The Crossroads (8 page)

Then they both had all those examinations in Walterburg. They couldn’t find anything wrong with either of them, but somehow she just couldn’t start a baby.

She told herself that she had everything she could want. Pretty clothes and a beautiful little home and a cute husband who made enough money. But nothing seemed to
really
belong to her. It was like pretending to
be married. His family seemed too busy to give her much time. And she couldn’t seem to make any girl friends. It wasn’t like being in the city. There were some cute girls working in the restaurants, but they knew she was one of the three Mrs. Droveks and it made it strained and funny. Not really friendly. It wasn’t that she was trapped out here in the country. Pete had bought her the secondhand Chevy on her twenty-fourth birthday. She could drive into Walterburg, but it wasn’t the sort of place where you could meet anybody sort of casual, like going in a bar or something.

In her restlessness, when Pete was away or busy, she got into the habit of walking over to the Starlight Club at about five-thirty and having a couple of drinks at the bar, and then eating in the Motor Hotel Restaurant. She would pretend she was a woman of mystery, on a long trip. And that was the way she had met Mark Brodey, the head bartender at the Starlight Club. Before Chip fired him.

Now she knew she was being Bad. It made her feel a little bit sick. She knew she should stop. She didn’t know how to stop. Mark was weird. He scared her. And she was most frightened of what he was trying to get her to do. Frightened because she sensed he was going to make her do it.

She stood for a moment on the blue rug, thinking of Mark’s soft, persuasive voice and his odd eyes and how he could hurt her so suddenly and unexpectedly with his hard fists. Pete had seen the marks and she had told him she had fallen. It was like long ago, hiding the marks Daddy had made from the other kids.

She shivered and went into the bathroom and ran water into the tub, using the perfumed bubble-bath crystals liberally. She tied her dark hair up out of the way, and stepped into water as hot as she could stand, soaked herself in the froth of perfumed suds. After she had selected and put on a black-and-white pinstriped blouse and a white fleece skirt, fixed her hair and made up her face, she found that she had lost her feeling of hunger. It had been the same way the last few times she had seen
Mark. Her stomach just seemed to close up. She had a cup of hot coffee and then wandered aimlessly through the house, waiting until it was time to go, pausing to look out the windows, move an ash tray, straighten a framed print, feeling tension rising until it was like a sickness.

She left at two-thirty and drove south on 71. She was a hesitant, nervous driver. Pete had taught her to drive. A little more than eight miles south of the interchange she passed the Ace Cabins, over on the left. A quarter mile beyond was a place where she could make a U turn. A fast truck scared her. She swung around and drove slowly back toward the Ace Cabins. She made certain she had not been followed. She swung into the narrow rough road that ran behind the cabins and drove to the last cabin in the row, turned in and parked on the far side of it, out of sight of the highway. Mark’s narrow face appeared in the window, looking out at her, coldly, without welcome. She got out of the car, went quickly to the door and let herself in, her heart thumping.

FOUR

At a few minutes past four on that sultry Friday afternoon, Mark Brodey sat in Buddha pose on the narrow rumpled cot and watched Sylvia putting her clothes back on. She moved with a tired listlessness and her eyes were red and puffy.

The instrument of my revenge, he thought. He liked the sound of that. Fix those goddamn Droveks good. Five long years I worked for that stinking Drovek tribe. Five years. Now bouncing one of their wives isn’t enough. Not half enough.

When Sylvia had started the habit of coming into the Starlight Club for a few drinks before dinner, he had gone out of his way to be nice to her. Kid around a little with her. Make her laugh. Good policy. One of the wives of the management. You never could tell when you might
need a friend. No idea of trying to get to her. None at all. Just innocent-like. Sexy-looking little dish, but you could tell she wasn’t on the make either. Just lonesome. No harm in it at all.

