Meeting Evil (6 page)

Obviously some sort of tranquilizer. Joanie occasionally took a pill when under certain strains, and he never failed to warn her against driving at such times.

He leaned forward. “All right. When Richie gets back, I’ll do the driving, if that’s what you want.”

“That will be too late.” She returned to her earlier state of torpor.

John went ahead and climbed out and into the front seat, sliding it forward somewhat to accommodate his legs, which were shorter than Richie’s. At five-ten he was certainly no midget, but he really did regret not having reached six feet, for most of his forebears had been taller, though he was among the thicker-set. He had been husky enough to play fullback on his high-school team, but at 185 he was too small for the college squad, not to mention that his speed was not sufficient to compensate. Today he was in the neighborhood of 210, despite trying to watch what he ate. But it was rare that he exercised.

When he looked at the ignition, he saw that the keys were missing: he could not have stranded Richie if he had wanted to.

A moment later Richie was back, paper bag in hand and a smile on his face. He professed delight at John’s return.

Not wishing to leave the impression that he had come back for any reason but necessity, John explained about the woman in the taxi office.

Richie scowled. “Scum. They’re everywhere these days.” He handed the bag to John. “Help yourself. I got extra doughnuts and coffee, just in case. I’ll be right back.” He walked rapidly away.

“Hey,” John shouted, but Richie vanished around the back of the car. John could not see where he went from there. “Goddamn him,” John said to the woman. “He’s been doing that to me all morning, and as usual I’m trapped.… Look, I hate to ask, but I assure you I’m good for the money. Could you possibly lend me the taxi fare to get home? It couldn’t be more than five bucks. I live just up the hill. I swear to you I’m a respectable person. I sell real estate, have a wife and two little kids, one just a baby. I look like this because it’s my day off and I didn’t expect to be out of the house.” He handed the bag to her.

In a hollow voice she said, “I don’t have any money. He took it all.”

“Richie? Are you saying Richie took your money away from you? He just
took
it?”

She acquired more energy. “He asked me for money. He didn’t have any.”

“Well, that’s different, isn’t it?” John said reproachfully. “I’m asking for a loan right now. If you had any to give me, and you gave it, would you say I stole it?”

She looked at him. There was no life in her eyes. “I told you I’m afraid of that guy. He’s dangerous. I didn’t have the nerve not to give him everything I had.”

John began privately to fume. Richie was taking forever, leaving him with this woman, who seemed quite as nutty a person as Richie himself. After all, she had begun their acquaintance by offering to have sex with him, a perfect stranger. He still did not know her name.

“Look,” he said, “I’m John Felton.”

Her response was mumbled.

“Sharon?” he asked. “Is that your name?… Okay, Sharon, I’ll get your money back from him—less, of course, what he paid for the doughnuts—and everything will be all right again, you’ll see. Then I’ll drive you home. Maybe at that point you’ll lend me the cab fare. Meanwhile, maybe you have a quarter left, somewhere way down in your purse? I know my wife sometimes finds change down there.” He had spotted a public telephone set into the outside corner of a savings-and-loan building a few doors down. Unfortunately the S&L was not one of those which he recommended to home-buyers when they asked for places to go for mortgages. The ladies who owned Tesmir Realty had several other preferred institutions. Else he could have gone inside and borrowed a bill or two from one of the loan officers who would have known him.

But before Sharon could react, Richie had returned, coming to the driver’s window and giving John the keys, his manner that of an obedient boy surrendering the family car to his father. Before he reached the passenger’s door, Sharon desperately scrambled out and jumped into the rear. She was short, so presumably would be more suited to the little backseat than Richie, but still it did not seem altogether right to John for her to give way in her own car to a stranger, though perhaps it was otherwise if Richie could be called a guest.

But he himself was under no such restraints, and when Richie was in place beside him, John turned and said, “Let’s have Sharon’s money.”

“Let me get settled first,” Richie gently complained. With some difficulty, given his tight jeans, he dug into the left-hand pocket and extracted a sheaf of paper money and then some coins. He offered the handful to John, who gestured toward Sharon.

