Catch-As-Catch-Can

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “They saw her,” said Dee. “They know something.”

  Outside the couple was hurrying toward their car.

  “I’d just like to know what it’s all about,” the man complained. “I’m not going to.…”

  “Not going to get mixed up,” said the woman viciously. “And spoil our trip. That type,” she added. “Hollywood.”

  Dee was running after them and Andy behind her. The woman got into the driver’s seat. She had the car started and in motion so fast that the man was forced to close the door in Dee’s very face.

  He bawled out the window, “She spoke to a man—” and then he was gone.

  Dee would have started to run again but Andy held her.

  “Wait.”

  She was straining to see after that car, to see which way it would go; it was in her mind to chase, to insist.

  Andy held her. “You can’t catch them now. Get calm, Dee.”

  Dee had soft-soled fabric slippers on her bare feet and when she stamped her foot the pavement stung.

  “She thinks he just wants to talk to a pretty girl,” she cried. “But maybe—”

  “Use your head. We can’t go chasing off on tangents.”

  “Laila spoke to a man! He could describe the kind of man—”

  “What good would that do? Maybe she spoke to a man.” Andy was crisp and tense. “Maybe not. This guy had a roving eye, all right. Wanted to get in on the excitement”

  “He wanted to get in on the—fun?” said Dee bitterly. “All right We’ll discount it. What are we going to do to find her?”

  “Just stop boiling over,” he said, a little coolly. “I’m going to ask in the real estate office.”

  Dee, stumbling behind him, looked at the traffic, moving, flowing, and saw the whole city Quid, everything shifting, people who crossed Laila’s path now moving elsewhere. She saw how this pursuit could be a crazy zigzag, how they could be blown this way and that like a piece of paper being buffeted by conflicting breezes. Unless they were cool and careful.… She thought of Laila, who wouldn’t be cool and careful at all, who would not know danger from kindness.

  The bland faces in the real estate office were turning politely.

  CHAPTER 8

  Vince Procter made change for a twenty. His fares turned into the drugstore and he pulled away. He spoke into his intercom. The spectral voice repeated, “Seventy-three.” It lost its impersonal character suddenly. “Say, Vince. Just told to get word out. Keep your eyes open for a girl, about five foot three, with long black hair, wearing a pink suit. They want to get her to a hospital.”

  “What’s the matter with her?” Vince was nothing at all but astonished.

  “She’s got to get some kind of treatment. Some doctor is calling the cab companies. It’s O.K. We checked with the police.”

  “Is that right?” Vince drawled. His eyes flickered. “What’s the story?”

  “They want her at the Greenleaf Hospital before midnight. That’s all I know.”

  “Before midnight, eh? Is there a reward or something?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “Lemme know if you hear that.”

  “Roger.” The voice got impersonal. “Where are you?”

  Vince told. “In action,” he snapped. “Code red.” This meant that he had a fare and would leave the intercom open.

  He didn’t have a fare … yet. But cab number seventy-three waltzed around in a U turn. Vince Procter was pleased and excited. Boy-and-girl stuff might bore him but intrigue he loved. He had always wanted to be a spy.

  Clive closed the phone book. “O.K., honey, now we’ve got the number, we can go. Say, what if Pearl isn’t there?” (He knew she wasn’t there yet, but he avoided remembering how it was that he knew.)

  “But she was going there, Clive,” said Laila with a lost look on her face.

  “Probably Dee’s going to guess where you are, honey. You might run into Dee.”

  Laila said, restlessly, “Could we go there. Clive? You do know where to go?”

  “We’ll go,” said Clive kindly. “I guess we can cross that bridge when we come to it.” He looked at his watch. It was two o’clock.

  Outside, he made an imperious gesture and a cab slid in. Clive began to give the Fleming address but he changed his mind in mid-air. “You know Inglewood? You know Fernwald? Make it the eighteen hundred block on Fernwald, east side of the street. I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  The driver saluted and Clive got in beside Laila. “I just remembered there’s an alley,” he told her. “Maybe we can kinda sneak in the back way. Lay low and see if Dee is there. This is hide-and-seek, eh? Ever play that, where you lived when you were little?”

