Ten North Frederick (14 page)

“Take it from me, it isn't,” said Williams. “Every self-made son of a bitch in the United States of America compares himself with Lincoln. It's an overworked comparison. But I
have
given you some ideas to chew on. That's good. If I can't be popular, at least I can make an impression. Court is adjourned.”

“You're leaving, Judge?”

“Yes, and one thing more, Arthur. You got me in this place and I appreciate it. I always wanted to belong to this club. But don't think you have to take the rap for me. Now that I'm a member, you know, I can stand on my own two feet. If they want to kick me out, you let them. I release you from all responsibilities implied or real. Nothing like me has happened to this club since young English wrecked the joint, fifteen-twenty years ago.”

“Perhaps they need a little shaking. What about that drink you were talking about?”

“The hotel bar. I'm told the place is full of twenty-dollar whores these days.”

“So I've heard,” said McHenry. He helped the judge with his coat.

Williams put his hand on McHenry's shoulder. “Arthur, you may not be the greatest lawyer since Fallon, but you always have one or two surprises up your sleeve. And you're a good fellow.”

“Thank you, Lloyd,” said McHenry.

The judge's car was parked free of charge in the lot across Lantenengo Street from the hotel. It was a small graft that the judge accepted as part of the honor of being judge, and in using the lot as his downtown parking place he considered that he had bestowed an honor on the place. He did not accept free gasoline, oil, car washing, tires, flashlights or other goods and services. The fact that the judge used that lot was an endorsement and an advertisement, and a mutually satisfactory arrangement. The same space was always reserved for the judge, and he did not have to tip the boys. A pleasant greeting was all that was expected. (It was not likely that the owners would ever ask the judge for a major favor, but if they did he would take his custom elsewhere, and if he were to do that the owners would lose prestige. And, of course, it was possible that a telephone call from the judge might remind the police department that the parking-lot owners illegally obstructed sidewalk and street traffic throughout the day and part of the night. A judge is the only official who is universally feared by police officers; the only official who can give them orders and even make fools of them with impunity, and at the same time remain vaguely on their side.)

Lloyd Williams was not on his way to look at the twenty-dollar whores in the hotel bar, but he was not unwilling to allow Arthur McHenry to think along those lines. Lloyd Williams was a calculating man. His dress, in an era of double-breasted suits and real or imitation hand-painted neckties, was conspicuously inconspicuous. He habitually wore a three-button single-breasted suit of dark gray worsted, including, except on the hottest days of summer, the vest. He wore plain white shirts with soft collar attached and neckties of black or blue, and black calfskin shoes of simple design. He wore no jewelry, of any kind, and his wristwatch was a gold one, cushion-shaped, that had a strap that needed a stitch or two. He never put his hat on quite straight, and the crown was changed in shape from wearing to wearing, and oftener than not a wisp or a lock of hair stuck out from under the hat at the forehead or the temple. His overcoat was a three-button model, dark blue, and half the time the collar was turned up on one side and wrinkled under on the other. All of his clothing was of good material and workmanship, all bought off the hanger at a Gibbsville men's store, none of it cheap or second-rate, and he achieved what he set out to do: through extreme care he gave the impression of a man who cared nothing about clothes; or for ceremony, or for side. It was hard to avoid dressing like a motor magnate, when the stores were offering cheaper versions of the motor magnates' suits and neckwear, but Williams managed it. And nothing he wore diverted attention from the man who was doing the wearing.

His car was a
1940
Buick four-door sedan, plain black and with a radio and a heater, but with no other optional equipment. The citizens had to know it was his car, and not guess it by any special license plate, by initials on the doors, or by official or other badges. The car was as carefully unpretentious as his clothes.

“Hello, Tom. Keeping you busy?”

“Pretty busy, Judge,” said the parking attendant. He did not offer to start the car or move it from its accustomed place to open the door for the judge. He knew better. The judge unparked his own car and drove it away.

He carefully obeyed all ordinances. He was a good driver, considerate and well co-ordinated. At only one point did he depart from any rule or regulation involving courtesy or consideration: in the
1900
-block on Market Street he sounded his horn: one long and two short. There was no apparent reason for blowing the horn.

But he did it every afternoon, in the
1900
-block on Market Street.

 • • • 

As a young man, as a law student, and as a young lawyer getting started, Lloyd Williams drank with the boys, whoever the boys of the moment might be. He was able to take in more alcohol with less inebriating effect than spirits had on his drinking companions, and he was respected for that ability. He did not have to drink every day to maintain his reputation as a drinking man, but the reputation followed him through life. In cigar-store discussions he was held up as the example of the brilliant lawyer who drank, just as a couple of doctors were cited as drinking surgeons. In Lloyd Williams's case the drinking was a political asset; he was a man, not a hypocrite, and another part of the asset was his reputation for being quite a man with the women. In his youth the drinkers were the patrons of the better whorehouses, and Williams himself went along with the boys in that activity. In any single year he was likely to go to one of the better whorehouses often enough to be welcome and respected, but in no single year did his visits to whorehouses number more than fifteen. There were other men, less conspicuous men, who went to a whorehouse every Saturday night, or every payday, but Lloyd Williams was hardly ever an inconspicuous man, and whatever he did was magnified. He acquired his reputation for success with women on little more than a monthly visit to a whorehouse, but the reputation was not confined to association with whores. Men somehow believed that all women interested Williams, and many women joined the men in that belief.

His reputation as a hellraiser flourished and was helped by the fact that he married rather late in life. And yet no one ever bothered to inquire too deeply into the renown as drinker or womanizer. Men assumed that because they got drunk with Williams, Williams had been drunk too; they assumed that because he went to bed with whores, he was going to bed with mysterious mistresses who were not being paid. In fact, in the presence of non-whores, Williams was the shyest of men, but even that characteristic was taken to be part of tactics and great discretion.

