Runaway

by McBain, Ed

  He didn’t want to chance going back to his own place. The cops would surely be watching there, and besides, he didn’t want to get Molly in hot water. He began running through the list of people he knew, and the third person he came up with was Barney Knowles.

  Sure, why not Barney? He knew Barney well. Barney would do him a few favors, especially with all the luck Barney’d been having lately. Sure, Barney would help a guy. Barney had a heart as big as Central Park.

  He smiled.

  He smiled, and then he left the phone booth and the store, and it was just as cold outside as it had been before.

  There’s a stretch of Harlem known as Striver’s Row. It stretches between Seventh and Eighth Avenues on West 138th and 139th Streets. It is not to be confused with the stretch east of Seventh Avenue on those same streets.

  The streets in Striver’s Row are tree-shaded. The houses lining those streets are made of attractive tan brick. The rents in Striver’s Row are high, and most of the residents belong to the white-collar or professional class. Barney Knowles lived in Striver’s Row.

  He had not always lived in Striver’s Row, mainly because he could not always afford the rental there. As a matter of fact, a good many of the people who’d been living there for a good long time rented out furnished rooms in order to keep up the rental. This was not one of Barney Knowles’s problems. Barney never had any trouble keeping up the rental now. Not any more, he didn’t.

  Of course, it’s doubtful that Barney’s neighbors would have approved of him so readily if they’d known he was a bookie in the numbers racket. They saw only a rather portly, dark Negro who dressed conservatively, and who always had a cheerful smile for everyone he passed. The smile seemed doubly cheerful because there were two gold caps in the front of Barney’s mouth, and you could usually see him coming two blocks away, even on a foggy day.

  Barney liked Striver’s Row. He liked it a lot, but he still kept his eye peeled for the day he could move to Sugar Hill.

  A man’s home is his castle, and Barney Knowles’s home was just that to him. When he walked the streets of Striver’s Row, the neighbors saw what he wanted them to see: the genial businessman, the smiling gent with the two gold teeth. When he closed the door of his apartment, he did as he wished.

  On the night that Johnny Lane headed for Barney’s pad, Barney was doing as he wished. His desire, on that night, was poker. His desire on almost every night, in fact, was poker. Barney was very lucky at cards, since the time his two front teeth had been knocked out. The teeth had been knocked out in a blackjack game when he was twenty-four. He had considered that the unluckiest night of his life, until things began happening to him afterward. He later looked back to the loss of those teeth as the turning point in his career. At any rate, his later good fortune seemed to stem from the time he had the gold teeth put in. Barney nearly always won at cards now. Tonight, Barney was losing.

  He was not losing because his luck was running bad. Barney’s luck never ran bad any more. He was losing because of the gentlemen in the game with him. The gentlemen owned the respective names of Arthur “The Flower” Carter and Anthony Bart. The gentlemen were very high up in the rackets indeed, and the gentlemen had an eye on Barney for a better job, and Barney had an eye on Sugar Hill, and so Barney lost that evening. Barney Knowles knew how to please.

  He was laughing heartily at one of the jokes The Flower had told when the knock sounded on his door. He allowed himself the luxury of finishing his laugh, and then he said, “Excuse me, fellers, someone at the door.”

  The Flower, encouraged by the laughter that had greeted his last effort, asked, “You runnin’ a whore house here, Barney?”

  “Wisht I was,” Barney answered, chuckling. He left the men in the living room and walked through the foyer to the front door. He kept the night latch on. A man in Barney’s position never knew when a caller would be carrying a loaded gun. He unlocked the door and opened it to the extent the chain permitted.

  He was not happy with what he saw standing in the hallway.

  “Johnny,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Everybody asks me the same question,” Johnny said.

  Barney looked over his shoulder toward the living room. The Flower was telling another joke, and Bart was listening respectfully. Bart never laughed. Bart only listened, and then maybe smiled if the joke was immensely funny.

  “You’d better go, boy,” Barney said. “This ain’t the place for you.”

