“Sure.”
When we were sitting at the table with a can of beer apiece, I said, “Now listen, Pete, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you this–for practice, if for no other reason. Tomorrow morning I’m going to be telling it to the police, straight to Chief Steiner. But I want two promises out of you before I start talking. One, you’ll keep this under your hat, talk about it to nobody. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“The other, if I sell my idea to you, you won’t try to do anything about it on your own. No private revenge, strictly up to the cops.”
“Okay.”
“It better be. Are you really carrying a gun?”
“Nah, that was a pipe I stuck in your back.”
“All right, here we go. I think Obie Westphal killed Jimmy.”
He started to laugh and I waited till he finished. When he quit laughing he stared at me. “What in hell gives you a screwy idea like that?”
I told him, starting right at the beginning, the whole story. Except that I left Oedipus in the closet and, of course, I left Nina out of it. But I took the accidents at the school one at a time, and told him about the freight yards and–well, the whole works. Even and especially what had happened last night.
“Jesus,” he said when I finally stopped talking.
He believed me.
He said, “Jesus, I wish you’d told me this Wednesday. It was me that damn near got you killed last night. I talked to Obie about you yesterday afternoon, trying to find out what he knew about you.”
That was good hearing, although I couldn’t tell him so. It made me feel a lot better to know that Nina hadn’t told Obie.
I said, “That wasn’t your fault, Pete. Forget it. But now that you know the score, can you add anything? Was there anything you didn’t tell me Wednesday that you can tell me now?”
He shook his head slowly. “No, damn it. But here’s what happened with me. After you asked me them questions, I got thinking about what happened to Jimmy, and I began to think maybe he had been bumped off. I didn’t have as much as you to go on; I didn’t know about Obie’s old man paying for the funeral or about Obie’s leather being in Jimmy’s pocket when he got killed. But I thought like you did about the racket that car makes going up the first hill on the roller coaster, and that Jimmy couldn’t of not known the car was coming, see?”
I nodded.
“I did a lot of thinking that evening. Next morning I went in and quit my job–not just account of that, I’d been meaning to; it was a lousy job and I can get a better one. I wanted to talk to you and find out what your angle was, so I went down to the Herald. I know a copyboy works there. Billy Newman. So I ask him where to find you and he tells me you’re on vacation, outa town fishing That ain’t the way I had it from you so I got curious about you. I made up my mind to watch you for a while and see what you were up to. Went out to your house early that evening. Your lights were on so I knew you weren’t outa town like your paper thought.”
“You followed me that evening?”
“Yeah, to the Press Bar somewhere around nine, came home about eleven, and went to bed. Anyway your lights went off and I went home. Didn’t tell me much. I went back and tried again noon the next day. Tailed you downtown to a restaurant–I caught a sandwich across the street from it while you was eating–and then you started outa town on Seventy-one and I stuck with you. That’s when you spotted me. Friday, that was.
“Well, after that I knew you’d know my car so I had to give that up. I did some more thinking and remembered you’d asked a question or two about Obie Westphal. So yesterday afternoon I looked him up and asked him if he knew you. He didn’t and wanted to know what it was all about, so I told him about you asking questions about Jimmy Chojnacki and then about him, and that’s how he got onto you.”
“But what were you doing out front this evening?” I asked him. “You weren’t going to try tailing me again in the same car, were you?”
“Nah, I’d decided to talk to you account I wasn’t getting to first base. Waiting for you to get home. But when you pulled in behind me like that it scared me for a minute; that’s why I’d a scrammed if I coulda got the heap started quick enough. Say–”
“What, Pete?”
“You say the one night you tailed Obie he took a walk to the jungles. What time was it?”
“He left the house around nine, came back about half past ten.”
“Maybe he’ll go again tonight. And with two of us we maybe wouldn’t lose him.”
“Nix,” I said. “I’m through. Tomorrow the police, and no more making like Nick Carter. Besides, don’t you think he’ll be watching for a tail tonight?”
“Sure, but he won’t see one. We use my jalop’; he’s never seen it. We park a long way off, just close enough to see his front gate. If he takes off for a stroll and heads toward the jungles we don’t follow him, see? We take a different route and get there first. We’ll be waiting back in the dark and pick him up after he comes in. And by that time he’ll have watched for a tail all the way there and be sure he ain’t got one so it’ll be easy.”
“Get thee behind me. No, Pete.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t, if he’s ever seen you. Think he has?”
I thought back and said I didn’t think so. He’d learned of my existence for the first time yesterday afternoon. I’d been playing poker at Harv Whelan’s then and hadn’t got home until midnight. Even if Obie had been watching the house and had seen me come home he would have seen me only at a distance and in the dark; I’d driven right into the garage and closed the doors from the inside. It had been plenty dark back there. I couldn’t have been more than a shadow as I crossed from the side door of the garage to the back door of the house. And this morning I’d gone to the hotel early and had stayed downtown all day till an hour ago.
I said, “But he knows you, Pete.”
