The drowning pool

“Better in the morning,” she repeated, with toneless, empty irony.

She was still standing tense and straight, with her hands clenched at her sides, when I started to back the car. The white beam swerved as I turned, and left her in darkness.

I stopped at the gate, but it was open, and I went on through. A few hundred yards beyond it a tall man appeared in the road, lifting his thumb for a ride. I was passing him up when I caught a glimpse of his face: Pat Reavis. I barked to a quick stop and he came ru

“Thanks very much, sir.” He smelled strongly of whisky, but he didn’t look drunk. “Your dashboard clock working?”

I compared the lighted dial with my watch. Both indicated twenty-three minutes after eight. “Seems to be.”

“It’s late than I thought, then. God, I sure hate walking. I walked enough in the Marines to last me the rest of my life. My own car’s in the garage, front end smashed.”

“Where did you do all the walking?”

“One place and another. I landed on Guadal with Carlson’s Raiders, for one. But we won’t go into that. You know the Slocums?”

To get him talking, I said: “Anybody who is anybody knows the Slocums.”

“Yeah, sure,” he answered in the same tone. “All that class. What the Slocums is an equalizer.” But he said it in a good-humored way. “You trying to sell them something?”

“Life insurance.” I was tired of the farce of pretending to be interested in Marvell’s play.

“No kidding? That’s a laugh.” He laughed to prove it.

“People die,” I said. “Is it so fu

“I bet you ten to one you didn’t sell any, and you never will. The old lady’s worth more dead than she is alive already, and the rest of them don’t have one nickel to clink against another.”

“I don’t get it. I heard they were good prospects, well-heeled.”

“Sure, the old lady’s sitting on a couple of million bucks in oil, but she won’t sell or lease. Slocum and his wife can’t wait for her to bump. The day she bumps, they’ll be down at the travel bureau buying tickets for a de luxe round-the-world cruise. The oil under the ground’s their life insurance, so you can stop wasting your time.”

“I appreciate the tip. My name is Archer.”

“Reavis,” he said. “Pat Reavis.”

“You seem to know the Slocums pretty well.”

“Too damn well. I been their chauffeur for the last six months. No more, though. The bastards fired me.”

“Why?”

“How the hell do I know. I guess they just got sick of looking at my pan. I got sick enough looking at theirs.”

“That’s a nice-looking kid they got, though. What was her name?”

“Cathy.”

But he gave me a quick look, and I dropped the subject. “The wife has her points, too,” I offered.

“She had it once, I guess. No more. She’s turning into another bitch like the old lady. A bunch of women go sour like milk when they got no man around to tell them where to get off.”

“There’s Slocum, isn’t there?”

“I said a man.” He snorted. “Hell, I’m talking too much.”

The car went over the little ridge that marked the edge of the mesa. The headlights swept empty blackness and dipped down into the valley. There were a few islands of brightness on either side of the road where night crews were working to bring in new wells. Further down the slope, aluminum-painted oil tanks lay under searchlights like a row of thick huge silver dollars in a kitty. At the foot of the hill the lights of the town began, white and scattered on the outskirts, crowded and crawling with color in the business section, where they cast a fiery glow above the buildings.

The traffic in the main street was heavy and unpredictable. Fenderless jalopies threatened my fenders. Hot rods built low to the ground and stacked with gin-mill cowboys roamed the neon trails with their mufflers off. A man in a custom-made Buick stopped in my path abruptly to kiss a woman in the seat beside him, and drove on with her mouth attached to the side of his neck. Eats, Drinks, Beer, Liquor, the signs a

Reavis was feeling that pull, his eyes were glistening with it. “Anywhere along here,” he said impatiently. “And thanks a million.”

I angled into the first empty parking space and turned off the lights and ignition. He looked at me with one long leg out the door. “You staying in town tonight?”

“I’ve got a room in Quinto. Right now I could use a drink.”

“You and me both, friend. Come on, I’ll show you the best place in town. Better lock your car.”

We walked back a block and turned into Antonio’s. It was a single large room, high-ceilinged and deep, with restaurant booths along one wall and a fifty-foot bar to the left. At the far end a fry cook worked in a cloud of steam. We found two empty stools near him. Everything in the place looked as if it had been there for a long time, but it was well-kept. The cigarette butts on the floor were new, the scarred mahogany surface of the bar was clean and polished. Reavis rested his arms on it as if it belonged to him. The sleeves of his gaudy shirt were rolled up, and his forearms looked as heavy and hard as the wood under them.

“Nice place,” I said. “What are you drinking?”

His answer surprised me: “Uh-uh. This is on me. You treat me like a gentleman, I treat you like a gentleman, see?”

He turned and smiled wide, full in my face, and I had my first chance to study him. The teeth were white, the black eyes frank and boyish, the lines of the features firm and clean. Reavis had quantities of raw charm. But underneath it there was something lacking. I could talk to him all night and never find his core, because he had never found it.

He offered the smile too long; something for sale. I put a cigarette in my mouth. “Hell, you just lost your job. I’ll buy the drinks.”

“There are plenty of jobs,” he said. “But buy ’em if you want. I drink Bushmill’s Irish whisky myself.”

I was reaching for a match when a lighter flicked under my nose and lit my cigarette. The bartender had approached us noiselessly, a middle-sized man with a smooth hairless head and a lean ascetic face. “Good evening, Pat,” he said without expression, replacing the lighter in the pocket of his white jacket. “What are you gentlemen drinking?”

“Bushmill’s for him. A whisky sour for me.”

He nodded and moved away, narrow-hipped and poised as a ballet-dancer.

“Tony’s a cold-blooded bastard,” Reavis said. “He’ll take your money for six months and then cut you off with a cup of coffee if he thinks you’re eighty-six. Now I’m not Jesus Christ—”

“Excuse my mistake.”

“You’re a right gee, Lew.” He smiled the big raw smile again, but he got to first names too quickly. “What do you say we pull the rag and have ourselves a time? I got me a neat blonde stashed over at Helen’s. Gretchen can find you a playmate. The night’s still young.”

“Younger than I am.”

“What’s the trouble, you married or something?”

“Not at present. I have to hit the road early tomorrow.”

“Aw, come on, man. Have a couple of drinks and you’ll feel better. This is a wide-open town.”

When our drinks arrived he took his quickly and went out through a swinging door named Gents. The bartender watched me sip my whisky sour.

“Good?”

“Very good. You didn’t spend your apprenticeship in Nopal.”

He smiled bleakly, as a monk might smile over the memory of an ecstasy. “No. I began at fourteen in the great hotels of Milan. I graduated before twenty-one to the Italian Line.” His accent was French, softened by a trace of native Italian.

“All that training so you can mix ’em for a gang of oilfield winos.”

“Nopal Valley is a fine place to make money. I bought this place for thirty-five thousand and in one year paid off the mortgage. Five years and I can retire.”