More Good Old Stuff

by John D. MacDonald

  “They got her out of Valley Farms fast. With the big mess over Ledecker, and with my getting away, they’d be stupid to kill her. They’d hold her for a while to see what happens.”

  “And where would they do that?”

  “Ledecker mentioned an apartment on Primrose.”

  “Nice neighborhood,” Lowery said dryly. “Let’s roll. This one is legwork.”

  It was ten o’clock before they had the right building, the right apartment. Lowery dispersed his men to cover all possible means of exit, including two in the courtyard manning the portable spotlight, armed with gas grenades.

  At the end of the stairs, Lowery whispered, “Stay right here, Raffidy. This is business.”

  Max shrugged. It was good to lean against the wall. His shoulder throbbed heavily and incessantly. But when Lowery and his two men went down the hallway to the door, he moved up into the corridor and inched his way down toward the door.

  “Open up,” Lowery called.

  “Who’s out there?”

  “Police. Open wide and come out with your hands in the air,” Lowery ordered.

  A different voice, a soft mild voice, said, “Thank you. No.”

  Lowery let go with the whistle and Max saw the bright thread of light under the edge of the door as the men out in the court turned the spotlight on the window.

  Lowery said, “You’re covered all the way around. Better come out the easy way or we get you the hard way.”

  Again the soft voice. “There’s a girl in here, Officer.”

  “That we know!”

  “I’m coming out with the girl in front of me. What then?” Max saw Lowery wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. There was a long period of silence.

  Lowery said, “You won’t make it.”

  The voice said, “I’ll take my chance. Order your men to stand back.”

  Lowery moved away from the door. He lifted the .38 special in his hands, looked hard at it as though he’d never seen it before. He whispered to the two men with him. They walked heavily down to the end of the hall. Lowery motioned to Max. Max went with them.

  Lowery said, “Okay. You’re holding the cards. We’ll be out of your way. But the moment you get two feet away from that girl—”

  “Stop talking,” the voice said.

  Lowery went twenty feet from the doorway, flattened with his back against the wall, his right arm extended, the special aimed down at the doorway.

  The hallway was still. Max heard the creak as the door opened inward. More silence. Then he saw her white face, the long, blond hair, the lightweight suit. She came out, one dragging step after another. He saw the fat pink hand that held her arm, the muzzle of the gun aimed at her head, the other fat hand holding the gun. Then the cheery, round, rosy-cheeked face of the fat little man. As the man’s small bright eyes swiveled toward Lowery, Lowery’s gun spoke with heavy authority.

  The fat little man did not waver. He dropped as suddenly and completely and thoroughly as though he had fallen from a ten-foot height.

  Marylen swayed. She turned, like a sleepwalker, and she saw Max. She came down toward him, walking slowly at first, and then running into Max’s open arms.

  Lowery leaned against the wall. The other man, a replica of Joseph, came out with his hands in the air. Lowery said, half to himself, “It had to be just right. A head shot and the reflex makes him pull the trigger. I had to get him in one spot the size of a dime, where the slug would sever the spinal column.”

  Max said angrily, “Why not let him go? Why take the chance?”

  “Why, you poor damn fool, he’d have killed the girl as soon as he got clear.”

  Marylen, her face against Max’s lapel, said, “I saw him kill Jerry. I remember.”

  Lowery, his temporary reaction over, said, “And now, Mr. Raffidy, where do we find Jerry Norma’s body?”

  “They’re doing a hell of a lot of cement work at Valley Farms, Captain …”

  It was pale, gray dawn and the sounds of the city hadn’t yet begun. Lowery, his well-fed face showing the dragging lines of weariness, hung up the phone. He said, “They got him. They’d slapped him in the face with a spadeful of concrete.”

  “How about Antonelli and Walch?”

  “Walch is beginning to crack. When he does, we can use the stuff he gives us to crack Antonelli. The little fat man’s name was Stan Norton, Ledecker’s blackmailer.”

  Max said slowly, “And now, Captain, may I phone in everything I know?”

  “Hell, are you working?”

  “With an exclusive like this? I’ve been working ever since I phoned in the eyewitness description of Ledecker’s death from the hospital.”

