Ray grinned at him, and the lad looked his question at him for a moment and then half-smiled back. It might work. Ray relaxed, forced himself to exude friendly warmth. People usually liked him instantly, sure that there was only sincerity and pleasant tolerance in the wide-set, clear blue eyes and calm, cheerful face with its handsome, clean-cut, light complexion. He said: “Let me ask a damn fool question—what’s the ticket for?”
The traffic man had stopped writing, now he forced himself to look down and move the pencil. “Overtime parking. You’re allowed one hour on these streets at night.”
Ray shook his head. “You’re going to call me a wise guy, but we haven’t been here an hour. We just made a delivery at Armstrong Clothing”—he jerked his head toward the avenue—”up on the tenth floor.”
The cop said, “Yeah?” He looked skeptical, but the pencil stopped moving.
“That’s right. You know us. Lots of the boys come up for suits. And we take care of the beat men and the desk guys too, in the season and out. I’ll make you a little bet.”
“I don’t bet.” The pencil was off the page, now.
Ray took the four cigars out of his breast pocket. They were El Ruys, not his regular brand, bought carefully in case he felt like smoking during the night. “I’ll bet you can have these cigars if you’ll just put your hand on that radiator. She’s almost red hot. We just got here.”
The officer’s hand covered the cigars with the deft sweep of much practice, and they disappeared into his pocket. He stepped slowly to the front of the car and held his hand perfunctorily near the top of the grill. “It’s warm,” he agreed. “What did you say the name of that firm was?”
“Armstrong Clothing,” Ray said distinctly. “Tenth floor. Just ask for me—John Harker. I’ll take care of you right. We got one inspector comes up all the time.”
He lied smoothly and earnestly, cursing inwardly because he could not remember the exact number or name of any of the buildings on the avenue, and worried instantly that he had mentioned an inspector, because the cop might ask his name.
“I see.” The pencil was out of sight, now, the pad disappearing. Ray knew that he would erase the portion of the ticket that he had filled out, and rearrange the cigars against crushing, as soon as he was alone or out of public view. Then it came. “Which building is Armstrong in?”
Ray turned and made a right-turn with his hand. “Just around the corner, first door. You know that one—cigar counter in the lobby.”
“Yeah.” He stood there and nodded. In his ears Ray imagined the scream of sirens, the shouts of alarm from the building they had recently left. Would this lad ever get on his bike and roll?
Ray turned to the car, inserted the keys in the door, talking cheerfully, pumping out the personality.
“You must get these mix-ups now and then. So many of these Fords around. You can’t hardly tell when one moves and another parks. I wouldn’t want your job—everybody thinks you’re hard on ‘em until there’s trouble, then they scream for you and tell you how to do it.”
He chuckled, made it a mutual resentment against the vagaries of the public. The officer grinned as he said, “That’s the way it is. I’ll be up to see you.”
He put his leg over his motorcycle, kicked it until the motor came alive, and rolled down the street. Ray jumped in the car, flipped open the door for Fancy, and followed him. The motorcycle turned left on the avenue, so Ray turned right, passing in front of the building where they had visited the Hencher Clothing and Textile Corporation.
Fancy was looking back. “There he comes,” he said excitedly. “He’s out in the street.”
“Who?”
“The old guy we left in the elevator.”
“Where’s that cop?”
“Going the other way.”
“Turn around and relax. He’ll never get his attention with that motorcycle popping off, and his old eyes won’t identify us at this distance.”
Fancy turned around, slumped in the seat like a distance runner after a hard race. Ray drove cross-town for several blocks, selected a deserted street, and suddenly parked in front of another car.
“Quick, now,” he said. “Switch those plates while I keep her running. Throw the old plates under that car.”
