by Howard Fast
“Four years of high-school Spanish,” the voice said. “That is very droll. I remember that your mother always despised Spanish. It was French and English for both of you, and nothing else would do—”
“I am not Carlotta,” Shirley insisted.
“Of course.” Then, switching to English, a heavily accented English, the voice said, “What happens today, Miss Campbel—it is accident. Mistake. No more. So go to bed and sleep and about it, forget—forget, that is all.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” Shirley whispered, but the man on the wire had already cut off.
“No,” Shirley told herself. “This can’t go on. This is no way for a girl to live. I could just as well be an airline hostess or something or one of those female astronauts.”
Then she called Burton at the precinct. They gave her his home number and told her to call him there. He had just come in, as he told her, and then she related the substance of the telephone call.
“Carlotta?” he said. “Carlotta what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re sure he spoke Spanish?”
“I’m sure,” Shirley said. “What do I do now—jump out of the window and make it easy for them?”
“Make certain the door is locked and go to bed. Get some sleep.”
“I’ll sleep like a baby,” Shirley replied bitterly.
Strangely enough, she did but by then it was two A.M. She pulled up the covers, curled under them and the next thing she knew, her alarm clock was announcing seven o’clock in the morning.
“Beautiful is as beautiful does,” said Mr. Bergan as he stopped at Shirley’s desk later that morning. “And you, my dear, you look like you didn’t get your beauty sleep.”
“Drop dead,” Shirley sighed.
“What am I, my dear Shirley?” he begged her. “All I ask is what am I, my dear Shirley, to come in for this kind of treatment?”
“Loathsome,” said Shirley.
“You know what makes ninety-nine percent of the trouble in this world? You know what makes wars and catastrophes and similar situations? You know why one half of this world is screaming at the other half?”
“You tell me,” Shirley said, her fingers working independently at the machine.
“Rejection. Plain, simple rejection. All you got to have is a cursory knowledge of Freud to realize what rejection does to people. Take me, for example. Here I am, tall, handsome, a graduate of Brooklyn College, a gentleman in every fiber of my being, thirty years old—”
“What happened to the card for Ginsberg Novelties?” Shirley interrupted him. “You were going to have it punched. Do you know, as long as I have been here, we have never been able to send an intelligent bill to Ginsberg Novelties. Either the address is wrong or the amount is wroth or both are wrong.”
“Is that all I mean to you—a punched card?”
“Here comes Mr. Morrow,” Shirley said.
At noontime, Cynthia Kugelman told Shirley that in her opinion, Mr. Bergan was serious, because he had stopped at her desk and made inquiries concerning Shirley’s family.
“In my opinion,” Cynthia said, “that is the first sign of a serious approach. As soon as they want to know about your pedigree, it’s a change of pace, if you follow me.”
“I’ve got a pedigree to end all pedigrees,” Shirley agreed. “Look, let’s have lunch alone, because I got something so secret, if I don’t tell you about it, I’m going to burst. I am also nervous.”
“You’re not the nervous type,” said Cynthia. She was tall and slim, and for the last month, her hair had been blond. Shirley thought it was the best color she had ever tried, and insisted that she keep it that way.
“I’m the nervous type, not you,” Cynthia went on. “That’s what my dates always say, that I’m the nervous type. I tell them I’m sensitive, they say, no, I’m nervous. But you?”
“Just wait,” Shirley promised.
Downstairs, in front of the building, Mr. Bergan intercepted them and said that he would be honored to purchase lunch for both of them.
“Another time,” Shirley smiled.
“You’re not sick?”
“Do I look sick?”
“You smiled at me,” Mr. Bergan said.
“Drop dead,” said Shirley.
“You can tell about the change of pace, can’t you?” Cynthia said, as they walked down Houston Street.
“Maybe. Only,” Shirley reflected, “it’s strange how unimportant men who want to date you become when you get mixed up with men who want to kill you.”
