More Good Old Stuff

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More Good Old Stuff Page 32

by John D. MacDonald


  Two large and solid men in dark suits came in and stood a few feet behind her, looking down at her, looking inquisitively at Max.

  “Oh, Jerry! Jerry, darling,” the girl said, her voice somehow thick and twisted.

  Max had been around a sufficiently long time so that he was about to say, “Take her along, boys.” He recognized one of them as Billy Shaw, a district man.

  But there was a sudden hotness on his thick wrist and he knew that a tear had fallen there. Somehow this made it all quite different. Tears were oddly in the mood of this day of unemployment, this sultry spring day.

  He left his arm right where it was, with the warm pressure of her against it. He said mildly, “Something we can do for you boys?”

  Shaw looked at him and said, “Seems she called you Jerry. Wouldn’t you be Max Raffidy that used to drop into precinct, reporting police?”

  “It’s her special name for me,” Max said.

  “Don’t go wise with us, Raff. What’s her name?”

  “If you want her name, let’s do it right, Shaw. Let’s all go right down and book her.”

  Shaw gave him a look of baffled disgust. “You people know too much. There’s no charge, Raffidy. She was reported acting funny on the street. Crying and carrying on.”

  “She’s fine now. All my women cry and carry on when they can’t be with me.”

  Stukey came over drying his hands on his apron. “I’d just as soon not have no trouble here, gentlemen.”

  “Keep her off the street,” Shaw snapped. He nudged his running mate and together they walked heavily out.

  “Bring the lady a brandy, Stuke,” Max said. Stukey shrugged and went back behind the bar.

  Now I have a tramp on my hands, Max thought. Sir Lancelot Raffidy roars in on his white horse. She seemed content to make a permanent pillow of his arm. In fact, the arm threatened to go to sleep. The kitteny whine of the woman pretending to be a puppet had covered up the little conversation with Shaw. It still made a certain amount of privacy possible.

  “Hey,” Max said softly. He burrowed with his other hand, got a crooked finger under her chin, gently eased her up.

  Her hands slid down so that she held his big hand with both of hers, gave him the warmest smile he had seen in many a moon.

  Stukey brought the brandy and plodded away. Max gave the girl the Raffidy evaluation. Silly spring hat, worn a bit awry. Hair worn too long for fashion, long and blond and curled under at the ends. Not harsh parched blond. Soft and natural. Short straight nose, unplucked brows, gray eyes, damp with tears, gray-purple smudges of weariness under the eyes. A young mouth, warm and somehow crumpled. As though from recent hurt. Pale, with a smudge on her cheek and the side of her nose.

  The tiny bugles blew inside Max. This was no tramp. This might have a very legitimate news interest. Then he smiled wearily as he realized that even if there was a news interest, there was no place to phone it in.

  Obviously the kid—she wasn’t over twenty-two—had been having a rough time. The side of her hand was scraped raw and her hair was tangled.

  The gray eyes bothered him. She smiled right at him, but when he looked into her eyes there was an emptiness there: as though she were smiling, not at Max, but at somebody sitting right behind Max. A faintly creepy dish, this one.

  “Drink your brandy,” he said.

  “You know I don’t drink, Jerry.”

  Max grunted as though somebody had shoved an elbow into the pit of his stomach. “Baby, look around. They’ve gone. And you need the brandy.”

  She let go of his hand, picked up the shot glass. “Right down?”

  “Down the hatch.”

  She knocked it back, thumped the glass down, gasping, coughing, strangling, new tears in her eyes. “Fooo!” she said.

  He watched color come back into her cheeks. “Sit right here,” he said. Stukey was watching too curiously. He went up to the bar, paid the tab, went back to the table and got her and walked her out into the late-afternoon sun. She clung to his arm. Usually Max did not care for the clingers, but this one made him feel very masterful. She was taller than he had thought, and she wasn’t too steady on her feet.

  “Where are we going, Jerry?” she asked. Her voice had the small and faintly faraway tinge that her eyes had—as though she talked to someone a few feet behind Max.

  He stopped twenty feet from the door of Stukey’s and said, “Let’s straighten this out, kid. I’m not Jerry.”

