The Fugitive Pigeon

by Donald E. Westlake

  What I had to do, it was clear as could be, what I had to do was get out of here. What I had to do was get to Manhattan, and to my Uncle Al’s apartment, and find out what was going on, and make him help me correct this no doubt honest mistake before I turned out mistakenly killed.

  But there was only one way down from here, and that was the staircase, and the odds were very heavy that those two guys were already occupying the staircase, coming up.

  I looked around the messy living room, feeling frantic, wishing there was a dumbwaiter so I could go down to the basement, or a chimney so I could go up to the roof, or anything at all so I could get the dickens out of here.

  Well, of course there was something.

  The window.

  I looked at it. Was it possible? Was there any chance at all I could go out that window and survive?

  Well, on the other hand, there was no chance at all I could stay inside and survive, so that pretty well decided the issue.

  I jumped to my feet and ran over to the bedroom doorway and shut the door. There was no key in the keyhole, but the sofa was right next to the door, and I pushed it over in the way in hopes it would anyway slow them down a minute. Then I turned the lights out and went over to the front window.

  Outside, there was nothing but the dark and windswept street. A page of the Daily News blew by. I opened the window and felt the cold breeze and realized I was just in my white shirt and apron, and my jackets were all hanging in the bedroom closet.

  Well, it was too late to go back for them. I took my apron off and sat on the window sill, and as I lifted my legs over I heard the door at the head of the stairs crash open.

  There was a kind of a ledge under the window a couple of feet, with metal letters along it that said ROCKAWAY GRILL. I stepped over the W and on the other side there were only a couple of inches to spare. I bent down and grabbed the letters and brought my other foot over, and AWAY gave away, and down I went.

  It was only about a ten-foot drop. I landed on hands and knees, and AWAY went clattering away, and just a second or two later so did I.

  Chapter 2

  I suppose it would be fair to say that all my life I’ve been a bum. First, when I was a kid growing up, I was a bum on my mother. Now, these last few years I’ve been a bum on my Uncle Al.

  It was just my mother and me while I was growing up. My mother worked for the telephone company, it used to be sometimes it was her voice on some of those recorded announcements all about how you just dialed a particularly stupid number, and she made pretty good money, the telephone company isn’t all that bad to work for. Later on she wanted me to go to work for the company too, but somehow or other I just never felt right about it. I had this feeling, I guess, I’d wind up being thrown out on my ear, and it would be a bad reflection on my mother and all, still working there.

  Anyway, the jobs I did get, after I got out of high school and the Army wouldn’t take me because of this something or other in my inner ear which I didn’t know anything about before then and which to this day has never once bothered me, the jobs I did get I never lasted with, not one of them. I’d work a month or two, and then I’d loaf around the house a month or two. And my mother, she was in the habit of supporting me anyway, she’d done it all my life, so she never complained about me being home and not working or making any money. She’d been my sole support because my father disappeared the day after my mother found out she was pregnant with me, and my father has not been heard of from that day to this, and it is my mother’s theory that he’s in jail or worse.

  In any case, it got so I was twenty years of age, twenty-one, twenty-two, and I was still a bum, loafing around the house all the time, reading science-fiction magazines, not settling down or accepting my responsibilities or doing any of those things my Uncle Al likes to talk about as being the attributes of maturity, and I’d had eleven different jobs in three years, and the longest I’d stayed at any of those jobs was nine weeks. My mother got me a couple of the jobs, and Uncle Al got me a few more, and the rest I got through the New York Times.

  And then one day Uncle Al came around and he said he’d finally found the job that was perfect for me, it was the job I’d been born for, and it turned out to be running the Rockaway Grill out in Canarsie, which is a section way out at the end of Brooklyn that vaudeville comedians used to make fun of all the time. New Jersey and Canarsie, those were the two places vaudeville comedians used to make jokes about. Anyway, this job was I was to run the bar all by myself. I could open at any time before four o’clock in the afternoon, and close at any time after midnight, the actual hours were up to me. I would work a seven-day week, but I’d get paid a hundred and twenty dollars a week and I’d get this three-room apartment to myself upstairs.

  At first I didn’t think it was a good idea, because I thought my mother wouldn’t want me to move out of our apartment, she’d get lonely or something. But she took to the idea right away, seemed almost too pleased by it, and that’s how I wound up running this bar in Canarsie.

  It wasn’t much work to run. No one ever checked up on me to see did I open before four o’clock or did I dip into the cash register from time to time. Then, there were already a few longer-established bars in the immediate neighborhood that took most of the local clientele, so I never did have a crowd in there, not even on weekends. I had a few regulars, and now and then a transient or two, and that was it. The bar lost money and nobody cared. I ran it loose and sloppy and nobody cared. My Uncle Al was right; it was the job I was born for.

  Of course, there was the other little part of it. Every once in a while some friend of Uncle Al’s from the organization would come around and give me a package or an envelope or some such thing, and I was supposed to put it in the safe under the bar until someone would come in and say such and such a code phrase, like in spy movies, and then I’d hand over the package or whatever it was. I got something like this to do once or twice a month, and always checked with Uncle Al on it to be sure there wasn’t any problem, and all in all it wasn’t exactly what you’d call hard work.

