by Kane, Henry
“Yeah,” I said.
“Real talkative, aren’t you?” The hand was as high as I could take it. “I’ll tell you this, mister. You figure to catch up with a lot of grief and there’s nothing I’m going to be able to do about it. That’s the men’s department. And I’m not the men’s department. I think you’re stupid but cute.”
“What happened up there in Mamaroneck?”
The hand went away, abruptly. She moved back to her corner. “You know what happened in Mamaroneck. You know, just as I know—from the newspapers. But you’re trying to roll it up to something big, aren’t you?”
The rear view gave me Frankie Gold. Frankie Gold was coming down the marble steps, peering into the gloom. I said, “That’s all, sister.” I opened the door on her side. “Good-bye, Mrs. Adams.”
“Bye, stupid.”
The minute she was out, I braked off, shoved into gear and rolled. Thunder was sharp and there was lightning to the east. On the road fat drops blotched the windshield. By the time I got to town, I was fighting a storm. New York, I love it, but the climate is the worst in the world.
When you can’t sleep, you can’t sleep, and fighting it does not help. I listened to disc jockeys during the night and to chamber music and symphonies and jazz. I listened to rain in the streets and looked out on the bleary yellow lights of the misty city. I thought about Olga Adams and her smooth shoulders and her soft inquiring hand and her blue eyes and the look in her blue eyes. I thought about her promise to rattle before she struck and I believed that promise. Olga Adams had an ego all her own and Olga Adams didn’t think I was using blackmail solely as a prod for money. No. Olga Adams thought my motives were more devious. Let her think. As long as Olga Adams thought along those lines I was safe—from Olga Adams—from violence directed by Olga Adams. But in the meantime, there was Matt Bennett and Frankie Gold and the remote Eddie Adams.
I pushed thinking out of my mind. I concentrated on blackness. I counted slowly. I counted fast. I didn’t count at all. I tried self-hypnosis. But sleep would not come. I climbed out of bed and brought back magazines and thick books and paper-backs, and I read until at long last it was morning, and I was engulfed in the euphoria of false energy that frequently happens after a sleepless night.
I bathed and shaved and ate and dressed and wrapped a raincoat around me and went out into the terror of morning. In my business I can sleep late and usually do, and morning and the creatures of morning are strange to me. My car was parked tight to the curb near the house but I whistled down a cab.
My secretary’s eyes popped at my matutinal invasion of the office but I pretended not to notice. Routine had piled up and we went to work on it. Rain plopped sadly all morning and all through the early afternoon. At two o’clock fatigue mixed with boredom and I quit. I left the raincoat in the office and had lunch in a nearby beanery. When I came out the rain had turned to fog and the steam was coming off the streets. I went back into the beanery and phoned the office and said I wasn’t coming back. It was a brown and dirty day and I was ready for sleep. I took a cab home, paid, and the cab rolled off as I stood under the canopy of my apartment house and breathed deep of the thick air. Central Park South was deserted. Anybody with any brains was indoors. A car started up from the curb, picking up speed, and—before I dropped—I saw the black prong extending out the window. Bullets from a carbine splattered above me and the car roared off.
I got up and dusted wetness from my clothes.
I had a hunch that Eddie Adams was home.
I parked the car outside the Montero and I used the house phone to call up to Casey Moore in the event he had company. Casey Moore didn’t have company. A creaky elevator took me up, and when Casey opened the door for me, I said, “Shove over, pal, I’m moving in.”
“Love to have you but I don’t think I’ve got the room.”
“Got to be room somewhere. It’s a hotel, no?”
“Something like it. Why you moving in?”
“Because I can’t go home. Remember I told you to keep your neck in?”
“Yeah?”
“That was a general precaution. Now it’s special.”
“What happened?”
“Bullets. A profusion of bullets out of a rolling car with yours truly as the target. They figure they get rid of me—they get rid of trouble. They don’t know I have a client.”
