Nothing In Her Way

by Charles Williams

  Nothing In Her Way

  by

  Charles Williams

  1953

  Contents

  Title Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  One

  He looked as if he'd got lost from a conducted tour of something.

  I didn’t pay much attention to him when he came in, except in the general way you notice there’s somebody standing next to you in a bar. Unless it develops he’s dead, or he has fingers growing on his ears, or he tips your drink over, you probably never see him. He did it that way, in a manner of speaking. I tipped his drink over.

  I wasn’t in any mood for an opening bid about the weather. The track had gone from sloppy to heavy during the afternoon and outside the rain was still crying into the neon glow of Royal Street. It’d be soup tomorrow, and unless you tabbed something going to the post with an outboard motor you’d do just as well sticking a pin in the program or betting horses with pretty names. I’d dropped two hundred in the eighth race when Berber Prince, a beautiful overlay at four to one, just failed to last by a nose. I was feeling low.

  It was one of those dim places, with a black mirror behind the bar, and while it was doing a good business, I hadn’t known it was that crowded. I’d just put my drink down and was reaching for a cigarette when I felt my elbow bump gently against something, and then I heard the glass break as it went over the bar. I looked down at the spreading Daiquiri, and then at him. It was odd. There’d been plenty of room there a minute ago.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It didn’t spill on you, did it?”

  “No. It’s all right.” He smiled. “No harm done.”

  “Here,” I said. “Let me get you another one.” I caught the bartender’s eyes and gestured.

  “No,” he protested. “I wish you wouldn’t. It was just an accident. Happen to anybody.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I knocked it over. I’ll get you another one.” The barman came up. “Give this gentleman another Daiquiri. And charge me with a glass.”

  The barman mopped up and brought the drink. I paid for it. He picked it up and said, “Thanks. Thanks a lot. But don’t forget the next one’s on me.”

  He looked like a cherub, or an overgrown cupid. He had on a blue serge suit too tight under the arms, a white shirt too tight in the collar, and a cheap hand-painted tie with a can-can dancer on it. You knew he’d been saving the tie for New Orleans. There wasn’t any convention badge, but maybe he’d been left over, or he’d lost it.

  “My name’s Ackerman,” he said. “Homer Ackerman. I’m from Albuquerque.”

  “Belen,” I said. He pumped my hand. Well, I thought, I can always make it to another bar, even in the rain.

  “Belen?” he asked happily. “Why, that’s the name of a little town right near Albuquerque.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “I’ve never been there, though.”

  He was disappointed. It was obvious he was hoping I knew old Ben Umlaut who had the tractor agency, or maybe the Frammis boys. I wished he’d go ahead and ask me where a fella could find some—uh—girls, and then beat it, but you couldn’t just brush him off. Not with that face. It’d be like kicking a baby.

  “Say, this New Orleans is some place, ain’t it?” he said. “To visit, I mean. Sure wouldn’t want to live here, though.”

  He went on talking. I only half listened to him, and looked at a girl who was sitting on a stool at the other end of the bar. She had red hair, but it wasn’t quite the same shade of red…It never is. I wondered if I’d ever break myself of it. After all, it’d been two years.

  “Gee, my feet are killing me,” Ackerman was saying. “I must have walked a hundred miles around this place. And then standing around out there at the race track—” He broke off and turned that cherubic smile on me again. “You prolly won’t believe this, but I won over ninety dollars out there. There was this horse running named Dinah Might, and it was raining, and I used to know an old boy named Raines who was a powder monkey—get it? Powder monkey, dynamite? And I’ll be dad-burned if he didn’t—”

  I didn’t say anything. Dinah Might was the cheap plater who’d beaten out Berber Prince by the nose at something like forty to one. Maybe he’d go away.

  “Say,” he said suddenly, “there’s an empty booth over there. Let’s sit down.”

  I looked at my watch. “I’d like to, but I’ve got to run. Man I was supposed to meet—”

  His face fell in on itself. “Oh, shoot. You’ve got time for just one, haven’t you?” he asked earnestly. “You can’t go off without me buying you that drink, after you bought me one.”

  It was something about those open blue eyes, I guess. You just couldn’t destroy his faith in the people he picked up in bars. “O.K.,” I said. “Just a quick one.”

  We carried our drinks over and sat down. The seats were leather-upholstered, with high backs. He started to light a cigarette, and then said, “Excuse me.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “Oh.” He looked at me blankly. “I thought I kicked your foot.” He leaned down sideways a little and peered under the edge of the table. “I see what it was, I think. Looks like there’s something lying there on the floor.”

  “There is?” I asked, without much interest.

  “Uh-huh. Wait a minute. Maybe I can reach it.” He leaned down farther and grunted. “Nope. Can’t quite make it. I tell you. Push your right foot a little, straight ahead.”

  I shoved the foot, and then he grunted again. “Now I got it.” He straightened up, his face red. “Le’s see what it is.” He stopped, and his mouth dropped open. “Say, Belen, look at this!”

