Hugger Mugger

THIRTY-THREE

CORD CLEANED UP well. When he joined us, showered, shampooed, clean-shaven, smelling of an understated cologne, and casually dressed, he looked like a successful broker on his day off. He slid into the booth beside me and smiled pleasantly.

"Sorry I sort of slopped over up there. I've been under some stress."

The waitress came over, filled our coffee cups, and asked Cord if he wanted anything to eat.

"You have any bran flakes?" Cord said.

She shook her head.

"Lunch menu," she said. "It's after eleven."

"Oh. All right, could I have some toast please, and a cup of tea?"

"Tea?"

"Yes please, with lemon."

"Sure."

The waitress went off. Cord smiled at us brightly.

"You boys talked things out," he said.

"Relentlessly," I said. "Why do you think your wife suddenly ended your marriage?"

"Must we?" Cord said.

"We must."

"Well, as you've heard Pud suggest, albeit coarsely, our marriage was in some ways a sham. I was able to…" He paused, thinking how to say it. "Service her, I guess. But in more nontraditional ways."

"Okay, you were sexually mismatched," I said. "You both must have known that for a long time."

"Yes. I had hoped when we married that I could make a go of it, but…"

"But you couldn't get it up," Pud said.

Cord looked a little embarrassed. I assumed it was the language rather than the fact.

"Well, you did make a go, after all," I said. "How long have you been married?"

"Eight years."

"Any good ones?"

"Sex aside, yes. Stonie and I were pretty good friends."

"I'm not sure there is a sex aside," I said. "But why now?"

"Why did we break up now?"

"Yes."

The waitress returned with a cup of hot water, a tea bag, and toast with a pat of butter on each slice and a couple of little packets of grape jelly on the side. Pud said yes to more coffee. I said no.

"You got some kinda pie over there?" Pud said.

"Peach," she said.

"I'll have a slice. No sense drinking all this coffee without no pie."

The waitress smiled automatically and went for the pie. Cord dropped the tea bag in his hot water and jiggled it carefully.

"I've asked myself the same question," Cord said. "And it always comes back to Penny."

I waited. He jogged his tea bag, checking the color of the tea. The waitress came back and put a fork and a piece of pie down in front of Pud, put the check down beside it, and left. I picked up the check.

"Penny decided we should go," Cord said.

"Why did she?"

"I have no idea," Cord said. "You, Pud?"

"She never liked either one of us much," Pud said.

"I don't agree," Cord said. "She may have disapproved of you, Pud. All that boozing, and the macho business. But I thought Penny liked me."

"Guess you were wrong," Pud said.

"What do you guys know about Delroy?" I said.

"Pretty good guy," Pud said.

"A fascist bully," Cord said.

"How long has he worked for the Clive family?" I said.

"Before I showed up," Pud said.

"Yes," Cord said. "He was there when Stonie and I got married."

"Always security?"

"More or less," Cord said.

"He'd get me out of the trouble booze got me into,"

Pud said. "And he'd get Cord out of the trouble his dick got him into."

"What kind of trouble?" I said.

Pud ate the last bite of his pie. "Me? Drunk and disorderly. Soliciting sex from an undercover cop-the bitch. DWI. That kind of stuff."

"What did he do to fix it?"

"Hell, I don't know. I just know he'd come and get me from jail or whatever and bring me home and tell me to clean up my act. And I never heard about the charges again."

"You?" I said to Cord.

"He's done the same sort of thing for me," Cord said.

"Young boys?"

"Misunderstandings, really. At least one clear case of entrapment, in Augusta."

"Don't you hate when that happens," I said. "Delroy took care of it?"

"Yes. I assume acting on orders from Walter."

"Bribery?" I said. "Intimidation?"

"Both, I assume."

"And why don't you like him?"

"He was always so superior, so contemptuous. He's a classic homophobe."

"Aw hell, lotta people don't like homos," Pud said. "Don't make them fascists, for crissake."

Cord nibbled on his toast.

"Any other thoughts on Delroy?" I said.

"I think he's been humping Penny," Pud said.

I felt a little shock of anger, as if someone had said something insulting about Susan, though lower-voltage.

"Oh for God sakes, Pud, you always think everyone is humping everyone."

Pud shrugged.

"You out of the apartment for a while?" he said to Cord.

"Yes."

"Good. I gotta go clean up, I got a job interview."

"Where?" Cord said.

"Package delivery service. One of us gotta work."

"Good luck," Cord said.

"I get a job, maybe we can move out of the fucking phone booth we're in now," Pud said.

"I hope so," Cord said.

"See you around," Pud said to me. "Hope you make some progress."

I gave him my card.

"You think of anything," I said, "I'm at the Holiday Inn, right now, or you can call my office in Boston. I check my machine every day."

Pud took the card, gave me a thumbs-up, and left the sandwich shop.

"Did you know he's stopped drinking?" Cord said.

"No."

"Hasn't had a drink since this happened."

"Amazing."

"He's coarse and dreadfully incorrect, and not, I'm afraid, terribly bright," Cord said. "But my God, I don't know what I'd have done without him."

"People are often better sober," I said. "Do you think Delroy is humping Penny?"

"Well, I hadn't really thought about that, but she's known him so long. I mean, what was she when Delroy came upon the scene, maybe fifteen?"

I waited while Cord tried to think about Delroy and Penny. This was hard for Cord. I was pretty sure he'd spent most of his life considering himself, and very little of his life considering anything else.

"I don't know," he said. "The idea seems sort of natural to me. I guess I'd have to say that if it proved so, I wouldn't be surprised by it."

"How about Stonie?" I said. "Do you think she was unfaithful?"

I knew the answer to that, though "unfaithful" didn't seem to quite fully cover truck-stop fellatio. I wanted to know if Cord knew.

"I would have understood," he said, "and I would have forgiven her, given how things were, and of course it's possible that she did things I don't know about. But no, I don't believe she was ever unfaithful."

"Hard to imagine," I said.