by Irwin Shaw
Suddenly I realized I was looking into the muzzle of a gun.
The two men came over to the car, walking slowly. I couldn’t see their faces in the dark but could make out that they were both wearing leather jackets and fishermen’s long-billed caps. “They have a gun,” I whispered to Fabian, across Priscilla, whom I felt stiffening beside me.
“That’s right, brother,” the man with the gun said. “We have a gun. Now, listen careful. Leave the key in the ignition, because we’re going to take the loan of your car. And get out. Nice and easy. And the old guy, too. He gets out on his side. Also nice and easy. And leave the lady in the car. We’re going to take the loan of the lady for a while, too.”
I heard Priscilla gasp, but she sat absolutely still. The man stepped back a pace as I opened the door and got out. The other man went around to Fabian’s side. I heard him say to Fabian, “Get over there with your partner.” Fabian came around and joined me. He was breathing heavily.
Then Priscilla started to scream. It was the loudest, most piercing scream I had ever heard.
“Shut the bitch up,” the man with the gun shouted to his partner. Priscilla was still screaming, but she was lying back, with her head on the wheel and kicking at the man, who was trying to hold onto her legs.
“For Christ’s sake,” the man with the gun said. He moved a little, as though he was going to get at Priscilla from the driver’s side. His gun had drooped a little and Fabian lunged at him. There was an enormous noise as the gun went off. I heard Fabian grunt as I jumped on the man, dragging his gun hand down. Our combined weight was too much for him and he fell back, the gun clattering to the pavement. Priscilla was still screaming. I grabbed the gun just as the second man came around the front of the car in the glare of the headlights. I fired at him and he turned and ran off into the woods. The man who had had the gun was crawling away on his hands and knees, and I fired at him. He jumped off and ran into the darkness. Priscilla was still screaming.
Fabian was lying on his back now on the pavement, holding his chest with his two hands. He was breathing in loud, irregular gasps. There was a little light reflected off the road top from our headlights. “I think we’d better get me to a hospital, old man,” he said, with long spaces between the words. “Fast. And tell Priscilla to please stop yelling.”
I was trying to lift Fabian, as gently as possible, into the back seat of the car, when I became conscious of headlights approaching from behind me. “Sorry,” I said to Fabian, who was half in and half out of the car now. “There’s somebody coming.” I picked up the gun again and stood between Fabian and the oncoming car. Priscilla had stopped screaming and was sobbing wildly in the front seat, hitting her head dementedly against the dashboard. I didn’t know which was worse, her screaming or this.
As the car approached, I saw that it was a police car. I dropped the gun I was holding. The car came to a halt and two policemen jumped out, their revolvers in their hands.
“What’s going on here?” the one in front asked harshly.
“There’s been a holdup. Two men. They’re in the woods somewhere. My friend’s been shot. We’ve got to get him to a hospital right away.”
“Whose gun is this?” The policeman asked, bending down to pick it up from where it was lying at my feet.
“Theirs.”
“You jumped a guy with a gun?” the policeman said incredulously.
“Not me,” I said. “Him.”
“Holy man,” the policeman said softly.
He helped me put Fabian into the rear of the car, while his partner, a thin man with glasses, who looked too young to be a policeman, went to inspect the car with the hood up that the two men had been examining when we drove up. “That’s the car, all right,” he said when he came back. “We’ve been looking for it. It was stolen last night at Montauk. We got a description from a gas station at Three Mile Harbor. Lucky for you.”
“Real lucky,” I said.
He looked curiously at Priscilla, who was still knocking her head against the dashboard, but he didn’t say anything. “Follow us,” he said. “We’ll lead you to the hospital.”
With the lights of the police car all flashing and the siren going, we sped down the dark roads. Coming the other way, I saw first one, then another police car racing past us toward the scene of the holdup. They must have sent out a call by radio from the car ahead of us.
