The Alarming Clock

by Michael Avallone

  The way her body quivered I could see she was thrilled right down to her bottom layers. But the proximity of Maxim had put some sense of awareness back into her. She wasn’t that thrill hungry.

  “I think we’d better go in, Ed. They’re watching us from inside.”

  “Follow the leader,” I said.

  “Right now I wish we were going somewhere else,” she said mournfully. “I mean it. I’ve never liked anyone so soon. On such short notice.”

  But she got hold of herself and led the way. I followed her up the stony steps that graded down from the entrance. We got to the top step without puffing and I waited while she dug a key out of her purse. Maxim had used his noodle all right. To the world at large, Ed Noon had wooed and won a fair Myra Colby and had made first base. A tête-à-tête in the lady’s apartment far from prying eyes. We looked the part to the hilt.

  Soon, we were inside a dim hallway that seemed muffled by thick carpeting, a thousand rugs and wallpaper that screamed of the gaslight era. It felt as hushed as a museum.

  But it wasn’t. Doors banged open and people started pouring downstairs like it was a surprise birthday party for someone. Only that someone was me and it wasn’t my birthday.

  But the two men coming down the stairs didn’t know that. And they didn’t care either. They were Maxim’s two watchdogs—the two who didn’t know or didn’t see that brown ties don’t go well with blue suits.

  They were more than glad to see me. It was obvious by the way they pulled me out of Myra Colby’s company and hustled me up the stairs ahead of them. I heard her feminine cries about taking it easy with me but they hardly heard her. After all, I had decked the both of them out for the full count yesterday and they still remembered.

  My arms were hurting the way they were twisted behind me but the two Menjous were merciless. They pushed me ahead of them towards a half-opened door that spilled out light from a desk lamp of some kind. I could hear Myra Colby’s high heels clicking on the stairs behind us.

  Someone pulled the door back wide and the pair behind me gave me a good-sized shove. I shot forward with the sudden release and twisted to avoid crashing into the desk with the lamp on it that was throwing off so much light. I staggered erect and turned, shaking the stiffness out of my cramped arms.

  The gang was all there. The wrong gang.

  Fairways was standing tall and business-like in a sincere grey suit by the door, his left hand curled around a delicately-dappled cigar. He seemed pleased to see me again. Genuinely pleased. As if he really did represent the Government and I was a nice, co-operative guy. Henderson and Thompson looked up from a card game they were having and they both looked just as pleased and just as honest.

  Only the two Menjous blocking off the door showed their displeasure. Their hands were knotted and unfriendly. Their eyes weren’t nice at all.

  And they weren’t the only ones.

  Maxim suddenly emerged from the shadows behind the desk, looking menacing but looking funny. Funny because of his feline face and the bandaged splint jutting stiffly from his right wrist. A picture flashed across my mind of the way Tom the Cat looks in those Tom and Jerry cartoons you see in the movie houses. You know, after one of those household scrapes in which Jerry the little mouse always comes out on top.

  My face must have shown my humour because Maxim’s voice cut me dead:

  “It has all been your way, Mr. Noon. Up until now. But once again I control things. Possibly you find that funny too.”

  I shrugged, remembering a line from another movie I had seen years ago.

  “We play the game, Max, but Fate controls the cards.”

  “Just so,” he sneered. He came forward, the light behind him now. He extended his good hand. “The clock, please. I am past all conversation with you.”

  There were two wicked noises behind me. That and high heels clicking in. Max’s boys had their Lugers out and Myra Colby had just come in.

  I held my hands away from my sides.

  “How about a deal, Max?” I stalled.

  “No deals,” Maxim replied. “Myra, you were with him. Has he brought the clock with him?”

  “Yes, darling.” She came around to where I could see her.

  “Mr. Noon put it in his left side pocket. You can see the bulge from here.”

  Fairways came forward suddenly, his cigar back in his mouth. His sincere eyes were boring into mine.

  “What kind of deal, Noon? You don’t seem to be in any position to make deals.”

  Maxim blocked his forward move. His eyebrows climbed up to his hairline and a fierce agitation seemed to rock his body.

