The Fugitive Pigeon

by Donald E. Westlake

I said, “May I speak now?”

  He waved two clusters of sausages airily. “The floor is yours.”

  “All right. Number one, I did not come here to kill you. I came—No. That isn’t number one.”

  “Take your time,” he said. “Organize your thoughts.”

  “May I stand up?”

  “Certainly. Pace the floor if you wish. Except near the door, of course.”

  “Thank you.”

  Moe and Curly—I mean Harvey and Luke—had been fading away into somnolence over by the door, but now that I was on my feet they suddenly became very alert again, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the doorway, gripping their guns tightly, glaring at me as though daring me to get funny. It was my own personal feeling that if I said, “Boo,” to those two, they’d turn tail and run to Montauk Point, but that didn’t matter. My job wasn’t to escape, but to plead my case.

  How to do it, though, how to do it? I prowled around the room, trying to think. After a minute I stopped and said, “Can I ask a question?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Is that why you sent your two men to—”

  “Trask and Slade.”

  “Yes. Trask and Slade. Is that why you sent them to kill me? Because you believed I was giving information to the police?”

  “Naturally,” he said. “An adequate enough reason, I believe.”

  “Sure. Can I ask another?”

  “Ask as many as you wish.”

  “What made you think it was me? That was giving information to the police.”

  He shook his head, with that pitying smile on it again. “We checked,” he said. “Naturally. The police were obviously in receipt of information concerning shipments of various commodities. There were at least, two instances, and perhaps more, when particular shipments which went through your hands, and which were perfectly safe before reaching you, had developed a police tail after leaving your hands.”

  “You mean packages I kept in my safe.”

  “Certainly.”

  “What makes you think it was me?”

  “As I say, we checked. I spoke to Mahoney myself, asked him to find out, and the word came back it was the bartender. You.”

  “Who’s this Mahoney?” I said. “I don’t know any Mahoney.”

  “Our liaison on the police force.”

  Mahoney. It was a name I wanted to remember, for future reference. But I would also want it narrowed down more than that, so I said, “Would that be Michael Mahoney?”

  “No,” he said. “Patrick.” Then he frowned, as though wondering why he’d told me that.

  Before he could think long enough to realize he’d been psyched, I said, “How can you be sure you can trust this guy Mahoney?”

  “Of course we can trust him. We bought him, years ago.”

  I said, “Well, this time he’s lying. Mr. Gross, before I got that job out at that bar, I was just a drifter, just a bum, living off my mother all the time. My Uncle Al got me that job, and it just suited me right. All I wanted out of life was to go on running that bar. I never looked inside any of the packages or envelopes I was asked to hold for a while, and I never asked anybody any questions about what was inside them or about anything else, because I didn’t want to know. I never wanted a lot of money, I never wanted revenge, I never wanted anything but to go on running that bar.”

  “Until,” he said, “Miss Althea Agricola came into your life.”

  “No, sir. No, sir, that isn’t right.”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “Tell your story,” he said.

  “Just let me get it straight. I want to tell you everything in chronological order.”

  “Take your time.”

  I went over by the window and glanced out, and here came the black car, the same old black car. I stared, and saw it pull to a stop with the other cars parked out front, and they got out of the car, the two of them, and hitched their trousers and shifted their shoulders inside their coats and pushed their hatbrims around a little and looked at each other and up at this window and moved toward the front door.

  Trask and Slade.

  So I couldn’t take my time after all. Before he’d come back up, Mr. Gross had contacted Trask and Slade, told them to come out here.

  I turned and said, “Trask and Slade. They just drove up.”

