Judge Me Not

Chapter Two

For the sake of privacy, he had moved from the Hotel Deron during his second month in the city, had found a so-called garden apartment on the north edge of town, a new development on Bannock Road just off the main east-west highway. The red brick units contained four apartments apiece, each with its private entrance. The units were so placed that each apartment looked out on a reasonable amount of open space and greenery rather than onto other windows.

Had he been living entirely on the rather meager salary Dennison had been able to swing for him, the apartment would not have been possible. But, in a period of conservatism following his father’s death, he had tied up the rather substantial inheritance so that he could not touch the principal. It brought in approximately two thousand dollars a year, and this made the difference between living carefully and living with a certain style.

The development had the advantage of having a central switchboard and messenger service, as well as maid service for those who wanted it. He pulled in by the office and went inside. Mrs. Kidder, the slim, shy, overworked wife of the manager, was at the switchboard, behind the high counter.

“Mr. Dennison called you three times this afternoon, Mr. Morrow. The last time he left the message you should come out to his house if you got back before ten.”

Teed frowned and looked at his watch. A little after eight. He smiled at Amy Kidder. “Thanks, honey.”

She blushed. “Now, Mr. Morrow!”

“As long as your husband doesn’t catch on, we’re safe, aren’t we?”

It was an old game between them, one that he knew delighted her, and never failed to make her blush. He winked solemnly at her, and went out and got in the car. There was annoyance at having to run out to Powell Dennison’s house just because the man happened to whistle for him, but the thought that it might be something hot, something new, muffled the annoyance.

Powell Dennison had rented a large, ugly frame house in one of the older sections of Deron. It was zoned residential, yet surrounded by areas that had been rezoned commercial. Teed parked in the narrow driveway.

As he went up the last step onto the porch, the front door opened, silhouetting Powell against the hall light.

“Glad you decided to come back to town, Teed. Come on in.” The voice, like the man, was slow, warm, sincere. He was a big man in his early fifties. Hard fat had larded the athlete’s body. In the firm, florid flesh of his face, the gray eyes were level, honest, and unafraid. This man, Teed knew, had a mind so quick and so certain that, as an administrator, he could have scratched high on the tree in either private industry or state or federal government. Yet his passion was city government, his skill the rejuvenation of weary cities, his creed the potential grass-roots impact of awakened citizens. It was not his fault that he lived in an era when such dedication was poorly paid. Teed had long since decided that Powell would have continued with his work, somehow, even if it were without any salary at all.

Powell led Teed into the high narrow living room with its ugly rented furniture, brown floral wallpaper, shallow unusable fireplace. Marcia Dennison, the elder of the two daughters, sat in an overstuffed chair, one leg pulled up under her, a book in her lap. She was twenty-three. She did the marketing, and the cooking, in addition to working five mornings a week in a local secretarial school, teaching typing classes. Though it would have been extremely simple for Powell Dennison to have found part-time work for her with the city government, it was the sort of thing that he would never do.

Though she had never indicated as much, Teed had the strong feeling that Marcia disliked him. She was a lithe blonde, firm-lipped, with her father’s gray eyes, with his air of calmness. Wherever she sat, however she stood, she seemed to be carefully posed, as though awaiting the pop of flashbulbs, yet he knew she was not vain. He always thought that the women of the Vikings had probably been like Marcia. Lithe grace concealed the essential sturdiness of thighs, the lioness loins. She sat there, in a cashmere cardigan that was not quite right for her because the shade of yellow took luster from her hair.

Jake, the other daughter, the dark, flashing, eighteen-year-old, the one most adored by Powell because she was like the wife who was now dead, was another matter. Entirely another matter, with her gawky ripeness, wide-lipped breathlessness, and hero-worshiping mind which had not yet caught up to bright lushness of the woman-body. She had been reading a paper spread on the floor and as Teed came in, she bounded up, came swinging toward him in jeans and T shirt, eyes bright with the ever embarrassing worship, lips smiling for him, dark hair rumpled, smoothing it now with the back of her hand, with a woman-gesture not quite right for the child mind.

She caught his arm. “Oh, Teed. Teed, it’s your birthday!”

Jake hugged his arm, cheek against his shoulder, round breast-firmness all too evident in its pressure against his upper arm. It was good to know that someone else had remembered.

“And there’s a cake,” she said.

Marcia smiled faintly. “Under pressure. I said you wouldn’t want one.”

