You Can't Catch Me

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Mr. Wells is cleverer than I imagined,” Wragge commented.

  “How dumb can a private dick get?” I asked. “You practically threw things at me when you forgot to eliminate Linda Spain before I met her. Linda was a cheap bump and grind queen, Wragge. The other fat man might have cared for her, but you wouldn’t give that type a passing nod. Linda was cheap, and so was the man who made love to her. He bought her a corny chromo and an incense burner, out of an uptown dump. I checked that picture, Wragge. And when I began my research, it seemed funny as hell to me that a man of your taste could ever buy a chromo of that sort. I’d figure you more the modern, progressive art fancier. You’d rather buy a Picasso reproduction than the mangy daub your double bought for Linda. The picture in her living room didn’t match your personality, Wragge.

  “The man you hired to die for you was too lowbrow, all the way. He took horse bets and ate garbage and made love like one of the common people. You should have taken all that into consideration when you set him up to be butchered in your place. You had a perfect scheme for fooling the police about him. You had a terrific gimmick for sucking in Rico Bruck and Monk Stang. Each would believe the other had the Folsom pendant, so long as the police didn’t recover it. In the meantime, your double would die for you and you’d be free to cash in on the gems and spend the profits with your Boy Scout friend, Gilligan.”

  “A masterpiece of deduction,” breathed Wragge, his eyes closed, his fingers tapping the edge of his chair in a slow and deliberate rhythm.

  “Isn’t it dandy?” I asked Gilligan. “I can’t wait to see Rico Bruck’s face when he finds out about this.”

  “That is a sight you will never enjoy,” Wragge said. “Because Gilligan and I do not choose to have Bruck find out about this.”

  Wragge sighed mournfully and raised his ponderous bulk in the chair. Time! I needed more time for these two. The minutes had flown. I wondered whether Toni had reached the police yet, and how they were reacting to her message, and whether they would be sending the squad cars up here. And when?

  Standing, Wragge loomed larger than I remembered him, but this might have been an optical trick, because he wore a different suit now, a gray double-breasted item that had been well-tailored to his massive figure. He picked up his gray hat and surveyed me wearily, fixing me with his tight-lipped smile.

  “We shall have to use the roof, John,” he said. “Come along Wells.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The Brentworth Hotel

  2:28 A.M.—July 20th

  Gilligan led the parade through the hall and out to the fire exit and up the stairs to the roof. Behind me, I felt the metal nose of Wragge’s automatic. His hand did not quiver as he pushed hard against me, digging it into the flesh around my kidneys, prodding me with every step, to remind me that he would never leave me, not until he had left me stiff, somewhere. His breath wheezed huskily in the silence, telling me of the strain of his climb on his larded frame. Our footsteps clattered and echoed up the stairwell, beating a dull but deliberate rhythm as we went higher and higher. We would be up there soon and they would be taking me across the roof to another building. Wragge must have planned this exit a long time ago, in case of any emergency of this kind. There would be a car waiting on the next block, and he and Gilligan would escort me to a convenient spot for mayhem. They would be thorough about me. These were intelligences, two brains who would not be sidetracked from their purpose. They would wrap me up and bounce me into eternity.

  And then we were stepping through the door to the roof. A breath of cool air hit me, but it reached no deeper than the edge of my sweating face. Inside me, a panic was building, the dry-throated clawing of fear I was on my way to sudden death. I was stepping into the clammy darkness atop The Brentworth, and the night was whispering to me, telling me that Toni Kaye would never come, that this was the end of the line for me.

  I thought of her in a rush of remembrance, all the way back to the sunlit entrance of the Card Club where she had made her first pitch for me, the prearranged come-on that was meant to lure me into the game Gilligan had devised. I thought of her with mixed emotions, cursing her for her luscious body and her teasing face. Had she changed at all during the last two days? What had happened to her on the road out to Long Island? What had stirred her to act for me? My mind was bright with the last vivid picture of her, the last quick moment before I headed this way. She had looked into my eyes and told me that I could depend on her. She had sold me a bill of goods. And as the door to the roof squealed shut behind me, I realized that I was whistling in the dark. Toni Kaye had probably headed out of town.