We went downstairs together and Casey’s friend, Joe Vincent, took a room, payment in advance since he had no baggage. Up in Joe Vincent’s room, I got out of my clothes and stretched out in bed and Casey lit my cigarette and he lit his own. I blew smoke toward the ceiling. I said, “Help me, Casey.”
“Me? I wish I could.”
“Think, boy. Is there something? Anything?”
He didn’t think. He said, “There’s nothing. I was away. For a long time. Remember?”
“Any relatives, Case? Your father have brothers and sisters? Your mother?”
“Nothing. It was that kind of a family. My mother was an orphan. She was an only child. My father has an older brother in Ireland, but I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with him if I wanted to.”
“What about friends? Didn’t your father have friends?”
He hesitated a moment. Then he said, “I suppose he did, but they were just people, casual, nobody close, nobody he’d really confide in …” His voice trailed off. He looked uncomfortable.
I sat up in bed. “You holding out on me, kid?”
“Yes.” His eyes avoided mine.
“But why?”
He prowled the room, then he picked up an ashtray and sat down at the foot of the bed. “It’s something I … I thought I shouldn’t talk about. It’s one of those things you know about but you don’t talk about because … because, well … you feel that people wouldn’t understand.”
“You may as well tell me, Case.”
“I suppose I should, though I don’t see how it can have any bearing. Which is why I didn’t mention it. Which is why I’m reluctant right now.”
“Let’s try, Casey.”
“It’s a lady. Her name is Mary Davis. I used to call her Auntie. I always think of her like that—Auntie. Dad and she were friends, real friends, for eighteen years.”
“They ever think of getting married?”
“She … had a husband.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t. That’s the point. That’s why it’s so hard to talk about. Auntie—Mary Davis—had a husband, Fred, Fred Davis, who was an invalid, paralyzed. He had suffered a spine injury on his job as a milkman. He had slipped on ice one winter many years ago.” His eyes closed and suddenly, for the first time, his face had the look of a boy. “As far back as I can remember old Fred sat in a wheel chair, motionless, and he couldn’t talk.” Now his eyes opened. “They had a tiny little income, some sort of compensation from the milk company, and the two of them lived like that in a tiny spotless little apartment in the Bronx.”
“How’d your father meet her?”
“Years ago, he was a bank guard in a Bronx branch. He met her up there before he was transferred downtown. She had a little thrift account. She was the sweetest, finest person I’ve ever known.”
I bent over, used his ashtray and got rid of my cigarette. I said, “What’s so tough about talking about that? I don’t get it.”
“For eighteen years my father and this lady were close, intimate friends. But friends, Pete, nothing more. People don’t understand that sort of thing. People read into these relationships, people love to gossip … and there was gossip about my father and Auntie, there was gossip indeed.”
“Sure,” I said.
Casey smiled but it had no happiness. “Dad was a lonely man and Auntie was a lonely lady. They saw a great deal of each other. As a child, I used to spend week-ends up there, with my father. As I grew up and broke away, Dad would spend week-ends up there himself. But there was nothing wrong, please believe me. Fred Davis loved it. He couldn’t talk, but there was a manner of communication
—he could sort of talk to them with his eyes. It was a fine, good, decent relationship.”
I said, “I begin to understand your reluctance to talk about this.”
“These things are so frequently miserably misunderstood.”
“Your father would have married her, I suppose, had it been possible.”
“No question about that. But she was married and to a man Dad loved. When I grew up, Dad and I talked about it, often. All he was ever worried about was gossip hurting this angel of a woman and her sick husband. As a matter of fact, as the years passed, they built up a little fib among them—for the neighbors, for people in general—Dad and Auntie were supposed to be brother and sister, and my calling her Auntie became real. Can you understand this?”
“Of course I can.”
