The Triple Shot Box (Goodey's Last Stand, Not Sleeping Just Dead & Fighting Back): Three Gritty Crime Novels

by Charles Alverson

  “Coffee,” said Harry as he started to walk up the faded blue-carpeted stairway. A few minutes later he was standing in his underwear watching his bloodstained clothes swimming soggily in the giant marble bathtub and slowly turning the water pink. Harry shoved the revolver Hoerner had given him into one of his shoes and stuffed his handkerchief in after it. There was a rap on the door, and a hand reached in holding a dark-blue robe.

  “Coffee in the small drawing room in two minutes,” said Sandra through the door. “Just follow what’s left of your nose.”

  Harry’s fingers discovered that the robe was soft, thick velvet with worn satin edging. He looked at himself in the gold-veined mirror and saw that the fit wasn’t bad. Over the breast pocket was an elaborate monogram Harry made out to be ALW.

  Something subtle bothered his nose, and Harry sniffed deeply, bringing back a wave of dull pain which made him blink his eyes and vow not to do that again. It was perfume: rich, yet dry and clean-smelling. Harry took one more look at the bruised bridge of his nose—it seemed as though he wouldn’t have black eyes after all—and left the big bathroom.

  Halfway down the stairs he saw Sandra waiting for him at the bottom. “Very fetching,” she said, and Harry felt himself going red. “I was afraid that with the damage the mighty Lenny did to your nose you might not be able to smell the coffee, so I came to lead you.”

  Sandra couldn’t help smiling at the picture Harry presented, but mixed in with the amusement she felt a growing warmth. Watch it, Sandra, she told herself, you’re about to demonstrate yet again your absolutely rotten taste in men. This thought only made her smile more broadly. And, she rationalized, he did win me in fair combat.

  Harry followed her through darkened rooms to a set of double doors which Sandra opened with mock ceremony. They stepped into a smallish room with a beamed ceiling and a curbed rosewood marble fireplace in one wall. The furniture was like the robe Harry wore: worn but well preserved.

  “This is the only downstairs room I can stand,” Sandra said. “I think it used to be reserved for intimate gatherings of the very best people.” She gestured Harry to a plush-covered sofa facing the fireplace and gave him a big cup of coffee.

  “This robe,” Harry asked, “it’s not Marco’s, is it?”

  “God, no,” said Sandra, “it’s a remnant of the wardrobe of the late Alvin L. Wishart, the man who built this monument to capitalism. That’s his picture beaming down in the foyer. You’d be lost in Marco’s robe. Old Alvin was a squat little devil.”

  “Thanks very much,” Harry said, taking a sip of the coffee. “How did you know I like my coffee black?”

  “All civilized people drink black coffee.”

  “He may have been no giant, but Wishart used a very nice perfume,” Harry said. He cautiously sniffed a lapel.

  “Oh, that’s mine. I confiscated the robe years ago when I found a trunk full of his clothes in the attic. Mother wanted to make me put it back, but Daddy let me keep it.”

  “This guy’s clothes are still up in the attic?” Harry asked. “Who was this Alvin L. Wishart, anyway? He’s not still up there, too, is he?”

  “Not exactly. Wishart was something very money-making on Wall Street; probably a crook. Grandpa was his gardener. Somehow, during a week of extreme frenzy, Grandpa ended up the legal owner of this monstrosity, and Wishart got all Grandpa’s cash. The old boy didn’t play the market, so he had some.”

  “Clever him.”

  “Yes, clever. They nearly starved on Spode china.”

  “What did Wishart do with the money?”

  “The last thing Grandpa heard was a cryptic postcard from Buenos Aires.”

  “Clever him, too.”

  “My dad was about fifteen years old at the time, and he used to love to tell us kids all about Alvin L. Wishart. Mother thought it was sacrilege.”

  “Your father,” Harry said, “he’s—uh—”

  “That’s right. He’s dead,” Sandra said. “Someone had the bad taste three years ago to drop several tons of scrap metal on him at the yard. I think that’s why Marco won’t work there.”

