The Cocktail Waitress (15 page)

She stepped back a bit, not enough to let me inside, but enough so that it no longer felt like she was trying to use her rigid body to block the doorway. “Jim thought Tom would sign his bond himself. Why didn’t he?”

“He couldn’t.”

“He could have put up his house, as I gather you did.”

“It’s mortgaged.”

“I never heard that before.”

“It’s what he told me.”

“And you signed just to please him?”

“… Perhaps—I had other reasons.”

“You mean you’re sleeping with him?”

“No, I’m not!”

On that, I flashed hot, and at once I saw her take note. Then: “O.K., then you’re sleeping with Jim. It’s the only other reason you could have.”

“It’s not my other reason!”

I was having a battle with myself by now, to keep from going over and letting her have it, as I’d let Tom have it twice now. I stood there blinking at her, so she had to repeat once or twice before I heard what she asked: “What was your other reason?”

“I wanted to do something, something nice if I could, for Tom. Because… I’m marrying somebody else—or at least I think I am.”

“Who is this somebody else?”

“That’s where your business ends, I’m afraid. I’ve told you all you need to know: your husband and I were nothing to each other, not
friends, not even acquaintances; I helped him to help a friend, and now it’s backfired and I stand to lose something I can’t easily bear to lose, unless you can help me get on your husband’s trail—as I’d think you’d be glad to do, if you know where he is or where he’s going.”

“It’s not so simple. If he’s not going with you, he’s going with another—” The word she’d been about to use would not have been complimentary and she saw, I think, that I was at my limit already. “… With another woman. And if he were caught and it came out…” She grimaced. “I can bear the shame of being thought the wife of a criminal, even of a fugitive. But to have it written in the papers that he left me for some girl our son’s age—”

“O.K. I understand.”

She looked at me closely, staring into my eyes in a way that made me uncomfortable. “… You do, don’t you?”

“I know something about men, I’m sorry to say. I may be younger than you, but I’ve lived some. I have a child too, and no father for him, though in my case I couldn’t be happier that he’s gone.”

“… Another woman?”

“A culvert wall, at seventy miles per hour.”

She nodded slowly.

“Mrs. Medford, I’m sorry—I saw you and thought you were something worse than you are.”

“Then, I’m sorry too, for getting upset. I have quite a lot on my mind.”

“It sounds like we’ve both had men in our lives who are, to put it bluntly, sons of bitches.”

“To put it truthfully.”

“Well, you’re right that I want my son of a bitch caught and brought back to face the music. And now that I see you’re not sleeping with him but chasing him down, I’d love to give you some help—provided you agree to do something for me. Two things.”

“Yes?”

“Keep the woman out of it—out of the story, I mean. Make sure the news photographers snap him alone, not her by his side. I don’t care how you do it, just that you do. And—keep me out of it, too, as far as the police go.” She saw that I was puzzled. Looking around the block, at the rush-hour foot traffic going past—wholly uninterested, but within range to hear—she stepped back further, allowing me inside at last. She shut the door behind us and, even so, kept her voice low when she spoke. “There were things I couldn’t tell the police, when they came and questioned me about Jim’s disappearance. Had I known what he was planning? Had I seen any signs …? I said no. What woman ever knows that her husband is about to leave her?”

“But you had seen something?”

“When he was in the shower Tuesday evening, the night before he was due in court. I found two tickets in his briefcase—two plane tickets issued under phony names, Mr. and Mrs. James Barnaby, leaving for Nassau at twelve o’clock Friday—tomorrow, in other words. When I shook them in his face, he said they were for us. We’d fly away together. Well, it was half the truth. In the morning, he was gone—and both tickets with him. But how could I tell the police this? That I knew about the tickets and let him hold onto them because I thought I would be taken along?”

I said: “You would have left everything behind? Your house, your son, your life …?”

“My son has been charting his own course for years now, since he turned sixteen, pretty much. My life, in this neighborhood at least, is over and has been over since the day Jim was arrested—I can barely show my face, even among people who were our friends once. As for my house and the other things we have, well … the tickets weren’t the only thing I found in his bag.” She held my gaze firm. “I didn’t count it, Joan, but I worked in a bank before marrying, and I can still estimate by eye. He’s got at least fifty grand in that briefcase, to go down to Nassau with, and lay in the sun for a while. And maybe more.”