  “I’m cut, Barney. I’m cut bad. I ain’t had anything to eat since—”

  “Boy, your troubles don’t interest me none. I got important people in here. If you led the cops to—”

  “The cops are nowhere around,” Johnny said. “I’ve been careful. Look, Barney—”

  “Just a minute, boy,” Barney said. He looked over his shoulder again, and then took the chain from its socket. He stepped out into the hallway and closed the door softly and rapidly behind him.

  “What d’you mean, you’re cut?” he asked.

  “My arm,” Johnny said. “I just stopped the bleeding.”

  Barney glanced at the bloodstained shirt. “You been to a doctor?”

  “How can I go to a doctor? The cops are looking for me. You know that.”

  “Man, do I know it! You can ruin me by comin’ here, Johnny. You shoulda had more sense than that.”

  “I need a coat, Barney, a jacket, anything. It’s cold out there.”

  “Wait here,” Barney said. “Don’t move from that spot, and for God’s sake, don’t make any noise.”

  He opened the door quickly and stepped into the apartment again. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a clean white handkerchief, and then he forced a smile onto his face. He was chuckling when he entered the living room.

  “Who’s that?” The Flower asked.

  “Damn’est thing ever,” Barney said, smiling. “Cleanin’ boy. I promised to bring my overcoat in, an’ I forgot all about it. Tailor thought I might need it, so he sent the boy up for it. Promised to have it back for me tomorrow.”

  “That’s thoughtful,” Bart said.

  “Yeah, sure is. ’Scuse me a minute while I get it, will you?”

  He walked out of the living room and into his bedroom. In the living room, Bart said, “You don’t run ’cross thoughtful people much. Not in this racket.”

  “The tailor ain’t in this racket,” The Flower said, laughing.

  Barney walked to his closet and opened the door. He had three overcoats, but he certainly wasn’t going to give Johnny either of the two camel’s-hair jobs. He took an old tweed coat from its hanger and started for the door again. He stopped short, considered for a moment, and then took a fiver from his wallet. He folded the bill and stuck it into the pocket of the coat. In the living room, The Flower was laughing at something else he’d just uttered. Bart was saying nothing.

  Barney went into the living room. “You can deal the nex’ hand, if you like,” he said. “This won’t take a minute.”

  “It’s already dealt,” The Flower said. “You got a king in the hole.”

  Barney laughed, and Bart said, “I don’t get it.”

  The Flower began explaining why it was funny for him to know what Barney’s hole card was, and Barney went to the door, opening it and stepping into the hallway again.

  “Here’s a coat,” he whispered. “I stuck a fin into one of the pockets. Now get out of here, boy.”

  “Thanks, Barney. Thanks a—”

  “Skip it. Just scram. And listen, don’t go gettin’ any damn blood on that coat.”

  “I won’t,” Johnny promised. He slipped into the coat, feeling the bill in the left-hand pocket. “Thanks again, Barney.”

  Barney nodded and peered over his shoulder.

  “Go on, boy,” he whispered urgently.

  Johnny started for the stair well. He was on the top step when Barney called, “Hey, boy.”

  Johnny turned. “Yeah?”

  “You kil
l Luis?”

  “No,” Johnny said.

  “I didn’t figure. Go on, boy. Good luck.”

  Johnny smiled and ran down the steps. Barney waited until he was out of sight. He opened the door to his apartment then, and began chuckling automatically before he reached the living room.

  Seven

  The Club Yahoo was a small joint on Lenox Avenue. Its food was not particularly good, and its floor show—with the possible exception of Cindy Matthews—was just as bad. The prices on the liquor sold were rather high, and it’s difficult to imagine why the club flourished. It did flourish, though, and perhaps that was due to the danza exotica Cindy performed there three times each night. It was a well-known fact that Sary Morgan, the owner and sole proprietor of the club, paid a good deal of change to the gendarmes for the privilege of allowing Cindy to perform her dance.

  Sary—whose real name, Savannah, had been aborted to its present state years ago—was a rotund little man with a penchant for pretty girls. His floor show was studded with pretty, if untalented, maidens, who formed an excellent backdrop for the dance Cindy performed. When the girls were not serving as a backdrop, they floated around among the customers, inducing them to drink. And whereas Sary had named the club “Yahoo” in all sincerity, there were those who insisted on calling it “Y’Whore.”

