True Confessions (25 page)

Corinne put her purse on the table and kept the scarf around her shoulders. She looked as if she were ready to run. “There’s a reason I brought my own car.”

“I’d like to hear that, I really would.”

“I don’t want to fuck you.”

“That’s nice talk. I was in Wilshire Vice there, I didn’t have to pay a cover charge to hear talk like that. They talked about that a lot, the people you met in Vice. Sucking, too, you get right down to it. Eating out is what they call it in Vice.”

Corinne put her hands on her pocketbook. “You’re drinking that stuff like it’s water.”

“Well, I been drinking it since four o’clock this afternoon, which is four hours and ten minutes ago, the way I figure. You know something? You’re not very funny. On my own personal laugh meter, I figure you about a two-and-a-half. You don’t even get a box of Mars Bars.”

“That’s ‘Dr. I.Q.,’ Mars Bars. The laugh meter’s ‘Can You Top This.’ “

“You know something, you’re a pain in the ass.”

“I’m leaving,” Corinne said.

“And I’ll break your arm, you do,” Tom Spellacy said. They stared at each other across the table. The waiter came and he ordered another rye and water. Corinne asked for a daiquiri and a menu. She buried her head in the menu until the waiter returned with the drinks.

“I’ll have the Salisbury steak.”

“That’s a four-dollar-and-fifty-cent name for hamburger,” Tom Spellacy said. He asked the waiter how the trout amandine was cooked and the beef Wellington and the breast of capon in white wine sauce and the rognons de veau and the salmon mousse and the chicken tetrazzini and he finally ordered Salisbury steak and another rye and water for himself and another daiquiri for Corinne.

Corinne had not touched her first drink.

“You want to start over again?” she said when the waiter left.

“Sure.”

She took off her scarf and placed her pocketbook by the leg of her chair. “When you were pulling that act with the waiter . . .” He started to protest but she kept on talking, “... I kept thinking about Charlie Quinlan. About after I was married to him, I mean. I don’t think I thought of him in years until you mentioned him yesterday.”

“I’m sorry I thought his name was Chuckie Quinn, if that’s what’s giving you the hard-on.”

“It doesn’t make any difference. I wouldn’t recognize him if he was the waiter.”

“You were married to him, for Christ’s sake.”

“For three years. I probably fucked him seven hundred times. I still wouldn’t recognize him.” She lifted the daiquiri and over the raised glass, she said, “I cut my losses, Tom.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

“And that’s what you were thinking.”

“No,” she said. “I was thinking that after the divorce, I wore dirty underwear the first couple of years, I guess on the grounds that anything that made me keep my clothes on was all to the good.”

“That’s swell,” Tom Spellacy said. “Really swell. It makes a lot of sense, that does.”

She watched a waiter wheel a meat trolley through the room and then looked him in the eye. “It means,” she said finally, “I wasn’t listening to you. All that time you were doing that number with the waiter about the menu, I wasn’t listening to you. I wasn’t embarrassed you were trying to cause a scene, I was somewhere else.”

“Thinking about your fucking underwear.”

“Dirty underwear,” she said quietly.

“It’s so important, your dirty drawers.”

“No,” she said, “it was not listening to you that was so important.”

The wine steward asked if they wished some wine. Corinne shook her head and Tom Spellacy ordered another drink. The waiter took away the service plates, gave them each a new napkin, switched knives and served the meal. They did not speak until the waiter had departed.

“It’s very good,” Corinne said after taking a bite.

“Tasty,” Tom Spellacy said. His meal was still untouched.

“I have only one rule about restaurants.”

’Td like to hear that.”

“You never eat fish in a restaurant where the menu says, Trom Neptune’s Locker.’ You know, with drawings of mermaids.”

“Why’s that?”

She looked surprised. “That’s what somebody told me once.”

“You don’t have much gift for small talk, you’re not talking about fucking.”

Corinne smiled brightly, as if he had just told a joke. She took a drink of water and then leaned across the table, still smiling. “I’ve moved out of the apartment. That’s another reason I brought my car.”

