Man on the run

by Charles Williams

  She paused and took a sip of the Martini. “Now, the actual suicide. He lived in a housing development called Bellehaven, about six miles north of town—”

  “I know where it is,” I said. “Two- and three-bedroom houses, fifteen thousand dollars and up.”

  She nodded. “Then you know where the big shopping center is. I was just out there; that’s where I bought the steak. Purcell’s address was 2531 Winston Drive. That’s the last street in the subdivision, and it parallels the edge of the shopping center. In fact, part of the supermarket parking area is directly behind the row of houses in that block.”

  “Then you could park in the supermarket lot and go right into the back yard?”

  She shook her head. “Not easily. The whole area is lighted. And all the back yards are enclosed with six-foot basket-weave fences covered with Pyracantha. There are gates, but they have latches that can be secured from inside. And Purcell’s was padlocked. You could climb the fences, of course, but in the early evening somebody in the parking lot would be almost certain to see you.

  “It happened on the night of January twenty-eighth, a little over three weeks ago. Mrs. Purcell went to a movie with the wife of a next-door neighbor. She often did; Purcell cared nothing for movies. She left around eight and there was never any doubt Purcell was alive afterward. The neighbor came over about the same time and he and Purcell had a beer and watched a fight on television until a little after nine. And after he left, about nine-thirty, Purcell’s boss, Lt. Shriver of the Robbery Detail, called him about something. He said Purcell sounded perfectly normal over the phone. And as nearly as they could tell afterward, that was only forty-five minutes before he killed himself. Neighbors on both sides heard the shot, and they placed it at approximately ten-fifteen. At the time they thought it was a car backfiring.

  “The picture was a double feature, so it was ten after twelve when Mrs. Purcell returned home. She put the car in the garage, and the two women said goodnight. The neighbor woman had hardly got inside when she heard Mrs. Purcell scream and then run out of the house.

  “The police were there within minutes. Purcell was slumped over his desk in the living room, shot through the temple with his own thirty-eight. The shoulder holster was where he always left it when he came home, hanging on a hook in the hall closet. The gun was lying on the rug beside his chair. They could get only partial prints off it, but they were all his. There was no sign of a struggle at all, and nothing to indicate anybody else had been there. The gate to the backyard was locked, and nobody in the block had seen anyone come or go from the front of the house. It couldn’t have been an accident, because all his gun-cleaning equipment was put away in the kitchen. There was no note, but on the desk just under his face was a single sheet of white paper and a ballpoint pen, as if he’d started to write one and then changed his mind.”

  It was baffling. “What do you think?” I asked.

  “That he was murdered.”

  “Why?”

  “Several reasons—one of which you don’t know yet. In the first place, the back gate’s being padlocked didn’t mean anything. It could have been locked after he was killed. Suppose he’d stayed home because he was expecting a visitor—a woman? He’d have left it open for her.”

  “But how would she leave afterward?”

  “Take her chances and go right out the front. All she had to do was walk half a block, turn right at the next street, and she’d be back in the parking lot. After eleven p.m., the streets in those housing developments are pretty quiet.”

  “All right. What else?”

  “There’s no such thing as a spur-of-the-moment suicide. When a man kills himself, whatever’s behind it has been feeding on him considerably longer than forty-five minutes. A single man might keep it hidden, but Purcell was married, and his wife said there’d been nothing unusual in his behavior.”

  “Yes, but damn it, we’re still just talking about Purcell. There’s no connection with Stedman except that they were partners on the Robbery Detail.”

  She gestured with the cigarette. “And that they’re both dead. Don’t forget that. However, there’s one more thing they had in common—the one you haven’t heard yet. Remember, I said Purcell had killed two men in line of duty?”

  “Yes?”

  “One of them was actually killed by Purcell and Stedman. On the twenty-second of December. See how your coincidence is stretching? In a little over a month Purcell commits suicide, and in less than three weeks after that Stedman is murdered.”

