Bruno Fischer

by J. Max Gilbert

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “It’s simple. Just don’t tell anybody you’re the mysterious woman.”

  Molly stood up and said: “Let’s have some coffee.”

  I sat on one .of the two maple chairs at the table and watched her as she spooned fresh coffee into a small electric percolator. She placed the percolator on the table, plugged it in, returned to the kitchenette for dishes, and sugar and cream. She looked like too much woman for any man but a big man — big, I thought, in more than size.

  When the table was set, she sat down opposite to me and rested her chin on her fist. “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “I’ve around forty-five dollars on me. I’ll use part of it to get me far enough away so that I won’t be recognized. I’ll get a job under an assumed name.”

  “And then?” she said. “After a month, or two months, or a year?”

  “I don’t know. What’s the use planning if you don’t tell me that you are not going to give me away?”

  The coffee started to percolate. She looked at her wristwatch. She was wearing those double earrings like wedding rings and they tinkled when she lifted her head. “You haven’t been on the level with me.”

  “I’ve tried to be.”

  “No. I’ve had the police handouts on the case and I’ve picked up a little here and there myself, but there are a lot of gaps.”

  “I can’t fill them in,” I said, “but I can let you have what I know.”

  It seemed to be less every time I told it. She sat listening impassively, her gray eyes fixed on my face without blinking.

  When I finished, she said: “That’s what’s wrong. Moon is sure you have the bag. He’d have reason to be sure.”

  “You sound like Lieutenant Woodfinch.”

  “I sound like anybody who listens to you. And who killed Jasper Vital?”

  “Whoever has the bag?”

  “Moon hasn’t it. Larry hasn’t it. Your idea that Crooked Nose got it just before or after tailing you and Larry is too far-fetched. Whom does that leave?”

  “Maybe somebody I never even heard of,” I said. “Esther’s name and address were in the paper. Anybody could have learned that Teacher’s bag had remained in the car. The coffee is getting too strong.”

  “Forty seconds more,” she said, con- suiting her watch. “There’s just one clue — the Tilly’s place Larry mentioned to you. Maybe a beer joint in Brooklyn.”

  “Badley Place,” I corrected her. “I’m not sure it’s Badley, but close to it. He asked me if I knew Tilly in Badley — “ I stopped.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Tilly’s place,” I said slowly. “Was it Tilly’s place in Badley instead of Tilly in Badley Place? So then Badley wouldn’t be a place or a street, but a community. That makes more sense.”

  Molly disconnected the percolator and poured coffee. “I never heard of Badley.”

  I sat staring at the rich brown liquid pouring into my cup. “I’m still wrong. During that ride with Larry I wasn’t in a state of mind to remember exactly what he said. But I remember now that he didn’t mention Tilly and Badley together. There was an interval.” I spoke very slowly, straining to send my memory back. The dull pain in my skull became a throbbing. “He asked me about Tilly. What’s happening there? What’s doing there? Something like that. He was after information. When I told him I’d never heard of Tilly, he didn’t believe me. He said he knew they were working in the Badley place now.”

  I looked up eagerly. “That’s it — working in the Badley place. As if there were a number of places and one of them was in a town called Badley.” Molly went to a tall, narrow bookcase only half-filled with books. “I’ve an old atlas which has an index of every city, and village in the country.” She returned with a wide yellow book. She pushed the sugar bowl out of the way and placed the atlas flat on the table and turned pages and then bent her head.

  “There’s no Badley,” she announced.

  “I was never sure it was Badley. What places begin with B-a-d?”

  “Well, here’s a Bade- and a lot of Badens and Badgers and Badham and Badin and Badmont and . . .”

  “Badmont!” I exclaimed.

  She looked up from the atlas, and for the first time she caught some of my excitement “Are you sure?”

  “Badmont. I’m like a man who’s had amnesia. You mention a familiar name and it all comes back. I’m positive. Where is it?”

  “New Jersey.” She tossed the atlas on the armchair. “I’ve driven through it. It’s in northwestern New Jersey. Copper mines, I think.” She stirred her coffee. “So what? Somebody named Tilly in Badmont. You know more than that. You know somebody named George Moon in Brooklyn.”

  I didn’t reply. I drank my coffee down black without sugar and poured myself a second cup. She was not a gabbling woman; she knew when a man wanted to be alone with his thoughts. She sat watching me as if waiting for something to happen. After a while she rose to clear the table. I lit the last cigarette in my pack and watched the smoke drifting away from my face.

  She came out of the kitchenette and stood beside my chair with her legs apart, like a man. Her hands would have been in her pockets, if she had had pockets. “What are you cooking up, Adam?”

  I stubbed out my cigarette. “I’m going to Badmont tomorrow.”

  Molly nodded as if she had expected that. “And what do you think you’ll do there?”

  “Running away is no good,” I said. “I don’t know how far I’ll have to run or how long, and what will happen to Carol and Esther while I’m gone. I know what it is to be away from them. I had too much of it in the army. I’m going to fight back.”

  “What are you going to fight in Badmont?”

