Chapter 11: Best Served Cold

They had a month of peace. At last, Ruby became aware of the changes within her own body. She felt a tightening in her belly and knew the baby inside her was growing. One of her secret worries was the baby might resemble one of the uglier men she had been rented out to. In her mind she shied away from the name "whore."

In her heart of hearts, she was never a whore. The part of her life where she became abased and used was locked off. Only at times like this did she think of those dark days. After a time she began to realize how skillfully, Bob had manipulated her.

She realized now, that the two occasions he had urged her to permit a host minister to slip into bed with her had been the prelude to prostitution. Whenever she started to remember she forced those memories out of her mind.

Her other nightmare was that she would come face to face with an old customer, perhaps even the baby's biological father. She made a firm vow she would kill herself if anything like that ever happened. She could never face Jimmy again if she were unmasked.

Ruby was not aware she had changed so much, inside and out, that none of her old "customers" would ever recognize her. The wrinkles in her brow and around her eyes were gone. The pinched, desperate, self-loathing expression was gone from her face and the sagging skin, caused by nightly doses of cheap alcohol, was firm and fresh looking again...

Her time on the "Glory Trail", when she sang while Bob preached about a god neither of them believed in, had been candy coated and covered by Wally's not-quite-factual news stories.

She knew there was always the chance someone would recognize her as a whore from the Livingston Hotel. She hated the deceit and the lies, she saw no other way than to lie about that ugly part of her life, and lie well. Wally had begun to believe his own recreated life history of Ruby Skye Haggard. The more he believed, the more he embellished.

During this same time, Jimmy had begun to slow down just a little in his need for sex. Once or twice a day was enough to keep him happy. Neither of them complained. Twice they went two whole days and nights without making love. Neither minded or became concerned. Every day they grew closer together in ways that neither had expected. It was a time of joyous discovery as two injured people were made well by the medicine of love.

They made and remade plans for the baby. "I was talking to a carpenter who does work for the paper. He says he can add a room on the south side of the house for the baby and make the south window in the living room over into a door. You want to talk to him?"

"Honey," Ruby told him, "You take care of it. I'll see to the decorations after you have it built." As far as she was concerned, that was the end of it. She had faith in Jimmy. Then things changed.

At four o'clock one morning, a loud knock on the front door woke them from a sound sleep. "Hell and damnation," Jimmy mumbled to himself as he got up and slipped his pants on. He fumbled with his belt as he crossed the living room. When he opened the front door Wally Chubb fell face down across the threshold.

"Who is it?" Ruby asked from the bedroom door.

"It's Wally. He was either beat up on or in a bad car wreck." Jimmy squatted down and picked up the half conscious reporter. He carried Wally to the couch and laid him down.

Ruby slipped on a robe and hurried to Jimmy's side. "Oh, look at his poor face, what happened?" Wally's right eye was bruised and swollen, and blood covered his face and hair.

Jimmy examined the injured reporter. "Off hand I'd say someone beat the hell out of him." Jimmy turned toward Ruby and said, "Honey, please bring me a wet towel. I sure hope at least some of this blood belongs to someone else. There's an awful lot of it here. I have a very bad feeling about this."

"You should," Wally's voice was slurred and weak. "This is supposed to be a warning to you to stop meddling where you aren't wanted. They're mad that you exposed Senator Pratt like you did. They know you did it. They controlled him with the threat of exposure, but you took their leverage away." He moaned, "Oh Jesus Christ I hurt."

Ruby flinched at the memory. She recognized Pratt from her days with Bob. He was one who liked to beat up on whores. Ruby sent an anonymous letter to Henry and told him where to find whores Pratt had abused. Guilt shot through her as she looked at Wally.

"I'll get you a pain pill." Jimmy went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and came back out with a morphine pill and a glass of water. He helped Wally to sit up and handed him the pill. Wally placed it in his mouth, made a face and gulped the water down. "Jesus, that pill tastes worse than quinine. What was it?"

"It's morphine," Jimmy told him. Wally closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep. Jimmy pulled a blanket up over Wally, then led Ruby back into the bedroom and went to sleep.

"Oh my lord," Ruby asked the darkness, "What have I started?" She hugged herself closer to Jimmy and finally drifted off into a fitful sleep.

Jimmy left for work at his usual seven thirty in the morning, just three hours after Wally fell through his front door. He walked into Stanley Green's outer office and told the receptionist, "Tell Mister Green I need to talk to him as soon as he gets here." He turned on his heel and left. She gave him a sour look.

Those people, as she thought of the non-office staff, did not belong up here in the nicer more civilized part of the building. Who did he think he was to give her orders like that?

In the pressroom, another problem awaited him. The bearings on the primary roller were frozen. The pressman had forgotten to give the lubrication a chance to circulate. "It's about time you got here. You didn't oil the bearings and now look at what's happened," the head pressman told Jimmy.

Jimmy shouldered him out of the way. "Go get an inch bar and bring it here," he told the pressman.

"Get it your own damned self, you're the mechanic here," came the quick answer.

