Max’s sigh of relief came right up from his shoes, was expressed through his wallet. He went back to his apartment by bus. He had Gruber dig up a cot and install it in his small living room. In the meantime he went in, clicked on the bedside lamp and looked at the girl. She was breathing heavily and she hadn’t changed position.
Max tipped Gruber, turned out the light and lay down on the cot, an ashtray on his stomach. He watched the pattern of the car lights across the ceiling for a time. Then he butted the cigarette, rolled over and was immediately asleep. He dreamed of someone coming up the stairs and it woke him up. He went into the bedroom, dug under the shirts, found the Jap automatic. Back in the living room, he went near the window and, in the glow of the streetlights, he jacked a slug into the chamber, clicked the safety on. With it under his pillow, he slept better.
When the knock sounded on his door, he opened his eyes, squinting against the morning sun. His watch said eight-thirty. He shucked on his robe, transferred the gun to the pocket of his robe and opened the door.
Dr. Morrison said, “How did she sleep?”
“Fine, as far as I know. Come take a look.” He led the doctor into her room.
Marylen had changed position and her breathing was much softer. When Morrison lifted her wrist to take her pulse, she opened her eyes. She looked around the room, her puzzlement showing on her face. Bewilderment began to be mixed with fear. Behind Morrison, Max put his finger to his lips and made exaggerated gestures for her to be quiet. She saw him and her eyes widened.
“Don’t sit up, please,” Morrison said. He opened his bag, took out a little thing like a flashlight. He held her eyelid back, shone the thin beam into her eye. Then he did the same with the other eye. He gently touched her behind the ear.
“Hurt?” he asked.
“Yes, Doctor,” she said in a small voice.
Morrison straightened up. “Try to rest, today. You took a bad beating. I’ll leave these pills. One every three hours, please.”
Max went with him to the door. Morrison said, “She’s tougher than she looks. Sturdy girl. Keep her quiet today.”
Max paid him and hurried back to the bedroom. Marylen looked up at him.
“You told me to be still. Why? Who are you? Was it a train wreck?”
“Train wreck!”
She sat up, holding the covers up around her throat. “Yes. Last night I went to sleep in the berth. Who are you? Where are we?”
Max sat down heavily on the straight chair and said, “Concussion.”
“What?”
“Marylen, you have a concussion. Or had one. I am—or used to be—a reporter. I know how concussions work. They kick your memory back to a time before the accident.”
“Where’s Jerry?” she said, her voice rising in fear. “Is he hurt?”
Max held up his big hand. “Now shut up a minute. Let me start from the beginning. My name is Max Raffidy. I was sitting in a bar.”
Slowly he went through it, with her wide eyes fastened on him. He left out her description of Jerry doubling over and falling to the concrete floor. He left out his own guesses about Jerry. But he did report the phone call to Jerry’s apartment.
When he was quite through she said, “And I thought you were Jerry?”
“I was beginning to think that was my name.”
She looked at him speculatively. “You are a little like him. But not much. Mr. Raffidy, this must have been very difficult for you. I’m very grateful to you. I’ll—”
“What? Call Jerry? He’s out of town. You haven’t got a dime and you’ve got only the clothes I found you in. You haven’t even got a lipstick and you don’t know a soul in town. You came here, met Jerry, and somehow you two got separated and you were beaten up.”
“I can’t stay here, though!”
“Marylen, I’m no hero. I’m a reporter out of a job. Jobs are tight in this town right now. They won’t hire me cold, but if I can walk in with a fat yarn, an exclusive, then I stand a chance.”
Her lips were tight and she had a frightened look. “But—you sound as though something awful might have happened to Jerry!”
“I’m no alarmist, Marylen. But it could happen.”
“I could go right to his apartment and talk to the man you talked to over the phone.”
“I found out last night that some unsavory types are hunting for you, baby.”
She sank back against the pillow. She looked blindly at the ceiling and said, “But I don’t understand!”
“How did you meet this Jerry?”
