The Mourner p-4

by Richard Stark

  The cab driver was gone, with Menlo’s ten dollars. Menlo was suddenly convinced that he had been played for a sucker. He very nearly turned around and left without saying a word to anyone, but the headwaiter was already there, armed with a stack of outsize menus. Feeling like an idiot, Menlo repeated what the cab driver had told him: “I’m looking for the action.”

  The headwaiter, without a flicker of expression, replied, “Up the stairway at the end of the bar, sir. And good luck to you.”

  So that was how he made his contact with the Outfit. The people he talked to at Long Ridge Inn were not of the sort he needed, but he told a circumlocutious story and they assured him he would be contacted once his story had been “checked out”. He left his name, and the name of the hotel where he was staying, and went on back to Washington.

  Three days in the hotel room. He was still living on the Ministry’s miserly expense budget, and so could have distracted himself with nothing more exciting than a motion picture. But he didn’t even go out for that, afraid he would miss the contact. He stayed in his room, ordering his meals from room service, and stared forlornly at the telephone. Finally, at one o’clock in the morning of the fourth day, it rang and a voice told him to leave the hotel and walk slowly west.

  He was met by a Cadillac with gland trouble, huge and rounded and with drawn curtains at the side windows. It rolled along beside him for a few seconds as he walked, and then a voice from its black interior called him by name. He entered the Cadillac, feeling a moment of irrational fright, and for the next two hours was driven hither and yon about the city, while he talked with the two men in the back seat.

  He intended, of course, to ask for help in getting the money, then to pull a double cross. He didn’t want any percentage of one hundred thousand dollars, he wanted it all one hundred thousand dollars. But the two men in the Cadillac seemed so confident, so competent, and so sinister, that he was no longer sure his original plan would work. He told them the story, and they agreed to join him in the venture, offering him 10 per cent of the take for supplying the information. He smiled, in mock surprise and mock bashfulness, and told them he had been planning to offer them10 per cent for performing the physical labour. They ordered the chauffeur to stop the Cadillac, and ordered Menlo to get out.

  Menlo opened the car door, and then paused to remind them he had told them everything except the name of the man who now possessed the hundred thousand dollars. He told them that if he must handle the whole thing himself he would, though he had hoped for a more sensible and businesslike attitude from any American organization, whichever side of the law it happened to be on. They said they just might be able to see their way clear to letting him have a quarter of the loot, so he shut the door, sat back, and smiled. Then the bargaining got under way in earnest.

  Because he found them so impressive that he was no longer sure he would be able to get away with the whole boodle, he bargained tenaciously and well, and when he emerged from the car he had the fat end of a sixty-forty split. He also had the uneasy conviction that the Outfit really intended to try for 100 per cent. Ah, well. Though the members of the Outfit were impressive in their grim stolidity, Menlo was the product of fifteen years of Communist bureaucratic intrigue, and he thought he might be able to handle himself adequately in this situation.

  His assistants came to see him the following day, and slowly the operation took shape. He revealed Kapor’s name, no longer having any choice, and it turned out the Outfit had an indirect connection with a maid in Kapor’s home named Clara Stoper. The connection was made more direct, and when Clara was offered a 10 per cent cut she would never receive she became a willing and eager member of the group. Events progressed without a ripple until the unexpected and somewhat frightening appearance of Handy McKay, who began playing up to Clara in a manner that was definitely suspicious.

  Could someone else be after the money? Could there have been a leak among the higher echelon of the Outfit? There was too much uncertainty here and that was dangerous. Menlo gave the order that Handy be taken and questioned, and from that point events barrelled onward like a plane in a tailspin. Menlo had shifted this way and that, always retaining his balance by the narrowest margin, and when the dust settled, there had been a total realignment. The Outfit was no longer a part of the scheme. Spannick was dead, and Menlo’s bridges were burned; he could no longer change his plans and go home now, even if he wanted to. So Menlo found himself in an uneasy alliance with the two newcomers, Parker and McKay.

  Menlo had much to be thankful to Parker and McKay for. They had, initially, saved his life. They had additionally simplified the actual mechanics of the robbery, far more so than the Outfit’s plan. And also they had, indirectly, reintroduced the fat man to sex.

  Bett Harrow. So long, so lean, so firm! So active and eager a participant! This was what he had been looking forward to while gaping at the airline stewardess, this was what he had been thinking of whenever the hundred thousand dollars recrossed his mind. Bett Harrow.

  He had waited that night till he was sure that Parker and McKay were asleep, and then he had risen from his bed on the floor. He carried his shoes and his jacket and necktie out to the hall, and there donned them, smoothing his somewhat oily black hair into place with his fingers and running thumb and forefinger down his trouser crease.

  He knocked softly at the door of room 512 and after a few seconds he heard a bed creak and then her soft call: “It’s unlocked.”

  He went in. The table lamp beside the bed offered the only light, amber and intimate. She was lying supine on the bed, the covers outlining her incredibly long body, her face framed by the blonde hair on her pillow. She looked up at him with surprise. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “You expected our friend again?” The prospect of Parker coming down the hallway now did not please him.

