“But,” I said, “all that money.”
“It’ll never bring you nothing but grief, kid,” he said. “You called it yourself. Blood money, you said, and that’s what it is. Two men are dead already for that money. Maybe Short Sheet’s stripper is dead too, by now. And maybe you’ll be dead in a couple days. I don’t know how you kept away from them so long already. Beginner’s luck maybe.”
“Maybe that’s it.” I gazed dismally between my knees at the dirty floor. “I suppose I ought to get out of town,” I said.
“Don’t do it, kid. They know that kind of dodge, they expect it. Once you’re out on the run it’s all over. They’ve got you in their kind of situation.”
I could see what he meant, and he was right. I said, “What can I do, then? I need time to think, time to decide. Where can I go?”
“You been staying around your home, haven’t you? That’s where you got my note.”
“I’ve been staying there mostly, yes.”
“That’s why you lasted so long,” he said. “That’s so dumb they can’t believe it. You’re on the run, and you know you’re on the run, and they know you’re on the run, and you stay home. They’ll never think of it in a million years. You just stay to home, like you been doing. Don’t go out on the street very much, if you can help it. And my advice is, unload that dough. It’ll never bring you nothing but a bullet in the back.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.”
“You work it out for yourself,” he said. “All I know is what I’d do. Just don’t give the dough to the Coppos, that’s all I ask. I hate the thought of them getting all that cash.”
“They won’t get it,” I promised.
“Good.” He got to his feet. “I can’t hang around any longer,” he said, and, wiped his mouth again. “Say, what I told you, that’s worth something, ain’t it?”
“It is,” I admitted. I took out my wallet again, found a ten, hesitated, put another ten with it, and gave them to him.
He took the money with a sardonic grin. “Three years ago,” he said, “I was buying cigarettes at the Playboy Club with these, and telling the Bunny keep the change. You never know, kid, you never know how things’ll turn out.”
“I guess not,” I said.
He scampered away across the terminal. I watched him, and when he was a good distance away I got up and followed him. There was a lot he’d already told me, but I had the suspicion there was also a lot more Professor Kilroy hadn’t told me. I wanted to know more about him.
At first I thought he suspected he was being followed, the way he kept looking around, and the fact that he was wandering around inside the terminal, doubling back on himself and hurrying along in great circles, but I kept well back and I’m sure he never did see me.
After a lot of this aimless rushing back and forth, upstairs and down, he finally headed for a bank of lockers, pulled out a key, unlocked one of the doors, and took out a neat new black attaché case of the kind being carried by half the men in the terminal. On all the others it looked normal, but on Professor Kilroy it looked incongruous. Carrying this unexpected bit of luggage, he headed for the nearest men’s room and went on inside.
I waited outside. I waited for twenty minutes. Men went in and men came out, but no Professor Kilroy. Was there another exit? Dare I go in and look for him?
At last I did. There was no other exit and there was no Professor Kilroy. I looked all over the place, even peeking over the tops of stall doors—which got me called a few names—and he just wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there.
27
I CAME OUT of the men’s room feeling baffled and uneasy and irritable. How had he done it? Where was he now?
As I stood there, with no doubt an expression of absolute stupidity on my face, a hearty man of middle age, robust appearance, good suit, nice pencil mustache, came up to me and said, “Say there, my friend, would this happen to be your suitcase?”
Distracted, I looked at the expensive-seeming blue suitcase he was holding up for my inspection and said, “No, it isn’t.”
“I just found it here,” he said.
“Is that right?” I continued to look around the terminal, hoping to see the scuttling form of Professor Kilroy somewhere out there on the great floor.
“Do you suppose there’s anything valuable in it?”
I looked at him, finally hearing what he was saying. “What was that?”
“I said, I wonder if there’s anything valuable in here.”
A great rage was swelling within my breast. I said, “Are you actually trying to work the lost-bag swindle on me?”
He blinked, and looked very innocent and very confused. “Well, of course not,” he said. “I just found this—”
“If that isn’t the last straw,” I said. Enraged, I kicked him soundly in the shin, and went away from there.
28
I WAS being followed.
I had chosen to walk home, for a number of reasons. There was my normal reason of pot belly, of course, but in addition I wanted a chance to think about what Professor Kilroy had told me—particularly his idea that I should give the money away to save my life—and sometimes I could think best if I went for a walk. And I must admit there was also a third reason; in how many movies on the Late Late Show had I seen it happen, where the hero gets into a taxi he thinks is being operated by an ordinary hack, only to discover that the man behind the wheel is in actuality a hireling of the mob? More than I could count, that’s how many. I’m sure Professor Kilroy would have called it paranoiac, but every taxi I saw seemed to glitter with a yellow evil, to be pregnant with malevolent potential. And never had I seen so many thuggish-looking cab drivers.
Therefore I walked.
And therefore I was being followed.
I had chosen to take Fifth Avenue, that being a broad and well-lighted thoroughfare as well as more scenic than some of the avenues to the west, and I had gone two or three blocks before I became aware of them. They were in a long black Cadillac, the same car that had been parked across the street from my apartment the other day. It was traveling now with only its amber parking lights on, and there were black side curtains drawn over the windows, hiding the back seat. In the darkness within the car I could make out little about the driver other than that he wore a chauffeur’s cap.
