by Jerry eBooks
It was very nice and the girl pointed this out to me with: “D’ya think I’d made a mistake about being here? I know what you’re thinking—that I was drunk and got mixed up. But I’ll even show you the booth we were in. It’s this way.”
She took my arm and led me to a booth about halfway down the dance floor. A waiter broke away from the bar and headed down our way. The floor was bigger than most places like that have, and the bar was at the end of the place. Booths all around the floor, with tables for two spotted out in front of them. And even as far away from the bar as we were I could see it was stocked with good liquor and a lot of it.
In other words the place had class.
The waiter came up and the girl leaned across and whispered: “That’s one of them! One of those I talked with.”
He was a tough-looking mug, and he came up as though he grudged having to give us the service. He was looking at me and paying no attention to the girl. I told him I wanted straight rye and water, and Miss Bryce said: “A Martini, please.”
He looked at her then—one of those so-here-you-are-again looks.
“That’s right, friend,” I told him. “It’s the same lady! How about the drinks?”
I watched him talking to the barman then, while the Martini was being mixed and when the order was being put on a tray.
The girl was speaking again: “You see? He knew me.”
“Well, why shouldn’t he? You told me you’d been talking to him about this missing man. He’d hardly forget a thing like that.”
“I should have gone to the police,” Miss Bryce said.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well—well, because.”
“That’s a swell reason,” I began, and stopped because the waiter was back with the tray and with a check for the drinks already on it. He stood there, and when I didn’t do anything about it he said: “There’s the check.”
I told him I saw it.
“I just got told not to serve this lady any more drinks,” the waiter explained.
“Who told you?” I asked.
He jerked his head toward the barman and didn’t answer.
I said: “If there’s one thing I love it’s a snooty waiter. This is a public place, isn’t it? The lady isn’t drunk, is she? So you’ll serve us drinks and like it or I’ll find out the reason why.”
“I just do what I’m told,” he said to that. And I retorted: “That’s what I want, so where’s the argument? If I tell you we want a drink you get it.”
He turned his head then and beckoned for the barman, who came out from around his plank with one hand under his apron. He was as hard-looking as the waiter, but he had a nice soft voice. He used it, saying: “Trouble, Luigi?”
The waiter said: “The guy’s giving me an argument. I told him no more drinks for the gal and he gives me an argument.”
The barman said to me: “Look, Mister! I don’t know you and I don’t want any trouble. But I’m running this place and I’ll not serve that girl another drink.”
“Why not?”
He came up right to the edge of the booth table and said: “Well, I’ll tell you. She came up here just after I went on shift, and she gives us a story about leaving her boyfriend here. She claims she was in here night before last with him. She also claims that I was on the bar and that Luigi was, the one that served them. Now I was working that night. And so was Luigi.
“We just changed to day shift today. She wasn’t in here or we’d have seen her. We haven’t got any missing boys around here. The girl’s maybe a friend of yours, but she can’t come in here with a screwy story like that and get drinks served her. She made a scene, Mister. She called me a liar and she called Luigi a liar. So no drinks. Is that plain?”
Luigi said: “She’s just nuts, is all.”
I said to the barman: “You all through with the speech?”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because, if you are, get back to that bar and make us another drink. One for me and one for the lady. Now move!”
He did. Faster than I thought he would and entirely in the wrong direction. Toward me instead of toward the bar. I saw the light shine on the brass on his hand as he took it out from under his apron and rolled away from it, but I didn’t have a chance. I was sitting down and cooped, with that booth table catching me at the knees.
The barman caught me on the cheek with the first lick. I didn’t know where the second one landed until I woke up sitting in the seat of my own car with the Bryce girl alongside me. She had as nice a set of hysterics as I ever saw in my life. And it took me about a minute to decide my jaw wasn’t fractured, and to find that my gun had been slipped out of its clip and hadn’t been put back.
I didn’t argue. I remembered we’d passed a gas station down the road and I drove back there in a hurry . . .
It seemed the best thing to do at the time and in the circumstances.
The boys at the station were not only nice, but curious. I managed to cut the Bryce girl off before she could tell them anything she shouldn’t have. My story was that I’d stopped to pick up a hiker and that the guy had tried to bat me down and take my car, and that I’d shoved him off the running board.
The story went over, but I was praying no highway cop would come by and ask me leading questions. Fooling nice kids like those station boys and fooling a tough cop are two different things. I got the blood off my face and the girl quieted down. As I turned the car back toward town, she said: “Now what do you think? And what are you going to do about it?”
“I think you’ve got something. We were all alone there, and if you’d only been a little dopey they’d have never turned you down for drinks. You were with somebody, weren’t you, and you were sober. And that slugging match came up too fast to be on the up and up.
“And taking my gun wasn’t the right thing to do on just an ordinary little bounce, like I shouldn’t have been given. That’s a public place and they’re supposed to serve the public. So maybe you’ve got something there. Maybe this boyfriend of yours is really missing from the place, after all. Maybe you were right. Maybe you were there.”
