The Grifters Page 4

  So he was changed, considerably. Enough anyway to keep him from being collared. But he was shaken right down to his shoe soles. He sneaked back to his hotel room, wondering if he’d ever have the guts to work again. He stayed in the hotel until dark, and then he went looking for Mintz.

  Mintz was gone from the small hotel where he had lived. He’d left months ago, leaving no forwarding address. Roy started hunting for him. By sheer luck, he found him in a bar six blocks away.

  The grifter was horrified when Roy told him what had happened. “You mean you’ve been working here all this time? You’ve been working steady? My God! Do you know where I’ve been in the last six months? A dozen places! All the way to the coast and back!”

  “But why? I mean, New York’s a big city. Why—”

  Mintz cut him off impatiently. New York wasn’t a big city, he said. It just had a lot of people in it, and they were crammed into a relatively small area. And, no you didn’t help your odds much by getting out of jampacked Manhattan and into the other boroughs. Not only did you keep bumping into the same people, people who worked in Manhattan and lived in Astoria, Jackson Heights, et cetera, but you were more conspicuous there. Easier to be spotted by the fools. “And, kid, a blind man could spot you. Look at that haircut! Look at the fancy wristwatch, and them three-tone sports shoes! Why don’t you wear a black eyepatch, too, and a mouthful of gold teeth?”

  Roy reddened. He asked troubledly if every city was like this. Did you have to keep jumping from place to place, using up your capital and having to move on just about the time you got to know your way around?

  “What do you want?” Mintz shrugged. “Egg in your beer? You can usually play a fairly long stand in Los Angeles, because it ain’t just one town. It’s a county full of towns, dozens of ’em. And with traffic so bad and a lousy transportation system, the people don’t mix around like they do in New York. But”—he wagged a finger severely—“but that still doesn’t mean you can run wild, kid. You’re a grifter, see? A thief. You’ve got no home and no friends, and no visible means of support. And you damned well better not ever forget it.”

  “I won’t,” Roy promised. “But, Mintz…”

  “Yeah?”

  Roy smiled and shook his head, keeping his thought to himself. Suppose I did have a home, a regular place of residence? Suppose I had hundreds of friends and acquaintances? Suppose I had a job and—

  And there was a knock on the door, and he said, “Come in, Lilly,” and his mother came in.

  6

  She didn’t seem to have aged a year in the seven since he’d last seen her. He was twenty-five, now, which meant that she was crowding thirty-nine. But she appeared to be in her very early thirties, say about thirty-one or -two. She looked like…like…Why, of course! Moira Langtry! That was who she reminded him of. You couldn’t say that they actually looked like each other; they were both brunettes and about the same size, but there was absolutely no facial resemblance. It was more a type similarity than a personal one. They were both members of the same flock; women who knew just what it took to preserve and enhance their natural attractiveness. Women who were either endowed with what it took, or spared no effort in getting it.

  Lilly took a chair diffidently, unsure of her welcome, quickly explaining that she was in Los Angeles on business. “I’m handling playback money at the tracks, Roy. I’ll be getting back to Baltimore as soon as the races are over.”

  Roy nodded equably. The explanation was reasonable. Playback—knocking the odds down on a horse by heavy pari-mutuel betting—was common in big-time bookmaking.

  “I’m glad to see you, Lilly. I’d have been hurt if you hadn’t dropped by.”

  “And I’m glad to see you, Roy. I—” She looked around the room, leaning forward a little to peer into the bathroom. Slowly, her diffidence gave way to a puzzled frown. “Roy,” she said. “What’s this all about? Why are you living in a place like this?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Stop kidding me! It isn’t you, that’s what wrong. Just look at it! Look at those corny clown pictures! That’s a sample of my son’s taste? Roy Dillon goes for corn?”

  Roy would have laughed if he hadn’t been so weak. The four pictures were his own additions to the decorations. Concealed in their box frames was his grifted dough. Fifty-two thousand dollars in cash.