“As time passed, it was almost as though they believed it themselves; in time, practically, they became brother and sister. Auntie was tiny, wispy, sweet and timid; and Dad was big and bulky and hearty; sort of the big brother, helping whenever he could, carrying Fred around; bringing presents like a television set; you know, things like that. They got old together, Auntie and Dad and the invalid, Fred.”
I folded the pillow and lay back on the bed. “I assume you’ve seen her since you’re back.”
“She’s the only one I tried to see. But she’s gone. She doesn’t live there any more.”
“Gone? Where to?”
“Miami, Florida. So I was told by the people who took over the apartment.”
“How long?”
“About six months.”
“Did you get the address?”
“Nobody had it. The only information I was able to get was that she had moved down to Miami, to a sister, a married sister.”
“Did they know the sister’s name?”
“No.”
“Do you know anything about this sister?”
“I’d heard about her. She’d lived in the city of Miami most of her life, and had married there.”
“And you don’t know her name?”
“Only a first name, Alice.”
“What about Auntie’s maiden name? Do you know that?”
He thought a moment. “Maxwell. That’s it. Maxwell. Mary Maxwell.” He stood up and laid the ashtray on a table and dumped his cigarette.
I said, “Do you have a gun, Casey?”
“Luger,” he said. “Souvenir.”
“Is it in working order?”
“It is.”
“Bullets?”
“Plenty.”
“Get it in shape, pal.” I looked at my wrist watch. “I’m going to catch some shut-eye. Wake me about seven.”
“Why the questions about the gun?”
“We may have to use it. I’ve got two, one at home and one at the office, but Pete-Chambers-Joe-Vincent isn’t showing up at home or at the office, not until this gets a little cleared up. I think another visit to Lido is in order.”
“When?”
“This evening. And you’re coming along as bodyguard.”
“It’s about time I got into some action.”
“I hope there won’t be any action, but who knows?” I yawned, jaw-creakingly. “G’bye, Case. Go play with your Luger.” He was at the door when I called to him: “What was the name of the milk company old Fred worked for?”
“Certified Special. Here in Manhattan.”
“G’night.”
He closed the door behind him softly. I got up, turned the key in the lock, looked out the window on the fog beginning to blow away, pulled the blind, stumbled to bed and went to sleep.
Shrill sounded the phone. Shrill as a shrew and ceaseless as a shrew on the right side of an argument. I rolled over in bed and reached out a hand and picked up the receiver and said, “Go away.”
“Pete? It’s me, Casey.”
I woke up. “What time is it?”
“Seven. Banging on your door didn’t help. I’m calling from my room. I told the girl to keep ringing till you woke up.”
“Stay with it, kid. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.”
I hung up and used the phone again for Information. I got Edward Adams’ number in Lido, called and the connection was made. I asked for Eddie Adams and a voice said, “Who’s calling?” and I said “Peter Chambers,” and the voice said, “Hold the wire,” and then there was a pause and then there was another voice, slow and cool: “Yes? This is Mr. Adams.”
“Pete Chambers.”
“Yes, Mr. Chambers?”
“All right if I drop in on you, sir? This evening?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Swell. And Mr. Adams …”
“Yes?”
“There are people who know I’m coming out to see you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“This afternoon I almost got in the way of the well-known hail of bullets.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just mentioning it. Just mentioning that if it happens again on my way to see you, or coming from your place, well … there might be people who’ll get the wrong view … especially since they know I’m contemplating a visit to you.”
“Now look, Mr. Chambers …”
“Let’s skip it, Mr. Adams. I’ll see you within the next couple of hours.”
The trip took us one hour and fifteen minutes. Casey Moore was silent most of the way. He had no holster and the thick Luger was a bulge in his jacket pocket, Once he said, “Do you make it for trouble?”
“I doubt that.”
“But this very afternoon—”
“That was this afternoon. This Eddie Adams is a smart operator. He won’t pull anything where he can be tied into it. I may be wrong, of course. Which is why I’ve got you around with that thing in your pocket.”
