Three hours dragged by. Nobody came to see me, the phone didn't ring, and the only sounds were of traffic eight floors below. Rain still dripped endlessly with the aching dismalness of a Jewish funeral. There had been no mail on the floor under the chute, no telegrams came, nobody cared whether I lived or died or moved to Terre Haute.
By eight-fifteen I had all I could take. I had gone through everything in the paper except the want ads, there was a mound of cigarette butts in the ashtray, and my tongue tasted like something rejected by a scavenger, I glowered at my wrist watch, growled, "Up the creek, brother!" for no reason at all and put on my trench coat and hat.
The fat little dentist in the next office was locking his door for the day as I came out into the corridor. He nodded to me. "Good evening, Mr. Pine. You're later than usual."
"And all for nothing," I said. "I nearly came in to have you drill one of my teeth. Just for something to do."
His smile was a little sad in a dignified way. "I could have used the business, sir."
We rode down in the same uneasy elevator, out to the street and our separate ways. Lights from neon signs and shopwindows cast patterns in color on wet sidewalks and streets, while citizens hurried by with their heads bowed
against the rain. The corner newsstand at Wabash Avenue had its back to what httle wind there was and its sideboards up to protect the papers. Water dripped from the el platforms and there was a sodden rumble to the sound of trains overhead.
I picked up my car at the parking lot and took Dearborn Street to get out of the Loop, heading north. At Chicago Avenue I turned west to Damen, then south a block to Su-I perior Street and on around the corner.
A narrow, deep, one-story red-brick building between two sagging frame houses on the north side of the street was the Cushman Garage. The dust-streaked office window held a display of spark plugs, and beyond that a fat man In shirt sleeves sat reading a newspaper under a shaded bulb hanging I from the ceiling. The green folding doors at the car entrance were closed and one of the red lights flanking them was out.
Fifty feet further along, on the same side of the street, a battered Ford Tudor stood at the curb, nose pointed in my direction. I parked across from it and went over and opened the door on the sidewalk side.
The muscular guy behind the wheel was Michael Light. I said, "Haven't you anything better to do?" and slid in next to him and closed the door.
The rain bounced softly against the roof and ran in unsteady lines down the windshield. The air was close and reeked of oil, rubber and stale cigars. Light put out a large hand and took a cigarette from the pack I extended.
"Christ! Since twelve-thirty this morning!" His voice was harsh, tired, angry, "You know what I had for supper? A lousy ham sandwich and a thermos of coffee." His knobby ijface stood out in the match flare. "For ten bucks a day . . . 'land I don't even need the money."
"You get a look at Wirtz's car?"
]46 HALO FOR SATAN
"Certainly I got a look at it. Vou think I'd be roosting here if I didn't? There's been cars in and out of that joint all day long, and half of 'em Chevvys. This is a poor man's neighborhood, brother. You don't get no limousines here."
"Give me a picture of it."
"Forty-one club coupe, light gray. Right rear fender's got a dent about the size of a baseball where somebody put the end of a bumper. Orange and black California license, number 7F26-419."
"Uh-hunh," I turned out the no-draft panel to let in some air. "You got that number any place besides in your head?"
"Yeah." He fished a white business-size envelope out of his coat pocket and gave it to me. "I wrote it on that."
I put it away. "The guy in the garage tell you anything about Wirtz?"
"Not much you can use. When I told him I wanted a look at the car, he said he knew all along something was wrong about Wirtz. Said he acted like something was on his mind: kept looking over his shoulder and kind of sneaked around. You shoulda seen his puss when I tell him the Chevvy wasn't the car I wanted. It suddenly hit him, I guess, that he'd been running down a customer and the customer might find out about it."
"Find out if they stay open all night?"
"Only till one in the morning. Open again at six. What do you want me do ?"
