At the motel restaurant I took on a load of ham and eggs. For the first time in days my nerves felt unkinked. I’d picked up a copy of the Register at the front door, and over a second cup of coffee I read it from cover to cover. There wasn’t even a paragraph about a search for an escaped con. I couldn’t understand it. Detroit was seven hundred miles away, but there should be something. Surely by now they knew whom they were looking for. Or maybe by the blackout they were trying to lull me into a sense of false security. It could even be working: while I certainly didn’t feel secure at the moment, I did feel lulled.
Leaving the restaurant, I picked up a map of the Midwest and another of Ohio at the cashier’s desk. Back at the motel rooms the Buick was gone. I took a folding chair out into the shade of a tree and sat down and opened the map of Ohio. I studied it for some time, and then leaned back to consider. My eye fell on a flaw in the brickwork in the motel exterior. I could see others. It was a shabby job; a skimped job. If I’d been the prime contractor, I wouldn’t have paid off until it had been shaped up.
Thoughts of prime contractors brought me back to the map. I needed a place to leave the girls where they’d be safe while I operated. It shouldn’t be too far away from the city on the river where the Risko Construction Company did business. It shouldn’t be too far from the city on the lake where Joe Bonigli did business, in case I needed a favor from Joe Bonigli. On the map Columbus looked about halfway between. It was about a three-hour drive in either direction. Far enough, but not too far. More important, I knew the roads, and not only the main roads.
Columbus it would be.
In an apartment there we should present a normal enough appearance while I maintained freedom of movement. With luck, it shouldn’t take me too long to get to Charley Risko. If I didn’t have the luck, Joe Bonigli and his people should be available for the favor they felt they owed me. There was no point in spinning it out: get to Risko, or round up the help to get to him. I’d rather do it myself, but I wasn’t prepared to be fussy.
I was still sitting in the shade with the maps on my knees when Lynn and Gussie rolled up the driveway. Gussie hopped out of the Buick and posed like a mannequin, on her toes, with one foot pointed in front of the other. “Look at me!” she cried happily. “Isn’t this gorgeous?”
I barely had time to take in the general dimensions of her peach-colored sleeveless dress when she charged across the grass to my chair and kissed me solidly on the mouth. The chair rocked violently at the impact. To the odor of girl had been added something from Paris. Something of Lynn’s, I supposed. “You taste better now,” Gussie announced. She stooped to pick up the maps that had fallen to the ground. “Are we going someplace?”
“Not today,” I said.
“Good!” she said energetically. “I’m going to take a swim in the pool.” She bounded back to the car from which Lynn was alighting with an armful of parcels, scooped them up along with the room key, and disappeared inside.
“Can’t you keep her the hell off me?” I complained to Lynn when she pulled up a chair alongside mine.
“Ssh, she’ll hear you,” Lynn cautioned. “You’ll hurt her feelings. She’s just like a puppy.”
“I prefer my puppies housebroken. What is this kid, a child of nature or something? People don’t act like that.”
“People your age, darling.”
I sat there.
Since I’d know her, Lynn had never called me anything but Pete. We’d drifted into an exceptionally fine arrangement without spoken endearments on either side. In the beginning, I’d been more of a father-image to her. When that changed, we hadn’t needed words.
Darling.
It had a nice sound.
She was looking at the maps. “What next?” she asked.
Her tone made me uncomfortable. “Nothing today,” I said. “Maybe not tomorrow, either. Did you get that bathing suit?” She nodded. “Let’s soak up a little sun. I’ll meet you at the pool.”
“All right,” she agreed, and started toward the room. Gussie blew out the door in a bathing suit that was strictly paper-on-the-wall. Her solid chubbiness stretched its seams in all directions. She sprinted across the grass and went into the pool in a shallow racing dive, then thrashed her way up and down its length. I watched her pull her way through the water; no finesse, just sheer power. Whoever married this girl should check the rpm’s in his diesel, I decided.
