BRUNO FISCHER – The Pigskin Bag
Taken from Mercury Mystery Book No. 127, 1946
CHAPTER ONE
I phoned Redfern Motors from a drugstore on Flatbush Avenue. The boss answered.
“I just dropped Mrs. Garrity off,” I told him. “She kept listening to the motor as if she knew which end of a car it was on and made me drive her three times around Prospect Park. Then she wondered if she really wanted a car after all.”
“Hell with her,” Mr. Redfern said.
“We've gotten customers for every car. Somebody was here a few minutes ago asking (questions about you.”
“About me?”
Over the wire I heard a chair scrape and then a deep sigh as Mr. Redfern settled his bulk into it. Mr. Redfern liked to talk and he liked to sit.
“It was like this, Adam,” he said. “He asked were you in. I said no. He didn't ask when you'd be back, like you'd expect a man to if he asked for you in the first place. Fact is, I got the idea he was glad you weren't in so he could question me about you.”
“What did he want to know?”
“How long you'd worked for me and how long I knew you and things like that. I'm no fool, you know, so after a minute I asked him what he was after. He said never mind, he'd come around and see you in person when you were in, and he started to go. I went after him and asked did he want to leave his name so I could tell you he'd called, but he said again never mind and went out.
“What did he look like?”
“A man around forty-five or fifty. His nose was crooked, like it had been broken, and you could bore a hole with his chin. You know him?”
“No.” I kicked the booth door open to let cigarette smoke out.
Mr. Redfern's voice lowered. “Adam, you're not in trouble?”
“What kind would you suggest?”
“With the police,” he said solemnly.
“I'd swear that man was a detective the way he acted. Sort of mysterious, if you know what I mean?”
“Detectives aren't mysterious. They walk around with badges they're always flashing in everybody's face.”
“You can never tell how they work.”
Mr. Redfern's tone dropped another octave to a conspiratorial half-whisper.
“I've known you a long time, Adam. I gave you your job back as soon as you got out of the army. Maybe it would be better if you took me into your confidence.”
“Shhh,” I hissed, “the wires are tapped.”
“What?”
“Listen,” I said. “You know me only as Adam Breen, but to the lower depths of the underworld I am Mr. Z., at present adhering to an exhausting schedule of a corpse a day, except Sundays and holidays.”
Mr. Redfern's sigh came over the wire like a gust of wind. “Adam, you're not the funniest man in Brooklyn. I tell you, I don't like the way he acted.”
“Probably he's a rival car salesman who doesn't want the premier distributor of Planet automobiles to know that his star salesman is considering buying a good car for a change.”
Mr. Redfern said nothing, which meant that he was sore.
I said quickly: “Probably my wife opened still another charge account and Crooked Nose is investigating my credit. The reason I called you is that it's after six and I'm close to home. Do I have to come back to the place just to bring the demonstration car in?”
“Well — “ Mr. Redfern dragged it out to show that he was a man of weighty decisions even in minor matters. “All right, but don't leave it in your driveway overnight. Put it in your garage, do you hear?”
I said goodbye and hung up. My legs were cramped when I unwound myself. Phone booth stools and beds were not made for six-feet-two of man.
On the way out of the drugstore I passed boxes of chocolates piled on a glass counter as thickly and geometrically as the downtown New York skyline. I bought one which looked like the latest thing in women's hats.
The street on which I, lived in Borough Park was early 1920's, which meant that it had no quietly decaying houses of imitation European architecture, and that it wasn't jam-solid with gray-brick apartment houses. These houses were two-story red-brick, attached, so that they formed an unbroken
line from one end of the block to the other. They didn't quite look like barracks only because of tiny white stoops every thirty feet.
I didn't live in them. I was an aristocrat. The houses on my side of the street, though otherwise exactly like them, were detached from each other by the width of a driveway. We had private garages and even back doors, and sometimes in midsummer the sun flowed as much as two feet into the living room for almost an hour a day. It was practically like living in the country.
