“All right,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Ed.”
“Is that all of it? What’s the rest?”
“Hunter,” I told her. “That took two syllables. I tried to stick to Ed; it’s all your fault.”
“You really are looking for Harry? That’s why you came here?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want with him?”
“That’ll take three syllables.”
“Go ahead.”
“To kill him.”
“Who are you working for?”
“A man. His name wouldn’t mean anything to you. If I thought it would, I’d tell you.”
She said, “Your tongue isn’t quite loose enough yet. We’ll have to try more liquor.” She refilled our glasses.
“And music,” I told her, “soothes the savage breast. How about those records. If you have any.”
She laughed again, and walked across the room. She pulled aside some cretonne and there was a shelf of albums. “Who do you want, Ed? Most of them are here.”
“Dorsey?”
“Both of them. Which Dorsey?”
“The trombone Dorsey.”
She knew I meant Tommy. She took the records from one of the albums and put them in the phono, setting it for automatic.
She came back and stood in front of me. “Who sent you here?”
I said, “It would be a nice line if I could say ‘Benny sent me.’ But he didn’t. I don’t like Benny or Dutch any more than I like Harry. Nobody sent me, Claire. I just came.”
She leaned over and touched both sides of my coat, where a shoulder holster would be. She straightened up, frowning. She said, “You haven’t even got a —”
“Shut up,” I said, “I want to hear Dorsey.”
She shrugged, picked up her glass from the mantel and sat down on the sofa, just far enough away to let me know I wasn’t expected to make a pass. I didn’t, I wanted to, but I didn’t
I waited till the phonograph finished the fourth record and quit.
Then I said, “What if there was money in it for you? For Harry’s address, I mean.”
She said, “I don’t know it, Ed.”
She turned and looked at me. She said, “Listen, this is the truth and I don’t care if you believe it or not. I’m through with Harry and with — with everything he stands for. I’ve lived here two years now, and all I’ve got to show for it is enough money to get back home on. Home is Indianapolis.
“I’m getting out of here and going back there, and I’m going to take a job and live in a hall bedroom, with one pillow on the bed. I can learn all over again how to live on twenty-five bucks a week. Or whatever. Maybe that sounds funny to you.”
“Not particularly,” I said. “But wouldn’t a nest egg in the bank be a good start for turning over a new —”
“No, Ed. For two perfectly good reasons. First, a doublecross would be a hell of a start. Second, I don’t know where Harry is. I haven’t seen him for a week — almost two weeks. I don’t even know if he’s in Chicago. I don’t care.”
I said, “If that’s the way it is —”
I got up and walked over to the shelf of albums. There was a book of old-timers there, featuring Jimmy Noone. Wang-Wang Blues, Wabash Blues — I’d heard a lot about Jimmy Noone, and I’d never heard one of his platters. I took the album over to the phono, figured out how to put it on, and stood watching till the first record got going. It was very, very swell stuff.
I held out my hand to Claire, and she stood up and came to me. We danced. The music was as blue as the crème de menthe had been green. Deep, deep blue. They don’t play it like that any more. It got me.
It wasn’t until the music stopped that I really realized I had Claire in my arms. And that she wasn’t fighting to get out of them and that kissing her was going to be the most natural thing in the world.
It was. And it was there, in the silence between records, in the silence of that kiss, that we heard a key turning in the door.
She was out of my arms almost before. I realized what the sound was.
She put a finger to her lips in a quick gesture of silence and then pointed toward a door that was ajar just to the left of the liquor cabinet. Then she whirled and started for the short hallway that led to the outer door of the apartment — the door in which the key had turned, the door that was opening by now.
I wasn’t so slow, either. I got my glass and my cigarette off the mantel and my hat off the end of the sofa, and I was through the door she’d pointed to, all before she’d reached the doorway to the hall.
I was in a dark room. I pushed the door back as it had been, a few inches ajar.
I heard her voice say, “Dutch! What the hell do you mean by walking in here like —”
The phono started in again, on the second of the Jimmy Noone records, and I couldn’t hear the rest. The record was Margie. “Margie, I’m always thinking of you, Margie —”
Through the crack of the door, I could see Clair crossing the room to shut it off. Her face was white with anger and her eyes — well, I’m glad they hadn’t looked at me like that.
She shut it off, sharp. She said, “Goddam you, Dutch, did Harry give you that key or did you —”
“Now, Claire, climb off it. No, Harry didn’t give me a key. You know damn well he wouldn’t. I got this key, toots. I figured this angle a week ago.”
“What angle? Skip it; I don’t even want to know what you’re talking about. Get out of here.”
“Now, toots.” He was farther into the room now. I saw him for the first time. I hadn’t been able to tell anything by his voice except that he wasn’t a soprano. I saw him now. He looked as big as the side of the house.
And if he was either Dutch or Irish, then I was a Hottentot. He looked like a Greek to me. A Greek or a Syrian or an Armenian. Maybe even Turkish or Persian or something. But how he got the last name of Reagan or the nickname Dutch, I wouldn’t try to guess. He had swarthy skin, and if he’d been stripped, there would have been acres of it. He looked like a wrestler and walked as though he were muscle-bound.
