by Howard Fast
“And you hid it in the lard?”
“Yes. No one ever touched the lard. The cook said she would die before she put lard in anything, and the Sarbines—well, why would they bother it?”
“Except to find the necklace.”
“That wretched imitation?”
“Lydia, that wretched imitation is worth exactly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“No. It’s not—”
“I know. But to my company and to the Sarbines, it represents a quarter of a million.”
“But why?”
“Don’t you see why, Lydia? It was a duplicate of the necklace and it was stolen. Until we can prove that it was a fake or that the fake was stolen, we are on the hook. We must pay off—”
“But I can prove it!” Lydia exclaimed. “And you don’t have to pay them off!”
“Baby—what can you prove? You tell me it’s a fake. But a whole houseful of dinner guests will testify that it was the real necklace—except one. Lydia,” I snapped at her, “if you had to come from one country to another with the clothes on your back, nothing else, a refugee with the clothes on your back, what do you take? I mean, if you have money, what do you convert it into?”
“Diamonds?”
“Good girl—exactly. Diamonds. And poor old David Gorman knew enough about diamonds to realize that the necklace was a fake. And he was foolish enough to give it away. But how? What did he say? Think, Lydia—what did Gorman say that evening?”
“You don’t listen to everything when you’re waiting on a table and planning a robbery at the same time. In fact, I can hardly remember anything that they said at the table that night.”
“Think. Try.”
“I’m so tired, Harvey,” she whispered. The drink had come, but Lydia stared at it moodily without touching it. “It’s hard, because one moment you’re a kid, and the next moment you rub your nose hard up against it.”
“Against what?”
“Money. Every time I hear ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ I think about money. My father wrecked his life for money, and he killed himself because he didn’t have enough money to be a man about it, or to give himself a blood transfusion or a money transfusion, and you say Sarbine killed this old man for money, and he would have killed me, and his man died there in the subway for the money, and that’s why you and I are sitting here, because there’s money in it—and oh, I am so tired of the whole thing, Harvey, and I think I am going to be sick. Did you see where the ladies’ room is, Harvey?”
“Outside, In the lobby. I’ll take you there.”
“To the girls’ john?” she grinned. “No. You wait here, Harvey. I will be right back.”
“Money?”
She shrugged. She was a tired, battered young lady who had watched her carefully contrived house of cards collapse, but there was something alive and wonderful and persistent about her. Yet I realized that her life would never move along a calm or sane or predictable path. She would go along sinking cars in bottomless ponds, tilting against windmills, revenging herself against the wicked ones, as her childhood reading defined it, avenging her family’s honor, planning marvelously imperfect perfect crimes, playing childhood’s games with a silly southern accent—but never content to buy at the visible price tag.
Now she reminded me that it was the practice, in certain circles, when a girl went to the powder room, for her gentleman friend to put fifty dollars in her purse. “For tips and things,” she explained.
“Not your kind of girl and not this kind of powder room.”
“You’re such a cheap bastard, Harvey,” she said softly. “I’ll be right back. Don’t let them take away that drink.”
I sat there at the table, putting two and two together and thinking of how much of the finder’s fee I ought to turn over to Lydia. I rolled this and that around in my mind, and then suddenly I looked at my watch and discovered that fifteen minutes had gone by and Lydia was not back.
CHAPTER NINE
WHILE I WAITED for the check, my nervousness increased. It was twenty minutes now. I went out into the lobby, and she was not there either, I called her room; no answer.
The Skelton had very little class. It was one of the in-between midtown hotels that do a reasonable trade because they have marked down their prices, and they pull both ends together by cutting and skimping wherever it is possible to cut and skimp. The lobby still preserved early pretensions, marble floor, brass trimmings, expensive lounge furniture, but at this time, shortly after midnight, it was deserted except for the desk clerk, who dreamed away his thin-haired youth over a copy of the News. He was irritated when I asked for some information. I would say that eight out of ten desk clerks in hotels are plaintive, constricted creatures who are irritated at the drop of a hat.
“I don’t watch the door to the ladies’ room,” he informed me. “It’s neither my practice nor my duty.”
Side by side, opposite him, were the two doors, Gentlemen and to the right of that, Ladies.
“How can you help it?” I wanted to know.
“If your girl is in there,” he said wearily, “she has to come out. They all come out. She can’t live there. She can’t eat there. She can’t sleep there.”
“You’re a goddamn help, aren’t you? Is there an attendant in there?”
“We’re not the Waldorf, buster.”
“And don’t call me buster and don’t crack wise with me. I’ve never been in a real knock-down, drag-out fight with fisticuffs and all the trimmings, but that doesn’t mean I can’t start, and if I got to start, I would like it to be with a skinny, miserable little bastard like you that I could wipe the floor up with.”
“All right, take it easy,” the desk clerk said. “Don’t blow your top because I didn’t notice your girl. Is that my fault?”
At that moment the doors of one of the elevators opened, and the desk clerk welcomed the operator.
“Franky, here’s a guy who’s girl walked into the john an hour ago, and he claims we’re hiding her.”
