Free Live Free

by Wolfe, Gene

  “He was anxious to sign,” Malloy said happily. “He wanted to sign, Steve. You should have heard him thank me afterwards. I could have made it fifty. I’m kind of sorry I didn’t.”

  “Suppose he dies?” Marshal asked angrily. (Captain Davidson watched the two of them in silence.)

  “He won’t.”

  “The hell you say! You’re no doctor.”

  “The doctor’s a doctor. He’s got him in there taking stitches in his head. He’s not yelling about oxygen and transfussions, is he?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  Captain Davidson said, “You said you didn’t live there, Malloy.”

  “I don’t, Captain.”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind if we had a look at your keys, would you? Just friendly. You say you’re an ex-cop. You ought to know how it is.”

  “I’d like the keys back, Captain. I hope you’ll keep the card. You know how it is.”

  “I don’t. I never sold insurance.”

  A shivering man in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt appeared at Malloy’s elbow. “Did you say twenty-five thousand whole life?”

  Captain Davidson tossed the keys to Evans on the stoop.

  “Double indemnity. Beneficiary’s his wife.”

  “That’s what I thought I heard,” the shivering man said. He was nursing a styrofoam coffee container. “One of the guys was talking about it when I came up. I had him—” He paused to wipe his nose.

  Glasser pushed him aside. “Look, you’re leaving, right? Malloy, right?” He thrust out a hand, and Malloy took it. “Nat Glasser. You got nothing to lose, so tell me. What kind of a presentation did he go for? Man-of-the-world? Serious? We’ve got something opening up that—”

  “How do you know I don’t have a concussion?” Sergeant Proudy asked argumentatively.

  “Do I look like God?” the old doctor said. “I don’t know.” As a matter of fact, he did look like God. He was a small, elderly man who sported a little white beard and an even whiter mustache; the collar of a tattersall shirt—an almost infallible sign of the presence of deity—peeped above the collar of his overcoat.

  “Suppose I do have a concussion?”

  “You’re blacking out? Seeing spots?”

  “No.”

  “Dizzy?”

  “Not much.”

  “Your fingers are numb. You drop things.”

  “Not since I dropped that flashlight, and that was before I got hit.”

  “Then supposing you have a concussion, I’m ordering you to go home and go to bed. In the morning, see your regular doctor and tell him what happened.”

  “That’s what you said before.”

  “I noticed it myself.” The doctor glanced at his curved needle and put it away. “Concussion is a bruising of the brain. It can be so slight there’s practically no symptoms at all. The main thing is to leave it alone until it gets better. Don’t play football. If you see somebody trying to hit you with a ball bat, duck. (Nurse, let me have some tape.) If you want to find out for certain if you have a concussion, we’ll perform an autopsy. If you think you might have a fractured skull, go to the emergency room of the nearest hospital and tell them that. They’ll zap your head with a few X-rays, and it’s a poor X-ray man that can’t find a little crack someplace if he looks hard enough. He’ll tell you to give up football until the bone knits. Okay, all done, put on your hat and you can go home.”

  “You’re through bandaging?” Sergeant Proudy’s fingers groped at the gauze.

  “Why do you think I was pulling you around while I was talking to you? I warn you, if you press it, it’s going to hurt.”

  Candy Garth said, “Here,” and extended a pink plastic hand mirror. Proudy accepted it and inspected his bandage.

  “I made it look worse than it is. If a dressing doesn’t look bad, nobody ever believes the patient is hurt.”

  “I’d hate to be hurt as bad as that bandage looks.”

  “You’d be dead.”

  Candy asked, “Is it going to leave a scar?”

  “I’m afraid so. He’s losing hair up there. Of course a plastic surgeon could erase most of it.”

  “I’ll keep it.” Sergeant Proudy rubbed his hands together. “When some rookie asks me what happened, I’ll just tell him I got it in the head with a fire ax. You got any aspirin?”

  “I never carry it. My theory is that any patient too dumb to buy his own is too dumb to live anyway.”

