ON MONDAY morning I had a short note from Cynthia Noxon telling me she’d be up later that day. The envelope had been originally addressed to me at the Connors Agency but somebody over there had been kind enough to forward it to Waymart. It wasn’t a challenge and it wasn’t an admission of defeat. She just said she was coming.
“When this tomato shows up,” I told the dumpy girl in the outer office, “have her cool her buttons out here for a spell.”
“Yes, Mr. Reagan.”
I went back and gloated over the renewal file. It was thick and bulky and loaded with money. And she’d pay for every nickel of it. One way or another. Or both.
At ten the phone rang and somebody yelled in that it was for me.
It was Connors.
“I have to see you, Johnny. Right away. Can you drive over?”
He sounded pretty urgent but I didn’t let that annoy me.
“Not today,” I said. “I’m wrapped up like a mummy.”
“Well, listen to this, then. You’ll be interested in this, Johnny. I no more than got into the office this morning when a man showed up. He was looking for you.”
There was a brief pause.
“Yeah?” I could feel it coming, something wrong, sweeping in and over me. “What did this guy want?”
“His name is Goldstein, Johnny. He wants to buy another annuity just like the one you sold him.” Connors’ voice dripped disgust. “Remember that one, Johnny?”
Nuts, I thought, I should have given the old guy the works. He’d had fifteen thousand and I’d only tried for half because I hadn’t wanted to frighten him off. Now he was crossing me up. He thought he had a real bargain and he was going after the rest of it. What a laugh!
“Sure, I remember him,” I said, thinking fast. “I’ve been trying to broker that thing all over the place, only I haven’t had any luck.”
“We sell annuities,” he reminded me quietly. “Maybe the income isn’t as high — or fantastic — but we sell them.”
“Look, I just figured that thing wrong, that’s all. I was figuring ten when I should only have used seventy-five hundred. I didn’t want to disappoint him. I’ve been trying to work it out.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I’ll have it all squared away this week.”
“You’d better, Johnny.” His voice became suddenly sore and vicious, ripping at me across the line. “You have that money in my office tomorrow morning or I’m turning the whole thing over to the insurance department. I told Mr. Goldstein that I’d be responsible — you used my name and you were in my employ at that time — and I will. Only you won’t get away with it, Johnny. You took that money from him and you either have it some place — or you don’t have it. And you’d better have it. I’m telling you, Johnny. Don’t play it out any longer.”
The telephone whanged in my ear and I jumped about two feet. I sat there staring at it.
A couple of hours later I was over being mad. I almost thought I might be getting a little bit scared. Old Connors had meant it about the insurance department. They could move in and throw me in jail or do almost anything else they felt like doing.
Things, it seemed, were rolling up a short, dead-end street.
I didn’t go out for lunch; I just sat on my nerves and waited. I wondered if Cynthia Noxon would show, if she’d have any money and, if she did, what I’d be able to work out with her.
I got out those renewals and looked at them again. All told they were worth somewhere around forty thousand dollars but I could never hope to get that much for them. Maybe half. I was counting on half, which would give me enough to pay off Goldstein — I’d been going to do that, anyway — and I’d have plenty left over to make a big splash some place else.
The hands of the clock moved around to three. I could feel the sweat running down my sides and legs. I kept going to the door and looking out front to see if she was there. All I got was more suspense.
About quarter of four, when I glanced out, I hit the jackpot. She’d just come in with some elderly-appearing guy. I didn’t keep her waiting.
“Hi, there!” I said. “Come on in.”
She said something to the guy and he sat down in a chair like a trained dog. Then she came through to my office, wrapped in a three-quarter fur coat, her hard, cosmetic face in first class shape, her eyes bright and washing all over me.
“Gee, it’s good to see you!” she said.
She was lying but I grinned and closed the door. I waved her into a chair alongside the desk. She opened the coat and sat down. I got a flash of white flesh as she crossed one leg over the other.
“How have you been, Johnny?”
“Fine.”
“Still going strong?”
“Yeah. You know me, baby.”
I dug out a bottle and offered her a drink. She said she didn’t want any, thanks, but I didn’t let that stop me. I had one for luck.
“Who’s the money bags out front?”
She flushed slightly.
“Did anybody ever tell you that you’re very crude?”
“Not lately.”
“He’s — well, he’s an associate.”
“I see.”
“You make it sound so nasty.”
I winked at her and lit a Camel. Now that she was in the office with me, where we could talk and I could see her, I wasn’t so nervous. I tried to stop thinking about Goldstein and his stinking money. I couldn’t let her know, not for a second, that I had to sell and had to sell fast.
“Things have been a little rough on you, huh?”
“You know that, Johnny.”
“Well, you brought it on yourself, baby. You dropped the egg out of the basket and it hatched.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“Sure.”
“One of mine was misjudging you.” She uncrossed her legs and I got an even better look.
“I came up to talk terms,” she said, leaning forward. Her dress dipped low in front but I couldn’t see anything except a handful of pink silk. “I’m prepared to be reasonable, Johnny.”
“You’re the one that’s buying.”
“Or selling,” she said earnestly. “One of us has to move over. We can’t go on fighting each other. It doesn’t make sense.”
“No.”
“Name your choice, Johnny. Do you want me — or do I get you?”
I let my eyes wander over her body.
“Who wouldn’t want you?” I inquired.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah — I do and I don’t. You haven’t got anything to sell, baby. Why should I pay out good money for your crummy outfit when I can steal every bit of your business and it won’t cost me a thing?”
“You have a point there.”
“I guess I have.”
