Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth (5 page)

Sweat had come out on him while he was talking on the telephone to Vera Sue and since, and he was wet with it. He was in bad shape. Being so helpless brought tears of rage to his eyes. Here he was like a mouse with its tail caught in the trap, he reflected, and all the cats walking around smacking lips. One cat, two cats, three cats. The city policeman, the Kansas City sherlock, and now Vera Sue, trying to cut herself in on a reward at his expense...

He did not remember going to sleep, but he awakened when the doctor came in. He felt very weak and shaky.

“Doc, you sure stayed away long enough.”

“I was invited to leave, remember?”

“Ah, Doc, don’t be an old woman. You know, I don’t feel so hot.”

“What’s the matter? The arm hurt?”

“The arm, the head, all over. I feel like one big sore ball, Doc, you want to know the truth.”

The thermometer went into his mouth again, feeling like an icicle, while the doctor counted his pulse. “You have some temperature. What happened with that telephone call to upset you this way?”

“Nothing, Doc, that I know of.”

They brought in a transparent canopy and set it up on the bed with him inside, then wheeled in a cylinder that had gauges on it and a tube running under the canopy. They hooked up the thing, and stood watching the gauges while the tube hissed close to his nose. “Doc, what is this thing?”

“An oxygen tent.”

“That’s what they put on guys who are dying, ain’t it? Take it away. I’m afraid of the thing.”

“We probably won’t be that lucky with you.”

The morning sun was splintering into his eyes. The way the sunlight was hitting the oxygen tent canopy he could see very little in the room. Finally he realized someone was sitting by the bed. A nurse, he thought, sitting there like an albino crow waiting for him to die. “Nurse, I got to piss.”

There was a giggle. The corner of the oxygen tent was lifted and Vera Sue looked in at him. “Hello, Walter.”

She kissed him. He kissed her back. Her mouth was warm and moist, tasting of spearmint.

“Jesus, honey, what I said there a minute ago. I thought you were the nurse.”

“It was kind of funny, Walter.”

“She’s an old crow, always sticking her cold thermometer in my ass.”

“Walter, I been sitting here a long time. They told me not to wake you—they said I could sit in here, but I should let you sleep. I told them a lie. I said I was your wife.”

“I wondered how you got in.”

“Walter...I couldn’t go to Illinois. I couldn’t make myself do it. You know something, after I talked to you on the telephone, I missed my bus sitting there trying to make myself go to Illinois like you wanted, but I just couldn’t.”

“Baby, I knew you wouldn’t, so you can stop kidding around.”

She kissed him and held him close. Her moist mouth moved all over his. “I’m glad you’re not mad. Walter, I wish I could get in bed with you right now.”

“That would be something. I bet this oxygen stuff would go flying all over, and somebody would come in to see what was wrecking the joint.”

“I wouldn’t give a damn if they did.”

A nurse came in with two glasses of orange juice, one for him and one for Mrs. Harsh, she said. The nurse was a different one, a large plain woman.

“Walter, is she the nurse you were talking about?”

“No, but she gives you an idea.” He lay back holding his orange juice. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. You got no idea what it is to be nailed down like this. Now, what was this about a detective from Kansas City asking about me?”

“Hasn’t he been around to see you yet?”

“I haven’t seen him, but I don’t know if he was here or not. I made the Doc think I was too sick to be bothered.”

“That’s funny. I got the idea he was finding out all about you, getting ready to offer you a proposition. I don’t really understand what he’s up to, Walter. He didn’t say you were accused of anything. He just said there was five thousand in it for him if you turned out to be acceptable and satisfactory, and he would appreciate anything I could tell him about you. He didn’t seem to be after any specific information, just general stuff. Walter, what is he up to?”

“I sure would like to know myself.”

“You sure got to help me figure a way to get my mitts on that five thousand.”

“Our mitts, you mean, don’t you?”

“What? Oh, sure, that’s what I mean.”

“Vera Sue, you be careful. You let me know before you make any moves. You let me supply the brains around here.”

“Well, how about me working some more on Kansas City as our first move?”

