Bruno Fischer

by J. Max Gilbert

  The man with the crooked nose was sitting at the counter.

  His compact body lounged indolently on the stool as he ate a slab of that impossible pie with gusto, and stirred his coffee. Tilly leaned against the gas range. Her eyes, as pale as Crooked Nose’s own, were almost hidden in fleshy, narrowed sockets.

  “What’s the matter with that Plymouth you have outside?” she was saying.

  I eased back out of Crooked Nose’s sight if he should turn suddenly.

  “Don’t you want to sell cars?” I heard him say.

  “That’s what I’m in business to do. But I asked you, why do you want to buy another car?”

  “I’m not sure that I want to. All I ask is if you have a good buy. I’m tired of that heap out there. I figure I could trade it in for a newer one.”

  “We don’t take trade-ins.”

  “You don’t? This is the first time' I’ve heard of a place selling cars which didn’t.”

  Behind me Milton said: “Something bothering you?”

  I hadn’t heard him come in through the side door or down the stairs. He pressed the hot corncob against his negligible chin and kept rheumy eyes on my face, waiting patiently for me to find an answer.

  “I was going out to get something from my car,” I said. “Any objection?”

  “You don’t get nothing out of your car standing in the hall.”

  I stepped past him, toward the side door. In the lunchroom I heard Crooked Nose say: “Can’t you even make up a cheese sandwich for me?” Then I was outside. I turned right toward the used car lot.

  There were at least a hundred cars lined up in half a dozen rows. The first few cars were ancient stuff, then they started to get better. There were a number in good-price condition made a year or two before the war, and there were quite a few only a few months off the production lines. Then the good cars petered out and there were scattered wrecks in various stages of being dismantled for parts.

  The huge barn was a good three hundred feet beyond the end of the cars. It had been red once, but years of weathering had turned it scaly pink. I walked toward it. The door was on the right side. When I got closer, I heard voices.

  A man said: “That’s all we do when we finish this one, sit on our tails and wait; How the hell do I know how long? Of all the lousy rotten luck!”

  I had -reached the broad rolling doors and was looking inside. It was a complete repair shop, from two power-driven hoists and arc welders to neat racks on the wall with any kind of wrench you could name and stacks of parts. There was room for a half dozen ' cars without crowding. Two were in there now and a slim kid in goggles was doing a paint spray job on one.

  A second man sat on a keg, watching the kid spray. His long, unshaven chin moved rhythmically. A vague yellow fuzz kept his head from complete baldness. He spat tobacco into an inverted hub cap and said: “Let’s hope it ain’t too long, Beezie.” Then he saw me.

  He leaped off the keg as if shot out of it. The kid cut the spray gun and pushed his goggles up to his forehead.

  “What the hell do you want?” Baldy demanded.

  “I’m just looking around,” I said, trying to sound calm about it.

  “Yeah? Look somewhere else. Don’t you see we’re busy?”

  “Are you?”

  “A wise guy.” Baldy glanced at the kid and shifted his tobacco to the other cheek. “Beat it.”

  The car which was being sprayed was a super deluxe Planet sedan, a little more expensive than my own, but the same model and year. The new coat was blue-gray. From where I stood I couldn’t see anything of the original coat. I went in closer to get a look at the rear fender. '

  “Damn you!” Baldy roared. He snatched a Stilson wrench from a bench.

  I didn’t want to spoil it by making a fight of it. “Take it easy,” I said quickly. “I’m bunking at Tilly’s. I think I’m going to work with you guys.”

  “Yeah?” Baldy’s long jaw jutted. “I ain't heard about it. Scram.”

  I scrammed. When I turned the corner of the barn, I saw Milton hurrying toward me. His oversized overalls flapped around his skinny body.

  “They just kicked me out of the barn,” I told him. He would hear it anyway, and it was best if he got it from me.

  “Rufus sure would,” he said joyously. “You’re lucky you ain’t got a slug in you.”

  We were walking back to the house. “Is Rufus the bald guy?” I asked.