  “Kindly stay out of this, my friend,” he hissed. “If you hadn’t acted so poorly in the Ritz thing, we would not have had all this confusion. I will handle things, if you please.”

  Fairways put the cigar back in his hand and poked a warning finger. “Let’s not harp on that. We made a mistake. So did Ritz. He wouldn’t come quietly. And while we’re on the subject of tactics, you haven’t done much better. Noon here made a monkey out of you and your group yesterday.”

  Maxim had heard all he was going to. He turned his back on the bigger man and looked at me again. But he was still talking to Fairways.

  “Submit your own report and be damned. I’ll do likewise. We’ll see which satisfies the Home Office more.” He extended his good hand again. “Now, Mr. Noon. The clock.”

  All I could do was make conversation.

  “What have you done with Alma and the kid?”

  He wasn’t listening. “Raise your hands. As high as you possibly can. Higher.” I did. I felt I could have unscrewed the light bulbs if there had been any.

  Fairways was still in their pitching. “Maybe we better hear him out. He’s a smart operator. He might have fooled Myra.”

  Now he had her mad at him. Her lips curved red-rich with sarcasm and her voice mocked him. “You think I’m stupid, Mr. Fairways?”

  “Now, Myra—” Fairways sighed.

  “You’re stupid,” I said. “But you’re also beautiful, Myra. Cheer up. It’s a wonderful compromise.”

  She just wouldn’t get mad at me. Or couldn’t. I got the biggest smile since Christmas from her.

  But I got ice from Max. Real dry ice. He was past caring about anything but the damn bulge of the damn clock in my side pocket.

  “Myra—go to him and take it out of his pocket. No tricks, Mr. Noon. Or you’re a dead man.”

  She did as she was told. Practically tip-toed around me, dug into my side pocket and fished the alarm clock out with hardly any trouble at all. I nearly laughed the way Maxim’s eyes lighted up like Roman candles at sight of the wrong clock. But he didn’t know that yet. Later on, the laugh might be on me.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’ve got the clock. Now what do we do? Sit around and wait for the results or can I and my friends go home now?”

  Maxim wasn’t even listening. He was turning the clock around and around in his fingers like the little boy on Christmas morning who can’t believe that he’s finally got the baseball that he wrote Santa that he wanted so very badly.

  I caught Myra Colby’s eyes and made a kissing movement with my lips. I really had her all right. The look she gave me back told me exactly what she expected from me some night in the very near future. That’s if I had one. Her look told me that too. A future, I mean.

  “Otto,” Maxim suddenly said, without looking up. Fairways coughed and turned away. “Retrieve my wallet and notebook from Mr. Noon. I believe he has them.”

  I set myself but I didn’t have enough time to sneeze. What difference would it have made anyway? It wouldn’t have made the blow fall any easier.

  Myra Colby shrieked and somehow that made me feel better. It was nice to think that watching me get knocked down from behind upset at least one person in that unfriendly room.

  But I was the one that got really upset.

  The top of my head caved in and my eyeballs tried to turn inwards to see what had done
it. But even as the blackness poured in, I knew what had done it. Otto’s Luger. Like I said before, everybody on this damned case had a Luger.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “He’s coming to,” somebody said. “I told you he had a hard head.”

  I groaned and opened my eyes. I felt like closing them again.

  A face hanging suspended in front of me was frightening. It was a face that looked like it had backed into a lawn mower. Mainly because the cheeks of the face were lumpy and swollen like a bad case of the mumps. There were ugly black swellings where the eyes should be. It was no face to see when you’re just coming out of the fog and confusion of a knockout blow.

  But it was the owner of the face who had spoken. And in spite of its sorry condition the face wore a smile as wide as a Jack O’Lantern’s.

  My head hurt. Hurt as it never had before. But the gargoyle before me was an old friend. An old friend who I thought might be pushing up daisies by this time. I was glad he was still with us.

  “Alec,” I said feebly. I sounded feeble. “Be a nice guy and pick up my head and set it back on my shoulders. It must be lying around somewhere on the floor by your feet. Don’t kick it whatever you do.”

