But then why this urgent meeting at Times Square? And why the business of the loudspeaker?
He solemnly washed his hands of the whole business--solemnly, but his metaphoric hands wouldn't wash. By the time he got to Third Avenue he had himself worked up again. Fine. All worked up and nothing to do. You'd already done what you could.
You'd telephoned. You'd tried Information. You'd run after the truck. What more was there?
He stood at the corner of 42nd and Third Avenue for a while trying to think it out. There was a City Directory up at the Information Bureau under the ramp at Grand Central. But it was probably twenty years out of date. And anyway, the place closed up at six o'clock. He glanced at his watch.
It was nearly ten.
His rooming house was on 39th, between Second and Third Avenues. He walked down the Avenue slowly, wondering what he'd do when he got home. Listen to the radio, probably. Just filling in time until he went to sleep. He hadn't planned anything for tonight. Lois' phone-call at the office had taken care of that. Third Avenue was grim and dark, shaded by the criss-cross roof of the El structure. Even the taverns and bars, bright spots in the gloom, were lighted in a desultory fashion. It was hot. Nobody wanted light. The pawn shop at 41st had a metal grill locked across its face, blanking out the glittering array of discarded instruments, tools, paint brushes, cameras, guns. The cafeterias were tombs, cavernous, catacombs. The white Riker's at the corner was deserted, except for the tired waiter sprawled on the points of his elbows, glumly studying the News.
There was still life in the side streets, though. It was an Italian neighborhood, and the staccato of Latin tongues flitted from fire-escape to window, from door-step to passerby. But nobody ever went on Third Avenue.
Third Avenue was a ghost under the El. A shadow, barren street infertile by night, dying each day with the sunset and awaiting resurrection at the dawn.
A solitary drunk scuttled irregularly along the other side of the street.
There were a few lighted windows on the upper floors. Like the hair still growing on the corpse--the rattlesnake's tail still rattling for twenty-four hours.
He had nearly reached 39th when he saw Clancy standing at the corner. He was waiting to ring in from the police box, and his night-stick twirled in an erratic rhythm, marking his impatience. Graham ran toward him. The slow, grinding rumble of an El train went by and he had to wait until it passed to speak.
Clancy said: "What's the matter, son? Have ye murdered somebody?"
Graham remembered the night Clancy helped him home after an extensive evening at a gin-party. Clancy was a good guy. Not the modern, efficiency-expert cop. But an old time flatfoot, lousy with prejudices, and overflowing with that violence of disposition which the Irish claim and so seldom possess.
He gave it to him slowly. All the details, so it wouldn't sound too screwy.
The Irishman grinned: "Look here, me boy," he said. "You can't be foolin' me with this stuff. Some skirt has given ye her phone number and ye're jest tryin' to get onto her."
"Clancy,"' Graham said, "this is serious."
"Serious or no serious, I'll get ye the number and street, but I wouldn't be takin' up with that type of women if I were you." Graham had to wait, until Clancy reported in, then they walked up Third Avenue to a hole-in-the-wall candy store.
"Gimme a nickel and wait here," Clancy said, "and I'll be gettin' ye yer number." He disappeared into the phone-booth at the back of the store. Graham bought a pack of cigarettes at the counter while he waited. He couldn't hear what the officer said. The elevated drowned out his words. He came out of the booth.
"Git out yer pencil and paper," the policeman said. "I'm not going to do this twice fer ye." Graham dug the articles from his wallet, writing on the back of somebody else's calling card. Clancy gave him the number slowly, grinning. "The address of the telephone number which ye gave me is number 42 Barker Street. And now what d'ye think of yer fine young lady?"
"I don't get it," Graham said. "Why should I think any different of her? Where is this Barker Street?
Clancy said: "Ah, youth. Ah, youth," in that superior way people over fifty think they rate. "Here," he went on, "ye go down Third Avenue until there's no more of it and only the Bowery, which was, in its time, a fine little sink of iniquity, but which is nothin' more now than a residential district for all the old bums in the world... "
He caught a downtown Third Avenue trolley and tried to read the News as the thing clattered along under the El. It was getting cooler. He thought of going back to get his jacket. But the car had reached 35th Street. He closed the window beside him. It was hard to read with the jouncing of the trolley and the flickering of the lights. He folded the paper again, and put it back under his arm.
