One
He looked as if he'd got lost from a conducted tour of
something.
I didn’t pay much attention to him when he came in,
except in the general way you notice there’s somebody
standing next to you in a bar. Unless it develops he’s
dead, or he has fingers growing on his ears, or he tips
your drink over, you probably never see him. He did it
that way, in a manner of speaking. I tipped his drink
over.
I wasn’t in any mood for an opening bid about the
weather. The track had gone from sloppy to heavy
during the afternoon and outside the rain was still
crying into the neon glow of Royal Street. It’d be soup
tomorrow, and unless you tabbed something going to
the post with an outboard motor you’d do just as well
sticking a pin in the program or betting horses with
pretty names. I’d dropped two hundred in the eighth
race when Berber Prince, a beautiful overlay at four to
one, just failed to last by a nose. I was feeling low.
It was one of those dim places, with a black mirror
behind the bar, and while it was doing a good business,
I hadn’t known it was that crowded. I’d just put my
drink down and was reaching for a cigarette when I felt
my elbow bump gently against something, and then I
heard the glass break as it went over the bar. I looked
Nothing in Her Way — 2
down at the spreading Daiquiri, and then at him. It was
odd. There’d been plenty of room there a minute ago.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It didn’t spill on you, did it?”
“No. It’s all right.” He smiled. “No harm done.”
“Here,” I said. “Let me get you another one.” I caught
the bartender’s eyes and gestured.
“No,” he protested. “I wish you wouldn’t. It was just
an accident. Happen to anybody.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I knocked it over. I’ll get you
another one.” The barman came up. “Give this
gentleman another Daiquiri. And charge me with a
glass.”
The barman mopped up and brought the drink. I paid
for it. He picked it up and said, “Thanks. Thanks a lot.
But don’t forget the next one’s on me.”
He looked like a cherub, or an overgrown cupid. He
had on a blue serge suit too tight under the arms, a
white shirt too tight in the collar, and a cheap handpainted
tie with a can-can dancer on it. You knew he’d
been saving the tie for New Orleans. There wasn’t any
convention badge, but maybe he’d been left over, or
he’d lost it.
“My name’s Ackerman,” he said. “Homer Ackerman.
I’m from Albuquerque.”
“Belen,” I said. He pumped my hand. Well, I thought,
I can always make it to another bar, even in the rain.
“Belen?” he asked happily. “Why, that’s the name of a
little town right near Albuquerque.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “I’ve never been there, though.”
He was disappointed. It was obvious he was hoping I
knew old Ben Umlaut who had the tractor agency, or
maybe the Frammis boys. I wished he’d go ahead and
ask me where a fella could find some—uh—girls, and
then beat it, but you couldn’t just brush him off. Not
with that face. It’d be like kicking a baby.
“Say, this New Orleans is some place, ain’t it?” he
said. “To visit, I mean. Sure wouldn’t want to live here,
though.”
Nothing in Her Way — 3
He went on talking. I only half listened to him, and
looked at a girl who was sitting on a stool at the other
end of the bar. She had red hair, but it wasn’t quite the
same shade of red…It never is. I wondered if I’d ever
break myself of it. After all, it’d been two years.
“Gee, my feet are killing me,” Ackerman was saying.
“I must have walked a hundred miles around this place.
And then standing around out there at the race track—”
He broke off and turned that cherubic smile on me
again. “You prolly won’t believe this, but I won over
ninety dollars out there. There was this horse running
named Dinah Might, and it was raining, and I used to
know an old boy named Raines who was a powder
monkey—get it? Powder monkey, dynamite? And I’ll be
dad-burned if he didn’t—”
I didn’t say anything. Dinah Might was the cheap
plater who’d beaten out Berber Prince by the nose at
something like forty to one. Maybe he’d go away.
“Say,” he said suddenly, “there’s an empty booth over
there. Let’s sit down.”
I looked at my watch. “I’d like to, but I’ve got to run.
Man I was supposed to meet—”
His face fell in on itself. “Oh, shoot. You’ve got time
for just one, haven’t you?” he asked earnestly. “You
can’t go off without me buying you that drink, after you
bought me one.”