I went inside and got into my trunks. When I came out, Lynn was in the pool with Gussie. That early we had it to ourselves. When Lynn surfaced I could see that her suit was conservative but its effect was not. She had long, long legs, not slender, not heavy. And that classically serene face. Not even Gussie’s flamboyant red hair and dazzlingly white skin could dim Lynn’s beauty. In my first nights with her, when I still had the shakes bad from dreams of the pen and seldom slept solidly for more than an hour or two, I’d lie beside her and study her sleeping features. That face brought me back to civilization.
“Hey, man,” Gussie greeted me raucously as I arrived at poolside. “Where’d you get that scar on your arm?” Her voice had a carrying quality that matched her brassy exterior.
“In the Spanish-American War,” I said. “Kindly show a little respect for your elders.”
She didn’t know whether to take me seriously or not. I saw Lynn hide a smile. Gussie tried a tentative laugh and splashed water at me. I let myself down into the pool via the chrome ladder and negotiated its length twice in an elementary side stroke.
By the time I climbed back up the ladder Lynn was already stretched out in the sun in a chaise lounge. I settled down in one alongside it. Gussie was still snow-plowing up and down the pool, whooping with energy. It tired me to look at her.
“Good morning,” a voice said from behind me. “Don’t get up. I’m Tom Gorman, the manager.” A wiry, sandy-haired man wearing rimless glasses moved into my line of vision. We shook hands with me still on my spine. “If you’d care to have lunch here on the patio today, be my guest,” he went on. I looked up at him, wondering at his meaning. His smile took in Lynn beside me and Gussie in the water. “We like to dress up the poolside.”
I looked at the patio on the other side of the pool. It was facing the highway, and elevated, visible to cars coming from both directions. “Thanks, but my wife has to be careful of the sun,” I said, ignoring the big beach umbrellas over the patio tables.
“Some other time, then,” Gorman said, and moved on. A shadow had settled over Lynn’s face. I knew what had put it there: the reminder. And that’s what I was letting her in for every day I was around her. Where the hell did I get off planning to take an apartment in Columbus with myself as resident genius? The biggest possible favor I could do this girl would be to fade away.
“I think I’ll go in and lie down for a bit,” she said abruptly. She didn’t meet my eye as she got up out of her chair. I watched her move gracefully across the lawn. If she hadn’t known before what it was going to be like, she knew now. Maybe I wouldn’t have to make up my mind about what I was going to do.
Maybe she’d make up hers.
I closed my eyes against the sun and the possibility.
• • •
Despite the unpromising start, we had a good two days there. Lynn returned to her usual cheerful self. Gussie just naturally couldn’t be held down, short of a foot on her neck. At meals she was good for a spilled glass of water a day, due to her extravagant gestures. I threatened to tie her arms. She didn’t know quite how to take me, and I intended keeping it that way. With the big girl, an inch was a thousand yards.
“She asked me what you do for a living,” Lynn reported the first afternoon.
“I hope you told her pimping?”
“Pete! I said you were in real estate.”
“So I’m in real estate,” I said, and let it go at that.
I soaked up sun and sleep in about equal proportions. I’d nearly forgotten what it was like to relax. Lynn rested too. Gussie was Gussie — explodi
ng all over the landscape every time I looked up.
“She asked me last night how many men I’ve had,” Lynn said the second morning. “She seemed disappointed when I said two. I gathered I was supposed to ask her how many she’s had.”
“But you were too chicken?”
“She was just trying to shock me.”
I wasn’t so damn sure.
The third morning we headed for Columbus. We stopped overnight at a motel in Champaign, Illinois, and got into Columbus at four the second afternoon. “Tell Gussie that friends are lending us an apartment there,” I’d told Lynn. I left them at the library while I went off on “business.” I looked up a real estate office and gave the rental agent a fast rundown on what I wanted: a ground floor, two bedroom, two bathroom, furnished apartment, immediate occupancy. I took the second place he showed me, on Governor Street on the north side of town, near a small park, and went back and collected the girls. I signed the lease — which I fought down to six months — Pete Whelan.
“Say, isn’t this nice!” Gussie exclaimed when I let them in with the agent’s key. She walked rapidly from room to room: both bedrooms, baths, dining room, living room, den, and kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door and looked inside, flicked the TV on and off, and finally sprawled herself in a leather-covered armchair. “This is great! You two must sure have some swell friends.”