  He murmured that he had rented the place as he found it, the best that he could afford. After all, he was just a commission salesman and…

  “And that’s another thing,” Lilly said. “Four years in a town like Los Angeles, and a peanut selling job is the best you can do! You expect me to believe that? It’s a front, isn’t it? This dump is a front. You’re working an angle, and don’t tell me you’re not because I wrote the book!”

  “Lilly…” His faint voice seemed to come from miles away. “Lilly, mind your own damned business…”

  She said nothing for a moment, recovering from his rebuke, reminding herself that he was more stranger than son. Then, half-pleading, “You don’t have to do it, Roy. You’ve got so much on the ball—so much more than I ever had—and…You know what it does to a person, Roy. I—”

  His eyes were closed. An apparent signal to shut up or get out. Forcing a smile, she said, Okay, she wouldn’t start scolding the minute she saw him.

  “Why are you still in bed—s-son? Are you sick?”

  “Nothing,” he muttered. “Just…”

  She came over to the side of the bed. Timidly, she put the palm of her hand to his forehead; let out a startled gasp. “Why, Roy, you’re ice cold! What—” Light bloomed over his pillows as she switched on the table lamp. He heard another gasp. “Roy, what’s the matter? You’re as white as a sheet!”

  “Nothin’…” His lips barely moved. “No s-sweat, Lilly.”

  Suddenly, he had become terribly frightened. He knew, without knowing why, that he was dying. And with the terrible fear of death was an unbearable sadness. Unbearable because there was no one who cared, no one to assuage it. No one, no one at all, to share it with him.

  Only one death, Roy? Well, what are you kicking about?

  But they can’t eat you, can they? They can kill you, but they can’t eat you.

  “Don’t!” he sobbed, his voice pushing up through an overpowering drowsiness. “D-don’t laugh at me—I—”

  “I won’t! I’m not laughing, honey! I— Listen to me, Roy!” She squeezed his hand fiercely. “You don’t seem to be sick. No fever or— Where do you hurt? Did someone hurt you?”

  He didn’t hurt. There had been no pain since the day of his slugging. But…

  “Hit…” he mumbled. “Three days ago…”

  “Three days ago? How? Where were you hit? What—Wait a minute, darling! Just wait until mother makes a phone call, and then—”

  In what was record time for the Grosvenor-Carlton, she got an outside line. She spoke over the phone, her voice cracking like a whip.

  “… Lilly Dillon, doctor. I work for Justus Amusement Company out of Baltimore, and—What? Don’t you brush me off, buster! Don’t tell me you never heard of me! If I have to have Bobo Justus call you—! Well, all right then. Let’s see how fast you can get over here!”

  She slammed down the receiver, and turned back to Roy.

  The doctor came, out of breath and looking a little sullen; then, forgetting his wounded dignity, as his eyes drank in Lilly.

  “So sorry if I was abrupt, Mrs. Dillon. Now, don’t tell me this strapping young man can be your son!”

  “Never mind that.” Lilly chopped off his flattery. “Do something for him. I think he’s in a pretty bad way.”

  “Well, now. Let’s just see.”

  He moved past her, looked down at the pale figure on the bed. Abruptly, his light manner washed away, and his hand moved quickly; testing Roy’s heart, probing for pulse and blood pressure.

  “How long has he been like this, Mrs. Dillon?”—curtly, not turning to look at her.

  “I
don’t know. He was in bed when I came in about an hour ago. We talked and he seemed to be all right, except that he kept getting weaker and—”

  “I’ll bet he did! Any history of ulcers?”

  “No. I mean, I’m not sure. I haven’t seen him in seven years, and— What’s the matter with him, doctor?”

  “Do you know whether he’s been in any kind of accident during the last few days? Anything that might have injured him internally?”

  “No…” She corrected herself again. “Well, yes, he was! He was trying to tell me about it. Three days ago, he was hit in the stomach—some barroom drunk, I suppose…”

  “Any vomiting afterward? Coffee-colored?” The doctor yanked down the sheet, nodding grimly at sight of the bruise. “Well?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “What’s his blood-type? Do you know that?”