  “Whatever is there,” I said. “Find the bag or learn who has it, or why it’s so valuable, or who killed Jasper Vital, or anything else that , will help me get out from under. Something ought to be there. Larry was almost as interested in Tilly and the Badmont place as in the bag. I think it’s some kind of headquarters, probably Moon’s.”

  “If it’s Moon’s headquarters, where does that get you? You know Moon doesn’t have the bag.”

  I was pulling the empty cigarette pack apart, not looking at Molly, but at what my hands were doing. “Moon hasn’t got it and Larry hasn’t got it, but somebody has it who knew its value, and that Raymond Teacher was carrying it when the car struck him. That means somebody in Moon’s organization or close to it. It’s possible that Vital and Larry weren’t the only ones to decide to doublecross Moon.”

  “You’re groping in the dark, Adam.”

  “What can you do m the dark but grope? I’m leaving town anyway. I’ve nothing to lose by going to Badmont.”

  “Except perhaps your life,” she said dryly.

  “What the hell, there’s always danger in a fight.” I flattened the empty cigarette pack wrapper. “Not so much danger if I just go to Badmont and look around. Moon never saw me. As far as I know, only one member of his gang ever did — Weaver, the guy who came to the showroom this afternoon. There’s Crooked Nose, but I don’t know where he fits in, for or against Moon. The odds are that the Brooklyn people won’t come up to Badmont while I’m there.”

  Molly walked away from me as if she had lost interest in the conversation. She picked up the highball she had left on the end table, but she didn’t raise it to her mouth.

  “Okay, Adam, a mysterious woman stole you from the detective, and they’ll never learn from me who it really was.” She turned to me with the rich, warm smile that had made a hard-boiled desk sergeant simper. “And you might as well spend the night here on the couch.”

  “You’re swell,” I said.

  “No, I’m just a sucker for tall lads with cowlicks.” She put down the glass. “I don’t know how you feel, but I can use some sleep.”

  She brought a sheet and a blanket and a pillow out of the bedroom. When she had arranged them on the couch, she eyed the result dubiously. �
�You’ll never fit on it.”

  “I’m used to cramped beds,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  She went as far as the bedroom door and turned and looked at me a long time with those unblinking gray eyes. She had two faces, one which glowed with the warmest smile on earth and the other frozen and remote. Whenever she stared at me like that, something inside of me squirmed. She was, I thought, a little screwy.

  “Good-night,” she said suddenly and stepped into the bedroom.

  I stripped down to my underwear and put out the light and climbed under the blanket. I lay between the two arms of the couch with knees raised. The glow of a street lamp spread up through the two windows and revealed the phone not ten feet from where I lay. It was close to two o’clock. Esther would still be up, waiting to hear from the police that they found me. And tomorrow she would wait, and the day after. And

  Carol who had known so little of me, except for this last year, I would wait.

  I heard Molly move about in her room. The slit of light under the closed bedroom door vanished and a moment later bedsprings creaked. I closed my eyes. There was no sleep for me, because of the nap or the two cups of coffee or the tumult in my brain.

  I got out of bed and went into the kitchenette and drank water. Then I wanted a cigarette. I had smoked my last one, but Molly would have some around. She hadn’t, not in that room.

  I found myself staring down at the phone. I stuck my finger into the dial hole which would start the connection to my home. Savagely I turned away and felt that I would tear things apart if I didn’t have a cigarette.

  I put on my pants and tapped lightly on the bedroom door. There was no response. I pushed the door open, and by the light which flowed from the living room I saw Molly lying in a maple bed with her bare arms over the cover and her face soft and relaxed in sleep. Her handbag was on the maple dresser, and beside it lay an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes and matches. It was a very small room. Five steps took me across. I reached for the cigarettes.

  “What do you want?” Molly said sharply.

  I spun toward the bed as guilty as a man caught with his hand in somebody else’s pocket. She was sitting up. Her left hand reached sideways to snap on the bedside lamp. Her right hand held a small pearl-handled automatic.

  The depreciating laugh which started in my throat came out as a nervous giggle. “I wanted to borrow a cigarette.” I explained.

  “Yes?” she said.

  She wore a peach nightgown with almost no bodice. An Amazon queen beyond doubt, and the gun was an adequate modern substitute for a spear. She held it pointed at me, competently.

  I said: “Do you always sleep with a gun under your pillow?”

  “I do when there’s a strange man sleeping in my apartment and I’ve lost the key to the bedroom door.”

  I shook my head. “You wouldn’t have any reason to be afraid of me except if I’m somebody who murdered a man a couple of nights ago and stole a valuable bag. If I'm capable of that, there’s no telling what I’m capable of with only an unlocked door between myself and a beautiful woman in bed.”

  She looked down at the gun and at herself, and she spoiled the picture somewhat by pulling the blanket up to her bare shoulders. The gun lowered to her thigh and she smiled. Not her deluxe smile. This one hardly plucked the corners of her mouth. “I think you’re what you pretend to be, a respectable lad who blundered into something too big for him, but I prefer to play safe. You might want to make sure that I wouldn’t be able to tell anybody how you really disappeared to night”

  “But you invited me to spend the night here.”

  “I felt sorry for you,” she said. “And I feel safe enough with a gun. A newspaper reporter sometimes goes places where it is convenient to be armed.”