  But he waved a fat hand to indicate it didn’t matter. “They’ll wait downstairs until called for,” he said. “Go on with your story. In chronological order, I believe you said.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I went back to the table and sat down, and started: “Like I said, I never gave information to the police because I never had any information to give them and never wanted to give them any information anyway. So last night when those two guys—Trask and Slade—when they came in and put that card with the black spot down on the bar, I thought they were kidding. It was just dumb luck I got away. I went to see my Uncle Al to ask him to help me, because the organization wanted to kill me and I didn’t know why, because I didn’t do anything wrong, but he was too scared to even talk to me. So I went to see Mr. Agricola to find out from him—”

  “Excuse me,” he said, holding up a wad of bread dough shaped somewhat like a hand. “If you were so devoid of information, how did you know to find the Farmer’s farm? From the Farmer’s daughter, perhaps?”

  “No, sir. Trask and Slade mentioned the name to my Uncle Al, I heard them when I was hiding in the stairwell. Then I went to a friend of mine, he used to sell pills for Mr. Agricola and he knew he lived out on Staten Island, and so I went out to Staten Island and found him in the phone book.”

  “The phone book?” He seemed startled.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He shook his head. “One never knows. Very well, go on.”

  “Yes, sir. When I got there, he was dead. That was the first time I’d ever seen him or his daughter or that farm. A man named Clarence locked—”

  “The bodyguard,” he said, in a tone that indicated trouble for the bodyguard in the near future.

  “Yes, sir. He locked me in the barn, and then Miss Althea came with a gun and unlocked the door and tried to shoot me, because she thought I’d killed her father. She took two shots at me.”

  “And missed you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How very fortunate for you.”

  “It happened,” I said.

  He smiled—pityingly, again—and said, “Go on, go on.”

  “I got the gun away from her, and outside I found my friend that had told me where Mr. Agricola lived, he’d come after me to see if I was okay, and we got away together. We took Miss Althea with us for a hostage, but she wouldn’t believe me when I told her the truth about her father, and she got away back on Sunrise Highway and my friend went after her and I haven’t seen him since. Either of them.”

  “How sad. I never, never had the privilege of meeting the Farmer’s child, and I had been looking forward to your introducing us. Is this the end of your story?”

  “I came here,” I said, “to talk to you, to find out why you wanted me killed, and to try to convince you I didn’t do whatever it was you thought I did. I didn’t give anybody any information, I’m not in cahoots with Althea Agricola, I didn’t kill Mr. Agricola or anybody else, and I didn’t come here to kill you. I don’t know about this Mr. Mahoney, if he’s lying on purpose or he just made a mistake, but whatever it was what he said is wrong.”

  “I see. Is that all?”

  I could tell by his face, by his voice, that he didn’t believe me. “And to ask you,” I said, “to give me a chance to clear myself.”

  “Very touching,” he said. “In other words, you would like me to let you go.”

  “Yes, sir. So I can prove I’m telling the truth.”

  “Surely you can see—”

  “All right, everybody!” shouted a female voice from the doorway. “On your feet and get your hands up!”

  Mr. Gross and I both scrambled to our feet and stuck ou
r hands in the air. Behind me, over by the door, I could hear two thumps as Luke and Harvey dropped their guns, one of which was Tim’s little pistol.

  The female voice said, “Not you, you dummy, you’re on my side, remember? Put your hands down.”

  I turned around and it was Chloe there in the doorway, as wild and beautiful as a cheetah, holding the automatic in both hands. I smiled at her, put my hands down, and picked up both guns.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Gross. “The beauteous Miss Althea. How do you do?”

  Chapter 16

  Chloe said, “I been listening in the hall, Charlie. You told him your story, and he wouldn’t believe you. Now let’s go.”

  I said, “We’ve got to be careful. Trask and Slade are downstairs.”

  “Who?”

  So she hadn’t been listening that long. “The two guys,” I explained, “that’ve been looking for me.”

  Mr. Gross said, “Young lady, I was aware the younger generation had gone astray, but to be a willing accomplice in the cold-blooded murder of your own father is, it seems to me, carrying bohemianism too far.”

  Chloe gave him a look of scorn. “Don’t be any more of a moron than you have to be,” she told him.

  I said, “Wait a minute. She didn’t mean that, Mr. Gross.”