He met Marcia’s level glance. “But I do. And thank you.”

“I would have made it, Teed,” Jake said, “but my cakes are godawful.” She let go of his arm and made a face, comically forlorn.

“You can have him back in a few minutes, girls,” Powell said. “Come on into the study, Teed. I’ve got something to show you.”

Teed had suspected for a long time that Powell had hopes of his one day marrying Marcia. Teed knew that Powell had no illusions about him, about his private life, and he guessed that Powell reasoned that, after marriage, Teed would settle down. Maybe Marcia’s coolness was the result of having guessed what her father dreamed.

Powell Dennison shut the door of the small study and pointed to a box on the table. “Have a cigar, Teed.”

“Never use them. Thought you knew that, Powell.”

Powell gave him an enigmatic smile. “Take a look at the contents.”

Teed looked at the open cigar box. One cigar was missing, and through the gap where it had been, he could see the green gleam of currency. He picked some more cigars out of the top row.

“Don’t bother,” Powell said. “I counted it all and replaced it. Five thousand in cash. I went down this morning to get in a little work. It was on my desk, wrapped in brown paper. My name printed on it in pencil.”

Teed grinned at him. “We’ve got them worried.”

“It looks crude, but it’s pretty smooth, Teed. No proof. No receipts. No demands. I’m supposed to quietly pocket the dough. That puts me very gently on the hook.”

Teed ran his thumb along the edge of the box. “It will be a pleasure to take them back.”

“I thought you might enjoy it, Teed.”

“I’ll go out in the morning.”

“Fine,” said Powell in the tone that meant the subject was closed. He opened his desk drawer, took out a small package, gaily wrapped. “From the Dennisons,” he said gruffly.

“Now, Powell. You didn’t have to...”

“Have to? Listen to the man. Come on out where the girls can see you open it. Had your dinner?”

“Not yet.”

“Marcia’ll fix that. And I’ll fix a shaker of stingers — a personal shaker for you, Teed.”

Because the dining room was more than grim, the Dennisons had a snack and Teed had a pickup dinner in the big light kitchen, the present, still wrapped, by his plate. Jake shouted from the next room and Marcia turned off the lights. Jake came in bearing the cake, the light of the candles shining on her smiling lips, dark glint of eyes. They sang in the traditional way and Teed gathered in his breath and whoofed at the thirty-one candles, seemingly getting them all until, when he had no breath left, one of them flicked back into pallid life. Marcia walked to the light switch again and they blinked at the sudden brightness. He opened the package. It was a silver lighter, a good one. He took the old battered one from his pocket, leaned forward in the chair, and flipped it into the metal wastebasket beside the sink.

Marcia came to him where he sat and put a hand lightly on his shoulder and leaned over to kiss him lightly. “Happy birthday, Teed,” she said. Her lips were cool and soft.

Jake had walked over to the other side of him. “Happy birthday, Teed,” she said, and her voice was shaky and something had gone wrong with her eyes. Her arm went strong around his neck and her lips came down on his, lips that felt swollen and seemed to pulse against his mouth. He knew at once that this kiss was wrong, that this kiss would spoil the mood so carefully constructed. He knew that he should force it to end without being too obvious about it, and her lips had parted against his and already the kiss had lasted too long, had become too intense.

He forced her away gently, heard Marcia’s nervous laugh. Jake stood and looked down at him, with that wrongness still in her eyes.

“Better put it to bed, Jake,” Powell said, with too much joviality in his tone. Marcia’s eyes were watchful.

“Yes,” Jake said, never taking her eyes from Teed’s, “there’s school tomorrow, isn’t there? And there’s a hell of a lot of candles on that cake, isn’t there?”

“Jake!” Powell said sharply.

She walked with too much casualness, too much hipsway, to the kitchen door, standing for a moment, looking at them, posing in a way that was comic drama and pathos at the same time. “Good night, all,” she said, looking only at Teed.

They were silent until the stair creak had ended, until her bedroom door had banged shut.

Powell sighed. “A handful, that one.”

Marcia put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her fist. “She thinks she’s in love with you, Teed. Been mooning around lately. She’s never been — quite this obvious about it before.”

It was a relief to have it in the open. “It puts me on a spot,” he said.

“I know,” Marcia said.

“What spot? What kind of spot?” Powell demanded.

