The Alarming Clock

by Michael Avallone

  “Ed—I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But don’t act this way.” I almost dropped the act right there because she sounded so teary about it. “I thought you’d be glad to see me—”

  “I am,” I said, moving away from her and busying myself roaming over our cell. Even before I could finish my rapid survey, I could see that Maxim had left us untied and unattended for a very good reason.

  Alma didn’t say another word until I had finished my survey. I’d been right about one thing. The soup was thick and bad all right.

  We weren’t in a room. It was more of a basement. There were no doors except the one that led off a flight of short, rickety stairs and that was solidly bolted and locked. No windows either, except a tiny grill-work affair that was buried in the extreme right hand corner of the back wall and that was so far up from the floor that I would have needed five packing cases and a chair to reach it. There was no electricity supplied for lighting. The only illumination we were getting was the broken bits of sunlight that were streaming through the grill of the window. I eyed my watch. It was almost three in the afternoon.

  The thing that bothered me the most was the absence of the five packing cases and the chair. Fact is, there wasn’t a stick of furniture in the whole basement. The place was barer than a strip-teaser who had finished her act.

  The gigantic boiler hadn’t been used since Ty Cobb was in his prime and the rest of the cellar equipment was older than last week’s news. Max had played his cards well. They’d rented a house and hung on to it just for situations like this. I felt a little queasy in my stomach. Lone wolf trouble-makers are pretty bad but organizations are worse. I started worrying all over again.

  Alma came back to life.

  “Don’t frown like that. That big vein jumps out in your forehead and makes me nervous.”

  “I got news for you. I’m nervous enough already for the both of us.”

  Now she frowned. “Those two clocks he’s got. Is one of them the McCoy?”

  I looked at her. “I was waiting for you to tell me. This Ritz of yours isn’t a cutie, is he? Somehow that crazy letter of his didn’t ring true. Hell, you don’t leave something in a stranger’s office if it’s worth so much as this dingus seems to be. I don’t know. You tell me.”

  She flared up at me. “Roland Ritz is the sweetest old guy I ever met. He was in trouble. So bad he couldn’t even tell me. So I recommended you. I’d been meaning to do that for a long time. And my vacation was due when Roland asked me for help. So I thought I’d come back before I lost my nerve. Ed, what’s wrong? Don’t you trust me—?”

  I rubbed the back of my scalp gingerly. “Keep talking. Forget you’re a woman for once. We might be dead ten minutes from now. Savvy? Tell me about Ritz first. Then we’ll go over the pipe and slippers routine. Is it a deal?”

  She squared her rounded shoulders. Her smooth face went blank and then she topped it off with a shrug.

  “Okay, Strong and Silent. We’ll do it your way. Here it is. I left town after the thing about Dolores. Been a government girl ever since. I’m a whiz at clerical work. And what’s more I enjoy it. Never thought I would but there it is. Alma Wheeler working in the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. And really fitting in somewhere. For the first time in her life. I owe that to you, Ed. You made me want to make something of myself.”

  “Forget about me,” I said. “Get to Ritz.”

  “Okay, Okay,” she fanned a hand at me. “No bouquets for Mr. Noon. He embarrasses easily. I met Ritz in the main cafeteria. He struck up a friendship. He’s about fifty-five or so. Short, careful dresser. Very European in speech. He talked a lot about himself. About the old country. Which in his case was Germany. Roland Ritz kinda impressed me with his love for this country. The good old U.S.A. Said he owed all his health and good life to America. Then the last couple of weeks he started to talk crazy. He said no man should betray a country that had given him so much no matter what the sacrifice would cost him. What sacrifice? I don’t know, Ed. He’d ramble on about it and then finally one day, he told me kind of wild-eyed he was in bad trouble. Serious was the word he used. Naturally. I said call a cop. Or talk to your bosses. Ritz was in the Security Department or something like that. You never really know who works where around the Pentagon. It’s such a damn big place, you know.”

  I was more than interested now. “Security. That’s an ominous word. Didn’t he hint at his trouble at all?”

