Case Pending

by Dell Shannon

  But it’d gone wrong, he wasn’t quick enough; and she’d come in, looked awful queer at him—funny, a bit frightened—and said sharp, “What you up to, still fooling round here?—you’ll be late for school, you go ’long now,” and he’d had to go, with her watching. So now he was waiting until there’d be nobody awake to see.

  And maybe it was silly, it wouldn’t make anything happen. Cops, he thought confusedly: but he did remember Dad saying, all new scientific things and like that, they were a lot smarter and some real high-educated now, from college. It might—

  Cops. He didn’t like loud voices and people getting so mad they hit each other. It made him feel hollow and bad inside—in the movies you knew it was just put on, and when you were interested in the story you didn’t mind so much, but even there sometimes it made you feel kind of upset. That was the first time, tonight, he’d seen Danny’s dad—since he’d come with them. Danny didn’t seem to be ashamed at all, tell his dad had been in jail back east, said it like it was something to brag about, but that was how Danny was. Marty sure didn’t think he could be much of a dad to brag on, jail or no jail.

  He shut his eyes and just like a movie saw it over again—himself going up the stairs to Danny’s apartment, ask if he wanted go to the movies with him, Ma’d given him thirty cents, said he could go—and the loud voice swearing inside, “Cops! You think I can’t smell a cop?—yeah, yeah, you say that to me before, so you walk right past a couple the bastards outside an’ never see ’em more’n if they was—listen, what the hell you been up to, bringin’ cops down on the place—”

  And Danny, shrill, “I never done nothing, I—”

  “Don’t talk back t’ me, you little bastard—I ain’t fool enough to think, him—I got him too damn scared! If I hadn’t spotted them damned—might’ve walked right into—What the hell else could they be after, watching the house? Couldn’t’ve traced me here—you been up to some o’ your piddling kid stuff, heisting hubcaps or somethin’, an’ they—”

  “I never—Listen, I—”

  And the noise of fists hitting, Danny yelling, and something falling hard against the door—Danny, he guessed, because then it opened and Danny sort of fell out and banged it after him and kicked it. It was dark in the hall, Marty had backed off a ways, and Danny didn’t see him. Danny leaned on the wall a minute there, one hand up to the side of his face, maybe where his dad had hit him—it looked like his nose was bleeding too—and Marty thought he was crying, only Danny never did, he wasn’t that kind. And then the door opened again and Mr. Smith came out.

  A tough-looking man he was like crooks in the movies, and there in the room behind that was just like the living room in the place Marty lived a floor down, was Danny’s ma, he’d seen her before, of course, a little soft-looking lady with a lot of black hair, and she looked scared and kept saying, “Oh, please, Ray, it’s not his fault, please don’t, Ray.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I ain’t goin’ do nothing! So all right, kid, maybe I got my wires crossed an’ it’s somethin’ else—hope to God it is—but listen, come here, you gotta go and do that phone call for me, see, I can’t—”

  Danny yelled at him, “Be damned if I will, bastard yourself!” and kicked at his shins and bolted for the stairs as the man snarled at him. Marty had crept back even farther toward the dark end of the hall; Mr. Smith didn’t see him either. He made as if to go after Danny, stopped, said, “Oh, hell!” and went back into the apartment.

  And Marty slid past the shut door and downstairs, but he didn’t see Danny anywhere on the block. He wondered if Danny was hurt bad, his dad looked pretty strong. And if he’d ever hit Danny like that before—probably so, if he got mad that way a lot. For a minute, thinking about it, Marty felt some better himself, because maybe his own dad had gone away and left them, but he’d sure never, ever, hit him or said bad things to him—or anybody. Marty’s dad, he always said it beat all how some fellows were all the time getting mad, you always sure as fate did something dumb or wrong when you was mad because you couldn’t think straight. There was only a couple of times Marty could remember his whole life when Dad had got real mad, and then he didn’t swear or yell, why, he’d never heard Dad say a damn, he was right strict about swearing. He didn’t talk an awful lot any time, but when he was mad he didn’t say anything at all.