“Now, toots,” he said, “don’t get up in the air like that. Take it easy. We got business to talk.”
“Get out of here.”
He stood there, smiling, turning his hat in his hands. His voice got softer.
He said, “You think I don’t know Harry’s crossing me? Me and Benny? Well, I’m not worried about Benny, but me, I don’t like to be crossed. I’m going to explain that to Harry.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” He took a fat cigar out of his breast pocket, put it between his puffy lips, and took his time lighting it with a silver lighter. He put his hat back on his head. He said again, “Don’t you?”
Claire said, “I don’t. And if you don’t get out of here, I’ll —”
“You’ll what?” He chuckled. “You’ll call copper? With forty G’s, hot from Waupaca, in the joint? Don’t make me laugh. Now listen careful, toots. First, I know the score.Harry pretended to break with you; he was smart, he did it before the Waupaca job. But like schlemiels, we let Harry take the stuff when we break up. Now where’s Harry? I don’t know, but I’ll find out. And I know where the forty G’s are. Here.”
“You’re crazy. You damn dumb —”
I’d been wrong in thinking he was muscle-bound. He just walked that way. His hand went out like a snake would strike and grabbed Claire’s wrist. He jerked her to him and her back was against him, his arm holding her there, against his chest, pinning down both her arms.
His other hand clamped over her mouth.
His back was mostly toward me. I didn’t know what I was going to do; I didn’t k
now what I could do against a mountain of muscle like that, but I opened the door. I looked around for something. The only thing I could see was the lightweight poker by the phony fireplace.
I started for it, walking quietly.
His voice hadn’t changed a semitone in pitch. He kept on as though he was talking about the weather. He said, “Just a second, toots, I’ll relax my hand over your yap enough to let you tell me yeah or no. One way we take the dough, you and me, toots, and Harry doesn’t live here any more. Other way, well — you wouldn’t like it.”
I had hold of the poker now. My feet hadn’t made any noise. Only, My God, it was a toy poker. It wasn’t made to poke a fire or to hit a giant over the head with. It didn’t have any heft. It would just make him mad.
The andirons were screwed down.
I remembered something I’d read. There’s a jujitsu blow along the side of the neck, parallel to and just under the jawbone. It’s given with the edge of the flat hand, and it can paralyze or even be fatal.
It was worth a try. I moved to just the right position, held the poker well back for a good swing.
I said, “Hold it, Dutch.”
Plenty happened. He let go Claire with both hands, and turned his head at just the angle I’d figured he’d turn it, and I let go with the poker, a full arm swing. It hit on the dotted line that would have been there if his neck had been on a diagram.
Claire fell, and Dutch fell, and the double thud shook the Milan Towers. It really was a jar. It knocked Claire’s crème de menthe glass off the mantel and it hit the tiles of the fireplace with a bright tinkle and a green splash. There were going to be spots on the maroon carpet after all.
My first thought was his gun. I didn’t know if he was really out or for how long. It wasn’t in a holster. It was a snub-nosed Police Positive revolver, in his side coat pocket.
Once I had it, I felt better. I could even hear what was going on, and what was going on was laughter. Claire was on her hands and knees trying to get up, and she was laughing like the devil. Slightly drunken laughter.
I didn’t get it; she hadn’t been drunk. It didn’t sound like hysteria.
It wasn’t. When she saw me looking at her, she stopped. She said, “Turn on the phonograph again, quick.”
Then she started laughing again. Only it was just her mouth that was laughing. Her face was white; her eyes were scared. She got to her feet and staggered across the room, deliberately.
I didn’t get it, I was dumb. But I can take orders; I got the phonograph going. She collapsed onto the sofa, sobbing, but sobbing quietly, very quietly.
The phonograph played, “Margie, I’m always thinking of you, Margie; you mean the world —”
Over it, she said, “Talk, Ed. Talk loudly. Walk, so they can hear you.” She’d stopped sobbing, and brought her voice up in pitch. “Don’t you see, you dope? a fall like that, a noise like that? It’s either a murder or an accident — or a drunk falling down. If there’s talking and walking and laughing after it,then they say, it was just a drunk. If there’s dead quiet after a thud like that, they call the desk —”
“Sure,” I said. I’d whispered it. I cleared my throat and said, “Sure,” louder. Too loud. I didn’t try it a third time.
I still had the gun in my hand. I shoved it in my pocket to get it out of the way, and went over to where Dutch still lay stretched out. I thought, My God, why is he still as that? He can’t be dead from —
But he was. My hand inside his coat couldn’t find any heart-beat, although I kept hunting. I didn’t believe it. A trick blow like that, you read it in a book, but you don’t really believe it would work. Not for you. For a jujitsu expert, yes, but not for you.
I’d been so scared that it wouldn’t even faze him that I’d put my weight into it. It had worked. He was as dead as a mackerel.
I started laughing, and not to reassure the neighbors.
Claire came over and slapped my face and I stopped.
We went back to the sofa and sat down. I got hold of myself, and got cigarettes out for us. I got hold of myself, and when I struck a match and held it for us, my hand was steady.