  Then, too, sometimes I closed the bar on a Monday or a Tuesday night, and went to a movie or something like that. I still knew a couple girls I could ask out from time to time, girls I’d known since high school. Generally speaking it was a pretty comfortable life. All I had to do was just drift along.

  Until those two guys came in and showed me the black spot. And all at once my drifting days were done.

  Chapter 3

  The way in and out of Canarsie, if you don’t have a car, is by subway, which is called the Canarsie Line, and which you get at the end of the line on Rockaway Parkway by Glenwood Road, about eight blocks from the Rock Grill. I ran that eight blocks till I got a stitch in my side, and then I kept running even with the stitch because I’d rather have a stitch in my side than a bullet in my head any day. I didn’t know how close those two guys were, or even if they were running after me; I was too busy to look.

  I got to the station and it took forever to find change in my pockets and buy a token and run out on the platform. A lit sign said NEXT TRAIN and pointed an arrow at the only train there, on the right side of the platform. All the doors were open. I ran aboard, and then ran from car to car till I found one with four people already in it, and there I collapsed into a seat and panted and held my side where the stitch was now nine.

  In one way I was lucky. Less than a minute after I ran aboard, the doors slid shut and the train started for Manhattan.

  Making a getaway by subway is not good for the nerves. The train just barely gets rolling pretty good when it slows down again, and stops, and the doors slide open in a very ominous way with nobody near them. Two killers do not get aboard, and the doors close, and the train starts forward, only to go through the whole thing again two or three minutes later.

  There are twenty-one stops between Rockaway Parkway and Union Square on the Canarsie Line, in case you want to know.

  I couldn’t really believe, when I
left the train at Union Square, that I’d escaped from them. Even though I hadn’t seen them yet, I was sure they were still on my tail. Scurrying, looking over my shoulder, I ran along the deserted passageways that led me to the Lexington Avenue Line, and stood on the platform there behind a soft-drink machine, waiting.

  It was ten minutes before a local came in, and in the meantime every sound of footsteps on the concrete platform took another year or so off my life. But the local finally did show up, and I leaped from cover behind the soft-drink machine, ran low and zigzag across the platform the way they do in war movies, and barreled aboard the train like a one-man rush hour.

  The Lexington Avenue local makes seven stops between Union Square and East 68th Street. I was seeing a lot of subway platforms.

  I never know which way is which when I come up out of the subway in Manhattan. I was at 68th and Lex, and I wanted to be at 65th and Fifth, which meant south and west, but I had no idea which way was south. I finally took a chance on a direction that looked right, walked up to 69th Street, read the street sign there, and walked back again.

  I told myself this was actually just as well; if anyone was tailing me, doubling back this way would confuse them and help me spot them. But of course I didn’t spot anyone tailing me, and didn’t really think I would.

  The walk to Uncle Al’s apartment building was long and dark and scantily populated. A few solitary hunched walkers passed me, our separate fears mingling for just a second as we went by, but nothing happened, and I got to Uncle Al’s building at last, a tall and white and narrow building with a brightly lit little entranceway. I went in there, and pushed the button beside the name A. Gatling.

  There was no answer. For a long while there was no answer, and then I pushed the button again, and then there was no answer some more.

  I stood there shifting from foot to foot. Where was he, why didn’t he answer? Could it be he really was in Miami?

  No. He suspected it was me at the door, that’s all. He didn’t want to answer because he figured it was probably me.

  I pushed the button again, and just left my finger on it, and stood there that way. I leaned on the button, and glanced out at the street, and a long black car was pulling to a stop out front. They got out of it, those two guys. They looked up at me, and then they looked at each other, and they came walking toward me.

  I stopped pushing Uncle Al’s button, and pushed all the other buttons instead. I stood there like the cashier at a supermarket cash register, pushing buttons. The two guys came across the sidewalk and up the steps. They were looking at me with no expression on their faces, and they were taking their time. I guess they figured they had me cornered. That’s the way I figured, too.

  But I kept pushing buttons all the same. The round grille beside the row of buttons began shouting in a variety of sleepy angry voices, but I didn’t answer. I just kept pushing buttons.

  One of the two guys looked at me through the glass, and reached for the knob of the outer door, and at last the buzzing sounded I’d been waiting for. I pushed open the inner door, slammed it behind me again, and for just a second I was safe.

  But what I could do they could do. I ran across the little lobby and pulled open the elevator door and pushed yet another button; this one numbered 3, for the floor my Uncle Al’s apartment was on.

  A very expensive building, this, seven stories high, with only two apartments on each floor. The elevator moved much faster than they do in buildings on the West Side. When it stopped, I pushed the 7 button and got out. The elevator went on up to the seventh floor, which would delay those two guys and might even fake them out.

  Two white doors in the cream wall faced me across the white rug. The one on the right, with the brass B on it, belonged to my Uncle Al. I went over and knocked on it. Because I didn’t expect an answer right away, I just kept on knocking. I even kicked the door once or twice, making black marks on the white, which couldn’t be helped.

  Behind me, with a whirring sound, the elevator went by on its way back to the first floor.

