Story of Lola Gregg

by Howard Fast

  The cab stopped finally, and the driver turned to look at her with a certain compassionate curiosity, as if somehow he had read her thoughts and been reached by her tension. “Two dollars and fifty cents, lady,” he said, almost apologetically, and seemed embarrassed when she gave him three dollars and told him to keep it, and he sat for a moment, looking after her as she left the car.

  She saw Feldberger right away. He was running toward the cab as it stopped, and he grasped her arm to steady her and smiled at her, and said, “It’s O.K.—don’t worry,” several times. They were a block from the theatre, and for a long moment she just stood there looking at it, watching the lights run over the marquee, looking at it as if it were a giant and alive and a determination of all her fate and future.

  But she was suddenly calm as she asked the lawyer, “Is he in there, Sam—really?”

  “I think he is, Lola. The woman in the ticket booth recognized him, but not at once. She was confused because he wore a shirt and tie, jacket and top-coat instead of the work jacket. He must have gotten clothes somewhere.”

  “But how do you know, Sam?”

  “Lola, I pay off enough to be worth a tip when something breaks. Now they’re all over the place——”

  “But, Sam, I don’t see anything.” They were walking toward the theatre now.

  “Give them credit for that, they didn’t start in this racket yesterday, Lola. They have over forty agents staked out around the theatre, and a roach couldn’t crawl through without being spotted. They were wise, from their point of view, not to want any spectaculars—I mean the movie stuff, roping off the streets, floodlights and all that. They don’t need it, because they got the situation under control this way. Sooner or later, Gregg’s got to come out, and when he comes out, they’ll take him.”

  “If it is Gregg.”

  “They seem to think it is. Now hold on, Lola.” He drew her to a stop. “Up there, see that big car, the big black Chrysler—there are three men in it. That’s their headquarters, as far as I can make out, and they work it by radio out of that car. They also got a couple of tommy-guns in there, I think——”

  “Sam, are they mad? Or do they want to kill Gregg?”

  “I don’t think they want to kill him. They got a crazy notion that he’s armed, and that’s what I’m afraid of. If he makes a bad motion, they might start shooting. That’s what I don’t want to happen——”

  “Will they let me go into the theatre and bring him out, Sam? Will they let me do that?”

  “I thought of that, but they’ve had a dozen men in and out of the place. They can’t find him.”

  “I’ll find him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “All right,” the lawyer nodded. “Now, do you suppose we can sell that to Cann?”

  “I’ll sell it to him,” Lola said coldly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  GREGG

  WHEN Lola opened the back door of the big Chrysler and stepped into it, the man who was sitting there said, “Wrong stop, lady. This isn’t a taxi-cab.” One of the men in front was saying, into a microphone, “Relieve Matthews, and tell him to call in. Tell Freddie to” go through the men’s room again. He might stay there until called out. He’s always asking to take a leak.” The man in the back had a tommy-gun balanced between his knees, his hands folded over the muzzle, so that anyone who looked into the car casually might well mistake it for a musical instrument of some sort. Cann was sitting in front, and he twisted around to look at Lola, without recognition at first, and then with raised brows.

  “I told you, lady——” the man with the gun said, beginning with that slow, unmistakable deliberation that becomes the articulation of a cop, any kind of a cop, large or small, high or low; but Cann interrupted him with a sharp, “Never mind, I know her.” And then he said to Lola:

  “Sit down, Mrs. Gregg. So you finally decided to join us. Who tipped you off, that Jew lawyer?” This was a new Mr. Cann. The insurance agent and the vice-president of the Bank were gone. Politeness was gone. This Mr. Cann was a cop—hard as flint—hard as nails.

  “I decided to join you,” she answered bitterly. “I want ray husband to live.” She squeezed in next to the man with the machine-gun, for once indifferent to the guns she hated so, indifferent to them and contemptuous of them. You had to disdain what you fought; otherwise, there was no fight, no struggle; but to her amazement she found it easy. It was a part of what was happening to her, and a part of what she was becoming in that process of happening; but she did not know that. She only knew that she was filled with anger and with contempt for men who played evil games with guns.

