Free Live Free

Partnership

“Where the hell have you been?” Stubb came half out of his chair.

“Down the hall talking to Sergeant Proudy,” Barnes told him. “You’re a detective, you must know something about guns.”

Candy’s now-scarlet mouth formed a little O at the mention of guns; the witch, who had smiled slightly when Barnes entered, continued to smile.

“Yeah,” Stubb said. “Yeah, I know something. I’m no crack shot, my eyes aren’t that good. But I know one end from the other.”

“That’s great.” Barnes pulled Proudy’s revolver from his waistband and laid it on the table. “You take this. I don’t want it, and I’m liable to shoot myself with it.”

Stubb stared at the gun for a moment, then picked it up with a napkin. The cylinder popped open, and when Stubb pushed the cylinder pin six bright brass cartridges rattled onto the table. He flipped his wrist, but the cylinder would not snap back into place, and he had to push it back with his left hand. After wiping and wrapping the entire gun, he lifted the mattress of the unused bed and pushed the gun far under it. He carried the cartridges into the bathroom and flushed the toilet.

“They go down?” Barnes called. He did not think they would.

“Yeah, probably no farther than the trap, though.”

Candy said, “It’ll plug up now.” She sounded bitter.

Stubb stepped back into the room. “I doubt it. A sewer line like that’s pretty big.”

“He knows everything, Jim does. I haven’t found one single, solitary, God-damned thing he doesn’t know more about than any other dude on earth.”

“All right, it’ll plug up. Madame S. can ask for another room.”

The witch said, “We have been negotiating, Ozzie. We wish to forge an alliance.” She sounded amused.

Stubb asked, “How’d you get it away from him, anyhow? Take it while he was asleep?”

Candy passed Barnes a cup of coffee. “Don’t tell the bastard, Ozzie. If we’re partners, we’re partners. If we’re not, we’re not.”

“I thought we were going to be partners,” Barnes said.

“Partners means share and share alike. Jim wants to give us a lousy ten percent. That for both of us, Jim? Five percent each?”

Stubb said, “Our last offer was fifteen. Fifteen for each of you.”

“Bullshit!” Candy heaved to her feet. “I’m splitting. Thanks for the coffee, lady. Sorry I’ve messed up the eggs, but somebody can still eat them—I’m not poison. Thank you so very much for letting me sleep on your floor. It was comfy.”

Stubb said, “For God’s sake, sit down. Nobody wants your eggs. You might as well finish them.”

“No, what nobody wants is me.” Candy looked for her white raincoat and found it in a corner. She picked it up, keeping her legs straight and grunting at the compression of her belly.

“I want you.” Barnes stood up too. “If you go, I go.”

Candy straightened, her face pink. “Thanks, Ozzie. You’re a decent guy. I go. Come on.”

“Damn it,” Stubb said, “we want you too. Twenty-five percent.”

Candy stared at him. “Ozzie and me each get twenty-five.”

The witch said, “You have not consulted me, Mr. Stubb.”

“I don’t have to. You agreed we’d give them fifteen. That was thirty for them and thirty-five each for us. I’m giving them another ten each out of my share. You have thirty-five; they have twenty-five apiece; I have fifteen.”

“No way,” Candy said.

There was a knock at the door.

For a moment they were silent, looking at one another. Stubb asked, “Proudy?”

Barnes lifted his shoulders. “Maybe.” The witch called, “Who is there?”

“Maid.”

Barnes opened the door. A middle-aged woman waited there with a dust cloth in her hand; behind her was a laundry cart full of crumpled sheets. “You still eatin’?” she asked. “I can come back.”

Stubb rose. “We’re about through, except for Ozzie. We didn’t know you’d be back, Ozzie, so we didn’t order for you.”

Candy told him, “I haven’t finished my eggs.”

“It’ll only take you a minute. I suggest we adjourn to the coffee shop. Ozzie can get a bite there, and this lady’ll have a chance to clean.”

The maid said, “It won’t take long. Just make the bed and vacuum and straighten around a little.”

The witch told her, “I’m afraid you will find the bath rather untidy. I indulged myself in an orgy of towels.”

In the corridor, Barnes said, “It might be better to go the other way.” Stubb nodded, and they trooped behind him. “What does he want?” Stubb asked when they had reached the elevators.

“I don’t know.”

“He thinks we’re up to something, huh?”

Barnes tried to remember everything that had been said in the vacant room. The coffee and cigarette had whetted his appetite, so that as he stepped through the doors his mind vacillated between Proudy and waffles. “He thinks we’re part of some vast, evil conspiracy, I believe,” he said at last. “Just one cell, but an important one.”

Candy said, “You’re putting us on.”

“No.” As they dropped past Six, Five, and Four, he showed them how he had taken Proudy’s gun. “That wouldn’t have worked with you,” he told Stubb. “And I don’t think it would have with Proudy, yesterday. Actually, it wasn’t a question of its working; I just got it out to light my cigarette. It’s a sample novelty. I can take orders for them.”

“Yeah. Let me see it.” As the elevator inched to a stop, Stubb pulled the trigger and inspected the blue flame. “Doesn’t look much like a real gun. Especially at the end of the barrel.”

Candy called, “Come on!” She was already at the door of the Quaint. “They’re just opening up, but they’ll serve us.”

“How wonderful,” the witch replied. She was looking around; and though her dark, handsome face was as expressionless as ever, she might have been sightseeing in the tunnel of some monstrous beetle.

The Quaint was furnished in a style called (in the catalogue of the firm that had supplied its decor) Middle Colonial Double Dutch. Its tables were of thick and irregular planks reproduced in Formica. Its false windows, lit from behind by electric bulbs, were furnished with inutile shutters pierced with hearts and tulips. Its walls boasted hex signs and polystyrene reproductions of long clay pipes.

