Too Hot to Hold

by Day Keene

  Brady wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. This was another new experience. It was the first time he’d ever been beaten up on suspicion of being something he wasn’t, then had a fortune thrown in his face.

  NINE

  LINDA LOU STUDIED her reflection in one of the mirrors in the washroom off Ward B. Now that she’d put on her slip, none of the black and blue marks showed. The bump on the back of her head was still tender to the touch but at least they hadn’t had to shave her hair.

  She sat on a bath stool and started to put on the stockings the nurse had brought her with her clothes. The nylons were ruined. She would have to buy a new pair. Either that or go back to the station for her luggage. But she didn’t have time. She didn’t have time to do anything before she tried to recover the parcel Mr. Dix had entrusted to her.

  Mr. Dix must know by now, he’d known for twenty-four hours that she hadn’t delivered the parcel. What action he might have taken would depend on the mood he was in.

  She was bitterly resentful as she slipped her dress over her head. She hadn’t wanted to accept the assignment in the first place. Just because a girl happened to be young and pretty she could get into the darndest messes.

  Her resentment grew. The nerve of the fat old man—he must have grandchildren older than she was. How could he possibly expect her to feel anything for him? She shook her head as she adjusted the straps of her brassiere. Not even for a big car and a clothes closet full of clothes and the Lake Shore apartment he’d mentioned.

  Finished dressing except for making up, which would have to wait until she reclaimed her purse, she looked at the list the nurse’s attendant had given her.

  Lipstick

  Compact

  Comb

  Gruen watch

  Ring (Costume)

  Driver’s license

  I.D. cards

  Wallet

  R.R. ticket

  $444.65

  All of it was there. She smoothed her rumpled dress as best she could. Then folding her torn red raincoat over one arm, she walked through the ward to the supervisor’s desk.

  She would make a sincere effort to get the parcel back. If she did, she would deliver it to the address she’d been given. But if she wasn’t successful, there was only one thing she could do and that was to put as much distance as possible between herself and New York and Chicago.

  She might even go back to Memphis or Jacksonville. Not even Mr. Dix could find her there. She’d never mentioned either town to anyone in Chicago, not even the girls with whom she worked. True, they’d all kidded her about the way she talked. But a lot of light-haired girls had drawls and the deep South was a big place. And working in the office in Memphis or even waiting table for Mr. Pulous was preferable to letting Mr. Dix maul her. She’d had enough of that jazz. Not that she didn’t think she might learn to like it if she had a fair shake at the business. But she still wanted what she wanted when she’d run away from Della. She wanted a man of her own, a man who would give her a decent home. A young man willing to give her a ring and a marriage license. When he came along he could maul her as much as he pleased. Morning, noon and night. And in between times. She’d even help him. And if babies came, so much the better. That was what the business was supposed to be for in the first place.

  As she stopped in front of Miss Hart’s desk, the day supervisor gave her a friendly smile. “Are you certain you feel all right, Linda?” she asked. “Are you sure you want to leave us?”

  Linda Lou assured her she felt fine and Miss Hart debated telling the girl that the police were interested in her and thought better of the idea. It wasn’t really any of her business. She laid the release forms on the desk.

  “Then sign here and here. You can pick up your personal things at the custodian’s cage just off the main lobby.”

  Linda Lou signed the releases. “Thank you.”

  The elevator was crowded. There were more people in the lobby, uniformed policemen and plainclothesmen coming and going, relatives and friends of patients, interns and orderlies and nurses. Linda Lou stood by the bank of elevators studying their faces. If the big man in the rain-sodden trench coat was waiting for her, she couldn’t see him. On the other hand, she might not even know him if she saw him again. It had all happened so fast. She’d been so frightened. All of the fear building in her during the long ride from Chicago had popped like a cork in a champagne bottle when she was in the taxi cab.

  She found the office Miss Hart had directed her to and having her purse in her possession again bolstered her morale immeasurably. She put on lipstick and powder and immediately felt better.