The elevator operator surveyed me bleakly for a moment or two, and then he asked me what the girl looked like.
“Middle height, kind of thin, brown hair, blue eyes but very deep, hair cut short, good figure, wearing a dress of blue print—cotton, I guess, flat heels—”
“Yeah, I saw her.”
“Where’d she go?”
“She went in the john and she come out and she didn’t look so good to me, and I got to mop up when they don’t look so good, so I said to her that maybe a breath of fresh air was what she needed, and she said that I was right and that was just what she needed, so she pushed through the revolving door, and then right outside are two guys who line up alongside of her and take her under the elbows into a car. Like that. She gives a sort of wiggle or something. But I don’t know if it’s real, if they’re her friends or what. And then they drive off. This is New York, Jack. Anything can happen here.”
“Sure. And you’re a citizen, buddy! You’re a great big boy scout, God damn you!”
He bristled and muscled up. With me, he could afford to be brave, and he demanded to know what I wanted. “I suppose I should have tangled with those hoods. For what? For a good-conduct badge?”
“This lousy world, mister,” I cried out at him, “is you! You’re a lousy, filthy reflection, a symbol of leave me alone, mister, and I’ll leave you alone and we’ll die alone—and that’s the way this world is dying, each rotten part of it alone.”
“It ain’t Sunday,” he said, grinning stupidly and uneasily. “You want to preach, Jack, there’s a big empty church down the street—”
I didn’t wait to tell him any more. I had time running like sand through my fingers, and an apology to make for stupidity. If I ever had a chance to make it. There’s a fool-killer who ordains these things, and rarely does he hand out any second chances. I pushed through the damn revolving door, and outside the hotel, where nine times out of ten a cab would have been standing, there was none now, none
standing and none in sight. The progressive lights of Sixth Avenue hurled the traffic north in tight bunches, but cluster after cluster came by, and nowhere did I see the bright topside lamp of a cab. Internally, I racked myself, screaming and pleading, but five minutes must have gone by before a cab stopped for me, and when I had flung myself into it, the driver turned a withered, aged, placid and white-haired countenance toward me.
“Six twenty-six Park Avenue,” I said to him. “Make it like it’s never been made before, and I got five dollars for you.”
His watery blue eyes regarded me patiently, while he said, “Sonny, we’re a short time alive and a long time dead.”
“Oh, Jesus, mister—no sermons. My girl is maybe dying right this minute.”
“All right, all right. We are going to get there safe and sound and practically. Where did you say that was?”
“Between Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth Street.”
“All right. Now just sit back, sonny, and enjoy this ride. Just sit back and relax.”
There was no point in screaming at him, no point in telling him why I was in a hurry. He could not hurry. Maybe in all New York City there were a few dozen cab drivers psychologically incapable of hurrying. I had drawn one of them, and unless I wanted to pay him off and try again, there was not a thing I could do but accept the ride and curse him silently. It took long enough for me to die a hundred times; it took long enough for me to think of everything that could happen to Lydia; but finally we got there, and I paid the old man and listened to his assurances that a long life was lived in moderation.
“Not too fast, not too slow—not too much, not too little. That does it, sonny.”
I did not try to answer him, but crossed the sidewalk to where the doorman and one of the elevator operators were in a deep, serious discussion.
“Who’s the boss in the small hours?” I asked them.
“That would be me,” the doorman said. He was a skinny little man in his middle sixties.
“Can I have a word with you?” I took out the folded five, palmed it so that he could see the denomination, and then slipped it into his uniform pocket where he could confirm it.
“You paid for it,” he shrugged, drawing me into the lobby.
I showed him my credentials. I told him about Homer Clapp, the day man, who, I assured him, was like a brother to me.
“That cuts no ice with me,” he said. His own name was Mike Gamsey.
“I don’t know what cuts ice with you. I just know this. I want the pass key to Sarbine’s apartment.”
“You want what, mister?”
“You heard me.”
“Go fly a kite. Blow. Scram. Or do I have to yell copper? You cut no ice with me, mister, a lousy insurance investigator—you got one hell of a nerve asking me for a pass key!”
He started to walk away, but I put my arm around his shoulder and held him back. “Mike,” I said softly, “I’ll tell you something about myself. I look like a nice guy. Tell me—you ever heard of karate?”
“You mean that Jap stuff?”
“That’s right. The Jap stuff. Deadlier than a gun—a way to kill. I had eleven years of it. In the army, I killed sixteen men with my bare hands—chop, chop—the side of the hand—you know, one chop. Now I got my right arm around you—so don’t move, Mike, don’t even twitch, because one single twitch, one move, one quiver of your body and this hand on your shoulder moves in—whup, and your neck cracks like a dry twig. Don’t test it, Mike. You never been nearer to death in your whole life. And do you know why I wouldn’t think twice about killing you?”
“Why?” came out in a dry, miserable whisper.
“Because my girl is up there in the Sarbine apartment with two bastards who are going to kill her. So you might as well be dead, Mike—why not?”
“Please—God Almighty, mister—take it easy—”
“Did you see them go up?”
“I saw them.”
