Room To Swing - Ed Lacy

“You couldn't buy it for ten times a grand. Tell me, Ted, are you going to stop wearing two-pants suits now?”

“What's wrong with this suit? Needs pressing but—”

“Nothing. It's a beautiful hunk of cloth. Let's blow. I need my beauty rest before facing the cameras. What do you know, suddenly I'm an actor.”

“Listen, Toussaint, we got some business talking to do.”

“I'm exhausted. Let's chatter while you drive me home.” I was too tired to be surprised at Ted's trying to hold me up for a day's pay, or whatever he wanted.

As we headed uptown, Ted chewing on a fresh cigar, he said, “I been thinking hard these last hours. You—we— have a good thing in these Madison Avenue buffs, a salting-money deal if we act smart and fast. Remember me telling you about this industrial stuff I'm going after? TV is an industry too, a big one. They must need private dicks on a thousand deals: spying on other networks, hush up scandals, keep track of a star's drinking, protect him—or her—from babes and con men—plenty of work. By acting smart I mean this: you have the “in” and I have the outfit. I'm offering you a partnership. Bailey and Moore. You get forty per cent. How's that, Toussaint?”

I shook my head. My eyes half closed with sleep, I was watching a TV show. Once more I was seeing Steve's apartment framed by the window, all the cockeyed furniture. Steve was “explaining” again why he killed Thomas. Kay was sitting there, calmly listening to him... agreeing with him. Cockeyed furniture, cockeyed sick people. Both of them talking like...

“I'm not chiseling you. I'd give you a straight fifty per cent only I am bringing in the equipment, a going agency, so seems to me I—”

I opened my eyes. “You can have it all, a hundred per cent, Ted. I'm throwing away my badge. I'll plug you to Kay. You'll be a cinch, the life of her parties.”

We were stopped for a light. Ted turned to stare at me, the strong cigar almost in my face. “Toussaint, you know what your mouth is saying?”

“They'll be making fun of you at the parties, but it means a big buck. Actually it isn't too hard to take or—”

“After years of starving in this racket, now you're giving it up?”

“Aha. Now. When for the first time I feel I know my stuff, would make a good investigator. Also give you Sid's weekend jobs too. Only time I want to hear about cops and detectives is in a novel or a movie, and maybe not even then. I've had it. Before I go to the studio today, I'm stopping at G.P.O. to tell Uncle Sam I'm one of his new mail carriers.”

“Toussaint, I figure we can't do less than ten thousand a year each, as a starter. You're wrong if you think you can go it alone or— You have something else working for you? Say, you ain't taking this acting stuff seriously?”

“Ted, I'm sick of phonies. I want to be a mailman and mind my own business. Let somebody else be waiting to collar a babe shoplifting because she hasn't money to buy the clothes she needs. I don't ever want to dun an old woman into paying up on some goddamn sink on which she was screwed from the word go. Most of all I'm sick of being around people busy stepping on each other's backs, turning in their own relatives for a job, murdering them to keep the job,” I said, seeing Kay again listening to Steve as if what he was telling her was normal, understandable; as if any job was worth what he did. “In short, I'm sick to death of playing in other people's dirt.”

“You lost blood, you're excited, tired. Tomorrow you'll think differently about—”

“No, Ted. Maybe this has been in the back of my noggin for a long time, without me knowing it. I'm finished as a dick. You did a lot for me, Ted, and I appreciate the chance you took. I mean that. But you don't need me for this Madison Avenue rat race. I'll talk to Kay, you'll be in solid.”

“If you do that, Toussaint, I'll never forget you. I'll take care of you at Christmas. I'll... you are going through with this acting business, ain't you?”

“Sure. I'll need the money to get straight. But that's it, the end of my being a badge. I'm tired. There was a farm outside Bingston. I'd like to just sit around that for a week, resting. No, no, that would drive me nuts. My stop is somewhere in the middle of the line.”

“You sure need sleep.”

We pulled up in front of the house—I hadn't seen the old dump in almost a week. It still looked like a dump, but such a friendly one. It really looked like home. Getting out of the car I shook Ted's hand, told him, “Thanks again. I hope this pays off big for you. Ask Kay for a good publicity man, get as much out of this hoopla as you can.”

“Hey, that's good. A publicity man—sure—easily worth a couple hundred to me. Kay will show me the ropes.... Suppose she won't be in her office till noon or so.”

