Fall Girl

by Deming, Richard

  A block from where he had abandoned the car he dropped the cap into a trash can.

  Sticking to sidestreets, Horton put eight blocks between himself and the car. Finally he came to a small, dimly-lighted park. Following a footpath, he found a bench shadowed by a tree and out of sight of the street. He sank onto the bench, lit a cigarette and considered his next move.

  Due to his unfortunate habit of carrying only a small amount of money with him, he had less than twenty dollars on his person. The rest, and his traveler’s checks, was in his room. It would be suicide to attempt to get past Manzetti’s men to his room.

  He could, of course, call on Belle or the colonel for a loan, but he hated to do it. Money wasn’t his worst problem anyway. It was time. He had to prove his innocence before either Manzetti or the police caught up with him.

  Horton was now thoroughly satisfied that Manzetti was not responsible for Quincy’s death. The performances of both Manzetti himself and of Joey the Cut had been too convincing. The most likely murder suspect was the blonde Velda.

  There remained the problem of how to prove she was guilty, or even how to start an investigation. If he tried to visit the woman, she’d probably yell for the police.

  His thoughts turned to the red-haired Helen Quincy. She had seemed to dislike Velda so intensely, perhaps she would be willing to help.

  He wondered if Helen would give him a chance to explain himself before calling the police, if he attempted to contact her. At the time she had warned him that police were coming to his room, she couldn’t have known what they wanted with him. She might not be nearly so co-operative now that the papers had announced he was wanted for murder. The murder of her step-father at that.

  Still, she had obviously liked him a great deal. And she had covered for him when he fled from the Lawford. Contacting her would be risky, but he could think of no other logical move.

  He decided that if he was going to get in touch with Helen Quincy, he had to do it at once, even though it was now past one A.M. By morning the news that his record had arrived from St. Louis would be in all the papers. It was going to be hard enough to talk Helen into trusting him, without having to explain a long record as a confidence man.

  Stepping on his cigarette, he rose from the bench and left the park in search of a phone booth.

  CHAPTER XV

  AT AN all-night drugstore Horton unobtrusively slid into a phone booth and opened the telephone directory. The only Quincy listed was the dead man.

  Horton frowned. It seemed unlikely, in view of Helen’s dislike of Velda, that she had lived at her step-father’s home. Then a thought struck him. Many hotels provided their desk employees room as part of their pay. It was quite possible that Helen lived right at the Lawford.

  Dropping a coin, he dialed the Lawford’s number. When the switchboard answered, he said in a confident tone, “Will you ring Miss Helen Quincy’s room, please?”

  Then he held his breath. But apparently he had guessed correctly. His only answer was the sound of a phone ringing.

  After three rings, a sleepy feminine voice said, “Yes?”

  “Helen?” he asked.

  He heard an indrawn breath as she recognized his voice.

  “Don’t be upset,” he said rapidly. “And please don’t hang up.” He paused, then said, “Switchboard operator!”

  The operator’s voice said, “Yes, sir?”

  He was thankful that he had taken the precaution. At this time of night the board would be so inactive, probably the operator left the line open on all calls out of sheer boredom.

  “I don’t want this call monitored,” he said. “Will you please close your line?”

  “Certainly, sir,” she said in an offended voice.

  Horton hoped the telephone company rule applied to hotel switchboards. He knew that a long-distance operator who eavesdropped on a conversation after being asked not to monitor the call was subject to instant dismissal. He had no idea if the same rule applied to other operators, but he had to chance that it did.

  Helen said, “What do you want?”

  “Your belief, first,” he said. “I didn’t do what the papers said. Nothing you read is true. Do you believe me?”

  “I haven’t known what to think,” she said slowly.

  “Will you give me a chance to explain?” he asked. “I think I know who did do it, and I need your help. I want to see you.”

  When she made no immediate reply, he said, “I know I sound crazy. You don’t owe me anything, and for all I know, you’ll walk me right into a police trap. But I have to chance it. Will you see me?”

  “Tonight?” she asked. “It’s past one.”

  “It has to be tonight. Tomorrow will be too late. Believe me, I wouldn’t bother you at this time of night if it wasn’t urgent.”

  There was a moment of silence as she thought things over. Then she said, “Where do you want to see me?”

  “Any place public would be too dangerous,” he said. “And I haven’t a room. Or rather, I have one I can’t use. It’s staked out by Manzetti’s men.”

  “Manzetti?” she said, startled. “Tony Manzetti?”

  “Yeah. It’s a long story, but he’s after me as well as the police. I’ll explain it all when I see you. Is there any way you can get me into the hotel without anyone seeing me?”

  After another moment of silence, she said, “The service door. There won’t be anyone in the kitchen now. How soon will you be?”

  “Twenty minutes, probably. I’m about a mile from there, and I’m walking. I’ll have to take a kind of roundabout route to miss the main streets.”

  “All right,” she said. “Go up the alley behind the hotel. There’s a light over the service entrance. I’ll be waiting in the kitchen.”

  It took Horton the full twenty minutes he had estimated to traverse the mile. And for most of the distance his heart was in his throat.