  There were some phone booths in the lobby and Linda Lou looked up the number of the Allied Cab Company. She dropped a dime in the slot and dialed the number.

  The man she spoke to was both helpful and courteous but he insisted that no parcel answering the description she gave had been turned in the day before.

  “I tell you what, though,” he told her. “Nine tenths of our drivers drive their own hacks. And if this should happen to be his day off, the driver of your cab might not have bothered to come back to the garage last night You don’t happen to know his name, do you?”

  “Yes,” Linda Lou said. “I do. It was Mike Scaffidi.”

  “Good!” The man had an infectious laugh. “Then you can stop worrying right now, Miss. Mike is one of our most dependable drivers and if you left anything in his cab you’ll get it back.” He added, “Unless the next fare kept the parcel instead of turning it over to Mike. Just hold on a minute. I think this is Mike’s day off but I’ll get his address and phone number from one of the girls in the front office.”

  Linda Lou waited with her fingers crossed until the man came back on the wire.

  “I was right,” he said. “Mike is off today.” He gave her a Bleecker Street address and phone number. “But if it is really important that you get back your parcel today you can probably reach him at home.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.” There was no pencil in her purse. She scratched the address and phone number on the back of a card with a bobby pin. Then she called the number the garage man had given her.

  She let the phone on the other end ring for a long time but still no one answered. She waited a few minutes and then tried again with the same result.

  She hung up the phone but continued to stand in the booth, her slumped shoulders pressed against the wall.

  Memphis. That was a laugh. Sure. She could go to Memphis. She could go to Jacksonville. She could even go back to Della’s. But why not stop kidding herself? If she couldn’t recover the parcel she could never run far or fast enough to hide from Mr. Dix. Sooner of later he’d find her. And, especially if she ran, he would never believe her story about the big man with his hand in the pocket of his trench coat. Following his own twisted line of thinking, Mr. Dix would assume she’d been trying to pull a fast one. He would also assume she’d stolen the money.

  She opened the hinged door of the booth. There was only one thing she could do. That was to go to the Bleecker Street address and wait until Mr. Scaffidi came home if she had to wait all afternoon and all night.

  She had to get back that parcel.

  She walked through the hospital lobby to the street and down the stairs. She stood a moment, hesitant, then walked rapidly down the street to the cab stand on the corner.

  In the window of the bar and grill across the street, Daly adjusted the brim of his pork pie hat to suit him.

  “There she goes,” he said quietly.

  Morgan stopped beating time to the record currently playing in the juke box and stood up. “It’s about time.”

  He joined Daly in the doorway and they left without looking back.

  The bartender was pleased to see them leave. If he heard “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” once more he knew he would blow his top. The two men had been waiting outside when he’d opened up that morning but outside of the quarters they’d dropped in the record player they ha
dn’t spent a dollar between them. And that on soft drinks.

  At first glance he’d thought they were plainclothesmen on a stake-out. Then he’d decided they were too young. Then he’d realized what they really were.

  He’d seen their kind before. For all of their Ivy-League clothes and pork pie hats and well-modulated voices, they were neither from Harvard or Yale.

  If they were working their way through college, those two punks were doing it with their guns concealed under the left arm pits of their well-cut coats.

  TEN

  THE WEATHER WAS nippy but pleasant. Scaffidi couldn’t decide if he was pleased that another winter was approaching or not. Bad weather brought more fares. It meant bigger tips. Still, it was more pleasant hacking in warm weather. A man could work in his shirt sleeves. He could listen to the ball games on his radio. What the hell? A man could only earn and spend so much money.

  Like working in the rain yesterday. What had it got him? A cold. When he could have been shacked up with Serafina. He was glad he wasn’t like some of the boys. Money, money, money. That was all they thought about. As soon as they got their own cabs, they had to hire night drivers. Some of them even hired two men on eight hour shifts and worked their heaps around the clock.