  “That son of a bitch!” She seemed very angry with Parker. “Get me a cigarette, will you? Over on the dresser there.”

  “Most certainly. I will, if I may, join you.”

  “Be my guest.”

  The tendency to goggle and giggle, as it had on the jetliner, was growing stronger and stronger. He fought it away, retaining an urbane and practised exterior as he carried her cigarettes over to the bed and leaned over to offer her a light. Her eyes were hazel, and deep, and knowing, and they gazed up unblinking into his own. He held her gaze, and smiled pleasantly.

  “Thanks,” she said, and blew smoke, but not towards his face. She patted the bed next to her mounding hip. “Sit down.”

  “You are most kind.” His weight sagged the mattress, and she slid just slightly towards him.

  “What are you to Parker?” she asked suddenly.

  “Ah,” he said. “How coincidental. Much the same question I had in my mind to ask you, though of course since you are a lady I would have phrased it somewhat differently.”

  “Parker’s a pain in the ass,” she said. “Sorry if I shocked you.”

  She had. Women at home did not speak in such a manner. He smiled to cover the instant of shock. “Precision in all things, my dear. And that phrase has admirable precision. My name, which our mutual friend neglected to tell you, is Auguste Menlo.”

  “You told me yourself, remember?”

  “Ah, yes, so I did.”

  “What are you so nervous about?”

  “I am most sorry. I hadn’t realized I was.”

  “Parker won’t be back, if that’s it,” she replied.

  That was, of course, part of it.

  He said, “As to Parker, my own connection with him is most transitory, and for convenience only.”

  “I could say the same thing,” she said bitterly. “I’d like to push the bastard off a cliff.”

  “Dear lady, how rapidly we have come to a meeting of minds.”

  She didn’t get it at first. She frowned slightly at him as she sorted out the words, and then all at once she responded to his smile with a dazzling smile of her own. “I’m Bett Harrow,” s
he said.

  “I am charmed.” And he meant it. He leaned forward to stub his cigarette in an ashtray. “Parker has told me of the statuette.”

  “I didn’t know Parker ever told anybody anything.”

  “He is not a blabbermouth, no. But he did tell me of the statuette. It was, you might say, a mutual sharing of confidences. My own is irrelevant at the moment, really. We might speak of it another time perhaps.”

  To have a woman like this, and in her company to spend one hundred thousand dollars. What a glorious dream! What a more glorious reality! “If I understand aright, your father has paid for this statuette in advance? Fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Cash in advance,” she replied. “We’ve got something else Parker wants too. He gets that later.”

  “Anything of, uh, value?”

  “Not to anybody else.”

  “Ah. Alas. My dear, I would like to ask you a hypothetical question.”

  “He would,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My father would pay again. If Parker didn’t have the statue, and you did, and you wanted to sell, he’d pay again.”

  “Another fifty thousand?”

  “He might not go that high. But you could probably get twenty-five.”

  Menlo shrugged. “I am not greedy.”

  “I bet you’re not.”

  He leaned over closer to her. “Another question, my dear.”

  “What this time?”

  “In my country,” he said, “women go to bed wearing great white sacks made of cotton. In the United States what do women wear when they go to bed?”

  “Depends on the woman.”

  “Well, you, for instance?”

  “Skin.”

  “Skin? You mean, no garment at all?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Incredible,” he said.

  “You don’t believe me?” There was a mock challenge in her eyes, and her hands gripped the top edge of the covers.

  “If you endeavour to prove that statement to me,” he replied, “I wish you to be warned that I can take no responsibility for whatever might transpire thereafter.”

  “Is that right?” She flicked her arms, and the covers shot back, baring her to the knee.

  He’d never undressed so quickly in his life. One sock was still half on when he lumbered into the bed, loomin over her like a dirigible. Her hazel eyes darkened, her body seemed to grow firmer and more taut, and all at once he found himself in congress with a panther. He said a lot of things in his native tongue, until he no longer had breath to spare on talk, and from then on he merely clung.

  When it was over, and they’d smoked a cigarette together and talked a bit more, he got up and began to get dressed. “I will see you in Miami. Very soon, I hope. And with the statuette.”

  “You’ll remember the hotel?”

  “It is imprinted firmly upon my memory.” He took one last cigarette from her pack, and lit it. “It might be best were you to leave in the morning, as Parker requested. He is taciturn and unpredictable, and I would want nothing to go wrong.”

  “All right,” she answered.

  “Until Miami, then.”

  “I’ll be seeing you.”

  He returned to Parker’s room and fell into pleasantly exhausted sleep, garlanded with sweet dreams

  Watching Parker and Handy at work, those last two days, he had grown more and more impressed with the way they handled themselves. He had originally planned to remain with them throughout the robbery and the getaway, letting them handle all the details, and double-crossing them only after the operation was completed. But as the time grew shorter, he revised his plans and decided to do away with them before they left Kapor’s house. Through some careful and judicious questioning, he had learned enough about the getaway route and the theories behind it to be able to handle it alone when the time came. But still, he was in a strange country and involved in an operation that was unfamiliar to him, besides being aligned with a pair of the most lupine of wolves. That last day, Friday, his nervousness and excitement grew and grew until he was afraid he would explode. It was more and more difficult to hold himself in check as the day wore on towards night.

