by Jerry
“Machine-gun madonna,” chuckles O’Shaughnessy.
“He was going to marry her. She was only a kid, seventeen or something like that. Well, between the shock of finding out who she’d been mixed up with, and us putting the pressure on her, the poor dame never had a chance. She claimed she didn’t know anything that went on during that cruise. So then we lock her up in a dark garage overnight, to frighten her into talking. We frightened her all right, but not into talking. Just our luck—he’d never let her cut her hair, said she looked like an angel with it long. So she has a hairpin to unlock the engines of all the cars in there—and there was about six of them—and starts them all turning over and breathes the monoxide until she’s gone. With a kitten he gave her still in her arms.”
“Fine note.” O’Shaughnessy scowls sympathetically. Not with them, but with the harried, friendless girl in the garage.
Tereshko grins.
“Yeah, ain’t it? Of all the dirty tricks! We hadda leave her lie in there all next day. Then we sneaked her out after dark, carried her miles away, and planted her somewhere else. I never even read about them finding her. If they did, they never tumbled to who she was, not a word about it came out in the pa—”
“Here’s my wife,” O’Shaughnessy interrupts, standing up. He’s sighted her across Tereshko’s shoulder as she comes in from the street just then, stands there a second, looks around. She’s something to look at, as she locates them, starts over toward them, with a smile for him on her face.
Tereshko, whose chair is facing the other way, follows him to his feet, turning around to greet her as he does so.
O’Shaughnessy is saying, “Nova, meet Mr. Vincent Tereshko.”
There’s a tinkle as Tereshko’s cocktail glass hits the floor. There’s a peculiar hiss at the same time, like an overheated radiator, or an inner tube deflating. Tereshko sort of reels back, the low top of the chair he has just risen from catches him across the spine, he goes over it, dumping the back of his head onto the soft padded seat, and then he and chair alike roll over sideward to the floor. Instantly he scrambles up again, gives a hoarse cry that sounds like, “No! Get away from me! You’re not real.”
He makes flailing motions with both arms, buffeting the air before him, then turns and runs through the foyer and out into the street.
They come out of their trance after awhile, not right away. “Well, I’ll be a—Did you see that? What bit him? A minute ago he’s sitting here chatting with me, then all at once he goes haywire.”
“It was—me,” she says wonderingly, still staring after Tereshko.
He flips his head impatiently at such an idea. “Nah, how could it have been you? Talk sense. You’re not used to crowds yet, every time anyone looks at you you think something’s the matter.” He can’t, after all, really tell who or what Tereshko saw.
“It was, O’Shaughnessy,” she insists troubledly. “He was looking right at me, right into my face. Something must be the matter with me! Is there anything wrong with the way I look? Because that’s the second time tonight that’s happened—”
He turns to her, startled. “Second! What d’you mean?”
“Just now, outside the door. There was a man sitting waiting in a limousine for someone, and as I got out of my cab, he turned around and looked at me, and then he—he gave a yell like this one did, and started off, tearing down the street a mile a minute as if he’d seen a ghost—”
O’Shaughnessy looks puzzled.
“Turn around a minute. Lemme see,” he says. Then as she slowly revolves before him: “You’re okay from every angle, I don’t see anything about you to scare grown men out of their wits. He musta seen somebody or something in back of you that did that to him. The heck with it. Let’s go home. It looks like the deal’s off, and I’m just as satisfied. It had a bad smell to it from the beginning.”
Seventy-two hours go by, the lull before the storm. Then, the third night after that, he happens to come back to the flat earlier than usual. He’s down to his last few dollars, and he’s been tramping around all day trying to make connections. But free-lance pilots, flying soldiers of fortune, don’t seem to be in great demand at the moment. He has her to look after now . . .
He spots her standing at the curb in front of their house, as he rounds the corner. She’s looking for a taxi. She signals one, and just as she’s on the point of getting in, he shouts: “Hey Nova! What’s the idea?” and comes running up just in time.
She seems astonished to see him. Not confused, just astonished.