  Sandra threw her black hair and gave an equine laugh. “This is a cheerful conversation. Bankruptcy, death. Can’t we find something more cheerful to talk about?”

  “How about Lenny?” Harry asked. “He says he’s your boyfriend. Is he?”

  “No,” said Sandra, “that’s not more cheerful. And no, Lenny’s not my boyfriend. Not any more. Lenny’s just a rich, very crazy boy I once made the mistake of falling in love with.”

  “But not anymore?” Harry asked out of real curiosity.

  “Uh-uh,” Sandra shook her head. “I’m a masochist, but I’m not that much of a masochist.”

  “Tough on Lenny.”

  “Not so tough,” she said. “I can’t do anything for him that a bottle can’t. And he knows it. That little show tonight wasn’t unrequited love. Lenny just didn’t have anything to do for a while and thought he’d come over and pick at a few old wounds.”

  “He could be dangerous.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sandra said, ruefully examining her skinned knee and torn jeans. “He always ends up crying and goes away quietly in the end after making as much fuss as possible.”

  “He didn’t go away quietly tonight.”

  “Ah, but that’s because he had a new audience. You were here to add spice to the script. Besides, drawing blood on you gave him a shot of adrenalin. You can’t begrudge the boy his moment of triumph. Speaking of triumph, how’s your nose?”

  “Okay,” Harry said. He waggled the tip gently between thumb and forefinger. “You really despise him, don’t you?” Harry felt the protective empathy of kind for kind.

  “Not really,” she said. “That’s bitterness speaking. Frustrated hopes, thwarted expectations, shattered dreams. All that stuff. But I’m tired of talking about Lenny. Tell me about you—no, better yet, tell me about your wife.”

  “Hildy?” Harry was shocked to find that he hadn’t thought about Hildy for hours.

  “Yes, if that’s her name. Is she sitting faithfully at home waiting for your lordly step at the front door? What’s she going to think when you come home wet, rumpled, smelling of my perfume and with a slightly damaged nose? I suppose she’s used to that. Will she hit you with a rolling pin?”

  “No,” said Harry, “Hildy’s out of town with the girls—my daughters.”

  “How many? Daughters, I mean.”

  “Two. Lizzie is eleven and Sophie, the baby, is eleven months.”

  “A baby at your age,” Sandra said with a smile. “You should be ashamed of yourself, you devil.”

  “It was nothing, really,” Harry said, feeling his ears go red. “It was a cold winter.”

  “What’s Hildy like?”

  What was Hildy like? It may seem a standard husband-wife joke, but Harry couldn’t answer that question. Would it do to say that she was short, dark, loved old movies and would rather live in fantasy than in the real world? That was part of what she was like, but it didn’t sum up Hildy.

  “I’d rather tell you about me,” said Harry. “I’m forty-five years old; I’m a high-school graduate; I never got to be a fighter pilot, and I scratch out a living selling liquor to people with too much money and too little sense. Very likely, somebody much like me is pouring a drink for Lenny right now.”

  “No, you don’t,” Sandra said. “You’re not clever enough, Harry, to turn this non-conversation back onto Lenny—and thus back onto me.”

  Harry noticed that this was the first time she’d called him by his first name. “Maybe not, Sandra,” he said, “but I thought I’d try.” Sandra finished the rest of her coffee and shuddered at the bitter, cold taste of the dregs. She looked at him.

  “Are you going to spend the night?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Harry, forgetting Hoerner, forgetting the Lamplighter, forgetting everything, and at the same time he felt the slightly cool softness of her hand on his. Harry pu
t out his other hand and encountered the animal thinness of her rib cage. With an easy pull, Harry’s mouth was on her young lips. It was not a passionate kiss but one of searching tenderness.

  “But more later,” said Sandra, breaking the kiss but remaining in Harry’s arms. As tall as she was, it was hard to say who was in whose arms. “First, I think we’d better sort out somebody’s gory clothes. Unless of course you want to go home in a pair of Alvin L. Wishart’s golf knickers or his tuxedo.”

  “No,” said Harry, letting his hands drop easily to her soft-hard hips, “I don’t think I could live up to them.”