When finally, at forty-one, he married, the choice he made did nothing to disillusion his friends. Lottie Williams was a childless widow of his own age, a Gibbsville girl whose first husband died in the great influenza epidemic of
1918
while serving as a sergeant in the Quartermaster Corps, Frankford Arsenal. Lottie Danner and Jimmy Franklin had been a high school romance and an ideal one: Lottie, a girl with a startlingly flawless complexion, beautiful teeth, and wavy auburn hair, and somewhat on the stout side, had a contralto voice that kept all other girls out of singing competition for the four years she attended high school; Jimmy had the quick reflexes and spare build of the natural athlete and starred in baseball, basketball and sprint events and was good enough to win two letters in football. After high school and his failure to make big league baseball, he played town ball, semiprofessionally, but devoted himself chiefly to beer, drinking it and selling it. He attended all sports events in the area, and in the beginning his brewery employers encouraged his interest with an expense account. But his usefulness as a good-will representative came to an end with a succession of fistfights. He was partisan to a degree; he bet large sums and did not always pay off when he lost; he was suspected of bribing a participant in a high-stake pigeon-shooting match. By the time he joined the Army he had been a bartender, house man in a poolroom, auto salesman, political hustler, bill collector, insurance salesman, sewing-machine salesman, and private detective. Most of his jobs had been obtained through the intercession of Mike Slattery, who had admired his athletic ability in high school and who even then was building a personal political organization. During the years of unsteady employment Jimmy refused to permit Lottie to take a job, but within a month of his death she was at work as a millinery saleslady and within two years of it she had her own shop on Second Street, just outside the high-rent district. The Danners were solid, respectable people; Lottie's father was a letter carrier, prominent in the anti-Catholic fraternal organizations. Lottie was called Lottie Danner for most of the years of her marriage to Jimmy Franklin; they were a small-town version of two theatrical celebrities who have married but retain their professional names, although Lottie called herself Lottie Franklin. Lottie lived at her parents' home, as she had done throughout much of her married life. When her father and mother died she inherited the house on Locust Street, but instead of taking in roomers, she converted the house into apartments, retaining the first floor for her own use. With the success of her millinery and the renovation of her father's house a new life began for Lottie.

Women, Lantenengo Street women, often dropped in at Lottie's shop merely to smoke a cigarette. The shop, in fact, became the younger women's idling place that corresponded to their husbands' cigar store. Only the oldest women of Lantenengo Street withheld their patronage from Lottie, and their absence was helpful. Lottie not only had the youngest hats; she had the young for customers. The men of Gibbsville, Lantenengo Street or not, remained totally unaware of the noncommercial aspects of Lottie's shop. All they knew was that their wives had dropped in at Lottie's and had, or had not, bought a hat. Whether they bought or not, Lottie made them feel welcome. She supplied cigarettes; she had a clean toilet; a box of aspirin and a carton of sanitary napkins; a telephone in her small office. And Lottie did not mind if a young woman closed the door of the office.

Lottie's first love affair as a widow was with a doctor, a newcomer to Gibbsville and a bachelor, who was six years younger than she. George Ingram was a University of Pennsylvania M.D., a native of Trenton who had heard that doctors prospered in Gibbsville, in spite of the seemingly large number of doctors in proportion to the population of the town. He was sponsored by Dr. English, who sent him patients and helped him socially, but George Ingram was not quite so ready to marry as the available young women of Lantenengo Street had hoped. He was twenty-nine years old and determined to repay the aunt who had helped finance his education. When Lottie Williams came to him with a torn fingernail and in pain, she was a patient and no more, but she knew a good deal about him through the talk at her shop. On her third, and what was to have been her final office call, she made sure to be the last patient of the evening.

“Won't need another dressing,” he said. “You can stop at the drug store and tell them to give you a rubber finger to wear at work, but I wouldn't even wear that all the time.”

“Fine,” said Lottie. She smiled at him and made no move to go. She continued to smile at him, and he smiled back.

“You make me feel as if I forgot something. Did I forget anything?”

“No,” she said. “Do you have a cigarette?”

“Why, yes,” he said.

“Let's you and I smoke a cigarette then,” said Lottie.

“Okay, let's. Do you smoke these?” He offered her a Fatima.

“Beggars can't be choosers,” she said.

“What is your regular brand?”

“Lord Salisburys,” she said.

“Sorry I can't oblige,” he said. “I'll have some the next time.”

“That's good news,” said Lottie.

“Oh, I take good care of my patients.”

“So's that, good news,” said Lottie.

“What made you think anything different?”

“I didn't think anything different, Doctor. I meant it was good news there's going to be a next time, and good news you take good care of your patients. I guess you're pretty lonely in town.”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“All the young Lantenengo Street girls after you, but you're giving them the cold shoulder.”

“Well, I don't want to get serious.”

“I don't either,” said Lottie. She smiled at him and said no more while she inhaled her cigarette. He smiled back uncertainly.

“Does that door lock?” she said.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Would you care to kiss me? And lock the door first?”

He got up and turned the key.

“Do you want me to take everything off?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You don't say much, do you?”

“We understand each other,” he said.

She stood up and they kissed each other.

“Turn your back,” she said.

“All right,” he said.

“I wish you could outen the big light.”

“I will,” he said. He snapped the ceiling light. “I'd better leave the other one on.”

“I don't mind the other one. It's the big one,” she said. In a few minutes she spoke again. She was lying on his sofa, the front of her body draped with her petticoat, but she was wearing nothing. “You take everything off too.”

“I intend to,” he said.

Their love-making lasted not very long and she said only one thing, when he was inside her for the first time: “God, I needed this.”

“So did I,” he said.