“Strike while you're hot. She's working there right now; phone her. See you this afternoon, Ted.”

The apartment looked the same, as shabby and comfortable as ever. Neither Roy nor Ollie was in. I opened my studio bed, undressed. A shower was out—my body looked like a weird crossword puzzle, the patches of white tape and bandages against my brown. I couldn't recall when I was to see the doc again, made a note to phone him. It was a few minutes after eight thirty when I set the alarm for noon, fell into bed.

As if the bed was wired for sound, the second I touched the sheets the phone rang. I placed the phone on the floor, got back into bed, and picked up the receiver. It was Sybil. “Touie, I've just seen the papers.... My God!”

“Hello, Sybil honey. I was going to call you later. I'll be able to pay back your money by tonight.”

“Who mentioned money? Are you all right?”

“Tired—and busy. You mentioned money the last time I called you—from Kentucky. You mentioned it a lot.”

“Oh, I was angry, you mixed up in all this crazy business. I mean, I thought it was nutty.”

“But now that it has turned out okay, it wasn't crazy?” I asked, wondering how I'd tell her.

“Touie, I've called in sick, thinking you'd come here. What are you doing in your place? I want to talk to you.”

“I have a little talking to do, too. Look, I'm in bed and pretty beat—can you come over here?”

“You know how I feel about going to your place.”

“How do you feel?”

“Come on, Touie, I've told you a hundred times.”

“But you never told me why, the true-blue why. Why?”

“Touie, are you drunk?”

“Only groggy. Sybil, it's important you tell me why.”

“Really, you know how it looks. I mean I don't want Roy or Ollie to think I'm... You know.”

“They aren't here. Yeah, I know, but what I know isn't what you know,” I said, wondering if I was afraid to say what I was thinking. “Honey, if I take the P.O. job today, would you marry me and move in here?”

“Touie, what's got into you? Why on earth should we live there?”

“Sybil, I'm saying this a little mixed-up, but... Babe, we have different standards, always have had, I guess. You want to marry me not because I'm me but because I've suddenly become a double income, a new apartment, a new car—the Harlem social swindle, which is even sillier than the Park Avenue monkey cage. You've been holding out—”

“Touie, I don't know what you're saying. You sleep and then come over this afternoon and we'll talk.”

“I have to work this afternoon and soon as I finish that I'm leaving for Ohio to pick up my car. Let's talk now, while I can say it. I don't want to talk about love like a schoolboy, but well... Maybe I can say it this way: you wouldn't marry me before because you were afraid you'd have to support me for a while. But I wasn't sitting around on my lazy rusty-dusty, I wasn't trying to establish myself. But you wanted to hold out for a sure thing. I'm not saying this very clearly.”

“You certainly aren't! I don't know what's wrong with you, Touie. As for supporting a man, I did that once and—”

“That's what I'm trying to say: I'm not talking about a man, or a situation, I'm talking about you and me.”

“Whatever you're trying to say is over my head. Here I lose a day's pay to wait around for you and you don't come here and when I call you, you give me a lot of silly stuff!”

“It isn't silly. I've been thinking about this the last couple of days. The high point of a marriage can't be a new apartment or a fur coat or—”

“Have you turned sappy? All this talk about 1-o-v-e. What's wrong with you?”

What was wrong was I didn't have the guts to tell her the truth. I tried to think of the right words and all I could think of was a line from a song: you always hurt the one you love.... But I didn't love Sybil and she never loved me. Then I kept thinking of what she'd said about when a man can't find himself he found her. That was true. I had found myself, didn't...

“Touie? Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, I heard you. Look, I can't say what I want. I'll... eh... I'll send you a check tonight.”

“Just be sure you do! When you come to your senses, when you come back from Ohio, perhaps I'll let you call me and we'll talk about this when you've calmed down.”

“Sybil, I want us to be friends—always—but I don't know if we'll ever talk about this....”

“All this publicity has gone to your head. Send me my money and good-by!”

She hung up and I put the phone down and stretched out in bed. I knew how it would sound: I was giving her the brush now that I had it made. But how could I tell her I didn't have it made moneywise, as Kay would say, but in my mind? In my peace of mind?

I was too tired to think about it. I felt lousy—but not too lousy. I'd been trying to tell her what I'd known for the last six or seven hours.... When I drove the Jag back from Bingston I wouldn't be driving alone... I hoped.