  Laila put her head back. “When I was very little,” she said. She was thinking that she was older. Her face was sad.

  Clive had a nervous appreciation of her mood. He put himself in the pattern of her older cousin, wise and fond.

  “Aw now, honey, tell Clive? Why don’t you? I know something must have happened. What’s got you so upset?”

  Laila felt he was kind. “Andrew explained to me,” she said bravely, “I’m taking too much from Dee and I am a trouble to both of them.”

  “That Talbot,” Clive snorted. “You don’t want to worry your head about anything he says. As a matter of fact, Dee takes too much on herself, if you ask me. She’s bossy, you know. She’s even kept me from trying to … uh … be a better friend to you. She really has. She wants to do it all.”

  “She’s been too kind,” said Laila forlornly. “I don’t know, Clive. Mamma was always kind. Jonas was kind. I thought it was easy.”

  “There, now.…”

  “But I think it is easy for Pearl to be kind, don’t you, Clive?”

  “Sure it is, honey. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s only Dee and that Talbot who make such a thing of it. I hope they don’t get Dr. Stirling all stirred up, though I.…”

  “I don’t think,” she whispered, “Dr. Stirling is so kind.”

  “Well, he’s a bossy type, too,” said Clive complacently. “And those medics get that way. Always saying the word between life and death.…”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  The cab’s intercom was buzzing. “Seventy-three,” said the driver irritably. “Long haul to Inglewood.”

  “Pickup on Western.” The voice gave an address.

  “Take me an hour, hour and a half.…”

  “Skip it,” the voice said.

  Clive was gazing numbly at the back of the driver’s head. He felt a freezing wonder. This wasn’t another cab. This was the same one! He had been thinking, that with her coat.…

  Well, he hadn’t done anything wrong. What did he have to worry about? Laila was emotionally upset. That’s all he knew. As a matter of fact, he realized, that was all he dared to know. He’d already made his decision to be ignorant. He’d go ahead, turn the kid over to Pearl Dean. He began to think over what little he knew about this Pearl Dean.

  “Pearl used to know your mother, didn’t she?” he murmured.

  “Pearl knows her well,” said Laila.

  Startled by the present tense, Clive sucked his tooth. Who was this Pearl Dean and what was her angle? Spirit stuff? Did she like Laila or Laila’s money or what, he wondered.

  At two P.M. the blue convertible was sliding south. Dee and Andy had found out no more on that corner. Now they were doing the most sensible thing they could think to do. They were going to the Fleming house in the hope that Laila was also going there.

  Dee could feel, piling up behind them, the vast network of streets they had not searched and could not search for one small girl. She saw, sliding by, all the variety of places—cleaners, drugstore, appliance shop, cocktail bar, parking lot, movie theater, shoe repair, linen store, luggage, laundry and hamburger stand. And the apartments and courts, motels, and houses, houses, houses. She observed the traffic, buses and trolleys, the trucks and the taxis, and the cars, cars, cars. Laila was a needle in a haystack, ju
st as hard to find as that.

  She was beginning to surmise that it was a very peculiar kind of haystack. The couple at the florist’s, for instance. If he had not been a man with an eye for a pretty figure, if his wife had not long known and resented this—if another kind of couple had seen Laila there—she and Andy might know more than they now knew. All the “if’s” were people—thoughts in people’s heads.

  If Laila had spoken to ask direction of some solid citizen, it was one thing. If she’d spoken to some rackety, pimply youth, it was another. If she’d spoken to someone who would not sense Laila’s own innocent difference—haystack? It was a labyrinth. There were dark twists in it.

  Andy glanced at her face. “Tell me,” he said, “what would Laila do if she gets to the Fleming house and Pearl Dean is not there?”

  “I don’t know. Everything depends on so many other things. When, where, and what kind of person—on this Mrs. Fleming, maybe. You can’t—” She wanted to express her feeling, her vision—but he interrupted.

  “I think we’ve got to call Stirling back. We’ve been out of touch too long.”

  “You think he may have heard something?”