“That’s the way men are,” Cynthia shrugged. “You can’t live without them and you can’t live with them.”
But when, at Kaplan’s Delicatessen Grill and Restaurant, over hot cornbeef sandwiches and celery tonic, Shirley told her the whole story of the night before, Cynthia found herself at a loss for words—and sat silent and pale, staring at Shirley. Shirley finished the cornbeef sandwich, cole-slaw on the side, and the french-fried potatoes.
Finally, Cynthia whispered, “And you just sit there and eat—”
“I’m hungry,” Shirley said. “But you know, I don’t think it’s nourishing the way we eat, one day pizza, the next day cornbeef with coleslaw and fried potatoes on the side. The trouble is, whenever I think of what I want to eat, it’s a cornbeef sandwich. Or pizza. So it comes to the same thing.”
“How can you sit there and talk about food?”
“What’s wrong with talking about food?”
“But what are you going to do?” Cynthia pleaded.
“Nothing.”
“You mean you’re just going to sit there and let them kill you?”
“The whole point is, Cynthia, that they’re making a mistake. They don’t want to kill me. They want to kill somebody else.”
“Great! Oh, yes, that’s just great! So you get a special funeral because you’re a mistake.”
“Well, what should I do?”
“I just think that the last thing in the world you should do is sit here and talk about food. So it’s going to cut five years off your life to eat pizza and cornbeef. But it seems to me that it’s just as plain as the nose on your face that these creeps have every intention of cutting a lot more than five years off your life.”
“That’s very true,” Shirley agreed somberly.
“So do something about it!”
“What?”
“What? What? Don’t keep saying that. Let them know that they’re making a mistake.”
“Who?”
“Who? The creeps who are trying to kill you.”
Shirley smiled sheepishly and felt the way she was smiling. Indignantly, Cynthia pointed out that it was a big joke—and she was so intent and disturbed that Shirley found herself feeling sorry for Cynthia.
“Poor Cynthia,” she found herself saying to herself, “poor Cynthia,” and then she said aloud, “I don’t know them—that’s the whole trouble. I don’t know who’s trying to kill me or why. All I know is that the kind of picture, you know, where the husband is making all these fancy plans to kill the wife or to drive her crazy or something, and you sit in the movie house smirking with pleasure, with maybe just a little bit of a chill, because you know about this cop from Scotland Yard and that he’s going to turn up at the right moment—well, that’s the kind of a picture I’m not watching any more.”
“That’s it—the cop,” Cynthia cried. “What’s his name—”
“Burton.”
“Right, Burton. Well, just let me tell you, honey, it’s his duty to protect you. That’s what we pay him for.”
“Cynthia, honey, use your head,” Shirley told her. “How can he protect me?”
“How? He’s only got twenty, twenty-five thousand cops, that’s all.”
“He doesn’t have them. He’s just a lieutenant of detectives.”
“So who’s got them? He should have a guard around you day and night.”
“That would be fine,” Shirley sighed. “That would be just fi
ne—I live out the rest of my life with cops all around me. I could even marry one, maybe, if I’m lucky. There’s just one catch. I don’t think he believes me. I don’t think he can make up his mind about whether I’m some kind of nut or something. Even last night with the telephone call, I’m not sure he believed me. I read an article once about how when there’s a crime or a murder or something, all kinds of nuts come running to the cops to confess doing it.”
“What about the pictures?” Cynthia demanded.
“That makes him wonder,” Shirley admitted. “I’ll bet even he has a hard time figuring out how those pictures got into the fat man’s wallet. He still doesn’t believe they’re not pictures of me.”
“Are they?”
“I just don’t know any more,” Shirley said.
In the afternoon, Mr. Bergan stopped at her desk and said, “Shirley, can you talk seriously, maybe for one minute?”
