Dig My Grave Deep Page 5

  Sump put the box on the floor, because it was getting heavy.

  “There are three questions,” said Port. “One: Would you allow the city to increase your expenses? Two: Would you move to better housing if it cost you one third more than you are paying now? Three: Would you be willing to pay up to twice as much more for your utilities? The answers areno to all questions, in ninety-nine per cent of the cases.”

  “What is this?” said Sump.

  “Slum clearance cannot take place unless the city pays fifty per cent of the cost for installing utilities, and the city won't do it.”

  “I haven't heard anything about....”

  “You will. That leaves the move up to the slum dwellers themselves. If they want to foot the bill, fine. But they won't. Here's their answer.”

  Sump stared at Port, then picked up the whisky carton. “You've got it sewed up, haven't you?”

  “That's the truth, scrubbed clean,” said Port and walked to the stairs.

  Chapter Seven

  When Port came out of Municipal Building he saw the man standing at the bottom of the stairs with one elbow on the front foot of the marble lion. The man had a lined face and simple eyes. He was waiting for Port.

  “Landis,” said Port. “I thought you went back to legitimate law.”

  “May I see you, Daniel?”

  They went across the street to the restaurant where judges and bondsmen hung out.

  “You drink coffee, don't you?” said Landis. They took a booth and ordered coffee for Port and a small beer for Landis.

  “How's the Reform movement?” said Port.

  “I'm sure you know better than I do,” said Landis.

  “I just asked, seeing you started it.”

  “Yes. Not that it shows any more.”

  “That's Bellamy for you. One great fixer, Bellamy. Why'd you ever take him in, Landis?”

  “Inexperience. However, it won't happen again.”

  Port looked over the rim of his cup. “You still in the game?”

  Landis had a trim gray mustache, and he rubbed it with his finger. “First of all, Port, this is not a game. It is not, I think, even a game for you. And second, I wouldn't have started the movement if I didn't think it had the strength to achieve eventually what its name suggests.”

  “Have it your way,” said Port.

  “I will.”

  Landis sipped cold beer and Port drank some cold coffee. Then he said, “I'm sure you wanted something, Landis.”

  “I saw you inside,” said Landis, “at the Sump performance.”

  “Funny, wasn't it?”

  “Hardly. I was surprised to see you, Port, because I had heard you were leaving.”

  “I didn't.”

  “Why? Pressure, or misguided loyalty?”

  “What's the difference?”

  “Yes. Anyway, I wondered if you would tell me this, Port. Are you back for good, or is this just temporary?”

  “Why do you ask, Landis?”

  “Your presence in town makes a difference. I told you quite frankly that I wasn't through, and I tell you just as frankly that my plans for the Reform party would differ, depending on whether or not you are here.

  “You'll never make a politician, Landis.”

  “Wouldn't you figure out what I told you yourself?”

  “On second thought, you might make a good one.”

  “Would you answer my question?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I thought you might, as long as it doesn't do damage to you or to your loyalties.”

  “You flatter me, Landis.”

  “No. I appreciate you.”

  “Then please appreciate that I won't give you an answer.”

  Landis nodded his head, but he wasn't through. “Would you tell me this much, Port. Do you intend staying indefinitely?”

  Port lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the aisle. “You know something, Landis, you're taking a lot of liberties. What makes you think I'd give you information that you could use?”

  “Because I know as well as you do that basically you don't give a damn what goes on in this town.” Landis put out a hand and said, “May I have one of your cigarettes?” They didn't talk while Landis lit up. Then he said, “Or maybe you do. Maybe that's why you were leaving.”

  Port didn't answer.

  “Well?” and Landis put his head to one side.

  Port sat back, felt around in an inside pocket. He put some envelopes on the table, a travel folder, and two membership cards. He put everything back in his pocket except for one of the envelopes. He opened it and took out his airplane ticket.

  “I bought this. You see? One way out. Take it, Landis,” and when Landis held it in his hand Port got up.

  Landis said, “All right,” and tapped the ticket against one nail. He watched Port pull down his jacket and turn to go.

  “If I ask you for it—then you know,” said Port and walked away.

  “I'll hold on to it,” said Landis, but Port was too far away to hear.

  Ramon fixed his tie in front of the mirror and looked at it to see if it was quiet enough. It wouldn't do to wear the wrong color, or too much of it, or even to indicate that he had given it thought. He looked sideways at Shelly. She was wearing an apron over her dress, and she was humming.

  “How about it,” he said. “You almost done with that sink?”

  She gave him a smile and stopped the humming. “You worry too much, Nino. I'll be done long before your Mr. Port comes in. You look very nice,” she added.

  He didn't appreciate the remark and waited till she had turned back to the sink. Then he spat in his palm and smoothed it along one side of his hair.

  “And you gotta change yet,” he said after a moment.

  Shelly wiped her hands dry and went to the stove.

  “I'll be out before he gets here,” she said, but that wasn't what Ramon had meant.

  “You stay here.” There was more force behind his voice than he had expected, but Shelly didn't seem to notice. She picked up the percolator with the hot coffee and poured some of it into a little pot.