  He’d been awful mad, that last time—that night before he went away. Just didn’t come home.

  And on that thought, everything it made him remember, Marty stopped feeling better, and stopped wondering why Mr. Smith was so mad at Danny, what he’d been talking about.

  He hadn’t gone to the movies after all. It was a kind of crook picture and he didn’t much want to see it really, though if he’d been with some other fellows he’d’ve had to pretend he did because it was the kind of thing everybody was supposed to like.

  And now he was sitting here in the dark, alone with the secret, waiting for it to be time. And remembering, now, what Mr. Smith had said about cops. Cops outside, watching the house. Something funny happened inside Marty’s stomach, like he’d gone hollow, and his heart gave an extra thud. Were they?—was it, was it because—

  You had to do what was right, no matter what. Even if it meant you’d die, like in the gas thing they had in California. He knew, and he didn’t see how his Ma could think a different way, it wasn’t right people should get killed—like that—even if he hadn’t ever meant, ever known even—Somebody ought to know, and stop it happening again. That was why he was sitting here cold and scared, waiting. Somebody. He hadn’t exactly thought, the cops—but of course that was what he’d meant. And all of a sudden now, thinking about them maybe outside, cops meant something different, terrible, to be more scared of than anything—anything he knew more about…

  Sometimes in the movies yelling at guys and hitting them and a thing called the third degree—the gas chamber in California—but once Dad had said, about one of those movies Marty’d told about, that was bad to show, it was wrong because policemen weren’t like that at all any more, that was other times. A bright light they had shining right in your eyes and they—But Dad said—

  Marty shut his eyes tight and tried to get back to that place, couldn’t remember how long ago or if it was Tappan Street or Macy Avenue, where there’d been Dad just like always, sitting at the kitchen table, digging out his pipe with his knife and looking over the top of his glasses and saying—and saying—something about policemen being your friends, to help you.

  He couldn’t get there, to Dad that time. Where he got to instead was that night before Dad—didn’t come home. He was right there again, he saw Dad plain, awful mad he’d been for sure, his face all stiff and white and a look in his eyes said how hard he was holding himself in. Dad saying slow and terrible quiet, “I can’t stand no more, Marion—I just can’t stand no more.”

  And Marty knew right this minute just how Dad had felt when he said that. Because he felt the same way, not all of a sudden but like as if he’d only this minute come to know how he felt, plain.

  I just can’t stand no more.

  He relaxed, limp, against the headboard, and a queer vague peace filled him. Like coming to the end of a long, long walk, like getting there—some place—at last, and he could stop trying any more.

  It didn’t matter what place, or what happened there. It was finished. I just can’t stand no more.

  The gas, and the cops whatever kind and whatever they did or didn’t do, and even—more immediate and terrible—his Ma, and what would happen afterward, when she found out. Anything, everything, nothing, it wasn’t anyways important any more.

  Something had to happen, and what did it matter what or how? May be there were those cops down there, even two or three o’clock in the morning, and they’d see him when he came out with—it—and take him to the police station. Maybe not; some other way, the way he’d thought or—maybe they already knew, he couldn’t
see how but they might. And in the end maybe they’d make him break the promise. It didn’t matter how it came: he knew it would come, and it was time, he didn’t care.

  Time for the secret to be shown open, the terrible secret.

  * * *

  When Morgan finally moved, he was stiff with cold and the sense of failure, a resignation too apathetic now to rouse anger in him. He had known half an hour ago that Smith wasn’t coming. Why he’d gone on standing here he didn’t know.

  He turned and went into the drugstore; hot stuffiness struck him in the face after the cold outside. The druggist was rearranging bottles on a shelf along the wall; he turned quickly, to watch Morgan—didn’t come up to ask what he wanted. Maybe he thought he was going to get held up. Morgan scraped up all the change in his pocket, picked out a quarter, went up to the man.

  “May I have change for the phone, please?”

  “Oh, sure thing.” The cash register gave brisk tongue; a kind of apologetic relief was in the druggist’s eyes as he handed over two dimes and a nickel.