  It was a wallet, an expensive-looking job, and from the thick bulge of it there was plenty in it. But by now I wasn’t looking at the wallet. I was looking at him, and remembering the way that glass had happened to get in the way of my elbow. No, I thought. Nobody could dream up a character like this.

  His voice had dropped to an awe-struck whisper. “Holy smoke, Belen! Twenties, fifties…Boy, there’s a wad in this!” Almost unconsciously, he had hitched his shoulder around so the wallet was hidden from the rest of the bar.

  “Any name in it?” I asked.

  “That’s a good idea,” he said excitedly. “Maybe we can find the guy and give it back to him. Le’s see.” He nodded. “Here it is. J. B. Brown, Springfield. Can’t make out the name of the state.”

  “That ought to be a cinch,” I said. “Just try Illinois, Ohio, and Massachusetts, and then work your way down to the others.”

  He looked at me with innocent helplessness. “That many Springfields? What you think we ought to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was still just waiting. “You have any ideas?”

  “No-o,” he answered. “Except that we ought to try to return it. Wouldn’t be honest to—well, just keep it, would it?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not. Unless you just couldn’t find anybody named Brown living in Springfield.”

  “Maybe you’re right. If we keep it for—say a reasonable length of time, and he didn’t come forward to claim it, I’d say it would be perfectly honest for us to divide it up.”

  Well, I thought, I’ll be a sad son. There wasn’t any doubt of it now. I began to burn a little. Was he stupid, or new at it, or what? I knew I didn’t look like somebody who’d go
for it.

  Maybe the thing to do was ride along with him just for the laughs. “What do you mean, divide it up?” I said. “You found it. I didn’t.”

  He shook his head. “No, by golly. You were right here with me, and you pushed it over where I could reach it. We both share in it. That is,” he added hastily, “if Brown doesn’t show up to claim it. Say, I think I’ve figured out a way we can handle it. There’s an old boy over at this little hotel where I’m staying, he works in a bank and he’s as honest as the day is long. We’ll let him hold it for us. And then, if nobody claims it, we’ll split it right down the middle. How’s that?”

  “Sounds fine to me,” I said.

  “Good.” He nodded, and then paused, a little uncertainly. “But there’s one thing.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, knowing very well what it was.

  “Well, it’s just in case Brown should show up later. I mean, to sort of prove good faith, and financial responsibility, in case we did have to give it back later on, I think each of us ought to be able to show cash of his own equal to his part of it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I see what you mean. Something like a bond, to prove we could pay it back if we had to. We give it to your friend to hold, along with the wallet.”

  He nodded. “That’s it, exactly.”

  “All right,” I said. “Down, boy. You can put it back in your pocket and fade.”

  “How’s that?” he asked, the guileless blue eyes growing wide.

  “Look. It was old when the pharaohs were in the construction business. If you have to work the pigeon drop, why don’t you try the neighborhood bars?”

  The smooth, pink face split open then, and he laughed. “Nice work, Mike.”

  “Mike?” I asked. “You know me?”

  He looked pained. “Really, Belen. You don’t think I’m that stupid in casing a mark? And I haven’t pulled anything as crude as a pigeon drop in twenty years.”

  I was still a little angry. “Well, what’s the gag?”

  “Don’t you know me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Charles,” he said. “Wolford Charles.”

  It rang then. I’d heard of Wolford Charles—or Prince Charlie, as he was known to half the bunco squads in the country. But as far as I knew, I’d never seen him.

  He must have been reading my mind. “You have an atrocious memory for faces, Mike. Don’t you remember that crap game in my hotel room in Miami last fall? You took four hundred dollars off me.”

  I thought for a minute. “Sure. I remember that. But the only man I recall who looked anything like you was some gold-plated Bourbon from Philadelphia, by the name of—” I stopped.

  He smiled reminiscently. “Precisely. Er—Shumway, as I recall. Eccentric chap. Cursed with an absolutely unshakable belief that he could make a six the hard way. A touching bit of faith in these days of spiritual bankruptcy, but mathematically unsound.”

  I leaned back in the booth and lit a cigarette. “All right, but I still don’t make it. You didn’t think you were going to get your four hundred back that way.”

  “One moment, Mike, please.” He shoved the Daiquiri away and asked the girl for Scotch without ice. “The late Mr. Ackerman’s feeling for drinks was almost on a par with his taste in cravats.” He looked down at the can-can girl and winced. “But to get back to your question. Call it an intelligence test.”

  “Why?”

  “I was curious as to your reaction.”

  “And so I spotted it,” I said impatiently. “What do I get? A merit badge?”

  “I was thinking of something a little more substantial. To be exact, a piece of a small business venture I have under advisement at the present time.”

  “I just got off,” I said. “It was nice meeting you, Charlie.”

  “But Mike, old boy, you haven’t even heard it.”

  “And I don’t need to. I already own an Arkansas diamond mine.”

  He shook his head. “You misunderstand me. You put up no capital at all. It’s really in the nature of a job, with a nice slice of the bood—er, profits. Say ten per cent.”

  “Nothing doing,” I said.

  “But why?”

  “I’m a gambler, not a con man.”