He sat there, letting the motor idle. He could have changed the plates himself in ten seconds less than Fancy required, but it was a good idea to give the boy something to do. He usually thought of Fancy as boy, although he was only three years younger than Ray’s thirty-two. It was taking him a long time. Too long, for the butterfly nuts were carefully greased and loose. The boy’s fingers were nervous. He raised his own hands and looked at them, proud of their steadiness. He heard a dull clang as the stolen plate slid under the car behind them, and Fancy climbed into the car.
“O.K. Let’s go.”
“Did the nuts stick?” Ray asked mildly as he drove to the next avenue and turned north.
“No.”
“Did you drop one?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“Just guessed,” Ray told him. He drove to the office, satisfied, feeling confident and superior.
When he left the car in front of the rather shabby building he ordered Fancy: “Take her up to the garage in the Bronx. Go straight there, don’t stop even for a cup of coffee until she’s locked up. Then c’mon back down here.”
“O.K.” Fancy replied.
Ray watched him roll away and then went up to the office.
The office was like the building and the corridor, shabby and out-of-date, without even recent paint or cleanliness or original good construction to lend it the appearance of genteel age. But when he opened the door he stood looking at the one new and fresh thing in sight, the sign in neat gold letters on the door, Raymond T. Hitchcock—Public Relations and Advertising.
Reading the legend over and over gave him a feeling of security and permanence, although Raymond T. Hitchcock as a company had no accounts, no assets, and a capital, in Ray’s pocket, of exactly one-hundred-and-fourteen dollars. He’d get there, way up there where he wanted to go. The real permanence he visualized included the neat gold letters on the door of a suite of offices on Fifth Avenue, plush furnishings prescribed by a top-flight interior decorator and purchased from the leading firm in the city—and paid for.
He walked through the drab reception room, created long ago by throwing a cheap partition across an office of moderate size, and into the single inside chamber. He put his hat on the old fashioned coat tree and sat in one of the two battered chairs, behind the worn and tired looking desk.
The surroundings depressed him, as poor or insecure quarters always did, an emotional lowering of the spirits to the dark plane where worry and vague remorse haunted him, made him perspire as he fought to find the cause of his depression, and railed. He took the suede gloves out of his pocket and put them in a drawer, because he did not feel that he could afford to discard them.
There was a pint of rye in the drawer. He took it out, looked at it for a long moment, and then poured some into a paper cup. I shouldn’t. I’ll need a clear head and a quick mind today. But one won’t hurt. I need it. Just one to celebrate the beginning. One will relax me. Give me a sharper edge.
He poured more whisky into the cup, until it was more than half full. He capped the bottle carefully and put it away, then drank the rye slowly, savoring its bite. He rinsed the cup at the sink behind the tattered green screen, and drank two full cups of the cool water. It would dilute the liquor—cleanse his tissues—make him feel just right.
Sitting at the desk he gazed at the blank wall of the next building, then closed his eyes as the claustrophobic tension mounted inside him. Damned dingy place. But it won’t be long now!
Everything would work. He had spent too long on The Plan for there to be any flaws in it. He’d get his! And he’d be up there where they couldn’t reach him I When you added brains and nerve you had a combination they couldn’t stop.
Nerve—g
uts—that’s what counted. Without it they’d even pick your brains. You could hustle and bustle and break your back and when you got to the top some guy would drop a rock on your head if you didn’t get him first. If you went soft you were a sucker.
Like that time when he was twelve—or was it thirteen?—and he had the eighteen dollars for the bicycle, sweated together a cent at a time, and two fights a week to keep the corner where he sold papers.
He remembered the night he had brought the money to the three shabby, smelly, tenement rooms with their sticks of furniture. His father was there alone, drunk. His mother had left two months before, and he hadn’t blamed her too much, although he never felt quite the same and he’d had to hustle for his food. At least she used to feed him, sometimes.
Big Heine had looked at his son and said: “Lemme take the money, Ray. Jus’ a loan.”
