Still, I was there for more than that. I crawled along the top of the car for a little ways, and it did seem safe up here, so I edged back and called down to Abbie to come on up. She did, slowly, with me helping her at the top, and when she was sprawled out on the roof, I yelled in her ear, “I’m going exploring! Don’t move!”
“Don’t worry.” She shut her eyes and let her head rest on her folded arms.
I stuck my mouth close to her ear. “Don’t fall asleep and roll off!”
She nodded, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. I patted her shoulder doubtfully, and then took off.
It didn’t take long to get to the other end of the car, and when I did, there was the pot-shooter, resting now between the cars. Waiting for the train to pull in at a station, no doubt. Then he and the others could just run along the platform to where we were, shoot us, and disappear.
Well, maybe, and on the other hand, maybe not. I pushed back from the edge and slowly sat up. I didn’t want to take my shoe off, wet and cold though it was, but I didn’t have much choice. So I took it off, and my foot promptly went numb. I wasn’t sure that was a good sign, but it was better than the stinging ache I’d been feeling up till now.
I lay on my belly again and crawled back to the end of the car. He was still there, feet straddling the open space as he faced outward. At the moment his head was bent a bit because he was trying to light a cigarette.
Perfect. I put one hand on the top rung of the ladder here to support me, took careful aim, and swung the heel of the shoe around in a great big circle that started in outer space and ended on the back of his head.
Lovely. He popped out like a grape seed out of a grape, and landed in a snowbank. The last I saw of him was his feet kicking in the air, black against the gray of the snow.
One down. Three to go.
Sure.
I put my shoe back on and looked across at the next car, trying to figure out how to get over there, and a head popped into view two cars away. And after the head, an arm. And on the end of the arm, a gun. It flashed, the gun did, and I faintly heard the sound of the shot. It missed me, but I wasn’t encouraged. I quick hunched around and started crawling back the other way.
Something went p-tiying beside my right elbow. I looked, and saw a new scratch in the roof there.
He was getting too close. I hurriedly crawled back to the pile of laundry I knew was Abbie and shook her shoulder. “We’ve got to go down again!”
“Wha? Wha?” She lifted a shaky head and showed me bleary eyes.
“One of them came up! Back there! He’s shooting!”
“Oh, Chet, I’m so tired.”
“Come on, honey. Come on.”
I herded her onto the ladder, with her about to fall twice, but the more she moved the more she woke up, and when she finally put her weight on the bad ankle on the ladder she woke up completely. She also let out a healthy yowl.
“That’s right,” I said. “Now get down and let me down.”
“Oh, wow, that hurt.”
“I’m sure it did. Go down, go down.”
She went down, and I followed her. As my head was going down past the level of the roof I saw that guy back there on his feet. I stayed where I was, just high enough to see him. Now what?
He braced himself. He thought it over. He shook his head and got down on his knees. He shook his fist at himself and got up again. He braced himself. He ran forward. He leaped from the front of his car to the back of the next car. He made it, and the car he’d landed on jounced. He teetered way to the left, his arms pinwheeling. The car jounced again, and he teetered way to the right, his arms pinwheeling. The car wiggled, and he teetered every which way, arms and one leg pinwheeling. He got down on one knee, down on hands and knees. He’d made it. And the car waggled, and he rolled over onto his side and fell off the train.
“Well, I’ll be darned,” I said. I looked down at Abbie, asleep in midair between the cars. “We’re going back up!” I shouted.
“Oh, nooo!”
“Oh, yes! Come on!”
She grumbled, she complained, she said unkind things, but she came on, and when she got to the top, I said, “Now we go back down again.”
She roused enough to stare at me. “Are you out of your mind? I hope they kill you, you crazy—”
“Listen to me. We’re going down the other side. The last two are on this side of the train, so we’ll go down the other side and jump off and they won’t be able to see us go.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Just do it,” I told her.
She did it. There was no ladder on this side, but there was a window ledge, there were handles and wheels, there were all sorts of things to climb on. As easy as falling off a building.
