The Nothing Man (3 page)

"Well…" She fumbled for the door handle.

"I'm sorry, Deborah."

She shrugged, and the horsetail of corn-colored hair brushed against her shoulders. "D-Don't be," she said. "Don't be sad, Brownie. That's the way it is, so… th-that's the way it…"

She got out and walked toward the station, and she didn't look back.

He poured himself another drink, shoved the bottle across his desk toward me, and gestured with his glass. He was a good-looking guy-gigolo-ish good-looking. With a little less beef on his belly and a lot less larceny in his heart, he might have been an instructor in a dollar-alesson dance academy.

"I don't make you, Brownie," he said. "I just don't dig you at all, keed. Ain't I always treated you right? You ever ask me for anything you didn't get? Hell, I try to be a pal to you, and-"

"Stuke," I said. "Will you shut up for a minute?"

"But-well, sure, Brownie. Go right ahead."

"It's this way, Stuke. I'm immune, know what I mean? I've developed a tolerance for sons-of-bitches. I can drink with you and enjoy it. I can let you do me a little favor without having the slightest desire to puke. In a sort of hideous way, I actually like you. But-"

"I like you, too, Brownie. You're my kind of people."

"Now, let's not carry this too far," I said. "But speaking of favors, Stuke, I do you one every day. Every time I sit down at my typewriter without writing that Lem Stukey is the chief pimp, gambler, all-around and overall racketeer of Pacific City I'm doing you a favor. And any time you think I'm not-"

"Brownie!" he spread his hands. "Did I say no? I know you could blast me. You're the only guy that could. From what I hear, you could maybe write a story that old lovey drawers was beating his own wife, and he'd see that it went on the front page… I
know,
see? I got the highest appreciation for you friendship. I know what you can do, or I wouldn't be asking-"

"Don't," I said. "Don't ask. I'm too tired even to tell you to go to hell."

"Hard day, huh?" He shook his head sympathetically. "I'll give you a couple bottles when you leave. Anything I can do, keed, anything at all. Just put a name to it."

I sighed and picked up my glass. He was a hard man to say no to, but no was all you could say. Once you said yes, you'd keep right on saying it the rest of your life.

"All right, Stuke," I said. "Let's get back to the beginning. I said I was immune. I can drink your whisky, talk with you, spend an evening with you now and then. I can do you the negative favor of doing nothing. But that's all I can do. That's all I will do. I will not, as you put it, give you the smallest boost. I will not, either by word or deed, do anything which might even remotely assist in making you county judge."

"Aw, Brownie. Why-?"

"I've told you. You're a menace, a plague, a son-of-abitch. You do enough damage where you are, but at least you're bracketed within fairly narrow boundaries. I shudder to think of you operating in the almost unlimited periphery of the judiciary."

"Okay. Throw the big words at me. Show me up. I ain't had no education. I'm just a poor boy who worked hard and-"

"Broth-er!" I said. "When you say that, smile!"

"Well"-he smiled a little sheepishly-"I got an idea how you feel, Brownie. You think a man ought to be a lawyer to-"

"Not necessarily," I said. "The job doesn't require it, and I've known some pretty good judges who weren't lawyers. It could work out, although it violates general precedent, if-if, my dear Lem-a man was sincere, honest, and devoted to the public's interest. Which you are not… No, Stuke, you stay where you are and there'll be no trouble from me. Mr. Lovelace wants the
Courier
all sweetness and light. No scandal, no exposйs, nothing that would reflect on the fair name of Pacific City. That's the way he wants it, and that's the way he shall have it-up to a point. You won't be knocked; you won't be blasted out of your present job. But neither will you be boosted upstairs."

He was silent a moment, his black, beady eyes fixed on me in an unblinking stare. Then he shrugged with pretended indifference.

"Suit yourself, Brownie. I was just trying to be a pal to you. The bandwagon's already rolling, and I thought maybe you'd want to hop on."