  Somebody else laughed. The sound made me feel better if not exactly perfect. There was only one person alive in the whole cockeyed universe who could laugh at a time like that. One dame, that is.

  I twisted into a half-sitting position and looked around. The time I took to crane my neck worried me. The bed under me creaked with age as I shifted position.

  Alma was sitting near my feet, at the edge of the bed, her mouth smiling but anxiety was living in her eyes. She peered at me closely. Thanks to the pitiful condition of her clothes she still looked like somebody who had had to fight to preserve her virtue. But she still looked wonderful.

  “Rise and shine, Woolsey,” she said softly. “I had to throw the eggs and bacon out. Got cold.”

  I shook my head. I could have sworn something rattled around loose between my ears. Maybe, my brains. I’d been hit so hard with Otto’s Luger, I felt certain the serial numbers were embossed on my skull forever.

  “Happy days,” I groaned. “Together again. What egg? What bacon?”

  Alec’s face moved in closer for a look at me.

  “She means the food we didn’t get yet. You okay, Ed?”

  I squinted at him painfully. Some question coming from him with his kisser in the shape it was.

  “Okay is just a word, kid. But how about you? Your mug looks like an overdone humburger.”

  Alec grinned, showing me he still had all his teeth. But his eyes were hard.

  “I’ll live. After the hands, a couple of knocks in the puss won’t ruin me. Hell, I’m just itching for a crack at those jokers.”

  I stared down at his stumps. Where his long, strong arms ended off in meaningless wrists. I’d been so used to seeing him with his hooks that I just couldn’t quite place him now in my mind. He looked different. Something like the first time you see a movie star without his toupee.

  “Your Purple Heart is showing,” I flipped at him, knowing he didn’t want my sympathy. I tried a smile on Alma. “I missed you last night. What happened? For a minute, I thought you’d eloped with Benny.”

  Her firm fingers closed around my knee to tell me private-like how glad she was to see me again but memory made her frown.

  “One of the Fairways’ boys jumped me. From a doorway right next to Benny’s. It scared hell out of me. Felt funny too. I could still see your back—you were going into your building. And there I was being snatched. And I couldn’t cry out or anything. Almost made me feel like Little Red Riding Hood.” She shuddered and bits of creamy shoulders pushed through her torn clothes. “It was Fairways and his crew. They brought me here. And tossed me in with Alec here.” She smiled at him to show him how much she’d liked his company.

  Alec winced ruefully. “They took me just as easy.” But he smiled at Alma. “Never missed my hands so much in all my life. Ed, you’re a lucky guy.”

  “I don’t know what she sees in me either,” I said, closing that line of discussion. The birds and the bees have never helped in any jailbreaks that I can think of.

  I looked around. We were bivouacked in a bedroom. Plain, simple bedroom considering it was the Village. Just a bureau, the bed, an end table and a hodge-podge collection of mismatching chairs. Plus some closet space in a narrow corner of the room. It might have been the guest room but it was a guest room for guests you didn’t care about seeing again. I could see that.

  I saw something else too. There wasn’t a thing in the place that could be used for anything working towards a rescue or the crashing out routine. Besides which, the door was hanging half-open and somebody was sitting out in the hallway quietly smoking a cigarette and toying with a Luger. Probably my old pal Otto. Getting an earful along with his sentry duty too.

  I went to the window feeling my head jar every step of the way. I set my teeth against the sensation and made a survey from the sill. The survey came up a walloping zero. The windows were four flights up, the building opening on an alley that sloped down towards a dead end in a section of New York sidewalk that was as empty as a moron’s skull. The nearest neighbour’s window I could see had the shades drawn and was a good six hundred yards away.

  I sat down on the bed again. My head felt better when I sat down.

  “How long have I been pounding my ear?” I asked them.

  “Half hour maybe,” Alma said. “I got scared. I thought you might be overdoing it just a little.”

  I rubbed my head with both hands.

  “It’s the ham in me. Alec, you got any ideas at all?”

  Alec shrugged his stumps eloquently.

  “I’ve been had, Ed. What is all this anyway?”

