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PART II
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

51

BY SOME MIRACLE, Trey refrained from punching the bar when he stalked in, thoroughly pissed off at himself. If he did, he’d have to explain to Marina how he’d gotten hurt and—

No, he wouldn’t have to explain. She’d know.

He hated that.

“Thought you was takin’ the day off to fool around with your bride,” Vern said.

“Change o’ plans,” he snarled.

“Things not workin’ out?”

“Things workin’ fine. I’m just a stupid shit.”

Vern looked like he understood, which made Trey feel no better. He went to his office and opened the door to see that it had been tossed, most likely by someone looking to find out where, when, and how he was getting his Remus. Suddenly, Trey felt better. He wasn’t the stupidest shit in town. Scarritt’s divan had been mutilated, which also made Trey feel better. He wished Scarritt could see it so Trey could hear him screech like a little girl.

“Heh. Didn’t like the fucker anyway. BOY!”

One of his errand rats popped up.

“Get this thing outta here an’ put my old divan back.”

“Yeah, Boss. What happen’a you?”

“Nothin’,” he barked. The boy shrugged and went off to find another boy to help him. Trey rustled around in his makeshift closet and found some fresh duds and went upstairs to change.

“Gio!” Trey bellowed when he came back downstairs fresh and tidy, heading to his table. He dropped himself in his chair. “Did you find me some new whores?”

“No. Plenty of girls have answered the ad, but none of our girls’ caliber.”

“Fuck a duck.”

“What happened?”

“Made a fool o’ myself in front o’ Marina,” he grumbled.

Gio hummed in commiseration.

The night went as usual. Trey interviewed three more girls, one of whom was a looker but not very bright; another who was bright, but not much of a looker; and the third who was a looker and bright, but very catty about the other two.

“Goddammit, I like my whores with a heart of gold, and I want my heart-of-gold whores back.”

“Good luck,” Gio said blithely.

Trey didn’t pursue that. Gio was still pissed. According to Marina, Dot was putting up a good front about being dumped, but Sister Albright was worried. Marina didn’t let on about much, so he didn’t worry about whether she would spill the beans to Dot to make her feel better. Marina’s ability to keep her thoughts and feelings to herself was something Trey liked because when he caught something he felt especially proud, although he never did find out what Marina really thought of the picture show. She sat quietly, didn’t laugh, but was about to tell him why she was delighted when he fell on his face. Twice.

Then he’d run like a little boy, the same way he’d broken up with the nice girl who corrected his pronunciation of Tucson. He was married to this one, though, so he couldn’t cut and run. He had to go home and face her like a man.

“What is it about this girl?” he muttered.

“Dunham,” Gio said, “what about her caught your eye?”

It wasn’t a pointed question. He really wanted to know.

“Not sure,” Trey admitted. “I wanna figure it out ’cuz it was almost like I knew I was gonna marry her as soon as I saw her. Ain’t love,” he said matter-of-factly, cutting Gio off. “I know what that feels like—” Gio’s eyebrows rose. “—and this ain’t it. More like … You know how, when I hire somebody, I see somethin’ that makes me curious, then after I talk to ’em a bit, I just know they’ll fit in here an’ do good work?”

Gio nodded slowly. “Yeah, I see what you mean. She fits with you.”

“Yeah. Like you. An’ the girls. Ida. Vern. Brody. I don’t fit with Boss Tom—”

“Nobody does,” Gio grunted. “The thing about gangsters—”

“Don’t explain me to me.”

Gio’s lip curled. “You’re not a gangster. A real one.”

Trey didn’t know whether to be offended or proud. “I am a very good gangster.”

“You don’t fit with this life any more than I do because gangsters want more and more power. You don’t. You’re happy with what you’ve got. I don’t. I want to stay out of sight. And the underbosses who aren’t working to gain power are going to get run over eventually. You know that or else you wouldn’t want out.” Trey couldn’t fault that. “So that’s your problem with Marina. You see her as an employee?”

“Not an employee. A partner. Future partner,” he amended. “Like Liz Albright is to Rev. Marina’s young yet, don’t know enough about the world. What she is right now is a really good friend, not quite yet the kind who’ll help you bury the body. She’d help Dot bury a body.” He paused, then blurted, “I’m competin’ with Dot!”

“You always have been.”

“Yeh, how do I win?”

“Fuck Marina,” Gio said flatly.

Trey felt a little sick to his stomach.

“When Lazia and Marie are out, you know they’re best friends and lovers. It’s all wrapped up together.” He paused, then muttered, “It’s what I want with Dot, but if it could happen, I wouldn’t have your problem. I don’t separate loose women from nice girls because most women want the same thing: to be liked as people and seen as attractive women.”

Trey scowled.

“I did actually talk to the girls. They’ll come back—” Trey’s day suddenly got much better. “—on one condition.”

Trey groaned.

“Make love to Marina and make it good.”

“Goddammit!” he bellowed, pounding the table with his fist. Half the people on the mezzanine gave him a wary look, which bolstered his ego. Here, he intimidated people. Sometimes he outright terrified them. Here, nobody would dare laugh at Trey Dunham. “That only means I’m whoring for the speak again!”

Gio shrugged. “Guess that depends on how much you want them back.”

“I can lie,” he sneered.

Gio smirked. “I’d like to see you get that lie past three whores, one of whom loves her job. They know where you live and have a little bit of free time right now to make friends with Marina.”

