42 Days For Murder

Chapter Eighteen

I called Spanish and told her I’d pick her up in half an hour. She said:

“That’s fine. Are you bringing your friend?”

I said: “Friend?”

“Well, Hazel’s friend. She’s here now.” I said I guessed maybe I could and called Lester and told him to meet me at the corner below his hotel. That we were going calling. He brightened up, until I told him who we were calling on and then he said, in a scared voice: “Ugh... maybe I’d better not go tonight, Shean. You know I don’t drink and... well... maybe I’d better not go.”

“The big gal’s got you scared, hunh?”

“It... it isn’t that. But she gets drunk and what can I do with her? She keeps calling me all the time. I... ugh... I think I’ll stay home.”

“Suit yourself. She’s your gal.”

He said: “Wait a minute,” and then: “I’ll meet you. Right away?”

“Yeah!”

I could hear a bunch of noise in the room and had a notion what had happened. Joey had gone in, probably with a bunch of drunken companions, and the kid had decided one woman, even if she was as big as a small pony, was easier to handle while drunk than Joey.

Just the lesser of two evils. I picked him up at his corner and he told me I’d guessed right. He said: “You know, Shean, Hazel’s a lovely girl but she drinks too much. She’s really nice except for that one thing.”

“Why don’t you reform her?”

He said earnestly, and meaning it: “D’ya suppose I could? She told me the only reason she does it is because she’s so lonesome. Because of feeling so badly over this divorce. Her husband was a brute to her.”

I asked: “Which one?”

“What d’ya mean?”

“Which husband? She’s had a lot of them, hasn’t she?”

He said: “She’s had a lot of trouble in her life,” and sighed, and I said: “For Christ’s sake, kid. You’re not taking the big wench seriously, are you?”

“We’ve spoken of marriage, Shean.”

He tried to make this grown-up and all it did was sound silly. I laughed. He got red in the face and said: “What’s funny about that? I’ve always thought a man who didn’t marry was losing a beautiful experience.”

“Look around you and prove that,” I said. “He’s losing a chance to pay out every crying dime he makes for alimony, you sap. Grow up, kid.”

“Age doesn’t make any difference if there’s real love between you.”

I stopped the car in front of the Spanish’s house. I said: “Now look. In the first place, you’re not old enough to get married. This gal is old enough to be your mother. She’s practically a professional at this getting married; she’s got too much experience for you. And besides that. She’s too big for you; she’d grapple with you and take you two falls out of three. Why, my God, kid, you could have her, another cow, and a dozen milk bottles and start a dairy route. Now lay off.”

“You shouldn’t speak like that about her, Shean. She’s really nice.”

I said: “Oh nuts. Come on in the house.”

We got out of the car and I remembered what Macintosh had said about Spanish and who’d introduced me to her. I took my gun out and held it under my coat and said to Lester: “Keep to the side and back of me. We might be walking into a plant.”

“Hunh?”

“She might be Rucci’s girl. I don’t know.”

He handed me back what I’d given him. He said: “And you talk to me about being foolish about women. And then go ahead like this.”

I knocked on Spanish’s door and my face was red. She opened it and said: “Come on in,” and we did.

The two girls were alone in the front room, anyway, and I made an excuse to follow Spanish out to the kitchen while she mixed drinks. Just to be sure nobody was hiding there. She had her back turned and I started to put my gun away, but I was clumsy about it and she turned and saw it slide in the clip. She made her eyes wide and said:

“You’re carrying a gun, Shean.”

“It’s an old habit,” I told her.

“I knew something was wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong, babe.”

“I thought about it all day. That’s why I went out to the Three C this afternoon. That’s where I met Hazel and Mrs. Wendel.”

“That right?”

“Hazel came back with me but Mrs. Wendel waited there for her lawyer, Crandall.”

“That right?”

“He came out with Rucci’s brother. Just as we left.”

I said: “Oh, oh!”

“He’s very nice.”

“I heard that.”

“Mrs. Wendel told me about you and her husband breaking in her house last night. She doesn’t have any more use for him at all. She won’t even talk to him.”

“I noticed that.”

“I think she’s foolish. He’ll just fight her alimony if she treats him like that.”

“Maybe so, hon.”

“I heard Rucci ask her if she’d talked to him and she said ‘Of course not.’ ”

She stopped shaking drinks then and put the shaker down. She came over to me and snuggled up and said: “I’d always talk to you, honey.”

“Even if you were divorcing me?”

“Of course.”

“It seems funny that she doesn’t talk to him, don’t it?”

She snuggled closer. “Shean, you’re in trouble. Is it over that woman?”

“Sort of, hon. Her old man’s a friend of mine. Get the idea?”

“I don’t like her. Hazel does, though. They had a long talk before Crandall came out.”

“What about?”