  “No. I—”

  He dropped the sheet, and picked up the phone. As he summoned an ambulance, breaking the hotel’s outside call record for the second time that day, he stared at Lilly with a kind of worried reproach.

  He hung up the phone. “I wish you’d known his blood type,” he said. “If I could have got some blood into him now, instead of having to wait until he’s typed…”

  “Is it…He’ll be all right, won’t he?”

  “We’ll do all we can. Oxygen will help some.”

  “But will he be all right?”

  “His blood-pressure is under a hundred, Mrs. Dillon. He’s had an internal hemorrhage.”

  “Stop it!” She wanted to scream at him. “I asked you a question! I asked you if—”

  “I’m sorry,” he said evenly. “The answer is no. I don’t think he can live until he gets to the hospital.”

  Lilly swayed. She got hold of herself; drawing herself straight, making her voice firm. And she spoke to the doctor very quietly.

  “My son will be all right,” she said. “If he isn’t, I’ll have you killed.”

  7

  Carol Roberg arrived at the hospital at five in the afternoon, an hour before the beginning of her shift. The mere thought of being late to work terrified her, and, by coming so early, she could get a bargain-priced meal in the employee cafeteria before going on duty. That was very important to Carol—a good meal at a low price. Even when she wasn’t hungry, which was seldom, even in America where no one seemed ever to be hungry, she was always subtly worried about when she would eat again.

  Her white nurse’s uniform was so stiffly starched that it gave off little pops and crackles as she hurried down the marble corridor. Cut overlong, in the European fashion, it made her look like a child dressed in its mother’s clothes; and the skirt and cuffs flared upward at the corners, seeming to set a pattern for her eyes, her mouth, her brows, and the tips of her short bobbed hair. All her features had an amusing turned-up look, and no amount of inner solemnity could conquer it. In fact, the more solemn she was, the more determinedly severe, the greater was the effect of suppressed laughter: a child playing at being a woman.

  Entering the cafeteria, she moved straight to the long serving counter. Blushing self-consciously; careful to avoid looking at anyone who might be looking her way. Several times, here and elsewhere, she had been drawn into joining other diners. And the experience had been painfully awkward. The men, interns and technicians, made jokes which were beyond her limited idiom, so that she never knew quite what her response should be. As for the other nurses, they were nice enough; they wanted to be friendly. But there was a great gulf between them which only time could bridge. She did not talk or think or act as they did, and they seemed to take her ways as a criticism of theirs.

  Carol took a tray and silverware from the serving counter, and studied the steamy expanse of food. Carefully, weighing each item against the other, she made her selections.

  Potatoes and gravy were eight cents. Then the two-order would be fifteen, yes? A penny less.

  “The two-order—?” The fat counter woman laughed. “Oh, you mean a double?”

  “A double, yes. It is fifteen?”

  The woman hesitated, looked around conspiratorially. “Tell you what, honey. We’ll make it the same price as a single, hmm? I’ll just go a little bit heavy with the spoon.”

  “You can do this?” Carol’s turned-up eyes rounded with awe. “It would not cause trouble?”

  “For me? Hah! I own this joint, honey.”

  Carol guessed that that made it all right. It would not be stealing. Her conscience comfortable, she also accepted the two extra sausages which the woman buried beneath her order of knockwurst and sauerkraut.

  She was hesitating at the dessert section, about to decide that she could have a strudel in view of her other economies, when she heard the voices back down the line: the fat woman talking to another attendant.

  “…Kosher Kid can really put it away, can’t she?”

  “When she gets it for nothin’, sure. That’s how them kikes get ahead.”

  Carol froze for a moment. Then, stiffly, she moved on, paying her check and carrying her tray to a table in a distant corner of the room. She began to eat, methodically; forcing down the suddenly tasteless food until it once again became tasteful and desirable.

  That was the way one had to do. To do the best one could, and accept things as they were. Usually, they did not seem so bad after a while; if they were not actually good, then they became so by virtue of the many things that were worse. Almost everything was relatively good. Eating was better than starving, living better than dying.

