by John Dunning
This was enough for the opening show. The climax was pure dynamite, with Nina brought to a raging fury by the arbitrary decision of those old bastards on the board, opening a rift with the powerful chairman that will bring new trouble to her whole family. He banged out some dialogue:
“The reason is simple, Miss Brewer. Girls do not ride. No girl has ever been granted a license, and properly not.”
“And properly not? What does that mean? That’s a hell of a reason! Damn it, this is my life you’re fooling with! Who do you people think you are, gods?”
The cusswords were vital. She must swear at them, offend them deeply, and thus begin the chain of events that would start this vendetta against her. Even the words “damn” and “hell” would be shocking on the radio, and the shock would double if they came from a woman.
The telephone rang.
“Heeey, Dulaney! . . . It’s about time you got back to that desk.”
Schroeder.
“Where the hell you been all day? I been trying your phone every hour.”
“We’re rehearsing a play. It’s . . . it doesn’t matter.”
“Did you get my money?”
He lied without thinking. “It’s burning a hole in my pocket.”
Schroeder laughed. “You’d better put out that fire, old buddy. How much you get me?”
He lied again. “Four hundred.”
“Good. I’ll need it all before I get where I’m going. I’m leaving the country tomorrow.”
Dulaney gave a little grunt.
“What’s wrong with you?” Schroeder said.
The line had clicked and there was that soft hum again, like a bad party line on a rural telephone hookup. “I’m fine, but there are people around. Maybe you should call me back on the phone in the square.”
“I don’t hear any people.”
“Take my word for it.”
“I take nobody’s word. You’re not trying to pull something now, are you, Dulaney?”
“What good would that do me?”
“Who knows how you crazy Americans think. You just come tonight. You give me my money and I give you your money’s worth.”
“I can’t get away tonight.”
“Well, you goddamn better, you hear that? You better come or I’m gone and you’re a dead man. You got that, Dulaney? You got that? You and that honey of yours can take what comes.”
Dulaney said nothing for a long time. Ten seconds.
“So, are you coming or not? Say it now, Dulaney, you got this one chance.”
“Okay . . . I’m coming.”
“Tonight.”
“Yes. I’ll be there.”
“If you’re late even by one minute I’ll be gone.”
“Schroeder, listen to me—”
“No, you listen. You come to a rooming house on East Eighty-fifth. Halfway down the block in the three hundreds. There’s a window box on the first floor—the only one on the block. Ask for Richard in three sixteen; he will tell you where to go. If there’s any monkey business you don’t get past Richard, you got that? Come at eleven fifteen, no sooner, no later.”
The connection broke. Dulaney sat listening to dead air. Then the line clicked and the hum went away.
( ( ( 25 ) ) )
HIS car ran hot in the wilderness, but sometime before eight he limped into Pinewood Junction, a jerkwater whistle-stop on the railroad. The town, carved out of a dense forest thirty miles west of the beach, was closed tight. Not a sign of life anywhere: not a gas station or even a bar, not a soul on the road or walking along the paths that seemed to be the town’s only sidewalks. A few dim-looking houses back in the trees. A long brick building, closed and padlocked, with the single chipped and peeling word GARAGE clinging stubbornly to the bricks over the bay doors. Something that looked like a general store, a relic from the last century, locked tight and dark like the rest of it.
There was a railroad depot. He had been assured of that, and there it was, just beyond the town limit on the other side of the tracks. The platform was empty, the windows dark, but he clattered across the tracks, pulled into the dirt lot, lifted his hood, and diagnosed his own problem, a splitting radiator hose that might last another fifty miles or give up the ghost in the next ten seconds. Water dripped slowly on the engine, and the drips sizzled and danced into steamy oblivion.
He climbed to the platform and stood at the end of it. A large slate schedule revealed that the northbound from Cape May to New York was due in thirty-seven minutes, at eight thirty-two by the clock over the door. He pulled up the flag to signify PASSENGER WAITING, then sat on a bench outside the locked ticket room and hoped the conductor cared enough to stop for a single fare.
