Some Came Running Read Online Free PDF Page B

remembered. He looked in the mirror to see if his ribbons were on straight.
    And suddenly, for no reason, he was thinking of Harriet Bowman. Miss Harriet Bowman of Greater Los Angeles. Only now she was married. To of all things a goddam lawyer. Promising young attorney. And to not ever have laid her even! He looked in the mirror. Oh, Harriet Bowman, if only you knew now what you missed. I wouldn’t care so much. It would make me feel much better. Who the hell gives a damn about marriage? Anger helped combat the sickness in his belly. What the hell had started him thinking about her ? Maybe it was looking at himself in the mirror. He didn’t much like what he saw. But it looked a lot better than it did four years ago, when the Army took him.
    Buttoning up his collar and tightening his tie, he went out and locked the door behind him.
    Outside the hotel, it was still drizzling snow, but it was beginning to slack off a little. He stood under the marquee a few moments, breathing the cold, wet air. Up the street in the same block as the bus station was the beer tavern. It was named Ciro’s. He remembered it from his youth, but the name had been different then. The neon of its sign shone bright red and green, inviting in the gray afternoon, but now that he was outside he didn’t feel much like going there. After a moment of indecisiveness, he walked up to it slowly through the dropping snow.
    A tall gray-headed, long-nosed man was behind the marble top bar cleaning the sinks, as he went up to it. Back in one corner was a griddle and a glass-topped contraption for cooking hot dogs. On one wall hung the Anheuser-Busch reproduction of Custer’s last stand. A homemade crayon picture of one of those big old-fashioned beer goblets was scotch taped to the backbar with the words Have a Schooner! under it. The gray-headed man listened dourly to his order for two hot dogs and a schooner and went back to fix it.
    The place had been re-furnitured since he’d seen it last, but that hadn’t changed it any. Feeling suddenly excited, Dave upended the heavy schooner the man brought him and drained half of it. Then he took a big bite of one of the hot dogs. His mouth watered. He was suddenly enthusiastic, and genuinely hungry. Back at the hotel, he hadn’t been.
    Except for three young men drinking beer in one of the booths, there was nobody in the place. Dave caught them looking at him. One wore a natty light gray suit and pearl semi-western-style hat. The other two wore their old Army clothes. Quiet seemed to ooze into the place from the walls. The three young men looked as if they might have been out all night and just gotten in and were now tranquilizing themselves over a beer before starting out again tonight.
    Dave caught them looking at him again, and when he ordered his second schooner the one in the suit and hat said something to the others and got up and came walking lazily over to him at the bar, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Tall, thin, sway-backed, with a hanging belly due more to the abnormal curve of his spine than to paunch, setting his feet down with that same slow jerky lift and drop a horse has in its hind legs. He stopped in front of him, languid, arrogant, insulting, and Dave tensed himself. Then carefully with the ball of his thumb, the man pushed his hat back just exactly to his hairline exposing a widow’s peak. Only then, did Dave realize that the man was ill at ease.
    “Hello, Mister Hirsh,” he sneered. “Welcome home.” Behind the biting Hoosier nasality was a trace of Southern accent. “I’m ’Bama Dillert.” He did not offer to shake hands.
    “Hi,” Dave said, looking him over. He was well over six feet, with dark-circled eyes in a pallid face. Maybe thirty-three. The suit, in spite of looking expensive, nevertheless managed because of its narrow cut to look small-townish and countrified. It was badly wrinkled. Also he hadn’t shaved today and his cuffs and collar were grubby. It looked like a