It was something about those open blue eyes, I guess.
You just couldn’t destroy his faith in the people he
picked up in bars. “O.K.,” I said. “Just a quick one.”
We carried our drinks over and sat down. The seats
were leather-upholstered, with high backs. He started
to light a cigarette, and then said, “Excuse me.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Oh.” He looked at me blankly. “I thought I kicked
your foot.” He leaned down sideways a little and peered
under the edge of the table. “I see what it was, I think.
Looks like there’s something lying there on the floor.”
“There is?” I asked, without much interest.
“Uh-huh. Wait a minute. Maybe I can reach it.” He
leaned down farther and grunted. “Nope. Can’t quite
Nothing in Her Way — 4
make it. I tell you. Push your right foot a little, straight
ahead.”
I shoved the foot, and then he grunted again. “Now I
got it.” He straightened up, his face red. “Le’s see what
it is.” He stopped, and his mouth dropped open. “Say,
Belen, look at this!”
It was a wallet, an expensive-looking job, and from
the thick bulge of it there was plenty in it. But by now I
wasn’t looking at the wallet. I was looking at him, and
remembering the way that glass had happened to get in
the way of my elbow. No, I thought. Nobody could
dream up a character like this.
His voice had dropped to an awe-struck whisper.
“Holy smoke, Belen! Twenties, fifties…Boy, there’s a
wad in this!” Almost unconsciously, he had hitched his
shoulder around so the wallet was hidden from the rest
of the bar.
“Any name in it?” I asked.
“That’s a good idea,” he said excitedly. “Maybe we
can find the guy and give it back to him. Le’s see.” He
nodded. “Here it is. J. B. Brown, Springfield. Can’t
make out the name of the state.”
“That ought to be a cinch,” I said. “Just try Illinois,
Ohio, and Massachusetts, and then work your way
down to the others.”
He looked at me with innocent helplessness. “That
many Springfields? What you think we ought to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was still just waiting. “You
have any ideas?”
“No-o,” he answered. “Except that we ought to try to
return it. Wouldn’t be honest to—well, just keep it,
would it?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not. Unless you just couldn’t
find anybody named Brown living in Springfield.”
“Maybe you’re right. If we keep it for—say a
reasonable length of time, and he didn’t come forward
to claim it, I’d say it would be perfectly honest for us to
divide it up.”
Well, I thought, I’ll be a sad son. There wasn’t any
doubt of it now. I began to burn a little. Was he stupid,
Nothing in Her Way — 5
or new at it, or what? I knew I didn’t look like
somebody who’d go for it.
Maybe the thing to do was ride along with him just
for the laughs. “What do you mean, divide it up?” I said.
“You found it. I didn’t.”
He shook his head. “No, by golly. You were right here
with me, and you pushed it over where I could reach it.
We both share in it. That is,” he added hastily, “if
Brown doesn’t show up to claim it. Say, I think I’ve
figured out a way we can handle it. There’s an old boy
over at this little hotel where I’m staying, he works in a
bank and he’s as honest as the day is long. We’ll let him
hold it for us. And then, if nobody claims it, we’ll split it
right down the middle. How’s that?”
“Sounds fine to me,” I said.
“Good.” He nodded, and then paused, a little
uncertainly. “But there’s one thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked, knowing very well what it
was.
“Well, it’s just in case Brown should show up later. I
mean, to sort of prove good faith, and financial
responsibility, in case we did have to give it back later
on, I think each of us ought to be able to show cash of
his own equal to his part of it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I see what you mean. Something like
a bond, to prove we could pay it back if we had to. We
give it to your friend to hold, along with the wallet.”
He nodded. “That’s it, exactly.”
“All right,” I said. “Down, boy. You can put it back in
your pocket and fade.”
“How’s that?” he asked, the guileless blue eyes
growing wide.
“Look. It was old when the pharaohs were in the
construction business. If you have to work the pigeon
drop, why don’t you try the neighborhood bars?”
The smooth, pink face split open then, and he
laughed. “Nice work, Mike.”
