by Jerry eBooks
“Sure, that’s fine.” He was smiling again. “And by the way, I fixed our snooping friend tonight. I don’t think he’ll bother you any more.”
“Mark Brewster? What did you do to him?” Her voice sounded high, breathless.
“Well, what do you care?” he said. “I told him off, but good. Look, kid, don’t worry about it any more. Here’s something to make you happy: I got a surprise for you.”
“For me?”
“Yeah, and you can just stew about it till I get there.” He laughed. “I’ve been told women love surprises.”
“Barny, I’ve got to go now. I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah. Good-by.”
He sat in the booth for a moment, frowning at his cigar. Shrugging, he left the drugstore and walked over to a bar on Locust Street to kill the next two hours.
He ordered a beer and a shot of whisky, his mood tranquil once more. The money was safe with Linda, and there was more under the hub-plate of his car. Espizito wasn’t the problem he’d figured that would be, and the newspaper snoop wasn’t going to cause any trouble. He wondered if Dave Fiest’s body had been claimed, and that thought brought a frown to his face. Why the hell should he care!
For several moments he stared at the collar on his beer, and then, with the curious feeling that he was borrowing trouble, he walked to the telephone booth in the rear of the bar and called the morgue.
“This is Neelan from Sixty-five,” he told the attendant who answered. “I’m winding up a report on Dave Fiest. Who claimed the body?”
“Just a minute.” The attendant was back in less than that time. “His mother claimed it last night. He’s on his way back to Idaho with her now, I guess.”
“Idaho,” Neelan said. “That’s a hell of a place for Fiest to come from.”
“Well, that’s where his mother lives. She flew in after we notified the cops out there.”
“She flew in all the way from Idaho, eh?” Neelan didn’t understand why this struck him as amazing. “What sort of woman was his mother?”
“Just a woman, I guess. Oldish, about sixty, I’d say.”
“Did she know he was a gambler?”
“How would I know that? Look, Neelan, I got a lot of work here tonight. We got two unidentified from the river, and they’re a mess.”
“You answer my questions,” Neelan said, suddenly furious. “You should have found out if his old lady knew he was a gambler.”
THE attendant’s voice was aggrieved. “Well, lemme think. Yeah, I remember she said something about it now. She said that was his trouble, that he was always trying to outsmart people. Even at home.”
“She did, eh? She said he was always trying to outsmart people, eh?”
“Yeah, something like that. Say, what do you care one way or the other, Neelan?”
“I don’t,” Neelan said. “You understand, I don’t.”
“Well, anything else?”
“No, that’s all.” He hung up and returned to the bar. He didn’t know why he was thinking about Dave Fiest with his smart clothes and suede shoes riding in a cold and lonely box across the plains of the Middle West. He could imagine the inside of the baggage car, the bored and sleepy guards, and the wail of the whistle as the train passed through tiny towns in the night. Smiling, he finished his beer. That’s what happened to smart guys, he thought, and nodded to the bartender for another drink . . .
Linda came into the circular bar at the Simba promptly at three. She seemed tired and nervous. They didn’t say much to each other until they were in the car.
Then he said: “Head still bothering you?”
“Yes. It’s like nothing human.”
“Maybe some food would help. How about it? A good steak, a couple of drinks? That might do the trick.”
“No, I’m sorry, Barny. I’d like to go right home.”
“Okay,” he said, disappointed.
They drove the short distance to her apartment in silence, and when he pulled up to a stop, she opened the door on her side almost before the car stopped moving.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “You forgot about the surprise.”
“Barny, couldn’t it wait until I feel better?”
“Hell, kid, it won’t take a minute,” he said. He took her slim arm, and she slid back onto the seat. “You’re shaking like a leaf,” he said, concerned. “You’re coming down with a bad cold, I’ll bet.”
“Maybe that’s it.”
