The Long escape

by Dodge, David, 1910-1974

  I was going to get stunned again. I could feel it coming. I waited seven seconds to help build up suspense before I said, "What was he selling?"

  "A manuscript, Mr. Pine. Written by Our Lord, Jesus Christ."

  It might have been the honest awe in his voice, or maybe I'd been sitting too long in one place= But right then there was a prickly feeling along my spine and a lifting sensation to the hair on the back of my neck.

  I sat there staring at the Bishop while traffic sounds floated up from Wabash Avenue below the open windows and an airplane motor hummed from far off. For a moment I had the crazy feeling that I was looking at His Grace across an acre of sun-flooded water. . I blinked a time or two to dispel the illusion, and said,

  "My religious training has been a little sketchy. But somewhere along the line I picked up the impression that Our Saviour left no written records."

  "Exactly, Mr. Pine. To the Church's knowledge, no such manuscript exists."

  "Yet Wirtz says differently. Is there even a small chance he's right?"

  The Bishop spread his hands. "Almost certainly he is wrong. But you see the position it puts me in."

  "If what he's got is what he says, would you pay twenty-five million for it ?"

  He said solemnly, "Such a document cannot be valued in dollars and cents, Mr. Pine. Its spiritual significance, the veneration in which so holy an object would be held, its possible effects on the canons of Christianity itself . . ." His voice trailed off and his shoulders rose in a shrug to indicate this was something beyond words.

  "Did he show you the manuscript?"

  "Oh, no. If I expressed a willingness to use my good offices to effect a sale at his price, he would agree to bring it here the following day."

  I ground what was left of my cigarette against the side of the bronze ashtray and got out another and moved it around in my fingers without lighting it. I said, "Where did Wirtz get hold of this thing in the first place?"

  "He didn't say, Mr. Pine. And I didn't ask him."

  "As far as that goes," I went on, "how does he know it's what he claims it is ? Wouldn't a thing like that be pretty difficult to identify?"

  He nodded, his eyes fixed on the cigarette dancing in my fingers. "You've hit on the real reason for my not ordering Wirtz out of this office early in our conversation. You see, Mr. Pine, Wirtz is an accredited paleographer."

  I blinked at him. "That means what?"

  "Wirtz claimed to be one of the four leading experts on ancient papers and inks in the world. He holds—or held, I'm not sure which— a position of some sort with the University of Southern California, and does a great deal of work for museums, universities, private collectors and business firms."

  "He just tell you that, or what?"

  "He showed me letters and cards. They appeared to be authentic."

  "Did he describe this document to you ?"

  "Briefly. He said it consisted of eight sheets of yellowed parchment, covered with faded but still legible script written in Aramaic."

  "Would that be in line ?"

  "The tongue spoken by Jesus was Aramaic, Mr. Pine."

  I put the cigarette in my mouth and lighted it. My fingers were steady; nothing had happened so far to make them shake. "You told me earlier that Wirtz is using an assumed name. What is it?"

  "Walsh. Raymond Walsh."

  "Did he show you anything else besides those letters and cards you mentioned to prove he was really Wirtz?"

  "Yes. At his own suggestion. An old draft card bearing his signature. Also a driver's license."

  "An Illinois license?"

  "No. California. He's been in Chicago less than two weeks."

  "What make was the car ? If you noticed."

  "I noticed, Mr. Pine," he said dryly. "I made it my business to notice. The license was for a Chevrolet coupe. I don't recall the year."

  "You remember the address it showed for his home?"

  "Hillrose Avenue, I think. I've forgotten the exact number. I suppose I should have written it down."

  I was getting needles in my legs. I got up and walked over to the window and looked down into Wabash Avenue. The big guy in the Palm Beach suit was still holding up one corner of the florist shop but the toothpick was gone. It seemed an improvement. Nothing else around but sunshine and two women in house dresses going into a grocery store. Not that I was interested.

  Behind me I heard the swivel chair creak faintly. The Bishop said, "What are you thinking, Mr. Pine?" He sounded more than slightly worried.