I thought about it for a moment. "Go on home, Mike. I can't think of a better way to spend a rainy night than to sit in the street and watch a rathole. Be here again at six. I may be able to give you a few hours' break during the afternoon. You got a gun on you?"
"Yeah. Such as it is. Iver-Johnson .38."
HALO FOR SATAN 147
"Better let me have it. Just in case."
He leaned past me to the glove compartment and brought out the weapon, w^atching me as I slipped it into a side pocket of my trench coat. He said, "What goes with this Wirtz, anyway?"
"A client wants to talk to him."
"That's all?"
"Yep."
He laughed shortly. "Ten bucks a day and no answers. Okay, you're the boss man." He pinched out his cigarette with the black fingers of his artificial hand and switched on the ignition and the lights. "See you tomorrow."
I got out and he drove away. I went back to my own car, turned it about in the narrow street and cut off the motor. The radio gave me static and a beer commercial, but it wasn't my night to be fussy.
The hours moved by like ten-ton trucks pulled uphill by snails. Blackness and damp all around. There were other cars parked along both curbs behind me but none of them seemed to be occupied. Now and then the garage doors ground open to let in or discharge a car, but only two of those coming out were Chevrolets and neither a gray club coupe. The rain grew heavier around eleven and I pulled up to within twenty feet of the entrance for better visibility.
By midnight traffic was down almost to nothing. I watched
the shirt-sleeved man put down his paper, drink a container
of coffee and light a cigar before disappearing through an
; inner door. Getting ready to shut up shop. It seemed I had
wasted a long evening.
I At twelve-forty-five I threw away my cigarette and was
[ reaching for the switch when a man on foot turned the corner
at Damen Avenue and came briskly up to, and through, the
office door of the garage. He was reasonably tall, certainly slender and wore a gray topcoat and hat, with the brim of the latter drawn down over his eyes.
It could have been Raymond Wirtz. It could have been any other tall slender man too . . . and it jjrobably was. I started the motor turning over quietly, switched off the radio and kept my eyes on those folding doors.
They clashed open finally. Headlights cut twin pathways through the night and a light gray Chevrolet coupe rolled slowly into sight, along the short driveway, then swung west, away from where I was parked. I had a clear spot wiped on my windshield even while the garage doors were opening; through it { made out a rounded dent in the Chevvy's right rear fender.
It seemed Mr. Wirtz had called for his property.
I waited, with my headlights out, until the gray car was through bumping across the trolley tracks on Damen and a quarter block beyond that. Then I switched on my parking lights and took up the chase. All I wanted now was to learn where Wirtz was holed up. Afterward would be time enough to push in and ask questions.
During the first ten or twelve blocks he must have turned that many corners. Not that he knew he was being followed: he wanted only to learn if that was the case. He used only side streets, and it took all my experience to keep him in view and not be spotted myself.
And all the time these maneuvers were going on, we were getting farther and farther into the western part of town.
At Chicago Avenue and Kedzie, where the car line turns east for a few blocks. Wirtz evidently decided no one was interested in him. He turned north into Kedzie and sharply increased his speed.
This was a well-traveled street, fairly wide and mostly
residential
this far out, and there was a fair amount of traffic even at one-fifteen on a rainy morning. I cut down the space between us to half a block and stayed there by holding the needle on the forty mark. The Chevrolet stayed well out toward the center of the street, while I kept in nearer the right-hand curb to keep my lights out of his rear-view mirror. The blocks spun by. Traffic signals were green for us most of the time, although twice we waited out red lights almost side by side. There were enough cars, however, to keep me from being conspicuous, and he never caught on. I Two or three blocks north of Belmont Avenue, the Chevrolet began to slow down at each intersection, the way a driver will do when he's trying to make out street markers at night. I dropped back until he was a full block ahead . . . and that's how he trapped me into showing my hand. I It happened at the intersection of Kedzie and Addison. [There, the coupe came almost to a full stop, waited until a [car passed in the opposite lane, then made a left turn into (Addison. I was half a block behind at the time and I tromped i0n the gas, made the same turn . . . and met him coming back out.
