’s the only person I know who can make somethin’ outa nothin’!”

“There is no limit to Mrs. Rasmussen’s resourcefulness,” Miss Tinkham said. “And Mrs. Feeley’s executive ability, her firm hand in dictating policy and procedure to underlings such as the brewery employee.”

“We all work,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Them fellers’ mouths was hangin’ open so wide you could drive a team an’ wagon in when they heard Miss Tinkham discoursin’! I said to ’em then an’ there: ‘Look what you get with a ten-cent beer at Timmy’s! Culture! That’s what!’”

“An’ you ain’t heard her play the piano an’ sing,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “She brings out the talent in everybody. When she gathers ’em round the piano for a song-fest, there’s no sleep for anybody in the county that night.”

“Do your heart good to hear it,” Mrs. Feeley said. “An’ in case anybody gets smart, Ol’-Timer here has some o’ the sweetest tricks you ever seen. What he can’t do with a inch o’ cigar ash in a glass o’ beer! After that, all we have to do is plant a lily on their chest!”

“I can see my education has been neglected,” Timmy grinned. “Wish they’d let me outa here soon.”

“Not for a while, by the looks o’ you,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Don’t worry about a thing. We’re gonna earn our keep.”

“Earn your keep? I don’t even know how to repay you….I’m not enough of a mixer to make a go as Mine Host.”

“What influenced you to embark upon the noble career of purveying relief to the Mass Thirst?” Miss Tinkham asked.