by Craig Rice
He walked at an angle so that the Beau Brummel—even though the latter did not appear in the least interested—could not see his face. He disappeared around the closest corner. Beau Brummel moved briskly on up the street, apparently unaware that he had interrupted anyone’s plans.
After ten minutes, Helene left the coffee shop, hailed a cab, and headed for the Casino on Rush Street.
Chapter Five
“I’m going to work, Jake,” Helene said.
“Sure you are,” Jake replied absently. He gulped at his drink and came to his feet and headed for the Casino entrance where two evening-gowned women and a single male escort had entered.
Oscar, the Casino’s host and maître d’, was home with either a cold or a blonde, no one knew which, and Jake was filling in. Therefore he returned to the side table where John J. Malone and Helene were sitting only at intervals.
To Malone, the gist of Helene’s statement was not as remarkable as her tone—her casual self-possession. She had been gay, witty, and entirely normal during the preceding hour, an image he found difficult to reconcile with the other one—the tense zombie he’d encountered on State Street.
Malone had spent the time in careful observation, making no pertinent statements, riding with the aimless tide of conversation. He appeared to be lethargic, tired after a full day, but inside, out of sight, his mind was churning with activity.
“Work?” he grunted. “Where?”
“At Walden.”
“And where the hell is Walden?”
Helene laughed, and Malone thought he detected just a shade of hysteria, but he could have been wrong. “The Walden Chemical Research Laboratory on Grand Avenue.”
“Don’t be silly. That’s top-secret government stuff. Ordinary taxpayers don’t just walk out there and go to work.”
“That’s ridiculous. What makes you think the government doesn’t like taxpayers? They love them.”
“That’s not the point. They hire specialists out there. Eggheads. If I’m correct, you majored in social amenities at college.”
“You’ve been misinformed on both my background and the way things are at Walden. I took typing and shorthand and I’m pretty good at both. So far as Walden is concerned, they do hire specialists. But only a part of the place is top secret. There is a big load of ordinary work that ordinary people do. The pay is low and they have difficulty in getting enough lower-echelon help. So they welcome eager hands.”
“You’ll be doing something for your country. Is that the pitch?”
“Precisely. If more people took an interest in vital government projects, they would—” Helene bogged down on what the result would be, but Malone filled in.
“They’d have less time to make money to pay their taxes. How come you hatched this big idea?”
“A very dear friend of mine, Vivian Conover, is in Chicago. She’s one of the specialists. She’s going to work at Walden. When she called from New York to tell me, I got to thinking—” Malone, watching closely from beneath lazily lowered lids, caught a look of quick confusion—something akin to the glazed look he’d seen on State Street. “At least I think that’s how it was.” The look vanished. “Anyhow, I investigated and met some very nice people. And the urge to serve was born.”
“Have you told Jake?”
“I just did.”
“Maybe he didn’t hear you.”
“Jake doesn’t hear much of anything these days,” she sighed.
“You two ought to go off on a vacation together.”
“That’ll be the day,” Helene sighed. “If Jake stayed away for a single day, this club would collapse. Didn’t you know that?”
“By the way,” Malone said casually, “I’m awfully sorry I slipped up on our date today—to buy the shotgun for Jake’s birthday. I got tied up and before I knew it the time had slipped by and I couldn’t call you.”
Again the look of quick confusion he’d noted before. Helene lifted her glass to hide it. She said, “Malone, you’ve no idea how relieved I am.”
“Relieved?”
“I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to ask me why I didn’t make it. I missed it myself and I felt terrible.”
Malone wanted to lean across the table and ask: What’s wrong, Helene? What kind of a mess have you gotten yourself into? You can tell me. Maybe you can’t tell Jake. I can understand that. But you can tell John J. Malone. He loves you and he’s your friend.
But Malone could only sit there mute, more certain than ever, now, that the waters were deep. And he without a paddle or a canoe, nor any notion whatever of what was going on to make Helene so unhappy.
“So we both missed it,” he said. “We’ll make it another time. When are you going to work at Walden?”
“Right away. But Kent Fargo suggests part-time at first until I get the hang of it and—well, sort of work into the harness, you might say.”
“Who’s Kent Fargo?”
“The man I was told to see—to get in touch with. He’s very nice. The sophisticated type. He made all the arrangements. I’ll be working for him.”
A sophisticated type and a beautiful blonde. The combination would have automatically made Malone suspicious had the blonde not been Helene Justus. Helene becoming involved with anyone other than Jake was unthinkable. They had the perfect marriage and the wolf didn’t exist who could nose in between them. At the same time, any wolf who tried would find himself at nasty odds with John J. Malone.
“Mr. Fargo has an apartment over on Pearson Street,” Helene said. “I’m due for a final briefing before I sign in for duty.”
Jake, having seated the last group and poked menus under their chins, was winging back toward the table. Malone, his manner a trifle frosty, met him with a blunt question.
“Did you know Helene is going to work?”
“Huh?” Jake slupped quickly from his glass. He’d sat halfway down but he straightened again. He grinned. “Busy, busy night. Party of six coming in.”
“I asked you a question!”
Jake blinked. “Look, I’ve got to seat those people.”
“The hell with them. Let them find their own goddam seats. It’s time you sat down in your seat for a minute and did a little listening. I asked—did you know Helene’s going to work?”
Helene sat silent as Jake stared. “Work! For God’s sake, why?”
“Maybe,” Malone said, “so she can have someone to talk to once in a while.”
