As her hands and her mind grew more crooked, Kate began to rely more and more on Joe Valery as her assistant in chief, as her go-between, and as her executioner. She had a basic fear of the girls in the house—not that they were more untrustworthy than Joe but that the hysteria which lay very close to the surface might at any time crack through their caution and shatter their sense of self-preservation and tear down not only themselves but their surroundings. Kate had always been able to handle this ever-present danger, but now the slow-depositing calcium and the slow growth of apprehension caused her to need help and to look for it from Joe. Men, she knew, had a little stronger wall against self-destruction than the kind of women she knew.
She felt that she could trust Joe, because she had in her files a notation relating to one Joseph Venuta who had walked away from a San Quentin road gang in the fourth year of a five-year sentence for robbery. Kate had never mentioned this to Joe Valery , but she thought it might have a soothing influence on him if he got out of hand.
Joe brought the breakfast tray every morning—green China tea and cream and toast. When he had set it on her bedside table he made his report and got his orders for the day. He knew that she was depending on him more and more. And Joe was very slowly and quietly exploring the possibility of taking over entirely. If she got sick enough there might be a chance. But very profoundly Joe was afraid of her.
“Morning,” he said.
“I’m not going to sit up for it, Joe. Just give me the tea. You’ll have to hold it.”
“Hands bad?”
“Yes. They get better after a flare up.”
“Looks like you had a bad night.”
“No,” said Kate. “I had a good night. I’ve got some new medicine.”
Joe held the cup to her lips, and she drank the tea in little sips, breathing in over it to cool it. “That’s enough,” she said when the cup was only half empty. “How was the night?”
“I almost came to tell you last night,” said Joe. “Hick came in from King City. Just sold his crop. Bought out the house. Dropped seven hundred not counting what he give the girls.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know. But I hope he comes in again.”
“You should get the name, Joe. I’ve told you that.”
“He was cagey.”
“All the more reason to get his name. Didn’t any of the girls frisk him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out.”
Joe sensed a mild geniality in her and it made him feel good. “I’ll find out,” he assured her. “I got enough to go on.”
Her eyes went over him, testing and searching, and he knew something was coming. “You like it here?” she asked softly.
“Sure. I got it good here.”
“You could have it better—or worse,” she said.
“I like it good here,’’ he said uneasily, and his mind cast about for a fault in himself. “I got it real nice here.”
She moistened her lips with her arrow-shaped tongue. “You and I can work together,” she said.
“Any way you want it,” he said ingratiatingly, and a surge of pleasant expectation grew in him. He waited patiently. She took a good long time to begin.
At last she said, “Joe, I don’t like to have anything stolen.”
“I didn’t take nothing.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Who?”
“I’ll get to it, Joe. Do you remember that old buzzard we had to move?”
“You mean Ethel what’s-her-name?”
“Yes. That’s the one. She got away with something. I didn’t know it then.”
“What?”
A coldness crept into her voice. “Not your business, Joe. Listen to me! You’re a smart fellow. Where would you go to look for her?”
Joe’s mind worked quickly, not with reason but with experience and instinct. “She was pretty beat up. She wouldn’t go far. An old hustler don’t go far.”
“You’re smart. You think she might be in Watsonville?”
“There or maybe Santa Cruz. Anyways, I’ll give odds she ain’t farther away than San Jose.”
She caressed her fingers tenderly. “Would you like to make five hundred, Joe?”
“You want I should find her?”
“Yes. Just find her. When you do, don’t let her know. Just bring me the address. Got that? Just tell me where she is.”
“Okay,” said Joe. “She must of rolled you good.”
“That’s not your business, Joe.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You want I should start right off?”
“Yes. Make it quick, Joe.”
“Might be a little tough,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”
“That’s up to you.”
“I’ll go to Watsonville this afternoon.”
“That’s good, Joe.”
She was thoughtful. He knew she was not finished and that she was wondering whether she should go on. She decided.
“Joe, did—did she do anything—well, peculiar—that day in court?”
“Hell, no. Said she was framed like they always do.”
And then something came back to him that he hadn’t noticed at the time. Out of his memory Ethel’s voice came, saying, “Judge, I got to see you alone. I got to tell you something.” He tried to bury his memory deep so that his face would not speak.
Kate said, “Well, what was it?”
He had been too late. His mind leaped for safety. “There’s something,” he said to gain time. “I’m trying to think.”
“Well, think!” Her voice was edged and anxious.
“Well—” He had it. “Well, I heard her tell the cops—let’s see—she said why couldn’t they let her go south. She said she had relatives in San Luis Obispo.”
Kate leaned quickly toward him. “Yes?”
“And the cops said it was too damn far.”
“You’re smart, Joe. Where will you go first?”
“Watsonville,” he said. “I got a friend in San Luis. He’ll look around for me. I’ll give him a ring.”
“Joe,” she said sharply. “I want this quiet.”
“For five hundred you’ll get it quiet and quick,” said Joe. He felt fine even though her eyes were suited and inspective again. Her next words jarred his stomach loose from his backbone.
“Joe, not to change the subject—does the name Venuta mean anything to you?”
He tried to answer before his throat tightened. “Not a thing,” he said.
“Come back as soon as you can,” Kate said. “Tell Helen to come in. She’ll take over for you.”
3
Joe packed his suitcase, went to the depot, and bought a ticket for Watsonville. At Castroville, the first station north, he got off and waited four hours for the Del Monte express from San Francisco to Monterey, which is at the end of a spur line. In Monterey he climbed the stairs of the Central Hotel, registered as John Vicker. He went downstairs and ate a steak at Pop Ernst’s, bought a bottle of whisky, and retired to his room.
He took off his shoes and his coat and vest, removed his collar and tie, and lay down on the bed. The whisky and a glass were on the table beside the brass bed. The overhead light shining in his face didn’t bother him. He didn’t notice it. Methodically he primed his brain with half a tumbler of whisky and then he crossed his hands behind his head and crossed his ankles and he brought out thoughts and impressions and perceptions and instincts and began matching them.
It had been a good job and he had thought he had her fooled. Well, he’d underrated her. But how in hell had she got onto it he was wanted? He thought he might go to Reno or maybe to Seattle. Seaport towns—always good. And then—now wait a minute. Think about it.
Ethel didn’t steal nothing. She had something. Kate was scared of Ethel. Five hundred was a lot of dough to dig out a beat-up whore. What Ethel wanted to tell the judge was, number one, true; and, number two, Kate was scared of it. Might be able to use that. Hell!—not with her holding that jailbreak over him. Joe wasn’t going to serve out the limit with penalties.
But no harm in thinking about it. Suppose he was to gamble four years against—well, let’s say ten grand. Was that a bad bet? No need to decide. She knew it before and didn’t turn him in. Suppose she thought he was a good dog.
Maybe Ethel might be a hole-card.
Now—wait—just think about it. Maybe it was the breaks. Maybe he ought to draw his hand and see. But she was so goddam smart. Joe wondered if he could play against her. But how, if he just played along?
Joe sat up and filled his glass full. He turned off his light and raised his shade. And as he drank his whisky he watched a skinny little woman in a bathrobe washing her stockings in a basin in a room on the other side of the air shaft. And the whisky muttered in his ears.