He thought about Harford and Kidd. How long had they waited for him and what had they thought when he failed to arrive? Standing them up was a minor worry, now that he was on the road with some kind of resolution in sight, but it was what he thought about, along with his telephone and the worry about that strange hum. The weather had changed. An early dusk was coming, the sun already down beyond the misty woods. The day had turned cold: not in actual degrees, but there was a chilling augury about his mission that extended to the environment. He couldn’t remember when he’d been so jumpy, so impatient to get somewhere and get it over with.
The timetable unfolded in his head. The train would put him in New York at nine twenty-eight. Almost two hours to kill. At eleven fifteen he’d meet Richard in room 316. He knew this by heart.
Midnight. By now he’d have seen Schroeder, probably somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. Richard would certainly pat him down, so he’d have nothing more than his guts and his strength when the showdown turned ugly. And ugly it would be when Schroeder found out he had no money. He hoped he and Schroeder would be alone, but more likely there’d be a gang from the bund, there to intimidate him if nothing else.
First reason, then bluff. If that fails, fight. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was all he had. “One way or another” was his byword. One way or another Schroeder was going to tell him what he knew.
What a plan. A great prescription for getting yourself killed.
It started going wrong before the train came in. Perhaps it was the deathlike stillness that made the movement catch his eye. Some little flutter in the woods across the tracks and beyond the glade: gone now as he turned his head for the full frontal look. Just the jitters, he thought: he’d feel better when he got on the train, better yet when the neon city pulled him into its vast anonymous hustle. A man could hide in that crowd forever if he didn’t have to go up to Yorkville and put himself in a spotlight, betting on a blind hand and hoping he wasn’t being lured there just to be killed like Kendall.
A covey of birds was his only warning. They flushed out of the thicket at the edge of the trees, banked north over the tracks, and glided into the grass two hundred yards away. A hunter, he thought. That inherited ability to read the woods drew his eyes back to the spot where the birds had jumped, and he saw a shimmery presence just into the forest. A hunter who flushed birds but did not shoot, visible for less than a second before vanishing back in the brush. A hunter hunting but not hunting birds, he thought, and in that second he knew he was in trouble.
The hunter’s hunting me.
He was already moving when the crack of the rifle ripped across the clearing. He dropped to the cement floor as the second shot knocked over the bench in a shower of splinters. He rolled to his feet and scrambled behind the depot. A third shot hit the building, blowing half a brick out of the northwest corner.
He flattened against the wall and there, in the longest minute he had ever lived, he thought he could hear the mist falling in the trees. He peered around the edge. The woods were dense and darkening, primevally empty.
He looked through the depot window, through the dark waiting room, and on through the glass doors to the woods east of the track. Not a movement anywhere back there. That in itself meant nothing. But the thicket had gone back to its natural
quiet. The birds circled and came home.
It looked like a nesting place. A nest would draw birds back, but they wouldn’t come if the hunter was still there.
At least eight or ten minutes had passed: plenty of time for a shooter to change his position and have another try.
Where would he come from?
From the north it would be a difficult shot. The road into town was long and straight with a deep open stretch. From the south it would be easier, with ground cover that grew thick around the tracks almost to the edge of the depot. The shooter would have one short moment of exposure as he dashed across the tracks, but once across he’d have a clear shot down the west end of the depot.
He took a deep breath and stepped around the edge of the building. Stood in shadow, looking across the tracks where the shooter had been just a few minutes before.
Here he passed the time, standing in the depot doorway, waiting for the train. At eight thirty-four he heard the horn and it came in, hissing to a stop.
Doors opened. People stared through lighted windows.
He’d be open to one shot from the south as he darted away from the cover of the building. He leaped across eternity, into the waiting coach.
He took a seat and sat low. A few passengers looked at him curiously, then the newspapers went up. The shields of urban indifference.
The doors closed. The train rocked through the black Jersey woods.
A conductor came through and collected his fare. At nine twenty-five they rolled into Penn Station and Jack Dulaney walked into the warm Manhattan night.