“A year ago I went to a party with one of the girls who worked in the same office. I wouldn’t have gone, but I was bored. I don’t care for her. She’s too loud. It was a cocktail party at a hotel. I met Jerry there. He’s—very nice. He travels around, selling machinery and seeing that it’s installed properly. He acted very—well, worldly, but he was funny and sweet and shy with me.”
“He came down to see you?”
“Five times. The last time he proposed. He said he had certain details to clean up, business details. He said that we’d go out to the West Coast and that he’d have a little capital to start a business of his own with. He would come down and get me and we’d be married and go West together. Then he phoned me. He sounded nervous, said things weren’t working quite right. He wanted me to come up here. I agreed. He wanted to send me money for the trip, but I said I had enough. He always seems to have plenty of money.”
It was beginning to shape a bit more clearly. Max thought for a while and then said, “Trust me, Marylen. You stay right here. I’ll whip up some breakfast for you. Then I’m going to go to the place where Jerry worked. I’ll see what I can find out …” As she sipped her coffee, he said, “This is a gun, baby. To fire it, you shove this little gimmick down and then pull on the trigger. Every time you pull it will fire, up to eight times.”
“But I don’t—”
“Somebody beat you up, honey, and they might want to try again. If someone knocks on the door, keep quiet. If they try to force the door, let them know you are in here with a gun. If they keep it up, shoot at the door. Okay?”
“If you say so, Max.”
“That’s what I want to hear.”
She called, just as he reached the door, “Please get me an orangy shade of lipstick and a hairbrush and toothbrush and toothpaste.”
The waiting room was paneled in honey-blond wood, with the combination receptionist-switchboard operator behind a square glass window. Latest magazines were on the low tables. Framed pictures on the wall were color photographs of snow scenes.
The girl said, “Mr. Walch will see you now, Mr. Raffidy.”
He went to the door. She touched the release and he pushed it open. Walch had the first office on the left.
He met Max at the doorway. He said, “Max, I was damn sorry to hear about the Chronicle. Tough break, fella. Maybe I can give you a note to a friend of mine.”
“No, Bill. Thanks anyway. This is something else.”
Bill slapped him on the shoulder. “Sit down, boy. Sit down.” Walch went behind the desk, sat down, nibbled the end of a cigar and spat in the general direction of the wastebasket.
Max said, “This is pretty delicate, Bill. A couple of days ago I landed a job fronting for a group of citizens who want to open up a club well outside the city. I contacted a man named Norma. I was told he could get me the stuff my clients want for their club. I talked with Norma about an order of about a hundred thousand. He wanted a guarantee of good faith. I went back to my people and got fifteen hundred cash. Naturally I couldn’t expect a receipt. Norma said we had to have a conference about a percentage cut after he talked to his principals. I was to meet him last night at five. He didn’t show. I called his apartment.”
Walch broke in. “I wondered who made that call.”
“It was your boy Max. Now he’s out of town and I’m in a spot. My clients want to hold off from making any definite commitment for a month or two. Lease trouble on the pr
operty they want. They want the fifteen hundred back. I promised it today. I look pretty sick, Bill. I’ve been around enough to know that you people can’t use written records. So you have to go along on faith. What do I do next? I’d hate like hell to spread the word that your outfit had rattled me for a lousy fifteen hundred.”
Bill Walch inspected the end of his cigar. For a moment his face was absolutely blank. He said softly, “I’d hate to think you’d gotten yourself a job with another paper, Max. I’d hate to think this was something fancy.”
“How fancy can I get? That’s your chance, the same way I took a chance with your boy named Norma.”
Bill suddenly smiled, a warm and hearty smile. “We can straighten this out fast, Max, boy. I’m expecting a call from Jerry any minute. When it comes in, I’ll ask him and we’ll soon know. Okay?”
With sinking heart and with an attempt to match Bill’s smile, Max said heartily, “That’ll be fine. Fine!”
Within a few seconds the phone rang. Bill said, “Be good and go back out into the waiting room, will you? This is pretty confidential. Big out-of-town deal.”
