by Craig Rice
“Bingo!” Handsome gasped. “Look out!”
Something whistled over Bingo’s head. He threw himself at the floor, pulling Henny with him. There was the sound of something thrown, and the oil lamp went out.
“There she is,” a strange voice yelled. “That’s the dame!”
Bingo heard the table go hurtling across the floor. A chair followed it, and then a dish crashed against the wall.
Another strange voice yelled, “Hey, get this guy offen my neck,” and still another voice, “Gimme some light! Hey, light!”
A flashlight moved crazily around the room. Bingo lifted his head and saw four men, one of them Handsome, fighting wildly. A fifth man, with the flashlight, stood by the window, and ducked back and forth.
Bingo shoved the girl under the table, slid across the floor, out of sight, and dodged out through the door. Once outside, he grabbed up a handful of pebbles and one good-sized rock, and yelled at the top of his voice. “Hey! You guys out there! Bring the tommy-gun! And those tear-gas bombs!”
He hurled the pebbles against a closed window, followed them with a second handful. Then the rock went through the window, with a loud crash. He ran around the house, screaming, “Shoot through the windows!” and flinging pebbles at the walls.
From inside the house came the sound of combat. Bingo threw more pebbles and yelled louder. He was rewarded by seeing two men flee out of the door and head for a car parked in the driveway. He shot more pebbles at the car and screamed, “Aim for the gas tanks!”
The car’s motor started. Bingo hurled another rock at the house and yelled bloody murder. Another man ran from the house and headed toward the car. Bingo yelled, “Shoot through the window!” again, and a fourth man ran toward the already moving car.
There was a roar of motors, and a car raced backwards down the driveway. Bingo threw one more rock after them, just for the joy of it, and then started back toward the shanty.
It was ominously peaceful.
Too peaceful.
If anything had happened to Handsome—
He flung himself through the door, regardless of what might be waiting for him. A fist clipped him under the chin, a female voice said, “Hit him again!” and a gun was shoved in his ribs.
“Hey!” Bingo said. “It’s me!”
“Lights!” Henny screamed. “Let’s have some lights!”
Handsome lit a match, located an oil lamp, and lighted it.
“Bingo,” Handsome said. “Are you all right?”
“Never felt better in my life,” Bingo said.
“Somebody was shooting machine guns at the house,” Handsome said, “and throwing gas bombs. There must of been a whole bunch of them, from the noise they made. These guys that came in here, they got scared and beat it. I hit one of ’em with the skillet, but not very hard.”
“They won’t come back,” Bingo said. He thought, I hope they won’t come back.
Henny’s face was white. She said, between set lips, “I hope you don’t mind, but I was scared.” She threw her arms around Handsome’s neck.
He patted her shoulder, very awkwardly. “If you’ll ’scuse me, lady, I got to get some water and make some fresh coffee.”
She turned to Bingo. “Suppose they come back.”
“If they do,” Bingo said, “we’ll handle ’em.”
“They were trying to kidnap me,” she said. “Because they think I know where—well, they’re trying to kidnap me, that’s all. They’ll come back.”
“We’ll be ready for them,” Bingo said. “Just rest your head on my arm, and relax. There, that’s better. Just stop worrying, baby. Just like that. Comfortable?”
“Uh-hm.” She nestled against him, like a kitten nestling against a pillow. “You’re so kind. I like you very much.”
“So my friends tell me,” Bingo said. “Who were these guys and why did they want to kidnap you?”
“They’re the—” She paused. “Because they think I know—” She paused again. “I feel so safe with you here.”
“That’s nice,” Bingo said. “And do you know where all that money is buried?”
She jumped away from him and four sharp-pointed fingernails raked his cheek as she moved.
“Now, now,” Bingo said. “Now, please. I didn’t mean to say anything to upset you. Please don’t be sore, Henny. I was just curious. You can’t get sore at a guy for being curious.”
She began to cry noisily, both hands over her face. “You, too,” she gasped.
“Please, baby,” Bingo said desperately, wondering what on earth to do.
Suddenly she grabbed the lapels of his checked sport jacket and said, “Look. Look at me. Do you think I’m beautiful?”
