Hang by Your Neck

by Kane, Henry

  “You mean it?”

  “Sure I mean it.”

  “I love you too.” Gay laughter. “I love everybody.” More serious: “Well—everybody nice. Why do you sit like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that. Just sitting like that. You bashful?”

  “Not bashful. Afraid, more.”

  “I won’t bite you.”

  “It’s not you, Annie. It’s Prairie.”

  “Prairie? What’s Prairie got to do with— Does he know you came here?”

  “Yes, Annie.”

  “Oh.”

  Silence. She went out of my lap and back to the divan. She looked at the pale dregs of vermouth, then, coyly, “Can’t we go someplace?”

  “Where, Annie?”

  “Don’t you have a place?”

  “I have a place, Annie. But they’re painting my place. Can’t you think of a place, Annie?”

  “A hotel …” Her round blue eyes came up against what I hoped was a stony expression. “No, that’s cheap …”

  “No place, Annie?”

  “No … oh! I have a place. Sure. Today he goes home directly. Like clockwork. Sure, I have a place.” She kicked out of her mules. “I’ll get dressed. Turn around.”

  I turned around. It didn’t help. She came back without mules, without shorts, without halter. She was worried. “Look, it’s not my place. It’s not really my place, I mean. It’s someone else’s place—I mean—does it matter? You’re a funny kind …”

  “No, Annie, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh, fine.” Then, with a sharp tilt of her head: “Willikens, you’re a bold one. Turn around. Puh-lease.”

  3

  In the taxi she was all for clambering on my knees.

  “Annie, the taxi man.”

  “Oh, yes, the taxi man.”

  We jounced. I pondered.

  I had never been so hard to get in my life. I pondered that. Maybe it was follow-through on Petersen. Maybe it was the shock effect of Johnny hanging off my window. Maybe it was the memory of the bulky prowess of Prairie. Maybe it was the prospect of Nyack. Maybe it was Miami Moonbeam. Maybe I was getting old. I hated that last one. I stopped pondering.

  The taxi drew up at the Tower Apartments on Sixty-ninth and Lexington. The taxi man winked largely, depriving himself of a tip. Annie led me through the soft-carpeted, mirror-walled halls to the elevator. The elevator man knew her.

  “Ah, good afternoon, Miss Fleckle.”

  “Ah, good afternoon,” Miss Fleckle said.

  Upstairs, way up, putting the key into the door of the apartment, Miss Fleckle remembered. “I’ll have to say you were my uncle, or something. Well, don’t worry, let’s have fun.”

  I said it.

  “I’ve a train to make, Annie.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A train.”

  “Train?”

  “Train. It goes on wheels. Railroad. I’ve got to catch a train. It takes off at five o’clock.”

  “So what? I’ll go with you.”

  “No you won’t, Annie.”

  “You’re a mean one, a real mean one. But cute.”

  Petersen’s was two golden rooms and a bath and a terrace. Gold and dark blue. Rich brocade. Warm splashes of maroon. There you have it. Mix with velutinous carpets, fine fixings of mahogany furniture, carved legs, gold lamps, wonderful desk, mantel of marvelous bibelots, phonograph, television, leather bar with high stools—there you have it—the retreat of the talkative tycoon with the grass-mown hair (with a key for Annie).

  I took off my hat and coat and I had one drink on Petersen. I chucked Annie under the chin and I went to work. I started with the closets and I went through the bureau drawers, and then all that was left was the desk. Annie watched in wonder from a low chair, her legs tight together and graceful. In a small voice, in the gentle tone of the doctor to a new Napoleon, she said, “What are you looking for?”

  I was honest with her. “I don’t know.”

  “You always like that?”

  “Like what, Annie?”

  “You always bring a girl someplace, then start running around looking—looking for nothing?”

  “Yes, Annie.”

  Annie sighed. “There’s all kinds.”

  “Yes, Annie.”

  “You’re certainly a queer one.”

  “Yes, Annie.”

  “How long does it go on, the preliminary running?”