He took the watch-case from his pocket and dropped it in her lap. “That won’t help a cold, but it won’t hurt it either,” he said, smiling. “Go ahead, open it. It’s for you.”
She opened the case and removed the watch with gentle fingers. “It’s very lovely,” she said after a moment.
“Put it on. Here let me help you.”
“No, Barny, I couldn’t accept it,” she said quickly. “Please understand. It—it’s just too lovely.”
“I thought you’d like it,” Neelan said. He couldn’t understand her, and he was baffled and annoyed. “I thought you’d like a pretty watch.”
“It was nice of you to think of me, Barny, but I can’t take it.”
She put it back in the case and placed the case between them on the seat. “I have to go in now.” She smiled faintly. “I’ve spoiled your surprise, haven’t I?” That made him feel better. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “If you can’t take it, you can’t take it. How about tomorrow afternoon? It’s my day off, and we could take a drive.”
She smiled at him and slipped out of the car. “Call me and we’ll see how I feel,” she said. “Good night, Barny.”
“Good night.”
Neelan put the car in gear and drove slowly down the block. He made a right turn at the first intersection, then two more rights brought him back to Linda’s street. There was a parking place about twenty yards from her apartment, and he nosed into it and turned off his motor and lights.
HE didn’t know why he’d come back: but Linda had behaved oddly, and he was worried. Lighting a cigar, he sat smoking in the darkness and watching the lights in her front-room windows . . .
Twenty minutes later a cab pulled up before her doorway. Neelan straightened up as a tall young man got out, paid off the driver, and went quickly up the steps of her apartment.
Neelan rolled the cigar around his lips, and one of his big hands tightened on the steering wheel until the knuckles whitened.
It was Mark Brewster who had gone into her apartment. Neelan settled back again and sighed heavily and watched the light in her windows with cold shining eyes.
Chapter Twelve
THEY HAD A DRINK IN THE SOFTLY LIGHTED LIVING-room and didn’t talk about Neelan for a moment. Outside, a soft misting rain had begun to fall, and the street and neighborhood was silent.
Finally Mark said: “When did he leave?”
“About half an hour ago. I watched him drive off, just a few minutes before you called.” Linda sat in a corner of the couch, and her face was lovely in the shadows of a lamp behind her head.
Mark told her about his conversation with Lieutenant Ramussen, and of Neelan’s attack on him at the Division.
“He said he’d fixed you,” Linda said. “I didn’t know what he meant at first.” She glanced at her glass. “I’m so scared, Mark. I just can’t help it.”
“Well, let’s forget him for a while, shall we?” he said, attempting a cheerful smile. “We can’t let him monopolize our entire lives.”
“I suppose not. May I fix your drink?”
“That’s an excellent idea.”
When she returned with his drink they chatted generally for a while; and then, somewhat to his surprise, he found himself talking about the novel he was writing. It wasn’t one of his normal topics, since he had rather an exaggerated dread of turning into a talking writer, long on conversation and short on production. But he had been upset and off-balance the last two days, and there was a release now in talking about something that was, in a sense,
personal and impersonal at the same time.
“Writing about war is difficult, I find, because all the clichés about it are true,” he said. “It’s a dull flat business for everyone involved ninety-nine per cent of the time; and if you show that side of it faithfully, you make the point, all right, but are equally boring in the process.” He smiled at her over his drink. “Or am I being sufficiently boring?”
“No, you’re doing just fine,” she said. “May I ask the one question one is never supposed to ask: What’s your book about?”
He told her something about the book, and he found somewhat to his amusement that he was working very hard to make it sound honest and significant.
When he was leaving, he realized that he was in a fine mood. Two drinks couldn’t have done that, he knew.
“I’m glad I stopped by,” he said. “This book is good therapy for our troubles, I guess.”
“I think it’s more than that,” she said. “I think it’s going to be fine, Mark.”
They stood together at the door a moment, an odd awkwardness between them, and then she smiled at him and patted his arm in a curiously intimate gesture.
