by Craig Rice
“Why?” Bingo said. There was a subway station on the corner; he wondered if he could duck into it fast and grab an uptown train.
“Because,” the blonde said, “that was his apartment where we left his friend.”
Bingo reflected that nothing much worse than what had happened to him in the past could happen to him in the future, and got into her car. It seemed to him as though he’d been hypnotized, from the ears down. His brain went on functioning, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on what the rest of him did. He began to wish, as the car started, that somebody would hypnotize his brain, too.
“Never mind about him,” the blonde babe said, leaning a little closer to him. “Would a drink make you feel better?”
Bingo nodded helplessly. She reached up in the dashboard compartment, took out a bottle of brandy, helped herself to a drink, and handed the bottle to Bingo.
The drink tasted strange, but it felt good. He began to relax a little.
“Don’t worry about him,” she repeated, “he’s dead. But you aren’t, and I’m not.”
The car was going more slowly now. Bingo peered out the window and tried to find out where he was. A street sign said WAVERLY PL., and another, on the same pole, pointed in a different direction and said WAVERLY PL. He leaned back against the seat cushions and gave up.
“I don’t know who you are,” the blonde babe said, “and you don’t know who I am. And neither of us cares, isn’t that wonderful?”
“I care who you are,” Bingo said.
“That’s wonderful too,” she whispered, “but you aren’t going to find out. I like you and you like me, and isn’t that enough?” She pushed the brandy flask into his hand again.
The car stopped in front of a building somewhere in the wilderness south of Waverly Place and west of Seventh Avenue. For a moment Bingo sat there in the front seat, his muscles tensed, ready for anything. He could feel the warm pressure of her knee against his leg.
“Don’t you want to come up and see where I live?” she whispered down his neck.
Bingo didn’t. He wanted to get out of the car, fast, and head toward where he hoped Seventh Avenue was and get to the subway before anyone stopped him. But maybe, in the future, he was going to need to know who the woman was and where she lived. So he opened the car door on his side and stepped out.
“I’d love to see where you live,” he said.
She walked across the sidewalk just ahead of him, fumbled for a key in her purse, unlocked and opened the door. Bingo realized suddenly that she was just a little high, not plastered, but high. He followed her up the carpeted flight of stairs to the second floor. There was only one door; she unlocked and opened it.
Bingo stepped inside and waited for her to turn on the lights. She didn’t. The room was heavy with perfume and almost dark.
He felt for the door, in case he needed to open it in a hurry, and said, “Now look here, lady, I don’t know you, and—”
She laughed, about twelve inches from his face. “Are you afraid you’re walking into a trap of some kind?”
“My Uncle Herman told me to always be careful,” Bingo said. He wished he were home.
“All right,” she said, still laughing, “I’ll turn on the light.”
He felt her brush against him. There was the click of a switch, and the room was flooded with a pale-pink glow. He blinked for a moment and then looked around. It was the kind of room that called for a pale-pink glow.
She didn’t look half bad in the rosy light.
“I liked you the minute I saw you,” she whispered. “You’re probably a crook, but I don’t care. We’ll never see each other again, so what’s the difference?”
Bingo took a step backward and said, “Now look here.”
“You aren’t afraid of me, are you?” she whispered. She took his wrist and pulled him down onto one of the pale-blue divans. “You wouldn’t be afraid of a poor, helpless woman, would you?”
“Me?” Bingo said. “I’m not afraid of anything or anybody. Only I gotta get home.”
She laughed, softly and not unpleasantly, leaned on his shoulder, and looked up at him. “You do think I’m attractive, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Bingo said, “I think you’re beautiful.” In the soft light, she almost did look beautiful.
“We’re going to be friends,” she breathed, “we’re going to be wonderful friends.”
“Absolutely,” Bingo said. “And if we’re friends, you’re going to answer a lot of questions I want to ask, aren’t you?”