  She moved away from him. Her eyes widened. Her mouth began to work. She began to make a hoarse moaning sound. Max had seen many ladies putting on an act. This was no act.

  She looked as though she were about to run from him, screaming. He took three steps toward her, grabbed her shoulders and shook her gently. “Hey,” he said. “Sure I’m Jerry. I was kidding, baby.”

  Right in the street, in the sunlight, she came into his arms, saying hoarsely, “Don’t do that to me again, Jerry. Please don’t.”

  Some urchins witnessed the deal, and did considerable hooting and whistling.

  Max walked down the street with her and he felt oddly like a man juggling a hand grenade after the pin had been pulled. He had begun to feel a certain responsibility. So, if he had to be Jerry, he had to be Jerry.

  “When did you eat last, kid?” he said.

  “I … I don’t know.”

  Hiram’s was two blocks away. Not worth taxi fare. They took a booth in the back and she wanted her steak medium well. She ate without taking her eyes from Max’s face and he began to think that this Jerry was one lucky character.

  Finally he had a play figured out. He grinned at her, his lips a bit stiff, and said, “Honey, we’ll pretend we just met, hey?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Glad to meet you, miss. My name’s Jerry Glockenspiel.”

  “Silly! Your name’s Jerry Norma. I’m Marylen Banner.” She gravely shook his hand.

  Max frowned. He said absently, “Hi, Marylen.” The name Jerry Norma had rung a tiny bell way back in his mind. Jerry Norma had, at one time or another, been news. Not big news. Something about the size of a page three quarter column.

  In a low voice that shook with emotion, she said, “Why did you do it, Jerry? Why did you run out on me like that?”

  Max sighed inwardly. Boy ditches girl. Girl goes off the beam. Tired old story. Better get along with her, turn her over for observation.

  “I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “You were just pretending, weren’t you?”

  “Sure. Just pretending.”

  She said softly, her head tilted on one side, “The lights, the way they came on so quickly. And that concrete floor. The black drops. You walked away and the lights came on and then all that noise like thunder. You doubled over and fell so slowly, Jerry. And then—when I ran to you—”

  She stopped and put the back of her hand to her forehead, her shadowed eyes closed. With the smudges washed off, she was delicately beautiful.

  Max shut his jaw hard. He ground out his cigarette and, keeping his voice level and calm, he said, “You thought I was shot, eh?”

  Her eyes snapped open. “Shot? I—I—can’t remember.”

  “I walked away from you and the lights came on.”

  “I think you left me sitting in the car, Jerry. Yes, in the car.”

  “Then the car was inside. A garage, wasn’t it?”

  “Now it’s fading away, Jerry. I can’t remember. I can’t.”

  Suddenly she looked around, at the tabletop, at the floor under the bench. “My purse! I’ve lost my purse!”

  “You didn’t have it when you found me in that bar, Marylen. Can you remember where you were before that?”

  “I don’t know, Jerry. I was looking for you for a long time.”

  He realized that she spoke well, that her clothes were smart, though not extremely expensive or shining new.

  “I’ll take you home, Marylen. Where do you live?”

  “Please stop teasing m
e, Jerry. Please. I’m too tired to take very much.”

  Max stared at her. “Look, I just plain forgot where you were staying here.”

  “Don’t you remember, Jerry? You met me at the train. We were going to find a hotel for me and then you said that when we were married I could move into your place. But my purse! All my money was in the purse. Everything.”

  “Now I remember. You came on the train from Chicago.”

  “Jerry, are you losing your mind? From New Orleans! When you wrote me I gave up my job and found another girl to take over my share of the apartment on Burgundy Street. And I came to you as fast as I could, darling.”

  Max ran a finger around the inside edge of his collar. “Sure, kid. Sure.”

  “What will we do?” she asked. “We checked all my things at the station and my baggage checks were in my purse.”

  “Maybe we could get in touch with your folks.”

  “You say such queer things, Jerry Norma. I told you what happened to my folks. It was so long ago that I hardly remember them. I told you about my guardian and how there was just enough money for school, and then nothing.”