Their method of keeping track of me was an odd one. They would drive slowly past me and stop at the curb just short of the next intersection. Then they would wait as I walked by and went about halfway down the next block before once again they passed me and came to a stop near the intersection.
It was more frightening in its own way than an out-and-out attack; that sleek and silent car rolling slowly by me, its tires crunching on the blacktop, then coming to rest like a great panther just a little way ahead. The driver always faced forward. The side curtains never moved.
Every time I went by I expected roaring gunfire from that curtained window, or a sudden leap of burly thugs out the doors, grabbing me up, hustling me into the back seat, taking me for the final ride. But nothing happened, and our slow silent terrifying game of follow the leader continued for block after block.
What could I do? Obviously they were hoping for a time when the sidewalk in my general vicinity would be free of other pedestrians, so they could at their leisure and without witnesses shoot me down or kidnap me or whatever they had in mind for me. Failing that, I suppose they hoped to follow me to the place where I was hiding out.
Ah, but the crosstown streets were all one-way, and maybe that was my salvation. Coming up was 36th Street, one-way eastbound, if I were to turn right, to turn west on that street, how could the Cadillac follow me?
It couldn’t.
Just this side of the intersection the Cadillac throbbed like a panther feigning languor. It had sidled past me again and slid to the curb and stopped. I walked on by it, feeling the old tightening of muscles in the middle of my back, and once again nothing happened.
I came to the corner, made an abrupt right turn, and strode briskly away down 36th Street.
And behind me a car door slammed.
I looked back in time to see the Cadillac shoot across the intersection, headed south, no doubt meaning to cut across 35th Street and come around in front of me, cutting me off at the Sixth Avenue end of this block. Meantime, a bulky man in a cloth cap had come around the corner and was walking at a steady pace after me, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.
I walked faster, pulling ahead of the bulky man, but without hope of getting down to the other corner before the Cadillac could come around and seal it off.
Ahead of me, about the middle of the block, there was light spilling from a small luncheonette, the only store still open along this stretch. And except for the bulky man behind me, I was the only pedestrian in sight. My shoulder blades itched and itched, and I hurried toward the luncheonette. There I would find people, safety, an island of light. If worst came to worst, I could phone the police; there was at least a chance the call would be answered by someone not in the employ of the Coppo brothers.
At the far corner, the black Cadillac nosed around the corner, its amber parking lights like the eyes of a sea monster. It stopped down there, near the corner, waiting for me.
I was nearing the luncheonette, nearing it, nearing it.
I was half a dozen steps away when its lights went out.
I almost stopped in my tracks. I did falter a bit, but then I remembered the bulky man behind me and I hurried on again. Only the occasional streetlight now gave homage to the memory of Thomas Alva Edison, a great man who should have statues erected to him on every side street in town. Well-illuminated statues. Next door to all-night diners with large clientele.
As I came even with the luncheonette, out its door came a man wearing white pants and a black coat, a jangling set of keys in his hand. I promptly veered right, walked past him, and went on through the open door and inside. “Power failure?” I asked pleasantly, and strode on into the darkness.
“Hey!” said an outraged voice behind me. “Whatcha think you’re doin?”
“Coffee and a cheese Danish,” I said cheerily, and fell over a table.
“Come outa there!”
“Make it a prune Danish, then,” I said, got to my feet, and fell over a chair.
“We’re closed, ya numskull!”
“How about the flank steak, hash fried, and green peas?” I asked him. I was crawling around the floor trying to find some way to stand up without hitting my head on the underside of a table.
“What are ya doin? Ya wreckin the joint? Come outa there!”
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “Everything I want’s on the dinner.”
“Out! Out! Out!”
“When’s the Swede get here?”
He wasn’t a literary type. He said, “Do you come outa there or do I call the cops?”
I was on my feet again, albeit shakily. “Nyaa nyaa,” I said provocatively, “you can’t catch me.”
“Okay, buster,” he said, came striding in after me, and fell over a chair.
In an attempt to circle around him, I walked into a wall, backed away from that into a booth, caromed off a hatrack, and wound up with my arms wrapped around a cash register. I felt like the ball in a pinball machine.
But at least I was up front again, with him no longer between me and the exit. I could hear him blundering around somewhere in the interior, falling over things and muttering, “Where are ya? Lemme get my hands on ya. Where are ya?” Apparently he was in too much of a rage to think about turning the lights on, which was fine by me.
I tippy-toed toward the door, fell over a planter—what was that doing here, full of artificial flowers with sharp points?—and went the rest of the way on hands and knees. Still on hands and knees, I peeked out around the corner of the door, and saw the bulky man leaning against a store-front window about twenty feet to my left. And the amber-eyed Cadillac parked down at the corner to my right.