The operation took three hours. Fabian had lapsed into unconsciousness before we reached the hospital in Southampton. An intern had taken one look at Priscilla and had her put in a bed under heavy sedation. I sat in the anteroom of the emergency ward, trying to answer the questions of the policemen about what the men looked like, the sequence in which things had happened, what we were doing on the road at that hour, who the lady was, whether or not I thought I had hit one or both of the men when I fired at them. It was hard to sort the things out. My mind felt numb, overwhelmed. It was hard to make the policemen understand who Priscilla Dean was and how it happened she didn’t know where she lived. They were unfailingly polite and not suspicious, but they kept asking the same questions, in slightly different ways, over and over again, as though what had happened couldn’t have happened the way I thought it had. I had called Evelyn as soon as they wheeled Fabian into the operating room and told her Fabian had had an accident but I was all right, not to worry. I told her I’d give her the details when I got home.
It was about midnight when the young policeman came back from using the phone to tell me the two men had given themselves up. “You didn’t hit either one of them.” He couldn’t help grinning as he said it. I would have to go to the police station in the morning to identify them. And so would the lady, he added.
When Fabian was wheeled out of the operating table he looked calm and peaceful. The doctor, in his green smock and mouth mask, now hanging at his throat, looked grave as he pulled off his rubber gloves. “It’s not so good,” he said to me. “We’ll know better in twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-four hours,” I said dully.
“He’s a good friend of yours?” the doctor said.
“A very good friend.”
“Where did he get that long scar on his chest and abdomen?”
“Scar? I never saw a scar.” I blinked. “I guess I never saw him except with his clothes on.”
“It must have been something fierce,” the doctor said. “It looks like shrapnel. Was he wounded in a war?” The doctor was young, too, no more than thirty-two or thirty-three, and I wondered, briefly, what he knew about wars.
“Yes,” I said, “he was in a war. He never told me he was wounded though.”
“Live and learn,” the doctor said briskly. “Good night.”
When I went out of the hospital, there was a flash in my eyes and I cringed. But it was only a photographer, taking my picture. Wait until tomorrow, friend, I thought, when they get dear old Priscilla Dean down to the police station. There’ll be some pictures to be taken then.
I drove home slowly, the road blurring uncertainly before me. Evelyn was waiting up for me and we each had a Scotch as we sat in the kitchen and I told her the whole story of the evening. When I finished, she bit her lips and said, “That miserable woman. I could strangle her with my bare hands.”
25
IN THE MORNING, THE STORY was in the Long Island papers, with my picture. And, of course, Priscilla’s. Before I went to the police station, I called the hospital and was told Fabian was resting comfortably. I probably could come and visit him for a few minutes later in the morning. Priscilla got to the police station just ahead of me, with uniformed escort. There must have been ten photographers waiting for us. Inside, we both identified the two men, although how Priscilla could have seen what they looked like in the darkened car with all her screaming and thrashing around was beyond me. They had both confessed anyway, so the identification was really a formality.
The two men looked harmless in the light of day. They weren’t men, really. Neither of them coul
d have been much more than eighteen, scrawny and frightened, with bad adolescent complexions and fake-tough mouths that quivered when the cops addressed them. Punk kids, my policeman friend called them contemptuously. It was difficult to believe that just a few hours before they had shot a man and had tried to kill me and I had tried to kill them.
When I left the building, the photographers tried to get me to pose with Priscilla, but I just kept on walking. I had had enough of Priscilla Dean.
I talked to the doctor before I went in to see Fabian. The doctor was optimistic. “He came out of the operation much better than I thought he would. I think he’ll be around for a while.”
Fabian was lying flat in the neatly made bed, with tubes leading into his arm and somewhere in his chest under the covers. The room was sunny and there was the smell of newly cut grass through the open window. He smiled wanly as I came in and raised his hand in greeting.