  I stared at her. “Yes—but, look. The police must have checked into it. A coincidence as obvious as that.”

  She nodded. “To some extent, yes. But remember, it takes at least two of anything to make a coincidence, and you killed Stedman. When you accept that, it falls apart.”

  I got up and walked across the room and back. “But, good God, they must have made some effort to check out any other angles.”

  “They did,” she replied. “Except that there don’t appear to be any. The man Stedman and Purcell killed was just another vicious hoodlum. His name was Danny Bullard, and he had a record going back ten years, with two convictions for armed robbery. He pulled a gun on. them when they tried to pick him up for questioning about a liquor store holdup. They had to shoot.”

  “He have any close relatives?”

  She shook her head. “There was an older brother, a waterfront goon named Ryan Bullard, but nobody’s seen him in years. He was tried and acquitted of killing a seaman during a strike, and after it was over he disappeared.”

  I lighted a cigarette. “How about a girl friend?”

  “Now you’re getting warmer. It has to be a girl. Assuming for the moment they were both murdered, the circumstances in both cases appear to be the same—the murderer could have been there clandestinely and by invitation. That spells only one thing, obviously. The only trouble is there doesn’t seem to be any girl.”

  “Except the one Red told me about,” I said. “I’ve got to locate her.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I don’t know what we’re going to prove if we do find her, but we’ve got nowhere else to start. However, you can’t risk going out of here until Monday, at least.”

  * * *

  We cooked the steak. I could feel strength flowing back into me with the food. We listened to the hi-fi and caught a news broadcast on the radio. They were still taking the city apart, block by block, looking for me. After awhile we went to bed. If the heroines of all Suzy’s novels were sexy, I thought, they came by it honestly. She was talented and passionate and an absolute delight, but somehow even after she cried out in ecstasy and collapsed you felt the desperate unhappiness or boredom that was goading her was still there and it hadn’t done her any good at all. I awoke during the night and she was gone. Switching on the light, I looked at my watch. It was shortly after three p.m.

  The door to the living room was ajar. I slipped on the bottom of the pajamas and went out. All the lights were on and she was sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room tossing cards into a silver bowl about ten feet away. She had on the black Capri pants, but was naked from the waist up except for the black silk eyeshade that was the only thing she ever wore in bed. It was pushed up over her forehead, and looked almost startling against the silvery blonde hair and fair skin. She was smoking a long black Mexican or Cuban cigarette, and beside her on the rug was a bottle of vodka and a glass. She was plastered.

  She looked at me, glassy-eyed. “‘Smatter, Irish? Can’t you sleep?”

  “No,” I said. I sat on the floor near her.

  She sailed another card toward the bowl. It missed. She said a word I’d have bet she didn’t even know.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  ”Matter?” She regarded me owlishly, and poured some more vodka. “Nothing at all.” She held out the bottle to me. “Have some of the opium of the futile, friend, and let’s revel in the pleasures of the flesh.” She paused, hiccupped, and solemnly appraised h
er naked torso and the swelling, dark-nippled breasts. “And speaking of flesh, did you ever see so much of it to revel in? One hundred and sixty pounds of futility—”

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

  She paid no attention. “No vodka? Then Benzedrine? Marijuana? Sex, anybody?”

  She swayed. I caught her and somehow managed to get her in my arms and stand up. Carrying her into the other room, I put her on the bed and covered her. “Save six for pallbearers,” she said, and passed out cold. I stood looking down at her. It was a rotten shame, I thought.

  In the morning when I awoke it was after nine and she was up and already dressed to go out. She was at the dressing table putting on her lipstick, and when she saw in the mirror that I was awake she turned and smiled, apparently without a trace of a hangover, as handsomely blonde and clear-eyed as ever.

  She came over and sat on the side of the bed. “Sorry about last night.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do. Where are you going?”