He thought: Suppose Lois is there? What excuse will I give her for getting a cop to find out her address for me? What if I imagined all this? What if I didn't really hear her voice coming from the loudspeaker? Maybe it was just a thought running through my mind.
And anyway. what business had he snooping like this? Still: there was the phone-call at the office earlier in the day.
He glanced out the window. Rivington. One more block. He got up and moved back to the car-exit, stepping down firmly on the rubber pad that controlled the door, because he had an inner suspicion that it took a lot of pressure to make those things work. The car stopped and he got off.
A chill breeze struck him as he stepped down from the car. A wave of damp, dirty air seemed to surge through the grim, unrelieved red-grey of the Bowery. He walked down another block and turned the corner by a little corner-lunch bar, open on two sides.
There were a couple of bars--converted stores, undecorated, glumly lighted, dirty--in the middle of the block. A pool-room, with the green topped tables glowing under the shaded lamps, pumped little puffs of stale cigar-smoke into the street. The rest of the street was dirty red brick, scummy store-fronts with rickety four-story buildings dumped on top.
O.K. So she came from a poor section. That was what she was hiding. All right. What did it matter? This was the Twentieth Century. There were no railroad tracks, anymore. They had been pushed underground. And anyway, he lived on the East Side, too ... He shoved the whole thing out of his mind.
He walked up the street slowly, studying the half-obliterated numbers on the doorways. After a while he found forty-two. It was a little cleaner than the rest, and there was a cardboard sign stuck up inside the glass of the door: "Furnished Rooms and Aparts., Inq. Supt."
There was only one bell. He pushed it.
Through the dirty glass he could see the hallway, an empty-looking yellow-painted horror, with scabby scars on the walls where the thick new paint had been slapped on over the old peelings. The only light was a clear ten-watt bulb, dingy and crusted with oily dust.
A door opened at the end of the hall and a man came toward him. He pulled the outer door open and thrust his face at Graham,
"Whaddya want?" he demanded. "W'atseidea comin' around this late at night. F'ya wanta get a room come in the daytime."
"I'm looking for a girl who lives here," Graham said. "A tall brunette about twenty years old."
"Huh," the man said. "You're the guy called up a while ago. I told you we ain't got nobody like that here. Not get out of here and quit botherin' me."
He slammed the door shut and vanished down the hallway. Graham pounded on the door, but the man merely snarled back at him over his shoulder and was gone. Graham stood there for a while. He was sure the man was lying. But that didn't get him anywhere. He backed out into the street and stared up at the lighted windows on the upper floors. There was no sign of movement.
He shouted, experimentally, not loudly: "Lois!" Nothing happened. He tried it again: "LO-IS!"
Somebody, male and un-Lois-like shouted from an upper window: "Shut'cher dam trap! I'm try'nta get some sleep!"
He turned back down the street and went into the corner lunch-room. A kid in a dirty white apron wiped his hands i
n the middle of the grimiest spot and moved in front of Graham.
"What'll ya have?"
"Coffee."
The kid slopped something muddy-looking into a thick china cup and crashed it down in front of Graham. "Anything else?"
"No."
The kid threatened the greasy surface of the counter with a filthy cloth. Then he sat down on a wooden stool, pulled a comic book from beneath the counter and began an intensive study of the adventures of The Whip.
Graham sucked at the blistering mud thoughtfully. He said: "Any good-looking dames around here?"
The kid set the book down with the air of a man who is superior to a thrice-read comic book. "A couple," he said. "There's a cute blonde around the corner." He made a figure eight with his hands. Graham thought: Helluva chance he has with that face.
"I used to know a girl around here," Graham said. "Lived somewhere on Barker, I think. A pretty brunette, about twenty with--" He showed the kid with what. "I think her name was Lois."
The kid's face lit up. "Oh, yeah. I think I know who you mean. She's still around. She comes over here about five every day for coffee and doughnuts. Lives over at 42 Barker."
