Free Trust by George V. Higgins Page B

worse’n it already is, and it might at least save something. Leave you one of your balls, at least.’
    “ ‘I got to go home,’ he says. ‘My wife’s expecting me.’
    “ ‘You go out there,’ I say, ‘and she’ll be divorcing you. Which she’ll probably be doing anyway, those car pictures hit the
Journal.
Just don’t make it worse, ’s what I say.’
    “ ‘I’ll have to call her,’ he says. ‘Call her and tell her something. Get me an outside line.’
    “ ‘The fuck I will,’ I say. ‘That’s a long-distance call, your house over the Cape. It’ll show up on the toll sheets the cops’ll then get, probably already ordered them up, and if they don’t get your actual picture, well that’s almost as good. Who the hell else’d be calling your wife from my joint the same day her car’s here? You wanna explain that, the papers? Now, stay put. Only one of us’s thinking right here, and he’s not the one in the room with the broad.’
    “ ‘I can’t stay trapped in here, Jimmy,’ he says. ‘I got to get out of this room.’
    “ ‘No, you got it backwards,’ I say. ‘You’re the one that wouldn’t leave it when you could’ve. Now you can’t, so stay. And keep something else in mind. I’m stuck in this office, too, and you’re the one that did it. ’Less of course I want to pose for them too. Which I don’t. Cops got enough pictures of me. Don’t answer the phone again if it rings. Those cops do come in here, ask see my register, well, Room Four’s vacant on it. The phone rings after this time, it’s them. You answer it, not in the book, this fact could get me in trouble.If they ask me to show the room, as they also can do, I’ll tell them fucking lock’s jammed. I’m waiting for the guy to come fix it.’
    “ ‘The window in the back,’ he says.
    “ ‘Bullshit,’ I say, “ ‘the window in the back.” You don’t think they figure that out? Oh, that’d make a great shot, you and Sister Mary Agnes climbing out the window. What do I say: “Well, they eloped?” No, just sit tight and try to think of what we’re gonna do, you finally can go out, get you out of this—if there’s any way. I see them leave finally, I will come out, start making a routine inspection. You’ll hear me knock on Three, and say who I am, and either someone answers or I go in myself. Then I’ll go to Five, ’cause we know Four’s door is busted, and go through the same thing again. And then it’s safe to come out. Unless, of course, they want to join me, in which case you’ll hear us talking. Then, well, don’t come out.’
    “Well,” Battles had said, “this’s what we come up with, all right? He’s not only got a lot of things, he’s got to explain his wife, but it’s also, he’s gonna have to give up the car. The cops finally leave, it’s after eleven, and I sneak him around to the back to where my wife’s in her car, and the broad meantime takes off in her own. My wife drives him down to fuckin’ La Guardia, and he takes a plane to the Cape. Rents a car at the airport, he says he got Providence, goes home and tells her hers’s been stolen, he’s out on a long lunch, the boys, having a few after that, and then they all took in a show. All this’s going on, I call my lawyer, Providence, tell him the name the judge gave me, his best friend in the world. Who’s supposed to call the cops there, tell him he’s the judge and the Mercedes’s been stolen. And that he’s on his way back the Cape,they can call him in the morning, tell him if they got it back or he makes a full report. I drive his car up this place, belongs a friend of mine that isn’t even home, and lock it up in here. Then I walk four miles home.
    “Now I am telling you,” Battles had said, “I know this isn’t taking candy, babies, anything, but something that’s got to be done. It’s almost two weeks since they filled out the hot sheet, and most cops see sixty a day. So hundreds of other cars