“I’m glad too that you stopped by, Mark,” she said.
She opened the door then and let him out, and he went down the steps with a smile on his lips. It was raining harder, he saw, so he turned up his coat collar and walked rapidly toward the nearest intersection. From the middle of the block a car pulled away from the curb and came slowly toward him along the street. It was a black sedan traveling without lights.
Mark stopped at the corner and saw that he had plenty of time to cross the street ahead of the approaching car; and glancing in the other direction, he stepped off the curb.
He heard the sudden swelling roar of the motor and the hissing noise of wet tires on the pavement, before the headlights caught him in their blinding brilliance. Mark wheeled, instinctively aware of danger, and saw the car hurtling at him, its motor whining in second gear.
The impact of the fender against his thigh knocked him sprawling into the gutter. His forward dive, automatic, unthinking, had barely got him clear of the car.
Mark lay still, his cheek pressed flat against the wet cement, and he could feel the water in the gutter damning up slightly in back of his left foot. The car had stopped ten or fifteen yards down the street; and the instinct that had first warned him of danger now forced him to lie still with his eyes closed.
He heard footsteps coming toward him, heavy squishing footsteps that stopped near his head. For a moment the only sound he could hear in the silence of the night was the gentle fall of the rain and the thudding of his own heart; then he heard a low laugh, and again the footsteps sounded, retreating now. An instant later the motor speeded up, and he heard the car roar off down the street.
He crawled painfully to his knees and watched its lading taillights, hoping to catch the license number when the car went past a street-lamp; but the rain was too heavy, and all he saw was the bright orange flash of a Pennsylvania plate.
He felt along his left thigh and winced. Nothing seemed to be broken, but a king-sized bruise was in the making. He thought of returning to Linda’s to call the police, but decided it would be pretty pointless to call the police, anyway.
Mark knew it had been Neelan behind the wheel of that car. He couldn’t prove it, of course; but he would bet his life on it. And he might have to, he thought bitterly, as he turned and limped slowly toward Chestnut Street, where he knew he would find a cab . . .
Neelan drove back to his rooming-house in a bitter mood. He was at a loss to understand what he’d done; and that added a frustrating confusion to his anger. Something had caught hold of him when he’d seen Brewster leave Linda’s apartment . . .
She wasn’t for him, he knew. He was attempting to use her as counter-balance against his gray and empty life, as a substitute for the cheapness and meanness of his background, his job, his friends. And it couldn’t work out that way . . . When he realized that, he fell asleep.
NEXT morning he woke at eleven, nervous and irritable, his mouth sour, his head aching intolerably. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor and looked about the drab room with distaste. He showered and shaved and dressed, drove to the nearest drugstore and went into the telephone booth. He could have been wrong about Linda. Mark Brewster might have called on her, unwanted, unexpected; and she had probably had been too polite to tell him to clear out. That could have been it, he thought. Cheered by this rationalization, he dropped his nickel and dialed her number.
Her voice when she answered was tired.
“This is Barny,” he said. “How’s the head?”
“Oh, hello. It’s better, I think.”
“Fine. How about making a day of it? I’m off until tomorrow night, you know.”
“Barny, I’m sorry, but I can’t.” She spoke rapidly. “I—we’ve got a rehearsal this afternoon. Something’s wrong with the timing on the show, and Bill wants to run through it to see where it’s off.”
“I get it,” Barny said.
“It—it’s quite a nuisance.”
“Yeah, I know. Came up pretty sudden, didn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, it did.”
He wanted to ask her if she’d gone straight to bed after he’d dropped her off the night before; or if she’d seen Mark Brewster again. But he couldn’t have stood it if she lied to him, and so he didn’t ask.
“Well, all right, kid, I’ll see you,” he said, and rang off without saying good-by.
Outside the sun was shining and wind sang clearly in the trees. Kids from the nearby school ran along the streets shouting to each other and to the policeman at the intersection.
