The Sour Lemon Score

One

A second too late, George Uhl realized he’d shot the wrong man first. Weiss was falling, Andrews was lunging for a gun he was never going to be able to reach, but Parker was going out the window. It was Parker he should have taken out first, and then Andrews, with the old man last. Old men are slower.

Later on, thinking about it, he finally came to the conclusion that he’d shot Weiss first because he knew Weiss. Stupid subconscious thinking — deal with friends before you deal with strangers. But that was the only explanation, and it screwed things up all around.

If it hadn’t been for Andrews, Uhl would have gotten Parker anyway, even though he’d gone for the wrong man first. But if he’d spent those extra few seconds getting Parker, Andrews would have had that gun in his hand and it might have gone the wrong way. So he had to take care of Andrews and let Parker go on out the window.

He was rattled for a while after that, and who wouldn’t have been? The tension of the robbery, driving back, waiting for the right moment to throw down on the other three — he’d been wound up like a watch, and of course as soon as something went wrong in the plans he got hopelessly strung up for a couple of minutes.

Until he saw Parker’s gun lying outside the window in the dust, and that was such a good break it almost made up for the stupidity. Anyway, it got him back on the track, and even though Parker got away into the woods Uhl was all right again, ready to go on with his plans. He was too smart to go crashing around in the woods after Parker. He’d have to let the bastard go.

But it wasn’t all that bad. Parker and Uhl didn’t know each other, so how could Parker make trouble for him later on even if he wanted to? And besides, since Uhl was going to leave him unarmed and on foot out here, he was more than likely to be picked up by the cops. Let Parker do twenty years in a federal pen somewhere and then come looking for Uhl.

So he went on with his original plan, ignoring Parker’s unscheduled existence. He went back and arranged for the fire, piling all the flammable stuff in the middle of the house, and then stacked the bodies on top so they’d burn thoroughly, first kicking their teeth loose. These bodies weren’t going to be identified by fingerprints or dental records. These bodies weren’t going to be identified.

In the barn he splashed gasoline around, led a trail of gasoline-soaked rags to Andrews’ Mercury. Then he set the two fires and got out of there. Good-bye, Parker. Good-bye, Weiss and Andrews.

Number six. This was job number six, and from the first one he’d wanted to do this. Every time the job would be done, he’d drive the car to the hideout, the money would be split up, and he’d look at the piles of cash, he’d look at the fraction he was given, and he’d want it all. But every time there’d been something wrong. Too many men, or men he knew too well who had friends who knew him and would come after him. It took till job number six before the situation was right. Only three others in the heist, and he really didn’t know any of them. Only Benny Weiss, and that not very much, just through organizing a job that didn’t come off one time.

And was thirty-three thousand better than eight thousand? Was the extra twenty-five grand worth the risk? Uhl grinned to himself as he drove east.

But as he thought it over, he began to realize that the loose end of Parker could make a lot of trouble. If Parker wasn’t picked up by the law, if he managed to get out from under, he would come looking for Uhl, and that was sure. Could he find him? Uhl didn’t know. He wanted to think it couldn’t be done, but he just wasn’t sure.

All right. So the thing to do was lay low for a while. Wait and see if Parker popped up anywhere; wait and see if there were any other repercussions. If everything was quiet, in a week or two he could come out of hiding and everything would be the same. If there was trouble, he could stay hidden out and decide what to do about it.

The question was, Where to hide? He thought of Howie Progressi first because he knew Howie would get a kick out of the story of his taking the thirty-three grand from three sure old professionals, but almost as soon as he thought of Howie he rejected him again. For two reasons. First, everybody knew he and Howie were tight. If Parker came looking, one of the early people he’d see would be Howie. And second, if Howie learned about the thirty-three thousand, the bastard might try to take it away from him himself.

The next one he thought of was Joyce Langer. There was the advantage there that they’d split up over a year ago, so nobody was likely to look for him around her now. Also, he could pretty well control her, keep her under his thumb. But on the other hand she was such a goddam kvetch, and if somebody came around to make him trouble she might just blow the whistle on him to get back at him if she was feeling put-upon. And she was always feeling put-upon.

Barri? No, too many people knew he was shacked up with Barri Dane these days. If he tried staying at her place, and if Parker did come prowling around, Barri was one of the people he’d get to first.

He was into Pennsylvania when he remembered Ed Saugherty. He hadn’t seen Ed since that time four or five years ago when the shmuck had called him: “Hi, George, it’s Ed Saugherty. Remember me? I’m just in New York for a couple of days with a convention. I thought I’d look up my old high-school buddy.”

Old high-school buddy. In those days George Uhl had been a big shot, a big wheel. High school had been great, the greatest part of his life so far, and in those days he’d had a half dozen little punks that hung around him, tagged after him, bought him beers, laughed at his jokes, listened to his stories about making out. And Ed Saugherty had been one of them, around-faced stocky kid with red cheeks and thick glasses, an eager kid who liked to laugh and who loved to hear George’s tough-sounding stories.

They’d met twice after that phone call, before Ed went back home to Philadelphia. He was working for a computer company now. He wore a white shirt and a tie even when he didn’t have to, and the company had transferred him a few years before to Philadelphia. He’d made George very uncomfortable during both those meetings, and in fact after the first one — a couple hours’ drinking together in a bar, with Ed picking up the tab, paying for it with a credit card — George had been sure Ed felt contempt for him now, thought of him as a loser. Ed had done a lot of talking about the company, his job, his future, his wife and children, his home in Philadelphia, his whole happy, successful life, and when he’d asked what George was doing now the only answer had been, “This and that. I get along.”

But then Ed called him again the next day, and it turned out the old hero-worship was still very much alive. When George realized that Ed saw himself as a dull wage-slave and George as a guy with an exciting life, there was nothing for it but to agree with Ed completely and start playing the role to the hilt. That second meeting had been full of wild stories, a few of them true, a few of them invented, a lot of them adapted from paperback novels, and there was no question but that Ed would pick up the tab again. And though George had really been in tough money shape just then, the main reason he tapped Ed for a loan was because he understood that Ed’s myth-comprehension of him demanded it. Ed pressed the forty bucks on him with a smile of absolute joy, saying, “No hurry about paying this back, George, no hurry about paying this back.”

