Dead End - Ed Lacy

     “Would she?” I asked, seeing her dead eyes starting up at me again. How easily I could remember when those same cold eyes had been soft with pleasure every time I walked into the apartment. Had I let her down? I don't know, it wasn't the money: I hadn't known about taking the money then or... I jumped to my feet. “Let's get on with this.”

     Doc knew make-up. He thinned my hair and then dyed it a dirty mild-blond, did the same for my eyebrows. It took more time than we thought as Doc had to rinse and rerinse my hair. I suggested we make a mustache with the cut hair but he claimed it would look phony. He fattened my nose by shoving cotton up each nostril; I had to breathe through my mouth. Then I had a blanket wrapped around my middle, and under that a better kind of padding—a homemade money belt with five thousand.

     Doc was right again, as usual. Once I had on my clown suit—as we called the worn work clothes—I sure looked like a fat blond slob who thought he was the height of sartorial perfection in a windbreaker. It could have been my imagination, but the clothes were itchy at first. Or my skin could have been crawling with fear.

     Doc didn't overlook a thing; he even roughed up my good shoes—until he rummaged in the cellar and came up with an old pair of sneakers that were a little large for me but workable. I sure looked as though I'd been wearing the clothes for the last year. He wanted me to leave my gun behind but I flatly refused. I stuck it in the folds of the blanket around my stomach where I could reach it easily. After Doc told me over and over not to attempt talking funny or different, and not to buy too much in one store, I started out.

     It was a dark, cold night, but the sweat was pouring off me as I walked the first hundred yards—expecting shots and shouts of recognition. I was about to turn back and tell Doc it was too late for any shops to be open, when a couple passed. They didn't even glance my way. By the time I reached the corner street light, I was feeling okay, my walk steady. I put my dirty cap at a cocky angle and stepped out. I dropped into a delicatessen two blocks away and calmly purchased a few sandwiches, several cans of beer and two packs of butts. Crossing the street to a candy store, I bought a paper and more cigarettes.

     I was flying so high I nearly nose-dived. Stopping in a dingy grocery on the way “home,” I'd bought a pound of coffee, bread, a couple of cans of milk, jam, and a dozen eggs—when I saw two dusty cans of crab meat on the shelf. This wasn't a crab-meat neighborhood and the cans must have been there for months. But Doc liked the junk, so I put them on the counter. The stoop-shouldered jerk behind the counter dusted off the cans with his apron. Running his damp eyes over my clothes, he grunted, “You got that much money?”

     I wanted to clip him but instead I mumbled, “How much is it?”

     Wetting a pencil on his tongue, he wrote some queer figures on a bag, announced, “Three dollars and eighty-nine cents.”

     I went through the routine of fingering the money in my pocket, finally pulled out a five-dollar bill. I told him, “Add two cakes of soap and a box of them crackers—might as well kill the five-spot. A guy is paid and the dough goes before he can make it home these days.” And I knew I was talking too damn much. Would getting rid of his old cans of crab meat make him talk? But I was stuck with them now. And what could he say?

     I rushed back to the house, greatly relieved when I saw the suitcases and Doc still there. After I pulled the cotton from my nose, took off the clown suit, we went into the kitchen and packed in a big meal. Doc was something: When I showed him the crab meat all he said was, “From Japan. Doesn't have the body of our domestic crab meat.”

     After we stuffed ourselves, Doc puffed on a cigarette as he told me, “Next time you're out, remember to buy a can of lighter fuel for me. Also some fruit. You should be able to find frozen juice. And frozen strawberries. That's what I want, strawberries. With decent ice cream.”

     “Perhaps you'd like me to run up to the zoo and get a container of coffee? I brought enough food for two days. How many more of these shopping trips do you plan on my taking?”

     “Now, son, one must relax to digest food properly. I am feeling quite full and contented. Let's not go into that all over again. Makes for a sluggish indigestion. We have to see the way the breaks fall. Look, we're practically buried in the newspaper—a few lines on the sixth page. That's a good sign.”

     Doc started for our room. I asked, “What about the dishes?”

     “Leave them. Might keep the roaches out of our room.”

