Opal Trace fumbled in her blue calf purse. Green fluttered. We paused to look at each other. Passengers brushed by us. I heard a kid blowing a noisemaker. Opal nervously handed me a fifty dollar bill.
“Here you are, hero. Fifty dollars like I promised. You’ve been swell about everything …”
Fatso squeezed by us suddenly and gingerly minced down the short ramp ahead of us. Opal shuddered again. I could see the bulk of Fatso shudder too under his striped tent, his medicine ball sized buttocks bouncing rapidly with each step. But his rakish bowler clung like wet paint to his skull. He didn’t look back but he didn’t have to. He knew where she was going.
But I was one up on him. He didn’t know where I was going.
“Opal, what would you say if I said I’d like to tag along? Just for the ride. Strikes me I need a vacation. It also strikes me that I like you and you need a bodyguard. This fifty should cover my ticket pretty nicely. I’ll buy it on the train so they won’t throw me off.”
Her eyes got round again. Real round. Then started to fill with the sheerest happiness I’ve seen outside of an orphanage when the new parents show up for an adoption. She started to say something but the words wouldn’t come.
I led her down the hard stairway before she could even change her mind. Or I could change mine.
But what mind I had left was made up. Spider and Dean had done that for me. They weren’t playing with water pistols. And Fatso didn’t look exactly helpless either.
Opal Trace had made up my new schedule for me. She was a damsel in distress personified. And this I have never been able to bypass. I’m just a sentimental chucklehead in caps where the lovely, forlorn dame is concerned.
And I did want to know more about this Violent Virgin she had mentioned. I never would have guessed, at that.
A burly conductor was shouting “BOARRRRRD!” as I was handing Opal Trace into the air-conditioned interior of the Mainliner. Thinking what a bum joke it was on somebody that my beautiful client should be on dope and riding a train with such a name.
The tunnel ahead was dark and endless. The Diesels were throbbing and roaring into life when Spider and Dean came flying down the station ramp on the dead run.
They were clambering aboard as the Mainliner’s wheels slowly began to revolve. Spider and Dean were going to Chicago too.
And that wasn’t a joke at all.
CHAPTER THREE
They just made it.
The Mainliner was starting to get up a head of steam and all the doors were clanging shut. The hum of noise and that slow, rumbling, concentrated roar of the big wheels in motion filled the cars. But I wasn’t stopping to collect any memories. The long, dark tunnel was yawning ahead–getting ready to swallow the crack streamliner whole. But that wasn’t important either.
Dean and the Spider were still on the trail. And young Velour Hat and old Funny Beret always seemed to get some kind of reaction out of Opal Trace. She was shaking again. All over. Damned if she didn’t look like she was going to faint. I anchored an arm around her waist.
“Easy, kid. I can handle those monkeys if I have to. But it won’t help none if you pull a third act faint on me. Where do we go from here?”
She was panicking all right but she still had some of her marbles left.
“Compartment B. I’m traveling first class this trip.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. A little privacy would help a lot. And I didn’t want to sit around in a day coach for Spider to crawl over anyway.
Up ahead, I could see a blue coat weaving towards us down the narrow corridor of the next car. “Come on. We’ll ask the nice man where we live.”
We passed quickly into the car, the coupled platform beneath our feet swaying easily with the still gentle speed of the train. Pillars and stanchions of the platform started to fall away fast. The light was darkening too. The vibrant electrical haze of Grand Central was fading like a galaxy of stars dropping back. And Spider and Dean were nowhere in sight. There was still time to run for cover.
The train man was yawning, a silver tooth in his head vieing with his brass buttons for attention when I nudged him.
“Compartment B?” I asked.
He’d been answering questions all his life. His reply was sing-song and impersonal. “Next car. Middle. On the right. Door’s clearly marked.”
“Thanks loads,” I said.
My tone cut through his coldness like a knife. His eyes narrowed.
“Please have your ticket ready when I come through. Yours and the lady’s.”
