Bruno Fischer

by J. Max Gilbert

  “The oddest way?” I said.

  “His eyes seemed to stand out of his head. I have no idea what he looked like, really, but I remember thinking that his eyes would fall out of their sockets if he kept staring at the policeman that way. Then he said: 'I'm okay. This lady is driving me home.' The policeman said: 'Like hell you're okay. The back

  of your head — ' He glanced at me and didn't finish. I turned in my seat and I still couldn't see the back of the injured man's head. He said: 'Damn it, I'm okay. I ought to know I'm okay.' Okay — that was the word he used over and over, as if trying to talk himself into it.

  “The policeman was half in the car and half out. He spoke very gently. He said: 'You better wait for an ambulance, mister.' The man became wild. He said: 'Damn it, I don't need a copper to tell me what to do!' That's what he called the policeman — copper, just like in the movies. The policeman stepped away from the car and spoke to another policeman. He came back and told me that as long as the injured man was in the car already, it would be quicker and better for him if I drove him to the hospital. I said I would be glad to, and the policeman got into the back seat. The injured man had stopped protesting. His eyes were closed again. He sat so very still.”

  “What about his bag?”

  “Oh, yes. One of the other policemen came to the car with the bag and asked if it was the injured man's. The injured man opened. His eyes and said: 'Bag?' He saw the second policeman push it into the car, and he said: 'God, yes, the bag.' Then he started to laugh in a way that made me cold all over. He said: 'Can you imagine that, I forgot the, bag?' And suddenly he stopped laughing and put his head back. The policeman outside slammed the door and I started the car.”

  “And at the hospital he again forgot the bag?” I said.

  “He didn't forget. You see — ' “ She started to shake in my arms. “They were so quiet in the back seat, the injured man and the policeman. I think I'd driven about five or six blocks when I heard the policeman say: 'Holy God!' I was driving very slowly. I looked around. The policeman was holding the injured man in his arms. He said to me: 'I think he's dead.' Without warning, without a sound, nothing at all — he was dead.”

  “Concussion of the brain,” I said. “Sometimes it happens like that. They think they're all right, but they're practically dead already.”

  “Yes, I'd had quite a shock when I'd seen him hit, but it had started to wear off. Now it came back, only worse. I don't know how I drove to the hospital, but it was only a few blocks farther and there I was behind the wheel and I suppose it was easier driving, doing something, than not driving. At the hospital

  they carried him out of the car. I didn't look. The policeman told me to wait. I sat there in the car and then the policeman came out and took my name and address and told me I could go home.”

  “And the bag remained in the car.”

  “The policeman should have thought of it,” she said. “But he went into the hospital with the men who carried the dead man out, and when he came back he spoke to me through the car window and didn't see the bag again. In the confusion and excitement it must have slipped his mind. As for me, I couldn't think about the bag or anything. I was numb. I hardly remember driving home. When I was in the house, I went to pieces.”

  “Carol told me she saw you cry.”

  “Yes. That made me feel better.”

  Esther turned her face up to me with a wan smile. “You know I'm not the hysterical type, darling, but it was so intensely personal, the man dying in my car like that.”

  “I know, baby.”

  She pressed her face against my chest.

  “What about that poor man's bag?”

  “I'll drive it over to the police station in a little while.”

  Next door Mrs. Gillette shouted to her boy Allen that it was his bedtime, and from across the street Allen shouted back that it was early. Down the block a horn honked impatiently. Spiked heels clicked nervously past the house and two young women giggled. Somewhere in the street a motor coughed and sputtered and refused to catch. These were the usual pre-twilight sounds which meant home. I felt fine. A man had died in the car with Esther and had spoiled her afternoon and my supper, but he was nobody to us and men were always dying and by tomorrow he would be only somebody to recall when discussing curious experiences. I felt fine because I was home with my wife in my arms and my daughter asleep upstairs in her bed.

  The phone rang. I unwrapped myself from Esther and went out to the hall to answer it.

