by Peter Rabe
“You want to know where he lived.”
“That’s clear now.”
“So you can get back that kilo of heroin he had hidden.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, please. The reason I tell you all this, is so you get a sense of the importance of my interest in you. What I’m after is something Tooley has kept in his place, not in the place where he lived in town, but the other one which we must find, something he had no time to remove, I’m sure, because he got arrested unexpectedly.”
“What is this dangerous thing?”
“All I want from you, Gallivan, are answers, not questions. You still don’t remember where he lived? Very well. I’ll go on.”
He reached under his blanket and I heard something click. Then he talked again.
“Now as to my hurry, Gallivan, my not waiting for you to sit out your three weeks. Tooley let me know, before execution, that a short while after his death he would get me. Those are his words, but I won’t have to make them any clearer.”
“No. He meant the half of you which is still alive.”
“That deadline — ” he closed his eyes and smiled at the word he had used, “that deadline is up just two days from now. He sent me the date, to give me discomfort And that date, as you notice, falls before your release. You had a little more than two weeks to go.”
“Two weeks and three days.”
“Yes. That was a pity. We tried finding his place without your help, even while the break plans were being made, but no matter. Now you’re here, now you know what the pressure is. Now your move, Gallivan.”
“What’s in his place?”
“Would that help you remember where the place is?”
“Any little thing, Mister Simon — ”
“You shouldn’t be flippant, Gallivan. Really not.”
“If I remember, if I could help you find Tooley’s house, room, whatnot, then what?”
“Then thank you and I’m through with you.”
“Through with me.”
“Well?”
I’d never get out alive once he knew but as long as he didn’t I would stay alive. Two days, anyway.
“Please, Gallivan,” he said, and it sounded bored, “I’ll get it out of you. Don’t you know that?”
“Buy me?”
“Since my life is involved, I can’t Don’t you know that?”
“I’ll die easy or I’ll die hard. That it?”
I felt my voice shaking. I think he heard it.
“Are you afraid of pain or are you afraid of death? There’s a difference, you know.”
He waited for me to answer but I didn’t, because of my dry throat. So he said, “I have nothing else to discuss with you, Gallivan, and I want you to go now. I give you the whole night Tomorrow, please take Rand here to that place where Tooley used to live.”
“And if I can’t?”
“You can. You mean if you won’t. Then, Gallivan, for heaven’s sake use your imagination. There are innumerable ways, all terrible. Don’t you know that?” he smiled and said, “You’re sweating, even now.”
A nurse came in with a covered tray. She put it on Simon’s bed desk and told Rand and me it was time to leave.
“They know that,” said Simon to the nurse. “Or do you want to tell me, before you go?” he asked me.
“I hope you die in the night,” I said to him.
He blinked, and for once said nothing.
“And if you don’t — what was that deadline? Two days later?”
He clicked his teeth and the nurse said that we really would have to leave now and what kind of behavior —
When we got out to the hall I had to lean against the wall. I thought about this unreal talk — it happened all over again, is what I mean — about the unreal calm of the words, about the man in his bed who was scheming for the half of his life which was left and no matter what.
“You going to faint, Gallivan?” Rand asked me.
“No.”
“You going to bed or you want to eat something first?” Rand asked me.
There was a sound from the man in bed. I think he was cursing the nurse. She answered very little and then opened the door. She took the tray down the hall, past the door to the staircase, and there was a little lift in the wall and she put the tray into that. She pressed a button and then went back into the room.
“Well? What first?” asked Rand.
“First,” I said, “I’m going to figure a way to kill Mister Simon. Don’t you know that?”
CHAPTER 24
I even ate something. I did it for the semblance of normalcy. Then I went to my room where Rand closed the door for me.
“It’s four stories up,” he said, “and of course you don’t get out any other way. Spend the night thinking, Gallivan,” and he closed the door.
It was nine. The bar closed at twelve. Two hours driving left one hour to get out of the house. If I had told Jessie to wait for me with her car, that would have been even smarter, but the way things were now I spent no time at all thinking about that deadly boner. I felt as alive as I ever had because I would get out or die trying.
I spent ten minutes of my hour at the window, thinking, and looking out at the moon. It looked sharp and clear, and that’s how I felt.
After ten minutes in the room I went out I had no idea where Rand slept, but I had no doubt he would show up soon enough once I started walking around.
He stuck his head out of a door when I got to the potted plant There was that blond halo around his hair again, from the light in his room, and his face was in the dark. I went back to him and put it on.
“Rand,” I said, “one last favor.”
“What?”
He was as reasonable as ever. I counted on that, his cold feelings. I was glad he wasn’t quirked and vindictive, the way the old Tooley must have been.
“I’m going nuts in that room,” I said. “Like you said, this is the night I’m going to spend thinking. But I’m going nuts in that room, Rand. Can you follow that?”
“Yes. So far. What’s the favor?”
