The Adjustment - By Scott Phillips Page 0,13
of a homely and heavily made-up woman wearing only panties, garter belt, and black stockings, a getup similar to which most of the women in the background were also wearing. The men were in shirtsleeves and most wore paper hats marked with stars and stripes. He explained to the Mrs. that this was a birthday party for Uncle Sam, and that as defense contractors he and some of his colleagues were required to attend. When he added that the girl with him was a good patriotic American girl whose contribution to the war effort was made horizontally, Mrs. Collins slapped him. He backhanded her in response, knocking her into a cabinet filled with little porcelain figures, some of which fell off their shelves. She started crying, picking up the shards of the precious little things, and he left the house looking for a fight or a fuck or both. Or at least that’s the way Collins told me the story; I was in Italy at the time, or maybe still in England, fighting the Nazi menace in my own roundabout fashion.
In any event, Fish represented a threat to my status quo, and I didn’t like the looks of him anyway, with his little pencil moustache like a slick villain in a movie and his too-perfectly brilliantined hair. Not to mention there was always something a little shady about these ex-cops who take up snooping, just one step removed from window peepers and dickflashers, as far as I was concerned. I retraced my steps and went all the way around the building, then crept, doubled over, to Collins’s Packard. I opened up the right rear door and grabbed the baseball bat I kept stashed under the front seat.
Then I rose to my full height and strode across the gravel to Fish’s Plymouth. He tried frantically to start it up, but before he got it into gear I’d already smashed the windshield, spiderwebbing the glass badly enough to prevent its operation until the shards were busted out. Fish scrambled out the driver’s door.
“You crazy son of a bitch, what the hell you mean busting my windshield?”
I swung again, left-handed this time, and caught him in the shin. He went down in hysterics and I got him a good one on the forearm. I could hear bone cracking, and I figured he was probably out of commission for the evening.
A crowd had formed at the door of the roadhouse. Park was walking towards me, saying something conciliatory to a concerned stranger who was wondering whether I needed bringing to heel. I reached into the front seat and grabbed Fish’s Speed Graphic, took out the film holder and pulled the sheet out of it, then opened half a dozen more he had laying on the seat. I didn’t know if they contained latent images of Collins or not; I scattered the raw negatives onto the gravel. Then I set the camera on top of the Plymouth’s hood and clipped it like Ted Goddamn Williams. It flew a good twenty feet and banged into a Studebaker.
“Mr. Ogden,” Park was saying.
“Yeah.”
“Are you listening? This is important.”
“Yeah.”
“Mr. Ogden, I’m the bodyguard. It makes me look bad when you take it upon yourself to do something like this. I’m still new, I know, but next time just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“You’re a good man, Park. Let’s have a drink.” I was well pleased at having hired him. We walked back inside and found the old man ensconced in a booth with his brunette, rubbing the inside of her thigh, completely unaware of the activity outside.
I GOT HOME exhausted at two in the morning and was relieved to find the lights out in the apartment. I undressed and got into bed and closed my eyes, and just as I began to relax into a state conducive to sleep the lamp came on.
“You son of a bitch,” she said, up on one elbow. Then she wheeled around and got out of bed, looking like she might hit me.
I was in worse trouble than I’d first assumed. “What the hell?” I said.
“If you won’t tell me what’s wrong I can’t fix it.”
Despite herself she was starting to cry. I was in bad trouble, I knew it; she hadn’t ever cried in my presence beyond her eyes getting a little wet, not even on the occasion of her mother’s death.
She struggled to get control and spoke again. “You don’t love me any more.”
Jumping Jesus, what do you