The Cocktail Waitress (14 page)

“Thank you, Mr. Eckert. How much am I going to owe you?”

“… For our chat today, nothing. If you want me to stay on the case, put it on my calendar—oh, shall we say two-fifty?”

“Two-fifty’s fine. Thank you.”

I wrote him a check for $250, thanked him again, and led the way out, Tom following. “Which way is this new station house your friend built, if you know?” I asked him.

“Across the street from the courthouse.”

“Then we can walk.”

The sheriff’s office was in a big room off the street, but shutting it off when you went in was an elbow-high counter with desks on the far side, girls seated at some, uniformed men at the others. We leaned on the counter, and Tom rapped with his knuckles. A girl came, and when she heard what case it was, called a deputy in the back of the room. He came, and remembering what Mr. Eckert had said, I put on a bit of an act, playing the poor, upset little girl who’d gotten charmed into putting her property at risk—which wasn’t so far from the truth, of course. “I went bail for a man who has skipped,” I said with my friendliest smile, “and I’ve come to find out what I can do, what the Sheriff can help me to do, to bring him back so I don’t lose my house.”

“… On that,” he said, eyeing me close, “I’d take it very serious.”

“I do take it serious,” I assured him. “If it was your house at risk, I think you’d take it serious too. But you seem to mean more than you’ve said. Give. What’s your name?”

“Harrison.”

“Deputy Harrison, I’m listening.”

“Mrs. Medford, it’s so rare for bail actually to be forfeited that I can’t remember its happening. But most bail is signed for by bondsmen, professional bondsmen, who have tremendous political clout. They’re not supposed to have it, but do. In the case of a woman who signed the bond as a friend, who has no particular clout—or do you have?”

“Not the slightest.”

I aimed that at Tom, and saw him wince. “In that case,” Deputy Harrison went on, “I’d say you could be in trouble. You could be the human sacrifice offered up, to prove the law takes its course— without fear, favor, or finagling of any kind.”

“… And is that so, that the law takes its course without favor?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m told Jim Lacey was well known around here, built this building for you.”

At that, he snorted. “Oh, yes. He was known. Sheriff had to tell him three times to stop trying to give the men bottles ‘for after hours.’ Don’t worry that he’s got friends here, Mrs. Medford, for he hasn’t.”

“O.K.”

“But that’s not entirely the good thing you might think it is.”

“Oh?”

“If he did have friends here, they might know where to find him. Now, we’ll do all we can, but it’s not a case with men detailed to search—we just haven’t got the men. What that means, in practice, is you’ll have to find him yourself. The good news is, you might be able to where we couldn’t. After all, I’m sure he does have a few friends somewhere, who wouldn’t help us, but who might shoot off their mouths to you. You see what I’m saying? If you can get them to tell you anything, we’ll be on it right away, if you give us the barest hint. To help a young girl like you, who made a mistake and now is in a jam,
we’ll act and act quick—but we have to have something to act on.”

“Well, then we’re at a dead end, because I don’t have the barest hint to give you.”

“But why?” He looked genuinely baffled. “Why wouldn’t you know where to find this guy, or at least his friends?”

“… Me? Why would I?”

“You went his bail, didn’t you?”

I stood there, utterly crossed up, and then at last saw what he meant. I asked him: “You mean there was something personal, as you think, between me and Mr. Lacey?”

“Well it’s what you would think, isn’t it?”

“Lacey’s
my
friend,” Tom cut in.

“All right, then
you
must know—?”

“I don’t.”

Deputy Harrison looked at Tom in a very peculiar way, and the way Tom looked away, I suddenly felt that he did know something, at least more than he was telling us. I knew also, if I wanted to find out, I had to get him out of there. So I thanked Deputy Harrison, shaking his hand with both of mine. He smiled, nodded, and squeezed my hand extra, as if to communicate that he really wanted to help. Then I drove home with Tom, and asked: “What was
that
all about? What are you keeping from me?”

“I thought of someone, that’s all. Jim has a girl. On the side, apart from his wife. I saw her once, leaving his office when I came to pick him up.”

“And Deputy Harrison thought I was she?”

