Wake Up Little Susie

Four

My office is a single room on the side of the local dime store. You reach it by climbing three untrustworthy wooden steps.

On the tiny porch was a small white box with a white envelope Scotch-taped to it: Mr.

McCain. I carried it inside.

The reason I work for Judge Whitney is so I can afford such luxuries as indoor plumbing, electric lights, and a mattress. In a town with too many lawyers already, a tyro doesn’t exactly get the highest-paying clients.

Take this little box. Helen Reynolds, a sweet weary woman who cleans rooms out at the Sunset Motel, has a fifteen-year-old son who has been in and out of trouble with the law since he was twelve. Mostly minor offenses: toilet-papering the trees of girls he has crushes on, overturning garbage cans in alleys, and writing dirty words on the sides of buildings. Buggsy Siegel he’s not. But he seems to be in court every month or so. Maybe if his dad hadn’t died in Korea the kid would’ve turned out better. You never know about those things and you can make an argument either way.

Anyway, none of the other lawyers will take his cases. No money in them. Helen lives in a two-room apartment and drives a

Hudson, one of the big ones that looks like an overturned bathtub. So I take his cases.

And in lieu of pay she makes me angel food cakes with a lot of nice frosting on them. Every three-four weeks I get one. This was my payment on account.

The mail was three overdue bills, an invitation to a s@eance Halloween party (Maybe Bridey Murphy will be there!) thrown by a very successful tort lawyer, and a note folded in half.

Hi McCain-I need to talk to you. Called and stopped by.

Mary

Mary Travers is the girl I should marry.

She’s smart, sweet, sensible, and as good-looking in her dark-haired way as Pamela Forrest is in her blond-haired way. She had a straight-A average in high school and had hopes for college, but then her dad got sick so she had to stay home and help support the family. She works the lunch counter down at the Rexall. A couple of nights, especially on high school graduation night, we came close to going all the way. She’d caught the McCain virus in junior high just as I’d caught the Pamela virus in fourth grade. And neither of us could find a cure. There was a time, right after high school, when she pursued me actively. But no more. I ate lunch at the Rexall a few times a week, and those were the only times I’d see her.

The way she looked at me, I knew she still loved me. And the way I looked at her, she knew I was still in love with Pamela. We were miserable.

I had just sliced myself a piece of cake with my letter opener when the phone rang.

“Hi, McCain.”

“Hi, Mary. I got your note.”

“I knew Susan Squires really well.”

“That’s right. You did.”

“I wondered if we could get together and talk.”

A ruse for a sort of date?

“Sure.”

“You could stop by the house.”

The house she referred to was the one she’d grown up in in the Knolls. My dad had gotten a good job after the war and we’d moved to a new house in one of the thousands of Levittown-style developments that had spread across the country. Washers and dryers. A new car every couple of years. A Tv antenna on the roof. Steak once a week. The Gi Bill.

A chance for your kids to go to college. Uncle Miltie. Howdy Doody. Ed Sullivan.

The promise of America, especially to those who had grown up in the despair of the Depression and had gone off to war.

A lot of returning Gi’s did well but Mary’s dad had not. He’d seen Japanese soldiers slice up his friends with machetes and then hang them like slabs of beef off palm trees.

He had a “nervous condition.” Couldn’t hold any job long. Went into depressions so bad they had to put him in the bughouse a couple of times.

And now he had cancer. Mary still lived at home to help him and her mother, who wasn’t all that healthy either. I felt terrible about not being in love with Mary. Sometimes I got down on my knees and actually prayed that I’d stop loving Pamela and start loving Mary. That’d make so many people happy. Including me.

“There’s a hayrack ride tonight,” I said.

“I saw that.”

“You want to go?”

“Are you serious? With me?”

“Sure. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“That’s only three hours, McCain.”

“You’ll look beautiful; you always do.”

“I was going to tell you about Susan.”

“Tell me tonight.”

“I’d feel guilty going. With Susan dead and all.”

“It’s just what you need.”

“I guess it probably is.”

I could hear how happy I’d made her, and that made me happy. Maybe I couldn’t fall in love with her but I loved her.

“Seven o’clock then.”

I was just turning off the desk lamp when the knock came. A client. A small practice like mine, they just drop by when they need to. Most of the time it’s all right. But now I had things to do.

“C’mon in.”