And that’s the way things were when the roof fell in. Five years working for that outfit. Two years as head bartender. With them ever since they opened the Starlight Club, ever since they had the liquor license. It wasn’t as if what he had been taking was going to break them. It had taken him quite a while to figure out how to beat the register. There was one behind the bar. He was smart enough not to try to bring anybody else in on it. You could always work something that way. The deal was always to find a way to work your own system, all by yourself. You had to make out a check for each customer, leave it in front of the customer, and take it away only when you stuck it in the machine to print the amount of the next round on it. The checks were in serial sequence. At the end of the night your cash in the box had to even out with the check totals. All issued checks had to be accounted for. Once a month your inventory had to be checked against liquor sales.

After he got the right idea, he managed to lift a blank bar check. He found a place where he could get a couple of hundred of them printed up, serial numbers and all. Every day when he’d go to work he’d take a couple or three along with him, slip them into the inside pocket of his white monkey jacket. Then he had the problem of picking the right bar customers. You wouldn’t want to waste one on a one-beer customer. The best deal was a couple who seemed all wound up in each other and had a lot of time and ordered hard liquor. Then you would slip in one of your own checks. Leave it right in front of the couple. Nobody ever noticed. When they were ready to go you totaled it on the machine, took their money, rang a zero and put the money into the machine and put the check in the pocket. You remembered the total and lifted it all when you closed out the machine at night. Never too heavy. Averaged around fifteen a night probably. An extra ninety a week, tax free. The organization
could afford it. And, to make the inventory look all right—it never could come out right on the dime—you poured all the short shots you could all the time. A woman drinking a Collins is just as happy with a half ounce.

So two months ago, at about six o’clock on a Saturday night, just as you’re slipping a tab for six sixty into the inside pocket of the monkey jacket, a big hand closes on your wrist. You look up and it’s Mr. Charles Drovek. You don’t even know how he got behind the bar so fast, much less how he got wise. He rips the jacket getting the tabs out, the one used one and the two unused ones.

They take you out in back, in one of the storerooms off the kitchen. Drovek and John Clear. Cold turkey.

“Have you been treated well?” John Clear asked.

“Sure. I guess so. Honest, this was the first time I ever …”

“Shut up, Brodey,” Drovek said. His face was red and his neck was swollen and those big shoulders were bulging the fabric of his shirt. He walked Brodey back against the wall. “You’ve been on the take for months. Maybe a couple of years. I couldn’t believe it. I had John double check. You’re a stinking, dirty, stupid little thief, Brodey. You aren’t worth the trouble it would take to stick you in jail where you belong. I would like to have you raise one hand, Brodey, or say one word. I would enjoy every minute of it. Go ahead.”

“I’m not going to do anything.”

“John, stick with him while he clears his locker out. Then get off the place, Brodey. This goes on every employee bulletin board in the place tomorrow morning, Brodey. We had a sneaking thief among us. He’s gone for good.”

“Five years I’ve been …”

“Shut up. You make me sick to my stomach.” Drovek turned and walked out of the room.

“Come on, Brodey,” John Clear said. “Let’s get your stuff. Here’s your check. It covers through yesterday. No sad farewells to anybody.” He shook his head. “You were stupid, boy. It was a good job.”

Those high and mighty Droveks. Polack bastards.

He’d gone on a drunk in Walterburg for a while and then had tried to find a job. But the word had gotten around somehow. And how did you explain where you had been for five years? He knew that the smart thing to do would be go north. Try one of the big towns or resort areas. But he ached for a chance to get back at those Droveks. He had to do something to them. Set a fire. Something. Finally, when his money was running low, he got a counter man job in a dirty spoon diner eight miles south of the Crossroads, and he rented one of the Ace Cabins a couple of hundred yards away.

Each night he thought of how good he had had it, and he would try to scrub the stink of stale grease out of his hair in the drizzling shower. Then he would lie on the bed and think about those Droveks. In his imagination he shot Chip in the belly a hundred times. They had no right to treat a man that way. Not after five whole years. They weren’t hurt by the little bit he had taken. He’d been worth that much to them. Actually. it hadn’t cost them a thing. He’d made it all back by shorting the other customers whenever he could.

He remembered everything he had known and heard about the Droveks, trying to find some weakness, some way he could hurt them badly. Finally he thought of a way. A big way. But he couldn’t do it himself. Too much risk. But it could be done. If he could get somebody to do it.