  She shook her blonde curls. “Not a whisper. Said he didn’t want to involve somebody who’d been so friendly to him.”

  “But Maxim recognized you, Alma.”

  “I told you—we had lunch together a lot. I must have been spotted one of those times.”

  It was the right answer, of course. But suspicion was getting to be an old friend of mine. I didn’t even trust myself any more.

  “So you recommended me to Ritz. With the intention of meeting him at my office. You wanted to surprise me, you said. Didn’t you have any other inkling of Ritz’s plans?”

  “Why the cross-examination, Ed? I tell you I didn’t know about the clock until this Max character started pumping you on the ride up here. Honest Injun, Edward. I wouldn’t lie to you, would I?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her. I was kicking her story around, trying to make it digestible.

  “So Ritz shows up, dumps the clock on my desk and takes a powder. Maybe because Max and his merry men were hot on his heels. Maybe not. Anyway, they beat hell out of my handless pal down on the hall because they thought maybe Ritz had left his clock with a watch repairman. That’s the Nazi mind for you. Intelligence without imagination or ingenuity. Nothing but think-alikes and look-alikes.”

  My talk was bothering her. Almost as much as the cold shoulder I’d been giving her since I came to.

  “I don’t get you, Ed.”

  “I don’t get it either. What the hell is there about a clock that could cause all this commotion? Do you know? I don’t.”

  “Well, stop worrying about me and start thinking.” She tried a grin. “I didn’t fall in love with your looks you know. I like smart men.”

  “Thanks, Wheeler.” I got organized. “Is there anything in your handbag we can use?”

  She knew what I meant. She riffled through it rapidly, exploring feverishly. Then she sighed and dumped the whole thing out on the basement floor. Her gold lipstick tube rolled, some loose change clanged hollowly. She made a face and held up a long nail file.

  “If we start digging our way out with this, we might be in time for New Year’s Eve in the year 2000.”

  “You got a point there,” I agreed. But it was an unintentional pun this time. I wasn’t thinking about jokes for once in my life. I fanned my fingers over my own pockets and belongings and came up with a handful of zero. My .45 was still back at the office. I stared around at the thick walls of the basement. Oh, for a bag full of hand grenades. I looked at Alma and something happened in the pit of my stomach.

  She knew me pretty well. I’d known her only a week out of my life but she’d known me better than my mother had. Her blue eyes clouded with worry.

  “Tell me straight, Ed. How bad a spot are we in? These guys playing for keeps?”

  “Alma, you picked a really awful day for coming home. Why didn’t you come last week? Or last month? Or last year? We can’t even celebrate, this way.”

  Like I said, she knew me real well. And I should have remembered her, remembered what she was like. They just don’t come any better than Alma Wheeler. She was an angel even though she never flashed her halo.

  She looked me straight in the eyes and moved in to me with a rush. Her nice, firm smoothness surrounded me, buried itself against me.

  “Ed, I had to come back. I love you. I always have. Don’t play it tough with me. Don’t kid. Not now. Please, Ed—”

  Her chin was lost somewhere against my chest. A drum started to kick my lungs apart.

  “Easy, kid. I’m glad you came back, of course—”

/>   “Are you, Ed? Are you—”

  I kissed her. Our lips ripped apart with an effort.

  “Ed, Ed.” Her voice was a husky love song. “Maybe this is the end of the line. Maybe this was meant to be like this. The two of us—”

  I cursed. “Stop that. Right now. No sad songs. Just take it easy. We just have to sit and twiddle our thumbs until we find out what the score is with Max so—”

  She had slipped out of my arms and suddenly she was unbuttoning her jacket. She was dressed in a smart, hip-hugging skirt neatly topped with a cute tailored jacket. The old Alma had gone in for candy-striped dresses and cashmere sweaters.

  Her jacket dropped to the floor like she didn’t care what happened to it and she had turned to me again. I looked at her as if one of us had lost his or her mind. It depends upon the point of view, I guess.

  But her rousing bust-line was straining my pulse with the way she was breathing. For a moment, I couldn’t do a thing with the fires that were going on in her nice blue eyes.

