The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

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The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction Page 17

by Maxim Jakubowski


  I raised my arms and stood there. With no accent at all the man in front of me said, “Sit down and hold onto your ankles.”

  I did as directed. They took the gun first. Then they took the money belt off me. They put the gun and the money belt on the bed. They seemed to be waiting for someone. I felt better. I had a lovely idea. “Police?” I asked. My voice sounded like something crawling up the side of a wall.

  “But of course,” the English-speaking one said.

  We all waited. Broughton came in. The white caterpillar eyebrows showed no surprise, no elation. He looked like the deacon standing at the end of the pew waiting for the collection plate to be handed back.

  “You saved us some trouble, Gandy,” he said.

  “Glad I could help.”

  “We didn’t find Brankis until yesterday. We’ve gotten excellent cooperation from the Mexican authorities.”

  “Put that in your report, Broughton.”

  He nodded. “I will. You nearly made it, Gandy. One day later . . .”

  “My hard luck, I suppose,” I said. “Can I get up on my feet?”

  He nodded. I got up. He showed expression for the first time. I was something low, dirty and evil. Something you’d find under a wet rock. Something he wanted to step on.

  “We’re taking you back,” he said.

  “Kind of you, sir.”

  I grinned at him. I gave him a big broad grin and he turned away from it. I was laughing inside. I was laughing so hard I hurt. Let him have his fun. Sooner or later he was going to find out about the wire I sent before returning to my cabaña – that wire to Washington Bureau Headquarters, giving the case code name, reporting recovery, requesting instructions.

  You see, it looked like all the money in the world, but sometimes even that isn’t enough.

  THE MURDERING KIND!

  Robert Turner

  1

  It started off just like any other Friday night. I left my office in the Emcee Publishing Company building on Forty-Sixth Street at five-oh-five. I went across the street to the quiet, dim little bar in the Hotel Marlo where every Friday night for the past year or so, I’d been stopping off after work for a dry Manhattan. I felt good. I had that Friday-payday glow of satisfaction that you get when you’ve got a good tough week’s work behind you, money in your pocket and two free days at home with Fran and the kids ahead of you.

  I wasn’t looking for any trouble. I would have the one drink, leave the Marlo and make the five thirty-seven Express bus to Jersey. I’d meet Johnny Haggard on the bus, and we’d bull it all the way home about our jobs and what we were going to do about the crab grass on our so-called lawns. Johnny lives next door to me in Greenacres, a new development just outside of Wildwood in North Jersey. There are plenty of acres there, but not much of it green, what with the thin layer of topsoil the builders used over all that fill. Anyhow.

  No trouble. No excitement. Nothing different. Everything the same as usual. That’s what I thought . . . But a couple of things happened.

  The Marlo is a small, old, side-street residential hotel. The bar is tiny, very dimly lighted, quiet, with no jukebox and usually not very crowded. Sometimes I’m the only one in there having a drink at five-ten. But not tonight. There was a girl there, all alone at the bar when I came in.

  There was nothing special about her at first glance. And that’s all I did, at first, was glance at her. Believe me. Listen, I’ve been married ten years and I appreciate a good-looking woman the same as the next guy. I kid with the guys and sometimes with Fran, just to needle her a little, about stepping out and fooling around. You know. But you also know it’s talk with most of us guys. After all, a man’s got a swell wife, a couple of fine kids, a nice home. You can’t have everything. So you make up your mind to that and forget about the things you don’t have.

  Herb, the tall, gloomy-looking bartender at the Marlo, saw me come in the door and had my Manhattan half made by the time I got onto one of the leather barstools. I sat there, savoring the first lemon-peel-tart smooth burn of the drink in my mouth, trickling down my throat, and looked at myself in the backbar mirror. I was not the only one. The girl at the other end of the bar was looking at my reflection, too. Our eyes met. She let them hold for a moment and then dropped her gaze, almost shyly.

