I hitched my head at him commandingly. “Come on, I’ve got her for you.” Even now, I could only get him to come halfway toward it; I brought it the other halfway, shoved it into his hands, left it there.
Gee he sounded lame. I couldn’t help thinking that myself while I listened. “Mrs. Mitchell, any word of Estelle yet—?”
That was as far as he got. She cut in with something, I could hear the rasping against the transmitter. His face got as white as though a whip had creased it. He let go of the thing and it hit the floor like a shot.
I picked it up and put it to my own ear. She was uncontrollable. She was just saying one thing over and over. “Murderer!” She spaced it for emphasis. “Mur-derer! MUR-derer!”
I hung up. I didn’t blame him for getting white.
He was taking a drink when I looked around. He’d brought a new bottle in with him when he came back from Headquarters. I couldn’t blame him for that either. I would have wanted something to wash down a word like that myself, if it had been jammed into my craw.
“Now you see?” I expostulated. “If you’da shot straight over there after she phoned last night like I advised you to, the thing wouldn’t have gotten to this stage. Your play was to notify the cops right along with her as soon as you heard the girl hadn’t shown up home; to take part in the thing, not stay out of it and let them turn it against you.”
And even now, if it had been me, I would have gone tearing over there and raised holy cain with her, whether she was grief crazed or not, for having the nerve to—But it wasn’t me, it was he. I was just the fellow he lived with. And far to the back of my mind, there was this suppressed thought struggling to come clear: I would, that is, assuming that I was innocent. If I was guilty, if the shoe fitted, how did I know but what I wouldn’t act just about like—he was?
I kept that thought pushed back. I let it squirm, but I kept it down. I left him up there in the place, went out. I could tell by the way he acted, kept edging up slantwise to the window, that he was worried they’d already posted someone down there to watch him, tail him if he went in or out. For my part, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had. And it still didn’t have to mean anything much; whether he let it hamper him or not all depended on what was in his own mind.
“You coming back soon?” he asked.
Other nights he didn’t give a rap whether I came back soon or late. I knew what he was dying to ask me—but didn’t have the nerve to: “See if you notice anyone hanging around watching the house.”
“I’ll be back,” I said indefinitely. I had a couple things on my mind I wanted to attend to.
If there was a spotter, the spotter knew his business; I couldn’t spot him for love nor money.
This McGinnis was a monkish-looking Celt with a bald crown; you kept looking for the hood and tasseled girdle, and all you ever got was a big imperfect perfecto. He knew Dixon and me, both, like his right arm. And as I said before, by that I don’t mean we were bar-flies or tanks. But anytime we had stepped in anywhere for a drink, for over eight months now it was to his place.
“Was my pal in here last night?” I wanted to find out about those missing three hours.
“Dixon?” he said. “That he was. And what was the matter with him? He left half his drink behind.”
He’d told me that himself. “I was looking high and low for him,” I said, to cover it up so it wouldn’t sound like a check-up. “How long was he in here, about? Can you remember?”
“He was in here till a good thray o’clock. He held the fort that he did; there wasn’t another soul—”
That was just the time he’d got back to the flat. I felt relieved. I even dunked my upper lip into the beer I didn’t want, in order not to offend his professional pride like Dixon had about his drink last night.
“Is he feeling any better today?” he went on.
I thought he meant on account of the unfinished drink, or because he’d been noticeably downcast. I would have let it go at that.
“The best thing to do for an upset stomach is just lave it alone—” he rambled.
I brought my scattered thoughts up short. Upset stomach? He had his symptoms crossed. Or did he? I didn’t ask him. There was only one way he could have arrived at such a mistaken diagnosis.
I waited a minute or two, then I said: “Be with you,” and went back to it and inside. I’d probably been in the washroom once or twice before, but it hadn’t been vital to notice it closely until now. There was just a rather unclean washstand, and then a cabinet behind a slatted half-door. It was very small and very uncertainly lighted.
The window—I remembered that there was one in here only now that I saw it again—was chink-narrow and very long. The glass was of a double opacity, whitewashed, and then filmed with accumulated dust. It was open a little from the top, for ventilation. It seemed humanly impossible for an adult to squeeze out through it. More important still, he’d only come in here to McGinnis’s after. What would he have gained by establishing an alibi after? It wasn’t like me to start suspecting him. Well, dammit, then why didn’t his behavior give me a chance to stand up for him?
I got up on the edge of the washstand with one foot and peered out through the top of the window. Its already prohibitive narrowness was still further bisected by a vertical iron bar. Furthermore, the light coming from behind me mushroomed out against blank brickwork only four feet in front of my face. The window just looked out on an air shaft bored down into the building, no way of getting up, no way of getting down. The iron bar was just gratuitous, or maybe one of the cubed walls was a later addition, sealing up what had until then been a three-sided indentation.
I got down, opened the dust-caked pane from the bottom, not without a good deal of difficulty. I wanted to see if I could make out the bottom of the shaft. I could; it ended only a few feet below the window. I looked at it a very long time, forehead grazing the rust-flaked iron bar. I have very good eyes, and I gave them the workout of their life.