She asked, “Want a drink, Ed?”
“No,” I told her.
She said, “Neither do I.”
The phonograph had changed records again. It started the Wang-Wang Blues. It got up and shut it off. If the neighbors under us or on either side were going to call copper or call the desk, they’d have done it by now.
I sat back down on the sofa. Claire put her hand in mine, and we sat there, not looking at each other, not talking, staring into a fireplace that didn’t have a fire in it and never would have.
Anyway, looking at the fireplace, we didn’t have to look at Dutch on the floor behind us.
But he was there. He didn’t get up and leave. He never would.
He wouldn’t ever do anything. He was dead.
And his being there got bigger and bigger until it filled the room.
Claire’s hand tightened convulsively in mine and she started sobbing again, very quietly.
| Go to Contents |
Chapter 12
I waited till she’d stopped crying and then I said, “We’ve got to do something. We can call the police and tell them the truth; that’s one thing. Another; we can scram out of here and let them find it whenever they do. The third would be tougher; we could put it somewhere else for them to find.”
“We can’t call the police, Ed. They’d find out Harry had been living here. They’d find out everything. They’d nail me as an accessory to every job he ever pulled. They’d —” Her face got white as a sheet. “Ed, they did take me along on one job, made me wait in the car and act as lookout. God, what a sap I was not to see he was deliberately fixing me up so I could never talk. The police know Dutch was on that job, and if —”
I said, “Could they identify you, and tie you in with that job?”
“I — I think they could.”
I said, “Then we’d better not call them. But you’re getting out of here anyway, going back to Indianapolis. Couldn’t you just leave tonight?”
“Yes, but — I’d be wanted. They could trace me when they found Dutch dead here. They could find out who I was and where I came from. I couldn’t go back to Indianapolis; I’d have to go somewhere else. There’d be dodgers out for me. All the rest of my life, I’d be —”
I cut her short. “Okey,” I said. “We can’t call copper and we can’t walk off and leave him. How could we get him out of here?”
“He’s awful heavy, Ed. I don’t know if we could do it, but there’s a service elevator at the back of the hall that goes to a back door off the alley. And it’s after midnight. But we’d need a car once we got him to the alley. And he’s awful heavy, Ed. Do you think we could?”
I stood up and looked around till I saw the phone. I said, “I’ll see what I can do, Claire. Wait.”
I went over to the phone and called the Wacker, and I gave Uncle Am’s room number.
When his voice answered, I felt so relieved my knees got weak and I sat down in the chair by the phone table.
I said, “This is Ed, Uncle Am.”
“You young squirt, what you mean walking off on me? I been waiting for you to call. I suppose you got yourself in a jam, huh?”
I said, “I suppose I did. I’m calling from — from the phone number we had.”
“The hell. You’re doing all right, kid. Or are you?”
“I don’t know. It kind of depends on how you look at it. Listen, we need a car or a —”
He cut in, “Who’s we?”
“Claire and I,” I told him. “Listen, this call is through the hotel switchboard, isn’t it?”
“Shall I call you back, kid?”<
br />
“It’d be an idea,” I said.
The call came in five minutes. He said, “This is from a booth, Ed. Go ahead.”
I said, “Claire and I were getting along, but we had company. A guy named Dutch. Dutch — uh — drank a bit too much and sort of passed out on us. We want to take him home without taking him through the front lobby. It’d be best if he wasn’t found here. Now if somebody had a car and parked it in the alley back of here, by the service entrance, and then gave us a hand getting him down the service elevator —”
“Okay, kid. Would a taxi do?”
I said, “The driver might be worried about Dutch. He’s pretty — uh — stiff, if you know what I mean.”
Uncle Am said, “I guess I know what you mean. Okay, kid, hold the fort. The marines are coming.”
I felt a hell of a lot better when I put down the phone and went back to the sofa beside Claire.
She gave me a funny kind of look. She said, “Ed, you called the guy Uncle Am. Is he really your uncle?”
I nodded.
She said, “That wild, screwy yarn you pulled about Harry killing your — your father last week and you and your uncle hunting him for that, only your uncle was asleep — wasn’t that in with the seven-foot snow on Michigan Boulevard and the dog teams giving out and —”
I said, “It wasn’t. It was the straight story. I told that first because I knew you wouln’t believe it, the way I put it. I didn’t know where you stood then.”
She put her hand in mine again. She said, “You should have told me.”
“I did, didn’t I? Listen, Claire, think hard. Did you ever hear Harry — or Dutch or Benny — mention the name Hunter?”
“No, Ed. Not that I remember, anyway.”
“How long have you known them?”
“Two years. I told you that.”
I wanted to believe her. I wanted like hell to believe everything she’d told me. But I had to be sure.
I asked, “Did you ever hear the name Kaufman? George Kaufman?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Yes, about — I guess two or three weeks ago. Harry told me a man named Kaufman might call up this number and give me a message. He said the message could be an address, and I was to copy it down and give it to him. Or that it might be that someone Harry was interested in meeting was at the tavern Kaufman owned. And that if it wasthat the guy was there, I was to get in touch with Harry quick, if I knew where he was.”
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