  Even a simulated friendliness was better than none at all. People had to care—at least a little—to pretend. Her own kith and kind, immigrants like herself, had not always done that.

  She had come to the United States under the auspices of relatives, an aunt and uncle who had fled Austria before the anschluss. Now well-to-do, they had taken her into their home and given her probationary status as a daughter. But with certain unstated stipulations: that she become one with them, that she live as they lived, without regard to how she had lived before. And Carol could not do that.

  The ritual dining, the numerous sets of dishes, each to be used only for a certain kind of food, were almost offensive to her. So much waste in a world filled with want! Contrariwise, it seemed foolish to fast in the midst of abundance.

  She was repelled by the bearded, pink-mouthed Shiddem for all his Judaic learning. To her he seemed a parasite, who should be forced to work as others did. She was shocked to find stupidity masquerading as pride—or what she thought of as stupidity: the imperviousness to a new language, and a new and possibly better way of life. All in all she was frightened by the conscientious apartness, sensing in it the seeds of tragedy.

  Because they were good to her, or meant to be, she tried to be as they were. She was even willing to believe that they were right and that she was wrong. But mere trying, willingness, was not enough for them. They accused her of abandoning her faith, one that she could never remember knowing. Their tyranny, in its own way, seemed almost as bad as that she had fled from, and at last, she had had to flee from them.

  Life outside the refugee world wasn’t easy. The alternative to it often seemed to be a world with quite as many prejudices as the one she had left. But it was not always that way. There were some people who were completely indifferent to what she had been; that is, they were indifferent in a critical sense. They—the rare few: Mrs. Dillon was their best example—accepted her for what she was now. And—

  She saw Mrs. Dillon approaching, moving past the other tables with her easy imperiousness. Hastily, Carol set down her teacup and came to her feet.

  “Please sit down, Mrs. Dillon. I will get you some tea, yes? Some coffee? Something to eat—”

  “Nothing,” Lilly smiled, waving her back to her chair. “I won’t be staying at the hospital this evening, and I wanted to talk to you before I left.”

  “There is something wrong? I—I have done—”

  “No, you’re doing just
fine. Everything’s fine,” Lilly assured her. “Get yourself some more tea, if you like. There’s no hurry.”

  “I’d better not.” Carol shook her head. “It is almost six, and the other nurse—”

  “I’m paying the other nurse, too,” Lilly said flatly. “She’s working for me, not the hospital. If she doesn’t want to work a little overtime for extra pay, she can quit.”

  Carol nodded and murmured meekly. This was a side of Mrs. Dillon she had never seen before. Lilly’s smile returned.

  “Now, just relax and rest easy, Carol. I like your work. I like you. I hope you like me, too—my son and I.”

  “Oh, I do, very much! You have been very nice to me.”

  “Why is it that you don’t have a regular job? That you’re just working extra?”

  “Well…” Carol hesitated over her answer. “The hospital, almost every hospital, it graduates its own nurses, and I am not such a graduate. Then, the regular jobs, like in the doctors’ offices, they usually want skills that I do not have. Often bookkeeping and shorthand, and—”

  “I understand. How do you make out on this special duty work? All right?”

  “Well, I do not always make so much,” Carol said seriously. “It depends on how much work I can get, and that is not always a great deal. And, of course, there are the fees to the nurses’ registry. But…well, it is enough, whatever. When I know more and when I better understand English—”

  “Yeah, sure. How old are you, Carol?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Oh?” Lilly was surprised. “I wouldn’t have thought you were that old.”

  “I feel much older, sometimes: Like I had lived forever. But, yes, I am twenty-seven.”

  “Well, no matter. Any boy friends? Going steady with anyone? No?” Lilly thought that was strange too. “Now, a girl like you must have had plenty of opportunities.”

  Carol shook her head, her upturned features humorously solemn. She lived in a furnished room, she pointed out, and she could not properly receive young men in it. Then, since it was necessary to work whenever she could, and since she worked irregular hours, it was not possible to plan ahead nor to be sure of keeping a social engagement if any were made.