Was Ed Saugherty the man to go to now? Somebody he’d had no contact with at all in four or five years, and no real extended contact with for closer to twelve years. But somebody who’d do whatever George asked. Like giving him a perfect place to hide out.

So Philadelphia was where he went, and he found Ed living in a brick ranch-style house on a winding black-top street in a well to do green suburb west of the city. It looked like a standard family in a standard setting, and George had no inclination to scratch the surface and see what was underneath. From the time he walked up the back to the driveway past the overturned tricycle to the open garage door where Ed was pouring gasoline into a power mower, George had no more interest in the people and the place than if they were the background for a television commercial.

“Ed, I’m in trouble. I need some help. I can’t talk about it, but I need someplace to hide out for a few days.”

Ed had fallen into his role in the melodrama as though he’d been rehearsing for it all his life. And why not? Didn’t he see it two or three times a week on television? Didn’t the situation keep cropping up, and wasn’t his role always the same? The true friend, the ally, the last desperate hope of the hero. If he couldn’t be the hero himself — and in going with the computer company, the wife, the brick house on the winding street, Ed had consciously turned his back on ever being the hero — this was the best possible supporting role.

Ed had a wife named Pam, a good-looking, slender woman in stretch pants, and she knew her role, too. She was against him, opposed to his staying there, opposed to Ed “getting involved,” insistent on Ed finding out what George’s true situation really was. George kept out of her way and left it up to Ed to handle her, never doubting for a minute that Ed would.

They had a guest room, and George kept to it most of the time. He made a halfhearted attempt to become pals with Ed’s oldest son, a ten-year-old named Bob, but Bob wasn’t interested, and George had been strictly making the gesture because he felt the situation expected it of him. After that he stayed close to the guest room except for the strained, silent mealtimes with Ed giving him sheepish smiles and Pam pointedly ignoring him and the two younger kids staring at him with their faces smeared with mashed potato.

The important thing was to find out if there was going to be any trouble from Parker or from anybody else, so what he needed was a link to his normal life, somebody he could trust, and that was Barri. He called her Tuesday afternoon, gave her an abridged version of the situation, told her the phone number here but nothing else about the place, and she agreed to relay any messages that might come in but not to give anybody any information about him. Then he sat back to wait.

He didn’t hear from Barri till Thursday, and then it was to say Matt Rosenstein wanted to get in touch with him and had left a D.C. number. George had worked with Rosenstein on two jobs, and they’d both been involved in the abort where he’d met Benny Weiss. Would his calling now be a coincidence? It had to be, but George was wary. Rosenstein was based in New York, so why a number in Washington? Why was he so close to George’s stamping grounds and to Barri?

He called Rosenstein, and Rosenstein gave him a long story about a caper he was organizing, something absolutely safe and with a fat return. Rosenstein wanted to meet with him and talk it over.

George didn’t specifically doubt Rosenstein, but he didn’t trust him either. His wariness, and the thirty-three thousand dollars tucked away in a suitcase in the guest room closet, kept him uninterested in Rosenstein’s offer. He said so, but Rosenstein kept pressing, kept wanting to have a meeting with him, until George began to get actively suspicious, at which point Rosenstein abruptly gave up, told him he was missing a sure winner, and hung up.

That was yesterday, and ever since that call George had been uneasy. He sensed people moving around out there, somewhere beyond the range of his sight and hearing, prowling around, up to something. He was getting nervous.

And then late this morning Barri had called again, and the message this time almost made him drop the receiver. “Benny Weiss wants to get in touch with you.”

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait!”

“What’s the matter, George?”

All he could do was keep saying wait. He was standing in Ed’s living room; he was alone in the house; there was silence and springtime outside, sunlight and grass. He had to get his mind back inside his head, and until then all he could do was say wait.

Finally he found a question he could ask: “Who called you? He called you himself?”

“No. A guy named Lew Pearson called. He said he was passing the message on.”

Lew Pearson. That bastard. Wouldn’t he like to do George a favor, though. “I’ll call you back,” he said and hung up and prowled the house a while, trying to make up his mind.

What did it mean? Benny Weiss was dead. Parker? How would Parker get to Lew Pearson? Through Benny’s wife maybe. So were Pearson and Parker combining against him? Was Pearson spilling his guts to Parker about everything he knew? Or was Pearson taking over from Parker, or running something on his own?

Maybe they were all in it together, Pearson and Rosenstein and Parker. Closing in on him.

He couldn’t just stand around here. He’d been jittery since the call yesterday; he’d wanted to move, act, do something, but there hadn’t been anything to do.

Now there was something to do. Nip Pearson in the bud.

He left a note for Ed on the kitchen table. He considered taking the money, but it would be safer here and finally he left it. And then he headed south.

A little over three hours later he was at Pearson’s house. He rang the bell, got no answer, found the door unlocked, and worked his way silently through the house, pistol in his hand. Then he looked out a back window and saw Lew sitting out there with a bathing suit on, Madge drifting around in the pool.

Ask questions? Did he want to know what was going on? No, he knew what was going on. There was only one meaning for Pearson’s message: He’d been trying to rattle George, make George expose himself by doing something stupid. And there was a quick way to defend himself.

He opened the window a couple of inches and knelt on the floor. He braced his gun hand on the sill, and he never saw the guy in the other chaise longue until after he’d shot Pearson. That chaise was facing the other way. There was nothing showing but the top of a head, and that was easy not to see at this distance. And Pearson had acted like a man alone, sitting there sipping his drink.

But then George fired his first shot, and the other man erupted out of the other chaise, and damned if it wasn’t Parker again. George emptied his pistol at the son of a bitch, but Parker rolled like a cat across the lawn and got clean away.

Would nothing stop him? This was George’s second try at him, and he’d failed again.

