Free Live Free

by Wolfe, Gene

  “Okay, turn around.”

  He turned as instructed. “I just wanted to talk to you for a minute. Put away your gun and let’s sit down.”

  “You said you had an electric razor. Where is it?”

  “I left it in the bathroom.”

  “Switch those lights on again and point to it. All right, go over to it slow.” Sergeant Proudy followed him into the bathroom, the muzzle of his revolver jammed against Barnes’s spine. “Unplug it and drop it in the crapper.” Barnes started to protest, and the revolver made an ominous click. “You do what I tell you. Do it now.”

  The razor sank with a soft splash, trailing a column of tiny bubbles. Barnes left the wire hanging out of the bowl. “Is that all right? If it is, how about putting your gun away? You’ve seen I haven’t got one. I’d like to sit down and talk.”

  The revolver no longer jabbed his spine, and he heard the shuffle of the policeman’s feet as he backed out of the bathroom. “You’d like to jump me. That’s what you’d like to do.”

  “I could have jumped you while you were asleep,” Barnes protested.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t. Lost your nerve. You sit down; sit on the bed.”

  Barnes seated himself gingerly, wondering what the maid would say, how she would report it to the management when she found the bed of an unoccupied room so rumpled and creased.

  “I’m putting my gun back in this shoulder rig,” Proudy announced. “You see it? I can get it a hell of a lot quicker than you can get your hanky, and I’m hoping, yeah, hoping you’ll try something. Because you’re going to be dead before you ever get your ass off that mattress.”

  “I won’t try anything,” Barnes said.

  “God damn you, you’d better not.”

  “I just came here to talk to you. You’re watching Madame Serpentina and Stubb and—ah—the rest of us? Isn’t that true?”

  “You’ve got this all wrong, bud. I don’t answer questions. I ask them.”

  “All I want,” Barnes said carefully, “is a little advice. You see, Sergeant, I’ve been offered a business proposition—by Stubb and Madame Serpentina specincally—and it occurred to me that if they were suspected of something, maybe I ought to find out about it before I give them my decision.”

  “What you’re telling me is you’re not working with them already.”

  “I’m not. We’re friends, that’s all.”

  Sergeant Proudy had begun to pace the room. Barnes watched him, trying to recall him as he had been the day before, when he knocked at the door. A harsh band of daylight had penetrated the drapes; when Proudy entered it, he seemed haggard, as though he were a creature of the night who lost all life and color there, as sea creatures do, taken from the water.

  “I know about you,” Proudy said after he had paced the room a dozen times. “You don’t think I do, but I do. You don’t think anyone knows, do you. Well, I do. I’m the only son of a bitch that does, but I know more about you than you do about yourselves.”

  “Then maybe you’ll give me your advice.”

  “Me give you advice? Oh, no, not me.” Proudy turned a humorless smile toward him. “What could I say? Quit? Your boss won’t allow you to quit. I know that, and you know it too. Confess and bargain with the Prosecutor’s Office for police protection? They wouldn’t believe you any more than they would me. Kill yourself? That wouldn’t work either, now would it?”

  “I guess not,” Barnes said.

  “So you see, there’s nothing I can tell you to do.” Proudy drew his revolver again, spun the cylinder so that it made a sharp clicking, then thrust it back into his holster. “We’ll fight it out, you people and me. I got a hand tied behind me: I got to work inside the law, or pretty much. You can do as you damn please. There’s four of you with God knows how many millions or billions behind you, and only one of me.” He thumped his chest. “That’s okay too.”

  Barnes said, “I believe you should sit down, Sergeant. You look tired.” A thought struck him. “Maybe we could go down to the coffee shop and have breakfast. Talk this over.”

  “To hell with you!” Proudy stopped suddenly, grinning. “Say, that’s pretty good, ain’t that right? ‘To hell with you.’”

  “I’ll say. It certainly is.” Fumbling at his shirt pocket, Barnes found a crushed pack of Winstons. It held only a few crumbs of tobacco. He wadded it into a ball and tossed it at the wastebasket.

  “You out? Here, have one of mine. That’s the way they do, ain’t that right? You want a blindfold too?”

  “Thanks,” Barnes said. “I’ve been trying to quit, but thanks.”