  “Rufus Lamb. Tough as you think you are. The young fella is Beezie. Handy with tools. You keep away from there till George says you’re okay.”

  “I was only looking around.”

  He cocked his head sideways and squinted. “You was only listening in the hall a while ago. You was going to get something from your car, but you didn’t go near your car.”

  “I’ll be blind if that’s what you want,” I said meekly. “In my room you started to tell me about a bag you said Ray Teacher had when he was killed.”

  He snickered. “Pumping me. Tilly says I talk too much. I told her not when I don’t have to. Catch on?”

  “I catch on,” I said dismally.

  I entered the house through the side door and went all the way up the hall and looked into the lunchroom. Crooked Nose was gone.

  The place was empty.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Molly crane sat at one of the two bedroom windows. Her bag stood against the dresser where I had left it; she still wore the brown-and-white checked skirt and the copper-colored jersey sweater. A glass ashtray on the windowsill contained half a dozen cigarette butts. She must have been sitting at that window since I had left, and had watched me go across the car lot to the barn and return with Milton. A fresh cigarette dropped from the corner of her mouth.

  She didn’t turn her head when I entered. I walked across the bedroom to her. “Crooked Nose was downstairs,” I said.

  The news did not create a sensation. “Did he see you?”

  “No. He was having pie and coffee, and talking to Tilly. I’m sure they’re strangers to each other. Where can he fit in?”

  “I can’t imagine,” she muttered to the window.

  “He’s not a cop. Lieutenant Woodfinch didn’t know him, and he didn’t come forward and corroborate my story that Larry had been taking me to Coney Island. He wasn’t working with Jasper Vital and Larry. He kept out of their sight and then tailed Larry in his own car when Larry could have used help to take me to Coney Island. He isn’t in Moon’s organization if he comes here as a stranger. What does that leave?”

  “A lone wolf after the bag.”

  “But if he’s here for the bag, he’s about the only one who’s pretty sure that I haven’t got it. What makes him sure?”

  Molly stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and immediately lit another. She didn’t seem to want to talk or do anything but sit there.

  I leaned the backs of my thighs against the windowsill and looked down at her. “What’s the matter, Molly?”

  “I’m scared, Adam.” She put a strained smile to her, mouth. “It got me when I realized that Tilly would let us stay here. I guess I’m not, as brave as I thought.”

  I nodded. “I know how you feel. But I’ve been scared for so long, since Monday evening, that a crust has formed over my fear. It’s like the first couple of minutes shells come flying at you. After that you don’t stop being afraid, but you stop giving a damn. Or you think you stop, and then suddenly you go to pieces.”

  “I won’t go to pieces.” She leaned forward and took my hand and held it against her cheek. “Now you know why I acted so rotten to you. It was sheer nerves. I think I’ve got over it.” My hand tingled against the soft warmth of her cheek and palm. Gently I pulled it away from her and used it to reach for the pack of cigarettes on the windowsill. I told her what I had found in the car lot and in the barn.

  “There’s nothing exactly wrong,” I said. “This place seems out-of-the-way for a used-car lot, but if it’s the only one for a good many miles and offers
bargains it might pay. The way those two men in the barn acted when I looked in doesn’t mean much. Rufus Lamb could be one of those irritable men who doesn’t like to be gawked at. The practically new Planet which was being repainted could have been in an accident. The fact is that there’s almost nothing to go on.”

  “Except that the people who run the car-lot are crooks,” Molly said. “Maybe they do need a mechanic, but you’ll get the job only if you convince them that, you’re also a crook.”

  “The car-lot could be a cover for something else.”

  “Maybe.” She didn’t appear to be greatly interested. She was back in the dumps.

  I went to the bathroom and washed up. Through the small bathroom window I could look down to the front of the building; A two-door ’42 Plymouth was parked beside Molly’s coupe. Crooked Nose had told Tilly he had a Plymouth.

  I returned to the bedroom. Molly hadn’t stirred.

  I said: “I’ve got to have your gun. Crooked Nose knows me by sight. There’s no telling what he’ll do or tell the others if he catches sight of me.”