  For what? For the privilege of keeping records and paying state unemployment and social security deductions and at the end of the year, a sonofabitch of an income tax, both state and federal. Not forgetting to mention the additional insurance and the wear and tear on their hacks. It wasn’t worth it.

  Perched on a stool in the corner lunchroom near his furnished room, Scaffidi made plans for the day as he ate a late breakfast of hot cakes and eggs and sausage and tamped it down with a pepperoni-anchovy pizza.

  After he’d washed his hack and swept it out he had to do something about his windshield wipers. It might be best to install new ones. Once windshield wipers started to go bad there was little you could do about them. The thought depressed him. He didn’t mind spending the money. He liked to do his own work. That way he knew it was done right. But it would take at least an hour out of his day.

  He spat on the floor. Always something.

  The fry cook leaned his knuckles on the counter. “What gives, Mike? Got troubles?”

  Scaffidi considered the question. “No,” he said finally. “Everything’s good with me. Like in perfectly satisfied.”

  The more he thought about it, the more positive he was. He’d never had it so good. He owned his hack. It was completely paid for. Having had sense enough not to marry, he didn’t have to worry about supporting a wife and a house filled with runny nosed bambinos.

  He pursued the subject with pleasure. He was free to go and come as he pleased. He could bowl or play cards all night, if that’s what he wanted to do He could drink as much wine and eat as much good food as he could hold. And when he had that other appetite, there were always Maria and Angelina and Serafina or one of the unmarried girls in the neighborhood, happy and willing to accommodate him.

  It was a lot of gorgonzola about women not liking to. Women liked it as well as men did. But a man had to know how to make love. Making love to a woman was as exact and exacting a science as designing a ballistic rocket. Everything depended on what you put on a designing board. No man could come home tired from a hard day’s work, snarl at his wife because dinner wasn’t ready, sit around in his undershirt, unshaven and unbathed, until he was yawning, then push her over on the launching pad, count down from four to zero and expect her to go into orbit. Such things took time and preparation.

  “More coffee?” the counterman asked.

  Scaffidi shook his head. “No. I gotta go wash the hack and sweep it out.”

  The counterman winked. “And then—?”

  Scaffidi counted out enough money to pay his check and added a half dollar tip. “Then we’ll see.” He winked back.

  He walked up Bleecker Street whistling, nodding now and then to a neighbor or acquaintance. There were so many pleasant things to do. He could spend the afternoon drinking wine and playing cards. He could put on his new blue suit and take the subway uptown to Times Square and take in a movie. He could drop in on Maria or Angelina. He could encore with Serafina.

  Scaffidi sucked in his breath at the thought.

  Santa mia Madonna! There was a woman for a man to squeeze.

  Scaffidi opened the small side door of the abandoned warehouse where he kept his cab when he wasn’t using it, or when he didn’t leave it in the company garage.

  His decision was made. As soon as he’d washed the cab and taken care of the windshield wipers, he’d give Serafina a call. And on his way up to her place he’d stop and shop for supper, bitter green Sicilian olives, whitings pickled in saffron, Genoese salami and moratel. And for the main course, broiled eels garnished with garlic.

  The thought made his mouth water. Serafina was as clever at a stove as she was in bed. She cooked with the same passionate abandon. And the wine. He must remember the wine. And a big box of the Turkish pasta she enjoyed. And above everything else, the flowers. Perhaps a dozen yellow roses. Women liked to be made over. He liked to make over them. It was a privilege.

  His footsteps sounded hollow in the warehouse as he walked back to his cab. Yesterday’s rain had washed the top and sides fairly clean but the front of the hood and the fender skirts were a mess. The white-walled tires were bad, too.

  He hosed off the worst of the dirt, then wiped and hosed and wiped the cab again. Then he attacked the white-walled tires with a cleaning agent and a stiff copper brush. The wash monkeys in the company garage never quite cleaned the cab to suit him. Perhaps they didn’t have the same pride of ownership that he did.