“Don’t you see it, Daddy?” Marcia said, almost impatiently. “If he laughs at her or brushes her off too hard, she’ll do something terribly silly, or terribly wrong. If he acts so that she thinks he’s encouraging her, it will just get worse. Teed has to walk right on top of the fence until she gets over it.”

Teed gave her a grateful look.

“By next summer,” Powell said, “she’ll be working at that summer camp, and then in September she’ll be going away to school.”

“October to June seems short to you, Daddy. To Jake it’s like several years.”

“I’ll have a talk with her,” Powell said heavily.

“Please,” Marcia said. “No.”

Later, after the dishes were cleaned up, Powell Dennison made one of his customary awkward attempts to throw Marcia and Teed together. “You see him out, please, Marcia. Teed, let me know as soon as you get back in the morning.”

Teed and Marcia went out onto the front porch. The midnight was cool. She leaned against the railing, her arms folded against the cold. He stood with the cigar box, re-wrapped in the brown paper, under his arm.

“I think you’re handling it very well,” Marcia said.

“Oh, Jake? I’m not doing anything. She’s quite a kid, you know.”

“She’s a very lusty young girl,” Marcia said remotely. The distant street light touched her pale hair, making it look silver, making it look like the smooth sheen of fast water in moonlight.

“ ’Night, Marcia. Thanks for the party.”

“Good night, Teed.”

As he backed out the driveway he saw that she still stood there, hips braced against the railing, arms folded, shoulders slightly hunched. In some obscure way she always managed to annoy him. She was like the clear ice on a winter stream where, if you look closely, you can imagine that you see the water bubbling by underneath. Seven years of responsibility for the household. Maybe that had done it.

Responsibility like that could do odd things to a girl like Marcia. With the death of her mother, the home could have fallen apart. Powell Dennison, with his dedication to his work, Jake, with her streak of wildness, both needed some focal point, some sane stability on which to depend. Marcia gave of herself, gave up her freedom, gave up a part of her individuality, for the sake of the home.

And, as with all forms of martyrdom, Teed knew that the danger was that she would learn to like it, possibly had already begun to like it, to value the deep sad wells of self-pity more than the lost freedom.

Once again he found himself thinking of the lovely Ronnie, of days long gone. Ronnie, who couldn’t wait. Ronnie, the Dayton wife of the insurance man. He knew he had been a fool to expect her to wait. There was no waiting in Ronnie. A war made no difference to her vast insatiable impatience.

So the little dark man had grabbed her deftly a month after Teed had left. There had been two possible futures for Ronnie. Either someone married her and chained her with children, with clockwork pregnancies, or she would become a tramp — not because there was any evil in her, any coarseness — but merely because she was driven and harried and spurred on by both a strong consciousness of the passing of time, and by the delusion that there was only one way, one fundamental way of making time stand still for a little while. Teed knew the accepted explanations of nymphomania. None of them seemed to fit Ronnie. He had a symbolic picture of her in his mind. A tiny naked Ronnie running, endlessly screaming, down a narrow empty street, running by all the sleep-shops, by the window displays of bedroom suites, by the deodorant and cosmetic ads that implored her to smell better, taste better, look juicier, acquire that wanted look — while behind Ronnie bounded the tireless beast which has a clock dial instead of a face, and carries the little packages of wrinkles, of gray hairs, of varicose veins, of sagging wattled tissues. In a nation where youth is a synonym of happiness, time-conscious women spend billions to cheat the hand of a clock, to prove that a calendar can lie. Teed went to sleep while playing the frayed old game entitled What Might Have Been. And Ronnie walked into his dreams, carrying a little wooden purse shaped exactly like a coffin, and one of the silver handles was actually a lipstick.

At nine-thirty the next morning Teed turned into the drive of Lonnie Raval’s home on Roman Hill, in one of the most exclusive residential suburbs of Deron. The drive slanted up to an oval turn-around with a three-car garage beyond it, an antique lamppost on a patch of green in the middle of it.

A small, stringy, dish-faced man wearing a white jacket came out the side door and stood waiting for Teed to approach.

“I’d like to see Mr. Raval.”

“Out in the back. What’s in the box?”

“Cigars. I’m...”

“I know who you are, Morrow, and where you work. He’s out in the back.”

Teed walked around the garages. He glanced back. White-Jacket was following him at a careful thirty-foot interval. Lonnie Raval stood forty feet behind the garage. New golf balls were blazing white against the grass. Lonnie had an iron in his hand. He was a tanned man of medium height with strong shoulders. He was dark-haired, entirely unremarkable except for his eyes, which were long-lashed, liquid, melting black.