Mind reader. We pushed on past him, footed to the next car and found Compartment B. In the middle on the right. Just like the man said.
Opal Trace was breathing hard when we reached it. She leaned against the door and sucked in some oxygen. Fine beads of perspiration dotted her white oval face.
“I’m beat. Haven’t dashed like that since the track team in high school …”
“You can rest inside, Beautiful. We still have your playmates on the lookout for us and I want to be ready when they show up.” I pushed the cream colored door in. Darkness rushed out. I fumbled, found the light switch and flicked it on.
“Surprise, surprise,” I said. Opal Trace stifled a shriek.
The compartment had something else in it besides the usual furniture of two facing-each-other downy seats. The paneling of the walls was nice, homey brown wood. The door to the bathroom was just as brown and just as nice. It was everything I expected a first class compartment on a first class train like the Mainliner to be. All the comforts plus something else.
The something else was Fatso. Still with his tent of pinstripes, still with the dainty bowler plastered on his dome skull. The way he didn’t blink his eyes too much showed me he hadn’t been waiting in the dark very long. Must have beat us in by about a minute.
But the gun in his hand, ridiculously small in his fat right mitt didn’t bat an eye. It was trained like an eagle on the third button up from my belt buckle.
“Close the door. And be good enough to join me in this very necessary private conclave. There isn’t time to waste.” His voice was Sydney Greenstreet too. Big and rumbling and occasionally very soft.
I closed the door and brought Opal in with me. The train was still moving like a slow phantom through the tunnel heading West. I put my back to the nice brown door and raised my hands. The fat man thanked me with a nod for my observance of the niceties of holdup procedure. I tried not to laugh in his face.
Because he didn’t need Peter Lorre. He was a whole show all by himself.
“Now, then,” he boomed. “We can proceed. You must hand over the Blue Green. Immediately. If you do not, my only alternative is to kill you both.” He settled back and made himself comfortable. Damned if his eyes didn’t seem to twinkle.
“Now, then,” he rumbled again. “Which is it to be?”
The clacking wheels of the Mainliner seemed to gobble up the crazy words and toss them around like skeleton bones.
We were roaring out of the tunnel now. I could see lightning, hear the thunder and the driving downpour of rainwater.
Out of the tunnel. But not out of the woods.
New York fell behind. The lights of Manhattan, neon by way of Con Ed, hung over the skyline. Slowly, inexorably, the Mainliner gathered speed, collected ground and bore on into the darkness. The car we were in swayed gently, lulled by the mechanical rhythm of the big wheels clinging to the tracks.
Opal Trace’s fright was mounting. She still had the damn shakes and they were uncontrollable now. Like St. Vitus. She was moaning almost inaudibly.
Fatso got impatient. But the gun in his thick fingers was as steady as Gibraltar. Only a mammoth frown disturbed the baby softness of his face and the twinkle in his tiny eyes had gone out.
“Come now, my friends. We must get to the point. Miss Trace, be good enough to allow me to remain a gentleman. It is my natural bent.”
Her eyeballs seemed to roll and her tongue unglued in her mouth.
“I haven’t got it,” she said hoarsely. “Honest to God, I haven’t got it …”
Fatso’s frown got wider than the lobby of Radio City.
“Do not lie to me, my dear. Your presence on this train heading for Chicago is proof positive. The mere fact that you have joined forces with such unsavory specimens as Spider and Dean is far too circumstantial to be anything but the truth. Come now–I implore you–don’t compel me to shoot a lady.”
Opal Trace swallowed. Fear had her by the short hairs. Her voice rose on a wail of terror.
“My God, Harry. I wouldn’t fool you. I quit them. Ran out. I didn’t want any part of their dirty set-up …”
Harry’s frown didn’t go away. But he seemed to digest her words and wait for them to settle in his craw. And he didn’t like the taste of them either.
“You’re lying, my dear. I’ve already checked the baggage car, before your hasty arrival at the station with this gentleman. I already know that you have a large crate on board. Large enough to hold a six foot statue. Now what else could that be but a piece of world-famous statuary known to one and all as The Violent Virgin?”