“Better count it,” Richie said, pushing it between the seat-backs. “I don’t trust anybody these days.”

“It’s okay,” she said quickly.

It seemed probable enough to John that Richie had not extorted money from her but instead had taken only enough to pay for the food, which furthermore was intended to serve as refreshment not exclusively for himself but for the whole group. In fact, he now asked Sharon, who was still clutching the bag, to help herself to the contents and pass the remainder up front.

John had impatiently started the engine and was waiting for a break in the bumper-to-bumper traffic that inevitably appears from nowhere when you want to pull away from any curb anywhere in the world though all had been clear a moment earlier. He waved the bag away when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Richie offer it.

“Where to, sir?” Richie asked his shoulder.

“I’m driving myself home,” John said firmly. “Where I’m getting out and staying.” He felt like adding
And you won’t be invited in,
but he really found it difficult to be rude, so settled for, “Where you two go from there is
your
business.” But then he regretted saying that, which maybe would seem callous with respect to Sharon, whose fears might be unwarranted but were no less psychologically real. “No, I’ve changed my mind. I want to drop
you
off first.” He had turned to address Richie.

Richie narrowed his eyes, but from the tone of his voice it seemed he might be joking. “So what have you two cooked up behind my back?” he asked. “If you want a little privacy, I can always look the other way.”

“All right,” John said sourly.

Richie was grinning. “I’m an understanding guy.”

Sharon had moved forward until her anxious, pale, red-framed
face was near their respective shoulders. “We’re not doing anything behind your back,” she said fearfully.

Richie did not acknowledge her. He continued to grin at John. “You’re not as straitlaced as you want me to believe. You won’t turn down a piece of free tail. Hell, why should you?”

John refused to participate in this banter. He was back to watching for a chance to pull the car out.

Sharon tried again. “We’re not—”

Richie said, “Shut your mouth.”

John swung around. “Don’t talk to her that way. This is her car, remember?”

“Yeah,” Richie said wryly. “They stole mine.”

“It’s not
her
fault.”

As usual Richie was quick to placate. “Anything you say, boss!” By now John was becoming accustomed to the deference habitually paid him by the man, who appeared to be the cowardly sort who would readily defer to other males but would bully women when they could get away with it.

“I don’t have any designs on Sharon,” John said. He had a hunch that behind his back the traffic had now opened up, but he wanted to make this clear once and for all, lest Richie continue to make tasteless and embarrassing remarks. “She should have nothing to fear from either of us. That’s why I want to drop you off first.” He stared at Richie, who as always backed down.

“You’re the doctor!”

“Well, where to? Where do you live?”

“I don’t want to put you to any bother like that. Just let me off at the nearest movie.”

There was something basically feckless about the man and hence, to John, who was himself of the absolutely opposite character, something at least a bit likable—in spite of
all. “There aren’t any movies open at this time of day in the suburbs. It won’t be any bother to run you home.”

“Hillsdale?” Richie asked skeptically.

Hillsdale was fifteen miles away, making for a round trip of thirty, which in the morning traffic meant the better part of an hour. John regretted extending the offer, but he had done so and was a man of his word.

“Why, sure,” he answered, concealing his disappointment under a rising tone. “Hillsdale it is! But first I really do have to call my wife.” He turned to Sharon. “I still need to borrow a quarter.”

Coin in hand, he left the car and went to the telephone niche in the outer wall of the bank. His knee no longer hurt as much as it had earlier.

Joanie was seething, and he in turn was annoyed that she did not want to hear an explanation. “I know it sounds crazy, but take my word for it. I guarantee I’ll be back before you’re due at Elaine’s: that’s the important thing, isn’t it?”

But she hung up abruptly. He only hoped that no one who could recognize him had seen him in the company of Sharon. She did not much resemble the kind of people who were his normal clients. Nor did Richie, to be sure.

When John got back to the car, he asked Richie what time it was.

“Damn if I know,” Richie said indifferently.