“I’m sorry it took me so long. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting like that. Is that why you changed your mind and came back here instead? You’re not sore, are you, O’Shaughnessy?”
He says: “What’re you talking about? Sore about what?”
“Why, because I’m half an hour late in meeting you.”
“Who told you to meet me?”
She’s more astonished than ever. “Why, you did! You telephoned me over an hour ago and said to take a taxi and come out and meet you at—” He takes a look around him up and down the street. “Come on upstairs,” he says crisply. “Never mind, driver, we don’t want you.” And upstairs: “What else did I say?”
“You told me to come as quickly as I could, that’s all.”
“Don’t you know my voice on the wire?”
“I’ve never heard anybody else’s but yours, so I thought it was you again. You sounded a little far-off, that’s all.”
“Well it wasn’t me. And I’m wondering who it was. Listen, Nova, honey, don’t go out any more by yourself after this. I’ll give you a password over the phone from now on. Barbed wire, how’ll that be? If you don’t hear me say barbed wire, you’ll know it isn’t me.”
“Yes, O’Shaughnessy.”
The following evening, when he comes back, he has trouble getting in. His latchkey works, but she has something shoved up against the door on the inside, a chair inserted under the knob, maybe. It doesn’t hold him very long, and she’s standing there in the middle of the room shaking like a leaf.
“What’d you do that for?” he asks. “And how’d that hole get in the door, over the lock?”
She runs over and hangs on tight. “They called again. They said it was you, but I knew it wasn’t because they didn’t say barbed wire.”
“They try to get you to come out again?”
“No, they didn’t. They said, ‘We’ve got a message for you from Benny.’ Who’s Benny?”
O’Shaughnessy just looks at her, eyes narrowing
“Then they said, ‘Oh, so your torch went out?’ Then they laughed and they said, ‘Where’d you get hold of the mick?’ What’s a mick?”
“Me,” he says slowly, wondering. “Anything else?”
She shakes her head dazedly. “I couldn’t make head or tail out of it. They said, ‘You sure put one over on us, didn’t you? It was a good gag while it lasted, but it’s run out now. We’ll be seeing you.’ ”
“Then what?”
“Oh, O’Shaughnessy, I was so scared. I didn’t know where to get hold of you, except you were downtown in the Loop somewhere. I locked the door and I hid in the closet, just left it open on a crack. In about half an hour, all of a sudden I could see the doorknob slowly turning, as if someone was out there trying it. Then when that wouldn’t work the bell started to ring, and a voice said thickly, ‘It’s me, babe. Let me in, I forgot my key.’ But I knew it wasn’t you. I got way in the far corner of the closet and pulled all the clothes over me—”
Meanwhile he’s taken his gun out of the valise where he keeps it and is checking it over, his wrists trembling a little with rage. That’s a man’s vital spot, the helpless thing he loves.
She goes on:
“Then something went polfa right into the door and came through on this side. I couldn’t stand it any more, I was afraid they’d come in and get me. I ran out of the closet and climbed out that window there onto the fire escape and got into the flat next door and begged
the lady to hide me. I told her someone was trying to break into our flat, and she started to call the police, but by that time they’d gone. I could hear feet scuttling down the stairs, a whole lot of them, and a big car driving off outside—”
Walking back and forth, trying to dope it out, tapping the muzzle of his gun against his palm, he says, “Listen kid, I don’t know what we’re up against, it may be just a false alarm, but—Shooting a bullet-hole through your door in broad daylight makes it look like the McCoy. If I could only figure what it was all about! It’s no one in my life. I’ve made enough enemies, heaven knows, but not in this country. Nova, tell me the truth—were you ever in Chicago before?” He stands still and looks at her.
“Never, O’Shaughnessy, never, until we came here two weeks ago. I don’t know anyone here but you. I’ve never spoken to anyone but you the whole time we’ve been here. You’ve got to believe me!”
He does, how could he help it?
