Some Came Running by James Jones

up before Frank could answer. The judge was never much of a one for amenities, either.
    Frank replaced his own phone, feeling more angry at the judge’s blunt incivility than grateful for the information he’d given him. Irately, he wondered where in hell Dave had ever managed to get fifty-five hundred dollars. That was not the Dave he remembered.
    The judge was a mighty good man to have on your side in a business deal, but you sure couldn’t say it was exactly pleasant to work with him.
    Edith Barclay had her head down working at her desk. But it was plain that she’d been listening.
    “Well,” he said, “did you learn all about it?”
    “No, sir,” Edith said, and went on working. “I hope it isn’t any bad trouble.”
    Frank stared at her, wanting to say something cutting, but she was just too good a help to get her mad at you. “If any more calls come in for me,” he said, “I want to talk to all of them. No matter how many, or who it is.”
    Well, he knew now what it was Dave had had up his sleeve.
    “I’m going up front,” he lied. He was going back out into the storeroom. He wanted to think this thing out, and the dimness and quiet there ought to be reassuring.
    “Yes, sir,” Edith said.
    But the storeroom wasn’t helpful. The crusty old watch repairman in his cubicle workshop did not look up; and his nose, which he never raised for anything unless a woman went by, was stuck down in a watch; and yet he managed somehow to make himself strongly felt as a presence. He always did that. Frank went back into the office.
    Edith did not even look up from her work, and he sat down at his desk to think it out.
    Frank’s attitude toward the youngest of his brothers had always been one of indignant disbelief. You could not run over customs and usages the way that boy thought he could. Not if you wanted to live with people. The indignation was coupled with a contempt for the boy’s complete inability to do anything and a kind of awed pride because Dave had turned out to be an artist, a writer. Frank did not read a book a year and said it was because he was too busy making a living, but the truth was books frightened him. He would never learn to read them easily. It did not help any that his wife Agnes, who was literary minded, was able to read into books a spiritual and intellectual significance that he himself could never find there, and felt ignorant because of. So secretly he was proud to have an artist, a writer, in the family because he did not count Francine. But he also felt Dave ought to make a little money at it. Otherwise what was the point? A grown man had to support himself. Or else suffer the ridicule of his associates. He had written as much to Sister Francine, who all during Dave’s years in Hollywood had kept him posted on Dave’s development; Francine had immediately written back defending Dave with fire, and the statement that there was no place for the creative artist in America. Frank was willing to concede that this might be true, though he did not see why it should be true in America and not in other places. He had followed Dave’s career closely, a lot more closely than anyone knew, except possibly Francine, and he had carefully read all the stories and both books when she sent them, and he couldn’t see where there was much sense in any of them, no wonder people didn’t buy them. The only thing of it all that touched him any, was that second book about the ball player and its main effect was surprise that Dave knew that much about baseball. But then, back not long before the war, Francine had written with malicious triumph to say that Dave was working on some movie scripts and as proof listed the titles. Frank, who was no moviegoer and had only the vaguest ideas of Hollywood, went to see every one of them. He had never given up hope of bayoneting the inflated bladder of Dave’s scandal, for his own sake if Dave didn’t give a damn. Once more, he was disappointed. All of them were