I knew the moment I saw her what was going to happen. You don’t run into that many Gaelic goddesses. It’s probably the hair: a bloody mane of it, the color of red at the epicenter of a fire and reaching all the way down to the sleekly jutting hips. A white silk blouse and no bra, a pair of tight tan slacks resembling jodhpurs and tucked into a smashing pair of knee-length riding boots, and a face as erotic and innocent as those photography magazines with the young women of Paris. Maggie Yates. The twenty-eight-year-old would-be writer everyone in town loved to gossip about. No bra was bad enough, but she also wrote letters to the local paper defending communism, marijuana, and pornography. Every male in town over the age of ten lusted after her but she would tryst only with me, as she frequently said, “Because even though you’re no genius, McCain, you at least know who Isadora Duncan is.” She lived above a garage on an allowance and was finishing up a novel she said was a combination of Peyton Place and The Dubliners. She went to the Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City for a semester and dropped out to write. She is being supported by a fashion-model sister in New York who sends her a check and cast-off clothes once a month (hence the expensive duds). Her parents died when she was young, and she has made mention of a trust fund that will someday be hers, the source of which is-mysterious. But then eastern money is always mysterious, you make money on money, on embossed sheets of paper. Out here you amass money through substantial and three-dimensional ways, with corn, cows, or ointments for pig hemorrhoids.

“I was just downtown,” she said, “and wanted to see if you were busy tonight.” Then: “God, I’ve got to get out of this town.”

“Why?”

“Why? Did you hear what I just said? I was just downtown? There isn’t any downtown here, McCain, just three or four blocks of really pathetic old stores. I’m starting to sound like I belong in this place.” She shook her head.

“God, as soon as I finish my novel, I’m heading straight back to New York.”

“I’m in kind of a hurry.”

She grinned. “How much of a hurry?”

She’d caught me staring at her breasts.

“Well, you know. A hurry.”

“You just wet your lips and gulped.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. And you know what that means, don’t you?”

“What?”

“That you’re horny.”

“Why does it mean that?”

“Because your crotch just moved too. That thing of yours is bouncing around in there.”

I sighed. “Well, can I tell you I like you?”

“Aw, McCain, we’ve talked and talked about that.”

“It just makes me feel better is all.”

“You’re so old-fashioned.”

“Yeah, I probably am.”

“Did you read that Fran@coise Sagan novel I gave you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, didn’t you notice how people’re always doing it and they never tell each other that they like each other? That’s a sign of true sophistication. Going all over the place and screwing people you hate.”

“They’re French.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” she said.

“The French’re capable of anything. Look at World War Two. How long did they hold out, an hour and a half?”

This time, she sighed. “Ok, but you can only say it once.”

“That’s good enough for me. Let’s hop to it.”

So we hopped to it. Pleasuring her was a pleasure. But fornicate we did. She was some fornicator she was. She’d taught me any number of things about lovemaking, things I longed to try out on Pamela. Things I was sure that stupid rich handsome and successful Stu would never know.

The fornication was, as always, great. She smelled good, tasted good, moved good, whispered good. As soon as we finished, she started to push me away. “Thanks, McCain. That was nice.”

“Wait a minute. You didn’t let me say it yet.”

“Aw, shit, I forgot. Hurry up, will you?

My butt’s starting to freeze.”

I looked at her gorgeous eyes. She was incomprehensible to me. A creature from a future world. Most girls not only begged but demanded some choice words of amour afterward. She despised them.

“Can’t you at least pretend you like it?” I said.

“Just hurry up.”

I was still in the saddle and it felt wonderful; it’s as good a place to be as there is, and I wanted to stay there for a minute or two, maybe joke around a little or something, but I knew I had to hurry so I said, “I really do like you, Maggie. You’re crazy and you scare the shit out of me but I’m fascinated by you and I like the hell out of you and I can’t help it.”

“Great,” she said, giving me a shove.

We dressed on either side of the desk.

Underwear elastic snapping. Feet stomped into shoes. Zippers running their patterns.

She was all dressed and lighting a Camel when she said, “By the way, you know that prick David Squires, his wife just got killed.”

“Yeah?”

“I ever tell you he put the make on me one night at his summer home?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Uh-uh. Wanted me to go down in the basement with him. Told me it was a lot of fun to do it standing up. Just like Hemingway did, he said. I guess he was trying to impress me with his vast knowledge of literature.”

“How’d he know Hemingway did it standing up?”

“I guess because of that scene in A Farewell to Arms.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot.”

“What a jerk.”

“Hemingway?”

“No, Squires. He’s this big capital-punishment jerk. Schmuck. I’d like to capital-punish him sometime.”

That was another cool thing about Maggie Yates.

She knew all these great Yiddish words from New York. Hearing them and saying them made me feel very cool.

