The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  “You seem anxious,” he said with an amused twist to his mouth.

  I shrugged. “We promised her.”

  “I can read you like a book, Johnny.” He nudged my ribs with his elbow. “Make much headway with her?”

  I shrugged again.

  “I guess not if you’re back so early,” Oscar said, leering amiably. “I can’t imagine what she saw in that punk Wally. She has class. Well, good hunting.”

  “Good-night,” I said and went into my room.

  7

  Next afternoon I set forth to make the collection for Abby. Oscar had given me his five hundred in the morning, and of course I had my own, so that left Georgie and Tiny to go.

  Georgie Ross lived out in Queens, in a neat frame house with a patch of lawn in front. His wife and two teen-aged daughters hadn’t any notion of how he picked up extra money to support them. His regular job, as a traveling salesman in housewares, didn’t keep him very busy or bring in much income. He had time on a weekday afternoon to be mowing his lawn.

  He stopped mowing when he saw me come up the street. He stood middle-aged and pot-bellied.

  “For God’s sake,” he complained when I reached him, “you know better than to come here.”

  “Relax. You can say I’m a bill collector.”

  “Just don’t come around, that’s all I ask. What d’you want?”

  “To collect a bill. Five C’s for Wally Garden’s widow.”

  His eyes bugged out. “You’re kidding,” he said. Meaning, if I knew him, not about the widow but about the money.

  I told him I wasn’t kidding and I told him about Abby’s visit last evening.

  “Listen,” Georgie said, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his suddenly sweaty face, “I’m not shelling out that kind of dough for anybody’s wife. I have my own family to think of. My God, do you know what my two girls cost me? Just their clothes! And my oldest, Dinah, is starting college next year. Is that expensive! I got to hang onto every penny.”

  “Some of those pennies were supposed to have gone to Wally.”

  “It’s his tough luck he wasn’t around to collect.” He leaned against the handle of the mower. “I tell you this: we give her two grand now, she thinks she has us over a barrel and keeps coming back for more. Oscar ought to handle her different.”

  “How?”

  “Well, he handled her husband,” Georgie said.

  That was a quiet, genteel street, and he fitted into it, by looking at him, the way anybody else in sight did. He resumed mowing his lawn.

  I tagged after him. “Use your head, Georgie.”

  “You don’t get one damn penny out of me.”

  I knew I was licked. I’d ask Oscar to try. He could persuade him if anybody could. I left Georgie plodding stolidly behind the mower.

  Tiny was harder to find. He was like me, without anywhere to stay put. He was paying rent on a mangy room he’d sublet downtown, but he only slept in it. I made the rounds of the neighboring ginmills. What with lingering in this place and that and shooting the breeze with guys I knew, I didn’t come across Tiny until after nine o’clock.

  He was sitting wide-shouldered and gray-haired at the bar, drinking beer. He was always drinking beer.

  He said, “Gee, am I glad to see you.” Picking up his glass, he slid off the stool and we went to an isolated table. “I’ve been trying to get Oscar on the phone,” he said, “but he ain’t in. Stella says she don’t know where he went.” He glanced around. “Johnny, there’s been a city dick asking me questions this afternoon. A fat guy.”

  “Brant?”

  “Yeah, that’s the name. He’s got it, Johnny. He knows who was in on it and what happened to Wally and all.”

  I thought of Abby.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Remember last Wednesday when the five of us went over the route in Oscar’s car? It was hot and when we came back through the Holland Tunnel from Jersey we stopped for beer on Tenth Avenue. Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Somebody that knew us saw the five of us sitting in that booth together.”

  I let out my breath. Not Abby.

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  “Search me. This Brant, he wasn’t telling. Some goddamn stoolie. He knew four of us—me and you, Oscar and Georgie. The one break is he hadn’t never seen Wally before. Brant is one cagy cookie, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I figure they showed the stoolie Wally’s picture, but he wasn’t sure. If he’d been sure, they’d be piling on us.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “The cops can’t make any move officially unless they can link us to Wally. I saw Georgie this afternoon and he didn’t mention being questioned.”

