Judge Me Not (19 page)

“I don’t think she’ll be thinking of marriage for a while.”

The black eyes were shrewd. “To forget one life, you should begin the new one very soon. She told me of herself. It was not something she had to tell, except that she thought she had to tell it.”

“She’s a pretty confused girl, I guess.”

“We do not live in a very simple world any more. There are all kinds of shame in this world now. I wonder what kind is the worst. I do not think it is hers.”

“You are a good woman, Mrs. Fermi.”

She chortled. “Me? I’m just a practical woman who … Ssst!” She put a heavy hand on his wrist, heaved up out of her chair, caught the light cord and pulled it. Teed listened and heard the steps coming up the stairs.

She whispered, “Anyone you do not want to see, I throw him down the stairs. In the neighborhood I am known as the violent woman. It is a handy thing sometimes.”

There was a light tap on the door. “Anna? Open up for Armando.”

She pulled the light back on, opened the door. Armando hugged her, kissed her soundly. “My God, Anna, you’re an armful. Hi, Teed. How about a cup for me?”

“I am a woman of stature, merely,” Anna said with mock dignity. She plodded over to the cupboard, brought out another cup. Armando sat down at the kitchen table. Teed noticed that there, in this room, his face was full of expression, that it had lost its impassivity. It was as though when he entered this apartment, he left behind the mask he wore for the world.

“Leighton is not to be found,” Armando said. “Dennison couldn’t get in touch with him. They’ve taken Dennison and the older daughter downtown. They’ve hauled cops out of bed and put them on duty. You and Carboy are the objects of what they usually call a ‘city-wide search.’ ”

The door on the other side of the kitchen opened and Barbara Heddon came into the kitchen, her eyes slitted against the light. She said, “I thought I recognized …” And suddenly she recognized Teed. Her face went utterly blank.

“Hello, Barbara,” he said.

“Hello, Teed.” She wore dark blue pajamas, a pale blue coolie coat buttoned high around her throat, falling in a straight line from her strong breasts to mid-thigh. She wore no make-up, and her face was kitten-soft with sleep. She said, “Sorry,” and turned as though to leave.

“Come and sit down, Barbara,” Armando said. “I think this is something you should know about.”

Anna started to get up. Barbara put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her gently back into the chair, got her own cup and filled it at the pot on the stove. She sat at Teed’s right, and did not look at him. Her hands were steady as she poured the cream. Teed looked at them and thought how fine and strong they were.

“Suppose you tell her, Teed,” Armando said.

“Maybe she’d rather not hear it.”

“If Armando thinks I should,” she said softly, “I think you better tell me.”

Anna said, “I would go and leave you three with privacy, but it is too much work to stand up, and the coffee is good, even if I made it myself.”

“Stay, Anna,” Armando said, patting her thick hand.

Teed told the story as quickly and factually as he could. He did not leave out Jake’s infatuation for him and her fear for him, the factors which had trapped her. He looked down at his right hand as he spoke, and saw that the hurried scrubbing in the bus terminal had not removed the darkness from around the nails of his first and second fingers.

He took the picture out of his pocket and handed it to Armando, on his left. Armando looked at it, lips compressed. “And here are the letters,” Teed said. “I’m glad I didn’t leave them with Powell.”

Armando read them, slowly, carefully. As he read, Anna said, “It is a foul thing. It is a low and evil thing. To use a young girl. To give her shame. To break the heart of her father.”

Barbara said, with harshness in her tone, “I think I know why you wanted me to hear this, Armando.”

“It isn’t something I can ask you to do, Barbara,” Armando said, keeping his eyes steady on hers.

“What is this all about?” Teed asked.

Barbara looked squarely at him for the first time since she had entered the room. “Armando knows that I’m trying to make a clean break with my bawdy past, Teed. He’s too much of a gentleman to ask me this sort of a favor. He thinks that I know enough about the operations of the vice ring here in Deron so that I can make a guess as to where she is and help you get to her.”

Anna put her hand over Barbara’s. “In your words and the way you look, you are beating yourself with whips. Don’t.”