  “I’ll get some,” Candy said. She bustled out, and they heard the stair groan beneath her weight.

  Barnes said, “That girl enjoys nursing. You ought to hire her, Dr. Makee.” He stood with his back to the fireplace, where the wreck of a table burned.

  The physician shook his head and snapped his bag shut. “There was a time when I would have taken you up on that. Now I’ve had to learn restraint.”

  Sergeant Proudy stood, swayed, and gripped the back of a chair to steady himself. “How much do I owe you, Doc?”

  Dr. Makee winked at Stubb. “I can always tell when they’re getting better. They call me Doc.”

  “How much? If it isn’t more than I got on me, I’ll pay you now.”

  “Ten dollars. Quite a few years ago, I swore I’d never charge more than ten dollars for a house call.”

  Stubb said, “Nobody else even makes house calls.” The bloody fire ax lay across his knees.

  “I don’t either. I’m retired, or that’s what I keep telling people.”

  “Here’s the aspirin,” Candy announced. “I’ll get you a drink, if the pipes aren’t frozen yet.” To Barnes she added, “Madame Serpentina’s packing. I listened outside her door.”

  Stubb glanced at the dark and silent television. He whispered, “Where’s Free?” but Barnes only shrugged.

  Sergeant Proudy gulped down two aspirin tablets and wandered across the room to look out the window.

  “There he is!” Sim Sheppard shouted.

  Everything stopped. Everyone turned to look. For perhaps twenty seconds, the prominent nose and small eyes of Sergeant Proudy appeared at the parlor window, still recognizable beneath a rakish cap of white surgical gauze.

  Sim’s coffee was trampled in the snow. Steve Marshal’s attache case came unattached. No physicist could say how hard the front-runners struck the door. They were weighty men, most of them, police and sales alike; they had been sprinting, and they were unable to brake on the ice. Behind them were a dozen more even weightier and equally unable—or unwilling—to stop.

  The weakened door made a sound much like that of a large model plane jumped upon by a small boy.

  Chapter 12

  THE RETREAT

  “You too, huh?” Barnes asked.

  Stubb looked around at him. “Yeah, me too.”

  It was night, and snow clouds hung over the city; there was no light anywhere that was not mankind’s. It might have been a city of clouds, with a few stars peeping through. They might have been in some vast, dark, rolling country, a land of hills and black pines.

  “I thought they’d have more down.”

  “It was almost quitting time when they got Candy out.” Stubb chuckled.

  “What was that gunk under her robe?”

  “Baby oil, I think.”

  “I’m the one who’s supposed to know about novelties. If I had greased the floor in the hall …”

  “They probably would have dropped her and broken her neck.”

  “Or she would have gone through to the basement. How much does she weigh?”

  “How the hell should I know? Two hundred, maybe.”

  “Two hundred and fifty, at least. Maybe three hundred.”

  “Maybe three hundred,” Stubb conceded. “Who gives a damn?” He tossed his cigarette into the snow. “It’s God-damned cold out here, Ozzie. You got a new place to stay?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Not me. They let me put my bag behind the counter in the Sandwich Shop up the street, and I’m still looking around.”
/>
  “Yes,” Barnes said again.

  “We kind of worked together this afternoon, right? And it didn’t go too bad. Hell, with Candy it almost went good enough.”

  Barnes nodded.

  “Ozzie, I was wondering whether I could bunk with you. Just for tonight. I’ll get a place of my own in the morning.”

  There was an instant’s silence, then the soft voice of the witch said, “Ozzie has no place to stay, Mr. Stubb.”

  Both men whirled. “Where’d you come from?” Stubb asked.

  “I fear he lied to you. He is here, staring at this ruined house, for the same reason you are. He wonders if he might not occupy his room one night more. Do not do it, gentlemen. It is very cold tonight. You would freeze.”

  Stubb asked, “What about you, Madame S.?”

  “I am here because I was forced to leave behind certain belongings. I have returned to fetch them.”

  Stubb said, “We’ll help you carry ’em. Where are you going?”

  “What is the nearest hotel of good quality?”