  The back of her head shook. “I need it more than you do. My fists aren’t good enough to protect me. Yours are.” Her alligator bag was on the dresser. I went to it and through the mirror I saw her looking at me. She didn’t say anything. She waited with the cigarette dangling from her mouth and smoke flowing across her face.

  “You want that gun in case you have to use it against me,” I said tightly. “Like last night in your apartment. That’s another thing that’s scaring you, having to share a room with a man who might be a killer.”

  “I’m keeping the gun, Adam “ She blew a thin line of smoke toward me. “Don’t waste your time looking in the handbag. I’m not that stupid.”

  I said angrily: “I guess I’ve no right to ask anything of you. You’re after your story and to hell with me. That’s all right. But may I ask a small favor? May I borrow your car?”

  “What for?”

  “I want to see if I can learn anything in Badmont. Want to come?”

  “No,” she said tiredly. “The car keys are in my jacket.”

  The jacket was on the bed where she had tossed it. I took the keys from the pocket. When I got outside the house, the Plymouth was gone. I doubted that Crooked Nose had left for good.

  There was a drugstore in Badmont which had a pretty good lunch counter and an apple-cheeked girl behind it. I had a real cup of coffee and a Western sandwich on soft roll.

  A phone booth stared at me through the broad mirror behind the counter. In a house in Brooklyn, Esther was waiting in numb terror for the phone to ring — to hear my voice tell her that I was safe or that I had been tortured into surrendering the bag and to get it from a certain place where I had hidden it and take it to another place. Or the voice might be that of the kidnaper demanding the bag as the price of my return, or of a policeman informing her that I had been found dead. She couldn't know which it would be. Perhaps the worst of all would be nothing at all happening, nothing but waiting.

  And Carol was waiting with her. She was old enough to understand, to share the private hell with her mother.

  I tore my eyes from the accusing reflection of the phone. There were New York City newspapers on a wall rack. I had to look at them. Molly had told me there was nothing in the morning papers, and there wasn’t. The evening papers were yesterday’s.

  I ordered another cup of coffee and started a conversation. The girl had never heard of Tilly's place. I drank the coffee quickly, careful not to look at the phone in the mirror.

  Next door there was a clothing store where I bought a white shirt and socks and handkerchiefs and underwear. The proprietor said that once, driving down from Middletown, he had stopped off at Tilly’s for a bite. He had found it an excellent place to avoid in the future. He remembered that there was a used-car lot, but he had never heard anything about it.

  I crossed the road to a filling station. A man who was fixing a flat tire said: “You mean that place over in York State? Don’t know much about ’em. .They’re nice folks though. Last spring I needed a transmission for a ’37 Ford 60. Couldn’t get it nowhere, but that bald man there — his name is Lamb — he pulled a transmission out of a Ford 60 he had on the lot and let me have it dirt cheap. If you’re thinking of buying a used-car there, I reckon they’re as honest as used-car dealers come.”

  I walked five hundred feet to another filling station. A man, tilted back in a chair against the show window, said: “Sure they sell their cars there. What d’you think they’re in business for? But they’re funny about trade-ins. What they want are straight cash transactions. Who doesn’t, but how can you run a car business that way? If they take a trade-in for a good car, it’s got to be a jalopy. Abel Wanderson had his eyes on a sweet ’46 Buick that had only three thousand miles, but they wouldn’t do business because he had a ’42 Dodge in very good condition to trade. And they won’t buy cars at all. I had a couple here I wanted to make a quick turnover on, but it was no soap with them. But they’ll sell and their prices are fair enough.”

  “Do they run any other business at that place?”

  “Well, there’s a lunchroom and a tourist house. If you ask me, I don’t see how they make a living. Not many people live in the area and even in the summer that’s not a busy road. Well, I guess they know what they’re doing.”