“We’re thinking about that girl, Anna. Not me. Here’s the picture, Armando. Maria Gonzalez is the … co-ordinator, I suppose you’d call it. She handles the call-girl list. She doesn’t run a house, but she sets up the amount of cut that each house pays in. Girls that are … recruited here never stay here in a house or, if they’re the ‘superior type’ ” … Barbara’s lip twisted in an ugly way … “They don’t go
on the local call list. They keep the house girls moving, and the eastern syndicate does the ‘booking,’ I suppose you’d call it. A call girl has more freedom of action. Maria’s people root out the amateurs, and either get cooperation, or make certain they get sent up for a while.

“The thing they keep the quietest about is the recruiting. Any one of the men who work with Weiss and Stratter can get a bonus by putting the finger on local talent that might make a professional. The police recruit too. You know. ‘I’ll send you to a friend and we’ll forget this charge against you.’ Some of the girls are eager to join the team. Some are a little reluctant. I know that they all get an interview with Maria before they go on the booking list to some town down the valley, or out of the state. Because there’s always the chance of trouble, the recruits are taken out of town. That would be the safest place for them to take the Dennison girl. It’s a place on Route 63, this side of Broganville, called the Castle Ann. The wise boys and girls call it ‘the training camp.’ ”

“I know the place,” Armando said. “An old country hotel on a hill, with a bar off the lobby. It’s got a stone wall around it …”

“And barbed wire,” she said, “and guards on the gate. Maria has a broken-down photographer out there with a darkroom and all. I understand they make movies there, too. For the smoker trade. It would fit.”

“Just a minute,” Teed said. “We’ve even got proof. That’s what Weiss started to say before he stopped himself. Castle Ann. Let’s go get her.”

“Sit down, Teed,” Armando snapped. “Nobody is just going to run out there and grab her. Obviously Raval has brought in some out-of-town talent. With things popping this way, he’d be silly not to. And where do you think those boys hang out? Castle Ann just happens to be Raval’s little fortress. They got everything but a moat and a drawbridge. You go riding out there in your little tin suit of armor and they’ll make you eat your white horse.”

“But while we’re sitting here …”

“Let me think a minute.”

“How about the F.B.I.?” Teed demanded. “Kidnaping is federal, isn’t it?”

“With the girl insisting that she’s staying there of her own free will?”

“And the local cops are no good,” Teed said.

“Oh, they’re fine. All they’re doing is hunting for you.”

Barbara said, “I was out there … for a little while, after Maria came to the jail to see me. I know this. It would take a small army to get in there by force. But if a person was known …”

Armando patted her hand. “I was afraid I was going to have to ask you, Barbara.”

“What can she do?” Teed demanded angrily.

“The thing to do is to get word to the girl, of course. She can tell the Dennison girl that what they’re using on her to hold her there is just a bluff. Then I could make a legitimate kidnaping charge. Barbara, do you think you could get to see her?”

“That’s going to depend on who is out there, Mr. Rogale. If Maria Gonzales is out there, it isn’t going to work very well.”

“That’s a hell of a risk for you to take,” Teed said. “I don’t like it.”

She smiled wanly at him. “I’m a lot better able to take care of myself than that Dennison kid is.”

“You aren’t going to be popular out there, Barbara.”

“It’s worth the risk. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can get her out of there. Say that Maria sent me to bring her to town.”

“I’ll drive you out,” Armando said. “If you can’t work it, I’ll come in after you and try a bluff of my own.”

“I’m coming along,” Teed said firmly.

“You are staying right here,” Armando said, with equal firmness.

“I can be useful, dammit.”

“In what way? Kicking a hole in the stone wall? Or catching bullets in your teeth? What’s your specialty?”

“You can’t stop me from coming along,” Teed said.

Armando gave him a long stare and then shrugged. “O.K., O.K. We can’t spare the time to argue with you. Go get dressed, Barbara.”

She dressed quickly, returned to the kitchen wearing a gray wool suit, a short fox jacket. She opened her purse and held it so that Armando could look into it. “I’m taking this along,” she said.

“A toy thing like that?”

“It’s twenty-five caliber and I know how to use it.”

“You don’t want the kind of trouble that can bring you.”

She put her purse down, held up a small mirror, carefully painted her lips, compressed them, examined the result.
“I’m taking it along,” she said. “In my whole life I’ve been frightened of only one person. Maria Gonzales. I’m taking it along.”