  I went back to my chair and sat down again. "I hardly know. What arrangement did you and Wirtz decide on, Your Grace?"

  "Simply that I would like to examine this document and that if it turned out to be authentic—which I told him was hardly likely—the Church would definitely be interested in buying it."

  "And?"

  "He agreed to bring it in the following day. Said I was free to make any tests I saw fit, but that once I was satisfied the document was authentic he would expect the Church either to meet his price or return his property."

  "That seems fair enough."

  His fingers tightened suddenly on the arm rests of his chair. "Mr. Pine, it is incredible that such a manuscript could exist, certainly not a genuine one. Had I thought for a moment it were at all possible, I would not have telephoned you. It's only that . . . well, any possibility, however slight ... I keep thinking ..."

  His voice flickered out entirely and he sat there watching me rub my chin while I picked over the information he had furnished. I understood why he, for all his grave smile and calm manner, was as jittery underneath as an elephant on stilts. His fear of missing the chance to get his hands on that hunk of papyrus was keeping him tight to his office, not to mention adding years to his age and fresh wrinkles to his face. With a thing like this brewing he wasn't able to go about the bishop business. No wonder he had canceled all appointments and sent his secretary away: it wouldn't do to have other ears hanging open in the vicincity.

  I said, "You mentioned a while back that Wirtz was having a bad case of nerves. Any idea what was chewing on him, other than owning something worth so much money?"

  "You've probably answered your own question, Mr. Pine. Although Wirtz was more than a bundle of nerves. There was a bitterness in him too—a cynical attitude. It led me to believe someone had done him a terrible injustice at one time or another. Such was my impression."

  "Yeah. When he failed to show that second time, what did you do about it?"

  "Nothing. Nothing at all. My first reaction was that Wirtz had been a crank after all. But I couldn't get the whole affair out of my mind; it came to the point where I could think of nothing else. Yet I could hardly go out there myself, and certainly I could send no one from the Church." The vertical line between his eyes deepened. "I hope it will be no more complicated than just your going out to see him. Wirtz hinted that men already have died over possession of the manuscript. That is why I mentioned this might prove a dangerous assignment."

  I ground out my cigarette and watched the black ashes crawl in the faint breeze from the window. "I don't rate the danger very high," I said. "This sounds like a fancy con game to me and I'll enjoy proving it. If I should run across any manuscript that looks older than yesterday's newspaper, I won't go south with it. Having twenty-five million dollars would scare the pants off me."

  That brought me another of his grave smiles. "You've expressed my own feelings, Mr. Pine. I have every confidence that you'll handle this matter intelligently."

  "Thank you. If you'll let me have the address I'll take a run out there and do what I can. For a quick guess I'd say Wirtz got a little scared at the score he was trying to run up on this caper and took a powder."

  Bishop McManus looked at me with his mouth open about an inch and bewilderment in his mild blue eyes. I said, "Just my way of talking, Your Grace. I mean the enormity of what he was trying to do must have frightened him off. Sometimes I sound like a bad movie."

  "
I see." He still sounded doubtful but let it go at that. He drew open the center drawer of the desk and took out a small white card and a fountain pen with gold filagree work along the sides. While I was admiring the pen he filled in the card with two lines of small cramped script and handed it to me. The name Raymond Walsh was first and under that an address in the seventeen hundred block on West Erie.

  I flicked a thumbnail against the underside of the card. "For a man worth twenty-five million bucks, Wirtz certainly lives in a cheesy neighborhood. You can just about buy a square block around there for the price of a ready-made suit."

  "So I understand." He returned the fountain pen to the drawer and closed it again. "There was a sort of threadbare neatness about the man. I don't imagine even a leading paleographer earns a great deal of money, Mr. Pine. That reminds me."

  He bent w'ith an effort and pulled out the right-hand bottom drawer of the desk and came up with a green metal cash-

  box which he put carefully down on the blotter pad. "You'll want to be paid, of course. I'm afraid I neglected to ask your fee."