  He gestured impatiently. “There is nothing whatever illegal about this. It’s just a simple matter of—ah—enhancing the value of a piece of real estate. But let me tell you about it, and about Miss Holman.”

  “You’re wasting your breath,” I said.

  “Miss Elaine Holman, a very charming and lovely young lady I met in New York. She’s connected with the theatre. Her mother and father are both dead, and she comes originally from a small town in the West.’ She was reared by an uncle who must be, from all accounts, one of the greatest scoundrels outside the pages of Dickens. You see, Mike, through a small irregularity in her mother’s will, this girl has been cheated of an inheritance of nearly seventy thousand dollars. All quite legally, of course, and there’s nothing the courts can do for her.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “And the uncle is in a Mexican prison, and the seventy thousand dollars is in the false bottom of a trunk being held by customs in Laredo. Cut it out, Charlie. Everybody’s heard of that one.”

  He was hurt. “Please, Mike. I’m trying to tell you this is strictly on the level. All I’m trying to do is help this girl get back what is rightfully hers. For a slight—ah—commission, of course. After all, I’m not a philanthropic institution, and the idea I have in mind will entail some expense.”

  “Roughly, around sixty-eight thousand, if I’m any judge,” I said. “Provided, of course, the whole thing’s not a pipe dream. But why are you telling me?”

  “Because I want your help. I’m offering you a job.”

  “But I’ve already turned it down. Remember?”

  He sighed. “I wish there was some way I could convince you this is strictly legitimate.” He looked up then, past my shoulder, and brightened. “But perhaps Miss Holman can. Here she comes now.”

  I looked around, and then stood up, trying to keep my face still and stiffen the weak feeling in my knees. She was wearing a clear plastic raincoat with a hood, and her hair was the color of a bottle of burgundy held up to the light. As he had said, Miss Holman was a very lovely girl.

  The only catch was that her name wasn’t Miss Holman. I was reasonably sure of that. I’d known her for twenty-three years, and I’d been married to her for two.

  Two

  It was insane.

  There wasn’t a quiver of an eyelash as Charlie introduced us. She’d never seen me before. She looked at me and said coolly and quite pleasantly, “How do you do, Mr. Belen?”

  I could hear Charlie still talking. “Mike is an old, old friend, my dear. I am trying to persuade him to join us.”

  I took it from her and played it deadpan. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do, and I was too dumfounded to think. God alone knew what she was up to, and there wasn’t any use even trying to guess. Was Charlie lying to me, or was she lying to Charlie? Since there was no known record of Charlie’s ever having told the truth about anything, the answer would seem to be obvious, but I wasn’t too sure. Dullness had never been one of her faults.

  We sat down again, and she ordered a Ramos fizz. She was on Charlie’s side of the table, directly across from me, and when the drink came she leaned forward a little and said, wide-eyed, “I do hope you’ll help us, Mr. Belen.”

  She could open a safe that way. In Salem, they’d have burned her—or they would have if there’d been enough women on the jury. Nothing had changed in two years. The dark red hair was short-cropped and as carelessly tousled as a child’s. Her face just missed being heart-shaped and petite, but there was nothing of the expressionless doll about it. It was mobile and almost flamboyantly alive, with only a subtle hint of the temperament you know damned well was there if you’d ever been married to her. She had a little dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her eyes wer
e dark brown and a little long for her face. Right now there was a blue silk scarf knotted about her chin, the big bow coming up beside her cheek and giving her a deceptively little-girl look. She was a little girl, all right—the same loaded little girl with a short fuse.

  We were divorced two years ago, and the only thing I’d heard of her in all that time was that she’d married some New York bookie named Lane. I thought of the last time I’d seen her. It was raining that night, too, and I remembered how black and shiny the streets were as we walked down the hill from the hotel in San Francisco. We said good-by quite calmly at the airline office on Union Square, and then I’d gone on to the men’s bar in the St. Francis and ordered a drink, suddenly conscious of how peaceful everything seemed—and how empty.

  I snapped out of it and came back to the present, realizing I’d been staring at her. Charlie’s proposition had been nothing but a bore, but now it had exploded right in my face. There was a horrible fascination about it, and it boiled down to that same question: Just who was bamboozling whom? Was Charlie trying to sell me the sad story of Elaine Holman, or was she selling him?

  But that was unbelievable. Charlie was a pro; he’d dealt in flimflam all his life; he had a mind like a steel trap; and he’d been around so long he wouldn’t bet you even money you didn’t have three hands on your left arm unless you’d let him take it home first and look at it. She couldn’t have the colossal nerve to try to pull something on him. Oh, couldn’t she? I thought.

  I lit her a cigarette, and then one for myself. She gave me a smile that would warm a duck blind, and turned to Charlie. “I do hope Mr. Belen will join us. He’s perfect for the job, and you just know instinctively that you can trust him.”

  I loved that. Maybe, I thought, in this idea they’re cooking up, they have to leave somebody alone for a few minutes with a red-hot stove.

  “Charlie,” I said, “I still don’t get what you want me for, but would you mind telling me a little more what this is all about? Just how are you going to get Miss Holman’s money back for her?”