Bringing in the bags, I put Lynn’s in the big bedroom with mine. Gussie’s things I put in the other. Stowing mine away in a big closet, I reminded myself that I should make some better disposition of the money. Leaving it in the apartment could prove too much of a temptation to Gussie’s curiosity during my absences. Although, if I got a break we might not be here too long, I told myself hopefully.
I gave Lynn the key — the rental agent had promised to deliver another in the morning — and she and Gussie went out grocery shopping. When they came back, I had to make three trips from the Buick to the apartment with double-armfuls of bundles. We had steak for dinner. Gussie “helped” Lynn, mostly by getting in her way. She did the dishes after dinner, though. On her good behavior, I decided. She didn’t impress me as the dish-washing type, not voluntarily.
Afterward we sat around the living room and watched TV. All very cozy and domestic, I thought, until I watched Gussie continually jumping up from her chair to take another cigarette from the pack on the coffee table beside me. She smoked more of them than I did. On the subject of eighteen-year-olds smoking I’ve got old-fashioned ideas, but I didn’t say anything.
I sat opposite the decorative fireplace in the pleasant, maple-paneled room with my legs stretched out in front of my armchair, at peace with the world, temporarily. There wasn’t much conversation, even from Gussie. We all just stared in a torpid trance at the bright image. No one even offered to change channels.
Around ten o’clock Lynn fell asleep in her chair. I got up and tapped her on the shoulder. “Bedtime, girl,” I said when she smiled up at me.
Gussie jumped up and turned off the television set. “I think I’ll go to bed, too,” she announced with as much energy as if she’d broadcast a climb on Everest. “Good night, all.”
“Good night, Gussie,” Lynn said drowsily. I echoed her, then held out a hand and hoisted Lynn to her feet when she took it. “Coffee?” she asked me.
“Not tonight.” We usually had coffee before bed. Gussie had already disappeared into the other bedroom by the time we went into ours. I undressed and sat down on the edge of the wide bed. When Lynn finished brushing her teeth and approached me in her pajama-top nightgown, I took her in my arms. We exchanged nose-nuzzling kisses for a moment, discovering in the process a marvelous unanimity of opinion about the program for the next few moments.
“There’re too many lights on,” Lynn whispered. I turned off all but one boudoir lamp. Back at the bed I positioned her carefully and rolled her pajama-top up under her chin. Her hands came down lightly on my shoulders, and we went to work. Easily, comfortably, and oh, so pleasantly. We were many a long mile down the road before I threw it into overdrive.
“Isn’t this nice?” Lynn sighed afterward just before she fell asleep.
I got up quietly and found a cigarette and lit it.
It was nice.
I wandered into the bathroom and stared at the face looking back at me from the medicine chest mirror.
It was nice, but it wasn’t what I was there for.
It wouldn’t do.
I smoked the cigarette down and stubbed it out. Tomorrow I’d get things organized and get rolling. I was on my way back to bed when I had a thought. Or a feeling. I opened our bedroom door and went out into the living room. I didn’t turn on the light. Moving as noiselessly as I could, I picked up an armchair, carried it out into the hall and set it down in front of the apartment door. I settled down into it in the dark. More than likely I was wrong, but just in case I wasn’t —
Naturally I fell asleep in the chair. I was rudely awakened by Gussie falling over my legs and landing heavily in my lap. I’ll say one thing for the kid — she had good nerves. The average female so unpleasantly surprised would have caterwauled herself into a conniption. All I drew from Gussie was one startled gasp and an elbow in the breadbasket. “Get the hell on back to your room,” I growled when I recovered my breath.
“Jeezus to Goddlemighty, you scared me, Uncle Pete!” she gasped.
So I was Uncle Pete now? I wondered when the promotion had taken place. “Just a minute,” I said. I could see her outline as she turned back from outright flight. “How were you going to get back in?”
“I have Lynn’s key,” she said in a giggly tone.
“She gave it to you?”
My surprise must have been apparent in my tone. For the first time since I’d known her, Gussie sounded sheepish. “I took it out of her bag.”