So we finally got back down again, both of us, and I spent some time instructing Abbie how to jump. I told her to stay loose, keep her arms and legs loose, don’t stiffen up, roll when she hit, try to land in a snowbank, and all sorts of good advice like that. She nodded continually in a dull sort of way, meaning she wasn’t hearing a thing I was saying. All I could do was hope some of it was seeping through into her subconscious and would show a result when we made our leap.
Finally I gave up on her and looked out from between the cars. We were on an overpass now, a deserted street below us. Beyond, the land fell away in a steep slope down from the tracks, with the rears of supermarkets and gas stations at the bottom.
“Up ahead,” I said. “It’s a snow-covered slope, it should be good for us. If there aren’t a lot of old tin cans under the snow. When I give the word, you jump. And remember to jump at an angle, jump as much as possible in the same direction the train is going. And stay loose when you hit. And roll. You got that?”
She nodded. She was sound asleep.
Here came the slope. “Jump!” I shouted, and pushed her off the train. Then I leaped after her.
I must admit it was exhilarating out there for a second or two. In midair, sailing along high above the world, the cold wind whistling around my orange-capped head, a very Jules Verne feeling to it. And then the feeling became more physical as my feet touched the snowy slope and I discovered I was running at thirty miles an hour.
I can’t run at thirty miles an hour, nobody can. I did the only thing I could do instead, I fell over on my face, did several loop-the-loops, and rolled madly down the hill, bringing up against somebody’s trash barrel at the bottom. Brrooommm, it went, and I raised myself up a little, and Abbie crashed into me. And I crashed into the barrel again.
“Oh, come on, honey,” I said. “Watch where you’re careening.”
“Growf,” he said, and wrapped his hand around my neck.
It wasn’t Abbie.
34
His hand was on my throat. My hand was on what I took to be his throat. My other hand was on what I took to be the wrist of his other hand, the hand in which he would be holding his gun if he was holding a gun. My head was usually buried under his chest somewhere, being ground into the ground. My feet thrashed around. We rolled and rolled, this way and that, gasping and panting, trying with only partial success to cut off each other’s breathing, and from time to time we would bong one or another part of our bodies into that stinking rotten trash barrel. It got so I hated the trash barrel more than the guy trying to kill me. It got so what I really wanted to throttle was that trash barrel.
In the meantime, who was really getting throttled was me. We seemed to have stabilized at last, no more rolling, and unfortunately we’d stabilized with him on top. With his hand squeezing my jugular and my face mashed into his armpit, it looked as though I wasn’t going to be getting much air from now on. About all I could do was kick my heels into the ground, which I did a lot of. I also tried squirming, but with very little success.
My strength was failing. I was passing out, and I knew it. I kicked my heels into the ground as hard as I could, but he just wouldn’t let go. My head was filling with a rushing sound, like a waterfall. A black waterfall, r
oaring down over me, carrying me away, washing me away into oblivion and forgetfulness, dragging me down into the whirlpool, the black whirlpool.
He sagged.
His grip eased on my throat.
His weight doubled on my head.
Now what? I squirmed experimentally and he rolled off me, and suddenly I could breathe again, I could move again, I could see again, and what I saw was Abbie standing there with a shovel in her hands.
“Don’t bury me,” I said. “I’m still alive.”
“I hit him with it,” she said. “Is he all right?”
“I hope not.” I sat up, feeling dizzy, my throat hurting, and looked at my assailant. He was lying on his back, spread-eagled, sleeping peacefully. He was breathing. More important, so was I.
His legs were still on mine. “He’s okay,” I said, and pushed his legs off, and tottered to my feet. “Where’s the other one?”
“Still on the train, I guess,” she said. “I thought we were supposed to be getting away from both of them by coming over to this side.”
“They must have figured that,” I said, “and one of them climbed over. So they could watch both sides.”
“So I didn’t have to do all that climbing around.”