The baby carriages were off the street when I reached home and most of the children were in the houses eating supper. It made the neighborhood somewhat forlorn and lonely. I maneuvered the Planet demonstration coupe up the narrow driveway and stopped it at the broader area just in front of the garage. One of the double garage doors swung creakily in the breeze. Esther chronically neglected to close doors, any doors, closet or cabinet or garage.
I rolled up the windows of the coupe and snapped the catches on the doors. If Mr. Redfern expected me to transfer my sedan out of the garage and the coupe in, he needed a course in psychology.
The coupe could stand the morning dew as well as my sedan. Esther, it developed, had left still another door open, the rear left door of the sedan. I entered the garage and Started to slam the car door shut.
That was when I saw the valise.
It sat on the back seat floor. Esther, I thought, had bought something else we didn't need. It was pigskin and looked expensive, though it was by no means new. She must have picked it up at one of the rummage sales from which she filled the house with junk.
I reached in to pull the bag out. Its weight was a shock. I had to tuck the box of candy under my arm and use both hands to swing the bag to the floor. When it was out I could lift it in one hand, but it was still a load. Two thick leather straps were fastened around it to hold the bottom against whatever was inside. It was locked.
“Adam?” Esther called from the back door.
''I’m in the garage.”
“I heard your car.” Her voice sharpened.
“Carol, come back here! You're not even wearing slippers.”
Carol cried, “Papa!” and swept around the open garage door. She wore her red corduroy bathrobe over pajamas and her feet were bare. I dropped the bag and swung her into my arms.
“What's that, Papa.?” Carol snatched the package from the hand which wasn't holding her. “For me?”
“For all of us, sweetheart.”
I nuzzled her cheek. She was big for not quite seven, built like me along string bean lines, but she had her mother's high color, flashing eyes, and black hair.
“Darling, she's just had her bath,” Esther called. “She'll catch cold.”
I adjusted Carol on my left hip and carried her out of the garage.
Esther was on the back door stoop. She wore a checked gingham house dress with a wide white collar. Her straight black hair was parted in the middle and hung down her back in two braids, each tied at the end with a tiny brown ribbon, exactly like Carol's. She made a fine picture to come home to, standing there trim and neat without the aid of corsets or elaborate make-up. I slid my free arm about her waist and, with Carol on my hip working on the candy box wrapper, I bent over and kissed her.
Esther's lips were cold. I turned my mouth on hers so that I could look into her dark eyes. They were very wide, staring, but not at me or at anything.
“What's wrong?” I asked.
“Ooooh, candy!” Carol exclaimed.
The wrapper was in shreds. “Mommy, can I have some candy now?”
&nbs
p; Esther stepped out of the circle of my arm. “After supper, dear.” She tilted her head back to smile up at me. “What's the occasion.?”
“Do I need one to bring something home to my family?”
She patted my arm. “You're very smug about us, darling, aren't you?”
“Uh- huh.”
“That makes it very pleasant. Please bring her in, darling. I don't want her to be outside right after her bath.”
Carrying Carol, I followed Esther through the back door into the kitchen. It smelled of coziness and good food. Tonight I didn't peer into the pots to see what Esther was dishing up. I stood looking at the way her skin was drawn tightly from her mouth.
“You didn't answer me,” I said. “Is anything wrong, baby? Aren't you well?”
Esther stood at the sink with her back to me. “I have a headache.”
“Bad?”
“Not very. Please get ready for supper. You came home late and Carol must be starved.”
I set Carol down on her feet and went as far as the door to the hall. There I turned. “By the way, I looked in the car and found — What's the matter?”
Esther had whirled from the sink. She stood with a plate in one hand and a serving spoon in the other, and somehow she looked smaller than I had ever seen her.
“Blood?” she said thickly.
“Where's blood?” Carol said excitedly.
“In the car? Huh, Mommy, is there blood in the car?”