“Don’t worry about me. I can keep out of sight in a jungle.” He stood up. “Well, I’m gonna try it anyway. If the cops pick him up after you talk to ’em tomorrow, this is my last chance not to miss out on all the fun.”
“He probably won’t go out tonight anyway.”
Pete grinned. “Then what’s to lose? I’ll try it an hour or two anyway. So long.”
I knew I couldn’t stop him and I didn’t want to let the fool kid go alone. I said, “Wait. Okay, I’ll go along. We give up at ten o’clock.” I looked at my watch. It was half past seven. “But give me ten minutes first. I came home to get a few things and I might as well while I’m here. Then we’ll take both cars until we’re a few blocks from Obie’s; I’ll leave mine there and get in yours. That way I won’t have to come back here and you won’t have to drive me downtown afterwards.”
We did it that way. Pete parked the jalopy almost a full block away but at a point from which we could see the front fence and gate of the Westphal place. Far enough away that if he came out and walked toward us instead of toward the freight yards we’d have plenty of time to U-turn and get away. Or get down out of sight until he’d passed; the car itself wouldn’t mean anything to him.
I hoped to hell that Obie would stay home and that nothing would happen.
At a quarter of nine Obie came through the gate and started walking the other way, toward the jungles.
We had plenty of time–it would take him twenty to twenty-five minutes to walk it and we could do it in five minutes in the car, even by a roundabout route so we wouldn’t have to pass him–so Pete waited almost five minutes before starting the car. By then he’d be another block or two away and there wouldn’t be a ghost of a chance of his hearing us take off.
Pete drove fast but skillfully. Half a block from the freight yards he turned the car into an alley and from the alley swung off onto the loading zone for a warehouse. We walked quickly back to the street and into the yards. In plenty of time; Obie wasn’t yet in si
ght.
Not many strings of cars on this side of the yards tonight but two, on the fourth and fifth tracks over, were parallel and it was dark between them. The moon was bright but low in the sky; it was easy to see in the open but plenty dark in the shadows.
Looking through between two cars a few minutes later we saw him coming. He was walking into the yards at the same angle we’d taken. Pete said, “He’s coming the way we did. He’ll walk through here between these strings. Let’s go down the line and find us an empty to duck in till he’s past. Then we can follow him.”
It sounded like good advice. We walked fast between the cars and the first empty was four cars down on our right. Pete climbed in. He said, “Come on. He’ll be showing in a minute.”
He was showing now, just walking around the end of the last car and starting toward us. Maybe I suddenly went a little crazy. I didn’t get in after Pete. I whispered to him, “Get back out of sight and stay there. I want to talk to him. Stay right around the corner of the door so you can listen.”
He whispered back, “Okay, pal,” and then I couldn’t see him any more.
If Obie could see me there in the shadows four cars away, it would be dimly. I had a little time to get ready. I whipped off my necktie and stuck it in my pocket. I turned the rim of my hat down all the way around and the collar of my coat up. I bent down and got a double handful of dust and rubbed it over the toes of my shoes. Then I brushed the worst of the dust off my hands and ran them over my face; luckily I hadn’t shaved that morning and with dirt on top of a light beard it would look like several days’ growth. Luckily too I’d been wearing this same suit most of the week without having it pressed, and it was a neutral color that didn’t show whether it was clean or dirty. Even in the moonlight I could pass for a hobo.
I fumbled out a cigarette and stuck it in my mouth, then took a few steps to meet Obie as he came close. “Got a match, kid?” I asked him.
“Sure.” He took a book of them from his pocket and lighted one for me and held it out in cupped hands. I held the tip of my cigarette to the flame.
His face, momentarily brightly lighted, grinned at me cheerfully. A schoolboy grin. So natural a grin that I couldn’t help wondering if I was wrong down the line, if a series of coincidences had led me–
“Swell night, isn’t it?” he said.
I nodded and just said, “Yeah,” because my mind was doing handsprings trying to get back to believing what it had believed before. This kid couldn’t be a killer. There was a catch somewhere.
“Just get in town?” he asked me.
I nodded. “How’s work here?”
“All right, I guess. I’m still in school myself. What kind of work do you do?”
“Printer,” I said. “Linotype operator. Say, do you–”
To the south of us a locomotive hooted and released steam and the clank of couplers drowned out what I’d started to say. The string of cars behind me was moving, and the car Pete Brenner was in was rolling away from us.
We both stepped back as the cars started to move. It put Obie’s face in the moonlight. His eyes were boyishly eager. He said, “Let’s hop ’em. I love to ride cars around the yards.”
He ran lightly and grabbed the rungs of a car going by us. I hesitated; I almost didn’t. If he’d urged me to do it, if he’d even looked around to see whether I was coming, I wouldn’t have.
But he was climbing on up the rungs to the top of the car. The train wasn’t going fast yet; it was easy for me to run and swing up after him. He was sitting on the catwalk when I got to the top. He was lighting himself a cigarette, again cupping his hands around the match.
