Ed Lacy - The Big Fix

     The woman pushed the door open, stepped inside, and closed the door. She was even taller than Bertha. She placed an arm around May, her face showing horror when she had a good look at May's bruises. She said, “No, Mrs. Cork. But don't be alarmed. I'm the wife of a detective. He's downstairs with your Tommy. We've been looking all over town for you, to help you. I had to use this ruse to reach you.”

     May began to weep. Ruth walked her to the bed and they both sat down. Ruth said, “Everything's going to be all right now. You're safe.” Looking at the scrawny little woman, the beaten face, Ruth asked herself, “How could any man ever love... this? Even marry her? She's just a plain bag of bones. Although really not as old as she looks. Why, probably she isn't forty.”

     May leaned against her, sniffling and weeping like a child, and compared to Ruth, not much bigger than a little girl. After a moment, Ruth said, “I'll send Tommy up to...”

     “Oh no! I can't let him see me like this. Oh, I've done a terrible thing.”

     “Nothing really very bad,” Ruth said softly, thinking, Now here's a real character for my book, if only I knew what makes her tick. Why do I feel so detached? I'll never understand people this way. “May, Tommy and my husband are going to take you to a better place, a safe place, until all this is straightened out. Then...”

     “I can't let Tommy see me like this.”

     “That's being silly. He's been out of his mind looking for you. And my husband is with him. I told you, he's a detective, and a good one. He won't let anything happen to you.”

     “Is he going to arrest me?”

     “No. Walt is in this as a friend of Tommy's. Trust me, and don't worry.”

     May shook her head and for a moment there was only silence in the room, and the sharp smell of bug powder. Ruth said, “You must let us help you.”

     May said faintly, “Can you get me something to eat? I'm so weak.”

     “Of course.” Ruth stood up. Suddenly, she said aloud, “You mean you're really hungry?”

     “I haven't had anything to eat for over a day.” As Ruth reached the door, May added, “Please don't let Tommy come up, yet.”

     “I'm just going down to get coffee and whatever else I can find. Now, you'll let me in again, won't you?”

     May nodded.

     Downstairs, Ruth told Walt and Tommy, “Get a container of coffee, rolls—anything. She's very hungry, still a bit shocked. And don't you go up there, yet, Mr. Cork.”

     “Is she hurt?” Tommy asked.

     “Well, no. Naturally, she's upset. Get her some food and let her talk to me for a while. She'll be okay.”

     “But...?” Tommy began.

     Walt cut him off with, “She's going hungry while we gab here. Must be a bar or coffee pot around. You buy some food. I'll wait here with Ruth. Need money?”

     “I have money,” Tommy said quietly, trotting off down the street.

     Walt looked at Ruth. “You look kind of pale yourself. Is she beaten up?”

     Ruth nodded as she lit a cigarette, leaning against the entrance of what, perhaps half a century ago, had been an imposing brownstone and was now a cheap rooming-house. Ruth shook herself, as if something might be crawling on her. “Both her eyes are blackened. She's such a pathetic little thing. But so is he. What do we do now?”

     “First we hear what she has to say. Then we'll hide her out in some hotel.”

     “Want to take her to my sister's across the river? Ann loves to do good and... Is May in any real danger?”

     “If they found her they might work her over again, but I doubt if they're going to look too hard. Certainly, not out of the state.”

     “What did she actually do?”

     “Held out a dollar bet from the numbers mob.”

     “How much?”

     “One dollar.”

     “They beat her for a lousy buck?”

     Walt looked at Ruth as if she was a child. “It sounds funny, but it's the principle of the thing. They can't let anybody hold out a cent on them, or they're through. Listen, thanks for doing all this, Ruth.” He touched her shoulder with his hand.

     Ruth turned away, blew out a smoke ring. “It's... interesting. Nice of you to help Tommy. Was he a famous pug?”

     “No. But he's had over two hundred amateur and pro bouts. He's...”

     “His face looks like his mother was frightened by a boxing glove.”

     “Can't you ever stop with the clever dialogue?” Walt asked. “I had less than twenty amateur bouts, all told. Two hundred fights isn't nothing to joke about or...”

     “Isn't anything to joke about?”

     “What?”

     Tommy came running back, holding a paper bag. He said, “I can't understand why May won't see me. I'll take this up...”