  “The Consort. It’s only about four blocks.”

  “From such a neighborhood as this? I am amazed. Then I go to the Consort. And yes, you may carry my things for me. You will save me the price of a taxi. Ozzie, you are a man and know about such matters. How may I pass through this fence?”

  The barrier the wrecking crew had erected was not actually a fence, but a pack-train of yellow sawhorses carrying indolent orange lights, harnessed with an orange cord. Stubb cut the cord with his penknife, and Barnes moved one aside.

  Not even the front wall of the house that had been Free’s was entirely gone as yet. Its outline remained, bricks hanging from their mortar to make a crazy arch that framed the dollhouse interiors of the front rooms. Under drifted snow, the hall was still recognizably the hall, with its stair vanishing upward into blackness. On its right, the parlor was changed mostly by the dying of the fire and the absence of the stuffed bird, its glass bell, and the table they had burned. To the left, Free’s bedroom seemed to bare all its poor secrets; his rumpled sheets cowered on the bed under a thin blanket of snow. Above, Candy’s room and the witch’s were only half exposed.

  “Look!” Barnes pointed. “I saw something.”

  “Where?” Stubb craned his neck and lifted his small body on tiptoe.

  “Up there. Something moved.”

  “Probably just the light.”

  “Or Free. It could have been Free. I never saw him after this morning. Did you? Did anybody?”

  The witch glanced back, her face half buried in the fur of her coat collar. “Free is dead.”

  Stubb grunted. “You see the body?”

  “I walk into it now.”

  “Without a flashlight. Ozzie, you got a light?”

  Barnes took out what appeared to be a small chromeplated pistol and pulled the trigger. A blue flame an inch long burned at the muzzle. “Butane,” he said. “You like it?”

  “I’m crazy about it.” In the dim, blue light, Stubb examined the trampled snow. “Kids been in here. See that little sole with the hole in it? Neighborhood kid. Madame S., I hope you hid whatever you got, or it won’t be there now.”

  “My things are here still. I feel them.”

  Barnes hurried to catch up with her. “Hold onto the rail, please, Madame Serpentina, or you’ll fall.”

  “Not on this. Not even without your light, Ozzie. I do not require it, nor would I if this place were entirely dark.”

  Something creaked.

  No one spoke; but there was in the air the almost palpable agreement not to speak, to ignore whatever it had been. The old house seemed to sigh. Perhaps there was no wind—the snow never stirred. Perhaps there was no sound.

  “We’d better hurry, Madame Serpentina. The butane won’t last long.”

  “I have told you I do not need light.”

  Stubb muttered, “Well, we do.”

  The door of the witch’s room was locked. She took her key from her purse and opened it to reveal one wall half dissolved in space and streetlights.

  “I’m surprised the kids didn’t break in,” Barnes said.

  “They were in fear, my Ozzie. They did not venture to the top of the stair, I think.”

  “Tracks?”

  “I do not need to look at tracks.”

  Stubb said, “Somebody came up here. Big feet. Probably the wrecking crew.”

  “No one has entered my room. That is all I care about. Ozzie, my bags are beneath that bed. Will you get them for me?”

  One was an old suitcase, the other a bag in actual fact, a sack of hairy goatskin as big as a laundry bag. Its knotted thongs were sealed with a lump of wax that looked black in the faint light.

  “‘Now I am done.’ So speaks the poet. If you will carry these for me, gentlemen? Mr. Stubb, it would perhaps be better if you were to take the suitcase. Ozzie, you may have the honor of the other. That is somewhat heavier, I think.”

  Stubb was already maneuvering the suitcase through the narrow doorway. After a final, lingering glance around the room, the witch followed him, leaving Barnes to bring up the rear.

  “What a day has this been, and what a time in my life! You say, Mr. Stubb, that it is not far to this hotel?”

  A voice out of the darkness asked, “Did somebody say hotel?” There was a flicker of light on the opposite side of the stairwell.

  “Candy, is that you?”

  “Jim?” The fat girl’s face appeared as the moon appears with the passing of a cloud. She struck a match and held it up.