That was the extent of the conversation until I braked in the roadway outside the pink-roofed house. I said, “Keep the thing in your lap and don’t hesitate to use it—if necessary.”
“No. They’ll know you’re out here. What they won’t know is whether I’ve got others staked out around the premises, and like that we’ve got them off-balance which is good.”
I patted his chin with the back of my hand, got out, ran up the stairs and worked out on the brass knocker. This time the door was opened by Paul and Mike was right beside him.
“How do you do?” Mike rasped. “You wish to see Mr. Adams?”
“I wish.”
“You do not object, I hope, to a gentle frisk by Paul?”
“I do not object.”
Mike smiled at Paul and Paul passed expert fingers over my person. “Clean,” Paul said.
“Smart fella. And now, if you will come along this way …”
He led me to one of the oak doors, opened it, nodded, and swept his hand in front of his stomach in a shoveling grotesque gesture bidding me enter. I went in and he closed the door behind me.
It was a large room with plum-colored walls and a coral carpet and heavy, carved, shining mahogany furniture. Soft light dripped from a high-up chandelier with many bulbs. Two broad windows were festooned with heavy drapes, alternately striped in plum and grey. Set between the windows was a massive mahogany desk. Behind the desk was a chair like a throne, turned-around-back-to-me, the tall carved rounded rear cushioned in brocade. The room was silent, the thick walls and the heavy draperies shutting off all outside sound. I flicked an impatient glance about me, waiting.
I thought I was alone.
I was wrong. I had never been more wrong in my life.
Noiselessly, the high-backed desk chair swung around and Olga Adams rose out of it. Olga Adams, completely nude. Correction. Olga Adams, completely nude, except for high-heeled gold sandals, painted toenails protruding. She came toward me slowly, undulantly, her hair unbraided in a gold cascade flowing down her shoulders. It was enough to put a cramp in your gut. I looked away fast, saw the thrown, creamy-white housecoat on a chair in a far corner and a wide gold mesh belt over that. Then I looked back at her, at all o
f her: Olga Adams coming toward me.
“Eddie Adams,” I blurted. “I called him.”
“I know.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Talk to me first.”
“But he knows I’m here.”
“Not yet he doesn’t.”
“But Mike, and that other hood …”
“They’re devoted to me.”
Then she arrived, and hung her hands around my neck.
I hunched back stiffly. I said, “Eddie Adams …”
“He’s upstairs. He doesn’t know you’re here yet. And he won’t—until I want him to.”
She pulled up on me and her lips opened on mine and she kissed me, softly at first, a kiss like a caress, then harder, the sweet-smelling body clinging, one knee moving; and then it eased off, and it stopped, and her hands dropped from around my neck, and her blue eyes were narrow and questioning and stony and unbelieving, and her mouth was tight. She looked at me for a long moment, narrow-nosed with fury, her expression almost childlike. Then she flung away, turned, moved away from me, and I watched her go. She lifted the housecoat, slipped into it, zipped it up, placed the gold belt around her waist and fastened it. Then she came back to me, a throb in her temple trembling.
“So that’s not it,” she said.
“No, Mrs. Adams. That’s not it.”
“What, then, is it?”
“Easy, lady.”
“Look, you. It’s not money. Ten G’s would have been beautiful for a guy on a small hist. I’ve been around, fella. Ten G’s, and you’d have been out clean. But you didn’t want it—so it’s more than dough. I’m good at things like that. I’m a chiseler myself, a high-class chiseler. I thought …” Her eyes travelled over me. “Okay, I was wrong.”
“You’re right about that.”
“What?”
“That you were wrong.”
She backed away and regarded me. She hooked her thumbs in the gold belt. “All right. If it’s not dough—what is it?”
“I’ve got an answer, lady. But it’s not gentlemen-like.”
“Let’s hear.”
“Mind your business.”
The thumbs came out of the belt. “I’m minding my business, fella. That’s exactly what I’m doing. What do you take me for?”