  She went over to the closet and put on the gray fur coat “Denton Street.” She smiled. “Fitting, don’t you think? The brunette being stalked by her only natural enemy?”

  “Leave that to me,” I said. “It’s my pigeon.”

  She paid no attention and went on out. Her only natural enemy was boredom; she had to do something or go crazy. She came back shortly before eleven. In the industrial area around Denton Street everything was closed on Saturday. She had been shopping, however, and carried two packages that contained a gabardine topcoat and a new hat.

  * * *

  “All right, let’s see how you look,” she said. I turned and she studied me critically. It was seven a.m. Monday.

  She nodded. “The suit is a little snug across the chest and the sleeves are half an inch too short, but it’ll never show when you have the topcoat on.”

  I looked at myself in the full-length mirror. The last trace of the black eye was gone now, and with the hat on there wasn’t enough of the red hair showing to attract attention. My shoes were shined. I wore a white shirt with button-down collar and a conservative tie, and a folded handkerchief and fountain pen peeped over the edge of the breast pocket of the jacket. I put on the topcoat.

  “And now the clincher,” she said. She handed me the briefcase. It was a slender one, of the type with no handles, zipper-closed, and rather old and beat-up. There were a couple of magazines in it, and some advertising circulars and two or three meaningless letters she had typed out. As she had pointed out, it was the perfect piece of camouflage.

  She grinned. “Darling, I just know you’re going to land that Ficklefinger account today and get the raise.”

  “I think I’ll get by,” I said, “if they don’t look too closely at my face.”

  “Who ever looks closely at men’s faces?”

  “Professional cops,” I said. “The very people we’re trying to fool.”

  She shook her head. “They don’t have a photograph, as far as we know. You could walk right up and borrow a light from any policeman in town—as long as you don’t do anything that looks suspicious. Don’t act nervous. And above all, don’t run when nobody’s chasing you. Maybe he just wants to borrow a match himself. Don’t worry about entering of leaving the building. There are thirty-three apartments in it, and not one of the tenants knows ten per cent of the others, even by sight? Ready?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You go first. And you know where to meet me.”

  “I wish you’d let me go alone. If I’m picked up and you’re with me, they can make it really rough. You could go to prison.”

  “You’ll be much safer in the car. The first time, anyway, until you get over some of the nervousness. I’m going.”

  There was no use arguing with her. “All right,” I said. “But remember, if I get in a jam, get the hell out of there —fast.”

  She opened the door and peered out into the corridor. “All clear,” she said softly. I went out. The stairs were just around the corner. I walked down two flights, and punched the button of one of the self-service elevators. It came. I went out through the small lobby. It was a cold, clear morning without wind, and there was frost on the grass in front of the building.

  Morning traffic was picking up along the street, which paralleled the edge of the park. I turned right and went up the sidewalk. There were a few pedestrians striding briskly along. For the first minute or two I felt naked and scared and wanted to shrug down inside the coat and pull my hat over my face. There was a bus stop at the corner. I passed it and went on to the next one, two blocks away.

  Several people were waiting here, and there was a newspaper rack. I dropped a dime in the box and picked up an Express. No one paid any attention to me.

  Stedman’s murder was still on the front page. Three men answering my description had been picked up in skid-row flophouses and later released. I shivered slightly. My greatest danger was that there were at least half a dozen detectives on the force who might know me by sight from having seen me around the Sidelines Bar. If I ran into one of them, I was a dead duck.

  I saw the blue Olds coming. It slid to a stop at the curb and I got in. There was a map of the city in the glove compartment. I spread it open, partly as an excuse to keep my face down.

  “I know how to get there,” she said. “I sized it up pretty thoroughly on Saturday. Denton Street’s in an industrial area three or four blocks from the ship channel. You see it—there in back of the Municipal docks, about two miles from downtown and three or four miles up from the Southlands Refinery.”

  “I see it now,” I said. We stopped for a traffic light.

  “If we’re lucky enough to find a parking place near that diner, I think we can watch two bus stops at once.”