"Have that inch bar here by the time I get back with a screw jack or I'll beat the shit out of you." Jimmy turned away and left a surprised pressman behind. Jimmy never talked like this to anyone. It was supposed to be that everybody picked on Jimmy.

In two minutes, Jimmy returned with a heavy screw jack. "Where's that inch bar?" he asked.

"Hey, I ain't your damn' errand boy..." He got no further. Jimmy drew back a large fist and struck him once between the eyes.

As the pressman fell, his helper eyed the changed Jimmy. He volunteered, "I'll get it." He hurried away.

Jimmy jacked up the roller hub just a little and poured a few drops of kerosene into the lube cup. He took the offered inch bar and rapped the end of the shaft. "Bump it!" he called to the helper. The helper turned the press motor on and off in rapid sequence. Jimmy swung the bar again and called, "Start it slow, real slow." The assistant was careful as he hit the switch and eased the speed control up one notch. There was a loud "clang" as Jimmy swung the inch bar like a baseball bat and knocked the jack away from under the hub. He filled the oiler cup with heavy lubricating oil laced with powdered graphite.

"Okay, don't go over three quarter speed and I'll tear it down after the day's run is completed. Those bearings are about shot." He walked over to the sink at the side of the big pressroom and began to wash his hands.

Stanley Green had stood amazed and watched from the door leading toward the offices. "Do you usually beat up on the press room help like that?"

Jimmy explained, "He started the machine cold and ran it at top speed and never gave the oil get a chance to circulate again after I warned him not to. Until I can get new bearings for the rollers, we have to start the presses slow and bring them up to speed until after the lube gets a chance to circulate. He almost ruined the main press."

Angry, Stanley Green walked over to the pressman with a sour expression on his face. He nudged the downed pressman with the toe of his expensive Florsheim dress shoe. "You're fired. Get out. Your check will be sent to your house."

"The helper can run the presses pretty good. If you make him pressman you'll have a loyal man," Jimmy said.

Jimmy seemed so certain in his judgment that Stanley nodded to the helper. "You have his job, don't mess it up." The surprised helper, now elevated to the pressman's job, looked wide eyed at Stanley and nodded. He stared at Jimmy with an expression of hero-worshipping gratitude. Stanley noticed it.

Jimmy told his boss, "Wally was beat up real bad last night. He's passed out on my couch right now. I want to find out what happened. It might have been my fault he got hurt."

"Are you needed here right now?"

Jimmy shook his head. "Come on up to my office. There seem to be too many things going on around here. Perhaps you can fill me in." He led the way, Jimmy one pace behind.

Once the door to the inner office was closed, Stanley ordered, "Sit." He pointed to a chair beside his desk. "Why was Wally beaten and why did he come to your house instead of the hospital?"

"My best guess is that he was dropped off at my house as a warning. Somebody beat him up real bad and dumped him on my doorstep in the middle of the night." He shifted restlessly in his seat and added, "Whoever did this has to have some reason to believe he would not go to the police."

Jimmy became still as he suddenly realized Wally was not the target but the tool. His eyes grew wide as he exclaimed, "Ruby! They are after Ruby. Christ, how could I be so dumb?" He jumped up and ran from Stanley Green's office. "Wait!" Stanley called to his retreating back, but Jimmy paid no attention. He was filled with dread. He had to get to Ruby before it was too late.

He ran down the stairs, out into the employees' parking lot and piled into his convertible. He started the engine and threw the shifter into "Drive," then shoved the gas pedal to the floor and kept it there. The Hydromatic transmission protested at the rough treatment as it jump-shifted from low to high. Jimmy swerved and weaved through traffic.

His grim face promised hurt for someone as he steered a course for home. He drove through the fence and up into the yard, then slammed on the brakes. The car stopped inches from the front porch. Jimmy jumped out, ran up the steps and slammed into the front door with his body when his hand missed the doorknob. The door flew off its hinges and struck a stranger standing in the middle of the room. The man had a gun in his hand in his hand.

"Ruby!" He screamed. "Where are you, Ruby?" Then he saw her tied to a kitchen chair someone had dragged into the living room to secure her. Her eyes were wide open, frightened, and her mouth was gagged.

Another stranger appeared out of the bedroom with a gun pointed at Jimmy. "Hold it!" the stranger ordered. Jimmy ignored the warning, jumped across the room in a single leap and grabbed the man's gun hand. He bent the gun wrist back and upward. The gun went off and the man fell to the floor. Where his Adam's apple had been moments before was now a ravaged mass of bloody flesh.

Jimmy did not stop or slow down, but ran back across the room and kicked the first stranger in the head.

"Ruby!" he whimpered as he hurried to her chair.

The knots in the sash cord used to secure her to the chair were too small for his big fingers. "Damn!" he exclaimed and ran to the kitchen. He grabbed a boning knife out of the knife drawer and rushed back to cut through the restraining ropes. He cut the gag from her mouth. "Oh, Honey, are you all right?" he asked anxiously.