( ( ( 26 ) ))
A SENSE of urgency drove him on to Yorkville. If he was in danger, so was Schroeder. This bit of logic kept running through his head. I will lose him if I go early: we will all lose him if I don’t.
A man on a train would almost certainly get to the city before a man in a car. But this advantage dissolved in his mind as he stood in the Lexington Avenue subway and waited for the uptown train. The lights of the Brooklyn express flashed over his feet, a caravan of people hurled through catacombs to troubles of their own.
Somehow he had to get to Schroeder: had to talk or bully his way past the sentry in 316 and make them listen. He got on his train and the next thing he knew he was getting off on Eighty-sixth. With luck he’d have an hour to work with: sixty minutes to persuade two jumpy Germans that they needed to hear what he needed to tell them.
He came up the steps to a far different Yorkville than the one he remembered. The glitter had faded from Hitler’s Broadway: the gaiety had gone and many of the cabarets had closed. There was less to celebrate in 1942: Hitler didn’t look quite as invincible as he once had, and the city’s tolerance of un-American activities had expired with the German declaration of war last December 9. There were still traces of political sentiment—a swastika painted on a redbrick wall, a picture of their führer taped to a light pole, an anonymous handbill raving against the Jews—but the revelers of 1938 had apparently been arrested, dispersed, or driven underground. The street was so quiet he could clearly hear the footsteps of a man crossing half a block away.
The flag store where Holly had run afoul of the Nazi woman was vacant now. The grand meeting halls—Turnverein, Mozart Hall, the Yorkville Casino—were closed and dark. He passed the pastry shop where Tom had been challenged by the Hitler youth gang . . . still open, and nothing about it changed except now there were no customers. Even the waiter, he thought, was the same weary-looking fellow who had asked them to leave. The scene tugged at his heart, making him wish for another crack at better days and a chance to get it right with the benefit of hindsight.
He walked down Second Avenue to Eighty-fifth Street and a moment later stood outside the apartment house. There was no use planning it to death: all you could do was play it by ear and see what happened when you knocked on the door. The hallway was dingy, with uncarpeted stairs curling up from an aperture halfway down. As he came to the second floor he heard voices talking German, then music on a phonograph. The floor creaked when he went on up. He followed the numbers to 316 at the end of the hall. There was a window—one of those six-foot casements that open onto fire escapes—and he looked over the coaly gap between the buildings. He put his head to the door and decided not to knock. Not now, not yet—some unknown hunch stopped him.
He flipped the window latch and pushed it up. It moved easily in its sash and he guessed that prolific use was made of the fire escapes in the summer: that soon people would be hauling mattresses out of their rooms to catch any breath of air. But that wasn’t the case tonight. There wasn’t a light anywhere: not a sound or a hint of life until he stepped out on the landing. Then he heard a group of men singing harmony in some distant place: German songs in the German tongue. They were such gay people, such jolly good fellows. You had to wonder why they couldn’t stop fighting the rest of the world.
Now he heard another noise, the rhythmic moaning of a woman. It grew in intensity until it seemed to fill the black gulf. He saw a bit of light from the street, just enough to make out the iron landings extending like steel skeletons full-length down each floor. The woman’s voice had risen to a whimper: as if she’s being killed, he thought, or beaten and left for dead. He touched the wall and the window to 316 was open a crack, raised about three inches over the sill. Was that where the crying woman was? But the room was blacker than the night, and when he leaned down and put his face to the opening he felt a stuffiness that said there was no one in the apartment.
Then the rickety platform began to rock and he knew what it was . . . a pair of lovers on the landing just above his head. The whole works clattered, creaking in a rhythm that was unmistakable, rising to a melting rapture and the deaf-and-blind fury of animals. Once in broken English the man tried to protest—Hush now, hush! Someone will hear!— but the woman cried out to Jesus and was already past caring. In the telling moment Dulaney had his fingers under the window. Only the real Jesus heard the squeak as he jerked it up and stepped into the room.