  As soon as he was inside the phone booth, Morgan began to sweat, in his heavy coat in that airless, fetid box. He sat on the inadequate little stool and dialed carefully. After two rings the receiver was lifted at the other end.

  “Sue—”

  “Dick!”—their voices cutting in on each other, hers on a little gasp. “I thought you’d call—been waiting—”

  “Has he called?” asked Morgan tautly. “He didn’t show, he won’t now, and I’m afraid—darling, I’m afraid he’s spotted those damn cops and thinks—”

  “I don’t think so.” Her voice steadied. “She called, Dick. About ten minutes to eight. She said to tell you he’d got ‘hung up’ and couldn’t make it, it’d have to be tomorrow night—and you’d get a phone call some time tomorrow, to tell you where and when.”

  Morgan leaned his forehead on the phone box for a second; a wave of tingling heat passed over him and he felt weak. “He got—delayed? He didn’t—that’s damn funny, I don’t—Sue, you sure it was the woman, the same—?”

  “I’m sure, darling. You remember what a soft, ladylike little voice she had, and she spoke quite well too, not glaringly bad grammar—she’s had some education—but awfully timid and meek, as if she was cowed. I recognized it right away—and she sounded like a child reciting a lesson, as if she was reading the message off—”

  “The woman,” he said, “the woman. So she’s still with him. Yes, we didn’t think she was lying then, about being married. Yes, a cut above him all right, probably one of those natural doormats—husband’s just being the superior male when he knocks her around. He—God, I was afraid—so it’s just another breathing space, until tomorrow night. I wonder why.”

  “I don’t like it—can’t stall with him forever, Dick—and in the end we can’t pay, he’ll—What can you say to him any more, to make him—”

  “Listen,” said Morgan, trying to sound authoritative, confident (don’t let her suspect how you’re planning to deal with it, convince her), “it’s the money he wants, he’s not in any rush to get this thing open in court, that’s the last thing he wants. It’s his only hold on us, he’s not so anxious to let go of it.”

  “I—suppose not. But—Dick, I—I’ve got to where I just want it over and decided, whichever way. This hanging on—”

  “I know, darling, I know. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll be right home—half an hour.”

  * * *

  Lieutenant Callaghan was a good deal less than mollified to be presented with such small fry as Tomás Ramirez; he had been lying hopefully in ambush for a certain big-time eastern wholesaler, and had—as he informed Mendoza bitterly—had a leash on Mr. Torres-Domingo and assorted friends for some time. What the hell good did it do to pick up a minnow like this Ramirez, who just ferried the stuff across the border in small lots? If Mendoza was interested, they had known about the Maison du Chat for quite a while, and a usually reliable source of information had led them to expect the wholesaler on the premises tonight, to set up a deal with Neddy, Mr. Torres-Domingo being the middleman. At nine o’clock they’d expected him, and so it was very probable that he’d been, maybe, a hundred feet away from the kitchen door when Mendoza’s bright boy had got a little too close to the game and flushed it early. And so their chances of getting him now, or even another line on him, were just about nil.

  And if Mendoza could remember back seventeen years to when, God help us and if this good-looking redhead here would believe it, he and Mendoza had been in the rookie school together, Mendoza just might recall that one of the first things they’d been told was that there were different divisions within any big-city police force. And that one division was sort of expected to play ball with the others, seeing that they weren’t exactly in competition with each other.

  “Well,” said Mendoza mildly to that, “I suppose I could have checked with you first, certainly if anything definite had showed up—but Ramirez was only one of those vague hunches, you know.”

  “Sure, sure, we all know Mendoza’s hunches! Second sight he’s got, maybe a crystal ball, I wouldn’t know, our little genius Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza! One look, and he says, that naughty fellow’s got a stack of H. in his back pocket, and won’t my good old friend Pat jump for joy to have a little of his work all done for him! Oh, he’s a star, our Luis! Hey presto, and I’ve ended up with a couple of hired-salesmen punks I could’ve taken two months ago, instead of the real big boy—and our Luis thinks he does me a favor to give me this Ramirez!”