“The next time,” George muttered, “I take my first shot at you.” Then he got to his feet and hustled out of there.

Two

Barri Dane stood by the door, smiling at her students as they trickled out bravely to face the day. She shut the door behind the last of them and the smile fell from her face like a picture off a wall. When she walked across the bare floor of the rehearsal room her reflection kept pace with her in the wall-length mirror on her right, but she didn’t bother to look at it. She knew what she looked like in black leotards, she knew the twenty-eight-year-old body was as firm and slender and well-curved as the eighteen-year-old body had been, she knew that the twenty-eight-year-old face looked tougher and more knowing and more provocative than the eighteen-year-old face had looked, and she knew the fatigue she was feeling would show only in a slight slump of the shoulders, a slight flat-footedness in the walk. So she walked the length of a twenty-two-foot mirror without glancing in it once, went through a curtained doorway into the living quarters of the building, turned on the shower water in the bathroom, and then stripped out of the leotard in the bedroom while waiting for the water to run hot.

Washington, D.C., is a tough town for the young single woman, and that’s because there are so many of them there. Government never has enough bureaucracy, and bureaucracy never has enough secretaries, stenographers, typists, and file clerks. So Washington is full of young women, and because there are so many of them a lot of them are lonely.

Barri Dane’s current livelihood was a direct result of this loneliness. Although in the past she’d been a stripper, a con artist’s shill, and a few other things, today she was an educator, a teacher with her own studio and with two well-attended classes every day.

It was part of her self-promotion when she said that the main thing she taught was confidence. “If you finish this course with new self-confidence,” she always told new classes, “we will both have succeeded.”

In more mundane terms, Barri Dane’s course was a general study in physical education. There were classes in calisthenics and in hygiene, as well as classes in belly dancing, in modeling, and in judo. A student could sign up for a complete four-month course, two one-hour sessions a week, for one hundred fifty dollars, or she could select a shorter program devoting itself to any one of the subjects Barri taught, for smaller amounts of money. There was a good living in it and it was by far the cleanest and most legitimate means of earning a dollar she’d ever found for herself, but after nearly two years she was bored to death with the damn thing. Still, there was nothing much else to do, so she kept on with it.

The water was hot. She stepped in and started to soap and got to thinking about George Uhl. She knew he wasn’t much; she’d always known that, just as she’d always known that she was invariably attracted to the George Uhl type, to the tough guys with a weakness, the big talkers who somehow would never come through. But George had just a little bit more going for him than those other bums; he had just enough strength so that he really did act every once in a while. And he’d acted now, all right. He’d done something and he was in it up to his neck. He wouldn’t tell her about it when they talked on the phone, but she knew once she saw him again in the flesh she’d get the story out of him. She always did. And all she hoped was he hadn’t dug himself into too deep a hole this time. Better a live bum than a dead hero.

She came out of the shower at last and toweled herself vigorously till her skin flushed red. Then she hung the towel over its bar to dry and went naked into the bedroom, where a man with a gun in his hand was sitting very casually on the edge of the bed.

He smiled at her. “That’s a nice way to say hello, honey,” he said.

She recognized him. He was the guy who’d come around yesterday wanting to get in touch with George. He’d given her a phone number to pass on to George, he’d said his name was Matt Rosenstein, and he’d left. When she’d told George about it he hadn’t seemed upset. In fact he said something about calling Matt to see what he wanted.

Barri thought, George, did you get me into something bad? She said, “What do you want, Mac?”

“I want George,” he said. He was medium height but very broad, massive in the shoulders and chest and neck like a weight lifter. He had a square head with a mean-looking face and a way of smiling that was somehow very nasty.

She said, “I told George you called. I gave him the number.”

“I know you did, and that was real nice. But now I want George in person. I want to go talk to him.”

The sight of the gun in his hand was making her feel very cold, but she was afraid if she went to put a robe on or anything he’d take it as a sign of weakness. She was terrified to show him weakness, as though he were a vicious dog that had to be faced down. She said, “I don’t know where he is.”

He got to his feet, taking his time, that nasty smile drooping on his face. “For your sake, honey,” he said, “I hope that isn’t the truth. Because I’m going to start on you now, and the only thing on God’s earth that’s going to make me stop is when you tell me where George is.”

Three

Paul Brock sat on the floor in the middle of the living room, and tears streamed down his cheeks. He felt he couldn’t go on; he felt it was all too much for him; he felt everything was lost and doomed and beyond recall. I just don’t have the energy, he kept thinking.

Matt had told him to come back to the apartment at five o’clock on Friday afternoon, and Matt would phone him there. “Parker won’t be hanging around there anymore by then,” he said. “But keep an eye out for him anyway.”

So that’s what he’d done, coming downtown from the hotel half an hour early, both to be ahead of the worst of the rush hour and to have a little time in the apartment, and what had he walked into?

It was criminal. It was like murdering a person, what had been done here, just like beating the life out of a human being. The apartment had been raped, viciously, violently raped, and then kicked to death.

All the time he’d put into this place, all the time and thought and energy and pride, all of himself, poured it into this apartment for three years now, and look what had happened. His home, his home.

What would Matt say? Matt wouldn’t really care, would he? Not really, not deeply, not the way Brock cared. Matt had never been all that interested in the apartment, in the plans for it. “You do it, baby,” he’d say, grinning that grin of his, and pat Brock on the cheek and talk about something else instead.

He was alone with his grief. His rage. Grief and rage. There was no one on earth who would really, truly sympathize, understand, share this horrible experience with him. Never before in his life had he realized just how totally, miserably, incurably alone he really was.

The phone rang.

Startled, he looked at his watch, and it was five o’clock. Had he been here half an hour already? He’d come in, he’d seen the living room, he’d wandered like a zombie through the rest of the apartment, stunned and dazed by it all, and had finished in the living room again, his mind just refusing to comprehend what had happened. And then he’d fallen to the floor; he’d been sitting here like that ever since.

And here it was five o’clock already, and the phone was ringing.