  “We also want him to live, Mrs. Gregg,” Mr. Cann smiled. “But we want to live, too. That’s a reasonable thing to ask, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know whether it’s reasonable or not, but I do know that my husband isn’t armed.”

  “How do you know, Mrs. Gregg? Was that a part of the plan you cooked up with him?”

  “We talked about that once already, Mr. Cann. Are you a record that enjoys repeating itself, or are you committed to a Hollywood version of your profession.” Her voice was quivering with anger now. “My husband isn’t armed. You know it—I know it, and your friends know it too. You know our pulsebeat, when we wake up, when we go to sleep. Eavesdropping and peeping is part of your not so noble profession, Mr. Cann. And you also know that my husband isn’t armed.”

  Cann shook his head. “Even allowing for your anger and personal disturbance, Mrs. Gregg, I don’t think you can afford to take that tone with me. I really don’t think you can.”

  The man next to him said flatly, “Come in, Chauncy. Take a breather, it’s turning cold out. Is that camera set up in the hotel across the street? Over.”

  “I think I can,” Lola said, her voice quivering just a little. “Maybe Feldberger and I have enough to bust this wide open. By all that is holy, I swear to God that if you shoot Gregg, I will testify under oath that it was deliberate and premeditated murder. I will shout it from the housetops. I will sign affidavits—I will never rest until I have my own satisfaction. I see you looking at me, Mr. Cann, so maybe you will understand that perhaps you haven’t taken my full measure. Yes, look at me again. Women are deceptive. Look at Lola Gregg, Mr. Cann. I pride myself that I know how to love, a talent possibly unfamiliar to you, Mr. Cann. I am also learning how to hate, and that makes a dangerous combination, doesn’t it?”

  Mr. Cann appraised her in the darkness of the car; she felt his gaze more than she saw it, and in the same way, she felt herself as if she herself were a stranger. Her words were strange and her voice was strange, and she was looking at herself objectively and not without pride. She no longer pitied herself.

  “Who the hell is going to listen, lady?” the man with the tommy-gun said, and Cann said:

  “What makes you so sure, Mrs. Gregg, that your husband has no gun?”

  “He hates guns,” she answered bitterly, “hates them—do you understand? He knows guns and he has used guns—it’s no secret that he was a soldier for seven years of his life. Good heavens, Mr. Cann, if you are a person of any sensitivity, feeling, love—a person with any concern for your fellow man, you don’t come out of that liking guns! Don’t you think we ever talked about it? A gun is a symbol in our lives, and we want a world where there are no more guns—none! None, Mr. Cann! Don’t you understand me?”

  “I am trying to,” Mr. Cann said, “You haven’t convinced me. I still think he has a gun.”

  “Won’t anything convince you?”

  “When I have Gregg and I find he’s clean, I’ll believe he’s clean.”

  “And we’re wasting time. So help me God, Mr. Cann, if you kill him, I will kill you. I swear that.”

  “It is both futile and childish to threaten me, Mrs. Gregg, and it is also an infraction of the law. I will make certain allowances for your condition, but I warn you to get off that tack. I am only, in my own small way, a public s
ervant doing his job.”

  “I heard that once before today,” Lola snapped. “Your job is a rag to rub all the dirt off you. You are as free to quit your job as I am to take one like it.”

  “We talk in circles, and I think it was you who spoke about time. Just what is it you want me to do, Mrs. Gregg?”

  The man next to him said, “Put Johnson in front and send Ricardo up to the balcony. And what in hell do you characters do in the can, play diddle-the-fiddle? Over.”

  “There’s a lady present,” Cann interrupted with annoyance. “If that’s the best you can do, shut up.”

  “I apologize. Honour of the service.”

  “Well?” said Mr. Cann.

  “I want to go into the theatre and talk to my husband. He will come out with me, and he will surrender.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Why is it nonsense, Mr. Cann?”