“I’d been standing around with my hands in the air long enough. I felt silly besides. I smiled at Harry and he somehow regarded that as an insult. His elephantine attention focussed on me for the first time. Sure, he’d had a gun on me. But he’d done all of his talking with Opal Trace.
“I see they’re making Maltese Falcons bigger this year, Fat Man,” I said. “If you’re through scaring the hell out of my pretty friend, I’d like to talk to you. Maybe we can scare each other for a switch.”
He didn’t think I was funny at all. His mouth pulled down viciously, his eyes lidded and his soft-looking nose got as rigid as a hawk’s.
“A humorist,” he said coldly. “I despise humorists. Any size, any form. By far, the cheapest, falsest frauds in life. Pray tell me about yourself, my friend. And be brief. I want to know your position in this enterprise.”
I could see we were going to get along great.
“My name is Noon. Miss Trace is a friend of mine. We’re going to Chicago together. The only one who’d be interested in why is Dr. Kinsey. But he’s dead now and we haven’t got time for researchers or poll experts. So why don’t you beat it like a good boy so I can make some time?”
He smiled, Harry did. But it was the smile that nailed somebody to the cross on Mount Calvary.
“I knew a man like you once in South America,” Harry said softly. “His sense of values was equally as limited. He believed in laughter as the great healer. He died believing that–with three of my bullets in his chest.” Even his smile faded now. And his eyes went back to Opal Trace. “So you’ve bought a set of muscles and a glib tongue to assist you to Chicago? So be it. But I have intervened now. Why are you shipping The Violent Virgin to Chicago? And where have you hidden the Blue Green?”
Opal Trace bit her lips. The transparent raincoat and the warm closeness of the compartment had raised a fine sheen of perspiration on her perfect face. She didn’t look at me because she had lied to me about knowing Harry. And Fatso Harry had her attention more than her first date could have had.
“Harry, you’ve got me all wrong. I didn’t ship that crate! It must be Dean and Spider’s doing. I had tickets for this train so I used mine, that’s all. Spider and Dean–they’re on the train too, you know. Or do you … ?”
He didn’t. It positively amazes me sometimes how certain words can affect certain people. Words like I Love You or Drop Dead. Or words like They’re On The Train Too. Because Harry bounced to his feet like a wildcat roaring into life, whirled and ran the taut shades on the two windows down, blotting out the dark scenery outside. He faced us again, breathing hard, his huge bulk trembling like leaves in a high wind.
“Spider–Dean? Here? On this train? They can’t be–it’s not possible!” His free left hand knotted into a pulpy, ineffective ball. “Impossible, I say! I left them for dead in that burning lodge in Maine …”
“They’re here all right,” I cut in evenly. “And it hasn’t been their day exactly. I roughed them up outside a Manhattan bar. So why don’t you take off, Harry? Before they get here and start shooting up the place?”
He lumbered toward me and waved his fat fist under my nose.
“Stop it,” he boomed. “Don’t prattle on. Let me think. There’s more here than meets the eye …”
“There certainly is,” I agreed. But my eyes were on the gun in his hand, waiting for the first break in his armor of fat.
Opal Trace cleared her throat as if she’d suddenly gotten control of herself.
“The conductor will be coming through soon asking for tickets. Don’t you think you ought to put that gun away, Harry?”
She was right. He knew she was right. And I’d almost forgotten we were on a train. Because I’d had that funny feeling of having seen all this before. And Harry had somehow lost all his menace for me in spite of the hardware he was waving. He was so fat, so ponderous, so much of everything that he had to be ludicrous. He couldn’t avoid it any more than I can my loose lip.
“Let me think, I say,” Harry puffed and wheezed. “I must have the Blue Green–I must! I’ve been so long on the trail. And now the Virgin just a few train cars away–it can’t end like this!”