“All right with me. But watch out for that local city cop, John Something-or-other. He’s no pushover. How are you going to get in touch with this Kansas City dude?”

“I’m going to call him and invite him to have breakfast with me. He left me his hotel address here.”

“Say, I would like to have a look at that picture the guy is showing around, the one that looks like me except for the scar on the face. Can you swing that?”

“I bet I can, Walter.”

He would bet she would too.

At noon they gave him a lamb chop and some mashed potatoes and peas and a cigarette and a newspaper. The policeman had not come back. The doctor had not come back. And Vera Sue had not come back. He had turned into a forgotten man, he decided, and it was all right with him. He was nervous. His mind was jumpy. He thought of his mind as acting like a bird with its legs chopped off so it couldn’t come to roost on anything.

He lay there with his fists clenched and his eyes closed, and one of the things he could not keep out of his mind was the way D. C. Roebuck’s car had gone over and over in the field, in one of the flips landing (he was now able to remember) on D. C. Roebuck himself.

Suddenly he remembered the newspaper they had brought him with his lunch. What was wrong with him? A thing as important as the newspaper, and he had hardly noticed it. Where was the paper anyway, on the floor, or where? He saw the paper on the floor, and when he leaned off the bed for it, the blood ran to his head and made him dizzy, and he almost fell off the bed before he clutched the newspaper.

The story from Carrollton, Missouri, was a small item on an inside page. It said the body of D. C. Roebuck, Kansas City photographic supply salesman, had been found with his demolished automobile in a field near Carrollton Friday and had been taken to his home in Kansas City for burial. That was all. Nothing there to hook him up with Roebuck’s death, he reflected, though that did not necessarily mean a thing. He imagined the police, and even more so an insurance company, worked undercover until they had all the evidence they wanted, then bang, they let you have it.

The next thing was the jury. The idea of a court trial worried him, but if he had to have one, he hoped the jury would be made up of farmers, so he could have his lawyer bring out that he grew up on a farm. Thinking about his early days on the farm made him feel maudlin. It was a good life, that farm, and he wished he had stuck with it. He would have, too, only a man needed a million dollars and a million acres to make a go on the farm; it was just impossible for a young man to save enough to start farming. It was equally hopeless the way his own parents had tried to make it, which was by share-farming. It was all the same hind tit and impossible to suck more than a bare existence out of it. But one thing he could say for the farm, it was man against nature, and not man against man the way it was in the city. In the city it was every man for himself: talk sweet and polite, act like a shark. He had to laugh at the memory of how he came off the farm a green one, and he had taken it in the neck too, until he got unsquared. Since then, he had handed them back a few licks himself.

Better have the lawyer soft pedal that to the jury, he thought, the jury might not understand quite how it was, on the bum, hitchhiking, pearl-diving for handouts, even panhandling. He had been in the pokey three or four times; he had not told the policeman the truth about that. What the hell, he thought, it was none of the town law’s business.

He wondered if the cop had shared that twenty-five bucks around. He would bet not. The town cop was just like anybody else, give them a whiff of easy money, put the golden odor in their nose, and they went haywire. Free money was the worst. Take the big free prize National Studios of Hollywood offered the marks over the telephone, it was not much, just three portraits that cost twenty-five cents apiece to turn out. But it was free, something for nothing, and common sense went flapping out of the window. Like Vera Sue, he thought, and that five thousand dollars she was chasing with her tongue hanging out. All she had to go on, some guy she had barely met had said somebody was paying him five thousand dollars for something that didn’t make sense. And Vera Sue was hard at it, trying to grab the five thousand as if it was right there in front of her. The smell of money had her wild.

But maybe the worst was, he could smell it a little himself.

Early in the afternoon the nurse came in. “Mr. Harsh, a letter for you.”

“For me? Who would be writing me?”

It was a large plain envelope with his name on it, a special delivery stamp, and the name of the hospital. Inside was a photograph. Nothing else. Harsh had a look at the photograph. He put it under his pillow in a hurry.

“Nurse.”

“Yes.”

“If you will close the door when you go out, I guess I will have me a nap.”