  Some girls can do a lot with their eyes. This one could. I don’t know how to explain it. Her eyes were very dark, extremely widely set, kind of intense and brooding-looking. With that one look she seemed to say: “You seem interesting to me. I think I could get to like you. If you study me closely I think you’ll feel the same way. And if you spoke to me, if you did it nicely, not in a wise-guy way, I wouldn’t brush you off. But you’ll have to make the approach. I wouldn’t dare.” You know what I mean?

  So using the backbar mirror, I looked her over more carefully. She wasn’t well dressed. She was wearing a trench coat, with the back of the collar turned up and no hat. Her hair was thick and blonde and hung gracefully about her shoulders but that’s all you could say about it. Her nose was a little too broad and her mouth too wide and full-lipped, but somehow those features seemed to fit just right with the dark, brooding eyes and although she wasn’t striking, she was a damned attractive girl. The quiet type. The kind who wouldn’t want a lot of money spent on her, who would be content to just sit and have a couple of drinks with a guy and talk and maybe go to a movie or something . . . You can see the way my mind was working.

  I’d almost finished the Manhattan when our eyes met in the mirror again and this time, they held longer and I got the feeling that both of us were trying to tear our gaze away and couldn’t. It was as though we were looking very deep into each other, hungrily. And then when she finally yanked her gaze away, I felt shaken and a little giddy, as though this was my third Manhattan instead of my first.

  I glanced sideways at her and she had her legs angled off the stool and crossed. She was wearing high heels, not extreme, but enough to give her naturally gracefully curved legs what seemed like extra length and sleekness. I suddenly realized that my heart was pounding too hard, and so were the pulses in my wrist.

  Herb the bartender went down to the girl, seeing she’d finished her drink. He asked her if she’d like another. She hesitated and then caught my glance in the backbar mirror again and turned quickly away and said, “Yes, please.” Her voice was soft, husky, almost a whisper.

  I knew then that I’d better get out of there, fast. All kinds of crazy thoughts and ideas were going through my head. I drained my glass, started to get up and somebody swatted me on the back. I wheeled angrily to look into Ronny Chernow’s handsome, grinning face.

  “Hi, Kip,” he said. “Living dangerously, I see. Sitting in a cozy little bar, drinking cocktails and flirting with a pretty girl! Ah, you sly old dogs, you quiet ones, you never can tell about your type.”

  I got very red. I started to tell Chernow that in the first place I wasn’t flirting, in the second place I was only thirty-one years old, at least a couple of years younger than he was. But he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring at the girl at the end of the bar and smiling at her. He was looking at her the way guys like Ronny Chernow always look at girls, as though she wasn’t wearing anything; patronizingly, as though he was thinking: You’re not too bad, Baby. Maybe I’ll give you a great big break and go after you!

  But the girl wasn’t paying any attention to him. Chernow turned back to me. He took hold of my arm. “Hey, you’re not running off so soon. Have another drink with me. Or will Momma spank you if you miss that first bus home?”

  What can you say to a remark like this? If you deny it, then go, you make it sound true, anyhow. I thought about the girl at the bar. She was listening to this. The loud way Chernow always talked, she couldn’t help it.

  I knew what Ronnie Chernow really thought about me: I was stuffy, not a sport, a guy who never had any fun, was regimented, never varied his routine – a man on a treadmill, going like hell but never getting anywhere. I didn�
�t care what Chernow thought about me. But I cared what I thought. And suddenly, crazily, I wondered if he was right. I had to prove that he wasn’t.

  “Okay, Ronny,” I said. “If you’re buying. I hear you’re a tight man with a buck.”

  That got him. Chernow was always talking about how much money he made and spent. “Me?” he said. “What are you talking about? Why, I spend more in one—” Then he stopped and grinned, realizing I’d turned the needle around on him. “Okay, Kip,” he said.

  While Herb made the second Manhattan, I looked at the clock. It was five-twenty. By now, I should have been a block away, on my way home, on the way to that five-thirty-seven Express. I knew now that I was going to miss it. It was the damnedest feeling. Maybe it was silly, but I felt a little sick and scared, apprehensive. In the five years we’d been living in Wildwood, I hadn’t missed that bus. I’d never stayed in town one night, even. Now that I realized that, it seemed a little ridiculous. At the same time I felt a slight exultation, a sort of breaking loose feeling, of strange freedom. I drained half of the Manhattan at one gulp. I looked at Ronny Chernow in the mirror behind the bar.