“Hand it over.”
Our hands groped in the dark as they key was transferred. “You sound like you think you’re my boss,” she said. There was a sulky note in her voice.
“Listen, kid,” I said in my toughest accents. “As far as I’m concerned, you can walk out that door this minute, and keep right on going. For all time. Or you can walk back into your room, but if you do, for as long as you’re around here I am the boss, and don’t you forget it. Understand?”
“Yes.” She sounded unhappy.
“Okay. Get. Either way.”
She got, back into the bedroom. I sat there a minute thinking it over. This was quite an eighteen-year-old. Without a quarter in her pocket — unless she’d dipped into Lynn’s cash, too, and somehow I doubted it — she was all set to step out in a strange town and try her luck.
And what would I have done if she’d opted for the outside door? Hollered for Lynn to come and bail me out of the consequences of my mouthy tough guy role? Just the same, we needed a few house rules. All I needed was for this plump Kewpie doll to get herself in trouble locally and draw attention to the apartment.
I went on in to bed.
“You’ve got to keep an eye on her,” I told Lynn in the morning. “And keep her busy. Run her twenty laps around the park mornings. Tell her she’s in training for the Olympics. Do anything that makes that bed look good to her at night.”
Over her coffee cup Lynn was staring at me as if she’d never seen me before. “What on earth made you wait out in the hall for her, Pete?”
“I just had a feeling. She’s the restless type.”
Lynn shook her blonde head. “Your mind certainly runs in strange directions.”
“Mine and Gussie’s. You get the picture?”
“I don’t think I like the idea of being a jailer,” she said slowly.
The words brought me up short. “Who the hell said anything about a jailer? I just asked you to keep an eye on her. It could be important.”
She put her hand on mine. “I’m sorry, Pete. I know it’s important. It’s just that I spent my own life saying ‘yes, Mother,’ and ‘yes, Father,’ and what did it get
me? Until I met you?” She gave me her brilliant smile. “You can see why I’m not letting you get away from me.”
“I can see you could get an argument you’d be a lot better off if you had,” I said grimly. “About Gussie — just take her to the movies or something when I’m not around.”
She looked at me. “When you’re not around?”
“Like tonight.” I tried to say it casually. It didn’t come out that way. “I’ll probably be late.”
I didn’t like what had happened to her eyes. “Please, Pete,” she said. “No more trouble?”
“No trouble. Business.”
She didn’t say any more. It had definitely put a blight on the morning, though. Twice before lunch I tried to smooth things over, and twice she shook me off. I gave it up.
Lynn’s attitude bothered me, but it didn’t change my mind.
After lunch I made a quick shopping trip. I bought a Panama hat a size too large so the brim covered too much of my face, and a pair of cheap, windowpane spectacles. I left them in the Buick. In the afternoon I took a nap. Lynn and Gussie had walked over to the park. While they were out I debated doing something about the money in the closet, but I had no ready-made alternative. I let it alone.
One good fast move that night — one lucky move — and I might not have to make too many more decisions, I hoped.
Lynn and Gussie came back around four-thirty. When I got tired of watching Gussie eying Lynn and me, trying to decide if storm warnings were really up between us, I checked out at five. I didn’t care to sit around any longer under that bright-eyed inspection.
I went out to the Buick and settled down for the three-hour drive to River City where the Risko Construction Company had its headquarters. A hell of a lot of people knew me in River City. Not that I intended meeting them, but just in case I had the Panama and the spectacles, and I could take out my lower plate, which changed the entire shape of my face. It should be enough, barring outright disaster.
Even in the ordinary course of events Charley Risko had never been easy to get to, and since I’d made it outside he was probably taking special precautions. There was a way, though, which just might wind up the whole ball of wax. Charley always prided himself on being the first to work in the morning, sometimes by as much as half an hour. Since most of the building stood wide open during the night, he never went to his office alone. The ritual was always the same: old Ben Curry, the night watchman, went in with him, opened up with Charlie’s key, and made a quick tour of the office. Then, and only then, did Charley go in.
Strongarm (Prologue Crime) Page 10