I didn’t take their word for it; I pulled my head in again and gave them a little help. I happened to have a newspaper furled up in my side pocket. I took it out, struck a match, and set the end of it on fire. Then I stuck it, burning, through the window and held it out above the shaft floor. It played it up to a dusky orange, plenty bright enough. I pulled the improvised torch in again before it got out of control, stamped it out on the floor. It had done the trick, shown me what my eyes had only been able to hazard at.
I tried with my arm first, but it couldn’t get anywhere near the shaft floor, the damn perpendicular bar held my shoulder joint too far back. I never chewed gum. I went out there now and bought a penny package from his machine and mashed it up. I didn’t want to have to ask McGinnis for anything, he probably wouldn’t have had anything the right length anyway. He didn’t even notice me come out and then go in again, he’d gotten a batch of new customers just then and was busy taking their orders.
I went to work on one of the slats of the cabinet door, wrenched it out of its socket at both ends and used that. They were all dilapidated and half-loose anyway. It was the same principle kids use in dredging up coins through a sidewalk grating. I stuck the gum on the end of the slat, poked it through the window, stabbed the shaft floor, and each time came back with something I had seen before—and I don’t mean just now winking faintly in the gloom at the shaft bottom either. They were the two mates to the patented raincoat fastener I had trodden on up at our place. And if there was any doubt in my mind that they were mates, the tatter of green cellophane clinging to each one settled that.
That accounted for three of them. Three out of a possible four, at the very most. And to lose that many fasteners, that raincoat had been subjected to the roughest sort of treatment, must have been wrenched-at and pulled around unmercifully (with its wearer inside it). Even so, it wasn’t the patent that had failed to meet the test, the fabric around
it was what had given way under the strain.
Even the implication of inordinate violence didn’t make me as creepy as the attempt at concealment. The washroom window must have been open only from the top, as I had found it myself, and perhaps he didn’t realize the floor of the shaft was as accessible to the washroom as it turned out to have been. I held open the cabinet door I had victimized, struck a match, stared intently. There were no traces left. But after all, a fabric like that must be highly combustible. Or if not, it was just a matter of severing it into small enough pieces to pass through the drain. And as for smuggling it in here unseen, how do people who swipe hotel towels for souvenirs, for instance, get away with them? By folding them flat underneath their vests and buttoning their coats over them. A pliable raincoat like that must fold into very nearly handkerchief size.
I didn’t feel so jolly. After I had cleaned the gum off the two fasteners, I wrapped them in a bit of paper, thrust them in my pocket to be retained against further decision. I was in a blue funk when I came out of McGinnis’s. The best I could muster was a half-hearted, “Keep an open mind, now, as long as you can. Don’t jump to too-hasty conclusions. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt, you’d want it given to you in his place.” It was already like swimming upstream.
If I hadn’t known I was going to wind up at the Mitchells’ until then, there wasn’t much doubt of it by the time I came out of McGinnis’s with those two raincoat fasteners in my pocket. Where else could I go? Back to him? He’d made the third one I’d already retrieved once at our place disappear a second time. To the police? Not at this stage of the game. Maybe not at any stage of the game. When you watch a guy going down in a quicksand before your eyes—if he doesn’t deserve to—you give him a hand out; if he does, maybe you fold your arms and let him go. But at least you don’t shovel rocks on his head to make him go down faster. I don’t, anyway.
I had to look it up in a phone directory, I had no idea where it was. There was a half-column of Mitchells, but I had no trouble separating the appropriate one, he’d already given me the phone number that paired with it. Mrs. Fanny A. It was only about six blocks from our place, as she’d said last night; almost too short a distance for any anonymous harm to have befallen the girl; it made it seem more likely than ever it had been a personally directed, intentional harm, meant for her alone by someone who knew her.
It was an outworn apartment house, when I got there, that just managed to maintain itself above tenement status, more through its cleanliness than anything else. The mother evidently lived on her income, and a very tenuous one at that. It was on the ground floor, and after I’d already located it I had an attack of last-minute qualms about going in. I wondered if I was being a hypocrite by coming here like this, with two of the very fasteners from her raincoat packaged in my pocket at the moment, and yet no intention of turning them over to them. It was a hell of a thing to do; either I was on their side or I was on his.
I poised my finger toward the doorbell. Then I dropped it again. I started to walk back and forth undecidedly, crosswise across the lobby. This kept carrying me to and fro in front of the elevator-grate. The car itself was somewhere out of sight the whole time, bedded in the basement most likely, as often occurs in those run-down poorly serviced houses. Without being aware of it I was accidentally giving the impression of someone whose business was on one of the upper floors, not down here at all, waiting to be taken up.
I still hadn’t been able to make up my mind, when I heard the street door open, and as I turned my head, two cops came in carrying a sort of hamper between them. They had newspapers spread loosely over the top of it. I heard one ask the other, “Why didn’t they have her come down, instead of us bringing it up here?”
“I dunno, I guess she couldn’t make it or somep’n.”