  “I'd like to speak to Mrs. Breen,” a man said over the wire.

  “Who's this?”

  “Are you Mr. Breen?'

  “Yes.”

  “I'm Raymond Teacher's brother.”

  His voice was an agonizing drawl. He treated each word as if it were a sentence by itself.

  “Raymond Teacher?” I said.

  “He was killed in an accident this afternoon. I understand that your wife was involved.”

  “She wasn't involved,” I said. “She merely drove him to the hospital.”

  “That's what I meant. I'd like to speak to her, please.”

  Esther had come out into the hall.

  '“About the accident?” she asked. “Is it the police?”

  “The dead man's brother.” I handed her the phone.

  Esther said into the mouthpiece: “Hello, this is Mrs. Breen . . . . Why, yes, the bag is still in the car. My husband found it a short while ago. , . . No, we haven't touched it. . . . It's still in the car. My husband was going to take it over to the police station. . . . Naturally you can have it. We'll be home all evening.... Yes, that's the right address . . . . You're welcome, I'm sure.”

  She hung up. “He's coming for the bag this evening,” she told me.

  I had a match up to my cigarette. I shook it out. “I wonder if we ought to give the bag to anybody else but the police.”

  “Why not, if he's the poor man's brother? Besides, it will save you a trip.”

  “I guess so.”

  Carol said: “Mommy, who were you talking to on the phone?”

  She was standing at the head of the stairs in her pajamas. She yawned and scratched her thigh.

  Esther sighed and went up to her. We worked in shifts putting Carol to bed. Generally it required three or four journeys upstairs before she was settled for the night.

  I went into the living room and dropped the match into an ashtray and looked out of a front window. Arthur Gillette was trying to restore luster to his weather-worn Chevy with a can of wax and at the same time arguing with his son Allen to go in to bed. A man leaned against the telephone pole in front of my house and watched Gillette and the boy as if he had never before seen a father having trouble getting his

  small son into the house.

  I went out into the hall. Esther was coming down the stairs. I told her I was going out to the garage. I wasn't sure why, but I wanted to have another look at that bag.

  The man left the support of the pole when I closed the front door behind me. His eyes swept by me without stopping at me and then back to Gillette. I stuck a fresh cigarette into my mouth and strode up to him.

  “Got a match?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He dug a matchbook out of a pocket and handed it' to me.

  His nose wasn't very crooked. It was twisted only slightly at the bridge. Mr. Redfern had been right about his chin except that it jutted out to two points made by a cleft you could have put your small finger into. His eyes were pale-blue and as blank as an infant's stare. Fifty would be about the right age for him, though his compact, muscular body looked younger.

  I returned his matches and said: “What do you want.?”

  His eyebrows went up. He seemed to be smiling, without a muscle moving in his face. “Come again.?” he said.

  “Late this afternoon you were in the Planet showroom where I work and asked my boss about me without leaving a name. Now you're watching my house.”

  “What for?”

  “That's w
hat I’m asking you.”

  He laughed without uttering sound. “Is there a law against walking through this street?”

  “You weren't walking.”

  He tossed the matchbook from one hand to the other and back. “You're a smart cookie, aren't you.?” That unblinking stare lay flatly on me.

  I looked at Gillette polishing his car fifteen feet away. I looked across the street at a couple of girls sitting on a stoop, at a neighbor I knew only by sight sweeping the tiny stretch of walk up to his door, at people strolling in the mildness of a fine September evening. I was glad that, it was a nice street and that people were on it and that it was not yet dark; I was bigger than Crooked Nose and probably better with my fists, but I wouldn't have enjoyed speaking to him on a lonely street.

  “I'm not smart enough to know what you're after,” I said, “except that you're up.to no good. Otherwise you'd tell me.”