On wooden legs Max went to the waiting room. He had the feeling that the gun had been left in the wrong hands. It would feel splendid in his pocket.
It was five minutes before Bill Walch appeared. He came into the waiting room with a wide smile and a long white envelope, saying, “It checked out, Max. Here’s your deposit. Come back and see us when your people get their lease attended to. Tell them that for strictly hands off by the county cops as well as the state boys, we’ll take ten percent of the gross, based on a monthly audit.”
Max went through the motions like a large smiling mechanical toy. He mumbled words of farewell, backed to the door, found the knob, went on down the corridor to the elevators. As he waited for the bronze arrow to swing up to the right floor, he peeked into the envelope. A flat sheaf of bills. All hundreds. Fifteen of them. He slipped the money out of the envelope, folded it once and slid it into his bill clip, behind a few tired fives and ones.
Down to the street he looked both ways, suddenly wary. It had seemed almost too easy. The tough part was to come—telling Marylen that the way Walch handed over the money was conclusive proof that her sweetie was no longer a matter of interest to the census taker.
He had worked on some fine fat stories, and in the process the Chronicle had chewed lightly on the frayed edge of the Concord organization, on the underlings, on the not-too-smart. But never had a lead opened so nicely. And there was no paper to back him. No organization. It was too early in the game to ring in the law. Yet he grinned with a certain satisfaction, and the grin, as always, erased the somewhat moody lines of his heavy face, made him look younger and even a shade reckless.
Yet the hair on the back of his neck seemed to prickle. He walked casually east, stopped to look in a window. A man who had no place to go. The third window of the department store was rigged out as a bedroom, with a plastic dolly sitting on the dressing-table bench. The dressing table had a mirror. It was in that mirror that he saw the one who sauntered on the far side of the street, pausing to cup his hands around a cigarette, tossing the match aside.
And behind the man who sauntered, a car slid to the curb. But nobody got out of it.
Max turned away from the window, walked more rapidly to the corner. As he walked, his mind was busy. Obviously Walch had ordered the tail. But why? Where had there been a slip? Or did Walch still want to cover in case it was a frame and Max was working, on the side, for another paper, or even for one of the perennial civic improvement groups? If Walch was worried enough to employ the tail technique, it would have been easier for him to play dumb about the fifteen hundred.
The obvious thing was to get back to the girl. He picked up a cab at the corner, glanced back in time to see the saunterer swing into the waiting car.
“Uptown,” he directed.
After five blocks he leaned forward, handed the driver a bill. He said, “I might leave you in a hurry, friend. Pay no attention.”
The driver gave a quick and startled look over his shoulder. Then he looked in the rear vision mirror. He said, “Friend, I’ll make a little time and then slow down by the Casualty Trust. Hop out there and go right through the building and with luck you can grab a downtown bus in the next block.”
“You are an intelligent and perspicacious citizen.”
“Thank you too much.”
Max went through the bank at a semi-lope, looking ahead with the expression of a man trying to catch up with someone.
There was no bus, but there was a cab. Max grabbed it, looked back. Three blocks away he thought he saw a tiny figure come hurrying out of the door. He wasn’t certain.
He took the chance of giving his own address. The elevator was in use, so he ran up the stairs, breathing hard. He had his key out and stopped absolutely still when he saw the door was ajar. He kicked it open, moved to one side and called, “Marylen!”
The rooms were empty and dusty, and the tired sun made too much of a point of the frayed rug. The keys that had slid from Gruber’s hand lay in the sunlight. Gruber’s hand was in shadow. The keys were on a chain neatly decorated with a white plastic death’s-head. Gruber lay on his face with his legs spread, his toes pointed in. Max cursed slowly and monotonously as he knelt by Gruber. He got his thumb on the right part of the stringy wrist, felt the strong pulse thud. He rolled Gruber over. There was a deep red spot on the point of Gruber’s chin.