  Digging out my Camels, I passed them around. They both reached for one feverishly, as if the firing squad was just outside the door. I lit all three weeds with one match, making mine the last smoke.

  “Don’t press our luck, Woolsey,” Alma mocked me. “Three on a match is bad luck.”

  “That’s not all that needs pressing,” I reminded her. “Look at this suit.” I inhaled slowly and got back to Alec and his question.

  “Kid, I haven’t got all the answers yet. But a guy named Roland Ritz, no relation to the Brothers Ritz, hiked himself out of Washington, D.C. carrying a clock that contained something that is so damn top secret and hush hush and important as all hell to the welfare of the good old U.S.A. that it would blow the lid off everything if our friends Maxim and Fairways were to get their hands on it and trolley it on down the line to the Commies.”

  Alec’s eyes narrowed. As beaten up as his face was, his old bulldog chin thrust out.

  “Reds.” He spat. “It’s always those bastards. Why can’t they settle down and stop horsing around with the peace?”

  “Good question, Alec,” I said. “But they can’t. Which is why all this fuss. They thought Ritz had contacted you. Watches and a Watch Repair man. And because they’ve got no imagination, your face is in its present condition. But as you said, your scars will heal. But not Roland Ritz’s.” I turned to Alma and looked at her. “He’s dead, Alma. Deader than any man can be. And it wasn’t nice. They laid him out in the office for the cops to find. I’d be in jail now if Mike Monks didn’t like me.”

  “Oh.” It shot out of Alma. Feminine and hysterical. “The poor little guy. And I sent him to you—”

  “Can that kind of talk right now,” I cut in harshly. “Nobody’s ever responsible for anybody else’s corpses. Things happen. Today, tomorrow or next year—things happen. You didn’t shoot him. Fairways did. Or one of his nice, clean-cut phonies.”

  The mist in Alma’s eyes suddenly evaporated and hot anger took its place. I had cut in on her self-guilt act just in time. She’d be all right now. Whimpering was for other women anyway. Not Alma Wheeler.

  Alec had another question. “What gives now, Ed? They got the clock?”


  I smiled.

  “They have. But I made a switch. Which is probably the only reason we’re still alive to pay taxes. Something tells me Maxim and Fairways don’t know exactly what they’re looking for. Which is typical of Commie tactics too. Nobody trusts anybody. Which may be a big point in our favour. But we’ll know soon enough.”

  Alec poked his left stump to his chin and rubbed some stubble slowly. “So that’s it.” His eyes took on a GI glint. “What do we do now?”

  I shrugged, knowing he was spoiling for some action. “We wait it out. I can stall as long as I have to. They’ll be playing around with the clock now. Once they see it has nothing to offer—it’s a clock from your shop let me mention in passing—but the same old springs and things, they’ll come bouncing in here. Out to tan my hide or force me to produce the Real McCoy. Till then—maybe we could play Scrabble. If we had a Scrabble set.”

  Alec grumbled complainingly. “If they’d only left me with my hooks. This way hurts. I feel as helpless as a baby.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I disagreed. I didn’t go for that whine in his tone. “You’ve always set me on my ear the way you can do things other guys with ten fingers can’t. Including me.”

  His face brightened a little at the bouquet but the whine didn’t leave his voice.

  “No, Ed.” He shook his head. “With the hooks, I’m 1A. Without them, I’m 4F and you know it.”

  “That’s your opinion,” I said loudly. So loudly that Alma flung a surprised look at me as if I were picking on Alec. “And you’re stuck with it. I’m not.”

  I knew what I was doing. Something had altered subtly in the atmosphere beyond our door. And I was going to capitalize on it if it killed me.

  I kept right on going. “Don’t quit now, Alec. Not after going all this distance.”

  “Ed—don’t clown around.” His young, swollen face got sullen. “I know what I can do and what I can’t do. If I had my hooks I could take that damn clock apart and show them what really makes it tick. I could detail strip it down to the last screw—”

  “Certainly you could, Mr. St. Peter,” a voice purred from the open door behind Alec. “And it is precisely what you are going to do.”