  “Because Roger Gregg is not a man unknown to us. We know almost as much about him as you do, Mrs. Gregg, and perhaps one or two things you do not know. Why should he surrender? He could have surrendered any time all day.”

  “He’s had time to think. He’s not insane. Why do you think our lives are a game of cops and robbers? We are plain people, people with families who want to have a little better world. We don’t play crazy games.”

  “Don’t preach to me, Mrs. Gregg—you really mustn’t expect to convert me to whatever you believe in with your little sermons.” The man with the tommy-gun guffawed. “I have my own convictions, you know. What makes you think you could find him in that theatre? We tried, and we’re not totally inefficient.”

  “I’ll find him.”

  “How, Mrs. Gregg?”

  “I tell you I’ll find him.”

  “But how, Mrs. Gregg? What magic do you possess that we lack?”

  “Not magic—I know him. He is part of me. I’ll know him in a thousand people. I know the way he sits, the way he holds his head. I’m not trying to fool you, Mr. Cann—I give you my word. Don’t you think he’s reasonable? He is. What is he to do in a theatre surrounded by agents? This way, he can be bailed out. He stands trial—yes, and he could win in court. In all his life, he’s never done an act that wasn’t brave and admirable. Give me a chance for his life, Mr. Cann! It’s to your advantage as well as mine. There might be a moment of satisfaction in shooting him down——”

  “We seek no such satisfaction, Mrs. Gregg.”

  “—but you would regret it. We’re not alone in the world. Gregg was a hero in two wars. The whole world knows his record in Spain, and here he won the Distinguished Service Cross, and that’s not so easily forgotten either. Do you think the White House would enjoy the headlines in every European paper—Roger Gregg, shot down from ambush, no chance for his life, murdered?”

  “There’s no need to be so dramatic, Mrs. Gregg. No one wants to murder your husband. We are taking only ordinary precautions.”

  “Then why don’t you let me go in there and bring him out with me?”

  Mr. Cann turned his back on her and stared through the windshield of the car for a long, contemplative moment; then he said to the man next to him, “What do you think?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Is he really the Joe DiMaggio of the Commies?”

  “Depends how you cut it. He did win the D.S.C.—at Guadalcanal. What he did in Spain, you can take her word for or leave it. Dead, he’s another martyr. I’d take some chances to have him alive.”

  “I’ll buy that.”

  “All right.” Cann turned back to Lola. “You can try, Mrs. Gregg. We’ll give you forty-five minutes inside. Come out with him or without him. When he comes out, he is to have both hands on the lapels of his coat. He is to stop in the lobby, ten feet from the outside ticket booth. We’ll be waiting for him. He is to stand there, absolutely still, keeping his hands just where they are, on the lapels of his coat, until we take him. Do you understand me—ten feet inside of the outside ticket booth. No sudden movements. You understand?”

  “I understand,” Lola whispered.

  “No hanky-panky—none at all, Mrs. Gregg. You asked me not to underestimate you. Now I warn you not to underestimate me or the department.”

  Lola nodded, and Mr. Cann reached over and opened the door of the car. She got out, and the door closed behind her. All the time in the car, she had hardly been able to take her eyes off the theatre entrance. Now, fixed, moved, directed, her heart hammering, she walked around the car and across the street toward the lights. The lights beat out THE LAST KILL, and the towering colour poster portrayed a man looming over a woman, whom he held half erect by the torn shoulder of her dress, his other arm raised, his palm open to hit her across the face—meanwhile, her make-up precise, her hair artfully waved, and the huge curves of her breasts great, impossible globs of flesh leering down on the street. As she walked, Lola’s eyes caught the words of the legend beneath the poster, the great letters jutting out like an act and declaration of faith, impossible to resist, making their statement of art and culture in irresistible terms, BLAZING PAGEANT OF MEN WHO LIVE BY DEATH AND THE WOMEN WHO LOVE THEM—NAKED, SAVAGE AND PASSIONATE—THE PICTURE THAT TOOK THREE YEARS TO MAKE WITH NO HOLDS BARRED. YOU WILL THRILL TO THESE WILD SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE—IN BEAUTIFUL CAMEOSCOPE, LARGE SCREEN. The enormous, out of focus poster faded as she came under the marquee. Feldberger stood there, hands in pockets, his strange, little boy’s face grave and troubled. He didn’t move, and Lola nodded slightly. Lola trembled now, as she got on the line at the ticket booth, the tension too long and too much. He will come out now, she said to herself, he will come out now and it will all be for nothing. But he didn’t come out, and the line shortened, and finally it was her turn to push the two dollar bills she had clutched in her hand through the ticket window, and whisper, “One, please.” A man ogled her as she walked in, and at first she thought it was one of the agents, but as he manœuvred toward her, she realized it was only someone alone and aching to be joined with another, to prove himself, to drive away his own devils. It needed little enough rebuff to lose him.

