“Uh,” said the drunk. “Yeah, I get you. I gonna be careful. I gotta—” He stopped short, fell against Donahue, gripped his arm. “You—you’re a private detective?”
“Yeah.”
“Good! Listen, brother—now listen.” He tugged at his wallet, counted out some bills. “Here. Here’s a hundred bucks. Listen, now. I gotta meet this gal. But I’m drunk, see? I’m stewed. Some swell lousy pals o’ mine got me stewed. Tell you what. You meet my gal, tell her I been detained on business. You take her to a hotel—make it the Grandi, and see she gets a room there. Me, I’ll get me a Turkish bath, get straightened out. Hey, wait now! How the hell do I know you’re a private dick?”
Donahue chuckled, showed him plenty of identification. He was frank. “This is easy money,” he said.
“A hundred bucks. Count ’em. I—jeeze—I got to get straightened out. You see, I just come back from South America—struck it rich—and these fine, nice, lousy pals o’ mine….”
Grinning, Donahue pocketed the hundred dollars. “Now wait, brother. You’d better lend me that picture of the girl. Tell me her name. Also, I’ll have to have your own name.”
“Sure! Sure I’ll”—he sought his wallet again—“lend you the picture. Name’s Laura and she’s—”
Donahue had his little book out. “And your name.”
He turned, by instinct more than anything else, and saw the long black shape of the touring car draw up and crowd in close. But he hadn’t time to get a word out of his mouth. He hadn’t time to snap his hand to his gun.
A gun crashed four times.
Donahue flung back against the side of the cab, ducking. The driver ducked and slewed in his seat and the cab careened, brakes screamed, but at the same time there was a tremendous bounce as the wheels went over the curb. The right front mudguard crashed against a building wall. The car recoiled and glass shattered.
Donahue was pitched forward out of the seat. He struck the glass partition between tonneau and driver’s seat and collapsed on the floor, facing backwards. The drunk piled down on top of him violently and Donahue felt something warm and liquid slap his cheek. He straight-armed the drunk off, hauled himself up and dropped to the seat, hot and shaking all over. His client was gurgling on the floor, in the darkness there.
The driver was pressing his forehead down on the upper rim of the wheel. The man on the cab’s floor was groaning and gurgling, and up and down the street autos, trucks, were stopping; the shots, the sound of the crashing taxi had frozen a few pedestrians into immobility and they remained thus.
“Brother….”
Donahue got a flashlight on and sprayed light down on the man’s face. He shut the flash off immediately, grimacing.
“Brother….” The tone was curiously sober.
“That’s all right—that’s all right.”
“Listen. Go meet her. It’ll be tough, her comin’ alone. Go meet her. Here… take this wallet. Key inside—for bag—”
Donahue snapped: “Cut out talking.”
“Here, take it”
“Will you shut up!”
He felt a hand pawing at his own.
“Take it. You’ll recognize her by the picture. There’s some dough in it. Give it to her. Here. There’s a baggage check in it. I got a bag at the station. Get it. Give it to her. Tell her to get out of town—go home again—I’m sorry—”
Donhaue found himself taking the wallet shoving it into his pocket.
And he heard the broken voice go on: “Don’t tell—the—cops. It ain’t her fault. She—don’t—know—and—”
“For——sake, shut up!”
It was hard to listen to the gurgle of a dying man. There was no reason why he had to listen to it. The man was a stranger.
“Hey, there!”
That was a voice outside the cab—loud and challenging.
Donahue pushed open the door and climbed out and a cop came up to him, stopped and eyed him with a hard stare.
“What the hell happened?”
Donahue’s thoughts were on the sprint. In his pocket lay the hundred dollars representing his fee for promising to meet and conduct to the Hotel Grandi one named Laura something. He did not know the man’s name—nor the girl’s. He had a rather thorough opinion of a harness-bull’s imagination. To tell this cop the truth as it had happened would, in the clear sound of words, seem fantastic. He would not expect the cop to believe him. Part of the truth might get by. The fact of the matter was he had seen an easy way to make a hundred dollars, had taken the case as a joke; and the joke had turned into tragedy.