  “Least I can do.”

  Barnes reached into his coat pocket and saw Proudy freeze. For an instant he froze himself. When Proudy spoke, he sounded as if he were choking. “What is that? Beretta twenty-two?”

  “Get them up and keep them up,” Barnes said, astonishing himself. “And shut up.”

  Clumsily, nearly dropping it, he grasped the butt of Proudy’s revolver with his left hand and jerked it out of the shoulder holster. “Get in the bathroom. You can shut the door and lock it, then we’ll both feel safer.”

  The door closed and the lock clicked. Barnes let out a great whoosh of breath and pulled the trigger of the little silver pistol. A small blue flame appeared at the end of its barrel. He lit the cigarette Proudy had given him and sucked in smoke.

  “I got a gun too now,” Proudy called through the door. “I had a backup, a derringer strapped to my ankle. You didn’t think of that, did you, you smart bastard?”

  “You’ll be a sitting duck coming out of there,” Barnes told him. He dropped the cigarette lighter back into his pocket and transferred Proudy’s snubnose to his right hand. Would it shoot if he just pulled the trigger? He could not be sure.

  “I’m not coming out. Just don’t you come in.”

  Barnes said, “I’ll come in when I’m good an’ ready, ya swab.”

  There was a muted clumping sound, and he imagined Proudy climbing into the tub, hiding himself behind the shower doors. He wondered if Proudy really had another gun.

  A trick sliding chart under the telephone gave emergency numbers as well as those for the hotel gift shop, valet service, and so on: Doctor, Hospital, Police, Fire. After a moment’s thought, Barnes pushed the number for Hospital.

  “Holly Angels,” the operator said enigmatically.

  “Listen …” Barnes discovered he did not know where to begin. “A friend of mine got hit on the head. He’s acting funny now. You know what I mean?”

  “Ya want Belmont,” the Holly Angels operator told him. “Belmont’s psycho. I kin connect ya.” There was a click and a buzz.

  “Belmont Hospital.”

  As quickly as he could, Barnes said, “Listen there’s a maniac in Room Seven Seventy-One of the Consort he’s got a gun and if you don’t do something he’s goingtokillsomebody.”

  He slammed down the phone and gasped for breath. Would they come? When you called people, they didn’t, not always. Sometimes not even the Fire Department came, he had heard. One of his customers had told him once that sometimes she could not even get salesmen to come, and he knew that not all the salesmen he had called to Free’s had come. He toyed with the idea of telling Proudy again that he would shoot him if he came out, but that might only make Proudy come out sooner.

  The notebook by the telephone showed half a page of scribbled comments: “ … after going in. Kidnap? Dead? How disp bdy? Cart? Later maybe. Still there, 2:50. Listened at door. Sleeping and talking. Rtnd stkt cald # grl. Ans dvc. Sd where you? Call when come in.”

  Barnes closed the notebook, picked up his order book, and dropped both into his pocket. As he left the room, he toyed with the idea of taking the tape from the door, but that would not, of course, keep Proudy in, only delay the men from the hospital, if men from the hospital ever came. For an instant he visualized thorny-winged green beings in robes of red, one carrying a net, the other a straitjacket. No, Belmont. Madmen, then. Belmont was ps
ycho. Better get away before they came.

  A siren howled outside, and he realized with a start that he was still holding Proudy’s revolver. He looked up and down the corridor to make sure no one had seen him and thrust it into the waistband of his trousers. As he was buttoning his coat, a bellman pushing a serving cart emerged from the nearest elevator.

  “How disp bdy? Cart?” That was what Proudy had been worried about, the waiter last night. Stubb had told the waiter to go the other way to reach the elevators, and he had done it. Proudy thought he was dead in seven seventy-seven. “Grl” must mean Sandy Duck, who had talked to him on her way out. She hadn’t come home then, or had come home late, or just had not taken her phone off the answering machine while she slept.

  The cart held an assortment of covered dishes, two carafes of coffee, silver, and a stack of cups and saucers. Barnes watched the bellman push it into the witch’s room and waited until he left, then went in himself. “Ahoy!” he said.

  Chapter 22

  PARTNERSHIP

  “Where the hell have you been?” Stubb came half out of his chair.

