Strongarm (Prologue Crime)

by Dan J. Marlowe

“Call her up when you finish eating,” I decided. “With a different car and her along we should be ironclad.”

  The minute I said it I wished it had stuck in my throat. Where the hell were my brains? Leaving Palladino’s, all I’d been able to think about was the possibility of physical danger to this pleasant girl. Now here I was planning to lug her around in Midwest, a clay pigeon for the law as an accessory in the flight of a fugitive if I took a fall. My original idea had been the right one; I had to get her under cover, and fast. This damn foolishness just had to stop. “On second thought, let’s scratch Gussie,” I said.

  Lynn looked at me dead-pan. “And then what?”

  “Well — ” I floundered. “Eat your dinner. I’ll think of something.”

  She ate. I thought. I thought myself dizzy. She smiled at me. “It’s two o’clock, Pete. It’s been fourteen hours since we left Palladino’s. Even if you’d kidnapped me, shouldn’t I have been able to get away and report it in the meantime?”

  “Now listen — ”

  “They’d never believe me, Pete.” It could have been the too-heavy meal, but I felt perspiration on my forehead. They wouldn’t believe her, either. A faint trace of a smile lingered on her mobile mouth. “You’re stuck with me.”

  “Do you think this is a damn game?” I must have bellowed it; heads popped up all around the restaurant.

  Her smile vanished instantly. “No, I don’t think it’s a game. I think you’re making a mistake. I hope you’ll change your mind and turn yourself in. But I’m not going to leave you to go it alone and get yourself in worse trouble.”

  Worse trouble! I was afraid my dinner was coming right back up. The girl meant well, and she was beautiful, and I was getting too damn fond of her, but who needed the aggravation? If I did what was right, I’d cut and run, alone. I had a job to do. If I did what was right — what the hell was right? How could it be right to walk out on her and leave her to explanations she was correct in predicting nobody would believe?

  “I’ll call Gussie now,” she said, pushing her plate away. She didn’t wait for me to say yes or no; she got up and walked across the restaurant to the phone booth.

  I hoped I felt the way I did because of the lack of sleep. If the same deficient quantity of clear thinking persisted after catching up on it, I should take my head in search of the nearest stone wall. If I wasn’t careful, this girl was going to get so far under my skin I’d never get her out. I couldn’t use it. Still, there were so many things right about her, from her intelligence to her performance in bed. That she should be favorably disposed to an old trout like me was something to marvel —

  “Pete.” She was standing beside the table. “Gussie’s on the line. Could we possibly make it down there tonight?”

  I groaned inwardly. All I wanted was some sack time. Des Moines was better than 350 miles away. “An emergency?”

  “She’s to be turned out on the street in the morning. She could use a little moral support tonight.”

  At age eighteen I guessed she could. I looked at my watch. “Tell her we’ll be in around midnight, maybe a little before.”

  Lynn’s smile almost made it worthwhile. “Thanks, Pete. I’ll help you drive.”

  She went back to the booth. I lugged the bags up to the cashier’s desk and paid the bill. When Lynn joined me, I led the way outside. “I never heard Gussie sound upset before,” she was saying. Standing on the sidewalk, I realized I hadn’t even asked Lynn what kind of car she’d bought. She pointed out a sober-sided, black, year-old Buick with a roof rack. I loaded our bags into the trunk. It must have been 110 degrees on the sidewalk. In the car, as we drove, there was moving air, but it was warm. I headed across town to Route 18 and set sail for Madison via Waukesha.

  For the first few miles I listened to the Buick. It sounded all right, and I stopped listening. After that I concentrated on keeping my eyes from closing. Beside me Lynn settled lower and lower in the front seat. Her head lolled on her shoulder; her skirt slipped up her creamy thighs. That helped keep me awake for a few miles. Then I angled the vent window so the rush of air blew directly in my face. I didn’t need any blueprint to know that nothing but five or six hours sleep was going to be of any real help.

  It took us just under two hours to make the seventy-five miles to Madison. Coming up on the outskirts Lynn shuddered awake and sat up suddenly. She looked around blankly. “What’s the matter?” I asked her as her eyes came back into focus.

  “Bad dream,” she shivered, pulling down her skirt.

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Want me to drive?”