“Mike?” I asked. “You know me?”
Nothing in Her Way — 6
He looked pained. “Really, Belen. You don’t think I’m
that stupid in casing a mark? And I haven’t pulled
anything as crude as a pigeon drop in twenty years.”
I was still a little angry. “Well, what’s the gag?”
“Don’t you know me?”
I shook my head.
“Charles,” he said. “Wolford Charles.”
It rang then. I’d heard of Wolford Charles—or Prince
Charlie, as he was known to half the bunco squads in
the country. But as far as I knew, I’d never seen him.
He must have been reading my mind. “You have an
atrocious memory for faces, Mike. Don’t you remember
that crap game in my hotel room in Miami last fall? You
took four hundred dollars off me.”
I thought for a minute. “Sure. I remember that. But
the only man I recall who looked anything like you was
some gold-plated Bourbon from Philadelphia, by the
name of—” I stopped.
He smiled reminiscently. “Precisely. Er—Shumway,
as I recall. Eccentric chap. Cursed with an absolutely
unshakable belief that he could make a six the hard
way. A touching bit of faith in these days of spiritual
bankruptcy, but mathematically unsound.”
I leaned back in the booth and lit a cigarette. “All
right, but I still don’t make it. You didn’t think you were
going to get your four hundred back that way.”
“One moment, Mike, please.” He shoved the Daiquiri
away and asked the girl for Scotch without ice. “The
late Mr. Ackerman’s feeling for drinks was almost on a
par with his taste in cravats.” He looked down at the
can-can girl and winced. “But to get back to your
question. Call it an intelligence test.”
“Why?”
“I was curious as to your reaction.”
“And so I spotted it,” I said impatiently. “What do I
get? A merit badge?”
“I was thinking of something a little more substantial.
To be exact, a piece of a small business venture I have
under advisement at the present time.”
Nothing in Her Way — 7
“I just got off,” I said. “It was nice meeting you,
Charlie.”
“But Mike, old boy, you haven’t even heard it.”
“And I don’t need to. I already own an Arkansas
diamond mine.”
He shook his head. “You misunderstand me. You put
up no capital at all. It’s really in the nature of a job,
with a nice slice of the bood—er, profits. Say ten per
cent.”
“Nothing doing,” I said.
“But why?”
“I’m a gambler, not a con man.”
He gestured impatiently. “There is nothing whatever
illegal about this. It’s just a simple matter of—ah—
enhancing the value of a piece of real estate. But let me
tell you about it, and about Miss Holman.”
“You’re wasting your breath,” I said.
“Miss Elaine Holman, a very charming and lovely
young lady I met in New York. She’s connected with the
theatre. Her mother and father are both dead, and she
comes originally from a small town in the West.’ She
was reared by an uncle who must be, from all accounts,
one of the greatest scoundrels outside the pages of
Dickens. You see, Mike, through a small irregularity in
her mother’s will, this girl has been cheated of an
inheritance of nearly seventy thousand dollars. All quite
legally, of course, and there’s nothing the courts can do
for her.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “And the uncle is in a Mexican
prison, and the seventy thousand dollars is in the false
bottom of a trunk being held by customs in Laredo. Cut
it out, Charlie. Everybody’s heard of that one.”
He was hurt. “Please, Mike. I’m trying to tell you this
is strictly on the level. All I’m trying to do is help this
girl get back what is rightfully hers. For a slight—ah—
commission, of course. After all, I’m not a philanthropic
institution, and the idea I have in mind will entail some
expense.”
Nothing in Her Way — 8
“Roughly, around sixty-eight thousand, if I’m any
judge,” I said. “Provided, of course, the whole thing’s
not a pipe dream. But why are you telling me?”
“Because I want your help. I’m offering you a job.”
“But I’ve already turned it down. Remember?”
He sighed. “I wish there was some way I could
convince you this is strictly legitimate.” He looked up
then, past my shoulder, and brightened. “But perhaps
Miss Holman can. Here she comes now.”