     “I'll wash them. We have! to eat here tomorrow,” I said, thoughtfully. This sudden sloppiness of Doc's was making me very jumpy.

     After I did the dishes I went to the bathroom and took a shower, washed out my socks and underwear—although after using the towel I was probably dirtier than when I started. I'd have to look through Molly's things for towels, if she had any. The water was hot—I'd been surprised to see (and turn on) a neat electric water heater in the cellar. But when would the man be around to read the meters?

     When I shut the “door” to our room, I hung my stuff on the back of the chair. Doc looked up from his newspaper, gave me an amused glance. “Taking in washing, kid?”

     “If I did, you'd be the first thing needing washing.”

     “I don't like to take my things off. Never know when we may have to lam out of here on a second's notice.”

     Lam where? I asked myself.

     Doc yawned. “Let me finish the paper and get some more sack time.”

     “Big night. I should have brought in a bottle.”

     “No hard liquor here.” Doc thumbed toward the bags. “That's our big night, Bucky. Relax. Man is certainly an odd creature. We work and sweat for some leisure time, yet if all man has is free time, he becomes restless.”

     “I wish we at least had a radio.” I was in no mood for one of Doc's after-dinner speeches.

     “How did men on the lam before the TV era kill time? Too bad I never taught you how to play chess, Bucky. We could pass the time in intellectual stimulation.”

     “I wish we had a radio,” I repeated. Maybe it wasn't funny, but it sent me off laughing and even Doc shook his head in mock sadness, gave me a tight grin as he said, “You're all brawn—thank God.”

     Doc read the paper while I lay on my cot, smoking a butt slowly. It wouldn't be so bad cooped up this way with Betty. Right now I wanted her with me. She may not have been the brightest gal or the most beautiful, but she was the most agreeable person I ever met, never said no to anything I wanted to do. It was a shame she wasn't along to enjoy the dough. I'd be willing to cut her in for a third. And having her here... But that was a dumb idea; it would be that much harder getting away with her along.

     Anyway, she was dead.

     Poor Betty. Why, it wasn't more than three or four months ago when we first picked her up.

9—Betty

     Doc and I had a good week. Some months before, we had bagged a nineteen-year-old kid in the act of stealing a car. He was wine-high at the time and it was a routine arrest. Shortly before the case came to trial, the boy's old man offered us five hundred dollars to make a few “slight” mistakes in the time; whether we saw the car on the uptown or downtown side of the street, or what the kid was wearing, and so on, in our testimony. It was the boy's first offense and it figured that if we sounded a bit confused—but not enough to look like fools—the kid might get off. The boy came from a middle-class W.P.A. family, as Doc sarcastically called them: white, Protestant, a hundred percent American.

     I was against taking the money. It seemed to me an open-and-shut case against the kid. And if he had been able to drive away, in his condition he might have killed a lot of people. But the poppa talked to Doc—not to me—and Doc put his hand out for both of us. On the stand we told a straight story, a tight story, and poppa looked like he wanted to kill us as sonny boy got a year.

     As he slipped me my half, Doc said, “Don't act like a child taking castor oil. We did the right thing, Bucky. He's a snotty kid and guilty. Why should he get off because his folks are rich enough to grease the police? Seriously, this was true law enforcement; we taught them never to try bribing a police officer again. And what the hell, they're in no position to kick about a thing.”

     We dropped into a bar we liked for a couple of free belts, a kind of celebration. The fat barkeep whispered, “Glad to see you guys. Doc, you see that broad over there in the booth? The skinny one. I don't know if she's crazy or what, but she's openly soliciting. And she don't even know how to do it. I threw her fanny out once before today, and here she is back. Get her out of here before I lose my license.”

     Betty didn't look like much then: pale; scrawny figure; her clothes tacky. But she was young, about twenty. When Doc and I sat down in the booth, flashed our buzzers, she began to cry. The barkeep hit his head with his hands—the last thing he wanted was a scene. So we walked-rushed her out to the squad car. She gave us the usual song and dance about being down on her luck, hungry. Then she looked at me and said, “I don't care if I do go to jail; at least I'll eat. All I've had since yesterday is a box of crackers.”

     “Hustling been that bad?” Doc asked, as if it was all a joke.