  "In your case," I said, "that can come later. I get thirty dollars a day, which includes expenses. It doesn't seem so much any more, after hearing all this talk about millions. I haven't had many cases where the talk got into even the thousands. I can bill you. Your Grace, when the job is finished, or when you decide there's no further point in keeping me on the job."

  He shook his head briefly. "I prefer to pay in advance, if you don't mind." A key from a pocket chain unlocked the box. He folded back the lid, took out a comfortably thick sheaf of bank notes and counted out two fifties, two twenties and a ten, all of them crisp as the day they left the presses.

  "This will cover live days of your time," he said, handing them to me. "If you conclude the matter satisfactorily before then, you may regard the difference as a bonus."

  I said something about that being very handsome of him and tucked the bills into my wallet. The four singles already in there looked mortified and tried to crawl under the lining.

  The Bishop finished locking the cashbox and returned it to the drawer. He stood up then to indicate the interview was over and came around to open the door for me.

  I said, "I'll let you know as soon as I have something to report."

  "Good." He smiled and put out his hand. "I've enjoyed meeting you, Mr. Pine. You see, you're the first—ah—private eye I've come in contact with."

  "That sort of evens us up," I said. "You're my first Bishop."

  We shook hands and I went off down the corridor, leaving him standing there.

  I walked down to the first floor, ignored the pleading

  glance of the woman at the PBX, board, and went on out into the shallow entrance hall with its composition flooring of alternate black and white squares and matching bronze busts of a pope and a cardinal, and out into Wabash Avenue. The big guy was still lounging across the street, reading a paper now or at least looking at the pictures.

  June was still two weeks away but spring had come earlier to Chicago this year and the late morning sun was bright and hot. The street parkway strips were as green as they would ever be and the few trees in this part of town were going to have leaves any day now.

  I went around the corner to where the Plymouth was parked at the curb on Superior Street. This had been a fashionable neighborhood once, but that was seventy years ago and the two and three-story residences had the faintly decayed look that goes with gas mantels and charcoal bed warmers. Somewhere a robin sang lustily and there was the evenly spaced whacking sound of a rug being beaten over a clothesline.

  It would have suited me fine to stand there and breathe in the soft spring air and think how nice it was to be working again, this time for a client who hadn't started out by trying to tear my head ofif or by asking me to wait for my money until an erring husband got around to making his alimony payments.

  But His Grace had a problem which was now my problem as well, and the answer lay in another part of town.

  I crawled in behind the wheel of the Plymouth and started out for the seventeen hundred block on West Erie Street.

  It was the kind of street where people Hved who had hardly anything except their lives. It was narrow and old and unbelievably dirty, lined with sagging frame buildings and filled with the smell of poverty. Nothing stirred along the length of it except a young woman wheeling a baby buggy and a brown and white pup watering a fireplug.

  Number 1730 was three floors and an English basement of frayed and weary wood that had been painted gray and trimmed in blue about the time Grant was writing his memoirs. Cracked green shades hung limply behind tightly closed windows, with an occasional curtain of white net to point up the surrounding squalor. Rusty iron railings leaning at an angle flanked a flight of worn wooden steps from the sidewalks to the first floor.

  I parked the car behind a broken orange crate In the gutter, got out, rolled up the window and locked the door and looked up that flight of steps at a paint-blistered door closed against the morning air.

  An old man was sitting on the top step soaking sunshine into his bones and a gray-fringed bald spot. A yellow corncob pipe smoldered between relaxed fingers resting on one knee, and his blue work shirt was tucked carelessly under the belt line of a shapeless pair of faded blue denims.

  We stared into each other's eyes across the distance. Very slowly he lifted the pipe from his knee and put its stem into the opening under the gray blob of his nose. I tipped a hand at him and went up the steps two at a time, just to show off.

  He blinked watery blue eyes at the handkerchief in my breast pocket when I stopped a step below him, and then said, "Lookin' for someun, young feller?" around the pipestem.