It indicated a change of pace, and it occurred to Shirley that you don’t tell someone to drop dead when he approaches you with serious intentions, regardless of what your feelings toward him may be; and she began to frame in her mind some such thing as this, “I appreciate your intentions, Mr. Bergan, and I am very considerably honored, believe me, but the truth is that such a thing never entered my mind. I have just never felt that way toward you, and it seems to me that unless a girl has such feelings to begin with, what they call an electric response of sympathy, it is just a waste of time to pursue the matter and can only lead to bruised feelings on both sides.”
She considered that she had composed it very nicely, and was about to test its effect on Mr. Bergan, when she realized that the subject of his conversation was in another direction entirely.
“It’s about something that happened right before you came back from lunch. You don’t know a bullfighter, do you?”
For once in her life, Shirley was speechless; but after several empty swallows, she managed to reply that so far as she could recollect, she didn’t know any bullfighters.
“Oh? This one asked a lot of questions about you.”
“Who?”
“The bullfighter,” Mr. Bergan answered feebly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, really, Mr. Bergan,” Shirley said. “What bullfighter? I told you I don’t know any bullfighters.”
“Well, this guy was around asking questions about you, and it just occurred to me that he was a bullfighter.”
“What? You mean he was wearing one of those silk suits with the red capes?”
“No, no, no. He was wearing a black suit, but it fit him tight as a glove. It was just something about the way he talked and acted and the way his hair was cut that made me think about a bullfighter. Do you remember the way Tyrone Power looked, with the long sideburns—?”
“Did he have a Spanish accent?” Shirley interrupted.
“How did you know?”
“It’s par for the course with bullfighters. What else? What kind of questions did he ask?”
“When you came here? Where you were born? How old you are? Do you speak Spanish?”
“You know something about New York,” Shirley sighed. “You only stay here long enough, you see everything. What did you tell him?”
“I told him to go to hell,” Mr. Bergan answered with dignity. “Do you know him, Shirley? I didn’t like his looks one bit. Who was he?”
“A bullfighter,” Shirley replied. “What else?”
At five o’clock, Cynthia said that she would walk Shirley home. She said that it was the very least a friend could do for a friend. “You’re out of your mind,” Shirley told her, but Cynthia insisted.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it,” Shirley said, “but walking me home is like walking home an ex-member of the Mafia who ran off at the mouth in front of a congressional committee. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, not at all, only you should have your head examined.”
Mr. Bergan appeared at that moment, and caught the last few words. “Something goes on with you two,” he said. “I got a broad back. Why don’t you put your troubles there?”
“After hours,” Shirley replied, “I leave my troubles with my psychiatrist. What do you think I pay twenty-five dollars an hour for?”
“Always a wisecrack,” he said sadly. “You would think friends grow on trees. But let me tell you one thing, statistically speaking, there are one and three-eighths women in this country for every available man. At least that puts me in a buyer’s market.”
“So go buy,” Shirley said, and led Cynthia off, and then felt miserable and guilty when Cynthia pointed out that all Mr. Bergan desired was to be of some assistance.
“Don’t you think we need assistance?” she asked Shirley accusingly. “And do you know something, he’s kind of good-looking in a certain way. Also, he’s tall.”
“So are trees.”
“What?”
“Tall. Oh, for God’s sake, Cynthia, I am upset. I don’t mean to be like that. It’s just that Mr. Bergan brings out the worst in me. I don’t really mean it. In some ways, he’s very nice.”
“It seems very ironic to think about doom in the spring,” Cynthia sighed.
Shirley knew exactly what she meant. In spite of the fact that April showers are a calendar obligation, there had been day after day of bright, sunny weather; and on this late afternoon, the city was bathed in a golden glow. People ambled along with a sort of tired but relaxed satisfaction, and even the stream of trucks that thundered down Houston Street appeared to move more slowly, more elegantly. The city was so pleasant, the evening breeze so cool that Shirley felt that her heart was as heavy as lead in contrast.
“A penny for your thoughts,” said Cynthia.
“You know something, I was just thinking about the kind of date I would like to have tonight, if I had a date—”
“I got news for you,” said Cynthia, “the last thing in the world to be on your mind should be a date. You know what I think?”