  With the bars closed for more than an hour, the streets were practically deserted. He was therefore a pretty conspicuous target for anyone who might be searching for him. Once a car slowed just as it passed him, and his fingers tightened around his gun butt. It must not have been any of Manzetti’s men, though, for it picked up speed and moved on.

  At an intersection, a police radio car came to a dead stop right alongside him. He tensed to start running, then realized just in time that it had halted for a boulevard stop sign. It moved on with only a casual glance from one of the uniformed officers in the front seat.

  After that Horton moved through as many alleys as he could find. When he finally reached the Hotel Lawford, his zig-zag route had nearly doubled the mile distance from his starting point.

  He was like the crooked man in the Mother Goose rhyme, he thought. There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile.

  He mused ironically that the rhyme symbolized his whole life. By the standards of society he was certainly a crooked man. And he had chosen his own crooked road to walk.

  At the mouth of the alley behind the Lawford he studied the shadows suspiciously. If Helen had phoned the police, here was where they probably would be waiting for him. Nothing happened, however, as he approached the green-shaded light over a door in the center of the building.

  A soft rap on the door, it immediately opened and he stepped inside. Helen quietly pushed the door closed again and dropped a bar in place.

  There was only a night light on in the kitchen, but it was bright enough for him to see the girl quite clearly. He noted that she had not only dressed since his call, but had gone to considerable trouble to make herself attractive. Her red hair was carefully brushed and her mouth freshly painted. Horton had a habit of close observation where women were concerned. He noticed that she had even mascaraed her eyelashes.

  He felt a touch of relief. Apparently his charm was still working on the girl. It wasn’t likely that a woman would carefully primp herself for a man’s visit if she only expected to turn hi
m over to the police.

  Then he became aware that her charm was still working on him, too. She had colored slightly under his observation, and he found himself grinning with delight at this lack of sophistication. Horton wasn’t used to women still fresh enough to blush.

  Fingering his day-old beard, he said, “You make me feel as though we’re Beauty and the Beast. Forgive the stubble. It’s part of my disguise.”

  Her return smile was shy and nervous. “Just follow me,” she said in a low voice.

  She led him out of the kitchen into a hall. Swinging, glass-topped doors across the hall gave onto the main dining room. Helen turned right to the open door of a freight elevator. She manipulated the controls to raise them to the seventh floor.

  Horton got a mild shock when they stepped from the car. They were directly across the hall from Belle’s room.

  He breathed a little more easily when Helen led him down the hall, around a corner and the full length of that hall to another turn. Her room was on the opposite side of the hotel from Belle’s.

  They passed no one at all in the hallways. Helen slipped her key into the door of room 786.

  Inside she pushed the door closed and emitted a sigh of relief.

  “I’m glad that’s over,” she said. “Afraid I wouldn’t make a very good gunman’s moll. I get too nervous.” Then she asked, “Would you like a drink?”

  “If it’s not beer,” he told her. “I had about a month’s quota of beer today.”

  Some of the rooms at the Lawford were equipped with refrigerators. Horton’s had possessed one, and Helen’s did too. Sliding back a wall panel, she disclosed its small door. When she opened it, Horton saw that it was well-stocked with beer and soda. She took out an ice tray and handed it to him.

  “You fix the ice,” she instructed. “You’ll find a glass bowl in the bathroom.”

  It was the old-fashioned type of tray which had to have water run over it to get the cubes out. When Horton returned from the bathroom with the filled bowl, she had produced a bottle of bourbon and had poured a substantial amount into each of two glasses. She dropped cubes into them and looked at Horton inquiringly.

  “Usually I take water,” he said. “But I need a pickup. I’ll just have it on the rocks.”

  She added a little soda to hers.

  When they were seated with drinks and cigarettes, the girl on the bed and Horton in a chair next to it, she said, “Now I think I deserve the explanation you promised.”

  “You do that,” he agreed. “Incidentally, I had to run out on my hotel bill. When this is over, I’ll pay it.”

  Helen brushed this aside. “You’re accused of murder, and you worry about a hotel bill. Let’s stick to the important matters.”

  During the ride up on the freight elevator, Horton had mulled over the problem of just how much of the truth he should tell Helen. He had decided to make a clean breast of everything, including his bunco game, for it would be difficult to explain his reason for visiting her step-father’s used-car lot if he didn’t tell the truth. If he made up a lie and was disbelieved, Helen would automatically be convinced he was the murderer. On the other hand, he had already tested out the true story on Tony Manzetti and had found belief. He was fairly certain the girl would believe it, too.

  In addition to this, he knew a woman would more readily forgive a man’s sin when he confessed it than she would if she learned of it from an outside source. In the first case she had only the sin to forgive. In the second, she had to forgive both the sin and his deceit.

  Horton said, “To start off, I wasn’t trying to get your step-father to cash a bad check, as the papers said. I offered him a check in partial payment for a car, but there was nothing wrong with it. I have fifteen thousand dollars on deposit at Rice City National Bank.”

  Helen gave him a relieved smile. “I knew the papers couldn’t be right. You just didn’t look like a crook.”