It was on the floor now, over to his right. The upper air just seemed too high, too far up toward the ceiling, the top of the room; he couldn’t get all the way up there, stand all the way up there. He got to hands and knees and crawled across the carpet to the phone and sat down again beside it. He picked up the receiver and in a strengthless, hopeless voice said, “Yes?”

“Paul?” It was Matt’s voice, strong and confident.

“Yes.”

“What’s the matter? Something wrong there?”

“Oh, Matt.” Brock shuddered and felt for a second as though he couldn’t go on, he couldn’t tell any more, he didn’t have the strength to hold the phone anymore.

“What the hell’s wrong?”

He took a deep breath. “He was here, Matt.”

“Who, Parker? You saw him?”

“No. It was before — Matt, he wrecked the apartment!”

“He did what?”

“It’s all... it’s all—” Brock gestured wildly at the wreckage around him, as though Matt could see his waving arm and strained face. “He just — killed it, Matt. Everything broken, everything—”

“What did he find?” Matt’s voice snapped through his own wailing.

“Find? I don’t know what he found. What do you mean, find?”

“Did he get the guns? Did he get the money? Did he get the serum? Didn’t you look around?”

“Matt, I didn’t even—”

“Look, dummy! Get off your ass and look!”

“Matt, how could I be expec—”

“Look now!”

“All right,” he said. “All right. I’ll be right back. Matt?”

“What?”

“I wasn’t sure you were still there. I’ll be right back.” He put the phone down and labored to his feet, as stiff and clumsy as a washerwoman. He went through the apartment, not looking at the destruction this time, looking for the signs of robbery, and he found them. He went back to the phone, turning a chair back onto its legs and sitting on its slit-open seat, picking up the receiver from the floor and saying into it, “Everything, Matt. He got everything.”

Mart cursed. Angry, harsh words, clipped and bitter. Brock rubbed the heel of his free hand against his forehead, listening to the tinny words in his ear.

Finally Matt took a deep breath and said, “Okay. He’s number two on the list. We’ll get him, baby, don’t you worry.”

“I want to kill him,” Brock said in the same faint voice. “I want to do it myself, Matt.”

“He’s yours. But right now there’s still number one. Uhl, he’s the one we’re after first.”

Brock forced himself to ask, “Have you found him?” Though he didn’t really care. He would never say anything to Matt, but he was thinking that none of this would have happened if Matt hadn’t insisted on horning in between Parker and Uhl.

Matt said, “Sure I found him, baby, what do you think? I found out his drop, anyway, and that’s all that matters. He’s either there or he’ll show up there. I’m gonna need you.”

“All right.”

“You don’t want to stick around there anyway.”

Brock looked at the room. “No, I don’t.”

“I’ll meet you in Philly. I looked it up; there’s a six-ten express train gets in at seven forty-five. I’ll meet you there.”

“All right.”

“Don’t worry, baby. We’ll have Uhl and the dough out of the way by tonight, and then we’ll go settle the score with Parker.”

“All right.”

“And we can use a chunk of that thirty-three grand from Uhl,” Matt said, “to put the apartment back in shape again. What do you think of that, huh?”

Voice dull, Brock said, “That will be fine, Matt.” Thinking how very alone he was, that the only man in the world he was close to could be so ignorant about him. That Matt could think for a minute he would ever want to set foot in this apartment again. That Matt couldn’t understand how it had been spoiled for him, that no amount of money on earth could make this apartment a virgin again. “I’ll see you in Philadelphia, Matt,” he said.

Four

Pam Saugherty said, “Well, I hope he never comes back at all.”

Ed Saugherty said, “Frankly, I hope the same thing. Just to get you off my back about him,”

“Is that any way to talk to me in front of the children?” Who were sitting with them at the dinner table, eyes round, ears open, mouths full of unchewed food.

Ed Saugherty knew there was no way to win an argument when his wife began hitting him in the head with the kids, so he just made a face and picked up his knife and fork and started cutting his roast beef.

Pam, having reduced him to silence, continued her half of the argument as a monologue, but he didn’t really listen. He thought about George Uhl instead, and about his earnest prayer that George wouldn’t come back. Not ever. Not at all.

And not just because of Pam either, though God knew that was a big part of it. But George was mixed up in something bad, and the longer George hung around here the greater the danger Ed Saugherty was going to get mixed up in it with him, and that was the last thing Ed wanted.

It wasn’t like high school anymore. The world was different now; the responsibilities were different. Only George didn’t seem to understand that. Back in high school he’d been an exciting guy to know, a risky, dangerous guy who drove cars too fast, drank before he was of legal age, got into fights with strangers, was always in trouble with the teachers at school; and it was fun to be a pal of his then, to share even just slightly in the excitement of his adventures. But when you’re a kid nothing is for real, nothing counts, there aren’t any responsibilities. That was what George failed to understand — that when a man grows up he has to set aside the things of a child, goddammit.

He remembered calling George four years ago, when he’d been up in New York with the convention, and he remembered with embarrassment how he’d deferred to George both evenings. In adult, practical, realistic terms it was Ed Saugherty who was on top of the heap and George Uhl who was on the bottom, but it hadn’t worked out that way, and Ed knew it was his own fault. He’d still seen George as romantic and dramatic; he’d seen himself as a dull, plodding, uninteresting sort of guy, and he knew he’d spent those two evenings trying to win some sort of approval from George, approval and understanding. He’d even tried to buy his approval with that forty bucks they’d both known was a gift and not a loan.

At least he hadn’t talked to George about women. That had been during the bad time with Pam. He’d come to New York determined to break his marriage vows, and when he’d called George it had been mainly in hopes George could arrange a double date or something, could line him up with a girl. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to ask the question, and George hadn’t volunteered any such thing. Afterwards he’d been glad he hadn’t embarrassed and humiliated himself at least that much. He’d done so enough as it was. With the forty bucks, and deferring to the man.

And the same thing Monday, four days ago, when George showed up in the dusty car, unshaved, a wild look in his eyes, full of desperate secrets, asking to be hidden out for a while. Ed had fallen immediately into the old attitudes towards George, admiring his derring-do, deferring to him, taking the subordinate position to him. And maybe this time it would wind up costing him more than forty bucks.