“We want a booth,” Candy insisted. “A big one—we’re expecting two more people.” When the hostess, who wore a Dutch bonnet, a Dutch frock, and vinyl wooden shoes, had led them to one, Candy said, “You get in first, Ozzie. I’d rather not have to slide over.”

Stubb said, “Still mad?”

“No, not a bit. But you two are on one side and we’re on the other.”

Barnes asked, “Who else are we expecting?”

The fat girl giggled. “Only me. I always say that.”

A waitress appeared. The witch ordered orange juice, Stubb coffee, and Candy corned beef hash with a fried egg. Barnes asked for a cream waffle with sausage. “It’s very nice of you,” he told the witch, “to pay for my breakfast. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gotten one.”

She shrugged. “This vile hotel pays. I shall charge everything to my room.”

“But if we find Mr. Free’s treasure …”

“Yes, if. None of you, not even Mr. Stubb, will devote himself as I. I will seek ceaselessly, for the rest of my life if necessary. Nevertheless, I know how unlikely it is that I shall succeed.”

“I’m more of an optimist,” Stubb told her.

“I know you are. So are most, and that is why they prefer roseate dreams to the great, hidden truths.”

“We’ll see who hangs in longest.” Stubb looked across the table at Barnes and Candy. “Have we got this partnership settled?”

The witch said, “Nothing is settled, Mr. Stubb.”

“What the hell does that mean? Those were my shares. Don’t I have a right to give them to these two if I want?”

“No. The thing has become preposterous. I do not understand why you wish to have these people involved with us, and I do not believe they will be of the least use. But if we are to have them, let us by all means arrange it as the fat woman originally suggested: on equal shares.”

Candy said, “No offense taken, but I’ve got a name. I’d appreciate it if you called me by it.”

“As you wish.”

“Equal shares it is.” Stubb grinned. “That’s decent of you, Madame S.”

“I have two provisos, however. No other partners are to be taken in. Nor are our shares to be redivided among ourselves. Each will claim one quarter.”

“All right with me,” Stubb told her.

“Very well; now we must see that there is something to claim. Miss Garth, I know that Mr. Stubb wishes to question you about all that passed between Mr. Free and yourselves. Before he begins, however, I have one or two questions I will ask.

“Last night the telephone rang, and you answered. You spoke in such as way as to suggest that it was Mr. Free who called. Specifically, you said: ‘Hello. Yes, it is me. I am staying with her. Okay. It was real nice hearing from you again, you know? We thought something might have happened to you.’ I assume that the ‘her’ with whom you said you were staying was myself. Who was the caller?”

“You’ve got a really wonderful memory,” Candy said.

“I could imitate your voice as well, should the occasion arise. But that is neither here nor there. You have refused to answer my questions regarding the caller on the grounds that we had not agreed on a partnership, and thus you felt entitled to keep for yourself whatever information you possessed—this despite the fact that the instrument was in my room, and thus the call was presumably for me. Now we have come to an agreement; specifically, to precisely the agreement you demanded. Your grounds avail you no longer, and should you find new ones, I shall consider our agreement voided at once—not by my action but by your own. Who was the caller?”

“If your memory’s that good, you ought to remember I said it was for me.”

“I do. I did not believe you then, nor do I believe you now. Who was the caller?”

Candy grinned. “A guy who works here in the hotel. His name’s Joe. Last night a bellhop tried to take us to see him, then Ozzie hooked onto that girl from the magazine, and Jim called again, and we never did see Joe. That’s why I said we were afraid something had happened—Ozzie and me had waited around, and he never showed. On the phone he asked for you, then he recognized my voice and said was I the one that had been singing in the club. That’s why I said yes, it was me.”

The witch pursed her lips. “Go on.”

“So he wanted to know what I was doing in your room, and I said I was staying with you.” Candy looked apologetically at Stubb. “It just slipped out, Jim. I don’t think he’ll rat on us, because he sounded so damn glad he didn’t have to talk to her. He asked me to tell her—that’s why I said it was for me.”

“Tell me what?”

“That there was some trouble about the money he owes you, but he was trying to raise it, and he’d pay you tomorrow night—that would be tonight now—for sure.”

“And you said you would?”

“Yeah. That was when I said okay. And don’t tell me I didn’t do it, because I just did.”

“Very well. A second question, and I will be finished. A blanket is hardly sufficient to cover you, and last night I observed you to rise and take a fur from your little bag. When you were asleep, I rose also and examined it. It is very soft and rich, and much, much larger than the pelt of a single mink.”

Barnes interrupted. “I saw it on her bed at Free’s!”

“This I have confirmation, though I did not require it. I was about to say that though it is so large, it is the skin of a single animal; the tail has been cut away, but one sees where the legs were. Mr. Free gave that to you, I should guess, and thus we know why you returned to his house when the police released you. Am I correct?”

Candy nodded. “It filled up my AWOL bag, almost, but I didn’t want to leave it.”

“Nor would I. Did Mr. Free tell you what it was?”

Candy shook her head. “He just went downstairs and came back with it. He said here keep this, I want you to have it, and I said it was pretty, and he said valuable too, you hang onto it. That’s everything, honest.”

“I believe I know what it is,” the witch said. “It is the pelt of a beaver. Yet I cannot guess what it means, or where he got such a thing. Can anyone?”

No one spoke; as the waitress brought their orders, Stubb rapped his glass with a spoon. “Maybe we’re going to find out. I want to hear about Free from both of you. Not just the skin, everything you saw or heard. After that, I’ll have assignments for everybody.”