The Bell Tolls for No One Read Free Page A

way to get him out from under the sheets. Killed by an F.B.I. agent in dirty underwear. I let her go; she didn’t look that good.
    Then there was another night when Jane set me up for another. We were drinking. The same cheap stuff, of course. I had gone to bed once or twice with her and there wasn’t much else to do when she said: “Howja like to meet a killer?”
    â€œWouldn’t mind,” I said, “wouldn’t mind a-tall.”
    â€œLess go.”
    She explained the whole thing to me on the way. Who he’d killed and why. He was now out on parole. The parole officer was a good guy, kept getting him these dishwasher jobs, but he kept getting drunk and losing them.
    Jane knocked and we went on in. Like I never saw the F.B.I. agent out of bed, I never saw the killer’s girlfriend get out of bed. She had this totally black hair on her head and this whitewhitewhitewhite skim milk terribly white SKIN. She was dying. Medical science be damned: all that was keeping her alive was port wine.
    I was introduced to the killer:
    â€œRonnie, Hank. Hank, Ronnie.”
    He sat there in a dirty undershirt. And he didn’t have a face. Just runs of skin. Veins. Little fart eyes. We shook hands and started in on the wine. I don’t know how long we drank. One hour or 2, but he seemed to get angrier and angrier, which is rather commonplace with commonplace drinkers, especially on the wine. Yet we kept talking, talking, I don’t know about what.
    Then, suddenly, he reached over and grabbed his black and white wife and picked her out of bed and began using her like a willow rod. He just kept banging her head against the headboard:
    bang bang
    bang bang bang
    bang bang bang bang
    bang
    Then I said, “HOLD IT!”
    He looked over at me. “Wuzzat?”
    â€œYou hit her head one more time on the headboard and I am going to kill you.”
    She was whiter than ever. He placed her back in bed, straightened the strands of her hair. She seemed almost happy. We all began drinking again. We drank until the crazy traffic began running up and down the streets far below. Then the sun was really up. Bright, and I got up and shook his hand. I said, “I have to go; I hate to go; you are a good kid; I gotta go anyhow.”
    Then there was Mick. The place was on Mariposa Ave. Mick didn’t work. His wife worked. Mick and I drank a lot together. I gave him 5 dollars once to wax my car. I didn’t have a bad car at the time, but Mick never waxed it. I’d find him sitting on the steps. “It looks like rain. No use waxing if it looks like rain. I’m gonna do a good job. Don’t want it spoiled.” He’d be sitting on those steps drunk. “O.K., Mick.” Next time he’d be sitting there drunk and see me. “I’m just sittin’ here lookin’, deciding what I’m gonna do. You see, you got those scratches on there. First thing I’m gonna do, I’m gonna paint in those scratches. I’m gonna get me some paint . . . ”
    â€œJesus Christ, Mick. Forget it!”
    He did, but a fine fellow he was. One night he insisted that I was drunk although he was the one who was drunk. And he insisted that he help me up the 3 flights of stairs. Actually, I helped him up. But it was a lumbersome, cumbang bang bang bang bersome journey and I think we awakened everybody in the apartment building with our cussing and falling against walls and doors and stair-rails. Anyhow, I got the door opened, and then I tripped over one of his big feet. Down I went, straight and flat upon a coffeetable with a one-quarter-inch glass covering. The whole table smashed straight to the floor—I weigh around 218—and all 4 legs crushed under, the top of the table cracked in 4 places, but the slab of glass itself remained perfect, unmarred. I got up. “Thanks, old buddy,” I told him. “Nothin’ to it,” he said. And then I sat there and listened to