I I had a brief glimpse of a white, staring face through water-streaked glass . . . then he was past me and swinging north again on screeching tires into Kedzie. By the time I finished 1 complete circle and lit out after him, he was a block away ind hitting fifty.
There was no longer any point in being cunning. I laid a leavy foot on the accelerator and went after him with blood n my eye. He probably knew he had a plaster by this time, )ut even if he didn't, he thought so. That was just as bad— or me.
His first mistake was trying to throw me off by turning )ractically every corner he came to. He cut them narrow
t,
11
and fast, the coupe teetering like a fat woman on a waxed floor. But I had much more experience at this sort of high jinks and the distance between us began to shrink fast. Then he made a stab at pulHng away from me by shoving the gas pedal through the floorboards while keeping in a straight line. That was no good either, because there was more power under my hood and I was using it.
His big mistake, though, was in not heading back toward heavily traveled thoroughfares. He might well have lost me that way; at worst he could have kept me from doing any more than following him. But with all the turning and twisting, he might have lost his sense of direction. Only in a dim way did I know where we were myself.
The last street he picked to outrun me on had only a few houses to each block, with stretches of open ground between. Few street lamps and those far apart. No other cars around and no one on the sidewalks.
Gradually I began to inch up until I was almost abreast the coupe. I could see him bent across the wheel, head stifily erect, driving like a dirt-track champion.
A corner loomed ahead. I saw one of his hands shift hij^Ii on the steering wheel. I snatched my foot from the gas and set it lightly on the brake. Tires gave a banshee wail as tlie Chevrolet made the turn.
You don't make that kind of turn at that speed on wet pavement . . . not if you expect to go any farther in the same car. The coupe's rear end skidded wide, kept on skidding, slammed against and over the curbing and struck with a tangled crash of breaking glass and twisting metal into the trunk of a cottonwood drooping its branches across the parkway.
I was out of the Plymouth and over there while glass was still showering the asphalt. The rear right side was caved away in and the wheel there jutted out like the open lid on a
can of beans. The gun Light had loaned me came into my hand while I was reaching out to jerk open the door.
He was slumped across the wheel, arms hanging down, the white blob of his face turned to me. In the weak rays from the intersection light 1 could see his eyes, open and staring at me.
I showed him the gun. "Out, Buster. With your hands where I can watch them."
"Who are you ?" His voice shook. I could hardly understand the words.
I said, "I'm a guy with a gun. Do you come out under your ■ own power or would you like to fall out on your face?"
He lifted his head slowly, shaking it to clear away the
shock. He slid painfully across the seat, ducked his head
through the opening and stepped into the street. Out where
I there was better light. I could see a small trickle of blood
seeping from the hairline above his left ear. I He wet his lips. "I—I insist on knowing who you are." f[ "Turn around," I said, "and keep those hands over your head."
When he tried protesting I gestured with the gun in a tough way and the words died in his throat. I patted him in ; the proper places and found nothing more deadly than a ballpoint pen.
I stepped back and said, "Okay, Wirtz. Where's that .manuscript?"
"Wh-what?" He wheeled sharply to face me, frenzy twisting what I could see of his face. "I don't know what you're talking about. Who are you ?"
I got out my deputy sheriff's star and let him have a glimpse of it. The light wasn't strong enough for him to identify it as anything more than a star. But that was good enough for 'him.
was holding. "I thought you were somebody else. A—a holdup man."
"You mean Jafar Baijan, Mr. Wirtz?"
It was a shot in the dark, and like most shots in the dark it didn't hit anything. He wouldn't have known the name of the man responsible for the torture and death of the man who first brought that manuscript into this country.
His expression told me that. Before he could speak, I said, "I know everything, Mr. Wirtz. I could start a quiz show wnth what I know. The manuscript, what it is and where you hoped to sell it. I know about the Bishop and the twenty-five-million-dollar asking price and about your wife being in Chicago hunting for you."