  “He’s been by now, I guess. The way I figure, this stoolie didn’t spill till today.” Tiny took a slug of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I don’t get it, Johnny. A stoolie sees four of us and a strange guy in a beer joint. What makes this Brant so all-fired smart he can tell from that Wally was the strange guy and we was the ones did the job way over in Jersey a couple days later?”

  “Because Oscar is too good.”

  “Come again?”

  “The caper bore the marks of genius,” I said, “and Oscar is a genius. Then Brant drops into Oscar’s apartment a few days ago and finds me staying there, so he’s got two of us tagged. Then he learns we two plus you and Georgie were drinking beer with a fifth guy who could’ve been Wally Garden, and he’s got us all.”

  “The hell he has! All he’s got is thoughts running in his head. He needs evidence. How’ll he get it if we sit tight?”

  “He won’t,” I said.

  This was a good time to tell him about Abby. I told him.

  When I finished, Tiny complained, “What’s the matter with Oscar these days? First he lets us all be seen together in a beer joint—”

  “I don’t remember any of us objected. In fact, I remember it was your idea we stop off.”

  “Sure, but Oscar should know better. He’s supposed to have the brains. Then he don’t know the kid had a wife and would blab every damn thing to her. Where’d he pick up Wally, anyway?”

  “He never told me,” I said. “But there’s the widow and we promised her two grand. I want five C’s from you.”

  Tiny thought about it, and he came up with what, I had to concede, was a good question. “You said you saw Georgie this afternoon. Did he shell out?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Expect him to?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bet he don’t?”

  “Look, Oscar will get it out of him. I’m asking you.”

  Tiny said cheerfully. “Tell you what I’ll do, Johnny. When Georgie shells out, I’ll shell out.”

  And he looked mighty pleased with himself. He had confidence in Georgie’s passion for hanging onto a buck.

  8

  So after chasing around for hours I had only the thousand I’d started out with. Well, that wasn’t hay and the evening was young. I could bring the thousand to Abby and tell her it was part payment. She would be grateful. She would thank me. One thing could lead to another—and perhaps tonight would be the night, the beginning.

  I took a hack to her place.

  Through her door I heard music going full blast. I knocked. No answer, which wasn’t surprising considering all the row a hot dance band was making. I knocked louder. Same result. I turned the knob and found the door unlocked.

  Abby wasn’t in the living room. The bedroom and the bathroom doors were both closed. The band music, coming from a tiny table radio, stopped and a disc jockey’s voice drooled. In the comparative quiet I heard a shower running in the bathroom. I sat down to wait for her to come out.

  The music started up again. It was too raucous; my mood was for sweet stuff. I reached over the table to turn off the radio, and my hand brushed a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses. She hadn’t worn them when I’d seen her, but women were vain about such things. Probably only reading glasses.


  She’d stopped showering. Now with the radio off, there was no sound in the apartment. Suddenly it occurred to me that I ought to let her know she had a visitor. Thinking she was alone, she might come trotting out without anything on. I wouldn’t mind, but she might, and I was still on the perfect little gentleman technique.

  I went to the bathroom door and said, “Abby.”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  I hadn’t time to wonder why she hadn’t sounded surprised to hear a man in her apartment and why at the least she hadn’t asked who I was. The explanation came almost at once—from the bedroom.

  “What did you say, baby?” a man called.

  “I’ll be right out,” she repeated.

  Then it was quiet again except for the thumping of my heart.

  I knew that man’s voice. If there was any doubt about it, there were those eyeglasses on the table. A minute ago I’d given them hardly a glance because I hadn’t any reason then to take a good look to see if they were a woman’s style and size. They seemed massive now, with a thick, dark frame.

  The bathroom doorknob was turning. I moved away from there until the table stopped me, and Abby came out. She was wearing a skimpy towel held around her middle and not another thing.