I choked and coughed. I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair. "Stuke. Please!"

"You think I'm lyin', huh?"

"Of course you're lying. When did you ever do anything else?"

"I got plenty of influential friends. How you think I climbed into this job?"

"Like you say," I said, "by working hard. You brought your little red-handled shovel to work with you, and you dug twenty-four hours a day. Before the alarums and excursions were sounded, you had uncovered any number of figurative but exceedingly smelly bodies. Now? Huh-uh. Alas, poor Stuke, they know you well. No more bodies. No county judgeship. No-and I'm probably offending etiquette in mentioning it-whisky in this bottle."

He laughed and popped the cork on another quart. "The whiz don't do anything at all to you, does it, keed? Just makes you spout a little smoother."

"That," I said, "is because I am a
Courier
man. I have my head in the clouds and my feet firmly on the ground."

"Yeah." He grinned. "Ain't it the truth?"

He stopped arguing about the county judge deal. We sat drinking and kidding, listening to the slash of the rain against the windows.

It was only a little after five. Less than an hour ago I'd taken Deborah to the station. But it was almost pitch dark outside with the sudden and violent storm that had struck the city. Stuke shook his black, oily head, cocking a hand to his ear.

"Dig them waves, will you? Almost three blocks away, and you'd think the ocean was coming right through the door."

I nodded absently, thinking of Deborah, wishing I could stop thinking of her. I wondered why she'd said-how she'd known-I was sad, right when I was kidding the hardest.

"What you doing tonight, keed? What you say we step out and play some babes?"

I shook my head. That was an easy one to duck. "Go over to Rose Island tonight? In this storm?"

"Yeah," he sighed, "that's right. No ferries runnin' tonight, and no one would take a charter boat out even if you was crazy enough to ride with 'em… Maybe I could-"

"Now, Stuke, you should know better than that. No loose women in Pacific City… not in the respectable mainland sections of Pacific City."

"Well-" He broke off abruptly, frowning. He cursed and snapped his fingers. "Christ, pal, I almost forgot to tell you. I ought to have my ass kicked!"

"I'll go along with the last statement," I said. "What about the first one?"

"I'm sorry as hell, keed. I meant to call you at the time, but it was almost three o'clock, see, and I figured you'd already be gone from the office." He swallowed and his eyes shifted away from mine. "She came in on the two-thirty bus, Brownie. One of the boys spotted her."

It was too well done, too carelessly done. Mrs. Clinton Brown's arrival wasn't something that Stuke would forget. By pretending that he had, he was proving the opposite. It meant plenty to him.

"My wife's over on the island?" I said. "I don't suppose you know the address?"

"Well, let's see, now," he frowned. "It's-oh, yeah, it's the Golden Eagle, cottage seven. It ain't so bad as most of 'em, keed. Little tourist camp on the south shore."

"I know what it is," I said. "You can bring your own whore instead of renting theirs."

He clucked his tongue sympathetically. I set my glass down and raised a hand to my temples. I had to do it; I had to cover my face. Sick and stunned as I was, I was choking with laughter.

"It's a damned shame, Brownie. I thought she'd given up bothering you."

"Y-Yeah," I said, shakily. "It's certainly strange."

"How come you put up with her, anyhow? A man's got to support his wife but he don't have to live with her."

"One of those things," I mumbled. I lowered my hand and stood up.

He jumped to his feet also. "Where you going, Brownie? You can't go over to the island tonight. I ain't gonna let you even try it!"

The hell he said! He'd have given his eyeteeth to have me try it.

"Don't worry," I said. "There's no way I could get over there tonight. I just want to go home."

"I'll go with you. I can see this has hit you pretty hard, keed. A time like this, a man needs someone to talk to. I'll take us along a couple bottles, and-"

"I'll take the bottles," I said, "and go by myself."