He put a hand up slowly to touch the blood on his cheek as if first aware something foreign was there. He looked at his fingers with a kind of vague horror, took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped away the blood. He said hazily, "I think I'd better see a doctor."
I leaned against the Chevrolet's rear fender and figured out what I wanted to say. The rain had almost completely stopped now, and in the silence I could hear a bird making small complaining sounds in the Cottonwood. The nearest house in sight was well over a block to the north, which— together wath the lateness of the hour—explained why the crash hadn't brought out a crowd. A block to the south the faint sound of a car motor rose, faded and died abruptly.
I said, "Where've you been hiding out, Mr. Wirtz?"
He just shook his head and stared at the blood on his handkerchief.
"Can't you get it through your head I know what I'm talking about? You're in hot water, mister. Four different people are interested in you because of that manuscript. And the cops want you for a pair of murders."
Nothing showed in his face that hadn't been there before. He said, "You still haven't told me anything," in an emotionless voice.
At least I had unprled his jaws. I said, "Well, the Bishop, for one. And a man named Myles Benbrook—although you know more about that than I do. Also, an old hoodlum with death in his throat. Number four is a somebody you and I haven't met yet, and lucky for us we haven't: a somebody I named Jafar Baijan."
He stood there, rubbing his hands nervously together around the handkerchief, a weary slump to his thin shoulders. He said, "How do you know all these things ?"
"I'll tell you that. I'm not a city cop, Mr. Wirtz; I'm a private investigator named Pine and I was hired by the Bishop to bring you back to him with that manuscript. I know you've been afraid to go back there because the cops wanted to question you about the body in your closet. But that was nothing to the way they want you now—since you put a knife in that sergeant early yesterday morning."
His shoulders jerked. "I haven't killed anyone, Mr.—Mr. Pine."
"Good! I'm delighted to hear you say so. But the buttons are the ones you'll have to convince. Not me."
"The police haven't any proof that I killed him."
"Pardon me. They do have. In large amounts and twenty-four carat. I'd li
ke to make a suggestion, Mr. Wirtz."
He just looked at me.
"Let's drive over and pick up this manuscript, then run up land deliver it to His Grace. We'll have to pick up a man on (the way, but he's a man who's on your side. In fact you'll get :your money a lot quicker because of this man. Not twenty-Ifive million bucks, though—I think you realize you'll never ^et your hands on that kind of money."
"No!" He almost shouted the word. "I won't do it! I don't trust you. You—you're lying to me."
I shrugged. "Okay. Get behind the wheel of my car. We're going for a ride."
He shrank away in quick alarm. "No! I won't do it. I don't have to go with you—anywhere."
I moved the gun around in my hand. "You'll go, brother. Either to pick up that manuscript and deliver it to the Bishop, or downtown to Central Station where the boys in hard hats can bat you around on the Tinney murder. Which will it be ?"
He was trying to see past my expression. "You mean you'd actually turn me over to the police?"
"Uh-hunh."
His chin came up. "Very well. Go ahead and do it!"
I blew out my breath slowly. Either he was calling my bluff or he was afraid of me enough to think he'd be safer with the cops. I hoped it was the former, for I had no intention at all of giving him to the Homicide boys.
Either way, it left it up to me to call his bluff. Maybe by the time we got within sight of Central Station he would reconsider.
I said, "It's your choice, Mr. Wirtz. Let's go."
We turned and started for the Plymouth. And in that moment a shadow flickered from behind the wrecked coupe. I started to whirl around while lifting my gun. Something came dow^n on the back of my head and simultaneously I felt the gun torn from my fingers.
The pavement reached slowly up and laid itself against my left cheek. I heard a hoarse cry from a man's throat and four dim hammer beats turned to faraway bells.
The Long escape Page 13