“You’ll be easy to find.”

“I left your things in a box inside the door. You can pick them up and leave the key with the super.”

“Fuck the Jockey shorts.”

The smile on her face did not waver. She propped her chin on her finger and she was utterly calm and he realized suddenly that she was serious and that he could not make her back down. I always cut my losses. It didn’t do much for the pride, but in ways he would not wish to admit, it was a relief. He picked up his knife and fork and began to eat.

“You’re going to get the scrape.” It was a statement, not a question.

She nodded.

He thought of Brenda nicking Lucille Cotter and he wondered if he should give her the name of a good man. A safe man. When he was in Wilshire Vice, he knew the names of all the safe men, the gynecologists who had lost their licenses for selling morphine or over a woman and who weren’t on the bottle. The good men used by city hall and the department and the DA’s office. A little scrape to help you out of a scrape . . .

“Tom,” Corinne said.

His smile felt foolish and he wondered if the liquor was beginning to hit him.

“Nothing’s changed except it’s finished, and you’re relieved.”

“We could always . . .” He could not continue. Could always what? He did not know what to say.

They ate in silence.

“Don’t worry,” she said after a while. It had not occurred to him to worry. She caught the surprised look on his face and said, “Not that I think you were consumed by it.”

“You know all the answers,” he said.

“That’s always been my problem. By the time I know all the answers, it’s all over.” She folded her napkin into a neat triangle. “Right now, for example, you’re embarrassed. You think your relief is showing.”

He did not answer.

“Have a chocolate eclair,” she said. “A second cup of coffee. Change the subject. What shall we talk about?”

He carefully removed the paper from a cube of sugar, avoiding her eyes.

“Your brother,” she suggested.

“My brother hasn’t got anything to do with this.”

“Oh, yes, he does. You don’t know why, but you always blame your brother.”

“Give it a rest, Corinne.” Finish the coffee, pay the check, tip the parking boy. He wondered if he had enough change for both cars. He wondered if they would shake hands or if he should kiss her on the cheek. He felt in his pocket. He had two quarters.

“You give him a rest. You want to make him just like you. You want to prove he’s just like you. That’s what you don’t understand. He is. Just like you. He’s your brother.”

It always came down to Des.

She shook out her napkin and dropped it on the table.

“Be like me,” she said, and then she smiled. “Always hopeful. I’ve cut my losses so often, I’d better be.”

The nuns were herding onto the merry-go-round. Tom Spel-lacy could see some of them trying to induce the Cardinal to go on the ride. The Cardinal raised his hands and kept shaking his head no. He was holding a bag of peanuts in one hand and there were fragments of peanut shells clinging to his black suit. The merry-go-round started, and as it picked up speed, the Cardinal waved wearily at the nuns. Then he turned and walked slowly to a bench. He seemed to sit down in sections. He dismissed his attendants and took off his homburg. His skin was white and already turning pink in the sun. From the shadow of a hot-dog stand the Mother Superior and a young priest and two middle-aged laymen watched him with the same intensity as nurses watching a patient in an oxygen tent. One of the laymen tried to approach and the Cardinal irritably brushed him away. The tiny terrier arranged itself at the Cardinal’s feet. For a moment Tom Spellacy thought he was going to kick it.

The old bastard likes to be alone, he thought. It was an appealing notion. He tried to imagine the Cardinal giving Des the brush. No. It would never happen. Des would anticipate.

I don’t anticipate, that’s my problem. With me, people cut their losses. Corinne. Brenda. Even Mary Margaret. In and out of Camarillo without so much as a by-your-leave. In the parking lot at the Windsor, Corinne had put her arms around him and held him for a moment. Then she had tipped the parking boy herself.

A half-dollar.