  “Down the hall talking to Sergeant Proudy,” Barnes told him. “You’re a detective, you must know something about guns.”

  Candy’s now-scarlet mouth formed a little O at the mention of guns; the witch, who had smiled slightly when Barnes entered, continued to smile.

  “Yeah,” Stubb said. “Yeah, I know something. I’m no crack shot, my eyes aren’t that good. But I know one end from the other.”

  “That’s great.” Barnes pulled Proudy’s revolver from his waistband and laid it on the table. “You take this. I don’t want it, and I’m liable to shoot myself with it.”

  Stubb stared at the gun for a moment, then picked it up with a napkin. The cylinder popped open, and when Stubb pushed the cylinder pin six bright brass cartridges rattled onto the table. He flipped his wrist, but the cylinder would not snap back into place, and he had to push it back with his left hand. After wiping and wrapping the entire gun, he lifted the mattress of the unused bed and pushed the gun far under it. He carried the cartridges into the bathroom and flushed the toilet.

  “They go down?” Barnes called. He did not think they would.

  “Yeah, probably no farther than the trap, though.”

  Candy said, “It’ll plug up now.” She sounded bitter.

  Stubb stepped back into the room. “I doubt it. A sewer line like that’s pretty big.”

  “He knows everything, Jim does. I haven’t found one single, solitary, God-damned thing he doesn’t know more about than any other dude on earth.”

  “All right, it’ll plug up. Madame S. can ask for another room.”

  The witch said, “We have been negotiating, Ozzie. We wish to forge an alliance.” She sounded amused.

  Stubb asked, “How’d you get it away from him, anyhow? Take it while he was asleep?”

  Candy passed Barnes a cup of coffee. “Don’t tell the bastard, Ozzie. If we’re partners, we’re partners. If we’re not, we’re not.”

  “I thought we were going to be partners,” Barnes said.

  “Partners means share and share alike. Jim wants to give us a lousy ten percent. That for both of us, Jim? Five percent each?”

  Stubb said, “Our last offer was fifteen. Fifteen for each of you.”

  “Bullshit!” Candy heaved to her feet. “I’m splitting. Thanks for the coffee, lady. Sorry I’ve messed up the eggs, but somebody can still eat them—I’m not poison. Thank you so very much for letting me sleep on your floor. It was comfy.”

  Stubb said, “For God’s sake, sit down. Nobody wants your eggs. You might as well finish them.”

  “No, what nobody wants is me.” Candy looked for her white raincoat and found it in a corner. She picked it up, keeping her legs straight and grunting at the compression of her belly.

  “I want you.” Barnes stood up too. “If you go, I go.”

  Candy straightened, her face pink. “Thanks, Ozzie. You’re a decent guy. I go. Come on.”

  “Damn it,” Stubb said, “we want you too. Twenty-five percent.”

  Candy stared at him. “Ozzie and me each get twenty-five.”

  The witch said, “You have not consulted me, Mr. Stubb.”

  “I don’t have to. You agreed we’d give them fifteen. That was thirty for them and thirty-five each for us. I’m giving them another ten each out of my share. You have thirty-five; they have twenty-five apiece; I have fifteen.”

  “No way,” Candy said.

  There was a knock at the door.

  For a moment they were silent, looking at one another. Stubb asked, “Proudy?”

  Barnes lifted his shoulders. “Maybe.” The witch called, “Who is there?”

  “Maid.”

  Barnes opened the door. A middle-aged woman waited there with a dust cloth in her hand; behind her was a laundry cart full of crumpled sheets. “You still eatin’?” she asked. “I can come back.”

  Stubb rose. “We’re about through, except for Ozzie. We didn’t know you’d be back, Ozzie, so we didn’t order for you.”

  Candy told him, “I haven’t finished my eggs.”

  “It’ll only take you a minute. I suggest we adjourn to the coffee shop. Ozzie can get a bite there, and this lady’ll have a chance to clean.”

  The maid said, “It won’t take long. Just make the bed and vacuum and straighten around a little.”

  The witch told her, “I’m afraid you will find the bath rather untidy. I indulged myself in an orgy of towels.”

