The Big Caper | Page 2

forehead. His breath made an odd, wheezing sound.
"We weren't expecting you until this evening!"
He said nothing as he fought to regain his wind.
She was at once aware of his eyes. Unusually large, they were of an odd russet brown and they bulged out from their sockets in a manner that she realized must be the result of a chronic thyroid condition. They were extremely expressive eyes, but at the same time she couldn't guess exactly what it was they expressed. They reminded her somewhat of the eyes of a very sick person or a sick animal. They didn't ask for sympathy, or even understanding. They merely seemed to reflect the inner misery of the person that owned them.
His eyebrows were so white as to be almost invisible, although his untrimmed hair was a deep yellow. There was no sign of a beard under the dead white skin of his face. He was only five feet, five inches tall, nearly two inches shorter than Kay. His obesity made him appear even shorter.
"I took a bus," he said. "Jesus, what a trip!" His voice held a faint trace of a lisp. "He wanted me to fly," he went on, "but the hell with that. I started two days early and took a bus."
She nodded and reached over to an ash tray and crushed out her cigarette.
"No damn sleep," he said. "Not a wink."
Kay looked at him and tried to feel sympathy.
"Your room's made up and ready," she said. "Wouldn't you like to wash up? I'll call Frank and tell him you're here."
He wiped the back of his neck with the handkerchief, which she couldn't help observing was very dirty, and then bunched it up and blew his nose into it loudly.
"Did you have breakfast?" Kay asked.
He looked up at her as though he didn't quite understand her question. Slowly he shook his head.
"Breakfast!" He got to his feet, using both hands--tiny little fat hands, like those of a baby--to pull himself up from the chair. "I could use a drink," he said.
Kay nodded. "Come on out to the kitchen."
He followed her from the living room, through the bare, unused dining room, and down the long hallway to the kitchen, at the rear of the house. There was a long trestle table in the center of the room with a half-dozen armless, straight-backed chairs pulled up around it. He made a wobbling beeline for the nearest chair.
Kay went to the drainboard, which still held the dirty dishes from the previous evening's party. At one end stood half a dozen partly filled bottles of assorted liquors, several empty soda bottles, and an ice bucket in which the cubes had been allowed to melt.
"Any particular drink?" she asked.
"You got gin?"
Kay said that she had and asked him how he wanted it.
"Straight."
She found the half-filled gin bottle, which she had neglected to cap last night after making the Collinses, and poured out a double shot in a Martini glass. She went to the brand-new refrigerator and took out the bottle of spring water and poured a glassful and then put both glasses on the table in front of him.
She couldn't help noticing the odor of stale perspiration that lay about him like a dank miasma.
Back at the drainboard again, she poured herself a Scotch and mixed it with soda. She did it almost automatically, at the same time subconsciously censoring herself for drinking so early in the day. But special occasions called for special measures.
When she turned to lift her glass and drink with him, she saw that he had already swallowed the gin. He didn't touch the water.
"Another, if you please," he said.
She put her own drink down untouched and walked over and took his glass. When she brought it back refilled, she brought the remainder of the bottle of gin with her.
He looked grateful.
He swallowed the second glass of straight liquor without a grimace, and then looked up at Kay.
"You alone?"
She nodded. "I'll go phone Frank that you're here," she said.
He reached for the bottle as she left the room.
The telephone was in what had originally been designed as a sewing room, off the hallway between the dining room and the kitchen. She dialed the number, standing beside the small table on which the instrument rested. She heard the sound of the buzzing as the bell rang at the other end of the line. It would ring three times and then there would be a short interval before it would start ringing again.
She waited several minutes. She wasn't impatient. She knew that Frank could very well be busy, out in front by the pumps, waiting on a customer. Ham wouldn't have arrived yet and Frank would be handling the service station alone.
She waited almost four minutes before he picked up the receiver.
"Harper's Service Station!"