  It took a lot of deliberation for Johnny Lane to go there, and he went with some misgivings. But he wanted a place to spend the night, and he had to see Cindy about that. He didn’t relish the idea of sleeping in some hallway. All he needed was some dame spotting him and screaming for the cops, figuring him for a drunk or something. No, he needed a place for the night, and Cindy was the only person he could think of now.

  The Club Yahoo’s bar started just inside the doorway, as if it were planned for someone to catch a quick shot with one foot outside the place. The bar ran the length of the right-hand wall in the long rectangular room. At the far end of the room a small platform sported a four-piece bop combo, and the combo was having at it hot and strong when Johnny entered the club. The tables lining the left-hand wall and then running perpendicular to the bar, leaving a square between the bandstand and the door for the floor show, were filled. The room was full of smoke and muted voices, and the bop combo blasted through the smoke with the precision skill of riveters.

  A very dark trumpeter had his horn pointed at the draperies that hung from the ceiling of the joint. And even though the bell of his horn wore a straight mute, the draperies shook a little when he cut loose. The tenor-sax man kept up a slow, rocking harmony behind the trumpet, and the drums and piano socked out a rhythm while the horn shrieked. The boys seemed to gather momentum in the final chorus. The people at the tables began banging their glasses and clapping their hands in time with the beat. Johnny stood to the left of the entrance, and he felt his own foot tapping out the rhythm as the music spread to his body.

  And then the tune ended abruptly, and the piano man threw his right hand at the keyboard, pulled out a sprinkling patter of notes and then stabbed them with some wild chords down in the bass. The drummer switched to brushes, keeping a rapid beat on the bass with one foot, lacing it with some high-hat work on the other foot. It was soft and quiet stuff, but quiet the way a .45 can be quiet when it’s just sitting there and not shooting. There was a surging power behind the music, an eerie cacophony that wasn’t quite cacophony, a dissonance that never became quite that. You expected a clinker, and then those black fingers spread over the white keys, and the clinker wasn’t that at all; it became part of the melody again, a skillful twisting and intertwining of chords until the melody was almost obscured but never allowed to be completely smothered. It was good stuff, stuff with too much class for a dump like the Club Yahoo. The tenor and trumpet came in together, two B-flat horns blowing smoothly together, soft this time, but with that quiet roll of rhythm behind them. They scattered chords like gold pieces raining from the ceiling. They rode that melody like a chariot, and Johnny listened and lost himself in the music, lost himself in the swirling smoke and hushed voices, the clink of glasses at the bar, the dim lighting. With a band like that, a man had no need for a mootah high. The band gave you all the high you needed, and he listened and the music swelled inside him.

  He felt the hand on his arm, and he turned his head abruptly.

  The girl standing next to him was a light tan color, and she was wearing almost nothing but her color. Sary had decked her out in long black net stockings and a skirt that barely covered her. The skirt was a part of a one-piece affair that hung loosely over her breasts, advertising the obvious fact that she wore no bra beneath it. Sary, a man who catered to fetishes, had given the girl garters to hold up the stockings, and the garters bit into her flesh tightly. She smiled brightly and leaned forward a little, the top of her garment falling away.

  “Check your coat, sir?” she said.

  “No,” he answered. “No, thanks.”

  The girl kept her smile, but it lacked conviction now. The boys on the bandstand played a cue four bars that told the crowd they were taking a break, and Johnny huddled back against the wall, keeping away from the slightly brighter light of the check room. He didn’t see Cindy anywhere around, but it was about time for her second show, and he figured it was safer waiting out here than going back to her. He’d try to catch her eye when she came on, and meanwhile he’d make himself as inconspicuous as possible.

  He was trying to do just that when he spotted Hank Sands.

  Sands was sitting at the bar, and he swung around on his stool and eyeballed the joint, his gaze passing the check room and then lingering on Johnny for an instant. Johnny wasn’t sure he’d been seen. He started to turn his back, but he saw the smile come onto Sands’ narrow mouth, and he cursed silently and waited.