“I got to walk around. I don’t want to wake anybody, I don’t want to alarm anybody or get clobbered by somebody guarding the elevator, I just want to be allowed to walk back and forth. You can understand that, can’t you, Rand?”
“You’re a pacer, huh?”
“Since stir.”
“The door to Mister Simon’s room is locked. The nurse sleeps in there with him.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“You sounded like it when you made that remark before, about killing him.”
“Do I sound nuts, Rand? Do I sound nuts to you now?”
“No. Just nervous.”
“I’m a pacer.”
He nodded and came out into the hall. He went to the elevator where he told the man, and he went to the stairwell where he told the man. Then he came back.
“They know you’re out here,” he said. “So pace.”
I started to go.
“That also means they’re going to be twice as awake.”
I walked away and he closed his door.
Problem one, finished. I could walk around.
I walked fifteen minutes, the same way mostly. Elevator hall, stairwell hall, elevator hall, stairwell hall. Twice I passed Rand’s room and the second time I could hear him breathe. He slept on his back, probably.
Stairwell hall. Mister Simon, I was sure, was by nature and illness a very light sleeper and for that reason was probably heavily doped. I heard nothing from that room. When I passed the door to the stairwell I looked through the glass in the door and nodded at the man on the steps. I had done this now several times and he would nod back. Then I went as far as the service lift in the wall and pressed one of the buttons. That made the lift go from the basement to the second floor, according to the buttons. It also made the thing hum.
When the guy from the steps came into the corridor I was at the other end. He looked my way, with gun, an
d then looked at the lift. Now he knew what was humming.
Problem two, finished. There was a precedent for the humming.
The next time I paced the corridor I didn’t nod at him, through the glass in the door. As a matter of fact, he never saw me pass, one way or the other.
When I had five minutes left of my hour the lift was on my floor and what would another hum be to a man with a gun, watching for Gallivan to come through the door.
I sneaked past the door again, doubled over, and stopped by the lift. I wasn’t even worried if it would snap a cable and break my back. I was getting light-headed and thought only that if it did happen I would probably die.
Getting in was the problem. I’m very long and that was the only thing that panicked me. One knee would stick out. It would scrape going past the opening, going past the sill, but after that, ‘til the next sill on the next floor, there would be room for the knee to stick out Maybe something would break — I wasn’t thinking any more.
I eased into the cubicle, sat tight like a spring, and could just reach the low button outside. The lift hummed and there was a godawful lurch downward, but then my fright got interrupted.
My knee hit the sill. The only thing which kept the scream inside me was the fact that I didn’t have enough air. The way I sat I could hardly breathe. The sound seemed to be the worst thing, the way the knee scraped. Then it was warm and wet, with the afterpain just starting, but by that time the first sill was past and I was in the black shaft.
The mechanism in the top of the lift had a whine in it, a new whine, which had not been there all the other times I had run it I held my ears —
There were three more sills. It was so bad, waiting to hit them, that I don’t remember about it too clearly.
The lift swayed with a very soft dip, so much of a dip that I could hear the cable twang overhead. When the thing stopped I was in the basement And I was past the opening. But not bad. Not too bad, I kept saying all that time. Not too bad.
I don’t know how long it took me to get out of the thing, but when I fell to the basement floor I could see a clock on the wall which said ten past ten. I had started down from the top five before ten. That trip past three floors hadn’t taken fifteen minutes.
I could walk. It was hell, but nothing like the trip down that shaft. I walked through what turned out to be the laundry, and up a few steps to a door which had a light on the outside. I could see snow there and the tracks we had made with the car.
All together there were four cars in the big port to the rear and two of them had keys. They were both doctor’s cars, by the sign in the back, and I was even steady enough to think about them and to hope that they slept in the sanatorium.
Except for the knee I was fine again when I got to the bar. Fine means, I was running mechanically, without human interference. It was quarter past twelve, a quarter past closing, but there were still two cars outside the bar. One, I was hoping, would be Jessie’s. The other one, maybe fat Eddy owned it Or the cop who had been there to take down my description.
And if he was there, and if nothing else occurred to me, I’d say, yes, I’m Gallivan, and this is the story. Maybe that would have been the way out all the time.
The knee was stiff, but just from the swelling, and the pain didn’t mean a damn to me now. I just wished Jessie would be there. Just to be there —
When I got into the bar and closed the door I felt how warm it was. I went to the bar and leaned on it for a moment.
Eddy turned around and said that the place was closed. He didn’t have his glasses on and didn’t recognize me ‘til much later. He was all the way up to me then. I was hoping that Jessie was in the bar, but I couldn’t see past Eddy.
He opened his eyes and his mouth and just stood there like that I was thinking much clearer by now but never got to use it. Eddy kept standing with his eyes and mouth open. He was holding the broom out a little, but he wasn’t looking at me at all. I felt the draft on my neck and didn’t bother to turn. From the look on Eddy’s face, the man behind me had a gun. Who would follow me in here with a gun —
“This is the place, huh?” said Rand.