  I returned to the coupe which was parked in front of the drugstore. Across the street, at the first filling station I had stopped at, a convertible with the top down stood between the two pump islands. The kid behind the 1 wheel had his hair slicked down and his hands and face washed and wore a natty tweed loafer jacket — a cleaned up version of the kid named Beezie from Tilly’s place. He wasn’t buying gas. He was speaking to the man who had told me about the Ford transmission he had got from Rufus Lamb.

  I was sure that I was the topic of their conversation. They kept glancing in my direction as they spoke. Once Beezie looked fully at me and though he saw me looking at him, he made no gesture of greeting. He had tailed me to Badmont and was now checking up on what I’d been doing. That was a bad sign.

  I made time back to Tilly’s place.

  Tilly and Rufus were in the lunchroom. They gave me deadpan nods when I entered and I nodded back the same way and went upstairs. Molly wasn’t in our room. I went out to the t hall and heard a car pull up. I continued on to the bathroom and looked out of the window. Beezie was getting out of his car. He moved like a man with urgent news that couldn’t wait. He must have burned up the road to have arrived so close behind me.

  My throat was parched. I took a drink of water from the bathroom tap and returned to the hall. I could hear them talking in the lunchroom, but they kept their voices too low for me to catch words. I started down the stairs, changed my mind, walked noiselessly back to the door, closed the door. I reached, for the key, but there was none.

  Molly’s handbag was on the dresser.

  I opened it. There were the usual cosmetics, keys, handkerchief, and a fountain pen and the wallet was well-filled. But no gun.

  I laid her airplane bag on the bed and rummaged through it. I found blue silk sleeping pajamas with little white polka dots and a robe to match, underwear and slippers, but no gun. I felt the pillows. I searched the dresser and the closet. Then there was nowhere else to look.

  Where was Molly?

  I shook a cigarette out of a pack on the dresser and without lighting it went out to the hall. The voices were still in the lunchroom. From the downstairs hall I would be able to listen unseen to whatever they were saying, and if it became necessary I could slip out through the side door.

  I was halfway down the stairs when Rufus Lamb and Beezie appeared at the foot of the stairs. Rufus had a gun in his hand. “Come on down, mug,” he said.

  Molly hadn’t told me how I could use my fists when a man was pointing a gun at me. When I reached the foot of the stairs, I saw that Tilly and Milton were also in the hall. All the faces were grim, remorseless.


  “What’s this?” I demanded. ,

  Nobody would answer me. Rufus had stepped behind me; I felt his gun against my spine. Beezie ran his hands over my body. I stood with the unlit cigarette between cold lips and a matchbook in one hand.

  “He’s clean,” Beezie announced.

  I was taken into a downstairs room I had never been in before.

  It was larger than the lunchroom and everything in it was new. A red broad loom rug gave the place warmth. A brown leather couch and two brown leather chairs were grouped about a fireplace. Newspapers and magazines were scattered like in any private^ home. A very large round table had plenty of tubular chairs around it. An oak cabinet radio looked as if it had just come from the factory. It was a cozy room, a sitting and lounging and probably eating room.

  I walked away from Rufus Lamb’s gun as far as the table and turned. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Tilly polished her elaborate ring against her vast bosom. “So you came here for a job, but you didn’t bring a thing to change into,” she sneered. “You had to go to Badmont to buy clean shirts and underwear.”

  “Was that all ? My stomach muscles loosened. “We brought a bag. Those were just some extras I needed.”

  “I looked in the bag,” Tilly said. “A few woman’s things, very few, but nothing a man can wear.”

  “I forgot my bag. I remembered when I was in the car, but didn’t bother to go back. Anyway, what’s the difference?”

  “The hell with that!” Rufus Lamb said. The gun was held lightly along his thigh. He stuck out his long jaw. “What were you asking questions about us for .in Badmont? Beezie shadowed you. Them questions sound like spy work to me.”

  I put disgust into my voice. “I've a right to know what I’m getting into.” “But you don’t answer questions.” Tilly said.

  Rufus brought up his gun a little. “You’ll answer ’em now. Start talking about yourself. How you knew Ray Teacher and what your record is and where you’ve been and so on.”