But then, what is it? What would you call it, anyway? If he had anything, he’d say it had the earmarks of an attempted snatch, for ransom. Mistaken identity? Yes, but who do they take her to be? The whole thing’s a maze. He wonders if he ought to give it to the police to handle for him. But then, what can he tell them? Somebody impersonated me on the phone to my wife, somebody tried to break into my flat while I was out. It doesn’t stack up to much when you put it that way. And he’s an individualist, anyway, used to being on his own. When it comes to anything threatening Nova, he’d rather take care of her himself.
Tereshko rings up unexpectedly that night. “This is Tereshko, O’Shaughnessy,” he says. “I’m down on lower State Street. I’d like to conclude that transaction we were talking over. Can you run down and meet me for ten minutes or so?”
“What happened to you the other night? Something seemed to frighten you.”
A phony laugh. “Me? Not at all. I got kinda sick all of a sudden, and beat it for the street.”
O’Shaughnessy motions Nova over, puts the receiver to her ear and whispers: “This the same voice you heard the other times?”
She listens, shakes her head.
So he says into the phone: “Frankly, the deal’s off, count me out.”
Tereshko doesn’t seem very perturbed, perhaps he doesn’t realize how much he revealed that night. “Sorry you feel that way, but you know best. Come down anyway for a drink, to show there’s no hard feeling. Come alone.”
O’Shaughnessy decides then and there that he will, to see what this is all about. That first night Tereshko was all for having Nova join them. Tonight he wanted O’Shaughnessy to come down alone. Does Tereshko want Nova left alone in the flat? Is he the one behind all this? Nothing like finding out. He says, “Get your hat.” And on the street, a couple of blocks away: “You’ve never been to a movie, have you? Well, you’re going to one now.”
He buys two seats, takes her in, finds a place for her. “Now don’t move from there till I come back and get you!” As if she were a child.
“Yes, O’Shaughnessy.”
There is no sign of Tereshko at the taproom where they were supposed to meet. O’Shaughnessy waits ten minutes, leaves, goes back and gets Nova. He fingers the gun in his pocket as they near their flat. “So now,” he says to himself grimly, “I think I know who Pm up against—if not why.”
The flat-door falls back unfastened before them. They give one another a look. “I thought—I saw you lock it after us when we left,” she whispers.
“You thought right,” he says grimly. He goes in first, gun bared.
No one there. “Must have blown open,” he says. “Maybe sneak-thieves.”
This alarms her. “My clothes! All the pretty things you gave me!” He grins a little at the woman of it, while she runs to the closet to find out. She comes out again as puzzled as ever.
“Anything missing?”
“No, but—I don’t remember this being on here before.” She’s holding one up to show him. A large lily is pinned to the front of it!
“Maybe it came that way and you’ve forgotten it.”
She strokes it with her fingers. “But it’s alive. They don’t put live ones on them.”
Even he knows that. He also knows what lilies stand for as a rule. He softly starts to whistle a bar or two. “Chicago, Chicago, I’ll show you around—”
VII
Some church-belfry on the other side of the river bongs twelve times. “Got everything in?” he says quietly. “I’ll carry the bags down. You put out the lights.”
She tiptoes submissively down the stairs after him. “I don’t know how far we can get on five bucks,” he remarks, “but it’s a cinch I can’t leave you up there by yourself any more in the daytime, and I can’t drag you all over town with me either. Maybe we can get a room on the other side of the city—”
Just inside the doorway he puts down the bags, motions her to stand by them a minute. He saunters out ahead, carefully casual. Peers up one way, down the other. Nothing. The street’s dead to the world.
Then suddenly, from nowhere, ping! Something flicks off the wall just behind him, flops at his feet like a dead bug. He doesn’t bend down to look closer, he can tell what kind of a bug it is all right. He’s seen that kind of bug before, plenty of times. No flash, no report, to show which direction it came from. Silencer, of course.
He hasn’t moved. Fsssh! and a bee or wasp in a hurry strokes by his cheek, tingles, draws a drop of slow blood. Another polfa! from the wall, another bug rolling over. The insect-world seems very streamlined, very self-destructive, tonight.