“My wife’s going to be really mad if I don’t come home soon. She’s got an appointment.” He suppressed the information that where she had to go was the hairdresser’s, because it might sound trivial to someone like Richie, whom he looked down on but nevertheless did not want to give an occasion to sneer.

“Swing around by your house and pick her up,” Richie said. “I don’t have to be anyplace soon.”

John said frostily, “That won’t be necessary.” He looked back at Sharon, who managed to look small even when in such a compartment. “You’re wearing a watch.”

“Huh?”

“What time is it?”

She took an extra moment to find her wrist. “Eleven-ten.”

“God Almighty,” John cried. “No wonder Joanie’s mad. I can’t believe it! I’ve been at this two hours?” He started the car again. Joanie’s appointment was at one. There was just enough time to make the round trip to Hillsdale if nothing happened that was untoward.

Richie held a container of coffee. John, who had breakfasted lightly almost four hours earlier, found the aroma seductive, but when Richie offered him the bag again, he again refused it: he wanted nothing from this guy.

“Joanie?” Richie asked now. “That’s your wife’s name? Cute. She about your age? What color hair?” He put the bag between his feet. “Must be nice being married to the right person. How many kids?”

John simply ignored the questions about his wife, for any answer at all would have compromised him with Richie—though he could not have explained why he felt that way—but decided to mention his kids, for suddenly they seemed a strength. “Two.”

Richie nodded enthusiastically. “You don’t say? That’s fantastic. You made ‘em, eh, John? You’re all right.”

Immediately John began to regret having admitted that much. He could finally see a break in the traffic, and he gave his attention to it.

Richie meanwhile asked, “Boys? Girls?”

John pulled away from the curb and was rolling cautiously toward a traffic signal that he suspected was on the verge of changing.

Richie continued. “Do you want some more? But I hope you’re planning these things. We don’t need more kids coming into the world by mistake.”

As it happened, John agreed with the principle, but it went against his grain to discuss the subject with this man. The traffic light, too, was trying his patience, staying red interminably. He eventually had to come to a full stop.

“It’s stuck,” Richie said. “Run it.”

In fact John felt like doing so, he who rarely suffered unduly from impatience. Perhaps some of Richie’s anarchistic tendencies were rubbing off on him. Just as the car came totally to rest, the light turned green. Had he taken Richie’s advice, he would probably have gotten away with it. As it was, he did not put the vehicle in motion again quickly enough to forestall a chorus of horns behind him, led by the belligerent tuba of a colossal tractor trailer, the enormous chromed radiator-grille of which was too large and too close to fit within the rearview mirror.

Richie’s reaction to the episode was focused in anger on the truckdriver, whose cab was too elevated for him to be seen at so short a range. “When we get out of this squeeze,” he told John, “pull him over. I don’t take shit from his kind.”

John regarded this as empty bluster. “Sure,” he said derisively. “I’ll run him off the road with this tank. That’ll show him.”

Without transition Richie returned to his former topic. “Know what I approve of? Your wife is home with the kids, not out of the house all day at some job like some bitches think they ought to be.”

If the truth be known, John was in a certain agreement with this sentiment, though he would never have expressed it openly to his wife. At the moment no trustworthy child-care facilities were available for Melanie, at least in Joanie’s
opinion, in these days when all one heard of were those in which the children were abused. And little Phil was still too young to be deprived of his mother for long. Even so, John disliked Richie’s idiom and did not want to encourage him in the further expression of his ideas on this or any other subject. But it would make for an oppressive atmosphere if he tried to get him to shut up until they reached Hillsdale. Including Sharon in the conversation might be an answer to the problem.

He looked for her in the mirror. “How about you, Sharon? Are you married?” She was not wearing a ring on the relevant finger, but then some married persons did not, especially women of a pronounced feminist bent, along with the usual men who assumed they were thereby duping potential pickups. To John this kind of deceit was almost as deplorable as adulterous sex. He had always told himself that if he were attracted to another woman than his wife, he would at least be honest enough to define himself, taking the consequences.