Driving out the Beach Road, he kept thinking about the beer case, wondering about it, until he told himself to either do something about it or forget it, but quit thinking. He couldn’t trace an empty beer case that had been thrown away two days ago, so forget about it. What he couldn’t forget completely was Frank Pizarro. He shouldn’t have ever let him get close. He should have known Frank Pizarro the first time he ever saw him. It wasn’t a good feeling to have something hanging over you. Something you shouldn’t have done but did.
Or something you should have done but didn’t. He remembered it as soon as he saw the girl from No. 5.
He had put Mr. Majestyk’s car in the garage and was walking up the lane behind the cabanas to his room when he saw the girl and remembered it. She was backing out of her carport, edging out, in her shiny tan Corvair. Then she was looking right at him, waiting for him to reach her.
“I wondered-I thought you were going to fix my window.”
He wouldn’t have remembered her if she had not been coming out of No. 5. She was dressed up: white beads, a white beaded clip in her hair, sunglasses with white rims and little pearls, made up and dressed up, sweater and purse on the seat next to her.
“The window,” Ryan said. “Listen, I haven’t forgotten. I got tied up.”
“Do you think tomorrow?”
“First thing.”
“Well not too early. I am on vacation.” She laughed.
“Anytime you say.”
“Fine, then.” She hesitated. “Can I give you a lift? I’m going into Geneva.”
“I just got back.” She didn’t look bad. About third string, but not really bad dressed up.
“Well, then, thank you,” Virginia Murray said and backed out a little more, slowly, before finally pulling away.
What was she thanking him for?
The back door to No. 5 and the window that was supposed to be stuck were right there. Ryan looked at the window, not closely but from a few feet away. He walked off toward his room.
Later on he went up the road to the A & W Drive-In for cheeseburgers and root beer and then played a couple of rounds of Putt-Putt golf. The redhead from No. 9 was there with her little girl, the woman in tight slacks and big white earrings and a band in her hair. She looked pretty nice, but Ryan let her go; he didn’t like the idea of the little girl there. By the time he got back to the Bay Vista, it was after eight. A couple of men were on the patio smoking cigars and some kids were playing shuffleboard, but most of the people were inside now, playing cards or putting kids to bed. He thought about stopping in to see Mr. Majestyk, but then he thought, What for? So he went to bed with True, the Man’s Magazine. He read “The Traitor Hero France Forgave,” skipped “The Short Happy Life of the Kansas Flying Machine,” and got partway through “Stalin’s $10 Million Plot to Counterfeit U.S. Money” before he said the hell with it and picked up his sneakers and went out.
HE LIKED BEING ALONE. Not all the time, but when he was alone, he liked it. He liked it now with the surf coming in and the wind stirring in the darkness. He could be alone on a beach anywhere. The houses back up in the trees were dark shapes that could be the huts of a village. The boats lying on the beach could be sampans used by the V.C. The word was they had brought in a load of mortars and automatic weapons, Chicom supplied by the Chinese, and he was on a one-man recon patrol up north of Chu Lai somewhere; get in and chart the V.C. ammo dumps and radio positions to the fleet sitting five miles out in the stream. It was funny people were afraid of the dark. What some guys did in the war, Underwater Demolition or the Special Forces guys, moving through the jungle at night with an M-16 and their faces black, one false step and you’ve got a pungi spike up your behind. And some people would be afraid to be out here. If you could buy the nerve to sneak up on people who were waiting to kill you, then it wasn’t much to sneak up on people who were afraid of the dark. It was funny, but it was also a good thing people were afraid of it.
You got used to it, that was all. You made up your mind you were going to be good at it and not panic. It was something you developed in your mind, a coolness. No, cooler than cool. Christ, everybody thought they were cool. It was a coldness you had to develop. The pro with icewater in his veins. Like Cary Grant. Pouring champagne for the broad or up on the rooftop and the guy with the steel hook instead of a hand coming at him, he’s the same Cary Grant. No sweat. That was good when he threw the guy and as the guy fell his hook scraped down the metal slant of the roof, making sparks.
Cary Grant was a good jewel thief. But it never showed what he did with the jewels after he stole them. There was an Armenian guy in Highland Park who would take TV sets, clothes, furs, things like that; but what if you brought him a $100,000 diamond necklace? “Harry, I got this $100,000 diamond necklace. What’ll you give me for it?” Could you see Harry?
But no more of that. Without a car and 150 miles from a pawnshop, they could keep their TV sets and suitcases. No, no more of that anyway.
During the time he had worked with the colored guy, Leon Woody, they would look for the easy ones first: newspapers on the front steps, or houses that were dark in the early evening with the shades down, or houses where the lawns needed to be cut. They would make notes on the houses they liked. They would note down what lamps were on at what time, and if the same lamps were on two or three nights in a row-one or two downstairs and one up-they would go to the front door and ring the bell and if no one answered, they’d go in.
Leon Woody’s favorite way was to go up to a house in the afternoon and ring the bell. If someone answered, he would tell the person they were looking for odd jobs-painting or wall washing or cleaning up the yard. The person, the lady, would almost always say no, and Leon Woody would ask about the people next door, if the lady knew if they were home or not. Sometimes the lady would say no, they were away for the summer or in Florida, handing it to them. Leon Woody would shake his head slowly and say, “Doggone, we is sure doin’ poorly,” putting on his dumb-nigger act but looking at Ryan and just barely almost smiling. If the lady did have work for them, Leon Woody would say, “Oh, thank you, ma’am. We sure do ‘preciate it. But seein’ it’s so late, maybe we best come back in the morning.” And walking away from the house, he would say to Ryan, “In the morning, she-it.”
If no one answered, they would park in the drive and knock at the back door. If still no one answered, they would go in, usually through a basement window, and look for luggage first, something to put stuff in. Then they would walk out the front door carrying the suitcases full of clothes, fur coats, silver, and the TV’s and radios-whatever they thought was worth taking-and throw it in the car.