"Yeah," Graham said, trying not to sound too interested. "What's she doin' now?"
"I dunno. What she always did, I guess. She's some kind of a dancer or show-girl or a model or somethin', ain't she?"
"Yeah," Graham said, non-commitally.
"Yeah," the kid said. "Lois Morgan is a nice dame. She always tips a dime," he hinted gently. "Not many around here like that," he added, wistfully.
Graham said: "Naw? Well, I gotta get moving." He flung a nickel on the counter, considered a moment, and added a dime. He walked out.
As he left the lunch counter another man stepped out of the shadows out of range of the lights and went into the stand. Funny, that. The face was familiar. He'd seen it before: Thick features, a spread, broken-looking nose. But it didn't matter.
He went back to number 42 and pressed on the bell, holding it down until the door opened at the end of the hall.
The same guy came out. He opened the door.
"You again?" he said. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Look." Graham said, firmly, "I want to know where Lois Morgan is."
The man stared at him, his shadowed eyes glinting slightly from the street-lamp across the way: "Now it's Lois Morgan. Before you were looking for Lois Vincent. What do you think I do, keep all the Loises in the world in this joint? Now get out of here and quit botherin' me."
Graham made a grab for him, catching him by the front of his shirt. The man was pulled half through the door. "Listen, you." Graham said. "I want to know where Lois Morgan is."
The man said: "Oh. A wise guy, huh? Scram, sonny boy, before I change your diapers for you."
Graham felt something hard pressed into his stomach. He looked down. There was a nice, shiny automatic making a dent in his shirt front.
Chapter III
AVENUE BY NIGHT
Graham backed away from him slowly. There was a feeling of unreality about it. Shadowy and synthetic--like the darkness of a movie-street. There was less of alarm in his feelings than of panic. Things had gotten out of control, somehow. But it was impossible. Nobody stuck guns in your stomach. Not in Larry Graham's stomach. In the newspapers, the detective stories, the movies, sure. But not really. Not in the middle of Manhattan Island. [An Island is a body of land entirely surrounded by water. Manhattan is a rock entirely surrounded by Rivers.] ... Not in Manhattan.
He was conscious that all sorts of horrible things could happen in Brooklyn. In the Bronx. Over in Queens... Sure. That was right. Even up in Harlem which seemed, somehow, isolated from the rest of the City. But not here. This couldn't be real. Somebody threatening him with a real gun ... where, if the man gave only the slightest pressure of the trigger with his finger, there would be a sharp explosion and the feeling of a fist striking suddenly in your belly.
He kept moving backward, off the single step at the doorway. There was a funny tightness in his gut. The man stood still in the doorway, the gun concealed in the shadow of his own body. But Graham knew it was still there. Pointing at him. Menacing with a real menace.
A real gun...
He stumbled a little on the sidewalk. Suddenly he was running. Fast. Like a startled mouse, huddling close to the walls in its flight. He heard the man laugh behind him.
He felt an urge to turn around and shout threats back at him--like a small child who has lost an argument with a bigger one. [Wait'll my big brother gets you... When I grow up I'll fix you ...] But he didn't.
He was a little ashamed for even thinking it.
He slid into the doorway at number 38. He wasn't being followed. The man was just standing there, laughing. After a second or so Graham heard the click of the closing door as the man re-entered Number 42. Graham stood in the doorway, trying to adjust himself to the changed order of things. Lois--loudspeakers--telephones--men with guns. They were all wrong. He didn't understand. He thought, again, of Clark: not remembering Lois.
Now that he thought of it--there was nobody who remembered Lois except Larry Graham. Not Ken Clark. Not any of his other friends--he and Lois hadn't gone around much; just to that one party at Jill's. And that had been a pretty wild night, where nobody was introduced to anybody. That was it--Ken had been pretty drunk that night. Everybody had been pretty drunk.