I looked around, and then stood up, trying to keep my
face still and stiffen the weak feeling in my knees. She
was wearing a clear plastic raincoat with a hood, and
her hair was the color of a bottle of burgundy held up
to the light. As he had said, Miss Holman was a very
lovely girl.
The only catch was that her name wasn’t Miss
Holman. I was reasonably sure of that. I’d known her
for twenty-three years, and I’d been married to her for
two.
Nothing in Her Way — 9
Two
It was insane.
There wasn’t a quiver of an eyelash as Charlie
introduced us. She’d never seen me before. She looked
at me and said coolly and quite pleasantly, “How do you
do, Mr. Belen?”
I could hear Charlie still talking. “Mike is an old, old
friend, my dear. I am trying to persuade him to join us.”
I took it from her and played it deadpan. There didn’t
seem to be anything else to do, and I was too
dumfounded to think. God alone knew what she was up
to, and there wasn’t any use even trying to guess. Was
Charlie lying to me, or was she lying to Charlie? Since
there was no known record of Charlie’s ever having
told the truth about anything, the answer would seem
to be obvious, but I wasn’t too sure. Dullness had never
been one of her faults.
We sat down again, and she ordered a Ramos fizz.
She was on Charlie’s side of the table, directly across
from me, and when the drink came she leaned forward
a little and said, wide-eyed, “I do hope you’ll help us,
Mr. Belen.”
She could open a safe that way. In Salem, they’d have
burned her—or they would have if there’d been enough
women on the jury. Nothing had changed in two years.
The dark red hair was short-cropped and as carelessly
Nothing in Her Way — 10
tousled as a child’s. Her face just missed being heartshaped
and petite, but there was nothing of the
expressionless doll about it. It was mobile and almost
flamboyantly alive, with only a subtle hint of the
temperament you know damned well was there if you’d
ever been married to her. She had a little dusting of
freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her eyes
were dark brown and a little long for her face. Right
now there was a blue silk scarf knotted about her chin,
the big bow coming up beside her cheek and giving her
a deceptively little-girl look. She was a little girl, all
right—the same loaded little girl with a short fuse.
We were divorced two years ago, and the only thing
I’d heard of her in all that time was that she’d married
some New York bookie named Lane. I thought of the
last time I’d seen her. It was raining that night, too, and
I remembered how black and shiny the streets were as
we walked down the hill from the hotel in San
Francisco. We said good-by quite calmly at the airline
office on Union Square, and then I’d gone on to the
men’s bar in the St. Francis and ordered a drink,
suddenly conscious of how peaceful everything seemed
—and how empty.
I snapped out of it and came back to the present,
realizing I’d been staring at her. Charlie’s proposition
had been nothing but a bore, but now it had exploded
right in my face. There was a horrible fascination about
it, and it boiled down to that same question: Just who
was bamboozling whom? Was Charlie trying to sell me
the sad story of Elaine Holman, or was she selling him?
But that was unbelievable. Charlie was a pro; he’d
dealt in flimflam all his life; he had a mind like a steel
trap; and he’d been around so long he wouldn’t bet you
even money you didn’t have three hands on your left
arm unless you’d let him take it home first and look at
it. She couldn’t have the colossal nerve to try to pull
something on him. Oh, couldn’t she? I thought.
I lit her a cigarette, and then one for myself. She gave
me a smile that would warm a duck blind, and turned to
Charlie. “I do hope Mr. Belen will join us. He’s perfect
for the job, and you just know instinctively that you can
trust him.”
Nothing in Her Way — 11
I loved that. Maybe, I thought, in this idea they’re
cooking up, they have to leave somebody alone for a
few minutes with a red-hot stove.
“Charlie,” I said, “I still don’t get what you want me
for, but would you mind telling me a little more what
this is all about? Just how are you going to get Miss
Holman’s money back for her?”
He took a sip of his drink and looked at me with a
benign smile. “The modus operandi is somewhat
involved, Mike. And we’d only bore Miss Holman, since
she’s already familiar with all its ramifications. Suffice
it to say that its axis, or focal point, is a real-estate
transaction of a rather novel sort.”