“I just talked to the doctor,” I said as I drew up a chair next to the bed, “and he says you’re going to be all right.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” His voice was frail. “Imagine dying to save the honor of Priscilla Dean.” He laughed faintly. “What we should have done was introduce her to those two boys.” He laughed again, a little rasping noise. “They could have gone off to Quogue together and had themselves a hell of a night.”
“Tell me, Miles,” I said, “what possessed you to go for that goddamn gun?”
He shook his head gently on the pillow. “Who knows? Instinct? My better judgment blunted by drink? Maybe it was just a little bit of old Lowell, Massachusetts, sticking out.”
“I guess that’s as good an explanation as any,” I said. “While we’re on the subject, the doctor says you have a great big scar on your abdomen and chest. Where did you get that?”
“A souvenir of a previous engagement,” he said. “I’d prefer not to talk about it right now, if you don’t mind. Could you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Will you call Lily and ask her if she could possibly come over for a few days? I think old Lily would do me a lot of good.”
“I’ll call her today,” I said.
“That’s a good fellow.” He sighed. “That was a nice evening, last night. All those polite people. You ought to cable Quinn and congratulate him.”
“Evelyn is doing it this morning,” I said.
“Thoughtful woman. She looked beautiful last night.” I started to get up. “Don’t go quite yet,” he said. “I believe there’s a pad and a pen in that drawer. Will you give it to me, please?”
I opened the drawer and gave him the pad and the pen. He wrote slowly and with difficulty. He tore the top sheet off the pad and gave it to me. “There’s no telling what’s going to happen, Douglas,” he said, “so I …” He stopped, as though he was having difficulty choosing his words. “That note you have in your hand is to the private bank in Zurich. I have an account of my own there, as well as our joint one. The number’s on there. And my signature. What I’m trying to tell you is that from time to time I … I, well—siphoned off a not inconsiderable sum. To put it plainly, Douglas, I was cheating you. That note will restore the money to you.”
“Oh, Christ,” I said.
“I warned you in the beginning,” he said, “I was not running as an admirable man.”
I patted his head gently. “It’s only money, friend,” I said. “The ride was worth it.”
There were tears in his eyes. “Only money,” he said. Then he laughed. “I was just thinking—it was a lucky thing I got shot. Otherwise nobody would have believed that it was anything but a publicity stunt to promote Priscilla Dean.”
The nurse came in and looked at me sternly, so I got up to go. “Don’t neglect the shop,” Fabian said as I left the room.
Lily arrived the next afternoon. I met her at Kennedy to drive her out to the hospital. She was handsomely dressed for traveling, in the same brown coat I remembered from Florence. She was composed and quiet as we sped east down the highway. But she smoked cigarette after cigarette. I had to stop at a diner to get her two fresh packs. I had told her that the doctor believed that there was a good chance that Fabian would pull through. She had merely nodded.
“The doctor also said—” I broke the silence as we passed Riverhead—“that Miles has an enormous scar running down his chest and abdomen. He said it looked like shrapnel. Do you know anything about that? I asked Miles, but he said he preferred not to talk about it.”
“I saw it, of course,” Lily said. “The first time we went to bed together. He seemed almost ashamed of it. As though it somehow lessened him. He’s vain about his body, you know. That’s why he’d never go swimming and always wore a shirt and tie. I didn’t press him about it, but after a while he told me. He was a fighter pilot—I suppose he told you that …”
“No,” I said.
She smiled gently through the cigarette smoke. “He’s a great one for selective information to selected people, our Miles. Well, he was a pilot. He must have been a very good one. I found out from older American friends of mine who had known him that he had almost every medal a grateful government could hand out.” Her mouth twisted ironically. “In the winter of nineteen forty-four, he was sent on a mission over France. It was a ridiculous, hopeless mission in impossible weather, he told me. I wouldn’t know anything about that, of course, but on something like that I tend to believe him. He said his wing commander was a stupid, murderous glory hunter. I’m not up on wars, but I have some idea what that means. Anyway, he and his best friend were shot down over the Pas de Calais. His friend was killed. Miles was taken by the Germans. They took care of him—in a nice, German way. That’s where the scar came from. When the hospital he was in was finally overrun, he weighed a hundred pounds. That big man.” She smoked in silence for a while. “That’s when he decided, he told me, that he had done his last deed for humanity. That explains something of the way he lived. Or does it?”