  "In a way," I said, "Kind of hot, hunh?"

  He allowed it was hot, all right, but said he liked it that way at his age. That seemed invitation enough, so I sat down next to him on the step and got out my cigarettes and lighted one. I could smell his pipe and I could smell him a little. A dry musty-clean smell like a bar of yellow laundry soap.

  I blew smoke through my nose and locked my hands around one knee. After a moment of silence, I said, "You the landlord around here?"

  He turned his head and looked placidly at the bridge of my nose where a football cleat had put a dent back in my high-school days. "No, sir," he said stiffly. "I don't own no propitty and I don't aim to, neither. Man don't rightly own propitty I alius say. It owns him."

  He could never convince me he spoke from experience on that score but it hardly seemed worth debating. "You live here, though?"

  "Sure. I live here. Right nice place for livin' long's you don't own it."

  "You know the other tenants ?"

  "Some I do, some I don't. They come and go."

  "There's a man named Walsh. Could we talk about him a little?"

  He took the corncob pipe out of his mouth, eyed it as if he had never seen it before, then put it back with thoughtful care and took three slow puffs, the gray smoke climbing straight up in the still air. He said, "Mebbe we could. Depends."

  "On what?"

  "On where it takes us. You a law man, mister?"

  "Not the way you mean," I said. I picked a splinter from

  the edge of the step and drew Hnes on the back of my left hand. "This is for his own good."

  He thought about that while his eyes went over the collection of bumps and hollows that make up my face.

  Finally he grunted deep in his throat and said, "Seems you're tellin' it straight. I seen that Walsh feller a time or two. A mixed-up man, mister. You got a name ?"

  "Pine," I said. "How's he mixed-up?"

  "Worried." The old man nodded judiciously. "Some-thin's pushing him hard. I wouldn't know what."

  "What did he say to make you think that?"

  "Man don't have to talk to tell you he's worried."

  I nodded to that. The splinter broke in half and I dropped the pieces over the railing next to me. A delivery boy went by on a bicycle, i
ts wire basket filled with beer bottles.

  I said, "He was around to see a man and arranged to go back again. But he never showed, so the man sent me around to find out why."

  He took the pipe from between his teeth, this time to spit over the railing. "Ain't seen him around last three, four days. Miz Trotter would have told me had he moved out, though."

  "She the landlady?"

  "Yep. Unhappy woman, mister. Worries about her propitty." He shifted a little on the decaying wood. "Walsh got a room on the third floor, in front, left side. You might go knock on the door."

  I stood up and dusted the seat of my pants and stepped on my cigarette. "It's an idea." I took out a dollar and tucked it into the fist holding the pipe. "For your time," I said when he eyed the bill doubtfully.

  "Right sure you can spare this, son?"

  I put out my hand. "Give it back and the hell with you."

  He cackled more than the gag was worth, showing yellow stumps that had been teeth about the time I was in rompers. "First money I ever got just for talkin'. Come around any time, young feller."

  I shoved open the front door and went into a gloomy hall filled with last year's air. There was stained two-tone brown paint on the walls and a fifty-watt bulb burning in a battered l)rass fixture over an old-fashioned wall hatrack. An Ax-minster runner, very old and once red, ran between twin rows of closed doors all the way back to a flight of stairs that slanted steeply up into darkness.

  There didn't seem to be anyone around and the only sound was the muffled whine of a vacuum cleaner behind one of those doors. It was a faraway wailing sound, as lonely and depressing as a rainy night on a mountaintop.

  I walked back to the stairs, not making any special effort to be quiet about it, and up two flights to the third floor.

  Outside the door that should have been Wirtz's was a cast-iron garbage pail. I lifted the lid and looked in, my only light coming from another fifty-watt bulb a few feet away. There was nothing in the pail but a bad smell. I wondered why I had bothered to look at all. I put the cover back and rapped against one of the door's tobacco-colored panels.