“Who owns the real estate?” I asked.
“Miss Holman’s uncle.”
“And who’s going to buy it?”
He raised his eyebrows in gentle surprise. “Why, Miss
Holman’s uncle, naturally.”
“Oh, I see,” I said. “That was stupid of me. But what
are you going to do if the uncle’s guardian catches you
at it? I take it they must have him put away somewhere
where he can’t hurt himself.”
“Miss Holman’s uncle is a banker, Mike,” he said, a
little pained, “and a very astute businessman. As I
remarked, the deal is a bit complicated, and, as any
masterpiece, it suffers in condensation.”
I could see very well he wasn’t going to tell me
anything unless I came in. Charlie was no fool. And I
didn’t want to get mixed up in their shenanigan,
whatever it was. What I wanted to do more than
anything in the world was to get her alone for a few
minutes, before this thing had me wondering who I
was, and see if I couldn’t shake a little truth out of her.
I’d never realized before just what a beautiful thing a
simple, unvarnished fact could be—if I ever ran into one
again.
Just then she looked at her watch and said, “I’m
going to have to run. I’m expecting a telephone call at
the hotel.” She stood up. “I’m very glad I met you, Mr.
—ah—Belen.”
Nothing in Her Way — 12
Charlie let me beat him to it, a little too obviously.
You could see his angle. Let her work on me. “I’ll walk
around with you,” I said. “Or get you a cab.”
“I wouldn’t like to trouble you,” she said.
“No trouble at all,” I replied. “It’ll be a pleasure.”
The rain had slowed to a fine drizzle. Instead of
turning toward Canal as we came out, she went the
other way, toward the French Quarter. I fell in beside
her and took her arm. We walked in complete silence
for a block and then turned off into a side street and
went another block. I looked back. Charlie hadn’t
followed us. We stopped under an awning, out of the
misty rain that swirled beyond us under the cone of
light from a street lamp. She looked up at me, big-eyed,
her face still.
“All right, Miss Holman,” I said. “Make me cry.”
“Mike, please,” she said. “I didn’t know it was you.
He said he had somebody in mind—to help us, I mean.
A friend of his. But I had no idea who it was.”
“Never mind who I am,” I said. “I can still guess that
—I think. What I want to know is which one of you
erratic geniuses is the mother of Elaine Holman, and
why?”
“Well,” she said hesitantly, “I am.”
So my hunch had been right. She was trying to sell
Charlie a gabardine mink. I wondered if she had any
idea of the probable odds on that. But it could wait.
“Well, look,” I said. “I suppose you can explain it Let’s
give it a try. I mean, why you’re mixed up in something
with Wolford Charles, and what the hell you’re trying to
do.”
She hadn’t changed expression. She was still
watching me quietly with those big brown eyes.
“Isn’t there anything you wanted to tell me first,
Mike?” she asked softly.
“Such as?” I asked, trying to sound tough about it.
“Well, I’m glad to see you.”
“I’m always glad to see you, Mrs. Lane.”
“I’m not married any more, Mike.”
Nothing in Her Way — 13
“Off again, on again, Flanagan.”
“Jeff was killed. Eight months ago, by a holdup man.”
“Oh.” I wanted to crawl down a sewer. “I’m sorry,
Cathy. I’m sorry as hell.”
“It’s all right. You were right, anyway. We were about
to separate.”
“It’s too bad.”
“I’ve missed you, Mike.”
“And I’ve missed—” I stopped. What was the use in
digging that up again? I’d always feel empty when she
was somewhere else, and we’d always fight when we
were together. You couldn’t win. “But let’s get back to
this Holman pitch,” I said briskly. “Start talking,
Cathy.”
“Well, there is an Elaine Holman,” she said.
“I thought there might be. But where is she?”
“In New York. I met her last year. And she does have
an uncle who’s a banker in a small town named
Wyecross near the Mexican border.”
“But what are you up to?”
“All right, I’ll tell you,” she said quietly. “I’ve found
Martin Lachlan.”
“You’ve what?” I grabbed both her arms.
“That’s right.”