  Traffic was growing heavier. She swung off the arterial, bypassing the downtown area, and in about fifteen minutes she turned into Denton in the 1200 block. “Four blocks now,” she said. “The. Comet Boat Company’s 1636.”

  I looked at my watch. It was still twenty minutes before eight. The traffic was mostly buses and trucks. She backed into a parking place. I looked around. On this side 0f the street the whole block was taken up by the Comet plant, a long brick building enclosed by a steel mesh fence. Directly across from us was a low frame building with a number of small windows. The sign said GEORGE’S. That would be the lunchroom. Next to it was a large wholesale plumbing supply outfit.

  She lighted a cigarette. “There’s another coffee place in the block behind us and one two blocks ahead. So if she came into George’s, there’s a good chance she works in the office of one of the four places in these two blocks. There’s Comet, the Hildebrand Plumbing Supply, and across the street in the next block is the Warren Paint Company. And directly ahead of us, beyond the next corner, is the Shiloh Machine Tool Company. It seems to be the largest.”

  There was a bus zone almost in front of the diner on the other side and one at the corner ahead of us. We had a good view of both. The car parked ahead of us was a small foreign sedan and we could see over it. The sun was spilling into the street now, and the air was warmer. I rolled down the window.

  “Here comes one,” she said. A bus passed us and pulled into the curb up ahead. Fifteen or twenty people got off, but they were all men carrying lunch boxes.

  “It’s still too early for any of the office force,” she reminded me.

  “Yes,” I said. I wondered how much further into left field we could go before we were up against the wall. We were looking for a girl we’d never seen. We weren’t even positive she existed. Red could have been mistaken. And if he weren’t, it was over a month ago. And there was no evidence at all that the girl he’d seen in the Sidelines had had anything to do with Stedman other than that he’d picked her up. He did that all the time.

  More buses came by, still loaded with workmen. It was after eight now. I slipped out and put a nickel in the parking meter.

  “That Sh
iloh Machine Tool Company,” she said musingly. “I keep thinking there’s something familiar about the name.”

  “Wasn’t it a battle in the Civil War?” I asked.

  She gestured impatiently. “Yes, of course. In April of sixty-two, just south of Pittsburgh Landing on the Tennessee, Grant and Buell against Johnston and Beauregard. It was a very bloody and disorganized affair, green troops hacking away at each other in isolated detachments lost in the thickets—” She broke off. “But I didn’t mean to get started on that. What I meant was I’ve seen the name somewhere recently. It keeps bothering me. Oh, well, I suppose it wasn’t important.”

  Cars began coming into the Comet parking lot, and office workers were getting off the buses now. Some of the girls were dark-haired. Each time I saw one I felt a surge of hope, but none of them ever answered the description Red had given me.

  “She might have changed her hairdo in a month,” Suzy said. “It could be cut short.”

  “She could even be a blonde by now.”

  She grinned. “Don’t fire, men, until you see the roots of their hair.”

  By nine o’clock we knew we’d drawn a blank. She pulled out of the parking place and drove down toward the beach. On the way we passed the big Southlands Refinery. As we drove by the Marine Department gate I stared longingly at it. She noticed it. “You’ll make it yet, Irish,” she said.

  I didn’t answer. I felt too rotten to say anything.

  “What would they do with your clothes and license and things?” she asked. “I mean, when the ship had to leave without you?”

  “Take them off and hold them there in the Marine Department,” I said. “Captain Bryce’s office—”

  I broke off suddenly, freezing with fear. A siren had cut loose in a short burst not a hundred yards behind us.

  “Don’t panic,” she whispered. “I think I was just going too fast.”

  The police car snarled its way up abreast of us in the inside-lane and the driver waved us over. She eased off onto the gravel shoulder and stopped. He stopped ahead of us, got out, and walked back. My mouth was dry, and I shoved my hands in the pockets of the topcoat to hide their trembling.