I rolled myself against the bar, to have both elbows on it, and looked at Rand. There was Rand with gun. Simple.
“You couldn’t have done it easier?” he said.
I kept standing the way I was because nothing had happened yet. I remember clearly that I wasn’t afraid.
But fat Eddy was the stupid one. He probably thought he was full of courage but what really showed was how stupid he was. He swung the broom at Rand.
Rand let him. When the broom came down he grabbed, it, yanked, then jabbed it back. For this simple trick the gun was on me, but Eddy got the broom handle in the belly. The big man fell down, rolled on his back, tried to roll over again. Rand went over and stepped on his face.
“Is this the place?” he asked me.
“I think so.”
He didn’t hold the gun on me any more because there was no point to it He walked around a little, looking at the walls, and wherever he went his one heel left a wet print Eddy’s nose was bleeding a lot.
“Where?” he asked.
“Would you believe it? I’m standing on it.”
He came over and looked at the floor where I stood, but he did not come close enough.
Then he looked at me and said, “You saw what happened to the fat one?”
“You’re not going to do it to me, Rand.”
“Stop sparring. We can’t stay here forever. Where?”
“It was here,” I said, and tapped my foot, “but I gave it to Jessie.”
“Jessie?”
“Yes.”
“Where? I mean, where is she?”
“In the back booth.”
He didn’t turn. He couldn’t have seen her leg anyway, from where he was standing, and when I shook my head at her, so that she should stay put, he just thought that was the oldest trick in the world.
He started to smile about it but then he dropped it. Here we stood, after all, in a lit place with a big window.
“All right,” he said, and picked up the broom which was lying between us.
I looked at the booth and said, “All right, Jessie. Show him the gun.”
He almost turned, but felt too clever. Jessie didn’t have a gun, but then Rand thought that there was nobody at all. So when she made a scraping sound in the booth he spun like a top.
Just far enough.
I snapped away from the bar and he must have forgotten about my reach. I got his gun arm and with everything that had happened coming to a very fast head at this moment, I had a great deal of strength.
His arm went too far back, too unnaturally, and the gun flew out of his hand and Rand flew down to the floor from the leverage. He lay there with something broken and groaned.
I got the gun. I cocked it and went back to Rand.
“Jeesis — ” he said. “Gallivan!”
“Close your eyes if you want.”
“Gallivan — ”
I shot him someplace high. I wasn’t going to have him following me around any more. I had come too far.
CHAPTER 25
Jessie came out of the booth, white-faced and her hands trembling. She I didn’t come across but just stood there.
The first thing she said was, “I had three more bindles in the drawer, Gallivan, but I didn’t take any. I left them behind. But I want one now. Badly.”
In spite of everything I had to smile at her, happy, because she had made it this far and could talk about it.
“Please don’t let me,” she said. “Please, Jimmy.”
I nodded at her and she smiled back. Just a short one, but it was real.
We found a flashlight behind the bar and took that upstairs. Walking up through that dust everything felt already over. It was like a rest. I didn’t know how much I would need it.
Tooley, I think, had rented the place and then, one day, he hadn’t showed up. I’m sure his nam
e hadn’t been Tooley for the matter of rental, and his name in the paper, if there was much of a spiel, wouldn’t have meant a thing to Eddy downstairs. I think Eddy had just closed up the place when his roomer hadn’t showed, because a lot of things were still up there; some furniture, bed stripped by now, and a trunk with some clothes.
I made dust clouds with the clothes when I ripped at the linings. Jessie sat on the bare bed.
“Gallivan.”
I looked up. She was still white but not trembling any more.
“Why don’t we leave and that’s all — ”
She saw my face and sighed.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t think you would.”
“I’d never stop running,” I said.
“Yes.”
But there was more.
“I know what’s here,” she said.
“What Simon wants?”
“It’s a baggage check. Two days from now the suitcase, or whatever, will go on the block. That happens after twenty-four months of no claim.”
“I know,” I said.
I felt dead. She hadn’t told me, back in the room.
“Gallivan,” she said, “at least you can make it I got twelve hundred cash. I’ll give it to you and at least you can make it.”
“You don’t want to find the suitcase, or whatever?”
“I don’t want you to find it.”
She wouldn’t say any more. After a while she even helped look for the thing and we found the baggage check where those things usually are. Behind the paper lining of the trunk. She found it and she gave it to me.
Downstairs she even stopped to put a wet rag on Eddy’s face and then she called a hospital to send down an ambulance. I hadn’t thought of that We left. Rand, I think, was breathing.
The check was from a baggage room at Greyhound in Yorkdam. It wasn’t for a suitcase but a briefcase with more clothes in it. That was the stuffing. Then there was a typed folder.
I wanted to look at it right away, standing there at the baggage-room window, but suddenly the rush went out of everything. It was just that kind of a moment Nothing to do now but look at the print, black and white. And Jessie looked pale and finished.