  Why didn’t they take the stairs, why wait for the elevator? I tried to figure it out, while I kept knocking and kicking at Uncle Al’s door, and then I realized what had happened. The city fire laws, see, make apartment houses have staircases even when they have elevators, but most expensive East Side apartment houses are as embarrassed about staircases as if they had to have outhouses in addition to the indoor plumbing, so they put the staircases in and then put walls around them and blank doors leading to them and they hope nobody will ever notice them. Which nobody ever does.

  In a minute they’d be coming up, via elevator. Would they stop at the third floor, or would they go on to seven? Did they know my Uncle Al lived here? They had to, there was no other reason for them to come here. They hadn’t followed me, I was sure of that. While I’d taken my route here by subway, they’d taken their route by car.

  So they’d stop here, just to be sure, on the third floor.

  Whirrr, they were coming up.

  I’ve been coming to Uncle Al’s apartment since I was a kid, and kids always know geography better than adults. Kids know apartments better, buildings better, neighborhoods better. So I knew the door to the right of the elevator led to the staircase. I gave off kicking and knocking, and went through that door, and fixed a matchbook so the door didn’t close all the way. Through the narrow vertical slit, I could see Uncle Al’s door.

  I’d been right; they got off the elevator at the third floor. Peeking one-eyed through the crack, I could see their backs, broad and black-coated. They didn’t just stand, they hulked.

  They walked across the white carpet without any noise, and knocked on Uncle Al’s door. It was a special code-type knock, and anyone could tell that; one, and then three, and then one.

  The door opened right away, and Uncle Al stuck his head out and said, “You got him?”

  Uncle Al is a big hefty guy, about two-thirds bone and muscle, about one-third spaghetti. He has black hair so thick and shiny most people think he’s wearing a toupee, and his face is a normal collection of mouth, eyes, eyebrows, cheeks, chin and ears positioned around a nose the size and shape of the bald eagle’s beak on the tail of a twenty-five-cent piece. In the summer, when he pitches softball in his undershirt at clambakes, you can see he has black hair growing all over his chunky arms and chunky shoulders and chunky chest. I don’t know about his chunky stomach, but I suppose he has black hair growing all over that, too. When he sits in an overstuffed armchair and crosses his legs, another hairy region pops into view between the top of his black sock and the cuff of his black trousers.

  Normally, Uncle Al has a voice to go with all this chunkiness and hair, a bass voice that makes him a natural for the barbershop quartets at the aforesaid clambakes, but right now, as he said, “You got him?” that voice had gone up maybe two octaves. It was the first time I’d ever seen or heard my Uncle Al scared.

  One of the two guys said, “Not yet. Is he in there?”

  Uncle Al said, “Are you kidding?”

  The second one said, “You wouldn’t cover up for him, would you? Agricola wouldn’t like that.”

  “I’m keepin’ out of it,” my Uncle Al said, “I want no part of it, no part of it.” All that showed of him in the hallway was his head, looking scared.

  Standing there in the yellow stairwell, my feet on concrete and my forehead against the edge of the door and my eye blinking at the narrow vertical strip of corridor, I began at last to understand a couple of things. Way back in Canarsie, when those guys out there had first come after me, my immediate reaction had been to call Uncle Al, the only one I personally knew in the organization. I’d been too scared and excited myself to understand the meaning of his response on the phone; at the time, it had only meant to me that Uncle Al was being difficult to talk to. And the same again, when I’d been kicking futilely at the door. My relationship with Uncle Al has always involved a degree of difficulty in communication for both of us, so there
was no reason this time should be any exception.

  But now, seeing his face hanging disembodied in the hallway, hearing his voice, I understood I’d made this trip for nothing. Uncle Al wouldn’t help me because he couldn’t help me. He was too scared.

  Out there in the corridor, while I was making my discouraging discoveries, they were still talking. The first one was saying, “He come up here.” Like it was an indictment of Uncle Al, an open-and-shut case.

  “Would I cross Agricola?” my Uncle Al asked them. He pronounced it A-grić,-o-la. “Am I a dumbhead?” he asked them.

  That was one of his favorite expressions. When he was young he used to drive a cab, and when he talks about it these days he says, “Drive a cab all my life? Am I a dumbhead?” The answer is supposed to be no.

  The first one, meanwhile, was repeating, “He come up here. And he didn’t go back down.”

  Uncle Al said, “What about the roof?”

  They both shook their heads. “It don’t figure,” the first one said. “He come here looking for you.”

  “Invite us in,” said the second one.

  Uncle Al said, “Listen, I got trouble enough. The wife don’t know nothing about this, you follow me? The brat’s her sister’s kid, you know what I mean? How do I explain you two, this time of night?”

  “We want the kid,” said the second one.

  The first one, still working the same idea, said, “He come up here.”

  Uncle Al said, “Maybe he went back down.”

  “How?” said the second one. “We took the elevator ourselves. There it is.” He half-turned, and pointed at it.

  Uncle Al said, “The stairs, maybe he took the stairs.”

  “What stairs?” They both said it, while I was thinking to myself that I understood about how he couldn’t help me but it struck me he was going to far when he started helping them.