by Otto Penzler
Georgie was down on one knee lacing his shoes so he wouldn’t have to look at anybody. Tiny was scratching his hairy chest unhappily. I was a little sick to my stomach. And Oscar Trotter smiled.
“Tiny, your knife, please,” Oscar drawled. “A gun would be too noisy.”
Tiny dug his switchblade knife out of a pair of pants draped over the hood of the Nash. Oscar took it from him and moved to the Buick as if taking a stroll through the woods.
I turned away. I couldn’t stop him, and if I could I wouldn’t have. I’d seen that kid only twice in my life before today, the first time less than a week ago. I didn’t know a thing about him except his name. He was nobody at all to me. But I turned away and my hands shook as I set fire to a cigarette.
Then Oscar was coming back.
“Well, Johnny,” he taunted me, “from the first you wanted less men to cut in on the loot, didn’t you?”
I had an impulse to take a swing at him. But of course I didn’t.
3
Much of the next three days I watched Stella jiggle about Oscar’s apartment. She was a bit on the buxom side, but in a cozy-looking, cuddly-looking way. She went in for sheer, tight sweaters and little else, and she had what to jiggle with. She belonged to Oscar.
I didn’t know what the dames saw in him. He was no longer young and you couldn’t call him handsome by a long shot, but he always had a woman around who had both youth and looks. Like Stella, who was merely the current one. She was also a fine cook.
I was staying with them in Oscar’s two-bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive. I’d come down from Boston for that New Jersey caper, and afterward there was nothing to take me back to Boston. Oscar was letting me use the spare room while I was making up my mind whether to stay in New York or push on to wherever the spirit moved me.
On that third day Oscar and I went up to the Polo Grounds to take in a ball game. When Stella heard us at the door, she came out to meet us in the foyer.
“There’s a friend of yours in the living room,” she told Oscar. “A Mr. Brant. He’s been waiting over an hour.”
I stepped to the end of the foyer and looked into the living room. The meaty man sitting on the sofa and sucking a pipe was definitely no friend of Oscar’s. Or of mine. He was Bill Brant, a city detective attached to the DA’s office, which meant he was a kind of free-wheeling copper.
Oscar touched my arm. “I expected this. Merely the MO. I’ll do the talking.” He turned to Stella. “Go do your work in the kitchen.”
“I haven’t any. Dinner’s cooking.”
“Go find something to do in the kitchen,” he snapped.
She flounced away, wiggling almost as much as she jiggled. But the thing is that she obeyed.
Oscar trained his women right. She was used to being sent out of the room or sometimes clear out of the apartment when business was being discussed. She was no innocent, of course, but in his book the less any woman knew, the better. It might be all right to trust Stella today, but who knew what the situation would be tomorrow? So she went into the kitchen and we went into the living room.
“Well, what d’you know!” Bill Brant beamed at me. “Johnny Worth too! Another piece fits into the picture. I guess you came to town for the Jersey stickup?”
“I did?” I said and went over to the portable bar for a drink. I didn’t offer the cop any.
“What’s this about New Jersey?” Oscar was asking.
“We’re cooperating with the police over there. You’re a local resident. So was Wallace Garden, who was found dead in the Buick.”
“You misunderstood my question.” Oscar was using his mocking drawl. “I’m not interested in the jurisdictional problems of the police. I’m simply curious as to the reason for your visit.”
“Come off it,” Brant said. “That payroll stickup has all your earmarks.”
I helped myself to another drink. I hadn’t been very much worried, but now I felt better. That, as Oscar had guessed, was all they seemed to have—the MO, the modus operandi, the well-planned, perfectly timed and executed armed robbery that cops identified with Oscar.
“Earmarks!” Oscar snorted. “Do they arrest citizens for that these days?”
“No, but it helps us look in the right direction.” Brant sucked on his pipe. “That killing too. It’s like you not to leave loose ends, even if it means sticking a knife into one of your own boys.” He twisted his head around to me. “Or did he have you do the dirty work, Johnny?”