     Ruth took the bag. “She's hungry, upset, doesn't want you to see her like this. Just wait a while.” Starting up the stairs with the bag of food, Ruth stared at the worn, wooden steps, thought, Here I am in the middle of the night, bringing food to a beaten, hungry woman in this stinking fire-trap. What more could any writer ask? If I don't get a story out of this, I'll turn in my typewriter.

     Ruth sat on the bed while May stood, wolfed down the coffee and two sandwiches. She'd said, “Messy to eat on a bed. And it's bad luck.”

     “If I had my wits about me, I'd have brought up a drink.”

     “I don't touch that stuff.”

     When Ruth lit another cigarette, offered her one, May said she didn't smoke. Ruth opened her chic, fur-trimmed coat, finished the cigarette. May was eating slower now, chewing the food, her thin face almost smiling. She said, “My, a steak couldn't have tasted better. Food makes all the difference, doesn't it? I feel so much better. One reason I liked being a waitress, I almost felt as if I was doing good, helping people eat.”

     “Tommy bought the food. You'll have to see him, Mrs.... May. He wanted to dash right up here. You should see him. What's a black eye between husband and wife?”

     “It isn't my face, Lord knows I never was a beauty.” May smoothed a fold in her skirt, seemed to absent-mindedly caress it. “Funny the kind of things you think about. I mean, even at a time like this, the trouble I'm in—I should be thinking about a hundred things and not about the time Tommy and I were first married. You see, I was brought up very strict by my aunt. In our neighborhood there were only two kinds of girls. You know what I mean.”

     May suddenly blushed and looked so young and girlish, Ruth wanted to cry. May said, “I don't even know why I'm telling you this, except I was thinking about it today, sort of running it over and over in my mind. Just now, when I said I was never a beauty. On our wedding night I... I... simply couldn't bring myself to undress. Tommy understood so well, that I wasn't afraid of him, but scared of the whole... idea. He turned off the lights in the hotel room and I was numb with... well... fright is about the right word. Then he began undressing me, his hands so easy, and I started to weep. Everything he did was so gentle and considerate, but I still cried. When I was naked he turned on the lights. I covered my face with my hands, I was that ashamed. So Tommy he pulled my hands away and says, 'Look at yourself in that mirror, May. Right how there's no difference between you and Mrs. Rockefeller. Do you know that? Except you're prettier—to me.' Of course we were poorer than church mice but what he said sounded so nice, so fine, I relaxed, even giggled. And... Gee, I shouldn't be talking like this. Poor Tommy, how can I ever explain to him what I've done?”

     “Come on now, after all, what did you actually do, steal a dollar? That's nothing. We all have...”

     “But it is so bad. Tommy and I had our differences, most of them forced on us by lack of money... and other things. But certain things we never had to worry about—like either of us being unfaithful or doing anything crooked. That's why it will be hard for me to explain how I became mixed up with the number crooks. Big Burt had suggested to me a couple times before that I should pick up numbers for him. But I wouldn't even listen, hear him out. Then... You see, I found an apartment I could get if I had a hundred and fifty to buy the furniture. I pleaded with Tommy to quit the ring, get any kind of job. With an apartment I felt we could both start living again. We've been apart for over a year. It's the shabby living in cheap rooms that spoils a marriage. Do you have an apartment? A home?”

     “Yes, we have a flat.”

     “Then you must know what I mean, how necessary a place of your own is. I felt if we didn't get this apartment, we were really finished. I had to raise the money before Bertha sold the apartment to somebody else. Nobody I could borrow that kind of money from. On what I make, I'd never be able to save fast enough. So, God forgive me, I agreed to take numbers. I was to get ten per cent of what I collected and if somebody hits, one of your customers, they usually give the runner another ten per cent. I was sure I'd make a lot of money—say, ten dollars a night.” May smoothed her skirt again. “But it takes time before people get to know about it, and so I couldn't be too open. Butch would have fired me. And rightly so. I did make a few dollars, and then several nights ago I clean forgot to give Burt some of the money I'd collected. Honest, it slipped my mind.”

     “I'm certain it did.”

     “You know the odds are six hundred to one and I was in a sweat. Suppose some of the numbers I didn't give in won? But they didn't and Big Burt never knew the difference. So then I thought—God have mercy—if I could hold out a few dollars a night, take a chance... well, in a month, I'd have the hundred and fifty dollars for the apartment. Well, poor Shorty James hit. Oh dear, he said it was the first time he'd won in over two years. And I hadn't turned in his dollar. Now he's out all that money. And Heaven only knows what Big Burt will do to me if he ever catches...” May started to weep again.