  Lowery sighed. “Can I stop you? I’m going home and get some sleep.”

  “So am I. I’m going to stop in at Memorial on the way and check on the girl. As soon as she’s well, I’ll ship her home.”

  Lowery stood heavily at the doorway. “In some things, Raffidy,” he said, “you almost achieve brilliance. However, with women, you’re on the dull side.”

  Max said angrily, “What should I do? Keep her as a good-luck charm?”

  But he was talking to the closed door. He managed the difficult feat of lighting a cigarette. He laid the receiver down and started to dial the newspaper number. By now the waiting wolves from the other papers would be plaguing Lowery.

  Halfway through the number he stopped dialing, said softly, “Good-luck charm. Hmmm.”

  He hung up and started dialing again.

  You Remember Jeanie

  For many years Bay Street was the place. Bar whiskey for thirty cents a shot, or a double slug for fifty. A waterfront street, where dirty waves slapped at the crushed pilings behind the saloons. A street to forget with. A street which would close in on you, day to day, night to night, until the wrong person saw some pitying old friend slip you a five. They would find you at dawn, and an intern from City General would push your eyelid up with a clean pink thumb and say, “More meat for the morgue.”

  Maybe, as he stood up, he would look down at your hollow gray face and the sharp bones of your wrists and wonder how you’d kept alive this long. So very long.

  But something happened to Bay Street. The smart developers saw what was happening elsewhere, and they conned the city, county and federal government into a glamorous redevelopment project. A huge mall. Parking garages. Waterfront restaurants on new piers, out over the water. A marina. Smaller shopping malls with quaint stores selling antiques, paintings, custom jewelry, Irish tweed.

  So the old saloons were uprooted, and for a time there was no place at all for the Bay Street bums. Then some of the old places started up again on Dorrity Street, four blocks inland, and soon it was all the same as before, with the stale smell of spilled beer, the steamy chant of the jukes, hoarse laughter, the scuff of broken shoes, the wet sound of fist against flesh.

  Frank Bard sat on the stone step of an abandoned warehouse and stared down along Dorrity Street through the misty rain. Across the street the rain made a pink cloud around the red neon of Allison’s Grill.

  Bard thought vaguely that if the rain increased, he’d have to get under shelter. He didn’t want to go inside; he had come out because he had been sick. The muscles of his diaphragm still ached with the violence of his retching. He turned the ragged collar of his dark blue suit coat up around his neck. He wondered if he ought to walk down the alley and see if anybody had tried to move in on him. Two weeks before, he had found a sturdy packing case and, at dawn, had dragged it down the alley and put it under a fire escape. The effort had left him weak and panting. He had filled it with clean burlap and it made a snug bed. The fall rain was chill; the packing case wouldn’t be any good in the winter. He forced that thought out of his mind.

  He was a dark man, with a sullen face. Once he had been solid, almost stocky, but the flesh had melted off him during the past year. He was still capable of sudden, explosive bursts of energy. His hair was long and his square jaw was dark
with several days’ beard. His cheeks were hollow and there was a dark wildness in his puffy eyes that the shadows concealed.

  Across the street an old man with matted white hair lurched out of Allison’s and fell on one knee. He got up and went on, limping and cursing in a thin, high voice, watered down by age.

  Frank Bard heard the slow tock, tock of heels, heavy heels, coming down the sidewalk on his side. He knew who it was without looking. He scowled down at the sidewalk. The slow steps stopped.

  He looked up. Patrolman Clarence Flynn, tall and solid, stood looking down at him. Flynn’s raincoat had a cape effect across the shoulders that made him look larger than life.

  He said softly, “You okay, Frankie?”

  “Give me a cigarette, Flynn,” Bard said hoarsely.

  Flynn handed him one, lit it. Over the match flame the two men glanced briefly into each other’s eyes—and looked quickly away.

  In the same gentle tone, Flynn said, “When are you going to straighten out, Frankie?”

  “I like it this way.”

  “You were a good cop, Frankie. You straighten out and you could come back in; your record’s good.”

  “I like it this way.”

  “You look sick, Frankie.”

  “I’m fine. You got a beat to cover.”