Esther brushed at Carol's hair as if at invisible flies. She kept staring at me. “I should have looked,” she said.
I opened my mouth, but Carol's shrill voice dominated the room. “What blood. Mommy ? Why are you looking so funny?”
Esther sucked in her breath. She pasted a smile to her face. “I cut my finger dear, and I got a little blood on the car seat.”
“Let's see, Mommy.' I don't see any bandage.”
“It's only a small cut.” Esther looked at me again. “Was there much?”
“Blood?” I said. “I don't know. I meant a bag. A heavy pigskin valise.”
She laughed. Most of the laughter was locked in her throat; only a little trickled out. “Oh, yes, I remember. But I was sure — “ She glanced down at Carol's head. “I'll tell you later.”
“Tell what. Mommy?” Carol jumped up and down at her mother's side. Her braids bobbed. “About how you cut your finger?”
“Yes, dear, about how I cut my finger.”
“Why can't I hear. Mommy?”
I strode across the kitchen and gripped Esther's shoulders. “For God's sake, what happened? What about blood?”
“It's nothing.” She pursed her lips and nodded down at Carol. “Aren't you going to wash up?”
What she meant was that she would follow me upstairs where we could talk without Carol listening in. I nodded and dropped my hands from her shoulders and went up to the bathroom.
When I was drying my hands, I still heard Esther and Carol speaking in the kitchen. She could prevent Carol from tagging after her by pretending that she was going upstairs to fetch something. Was there much blood? That was what she had asked me, as if she had expected gallons of it poured all over the car seat. I found that I was rubbing my hands on the towel long after they were dry. I bunched the towel in my fingers and stood listening for her to come up. What I heard were dishes rattling in the kitchen.
Why the hell didn't she come upstairs?
“Darling, what's keeping you?” Esther called from the kitchen. “Your food is on the table.”
In rage I threw the towel from me and didn't care where it landed. Not rage, I decided as I descended the stairs. I was scared, and because I didn't know why, it was like being scared of a ghost in which you didn't believe.
Esther was ladling stew out of a big pot on the stove. Carol sat at the table, sipping tomato juice and wistfully running her fingers over the red ribbon of the candy box. I took my seat and picked up my juice glass.
“Whose bag is it?” I said. “You can at least tell me that.”
Esther's back remained to me “I don't even know his name.”
“Whose name?” Carol said. “Whose name do you mean, Mommy?”
“Carol, finish your juice.” Esther came to the table with a plate in each hand. She looked as if she hadn't slept a wink the night before, though I knew she had had at least eight hours sleep.
And she sat down without saying anything about the bag.
I put down my glass with a thump. “All right, try this one then,” I said nastily. “Do you know a man of forty five or fifty with a crooked nose?”
“Who, darling?” She asked as if she had only half-listened to me.
I repeated the description. “And a pointed chin,” I added. “Has he been around here recently asking for me?”
“No. Asking what? Who is he?”
I made myself grin. “That's my mystery. It's not an eighteen-carat one like yours, but it's the best I can manage without more notice.”
“What mystery. Papa?” Carol demanded wide-eyed. “Is it a mystery about the man you said has a crooked
nose?”
“I was only fooling,” I said. “Eat your stew.”
That was one meal where neither Esther nor I tried to shut off Carol's inexhaustible flow of talk so that we
could get a word in edgewise. I grunted yes or no as her monologue demanded and every now and then I looked as Esther. She wasn't eating. She wasn't doing much of anything except sitting.
Carol's bedtime was at seven-thirty, but I used the box of candy to bribe her to let me take her upstairs twenty minutes earlier. Putting her to bed was my job; I wouldn't have traded it for anything else I could think of. I carried her piggy-back up to her room, dumped her on the bed where she rolled squealing with laughter, tucked her in, lay down beside her with a book. That was the routine, ending up with reading a chapter.