Anna came to her, put her hands on Barbara’s shoulders, looked intently into her face. “You come back here. Stay for as long as you want.”

Barbara’s face softened. “Thank you, Anna.”

“And you are not making the sauce right yet. Practice you need.”

“Thank you for everything.”

Anna hugged her. “Such a silly girl,” she said.

The puppy awoke and whined. His tail whapped against the side of the carton. They went down the stairs and out onto the dark sidewalk. Armando walked around his car, slid in behind the wheel. Barbara sat in the middle.

Before he started the car, Armando said, “If you want to go back upstairs, Barbara, we’ll both understand. And we’ll think of another scheme.”

“I want to do it,” she said. Her voice was remote. “I have to do it, I guess. You can’t just stop thinking and stop remembering. The scales are all out of balance for me. I have to put a little weight on the other side of them.”

Armando said, “Good girl.” He started the motor and they moved slowly down the street.

“I liked your note, Barbara,” Teed said.

She gave him a smile, quick and pallid in the darkness of the car, barely visible in the glow of the dash lights.

Armando drove with extreme care. Route 63 left Deron at the southwest edge of the city. It was two-lane asphalt, crossed by many spur tracks that led to sleeping factories. Beyond the tracks was a mile of grubby drive-ins, gas stations, beer joints. And then the road began to lift into the hills, began to curve through farmland. The faint spice of Barbara’s perfume was in his nostrils and her knee touched his. He increased the pressure a tiny bit and she took her knee away. It made him remember the perfume Jake had swiped from Marcia, made him remember the absurd reek of her in the darkness, the pathetic youngness.

Armando pulled over to the shoulder. “We’ll get out here, Barbara. Once we’re over the next hill, the gate guard might notice the car stop and start wondering.”

Armando got out and Barbara slid under the wheel. Teed put his hand on her arm. “Be careful. Please be careful.”

She turned to Armando, who stood at the window, beside her. “Don’t you two try anything foolish. I’ll try to be out in twenty minutes. If I’m not out of there by then, you’ll know I’m … not coming out for a while. Then you head back for the city and get help. I
will
be held against my will.”

“You were thinking of that angle from the beginning?” Armando asked.

She said, “Yes.” Her voice was low. “Please get out, Teed.”

He stepped down into the shallow ditch. The car moved back out onto the asphalt, up the slope, over the crest.

“Very special gal,” Armando said. “A very gutty young lady. That’ll teach me to go around judging people too fast.”

“If Maria Gonzales is there, it will be bad?”

“Maria has a temper. And a knife.”

“We shouldn’t have let her try it, Armando.”

“She’s special, Teed. But she’s still expendable.”

“I wonder.”

“Let’s get as close to the gate as we can.”

After the motor sound faded, the countryside silence was like a blanket across the stars. Wind skittered through the dry grass. Dried leaves rustled. A distant rooster crowed in sleepy protest.

“How do we stand on time?” Teed asked.

“She’s been gone three minutes. At twenty of four her time will be up.”

“And then what?”

“Then we can try a bluff.”

“A good idea?”

“Frankly, Morrow, it stinks. But the alternative is heading back for town on foot and trying to talk somebody into sticking Uncle Sam’s neck out for the sake of one of our local call girls. That stinks too.”

They crossed the ditch and walked beside the fence. “Lights coming from town,” Armando said tersely. “Flatten out.”

They stretched out beside a rusty wire fence. The car boomed by. It dropped over the crest and reappeared later, twin red taillights sliding up a far slope. Teed got up. Something pricked his knee. He picked a cluster of burrs out of his trouser leg.

“This the Castle Ann fence?” Teed asked.

“No. They really
have
a fence. See where it starts up at the crest there?”

At the top of the crest there was a place where they could see over the high wall. It was a four-story oblong—a frame building that sat on the top of a small knoll about two hundred feet from the road. Some windows were lighted on the two top floors. Lights were visible in all the windows of the far end of the main floor.

“See those ground-floor lights? The bar is in that end.”

There were no trees around the structure. It had a curiously naked look. “Why four stories out in the middle of nowhere?” Teed asked.