  “I’m almost finished, Annie.”

  The last thing was a leather portfolio out of a bottom drawer. There was a will and legal papers and contracts and letters—and a note from Toby O. Nottiby to Arnold Petersen for twenty-five thousand dollars. I sat in the desk chair and I put the portfolio away and I stared at the note. Annie came and stared with me.

  “Toby O. Nottiby,” she said. “Why, that’s our Nott. Poor old Nott. How come he owes this louse all that dough?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Annie.”

  She plucked the note from my fingers. “Poor old Nott,” she said, slowly tearing the note, retearing it, retearing it. She danced away.

  “Annie. Where you going, Annie?”

  “Bathroom, my running Romeo. Wanna come?”

  I had one more drink on Petersen.

  Annie came back and took the glass out of my hand. She set it down on the bar and put both arms around my neck. “It’s time now, honey. You’re supposed to kiss me.”

  “Where’s the note, Annie?”

  “Finished. Flushed.”

  “What?”

  “Flushed, honey. It’s time now. I let you run around, didn’t I? I let you run around like all hell.”

  “Now, look, Annie—”

  Her left hand stayed on my neck, holding it. Her right hand came down to a point of finger which she used as a poke for emphasis. Her eyes were wide and blue and clear and her mouth was full and red and pretty and her face was very near to mine. She smelled good.

  “You look, mister. I like you. I take you up here with me because I like you. I’m patient. I understand life, people. There are all kinds of people, queer ones. You run. Run, okay, I let you run. Maybe you’re one of those that likes to run first, warming up. Maybe you got a fetish. All right, you got a fetish. So I let you go looking in closets and banging drawers and run around. All right, so now that’s finished.”

  “But, Annie—”

  “How would you like me broadcasting about you coming up here and taking a note out of a brief-case and tearing it up and flushing it down the bowl? How would you like that? Because if you would—”

  “But, Annie—”

  “If I were you, I’d kiss me.”

  I kissed her.

  I almost missed my train.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  You reach the Erie Railroad, from Manhattan, by means of the Hudson Tube or the Chambers Street Ferry. The Tube is quick, but you don’t get the exultation of the sailor on the sea with the chug beneath his feet and the whip of wind in his face. I’m not a sailor often, so I took the Ferry. I stood along the rail and I watched the sun die on the water in a pale long slant. Wind whipped my face. I exulted. If the ride would have been any longer, I’d have been seasick, exultingly. I walked the plank in Jersey City and I ran my shins against the unsocial edges of many suitcases. I tapped a shiny-visored conductor.

  “Train to Nyack?”

  “Over there. But you better run, brother.”

  I ran. I made it. It pulled out.

  I walked a wavering route. I found a seat beside a smiling lady with a wide spread of thigh. She narrowed against a sooty window, while I said, “Pardon me.” I sat small in the seat, my heart knocking. It wasn’t the running. I’m a city animal. I’m not proud of that. I’m not ashamed. It is an accident of environment. My visits to the country have been few and far between and they’ve been shorter than a snowman in a thaw. No sooner do I get to where the grass is green and the leaves rustle, than I expect rattlesnakes in echelons and every twig is a
n asp and every sough is a gasp and every tree is a gnarled old witch out of voodoo. The fearsome foliage kindles my gooseberries.

  I arrived in Nyack.

  People piled off. There was luggage and laughter and slamming of car doors. Station wagons coughed, purred, and slid out of range. Taxicabs bumped fenders. People shook hands. Husbands kissed wives. Wives looked coy or wives didn’t notice. Men slapped backs. Boys whistled. Girls smiled. Then it subsided, it rippled out and it went away, and I was left—me and a tall, lank seventeen-year-old in blue denims and a watermelon grin. We faced each other.

  “Whew,” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This usual?”

  “It’s homecoming time. Commuters.”

  “Could you tell me where the Merrill place is?”

  “Sure.” He sliced air with two parallel fingers. “Up a piece that way. Mostly dirt road. Close up to a mile.”