  “To the left, Wells.”

  Wragge’s voice had lost some of its measured softness. He pushed me where he wanted me, across the roof and behind an abutment and under a few stray wires left over froth the era of radio aerials. Ahead of me, the roof ended. There was a slight rise to the side that faced the alley. Beyond, over the dim ridge of the silhouetted buildings, a vague crimson mist hung over the area above Times Square. The Paramount clock stood at 2:03. In all the fogged vista ahead of me, not one light burned, not one office building glowed with life. The sounds of the city seemed to come from over the hills and far away—the occasional bark of a taxi horn, the distant hiss of tires, a voice; a laugh. And silence. Would they dare shoot a gun in this void? The noise of it would go screaming through the streets, rousing the guests in the hotel below. A gun would be simple and direct, but it would lack subtlety.

  “Keep walking, Wells.”

  Where did he want me to walk? A few yards ahead lay the edge of the roof. The nausea of Wragge’s purpose rose up to make me gasp in horror.

  “What’s the gimmick?” I asked again, aware of the answer before it would leave his lips. Time! I needed every second, every precious ticking instant, every breath, every pause; every possible delay.

  “Keep walking,” said Wragge.

  “Over the edge?”

  “Would you rather be pushed?”

  “I’m not the suicide type,” I said.

  “Push him, John,” said the fat man.

  One step! Gilligan was taking it, toward me, the sound of it clear and sharp in the sticky silence. A footfall. A flick of time, an instant, a chip of a second, a breath, a sigh, a heartbeat. And what would I do with the moment? How could I use it? It was a time for clear thinking, a time to be the wise guy, the sage and smart detective. Instead, nothing but sweaty terror boiled in my brain. My ears were burning with pressure, listening for the sound of a siren, the noise of the squad cars, on their way to rescue me, like the Marines in a grade D Hollywood opera. But nothing rose out of the vastness of the surrounding city, no unusual sound except the hammering of the blood in my ears.

  Another step! Gilligan was closer and only a breath of living had elapsed. My eyes searched the rooftop for something to use—an old pipe, a rotted aerial pole, a convenient brick. But somebody had cleaned this roof not too long ago. It was as barren as an empty tabletop.

  Until I saw the ladder, on my left! There was hope in that ladder, a small out; a chance if I could work it in time. Down below, the fire escape led to the alley. If I could make the ladder, what then? But Gilligan was taking still another step and now he was behind me and the big moment had come. I lunged back at him. I caught him squarely in the gut and his gun went off. The flat clap of thunder from its muzzle screamed into the still night. I was hit.

  A stab of pain shot through my shoulder and my right arm felt as useless as a broken crutch. Gilligan had fallen back under my sudden lunge. But now he was alive again, and coming after me fast. I crawled toward the ladder and hung on. I dropped myself over the edge, and when my hands grabbed the siding somebody stood over me and kicked out at me with sudden ferocity. It was Gilligan again. He was doing his damnedest to kick me off the edge of the ladder and down into the black hole of the alley. I heard Wragge mutter a sharp and deep-throated com
mand as I dropped one step lower on the ladder and fought to keep my right arm from falling off my burning shoulder. Gilligan hit down at me with his gun butt. He caught me on the other side this time and I grabbed for his arm and made it. I yanked him my way and he was surprisingly tough to move. But anger and pain had made me a madman. I pulled hard at him and he slipped toward the edge of the roof, kicking for my head and wheezing strangely, like a frightened animal or a frustrated boy in a school yard brawl. I caught his shoe and held on. I yanked and jerked. And then, howling and screaming, Gilligan slipped toward me, and over me and off the roof, falling and yammering his terror to the skittering wind. He went down yowling all the way until a final thud ended his trip to hell.

  I lifted my head cautiously above the line of the roof. Where was Wragge? Hot fury dimmed my eyes and forced me to take a zany chance. I forgot about everything but Wragge. I remembered his cool, and murderous sagacity. He would be waiting for me in a dark corner, somewhere where I least expected him. He would be standing quietly by, letting me grope and stumble until he could level me with one powerful sweep of his giant arm. I flattened myself on the rooftop and looked around.