He smiled at Teed. “Hi, fella! Glad to see you. O.K., Sam.” White-Jacket turned without a word and went back around the garage toward the house.

“Trying to get more loft and more backspin,” Lonnie explained. He addressed a ball, swung hard. The ball went out in an arc that was too flat. A hundred yards down the manicured slope, a leggy brunette in a chartreuse sun suit scuffed over to the ball, picked it up and put it into the cloth bag she carried. There was something bored and petulant about her stance and her walk.

“Now what the hell am I doing wrong, Morrow?”

Teed moved over behind him. “Try it again, Mr. Raval.”

“How many times I got to tell you to call me Lonnie, fella?” He prodded another ball out of the group, addressed it, swung. The result was the same.

The girl picked it up. “I’m gettin’ tired, Lonnie,” she called, her voice coming thinly up the slope.

“Just keep picking up the balls, you,” Lonnie shouted back. Teed saw her shrug.

“Try placing the ball more off your right foot,” Teed said. “You’re trying to scoop them. Let the pitch of the club head do the work. Just imagine you’re going to hit a low flat one.”

Lonnie tried another. It lofted high, came down and put on the brakes.

“Hey, now!” Lonnie said.

The next one worked the same way. And the next. “Fifteen bucks an hour I give that schnook at the club, and you do me more good in three minutes than he does in the whole hour.”

“Lonnie!” the girl called.

“Shut up!” he shouted. He slammed another one, putting more meat behind it. The girl stood where she was, and Teed saw at once that she had lost track of the ball.

“Fore!” Teed yelled.

The girl tried to break away, her hands going up. It was like slow motion. She ducked directly into the path of the ball, and he saw it rebound high from her dark head, heard the “tok” sound it made.

The girl sat down, hard and flat, both hands flat on the top of her head. Lonnie started rolling on the grass, hugging his stomach and making strangled noises. “Funniest... Jesus... Oh, oh, oh,” he gasped.

Teed hurried down the slope. The girl still sat there holding her head, her face all screwed up. Between sobs she was spewing out a stream of gutter language that threatened to sear the green grass for yards around.

Teed squatted on his heels. “I guess I didn’t yell in time,” he said.

She looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. She slowly lowered her hands. “It wasn’t... your... fault.” Her mouth was trembling.

She looked beyond him and Teed heard Lonnie approaching. Her eyes hardened. “Dammit,” she said, “it isn’t enough I got to chase balls like a stinkin’ caddy, but you got to clobber me on the head with one.”

“Kindly shut your big loose mouth,” Lonnie said quietly. All fire left the girl’s eye. She stood up meekly. Lonnie took her by the upper arm. Teed saw the whiteness come around her mouth.

“Meet Mr. Teed Morrow, darling,” he said. “Morrow, this is my secretary. Alice Trowbridge.”

“How do you do,” she said.

“Now, you were clumsy, weren’t you, darling?”

“Yes, Mr. Raval.”

“Go on up to the house and take an aspirin, darling.”

He released her. Teed felt faintly ill as he saw the depth of the indentations his hard fingers had made in her arm. She walked up the slope, legs slim and brown under the crisp chartreuse shorts, back straight, head lowered. She didn’t begin to rub her arm until she had almost reached the garage.

“Is this just a friendly visit?” Raval asked, dark eyes dancing.

“Not likely. Mr. Dennison’s doctor told him he had to stop smoking cigars.”

“Is that supposed to mean something? It sounds like one of those cute cracks that mean something else.”

“Here’s the cigars you sent him, Raval.” He handed the box over.

“That I sent him?” The surprise was just a shade too enormous, Teed decided. Lonnie took the box, hefted it. “Must be some kind of mistake.”

“With five thousand cash in with the cigars, Lonnie. You aren’t kidding me and you certainly aren’t kidding Powell Dennison.”

Raval grinned. “Come on up to the house. We can have a talk.”

“There isn’t much to talk about, Lonnie.”

“Hell, I thought we had mutual interests, Morrow.”

Teed shrugged. “Suit yourself.” They went up to the house. There was a small patio on the side opposite the drive. A glass-topped table, some wrought-iron chairs. Raval ordered Sam to bring drinks and then to pick up the golf equipment.