  “Now when did I say so? It’s the way the cards fall,” said Mendoza philosophically. “These things happen. My crystal ball doesn’t always show me the right picture—”

  “That you can say twice,” said Callaghan. “Got you in trouble before—got you a bullet in the leg in that Brawley business, and right now, by God, I’m sorry it wasn’t in the head! And I’ll never know how you hypnotize these respectable, high-class, good-looking women to go round with you.” He looked at Alison there in the drafty corridor outside his office at headquarters. “You look like a decent God-fearing Irish girl.”

  “Only on my mother’s side—she was a McCann,” said Alison solemnly. “And I think it’s sheer surprise, Lieutenant—for any man these days who thinks he can still order us around, the dominant male, you know. By the time we’ve recovered enough to begin to talk back—”

  “It’s too late, I know.” Callaghan shook his head at her. “You watch yourself. I’ve got another piece of advice for you, lady—whatever else you do with him’s your own business, but don’t ever get into a hand of poker with him. And seeing you’ve done about all the damage you can do tonight, Luis—on headquarters business, that is—I guess you can get out of my sight and take her home.”

  Mendoza rubbed his nose and said he wouldn’t presume to teach Lieutenant Callaghan his job, but he did think that Ramirez—

  “Oh, get out, scat!” said Callaghan. “He’s on his way here now, I sent two men after him while you were phoning your bright little boy’s wife. I can’t hold him on anything, unless one of these two involve him or we find the stuff in his possession—both of which are likely to happen. Not that I give a damn about him, but thank you so much for pointing him out, and now good night to you.”

  Mendoza grinned at him, said, “¡Uno no puede complacer a todo el mundo—one can’t please everybody! Be good, Pat—hasta más ver,”56 and took Alison’s arm down the hall to the elevator. “And now,” he added, “la familia Ramirez is due for another shock.”

  “Yes, poor people. I must see them, to return half the tuition she’d paid, you know. I didn’t like to blunder in the very day after, but I thought at the inquest I might have a chance to—”

  “You haven’t been subpoenaed, you notice. A very routine affair. Maybe twenty minutes—adjourned awaiting further evidence—that’s how it’ll go. Come if you like, but it’ll be
very dull, I won’t be there.”

  “I’d like to think that was a non sequitur,” said Alison, “but I’m afraid you didn’t mean it that way. I suppose that ex-football-star sergeant will represent you. I think I will go. I’ve never been to an inquest and it’s an excuse to take the morning off. Besides, I do want to see the family, only decent.”

  Mendoza looked at her and shook his head, getting out his car keys. “Occasionally I agree with Pat—astonishing how I seem to acquire these high-principled women.”

  “That,” said Alison sedately, “is a very premature verb.” And twenty minutes later, at her apartment door: “Don’t forget those stockings. Size—”

  “Nine and a half, thirty-three inches, I’d guess it.”

  “Mmh, yes,” said Alison, “and entirely too good a guess it is.”

  “Women, we never satisfy them—they don’t like us too callow and they don’t like us too experienced!” He laid a caressing hand round her throat. “I’d said to myself, very gentlemanly this time, maybe next time I’ll kiss her good night, but I told you I’m always breaking resolutions…and sometimes even twice—or three times—if it seems like a good idea.”

  “Once was quite enough,” said Alison rather breathlessly, pushing him away, “for three days’ acquaintance!”

  “So we figure it like compound interest, chica—I’ll add up how much it comes to per week.”

  “Good night, mi villano optimista,” said Alison firmly.

  He smiled at the closing door; he never liked them too easy.

  * * *

  At about the same time that Alison Weir was struggling with the zipper of the oyster-silk sheath and reflecting that Lieutenant Callaghan’s advice about watching herself was an excellent idea, Agnes Browne was standing in the cold dim rooming-house hall, shivering in just her slip and the cotton robe she’d tied round her when Mrs. Anderson called her to the phone.

  “You shouldn’t’ve,” she kept saying, almost crying. “Hitting a policeman like that, Joe, it’s terrible, they might’ve arrested you—you shouldn’t go losing your temper like that.”