“But—if he had that much money—he could have made bail anytime he wanted!”

“Sure, and had less to live on when he got to the islands. Why should he, if he could persuade someone else to put up the money for him?”

“And where did all this money in his briefcase come from?”

A flush of red rose along her cheeks, and I remembered the newspaper articles about the bribes he was supposed to have taken. “I don’t care to speculate. All I can tell you is, here was all this money, and a pair of plane tickets, with the alternative being no money, just a public trial and its aftermath, and I said to myself, sometimes you just have to jump.”

“But then, he jumped without you.”

“Now you’ve got it. And you can see why I couldn’t share this with the police.”

“No, of course,” I said, seeing it perfectly. An officer like Young might have bent the rules for her, but a Church would have had her hunting up bail of her own in no time. “Well, they don’t have to know I heard about the tickets from you. Tom made a pile of calls yesterday, to all your husband’s friends. One of them might have known and told him.”

“Mrs. Medford—Joan—if you can handle it that way you’ll have my blessing and my thanks. All you have to do is look for Mr. and Mrs. Barnaby in the United Airlines terminal tomorrow before noon, and you should find him.”

I stood there blinking at her, trying to realize she had made it possible for me to keep from losing my house. I wanted to thank her, but nothing I could think of to say seemed to cover it. So I just said, “I will,” and turned to go.

As I opened the door, she said: “If you see Tom, give him my love. He’s a good one, if a bit pie-eyed sometimes.”

“Glad to.”

“He ever tell you that idea he has for the Chesapeake Bay—some
idea he can work the atomic plants to get the nettles out, use one against the other? If that’s not screwy, I don’t know what is.”

“Yes, he’s told me.”

Next thing I knew, I was in Tom’s car, and we were headed for Upper Marlboro, with this tremendous piece of information Mrs. Lacey had given me. I must have called him but don’t remember doing it. We talked, very excited, about what our next move would be, with no backwash to last night and the sour note we had broken on. Then we were at Upper Marlboro, parked back of the courthouse, and then in the Sheriff’s office again. Deputy Harrison came out to see me, and was really friendly about it. “Then O.K.,” he said. “That cooks his goose, that does it. We’ll be there, with our warrant to serve on him. We’ll take it over—you’ve nothing to worry about.”

“Feel better now?” asked Tom as we headed home.

“A little relieved perhaps. Once he’s back in jail, then I’ll feel better.”

We got to my house, and I asked him in, of course. He dropped into the chair I usually sat in, staring out the window, the way I so often did. “… Something wrong?” I asked, after a while.

“No, not a thing.”

But then, five minutes later: “I think.”

And then: “Joan, I’m worried, and don’t even know about what. But suddenly, it’s all become too damned easy.”

“… Well?” I asked after a moment or two. “The whole trouble was, they didn’t know where to find him. Now they do. It takes care of everything.”

After a long time, he said: “Jim Lacey’s nobody’s saint, but he’s nobody’s fool either. Being crooked does not also mean being stupid. So Jim Lacey knows his wife saw the tickets and knows what he’s up to. So he knows she could do her best to louse him. So what does he do about it?”

“… You asking me?”

“Myself. I just don’t happen to know.”

But pretty soon he began snapping his fingers. “What I would do about it would be to go out to that airport, bringing the girlfriend along, and then separate from her, so as not to be spotted as a couple. Then I’d put myself somewhere, maybe topside in the lunchroom, where I could keep an eye on that waiting room, to see everyone that comes in. So here come the Maryland officers—in uniform, perhaps,
but even if not, I know them personally from when I built the station.”

“… O.K.? What then?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“No, but I don’t feel relieved anymore.”

“Well, I certainly don’t. O.K., I see them come in, and right away, I slip out. I slip out into a cab, and beat it to the bus station. There I wait for the girl—who may have slipped out too, and be waiting at the cab stand. So we go by bus to Miami, where I take the same flight the next day. So I forfeit the price of two tickets. So? It’s better than going to prison.”