He had given the eighteen dollars to the big, red-faced man who staggered before him like a stranger, possibly because Big Heine could take the money from him anyway, perhaps because Big Heine was the last thing in the world that seemed to belong to him—little Ray Heine who didn’t want to be all alone. Big Heine took it and staggered out, leaving promises. Later, he had even been sorry, during brief moments of sobriety, but Ray never got the money back. One day the man and woman from the social office came—and he went to the home. He never did find out what became of his father. When he got around to caring a little—after he had grown a bit and run away from the home and was working his way up—no one knew very much.
To hell with them all, anyway. Some day he’d buy a farm with a big fence around it and horses to ride, and take it easy. Way up in the hills, away from everybody, snug and secure. Sit on the porch and watch the hands in the fields. Maybe marry. You could depend on some of them if you were paying the freight.
He was trying to picture the farm, a cross between the rolling green fields of Indiana and the brown, warm, lazy lands of the South when Silvia came in. She rattled a coat hanger on the tree that they all had to use, and he opened his eyes. “Good morning, Miss Nuss.”
She returned the greeting and stood by the desk expectantly, an eager-faced girl in a prim white blouse that was speared by her young breasts, molded, he supposed, by another of those trick brassieres they featured in the ads. Her clear olive skin was formed rather sharply on cheekbones and chin that would photograph very well. She had black hair and almost black eyes, reminding him of a picture he had seen somewhere supposed to depict Cleopatra in top form. He was glad he had hired the kid. He had envisioned a sleek blonde when he had inserted the small ad for a receptionist-stenographer, but Silvia’s innocent, yet stirring, appearance had made him change his mind. Her honest, naive, rather formal attitude would help their front. He wondered if she was a virgin—certainly not far from it. It would be interesting . . .
She grew tired of waiting, shifted her weight from leg to leg. “Any dictation or anything Mister Hitchcock?”
“No,” he answered slowly—she admired him, that was easy to tell. “Just keep taking it easy. Business will pick up pretty soon.”
She turned away, evidently puzzled and a little bored after ten days with a firm where no one gave her anything to do. He watched the thin black skirt flex over her youthful flanks as she went through the door. Those ballet slippers gave her an interesting, low-slung look, like the earthy Chinese women in the newsreels.
He followed her into the other room, moving with the easy grace of a prowling leopard, and stood smiling at her as she sat at the typewriter. He said: “You look fresh as a daisy every morning. How do you do it?”
Her smile was quick and grateful. “I get lots of sleep and do the exercises with the man on television.”
“I’m starting those exercises tomorrow morning.” He leaned slowly down, making it a gentle motion, commanding his features to display tender admiration. She looked up at him in surprise, but did not pull away as he murmured, “You’re actually beautiful,” and placed his lips on hers.
He felt the stiffness in the warm, sweet-breathed mouth as he captured it. For an instant he sensed the alarm, the doe rising and tensing before flight. Carefully, he did not press his advance, nor add any erotic fire to the kiss, until he felt her indecision in the hesitant, feathery response of her lips. Then, like a magnet, he drew her out, adding depth to the kiss, placing his hand tenderly on her back, stirring her with a tight rein on every move, letting her emotions supply the power and surge. A long moment passed, and he noted the turning point of surrender and victory when she gave life to her lips and tilted her head to match his position.
His betrayal came from his own passion. The half-clumsy, hesitant yet hungry, all-sweet and all-giving reactions of her lips and body flamed his senses and carried him beyond control. His free hand rose in a massaging, sensual caress, enveloping one of her firm, surging breasts . . . and she gave a little cry, part anguish, part regret, and twisted away from him.
You damn fool, he berated himself, you advanced too fast and scared the quarry.
He smiled at her, keeping it tender. “Gosh, Silvia, I don’t know why I did that . . . you looked so much like a pretty little doll I just wanted to pick you up and snuggle you.”
He bent the situation quickly past the crisis by chuckling, “You’re too nice to waste on a reception desk. You’d be married off too fast and we’d lose you. When we move to the new quarters I’m going to tuck you away in your own office.”
She said, “I’m not used to being kissed so early in the morning.”