If George came back. But of course he’d come back; he’d left a suitcase in the closet in the guest room. And in his note he’d said he’d be back. But if only he wouldn’t.

In a funny way, if it weren’t for Pam he felt he could throw George out now. If he came back. Tell him, “I’m sorry, George, but I’ve got responsibilities to my family and I’m afraid you could wind up bringing them trouble, so I’m going to ask you to find somebody else to help you. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.” He could say that and mean it and know it was the best thing under the circumstances. Except for Pam. She’d turned it into a contest by now, a battle of wills, trying to force him around to her way of thinking, and of course that made it all impossible. To throw George out now would not be the way of reason, it would be giving in to Pam. Letting her win.

If there was only some way to get that fact across to her, to make her understand that if she’d only lay off she’d get what she wanted. But, looking across the table now at her talking face he knew there wasn’t a damn thing he was going to be able to do to change anything. Circumstances were rolling along, rolling along, and he was just swept up in it, and all he could do was hope for the best.

The phone rang.

It startled him and he dropped his knife, and that startled Pam, who stared at him in surprise a second and then said, “I’ll get it.”

He nodded and picked up the knife again. He watched her trim figure as she walked into the living room, thinking that George had no idea what he’d cost Ed already. He looked around the table, told Angela to chew her food, and then Pam came back and said, “It’s for you. I think it’s him.”

“Oh.” He got to his feet as she, cold-faced, sat down. He went into the living room and said hello into the telephone.

George. “Ed, we’ve got a problem.” Sounding out of breath, rushed, harried.

Ed felt dinner lumping in his stomach. “A problem? What do you mean, a problem?”

“I’m not coming back there,” George said, and Ed smiled at the phone. But then George said, “There’s been a mess down here. I’m in Washington. There’s a girl here” — his voice receded a bit as though he turned away from the phone to look at something for the next few words — “she’s been beat up pretty bad. I got to take care of her, do something for her; then I’m getting out of here. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’ll get in touch.”

“That’s all right, George, you—”

“The big thing is the suitcase I left there,” George said quickly. “You stash that someplace safe, you hear me?”

“Yes. I—”

“Don’t tell your wife where. Just you do it by yourself.”

Ed stiffened a little at that. “Pam wouldn’t—”

“That isn’t the question,” George said. “The question is, it’s better she doesn’t know anything. Better for her. There’s a guy might come around.”

“What?”

“Ed, don’t worry about it. Here’s what you tell him.”

“What do you mean, somebody might come around?”

“This girl here had to give him your phone number. He really leaned on her, Ed, he made a mess out of her. But all you do—”

“My phone number? George, what have you done to me?”

“Listen to me, goddammit. If he comes around, if he comes around, you tell him you used to know me when. I called you on the phone, I asked you to relay messages, you said okay. You got two messages, one yesterday, one today. The one yesterday was from a Matt Ros—”

“George, I can’t—”

“Listen, Ed, you want him leaning on you too?”

“What is he after, George, the suitcase?”

“Hell, no! He’s after me, Ed, what do you think? Listen, all you have to do is remember the two messages. You got them, I called you a while later, and you gave them to me, that’s all you know. You don’t know where I am or anything else. You got it?”

Pam had come to the doorway, napkin in hand. She was looking at him.

Ed said, “Are you sure I shouldn’t call the police, George?”

“Ed, you’ve got an aiding a fugitive rap if you do. Now just listen to me.”

“Aiding a—” Then he saw Pam in the doorway and stopped himself.

George was saying, “You don’t have anything to worry about, Ed. He might not come around at all. Just stash the suitcase somewhere safe, and if this guy comes around give him the story. Two messages, and I called you both times. He’s got no reason to call you a liar, so he’ll go away. Right? Ed, you there?”

“I’m here.” Ed licked his lips, watched his wife watching him in the doorway.

“I’ll go over the messages with you,” George said, and went over them with him. The names, the times the messages came, the phone number on the first message, the times George allegedly phoned him to get the messages. He made Ed repeat them, which he did, Pam frowning at him, and then George said, “I’ll get in touch in a couple days. Now I got to get out of here. Don’t worry about a thing, Ed.” And hung up.

Ed kept holding the receiver to his ear. He knew George had hung up. He knew sooner or later he was going to have to hang up too, but until he did, until he broke the connection at his end, nothing could move forward. As soon as he hung up, reality would break in, Pam would start asking questions, strangers would come to the door. But not till he hung up the telephone.

He stood holding the receiver to his ear.

Five

Midnight. Matt Rosenstein stepped into the sidewalk phone booth and shut the door to make the light come on. He dialed the number, then opened the door partway again, enough to switch the light back off. Then he leaned against the glass wall and listened to the ringing.

Matt Rosenstein was a heavyset man of forty-two with irritable, intelligent eyes and a heavy, stupid jaw. He’d started pushing garment racks around Seventh Avenue in New York in his late teens, and the first crime for money he ever committed was helping punch some people out in an office down on Varrick Street. He never knew what it was all about and he never much cared. He and three other guys got thirty bucks each to go downtown and punch these people out, and they did, and that was it. And it was easier work than pushing garment racks up and down the sidewalk.

In the twenty-four years since that incident, Rosenstein had committed most of the felonies on the books — kidnapping was about the only major exception — and every commission had been strictly for money. He’d burned people’s diners down when they wanted a fire for the insurance. He’d stolen, he’d hijacked, he’d extorted, he’d blackmailed, he’d murdered, he’d swindled. Whatever came along, it never mattered. Money was money, and more money was more money, and a tough, thick-skinned guy with intelligent eyes and a stupid jaw could make out in this world.

Until four years ago when he’d met Paul Brock, his personal life had been bare but heterosexual. He’d taken sex the way he’d taken money, where he could get it and any way he could get his hands on it. It had never pleased him as much as money, but it had never occurred to him there might be any reason for that other than his own preoccupation or the dullness of the pigs he invariably wound up with.

