by Howard Fast
“That’s not so stupid.”
“No—it’s not so stupid at all, Harvey. In fact, it is quite clever, if you take into consideration the fact that the diamonds had never been in the lard.”
“What the devil are you talking about, Lydia?”
“Think it over, Harvey. And while you are at it, think about something else too, something that has been scampering back and forth in my own head, and I can’t make one bit of sense out of.”
“Go ahead,” I nodded. “I might as well have that one too.”
“Simply this, Harvey. If you were so convinced that the necklace had been hidden in the lard and that now the Sarbines were onto it and had reclaimed their greasy necklace—then wouldn’t the necklace be there, right at this moment?”
“Where?”
“Don’t play hard to get, Harvey. You know where. At the Sarbines’ apartment.”
“You’re suggesting that the necklace is now in the Sarbines’ apartment?”
“That is exactly what I am suggesting, Harvey.”
I leaned back and plumped my hands, palms down, on the table. Finally a little light was beginning to break. “Of course the necklace is still at the Sarbines’. Sunday night you pinched it and stuffed it into the lard and made it all smooth and nice. The Sarbines knew you were a phony, and they simply waited for you to play right into their hands—”
“How do you know that?” she interrupted, her face hard and her eyes gleaming.
“Honey child—did you ever really listen to that southern accent of yours?”
“It got by.”
“Come off it, kid. It did not get by. Maybe for a dinner guest or a visitor, but not day after day. You walked into the Sarbines’ willing hands—Lydia Anderson, girl thief, to the rescue. They kept setting up the job, and then finally you took the bait and stole the damn thing. Right?”
Lydia shook her head and said, “You know so much—you’re such a wretched know-it-all, and of course you’re convinced that no one else in the world except you has a shred of intelligence. Lip modesty—but inside, how great Harvey Krim is! How very great he is indeed! Very well. Go on and play it your way. The jewels are in the lard—what then?”
“The Sarbines had to find them—and it took until tonight.”
“And then the Sarbines removed lard and jewels, right?”
“Exactly.”
“So the necklace is still in the apartment—”
“Where it has always been.”
She leaned toward me and said, “All right, Mr. Krim. You claim that you know where the necklace is. You claim that it is in the Sarbines’ apartment. What stopped you from bringing a hundred men over there with Lieutenant Rothschild, with search warrants, and going over that apartment with a hundred fine-tooth combs until the necklace was found?”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“You know what I mean, Mr. Krim. I mean that supposedly you knew where the necklace was, yet you imparted none of your knowledge to the police. Do you know what I think, Mr. Krim?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that your finder’s fee is worth just about nothing if the police turn up this necklace. And your only interest in finding it is your fee. So you’d rather have it in Mark Sarbine’s hot little hands and have your company pay out a quarter of a million dollars against a phony theft than you would have the police retrieve it.”
“Maybe,” I nodded. “Maybe that’s my purpose, just the way you put it. I have no vendetta against Mark Sarbine, and I’d just as soon he ran around loose as not. So maybe all that I want is my finder’s fee, Lydia. You could be right. But there’s another angle, isn’t there?”
“What other angle?”
“It seems to me you’re forgetting who stole the thing. Grand larceny is grand larceny, whether you carry the loot across the state line or keep it in your pockets or hide it right on the premises where you stole it. That’s right—I still believe you stole that necklace. Lieutenant Rothschild is no boob. He searches the place and comes up with the necklace, and then he’s got to say to me, ‘Harvey, how come?’ So what do I say to him? Do I lie to him—or try to—or do I come out flat and tell him who stole the damn thing, if Sarbine hasn’t told him already?”
Staring at me, Lydia arose, and then she leaned across the table and whispered, “There’s another way, isn’t there, Mr. Krim?”
“What?”
“To believe me. To trust me a little.” And with that, she turned, went to the door and closed it behind her, without ever looking back. I called, “Lydia!” once, but she did not stop, and the waiter came over to the table and said:
“You got to know when to stop pushing. Enough is enough, but a dame is not a piece of wood.”
“Sure—lecture me,” I agreed. “I got nothing to worry about now but your warmed-over and slightly soggy philosophy.”
“Forgive me for breathing,” the waiter said, and as he stalked away, the door to the restaurant opened and Lydia re-entered. She walked back to the table and sat down.
“Anyway, you forgot your coat,” I said. “And since you’re not working for the Sarbines any more, where would I ever find you?”
“The devil with my coat! Why should you want to find me? You don’t think I’ve got the necklace in my purse, do you?”
“No.”
“So your one interest in me has ceased. Right, Mr. Krim?”
“Well—you know—good God, you don’t even have a place to spend the night.”
“I’ll find one. I am a grown woman and quite capable of checking into a hotel.”
“Then why did you come back?” I asked her.
“You remember the man in the Sarbines’ living room?”
“Yes.”
“He and another man are outside the restaurant, waiting for us. They started toward me—so I came back.”