“Oh, God. Gio! Sex ruins everything! Especially friendships an’ I like our friendship the way it is.”

“Except you don’t because you don’t want to be a chore, which means you do want to have sex with her.”

“I told you. I. Don’t. Like. That. Marina.”

“Do you really think she’s going to act the same when she’s not high?”

“I don’t wanna find out.”

“Quit being so fucking whiny and look around. The Lazias. Pendergasts. Albrights. They’re all business in the daytime, rushing around doing their own jobs to keep life together, but then supper rolls around, Albright grabs her ass just a little, she smiles at him, you know how confident women do, and then it’s back to business. Albright’s not counting down the minutes till he can get her in bed. Eventually the kids get tucked in and the house closes down. They go to bed talking about tomorrow’s chores. The bedroom door closes. After a couple of minutes, she starts giggling. Sun comes up, they’re at the day’s work again.”

“How do you know this?” Trey demanded.

“Dot talked about her family a lot. I was invited to supper a couple of times and I watched them. But I could read between the lines of what she didn’t know she was saying and what I saw that for her is just what they do and she doesn’t think anything of it at all. My point is, those moments are just that. Moments. Those moments are private and quiet and they wake up happy. I have never woken up happy after a night of fucking. Have you?”

“Well, yeah. For a spell. Not with Marina.”

Gio sneered. “With Marina, you were renting your body out. Same as the rest of us.”

Trey winced.

“The girls aren’t trying to get you to whore for the speak again. They want you to learn how to appreciate her as a person and a friend and desire her as a woman. At the same time.”

“Why do they care about my sex life?!”

“Because they have hearts of gold,” Gio sneered.

“Oh.”

Gio scowled at him. “Ethel told you why. We feel responsible. We hung our lives on corrupting an innocent girl. The least we can do is help her out where we can.”

That deflated Trey as nothing else had.

“Sally was a preacher’s daughter who thought she was in love and was loved in return. Now she’s a whore, and she’s the one carrying most of the blame and guilt, while the cat’s out living his life to the hilt. Ethel, Ida. We were all innocent once and I still have nightmares about that last hit. Even Boss Tom felt bad once it was pointed out to him. If you’d made that bet with anybody else and the father went to him for justice, you’d be dead.”

That was absolutely true. “Is that why you didn’t fight me when I threw in the towel?”

“Yes. We know you like her. We know you’ll take care of her. If you didn’t want to fuck her, it wouldn’t make us any difference. You could have any woman you want and no one would ever know. She probably doesn’t want to have anything to do with sex anyway.”

Trey shook his head because that still stung.

“I’ve seen the way you look at her. Maybe you aren’t in love, but you want her.”

That was also true. He did. He wanted her so badly he simply blocked that from his mind so it wouldn’t torture him. Every time he looked at her, flashes of memory hit him. Her easy, heavy-lidded smiles. Her kisses. Her soft whispers of desire to go along with her soft caresses. And the next day, she’d been back to her usual standoffish, proper, shy self.

Was that any different from what Gio said about the Albrights?

“Go to bed satisfied at a good day’s work, have a little fun with your girl, wake up happy, discuss the day’s plans, then get up and go about your own business and let her go about hers. It’s the only fun you’re going to get until you can plan an outing, pictures or ballgame or something. Those are special. The fucking in between is you two having a little bit of fun you can slip in between your chores and eating and sleeping.”

“Fun,” Trey murmured, staring blankly at the activity around him. “Just part of our day.”

“It doesn’t even have to be that good or special and sometimes not at all. It just has to be something only you two share. Like Agatha Christie. Nobody else wants to listen to you two chattering about whodunnit.”

“Agatha Christie,” he mused, then said wistfully, “I shore do miss that, to be truthful. An’ the other books. Findin’ new stuff the other might like.”

Gio looked surprised. “Why did you stop?”

“Well, I—” Why had they stopped? “We have work to do. It can’t be like when we was courtin’. I took a lotta time off and now I don’t have to ’cuz we live together.”

“And sleep together?”

“Yeh.”

“And you’re jealous of Dot when you’ve got the clear advantage? Teach Marina how to have a little fun in bed, then she won’t think of you as a chore and you won’t think of her as a whore.”

Furious, Trey bellowed, “I don’t think of her as a whore!”

“Does she or doesn’t she think you do?”

That hurt. It hurt in the same place it hurt that he’d forgotten to open Marina’s door, then fallen on his face, then got laughed at, then Marina trying to shield him from view because she knew. He’d been exposed like the Wizard of Oz to the girl he least wanted to be exposed to.

He sighed. “Gio, the second I do, she’s— I’m— She’s a virtuous woman and I don’t wanna make her not-virtuous.”

“She doesn’t stop being virtuous just because she’s having fun with her man! Everybody in town knows how she got pregnant and that she was drugged, because you put the word out you’d kill whoever did it. She goes to bed virtuous. She’ll wake up virtuous. Nothing changed. It’s never going to change.”

Trey cleared his throat.

“And so what if she turns into the bearcat she was when she was high. You’re the only one who’ll ever know. You liked the sex until you started thinking later. You weren’t thinking about it when you were with her.”

He allowed as how that was true.

Gio looked at him with pity. “What are you afraid of, Dunham?”

He didn’t know.

Gio arose and knocked on the table. Trey looked up at him. “You know how women become loose?”

Trey shook his head.

“Looking for appreciation and desire they never find.”

51

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