  Flynn shrugged. He handed the half pack of cigarettes to Bard and walked toward his prowl car. He stopped ten feet away and said, “She wasn’t worth this, Frankie; no woman was worth this.”

  Bard called him a foul word and snapped the half-smoked cigarette into the street. After he could no longer hear the sound of Flynn’s heels, he tried to light another one. His hands shook so badly that he couldn’t do it. The matches were damp. They sputtered and went out quickly.

  He felt in his side pocket to make certain that the five quarters were still there. They were cool against his fingertips. He stood up, swaying slightly, and then walked across the street, pushed his way into the heat and smell of Allison’s.

  The bar was of plywood laid over some heavier substance. Naked bulbs were laid behind the bottles on the back bar, and the light glowed through—amber. The place was narrow and rectangular—with the bar on the left and booths on the right. An ancient jukebox sat against the far wall, bubbles rising endlessly up through the colored tubes. Arthur Allison, a small trim man with Truman glasses and a gray mustache, in a spotless white shirt, waited on bar, his quick eyes flickering ceaselessly from face to face. Allison was a watchful, careful man. Jader waited on the booths and, on occasion, acted as bouncer. Jader was tall and heavy with weak eyes that watered constantly. He too was watchful. Underneath the bar, to the left of the beer taps, was a small drawer. There were usually a few small packages in that drawer. Summer and winter a small hot coal fire burned in the basement. In the winter, the fire heated the building; in the summer, the radiators were turned off. On the under edge of the drawer containing the packages was a small loop of wire. Either Jader or Allison could, by yanking on the loop of wire, drop the bottom of the drawer. The little packages would then drop down a chute into the fire. It was safer that way. For every package held and relayed to the proper pickup men, there was a fee of one hundred dollars. Thirty for Jader and seventy for Allison. On some days as many as eight packages spent varying lengths of time in the drawer.

  Allison and Jader were very watchful and cautious men.

  When Frank Bard walked in, there were four men at the bar. He knew three of them by sight; the fourth was a stranger. Two of the booths were occupied. In one were two Swedish merchant seamen and a thin painted girl with hair the color of ripe tomatoes and a wet, smeared mouth. In the second booth were two quiet men wearing dark topcoats. Bard glanced at them and guessed that they were waiting for one of the packages to arrive.

  Bard did a curious thing. He held the door wide, and as he walked over to the bar, he smiled down over his right shoulder. He said something in a low voice.

  He stepped up beside the stranger, still smiling down at a point about six inches from his right shoulder. Allison moved over toward him and said, “You got the money, Frank?”

  He took the dollar in quarters from his pocket and said, “The usual for me and Jeanie, Arthur.” Allison poured two straight ryes and smiled tiredly as he put one in front of Bard and one in front of the empty space. Bard said, “You wouldn’t rather sit in a booth, would you, Jeanie?”

  “What the hell do you keep asking her that for?” Arthur said. “She never wants to sit in a booth; she always stands up here at the bar with you.”

  Bard looked vaguely indignant. “It’s polite to ask her, Arthur.”

  The stranger, a lean man in work clothes with a pinched, bitter mouth, looked with pained disgust at Frank Bard and then at Allison. “What the hell goes on?” he asked.

  Allison looked amused. “Oh, Frank comes in here all the time with Jeanie.”

  Frank Bard turned and looked at the stranger. “Jeanie and me, we like this place. She likes to come here even if she did have a little bad luck here a little over a year ago.”

  The stranger looked into Bard’s eyes and moved back a few inches. “Bad luck?” he inquired politely.

  “Yeah. Jeanie was in here late one night and some lush hit her with a bottle. Hit her right over the left ear. I guess my Jeanie hasn’t got such a tough skull. Funny how it didn’t break the bottle, hey, Arthur?”

  Jader came over, his pale eyes watering. He said, “Damn it, Arthur, why do you let this nut come in here?”

  Arthur grinned. “Nervous?”

  “No, the guy drives away trade.” He turned to the stranger. “Mister, a drunk bashed her head in with a bottle and got clean away. We give the cops a description but they never found the guy.” He paused and glanced at Bard, who was talking to Jeanie in a low voice, almost a whisper. He continued. “And this thing used to be a cop. Jeanie was his girl. He’s been on the skids for a year, and every time he comes in here he’s got that damn imaginary woman with him. I tell you, it’s enough to drive me nuts.”