  His fist snapped shut over the matchbook. It was a broad, strong fist with dark hair curling up to the second knuckle. “You've got an imagination, mister,” he said. He turned with easy grace and sauntered up the street.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Gillette had got his son to go into the house. He waved the waxing rag at me as I approached his car parked at the curb. He was a dumpy man with his weight centered around his middle. His face could have been cut out of a pumpkin and wasn't made for looking solemn,' but he tried it. “Hey, Breen, that was a hell of an experience your missus had this afternoon,” he said.

  “How do you know about it?”

  “It's in the paper. The Bugle. Just a little piece. It said a man was hit by a car on Fort Hamilton Parkway and he died while your missus drove him to the hospital.”

  “Did it give her name and address?”

  “How do you think I knew it was her?”

  Crooked Nose was out of sight. What could he do — walk around the block and take up his watch from behind a tree, or call it a day and go home?

  “It must have given your missus a bang, him dying on her like that,” Gillette was saying.

  “It did.”

  I walked on to the candy store at the corner. I bored through the usual crowd of young loafers hanging around the newsstand and pulled out the last remaining copy of the Brooklyn Daily Biggie. There had been a run on the paper tonight because the Dodgers had taken a double-header from the Giants. I went into the store, bought a pack of cigarettes, paid for it and the paper, and stood against the wall and opened the paper.

  I found it on page three. There were only a couple of paragraphs. The first gave the bare essentials, Esther’s story boiled down into two sentences with so many dependent clauses that I had to read them over to straighten them out. The second .paragraph gave names and addresses. Raymond Teacher had been the dead man’s name all right; he was a foreigner from the Bronx. Howard Pine, the man whose car had struck him, was a local product from Schenectady Avenue.

  An accidental auto death wasn’t sensational news in Brooklyn.

  I folded the paper and tucked it under my arm and left the candy store. Twilight was spreading mellowly over the street and even the shouts of children were somehow softened. I passed Gillette brooding down at an area on the front right fender he had waxed.

  “Why don’t you let me sell you a new Planet?” I said.

  “When they give them away as grab-bag prizes, I’ll be able to afford one.” He rubbed more wax into the spot.

  A magnificent postwar Cadillac convertible was parked in front of my driveway, blocking it. It had a Florida license plate. From a side angle I saw a man behind the wheel. His hat was pushed away from the back of his head. He needed a .haircut. A couple of more steps showed me definitely that he was not Crooked Nose. He was younger and a lot uglier in spite of the fact that his nose and chin were reasonably normal.

  Crooked Nose had not reappeared.

  I turned my head the other way and saw a man walking down my driveway. When he reached the demonstration coupe, he tried the door. I’d locked it.

  I strode toward him. He heard me and turned and thrust both hands deep into his topcoat pockets.

  It was too warm for a topcoat, but he was wearing one. It was tan camel hair and looked like a lot of money, to match the Cadillac. So did his suit under the open topcoat — shaggy tweed. He wore a tan shirt and a black-and-white necktie with broad stripes running lengthwise. His hat was unblemished pearl-gray. His getup wasn’t to my taste, but on him it looked good. His build was boyish, slender, but he carried it well. His face fitted the rest of him. It looked as if it might have been turned out by a high-class shop which went in for faces. The mustache under his high-bridged, matinee idol nose was as thin and precise as the edge of a razor blade. He probably fancied himself quite a lad with the women.

  “What are you looking for?” I demanded.

  At the moment he was looking for it in my face. He took his time answering, and then, didn’t answer my question. “Mr. Breen?” he said.

  “So what? That doesn’t give you the right to snoop in my car.”

  He smiled. If I were a woman, I might have gone crazy over that smile. “I'm a friend of Ray Teacher. Was, I mean. I came for his bag.”

  “Are you the man who phoned about the bag a little while ago?”

  He wasn't so good. He blinked and the smile faded before he brought it back. “Sure,” he said.

  “Like hell,” I said. “The man who phoned said he was Teacher’s brother.”

  “Oh, sure. But he was busy and asked me to drop around for the bag.”