  “Sorry I disturbed your sleep,” I said stiffly and turned to go.

  “You were supposed to have come for cigarettes,” she called after me. I wasn’t sure that her voice was mocking.

  I returned to the dresser and shook two cigarettes from the pack and went to the door. She sat against the headboard with the cover held to her throat and the gun on her thigh.

  Her gray eyes showed nothing that was behind them.

  “Good-night,” I said and closed the door between us.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  My wristwatch said five minutes to nine. Sun streamers filtered in through dusty windows and lay across the rug and touched my bare feet propped up on the arm of the couch. I 'turned my cheek against the pillow and looked at the phone on its table on the other side of the room. It had waited all night for me.

  The bedroom door was open. I could see the rumpled empty bed. I didn’t hear her in the bathroom. I lay on the couch and looked at the phone.

  A key turned in the lock. Molly Crane came in with a couple of packages. She wore a suit of brown-and-white checks, and many men would have envied those broad shoulders and the tall, erect carriage. But there was nothing mannish about the way her copper-colored jersey sweater molded her fine breasts.

  “I let you sleep while I went down for rolls,” she explained. “How do you feel this morning?”

  I pulled my bare feet out of sight under the blanket. “Physically I’m all right. I’ve been thinking about the wild ideas I had last night.”

  She glanced at the phone as if it could tell her something. “So you phoned your wife?”

  “Not yet, but I’m going to.”

  “That’s up to you.” Molly placed the bag of rolls on the table arid turned back to me with a small package wrapped in blue paper. “I had a look at the-morning papers while I was downstairs. There wasn’t a thing about you. Then I phoned my paper and I learned that a story had gone on the wire a couple of hours ago. I guess the police waited until they’d spent the night hunting for you before they gave anything to the press.”

  “What did they give out?”

  “Witness in Brooklyn murder vanishes. Believed kidnaped. That was what you wanted wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” I turned my face from the phone. “Esther is sitting at home waiting, not knowing if I’m dead or alive. It’s a terrible thing to do to her.”

  She waited for me to go on. When I didn’t, she dropped the small package on my blanket and said: “I bought you a toothbrush and a razor and shaving cream.”

  “You’re swell.”

  Her shoulder-length hair swung with the tossing of her head. “Better save it till you’re sure you mean it. I’ll turn my back till you dress.” She went into the kitchenette.

  I gathered up my clothes and the package, and in my underwear sprinted into the bathroom. A hot shower and .a shave set me up and made me look presentable — or almost so, for the bruise on my cheek had darkened and produced a thuggish effect. It hurt only when I pressed my finger against it.

  When I came out, breakfast was ready. I sat down opposite Molly and drank canned grapefruit juice.

  “I’m going through with it,” I said, putting the glass down.

  “I was sure you would. You made too many arguments last night not to have convinced yourself. We ought to get an early start.”

  “We?” I said.

  She flashed that dazzling smile of hers. “I told you not to thank me for anything I did for you. I was thinking of myself when I brought you here and let you spend the night. I’m a newspaper woman.”

  “It might be dangerous.”

  “It might be for you, but I’ll merely be an outsider looking in. This is my chance to get the whale of a story I’ve been after.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I’ve been around, Adam. I know a little something, about criminals. Possibly I could be of help.”

  “I've taken enough favors from you. This is my job.”

  Her head dipped as she leaned across the table to pour my coffee. “Get it out of your head that I’ve done you any favors, or will. All the help I want is to help myself to an exclusive story.” She sat back and the gold in her eyes sparkled. “You can’t stop me. My car is dow
nstairs; I’ve already taken it out of the garage. I can beat you to Badmont. You can go with me or meet me there.”

  I drank my coffee, thinking it over, and then laughed mildly, “You’re quite a woman.”

  “I’ve been told that.”

  “I don’t only mean physically.”

  “I’ve been told, that too. Would you like another slice of toast?”

  Twenty minutes later we left in her car. She drove all the way.

  We were like the bear climbing over the mountain. When we reached the other side there was always another mountain, or a rib of the same mountain, and between the ribs lay rolling valleys. Occasionally we saw a farmhouse in the distance, but not often. Once we passed a bearded man trudging along the road. For the rest, the valleys: belonged to grazing cows.

  Shortly before noon Molly stopped the car just after we had started another descent. “There it is.”

  I looked up from the New Jersey road-map spread on my knees. Below us houses were scattered along the farther side of the valley.

  I said: “It looks too placid for Brooklynites. We can’t stand a place where there aren’t crowds, and that goes double for Brooklyn gangsters.”

  “They must have reason to want to be where it’s placid.” She drove on.

  My stomach muscles tightened. We were very close now. I folded the map and opened the door of the glove compartment. Her copper-colored alligator handbag, to match her jersey sweater, was in there. I pulled the bag out a little way to shove the map under it.

  The car jolted to a halt. Molly leaned hard against my side, snatched the handbag, and placed it on her left side, between her hip and the door. Then she released the hand brake and shifted the rolling car into high.

  I said: “So that’s where you keep your gun?”

  “You can hardly expect me to wear a, holster.”