He took a long breath and pulled the window down where it had been. He touched an unmade bed . . . pillows strewn as if the lovers had begun their play here. The room was stifling. He felt his way around the bed, to the wall, then to the door. The front room led out to the hall, the thin line of light around the door his only guide.
The hall door opened into a windowless living room, with the bedroom on the fire escape and, he guessed, a kitchen and bathroom on the other side. He groped his way along the wall and wondered, did he dare use a light? Maybe, if he could be sure of containing it. He found the switch and moved beyond it: then, casting away from the safety of the wall, he struck out across the room.
There were no obstacles to the opposite wall and he moved along it to a doorway. Bumped past an icebox to a small dining table with chairs. Felt an oven: his fingers touched the gas jets, then the grates, and he felt his way around that to another door. Pushed it open and the faint smell of rust told him he had reached the bathroom. At that moment the telephone rang, breaking the silence like a bombshell.
He jumped away and spun into the room. Slammed against the wall, said a soft “Jesus Christ,” and stood breathing deeply while the phone went on ringing. He lost track of how many times it rang, and when it was finally quiet, that was somehow worse than the noise. He heard a clock ticking, and this heightened his urgency and gave him a new awareness of time. It must be at least ten o’clock now and he was burning up the minutes with no other plan if his meeting with Schroeder should fail.
Unless he could find a lead, somewhere here in the apartment.
He turned on the bathroom light, an agreeably dim bulb over a rust-colored sink. Again the phone rang, exploding in the same split second as if the light had set it off. It jolted him a second time and he cursed himself. Loudest goddamn telephone on the planet. But he had light now, and he was in a large bathroom with a tiled floor that testified to better days. He opened the medicine cabinet but it was almost bare: a cardboard box of a
spirin, a well-squeezed tube of toothpaste, a bottle of disinfectant. One other item caught his eye: a diaphragm, shoved into a corner of the middle shelf. Lusty people, these Germans.
He followed his reflected light into the eating room. The telephone kept ringing. Now he could see it, perched on a counter a few feet away, and he had a sudden urge to answer it—crazy, he knew, but it seemed less so as he stood there facing it. What could he lose? If it happened to be Schroeder calling, maybe he could get it all said in one long piece—how his phone had been tapped and even now someone might be out in the street, gunning for them both. But he was spared the decision when the ringing stopped.
He saw the clock on a shelf just a few inches from his face. It was still only nine fifty-four, if that could be believed. He peered into the living room, and the few pieces of furniture looked spectral in the indirect light. There was a poor excuse for a sofa with stuffing coming out of one arm. A console radio across the room. A desk against the wall with a hard chair pulled up close. That was it for furniture.
He sat at the desk and made a quick search of the pigeonholes on both sides of the writing surface. Nothing but a few bills, all in the name Aleta von Papen. Nothing about a Richard or any of the Schroeders. Could he have come to the wrong place? He stared for a moment at the radio, a well-used Zenith with shortwave and police bands, and something caught his eye. The dial was set on Harford, the spot marked with a small red slash.
All his doubts vanished in that moment. Suddenly his mind was back at Harford. He knew the station’s schedules well enough to test that clock on the shelf. Right now Eastman would be reading the closing of one of their few local nighttime slots. Rue would be standing at the other mike, ready to do Miss Nicotine for their one national account, Wings cigarettes. He clicked on the radio and turned the volume low, little more than a whisper, as he went through the left drawer. The radio whistled as he sifted through a wad of newspaper clippings, most of them about G-man activity in Jersey and New York. Two Germans arrested at a farm near Elizabeth. Fourteen rounded up on a sweep through Yorkville. German-Americans in sensitive positions—in radio stations, post offices, shipping companies, anyplace where they could see or hear things—placed under increased security. Nazi sympathizers find little to cheer about in U.S. courts as prison or deportation looms for most. Hoover given prominent credit in every piece. He and Congressman Dies, who reconvened the Committee on Un-American Activities yesterday, lauded for their eternal vigilance. A familiar voice burst out of the radio—Rue, just finishing her commercial. Good news . . . the clock was off by less than a minute.