“Anything you say,” she said, “anything.” Suddenly she rose, walked across the room, and slid open a cabinet to reveal the most completely equipped built-in bar Bingo had ever seen. “My friend wants a drink, I know. So I’m going to fix him one, a special one.”
It seemed to Bingo, as he watched, that she poured a little out of every bottle on the shelf into a tall glass. He tasted the result timidly. It was sharp and pungent and tantalizing. He sipped it cautiously and then set the glass on the end table beside him, a little suspicious. He’d have traded it in a minute for gin with a short beer for a chaser.
The blonde babe cuddled down beside him and laid her head on his lap.
“Tell me you like me,” she said, “do tell me you like me.”
“I like you,” Bingo said politely, “I like you very much.”
Maybe she could tell him, and would tell him, all that he wanted to know. If that were so, he certainly ought to stay and find out. Maybe everything could be solved and settled, right here and now, in a few minutes’ conversation with her. He decided to stay.
“Back there, you said—‘he killed him,’” Bingo said. “Suppose you tell me who he is.”
“Suppose I don’t know?” she said coyly.
“But you do know,” Bingo said coaxingly. He slid an arm under her head and looked down at her. Her slightly bloodshot eyes were a glazed-china blue. “And you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?” He tightened his arm a little. “You’re going to tell me because you like me.”
She shook her head, smiled slyly at him, and said, “Af’er w’ile.”
Bingo realized that she wasn’t just high, but tight, and good and tight. He loosened his hold a little. Maybe he’d better go on home, after all. No, he might get more information from her when she was like this.
“’M notta bad girl,” she said coyly, with a tiny giggle. “S’jus’ family traits. Bad family traits. M’brother’s worse, much worse.” She waved an arm around the apartment. “Y’don’t think I live here. H’m-m’m! Live somewheres else. Nice respect’ble married woman with family.” She put the arm around his neck, tight. “Shouldn’ve brought you here t’night. Couldn’ help it. Was because seeing man killed.” The arm tightened around him, pulled his face down. “Now kiss me, sweetheart.”
It was a little like being kissed by a leech. Bingo felt his stomach turn over uncomfortably. He let her drop back into his lap as soon as her arms let go.
She slid off his lap, stood up, and walked, just a shade unsteadily, to a door on the other side of the room.
“Comin’ ri’back, sweetheart,” she said.
Bingo sat for a moment, looking after her. He felt unhappy and a little worried. Maybe he ought to make a quick getaway through the door, up the street to the subway, and home. Maybe she’d gone in there to phone the police.
He could hear her moving around in the other room, softly and quickly.
“Look here, lady,” he called out. “If you’re going to answer my questions, come out here and answer them. Because I gotta go home.”
He heard a faint giggle from the other side of the door.
Bingo waited as long as his nerves could hold out. Then he went to the front door and took a firm hold of the knob.
“I don’t believe you know anything anyway,” he said loudly. “So g’night.”
“Wai’ a minute,” she called. “Here I am.”
Bingo spun around, his hand still on the knob. Then he
stood there motionless, as she closed the door behind her.
She took a few steps into the room and paused, smiling at him. She was naked, completely naked, save for a pair of feathered mules on her puffy feet, and a string of blue-white pearls around her fat, wrinkled neck.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bingo stood for a moment in front of the apartment building, lighting a cigarette with a hand that still trembled a little. Then he started walking in the direction of what he hoped was Seventh Avenue.
He hoped he hadn’t hurt the blonde babe’s feelings. But saying good night as politely as he could, and going on out into the hall, had seemed the only thing to do at the time.
Under other circumstances, and with a different dame, he would have appreciated the gilt and satin apartment with the pale-pink lights and the contents of the built-in bar. Not, though, in the company of the blonde babe.
In that brief, startled, and embarrassed glance before he’d turned around and said, as he opened the door, “Sorry, I gotta go home. G’night, ma’am. Thanks for the drink,” he’d seen that without her high-priced foundation garments she seemed to sag all over. She bulged in the wrong places and was hollowed in the wrong places. And the little blue veins stood out everywhere like rivers on a relief map.