“Did I know that? Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Aren’t you going to thank me for saving your life?”
“What?” I looked at the shovel, at the sleeper, and back at the shovel. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “You did, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did,” she said.
“Throw away the shovel and I’ll thank you,” I said.
She grinned and threw it away. I took a step closer and put my arms out and she came into them and we swapped breaths. Hers was very warm and sweet, and even through all our clothing she felt very soft and slender and delicious.
She broke first, and smiled at me. “That’s nice,” she said.
“Come back,” I said. “I’m not done thanking you.”
She came back.
I thanked her for quite a while, until she finally said, “Chet, this is lovely, but the truth is I’m cold. I’m freezing. And I think my ankle’s swollen. And I’m exhausted.”
I said, “When do you have to go back to Las Vegas?”
“Whenever I want.”
“Do you think you could maybe never want?”
“You mean stay here?”
“In the vicinity.”
“What about you in Vegas?” she said. “Nice and warm all the time, and you can gamble all you want.”
“Not me,” I said. “Look how much trouble I get in where I can only gamble a little. I’d better stay in a state where it has to be a sideline. Besides, Belmont opens in May.”
“We’ll have to talk about it,” she said.
“Later on, right?”
She nodded. “Right.”
“For now, we get you someplace warm where you can sit down, right?”
“Oh, please, sir.”
“Lean on me.”
She did, maybe a little too much, and we staggered around the liquor store we’d landed behind and out to the street. And about a block away, on the other side of the street, was a big red neon sign that said bar.
“Look, Moses,” Abbie said, “it’s the Promised Land.”
I tried hurrying, but Abbie’s ankle just wouldn’t hold her any more, so finally I said, “Okay, let’s do it the easy way,” and I picked her up in my arms.
“Oh, what a grandstander,” she said. “Now that we’re almost there.”
“You want to walk?”
“No!”
“Then be quiet.”
I carried her across the street and into the bar, where the bartender and his three customers sitting at the bar all looked at us in deadpan disbelief. “She’s my sweetie,” I explained, and carried Abbie over to a booth and helped her sit down. Then I asked her, “What do you want to drink?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
“Scotch and soda.”
“Fine.”
I went over to the bar and ordered two Scotch and sodas. The bartender made them and set them down in front of me and I paid him. I put the glasses on the table while he got my change, and then went back to the bar, and he handed me my change and said, “I love your chapeau.”
I looked at myself in his back-bar mirror, and discovered I was still wearing the orange hat. I’d forgotten all about it. I looked like Buddy Hackett being a Christmas elf. I said, “I won it for conspicuous valor.”
“I figured you probably did,” he said.
I took my change back to the booth, where Abbie was giggling behind her hand, and sat down. “Here’s where you should of ordered a sidecar,” I said.
“You do look kind of odd,” she said.
“It keeps my head warm. Besides, it was a gift from a dear friend.”
She got a tender look on her face and reached out to clasp my hand. “And you’re a dear friend, Chet,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“Probably lived a lot quieter a life,” I said. “But let me tell you, if you stick around I can’t promise it’ll all be as thrilling as the last few days.”
“Oh, what a shame,” she said.
I took a slug of Scotch and soda. “And it isn’t over yet,” I said.
“Why? What are we going to do now?”
“As soon as this booze gives me some strength back,” I said, “I’m going over there and ask that very funny man behind the bar to call us a cab to take us back to New York.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s a poker game tonight,” I said, “and one of the people sitting around that goddam table killed your brother. Not to mention winging me in the head while aiming to kill you.”
“I don’t think you can be winged in the head,” she said. “I think you have to be winged in the arm.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I was wung in the head.”
“I thought you were,” she said. She’d picked up the style from the bartender.
“And,” I said, refusing to be sidetracked, “we are going to that poker game, you and I, and we are going to figure out which one of those lovelies it is. Just as soon as I have the strength to stand up.”