The words came from a book, he was sure, but the incident was under control. “We’ll try it again sometime, after dark.”
“I’m not sure,” she replied primly. “I don’t know what came over me just now.” She was fumbling.
He made it easy for her. “Let’s make it our secret until the right time or place . . . ‘cause, know something?”
“No.”
“I don’t know what came over me, either.”
Ho gave her an intimate, conspiratorial wink and went back into his own office. Slumped in the chair he cursed his impetuous actions, then excused them. Oh, but she was a succulent little dish!
When Fancy came in, he sent Silvia after coffee and rolls.
“All set,” Fancy reported. “The heap is locked up. Tight.”
“O.K. After it cools off for a week or so, you can take it out on Long Island to some used car lot and sell it. It’s clean.”
Fancy nodded, rubbing his hands together nervously.
Ray watched them and asked suddenly, “Did you put your gloves on when you swapped those plates?”
The younger man beamed with self-satisfaction. “I sure did. Didn’t you see me?”
“No, I was busy watching for cars. Nice going, boy. You’re learning the angles.”
Fancy’s thin, sensitive face glowed. Compliments from Ray were a rarity.
Ray was standing in his shorts, drying his face after a quick shave, when Silvia came in with the coffee. “Put ‘em down on the desk,” he told her, aware that she stole a glance at his big, athletic body in the white undershirt and shorts. “Help yourself to yours. I’ve gotta dress.”
The last remark was unnecessary. She took one of the containers and a second look and went into the outer office. It wouldn’t be too hard, he thought, she’s just at the age—he dismissed the idea and began to get ready.
Fancy watched admiringly as Ray donned the hand-finished, number six tailored gray sharkskin with the conservative stripe, a clean white shirt with spread collar, and knotted the striped tie—striped for a school Ray had never even seen. Bench-made cordovans, a sleek Homburg of a lighter gray than the suit, and a white handkerchief barely peeping from his breast pocket, were Ray’s final additions. He checked his tie in the little mirror. “Solid, Francois?”
Although Fancy’s real name was Francois, he gave a start of surprise at the unexpected label. “Yeah,” he said. “You look great. I’d use your picture in an Esquire ad.”
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“Not if I know it,” Ray answered almost gaily. “Too many gals and husbands would like to know where I am.”
He checked his appearance in the little mirror behind the screen, adjusted horn-rimmed above-the-ear glasses which made him look startlingly intellectual, and after a moment’s indecision, placed a plain gold ring with a fiery stone on his little finger. The stone was titanium, worth fifteen dollars wholesale.
The face in the mirror was the kind men instinctively admire and women want to see more of. Honest sincerity, strong character and good family line, health and vigor, seemed to be stamped on the features. This was a man you’d like to bring home for your daughter. You’d guess that he graduated from an Ivy League school and was showing unusual promise in his profession. Modest chap, too! Ray affected a quiet, slightly enquiring expression that suggested a friendly listener, a man who thought what you had to say was important. Ray knew the props and he was a fair actor—surface appearance would never cause him any trouble.
He turned to Fancy. “From now on, around the office, you’re Mister Francois R. Peller, or Francois, or Mister Peller. You’re an expert advertising man and public relations writer, but the less you talk about it the better.”
“O.K.” Fancy agreed.
Ray looked at him intently. “You’ve never been pinched, eh?”
“No.”
“You haven’t got any friends—or enemies—in New York that you haven’t mentioned?”
“No. I was only here once. Years ago.”
“O.K.” Ray was sure that Fancy was telling the truth. He had brought the lad from Chicago. He needed a strong-arm boy for The Plan.
They had driven to New York in the Ford, and hired the office, but all Ray ever told Fancy about The Plan was: “Keep your mind clear. I want you for an associate who’s ready to go to work when the chips are on the table. Just do as I tell you.”
More and more under Ray’s influence, Fancy had become almost a shadow—an obedient shadow.
The Heel Page 2