  “You'll be all right,” she said. “You're too eager, Nino.” She had her back turned to him, so she didn't see his angry frown.

  After a while he said, “I wish you'd stay, Shelly. You know, just to be polite.”

  “But it's business,” she said.

  “You can always leave later.”

  She went to the door of her room and said, “What do you want me to wear?”

  He shrugged and looked at the oilcloth on the kitchen table. “You know better than I. Just look right, you know?”

  She wasn't sure that she knew what he meant, but she knew how anxious he was. She closed the door to her room and started to change into something else. Nino had always been anxious, but then it hadn't mattered. Nino had never done anything. Now it was different. He was doing something, or perhaps someone else was doing something to Nino. She didn't know which.

  She heard the knock at the door outside, and when her dress had stopped rustling around her ears she heard chairs scraping at the kitchen table, and Nino laughing. It didn't sound as if there had been a joke, but Nino laughed, said something, laughed again. The other one hadn't said a thing. Shelly buttoned up, shook her hair back, and went to the kitchen.

  The first thing Port saw was that she wasn't wearing a red carnation. He said hello to her and he said he hoped she didn't mind his taking up her quarters, but what he was really thinking had to do with the flower. I must bring her a flower, he thought. He frowned and looked at Ramon, “Shelly,” said Ramon, “pour us some coffee, will you?” Shelly went to the stove. “If you'd like to be alone, Mr. Port, I can...”

  “Just for a while. Do you mind?”

  “You can go in the other room,” said Ramon. “I'll tell you,” Port took his cup from her and put it down on the table. “We'll finish this and then your brother and I can go someplace else. I didn't mean to...”

 
“Oh, no!” Ramon laughed. “You go out, Shelly, and come back in half an hour. Okay? Okay, Dan?” Port said, “Fine,” and picked up his cup. Shelly took a handbag off a hook in the wall and went toward the door. When she passed her brother's chair she touched his shoulder, and when he looked up she smiled at him and said, “I'll see you later.” She nodded at Port and opened the door.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” said Port. He smiled at her and she stood in the door for a moment, smiling back at him. “That was nice of you,” he said. She nodded and went out. Ramon had the feeling they had made quite a lot of that coffee, bit. He wished that she could have stayed. Maybe they knew each other better than he thought? Maybe, that thing about having met on the street— He put his cup down.

  “What happened with the job?” Port asked.

  “I went to the agency, as you said to, and before they sent me out there I memorized those references that were on the card they had ready...”

  “The job, Ramon.”

  “I got it.”

  Port sat back and took a breath and said, “Good.”

  “It's from eight to five, and they want me to room out there. A room they got in the basement. Their name is Bellamy.”

  “I know that.”

  “Oh.” Then Ramon waited.

  “You know who Bellamy is?”

  “I didn't know it wasthe Bellamy. The way you said it...”

  “It's him.”

  Ramon felt suspended, even a little shaky, and he didn't know whether it was from eagerness or from fear. But he knew for sure that he was now very important.

  Port was drawing a square on the paper and pointed at it.

  “Here's your room. Your bed stands over here, and there is a washstand, so, and a table.”

  “How—how did you know?”

  “The electrician that worked at the house yesterday told me.” Port took a sip from his cup, then looked up. “You starting tomorrow?”

  “Yes. They want me to start tomorrow.”

  Port drew again.

  “Next time you go there lie down on your bed, reach down where the floor board is, here, and pull it away from the wall. It'll pull away easy. Reach in by the corner and there is an earphone.”

  “Earphone?”

  “Yeah. The cord's long enough so you can lie on the pillow and listen with the earphone next to your ear.”

  “I'll be damned.”

  “Yeah. Now I don't care about any calls but the ones Bellamy makes, or gets. He's got a daughter, but she isn't likely to use the phone we rigged. She has her own. Now, Bellamy doesn't get in till around nine. I want you to get your sleep between five, when you get off, and nine when he gets in. Tapping is a tiresome job. Watch it you don't fall asleep while you lie there listening. Sometimes nothing happens at all.”

  Ramon nodded. His mouth was open.

  “Bellamy does business on the phone till late at night. He always has. Most of the stuff I don't care about. He's got deals in construction, he talks to New York about fighter contracts, boxing and wrestling; forget it. What I want is local. Whom does he talk to about the Reform party, what does he say, what about Stoker, plans, meetings, what is said about the new tie-up with slum clearance...”

  “It's—you tied it up again?”

  “He'll be talking about that. Some, anyway. But whatever it is, in this connection, listen hard. Write it down if you can't remember, but don't write it down if you can help it. Get names, names of outfits, anything that can tie down the place he is calling, like a club or an office. You got this clear, Ramon?”

  Ramon nodded seriously and repeated what Port had said. Port balled up the paper and threw it into a trash carton under the sink. Then he told Ramon how to get in touch with him. Unless it sounded hot he should not use the phone booth that stood at the intersection a short walk from the house, never to use any phone inside the house, but he should talk to the mailman that came to Bellamy's at around nine in the morning. “He's an old one. If he says to you tomorrow, 'Been digging up any worms?' that's him.”