  Sandra rose from the sofa but let her hand linger on the pudgy curve of Harry’s jaw. “Right, then, follow me.”

  Harry followed her back up to the baronial bathroom where his clothes lay in what looked like a pool of weak strawberry soda. “I’m a pretty good bleeder,” he said.

  “Yes,” Sandra said, sitting on the thick edge of the bathtub and pushing the sodden clothes around with her hand. “Help me wring these out and we’ll put them in the dryer. I’ll see what I can do with a steam iron in the morning.”

  The suit, shirt and vest were slowly tumbling in the big-eyed clothes dryer when Sandra closed the laundry-room door behind them.

  “And now?” Harry asked.

  “And now,” she said, “I live up there.” She pointed at the ceiling. Once again, Harry followed her, this time to a narrow, sharply rising staircase in the corner nearly hidden in shadows. As they climbed, Harry watched the creasing and straining of the jeans over her small, rounded bottom and thought about taking them off her.

  18

  “I’m sorry,” Harry said, lying beside her in the dark.

  “Don’t be,” Sandra said. She lay under his outstretched left arm. She picked up his other hand and placed it on her breast. At the touch, Harry felt again the intense excitement which had so recently failed to translate itself into action. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  “I suppose you’re used to failures.”

  “Failure and success,” she said. “There’s not much difference.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m new at this sort of thing,” Harry said, hating himself for saying it. At first, in the fresh humiliation of his failure, Harry had tried to move away from the girl. But in the Spartan narrowness of her bed there was nowhere to go, and she clung to him with surprising strength. “Like when a girl loses her virginity,” he added.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said. “When I lost mine I couldn’t stop giggling. No trauma at all. Poor Lenny.”

  “I’ll kill him,” Harry said, but he felt better.

  “No,” Sandra went on soberly, “I don’t think you’re suffering from first-infidelity nerves. I think you’ve got something much more serious on your mind, and that’s what went wrong with our little love scene.”

  “You’re right,” Harry said. Then he told her everything. About Rizzo and Hoerner and why Marco was lying in the hospital. Sandra didn’t say anything, just listened. As he talked with a fluency he didn’t know he possessed, Harry could feel her soft breathing and see the shadows of her face. All she said was: “Poor Harry, poor Marco.” Her thin arms snaked around his waist and pulled Harry to her fiercely.

  When he had finished telling, they made love with a ferocity Harry didn’t recognize in himself. Just before she fell asleep, Sandra told him drowsily: “You’ve nothing to be sorry about, Harry boy.” Shortly after, Harry felt his mind dissolve into nothingness.

  Their sleep was short. In the blackness a telephone was ringing with short, persistent bursts of annoyance, and Sandra fumblingly put on a nightlight and picked up the receiver. It was just after midnight.

  “Yes?” she said sleepily.

  Harry reached over to cup Sandra’s breast from behind, but she shook off his hand with an unconscious convulsion. “Mother,” she said. “Yes, I’m awake. What’s happened?” She listened for a few moments and then said: “I understand. Mother. How are you? Good. I’ll be right there.” Sandra replaced the receiver and turned to face Harry.

  “Marco’s dead,” she told him. “He died a few minutes ago. A blood clot in his brain.”

  Harry couldn’t say anything. He was grateful when Sandra slipped back into his arms and clung wordlessly for a long moment. He felt her tears on his chest. Then she broke free and kissed him. Her kiss was a wordless release from blame.

  “I’ve got to get to the hospital,” Sandra said, sliding out of bed and beginning to dress swiftly. From behind, her waist looked as thin as a child’s, and her shoulder blades stuck out like little wings.

  “I’ll drive you.” Harry reached for the old velvet robe.

  “Okay. But hurry. Your clothes must be nearly dry now.”

  They were—nearly. Harry pulled them on quickly, shuddering at the feel of the damp, wrinkled cloth. Putting the revolver back in his coat pocket, he walked back to the vast bathroom to wash his face. He looked like a corpse that had been washed up on a beach. A not very high-class corpse badly in need of a shave.