“We were there all right. What are you going to do about it?”
The answer was so plain I thought she’d figured it out for herself. I said: “Why, I’m going to stop at the State Police station and tell the boys what happened. So will you. Then I’ll swear to a warrant and we’ll go back there with a bunch of cops while they shake the place down properly.
“I could pick up a cop along the road here, but it’s better to go to headquarters and do it right. We’ve got such a screwy story they’ll probably want to check on me before they’ll go for it.”
“We can’t do that,” Miss Bryce said.
“Why can’t we? If nothing else, I want my gun back.”
Miss Bryce then told me why we couldn’t go to the cops on the thing.
2.
It seemed that she and this missing boy, whose name was George Harper, were engaged to be married, but that they’d had a struggle getting that way. George was a wild kid, and papa and mama Bryce didn’t think he’d do the right thing by their little daughter. He’d been in a couple of jams for drunken driving and his folks once had had to pay him out of a girl jam. Both families had money, or so I gathered.
The girl insisted that going to the cops was out. That I’d have to work it out in some way so there’d be no notoriety. She didn’t want her folks to hear of it.
They’d been in this place the night before. And they hadn’t been supposed to be in any place where liquor was sold because George was on strict probation.
For that matter, he was on probation with the cops as well. He wasn’t supposed to take even one drink and drive his car. That promise was the only thing that had saved his driver’s licence.
They’d got in an argument over the kid’s drinking. The girl had given him back some sort of a class pin that seemed to mean a lot to her and then had walked out on him.
We came to t
he police barracks about then, and I parked just the other side of it while we went over it.
I said: “Look, Miss Bryce! This is all well and good. But if you’re really worried about this boy the cops are the people to tell it to. They’ve got authority and I haven’t. I’m not going to take a chance on losing my licence by busting into that place without a bunch of cops and a search warrant behind me. On top of that I’ve just found out it’s too hard on the face and eyes.”
“How much?” she asked.
Which is what I’d been working for. The more I thought it over, the less I wanted to go to the cops with a screwy story like the one I had . . .
I didn’t go back until ten that night and I didn’t go back alone. I took Whitey Malone with me, and I had a spare gun and a sap as well as Whitey. I figured I shouldn’t take too much of a beating with all three, because Whitey, at one time, had been better than a fair middleweight. He was a little punchy, but he did what he was told to do—and that’s what I wanted. I parked the car behind a bunch of others.
“So you got it?” I said. “I go in first and you drift in behind me. Wherever I park, you park near. If I get in a beef, you know what to do.”
“Sure, Joe,” Whitey answered. “And if nothing happens and you give me the nod I sort of wander around and look the joint over. That right?”
“That’s right. Now you’ve got money and you’re supposed to buy a drink often enough for it to look good, but don’t get tight. If it comes to a brawl I’ll have a tough enough time getting out by myself, without having to dig you out from under a table and carry you on my back.”
“Don’t fret,” he said, sounding hurt, “I don’t get loopy when I’m working.”
I knew a lot better, but I was hoping he’d hold up that night. It was the stuff in bottles that had beaten him in the ring, not the men he’d fought.
So that’s the way we went in, and we found the place about half full.
I headed for the bar the first thing. If the lad who had given me the bounce had told me the truth he and his waiter pal had been off shift for some time. And the only chance I had for trouble would be that one or the other was hanging around. If that was the case I wanted to find it out right at the start, because I wanted to look around a bit and I wanted Whitey to do the same.
But the two barmen who were working then were strangers and I saw no trace of the waiter named Luigi. I took a couple of drinks at the plank, then gave Whitey the nod and sat down at a table where I could watch the dancing. Whitey drooped an eyelid at me and headed toward the back and the men’s lounge.
And he was still back there when the cigarette girl came by, with her cute little tray and her cute little uniform.
“Cigarettes, Mister?”
I’d have bought them anyway, but I was a cinch when I saw the pin that held her uniform blouse together. I’d had the Bryce girl give me a description of the pin she’d given back to the boyfriend, and if this wasn’t the one it was a dead ringer. I paid for the cigarettes with a five-dollar bill.
“If I told you to keep the change, would you get a cut on it?” I asked.
The girl was pretty and she was smart. She nodded her head and said: “That’s the boss just going behind the bar.”
I looked at the boss and saw what she meant. He was little and hard-looking and the type who wouldn’t let a dime out of his hands unless he was getting two dimes in return. And I knew how most cigarette girls have to turn in their tips.
I said: “Look! He’s watching. I’ll take the change back and meet you by the ladies’ lounge. I’ll pass it to you there. If you can’t get rid of it back there you’re not as smart as I think you are.”
“What’s the idea?” she asked, all the time counting me out the change. She wasn’t in any hurry about it. The girl kept smiling and nodding and acting like cigarette girls are supposed to act with customers who are spending money.
I put on the same kind of an act, and said: “You know something it’s worth twenty dollars to me to find out. The five is just so you’ll meet me and let me tell you what it is.”