     Ruth said sharply, “Stop it, all this Shorty really lost was one dollar. Don't be afraid, we'll find a place where you can hide, maybe out of town, and you can get another job.”

     “But you don't see, I'll never be able to take Bertha's apartment now! It's the end of Tommy and me.”

     “Nonsense, there are other apartments,” Ruth said, thinking. She said, “nobody I could borrow that kind of money from....” A hundred and fifty dollars—and she made it sound like a million...

     “Where? For a whole year I been looking hard for one— that we could afford. A roof over our heads is important as food. I've messed this up so. It's a wonder Tommy sticks to me.”

     “Stop blaming yourself. As you said, if Tommy had taken a job.... I heard he's had plenty of fights. Doesn't he make any money in the ring?”

     “Not any more. He's way past his prime. He shouldn't be fighting. Seeing him hurt is another of my nightmares. But I can't tell him that.”

     “Perhaps we can all talk to him. The first thing is for you to pull yourself together, get out of here and into a safer place. Then we'll convince Tommy to...”

     May shook her head, ran her sleeve over her wet face. “He has to realize it himself. It's wrong to tell a husband what to do. Oh, I found that out.”

     Ruth grinned. “Honey, the idea that a wife is a man's pet servant is so old-fashioned that...”

     “No, no, you don't understand,” May said, her voice suddenly clear as she looked up at Ruth. “Although, being happily married, you must know this. What I meant is, marriage is a partnership, and one partner has no right to press the other too much. Believe me, the girls I work with, they all really want to have a good marriage, despite their fast talk. That song about a good man is hard to find—it's the truth. Tommy is a good man. Why when I married him I became a somebody for the first time in my life. Even before —I was known as Irish Tommy's girl. People would point me out on the street. Tommy was a famous man in our neighborhood. It was all so lovely in the beginning. We were living pretty well. Tommy began bringing home five or six hundred dollars a fight, sometimes fighting twice a month. When he was in training we didn't sleep together. Gee, Mrs....”

     “Ruth.”

     “Ruth, you must think I'm awful talking so much about sex. But a fighter's wife is... like I said, we'd be apart and then it would be a honeymoon all over again. I hate boxing, but I did get a thrill the few times I was at ringside, seeing how clever and sure my husband was, listening to the crowd yell for him. Everybody said Tommy would be champ soon, even the newspapers. I ruined that for him, too.”

     “What's with you, May, blaming yourself for everything?”

     “It's true, it was my fault. When I became pregnant and they found the spot on my lungs, the doctor told me not to have the baby. I was only in my second month. Even my priest... well, never mind that. But I insisted, went ahead and had the boy. It was a baby boy even though it was a still-birth. I nearly died having the kid, my lungs went to pieces. I had to go to this fancy sanitarium. Tommy insisted upon the best for me. We needed a few thousand dollars in a big hurry. Tommy went in with Robinson.”

     “So?”

     “Of course you don't understand about boxing. Tommy was smart, wouldn't let any manager rush him for a fast dollar. Robinson was the greatest fighter of our day. Boxing is like any other job, it takes time to learn your trade. Perhaps in a few years Tommy would have been ready for Robinson. He wasn't then and he knew it. And his fierce pride wouldn't let him put up a cautious fight. He tore into Robinson. Tommy was beaten so badly.... I thanked God I was in a coma before and especially after the fight. My Tom never got over that licking. His reflexes were mined and... why, he was urinating blood for a week afterwards.

     “Even then, he might have made it if he'd taken a long rest. Tom had to keep on fighting, my doctor bills were piling up. As I told you, he's a proud man, wouldn't have taken charity even if we could have got some. He was Irish Cork, the contender. When the hospital finally released me, about a year later, I found out the truth. Tom was finished, fighting for a few dollars on his former reputation. He was broke. I insisted upon helping, working. That was our first separation. He walked out when I took a factory job. But I couldn't get any other work and it almost killed me, but we were hungry. Since then we have a reunion, then part, makeup and part again—living in dreary rooms which made us both mad all the time. Tom can't face up to the fact he's through as a boxer. He's never lost hope, still talks about his luck changing, bringing home a big purse.