  “What am I going to do with you?” Max asked helplessly.

  “You have plenty of money, Jerry, darling. Find me a room and tomorrow we’ll shop together for what I need—to be married in.”

  Suddenly she winced, leaned low over the table and said, “Jerry, I’m sick. I’m so sick …”

  When he had the cab waiting outside, he went back to the table and got her. She leaned heavily against him, walked with her head down, eyes half closed. People stared at them with wry amusement, thinking that she was drunk.

  He said to the driver, “Memorial Hospital, and snap it up.”

  But three blocks further on, he leaned forward and said, “Changed my mind. Take us to Bleecker Street.”

  He paid off the cab, walked her up the three steps, held her in his left arm while he got the key in the door. She collapsed completely inside the door, and he picked her up in his arms, carrying her like a child. Gruber, the superintendent-janitor, came out into the hall, stared at him, then grinned.

  Max snapped, “Pick up her hat and hand it to me. Then get hold of my friend Doc Morrison across the street.”

  He stepped with her into the elevator as Gruber went out the front door. He had to put her on the floor while he got his door key and opened his front door. The tiny living room of his apartment was rancid with stale smoke, thick with dust. Through the open bedroom doorway he could see the unmade bed. He turned sideways to get her through the narrow door, her head hanging loosely, her arm swinging.

  He grunted as he lowered her onto the bed. Then he went to the window, stood smoking a cigarette, his back to her, until he heard the knock on the door.

  Morrison was young, dark, quick. He put his bag on the floor, went over to her, took her pulse. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “You’re the doctor. She’s not loaded, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then get out and shut the door.”

  Max sat in the armchair. He picked up a newspaper, found that he wasn’t getting any sense out of the words. He flipped it aside.

  In fifteen minutes Morrison came out, leaving the bedroom door open. Max looked in, saw the girl was snoring softly.

  Morrison looked angrily at Max and said, “Somebody gave that girl a hell of a beating.”

  “Beating?”

  “Come here.” Morrison led him into the bedroom, pulled her arm out from under the covers. There were two large purpled bruises between her elbow and shoulder. He said, “She’s got a round dozen bruises like that. And look here.” He rolled her head to one side, pulled the fine blond hair away from her ear. Behind her ear was a large, angry-looking lump. “That looks like she’s been sapped. But I wouldn’t know. She’s suffering from the beating, from shock, maybe from a minor concussion. I gave her a shot of sedative. She’ll sleep hard for twelve hours. There don’t seem to be any broken bones. I’d like to get my hands on whoever treated that girl that way.”

  “That’s a pleasure I would enjoy too, Doc,” Max said gently.

  “Twenty dollars, please. I’ll stop in tomorrow and see how she is and see if we should take her down for X rays.”

  Morrison took the twenty and walked out, still angry, slamming the door behind him. Max walked back in and stood by the bed and looked down at her. In sleep her face was composed, childlike. Her blond hair was softly spread on the pillow.

  He turned to the lightweight suit she had been wearing, went carefully through the two pockets. He found a balled-up handkerchief smelling faintly of perfume. Nothing else. Then he went over the labels. The shoes and suit had come from New Orleans, definitely. The other items could have.

  He opened the window a bit further, looked down at her again, and said, “Honey, you’re gradually becoming a burden.”

  Closing the door gently, he left the bedroom. He locked the apartment. The streetlights had just come on. The air was growing a bit more chill. At the corner, he swung onto a bus and took it down to within a half block of the Examiner office.

  Townsend, on the desk, said, “Sorry, Raffidy, but we haven’t—”

  “This is something else, Bobby. I want to see if you got a clip on a citizen of this fair city named Jerry Norma. Jerome, I’d guess.”

  Townsend, relieved that Raffidy hadn’t come about a nonexistent job, gave him the use of an empty desk and, within a few minutes, a copy boy brought a brown manila envelope from the morgue.