  I tried humour. “What’s with you, Wheeler? This a private strip for me?” I gasped. She wasn’t listening. Her fingers went down to the zipper of the skirt. Zipped. Unzipped. “Alma—you nuts?” She had stepped out of them as neatly as you please. She stood before me, the soft silk of her underthings and gleaming patches of nice white skin combining to make the big, bare bleak basement take on all the romance and seduction of a boudoir.

  I took a step towards her. But she met me halfway. Her mouth found mine as it opened to sputter. And then it travelled up to my ear and flooded it with tingles and thrills—the kind you can only get from that one girl I was telling you about.

  But I’m my own man. I tried a last dodge. I broke away from her.

  “Wheeler, I should have told you before. There’s another girl. Violet Hemingway. We’re going to be married—”

  Her happy laugh shot that last little ruse to hell. I couldn’t help it. Sex wasn’t going to help us get out of that basement alive.

  “Hemingway hasn’t got a sister and you know it,” she said fiercely, pinning me with her arms again. Then her face and voice went all soft again and all the fight went out of me. “Listen, Ed. Before I lose my nerve and collapse like a schoolgirl. This may be our last chance. I’m taking it. I’ve wanted you too long, too hard.” Suddenly, she was crying. Just like that. “Oh, baby. I was such a jerk. Why didn’t you kick hell out of me and make me understand about Dolores—?”

  Suddenly, I was whispering too. Or crying half-choked. I can’t say which for sure.

  “It was your life, Alma—”

  Her face came up to mine, her lips were moist in the gathering gloom of the basement. Right then and there the only thing in creation was the two of us. A pair, a combo, a team. A unit that belonged together, worked miracles together and alarm clocks were silly, noisy things that just got you out of bed in the morning.

  “I love you, Ed. Want you—”

  “I love you too, Alma—”

  It was a crazy time and a crazy place for it. But with a girl like Alma, no time was too crazy and no place was too crazy.

  The moment of love, like that of truth, demanded recognition. Right there on a cold, hard basement floor while a bunch of guys named Joe were somewhere upstairs planning something that might keep us from ever having each other again.

  Believe me, Tomorrow can be a long way off.

  Chapter Six

  We were sitting on the floor, holding hands and looking at each other sharing a silence that can only be described as mutual when somebody banged open the door upstairs. The one leading down into our cell. It wasn’t just a nasty old strange basement anymore. It had taken on a wonderful charm of its own.

  I counted three sets of men’s legs coming down the steps to my feet. Then I counted three Lugers. Then only two. Maxim buried his in a sidepocket when he saw the status was still quo. His two companions spread out at either end of the basement and kept us covered. One of them was the giant who had played in my closet. The other was another of the mismatched suit-and-tie guys. I couldn’t tell which. They had all started to look the same to me. Just like so many process servers.

  They hadn’t changed at all in the last couple of hours. Except for one thing. Maxim’s cold kisser held a subtle difference. His thin lips were set tight like a stitched wound and his little eyes were regarding me in a way that showed how much he’d enojoy driving a truck over me.

  Alma stood up next to me. I felt her hand slip into mine. I squeezed it reassuringly. She squeezed right back. That helped a little.

  I smiled at Maxim.

  “Don’t look so heartbroken, Max. We would have told you long before this but we didn’t want to hurt you. Alma and I are in love with each other. She doesn’t want to marry you. She’s marrying me instead.” I turned to her. “Aren’t you, Alma?”

  She was perfect. She huddled to me protectively and fluttered her lashes pityingly at him.

  “I’m sorry, Max. But what Ed says is true. I want a man who’s interested only in me. Not silly old alarm clocks.”

  The effect of this insane patter on a man like Maxim would have filled three books on reactions to the spoken word. He didn’t know whether to spit or salute. First, his face tried to come apart with sheer amazement, then he started to smile until his old Nazi training rescued him from such a compliment. For a finisher, his thin, high cheeks flushed stormily and two lightning bolts cracked right out of his eye-sockets and the zippered mouth roared out sound.