“Take a look in the cab,” he said.
The cop snapped on a flashlight and poked into the tonneau. Donahue watched him, his eyes narrowed.
“Hey!” the cop yelled; then he backed out, spun around. “That guy’s dead.”
Donahue said: “A curtained touring car yanked up alongside us and let go. The guy inside got it.”
“Who’s the stiff?”
“I’m damned if I know.”
The cop towered with rage. “What the hell are you trying to hand me?”
“I picked him up in a gutter downtown. He was soused. Like a drunk, I couldn’t get rid of him. So we took a cab.”
The driver looked out, choked: “F-four shots!”
“You,” the cop said to Donahue, “are lying!”
“So what should I do now? Break down?”
There was no turning back now. He had the man’s wallet. To turn the wallet over now would be to put himself in a very serious jam.
The cop twirled his nightstick and laughed unpleasantly.
“Okey, guy, okey. Be wise, be wise…. Hello, Coake,” he said to another cop who had come up on the run.
“Hello, Donlin. What the hell?”
“A stiff inside.”
“Who’s this?”
“A wise bimbo.”
Donahue said: “You cops!” with hopeless irony, and chuckled.
A car drew up at the curb and a stoutish man alighted without haste and came across the sidewalk slapping gloves he held in one hand across the palm of the other.
“I heard shots.”
“Yeah,” Donlin said. “Pike what’s inside.”
The stoutish man looked into the cab, backed out and said: “Well, well,” in a merry voice. “And who’s—”
Donahue was leaning against the building wall, eyes cold but watchful.
The stoutish man said: “Well, well, Donny!”
Donahue’s “Hello, Kelly,” was not enthusiastic.
“He’s a wise bimbo,” Donlin growled.
Kelly McPard grinned broadly. “Hell, he’s all right. Just has a habit of being Johnny-on-the-spot. So what happened, Donny?”
“Ask precious,” Donahue said, indicating Donlin.
Donlin told him, and then said: “And this guy right away starts to act dumb like a Dago.”
McPard made a face, as though all this was unpleasant business. “Tsk! tsk! Well—well, suppose we get the morgue bus. Did you frisk the stiff?”
“No,” Donlin said.
“Better.” He backed away from the cab, turned casually and looking up the street, said to Donahue: “What about it?”
“It’s blind to me.” Donahue shrugged. “I told the cop everything I know.”
Kelly McPard kept looking up the street and said thoughtfully: “Ye-es, I suppose so…. Well?” This was directed at Donlin, who had come out of the cab.
“Only this.” Donlin held the .38 auto in his hand.
“Full?”
“Yup.”
McPard sighed and said to Donahue: “Mind running over the station house?”
“I gave the cop all the dope. I was headed uptown. You know where I live.”
McPard shrugged. “Okey.”
“What!” yelped Donlin. “You gonna let this ape—”
“Ah,” drawled McPard, “he’s all right. We don’t need him.” There was curious laughter back of his voice, a wily dip to his head
. “Run along, Donny. I wouldn’t think of pestering you.” And there was still that curious sense of laughter.
Donahue walked away.
Chapter II
He had decided a dozen times in the space of as many minutes to turn the wallet over to McPard. And in the end he hadn’t. He was Irish, and that may have accounted in some measure for the sentimental streak beneath the tough hide. That—or the fact that he and Kelly had a habit of playing hide and seek with each other. Within limits he trusted McPard. Kelly was square. But he had long wanted something on Donahue, and this would have been too good a chance.