“Something,” I said. “Did you believe that English act?”
“Of course not. We laughed about it. I coached him on Britishisms. You were involved in quite a bit of business with him, weren’t you?”
“A bit,” I said.
“You remember I warned you about him when it came to money?”
“I remember.”
“Did he cheat you?”
“A bit.”
She chuckled. “Me, too,” she said. “Dear old Miles. He’s not an honest man, but he’s a joyous one. And he gives joy to others. I’m not the one to say, but maybe one is more important than the other.” She lit a fresh cigarette. “It’s hard to think of his dying.”
“Maybe he won’t die,” I said.
“Maybe.”
We said no more until we reached the hospital. “I think I’d like to see him alone,” Lily said, as we drove up to the door of the handsome red-brick building.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll drop your bags at the hotel. And I’ll be home if you need me.” I kissed her and watched her go into the hospital, in her smart brown coat.
It was dark by the time I got home. There was a car I didn’t recognize standing in front of the house. More reporters, I thought disgustedly, as I walked up the gravel path. Evelyn’s car wasn’t in the garage and I guessed that Anna had let whoever it was into the house. I opened the door with my key. A man was sitting in the living room, reading a newspaper.
He stood up when I came in.
“Mr. Grimes …?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I took the liberty of coming in and waiting for you here,” he said politely. He was a thin, studious-looking man with sandy hair. He was neatly dressed in a lightweight, dark-gray summer suit with a white shirt and dark tie. He didn’t look like a reporter. “My name is Vance,” he said. “I’m a lawyer. I’m here on behalf of a client. I came for a hundred thousand dollars.”
I went over to the sideboard where the whiskey was and poured myself a drink. “Would you like a Scot
ch?” I asked the man.
“No, thank you.”
I carried my drink with me and sat down in an easy chair, facing Vance. He remained standing, a neat, small-boned, unmenacing, indoor type of man. “I was wondering when you’d come,” I said.
“It took some time,” he said. His voice was dry, low, and educated. It would bore a listener in a short while. “You were not easy to follow. Fortunately …” He made a little movement with the newspaper. “You’ve made yourself into quite a hero out here.”
“So it seems,” I said. “There’s nothing like a good deed for shining in a naughty world.”
“Exactly,” he said.
He glanced around at the room. From the nursery came the sound of the baby crying. “A nice place you’ve got here. I admired the view.”
“Yes,” I said. I felt very tired.
“My client has instructed me to tell you that you have three days to deliver the money. He does not want to be unreasonable.”
I nodded. Even that was an effort.
“I will be at the Blackstone Hotel. Unless you prefer the St. Augustine.” He smiled, skull-like.
“The Blackstone will do,” I said.
“In the same conditions in which it was found, please,” Vance said. “In one-hundred-dollar bills.”
I nodded again.
“Well,” he said, “that takes care of everything, I think. I must be on my way now.”
At the door, he stopped. “You haven’t asked me whom I represent,” he said.
“No.”
“Just as well. I couldn’t tell you if you had asked. Still, I can say that your … your escapade … was not without its benefits. It might ease the pain of having to return the money to know that it saved several distinguished people … very distinguished people from considerable embarrassment.”
“That makes my day,” I said.
It was nine o’clock when I went up in the elevator in the apartment building on East Fifty-second Street. I had left word with Anna to tell Mrs. Grimes that I had been called to the city suddenly on business and that I would be gone a day or two. I could have called Evelyn at her office, but I didn’t want to have to explain anything.