Once she must have been something worth looking at, with her clothes off. The pity of it was, she didn’t know that time was past, long past.
The street was dark. Bingo walked about a block. Then a car came racing up the street and pulled up to the curb beside him with a loud screeching of brakes, the door opened, and the blonde babe called, “Get in, I’ll give you a ride home.”
“Thanks just the same,” Bingo called back. “It’s a nice night to walk.”
“I said to get in,” she said irritably.
Bingo remembered she still had the dead gangster’s gun, and got in, slamming the door.
“You’re a dirty bastard,” the blonde babe said, starting the car, “Well, where do you live?”
“It’s very kind of you to offer me a ride,” Bingo said politely and placatingly. “I live near Eighty-first Street and Central Park West. You can just drop me there at the corner.”
“We could have been great friends,” she said nastily, a block or two later. She turned a corner so fast that it threw him against the side of the car. A moment later she turned another corner into Seventh Avenue, this time throwing Bingo back against the seat cushions.
“Lady,” Bingo said feelingly, “I hope we’ll never be enemies.”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Her face was flushed and a trifle puffy; she hadn’t bothered to straighten her brass-blonde hair. Also, he noticed, she hadn’t bothered to fasten her bronze lamé blouse down the back.
“Now listen,” he said, slowly getting his nerve back, “you still haven’t told me why you came up to Mr. Penneyth’s apartment tonight.”
She said, “Go to hell.”
Bingo waited a few minutes, and then said, “You were searching the place. I know, I was watching you. What was it? What did you expect to find?”
“You go to hell,” she repeated.
Bingo wished he hadn’t promised his Aunt Kate, when he was fifteen, never to call a lady a bitch. He leaned out the window, trying to find out where they were, and how far from home. He saw only unlighted buildings speeding past.
“Whoever killed that gangster,” he ventured, “did a neat job of knife throwing, if I ever saw one. Wonder where he learned how.”
She didn’t seem to have heard him.
Bingo began to get mad, too. He could have spent this hot, sticky evening at home, wearing his new Hawaiian-print shorts, drinking beer, watching Handsome get the day’s prints ready to send out, and chinning with Mr. Pigeon. He could have spent it strolling in Central Park, thinking of all the things he was going to do with his share of the half-million dollars. He could have taken Baby to a two-bit movie before she went to work. He could have done any number of pleasant, entertaining, and refreshing things. He could even have paid a personal call on June Logan.
Instead, he’d made a fruitless search of Harkness Penneyth’s apartment, learning only that Harkness Penneyth had been stabbed to death and, later, dressed, both by some unknown hand. He’d run into the blonde babe and seen a man killed. He’d been forced to assist her in the unpleasant and undoubtedly dangerous task of moving the murdered man to the hall outside a particularly vicious gangster’s apartment. Then the blonde babe had embarrassed him.
And, after all that, he hadn’t learned any of the things he’d meant to find out about.
He drew a long breath and started from scratch.
“Who killed him?” he demanded, “and who would kill you except you’re too smart for him? Who killed that guy tonight, with a knife? How come you know Marty Bucholtz so well that you know where his apartment is? And who are you, anyway?”
This time she didn’t even bother to say, “Go to hell.” She slammed on the brakes for a red light with a jolt that nearly sent Bingo’s head through the dashboard, then stepped on the gas and shot ahead.
He decided there was no use asking questions, in the mood she was in. Not only was she sore at him, and with good reason, too, Bingo thought apologetically, but anybody who’d sobered up as fast as she had was bound to be a little irritable and ugly.
He wondered if he ought to try mentioning Mr. Pigeon to her. That might shake loose a confidence or two. Maybe he’d better not. It might involve him in unpleasant explanations and difficulties. On the other hand, he argued with himself, if she knew Harkness Penneyth, and knew Marty Bucholtz and his pal, it was likely that she knew something about Mr. Pigeon.