  “How long do you think I intend to play with you? I assure you both I am long past agreeability. Now, then—” he caught his breath. “Remain silent and listen to me. I am in command here.”

  I clicked my heels for him.

  That did it. He stepped towards me as if he were wearing knee-length boots and gave me the back of his hand. But I was ahead of him. I rolled my head expertly and his nicely-manicured hand sailed past my nose windily.

  “Don’t try that again,” I said. “The next slap will be one too many. And then only a bullet will stop me. And you’ll never get the answers that you seem to be needing so badly.”

  Maxim recovered himself and smiled coldly. He waved off his two henchmen who had come forward to help. He planted a rocky hand on each of his squared off hips.

  “You think to trick me into recklessness and error, Mr. Noon. Well, you are wrong. I assure you I am my own man.”

  “We’re convinced, Max,” I rasped. “What’s the good word? You didn’t come down here to ask us if we were comfortable.”

  That seemed more to his liking. He smiled wider.

  “Just so, Mr. Noon. I am not concerned with your comfort. I have a question to put to you. It is your last chance for clemency at my hands.”

  I was thinking fast but all I said was, “Shoot.”

  His eyes glinted in the dim light.

  “Do you submit in all honesty that one of the clocks we brought with us from your office is one that Roland Ritz left with you this morning wrapped up in a package on your desk?”

  I shook my head. “You sure take the long road home, Max. Yes, I submit in all honesty that one of the clocks you brought with you from my office is the one that Roland Ritz—”

  This time he didn’t miss. Because he spat right at me. Spittle appeared magically on my coat front.

  “You lie!” Max shrilled, suddenly sounding like a hysterical woman. Alma started to swing a high heel but I held her back.

  “Don’t be nuts, Max,” I said calmly wiping my suit with my pocket handkerchief, fighting to keep red haze out of my thinking. “That clock doesn’t mean anything to me. Why should I lie? For what reason?”

  “That is for you to say, Mr. Noon.” Somehow he seemed to be still screaming. “I warn you, my friend. I am not the most patient man in the world—”

  “I know,” I said, rubbing my cheek. “You’ve mentioned it quite a few times already.”

  He stepped in closer again. “I want the truth. Quickly. Where is
the clock? Hiding it will gain you nothing. Perhaps we can deal—”

  This time I blew up. “Hell, Max, that clock doesn’t mean a damn thing to me except the time of day. What is all this hoopla anyway? What’s so special about this clock? It’s not gold or diamonds, is it? Maybe there’s a map for a buried treasure inside. Wait, wait—don’t tell me. I got it. It’s one of those new compact hydrogen bombs everybody’s on the lookout for. That’s it. Though I could have sworn it wasn’t nearly heavy enough for that—”

  “Ed,” Alma said. “Knock it off. Not with this guy. His blood pressure can’t take it.”

  She was so right. Maxim’s face had fairly purpled with anger and fine little veins started to pop out on his forehead. He finally composed himself and stopped swelling.

  “Very well then. The alternative was yours and you refused my kind offer of parlay.” He had stopped breathing fire and smoke too. “We will see what you say a little while from now. Your story may be different, no?”

  “Different—no,” was all I had left in me.

  Maxim barked out some gutturals. The party had really just begun. One of the other two, the lousy dresser, marched over and spread me and Alma apart. A hard-nosed Luger moved me further away.

  “Hands up, please,” Adolphe Menjou said in stilted English. I obeyed orders. Maxim came over and joined us. But both of them were a comfortable distance away from me so that any sudden moves would mean a fast funeral. The other guy, the closet giant, was standing off in the centre of the room about a yard from Alma. He was only a full head taller than her. I got a cold chill when I saw him tuck his Luger away in a hip holster. He stared down at Alma like a large dog surveying a choice bit of soupbone. Only this wasn’t any choice bit of soupbone. This was Alma. My Alma.

  My legs started reflexively without my brain having a thing to do with it. The Luger barrel slammed into the pit of my stomach and I sat down, the wind gutted out of me, tears of pain blinding me.