“Watch when I go back,” she told me. “You come back in about five minutes. I like to talk about things like twenty bucks, Mister.”
I could tell by the way she acted that she figured I was on the make. It made me a little sore to be picked for a masher. But I’d walked into it and I was getting a chance to talk with the girl and that was what I was working for. She made her rounds and went out in the back. I waited the five minutes and went the same way.
The bar went about halfway across the back of the building, and the swinging doors to the kitchen opened at one end of it. Past this door was an open hall with a shaded sign on each side of it. One read: LADIES, the other GENTLEMEN. On the other side of the bar was another hall, but this one was curtained and there was no sign of any kind by it.
I took it for granted it would lead back to dressing-rooms for the floor show that was advertised as being on three times nightly. To be truthful I wasn’t worrying about it much. I was thinking I’d stumbled on a lead to my missing George Harper if I worked it right and got any kind of break.
As I went down my hall I saw the girl waiting for me. It was quite dark, so dark that I could scarcely make out the dim outlines of the girl.
She said: “Okay, hot shot! Spring it fast! I’ve got to get back on the floor. I’m not through work until four.”
I gave her the change from the five and said: “I’m law. I want to know where you got that pin that’s holding your blouse together. I’m willing to pay for the information, and if I don’t get it I’m willing to take you out of here right now. Not at four o’clock, but right now.”
“Tough, eh?” she said, sounding very thoughtful about it.
“Tough enough.”
She proved half smart right then. She said: “You’re private law, if you’re any law at all. No regular cop would pay for what he could get for nothing. Listen. I get through here at four and I ride back with some of the boys in the band. My name’s Mary Ames, and I live on West Seventieth. Can you remember the address?”
I said I could and she gave it to me.
She said: “I can’t talk now. I haven’t got time. And I haven’t got guts enough, either, Mister. You wait for me outside my place. I’ll be there about a quarter to five at the latest. And I’m not doing this for the twenty.”
“What for then?” I asked.
She said: “You wouldn’t understand.”
And with that the door of the men’s lounge opened and two men came out. And after them a third.
The first one was the bartender who’d heaved me out of the place that afternoon. The second was a dapper little man about half the barman’s size. The third was Whitey Malone. With the light from the open door on them they were in a spot where I could get a good look. And I looked even as I ducked so that the barman wouldn’t recognise me.
I even looked long enough to see the little man with him had a scarred neck. The scar ran from just back of his ear down into his collar. The barman and his pal ducked into a door right across the hall from the one they’d come out of—a door that in that shadow I hadn’t even seen. Whitey turned away toward the bar and dance floor.
I said to the girl: “Who was the big guy?”
“Oh!” she said worriedly. “Did he see us?”
I told her that I didn’t think it likely; that we were probably too much in shadow. I didn’t tell her that if that barman had seen me he’d have probably tried to repeat the afternoon performance, because I certainly didn’t have either the time or the wish to go into that right then.
“You be in front of my place at that time,” she said. “Hurry back now. I’ve got to go. Please! You don’t know the chance I’m taking.”
I said again that I’d be waiting for her and went back in the bar and dance place. As soon as I got Whitey’s eye I nodded toward the door and paid my bar check and went out. Whitey followed me in more of a hurry than I thought he’d be
in. I asked him if he’d found out anything.
“Just that you were talking to a girl in that back hall,” he told me. “That’s all.”
“Did you see me?”
“Sure—not plain, but plain enough.”
That gave me something to think about while I was driving back into town.
3.
It wasn’t until I’d been waiting a half-hour too long that I really started to worry. And at half-past five I started back alone. I had a notion to stop for Whitey, but all he was good for was a stand-up and knock-down fight. And I had a hunch it wasn’t going to be anything like that.
I was right. Plenty right. I left my car way this side of the place, before I came to the bridge which was at least a half-mile this side of the tavern. I went up through the brush at the side of the road, too, making the sneak as quiet as I could. But, just the same, I barely put my head out of the bushes, and where I could see the place, when somebody shot at it.
It wasn’t any mistake, either. It wasn’t anybody potting at what he thought was a rabbit with a small-calibre rifle. The weapon was a heavy pistol. And when I ducked my head like a turtle and went back in the brush they tried for a lucky break and emptied the gun just by guess in my general direction.
By the time they got it unloaded I was getting away from there fast. I didn’t have any reason at all to shoot back, even if I did have a dirty idea about it. And that wasn’t enough. I stopped for breath and heard them chasing me.
One of them shouted: “He went this way, Sam.”
The voice was over at the side, so I kept on heading down the general direction of the road, to where I’d left my car. And I pretty near got caught—because they figured I’d go that way and almost cut me off.
If they hadn’t I wouldn’t have found the car. I got to the bridge with them close enough behind so that I knew I’d never make it across without being seen. And I had the choice of making a target of myself or getting wet.
I took the latter. Ducking under the bridge with my gun out, I was ready to pop anybody who came in under there after me. The two of them who were chasing me stood right over me and talked it over.