35
I won’t say climbing the stairs at Jerry Allen’s place was the worst thing I went through that weekend, but it comes close. We’d spent a good forty-five minutes sitting in the back of that cab, relaxing, and we got out of it in front of Jerry’s place feeling pretty good. Then we climbed all those stairs up to the fifth floor and we were dead again.
Abbie more than me, of course, because of her ankle. I’d had the cab stop in front of an all-night drugstore and I’d gone in and bought an Ace bandage, and I’d wrapped it around her ankle so that now she could walk on it at least, but it still slowed her down and drained her energy.
In the cab I’d offered to drop her off somewhere safe and go on to the game alone, but she’d said, “Not on your life, Charley. I want to be in at the finish.” So here she was, hobbling up the stairs with me.
I wondered if they’d all be there. We’d discussed them on the way in, of course, the four of them, the four regulars, trying to figure out which one it could be, and we’d decided if one of them was missing tonight that was tantamount to a confession of guilt. But we’d thought it more likely the killer would try to act as normal as possible now, and so would more than likely show up.
So which one would it be? Jerry Allen. Sid Falco. Fred Stehl. Doug Hallman. There was also Leo Morgentauser, the vocational teacher, the irregular who’d been at the game last Wednesday and who surely wouldn’t be here tonight. He’d known Tommy, in a business way, but very slightly. Maybe because he wasn’t a regular in the game, I just didn’t think he was our man. But if everybody else proved out clean tonight, I’d certainly go make a call on him.
In the meantime, it left four, and the most obvious right away was Sid Falco. But both Abbie and I had re
jected him right away. In the first place, he wasn’t an amateur, and Golder-man had told us Tommy’s killing had been the work of an amateur. In the second place, Sid wouldn’t have had to steal Abbie’s gun from me in order to have something to shoot me with. And in the third place, we just didn’t like him for the job.
Then there was Jerry Allen, our host. Part-owner of a florist shop, a possible homosexual, a steady loser at the game, full of sad embarrassed laughter whenever one of his many bad bluffs was called. So far as I knew he’d never met Tommy, and I couldn’t think of a motive for him, and I couldn’t see him shooting anybody anyway. I particularly couldn’t see him sitting at his kitchen table and carving dum-dum bullets.
Of course, the same was true of Fred Stehl. He was the one with the wife, Cora, who called once or twice every week, sometimes every night there was a game, for months, trying to prove Fred was there. What excuses Fred gave her a hundred and four times a year I don’t know, but she obviously never believed any of them. Fred was a loser at the game, but not badly, and his laundromat had to be making pretty good money. He made bets with Tommy a lot, but where was his motive?
Of all of them, the only one I could see getting teed off enough at anybody to sit at a kitchen table and make dum-dum bullets was Doug Hallman, our cigar-smoking gas station man. But I couldn’t see Doug actually shooting anybody. His hollering and blustering and loudness usually covered a bluff of one kind or another. When he was serious he was a lot quieter. If he ever decided to shoot somebody it would be a simple, clean, well-planned job, using one perfectly placed bullet which wasn’t a dum-dum at all. Or at least that’s the way it seemed to me.
So I’d wound up eliminating them all, if you’ll notice. But doggone it, one of those guys had stolen Abbie’s gun from me. It couldn’t have been anyone else, that was the one fact we had for sure. The idea that I’d been shot by the same gun was an inference, but it was based on a lot of circumstantial evidence. The amateur standing of the killer, for instance, combined with the cops’ having found the murder weapon that killed Tommy. And the fact that its aim was off, so that the shot that had hit me had probably been intended for Abbie, was another inference, but it followed logically out of the first one. And finally, that the person who shot at me—Abbie—us—whoever—was the same person who killed Tommy was yet another inference, but one I had no hesitation at all in making. So with one fact and three inferences we wound up with the conviction that one of the guys present at last Wednesday’s poker game was the murderer. And then we went over them one at a time, and eliminated them all.
Somebody Owes Me Money Page 20