  “Think you can handle it?”

  “I’m all right now.”

  I pulled over to the shoulder, got out and walked around the car as she slid over behind the wheel. “Don’t let me sleep more than an hour,” I said, leaning in the front window. “Stay right on 18 till you get about forty miles past Madison, where you’ll see Route 151 heading south to Dubuque. That’s the road we want.” I opened the back door, climbed in, and curled up on the back seat. I felt the Buick start up again, but I didn’t feel many revolutions of the wheels.

  I woke up on my back with my neck and one arm paralyzed. I rubbed myself halfway back into shape and sat up. Green countryside and yellow cornfields flowed by the windows. The sun was so low in the west I knew I’d slept a lot longer than an hour. “What time is it?” I addressed the front seat while looking at my watch in the world’s most familiar silly symphony.

  “Seven o’clock,” Lynn replied. I could see her eyes on me in the rearview mirror. “How do you feel?”

  “Great,” I said, stretching mightily. Surprisingly enough I did, too. “Where are we?”

  “Still on 151, close to Cedar Rapids.”

  “You’ve really been knocking them off. Pull off the road and I’ll spell you.” Obediently she edged off the highway and braked to a stop. “Hungry?” I asked her as I got back under the wheel.

  “I could eat again,” she smiled. “That first meal just filled up a few hollow spaces.”

  She had pushed back over to the passenger’s side in the front seat. “Don’t you want to lie down in back?” I asked.

  “I’m not sleepy,” she protested. “Tired, yes.”

  “We’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight after we make Des Moines and just lie around tomorrow and get our breath,” I promised her. “Did you get a bathing suit with the stuff you bought today?”

  Her headshake was negative. “No.”

  “We’ll get you one in the morning and see if we can’t get it wet.” I rolled the Buick back onto the highway. “Keep an eye peeled for a decent place to eat.”

  We stopped just a few miles down the road, still northeast of Cedar Rapids. I didn’t feel hungry till I put my legs under the table. Then I ate everything the girl put down but the napkins. The food seemed to finish the job of waking me up; I felt almost chipper. It had the opposite effect on Lynn. She was nodding at the table while I finished my cigarette. “I think I’ll try the back seat for a little bit,” she said when we were outside in the deep twilight. “If you don’t need me to talk to you to help stay awake?”

  “I’ll call you if I do,” I told her.

  She took off her shoes and stretched out in back. I switched on the lights and started down the road. The fields closed in on the highway as the purple twilight turned to dusk and then to full dark. Traffic wasn’t too heavy. Beyond Cedar Rapids I dropped south on 149 to Route 6 which gave me a straight shot into Des Moines the last 140 miles. I had no more route signs to watch, nothing to do but hang onto the steering wheel. I stopped once without waking Lynn and walked around the car for five minutes. We went through Grinnell at ten o’clock, Newton a little before eleven. The night air had turned cooler. The Buick purred along like a well-fed kitten.

  At eleven-thirty I stopped and woke Lynn. “Oh, my,” she yawned, stretching in sections. “Where are we?”

  “Getting close. Where does
the kid live?”

  “At 244 Cortlandt Street. Mrs. Neville’s. It’s on the south side of town.”

  “We’re coming in on the north side, but we can cross town on Fourteenth Street. Do we take her right out of the rooming house tonight?”

  “It would probably be the best thing to do.”

  “Then we’d better make sure of a motel on the way into town. Watch for one that says ‘Swimming Pool’ and ‘Air-Conditioned.’ I’m through roughing it for a while.”

  Lynn leaned over the seat and rubbed the back of my neck with cool fingers. “Sure you feel all right, Pete?”

  “Fine.”

  I started knocking off the miles again. On the outskirts of Des Moines she tapped my arm and pointed: a gaudy chunk of neon advertised the bounties of the Presidio Motel. In addition to my requisites, it listed “TV.” I turned into the semi-circular driveway and stopped in front of the office. “Three rooms?” I asked Lynn as I climbed out.

  “Why?” she wanted to know. “Wouldn’t a place this size have a two-room-separated-by-bath arrangement?”

  “It probably would, but just who are we? Does the kid know my name? And even by grace of a sudden elopement, we can’t be Mr. and Mrs. Pete Karma.”