“Sure,” Bingo said.
“Would you like to make love to me?”
He nodded, beginning to feel a little dazed.
“Would you like to make love to me, even if I didn’t know where all that money was buried?”
Things began to fit together in Bingo’s mind, like pieces of a puzzle clicking into place. He put a reassuring arm around her and said, “I don’t know what money you’re talking about. But I don’t care where it is and I don’t want it. Because I’ve got so much money that I stay awake nights trying to decide what to spend it for.”
She stared up at him, and the tears began to flow again. “I believe you,” she said. She shoved her face against his shoulder and began dripping tears all down his favorite shirt.
“Wait a minute,” Bingo began.
“Don’t interrupt me. I’m trying to tell you something. Something important. Men have made love to me. I thought it was because of—because I—well, anyway. It always turned out they knew I was his daughter. They thought I knew where a lot of money was hidden. And if I had known, I—I’d—”
“You’d have gone and dug it up yourself,” Bingo said sympathetically.
“That’s it exactly. But I still don’t know where it is. So if you make love to me, it’s got to be because I’m beautiful. I think you’re a darling. Mind if I call you ‘darling?’”
“You’re drunk,” Bingo said. He wished Handsome would come back into the shanty.
“Not me. I don’t drink. I’ve got a bad heart. And a bad nature, too. I’d as soon cut your throat as look at you. You believe that, don’t you?”
“Sure I believe you,” Bingo said. “You look like an honest girl.”
She pushed him away and began to laugh. “I’m not an honest girl. My father was a crook. I’ve heard about it since I was old enough to talk. It’s hereditary. He was Mr. Crook, so I’m Miss Crook. Legitimately, Miss Crook. He did marry my mother, you know, but only because Grandfather made him.” The laughter began to break into sobs. “I’m a virgin, Mr.—darling. I am going to call you ‘darling.’ Would you think, to look at me, that I was a virgin?”
Bingo tried, fast, to decide whether it would be more polite to say “Yes,” or “No.” He compromised by saying nothing, and patting her again on the shoulder.
“Well, I am,” she said.
Her voice couldn’t have sounded any more passionately defensive if she’d been saying, “Well, I’m a leper.”
“And do you know why? Do you want to know why?”
Bingo didn’t particularly want to know, but he felt it would be more tactful to say “Yes.” He did. Where was Handsome?
“Because,” she said, “I was always afraid that if I—you know what I mean—I’d murder him—whoever he was—while he was asleep, and steal all his money, if he had any.” She was sobbing wildly now, apparently without realizing that she was sobbing. “If a person has criminal tendencies, if a person was born with criminal tendencies, that person has to protect society and herself against—” The sobs became frantic. “Uncle Fred. He always told me—” The sobs became a high-pitched wail.
Handsome came in through the door, the pail of water in his hand. He looked at the girl and said, “Shut up!” in a normal and pleasant tone of voice. Then he dipped the dish
towel in the bucket of water and slapped it over her face. He looked at Bingo and said, “She’s hysterical. My aunt-in-law Esther Kusak used to get hysterical all the time. Her husband—that was my uncle Frank—always got scared and called Bellevue, but it was a waste of a nickel, because my stepsister Dominica—she lived across the hall—would just throw a bucket of water on her and then it was all O. K. again.” He dipped the dishcloth in the bucket again, laid it gently over the girl’s eyes, and said, “Shut up now, lady. Please.”
She shut up. She stopped sobbing. Handsome went on washing her face, and talking, in the same tone of voice, about his aunt-in-law Esther Kusak, and the time a relative had sent her a baby alligator as a souvenir of his trip to Florida. She slipped down to the floor and rested her head on Bingo’s knee, and Handsome accidentally slopped water over Bingo’s favorite blue gabardine slacks.
“It was such a long way here,” she whispered. “Such a long way. And I couldn’t stop to sleep because there wasn’t time. And even with all that, I was too late.” She whimpered a little against Bingo’s knee, and was still.
“She’s sleepy,” Bingo said. He pushed a wisp of hair gently back from her forehead.
