The Heavenly Table(85)

The old man by the window jerked up with a startled expression on his face. “Who? What? You mean Nancy? Aw, she’s not so bad.”

The barber laughed bitterly. “That’s my father-in-law,” he whispered low in Chimney’s ear, the sour smell of his breath nearly making the boy’s eyes water. “He don’t know shit.”

“What’d ye say?” the old man asked.

“Nothing,” the barber said. “Not a goddamn thing. Just talkin’ to my customer here.”

“I’m serious,” Chimney said. “Where can I find one?”

The man wiped the remaining lather off the boy’s face with a towel and turned to pick up a pair of scissors. “There’s two taxis that park down here on the corner every evening after six o’clock. Either one of them can show ye.”

Now he was getting somewhere, Chimney thought. Then the barber turned him in the chair, and he saw an automobile drive past the window. “They a place around here sells cars?” he asked.

“Jesus, what’d ye do? Rob a bank?”

“What’s that ’sposed to mean?” Chimney said, laying his hand on the butt of the little Remington stuck in his pants.

“Well, first you asking about buyin’ whores, and now automobiles. Sounds like he’s got money to spend, don’t it, Jim?”

“I don’t know,” the old man muttered. It was obvious that the crack about his daughter had hurt his feelings.

“Oh, don’t be mad, Jim,” the barber said. “I was just kiddin’ about Nancy. You know that.”

“Well.”

“Besides, it shouldn’t be nothing to you anyway. Hell, I’m the one stuck with her now.”

“Clarence, you shouldn’t talk like that. Nancy’s all right.”

“Best place to go look at cars is Triplett’s,” the barber said, turning back to Chimney. “Just make a left when you leave and another left at the first street. You’ll see his lot a couple blocks down. I’d go with ye and buy one myself, but that all right bitch I’m married to keeps me in the poorhouse. Ain’t that right, Jim?”

Chimney got out of the chair and studied himself in the mirror for a moment, then paid the man. Picking up his bundle of new clothes, he walked back to the hotel and took a hot bath. As he soaped himself up, he thought about the barber and his wife, wondered if she was really as bad as he’d let on. She must be, otherwise why would the bald-headed father-in-law put up with such insults? Christ, the slut was probably bent over a chair getting f*cked by someone right now. His hand went down between his legs as he tried to imagine what she felt like. By the time he finished, he had water splashed all over the floor around the tub. He hurriedly dried off, then put on his new clothes and went down the stairs and out the door onto the street. The weather was fine, the sky a soft, cloudless blue. Walking past the hotel where Cane and Cob were staying, he entered a joint called the McAdams. It was the first time he’d ever been in a bar, but he sat down on a stool and nonchalantly ordered a beer and a steak sandwich like he’d hung out in them all his life. He made small talk with the keep while he ate, then went on down the street looking for the car lot.

Chimney knew absolutely nothing when it came to automobiles, but there were at least a dozen parked on the gravel of various years and models. He was walking around looking them over when a man in a pair of greasy coveralls came out of a garage and introduced himself as Tom Triplett. “You looking for a car?”

“Could be,” Chimney said. “Ain’t decided yet.”

“Well, take your time,” the man said. “It’s probably the most important purchase you’ll make in your lifetime. You from around here?”

“No,” Chimney said.

“What brings you to Meade?” Triplett asked, wondering, as he looked at the customer’s clothes, if he might be a carny, or another one of those entertainers the fruitcake over at the Majestic was always bringing in. Most of the acts he’d seen there over the years weren’t worth the quarter admission fee, though he would admit that goddamn bunch called the Lewis Family did put on a hell of a show once they got wound up.

“Oh, nothing much. Thought maybe I’d buy me a whore.”

Triplett didn’t bat an eye. Ever since the pimp and his women appeared out of nowhere a few weeks ago, half the men in Meade had whores on their mind, one way or another. He didn’t approve of them for the most part, but that most part was because Blackie kept sending his bodyguard over with IOUs for services they had provided to his son, Jeffrey. “Buy ye one of these and you won’t have to pay for it,” he told Chimney.

“What do ye mean?”

“Hell, son, ain’t nothing gets a woman hotter than ridin’ around in a nice car.”

“That right?” Chimney said.

“As God is my witness,” Triplett said. “Why, my boy, Jeffrey, he…” The salesman felt his stomach begin to fizz, and he clapped his mouth shut. Talking about his son would just set his ulcer on fire again. The lazy sonofabitch had slithered home again this morning past dawn, all scratched to hell and stinking drunk, looking like an animal that should be shot and put out of its misery. He’d f*ck anything with two legs. “Take this car, for example,” Triplett said to Chimney, pointing at a shiny red Packard. “Why, I guarantee you, you drive this car uptown tonight, you’ll have to fight the women off. Let me ask ye something. How is it ye get around now?”