  “I don’t think the last name ever came up in my letters,” Lynn said slowly. “You’ve always been just Pete.” She thought about it for a moment. “But let’s play it safe for tonight. Get the two-rooms-separated-by-bath deal if they have it, and I’ll double up with Gussie till I can feel her out about the last name. We can be Mr. and Mrs. Pete Whelan, and as far as Gussie is concerned, we’re married. If she knows the name Karma, I’ll have to do some figuring to explain the change.”

  “Do some figuring now,” I told her. “It’s not an easy explanation.”

  “I’ll think of something,” she said confidently.

  I was too bushed to argue. I went into the office and registered us as Mr. and Mrs. Pete Whelan, then had to go back out to the car to ask Lynn for Gussie’s last name. “Bowen,” she said. “Augusta Bowen.” She put a hand on my arm. “Pete, you don’t think this is a good idea?”

  “I’m too tired to think,” I said. I hadn’t said a truer word in the twenty-three hours we’d been running. “Let it go.” Back in the office I filled out the second registration card, pocketed the keys to the rooms, and inquired directions to Cortlandt Street. Fortunately it turned out to be simple. I was in no shape for an involved take-the-third-right-after-the-fifth-stoplight deal. The motor that had been pushing me so hard seemed to have cut out all of a sudden. All I wanted was bed and lots of it.

  I drove into Des Moines’ quiet streets. It was ten minutes to midnight when we turned south on Fourteenth Street. Lynn had fallen sound asleep on the short ride; she sat up with a jerk beside me when I pulled into the curb in front of 244 Cortlandt. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Are we there?”

  We were there. A figure in shorts flew down the stone steps of the dilapidated rooming house and right through the car window enveloped Lynn in a bear hug. “Oooooh, am I ever glad to see you, Lynn!” a young voice cried. All I could see was a mop of red hair and the tip of an ear.

  I got out of the car and walked around it. Lynn had freed herself and was getting out on the sidewalk. “Pete, this is Gussie,” she said to me. I held out my hand. Gussie ignored it; she grabbed me and kissed me full on the mouth. Aside from the fact that I had a thirty-six hour beard, it’s not the type of greeting I’m accustomed to. She was shorter than Lynn, and plumper; chunky wouldn’t have been amiss as a one-word description. She looked older than eighteen.

  “Pleased to meet you, Pete,” she said in what was evidently her sophisticated voice, after cutting loose from me. It sounded altogether different from the way she’d greeted Lynn. “I’ve heard so much about you I feel as though I know you.” She had a cute, round face with a button nose and freckles; the face was young enough. She turned back immediately to Lynn, slipping an arm around her. “Talk about the marines to the rescue, cousin! I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

  “Gussie, we’ve been driving all day and we’re dead,” Lynn said. “All we want is to get you out of here, and get a night’s sleep. The post-mortems can wait.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, there’s — ”

  “I’ll take care of the details,” I cut in. I’d already seen the nightgowned figure just inside the door at the head of the stairs. Not that Gussie seemed embarrassed, I thought to myself as I climbed the stairs. “Mrs. Neville? I’m Pete Whelan. We’ve come for Gussie. If I could settle up with you — ”

  “Right this way,” she said. In the dim hall light I couldn’t get much of a look at her. I followed her down a dark passageway to a small room at the rear of the house, where she switched on a desk lamp. She was middle-aged, with a pleasant face but a no-nonsense chin. “I suppose you think I’m the original Mrs. Scrooge, turning the girl out on the street?” she said over her shoulder, seating herself at the desk.

  “I haven’t heard anyone say so.”

  She half-turned to look at me. “The girl ought to go home, or somewhere she has supervision. She’s irresponsible. And boy crazy. The two jobs she lost were because of not getting up mornings after late dates with boy friends. Scandalously late.” She turned back to the desk. “The amount due me is seventy-two dollars. For six weeks rent.”

  “Gussie didn’t board here?”

  The corners of Mrs. Neville’s pleasant mouth curved upwards. “Not originally.”

  “But you’ve been feeding her?”

  “Do I look as though I’d let an eighteen-year-old go hungry? But it was one of the reasons I decided I had to force her to go home. She was a little too comfortable here at no trouble or expense to herself.”