Paul Brock was a partner in a men’s boutique on Hudson Street that needed a fire preceded by a robbery, and one of the other partners got onto Matt, and that was how they met. Matt looked at Brock, recorded the fact that he was a faggot, and ignored it. Business was business. But the night before the fire they were alone together in the stockroom, Brock explaining what to take and what to leave, and Matt found himself patting his cupped hand against the back of Brock’s neck. Brock looked at him, and Matt saw the fear in Brock’s eyes, and he shook his head and just kept patting. And Brock sort of went limp, his shoulders sagged and his eyes closed, and he leaned forward toward Matt as though he’d fallen over on his face, and that was how it started.

As far as Matt Rosenstein was concerned, though, he himself was still straight. Brock was a faggot, and the relationship they had was sex-based, but that was just because living with a guy had business advantages and other advantages over living with a broad. Matt was still straight, and when he got a shot at a woman he still took it and it still wasn’t very good, but he was still straight.

Like Uhl’s woman down in Washington this afternoon. Now, she might have been okay. She looked as though she ought to be a real tiger in the rack, but of course by the time she opened her head about Georgy Porgy she wasn’t feeling too frisky anymore, and the way it turned out she lay there and took it when he climbed abroad. So it was fun, but not a hell of a lot fun. Anybody in his right mind would prefer a Paul Brock to something like that. You wouldn’t have to be a fag.

And Paul came in handy in a lot of ways. Like at the moment he was on watch in front of the house. The two of them had been there since about eight o’clock this evening, waiting to see something happen, and nothing had happened. At twenty to twelve the last light went out in there, and that was when Matt said, “Stay here. If he comes out, let him have it in the leg. I’ll be right back.” And he’d driven here, to this phone booth on a corner three blocks away, and now the phone was making its ringing sound in his ear, and after fourteen rings there was at last a click, and then a silence, and then a shaky, small male voice said, “Hello?”

“Let me talk to George,” Matt said.

There was a sharp intake of breath, and then silence, and then words in a rush: “There isn’t any George here. You’ve got the wrong number.”

“No, I don’t, honey. I want to talk to George Uhl.”

“There’s no one here by that name.” The voice was shakier than ever.

Had something got George’s wind up? Had he taken off someplace? Matt said, “Then how do I get in touch with him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know any George Uhl.” The shakiness in his voice called him a liar with every word he said.

Matt nodded comfortably at the phone. “I’m okay, baby,” he said. “I’m straight. I’m Matt Rosenstein. I just talked to George yesterday. I want to talk to him again, that’s all.”

“Matt Rosenstein?” The voice sounded uncertain now.

Matt frowned. Had it been a mistake to mention his name? George would be running from that guy Parker these days, wouldn’t he? Not from Matt Rosenstein. He said, “Sure. George and me are old buddies.”

Still uncertain, the voice said, “He mentioned your name. He did mention your name.”

“Well, sure.”

“But he isn’t here now. I honestly don’t know where he is.” Then, with gathering certainty, “But if you want to leave a message—”

“When did he leave?”

“He never was here,” the voice said very quickly again, and Matt knew he was lying. He’d just said he isn’t here now. “But he’ll be calling here,” the voice said. “You want me to give him a message?”

“Sure,” Man said. “Tell him I called, will you?”

“Is there any place he can call you back? The same number as before?”

For a second Matt felt doubt. If this guy knew the number from the last message maybe he really was just another stage in the chain. Maybe messages went first to the broad in Washington and then after that up to this guy in Philadelphia and then to George himself anywhere in the country. Anywhere in the country. Just call his buddy in Philly every once in a while, see if there’s any messages. George just might be that smart.

Except that this guy was too shaky, and his words contradicted each other, and Matt just had a feeling. George had been hid out here, right here, right in this guy’s house. Maybe something had spooked him, maybe Parker was on the prowl again, or maybe the broad had got herself untied and to a phone — though he doubted that — and so George wasn’t here anymore, but he had been here, and of that Matt was dead certain.

And George would want to keep in touch. He’d want a line into his regular life; he’d want to know how things were going. And he’d keep on doing it through this Ed Saugherty, it only stood to reason.

Matt said, “No, that number isn’t good anymore. Just tell him I’ll get in touch. Okay?”

“All right,” the voice said.

“Bye,” said Matt, his voice soft, and put the phone back on its hook. He nodded at the phone, thinking, and then went out and got into his car and drove back to where Paul was sitting next to a hedge on the front lawn across the street from the Saugherty house. Matt parked the car and got out and Paul came over and Matt asked him, “Anything happen?”

“A light went on is all. It’s still on.”

Matt looked across the street, and a light was shining in the house somewhere. “I guess I got him nervous,” Matt said. “Come on.”

“Is he in there?”

Matt led the way across the street. “Not now. I don’t think so, not now. But he was. And Saugherty know where he went. Come on.”

They didn’t go direct to the front door but angled over to a corner of the house. Matt boosted Paul up and Paul stood on his shoulders, bracing himself with one hand against the wall while he reached up with a pair of wire cutters in the other and snipped the telephone wire. Then he got down to the ground again and they walked half a dozen steps to the garage door. Matt tried it and it lifted. They went in and Matt switched on the light and they shut the door again. They made no effort to be quiet.

The door between the garage and the kitchen was locked, but it had glass in the upper half. Matt took a pistol from under his jacket and smashed the glass with the butt. He reached through and unlocked the door and he and Paul stepped through. The kitchen was half lit with spill from the living room. They went into the house and shut the door behind them, and in the kitchen they met a wild-eyed man in bathrobe and pajamas and slippers, scuffing hurriedly across the floor in their direction. He stopped when he saw them and said, “What are you doing? What are you doing here?” It was the same voice Matt had heard on the phone.

Matt saw a light switch and clicked it on. Ed Saugherty squinted in the white glare, and Matt said to Paul, “Go check out the rest of the house.”

“Just a minute,” Saugherty said. “Just a minute.” He made as though to block Paul’s path, but Matt held the pistol up where Saugherty could see it, and Saugherty stayed where he was. Paul left the room.

