Chapter Six Gal Friday
If you had told me after I’d gotten bitten that night in France that I’d not only learn to survive, but also thrive, and that I’d have an absolute dish of a dame on my arm, I would have laughed—and then I might have thrown my gas mask at your head.
But here she is, sitting in my Ford, her hip pressed against mine, head on my shoulder as we head back from the city.
“Your folks would have a fit, wouldn’t they? With me getting their only daughter back to her boarding house after midnight? Do the Kincaid’s have a curfew?”
“No, but no callers of the opposite sex in individual rooms—only in the parlor and kitchen, and never after eight. They run a respectable house, though I suppose I’m not a respectable girl anymore,” Susie laughs.
“That’s a fallacy. You’re only doing what some engaged folks might—just before you’re engaged. I respect you. I respect the heck out of you, Susie. Especially after this morning.”
Susie sighs and sits up straight. I know she’s proud of herself for what she pulled off this morning. “It was nothing.”
Driving on the dark, almost deserted roads into the foothills of Pine Ridge, I press my lips to her curls, thinking about our day, and what it’s like to have someone in my corner like Susie Spade.
In Washington, red tape is a way of life. You don’t get to cut it without extreme circumstances, and then there’s a ton of paperwork to follow, in triplicate, that leaves you sweating a court-martial, even if you know you did the right thing for God and country.
“You know, I’ve been trying to tail Rody Johnson when he meets up with his mistress for days, but with his traveling salesman schedule, I thought I’d be sitting on this case for another few weeks.”
“Well, maybe it isn’t as important as catching spies, Sam, but it was something I could do,” my secretary and sweetheart hums, preening a little.
“I’ll say you could. You were amazing today, baby doll, and I’m not going to stop bragging about it, or thinking about what a lucky guy I am.”
It’s true. Susie is busy humming the closing number for the musical revue we caught in the city, but I’m reliving the day we shared.
Not only did our day start with her nursing my bruises and giving me a kiss that’d melt steel, but then she insisted on looking over the case of the cheating traveling salesman.
After looking at my notes for just ten minutes, she said we needed to pay a call on the “bit of skirt,” the girl working at the textile factory, on her coffee break.
It’s not like I haven’t considered that, but without wanting to tip my hand, and with no excuse to barge into a factory that’s made up of mostly girls and a few male foremen, I’d have stood out like a sore thumb.
“How are you going to get in?” I’d asked when we’d climbed into my car.
“You leave that to me,” Susie said, and spent the drive over fixing her hair and repinning her hat in different positions.
Didn’t my Susie kiss me goodbye at the factory gates and march in bold as brass, waving at the gatekeeper and crying out, “I’m here about the job posted in the paper! Where’s the manager’s office, honey?”
And she got in.
I sat in the car, sweating bullets, waiting for her to be tossed out and our collective cover to be blown.
It wasn’t.
Susie was gone for an hour. When she came back out, she was arm in arm with a curvy blonde with her peroxide-colored hair up in a scarf and pouty, pursed lips.
“Sammy,” she flounced over to me. “This is Tilly. She’s going to show me around when I start here.”
“Pleased to meet you, Tilly,” I said, tipping my hat and meeting Susie’s eye.
Susie just plowed on as if gossip were her lifeblood. “You’re never going to believe what she told me. She’s been seeing that guy! That same salesman who asked me to drive up to Saratoga with him on his route last week!”
I may not have had any idea where Susie was going at first, but things were falling into place right away. “You don’t say? That traveling salesman?” I gasped just short of theatrical.
“That’s right! Tilly and I met in the break room and got to talking. I said with a figure like hers she must be walking down the aisle soon, away from this dump!” Susie giggled and pointed back to the factory.
“Well, I sure thought I was, right until I told her about Mr. Johnson and his big brown Cadillac and his shoe sales up and down the state. I couldn’t believe it when Sue said she knew him, too.”
“Well, my brother here warned me about Mr. Johnson. I didn’t want to listen, but after meeting you, Tilly... What was it you were telling me, Sammy?”
Catching on to my supposed role, I managed to look serious.
“I told you, sis, Mr. Johnson isn’t just some no-good dog who’ll have a string of girls on the side; he’s married.
He’s a traveling salesman with a nice little wife and a nice little house out the highway.
Didn’t I tell you I saw his car there the other day, and him kissing the missus and kids goodbye? ”
“What an utter piece of scum!” Susie cried.