  She frowned at me. “I didn’t?”

  “When this all over,” I told her, “I’m going to want my job back in the bar. I’m not out to fight the organization.” I turned to Mr. Gross. “You’re making a mistake, Mr. Gross,” I said. “And I’m going to prove it to you. All I want is the job I had, and to be left alone.”

  “If the facts weren’t so clear, the conclusions so inescapable,” he said, “I could almost believe you. You should have been an actor.”

  I said, “Mr. Gross, if I came here to kill you, why don’t I do it right now? If that’s Miss Althea there, why doesn’t she kill you right now?”

  “Because of Trask and Slade downstairs,” he said reasonably. “As you just told the Farmer’s daughter, their presence means you’ll have to be careful. You can’t risk the noise of a shot.”

  Chloe was looking gimlet-eyed at Mr. Gross. “What did he mean by that crack?” she wanted to know.

  We both looked at her. “What crack?” I said.

  “That crack about the farmer’s daughter.” She stared daggers. “Just what did you mean by that, Fatso?”

  Mr. Gross looked insulted, which on him meant his face got a greenish tinge again. I said, “It wasn’t a crack. He didn’t mean anything by it. I’ll explain it later.”

  “He better watch his lip,” she said.

  I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Gross, but I’m going to have to tie you and gag you. So we can get away.”

  Mr. Gross said, “Harvey, call for help. Luke, you too.”

  Harvey opened his mouth and said, “HELP!”

  Luke did, too.

  Now, that wasn’t fair. Chloe and I were the ones with the guns, we were the desperate characters. According to the rules, Mr. Gross and Luke and Harvey should all have been very quiet and very obedient and very meek. Instead, Harvey and Luke were both saying, “HELP!” not quite in unison, and under the racket Mr. Gross was looking at us with the patient smile of an inevitably victorious Lucy about to play another game of checkers with Charlie Brown.

  We had our choice. We could shoot everybody and run, or we could just run.

  We just ran.

  “This way!” I shouted, over the shouting of Harvey and Luke, who had leaned closer together in the style of barbershop quartets and who were practically making a theme song out of HELP. I shouted my own shout, and waved my arms, and ran from the room at full tilt. Chloe came along in my wake.

  I figured Trask and Slade would be coming up the front way, along with everybody else, so I headed for the back stairs, the ones I’d been brought up earlier. We leaped down the steps three and four at a time, and behind us we could hear Luke and Harvey yelling at the top of their lungs, now having worked into a kind of tempo, a sort of Sonja Henie skating-music beat. Mr. Gross was yelling, too, by now, shouting directions to somebody to do something. I could guess what.

  Still, there was a chance; we did have a lead on them. At the foot of the stairs, I made a false start toward the rear door I’d come in, but then I changed my mind and my direction and headed for the front of the house instead, Chloe willy-nilly in my wake. They would all, I was hoping, figure us to go out the back way, so they’d go out the front and circle the house on both sides to get us. If we followed them out the front way, we might have the slight advantage of surprise.

  I slowed down a bit, going through the ground-floor rooms, and Chloe at last caught up with me, panting and tugging at my arm. She whispered, “What are we going this way for?”

  But there wasn’t time for explanations. I shook my head, and motioned for her to stick with me and ask no questions.

  Ahead of us there was a closed door. I opened it, cautiously, and entered an unpopulated room full of card tables, with playing cards scattered all over their surfaces. Folding chairs stood back from the tables, as though they’d been vacated by people abruptly getting to their feet and hurrying away. Across the way, past a wide doorway, there was a hall leading to left and right, and a hubbub of conversation but no one to be seen.

  I led the way, tiptoeing now, across this empty room to the doorway. I stuck my head around the corner, and down to the right I saw a cluster of people grouped around the foot of the stairs, some looking up the staircase and others looking toward the front door, which was just beyond the cluster and which was standing open. There was no more shouting now, from anywhere. Mr. Gross’s bigger-than-life wife was prominent in the middle of the cluster, a head taller than anyone else. She looked somewhat offended.