  Arthur grinned tightly. “Where’s your sense of humor, Jader?”

  Jader looked again at Bard, cursed and wandered off. The Swedes were pounding on the table.

  Frank Bard bent low over his glass of rye. He lifted it with a quick motion, and downed it. It caught in his throat. He gagged, but it stayed down. He stood for a moment, savoring the glow of it, feeling immediately stronger, more confident. He glanced at the wall above the back bar, whistling softly. His lean hand, dirt stained into the knuckles, reached slowly out, shoving the empty glass over toward Jeanie. The hand hooked around her full glass and brought it back. He glanced down, as though surprised to see the full drink in front of him. He drank it with steadier hand and smiled at Jeanie.

  “Taste good to you, honey? If I had the dough, I’d buy you another.” He took out his last quarter. He glanced over and said, “What was that, honey?”

  He beckoned to Arthur. “Arthur, Jeanie says …”

  “Yeah, I know. She wants a beer chaser.” He picked up the coin, drew one beer and set it in front of Jeanie. Bard whistled again, while his right hand stole out and slid it over. He drank it quickly and, again looking at the wall, shoved the glass over in front of Jeanie.

  The stranger said, “You were a cop?”

  Bard looked at him and drew himself up, looking for a fraction of a second out of the wise, confident policeman’s eyes. The expression faded and his eyes once more looked hot and wild. “What’s it to you!” he demanded hoarsely. “I don’t see you buying me and Jeanie no drinks; buy ’em and we’ll talk to you, mister.”

  The man took hold of Bard’s shoulder with what was almost gentleness. He turned him so that he faced him directly. The work-hardened hand came across, smacking solidly, fingers open, across Bard’s jaw, knocking him against the bar. The hand came back in a backhand blow that straightened him up again, splitting his underlip at the corner.

  Frank Bard stood unsteadily, his hands at his side, grinning
foolishly at the stranger, his eyes filling with tears from the burning pain in his lip.

  Arthur said, “Take it easy!”

  The stranger said, “That’s for being a lousy cop; that’s for nothing. You there, set up drinks for Prince Charming and his lady.”

  “Thanks,” Bard said humbly.

  “Think nothing of it, Prince.” The man turned his back.

  Bard drank the two drinks and stood holding on to the edge of the bar. His face grayed and he said, “Excuse me, honey.”

  He lurched off to the men’s room and was ill. He came out in a few minutes, still shaking, his clothes soiled, and stopped by the bar. He said, “Come on, Jeanie.” He walked toward the door. Jader crossed close beside him. With wild fury, Bard grabbed Jader’s arm and spun him around. He said, “Why the hell don’t you watch where you’re going?”

  He bent over suddenly, as though helping someone up from the floor. He snarled at Jader, “Okay. Okay. Go around knocking women down and don’t apologize. You all right, honey?” he said softly, making brushing motions in the air. Jader grunted, balled a large white fist and slowly drew it back, his wet eyes narrowed.

  Arthur snapped, “Jader! Hold it.”

  The big hand unclenched and Bard walked to the door, held it open with a small bow and then walked out.

  Jader said, “Arthur, I’m not going to stand for …”

  “Shut up!” The gray eyes were cold behind the lenses, the mouth a thin tight line under the mustache. The girl with the Swedes giggled. Jader turned and walked toward the back of the place.

  In the alley Frank Bard stood, his hand on the corner of the packing case, looking up at the night sky. The rain had stopped and small clouds scudded across the moon. Bard dropped to his knees and crawled into the box. He lay with his face against the damp wood and tears ran down through the thick stubble on his cheeks. He reached awkwardly into his side pocket and pulled out a small package. He unwrapped the paper. It contained a small cool metal tube that still contained lipstick. Her lipstick. He held it close to his nose. It held the elusive scent of her. His fingertips touched the little skein of hair. Her hair. Long and pale and delicate—amazingly golden. He wrapped the package and replaced it in his pocket. After a long time, he slept.