That was one thing about Oscar, I thought—he did his own dirty work. Maybe because he enjoyed it.
Aloud I said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Brant sighed. What had he expected, that we’d up and confess all as soon as he told us he had a suspicion? We knew as well as he did that he didn’t even have enough to take us to headquarters and sweat us, and likely never would have. But he was paid to try, and he hung around another ten minutes, trying. That got him nothing, not even a drink.
After he was gone, Stella came in from the kitchen and said dinner would be ready soon.
4
Another day passed and another. I was on edge, restless. I took walks along the Drive, I dropped in on friends, I went to the movies. Then I’d come back to Oscar’s apartment and there would be Stella jiggling.
Understand me. I didn’t particularly hanker for her—certainly not enough to risk fooling around with anything of Oscar Trotter’s. Besides, I doubted that she would play. She seemed to like me, but strictly as her husband’s friend. She was completely devoted to him.
No, it was just that any juicy dame within constant eyesight made my restlessness so much harder to take.
We were playing Scrabble on the cardtable, Oscar and Stella and I, when the doorbell rang.
It was evening, around eight-thirty. Oscar, of course, was way ahead; he was unbeatable at any game that required brains. Stella was way behind. I was in the middle, where I usually found myself in everything. As it was Stella’s turn to play, I went to answer the doorbell.
A girl stood in the hall—a fairhaired, blue-eyed girl in a simple gray dress and a crazy little gray hat.
“Mr. Trotter?” she said.
“You’re right, I’m not,” I said. “He’s inside.”
Without being invited in, she stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind her. “Please tell him Mrs. Garden would like to see him.”
“Sure.” I started to turn and stopped. “Garden?” I said. “Any relative of—”
I caught myself. In my racket you became cautious about naming certain names under certain circumstances, especially when you weren’t supposed to know them. There were all kinds of traps.
Gravely she said, “I was Wally’s wife.” She put her head back. “You must be Johnny. Wally told me about you.”
I gawked at her. Standing primly and trimly in the foyer, she made me think of golden fields and cool streams and the dreams of youth.
I said, “Wait here,” and went into the living room. Stella was scowling at the Scrabble board and Oscar was telling her irritably to do something or pass. I beckoned to him. He rose from the cardtable and came over to me.
“Wally’s wife is in the foyer,” I said.
Oscar took off his eyeglasses, a sign that he was disturbed. “He never mentioned a wife to me.”
“To me either. He wasn’t much of a talker.”
“What does she want?”
“Seems to me,” I said, “our worry is what does she know. If Wally—”
And then she was in the living room. Having waited maybe thirty seconds in the foyer, she wasn’t waiting any longer. She headed straight for Oscar.
“You must be Mr. Trotter,” she said. “I’m Abby Garden.”
Abby, I thought—exactly the name for a lovely girl of twenty, if she was that old.
Oscar put his glasses back on to stare at her. He seemed as startled as I’d been that such a dish could have been the moon-faced kid’s wife. But he didn’t say a
nything to her. In fact, his nod was rather curt. Then he looked across the room at Stella.
Stella was twisted around on her chair, giving Abby Garden that feminine once-over which in a moment took in age, weight, figure, clothes, make-up. Stella didn’t look enthusiastic. Which was natural enough, considering that whatever she had the other girl had better.
“Baby,” Oscar said to Stella, “take a walk to Broadway and buy a pack of cigarettes.”
There were cigarettes all over the apartment. At another time he might have given her the order in one word, “Blow!” but this evening he was being polite about it in front of a guest. It amounted to the same thing. Stella undulated up the length of the room, and on the way her eyes never left the girl. No doubt she didn’t care for being chased out for her. But she left, all right.
Me, whenever I told a dame to do anything, she either kicked up a fuss or ignored me. What did Oscar have?