“When?” I demanded. “And why didn’t you write
me?”
“I didn’t know how to reach you.”
“Wait a minute,” I broke in. “This man in Wyecross—
this banker—he’s Lachlan. Is that it?”
She shook her head. “Lachlan’s in Mexico.”
“Where in Mexico?”
“If I tell you, will you help me?”
“Look,” I said. “I’ve been waiting to catch up with
Lachlan as long as you have.”
“All right. He’s in Lower California—fishing, at La
Paz. But he has an apartment in San Francisco, among
other places, and that’s where we’ll find him when
we’re ready.”
Nothing in Her Way — 14
“Ready, hell. We’re ready now.”
“No, we’re not,” she said. Then she looked up at me.
“Unless—How much money do you have?”
“Thousand—eleven hundred dollars. About that.”
“Then we’re not ready. It’ll take a lot more than that
even with what I have.”
I began to catch on. “Then you dreamed up this
Holman thing to raise the money? You sold Charlie on
it, and he’s going to split with you?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“I see. The end justifies the means.” It always did
with her. “Even if it means helping Wolford Charles
swindle some man who never heard of Lachlan?”
“That isn’t quite the case. You haven’t asked me yet
who this Wyecross man is.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Goodwin.”
“What? Not that one!”
“Yes. Howard C. Goodwin.”
“You sure it’s the same one?”
“Mike, darling, I spent a week in Wyecross, doing a
survey for—for—I’ve forgotten the name of the agency
—I know everything there is to know about everybody.”
As I said, dullness wasn’t one of her faults.
I was still holding her arms. For some reason I’d
forgotten to turn them loose. “Mike,” she whispered,
“you’ll help us, won’t you? I need—I mean, we need
you.”
There’s always a warning, if you’ll listen to it. It
buzzes when you’re playing cards with strangers and
get an almost perfect hand, and it’s always smart to
listen. I could hear it now, but very faintly, as I thought
of the law and of Wolford Charles and of the mess we
could get into. But I was touching her and she was
looking at me, and Lachlan was somewhere at the end
of it. I couldn’t hear it very well.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m with you. Let’s get started.”
I should have turned up my hearing aid.
Nothing in Her Way — 15
We flagged a cab and went around to her hotel. We’d
go out somewhere for dinner, she said, and she wanted
me to meet Judd Bolton, a friend of hers from New
York. He was in the deal.
“Does he know who you are?” I asked. “I mean, what
name do you use around him?”
She laughed. “I’ve known him a long time, and he
knew Jeff. I asked him to help me, and he was the one
who suggested getting Charlie. Charlie’s the only one
who thinks I’m Elaine Holman.”
“If he does,” I said.
I was itching to find out what else she had learned
about Martin Lachlan, and to get a line on this thing
they had rigged for Goodwin, in Wyecross, but there
wasn’t time to get much information out of her. She
said Charlie’d brief me on the Wyecross deal in the
morning.
“They don’t know anything about Lachlan,” she said.
“We do that alone.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Lachlan’s ours.”
He’d been ours for a long time. Except for the slight
matter of finding him.
At the hotel she went up to the desk to call Bolton’s
room. I watched her across the lobby, conscious that
she was still one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever
seen and thinking it was a shame more of them didn’t
learn to walk. While she was talking, I drifted over to
the newsstand to see if the Racing Form had come in. It
hadn’t, and it was while I was standing there looking
idly around the lobby that I discovered I wasn’t the only
one watching her.
He was sitting like a limp doll in a big overstuffed
chair near the doors with a paper in his hands, dark,
thin-faced, a forgotten cigarette hanging out of the side
of his mouth. The paper was lowered into his lap and he
was watching her with the unwinking intensity of a
hungry child. In a minute she turned away from the
desk and he put the paper up again. I stood there a
minute, wondering about it. It was probably nothing.
Everybody looked at her. It was just 1926 again and he
Nothing in Her Way — 16
was asking her if she’d ever seen the view from his
apartment window, before going back to tomorrow’s
selections at Hialeah.
Maybe, I thought uneasily. If that’d been spring in his
face, they ought to get the women and children out
before winter.