“Smart girl,” I said bleakly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE WAITER came over and observed that he was pleased to find us back together again, that that was the way it ought to be between a man and a woman—a certain amount of discord, naturally, but also a give and take. He was a large, dark-skinned Italian of about forty, with big, sloping shoulders and hamlike hands. It appeared to be a rule that in this city, philosophers came large of build. I told him that and that I did not desire to hurt his feelings.
“I hate cab-driver philosophers. I just can’t tell you how I hate the ignorance of cab-driver philosophers,” I explained to him. He started to protest that he was not a cab driver. Then the point sank home and he turned and departed.
Lydia said it was cruel.
“He was cruel too. Ignorance is cruel. Interference in the affairs of others is cruel.”
“I know now what you remind me of,” Lydia said.
“What?”
“That Camus character—what is his name?—that poor devil in North Africa who is like a stranger in this world and finally ends up by murdering some poor Arab he hardly knows. But I suppose you never read it?”
“I can read and I read it—and there is no resemblance. Absolutely none!”
“Harvey—that did get under your skin.”
“Look, why don’t you stop psychoanalyzing me and stop trying to understand me, and concentrate on what we do now. Are you sure it was the same man we saw in the Sarbines’ living room?”
“Certainly I’m sure,” Lydia said, “but I don’t see why you should be so upset by that. Also, I didn’t mean that you were like a murderer or anything. I mean it as a sort of compliment, Mr. Krim, that you seem to be seeking something—”
“Yes, the Sarbine necklace,” I put in shortly. “Also, Lydia, it seems to me that by now you should have made up your mind which I am, Mr. Krim or Harvey.”
“It depends on how I feel about you.”
“Well, your feelings change frequently.”
“So do you, Harvey.”
“Because I live in a world of half-wits. There’s a man outside who i
s probably some kind of a triggerman or hired killer—”
“Two men, Harvey.”
“Two men. Two triggermen. Two hired killers—”
“You don’t believe that, do you, Harvey? I mean, you just can’t help get notions when you think of the garbage they put into TV and the screen and books—”
I leaned toward her and said earnestly, “Listen, Lydia, there are TV and the screen, and there are also real, life-size killers. They do exist!”
“All right,” she shrugged, “so they exist. Maybe that is the genus out there. All you have to do is to telephone your friend, Lieutenant Rothschild, and tell him that we’re here, just a few blocks from his station house—”
“Lydia, how old are you?” I asked her.
“Twenty-three. Why?”
“I don’t know. I think you’re bright and resourceful, but—”
“All right. What did I do wrong now?”
“Don’t you remember, Lydia? Lieutenant Rothschild is no longer a friend of mine.”
“But we’re in trouble.”
“There is nothing, I am afraid, that would make Lieutenant Rothschild happier.”
“But he’s not every policeman in New York.”
“He’s every policeman around here.”
“But suppose you call downtown someplace and asked for help?”
“The first thing they would ask is my name. The second, where am I? And third, they would be in touch with Rothschild.”
“Isn’t he at home eating dinner?” Lydia pleaded.
“Rest assured he left word that if anyone in the place sees me about to die, they should not interfere.”
“Then just call the police. I’ll do it.”
“And when they come here, Lydia? What do we tell them—that outside here there is a gentleman we saw once before?”
“Then what do we do?”
“Take it easy,” I said, and then I waved to our waiter. He didn’t budge, but stood by the kitchen door staring at us stonily. I waved again and smiled. Still, he ignored me. So I took five dollars out of my pocket, walked to him and pressed it into his hand.
“I am buying forgiveness and eternal friendship.”
“Sure,” he nodded sadly. “A buck buys everything. A simple gesture of friendship before would have been enough. But no. That’s too easy.”
“I’m sorry,” I agreed. “Mostly, we never know until it’s too late.”
“Big laugh. Make a joke of it.”
“I’m not making a joke out of it,” I said. “It’s just that my girl and me, we’re in trouble—we need help.”
“She’s your girl?”
Rather than complicate it any further, I said yes, she was my girl.
“You’re older than she is. It’s a big age difference, huh?”
“Twelve years.”
“That’s a chunk. She don’t get older but you do.”
I was trapped again, and as much as I wanted to get out of the place, I had to ask him what he meant—I got older, but she did not?
“How old’s she now?”
“Twenty-three,” I said.
“All right, twenty-four, twenty-five—what’s the difference? But with you it’s something else. With you, it’s terminal.”
I stared at him, and then I shook my head, “Look, please, mister—I don’t want to get philosophical. All we want is another way out of here except the front door.”
He thought about that for a while, and then he shook his head.
“Am I asking so much? Why not?”
“Because there isn’t any other way out.”
“There’s got to be. Every house has a back door.”
He thought about it for a while before he nodded, and admitted that perhaps I was right and that perhaps every house did have a back door. “It’s not a rule,” he amended. “Wise guys know everything with rules, but this is no rule. But you could be right. I don’t know. I got to think about it.”
“Then this place has a back door?”
“What do you want from me, buster?” he asked tiredly. “All day long I been on my feet, and you’re going to play games with me. You want the five back? Here’s the five dollars.”
He went into his pocket, but I stopped him and persuaded him to keep the five.