The story was about two little girls whose names were Alice and Mary and who had been visiting their grandmother's farm for twenty-three chapters. Tonight's chapter, the twenty-fourth, seemed as long as all the others combined.
“Don't read so fast,” Carol protested.
I forced myself to go slower.
“Papa, do you want to hear a secret.?”
Carol said suddenly.
“If you think you ought to tell it.”
Her arms went around my neck. I felt her breath in my ear and one of her braids on my upturned cheek. “Mommy was crying.”
I turned my face and body to her. When?”
“When I came home from school. She was sitting in the kitchen crying. She
wouldn't tell me why.”
“Probably because of her headache,” I said.
“I hope it gets better.”
“Yes,” I said. I turned back to the book and continued reading. Something had happened
to my voice. I had to keep clearing my throat.
CHAPTER TWO
Esther sat on the living room couch with her legs tucked under her. She looked dainty and sweet and girlish sitting like that with her braids hanging over her shoulders and her hair behind her ears and that cute gingham dress not covering her knees.
I dropped down beside her. “Carol's asleep. Now what?”
“I'm sorry, darling, for acting so mysteriously.”
She leaned toward me and I put an arm about her. “I couldn't let. Carol hear. She'd have nightmares.”
“That bad.?” I said. “I've been thinking, baby. You ran over somebody with the car, didn't you ? And the man with the crooked nose is an insurance investigator.”
“Who?”
“I mentioned him at the table. At around six tonight he came to the showroom while I wasn't there sand asked Mr. Redfern questions about me.”
“But, darling, I didn't have an accident. I only saw it. What interest could an insurance investigator have in you? I was the witness.”
I chuckled with relief. “So that's all it was — you merely witnessed an accident.” I smil
ed at her.
“It was worse than that,” Esther said against my chest. “After lunch I took the car out to visit Emily. On Fort Hamilton Parkway I stopped for a red light. Just as the light changed a man crossed in front of my car. I remember that he was carrying a bag and moving rather slowly and I waited for him to pass. I was just about to release the clutch when I heard a scream and brakes squealed and I looked sideways and there was the man flying right at me. He actually seemed to be in the air, flying straight at my window.”
“Easy, baby,” I said, holding her.
She lowered her voice. “What happened was that a car going the opposite direction had started as soon as the red light went off, and the man who was crossing the street wasn't looking. That car struck him and flung him back the way he had come. He landed on his head at the side of my car. I could actually hear his head hit the road. I sat there watching him get slowly to his feet. He reached for the handle of the door at my side and pulled himself up. Then his face was right on the other side of the door window. It was horrible.”
“You poor kid. Bloody?”
“He didn't seem to be hurt, but his face was — well, its color was enough to turn my stomach. He stood looking at me and holding onto the door handle. Maybe I said something to him; I don't remember. I don't remember a crowd gathering, but suddenly people were all around my car and the other one that had hit him and traffic was tied up. Then I saw another man standing beside the man who had been hit. He was pale and trembling; he said he was the driver of the car. He asked the other man if he was hurt. The man who had been hit frowned and said: 'I'm okay.' He said that over and over, 'I'm okay,' and I sat behind the wheel and didn't know what to do. He started to turn away from the car and almost fell and grabbed the door again. He looked at me again and said: 'Mind driving me' home, lady? I guess I'm groggy.' I said I would and opened the back door.
“He stumbled when he tried to get in, and several men helped him. Then somebody in the crowd said: 'His head is bleeding.' I turned and he was sitting with his head against the back of the seat and his eyes were closed. I didn't see blood. I never did. I said: 'Where do you live.?' I asked him twice before he answered. He said: 'Near here. Let's see — ' He was thinking about it, trying to remember. Suddenly the police were there. I saw three or four of them pushing the crowd back and then one of them opened the back door of the car and stuck his head in. He said: 'Are you the man that was hit?' The man opened his eyes and stared at the policeman in the oddest way.”
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