  Her body was very beautiful. But it was a bitter thing for me to see now.

  She took two or three steps into the room, flowing with that wonderful grace of hers, before she realized that the man standing by the table wasn’t the one who had just spoken to her from the bedroom—wasn’t the one for whom she didn’t at all mind coming out like this. It was only I—I who had been dreaming dreams. Her free hand yanked up and across her breasts in that age-old gesture of women, and rage blazed in her blue eyes.

  “You have a nerve!” She said harshly.

  Again he heard her in the bedroom and again he thought she was speaking to him. He called, “What?” and the bedroom door opened, and he said, “With this door closed I can’t hear a—” and he saw me.

  Oscar Trotter was without jacket and shirt, as well as without his glasses.

  I had to say something. I muttered, “The radio was so loud you didn’t hear me knock. I came in.” I watched Abby sidling along the wall toward the bedroom, clinging to that towel and keeping her arm pressed in front of her, making a show of modesty before me, the intruder, the third man. “I didn’t expect she was having this kind of company,” I added.

  He shrugged.

  A door slammed viciously. She had ducked into the bedroom, where her clothes would be. He picked up his glasses from the table and put them on.

  There was nothing to keep me here. I started to leave.

  “Just a minute, Johnny. I trust you’re not sore.”

  I turned. “What do you expect me to be?”

  “After all, you had no prior claim on her.” Oscar smiled smugly. “We both saw her at the same time.”

  He stood lean and slightly stooped and considerably older than I, and dully I wondered why everything came so easily to him—even this.

  “Next time,” I said, “remember to lock the door.”

  “I didn’t especially plan this. I asked her out to dinner. My intention was chiefly business. Chiefly, I say, for I must confess she had—ah—impressed me last night.”

  This was his high-hat manner, the great man talking down to a lesser being. Some day, I thought wearily, I’d beat him up and then he’d kill me, unless I killed him first.

  “You understand,” he was drawling, “that I was far from convinced that our problem with her would be solved by giving her two thousand dollars. I had to learn more about her. After dinner we came up here for a drink.” That smug smile again. “One thing led to another. You know how it is.”

  I knew how it was—how I’d hoped it would be with me. And I knew that he had never for one single moment made the mistake of acting the little gentleman with her.

  I had forgotten about the money in my pocket. I took it out and dropped it on the table.

  “Georgie and Tiny weren’t keen about contributing,” I told him. “There’s just this thousand. You’ve earned the right to worry about the balance.”

  “I doubt that it will be necessary to give her anything now. You see, I’ll be paying all her bills. She’s moving in with me.”

  “How nice,” I said between my teeth. “I’ll be out of there as soon as I pack my bags.”

  His head was bent over the money. “Take your time,” he said as he counted it into two piles. “I still have to tell Stella. Any time tomorrow will do.” He pushed one pile across the table. “Here’s yours.”

  So I had my five hundred bucks back, and that was all I had. Before I was quite out of the apartment, Oscar, in his eagerness, was already going into the bedroom where Abby was.

  I went out quietly.

  9

  That night I slept in a hotel. I stayed in bed most of the morning, smoking cigarettes and looking up at the ceiling. Then I shaved and dressed and had lunch and went to Oscar’s apartment for my clothes.

  I found Stella all packed and about to leave. She was alone in the apartment. I could guess where Oscar was.

  “Hello, Johnny,” she said. “I’m leaving for good.”

  She wasn’t as upset as I’d expected. She was sitting in the living room with her legs crossed and taking a final drink of Oscar’s liquor.

  “I know,” I said. “When’s she moving in?”

  “Tonight, I guess.” She looked into her glass. “You know, the minute she walked into this room the other night I had a feeling. Something in the way Oscar looked at her.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure I am. He was too damn bossy.”

  I went into the guest bedroom and packed my two bags. When I came out, Stella was still there.