And anyway, he couldn’t make matters any worse than they were already.
“Listen, ma’am,” Bingo said. “Did you ever know a guy named Mr. Pigeon?”
The blonde babe said, “Shut up.”
Then Bingo really gave up. He leaned back against the cushions, half closed his eyes, and thought how pleasant it was going to be to get home again. Just a few more blocks now, and they’d be passing Central Park.
Suddenly the car slowed down a little. Bingo sat upright and looked out the window. All he could see were darkened store fronts.
“I don’t know who you are,” the blonde babe said crossly, “and I don’t give a damn. Whoever you are, you’re a dirty bastard. But I’m going to tell you one thing, and it’s for your own good, and then you can go to hell.”
Bingo stirred uncomfortably and said, “Yes? Go on.”
“You’re mixing up in something that’s none of your business,” the blonde said. “I don’t know why you’re doing it, or what you expect to get out of it. But if you know when you’re well off, you’ll lay off.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Bingo said, hoping she’d enlighten him.
“If you don’t,” she snapped, “then I won’t tell you. If you do, I don’t need to. I’m just giving you some good advice, and I don’t really care one hoot in hell whether you take it or not.”
The car started moving at its normal speed again. Bingo found one slightly bent cigarette left in the crumpled package in his coat pocket, took it out, smoothed it, and lighted it.
“What’s going to happen to me if I don’t?” he asked.
“That’s your business,” she said sulkily. “But you’ve seen two men who’ve been killed so far. You’re mixing up with people who don’t fool.”
Bingo said, “What people?”
This time she said both, “Shut up” and “Go to hell.”
Bingo sighed and leaned back again. There was a certain monotony to her conversation.
They drove on for a few minutes more. Suddenly he felt that the air was momentarily cooler and damper. He sat up and opened his eyes.
“Hey! Where are we?”
He looked out the window. They had just passed Bowling Green and were approaching South Ferry.
“Wait a minute,” Bingo said. “I live near Eighty-first
and Central Park West.”
“I heard you the first time,” she said grimly.
The car slowed to a stop at South Ferry, the southernmost tip of Manhattan Island. She reached across him to open the door.
“Get out,” she said.
He could see the pale glint of light on the gun in her lap. He got out.
“I hope you have a nice time getting home,” she said, adding repetitiously, “you bastard.” She let in the clutch and then, before the car started, thrust her hand through the open window and dropped something into his hand.
Bingo stared at it. It was a nickel for subway fare.
He flung the nickel after the disappearing car and missed it. Then he completely forgot his promise to Aunt Kate.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mr. Pigeon was in the rocking chair, in the tiny (eight by eleven) room with two windows that Bingo called the “office,” Handsome called the “other room,” and Ma called the “parlor.” Handsome sprawled on the couch, where Bingo had slept the night before, his long legs hanging over one of its arms. Baby had sent up some cold beer before she went to work. Mr. Pigeon was telling the open-mouthed Handsome wild and wonderful and probably highly imaginative tales about the South American jungles. It was all very pleasant and quiet, and almost cool.
Bingo sighed happily and began peeling off his sweat-soaked shirt. It had been a long, hot, uncomfortable ride on the subway, from South Ferry to the Eighty-sixth Street station, and his state of mind hadn’t been any too pleasant. A very dirty trick, any way you looked at it, taking a guy as far as you could in the opposite direction from where you knew he wanted to go. All because he couldn’t appreciate your charms, as the song writers would put it.
The tiny, shabby apartment had never looked as good to him before. Funny thing, too, having little Mr. Pigeon around made it seem more homelike.
Bingo stretched, said, “Gotta change my clothes, be back in a minute,” and went into the larger room that served as bedroom, dining room, and kitchen. Handsome followed him, sat down on the bed, and looked at him expectantly.