They waited, neither saying anything. After a couple of minutes they heard a complaining woman’s voice and then a kid crying because he didn’t want to be awake. Saugherty said, “You can’t just—” and then quit. Because they both knew Matt could. Just.

Paul called from the living room, “Okay, Matt.”

Matt waved the pistol at Saugherty. “Let’s join them.”

They went into the living room. Paul had closed the drapes over the picture window. A woman looking angry and scared was sitting on the sofa with three kids lined out beside her. The kids all looked teary and scared.

Matt said to Paul, “This it?”

Paul said, “There’s somebody been using the guest room, but he’s gone now. No luggage or anything.”

“So he isn’t coming back,” Matt said. “Or maybe he is.”

The woman snapped, “He isn’t. We didn’t want him here, and we don’t: want you here.”

Saugherty tried to shush her by patting the air with his hands, saying, “Pam. Pam.”

“You make me sick,” she told him and then didn’t look at him anymore. She glared at Matt instead.

Man said to Saugherty, “I’m the fella just phoned a little while ago.”

“Rosenstein?”

“That’s right. Very good. Matt Rosenstein. Now, all I want is to have a nice talk with George. You know? I’m sorry to get everybody out of bed this way, but I feel it’s kind of urgent. So all you have to do is say where George went, and we’ll go right away again.”

Saugherty shook his head. “I don’t know where he went. I really don’t.”

“That would be an awful shame,” Matt said, “because we don’t plan to leave here until we find out where he went. So if you really don’t know, it isn’t going to be so good for you.”

“He’s supposed to call,” Saugherty said. He sounded desperate. He kept blinking. He said, “He told me he’d call, but he didn’t tell me where he was or where he was going. I swear he didn’t. But he’ll call.”

“Well, that’s another shame,” Matt said, “since we just cut the phone wires. So we’re stuck with you telling us where George is. You see how it is?”

“But I don’t know!”

“Well, then, maybe he’ll come back,” Matt said, and by the expression that flicked across Saugherty’s face for just a second he knew he’d hit on it. Saugherty’s eyes glanced to one side, his mouth made a small grimace, and then it was over. But that was all Matt needed. He nodded and said, “Yeah, that’d be nice. He’ll come back here. How soon do you figure he’ll be back, Ed?”

Saugherty said, “He isn’t coming back. He’ll just call. When there’s no answer, he’ll be afraid to come back.”

“Naw. Not if the phone’s just out of order. He’ll be back. And we’ll just wait for him. Unless you’ve got some idea where he is? Some small idea?”

“I don’t. I swear I don’t.”

The woman said, “Ed, if you’re protecting that man—”

“For the love of God, Pam, do you think I’d—”

Matt turned to her, smiling his little smile. “Maybe you know something you’d like to tell us.”

“I didn’t talk to him,” she snapped. “My husband talked to him when he called.”

“He called?” Matt turned back to the husband. “When was this, Ed?”

“This afternoon.”

“And what did he say, Ed?”

“He said he wasn’t coming back, but he’d call, he’d let me know what was happening.”

“He didn’t say where he was?”

“He said he was in Washington; some girl was beaten up down there or something.”

“In Washington.”

“But he wasn’t staying there. He said he was leaving right after the phone call.”

“It’s a mobile age,” Matt said. “It’s easy to forget that. So the son of a bitch was in Washington today, was he?” He looked at Paul. “He’ll be back, won’t he?”

“I don’t know, Matt. The phone out of order could scare him off.”

“Can you splice it, patch it up?”

“Maybe. It looked like there was some tools and stuff out in the garage.”

Matt thought and then nodded. “Okay. We’ll fix the phone and we’ll wait. And George will call, and Ed, you’ll tell him everything’s okay here, he can come back, no trouble. And you better sound convincing.”

“Oh, I will,” Saugherty said, and all at once he sounded bitter. “I don’t owe George Uhl anything, don’t you worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Matt said.

Paul said, “You want me to fix the phone now, Man?”

“Not yet. A little later. Right now you keep an eye on everybody while the little lady gives me a tour of the house.” He smiled at her and saw the startled expression on her face. But she wasn’t as tough as that bitch down in Washington this afternoon; she wouldn’t take as much convincing. There’d be a lot of energy left in her when they got to it.

Paul said, “Must you?” His voice was full of hurt, like always.

Matt shrugged, grinning at him. “Just a boyish peccadillo,” he said. “It don’t mean anything, baby.” He turned and took a step over to the wife. He put his hand out. “Come on, Pam, I got the hots to see your house.”

“Don’t touch me,” she said and leaned back against the sofa to keep away from him.

He leaned forward to take her arm, and she slapped at his hand, and he slapped her hard across the face. One of the kids let out a shriek.

Saugherty shouted something and ran at Matt. Everybody always needed convincing. He reached out one hand and held Saugherty with it and used the other hand to start hitting him.

Six

The doorbell woke Joyce Langer from a dream in ‘which seven old crones who smelled like bacon were trying to drown her beside a rowboat on a cold, black river surrounded by fog. She came out of the dream slowly, almost reluctantly, fighting off the bony hands for a long time, her mind confused in its attempt to fit the sound of the ringing into her dream somehow, a black stone church with a bell ringing in its steeple appearing out of the fog just as the fog crumbled away entirely and she was awake, in bed, in a room in a building on West 87th Street in New York City, alone, unhappy, in darkness, with the doorbell ringing.

Her clock radio over on the dresser had a luminous dial, and it read twelve minutes past one o’clock in the morning. Who would be ringing her bell at a time like this?

She thought of Tom Lynch, the strange tough man who’d taken her to dinner this evening. Could he be back? She had a sudden sexual vision, almost physically staggering in its effect, and then it drained away again and she admitted to herself just how unlikely it was that Tom Lynch would have returned at this hour, and how much more remote from possibility that he would be here to have sex with her. She knew the kind of man she attracted, the kind of man she could succeed with, and he wasn’t it.