With difficulty, she stood up and hugged him close. "Jimmy, they were going to kill you and me and blame it all on Wally." She started to cry, "Sweetheart, I was so worried for you. Oh please, don't let anyone do anything to you. Oh, I love you so."

"What's going on in here?" a voice asked from behind him.

Jimmy turned back toward the open front door and saw a uniformed policeman standing there. "They tried to hurt Ruby," he said in a low voice.

Stanley Green slipped around the officer and came into the house. "I thought I should call the police to protect you. I see no protection was needed." He surveyed to two bodies on the floor and looked over at Wally lying unconscious on the sofa.

Another reporter from the paper slipped in through the door and began to take pictures. Jimmy whispered into Ruby's ear, "You better go get some clothes on." She nodded without answering and hurried into the bedroom and changed from her robe to street clothes.

The intruder Jimmy had kicked in the head started to revive. As Jimmy bent over and jerked the injured man to his feet, the cop tried to intervene. "Hey, he's under arrest."

From the bedroom door Ruby told the policeman, "You better not interfere."

Before the policeman could protest again, Jimmy asked, "Who sent you to my house?"

"L-Leech, Willard Leech and the Party leaders." The stunned and frightened man answered as he stared across the room at his dead partner.

Wally finally stirred on the sofa. He raised his battered face and saw the man Jimmy held in the air one handed. "That's one of the bastards who hammered me." Wally's assistant took more flash pictures of Jimmy and then more of Wally.

"Mister Green," Ruby said, "I am glad you are here to see this first hand. That, that man threatened to ... to do..." She started to cry, unable to finish the sentence.

The look of rage on Jimmy's face was awesome to behold as he let go his prisoner and lashed out once with his right leg. The blunt toe of his heavy work shoe drove the man upward off the floor

"Get him out of here before I kill him," he hissed at the policeman.

Ruby went into the kitchen to make coffee. Her first thought, now that the danger was over, was to put on a show of cool bravery. "Never show any fear." Bob always told her during her whoring days. "Some people feed on it." Right now, it seemed the thing to do. She brought the first cup to Wally as soon as it was done, then turned to Stanley, "Mister Green, would you care for coffee?" she asked, all at once the perfect hostess.

Stanley went over to Jimmy's big overstuffed chair and sat down. "Please bring me a cup if it is not too much trouble," he requested. He was overwhelmed at the carnage around him.

This was the first time in Stanley's life he had ever seen violence up close. He decided he preferred to read about it in his newspaper. He never realized people such as Wally's assailants really existed. On an intellectual level, he was aware they did, but to be next to human bodies when they got beaten and killed unnerved him.

Wally was grateful as he drank the coffee. He suffered from a morphine hangover. "Christ," he complained, "I feel like hell." He took another sip of the strong brew.

"You want to go to the hospital?" Ruby asked. "You look pretty banged up."

"No, I think I'm bruised more than anything else. My head is a little fuzzy, but after a little more coffee, I'll go write my story. There is much more at stake here than just a seat in the senate." He took a deep breath, let it out in a long sigh and drank more coffee.

Stanley spoke up. "Jimmy, you stay with Ruby and call in later. I want you to get a telephone installed out here. You need one." He went to the door and called Wally and the cub reporter to follow.

As soon as Stanley and his three employees left, the policeman told Jimmy, "I radioed in for an ambulance to load the dead one and this one." He pointed to the unmoving man on the floor. "I think you damaged him pretty bad there."

"He hurt Ruby," Jimmy replied simply, as if that explained everything.

"Oh, Jimmy," she told him, "I'm safer with you than if I was in Fort Knox in a vault." She brought him a cup of coffee and offered one to the policeman.

The policeman nodded his thanks and waited for the ambulance. He sat down on the chair Ruby had been tied to. "You all don't have to worry about what happened here. Nobody will try to prosecute you for protecting your lady and your friend."

"That's good to know," Jimmy said, "But I am more worried about how flimsy that door is. I just barely bumped into it and it fell off the hinges. I'm going to have this place made stronger. I want Ruby safe when I'm not around."

"Honey," Ruby told him, "When the story gets around about what happened here and what you did to those two, I will be the safest woman in town. Nobody wants to mess with Jimmy Lee Haggard's woman." She hugged him and he spilled coffee on her.

"Oh hell and damnation, Ruby, does it hurt?" his voice became almost a whine as he started to revert once more to his "clumsy Jimmy" persona.

"No sweetheart, I just love getting scalding coffee poured all over me. Would you do it to the other side so I have matching scald marks?"

He raised his voice, "Damn it, Ruby, you don't have to get so sarcastic. I was worried about you and whether you were hurt or not."

"Well, don't ask dumb questions and I won't get sarcastic at you." They both forgot the policeman was there.

"Well, it's your fault you got scalded. You ought to know better than to hug a man who has hot coffee in his hand." He frowned at her.

"Honey, are we having our first argument?" She asked.

"It sure as hell looks like it," he answered and gave her a sheepish grin.