  Sands picked up his drink and sidled off the stool. The waiters were already hitting the tables, peddling their liquor during the band intermission. Sands worked his way through the activity, inching his way forward like a mole. He was a small man with a perpetual smirk on his mouth. He combed his hair in a high pompadour, aided by the various hair-straighteners he used. He also wore elevator shoes, but all his combined trickery didn’t help his height any. He still looked like some kind of rodent, and the pegged pants and long jacket didn’t help to conceal the slope of his shoulders or the narrowness of his chest or the mincing steps he took.

  He was the kind of guy who made you feel slimy. There were a few guys like that in Johnny’s immediate circle of acquaintances. Guys who could just stand there and say nothing and somehow make you feel as if spiders were crawling up your behind. Maybe it was the smirk Sands wore, like an open switch-blade knife. Or maybe it was his piggy little eyes. Or maybe it was the way he undressed every girl who came within three feet of him, sucking out her navel with his eyes. He’d visually undressed Cindy more times than Johnny could remember, and Sands certainly didn’t try to hide the fact that he was intensely warm for her form. Cindy always looked uncomfortable when he ran over at the mouth. Johnny looked more than uncomfortable. Johnny had once almost ripped off Sands’ head, but Sands had just laughed that infuriating high laugh of his and tried to pass it off as a joke.

  The smirk was plastered on his mouth now as he worked his way over to Johnny. Johnny unconsciously glanced over his shoulder. He didn’t trust Sands, and if the bastard was going to start yelling for the cops, he wanted to know where the door was and how quickly he could reach it.

  Sands stopped in front of Johnny and examined him closely, the smile on his face.

  “Well,” he said, “dig the fugitive.”

  “Cool, man,” Johnny warned.

  “Ain’ no cops here,” Sands said. He stepped back a pace and studied Johnny again. “You doan look no different,” he said.

  “I don’t feel no different,” Johnny said. “What’s on your mind, Sands?”

  “I jus’ wanted to know what a murd’rer looked like, thass all.”

  “I ain’t killed nobody, Sands,”
Johnny said tightly.

  “Ain’t you, now? Well, now, thass a matter of ’pinion, now ain’t it?”

  Johnny said nothing. He hated the way Sands talked. Sands had been born and raised in Harlem, but he always tried to sound like a goddamn Georgia cotton-picker.

  Sands was still smiling, enjoying Johnny’s discomfiture immensely. “You reckon they goan send you to jail, man?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Johnny said.

  “Murder.” Sands shook his head. “Tch, tch, thass a shame. I understan’ people gets cooked for murder. That right, Johnny? Does they fry people for murder?”

  “Man, you’re talking too much,” Johnny said.

  Sands chuckled shrilly. “Man,” he’ said, “you kill me. I never done seen you so jumpy. You like a stick of M, man? Sutthin’ to calm you down?”

  “I don’t want nothing from you, Sands.”

  “On’y one thing I want fum you, Johnny,” Sands said. “An’ you know whut that is. An’ I sure’s hell goan get it when they fry you.”

  “Look, you simple bastard …”

  “Ah, ah, now le’s watch that language, Johnny-boy. Le’s jus’ watch it now. Remember I jus’ might get o-fended, and then I liable to wander over the phone booths and call the bulls. Now, you doan want no bulls on the scene, does you?”

  “Be the last phone call you ever made,” Johnny said.

  Sands chuckled again. “Yessir, boy. When they pops you in that chair and shaves off yo’ hair, I’m goan come right down here and grab Cindy, right ’tween these two hands o’ mine.” He held his hands in front of him and tightened them, enjoying Johnny’s helplessness. “Whutchoo think of that, man? Right ’tween these ol’ fingers.”

  “Blow, Sands,” Johnny said.

  “I liable’a blow right over to the phone booths.”

  “Go ahead. You ever get strangled in a phone booth, you bastard?”

  Sands smiled. He put his arm on Johnny’s shoulder and said, “Man, I jus’ teasin’, thass all. No need to—”