“All right. Now take me to the service elevator. Quiet. Just you and me with my arm around your shoulder, and make one false move and you die so quick you’ll never know what hit you.”
I almost had myself convinced. As a matter of fact, the only time I had ever seen this idiocy called karate was on TV. I had never killed anyone, in or out of the army, and if I ever hit anyone hard enough to break his neck, I would probably never sleep again as long as I lived.
But the doorman bought it. Evidently it sounded totally reasonable to him, and he bought it. Without a word he took me across the lobby, opened a door in the back, and led me into a drab little hallway where the service elevators were stabled.
“We’ll go up to the Sarbines’,” I said. “And you’ll play it cool and quiet. Very cool, very quiet—and there’s an outside chance that you live. Just an outside chance.”
He started the elevator up, and he whined to me that he wanted no trouble.
“Sure, you want no trouble. That’s the disease of this stinking world. No one wants any trouble.”
“Whatever you say, mister.”
“Just remember that you got trouble. You got a lot of trouble. If that girl is dead up there, you got enough trouble to last you the rest of your life.”
“How did I know—”
“Shut up!” I whispered. We were there. “Just open the door gently—and now the apartment door—gently.”
He fumbled with his pass keys a bit before he found the right one. We were on a tiny service landing, containing the elevator stop and a staircase winding down around the shaft. The service door led to the pantry, and what I would do once I was in there, I had no idea. But I didn’t have to speculate. He found the key and opened the door.
“Wait here,” I whispered to him. There was nothing else I could do, short of hitting him; and I was possessed of neither the mood nor the talent to begin slugging old men, even if I had known how. Instead I entered the pantry, closing the door softly behind me, and stood there and listened. The light was on there, and in the foyer too, and voices came from the living room:
Sarbine: “Because you’re a goddamn fool! You’ve crapped this up every step of the way!”
“We had to follow him into the subway. He put his head in a trap, and we had to follow them—”
“A trap! Who was trapped? Oscar’s dead—and that son-of-a-bitch insurance man is alive!”
The other voice hemmed and hawed, and Sarbine suddenly shouted: “Stupidity! Stupidity! Just answer me, you stupid fool, why did you bring the girl and not the man? Are we white slavers—or are you opening your own damned cathouse? And with what? That skinny, pigeon—breasted imitation of a woman? Who wants her? She is finished, done, washed out. If it pays to wring her neck, wring her neck. But why bring her here?”
“We thought—”
“You did not think—either of you. You don’t know how to think. You are afraid to think. If you had thought, you would have realized that the importance now rests with the man. The man. That lousy, long-nosed insurance man—he’s the one, snooping, insolent dog—”
I had started to move, so I missed some of the better moments of Sarbine’s description of myself. As I stood, my shoulder was practically against the door to Lydia’s room, and I thought to myself that I would do better in the dark room, where there was at least a bed to crawl under if need be, than out here in the lighted pantry. So I opened the door, slipped in, and closed the door behind me. However, the room was not dark. The reading lamp next to the bed was lit, and on the bed, mouth taped, hands and feet tied, was Lydia.
It took me a moment to pull the tape off her mouth, and perhaps a minute more to undo the clothesline that she had been tied with. She swayed a bit as she sat up; her dress was torn; there was a long scratch on one arm; but otherwise she was all right, and unharmed, only vibrating with what she had planned for Sarbine. “Oh, that scum! That wretched man—”
I stopped her, able to smile a bit now and wondering what her reaction would be if she could hear Sarbine’s description of her, but still
afraid, conscious of where we were and desiring only to get out of there—as I told her.
She said to me, “Not in this dress, Harvey.”
“What?”
“I know you saved my life, Harvey, and it’s generous and brave, but I must change my dress.”
“I swear,” I whispered, “that I will strangle you if you don’t get out of here now. Now.”
I think she believed me, because when I opened the door for her, she slipped through without another word, not even remembering to put on a coat or a sweater. In the living room, Sarbine was saying:
“Kill her? What good is it going to do? It’s the man—get the man, and whatever we do with them, we do with both. But I want both. Do you understand?”
At that moment the damn fool, “pigeon-breasted” idiot called Lydia chose to stick out her tongue at me and twist my nose. I grabbed her hand, dragged her through the pantry service door onto the landing and then blew the whole thing by allowing the door to slam behind us. The elevator was gone. The skinny Mike, psychological victim of karate, had chosen to flee and was probably calling Sarbine on the house phone right at this moment.
With Lydia attached to my hand, I started down the stairs, taking them three at a time, until suddenly I realized that Lydia, sliding, stumbling and leaping, was one misstep from a broken neck.
“Harvey,” she cried, “what do you think you’re doing?”
“Being a bloody professional coward,” I replied, “and since I can face it, you’d better damn well. Because I love you.” I was still dragging her down the stairs, but with shorter and slower leaps.
“Harvey, please—”
“You stupid kid, I’m scared, and it’s time you were!”
“If I’m stupid, why do you love me?”
“Save your breath.”
We were at least four flights down before I heard the door open and slam above us. Somewhere in the course of this, the elevator passed us on the way up.