But coming toward me from the direction of Sixth Avenue was a group of teen-agers, all talking at the same time, most waving their arms, moving in a compact mass as though enclosed in an invisible box. They may all have been boys and they may all have been girls and they may have been a mixture of the two, it was impossible to tell. They all wore slacks and jackets and were slender without any particular shape. Their hair was too long if they were boys and too short if they were girls. Their voices were changing if they were boys and showed they’d been smoking too much if they were girls. They all walked as though they’d just gotten off motorcycles.
I got to my feet, brushed myself off, and as the group drew abreast of me I stepped quickly from the doorway, inserted myself in the middle of them, and said loudly, “Say there, gang, you hear the one about the centipede with athlete’s foot?”
They paid absolutely no attention to me. They just kept walking along the same as ever, all talking at the same time, most waving their arms, the compact mass unaltered in the slightest by my presence in its middle. One of them on my left was relating the plot of a motion picture, another one a little farther forward was describing a coat he/she had seen at some airport, one to my right rear was discussing American foreign policy, one out front was talking about the advantages of the university at Mexico City, and one on the left fringe was giving an impassioned defense of the birth control pill.
The bulky man had retired into a dark doorway. All I could see of him as we trundled by was a pair of malevolently gleaming eyes.
The Cadillac slithered by and came to a stop down near the corner.
At Fifth Avenue my platoon turned right. I was still trying to confound the Cadillac with one-way streets, and Fifth Avenue was one-way southbound, so I parted from the group there, turning to go in the opposite direction, saying, “See you later, alligator,” as a way of dating myself for them.
“See you, man,” one of them called after me, which I thought was very nice.
The bulky man was after me again, but the Cadillac was hampered from circling the block once more by a red light facing it at Fifth Avenue. Still, no light stays red forever, unfortunately, and before I had reached 37th Street I heard the swoosh of it back there, setting off on my roundabout trail once again.
May I point out that throughout this entire time I was absolutely terrified? It was the spasm of panic that had kept me going so far, and I was now finding out about myself that panic had a tendency to make me manic. The shyness I had always assumed to be an integral part of my character appeared now to be excess baggage, to to be hurled overboard when the going got rough.
But how much longer could I keep it up? They were chasing me both by car and afoot. As nine o’clock neared, the business and shopping district in which we were buffeting was busy closing down; soon the streets would be more or less empty, the last of the stores and luncheonettes would be closed, the traffic along Fifth Avenue would slow to a trickle. In all that darkness and silence and emptiness they could finish me off like a man slapping a mosquito between his palms.
I crossed 37th Street, looked down to my right, and didn’t see the Cadillac yet in sight; more red lights, I assumed. I kept going north. Behind me, the bulky man had receded to almost a full block back.
As I crossed 38th Street, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the Cadillac streak across the intersection a block south, jouncing like an ocean liner in a rough sea.
Well, at least I was giving them trouble. As I strode briskly northward on Fifth, the Cadillac was forced to zigzag like a skier on a slalom; east to Madison, up a block, west to Sixth, up a block, east to Madison, up a block, and so on.
Fine. They might get me, but I’d take some of their gas with me.
But 37th Street was the last I saw of the yellow-eyed monster until I approached 40th Street, where I saw they’d decided not to play that game. The Cadillac was parked north of 40th Street, in front of the library, waiting for me to come to it.
Well, I wouldn’t.
I turned left on 40th Street, which was again the wrong way for the Cadillac, hurried along beside the library, and beyond it on my right there was the inviting darkness of Bryant Park. Too inviting; the bulky man and I might go in there, but only the bulky man would be coming out. In the morning I’d be found among the ivy, if someone didn’t steal me before then.
I hurried past the park, turned right on Sixth Avenue, and made for the bright lights and movement of 42nd Street. Reaching that corner, I came across another group, and promptly joined in. This time I knew what sex they were but they didn’t. They twittered at my arrival and made quite a fuss over me. “Well, look what we have here,” one of them said, batting his store-bought eyelashes at me. “Rough trade.”
All things considered, I suppose I’ll have to accept that as having been a compliment.
“Where did you come from, honey?” another asked me. “You off a ship?”
It seemed all at once as though I were only a few seconds from a fate worse than death, so I took the other choice, extricated myself—with some difficulty—from the aviary, and entered a handy bookstore.
From one extreme to the other. This place reeked of hetero-sexuality; men with furrowed brows and furtive eyes flipped through the racks of girlie magazines and sexy paperbacks. There was a kind of shabbiness overlying everything here, as though no one connected with any part of this could quite afford even second best.
The store was narrow and shallow and full of silent browsing men who weren’t meeting each other’s eyes. I threaded my way through them, saw a smallish green door at the very rear of the store, made for it, opened it, and stepped on through as the man at the cash register up front shouted, “Hey! Where you—?”
I heard no more, because I’d shut the door again.
I was in a small bare empty room with a single fifteen-watt bulb glowing sullenly in a ceiling fixture. Across the way was a curtained doorway. I went through there and into another small room, in which three men were standing around a table looking at a lot of pictures of naked women. They looked up, startled, saw me in the doorway, and dropped the pictures as though they’d suddenly caught fire. “A raid!” one of them shouted, and all three went tearing through a doorway on the opposite side of the room.
God Save the Mark Page 15