I fixed drinks for the three of us. Abby wanted a rye highball without too much gingerale. Her hand brushed mine as she took the glass from me. That was sheer accident, but all the same my fingers tingled.
“Now then, Mrs. Garden,” Oscar said. His long legs stretched from the armchair in which he lounged. “What’s your business with me?”
She rolled her glass between her palms. “Wally told me his share would come to thousands of dollars.”
“And who,” he said, “might Wally be?”
“Please, Mr. Trotter.” Abby leaned forward. “We can be open and aboveboard. Wally had no secrets from me. I didn’t like it when he told me he was going in on that—that robbery. He’d already done one stretch. Six months for stealing cars. Before I met him.” She bit her lower lip. “I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
Oscar looked utterly disgusted. He had no use for a man who blabbered to anybody, including his wife. Wally may very well have endangered us all.
“So?” Oscar said.
“Oh, you needn’t worry I told the police. They asked me, of course. They questioned me for hours after they found poor Wally. But I told them I knew nothing about any holdup or who was in it.” She gave him a piece of a small smile. “You see, I didn’t want to get into trouble. After all, if I’d known beforehand, I was a kind of accessory, wasn’t I?”
“So?” Oscar said again.
“There was one detective especially—a fat man named Brant. He kept asking me if I knew you.” She looked Oscar straight in the eye. “He said you killed Wally.”
“Now why would I do any such thing?”
“Brant said Wally was wounded during the getaway and then you or one of the others killed him with a knife to get him out of the way.”
“My dear,” Oscar said, more in sorrow than in anger, “can it be possible you fell for that line?”
“Is it a line? That’s what I want to know.”
Oscar sighed. “I see you’re not familiar with police tricks. This is a particularly shabby one. Don’t you see they made up this story to induce you to talk?”
“Then he wasn’t killed with a knife?”
“No, my dear. The bullet killed him. He died in my arms. Wasn’t that so, Johnny?”
“Yes,” I said.
5
That word was my first contribution to the conversation, and my last for another while. Nursing a Scotch-on-the-rocks, I sat on the hassock near Abby’s legs. They were beautifully turned legs. I looked up at her face. She was drinking her highball, and over the rim of the glass her wide blue eyes were fixed with rapt attention on Oscar, who was, now, being a salesman.
He was as good at that as at anything else. His honeyed voice was hypnotic, telling her how he’d loved Wally like a son, how he would have given his right arm to have saved him after that dastardly bookkeeper had plugged him, how the conniving, heartless coppers were out to make her hate him and thus betray him with that fantastic yarn that he, Oscar Trotter, would either have harmed or permitted anybody else to have harmed a hair of one of his own men.
He was good, and on top of that she apparently wasn’t too bright. He sold her and she bought.
“Wally always warned me not to trust a cop.” She split a very warm smile between both of us. “You look like such nice men. So much nicer than that fat detective.”
Oscar purred, “Then I take it we’re friends, Abby?”
“Oh, yes.” She put her highball glass down on the coffee table. “And in a way we’re partners, aren’t we? When will I get my share?”
Suddenly there was frost in the room. The cheekbones ridged Oscar’s lean face.
“What share?” he said softly.
“Why, Wally’s share. He earned it, didn’t he?” She was completely relaxed; she was free and easy and charming. “I read in the papers that there were twenty-two thousand dollars. One-fifth of that—”
“Young lady,” Oscar cut in, “are you trying to blackmail me?”
“Not at all. I simply ask for what I’m entitled to. If money is owed to a man who dies, it goes to his wife.”
She said that wide-eyed and innocent-faced, her earnest manner holding no hint of threat—merely a young and probably destitute widow wanting to clean up financial matters after her husband’s untimely demise.
Huh! A few minutes ago I’d thought she wasn’t so bright. Now I changed my mind.
I spoke up. “She’s got something there, Oscar.”
“You keep out of this.”
“Not this time,” I said. “I suggest we each give her five hundred bucks.”