Then who was it? The doorbell rang again as she switched on the light and got out of bed, smoothing her peach pajamas down over her legs. Various people from the past flickered through her mind as she went to the closet for her robe, and then she thought of George Uhl, and she stopped with the robe half on, knowing that that was who it was.

George Uhl.

She was suddenly terrified. She’d never been afraid of George before, not really afraid, but what she was feeling now was terror, and she quickly analyzed it for what it was. Guilt. Guilt at having helped Tom Lynch, George’s enemy.

Had George found out? Was he coming to get even with her?

Paranoia lies close beneath every skin. She wondered briefly if Tom Lynch had been a trick, a test set up by George to see if he could trust her. Then Lynch had gone back to him and said, “She spilled everything about you, George.” Now George was here to pay her back.

The thumb out there jabbed and jabbed at the bell. She couldn’t ignore it, no matter what.

She ran through the apartment, her throat constricted as though she were wearing a too-tight necklace. She stopped at the door, breathless, panting as though she’d run a mile, and stooped to peer through the peephole in the door, seeing the face there she’d known she would see.

But not the expression. Not anger, not cold rage, not the determination to get even with anybody. As she watched, he turned his head and looked over his shoulder, and she saw how loosely his jaw hung. He turned back this way to ring the bell again, and she saw how pale the skin was around his eyes, how large his eyes looked.

He was terrified. George was terrified.

Now guilt wrapped her completely. She’d betrayed George to Tom Lynch, and the result was now outside her door, frightened, urgent, desperate. Coming to her for protection.

She unlocked the door and opened it, and George burst in, shoving the door so that it smacked painfully into her shoulder. “Took long enough,” he said and slammed the door again.

The only light was the pale line across the floor from the ceiling light in the bedroom. She stood there, unable to think, and he switched on the nearest floor lamp and looked at her. “Still the same,” he snapped as though it were an accusation. He jerked his head at the bedroom. “You got anybody in there?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t think.

“Not you,” he said. His own fear had made him scornful and savage. He turned away from her and strode off toward the bedroom.

She trailed after him, trying to sort out the moods in her head. She got to the bedroom and saw him standing beside the bed, leaning one hand on the wall while he kicked his shoes off. He looked over at her and said, “I’m in a jam. I need to be hidden out for a while.” She nodded, looking at him wide-eyed.

He made an obvious mammoth attempt to be agreeable to her, sticking a false smile on his face and saying, “You’re the only one I can trust, Joyce. It’s always you I come to when I’m in trouble.”

A dull anger, like the beginning of heartburn, began inside her. It was such a cheap and obvious lie. He didn’t even work very hard to make her believe it. She was supposed to be grateful for whatever dregs she got; she wasn’t supposed to look the gift horse in the mouth. All he had to do was give her the bare outline of the role she was to play, and then she would play it.

Had it always been that way? The anger turned sour because it had.

He was taking off his shirt. “You don’t know how it’s been, Joyce,” he was saying. “On the run like this.” He came walking over to her, that smile on his face. “You were the only one I could turn to.”

She knew it was a lie. She knew it was a lie. She stood there and let him put his arms around her, her body shivering inside the blue robe and the peach pajamas. In the last instant before his face was too close to be in focus she saw the expression change on it, saw it turn scornful and sure of itself. But then he was kissing her, his hands were stroking the bathrobe, and there was nothing to do but close her eyes and not believe or remember what she’d seen or what she knew, close her eyes and put her arms around him and believe whatever she wanted to believe.

His one hand slid down her back, down past the indentation of her waist, down over the curve of her rump, cupping against the bottom of her torso, pulling her close against his body. She felt him against her, and she felt how hungry she was, and she stopped agonizing over it. Even when he murmured her name in her ear, giving her a spurious individuality, she ignored what she knew.

Desire was completely physical and impersonal on both sides, and concentrated that way it made them clumsy with haste. Clothing was in the way, cumbersome and difficult to remove. Their arms were full of elbows, getting in their way. They fell over onto the bed, lying diagonally across it, all wrong, legs hanging out in mid-air from knees down.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and she was very noisy.

In the calm after the storm she opened her eyes and looked up and he was grinning at her. “You’re okay, Joyce,” he said, and she knew it was the first thing he’d actually said to her since coming in here. She smiled bashfully and reached up to touch his chest.

He lifted away from her, looking somewhere else. Kneeling beside her he stretched and yawned and scratched his chest and said, “Boy, I’m beat. You still working up at the college?”

Three words, that was all she was going to get. The moment was past already. She said, “Yes.”

“Don’t wake me, okay? I had a rough day.” He crawled over her as though she were a bunched-up blanket and lay down with his head on the pillow. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of day I had,” he said, he eyes closing. “Would you believe I drove from Philadelphia to Alexandria, Virginia, and from there to Washington, and from there to here? All in one day?”

“That’s a lot of driving,” she said and sat up. She wanted to cry, but she wasn’t going to.

“You’re damn right,” he said. He pulled the covers up over himself. “See you tomorrow,” he said, and rolled over on his side so that when she got into bed next to him his back would be to her.

She looked at his shoulder covered by blanket. She didn’t think about tonight at all; she thought about the past. Other times with George. Things he’d done, things he’d said, things he’d failed to do. And other men, all of them like George one way or another. Things they’d done. Things they’d said. Things they’d failed to do.

She got to her feet. He was asleep already. She picked up her pajamas from the floor, and the waist button on the pajama bottoms had been pulled off. She bit the inside of her cheek because she wasn’t going to cry. She dropped the pajamas on the floor again, picked up the robe instead, put it on, left the room, shut the door quietly behind her.

The white pages phone book was under the telephone in the living room. She sat on the sofa, her chin trembling, and looked up the number, then dialed it. She listened to the ringing sound, wondering if she would hang up when it was answered.

“Rilington Hotel.”

“Oh,” she said. “Uh.”

“Yes?”

She hunched over the phone, her voice low but steady. “I want to leave a message for Mr. Thomas Lynch,” she said.