He looked at me, trying to appear concerned and worried while he sized me up. But there wasn't anything for him to see. The two-way pull had taken hold and he wasn't looking at the real me-the me-in-charge-of-me. I'd moved off to one side, and I was moving faster every second. I was miles away and ahead of him.

"Okay, Brownie," he shrugged, "if that's the way you want it."

He took two quarts of whiskey from a filing cabinet and twisted a newspaper around them. We said good night, and I left.

I walked out to my car, walked not ran, and I was soaked to the skin before I'd gone twenty feet. I slid into the seat, shivering yet not really conscious of the cold. I uncorked one of the bottles and raised it, staring blankly through th streaming windshield.

Until the last time-her last hell-raising visit to Pacific City-I'd been as easy on her as a man could be who was through with his wife. I'd put it to her as I had in the hospital: that it was just simply a case of not loving her any more. But it hadn't worked, and I'd seen it wasn't going to work. In a way, I was actually holding out hope to her. So, the last time, I'd got tough, tough and nasty. And it seemed to have done the job.

She hadn't been in Pacific City for three months. I'd have sworn that in another three months or so she'd be filing for divorce, that she'd made the break final and marry someone else. That was what she would have done. That, I was sure, was what she would have done. Except for Lem Stukey.

Lem wanted something that only I could deliver. He'd been looking for a way to force me to deliver. So I figure he'd started wondering about her, and he'd got in touch with her and started her to wondering: _Think it over, keed. There ain't no other woman; you can't get him to go out with a babe. And the guy's drinkin' himself to death. Something's botherin' him, see? Maybe he done somethin' wrong while he was in the army, and he split with you to keep from mixing you up in it_…

Well, Ellen would know that I hadn't done anything "wrong." She'd know that her Brownie wasn't the kind to commit bigamy or get himself an incurable dose or engage in espionage, or involve himself in any similarly shameful situation or activity. Still, I'd seemed quite contented with our marriage before I entered the army, yet afterward-as soon as I was shipped back to the States-I'd insisted on splitting up. And since there wasn't another woman, since I wasn't in love with someone else, why…?

Stukey had prodded her. He'd kept her mind on the puzzle. And the truth must have finally dawned on her or she wouldn't be here.

It was rather strange, of course, that he'd told me she was back, but- I shook my head. It wasn't strange. Very little went on in Pacific City that Lem didn't know about. I'd know that he knew she was back, and his failure to tell me would have seemed suspicious. As it was, he hadn't carried the matter off too well. He'd overacted-been a little too offhand. I hadn't thought him capable of embarrassment but obviously he had been.

I held the bottle to my mouth, swallowing steadily. Swallowing and swallowing. A hammer seemed to swing against my heart, numbing it, and another hammer swung against my back, driving through from my back to the heart. And it seemed to push forward, numb and lifeless, and press out through the skin.

Then it slid back into place. The numbness went away. It beat slowly but firmly.

I lowered the bottle. It was more than a third empty. I'd just killed myself, but I wasn't dead. There wasn't, I thought, listening to the roar of the ocean, anything that would kill me. I was going to go right on living, forever and ever, and… How could I? How could I live in a world of snickers and whisperings and amused pity?

I corked the bottle and started the car.

I drove up to the center of town, circled the Civic Center (WPA 193 8), and turned back in the direction I'd come from but on another street. It was probably unnecessary, this maneuvering, but you could never be sure with the Lem Stukeys of the world. They operated with a peculiar shrewdness that transcended intelligence. They had climbed to their pinnacles by doing the unexpected. At any rate, I had plenty of time. Time, with me, was endless.

There was no tail on me; I made sure of the fact. I drove through the wind-hurled downpour to the piers, wound the car through the dark chaos of sheds and warehouses, and parked in the shadows-if shadows there were in this blackness-of a sheet-iron storage building.

I uncorked the bottle and dug some dry cigarettes out of the pocket of the car. I sat drinking and smoking, thinking how strange it was that the thing that had to be done was always the hardest to do.