  When he was finally satisfied with the whiteness of the tires he opened all four doors and swept out the cab, front and back with a whisk broom, taking special care to feel between the seat of the rear cushion and the back. People left the damndest things in taxis. Once he’d found a full set of false teeth worth perhaps two or three hundred dollars and turned them into lost and found and the sonofabitch who claimed them hadn’t left a buck for him.

  Scaffidi was philosophical about it. That was the way the wheel turned. Sometimes it stopped on your number. Sometimes you couldn’t win for losing.

  He frequently found change. He did this afternoon, a quarter, two nickels, a dime. Scaffidi dropped the change in his coat pocket without a second thought. Change came under the heading of tips. Who could identify a dime?

  He swept the dust on the floor in the rear into a small pile and started to scoop it up with a piece of cardboard and picked up a small plastic object that was in the pile. It was a tag off a small piece of luggage or a brief case. Imprinted on the tag was the inscription:

  James A. Brady

  1134 E. Elm Street

  Stamford. Conn.

  Stam. 3-4124

  It was a cheap tag, worth not more than a dime or a quarter in any five and ten or stationery store. Scaffidi started to throw it away and on second thought dropped it into his side coat pocket. It was just possible someone might claim it. A lot of people set a sentimental value on the weirdest things.

  He scooped up the dust and discarded it and closed the doors of the cab. The balky windshield wipers could wait. It would take him at least an hour to go buy and install a new set, an hour he could be spending with Serafina working up an appetite. The rain storm had been a freak. There was seldom any really bad weather until after Thanksgiving.

  He backed a foot or two to give the cab a last inspection and turned and looked over his shoulder as someone knocked lightly, almost timidly on the small side door.

  “Come in. Come in,” he called.

  A light-haired girl carrying a red raincoat over her arm opened the door and came in and walked quickly toward him. Her voice was as small as she was.

  “Thank God I’ve found you, Mr. Scaffidi.”

  Scaffidi realized he was holding a wadded polishing cloth and stuffed it in his pocket. The gi
rl looked vaguely familiar but he didn’t have the least idea where he’d seen her before or why she should thank God she’d found him.

  Linda Lou smiled hopefully. “They told me at the place where you room that you’d gone to the lunchroom on the corner. And the man in the lunchroom said I’d probably find you here.”

  Scaffidi pushed his cap back on his head. He not only didn’t know the girl he could hardly understand her. She didn’t talk like a New Yorker. Then he thought he had it. Of course. She had a mouthful of cotton. Like in “Gone With The Wind.”

  He took off his cap. “So what can I do for you, Miss?”

  Linda Lou’s hopeful smile wavered. “I’d like my parcel, please.”

  “Your parcel?”

  “The one wrapped in silver paper.” Linda Lou continued earnestly. “You must remember me. I rode in your cab yesterday morning. I got in in front of Grand Central Station and you stopped a little way up the street and got out and worked on your windshield wipers.”

  Scaffidi remembered her in a vague way. “Oh, yeah. I make you, now. You’re the babe who stuck me with a meter pull. You said you wanted to go to St. Walter’s Hotel. Then while I was working on my wipers you took a powder and ran across the street and got yourself hit by a truck.”

  Linda Lou forced herself to smile. “That’s right. Now may I have my parcel, please?”

  “Parcel?”

  “The one I left in your cab.”

  Scaffidi returned his cap to his head. “Not in my hack, Miss. I just finished cleaning it out and I didn’t find a thing.”

  Fighting a wave of panic, Linda Lou asked if he minded if she looked and Scaffidi opened the right rear door of the cab for her. “Go right ahead, Miss.”

  Linda Lou climbed into the cab and thrust her hand between the leather cushion and the back of the seat. The parcel wasn’t where she’d wedged it. Either the cab driver was lying or someone else had found the money, probably the man with the gun in the pocket of his wet trenchcoat. She turned around and sat on the seat and cried.