  They had not found the derringer stowed away beneath the false bottom of his leather toilet kit. It was more of a toy than a gun, especially in comparison with the weapons that Parker and McKay carried, but it was small enough and light enough to be safely hidden and it held two bullets. If he was careful, that should be sufficient.

  Friday evening, when Parker and Handy left to steal the second car, he transferred the derringer to his coat pocket, hoping they would not think to search him again before entering Kapor’s house.

  McKay came back at the appointed time, and Menlo carried the empty suitcase they’d bought that day out to the car. He climbed in, saying, “Have you had good fortune?”

  “Good enough.”

  McKay, too, had his moments of taciturnity.

  From this point, when he actually entered the automobile and sat down next to McKay, until the operation was complete, he was in such a state of high excitement that he scarcely knew his name. The operation went like clockwork, and the delight bubbled up in him, mixed deliciously with terror, in a heady combination that was almost like a drug. They drove to the house in the stolen Cadillac, they entered, they found the room containing Kapor’s pitiful collection of bric-a-brac. And there for the first time Menlo saw the white mourner. In his state of heightened sensibilities he saw the mourner as being deeply meaningful and symbolic; in some convoluted way it expressed to him the end of mourning. Now at last all was within his grasp.

  The head came off the Apollo, just as Clara had said it would, and inside was the money. It wasn’t really money to him yet when he thought of money, he still thought of his native currency but he knew he would have no difficulty in getting used to these unfamiliar green bills, with their Presidents and public buildings. The money poured out of the hollow Apollo, filling the suitcase and more, like a cornucopia. In excitement and dread and anticipation and pleasure so intermingled and intense that he came very close to fainting, he stuffed into his pockets the fingers caressing the crisp green bills, and then pulled his hand from his right pocket again, the fingers now gripping instead the small deadly black derringer.

  Both tried to escape him, flinging themselves about, knocking statues down, but the excitement ended at his wrist. His hand was calm and steady. He fired twice, and each went down. They hadto go down. In one lightning bolt of time, Auguste Menlo had become invincible. His finger twitched twice; his adversaries ceased to exist. Their husks, their empty shells, lay broken at his feet.

  He stowed the derringer back in his pocket, hearing the crisp crinkle of the bills again, and hurried over to pick up the spoils. The statuette under his left arm, the suitcase heavier now, much heavier hanging from his right hand. He was flushed, feverish, victorious. He didn’t even remember turning the lights off on his way out.

  2

  MENLO was dreaming.

  First, there was a beach. There were great round beach umbrellas, and crowds of people swimming and splashing in the shallow water. Women wearing wool bathing suits and big floppy hats shading their eyes looked out over the water, and men and other women lay face down on blankets, sunbathing. There was a steady roar of sound, shouting and splashing and laughing, ebbing and flowing like the waves that trickled up the flat beach and down again. And children running, people hurrying this way and that. But it was all muted, all slowed down. The shouting and splashing sounded far off as if under water, and all the running and scurrying was like a moving picture run in slow motion.

  A woman came walking towards Menlo across the beach. She was tall and golden and blonde and slender, with pleasing fullnesses where they should be, and she was totally nude. But no one else paid her any attention. She came closer and closer to him, smiling with a smile that offered everything, and he recognized her, but he couldn�
��t remember her name. He stared at her, trying to remember, and wondering why no one at the beach was alarmed by her nudity. Then the sun got into his eyes, making them sting and water, and he closed them for relief. When he opened them again the woman was closer, but now she was wearing Parker’s face.

  “No!” Menlo screamed, and in a sudden great gout of flame and smoke she disappeared. He looked out over the water, and a huge ship with tremendous white sails was racing towards him, bombarding the beach. The gouts of flame and smoke roared up all around him. People were screaming, and running every which way.

  He dropped to his knees and began scrabbling in the sand, digging a hole to hide in, when a voice said, “Why not just clamp down hard on the capsule, my friend, and save all that digging?”

  He looked up, there was Spannick, sitting on a kitchen chair and smiling at him. The kitchen chair was very slowly sinking into the sand under Spannick’s weight.

  “You’re dead,” he shouted, and Spannick’s face changed to Parker’s. He closed his eyes, knowing he was doomed. He opened them again, and he was in a motel room with one green wall and one white wall and one yellow and one wall of glass covered by draperies of the three colours all combined, and he was alone.

  He sat up, and slowly the realization came to him that this was truth, that he was awake and the nightmare was over. His elbows were trembling, and his mouth hung open. He tried to close it, but his jaw immediately fell slack again. He tried again, and it fell slack again. He kept trying, sitting mounded in the middle of the bed like a squat pink fish, his elbows trembling and his mouth closing and falling open, closing and falling open. But reality was returning to him, and in a minute he got up from the bed and stood in the middle of the room. He was naked, in honour of the United States and Bett Harrow.