“She’s asleep,” Handsome said. He carried the bucket to the makeshift sink and left it there. Then he began smoothing out the best of the two bunks.
“Handsome!” Bingo said. “She can’t stay here.”
“She’s got to stay somewhere,” Handsome said, turning back a blanket. “And we got two bunks, and only one of us can sleep at a time, anyhow.” He lifted the girl from the floor as though he’d been picking up a baby, laid her on the bunk, took off her red-and-white wedgies and carefully pulled the blanket over her.
“How come only one of us can sleep at a time?” Bingo said. He was tired and cross, and he’d picked that bunk, the one with the limp but only mattress, as his own.
“Well,” Handsome said. “In case those guys with the machine guns and the tear gas come back. We’ve got a gun now, in case they do, but one of us oughta be awake. There must have been a whole bunch of ’em. They scared the daylights out of those kidnapers or whatever they were.”
“Handsome,” Bingo confessed, “those guys was—I mean, were—me.”
He explained about the pebbles, and the rocks. Handsome looked worshipfully admiring and said, “Gee!”
“Only,” Handsome added, “I still say one of us oughta be awake. On account of them guys that wanta kidnap the lady, here. And also, them guys that busted out of the jail this afternoon and are still running around loose. And the guy who murdered that gentleman, Mr. Siller, or whatever his real name was. And because of Mr. Halvorsen’s turkeys.”
Bingo gave in. Not only because Handsome’s reasoning made sense, but because Handsome volunteered to take the first four-hour watch.
Four hours’ sleep, Bingo told himself, and you’ll be a new man. Remember what Will Sims said about the country air?
He took his blue-and-orange-striped pajamas out of the calfskin suitcase, and glanced anxiously at their visitor. She looked asleep, but you never could tell. Finally he retired modestly into the back yard to change into the blue-and-orange pajamas.
She hadn’t moved as much as an eyelash when he came back into the shanty, and he breathed easier. He took one of the patent folding hangers from the suitcase and folded the blue gabardine slacks over it neatly. Tomorrow, he decided, he’d wear the brown-and-tan cords. And the hand-stitched yellow sport shirt. He took the bankroll—a hundred and seventy-two dollars now—out of his pocket and tucked it neatly into his left shoe, anchoring it with his sock. The silver—a couple of dollars in change—he put under his pillow.
Handsome was sitting by the door. The gun, that had been left behind by their invaders, was on Handsome’s lap.
Just four hours’ sleep. Then he’d change places with Handsome. They could both catch up on lost sleep some time in the future.
He murmured, “Good night” to Handsome, and climbed into the bunk. It was hard, and bumpy, but at that moment it felt more comfortable than any other mattress in the world.
Could anything in the world be so wonderful as the prospect of sleep?
He sighed happily, stretched, and closed his eyes.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
There was a sound in the room. He tried to ignore it at first. Sleep! No, the sound was too insistent. A voice.
Bingo raised up on one elbow and blinked at the light.
Across the room from him, Henny was sitting up in bed, her hair tumbled over her shoulders, her eyes bright and wide-awake. She caught his gaze, and smiled.
“Darling,” she said warmly. “You don’t mind if I call you darling, do you? Would you like to hear the story of my life?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’m sure the story of your life is fascinating,” Bingo said sleepily. “But can’t it wait till morning? We’ve had a pretty busy day.”
“Morning might be too late,” she said stubbornly. “They might come back and kidnap me, or murder me.”
Bingo yawned, “With us here to protect you? Go to sleep.”
“Maybe she don’t feel like going to sleep,” Handsome said. “Let her talk, if she feels like it.”
“Or I might just die,” she said. “You might wake up in the morning and find me dead. Then you’d be sorry. Then you’d remember I’d had a bad heart.”
Bingo sat up, pulled the ragged blanket around him, and rubbed his eyes. “What’s this bad heart gag? Have you really got one, and how do you know?”
“I have.” She nodded slowly and sadly. “Uncle Fred told me so. The last time I saw him. He’s a doctor. Well, practically a doctor. He’s a chiropractor—I mean, he would have been a chiropractor, if he’d ever finished the course. So he’d know, about things like that.”