  “Then let him come for it tomorrow.” I didn’t like Handsome’s eyes. They reminded me of Crooked Nose’s. You looked into them and saw nothing.

  He said: “Ray Teacher’s brother is a guy who speaks so slow you can die before he gets the next word out. Does that prove I’m on the level?”

  “It proves that you know him, but it doesn’t explain why you sneaked down the driveway instead of going up to the door and .asking for the bag.”

  “I just finished speaking to your wife. She said the bag was in the car and she thought you might be in the garage, so I went to look for you.”

  Over my left shoulder I saw that the living room lights had gone on. Radio music flowed out through the open side windows. Esther would be sitting beside the radio reading a mystery novel. The man in the Cadillac convertible parked directly across the driveway entrance had his head turned toward us.

  “I’m going to drive the bag to the police station,” I said. “You can follow me. If you’re entitled to it, they’ll give it to you.”

  Handsome took his left hand out of his topcoat pocket and ran the nail of his thumb over his mustache. Portrait of a man in deep thought. Then he said:

  “Why make all this fuss over a bag with a few shirts and socks in it?”

  “Socks and shirts aren’t that heavy.”

  “How do I know what’s in it?” he said testily. “All I know, my pal’s brother was killed by a car and he asked me to do him a favor and pick up the bag. How would five bucks satisfy you for your trouble?”

  “You can get the bag for nothing at the police station.”

  “I’ve got a date in twenty minutes. Ten bucks.”

  I said nothing.

  “Okay, twenty. I’m in a hurry.”

  “Let’s hear you come up to fifty,” I said.

  “Boy, you’re a business man.” He reached into his hip pocket for his wallet.

  “I wanted to hear you offer fifty, that’s all,” I said. “You told me what I wanted to know. Now beat it.”

  Slowly his hand reappeared without the wallet and slipped back into the topcoat pocket. “A wise guy,” he said reflectively.

  “I catch on after a while,” I told him. “That secondhand bag isn’t worth fifty dollars or twenty dollars, especially not if you’re legitimately entitled to it for nothing.”

  Twilight was spreading over the driveway. He stood very still. The handsome face was suddenly washed-out, tired.


  “Never mind the bag,” he said woodenly and stepped past me.

  I watched him walk up the driveway. He spoke to the man behind the wheel through the window of the Cadillac and then opened the door and got in. I tuned to the garage.

  The garage door Esther had left open in the afternoon was still open and so was the sedan door. The pigskin bag was where I had left it on the concrete floor. I lifted it with two hands and shook it. There was a heavy, sluggish rattling, like big stones hitting each other.

  I looked up the driveway. The Cadillac hadn’t moved. The two men in it were talking it over. Handsome wanted the bag too badly to leave without another try. I thought of how he had not taken his right hand out of his topcoat pocket.

  Out of my pants pocket I fished the ring on which were the two sedan keys and I unlocked the trunk and put the bag inside. I locked the trunk and looked over my shoulder through the open door and past the coupe. They were getting out of the Cadillac.

  They came side by side down the driveway, and Handsome’s hands were deep in his topcoat pockets. The other man was shorter, but very wide all the way down to his ankles. His face was wide too, and especially his nose which had a pulpy spread to it. He moved as solidly and as relentlessly as a .heavy tank.

  I stepped out of the garage. My palm sweated against the metal keys clenched in it. They saw me standing there just outside the garage, and Handsome smiled, I turned my body as if to look into the garage. To the left of the garage and in back of the house there was a tiny yard covered by grass which I hadn’t cut in weeks. My body was between my hand and the two men, and I hardly had to move my wrist to flick the keys into the grass. In the gathering darkness my own eyes lost sight of the keys before they fell.

  They were rounding the demonstration coupe before f turned back to them. I remained where I was, waiting. Handsome came within a foot of me and stopped. The other man stood at my side, not close, his body solid and squat, his face heavy and broad and not pleasant. His right hand hovered with apparent carelessness near the right lapel of his jacket.