  “Johnny,” she said, “have you any plans?”

  “No.”

  “I called up a woman I know. She owns a rooming house off Columbus Avenue. She says she has a nice furnished apartment to let on the second floor, with kitchenette and bath. She says the room is large and airy and nicely furnished. A young married couple just moved out.”

  “Are you taking it?”

  “I think I will.” She uncrossed her knees and pulled her skirt over them. “Two people can be very comfortable.”

  I looked at her sitting there rather primly with eyes lowered—a placid, cozy, cuddly woman with a bosom made for a man to rest his weary head on. She wasn’t Abby, but Abby was a ruined dream, and Stella was real.

  “You and me?” I murmured.

  “If you want to, Johnny.”

  I picked up my bags. “Well, why not?” I said.

  10

  Stella was very nice. We weren’t in love with each other, but we liked each other and got along, which was more than could be said of a lot of couples living together.

  We weren’t settled a week in the rooming house near Columbus Avenue when Oscar phoned. Stella answered and spoke to him. I dipped the newspaper I was reading and listened to her say we’d be glad to come over for a drink that evening.

  I said, “Wait a minute.”

  She waved me silent and told Oscar we’d be there by nine. When she hung up, she dropped on my lap, cuddling the way only she could.

  “Honey, I want to go just to show I don’t care for him any more and am not jealous of that Abby. You’re sweeter than he ever was. Why shouldn’t we all still be friends?”

  “All right,” I said.

  Oscar answered the doorbell when we got there. Heartily he shook Stella’s hand and then mine and said Abby was in the kitchen and would be out in a minute. Stella went into the kitchen to give Abby a hand and Oscar, with a hand on my shoulder, took me into the living room.

  Georgie and Tiny were there. Georgie hadn’t brought his wife, of course; he kept her strictly away from this kind of social circle. They were drinking cocktails, even Tiny who was mostly a beer man.

  “Looks like a caper reunio
n,” I commented dryly. “Except that there’s one missing. Though I guess we could consider that his widow represents him.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Oscar said pleasantly, “Here, sour-puss, maybe this will cheer you up,” and thrust a cocktail at me.

  I took it and sipped.

  Then Abby came in, bearing a plate of chopped liver in one hand and a plate of crackers in the other. She had a warm smile for me—the impersonal greeting of a gracious hostess. Stella came behind her with potato chips and pretzels, and all of a sudden Stella’s jiggling irritated me no end.

  Abby hadn’t changed. There was no reason why I had expected she would. She still made me think of golden fields and cool streams, as she had the first time I’d laid eyes on her.

  I refilled my glass from the cocktail shaker and walked to a window and looked out at the Hudson River sparkling under the sinking sun.

  “Now that was the way to handle her,” Georgie said. He had come up beside me; he was stuffing into his mouth a cracker smeared with liver. “Better than paying her off. Not only saves us dough. This way we’re sure of her.”

  “That’s not why he did it.”

  “Guess not. Who needs a reason to want a looker like that in his bed? But the result’s the same. And you got yourself Stella, so everybody’s happy.”

  Everybody was happy and everybody was gay and got gayer as the whiskey flowed. But I wasn’t happy and the more I drank the less gay I acted. Long ago I’d learned that there was nowhere a man could be lonelier than at a party. I’d known it would be a mistake to come, and it was.

  Suddenly Georgie’s face turned green and he made a dash for the bathroom. Oscar sneered that he’d never been able to hold his liquor and Tiny grumbled that the only drink fit for humans was beer and I pulled Stella aside and told her I wanted to go home.

  She was not only willing; she was anxious. “Fact is, I don’t feel so good,” she said. “I need air.”

  We said our good-byes except to Georgie whom we could hear having a bad time in the bathroom. An empty hack approached when we reached the sidewalk and I whistled. In the hack, she clung to me, shivering, and complained, “My throat’s burning like I swallowed fire. My God, his whiskey wasn’t that bad!”