In a few minutes Bolton came down, and she
introduced us. He was about thirty, big, expensivelooking,
and tough in a civilized sort of way. Maybe it
was the eyes. They were gray and they didn’t say
anything, but you got the impression they could be hard
as well as urbane. We got off to a bad start.
She explained who I was and told him I was in the
act. He smiled at me, with not quite enough nastiness
to pin down.
“Horses a little off their form, eh?” he asked. It
wasn’t hard to translate. I was a broke horse player
looking for a handout.
“Are they?” I said.
I could see dinner wasn’t going to be much if we had
to have him along, but I was ready to try. We were
going to be in this thing together, and we might as well
make some effort to hit it off.
We went over into the French Quarter and stopped in
a little hole in the wall for a drink while we made up
our minds where to eat. There were some Navy
uniforms up front at the bar, and a row of empty
booths, and in the back a jukebox with colored lights
was sobbing its heart out over something. We walked
back to one of the booths, while the uniforms looked
her over for spavin and bowed tendons, and she and
Bolton sat down on one side and I got in across from
them with my back toward the door. She ordered a
Martini, and Bolton and I settled for Scotch.
The drinks came. The uniforms drifted out and the
place was empty except for us. The flood of tears from
the jukebox shut off and it shifted over to something by
Vaughn Monroe. “Salud y pesetas,” I said to Cathy.
She started to raise the Martini and then stopped, as
if she had run into an invisible glass wall. The door had
Nothing in Her Way — 17
opened and closed behind me, and now I heard
footsteps coming along the row of booths, unhurried
footsteps sounding like a sequence out of a B movie.
Bolton looked up over my shoulder and I could see his
face get dirty with fear. I turned my head to try to see
what it was in the mirror behind the bar. It was the
man from the hotel lobby.
He still looked like a corrupt and undernourished
child, even in the baggy overcoat and with a gray snapbrim
hat pushed back on his head. The dangling
cigarette was gone now, but he carried the thin face
tipped to one side as if the smoke still trailed up past
the expressionless black eyes. As I watched him I was
conscious of the odd impression that he looked like a
gangster would who spent most of his time at crime
movies studying the dress and mannerisms of
hoodlums. He stopped and stood looking at us. Or
rather, he was looking at Cathy. He gave me one
negligent glance and forgot me, and appeared to have
no interest in Bolton.
“I guess you forgot me,” he said. “In such a hurry to
leave, you forgot all about me.”
“No,” she said. She put down the drink at last. “I
didn’t forget.”
“Then maybe you just didn’t care.”
She was watching him the way a tiger eyes the man
with the chair and whip. It wasn’t fear in her eyes, just
watchfulness. “I think I told you once. I haven’t got that
much money.”
“You can forget that dodge,” he said. “I know all
about the insurance he left.”
Before she could say anything, Bolton spoke up. You
could almost smell the fear in him. “I’m sure Mrs. Lane
will pay you, Donnelly. It’s just that it takes time to get
that much money.”
She gave him a quick, sidewise glance of contempt.
“How about it?” Donnelly asked, ignoring him.
“I told you—” she began.
He moved a leisurely step nearer the table, leaned
over it past Bolton, and his arm swung. The whole thing
Nothing in Her Way — 18
was so unhurried and deliberate it caught me by
surprise and I sat there like a fool. His opened hand
cracked against the side of her face with a sharp
column of sound above the honeyed crooning of the
juke. The arm came back and I caught it and turned.
It was like twisting a pipe cleaner. There was no
strength or resistance in it at all. He half turned, with
his elbow on the table, and looked at me utterly without
interest as if I were a roach that had just crawled out of
the woodwork.
“Who’s the strong boy?” he asked Cathy.
The barman was running up. I let the arm go and
Donnelly straightened up. The side of Cathy’s face was
stinging red, but she made no move to put a hand to it.
“What’s going on here?” the barman asked with a
truculent glance at all of us.
Donnelly jerked a negligent thumb. “Beat it. We want
anything, we’ll call you.”
“You want me to call the cops?”