“Oh, sure,” Bingo said. “He’s practically the Mayo brothers. What did he tell you?”
“Well, he said I had a bad heart, and I mustn’t ever drink anything, or smoke, or dance, and I always have to get at least ten hours’ sleep every night, and I mustn’t ever”—she stared at the floor—“you know what I mean. Or, I’d just—well, I’d just drop dead. He said I was born with a bad heart because of the kind of life my father lived.”
Suddenly she jerked her head back. “I never should have come here. It was wrong. But I was born to do wrong. I can’t help myself.”
“Listen, you.” Bingo paused. He’d started to tell her to go to sleep and let them do likewise. Then he’d caught the look in her eyes and he was wide-awake.
He’d seen fear many times before in his life. The scared look in kids’ eyes when they ran from Brooklyn cops. The face of a woman who knew she was inescapably marked for murder. The white, set lips of a petty thief who’d been picked up at a carnival near Albany. The agonized terror of a drunk who’d fallen from a subway platform and been snatched to safety one minute before the next express came screaming through the tunnel. The deathly pale face of a girl who’d suddenly discovered that it was three in the morning, when she’d been told, sternly, to be home before midnight.
But those were fears that had struck unexpectedly, like lightning. A cop coming around the corner. A gun shoved in the ribs. Sudden trouble, sudden danger, sudden death. This was something else.
Henny’s eyes were scared, and they’d been that scared for years and years. She’d lived with terror since—since when? And why?
Because she knew where a tidy little fortune was buried? But she didn’t know.
Because her father was a fugitive from justice? But she hadn’t lived with her father, she hadn’t ever seen him.
Something. But what was it?
He wanted to speak to her, reassuring words. But he was tongue-tied. He felt helpless, and a little frightened himself.
“I had a cousin in Newark whose wife was always running to chiropractors,” Handsome said cheerfully. “None of ’em ever did her any good, account of there was nothing wrong with her to begin with. But she’d g
et awful mad when they told her there was nothing wrong with her, and start looking up another one. She was a nice girl, name of Hazel. Used to work for Macy’s. Maybe if your uncle never finished studying to be a chiropractor, he could of made a mistake in your case. You look healthy.” He added, “How do you feel?”
“I feel—I feel terrible!” she gasped, and clutched at her throat. “I think—I’m dying!”
“What’d you eat tonight?” Handsome demanded.
“A couple of hamburgers. And a malted milk. And a candy bar. And I drank a coke, Oh, yes, and I had a root beer, and some peanuts. Oh! Do you think any of them were poisoned?”
“Uh-uh,” Handsome said. He rose, stuck the gun in his pocket, and began mousing around in the makeshift cupboard. “Nobody’d want to poison a nice lady like you. All you need is a pinch of baking soda, and I think I saw some in here—”
Bingo drew a long breath, and mentally blessed Handsome. That zombie look had gone from her face and, with it, his own fear. She was an ordinary girl, a mild pain in the neck, but beautiful, one who mixed roadside hamburgers and malts and peanuts’, and had to be dosed with baking soda. He said, “Since we’re all awake, tell me about your uncle Fred.” He said it deliberately casually. “Is he the guy you’re so damned scared of?”
“Scared?” She choked on the warm water and baking soda. Handsome pounded her on the back. Bingo picked up the glass she’d dropped.
“You’ll feel better in a minute,” Handsome assured her.
“My uncle Fred,” she said stiffly, “took me in when I was an orphan. He provided for me and cared for me and taught me. I will be grateful to him as long as I live. I will never be able to repay the debt of gratitude I owe him. I have always been a bad, willful girl, and I deserve every misfortune that has come to me.” She didn’t say it, she recited it.
Bet Uncle Fred taught her to say that, Bingo thought. He said, “He sounds like a very remarkable character. What was he before he became a—chiropractor?”
“He was a missionary,” she said. “Only, there was some kind of misunderstanding about money, and he was—he resigned. Then he studied medicine so that if he couldn’t save souls, he could at least heal bodies. But there was some difficulty before he’d completed the course. Then he started a church of his own.”