He watched Crotty approach down the boardwalk, leading an old man who looked as if he had not taken a bath in a month. The old man was pushing a grocery shopping cart filled with carved shooting-gallery targets. The Cardinal stared at the spectacle of the old man and for a moment Tom Spellacy thought that Crotty was going to stop and introduce them. A little different from Dan T. Campion and Cosmo Gentile and the other leading Catholic laymen he gets to see, that’s for sure. All he knew about the old man was that he carved puppets and pushed his shopping cart around the state, one end to the other, and that his name was Shopping Cart Johnson and that he had left a message for Crotty that he knew the murderer of Lois Fazenda and that he would be at Ocean Park today selling puppets to the target galleries. Crotty had run into him before. He must be a hundred years old, Crotty had said, and he smells like he uses dog shit for shaving lotion. A junk man, we used to call a guy like that, or a bum, maybe, we weren’t feeling too good that day, but he picks up things, being on the go all the time, and sometimes he’s useful.

Shopping Cart Johnson took a Camel from the package Tom Spellacy offered. He lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, blew out the match and then put the package into his shirt pocket.

“I’m about as well off as a man can get,” Shopping Cart Johnson said without being asked. “Ain’t got no rent. I sleep in my pup tent off the road. Do my own cooking, my own laundry. Carve my targets and wash my own clothes every Saturday.”

“Today must be Friday then,” Tom Spellacy said.

“So it is,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “No bills, no taxes, no worries. Need a little money, can always sell a pint of blood. AB negative. Always in demand. Knew a fellow once, had a bleeding ulcer, wanted to keep me around. Hundred a week, three hots and a cot, and a shot at the nigger maid. ‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘don’t appeal to me. I like the wide open spaces.’ “

Tom Spellacy had heard worse routines. It had been polished by constant repetition and he was sure that Shopping Cart Johnson could recite it at the first hint of a hot meal. It was the routine of a man used to paying for his supper by chopping wood or doing the chores or washing dishes.

“Always on the go, seeing new spots, meeting new people,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “People know me from Crescent City to Calexico. Know a fellow in Crescent City, drives a Studebaker, XYL 468, ninety-one years young, married a pretty little thing, fourteen years old. Can’t keep a good man down, as the saying goes.”

“Or up, as the saying also goes,” Tom Spellacy said. He knew it was no use pushing Shopping Cart Johnson. He would get to the point in his own time. In the meantime, enjoy the sun. It was a useless venture anyway.

“So it does,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “What more can a man ask? Only expense is shoes. I go through a pair every two, three weeks. Only bother is ants and flies. But hell, everybody gets flies sometimes.”

Tom Spellacy took a notebook from his pocket. “I better get this down, Frank. Fuqua’s the one I want to read it to.” He wrote the date and “Ocean Park” and “Shopping Cart Johnson” and “Crescent City to Calexico” and out loud he repeated, “ ‘But hell, everybody gets flies sometimes.’ “

“Right,” Shopping Cart Johnson said.

“Right,” Crotty said.

“Saw your murderer,” Shopping Cart Johnson said.

“That’d be a big help,” Tom Spellacy said.

“Don’t want no reward,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “Got a reward, maybe I wouldn’t want to lead the outdoor life. The open road, that’s for me. No automobile. Had a Reo once. YNJ 021. I had a little trouble with the Mann Act in that automobile. Gave it up. The open road, the outdoor life. Hadn’t been living the outdoor life, wouldn’t’ve found your killer, right?”

“Right,” Tom Spellacy said.

“Out to the El Segundo Barracks there,” Shopping Cart Johnson said.

“They’re abandoned,” Tom Spellacy said.

“Since 19 and 44,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “First time I been that way since they had the antiaircraft stationed there. Nice boys. Used to give me their extra condoms. Sold them in a house down in Calexico. Used one myself. Sweet little Mexican thing with a gold tooth. Had a little flivver, NDS 465. Imagine a Mexican whore with a car.” He shook his head vigorously and grinned. The teeth that weren’t missing were green with decay. “Goddamn. That was the last time. Don’t get much opportunity on the open road. My age, don’t get the urge much anyway, you get my meaning.”