  Silence. If he was here, he was anchored. He was already in position to strike his lethal blow. The deck was stacked his way now. If he could get rid of me, his little game would be over. And then the sweat began to crawl over me. And then my gut began to burn with a fresh and mounting nausea. Wragge must get rid of me! He had set the stage perfectly for the end of the melodrama, the last quick scene before curtain time. I realized, suddenly, that Gilligan had been almost too easy to pull over the edge of the roof. I knew now that Wragge had helped me pull him over! And when the knowledge hit me, my eyes went dry and my breath came hot and rasping. I searched the dim corners of the rooftop for the spot where Wragge had chosen to hide his larded body. I rolled slowly to the right, keeping in the clear. The door lay ahead, and beyond the door, the dim edge of the adjoining building. Wragge would be somewhere in between, waiting for me to cross the roof toward the exit.

  I got to my knees and began to crawl slowly toward the abutment between me and the door. He must be behind there! I groped and clutched at the slick surface of the roof, feeling for everything and anything. And then I found it—a broken aerial post, about two feet of metal and heavy enough for manslaughter. I went forward again and reached the corner of the abutment and dove blindly into the dimness beyond.

  Then all hell broke loose. Wragge caught the full strength of my attack and came back at me with a violence that knocked the wind out of me.

  I brought up the metal rod and beat out at him blindly. He was a mountain of brute power, an elephant toying with a mouse. He fell back a step and hit me behind the ear, then dropped me to the roof again. I clung to his beefy legs and pushed. My right arm was now worthless. I had only one chance: a quick shot at his stomach with the rod. But he must have sensed the urgency in my maneuver. Because he sidestepped me and aimed a kick at my face, as agile as an athlete, as quick as a fox. His foot skimmed my jaw and now he was off balance; I caught his leg and jerked hard and heard him mutter a bad word at me as he fell over on his back, a carload of meat, puffing and blowing as he tumbled. Then I went at him. The metal rod was lost to me, but I hammered at his paunch with my fist. Was he laughing at me? Where was the bastard rolling now? He dragged me with him as he righted himself; I struggled to grab him, but he was slipping away and bringing his hands down to my throat. He squeezed. I kicked out at him and my toe caught his midsection and forced animal grunt from him. But I was on the way out now, and he knew it. From somewhere in a distant province the sound of a screaming siren flooded the air. Closer? Or was it the mad screaming of my angry hate that whistled in my ears. Up? Was he lifting me now? I bit out at his arm and felt the soft flesh of his wrist in my mouth. I bit harder and he trembled and paused and lowered me and shouted a deep-throated obscenity at me. The sirens were bright sharp stabs of hysteria now, echoing in my ears. Wragge reached down for me again and the last thing I saw was the gray and shapeless lump of his tremendous body, and the last thing I heard was the sound of a thousand horses galloping across the tarred roof. And a shout of pain when the world exploded in my face.

  After that, I dropped into oblivion.

  CHAPTER 30

  The Oakland Hospital

  4:17 P.M.—July 21st

  Time was a vague and shapeless thing. I drifted on a large and grayish cloud, high above the city, so high that the earth seemed lost below. There were countless floating things up at this level with me, but everything whirled and swayed and drifted without purpose. There was a girl on a small cloud who passed my way and winked at me, but when I grabbed out for her, my anxious hands caught nothing but the wind. So I sat and waited on my personal nimbus and after a while the earth loomed larger, a billiard ball, a beach ball, and finally, a rushing, looming thing that would catch me soon, because I had fallen off my cloud and was descending rapidly. I was headed down now, chasing the girl on the tiny cloud. She fell at a whistling clip and I grabbed for her silken shanks and held on. Then we sailed through the fog and into the realm of living, and we were hurtling through the last thin edge of space and headed for a crash. Somebody screamed at us, and there was silence and I knew that nothing could stop us now. I dropped to earth with a gasping groan.