The girl was gone, and her clothes were gone. On the dresser, there was a note in sprawling backhand finishing school writing which merely said: “Thanks for everything.” The note was weighed down with the Jap automatic. The safety was off. He noticed with clinical detachment that it was a silly way to leave a gun.
Gruber responded to the water treatment, dopey at first, and then violently and thoroughly angry, with all the heat and force that a stringy, sandy little man can develop.
Max finally got the sense of it. Mr. Raffidy had locked the girl in. This friend of hers had come and the friend had asked to have Gruber unlock the door. The girl had seemed eager to have the door unlocked. He remembered the friend, a small plump man with red cheeks, saying, “Miss Banner, Jerry is down in the car waiting for you.”
After he had unlocked the door and the girl was in the bedroom dressing, Gruber had stepped in for the expected tip. The man had reached for his hip pocket and then his hand had come up too fast from his hip pocket.
No, Gruber was going directly to the cops. No fat little so-and-so was going to put the slug on him right in his own place. Max blocked the doorway while Gruber danced up and down in a rage, getting even madder as he found a tooth splinter in his mouth.
Max got hold of one of the crisp hundreds. He crackled it, said, “This is to lick your wounds with, Gruber. This is oil for troubled waters. You can gripe all you want with the hundred in your pocket. Or you can yell cop and the hundred is in my pocket.”
Gruber’s dance of anger slowly settled down into a shuffling of feet and then he said, “A deal. But what are you mixed up in, Mr. Raffidy?”
“Never mind me. What did the guy look like?”
He didn’t get more than the original description. Gruber hadn’t seen the car. The girl seemed happy, but worried. At least, that’s the way her voice sounded. Gruber went down to the elevator, grumbling about a respectable apartment house, and how the hell was he to know what kind of friends Raffidy had.
Max sat on the edge of the cot. The door was shut and he was alone with his enormous guilt. He thought of all the things he should have done. A nice safe hospital for the girl. An immediate report to Lowery, District Homicide Squad Captain.
He clenched his fists and looked at his knuckles. Raffidy, the hero type. Raffidy, the job-hungry kid. So hungry for a job that he got the girl a date with her boyfriend. Her nice dead boyfriend.
He reviewed what he knew of the local organization, looking for a starting point. At the top locally was Myron
Ledecker, big wheel in both Concord Devices and Valley Farms. Tall, thin, consumptive-looking man with hawk nose, bald head and British accent. Clubman. Semi-socialite. Accepted by those who didn’t know or care that his bankroll was made up partly by schoolkids’ dimes.
The next level was vague. Bill Walch was one. Brad Antonelli was another. Brad had started as collector of the payoff from the horse rooms. Jerry Norma had been on the third level, reporting probably to Walch.
He began to work on how they’d found the girl. The answer wasn’t long in coming. Once the two searchers had hit a dead end on the taxi, they’d gone back trying to identify the man she was with. Stukey wouldn’t have talked. But the waiter in Hiram’s knew him by name. He realized that he should have been smarter. But you can’t turn the clock back.
One more step in the thought process. They had the girl, the actual witness to the murder, even though she didn’t remember it as yet. Shock and the concussion had driven it out of her mind. They would assume that she had told Max the story. He would have only hearsay and yet they had a decision to make. He guessed that they wouldn’t get rough with him. Two killings would be ample. Instead, they would try to discredit him.
It would be best to get the jump on them. At least one mistake could be corrected. He phoned Captain Lowery. It took several minutes to get through to him.
He said, “Ed? This is Max Raffidy. I want to report—”
In a voice heavy with sarcasm and exasperation, Captain Lowery said, “You want to report! You want to report! By heaven, Raffidy, if you send this department on another goose chase like you did twenty minutes ago, I’ll have you picked up!”
“But—”
“I always thought you had good judgment, Raffidy. Maybe the Chronicle folding has softened your brain. I’m not interested in a damn thing you have to report. If somebody has heisted your wallet, report it to the cop on the corner.”
More Good Old Stuff Page 33