Oscar pushed his fingers under his glasses to rub his eyes. Then he nodded. He had no choice. We’d be in a bad way if she were to chirp to the cops.
“How much will that come to?” Abby asked me.
“Two grand. Wally wouldn’t have gotten a fifth anyway. He was only the driver. Believe me, we’re being more than fair.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said, and gave me a smile.
This was why I’d jumped in to negotiate—to get some such smile out of her, a smile of sheer joyous gratitude. A man has already gone quite a distance with a dame who thinks she’s beholden to him for money. And with this one I was after going on and on and maybe never stopping.
“Just a minute,” Oscar said.
Abby and I shifted our attention from each other to him.
“Prove you’re Wally’s wife,” he said.
“But I am.”
Oscar looked stern. “I know every switch on every con game. We don’t even know Wally had a wife. If he did, we don’t know you were the one. Prove it.”
“Why, of course,” she said. “I have my marriage license and other things at home. If you want me to bring—”
“I’ve a better idea,” I said. I wasn’t one to pass up any chance when I was on the make. I got off the hassock so quickly I almost spilled what was left in my glass. “I’ll go with you right now and look over whatever you have.”
“That’s so good of you,” she said so sweetly that my heart did a complete flip.
Oscar nodded and closed his eyes. When we left, he appeared to have fallen asleep in the armchair.
6
According to the marriage license, they’d been married seven months ago by the county clerk here in New York.
I sat in the only decent chair in the place. Nearby a train rumbled on the Third Avenue El. She didn’t quite live in a slum, but the difference wasn’t great. There wasn’t much to this room, and there was less to the bedroom and kitchen and bathroom. They were all undersized and falling apart.
Wally’s cut of the loot would have meant a lot to him and her, if he’d lived through it.
I handed the marriage license back to Abby. She fed me other stuff out of the shoebox on her lap—snapshots of her and Wally, his discharge papers from the army, the deposit book of a joint savings account containing less than fifty dollars, a letter from her mother from somewhere in Iowa complaining because she’d gone and married a man named Wallace Garden whom none of the family had met.
“Good enough,” I said.
“How soon will I get the money?”
“Soon as I collect it from the others. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Two thousand dollars,” she reminded me.
“That’s right,” I said.
Abby put the lid on the shoebox and carried it into the bedroom. She didn’t jiggle and wiggle like Stella. Her tight, slender figure in that trim gray dress seemed to flow when in motion.
I wanted her as I hadn’t wanted anybody or anything in a very long time.
Take it easy, I warned myself while waiting for her to return. I could mark myself lousy in her book by rushing. All right, she’d been married to that round-faced kid, who’d been what he’d been, meaning no better than I, and she hadn’t acted particularly upset over his death. But I didn’t yet know what made her tick. I only knew that she looked like moonlight and roses and that it would be wise to handle her accordingly. She was already grateful to me. She’d be a lot more grateful when I brought her the two grand. Then would be time enough to take the next step—a big step or small step, depending on how she responded.
So I was a perfect little gentleman that evening. She put up a pot of coffee and we sat opposite each other at the table and she was as pleasant to talk to as to look at. She spoke of her folks’ farm in Iowa and I spoke of my folks’ farm in Indiana.
When I was leaving, she went to the door with me and put her hand in mine. And she said, “I’ll see you soon, Johnny.”
“Do you want to see me or the money?”
“Both,” she said and squeezed my hand holding hers.
I walked on a cloud clear across town and then a couple of miles uptown to Oscar’s apartment. I hadn’t as much as kissed her good-night, or tried to, but what of that? My hand still tingled from the feel of hers.
I laughed at myself. Johnny Worth, the cynical hard guy, acting like a love-sick schoolboy! But I laughed at myself happily.
Oscar and Stella were in bed when I let myself in. Oscar heard me and came out of his bedroom in a bath-robe.
“She was Wally’s wife, all right,” I told him. “Tomorrow I’ll go collect the dough from Georgie and Tiny.”