  Horton took a gulp of his drink to steel himself for the plunge. Then he said, “I am though, Helen. Just not the type the papers said.”

  She frowned without understanding. “What?”

  “I’m a bunco artist.”

  Helen looked confused. “A what?”

  “A con man. I was trying to pull a confidence game on your step-father when he got killed.”

  She said slowly, “I don’t think I understand.”

  He told her, outlining his plan for the third time, just as he had told it to Belle and Manzetti. As he described the gimmick, it occurred to him that if he continued to tell it to people, the idea would be useless for future use. It would spread all over the country by word of mouth.

  By the time he reached the point of the story where her step-father was killed, Helen’s expression was a mixture of shock and disapproval. But at least there was no suggestion of disbelief on her face.

  Doggedly, he ploughed right on with a description of his activities after the murder, omitting nothing except mention of Belle’s and the colonel’s help. When he described his unmasking at the Sixth Ward Athletic Club and the subsequent attempt by Manzetti’s men to kill him, her expression of disapproval faded to one of alarm. He didn’t tell her of his suspicion of Velda. He wanted to save that until he had cleared the air by his confession and had gotten her back into a co-operative mood.

  When he finished, there was a long silence. Then she said, “Why did you tell me this, Jim?”

  “Because it’s the truth.”

  “I mean, why did you want me to know?”

  “A couple of reasons. I wanted to convince you I had no reason to kill your step-father. Have I convinced you?”

  She gave a reluctant nod. “Yes, I believe you. But this other is something of a shock. I suppose it’s the lesser of two evils to learn you’re a confidence man instead of a killer, but it’s still a shock. What’s the other reason?”

  “I simply didn’t want to deceive you.”

  She thought this over, and a touch of color came to her cheeks again. She took a sip of her drink to cover her blush, and selfconsciously tapped ashes from her cigarette. “I suppose in a way that’s flattering,” she conceded. “But do you always do things like this? I mean, is that the way you make your living?”

  He said, “I’m afraid it is, Helen.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  NEITHER SAID anything for a time. They sipped their drinks, finished their cigarettes and stubbed them out. Helen sat with downcast eyes, thinking deeply.

  Finally she looked up and asked, “Do you have a prison record?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m known to police in a number of places. Not wanted by them; just known.”

  “In other words, you’re a successful confidence man?”

  “You could put it that way,” he admitted.

  “Doesn’t your conscience ever bother you?”

  “Why should it?” he asked. “I don’t fleece widows and orphans. I’ve never yet taken a man who couldn’t afford the loss. And with taxes what they are today, it’s all deductible.”

  “That sounds like rationalization,” she said with disapproval.

  “It is,” he admitted. “Any way you look at it, I make a dishonest living. But compared to most bunco artists, I’m a paragon of virtue. The average con man wouldn’t hesitate to take the last cent of a widow with seven children, and wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep if he later heard they all starved to death. I confine myself to taking well-to-do businessmen.”

  “It’s just as dishonest to cheat them as it is to cheat widows.”

  “Of course,” he agreed. “I’ll even admit my motive is selfish. I couldn’t stand to have a starving widow on my conscience. Picking the type victims I do, I can sleep like a baby.”

  She considered him thoughtfully for a long time. Horton finished his drink, rose and set the empty glass on the dresser. She sipped the last of hers and held the empty glass for him to take.

  “Another?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m trying to make up m
y mind about you.”

  “I know,” he said. “Take your time.” He set her glass on the dresser.

  “You were truthful with me,” she said. “I suppose I ought to credit you with that.”

  He smiled at her.

  “And if you really only cheat well-to-do men, you aren’t as bad as you could be.”

  He smiled again.

  “You could cheat women very easily, you know. You have a way with them.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said formally. “I think you’re wonderful too.”

  “Do you really?” she asked, her expression of disapproval disappearing entirely.

  In answer he walked over to the bed and tilted up her chin with one hand. He looked down at her for a moment, then stooped and kissed her solidly on the mouth. She made no attempt to turn her head, but her lips were passive. When he straightened, she stared up at him thoughtfully.

  She said, “I have a philosophy.”

  Still cupping her face with one hand, he asked, “About what?”

  “I believe you can’t hurt people before you meet them. I mean, what a man does before he meets a woman shouldn’t offend her. And vice-versa. Your past is your own business. But after they meet, if they mean anything to each other, what each one does is the other one’s business.”

  “Sounds fair,” he said.

  A little breathlessly she said, “So don’t kiss me any more unless you promise you’ll reform.”

  Dropping his hand from her chin, he studied her curiously. The remark coming from any other woman would have struck him as so childlike that it bordered on inanity. Coming from Helen, it struck him only as delightfully innocent.

  To his own surprise, he heard himself saying, “I think I’d promise you anything, and mean it.”

  Then he dropped to the bed alongside her and took her in his arms. Her lips were no longer passive.

  Gently he pressed her back onto the bed.

  A ringing telephone awakened Horton. For a moment he couldn’t recall where he was. Then a head stirred on his bare shoulder and Helen sat up, clutching the sheet to her bosom. With her free hand she lifted the phone from the bedside table.