  “I think he may. Anyhow, I’d like to suggest the idea of a cab to him. I have a hunch she’ll never get as far as Inglewood. It’s the hell-and-gone south.…”

  “Suggest a cab to the police, you mean?”

  “Yes, and let Stirling handle all that. He’s stationary. Better position than we are to find her, actually.”

  “Andy, if she talked to a man—don’t you see it makes such a difference what kind—”

  “This is geography, Dee. It’s places. She’s somewhere. We can’t turn every stone. But the police can do that.”

  She shook her head. “You have to follow something. We have a chance to find her if we—”

  “I don’t care who finds her,” he said in sudden anguish. “I just doubt we’re doing much good—roaring around. I think we’ve got to call, and I need gas.”

  So he pitched the wheel over and the car dashed into a gas station on a corner, one that shrilled to the eye a block away, all gaily decked with colored banners. Pitched them into a nightmare.

  Horns blew. Bells rang. People seemed to spring from the ground. Flash bulbs went off in their faces. A grinning man in white coveralls grasped Andy’s hand and pumped it violently.

  Somebody cried, “Hey. Red! Hey, look this way, Red!”

  Somebody said, “Get the girl with Joe, you guys. She’s photogenic and how!”

  “It gives me great pleasure …” the man in white was booming into a microphone that had jumped up from someplace, “to present you, sir, with this fifty dollar savings bond.…”

  “Wait a minute, Joe, will ya?” screamed somebody. “Wait a minute.…”

  “Wassa matter?”

  “The mike’s dead.”

  Somebody cried, “Why ain’t I loaded with color!”

  “Listen,” the white-clad man said confidentially, his breath tinged with alcohol, “this is just a little stunt, see. You hit the jackpot, folks. You are our one-millionth customer. Whatd’ya know, eh? Surprised?”

  Stunned, Dee could feel Andy gathering control of himself. “How long will this take?” he asked in measured calm.

  “Five minutes. Ten. Aw, you’re in no hurry. There’s prizes. Fifty dollar bond for the gent and nylons for the lady.”

  “O.K., Joe. On the mike, now.”

  “Folks …” boomed Joe.

  Andy said under his breath to Dee, “I think we’ll get out faster if we sit quiet.”

  People were collecting, lured by the knot already about them, by the noise. The pavement was vanishing. Dee’s jaw trembled. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “I’d like to hit him and jump, but there’s a cop. A wrangle could take us even longer.…”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  She looked at his face. It was bleak. Dee said, “You couldn’t know.…”

  “Dammit,” he said, “If I’d known—” His jaw worked.

  “Andy, shall I get out? Go on alone?”

  “You’ll never get away,” he said bitterly, “you’re too good-looking.”

  It hurt. She put her bare hand to her mouth.

  “Aw, give us a smile, Red, why don’tcha?” somebody was pleading. “And say, listen, you’ll sign a release, won’tcha? So you’ll be in a big old ad. What can it hurt you?”

  They were all grinning like monkeys, entranced with their stunt and their fun. Dee thought, It’s the same thing. They’re all thinking their own thoughts, each following his own line of attention. All the lines crisscross and intersect, and here they happen to hold us.

  “Smile,” said Andy savagely.

  She smiled as best she could.

  Under direction, Vince Procter pulled up at an alley’s mouth. Making change, he glanced slyly down the alley. Pulling away, he saw in his quickly angled mirror that the man and the girl who wore a pink suit under that blue coat just stood there on the sidewalk. Waiting for him to get away. Uh huh. But Vine wasn’t going away. He was playing spy.

  He scooted. But he braked suddenly. Parked. Went at a fast walk back. Head around a brick corner, he saw them in the alley. They went straight in, between backyards. He made a note and a careful count, when they turned and went left, about a third of the way along.

  He went scrambling back to his cab and spoke to the office. “Say, any more on that girl?”

  “No more.”

  “Been found yet?”

  “Haven’t heard.”

  “And no reward or anything like that, eh?”

  “Listen, Vince,” said the voice, “we’re swamped, see. Get back and make that pickup. Skip the buried treasure. Will ya? Don’t go cruising around looking to be a hero. Because if you do.…”

  “You’ll mention it upstairs,” said Vince. “Yeah.”