“But no arguments,” he specified. “Did I say there is no back door to this place? Just answer me. Did I?”
“I thought you did.”
“There you are. No. I said—” very slowly, “—there isn’t any other way out. What’s your girl’s name?”
“Lydia.”
“Yeah. That’s a nice name. Why should you leave her alone?”
He led me back to the table. Lydia looked up at him anxiously, and he smiled reassuringly, “I’ll sit down for a moment,” he said. “My feet are killing me.”
Lydia nodded. “That’s the way I feel when I have a whole dinner to serve—I’m a maid, so I know how you feel.”
“What do you mean, a maid?” the waiter asked.
“A housemaid—domestic servant. Clean up, wash, scrub, laundry, table—every damn thing you can think of including the boss’s hands.”
“That son of a bitch, Sarbine?” I burst out.
“Harvey, don’t get protective. That would be the last straw.”
I asked the waiter, “Will the boss get mad if he sees you sitting here?”
“He’s my cousin—I own twenty per cent of the place. It’s all right now, three couples left, all steady customers. If they want to go somewhere else because I’m sitting down with you for five minutes—the hell with them, I can do without their trade. Look, what do you need the back door for?”
Lydia and I looked at each other. Then Lydia grinned slightly, and I told him about the two men in front that we didn’t want to meet.
“Rough guys?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a long story. I could tell it to you, but it would take the best part of an hour to make it reasonable. It’s easier if we just go out the back door.”
“Sure,” he nodded. “This is a brownstone. So you’re in the back yard of a brownstone, three walls. The wall on your left is an apartment house—a hundred feet high. No good. On your right, a German restaurant with three Doberman pinschers in the back yard. So if you go into that yard you got to kill the dogs or get ripped up. So? All right, the wall behind you, straight ahead when you come out the door—it leads to another yard, people living there, a lot of music, if you like hot licks, which I don’t call music. You want to try it?”
“You know,” Lydia said, “you can’t just tell yourself dogmatically that you like jazz or you don’t like jazz—you have to listen to it. That’s the trouble with people like you—”
“We’ll try it,” I interrupted.
“—because we’re at a time when there’s practically no contact left at all. Nothing moves anyone else. There’s no connection between people, and we’ve practically lost any sense of ourselves.”
“Both of you—I’ve never seen anything like it,” the waiter said.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But look,” I explained, “if these two men come in and they’re looking for us, you just don’t know—”
“I don’t know. You’re gone, I don’t know.” He led us through the kitchen, where the cook was having a bowl of soup and reading a paper, and where the assistant cook sighed and shook his head, into a pantry and then to the back door.
“So don’t worry about what I tell anyone,” the waiter said. “You got enough to worry about with each other. All right—the back yard’s all yours.”
He closed the door to the pantry and left us out there in the darkness—not total darkness; it never is, in the city; but deep darkness nevertheless, a kind of black well, with lights in the windows above us and the sound of music from behind the wall facing us, and also from behind that wall, the flicker of Japanese lanterns or something like Japanese lanterns. We stood close together in the darkness, Lydia a silhouette until my eyes beca
me used to the lack of light and I was able to make out something of her face and features. She had found my arm, and now clung to it, telling me that she was scared. “Not until now, Harvey—all of a sudden.”
She began to shiver, and I did something I hadn’t done to anyone in years. I felt her forehead to see whether she had a fever, and that made her burst out laughing.
“Are you going to be a father to me, Harvey?”
I asked her whether that wasn’t what she wanted?
“No, damn you! I never had one, and I don’t want one now. And not Mr. Krim, not for any post. So just stop staring at me, and see if you can get us over that wall.”
She eluded me. If I found any small part of her, she proceeded to elude me. I pulled myself up onto the fence wall, which was about seven feet high, and straddled it. Sitting there, I could see the yard behind the wall and the house behind the yard. The house had high glass doors, sliding panels all across the back of it, and the yard itself was paved with red-clay tiles and furnished with benches and chairs and tables. Behind the glass doors people were dancing, and it seemed utterly impossible that even one of them should fail to see me, perched as I was on the fence.
“Well, come on, Harvey—get me up there,” Lydia said.
But one of them did see me, and she was out in the garden already, slim and slinky, with a white-silver dress and a shinning head of yellow beauty-shop hair. A man was with her, making inept passes—but I suppose all passes are inept to a concealed observer—and she was brushing him off, like a professional golfer swatting balls for exhibition. Meanwhile I reached down for Lydia, the edge of the fence damn near cutting me in two, and drew her up. Lydia was wiry—by no means one of these helpless girls—and she swung off the fence and down without any help from me. Yellow-hair had walked over to join her. “Who’s he?” yellow-hair asked. The passmaker pulled her back, suggesting that I was some sort of thief or prowler.
“You give me one sweet pain in the can,” yellow-hair said to the passmaker. “Furthermore, don’t pull me, ever.”
I dropped down.
“How do you know he’s not a crook?” the passmaker demanded. He was a huge, overgrown, overfed, good-looking boy in his twenties.