  He was big, handsome, in a red-faced, square-jawed sort of way. His carefully tousled, boyishly curly hair made him look younger than he was. A lot of the girls in our office were crazy about him. He was the vigorous, aggressive, breezy type and he was always kidding around with the girls and always letting hints drop to other guys in the place that he’d dated a number of them and found them vulnerable.

  He was the business manager of Emcee Publications and I don’t know what he made, but it must have been somewhere around ten thousand a year. But he spent and dressed as though his salary was three times that. Being single, though, with nobody else’s way to pay through life but his own, I guess he could do that.

  It was hard to like the man. He was big-mouthed and overpowering. But it was just as hard not to admire him. He was everything that I was not and I thought about that, sitting here. At least Ronny Chernow had color. I was drab. His kind of life was excitement. Mine was boredom, monotony. Men like Chernow felt sorry for worms like me.

  I began to rebel against that. I told myself: I’m going to have a little change. I deserve it. I’m way overdue. I’ll show this big, handsome jerk next to me that I can have fun, too. I’ll call Fran and tell her I won’t be home until late. I’ll stay here, have another drink or two and then go someplace for dinner. Later, I’ll go to the fights at the Garden.

  “Ronny,” I said. “You’re a real round-town boy. Where’s a good place to have dinner? I’m staying in town tonight.”

  His thick handsome brows rose as though I’d said I was going out to stick up a bank. “What!” he said. “You’re finally going to break away from Momma’s apron strings? Congratulations, kid. I’d just about given you up. Maybe you are human, after all.” He slapped me on the back again. “Where you going? Got a date?”

  I began to enjoy this. I wanted it to last a little longer. I began to almost like Chernow. “Now, look,” I said and winked at him. “Have I asked you where you’re going tonight, who you’re going to be with? Does Gimbels tell Macy’s. It’s none of my business. Maybe this isn’t any of yours.”

  He looked dubious but didn’t press the point. We finished our drinks and Chernow said: “Well, since you don’t have to run, let’s do this again.” He flipped his empty glass with the back of his forefinger.

  I didn’t answer. I looked at the clock. It was five-thirty. I should call Fran. Somehow I dreaded that. That would be the final break with my routine. I hated to make it. Yet I had to call her. Then I remembered that she wouldn’t be expecting me until six-thirty. She wouldn’t leave to meet the bus at Wildwood until six-twenty. I still had plenty of time for that call. I watched Herb make two more drinks. Then I looked toward the glass and saw the girl at the end of the bar staring at me again. Chernow noticed, too.

  “Hey!” he said. “That baby is giving you the eye. If she even half looked at me like that, I’d be down there sitting on her lap by now.”

  “Well,” I said, sarcastically, “you’re the Casanova type, anyhow.”

  He missed the sarcasm. “Listen,” he said. His eyes appraised me. “You could do all right, too, if you’d give yourself half a chance. You’re a good-looking guy – a little on the slim side, but not bad. You’re too timid, though. Women like aggressive guys. You gotta go after them. You—”

  “Hey!” I broke in. He was beginning to embarrass me. “Not to change the subject, but did you find out from the advertising department how come we lost that second cover ad?”

  “They’ve switched to the Tripub Comics group for the next six months. But they’ll be back as soon as Tri’s circulation drops and you can goose ours up again. How about getting on the ball and doing that, huh, kid?”

  “Sure,” I began to burn a little. As editor of Emcee’s Comic magazine group, I was responsible for circulation. “That’s easy. Just get the old man to allow me five bucks a page more for the artists and a dollar a page more for the writers. Better art and better stories are what the kids are buying. I do the best I can on the lousy budget I got.”