It was two minutes to nine when he heaved out of a taxi at Penn Station. He slapped swing doors open, went down into the main rotunda. The only 9:02 train would arrive downstairs. He went down and saw a man in a cap marking on a blackboard that the 9:02 was expected to arrive at 9:15. He worried a cigarette between his lips and cast a quick glance over the waiting people. The small wallet felt hot and oily in his palm; he kept that hand religiously in his overcoat pocket. Shop windows were bright and cheerful in this subterranean cavern, but the air was always stuffy, second-hand, winter or summer. He prowled around, looking. He pushed into a soda counter, entered a telephone booth, took out the wallet. It contained two hundred and twenty dollars. There was the girl’s picture. She looked young, brown-haired, nice. On the back was inscribed: “Love to Charlie from Laura.” The snap wasn’t very old. And there was a baggage check. He replaced the articles in the wallet, the wallet in his pocket.
“Tough,” he said, thinking of the picture.
He went out and looked at the blackboard again. His watch checked with the electric one above: 9:12. Then the man with the cap was megaphoning: “Blah… from… blah… Columbus… Wheeling… blah… was due at 9:02…blah… Track… blah!”
People got up and moved down the corridor. Donahue tailed along, looking around. His eye lit on a small young man leaning against a stone pillar. There was a sensation of something clicking as the little man’s eyes met his own. Then they dropped, a foot ground out a cigarette and the little man sauntered off, whistling. Donahue tried to catch sight of him a moment later, but was unable.
People were coming up the stairway from the train level below. Donahue watched and saw her but did not immediately go to her. She was very small, with a startled, pretty face. A porter was beside her, holding a bag and asking something. She kept shrugging and peering eagerly at the faces. It was minutes before the crowd went away, and then she stood there alone with the porter drooping beside her. Donahue cast another look around, then went over to her.
“Laura?”
There was a frightened smile. “Yes!”
“He couldn’t meet you. He sent me…. I’ll take that, porter.” He took the bag and gave the porter a quarter. “This way, Laura—”
“But—”
He was pointing: “We have to go to the checkroom first.” He flung a look over either shoulder.
“How is Charlie? Why couldn’t he come?”
“Yes,” he said, making believe he misunderstood. “The checkroom’s upstairs. Have a nice trip?”
“Oh, long. Lonesome.”
“There it is over there.”
He gave the check to the man at the counter and received a small yellow handbag that looked new. Gripping it in his left hand, the girl’s suitcase in his right, he started off.
“Come on. We’ll get a taxi.”
They got one in the tunnel and rode out into Seventh Avenue. Donahue had given the address of his apartment-hotel. He was glad the girl didn’t talk. She sat quietly in a corner. He sat in the other, his arms folded and his face in a hard, brown study. Presently the cab stopped and the hotel doorman let them out. Donahue lugged the bags and they went up to his apartment. He could tell by the way she looked when they entered his rooms that she expected to see Charlie there. She turned on him as he was closing the door.
She said, weakly: “Something—something’s—”
“Ssh!” He skated the bags into one corner and scaled his hat on to a divan. He went on into the bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror and thought: “Of all the saps, Donahue, you’re the berries—with all the trimmings.” He turned, strode out of the bathroom with his coat’s long skirt slapping his calves. He walked straight to the center of the room and stood there grinding the heels of his hands slowly together and regarding the girl with a glazed introspective look.
There was a little cry—“Oh!” And small white fingers suddenly against cheeks from which the color was ebbing.
He took a step and laid a big hand on either of her small rounded shoulders. “He’s dead, Laura.” That was the easiest way—right out with it. He felt the rounded shoulders twitch and he saw her looking up at him with a peculiarly abstracted expression. Then she stepped back and began walking up and down the room, swiftly, quietly, with her eyes fixed on the carpet. Suddenly she dived on to the divan and lay there—still, motionless, without a move, without a quiver.
He grabbed the back of a chair and dragged it across the carpet, planked it down in front of the divan. He sat down and scrutinized the palms of his hands, turning them this way and that.
He said, as if talking aloud to himself: “He asked me to meet you. That bag there: he asked me to give it to you. He said you should go home again. He said he was sorry he couldn’t meet you. He gave me some money to give to you—to get back on, I guess.”
She broke into sobbing and he got up and entered the bathroom and washed his hands. The running water dimmed the sound of her sobbing. He washed his hands over and over again, throwing secret glances at his image in the mirror. After a while he turned to the room and saw her sitting up. Her hat was askew, her face smeared with tears. She sniffled, stared straight ahead of her with blank, wet eyes.