“What?”
“You should disappear,” Cynthia declared.
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Absolutely, you should disappear. You’re not around, they can’t kill you. That makes sense.”
“Nobody disappears,” Shirley answered impatiently.
“No? How about Judge Crater?”
“Who was Judge Crater?”
“Somebody who disappeared. As a matter of fact, it’s a classical case of somebody disappearing. So don’t tell me nobody disappears.”
“For heaven’s sake, Cynthia, where can I disappear to?”
“You can move in with me for a while,” Cynthia offered generously.
“Thank you. That’s really disappearing. Except when we come to work together each morning at nine.”
“Maybe you’ll have to give up the job.”
“That’s fine. So then I only starve to death.” Shirley walked on in silence for a while, and then she said, “You know, Cynthia, I am beginning to be very annoyed about all this.”
At the door of Shirley’s house, Cynthia said good night and warned Shirley not only to lock her door, but to wedge a chair under the doorknob.
“I know about that, that it’s not just something out of the movies, but it works,” said Cynthia, “because my Aunt Anna and my Uncle Frederick, they were always having the most terrible kind of fight, only it was my Aunt Anna who was twice his size, she was always pushing him around. So one night, he goes into the bedroom and wedges a chair under the knob, and he tells her he ain’t coming out for maybe a week. You know they had to take the door off the hinges. Anyway, good night,” Cynthia finished, “and for God’s sake, be careful.”
It occurred to Shirley that she could invite Cynthia upstairs with her, to share cornbeef hash and eggs. Formerly, she had often felt that Cynthia had a tendency to run over at the mouth, yet tonight she could imagine nothing cozier than to have Cynthia fill in all the loopholes in the relationship of her Aunt Anna and her Uncle Frederick, what their fig
hts were about, how long he had remained in the room once he was in there and what happened after they took the door off the hinges and rooted him out. Yet Shirley was possessed of a strong and insistent streak of fair-mindedness, and she had to admit to herself that to invite Cynthia upstairs with her was not unlike inviting a feckless child to amuse himself with a box of matches. Reluctantly but firmly, she said good night and went up the outside stairs into the hallway.
There were no apartments on the ground floor of the old city house in which Shirley lived. When the house had been converted into apartments, back in the 1930s, two stores had been built on the ground floor. Thus, when one entered from the street, there was only the long, narrow, blank hallway, divided halfway down its thirty-five feet of length by a staircase rising to the second floor, and lit by a single bulb in the ceiling.
Shirley entered and closed the outside door behind her, took three or four steps toward the staircase and then sensed that she was not alone—a sensation of closeness, breathing and soft motion. She remembered reading something once about a person who was injected with a. strong drug and felt it course through her body. In a similar manner, she felt fear surge through her, race down her spine and reach out to every extremity of her person, and caught with fear, choking with, it, she sucked in air deeply, gaspingly, her stomach rising and falling, her “chest expanding. It lasted only a moment. She was controlling herself again when the man stepped out from behind the staircase.”
“Buenas noches, Señorita Carlotta,” he said softly.
Shirley could see why Mr. Bergan had called him a bullfighter. He had the lean, nervous, tense stance of a bullfighter. He was small, no taller than Shirley, very slim, and the trousers of his black suit were cut almost as tight as leotards. He wore a white shirt with a yellow tie, and his black hair was full and long, his sideburns low almost to the lobes of his ears. He had black eyes, a sallow complexion, and a switch-blade knife in his right hand. The blade of the knife was at least seven inches long.
He balanced on the balls of his feet, swaying slightly from side to side, and then he came toward Shirley with small, mincing steps.
“Crazy,” thought Shirley, her heart pounding, but her thoughts racing even faster, “crazy and sick and way, way out. He’s full of stuff and flying with it, so no sudden movements. Don’t turn your back, Shirley, for God’s sake, don’t turn your back. Don’t panic. Don’t run.”