“I didn’t hear. They were over at another booth. Probably about Mr. Crandall, don’t you think?”

“Probably. Let’s go back in the front room.”

She pouted and said I never wanted to be alone with her. I said she was crazy and that was probably the reason I was so mad about her. She said that I never acted as though I wanted to be alone with her. I said that proved right there she was crazy, but that I hated to leave Lester alone with Hazel; that they were both just young and foolish kids and might not be responsible for what they did. She giggled and said Hazel was looking for a husband. I said that Hazel had not only been looking for a husband for the last twenty-five years but that she’d been finding them and trading them in on new models as fast as she got them. She said she wasn’t that type; that she was a one man woman and that I was the man. I said: “What are you going to do with those drinks? Let ’em stand there on the shelf and melt until they’re no good?”

She said: “You’re afraid of me because I met you through Rucci. Isn’t that it?”

“Of course not, kitten.”

“I just met him casually. That’s all. I’ll prove I’m no friend of his. I heard him say to his brother ‘Tonight’s the night for that Irish bastard.’ ”

“That’s supposed to be me, babe?”

“You’re Irish, aren’t you?”

I laughed.

“And what did you mean when you said ‘Oh, oh’? When I said that Rucci’s brother came out with Crandall?”

“That was a slip, lamb.”

She got away from me and back to the shaker. She snapped: “All right. Don’t tell me anything. I went out there just because I thought you were in trouble with Rucci and because I thought I could maybe help you by finding out something.”

“I appreciate the spirit, babe.”

She put the shaker and glasses on a tray and tossed her head while she headed toward the front room. But when she got to the door she stopped and said: “You might talk to Hazel and see what you can find out. Mrs. Wendel was sore about that business of last night and she was doing a lot of talking.”

“Don’t ever say you don’t help me, sweet.”

“I tried. Shean.”

I said: “Let’s go in the other room.”

Lester and Hazel were sitting on the davenport and Lester looked a little mussed. I figured Hazel had probably been holding him in her lap; she was big enough to do the deed comfortably. He looked relieved when he saw us and she looked about half mad. I poured her three Martinis, as fast as she could get them down, then sat down by her and said: “Did you hear about the little stunt Wendel and I pulled last night on his old lady? That was funny.” To prove it I laughed.

Hazel said: “Heard it! I heard nothing else all afternoon. It’s a wonder you both weren’t arrested.”

“We were.”

“She didn’t tell me that. She said she didn’t even know where her husband was.”

I thought of the Carson City jail but didn’t say anything about it. I said: “Chances are he’s around someplace. He may be keeping inside, so she doesn’t have a chance to raise hell with him.”

“She’s the kind that would. But she’s so mad at him she won’t even talk to him. She told me he was mixed up with some girl here, but that she doesn’t want to use that against him. He beat her up last night, too, she says.” I said: “Nuts!”

“Well, if I was him I wouldn’t go out to the Three C any more. Or you either. They think a lot of her out there. She’s there all the time.”

I said: “Probably on account of young Rucci. The one that came out with her lawyer today.”

“Well, she knows him of course. She must have met him lately though; she’s from New York and he’s from Sacramento.”

“That’s probably it.”

The shaker went dry and she looked at it, very wistfully. I said: “Toots and I’ll go out and fill it up again.”

She was reaching for Lester when Spanish and I went through the kitchen door. Spanish said: “Well, did you learn anything?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“I didn’t hear her say anything.”

“You didn’t know what to listen for, hon.”

She shook her head and said: “Secrets.” She was about half mad and about half worried about me and I kidded her out of both before we went back in the parlor.

Lester looked a lot more mussed than he had the time before. And a lot more worried. He kept shooting me pleading glances and, finally, when Hazel got up and lumbered away to the bathroom, he came over and whispered:

“Let’s go home, Shean! She’s getting tight again.”

I said: “You might as well learn to take it if you’re going to marry the girl. My, won’t life be a wonderful thing!”

“Rub it in,” he said. “Let’s go.”

We had the shades pulled down and I’d been watching the doors all the time. Every time Spanish or Hazel got close to one I’d sit so I could get at the gun under my coat. Just in case there was something to what Spanish had heard at the Club. I didn’t think she’d have cracked about me calling her that night but there was that possibility and I didn’t want to be caught and not have a chance. I said to Lester:

“You take my car and take Hazel back to the hotel. I’ll go out the back way and walk to my place.”

“I don’t want to take her home alone, Shean. She’s too drunk.”

“I thought you were strong for her.”

“That’s just when I’m not with her.”

I said: “That’s the way most married men feel, you dope. This is business; I think maybe somebody’s waiting for me to come out of the place here. Get it?”

He said: “Well, all right, but I hate to do it. I’m sort of afraid of her.”

“You’re all right as long as she don’t fall on you,” I told him.

He looked sad and waited for her to come back from her pilgrimage.