Teed lit Lonnie’s cigarette and his own with the new lighter. The box sat on the table between them. After Sam brought the drinks, Lonnie Raval said, “If there’s five thousand in that box, it sort of puts me in a spot. I got to report all my income. Now how the hell will I report that? A gift? I don’t want those Internal Revenue snoops raising hell with me and my accountants, do I?”

“Better not put it down as a gift from Dennison, Lonnie.”

“Look, fella. Get me off the spot. You can tell Dennison you gave me the dough. Keep it yourself.”

“And then someday you’ll want a little harmless favor from me, Lonnie. I don’t want to have a ‘sold’ sign on me.”

Lonnie clucked sadly. “You guys! You Christers.”

“Must be we have you worried, Raval.”

One dark eyebrow went up a little. The eyes were liquid, wet-black, beautiful. “Worried? Not such a good word, Morrow. You two are like maybe a pebble in my shoe. And I’m a lazy guy. I just hate to sit down and take my shoe off and shake the pebble out. Maybe I’m going to have to do it, though.”

“Maybe we won’t shake out so easy,” Teed said, trying to match Raval’s casual confidence, trying not to show how much the quiet words had bothered him.

“Now that just doesn’t make sense, Morrow. You and those silly goddam affidavits! Think I’m going to sit still and let you nibble on me? Take a message back to Dennison. Tell him Raval is scared of federal heat — so scared that he keeps his nose clean. Tell him Raval can find angles as far as state and local heat is concerned. And tell him that as far as a couple of amateur good-government bastards are concerned, Raval is laughing.”

“And offering money.”

Lonnie stared at him. “I could learn to dislike you, Morrow. Tell Dennison I’ve got a couple of boys who are so stupid they’re more trouble than they’re worth. I’ll set them up so Dennison can knock them over and be a hero.”

“He’ll never go for that.”

“Stay in my hair and you’ll both wish you never heard of this town.”

“So far it only adds up to noise. What can you do? Have us killed?”

Raval gave him a hurt look. “Jesus, boy. You better stay out of those B movies. How long do you think I’d last if I went around killing people? Jesus!”

“I know that would be pretty crude, Raval. The point I was trying to make is that outside of killing us, there’s no way of stopping us.”

“I don’t know why I have to explain all this to you, Morrow. Look. You and your boss nosed around the City Engineer’s office long enough to get the specs rewritten on the repaving of Grayman Street. It took most of the sugar out of that job and cost me personally twelve thousand. All right. Now suppose I was a manufacturer. Somebody starts cutting into my profit. What do I do? First I try to hire them. That doesn’t work. Do I kill them? Hell, no. I look them over until I find a little button. Like a doorbell. I just push on the button.”

The man’s confidence made Teed’s mouth feel dry. “But...”

“I take a look at a guy like you. Money doesn’t seem to interest you. Maybe you’ve got enough. So I try something else.” He threw his head back and yelled, “Alice! Alice, come on out here.”

“Coming!” she called, from the recesses of the house. She appeared almost immediately. She had changed from the sun suit to a crisp white halter-back dress. She sat down in one of the chairs and said, poutingly, “What a terrible headache I got!”

Lonnie Raval said, softly, affectionately, “Honey-lamb, what happens if I tell you to go out there and see how much grass you can eat?”

She stared at him. “You going crazy?”

“No. I mean, what happens if I really tell you to do that?”

She held his gaze for a long moment and then her eyes dropped. “I guess maybe I’d do it, Lonnie.”

“Show the man.”

“Gosh, Lonnie, I...”

“Show the man!”

The tall, tanned girl walked out into the yard. Raval watched her without expression. She bent over and pulled up a clump of grass. She raised it slowly and put it in her mouth, started to chew.

“O.K., honey-lamb. Spit out the nasty grass. Come back and sit down. Morrow, you see what I mean? Now this girl here, she was pretty snotty to me last year. So I had to find out which button to push. You find the button, and you own the person. I own her. Anything I tell her to do, she does, don’t you, baby?”

She looked down at her hands. “Yes, Mr. Raval.”

“You don’t ever want to make me mad, do you?”

“No, Mr. Raval.”

“Because when I get sore enough at you, you know what I’m going to do to you, don’t you?”

Her voice was a barely audible whisper. “Yes, Mr. Raval.”

Lonnie smiled at Teed. “I get a big yak out of how those newspaper guys make a big mystery out of how the Commies get those confessions. They ought to come talk to Raval.”