“So it would seem that I’m the buyer, Johnny. Let’s see your contract.”
I pulled it out of a drawer and tossed it into her lap. It was a simple agreement, straight to the roots of the matter and not spoiled with a lot of legal hedges. It gave me the right to sell my business to any licensed agency at any sum which I might be able to get.
“That part’s all right,” she said after a while.
“It’s a little different than the kind of stuff that you hand out.”
“You should always read what you sign, Johnny.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
“Now — how much are your renewals?”
“You ought to know,” I said. “I swiped them from you.”
“I know it’s quite a lot.”
“Forty thousand.”
“That sounds about right.” She crossed her legs again, more carefully this time. “And how much do you want for them?”
“Twenty,” I said. “Cash.”
She took a deep breath and it hung there in the silence. I guess it was about what she expected me to say.
“That’s quite a lot, Johnny.”
“Take it or leave it, baby.”
She got up and draped her coat over the back of the chair. Then she walked around the room, slowly, her arms folded across her breasts. She stopped at the window and stood looking down at the street for a long time. Then she turned around, still standing the same way, and I knew something was wrong. Her red lips curled away from her teeth and it wasn’t a smile at all. It was a sneer and the hate in it flared up into her eyes, freezing deep into the pupils.
“I’ll give you five,” she said.
I jammed the cigarette into an ash tray. Some of the hot end stuck to one finger, burning, but I didn’t pay any attention to that.
“Go to hell,” I said.
She began walking around the office again, every line of her body swaying.
“You’re a sucker,” she said. “I’m doing you a favor by giving you that much.”
“Don’t be so generous, baby. You might overdue it.”
She drifted over and stopped in front of me. She held her head up high and proud and the sardonic twist still spoiled her mouth.
“After all,” she said, “you only need seventy-five hundred. If I give you five you ought to be able to make it. You should get about a thousand for your car and — ”
“What!”
“You heard me, Johnny boy. I dropped in at the Connors Agency on the way up — thought you might be there — and I met the old boy himself. I told him what I wanted to see you about and he was nice enough to tell me why you should listen. Catch?”
I shook my head, trying to clear it. It had all looked so good, so possible, and now they were crowding me close.
“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “The rats are gnawing on my door.”
She laughed and I had an urge to rattle her teeth with five hard knuckles. But I didn’t. I had no reason to hate her. We’d been playing a fast and dirty game, the both of us, and now the end had come for one of us.
“So you think you’ll get it that easy,” I said.
“I know I will.”
“You know wrong, baby. It won’t work.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Johnny. If you don’t have that money to him by tomorrow morning he’s turning it over to the insurance department.”
“Stop scaring me,” I said.
“And that’ll mean the bonding company, Johnny. They’ll toss you in jail.”
Something else was in her eyes now besides the touch of victory. There was the shadow of a lonesome, inward fear that crept up into the blue.
“So what?” I demanded harshly. “They throw me in the can and I sit it out for a while. I don’t know, maybe I’ve got it coming. I’m fed up with this racket, anyway I should have stuck to a dumb job.”
“I’m offering you a way out, Johnny.”
“The door’s pretty narrow,” I told her. “I’ll get it slammed on my neck.”
“You can’t do anything else.”
“Oh, now, can’t I? Hell, baby, I can go to jail, just like I said, and have myself a little rest for a couple of weeks. It won’t take long for the renewals to build up enough to pay off a lot more than seventy-five hundred.”
“You’ll lose your license.”
“I was going to go into farming anyhow,” I said. “Or something else. It doesn’t make any difference.”
I knew I had her solid.
“And I’ll watch you go broke,” I said. “Cripes, baby, you’ll be out of business before I am. I’d like that. I’d like it fine.”
“I’ll give you seventy-five hundred,” she said, not looking at me.
“That’s a long ways from twenty.”
“I couldn’t do it, Johnny. Honest!”
“That’s tough.”
“Mr. Greene — he’s the man waiting out there — Mr. Greene said he’d go up to — ”
“How much?”
“Eight,” the said. “He hasn’t got any more than that.”
Before she could stop me I was out of the office and in front shaking hands with Mr. Greene.
“You going in this with Miss Noxon?”
His hand was like a piece of inner tube and his eyes were small and dumb.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And how much do you figure on paying?”
“Well.” He licked his lips with his tongue. “Well, she said she might get it for ten. I don’t know much about these things, but — ”
“Thanks,” I told him. “And lots of luck.”
I walked back to the office, wondering how long it’d take her to finish him off.
I went in and closed the door. She was sitting on the edge of the desk, swinging her legs back and forth, smiling at me.
“You just robbed me of two thousand bucks,” she said. “That ought to make you happy.”
“Yeah.”
“He told you ten?”
“He told me ten.”
“All right,” she said, getting down. “I’ll buy.”
The rest of it didn’t take very long. We drove down to a lawyer’s, the same one I’d talked to about the divorce, and he drew up a bill of sale. Greene didn’t have much to say but she insisted that I agree not to continue in the insurance business within a radius of two hundred miles. That part was okay with me and we stuck it in. After that we signed the original and some duplicates. She got the original and I stuck one of the carbons in my pocket along with the five thousand in cash and a certified check for another five which Greene had come up with. That Greene turned out to be a pretty regular guy. He even paid the lawyer.
I left them at the corner and walked back toward the office. I got a charge out of that clause she wanted put in the bill of sale. I had an extra list of all my clients and their addresses. If I wanted I could wander out west some place and set up shop. I had all these names and I could move right in on her again through the mails. I laughed and walked along faster.
That dumb dame didn’t know what it was all about.