Finally he saw how Sylvia could be fitted into the picture, how she could be the one to make it work. When he was certain he called her at her home one afternoon, taking the chance he’d find her alone.

“Mrs. Drovek? This is Mark Brodey. You remember me? The bartender?”

“Sure. I remember you.” She sounded very cautious.

“I guess you heard I got fired.”

“Yes.”

“You know why?”

“You were stealing.”

“That isn’t true. I wasn’t stealing, Mrs. Drovek. I was framed. But nobody will listen to me. They won’t give me
a chance to explain. I wonder if you’d be willing to help me.”

“How could I help you, Mark?”

“It’s like this. If you could come see me, I can show you the proof how I was framed and explain it to you. Then you can put in a word with Mr. Charles for me. Honest, I need help bad, Mrs. Drovek.”

She agreed. He told her where he would be, where she should slow down and look for him. She came along a half-hour later. It was his day off. He got into the car with her and directed her to the Ace Cabins.

“Why are we going there, Mark?”

“Slow down now. You take a right just down beyond that sign. I got the proof in my cabin, Mrs. Drovek. I got to show it to you. Turn here. It’s the last cabin. You can park the other side of it.”

The nearby cabins were empty. As soon as he got her inside he grabbed her. She put up a good battle at first. It was a silent struggle, just the scrape of their feet on the floor, the gasping sound of their breathing. He was beginning to be scared about it, thinking that if he had sized her up wrong and this didn’t work, he might be charged with attempted rape. Finally, when he got room to swing, he belted her a couple of good ones. It knocked the wind out of her and all the fight out of her. She started crying in a meek way and from then on she let him do just what he wanted, even co-operating with him in a half-hearted way. He knew he was getting back at the Droveks this much anyway. Punishing something that was theirs. Making it do what he wanted it to do. Making it yell with pain.

He kept her there until nearly dark. And then he said lazily, “You know how it was, Sylvia. You kept coming in the bar to see me. I got fired. You asked what happened to me. You looked me up. You came here because you wanted to come here.”

“No.”

“Sure you did. You couldn’t keep away from me. Be a hell of a thing for Pete and Chip and Leo and Joan and
the old man to find out what a roundheel bitch Pete married. You going to tell them?”

“No,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

He bent her little finger back. “Make it
no darling
. It’s friendlier.”

“Oh! Ah! Stop! No, darling. No darlingnodarlingno.”

“That’s nice and friendly.”

When she was dressed and he was ready to let her go, he caught her and twisted her arm behind her. “Wednesday is my day off. You be here by three.”

“I don’t want …”

He bent the arm until pain twisted her mouth out of shape and she gave a gasping scream. “You be here, you bitch! Or I’ll be after you. And what I’ll do to you will make all this seem like we were having a dreamy waltz. And all them Droveks will get a letter about where you spent today. Promise!”

After she left he could not be sure. He was not sure until the following Wednesday when, a little before three, he heard the car stop beside the cabin and looked out the window and saw her there. He’d known it would work. Some of them you could slam around. She was that type.

Now, on this sixth or seventh visit, he sat cross-legged on the cot watching her put her clothes on. He was a lean, narrow-headed man with very pale skin, and odd eyes of a very pale shade of gray-blue. His thin back was knobbed and knotted with small muscles that writhed and bulged under the skin with each random movement.

“When did you say you dated the punk?”

“Last night,” she said listlessly.

“That’s right. Good old Pete was away. Did he make out again? Look at me when I ask you a question. Did he make out?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you two lovebirds go?”

“We just stayed in the car, Mark. Over by the state park.”

“You keep one thing in mind all the time, baby. You can’t be seen with me. And you better not be seen with
the punk, either. How far did you get with selling him on the deal?”

“Just about … going away together.”

“That’s all? Nothing about money? Baby, you’re going to make this last too long. Maybe you’re getting a big kick out of stretching it out. You got me and Pete and Glenn Lawrenz.”

“I hate it! I don’t like it at all.”

“Then you better move, baby. You better get off your duff.”