I shook my head at him. “Blue Green, Violent Virgin. Stop. You’re giving me a headache.”
He stopped. Stopped running on. Stopped babbling like Tennyson’s brook. His ludicrity vanished. And only the scholar that he must have been at one time in his life shone in his eyes.
“Humor,” his voice droned softly. “Can a man always laugh in the face of everything? Do you find a million dollars so humorous, Mr. Noon? Or would you also throw back your head and laugh within sight of the gates of Shangri-la?”
I groped for something. “If there is no wind–row.” I shrugged his sincerity away. “Old Polish proverb.”
“It’s useless to discuss it with you, Mr. Noon.”
“Good. Now how about Spider and Dean?”
“Just so. Spider and Dean. Two animals on the trail. Yes, by all means, they must be considered.”
“Just so. But it seems to me you were threatening me and the lady with sudden death only five minutes ago.”
“Threatening, Mr. Noon?” The gun barrel glinted in the light from the overheads. His tiny eyes roved over us. He showed a pink tongue, running it around his pink mouth corners. Bells clanged somewhere and the long hoot of the streamliner horn blasted in the night. “I can assure you I do not make idle threats.”
“Harry …” Opal Trace blurted. “The conductor. I can hear him coming …”
We all seemed to freeze at that. Suddenly there was only the sound of the train humming along the rails, the rhythmical clackety-clack of the wheels rolling over the ties. That and Harry’s wheezy, forced breath. His oxygen tent had a double load all right.
A low mumble of voices filled the corridor behind the door. Opal Trace sat down on one of the plush-backed chairs across from Harry. I leaned against the wall. My arms were starting to deaden. They lowered by themselves reflexively. A glower from Harry sent them up again.
A knock sounded at the door. Three spaced, soft taps. A voice, an efficient well-oiled voice, spoke in an even monotone.
“Conductor. Tickets, please.”
Opal Trace looked at me, then at Harry. There wasn’t much the fat menace could do about this situation. Murder or moonshine, rich or poor–when the conductor wants to see your ticket, he sees it. Or you buy one or off you go. Harry knew that too. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t have a ticket. Which might give me the chance to stall for the opening I was looking for.
“Let him in,” Harry growled in a fierce guttural. He took his rakish bowler off and placed it neatly over his gun hand. “Sit down, Mr. Noon and do not think of any of your very bad jokes at this time. I am an excellent shot. You may reach for your ticket when it is asked for. Nothing more.” He jerke
d his head toward the door. “Let the conductor in, Miss Trace. And do not, I beg of you, compel me to ruin a perfectly good hat.”
He didn’t have to tell her that. She was too frightened to sneeze without his permission. I sat down where she had been with Harry facing me. A foolish, amiable smile had settled over his moon face. But the fool smile was strictly for the conductor. Harry was nobody’s jovial fat man. Or anybody’s fool either.
He laughed. Good and loud. Haha. As if he had just heard a very good joke and the knock on the door had interrupted it. It was a weird sensation hearing him laugh like that, but the blood rushing back into my tired arms made me feel a helluva lot less weird.
Opal Trace opened the compartment door. Harry stopped laughing. I guess I just gaped. Opal drew back and tried to go through the wall.
The conductor with the silver tooth and the jealous brass buttons was standing in the doorway. Only he wasn’t standing and the brass buttons would never have to be jealous again. The conductor’s mouth was closed forever.
Even as he toppled face-forward into the compartment, as stiff as the dead man he was, and I saw the staghorn handle of the knife rammed up to the hilt in his back, I knew I had walked into the soup again.
Vacation, hell. It was murder and sudden death all over again. And corpses follow wherever you go.
Opal Trace’s scream was swallowed in the piercing shriek of the train whistle.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dead bodies always do things to people. It depends on the time and the place of course, and just what kind of article you are. If you’re in a shooting war, you get used to corpses. If you’ve never seen one before, it’ll either shock you into silence or shock you silly. Or interest the hell out of you.
The Case of the Violent Virgin Page 3