“I don’t know that he knows about her. Probably not, and I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. But I guess he thought you might be something like that to Jim. He gave his reason for thinking it, and you can’t say it didn’t make sense—until you were explained, that is. Your connection with the case, through me.”

“So who is this girl?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know—not her name, not where she lives, nothing.”

“What do I do now?”

“Joan, if I knew I’d certainly say.”

I asked him in and he began making calls, or rather the same call, over and over, to at least a dozen people: “Jack?”—or whatever the name would be—“Where’s Jim? I have a reason for wanting to know… O.K., but if you hear something, will you ring me at this number? Oh, and do you have any idea how I might reach his girl? No, not his wife. You know who I mean…” About the fifteenth call I went out in the hall to put my hand on the receiver, so he couldn’t lift it again. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve had about all I can take.”

“It’s all I know to do. These people are his friends, and one of them might know something useful—if they’d want to tell me.”

“O.K., but one more call and I’ll scream.”

“I’m doing this for you, let’s remember.” He shoved my hand aside and lifted the receiver.

I didn’t scream, but I began slapping at him again as he sat there at the telephone table, the way I’d slapped him that night at the Garden. He got up, put his arms around me, wrapped me up, and held me until I calmed down. “I’m sorry,” I said, still trembling. “—I have a temper, as perhaps you’ve found out.”

“Well, you’d better get it under control, Joan, at least where I’m concerned. It’s not my fault Jim skipped.”

That was enough to set me off again. “Not your fault? Not your fault?”

I then recited it at him, the whole book, beginning with the first night, what he did to me and what I did to him; then my signing the bond for his friend Mr. Lacey, and then the thanks I got, being taken
to a so-called nightclub that was really a hot-sheets motel in flimsiest disguise—I really screamed it at him, until I was hoarse and could hardly talk. When I collapsed into a chair and started to cry, he took his handkerchief out, wiped my nose, and asked: “Are you done?”

“I guess so. Please, will you go home?”

“Not just yet I won’t. First off, Joan, on this litany you keep hurling at me. When a woman is really sore, when she hates a man for what he’s done, she doesn’t entertain his offers night after night, she tells him so and cuts him cold.”

“Not if he’s a long-standing customer and she’s a waitress who needs her job.”

“O.K.—maybe. But at least, the one night he makes no invitation, she doesn’t proffer one of her own, I think you’ll agree with that?”

I said nothing.

“So then we come to Jim Lacey, and why you signed his bail. Well why did you, Joan? Why?”

“Because you asked me to.”

“I didn’t at all; I never asked you to.”

“O.K., maybe it was so you’d know I wasn’t a pauper, so you would stop treating me like some kind of cocktail girl—”

“You
are
a cocktail girl!”

“O.K., I’m a cocktail girl, and to thank this poor waif for helping your friend, you take her to a whorehouse.”

“I had a reason for that too.”

“Explain it, please.”

“I had the impression that you liked me, that you might want more of my company than you could have just chatting at the Garden. But I wanted to take you somewhere special for it—somewhere where the lights would be dim and the music low, where people would be having a good time. A place where we could be with each other and not be bothered, but with a touch of excitement, too. You may not
have cared for the Wigwam, but the fact is, it’s an exclusive club— they’ve hosted some of the most famous and influential people in this town, perhaps even a president or two.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“I thought at least it would be nicer than promoting an invite here, or suggesting you come back to my house. That felt too much like— well, like what Liz does, where it’s for money, not because two people want each other so badly they can’t stand it.”

“You think I wanted you that badly?”

“I know you did. You admitted you did.”

“In that moment! I lost my head for a moment. But I woke up quick enough, and when I did I ran out of that place practically naked, just to get away.”

“It was more than a moment. When I was unbuttoning your pants, who was it helping me? Who pulled your blouse off? And who was it unbuttoned my cuffs? Unless there was a third person in there with us that I didn’t notice, it was you, Joan.”

Step by step, he took me back over what I had done, from the day of Ron’s funeral on. “You want me to say it plain?”