  “Candy, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Getting some stuff. Celebrating.” She smiled, and despite its unfocused quality, the smile made her pretty. “This is where it was, right? I thought,” (she belched softly) “that maybe before they tore down the stadium I’d go stand on the mound again.”

  “Yeah,” Stubb said. “You had them going.”

  The witch added, “And we should be going.”

  “To a hotel, you said.” The fat girl still wore her white plastic raincoat, but her lost white plastic boots had been replaced by enormous black ones. She carried a flight bag and brought the malty odor of beer with her. “I met this guy I know, and he said sorry I’d like to but I don’t have the bread, right? And I said tonight he didn’t need it—just let me sleep over. So we went up to his place, and then he said come on, I know where there’s a party tonight.”

  The witch pushed past Stubb as he stood listening; Barnes followed her.

  “So we got in his beater and drove way the hell out. Shadylawn. Sounds like a graveyard, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Stubb said.

  “And then he said give me a cigarette, and I said I didn’t have any. I’d been smoking his on the way out. So we went by a drugstore, and he stopped and dug out a buck and said here go in and get us a pack.” A tear splashed on Stubb’s hand.

  “And he split while you were inside.”

  “Buh huh.”

  “Jesus Christ. No wonder you feel down. How’d you get back?”

  “Hitched.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Stubb said again.

  “It wasn’t so bad, except I was afraid I was going to get picked up by the smokies.” The fat girl swallowed and snuffled. “Jim, we’d better go. We’ll lose them.”

  “Sure we will. I got her suitcase here. Can you make it down the steps okay?”

  “I made it up. You don’t have a drink on you?”

  “I got two cigarettes, and that’s it.”

  “Up at Harry’s, I knocked down six or eight beers, and now I can feel them dying in me. You know what I mean?”

  “Sure.”

  She was going down the stairs beside him. There was just enough room for the two of them with the suitcase between them. At the bottom, she asked, “Let me have one of those cigarettes?”

  “Sure,” Stubb said. Barnes and the witch were already some distance down the street. Stubb put down the suitcase, took out hi
s last two Camels, and crumpled the pack and tossed it into the gutter. He lit their cigarettes from a paper match, as he had before.

  “This lady picked me up. She was about forty, I guess. Her husband was out of town and she was going downtown to have dinner with another lady she’d gone to college with. Hey, let me carry part of that—see, I can just hook a couple fingers in the handle.”

  “All right.”

  “Now we kind of walk in step. I told her I was on a date and he wanted me to come across, and when I wouldn’t, he shoved me out of the car.”

  “Happens a lot, I guess.”

  “Not to me. Anyway, she bought it. At first, you know, I thought she was just pretending to make it easier for both of us, but she really did buy it. I was kind of messed up.”

  “Like now,” Stubb said.

  “I guess. I didn’t give her any big act. Just what I told you. I asked her about this college she and the other lady went to. It sounded great. When I got out, she said how far, and I said oh, ’bout eight blocks, but you wouldn’t want to go down there, and she gave me a couple of bucks for a cab.”

  “You can’t hardly open the door of a cab for two bucks.”

  “I don’t think she gets downtown much.”

  “Tell me about coming back to Free’s.”

  The fat girl belched again, letting out the air with a puff of smoke. “Jim, am I walking all right?”

  “Good enough.”

  “She knew I was a little—you know. Tippy.”

  “Tipsy.”

  “I didn’t laugh or do anything crazy, but she must have smelled it on me. I think I cried a little.”

  “She’d expect you to.”

  “Uh huh. Do we want to catch up with them?”

  “No. Let’s just keep them in sight.”

  “Then we ought to slow down a little. This thing’s heavy anyhow.”

  “Sure.”

  “I was all messed up, see? I’d spent the whole damn evening, and all I had was three bucks to show for it. I didn’t have anywhere to stay.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I remembered—you know? Once in my life I had come over everybody. You remember when they came in and I was sitting there all slicked down with Johnson & Johnson’s? They just about went bananas. You remember, Jim?”