  And then somebody was shaking me.

  And a cool hand held mine.

  And a cool voice said, “How do you feel, Mr. Wells?”

  The room was white and the air was white, and the light was white and her figure was white; a white voice from a white face with a white hat perched on white hair. I rubbed my eyes with my good hand, because the other one was bedded down in a stiff and awkward cast. Somebody had wrapped my head in bandages and the man who sat at the side of the bed was bundled in the same way. He leaned toward me and I gawked at him and laughed when his misted shape came through to me.

  “Izzy,” I said. “It’s a small world.”

  “You mustn’t talk too much,” the nurse said. She was suddenly familiar, the little doll I had met here before. She was Magda Prionee, pretty enough to be featured on Life’s cover.

  “How long have I been here?” I asked.

  “Almost two days,” Magda said. “You were badly hurt, Mr. Wells.”

  “But you should have seen the other guy,” Izzy laughed. “You sure put a dent in the fat man, Mike. Leach says you almost bit his wrist off.”

  “Did Leach find the Folsom cluster?”

  “Wragge had it on him. Leach caught him trying to leave by way of the next building. He would have made it, too, only the door was jammed a bit, and Wragge couldn’t open it fast enough with his left hand. You bit hard enough to put his right hand out of commission. He made a mistake when he tried to shoot his way off the roof with Leach’s boys. He didn’t know that they were all over the place, including the next building. He was shot twice, Leach says, and the second slug killed him.”

  “I’m feeling no pain,” I smiled. Izzy lit a cigarette for me and I puffed it hungrily and let the room come into focus for me. Magda stood close to Izzy and she was smiling down at me. She had a round and girlish face, a blue-eyed doll with a high tan and the whitest teeth this side of the toothpaste ads. She took my pulse and her fingers felt soft and tender and their pressure was making my blood bounce and gurgle in its normal tempo. She had dark hair and a good figure. I thought of Toni right away. “What did Leach say about the girl, Izzy?”

  “What girl?”

  “Toni Kaye. She came through for me. I owe her something.”

  “Oh, that one,” Izzy laughed. “She came up to see you after they brought you in, Mike, She had a message for you. She told me to tell you that she was going back to Chicago. She didn’t like it here in New York. Said the town was too fast for her. Said you’d understand. Funny thing—I could have sworn the doll was crying when she left the hospital. You and she have
something special cooking?”

  “A pretty good stew,” I said. “But maybe a bit too highly flavored for anything but indigestion.”

  “Double talk,” said Izzy. “Did she help you?”

  “In a roundabout way. But she almost arranged for your funeral, chum. She didn’t mean it, I’m sure, but Elmo almost bumped you off because of Toni. What did you have down at the apartment? What did you find that you wanted me to see? The refrigerator?”

  “Of course the refrigerator. The way you described Wragge to me, he couldn’t possibly have eaten the trash in that icebox. Right?”

  We talked about it. We went back over it and chewed the small pieces and enjoyed the crumbs, because it was all over now and we could afford the luxury of it, like two gourmets licking their chops over a tasty meal. It was down, swallowed and lived through. It was a finished feast and we were burping our delight now that the moment had arrived for the demitasse and brandy. And when we had finished with the tasty bits, Magda stepped forward and tapped Izzy on the shoulder delicately and reminded both of us that we were semi-invalids.

  She led him to the door and he waved a hand at me and was gone. Then Magda busied herself at the window, adjusting the Venetian blinds. The light was strong out there. The sun streamed in and lit the outline of her supple figure, so that the rounded contours of it were a gray shape under the starched uniform. In that pose, she lingered at the window until the shades were adjusted just so and the room was bathed in a quiet gloom. Magda sat down near the bed and crossed her legs, and even with the big white hospital brogans on, she had knees worthy of a chorus line. She got me a glass of water and her figure moved gracefully as she reached for it on the small end table. I let her feed me the water and her cheeks went hot when I grabbed her free hand. There was something burning in her eyes and I wondered vaguely how long it would take me to find out what it was; and if it was what I thought was, how much longer after that to share her personal fire.