  In the corridor, Barnes said, “It might be better to go the other way.” Stubb nodded, and they trooped behind him. “What does he want?” Stubb asked when they had reached the elevators.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He thinks we’re up to something, huh?”

  Barnes tried to remember everything that had been said in the vacant room. The coffee and cigarette had whetted his appetite, so that as he stepped through the doors his mind vacillated between Proudy and waffles. “He thinks we’re part of some vast, evil conspiracy, I believe,” he said at last. “Just one cell, but an important one.”

  Candy said, “You’re putting us on.”

  “No.” As they dropped past Six, Five, and Four, he showed them how he had taken Proudy’s gun. “That wouldn’t have worked with you,” he told Stubb. “And I don’t think it would have with Proudy, yesterday. Actually, it wasn’t a question of its working; I just got it out to light my cigarette. It’s a sample novelty. I can take orders for them.”

  “Yeah. Let me see it.” As the elevator inched to a stop, Stubb pulled the trigger and inspected the blue flame. “Doesn’t look much like a real gun. Especially at the end of the barrel.”

  Candy called, “Come on!” She was already at the door of the Quaint. “They’re just opening up, but they’ll serve us.”

  “How wonderful,” the witch replied. She was looking around; and though her dark, handsome face was as expressionless as ever, she might have been sightseeing in the tunnel of some monstrous beetle.

  The Quaint was furnished in a style called (in the catalogue of the firm that had supplied its decor) Middle Colonial Double Dutch. Its tables were of thick and irregular planks reproduced in Formica. Its false windows, lit from behind by electric bulbs, were furnished with inutile shutters pierced with hearts and tulips. Its walls boasted hex signs and polystyrene reproductions of long clay pipes.

  “We want a booth,” Candy insisted. “A big one—we’re expecting two more people.” When the hostess, who wore a Dutch bonnet, a Dutch frock, and vinyl wooden shoes, had led them to one, Candy said, “You get in first, Ozzie. I’d rather not have to slide over.”

  Stubb said, “Still mad?”

  “No, not a bit. But you two are on one side and we’re on the other.”

  Barnes asked, “Who else are we expecting?”

  The fat girl giggled. “Only me. I always say that.”

  A waitress appeared. The witch ordered orang
e juice, Stubb coffee, and Candy corned beef hash with a fried egg. Barnes asked for a cream waffle with sausage. “It’s very nice of you,” he told the witch, “to pay for my breakfast. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gotten one.”

  She shrugged. “This vile hotel pays. I shall charge everything to my room.”

  “But if we find Mr. Free’s treasure …”

  “Yes, if. None of you, not even Mr. Stubb, will devote himself as I. I will seek ceaselessly, for the rest of my life if necessary. Nevertheless, I know how unlikely it is that I shall succeed.”

  “I’m more of an optimist,” Stubb told her.

  “I know you are. So are most, and that is why they prefer roseate dreams to the great, hidden truths.”

  “We’ll see who hangs in longest.” Stubb looked across the table at Barnes and Candy. “Have we got this partnership settled?”

  The witch said, “Nothing is settled, Mr. Stubb.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Those were my shares. Don’t I have a right to give them to these two if I want?”

  “No. The thing has become preposterous. I do not understand why you wish to have these people involved with us, and I do not believe they will be of the least use. But if we are to have them, let us by all means arrange it as the fat woman originally suggested: on equal shares.”

  Candy said, “No offense taken, but I’ve got a name. I’d appreciate it if you called me by it.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Equal shares it is.” Stubb grinned. “That’s decent of you, Madame S.”

  “I have two provisos, however. No other partners are to be taken in. Nor are our shares to be redivided among ourselves. Each will claim one quarter.”

  “All right with me,” Stubb told her.

  “Very well; now we must see that there is something to claim. Miss Garth, I know that Mr. Stubb wishes to question you about all that passed between Mr. Free and yourselves. Before he begins, however, I have one or two questions I will ask.

  “Last night the telephone rang, and you answered. You spoke in such as way as to suggest that it was Mr. Free who called. Specifically, you said: ‘Hello. Yes, it is me. I am staying with her. Okay. It was real nice hearing from you again, you know? We thought something might have happened to you.’ I assume that the ‘her’ with whom you said you were staying was myself. Who was the caller?”