He said, “Love to ride cars. Got to quit pretty soon though when school starts again. With studying and football I don’t get time to come here. Ever play football?”
“No. Haven’t the build for it,” I said. Over the noise of the train and the rush of wind we had to talk loudly. I flipped my cigarette, a fiery arc into the night, and shifted to sit down more comfortably by the brake wheel. It was nice and cool up there. I didn’t blame Obie for liking to do this.
I started to turn around to say something that would get him to talking again. My hand, resting lightly on the brake wheel, saved me from dying in the next second.
The push that sent me off the end of the freight car, into the space between it and the car ahead, was so sudden and so strong that it would have knocked me off the car even if I’d been ready and braced for it. But my left hand tightened convulsively on the iron brake wheel and I dangled there between the moving cars, only the narrow coupling between me and the roadbed.
And Obie was bending over reaching for my fingers to pry them loose from the wheel. Bending down that way put his face in shadow; I still don’t know whether, in the act of murder, it was the smiling face of a schoolboy or the mask of a fiend. It’s probably as well I didn’t see and don’t know; I might be having nightmares about it either way. I don’t know which way would have seemed the worse.
In that second of hanging on, of thinking I had only another second or two to live, there was one part of my mind that remained calm enough to cuss me out for the utter fool I’d been. I’d known, and yet without even thinking what I was doing I’d put myself in this spot. I’d been so sure he wouldn’t recognize me as Sam Evans that I’d forgotten completely the fact that under these circumstances I was in just as deadly danger whether he knew me or not.
His hands were on my hand now, prying fingers loose. I tried frantically to get my other hand up to the wheel but I couldn’t, with so precarious a grip, swing my body to make my right hand reach that high.
Then, above and past Obie’s head, I saw something swinging down. Even over the noise of the train I heard a thudding sound and then Obie was falling forward toward me. My right hand managed to grab the edge of the catwalk to supplement my failing grip on the wheel and it pulled me in closer to the end of the car. Even so, his body scraped against my back as he went over.
Then a hand grabbed my wrist to help me and it was Pete Brenner, bending over the end of the car. Still in his right hand was the pipe he’d had in his pocket. I should have known; it wasn’t a pipe for smoking. It was an eight-inch length of lead pipe.
He suddenly realized that he was still holding the pipe and that he didn’t need it any more. He tossed it off the side of the car and used both hands to help me back up.
I looked down then. Obie was doubled over across the coupling between the cars but his body was starting to slide off. He went off head first; I saw his head hit the rail and then the car was over him.
A minute later the clank of couplings told us the train was slowing down, probably to reverse but we didn’t wait for a ride back. We got off and took the quickest way out of the yards, and back along streets to where Pete had left his car.
We didn’t talk much but Pete explained what had happened. When the car he was in had started moving, he’d stuck his head out of the door and had seen me following Obie up the rungs to the front end of the car that was three cars behind him. He’d jumped out of the door and caught the same set of rungs as it went by. He’d been holding onto them just below the top of the car, listening to us talk. Then when I’d yelled—I hadn’t known that I had but it didn’t surprise me–when Obie had pushed me, he’d come over the edge and slugged Obie while Obie was trying to pry my fingers loose from the wheel.
He drove me to my car and we parted there. I drove home and fast. I made a phone call to the airport and then phoned Millie. I told her everything was all right now and that not only could she come back but I desperately wanted her, needed her, to come back tonight, that if her brother-in-law would drive her to the airport right away she’d just make a plane that would get her home before midnight, and that I’d meet that plane. And she said that would be wonderful.
MONDAY
1
At nine-fifteen Harry Rowlan
d went by my desk on his way out. He said, “Ed wants to see you, Sam.” I got up and went into Ed’s office.
He said, “How was the vacation, Joe?”
“Fine,” I told him.
“I’ll give you an easy one to start on. Funny thing, too. Remember the last day before your vacation we thought a kid named Westphal was the one killed at Whitewater and you were going to do a story on him?”
“I remember,” I said.
“The Westphal kid was killed last night. Hopping cars in the freight yards, fell between ’em. Wheel went right over his head–but there’s no doubt about identification this time.”
“How much you want on it?”
“Don’t spare the horses. His father’s an advertiser, and Rowland says the kid was quite a high school celebrity in his own right. Rowland’ll cover the details on the news end; you just write up the kid like you were going to do before.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Take your time and make it good.”
I went back to my desk and fished in the back of the top drawer. It was still there, the story I’d written nine days ago. It began: “Today under the wheels of a Whitewater Beach roller coaster–” I took a thick soft copy pencil and obliterated that. I made it read. “Last night under the wheels of a freight car at the C. D. & I. yards—”
I read it through, all six pages, and didn’t change another word. But I shouldn’t turn it in for at least an hour, so I sat there staring at nothing. Until, up near the ceiling somewhere a fly started making a hell of a commotion…
THE END
The Deep End Page 18