     She said hysterically, “I always thought this... this last resort... would be simple. It isn't. I've made four dollars in five days, I'm scared crazy. I was locked out of my room this morning and... I'm so hungry I could...”

     “Sister, you're spinning an old record,” Doc told her.

     I felt sorry for her. Perhaps that was the key to all my feelings toward Betty: I was sorry for her. She didn't have a thing except her youth. Her face wasn't pretty, sort of rough-featured, like her nose had been stuck on. But as Doc once told me, humor is based on cruelty—so maybe love is based on pity. I told her, “Okay, stop the tears. I'll blow you to a good meal.” I looked at Doc. “We can let her go. We haven't anything on her except being a vag.”

     A radio car cruised by with a police captain—probably the local precinct captain making his wrap-up for the day. I thought he recognized us.

     Doc said, “Start the car, Bucky. This isn't the place to talk. Go to Mario's; we'll put some good heavy spaghetti next to the young lady's ribs while we chat. What's your name, honey?”

     “Betty. Betty James,” she said suspiciously, although when she looked at me her eyes were grateful.

     We had a neat meal. Doc was in high, ordering a lot of fancy dishes like clams smothered in various kinds of melted cheese, and white and red wine. It made me think of Nate.

     Betty ate like a pig. The food loosened her up a little, but there was still this sullen, suspicious look that said she didn't trust cops, was still scared stiff. I don't know why, but that got me excited.

     When we had plowed through some rich Italian pastry and were sipping coffee espresso, Doc puffed on a cigarette as he told her, “Listen to me closely, Betty James. I'm going to make a suggestion. You want to buy it, fine. You turn it down, that's okay, too. Whatever you decide has to be of your own free will. Now, we're not going to arrest you. If you like, walk out of here this minute, and I hope we'll never see you again. You want to do that?”

     She puffed fast on her cigarette, like a kid, asked, “Can I hear the suggestion?” She was talking to Doc but looking at me.

     “Honey, you walk out now, you may luck up on something legit and be on your way. But the odds are against you. So you'll turn back to the streets and sooner or later we, or some other officers, will have to take you in. You'll do a couple of months, maybe longer, and when you come out, then what? Not a thing will have changed for you: You'll still be broke, jobless. The hard truth is you'll be walking the streets again, maybe working for some two-bit pimp. It becomes a vicious circle. You understand what I'm driving at, honey? In most ways our ideas of prison reform are not only hopelessly old-fashioned but downright stupid.”

     “I still don't get the deal,” she said.

     Doc smiled, trying hard to give her the soft sell. “The way I see it, realistically, since you want to go into the business, or rather circumstances force you into it, then be a success at it instead of a cluck. You look like a nice kid, not a tramp; that's why we're giving you a break. Suppose we set you up in a modest apartment, let you do a nice quiet business? We'll pass the right word to a few bartenders and—well, kind of protect you. All you make is yours, and if you're smart, you'll save your dough and quit the racket as soon as you have enough to set yourself up in a real business.”

     “How can I get an apartment? I haven't a dime.”

     “We'll advance you enough for rent, clothes, eating money.”

     “What's in it for you?”

     Doc threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, you are my girl! Brimming over with modern philosophy—what's in it for me! The answer is: nothing. We'll drop around now and then and all you have to do is show us a big time. Want to buy it?”

     Betty said yes without a second's hesitation.

     “You're absolutely certain you want to get 'in the life,' as the quaint phrase goes?”

     “Yes.”

     “Then it's a deal. No, that's too harsh a word—it's a friendly agreement,” Doc said, ordering more wine.

     Betty stood up. “I'll have to make more room for the wine,” she said, heading for the ladies' room.

     Soon as she left, I asked Doc, “Are you playing idiot's delight? Do you realize the limb we're out on? Two cops setting up a girl!”

     “There's always a certain amount of risk in doing a favor. That's why it's a favor. What else can we do? Suppose we gave her a few bucks; what will she do tomorrow or the next day? She looks like a nice, simple kid. Prison would only harden her. Don't worry; we'll play it careful, protect ourselves. Only this time, Bucky, no mink coats. Don't get her into any bad habits.”