  She was telling herself what to do, precisely and thoughtfully. “First find your eyes,” she instructed herself. “It’s no use trying to see until you are used to the darkness. And that takes a little time. I know how eager you are, but you have to wait—at least five minutes.” She looked at her watch, and then shook her head. It was no good trying to do it with a watch. She would simply have to stand there until she was able to see.

  She stood behind the last row, in front of the plate glass that separated the lobby from the seating area, and she tried to put herself in Gregg’s place, think as he would think. He must have been totally tired—no more walking, he needed to sit and rest. In a sense, he had run a circle and had returned to his starting-place, and while another might have made an adventure out of such a situation, Gregg could not. She knew how quickly he could come to a decision, and then how long and thoughtfully he might consider it before he would act upon it. In her own mind, she believed wholly that he had decided not to run. It was not a case of what was right and what was wrong, of what was possible and what was impossible; but rather of the nature of this particular man. He was a stubborn man, slow to act often enough, but absolute and decisive in his actions. That could be weakness or strength, and Lola remembered times when people had argued with Gregg, pleaded with him, threatened him, and then had literally raged at his unshakability. It was Gregg during the Spanish War who had been told to hold a machine-gun nest until he received contrary orders, and while all the rest of the army retreated, he and the four men with him held the point for twenty-two hours until, finally, surrounded and without ammunition, they picked up the gun and got back to their own lines with it. How often this quality of his had infuriated her! Nevertheless, he must have made his decision, and then he must have wandered into the first downtown theatre he noticed, to sit in the darkness and think it through.

  As a sudden impact upon her, the realization came that he was here, in thi
s theatre with her, watching the screen, even as she was watching it without seeing it. She brought it into focus, and told herself that she must wait a minute or two more. Already, she could pick out the shapes of people in the audience. Aminute or two more. She looked at the screen, but seemed to see only what Gregg was seeing and could make no more of it than he might have made, brooding over the strange pass and place he had come to. The coloured shadows leaped and postured and swore baths and they pointed guns at each other, and the guns thundered, but it was a dream of no consequence or meaning. One of them was being beaten. A large, handsome man, he was punched again and again, the thud of the blows echoing and re-echoing through the theatre; but no bruise or break in the skin of his handsome face appeared. He fought back with blows of his own that would have crushed the knuckles of an ordinary man, but he never winced or rubbed his knuckles or took any notice of them. A chair was broken on his head, but he only shook it and thereby shook all the fractures and broken bones back into place. His inde-structibility made no impression on her, even as it made no particular impression on anyone else in the theatre. In this particular bath of brutality, they accepted men who could not be injured. When he was hurled back by his opponent and struck the opposite wall with such force that would have killed an ordinary mortal, no one was surprised to find him bounce back, unbruised, grinning and ready to punch his way right back to five thousand dollars a week.

  Lola closed her eyes to shut it out and become Gregg again. The reasoning was not too complex. He would avoid the balconies, as places too open; he would sink himself into the orchestra, slump into his seat where it was broad and dark, not alone, but among other people. He did not know they knew he was there, and he did know that the odds were all against his being discovered. He would be resting, not hiding.