  “You know a Mr. Nottiby?”

  “Yes, sir. My uncle’s friend. My uncle’s a gunsmith. Yes, sir. Lives in that Merrill shack. Rumor is, he owns it.”

  “What’s the best way of getting there?”

  “Walking.”

  I grunted. “What’s second best?”

  “Car, I suppose.”

  “There wouldn’t be one around?”

  “Might be.”

  “Whose?”

  “Mine.”

  “Would it be near?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Dough, mostly.”

  “You’re a smart young lad. How much?”

  “Couple bucks, maybe.”

  “If you’ve got the car, young man, you’ve got a deal.”

  “Don’t go way.”

  He was back in three minutes, high up on a vintage edition, claptrap with the top down and spluttering. “Climb in, sir, but the payment is made in advance.”

  “How long did it take me to get here from the City?”

  “An hour. Climb in, sir. That’s two bucks.”

  We effected our deal and we rolled off. He was a smarter young man than I thought. The Merrill place was up the old dirt road, all right, but it was maybe three short city blocks from where I had taken him up for hire.

  “That’s one short mile,” I advised.

  “Longer when you walk.”

  “Sonny,” I said, “I like you.”

  “Like you too, sir.”

  In the midst of our declarations of affection, a car starter churned in back of the house, and a long yellow convertible took a bounce on a bad road and disappeared to the right. I would have sworn there was a green hat on a dark head in the driver’s seat.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Automobile.”

  “That road, I mean.”

  “The one by the back of this place?”

  “That one, lad, precisely.”

  “Piece of pebble road. Real lousy piece of road. Gives toward the right for the highway. Get you to New York if you want to go.”

  “Stick around, kid. I just want to talk to a guy.”

  “Sure.”

  The house was a ranch type, pink stucco. It had a stone path leading up to a gray lacquered door with a silver handle-knocker. There was a flat cultivated patch on either side of the stone path, with flowers. The house was deep with many windows, eight rooms, fast judgment, of the railroad variety. The car subsided and the boy waited while I walked up the stone path and up three stone steps. I latched on to the silver handle-knocker. The thing was an ornament, but there was a push-bell on the right. I pushed. I heard it ring inside. No one answered.

  I tried the door.

  The door was locked.

  I turned. The boy was fairly clear in the bright twilight. “Ring some more,” the boy said. “Somebody’s home. The parlor’s lit.”

  “You know the place?”

  “Been in it, couple times. Delivered packages. Parlor’s lit.”

  “Where?”

  “Around the side.”

  I pushed the bell again. I tried the door again. I went down the steps and around to the side of the house. The windows wore Venetian blinds like the ladies wear their evening gowns, all the way down, but there was a glow behind four of them. The rest were dark.

  “What’s your name?” I yelled to the boy.

  “Jeff.”

  “Come here, will you?”

  He came and he stood beside me. I tapped on the glass of the window. Nothing, except the sound of my tapping.

  “That’s funny,” he said.

  “We’re going in, kid.”

  “How?”

  “You try the windows on the other side of the house. I’ll try the rest of these.”

  “Okie,” he said. “It’s not breaking a law, trying.”

  He crunched around the back of the house, out of sight. I started on the left and worked my way to the back. All the windows were locked. The boy said, “Locked. All mine too.”

  “Back door?”

  “I tried that.”

  “We’re going in, anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve come all the way from New York to talk with Mr. Nottiby.”

  Reasonably he said, “If the place is locked up, more’n likely he ain’t there.”

  “What about that parlor?”

  “People leave lights on, sir. They do it all the time.”

  “You with me, son?”

  “No, sir, mister. I’m agin you.”

  “Will you wait?”

  “I’m not breaking a law, waiting. Sure I’ll wait.”