Neelan climbed in behind the wheel of his car, and drove slowly along the block with no destination in mind. He drove for half an hour through the middle-class residential streets of the city. There was nowhere he wanted to go, nothing he wanted to do, except to see Linda, and that was impossible.
He drove aimlessly for a few more minutes and then headed for a taproom far out in the west section of the city. The man who owned the place was a patrolman at the Ninety-second District. His brother was a city fireman, who helped out when Al was on duty. Neelan had spent a lot of time there in the past. It was a homey, relaxed joint, with dark wooden booths, bowling machines, and a juke box.
Neelan went in and ordered whisky with a beer and talked for a while; then Al went down the bar to serve another customer.
Neelan finished his drink, feeling slightly relaxed, and walked to a telephone booth. He called a woman he knew, a waitress who worked a night shift, and after enduring her good-natured complaints at being waked in the middle of the day, asked her to meet him at Al’s that afternoon.
She laughed and said all right.
Chapter Thirteen
IT WAS TEN MINUTES UNTIL LINDA’S NEXT SHOW when the door of her dressing-room opened and two large men sauntered in casually. One of them closed the door and leaned his great bulk against it; the other put both hands on his hips and regarded her with a cheerful smile.
“Miss Linda Wade, I guess,” he said.
She had turned from her dressing-table, still holding a lipstick. “Who are you—what do you want?”
The taller man, the one with the incredible shoulders and thick black hair, continued to grin at her. His companion, a huge squat man with badly battered features, nodded at her approvingly.
“You got a nice direct personality. Miss Wade,” he said. She looked from one man to the other, aware that her hands were trembling. “Who are you?” she said.
“We’re friends of a friend,” the bigger man said, his grin widening. “That makes us all friends, so to speak.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“We don’t want to mystify you, Miss Wade. Do tee, Hymie?”
The man at the door shook his round head solemnly. “Not a bit. With a direct personality, we should be direct, I say.”
“Right, Miss Wade; we
’re friends, in a manner of speaking, with Barny Neelan. You know the name, I guess?”
“Yes, I know him,” she said; she rose and walked to the door. “Please get out of my way. I’ve got a show to do. I have nothing to say to you about Barny Neelan or anything else.”
“Sure, sure,” Hymie said, in the soothing voice one might use with a child. “First, though, we got a few questions to ask you about our mutual friend.”
“Let me out of here,” she said angrily.
The bigger man lifted her gently back to a chair with the same ease that he would have handled a child’s doll. “Neelan is spending a lot of money on you?” he said, gazing down at her and smiling.
“He give you anything to keep for him?” Hymie asked. “Some stuff in a delicate shade of green maybe, with historical-type pictures on it?”
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Hymie said with great earnestness. “We want to fill in everybody, so there won’t be any mystery any more. Everybody should have all the facts, I figure. That way, everybody can do what’s best to keep out of trouble. You think I got a good point?”
“If you don’t let me out of here, I’ll start screaming.” Linda stood up defiantly. “I’m awfully good at screaming.”
Hymie looked disappointed. “We were hoping this would be a friendly visit, Miss Wade. We don’t want anybody to get hurt. Hurt feelings, I mean. But that creep you hang around with is going to get lots of people hurt. Miss Wade. Maybe even you.”
THERE was a knock on the door: Hymie stepped aside. Jim Evans stuck his head in, and said: “You’re on. Linda.” Then he saw Hymie and Laddy, and his eyes became wary. “What’s up, boys?”
Both men smiled at him. “Nothing much,” Hymie said. “We just came by to tell Miss Wade we liked her act.”
“That’s right,” Laddy said. “We’re stage-door Johnnies, in a manner of speaking.”
“Oh, I see.” Jim Evans smiled quickly. “Well, I’ll bet Linda’s glad you like the show. How about having a drink with me, boys?”