“All right, all right, all right—I wanted you, I admit it. I’m human, and the way you touched me I couldn’t help it. I—”

“O.K., O.K., O.K., now we’re getting somewhere. So the question is why did you run? Why didn’t you hold still for what you wanted, what I wanted, what we both wanted? I’ll put it in three little words: Earl, K, White. I’ll add a fourth and fifth if you like—”

“… The Third.”

“The Third. A worn-out, washed-out scarecrow, old enough to be your father and then some, ugly to look at and I bet worse still to touch—but, he’s got money.”

He stopped then and waited for me to say something. And finally I did. “Don’t knock money. I need it. You need it. Show me the person who doesn’t need it.”

“I wouldn’t sleep with an old man to get it.”

“Yes you would. If he’d have you. If he knew the governor and could get you that contract for the goddam nettles. You know you would.”

A half hour must have gone by, with him at the window, just standing there, looking out. The phone didn’t ring once.

Then suddenly he said: “I was going to suggest we get some dinner, but as I feel now, I don’t want to. If you need me, let me know. I’m in the book.”

And he left.

Around seven, I went over to the Royal Arms, had something to eat, then drove back and went to bed. I spent an utterly miserable night, still worried sick over the situation, still up in the air about Lacey, and in pieces at what Tom and I had said to each other. I woke at three and then again at six, at which point there was no sense trying to fall asleep again, so I sat in the living room looking out at the street until the sun came up.

Tom had tried phoning everyone he could think of the day before, except for one person, leaving her out for an excellent reason—but as nothing had come of any of his calls, it was the only thread left to pull. I had myself some breakfast, put on a dark suit, combed my hair back and pinned it up, then pulled the White Pages from the cabinet and flipped through until I reached the Ls. I was afraid they might not be in the book, what with his being something of a public figure, but there they were. I copied out the address, got into my car, and just thirty minutes later was pulling up in front of their house, a modern split-level home with tile roof and towering shrubs framing the porch.

The door opened before I even shut off the ignition. The woman standing behind it was thickset and middle-aged, I would say perhaps fifty, with gray hair, and light blue eyes that sized me up as I approached. I said: “Good morning. Mrs. Lacey?”

“… Yes, I’m Pearl Lacey.”

“I’m Joan Medford, Mrs. Lacey. You husband and I have—”

I’d been about to say
a friend in common,
but she didn’t let me get
that far. “Medford! My god. I never expected you to show up here. Well, you surely don’t have to tell me what you and my husband have—I can imagine well enough.”

“You can’t, as it’s not anything like—”

“I’ve heard it before, dear, and from ones that looked prettier than you. What happened, he’s not taking you with him? Is it your fragile constitution, you just can’t bear the tropical heat? Or tell me, did he cheat on us both …?”

I was taken by surprise, not so much by her anger, as I’d prepared myself for her drawing the same conclusion Deputy Harrison had, as by her recognizing my name. But her next remark explained it: “You poor thing—standing his bail and then nothing to show for it but the brush. And after all those evenings you two must have spent together when I thought he was working on his sewer projects. Well, I suppose in a way he was.”

“Mrs. Lacey, I’ll have you know there were no evenings together, or nights, or days. I only met your husband once, and the only thing that passed between us that time was a handshake.”

“There’s no need to lie anymore, dear, certainly not to protect him.”

“I’m not.” Something in my voice stopped her, made her look at me differently.

“… But you went my husband’s bail!”

“Yes I did, Mrs. Lacey.”

“Why would you go his bail if you weren’t …?”

As I’ve said, my temper’s my greatest weakness, and I wanted to tell her it was none of her business why, but I made myself remember the one great object today was to find out all that I could, and that to do it I’d have to be friendly, even to this woman. Especially to this woman, as she seemed to know something about where Lacey was, judging from her remark about tropical heat.

“I did it to please a friend,” I told her, after swallowing one or two times.

“What friend?”

“It’s what I was about to tell you when you cut me off before. Your husband and I have a friend in common, Mr. Thomas Barclay.”

“Tom? You know him?”

“I’ve said: I count him a friend.” At least, until last night, I thought; but I didn’t say this to her.