I started to kiss her good-bye but remembered that a good-bye kiss was another no-no.

“See you, McCain,” she said. And was out the door.

So David Squires had put the make on her. Interesting. What if he were a chaser? What bearing might that have on this case?

On the way over to Keys Ford-Lincoln, I listened to the national radio news. The big Edsel Day had been something of a bust all over the country. A lot of people had found the car ugly.

And a lot more found it overpriced.

The cleaning crew was already at work on the grounds. There were dead balloons and pennants and Pepsi cups and gum wrappers and cigarette butts covering the tarmac everywhere. The celebration had been scheduled to last until evening with a country-western band and a barbecue. Dick had obviously called it off.

No police cars. Cliffie had done his usual thorough job. The body had been discovered less than four hours ago and Cliffie was already long gone.

I wheeled the ragtop around back and went in the service door. Keys’s big yellow Lincoln convertible was parked nearby so I assumed he was still there.

He was there, all right. In his office.

With a cigar and a bottle of Wild Turkey that he was pouring straight into a Pepsi paper cup.

He had his shirt open, his tie off, and his cordovan Florsheim wing tips up on his desk.

His wife sat on the edge of a wooden chair.

She wore a green dress that looked light enough for summer. For such a big-boned woman, she moved with appealing grace. Her perch on the chair was delicate.

“I feel like calling Edsel Ford at home,” he said, “and telling him what a piece of shit his car is.”

“I still like it,” his wife said. “But obviously the public doesn’t share my taste.” She rose. “Well, dear, I’m going to go spend some of your money.”

“Buy me a couple of gallons of bourbon,” he said.

She winked at me. “Be sure he doesn’t do anything foolish, Sam.”

He made a sound that faintly resembled a laugh. “I do foolish things all the time.

Nobody’s been able to stop me yet.” The bitterness surprised me. She looked embarrassed by it.

She nodded to both of us and left.

“Damn, she’s a nice lady,” Keys said.

“Don’t know why the hell she puts up with me.”

Then: “Drink?”

“No, thanks.”

He gunned some more of his own.

He sighed. “First the Edsel. And now Susan Squires.”

“Yeah, I was meaning to ask about her. She used to work here, you said?”

“Two years. Back when she dropped out of college.”

My question didn’t seem to surprise him at all. “Was she seeing David Squires while she worked here?”

“The last year or so. He was here so often, I damn near offered to put him on payroll.”

“I take it you didn’t like it.”

“She was the receptionist. She had to meet people and be nice to them. Most people don’t appreciate how important a good receptionist is. They’re your first contact with the public. A receptionist who is rude or unhelpful gives you a bad impression of the place.”

“Was she rude and unhelpful?”

“She wasn’t rude very often. But unhelpful, yes. At least for the last six-seven months she worked here. She was caught up in her affair with Squires. They’d have an argument and she’d come in to work looking teary and worn out. Started calling in sick a lot. You know how it is when you’re in love. Sometimes you have a hard time concentrating. And he’s still married all this time. You’d think they would’ve been a little more discreet.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking of Pamela and her affair with Stu. “Yeah, you would.”

“I didn’t want to fire her. But I was glad when she finally quit.”

“Because of the scandal?”

“Hell, yes. It wasn’t real good for business, believe me. She just couldn’t take it anymore. She went to stay with some relative.

By that time, I sure as hell didn’t blame her.”

“Why was she here now?”

“Oh, hell, we’re still friends. After she and Squires finally got married and everything settled down, she dropped in all the time. Everybody here still liked her.”

I was writing all this down in my notebook.

“What’s wrong with Howdy Doody?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Your notebook. Noticed you’ve got a Captain Video. They out of Howdy Doody, were they?”

I felt my cheeks burn. “I got a deal on these.”

“Msta been some deal”-he smiled-? make you carry a notebook like that around. Captain Video, I mean.”

I changed the subject. “Cliffie spend much time here?”

“They’re having corn on the cob over at the Eagles tonight and then showing two Abbott and Costello pictures. Cliffie’s like a kid about that kind of stuff. You think he’d hang around and do his job when they’ve got corn on the cob boiling in those big pots?”

The office was small. He had a lot of family photos on the wall and a badly thrumming Pepsi machine in the corner. There were also more plaques, these from the Ford Motor Company, one of them having to do with clean rest rooms. Not the kind of thing you’d want on your tombstone: He Kept A Clean

John.

“You notice if he did anything with that broken taillight cover?”

“He didn’t. I asked my boys if they knew anything about it and they didn’t. Gil said it wasn’t there when he left last night at seven but it was here this morning when he came in at six.”