“Where can I see his body?”
“I wouldn’t,” he said.
“I want to.”
“You can’t.”
She looked up at him. “Why?”
“It was his dying wish that you shouldn’t.”
Her tone was dull: “How did it happen?”
“He was shot. I guess it was an accident.” He tossed the wallet to the divan. “His money’s in that and the key to his bag. I’ll get you a room in the hotel. I brought you to this apartment because I thought it’d be easier.”
“Who—who are you?”
“My name’s Donahue. I’m a private detective.”
“You knew Charlie well?”
“I never saw him before. I just saw him when he was dying.”
“And—and you did this—for him—for me? You did this for strangers?”
He frowned and turned away. He was glad she didn’t rave and carry on hysterically. She wasn’t that kind. All her emotion remained inside, locked up, torturing her. You could see that much in the stunned white face, tell it by the dull, listless monotony of her words. Then she was feeling at her throat.
“Do you—you mind if I stay here till I can get a train?”
He shivered. He wanted to get her into another room, out of sight; he wanted to get her out of the city as soon as possible. He had done enough. He didn’t want to have a strange girl on his hands.
She was saying: “I hate to ask it. I—I’m not that kind of a girl, you understand. But—but I’m afraid to stay alone. I’m just—afraid. Coming like this—from a small town—I’ve never, been in a big city. And I’m afraid to be alone. I’m ashamed to ask you, but…” She moved her shoulders wearily and then covered her face with her hands.
“Okey,” he said after a while. “Sure. Stay here. I never thought of that.” He nodded. “Bedroom’s in there.”
He picked up her suitcase and Charlie’s bag and carried them into the bedroom. He frowned and muttered, to himself, but when he reappeared in the living-room these manifestations of his ill-humor were absent. She was standing, a small, lone, pitiful spectacle.
“In there,” he said.
She smiled wistfully. “Y
ou’re so good, Mr. Donahue—so good.” She dragged her feet past him and entered the bedroom, closing the door quietly.
He crammed a pipe and lit up, took to pacing with slow, long strides, his face wrapped in thought. A few moments later he heard a sharp outcry. His nape bristled, his eyes narrowed and he whipped to the connecting door, flung it open.
She was on her knees, shaking, her eyes wide. She looked up at him and grimaced and pointed downward. He crossed the room and looked down into Charlie’s open bag.
It was crammed with money—hundreds, thousands of dollars.
Chapter III
The connecting door was closed—locked. He had heard the girl turn the key quietly on the bedroom side. It amused him more than anything else. There was a single in-a-door bed in the living-room, if he wanted to use it later. But the divan would do. He was interested in neither, though, at the moment. Coming out of the little pantry that contained nothing more than an icebox and a sink, he tried the Scotch highball while heading for a mohair easy chair. Dropping into the chair, the dim glow of the floor lamp behind made his smooth black hair shine but kept his face mostly in shadow.
Fourteen thousand five hundred dollars. He looked at the connecting door: the money was behind that door. He drew on his pipe and heard, far away, the thresh of a southbound Elevated train.
Charlie Stromson was his name. It was like this: He’d known her in Revelation, Ohio, six or seven years ago. She was the cashier in the Center Square General Store. Charlie worked in the Sportsman’s Exchange, the game and fish store; he was a wizard at repairing guns and fly rods and mounting fish or birds. Then he got it into his head that there was gold in South America. They became engaged, and he went off to find a fortune.
He wrote her three months later from New York, that he was leaving for South America to get their fortune. That was the last she heard of him for three years. Then there was a letter from Montevideo. He’d made his fortune and he named a date when she was to meet him in New York. She sent a letter care of the General Post Office, New York, saying she would meet him on the appointed date. She’d shown Donahue the letter post-marked at Montevideo. It told of hardships in the jungle, of privation, months and years away from any civilized town.
Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask Page 40