  I brought my head back into the card room and whispered to Chloe, “We’re going through those people out there. Through them and out the front door and straight down the driveway and back to the car. It’s still in the same place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Holler and wave your gun around while we’re leaving the house,” I told her. “It’ll help clear us a path.”

  She nodded. She looked intent, and excited, and very High School of Music and Art. I could have been giving her directions to find a Communist cell meeting, or a Black Mass, or a pot party, or the Egyptology room in the Fifth Avenue Library.

  “Get set,” I whispered. I felt, myself, very Robert Mitchum. I had to stifle an urge to synchronize watches.

  We stood poised at the threshold, like ski jumpers at the top of the slide. I hefted the guns in my two hands—my old pistol in my right, and Harvey’s automatic in my left—and then I hollered, “Let’s go!” and went racing around the corner, yelling, “Yah! Yah! Yah!” I also waved my firearm-full hands around quite a bit. Behind me I could hear Chloe shrieking like a banshee.

  The card-party guests exhibited for our bemusement a catalogue of startled white faces, and then whisked those faces away to left and right like the skeletons in a black-light ride at Disneyland. A path opened between us and the door, and we tore through it.

  Trask and Slade appeared in the doorway, side by side, filling it. Black suits, black topcoats. Black guns in their hands, black scowls on their faces. Menace, menace.

  I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted to. Whooping, I lowered my head and kept on going.

  My shoulders caught them amidships, my left shoulder thudding into the breadbasket of Trask or Slade and my right shoulder chunking into the midsection of Slade or Trask. I heard, “Oooff!” in stereo, and then I was through the doorway and there was nothing pressed against my shoulders any more, and I was flailing forward in a wild attempt to get my feet back under my torso where they belonged.

  I ran for the next little space of eternity completely off balance. My feet pumped and pumped, trying to catch up with the rest of me, and it seemed certain I was about to dig my nose into the gravel driveway and maybe ream out a furrow twenty feet long. At
the same time that I was trying to catch up with myself, I was also trying to run around all the cars parked in front of Mr. Gross’s house, having no desire to run into any of them, not at my current speed, which I later estimated to have been about Mach point nine. I don’t think it was much higher than that because I didn’t hear any sonic boom.

  What I did hear was a lot of shouting and hirruping, all from behind me. Ahead, once the last parked car had been cleared there was only the lit driveway and the lovely blank hole in the hedge that led to the street. Flailing, flying, I hurtled toward it, and on through.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t make the necessary right turn. I kept on going, turning in a slight arc that would have had me complete a right turn somewhere out around Montauk Point, and if it hadn’t been for the hedge on the other side of the road I don’t know where I might have gone.

  Where I did go was into the hedge. Thunk! I got my arms up in front of my face just in time, and the hedge stopped me the way all that cotton batting stops bullets in ballistics test boxes in the movies.

  I hung there, exhaling, for a second or two, until somebody pulled me by the back of Artie’s jacket, and Chloe’s voice said, with shrill insistence, “Come on! Come on!”

  I came on, out of the hedge and off again. There had been no shots at all, and so far no one had come out as far as the road after us, but I thought I heard a car being started in there and that had to mean Trask and Slade were after us again. Now, I guessed, more than ever.

  We pelted down the road, through the dim light at the intersection and into the lovely darkness beyond. I’d gotten into the lead again by then, having long legs and no sense of chivalry, and so I was first into the car, through the door on the driver’s side and across past the steering wheel, which caught me a good one in the ribs.

  Chloe leaped in after me, slammed the door, and jammed the key into the ignition. Looking back I could see four headlights coming out of Mr. Gross’s driveway. You might know those guys would drive with their highs on.

  “Hurry!” I said.

  But as I said it the car leaped forward, and I cracked my head on the back of the seat, biting my tongue severely.