Sneaky People: A Novel by Thomas Berger Page A

two-dollar note, the standard fee for a whore, if you could believe Horse Hauser, who had quoted his brother Lester, who if you could believe him , was by now screwing Imogene Clevenger under a bush in the park.
    “So far as I’m concerned, I’ll never mention it again,” said Buddy.
    When they got home Ralph went to his room, realized he had been stinking drunk for hours, fell onto the bed, and went to sleep with his clothes on.
    Naomi sat in the living room, reading a book. She was wearing the same housedress as at lunch and sheenless cotton stockings, in view from the calf down. Her skirt never climbed very far up when she sat, but her stockings invariably drooped in whatever attitude.
    She peeped over the top of the volume at Buddy’s entrance. “You must be devastated after a day like this. I trust you had a bite somewhere. If not, there’s some salmon left.”
    “And how ,” said Buddy, sitting down on the couch. He ignored the mention of food. Naturally he abhorred salmon. “I ran across Ralph and gave him a lift.”
    “Wasn’t that lucky,” said Naomi, lowering the book to her lap.
    “Say,” said Buddy, “you see more of him than I do. How’s he getting along?”
    “Oh, you never need worry about Ralph. He’s very self-sufficient.”
    Buddy grimaced inwardly at her pretentious lingo; what showed was a smile. “You know how it is with a kid that age. He plays his cards close to his chest. The last guy he’ll shoot straight with is his old man. I was like that myself. I wonder if he’s tried smoking yet. I sneaked a few drags on my pop’s pipe once, made me sick as a dog, haven’t smoked again till this day. God rest his soul.” All of Buddy’s immediate family were dead, except a sister who moved to Massachusetts and hadn’t been heard from since, nor had she been sought. He was a loner.
    He regretted having introduced this subject. Naomi went to the drumtop table and took a cigarette from a brass box, now greened, which had been a wedding gift years before.
    Buddy resumed: “If I could find the time I ought to take Ralph fishing or to a ballgame.”
    Back in her chair, Naomi slowly released the smoke from her first draught. “I wonder.”
    “Don’t he like baseball?”
    “If so, it had better be tomorrow. High school begins on Monday.” She returned deliberately to the cigarette, placing it in an ashtray on the little disc-shelf affixed midway down the shaft of the floorlamp.
    Buddy repressed most of his annoyance. “It was just an idea. I’d like to do something for him.”
    Naomi thought about this. Then she said: “Well, no one need be embarrassed by good motives.”
    When she was dead Buddy intended to put Ralph in a military school.
    Oddly enough, though they usually retired at different hours, Buddy and Naomi slept together in a double bed. He even put it to her occasionally. It was not altogether without satisfaction that he ran her skinny body through with his lethal weapon. This however was not one of those nights. He pretended to be asleep when she slopped in, semicircled the bed in her old nightgown, got into the far side, and, tilting the lampshade and leaving it askew, turned out the light.

chapter 5
    N EXT MORNING Buddy arrived at the lot fifteen minutes early for his appointment, opened the safe to get the money, and found the cashbox empty.
    However, after a moment of panic he remembered his instructions to Leo and realized that the latter had taken all the cash to the night depository, including the sum that had been kept for the hiring of a killer. Buddy had assembled a fund of approximately three hundred and fifty dollars by diverting amounts from the cash payments for car sales. This lode remained always available in the metal box, which lay behind the locked door of the safe at night and on weekends. A burglar might of course blow the safe and be rewarded. But if, after Naomi’s death, suspicious investigators checked Buddy’s bank accounts they would find no