  Sandra was waiting for him in the hallway looking as if she’d never been to bed. She had put on a plain blue wool dress, and her hair was caught up in a loose braid at the side of her head. When she saw Harry, Sandra couldn’t quite stifle a smile.

  “I know,” Harry said, “I know. Let’s get going.”

  They drove in silence, each aware of Marco lying cold and dead in the hospital ahead. Harry hadn’t yet said anything to Sandra about her brother. He sensed—he hoped—that she knew what he wanted to say: how guilty and responsible he felt. Harry wished he’d accepted Rizzo’s offer in the first place. Marco would be alive. It could have been worked out somehow, Harry thought.

  He parked in a dark, shadowy spot within sight of the brightly-lit hospital entrance. An ambulance stood in front of the entrance with its blue top-light rotating slowly. A white-uniformed attendant leaned against its pale side carefully smoking a cigarette. Harry wondered whether its passenger was coming or going—alive or dead.

  “I’ll let you out here,” Harry said. “If anybody saw me like this, they’d throw me down and give me artificial respiration.”

  “Okay.” But she didn’t move.

  “Sandra,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “I know. Don’t say it, Harry. There’s no need. I think I understand. I want to understand.” Again, tears ran down her face. Quickly, without noise, like beads of condensation on a window. She wondered if they were really for Marco or for her mother. Her mother would expect them. Mother wouldn’t cry; no, she’d be drier than ever. But she would expect tears of others. What was death without tears?

  “I have to go in,” she said, kissing Harry’s stubbly chin with dry lips. “Go home; get some sleep.”

  “When will I see you?” He felt foolish and very young.

  “You’ll see me,” Sandra said. “As soon as you hear that Marco is dead, you’ll come around to see us.” She showed her teeth. “God, what a charade.”

  Harry watched the girl click out of the darkness into the antiseptic glare of the hospital lights and disappear through the front door under the blank gaze of the ambulance attendant. She didn’t look back.

  He continued to sit in the darkened car. Harry was tired, uncomfortable, wrinkled, slightly damp in spots, bruised and, above all, confused by the events of the week and especially that night. None of it fit. Time was necessary to sort it all out, but time was what he didn’t seem to have.

  Wearily, Harry slipped the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. He headed for home.

  19

  As his front door closed behind him, Harry remembered Hoerner. He was supposed to have gone back to the Lamplighter and waited there for a call from Hoerner. Harry looked at his watch. One o’clock. Just over six hours ago he’d talked to Hoerner. It seemed like six days. Harry dialed the number of the Lamplighter.

  “Hank,” he said, “Harry. Have there been any calls for me this evening?�
��

  “Have there? Only about a dozen. Say, what happened to you? And what was with Marco? I thought you were coming back soon.”

  “It’s a long story, Hank,” Harry said. “I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now I can’t face it. Who were the calls from?”

  “All the same guy, Harry. And he’s here now waiting for you. He came in about an hour ago.”

  “Is he a tall, sort of mean-looking guy?”

  “That’s him. I wouldn’t want him mad at me. Do you want me to call the cops or something?”

  Harry laughed. “No, thanks all the same. But, Hank, close up tonight at the usual time. Can you work tomorrow night?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Okay,” said Harry. “I’ll ring you tomorrow. Now let me talk to my friend.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Hoerner demanded. His voice was tight with tension.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” Harry said. “Look, Hoerner, I’m tired of talking on the telephone. Why don’t you come over here to my house? You know the address.”

  “See you in ten minutes,” said Hoerner. “I’ll come in the back way.” In just over that time there was a tap on the back door, and Harry admitted Hoerner to the dimly lit porch.

  “Come in here,” he said, leading Hoerner into the living room and switching on a floor lamp.

  “Christ,” said Hoerner, getting a look at Harry, “what happened to you? You look like you’ve been run over by a street sweeper—twice.”

  “Nothing serious,” said Harry, dismissing the question. “Marco is dead.”

  Hoerner said nothing.

  “He died maybe an hour ago at the hospital from the beating Rizzo’s thugs gave him.” After another silence, Harry said, “You don’t seem to care very much.”