“Filthy pig!” Tilly agreed.
Nothing bonds girls faster than hatred of cheating, low-down swine.
“You know, Sam, you and I gotta go tell that wife what he’s up to. If I was married and my husband was playing the field, I’d want to know about it,” Susie said firmly, and Tilly nodded.
“I’ll never see him or his patent leather pumps again,” she spat.
She blew out a lower lip and rolled her eyes.
“He wasn’t much to look at, if you think about it, but with work like it is for a girl...
and all those shoes at wholesale prices.
” Tilly had heaved a sigh for all good things lost, and Susie patted her arm.
“Hey, Susie. Is your brother single?”
Our meeting concluded with lightning speed after that—and once we drove away and hit the first stop light, Susie made it clear I wasn’t single any longer with another one of her red-hot kisses.
Susie’s sudden massaging hand on my thigh jerks me back to the present. “Did I tell you how proud I was of you?” I blurt.
“You just did! Are you still thinking about this morning?”
“I sure am.”
“It only worked because I can pass for a factory girl and I’m new around here,” Susie shrugs, as if solving a homewrecking case is nothing.
“But you had the guts to sneak in, bluff your way to the right room, spot our quarry just based on a vague description from Mrs. Johnson’s suspicions.
You know, Lionel, my boss, you might call him, back in Washington, used to say I was his ‘Man Friday.’ You know, from that old book, Robinson Crusoe?
Meaning I’d do whatever he needed and get the job done.
You’re my Girl Friday—but I want you every night of the week. ”
“What about the weekends?” Susie gently kisses my ear.
“Double on the weekends.” I clear my throat. “I have to head out of town, baby, but when I get back from that assignment, I’d love to go to Yonkers with you for a weekend. What d’you say? Can I meet your folks?”
“Oh, Sam. Of course! But your family...”
“Oh, I’ve got dozens of aunts and uncles, but I’m on my own these days.
They’ve largely written me off for staying a soldier once my service was done.
The Silvermans of old were silversmiths, and some were jewelers.
The most recent generation have gone into banking.
You know. Dignified, artesian callings.”
“Banking sounds dull—and harrowing these days.”
“I wouldn’t mind settling down as a banker. The country doesn’t need more men squeezing the little guy, but it needs someone responsible, hopeful, and willing to help.” Around here? Someone who might understand the supernatural.
“That’s you to a tee.”
Even in the dark, Susie’s eyes shine up at me.
The phrase “to a maiden’s prayer” sings in my heart and I have to clear my throat so I don’t burst out in an off-key squawk.
“It’d sure pay better, and the Pine Ridge Savings and Loan barely limps along in such a small town.
If I work hard, call in some of my uncle’s favors, maybe in five years, I could be partnering there, or even opening a competing institution that wants to work with the locals.
A lot of the mortgages in town are held by the bigger branches in Binghamton. ”
“Say that three times fast,” Susie laughs. “You know... I suppose Doctor Watson was still a doctor when he solved crimes with Sherlock Holmes. We could be like Nick and Nora, I suppose, fancy bankers by day, detectives by night. I mean... That is if we... If I—”
“We wouldn’t be fancy, sweetheart. We’d be good, honest bankers. Nothing too fancy—except for my girl. If I had the money, I’d cover you in furs and jewels.”
“Well, Mother would approve, surely, and she’d brag about me landing a banker who would drape me in mink, but I’d rather you cover me in— Sam!”
Susie’s soft, dreamy voice ends in a frantic scream.
She has the presence of mind not to clutch my arm, which I desperately need to control the wheel, because another car is suddenly emerging at us with lights off and engine roaring, squealing out from behind a lonely Burma Shave sign on the side of the road.
I can see in the dark, but just as my eyes work to adjust, big round headlights blind me as it comes at us head-on, forcing us off the road.
My car bumps and rumbles on the uneven terrain of the hilly mountain countryside where even the best roads are pitted with potholes.
Eyes that work in the dark better than humans help me avoid trees and stumps, and sharp wits and fast reflexes have me rounding the lumpy, grassy turf and making my way back to the road in seconds.
Susie breathes heavily, but she’s silent, watching out the windscreen.
“Sit tight. I’m going after him.”
I have to. It has to be him. The one who met me in the woods the other night. I didn’t drive him off, only got him on the run until he regrouped.