He takes a wary step back, slips inside the doorway again, still facing front. If he could only spot the flash, see where it was coming from, he could send them a few back. Meanwhile he’s half-in, half-out of the iron-grilled, thick, glass street-door.
There’s an anvil-like sound, and the warped spokes of a wheel show up in the glass, centering in a neat, round hole. Powdery stuff like dandruff dusts his shoulder. Another bug has dropped inside the hallway.
Hands are gripping at his coat, pulling at him from behind. “O’Shaughnessy, don’t—you’ll kill yourself standing there like that! Think of me!”
“Douse that bulb back there, swat it with-your handbag—I want to see if I can catch the flashes.”
But she won’t do it, and that traps him into going back and doing it himself. Then her arms wind around him when she gets him back there at the far end of the hallway, and she clings for dear life.
“No! No! I won’t let you—What good’ll you be to me dead? What’ll become of me?” He gives in at last—it’s either that or drag her bodily after him back to the entrance clinging like a barnacle.
“All right, all right. There must be a back way out of here.”
But, at the outlet to the electric-lighted basement passageway, as he emerges in advance of her—there are again winged insects on the loose, spitting off the wall. “Wait a minute!” he says, cutting short her plaintive remonstrances. “I think I caught the flash that time! Along the edge of the roof on that next house. Wait’ll it comes again.” And cuts his hand at her backhand. “The bulb. The bulb.” This time she obeys, blackness inks the passage behind him.
He draws and slowly raises his gun, standing perfectly still, face tilted to the sky. Gambler’s odds: his life against the chances of hitting a powder-flash six stories up. His left thumbnail scrapes past the rabbit foot imbedded in his vest-pocket, half absent-mindedly.
A winking gleam just over the cornice up there, a flare from his own gun as fire draws fire. A chipping of the stonework just over and behind his head, and then something black and gangling falling clumsily down six stories, a blur against the gray-gloom of the walls. A sickening thud against cement, just out of sight behind the eight-foot dividing-fence.
More flashes up there, six in a row, and a sound like hail or gravel down where they are. But O’Shaughnessy’s already back inside the sheltering passageway. “It won’t work. There’s still a second one up th
ere, and we could never get over that eight-foot fence alive. They seem to be doing this up in style. Come on back up to the flat.”
She goes up the inner stairs with her hands shielding her face. “That fall. I hope he was dead before—he landed.”
“That evens the score a little,” he says unsentimentally. “They that live by the sword—”
Night in a Chicago flat. He says: “The door’s locked, and I’m here with Buster. You try to get a little sleep, honey, your old man’ll look after you.”
“But promise me you’ll stay up here with me, you won’t go down there again.”
“I promise.”
So, fully dressed, she lies there on the bed, and after awhile she sleeps, while he stands guard at the shade-drawn window, gun in hand, the spark of his cigarette held carefully behind his back.
A milkman comes and never dreams the muzzle of a gun is four inches away from his head on the other side of the door as he stoops to set down a bottle of milk. Nova sleeps on, like a child. Night in a Chicago flat.
Three hours after daylight they’re ready to leave. There are enough people on the streets now to give them a chance. If they don’t get out now, they never will. This net that’s been meshed loosely around them all night will be pulled tight by the time darkness comes a second time. They want him out of the way, but they want her alive. That much he’s sure of.
Just before they go, he murmurs, “There’s a cab been standing there ever since dawn, probably all night, just past the next corner. There’s no public hack-stand at that spot, either.”
“Do you think that’s—them?”
“I don’t give a hoot whether it is or not, I can’t breathe in here any more, I’ve got to get out in the open! Stick close behind me, and if I tumble, you keep going. I’ve been shot at before. I’m the bad penny that always turns up again.”
But then, as he puts his hand out to the doorknob, a sudden rigidity, as though some indefinable sound has reached him from outside it. “There’s someone out there,” he breathes.
She winces. “We’re too late.”