“So Cliffie didn’t take it?”

“Far as I know, he didn’t even look at it. Think the cleaning crew finally picked it up and tossed it in one of the cans out back.”

“Mind if I look?”

“That’s some job you’ve got, McCain. Scrounging around in waste cans.”

“I didn’t get a law degree for nothing.”

He laughed. “Yeah, and everybody in this town is proud of you.” Then: “Poor Susie. Just can’t figure out how she got in that Edsel. Why couldn’t it have been the Pontiac dealer down the street? I know that sounds sort of mean, but between the bad publicity with the Edsel and the murder…

Sure you don’t want a drink?”

“No, thanks. I’ve got to put that law degree of mine to use.”

He smiled. “Thanks for making me feel better, McCain. I appreciate it.”

The sky was darker now, stains of mauve and gold and amber, a few thunderheads brilliantly outlined with the last of the day’s sunlight. There’s a loneliness to Saturday night, at least for me, that no amount of noise and movement can ever assuage.

There’re a lot of popular songs about Saturday night, about how you live all week for it to roll around so you can go out and have yourself a ball. But deep down you know it’ll never be quite as exciting as you want it to be, need it to be, and the lonesomeness will never quite go away. I think my mom used to feel this when my dad was in Europe during the war.

She’d kind of fix herself up on Saturday night and then sit in the living room by herself with her one highball in her hand and a Chesterfield in her fingers. Even when she’d laugh at the radio jokes there’d be a lonesomeness in her eyes that made me sad for her and scared for my dad. But we were lucky. Dad came home.

There were five large trash barrels out back.

A big lonely mutt hung around watching me.

It took me twenty minutes to find what I was looking for. I couldn’t decide whether to start on the barrels from the left or right. If I’d started from the left I would have been out of there in five minutes. So of course I started from the right. This is the kind of frustration that the nuns always said was good for us. Taught us humility and patience. I never was sure about that. It was like attributing not eating meat on Friday to Jesus. All the things that poor guy had on his mind, did he really have time to worry about cheeseburgers?

By the time I finished, my shirtsleeves were grimy and my fingernails were black. In the center of the fourth barrel, I found what I was looking for. Whoever had picked it up had been thoughtful enough to put it in a paper bag for me. Even the little pieces.

“Ok, now, McCain. Close your eyes.”

Mrs. Goldman is a widow who rents out rooms. I’d call her my landlady, but that term always paints a mental picture of a dowdy middle-aged woman with flapping house slippers and pink curlers in her hair. Unless of course you read the occasional Midwood “adult” novels they sell under the counter down at Harkin’s News. In those books landladies are invariably twenty years old and cursed with nymphomania and they’re always asking the narrator if he’d “like to earn a little discount on his rent.”

I figure Lauren Bacall will probably look like Mrs. Goldman when she reaches her mid-fifties: tall, elegant, quietly imposing. Mrs. Goldman’s husband died six years ago. She hasn’t had a single date since. Until tonight. She goes to temple in Iowa City every Saturday. She recently met an optometrist there, a man around sixty and a widower. He was taking her out for steaks and dancing tonight.

“Ready?”

“Ready, Mrs. Goldman.”

“And you’ll be honest?”

“Absolutely.”

Mrs. Goldman keeps the downstairs for herself. There are three apartments upstairs. She’d bought herself some new duds and wanted my opinion of them. I’d never seen her this nervous before. It was cute.

“Here I come, ready or not!”

She came down the hall from the bedroom into the living room and she was gorgeous. Really. She’d bought a black shift and black hose and black pumps and one of those little French-style hats that Audrey Hepburn wears whenever she wants to get William Holden all hot and bothered.

“Holy moly.”

“You think he’ll like it?”

“Are you kidding? He’ll break down in tears.”

She smiled. “You never overstate things, McCain. That’s one of your finest qualities.”

She leaned over and gave me a motherly kiss on the cheek. “I appreciate the compliment. I need it. I keep running to the bathroom every five minutes, just the way I used to when I started dating my husband. I have a bladder that’s very sensitive to romantic feelings.”

She smelled great too.

Then: “Oh. David Squires stopped by to see you.”

“David Squires? Are you sure it was him?”

She laughed. “Are you saying that I should have Dr. Kostik check my eyes tonight? I know David from the Fine Arts committee at the library.”

“God,” I said, stunned. “Why would he want to see me? He and the Judge despise each other.”

“That’s what I was thinking. But his wife was murdered, so maybe he needs to talk to you. The poor man.”