“I don’t feel relieved
at all.”

“I’m sorry if I upset you.”

“But what do we do?”

“You say we in that tone of voice, I have to think of something.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean. Don’t you?”

I felt weak and queer and smothered, and am not at all sure that I answered.

By now he was tramping around, showing every sign of excitement, and then suddenly snapped his fingers again, telling me very excitedly: “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” I waited, and he went on, kneeling beside my chair: “We need a hand, from someone else with the power to arrest and an interest in doing so, someone he won’t recognize. We can’t use the Airport Police, on account that they’re Federal and take no part in local bail jumps. However, I think we have an alternative. He’s skipping with fifty grand, and it’s fairly certain he hasn’t paid any tax on the money, which means IRS will move in, if we just give them the tip.
They
can claim help from the Airport Police, as they’re Federal too. Come on, we’re going to Wheaton.”

We used his car again, and once more were in one of those offices with counters in front, desks in back, and girls in short skirts chewing gum. I pictured all three being ordered in bulk from something like the Sears Catalog. At one of the desks was a man, who came and asked what we wanted. Tom let me talk and I did, being as brief as I could, yet at the same time explaining myself, who I was, and how I’d gone Lacey’s bond. Then I said: “Where you come in is: He’s skipping with fifty grand, fifty thousand dollars, or so I’m reliably informed, and if he’s skipping to Nassau, we can bet he hasn’t paid any tax, and could be he doesn’t intend to. Sir, does that possibility interest the IRS?”

“Lady, are you being funny?”

“You mean IRS doesn’t care?”

“I mean it does—and how.”

“Then what does it do about it? And what do I do about it?”

“Hold everything—got to consult.”

He went to his desk, picked up the phone and pressed buttons. Pretty soon another man was there. They whispered a minute, then spoke to a girl, who got up and went through a door. In a bit she came out with a card, which the men took from her and studied. Then they both came to the counter. “O.K.,” the first man said. “This is Mr. Schwartz, who will act with me in this matter. My name is Christopher, and we’ve looked Mr. Lacey up—he filed a return last year, but paid so small a tax we checked him out. We didn’t turn up a great deal—there’s nothing now pending against him. But skipping to Nassau, with fifty grand in his pocket, sets up a risk for us that we simply can’t ignore.”

“Yes, Mr. Christopher, but what—?”

“I’m coming to it, Mrs. Medford. We collar him at the airport, count the cash he has on him, figure his tax from the tables, and impound it.”

“In the waiting room, or where?”

“In the Airport Police office. It’s downstairs from the main waiting room.”

“And after you’ve taken the money?”

“That’s all, we’re done. We give a receipt, of course. If he doesn’t like it he sues us in court.”

“You mean he’s free to go?”

“We have no objection, none at all.”

“But what I’m interested in is the Maryland Police—having him held long enough for them to come in and get him.”

“I see your point, but we can’t help you directly. However, if the Maryland Police got there while we’re working him over, if they knew where to come, to the Airport Police office—”

“You mean I should call them about it?”

“If we’re all in sync, we don’t actually work together, but the result will be the same.”

“I see. I see. Then—thank you.”

“Wait a minute, not so fast.”

He and Mr. Schwartz whispered, and then Mr. Schwartz asked: “You know this man, Mrs. Medford?”

“I met him once, yes.”

“You know his lady friend?”

“Not even by name, no. But Tom here, he’s seen her. And he knows Lacey as well, much better than I do.”

“All right, then.” To Tom: “You can finger him for us, and her. She’s important, because the possibility that we would be there must have occurred to him, and letting her handle the briefcase would be a simple way out—if we get him, she can slip away.”

“He’d have to trust her for that,” Tom said.

“Not at all,” said Mr. Schwartz, grinning, but the way a cat grins at a mouse. “He just has to hand her the bag and tell her to take it
onto the plane for him. He doesn’t have to say what’s in it.”

“That’s why we need you there,” Mr. Christopher insisted. “If he doesn’t have the case we can grab
her,
and impound the tax that way.”

I said: “But then you’ll let the girl go? I made a promise to the person who told us where to find him, that we’d keep the girl out of it.”