Nobody remembered: Not the man with the gun. It was almost as if Lois had never existed at all. Nobody remembered--nobody but the switch-board operator at the office. But to her Lois was just a voice, a soft, feminine voice that said "Let me speak to Mr. Graham, please." Of course. That was their only contact. Telephones. Telephones that were wrong numbers. Telephones in houses guarded by men with guns...
Graham twisted his head and looked toward the corner lunch-counter. There might be more information there. The strangely familiar man was just coming out. He was familiar, too. Very familiar.
Graham thought back frantically, as though tracing the man in his mind might bring some order into this chaos. Where had he seen him before? Not at the office. Not on the street. He started to discard the thought. Then: A Third Avenue Trolley ground across the Bowery end of Barker, and he remembered: The man had been standing beside him at 38th Street when he boarded the trolley. He had sat opposite him all the way down--Oh well. It wasn't important. Just one of those sharp little details that caught at your mind.
Anyway, the kid was the important thing. Graham started across the street, diagonally, toward the lunchstand. He couldn't help looking back toward Number 42.
But there was nothing doing there. No new light glowed upstairs. There was no movement behind the dingy curtains at the windows. And the downstairs doorway was empty. No menacing figure with a gun held belt-high leered at him and laughed.
It was as though there had never been a man with a gun. As though he hadn't rung the bell at 42. Barker Street was unchanged by the impossible thing that had happened to him there two or three minutes ago. A muffled juke-box in one of the saloons still thudded out the monotonous rhythm of the imitation jazz. The same shirt-sleeved figures humped over the green tables in the pool-parlour. Nothing had changed.
And the boy in the lunch-counter remembered Lois. He even knew her right name: Lois Morgan. There really was a Lois. No. That wasn't the way to think it. There was no question in his mind that there was a Lois. Any question like that would be--silly.
He stepped into the bright lights of the lunchstand and went over to the end of the counter where the kid sat, bowed over his comic book. The kid didn't move. Pretending he didn't see him. That was it. The kid was looking at him out of the corner of his eye. He said: "Hey!" The kid jumped.
He stood up: "What'll ya have?" he said.
Graham said: "When was the last time you saw Lois Morgan?"
The kid looked at him funny. He said: "Never heard of her."
The earth was, for a moment, hard to get und
er control. It seemed, somehow, to be trying to twist from beneath Graham's feet.
He said: "You must remember her. We were talking about her a minute ago?"
"Are you kiddin'?" the boy asked.
It was impossible. Nobody could be that dumb. Not even a lunch-counter waiter. He had to remember.
Graham said: "Look, I was in here a couple of minutes ago, wasn't I?"
"Sure." the kid said, in a sort of questioning, so-whatish way. "You had a cup-a-coffee. Hey look, mister, if you're gonna puke do it somewhere else, will ya. I just cleaned that floor."
Graham's hand caught the marble counter's edge in a knuckle-whitening grip. "We were talking about girls around here, weren't we?"
"Are you nuts, Mister?" the kid demanded. "We wasn't talking about nothin'. You had your cupacoffee and left."
Graham turned suddenly on his heel, and almost ran from the place. On the street he caught himself, stopped, stood still for a moment. And then started down the Bowery toward the El Station.
He didn't understand. He knew he wasn't crazy. He wasn't inventing this. He was sure of it. He was sure of it.
He stopped again; looked up and down the street for a cop. There was none in sight. Not even one of those green and white coupes. Anyway, what could he tell a cop? That his girl hadn't shown up for a date? That she didn't answer a telephone? Nothing a cop would believe.
The Bowery, under the El, was a grim, empty tunnel, stretching in both directions without cease. The sky--what little you could see of it--was black and lifeless. There was no moon, and the stars were veiled and dimmed with the muggy density of the hot air.
The doorways, hollow empty sockets, stared at him. The over-clustering framework of the overhead railway pressed down on him. The street lamps glared at him, yellowish soulless light.
He wanted to run. He wanted to escape the grimness of the street, the threat implicit in every darkened doorway, in the overhanging metal above his head, in the sleeping figures huddled in corners of the sidewalk--the Bowery bums, sleeping off their evening drunks.
Every shadow along the street seemed alive and dangerous. He was alone.
Madman on a Drum Page 2