  “I get the picture. Mrs. Neville — ” I put my hand in my pocket “ — I’m not offering to pay you for Gussie’s meals, because I know you didn’t do it for the money, but I wish you’d take this little bit over and above the rent money against the day you find another eighteen-year-old on your hands.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Whelan.” Mrs. Neville put the bills I gave her in the desk drawer and locked the drawer with a key on a cord around her neck. “Are you taking Gussie home?”

  “Eventually, but we’re on vacation right now. I know my wife will want to join me in expressing our appreciation for your looking after the girl.”

  “Your wife looks like a sensible woman,” Mrs. Neville said, pushing back from the desk and leading the way out into the hall. “She’ll need to be to cope with Gussie. There’s nothing vicious about her, but an almost complete — well, I shouldn’t be prejudicing you against her.”

  Lynn and Gussie were coming down from the second floor, and Lynn speeded up when she saw me. “Don’t say anything about her not having any baggage,” she said under her breath as she approached me. Under one arm Gussie had a small bundle. Her hands were empty.

  “We all set?” I asked them both.

  “As soon as I say good-bye to Mrs. Neville,” Gussie said. She said good-bye and thank you, graciously and with no trace of embarrassment. Mrs. Neville smiled and patted her cheek. We went out to the car, and I headed straight for the Presidio.

  I carried Lynn’s bag into the second unit and set it down on the bed. “Goodnight, girls,” I said firmly, handing Lynn the key. “See you in the morning. And not too early in the morning.”

  Inside my unit I put my bag in the closet, unopened. I shoved a knee into the mattress of the double bed and approved of its consistency. I adjusted the air-conditioner, undressed, and slid between the sheets.

  I was asleep before I drew the second breath.

  chapter VII

  Sometimes it was hard for me to realize that Lynn was only as old now as I’d been in Korea.

  I crossed a private Rubicon there on December 2, 1950.

  Everyone crosses it eventually, but not everyone recognizes the moment.

  December 2, 1950, was a windy, snowy, bitter cold night at Yudam-ni i
n northeast Korea, a few miles below Chosin Reservoir — ”Frozen Chosin.” The Chinese Communist army had just entered the war after we’d chased the gooks from Pusan to Pyongyang. They’d entered it with a bang; they’d attacked and encircled the 7th Division to the east of us, and were on our right flank.

  I crouched behind a cairn of boulders on a craggy hillside where for five days the 5th and 7th Regiments of the First Marine Division had taken 20 per cent casualties to hold a line. We’d heard that thirty-five miles south of us the CCF’s had cut the road on the way down to Hagaru-ri, the next strongpoint, and set up enfilading machine guns and mortars. We suspected worse. I think quite a few of us had the feeling we were the walnut on the anvil, waiting for the blacksmith’s hammer.

  A scraping sound on the hillside brought my head around. Major “Josh” Harper, a lean and lank Tennessean, slithered his way over the new snow on the old crust and dropped down beside me. “Evenin’, Lieutenant,” he drawled after unwrapping his scarf from his face. Frost rimed his eyebrows. “Th’ battalion’s goin’ for a hike. Git yore boot in yore boys’ tails.”

  I thought he was kidding. The icy Manchurian wind was driving the falling snow with blizzardlike force; an hour before the temperature had been twenty-four below zero. I was bone-cold, and I’d been hungry for five months, ever since I’d caught a rifle butt in the mouth in the hand-to-hand at No-Name Ridge. My new lower plate was not a success. “You mean right now, sir?”

  “I mean fifteen minutes ago. Baker Company’s still holdin’ on Fox Hill. If the hill goes, the wogs command Toktong Pass, an’ I’ll never git to use my paid-up cemetery lot back in Murfreesboro. Cain’t let that happen, Lieutenant. Get ’em movin’. Form on me on the right.”

  He replaced his scarf and crawled away to the next forward outpost. I flexed my legs that were rapidly losing all feeling and started down the line in the other direction in search of Joe Altobelli, my first sergeant. I found him in a shallow cave trying to thaw out a frozen can of “C” rations over a pitiful-looking fire. “You eat this stuff when it’s frozen,” he was explaining to Pvt. Hobey Andrews, from whom he’d taken it, “you’ll get enteritis.”