The Snare

13. AFTERMATH

13. AFTERMATH Tommy Arnold and Julia walked out together . He took her to lunch and teased her a little. "You were trying to be noble and nobody needed you." Julia wouldn't laugh. "He saw me," she said. "In spite of all this get-up. As he was going out of the courtroom. I know he recognized me. It was just a glance." "I have to admire him," said Tommy Arnold, thoughtfully . "Though if the police ever get hold of him again any time soon, it's going to be a lot more nursery games than that. I still admire what he did. It was something that took nerve because there wasn't any precedent for it." "I admired it too." To Julia and Tommy Arnold it now seemed they had known each other for years instead of weeks. She knew his typecasting in her life, the not-quite-brother,not-quitelover , the kindness and confidence of it all. Her plate arrived. She took off the floppy, disguising hat and laid it on the seat beside her. Then she took off the dark glasses. "My idea is," she said, "that people draw life from the crooked world. There's a conversation going on with the straight world, all the time. It's what makes this city and it's what makes the world. Haven't you noticed?" Letting that out with one sidelong glance, half-innocent , and she'd nailed him so completely he was speechless . For the shady world to him was irresistible. He understood why cops took rake-offs, half the time because in the first place they had got to be cops from wanting in on it all. Deep within him he knew, too, why the nice girl no Elizabeth Spencer in wound up third floor front at an address known to many. Why, for that matter, was good old Tommy Arnold always on the trail of crime? It reminded him: if he couldn't get this story out any other way, he'd write it up for Detective Story magazine, the fiction one, inventing a fake ending which would solve it. "Yes, I've noticed," he at last, dryly, agreed. And then: "What happened to the Parham boy?" She looked up quickly. "How'd you know him?" "I didn't. I looked through the society files until I found you. Something nagged at my memory when I met you. The name sounded familiar. I checked to follow up that feeling and there you were: engaged to the Parham boy, out of that wealthy family up there in Mississippi. Do they own half the state or just three-quarters? What happened?" "I let it go." "Christ, you were fixed for life." "That's just it. Would you like to be fixed for life?" He grinned. "I like you, Julia Garrett," he said. "No," he admitted, "I wouldn't like to be fixed for life, still, for a woman—you've got to be fixed one way or another." She sighed, acknowledging the counterblow. "You're right there." "What was the matter with Parham?" "I told you. I as good as told you. Even Cadillacs get dull. I wasn't ready for the long pull." "You weren't in love?" "Martin Parham was a real sweet boy." "Enough said," said Tommy Arnold. He was eating. Like a good reporter he was not looking at her closely, but she knew that he could have re-told from memory every expression in her voice and face. "So now you go chasing around after new experiences ." "Is that how it seems to you?" He did not reply and she felt close enough to him to 112 T H E S N A R E add: "I want the depth. I have to have it and, when I get it, then I'm with it, with life, you know, the way you have to move." "It's a point of view," Tommy Arnold admitted. "Especially if you don't have a wife and children to support." "What did your father do?" Julia asked him, unexpectedly . "He was an accountant. On the side he souped up old cars for racing drivers." Mentioning this to her, he could see them once again, the leather-faced men with hardset eyes, sometimes with a bright blue handkerchief knotted at the neck, passing through the back yard in spring, past the privet rich with scented...