  Ten minutes later Raffidy had a fair picture in his mind of a young man named Jerry Norma. In 1966, an alert gas station attendant had smashed the eighteen-year-old Norma with a wrench, while Norma was working on the till. He drew a one-to-three. Fifteen months with good behavior. In 1968, he had been implicated in the case against a car-theft ring. Case dismissed for lack of evidence. In 1971, he was under suspicion of having tried to bribe a member of the State Liquor License Board. No case. No trouble with the cops since that time. In 1975, listed as one of the “partners” in an enterprise called Valley Farms, Incorporated. Max knew the place. Riding horses. Whiskey sours for breakfast and a lot of fat gambling. A semiprivate club with the rumored reputation of being “protected.”

  In 1977, a paragraph about how Jerome Norma, acting as agent for the Concord Amusement Devices, had issued a statement to the effect that none of the equipment located near the public schools of the city was in any sense gambling equipment, but should be considered merely games of skill.

  There was a cut with the paragraph. Max studied the picture. Yes, Norma would be about his size. A bit thinner. Same general coloring.

  He knew the type. A rough kid who starts out like a chump then finds that you can work close to the letter of the law without actually stepping over. A rough kid who gets smarter and smarter, learning where the four-thousand-dollar convertibles and the plush apartments come from.

  But where would the girl fit? He had heard that Concord Amusement Devices was a segment of a national organization. If Jerry Norma was high up in Concord, he could very well take business trips to New Orleans. Gambling was on the way back there. And, meeting Marylen, it was also probable that Jerry could fall for her. She wasn’t what he was used to. She had—might as well admit it—more than a little charm and breeding.

  He found a phone book, found a J. B. Norma listed. He signaled for an outside line, dialed the number given. The phone at the other end was picked up in the middle of the second ring. A cautious low voice said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. Norma?”

  “Isn’t in. Who’s this?”

  “I had an appointment with him for five o’clock. He didn’t keep it.”

  “No. He went out of town for a while.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “I couldn’t say. If you’ll leave your name—”

  “Are you a friend of his?”

  “Yeah. He loaned me his apartment here until he gets back.”

  �
�This is about some—some equipment to be installed for me.”

  “Oh!” There was a pause. There was a distant sound of voices. Max listened intently, but with the newsroom noise around him, he couldn’t catch what was said. The man came back on and said, “If it is in connection with the Concord Amusement Devices, friend, you get hold of Bill Walch tomorrow morning at the Concord offices. Know where they are?”

  “On Madison.”

  “That’s right.”

  Max hung up slowly. The girl had spoken of Jerry Norma falling over slowly in some place that could have been a garage. And now Jerry Norma was out of town. Way out, maybe. He knew of Bill Walch. Walch was also one of the partners in Valley Farms. A big jovial backslapping man of mysterious and varied interests.

  He thanked Townsend, walked slowly out of the building. He grabbed a crosstown bus to Primrose, went on back to Stukey’s. The crowd was a lot heavier and the place was thick with smoke. He wedged himself into a foot of space at the bar. A variety show was on video.

  Stukey came along the bar, poured the shot and said, barely moving his lips, “You had callers.”

  “Same ones followed the girl?”

  “Other side of the fence, lad. Very harsh types. They wanted the girl. All I knew was she left with a stranger.”

  “Thanks, Stuke.”

  “They went the same way you went when you left with her.”

  Max downed his drink, dropped the money on the bar and was out of the door, moving fast before he had thoroughly swallowed the rye. He kept on moving fast until he rounded the corner where Hiram’s, bright with green neon, shone in the middle of the block. Two cabs were parked in the stand at the corner.

  He went over to the first one. The driver snapped the door open. Max pushed it shut and said, “People have been bothering you with questions?”

  “In a nasty way. Why?”

  “They were tracking a couple who came out of Hiram’s a little after five. Is that right?”

  “Am I talking for free?”

  “For whatever it turns out to be worth.”

  “Okay, so they wanted the couple. Vague on the guy but lots of detail on the woman. They let it be known they could be unhappy about it all. Joey saw ’em come out. The guy first to hail the hack, and then he went back and brought out this dish. Drunk, maybe. Or sick. Joey would have had the fare but his boiler didn’t catch the first time and so a floater got the fare. These other nosy guys asked Joey about it until they got tired. Unless they can use cops, they can’t trace it.”

 

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