They started diagonally across the lobby to the door on the left. Then when they got halfway to it the leader said, “Naw, it’s the one on this side,” and abruptly changed directions. They ended up before the one I had just been hesitating outside of myself a moment ago. But the swerve was violent enough to dislodge part of the newspaper covering on top of what they were carrying. It drifted off, and the rear carrier had to stop a minute and replace it.
It was just a fluke that I happened to be standing right there in the same apartment lobby with them at that moment. They didn’t try to hide the momentary glimpse I was afforded of what was in the hamper. They didn’t look twice at me, I was just someone waiting to be taken up to one of the higher floors. They didn’t think the tattered, grimy, green-cellophane raincoat lying spread on top of other maltreated garments would have any particular meaning to me, or that I could transmit the knowledge to the one place they didn’t want it to go until they were ready for it.
I didn’t get out fast enough. I couldn’t bolt right in front of them; I had to wait until they were admitted first. The mother must have been somewhere close at hand near the apartment door. They just about got in with it, took the newspapers off, when her scream slashed through it like a knife through cheesecloth. That was identification, complete, devastating, final—that harried scream that ended in a soft thump on wood.
I got outside to the street fast. The six lengthwise blocks, that were all the margin of lead I had, streamed by under me; I can’t remember now any more whether I actually ran or just hiked fast. I kept thinking, “What’ll I do about this?”
I slowed when I got to our corner. They might have someone watching the place already. They must have. If there was, I couldn’t see him. But then if I could have, he wouldn’t have been any good to them. I only walked slow up to the door. Once inside, I ran up the stairs again. I keyed the door open and closed it behind me again with camera-shutter rapidity.
The room was dark, at first I thought he was out. But he was lying on the bed. Not like you lie on it to sleep on it, the other way, across it from side to side, head down, face buried in a tragic nest he’d made out of his arms. Heartbreak, I suppose; I don’t know. He reared his head when he heard me come in, but I’d already had time to glimpse him the way he was first.
“That you, Red?”
“Yeah, it’s Red.” I stood in the doorway looking at him.
He got up off the bed, slowly, one limb at a time. He tried not to show he could feel me looking at him. Finally he couldn’t help it any more. “What d’you keep looking at me for?”
“You better get ready for a long pull. Your girl’s dead.”
His face shifted gears. I thought he was going to cry, but if he did, it didn’t come to the top. He said, “Are they sure?”
“They were just bringing her things into the flat when I was outside it just now. I recognized the raincoat—”
I heard him draw his breath in, deep. Then suddenly he shot past me. I went after him. “I’m going to get out of here,” he said in a smothered voice. The panic was on him. Maybe so; but I was running out of excuses.
I slapped the flat door shut again before he’d gotten it far enough out to get through it. “Now wait a minute, don’t lose your head; you’re doing the worst possible thing.”
“I’m getting out! I saw how they acted about it tonight at Headquarters the first time already. They only let me go because they didn’t have anything on me then.”
He kept trying to get it open, I kept trying to hold it back.
“Did you come back here to hold me for them, so I’d be here when they get here?”
“No—I came back to tip you off ahead of time, I guess—” I took one arm down off the door.
“Then lemme get out. Red, gimme a chance at least!”
“Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re as good as admitting the fact you did something to her, you’re advertising it.”
He was past reasoning with. “It’s easy for you to talk, isn’t it? It’s not your freedom, is it? It’s not your neck, your life. I should stay here and let the
m bag me, and never have a fighting chance from then on!”
He couldn’t get out past me, he couldn’t get me out of the way. He had to give up finally, he was all winded and—although we hadn’t come to blows, principally because he’d known enough not to strike the first one—a wrestling match can tire you as much as a fist fight. He flopped back into a chair, stayed there inert, tongue out—metaphorically speaking, anyway. I stayed there by the door, also breathing hard.
“My own friend,” he said finally.
Maybe that did the trick, I don’t know. If he’d kept on trying to edge me aside, force his way out, I suppose I’d have kept blocking him. It was when he quit trying, slumped down like that, that it got to me. “I don’t think you can make it any more,” I side-stepped grudgingly. I took a look from the window. Nothing yet. He didn’t try to make a break for the door, even after I’d left it; maybe I had him cowed, or he was resigned now.
I picked up the coat and hat I’d just had on me, threw them over at him. “All right, there’s your chance, take it if you want it,” I relented. “They’ve seen me in this outfit two or three times already, you may get away with it. You’d better not try the street, they must have been watching it long ago. Go out through the back yard and maybe you can get through to the next one over, like I did that night when that instalment collector was on my tail. And if you do make it, walk like I do, long slouchy strides—not snappy ones like you take. Keep your left hand in your trouser pocket the whole time. That’s me. Wear the hat down forward like I do, almost over the bridge of your nose. Until you get—wherever you’re going.”
He opened the door. I was soft, I was molasses.
“Here, d’you need dough? You better take this with you—” I shoved some into his hand.
He tried to shake mine, but mine wasn’t there any more. “Where’ll I get in touch with you, Red?”
“D’you want to?” I couldn’t help asking pointedly.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 50