  He went around to the front and I saw him climb up on the seat and punch a cigarette out of a pack and start smoking in the manner of all seventeen-year-olds smoking a cigarette, with a romantic bravado, the cigarette inside the cup of his hand, long puffs, chin down and squint. I picked up a flat rock and I pushed it through a window of the parlor just beneath the turn-lock. Glass showered inward. I tapped off some of the jagged ends and I threw the rock away. I was careful putting my arm through and turning the catch and taking my arm out. Then I lifted the window.

  I pushed by the Venetian blind into a well-lit living room and I saw Toby O. Nottiby sitting in one corner of a blue mohair chair, stiff but not uncomfortable, with most of his brains splattered in a grotesque clot on the wall. Blood was a thick dry half-mask on the left side of his face. There was a wide ridged hole in his right temple. His right arm hung over the chair like a motionless pendulum. The ivory handle of a full-barreled fat-bodied revolver showed between the shadows of the stiff curled fingers, beneath the sleeve of gay purple and gold pajamas.

  I touched him. He moved in one piece, falling across the side of the chair, one leg up. He was cold.

  I went away from him and I stood in the middle of the room breathing through my mouth for a lot of breath.

  Opposite him, a lamp on a table was overturned. A bullet had nicked the top of it, turning it over, unshattered and intact. The bullet hole was a small round eye in the wall back of the lamp.

  That’s all, except the musty smell of an unventilated room.

  I went through and I twisted the snap-lock on the front door. “Jeff!”

  “Coming, sir.”

  The boy came up the stone pathway and up the three stone steps. “Yes, sir?”

  “Can you take it, Jeff?”

  “Take what?”

  “Did you ever see a dead man?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s not pretty, Jeff.”

  “Who?”

  “Nottiby.”

  “What?”

  “Inside. Looks like he killed himself, the poor guy.”

  Jeff said nothing. He followed me through to the living room. He gasped, but he didn’t change color. “The poor guy,” he said.

  “That’s big enough for a forty-five in his hand.”

  Jeff kneeled beside him, close to the hanging hand. “It’s a forty-five, all right.”

  “How do you know, Jef
f?”

  He stood up. “It’s his gun. A nickel-plated forty-five with an ivory handle. My uncle here’s a pretty good gunsmith. Nottiby had it over there once, trouble with the catch. I brought it back.”

  “Okay, kid. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Just a minute, sir.”

  “Yes, Jeff?”

  “I’m gonna call the town cops. Do you mind, sir?”

  “Mind? Why should I mind? But, Jeff—”

  “You had nothing to do with this, sir. So why shouldn’t you—”

  “I wanted to talk to the guy, Jeff. Now I want to get back to town. I can’t get mixed up with country cops and a lot of questions, that sort of thing, Jeff. Understand?”

  Jeff said, “No.”

  “When’s the next train to New York?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “No, Jeff. I mean the next train.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  I looked at him sidelong and I went to the phone. Jeff stared at Nottiby. I remembered that Barclay number and all the way from Nyack I called Erie Information. The next train from Nyack to Jersey City was 6:10 a.m. Tomorrow.

  “Sorry, Jeff.”

  “That’s all right, sir.”

  “Jeff.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Jeff, you know I had nothing to do with this. Don’t you?”

  “I’m sure of that.”

  “I can understand your calling the law, sure, I can.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  “But must I be involved? It’s like you said, I had nothing to do with it.”

  Jeff rubbed fingers at his hair. “I don’t get it.”

  “Could you drive me back to town?”

  “Depends.”

  “Could you?”

  “Got to call my folks and tell them.”

  “Would they let you?”

  “Depends.”

  “How much, Jeff?”

  “Well, up to the edge of the Bronx, say—fifteen bucks?” He didn’t look too hopeful.

  “You’ve got the fifteen. Plus a ten-dollar bonus.” I took out my wallet and peeked. I could afford it.

  “You’re not bribing me, sir.”

  “I don’t mean to, Jeff.”

  “I’m calling the cops, anyway. I’m also telling them about you. Then if it’s okay with my folks, I’ll drive you in. I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong that way. You just had nothing to do with it, so what difference does it make?”