Teed felt ill at having witnessed this humiliation of a human being.

“Want to make a bet, Morrow?”

“What do you mean?”

“You stay in town long enough, and I’ll own you too. I tell you to eat grass and you’ll eat grass. I know. You’re telling yourself you’re a big strong guy and you’d die before you’d take orders like that. That’s fairy-story stuff, Morrow. Hero stuff, like in the books. People aren’t like that. You can break people. You can break anybody in the world, if you know how to go about it. If you want to be smart, just join my team. Dennison doesn’t have to know. Keep the five grand. You like this little girl? Take her home with you. She’ll do anything you tell her to do.”

“No, thanks.”

“She’s a better piece than the Mayor’s wife, Morrow.”

Teed stood up, unable to conceal his surprise.

“Man, how do you think that old fud got to be mayor? Raval keeps up on things. Raval keeps track. See, already I got a little handle on you. Already I found one button. And I’ll find the button on Dennison, too. And you two gentlemen can hold hands and jump through a big hoop whenever I hold it up. Felice gave me a full report. She isn’t bright. Just sort of shrewd.”

Raval looked lazily at Teed’s clenched fist and said, “It wouldn’t be at all smart to take a punch at me, Morrow.”

“You won’t stop us,” Teed said. He turned on his heel and left. As he rounded the corner of the house, he glanced back. The man and the girl sat placidly on the terrace. A master-slave relationship. A little medieval nightmare in a sunlit world.

He stepped on the starter. Under the hood a low whistle started. It increased in volume and pitch. It climbed up into a whistling scream that terminated in a sharp explosion. Clouds of white smoke rolled out of the vents.

The stringy little man called Sam was standing by Lonnie Raval. They were both laughing so hard they were doubled over. The girl in the white dress was standing behind the two of them, her laughter shrill above theirs. Teed yanked the bomb loose from the spark plug and threw it on the grass. He slammed the hood down. At the end of the driveway, as he slowed to make the turn, he could still hear them laughing.

Teed drove a mile before he permitted himself a small rueful grin. Raval had been all too convincing. The very casualness of his confidence had, in itself, been a weapon planned to undermine Teed’s confidence. Whatever else Raval was, Teed realized he was also an expert amateur psychologist. He had thrown in the knowledge of Felice Carboy at the proper moment to obtain maximum shock value. The little demonstration of his power over the girl had been adequately sickening.

By the time he parked in the City Hall lot, most of his confidence had returned. The City Hall was of yellow brick and sandstone, with four two-story pillars across the front. A patch of paper-littered parched grass stretched across the front, bisected by the wide walk leading to the foot-cupped concrete steps. Behind the building a roofed walk led to police headquarters.

Teed went into the Hall and up the stairs, heels clacking on the shiny metal treads, nostrils full of the stink of green floor-cleaning compound, ancient dust and the pink reek of the deodorant blocks in the urinals. Lonnie’s Mint. That was what the wise ones called the Hall. Its symbol was the shine on the pants seat of a third-rate lawyer. Justice was blindfolded, but she carried no scales. In Deron she lay flat on her back in the City Hall with her knees high and the soiled toga entangled around her waist, with tireless relays of public servants making certain that she stayed that way.

Three City Hall girls came down the stairs toward him, high heels clacking, voices chattering about the week end.

“S-s-st!” one said.

“Good morning, Mr. Morrow,” they said, singsong, almost in chorus.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said.

They passed him, and when he looked back down at them they were looking up the stairs. They clutched each other and giggled shrilly.

Teed went into his office and through the connecting door into Powell’s outer office where sallow Miss Anderson, a trustworthy import, was filing letters.

“He in?”

“Expecting you, Teed. But Commissioner Koalwitz is in there right now.”

“Give me a buzz when he’s free, please.”

He went back out and sat at his own desk. The green rug was scuffed down to where brown showed through the pile. One of the slanting window ventilators was missing, the other one cracked. Green steel desk with brown-black cigarette scars in the paint. Calendar from Mooten Brothers, A Funeral to Fit Every Purse. Ash tray on the desk encircled by a miniature rubber tire. Chair that creaked. Another office in another public building — so like the ones that had gone before, the ones that would come afterward. Public buildings and pigeons. They seemed to go together. One landed on his windowsill, looked in with beady, wise glance.

“Pigeon, I don’t think I’ll mention Felice to the boss. Check on that?”

The pigeon shrugged and flew away.