“No,” Cathy said. “We’re all right.”
He went back to the bar, but kept watching us.
Donnelly leaned on the table. “You better think it over,
sweetie,” he said. “Don’t make me look you up again.
You wouldn’t like it.”
He turned and started to go out, and then looked
back. He nodded at me without even looking at me.
“And if Strong Boy here is a friend of yours, you ought
to tell him about putting his fat hands on people. I don’t
like that rassling stuff.”
I started to get up to follow him to the door, but she
gave me an urgent glance and shook her head.
He was gone. She picked up her drink and took a sip
of it, then turned and looked at Bolton.
“You can finish your little drink now, dear,” she said.
“I don’t think he’ll be back.”
Nothing in Her Way — 19
Three
I didn’t get much sleep that night. There were too many
questions going around in my mind trying to mate with
answers that weren’t there, and I was busy with
twenty-three years’ accumulation of Cathy Dunbar
Belen Lane. That was a large order of just one girl, I
thought. Wasn’t it enough for one lifetime? Did we have
to go around again?
If she was mixed up in something dangerous, was it
any of my business any more? Who was this Donnelly,
and what did he want? She’d only shrugged him off
when I’d asked her. “A cheap hoodlum,” she said
indifferently. “He has some stupid idea I owe him
money.”
Then she turned and smiled charmingly in Bolton’s
direction. “I do think it’s cute, though, the way he
impresses Mr. Bolton.” If she got the knife in you, don’t
think she wouldn’t turn it. She despised people she
could walk on.
His face was red with impotent fury. “I tell you,
Cathy, the man’s dangerous. He’s as deadly as
nitroglycerin. He’s not all there.”
“I agree with you, dear,” she said sweetly. “If he
thinks he’s going to collect money from me, he’s
certainly not all there.”
Nothing in Her Way — 20
Bolton didn’t add up at all. When you dipped into him,
you came up with both hands full of nothing. It was
easy enough to write him off as a coward, the way she
did, but something said it wasn’t that simple. Why?
There wasn’t anything you could put a finger on, for
God knows his face and his voice had been rotten with
that cringing before Donnelly. Maybe, I thought
wearily, as I gave it up, he’s read Donnelly’s clippings
and I haven’t.
It was strange, the way you couldn’t escape from the
past. Or was it the past? Maybe she was the thing I
could never get away from. I lit another cigarette and
tried to think objectively about it. Of course I hated
Lachlan; but why was it always intensified when I was
with her? Just how often had I thought about him
during the past two years?
No, I thought, that’s not right. I’m just trying to
blame her for something I’ve got the same way she has.
It’s all tied up with both of us and we’re all tied up with
it and each other, and we always have been.
When she was four and I was six it was a white-nosed
bear with a terrible voice and flashlights for eyes that
made her tell stories and get into trouble. I believed it
about the bear. She convinced me. It wasn’t that I
lacked sophistication in the matter of bears, for I had
seen them, in the Sierra Madre, with my father and
hers; it was just that her bear was very real. You could
almost see it yourself when she told you about it, and if
it had flashlights for eyes—well, stranger things had
happened. Stranger things had happened to her,
anyway.
It was a long way back to those days when we were a
couple of imaginative and bilingual kids playing with
real Indians and imaginary bears, when the
construction firm of Dunbar & Belen had built a lot of
bridges and dams in the republics south of the Rio
Bravo. That was before the firm had become Dunbar,
Belen & Lachlan, and then had become nothing at all
with the devastating suddenness of a dam going out.
That was what it had been, a dam. And when it
collapsed, it took Dunbar and Belen. It didn’t take
Lachlan.
Nothing in Her Way — 21
It was a long time before the whole story was pieced
together, and when it was, it didn’t matter very much.
Dunbar was dead—he died two years after they were
released from prison—and while my father was still
alive, he never seemed to take much interest in the
fact. It wasn’t that there had been any loss of life in the
disaster; as they said afterward, that was their only
piece of luck. It hadn’t killed anybody. It had just cost
them their company and their good reputations and two
years of their lives.
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