  “Been digging up any worms,” said Ramon. He nodded to himself and looked nervous.

  “When's your day off?”

  “Uh—Thursday. But not this Thursday.”

  “He's always been a cheapskate,” said Port. He smiled at Ramon. “How much you making?”

  “Thirty-five, with room and board.”

  “That's why he keeps changing the help. He won't pay a real professional.”

  “His daughter hired me.”

  “How much does a real gardener make?”

  “I don't know. I don't know nothing from gardening. It worries me, you know? You ever think of that?

  “You won't be there long enough.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do a good job, Ramon, and you're in.”

  Ramon lit up, but the real relief didn't show in his face until a few moments later, when a key turned in the door and Shelly came in. She said, “If I'm too early...”

  “No, this is fine,” said Port, and noticed that Ramon relaxed. “I'm just going. I apologize,” he started when Ramon got up and said he wouldn't have it, that Port should stay. His sister would want him to stay and she should slice up some of the cake she had made.

  “I don't know if Mr. Port...”

  “I like cake,” said Port.

  He stayed in his chair and watched Shelly slice cake. He saw her from the back and the curve of her back made him think of the girl in McFarlane's office, but he liked this girl better. Or her looks, anyway, since he didn't know Shelly at all.

  Ramon was running around, looking in drawers and on shelves and then he said, “I'll be right back. I can't find the cigarettes.”

  “Use mine,” said Port, but Ramon was at the door, explaining that he only smoked one kind and Port's wasn't it. He closed the door and was gone.

  They both looked at the door and then Shelly came to the table.

  “You still want the cake?”

  Port looked up at her and saw what she meant.

  “I don't think he'll be back so soon,” he said.

  Shelly sat down at the table and pushed the cake out of the way. The movement showed the inside of her arm and she moved so slowly that Port thought he was looking at it a very long time. He didn't care if she noticed. She folded her arms on the table and he didn't notice how she looked at him. When she talked he looked up quickly.

  “He is trying very hard.”

  “Ramon? Yes, he is.”

  “He won't be back for a while, so there's time for me to ask you something.”

  Port went to the stove and poured himself another cup of coffee.

  “What do you want from my brother?”

  “It's mutual,” said Port. “I need talent, and he wants to give it.”

  “He has no talent. All he has is big dreams of how to be an operator.”

  “I won't strain his talents.”

  “How about his self-respect?”

  Suddenly Port didn't like her. He thought her eyes were too large, her fingers too long, and her face had the toneless color of a dark complexion without enough sun.

  “He can take it or leave it. So can you.”

  She poked at the cake with the long knife she was holding, but she kept looking at him.

  “You've harmed him already,” she said. “He's never done this before.”

  “What's that?”

  “Pimp his sister.”

  Port put out his cigarette.

  “I didn't take him up on it,” he said.

  Her eyes got narrow and she put down the knife. But her voice was as even as ever.

  “You stayed, didn't you?”

  Port sat still, letting the tension turn to a physical sting on his skin.

  “I would have stayed anyway,” he said.

  “That's how you planned it?”

  “No,” he felt irritable with her suspicion. “I just decided. I took one look at that cake of yours...”

  She jumped up so fast
he thought she had in mind leaping at him. He watched how her breasts moved with her breathing and then the color that darkened her face.

  “Get out,” she said.

  He pushed back his chair and got up. Her emotion surprised him.

  “And now what, you scream?”

  She didn't answer. She picked up the knife and held the point into the oilcloth. Port went to the door, opened it, and turned back to the girl.

  “I'll see you,” he said.

  She punched the knife into the oilcloth again, but didn't move otherwise. Only her face was full of life. “You know,” she said, “I don't know how to throw this. If I knew how to throw a knife, I would.”

  “I'm glad you can't,” he said and walked away without closing the door. Shelly could hear him whistling.

  Chapter Eight

  When Port got to the Lee building the nightman opened the door for him. “Mr. Stoker ain't in,” he said, “if that's who you want.”

  “Where did he go?” Port said.

  “He never came in today. Fries was here, but he's gone by now.”

  Port went back to his car. He leaned against the rear fender and jiggled the antenna that stuck out at an angle. He hoped Stoker hadn't left town for some reason, but he didn't think Stoker would, not at this time. He got into his car.

  When he got to the apartment, Mrs. Stoker opened the door. She gave him a hostile look and told him which door to take.

  Port knocked at the door and waited till it was opened by Fries, who stepped aside to let Port come in. Stoker was in bed.

  There was a knee desk in front of him, a phone by his elbow, and his color was fresh, which—in a case like Stoker's—didn't mean health.

  “If it's good, tell him,” said Fries. “If it isn't, don't hang around here till you've fixed it.”

  Port said hello and sat down near the bed. “You've got a good man here,” he said to Stoker. “It proves we all got a good side, no matter how bad the first impression is.” Then he smiled at Fries.

  “One day, horse around like that,” said Fries, “and you're gonna be...”

  “Fries, there's no such thing as a spontaneous ulcer, but you're working on it,” Port said.