  “You know,” the voice warned. “You know the time you thought you saw a murderer. You know the time.…”

  “O.K. O.K. Code black.” He cut the communication.

  And what you don’t know ain’t going to hurt you, either, he thought truculently. Hell with that pickup. It was a little after three P.M. He had ideas. He’d listened with pricked-up ears to every word he could catch between his late passengers. He hadn’t heard anything about illness or treatment. Could be it wasn’t the right girl. Could be it was, too. If so, there was a plot going on. Vince loved plots. And he knew where they had gone.

  Mrs. Fleming’s house was a neat stucco, bright, new, and painted blue. It was very much like a million others, along a thousand new streets that spread incredibly over the basic desert of this vast and sparkling plain between the mountains and the sea. An alley skirted her backyard and the single garage that stood on a back corner of her lot. Here, on the rather shabby lawn, Pearl Dean’s aluminum house trailer was peacefully standing. Beside it was Pearl’s coupe.

  “Oh, Pearl!” Laila began to run up the flagstone path.

  Clive saw the door open in the glassed porch. He saw Laila hurl herself upon the massive figure in the black crepe dress. He settled, mentally, for the seven hundred dollars in his pocket. He advanced tentatively, his thoughts wiggling and squirming, twining and scrambling. Suppose Dee was here? Then he had better be ready with innocence and shock. But, if Dee was not here.…

  He began to think she was not. For Laila was talking, pleading, and Pearl Dean, for all her massive air of serenity, was surprised. He began to wonder once more about this Pearl. How would she react? She didn’t, he remembered, think much of modern medicine. She feuded with Stirling. He advanced, thoughts tangling in his head.

  Pearl Dean was crooning over the girl, who simply clung to her. At the same time, the big woman’s huge eyes checked off Clive’s advancing figure and her ears heeded the approach of her hostess within the house.

  Pearl said softly, “Estelle?”

  “Yes, dearest Pearl?” The sharp little old face was stiff with resentment
of this invasion, with jealousy.

  “I am so happy that this has happened here,” said Pearl very softly. “Only in your house can I be so certain of a generous and understanding heart. May I bring this child inside, Estelle, and shall we see if we can help her?”

  “Dearest Pearl! How can you ask!” cried Mrs. Fleming.

  “Come, Laila. Come, lamb.… Yes, Mr. Breen?”

  Clive said, “How do you do? She was so anxious to find you, Miss Dean. I … don’t exactly know what this is all about.”

  “Clive has been most kind,” said Laila. “Pearl, may I stay? Please keep me?”

  “Of course, darling. Now, go to Estelle, little darling. Estelle has the kindest of hearts. You shall find nothing but love and kindness in this place.”

  “Ah, poor darling,” said Estelle, hypnotized by praise.

  “What is it?” asked Pearl Dean, moving rather quickly to Clive.

  “Talbot must have said some sharp things to her,” Clive said hesitantly. “That’s about what I can make out. Told her she’s a lot of trouble for Dee. Hurt her feelings.”

  “Ah,” said Pearl, her nostrils vibrating.

  “Anyhow, she acts heartbroken, says she doesn’t want to see them for a while.”

  “See Andrew Talbot?”

  “Or Dee.”

  “Or Dee!”

  “Poor kid’s pretty upset,” said Clive nervously. “I happened to bump into her and I didn’t know what else I should do. Has Dee called here?”

  Pearl said, “No.”

  “She will,” Clive said. All the while Pearl’s great eyes examined him and he squinted at her, “They’ll be hunting for Laila—Dee and Talbot.”

  “Every heart has a right to heal alone,” said Pearl.

  “They don’t know where she’s gone, you see. They’ll be worried.”

  “They should be worried,” said Pearl sternly. “Worried and ashamed.”

  “I guess I’ve got to let them know. Otherwise.…”

  “Yes?”

  “If they tell Dr. Stirling she’s missing, he’s going to have the cops out after her.”

  Pearl Dean began to breathe heavily. She looked behind her where Laila was stitting on a rattan couch, sipping a glass of water. Estelle Fleming had removed the ugly tam and the black hair had tumbled down.