  “I suppose,” Chernow finished his drink, swung around on his stool. He was looking at the legs of the girl at the end of the bar. He made a whistling sound. “Man, look at those legs!” he said. “Kip, kid, if you don’t make that before you leave here, I’ll disown you . . . Well, I got to run. Have a good time, boy. Live dangerously!”

  I waved and in the bar mirror, watched him breeze out of the place. I told myself to hell with him. The next time I caught the eye of the girl at the end of the bar, I smiled. She looked frightened and turned her eyes right away.

  “Herb,” I said. He came toward me, wiping his hands on his bar apron, his amber eyes doleful. “Herb, ask the lady if she’ll have a drink on me. At the end of the bar there.”

  The bartender’s dolorous voice said: “You sure you want to do that, Mr Morgan? I mean, I know it’s none of my business, but . . .” He broke off, half apologetically.

  Something like a bell of warning seemed to toll inside my head. But I was looking at myself in the bar. Like Chernow had said, I wasn’t a bad-looking guy. And that third Manhattan had hit home. I wasn’t drunk but I was feeling – well – aggressive, cocky.

  “Don’t be silly, Herb,” I said. “See if the lady’d like a drink.”

  He ambled down to the other end of the bar, spoke to the girl. I watched her in the mirror. She registered a little surprise, a little confusion, just the right amount of each, very cutely. I didn’t hear what she said, but saw Herb start to mix a martini, then take it down to her. She looked at me in the bar mirror, raised the glass and formed the words, “Here’s luck,” with her full lips.

  I said: “Herb, make me another drink. I’ve got to make a phone call.” It was a quarter to six, now. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I went through into the lobby to the phone booths. I called Fran, told her I’d been detained at the office, but was leaving now.

  “I haven’t looked at the schedule yet, Baby,” I said. “So I don’t know which bus I’ll be able to get at this time. I’ll call you from Wildwood and you can run out. Okay?”

  “Kip,” Fran said. “Are you all right?”

  My heart skipped a couple of beats for no reason at all. “Sure. Of course I’m all right. What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t been drinking?”

  I didn’t answer for several seconds. Then I said: “Well, I stopped off and had a couple with Ronny Chernow. Why, I don’t sound drunk, do I?”

  She giggled. “No, silly. But you never call me ‘Baby’. It sounded funny, coming from you.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay, Baby!” She hung up.

  I realized as soon as I left the phone booth that the instant I’d spoken to Fran, I’d forgotten all about my resolve to stay in town for dinner and the fights. At the sound of her voice
I’d instinctively reverted to my role of the faithful home-loving husband. Routine had won out. I shrugged. It was probably just as well. Away from the dim lighting of the bar and the sight of the girl sitting there all alone, I realized that I just wasn’t cut out for that sort of thing, let’s face it. I would go back, finish that last drink I’d ordered and take off for the bus terminal.

  Back in the Marlo bar, as I passed behind the girl at the end, she half turned, said, huskily: “Thanks for the drink. Why don’t you bring yours over here? I mean, it’s silly for the two of us not to talk.”

  I got kind of choked up. My heart felt too big and thick inside my chest; I was sure she could hear it. I was suddenly glad that I’d made that mistake on the phone and committed myself about going home, now. If I hadn’t, I’d probably take this girl up on her invitation. The way the sound of her voice hit me, the impact her eyes had upon me – well – a guy is only human.

  I said: “Uh – thanks – but I’ve got to run, now. Some other time.”

  I went to my own end of the bar, gulped down the Manhattan, gagging on it a little. When I set the empty glass down, I misjudged the distance, set it down a little too hard. I knew then that I was a little tight. I knew when I got outside it was going to hit me. I turned away from the bar and the girl spoke again:

  “How about letting me buy you one, before you go? I mean, I don’t want to be obligated. Please? Pretty please?”

  This time her voice didn’t get under my skin. It even annoyed me a little. She seemed suddenly overanxious and the soft huskiness had become harsh with the almost desperation tone of her voice now. And that repeated ‘I mean’ business grated, too. I was glad this was almost over and I’d had sense enough to get out from under before it was too late.

 

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