The nurse did not take the hint right away, but fussed around a while longer with the sheets, put out a fresh glass of water with the bent glass straw in it, and put the bedpan where he could reach it. Finally she left, closing the door.

Harsh got the picture out and had a long look at it. The thing was as close a likeness to him as he could imagine, except for the scar, which began at the left eye corner and ran down and forward, a scar about three inches long.

He was smearing scrambled egg on toast and taking slow bites when Vera Sue came in the next morning. It was ten o’clock. Vera Sue wore a grey sweater, tight-fitting, a shiny wide black belt, and a charcoal skirt with enough material in it for several skirts. She had a pert and jouncy new charcoal hat with a feather. She came to him and began kissing him. He held her and kissed back. Presently an embarrassed smile came to the nurse’s face, and she left the room.

“Walter, did you get my letter?”

He feigned surprise. “What letter was that?”

“You didn’t get it? A special delivery I sent you?”

“Never heard of it.”

Vera Sue slapped her forehead with her palm. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Walter, something went wrong.”

“Well, somebody did send me a picture of myself, or my almost-self.”

She leaned over and damn near bit the end off his nose. “There! That will teach you to joke.”

“Sure I got your letter and I must say it convinced me I was wrong about there not being any picture. Ouch! Goddamn, you could ruin the end of a man’s nose that way.”

“Walter, you scared me. I thought that cop had got wise or something and headed it off.”

“How did you get the picture?”

“Off of Kansas City. I picked his pocket.”

“That’s okay, as long as his pants weren’t hanging on the bedpost when the pocket got picked.”

“Walter, you know me better than that.” She slapped her forehead with her hand again. “Walter! For God’s sake, your face!”

“Huh?”

“What did you do to your face?”

“This? Oh, that’s an experiment.” What he had done was take a teaspoon, the one out of the medicine glass on the table by the bed, and place the edge of the handle across his cheek about where the picture showed the scar to be. Then he had lain on the spoon handle. He had been lying on the spoon handle nearly an hour, and it had made a groove in his face. “Let me have the mirror out of your purse, so I can check on the results.”

“Walter, why did you do that?”

“You took your time noticing it. Let’s see the mirror.”

She fished in her purse, found the mirror, and he held it in front of his face, moving his head from side to side to view the results of his experiment. There was a deep crease on his cheek. It looked somewhat like a scar. He was stunned at the resemblance he now bore to the picture.

“I wish you hadn’t fooled with your face, Walter.”

“This really makes me the double for the guy in the picture, though, don’t it? That’s what I wanted to find out.”

Vera Sue began to walk around the room. “I’m not so sure. You may have fouled things up.”

“How is that?”

“A man’s here.”

“Who? Your guy from Kansas City?”

“No, a man from New York. A new man. Mr. Brother, he said his name is.”

“Mr. Brother? I don’t know anybody by that name.”

“Well, he’s here now.”

“How in the name of creeping Jesus did he happen to show up, and what does he want?”

“That John What’s-his-name, the city policeman, sent him a telegram.”

“Oh, that. The O-Negative Blood Foundation thing. Twenty-five bucks reward for everybody connected with getting that blood except the guy who needed it, which is me. The cop was supposed to telegraph to get the reward. If you ask me, it’s as cockeyed as the rest of this. You say this Mr. Brother is here? Here at the hospital?”

Vera Sue nodded quickly. “He’s in the waiting room now.”

“Right outside?”

“Yes.”

“Oh what a stupid trick, bringing him here now.”

Vera Sue’s face became sullen. “Don’t call me stupid.”

Harsh was angry that she hadn’t consulted him. If she were standing a little closer, he thought, he would give her one with his fist, smack her across the room. He would teach her to talk over a move with him before she made it. Then he felt shaky inside, realizing he was helpless here in bed, and if Vera Sue walked out on him, he would really be up the creek.

“Vera Sue, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you dumb. I guess I said it because I’m sick.”

She took the mirror away from him and put it in her purse. “You’re a no good son of a bitch, did you know that?”

“Yes, I’m no good, and I’m sorry and I love you.”

“The hell with you, Walter.” She adjusted her new hat. “I’m going to bring in Mr. Brother.”