Knowing Jake as he did, Malone watched as the big red-headed bum decided whether to get mad or not. Malone could see the process going on. Jake’s first instinct told him to get mad and tell John J. Malone to mind his own damn business. But the news he’d only half listened to up to that moment intrigued him. And as the party of six looked around, took offense, and walked out of the Casino, Jake sat down and looked at Helene as though it was the first time he’d seen her for quite a while.
“Going to work? What is this, honey? You don’t have to work.”
Helene laughed. “Of course I don’t. But that’s not the point.”
“Then—” Jake glanced quickly back and forth between the two of them—from Malone’s frosty visage to the infinitely more attractive face of his wife. “Then, is that it? Do you feel I’m neglecting you?”
“Of course not, darling.” Helene laid her hand on Jake’s and squeezed fondly. “It’s just that lately I’ve felt so useless! Everybody rushing around being productive and what do I do? Absolutely nothing. A person wants to—well, to count sometimes. You understand, don’t you?”
Jake shot a look of triumph at Malone. “She’s right.” His relief at not being to blame brought a big grin. “Sure! I’m working all the time and I suppose bridge and shopping get kind of dull. I think it’s a great idea. Where you going to work, honey—at Marshall Field’s?”
Malone listened as Helene briefed Jake. “Who’s this guy Kent Fargo?” Jake asked.
“He’s an executive at Walden. He was brought in to organize the
office force. You see, darling, the place isn’t all top secret. There are dull, routine jobs to be done, and—”
Jake blocked her off with a raised hand. “Sure—sure, honey. I know, and I think you ought to give the thing a try.” He looked across the room and came out of his chair. Grinning, he said, “You’ll have to work for a month to make back the money we lost when that six-party walked out. Let me catch that threesome before they do the same thing.”
He was gone. Malone knocked off his fresh shot of gin and stared into his beer chaser. He felt let down. He wasn’t sure how he’d expected Jake to react, but had to concede that the way he had reacted was perfectly logical. On the face of it, there was nothing wrong with a bored wife going to work.
Only one thing was wrong. Helene was far from bored. Malone had seen enough to know she was leading the fullest kind of a hidden life.
“I’ve got to run along,” he said. “It’s been a rough day.”
“I’ll go out with you.”
They left, waving to Jake across the room where he was picking up a note to deliver to the combo that played requests under the palms in the alcove. He waved back.
Helene’s car was parked at the curb. She got in and Malone closed the door and stood leaning on it. With his head halfway inside, he said, “Helene, does Jake know you’re going to a psychiatrist?”
Helene froze for the barest instant before her eyes snapped around. “Malone! You’ve been spying on me!”
“Never mind that. It was accidental. Answer my question.”
Helene wilted. She did not collapse, but she settled back into her seat and stared out through the windshield. “No,” she said. “He doesn’t know. And please don’t tell him. Please, Malone!”
“For God’s sake! I’m no loudmouth. Of course I won’t tell him. But you and I have got to have a talk. You’re in trouble.”
“I’m not. I’m not, honestly! Mind your own business, Malone.”
“Okay—maybe—after we have a talk.”
Helene considered this. “All right. But not now. I have an appointment. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Malone backed off and watched the sleek Caddy convertible pull around the corner and disappear. Then his mind slipped into gear and latched onto something that had been said previously.
Mr. Fargo has an apartment over on Pearson Street. I’m due for a final briefing before I sign in for duty.
Jake had taken these as two unrelated statements, but now he realized that he’d been an idiot. They went together. Helene had a date with Mr. Fargo in the apartment on Pearson Street to be briefed before she signed in for duty.
Oh, yeah? Where on Pearson Street? At what address had this Fargo wolf set up shop? Malone cursed himself for not finding out. But he hadn’t found out and that was that. Nothing he could do.
He strode north toward the river, his hands deep in his pockets. Maybe he would have done nothing anyhow. Helene was of age. She knew what she was doing. But that was the point. She didn’t. Show Malone a wife who sneaked off to a psychiatrist without her husband’s knowledge and he’d show you a wife who didn’t know what she was doing.
He walked north …
… and it was not until he’d crossed the Randolph Street bridge and swung right, heading for Wells Street and home, that he realized he was being followed.
It came as a tickling somewhere inside his head. He had an instinct for such things. And so sure was this instinct that he swore at himself for not looking around back there in the open—on the bridge-where he could have spotted the tail.
It was too late now. There were alley mouths, doorways, recessed shop windows. Any tail old enough to be away from his mother could stay hidden under these circumstances.
Malone moved on, walking lightly, keening his ears for the sound of the tail’s footsteps. They didn’t come. The guy must be walking in his socks, Malone thought. But he was there, no doubt about that. Malone took out a cigar. He peeled it close to his belly, put it in his mouth and got out a match. He scratched the match and turned suddenly with his palms cupped as though to catch the wind.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The tail was good. He knew his business. A good tail has to have the instinct to know when a mark is going to turn around suddenly while lighting a cigar. This one had it.
Malone walked on, wishing to hell everybody hadn’t gone home. At least, why couldn’t some idiot cabby cruise by in search of a late fare? The knot-heads were never around when you wanted them.
Malone reached Wells Street and turned left. Around the next corner was home and sanctuary. There would be a red neon sign announcing the hotel where Malone had remained since the day—before he got his night-school law diploma—when the management said it was all right to park his cab behind the place free of charge.
The mouth of that alley was drawing close. Malone’s finely tuned senses told him the tail had rounded the corner behind him. A dozen steps to the mouth of the alley. He would make it. He did.
But as he stepped into the welcome shadows, a man stepped out of them, confronting him, forcing him back under the street lamp.
Christ! A second one! One of them making the chase while the other blocked the entrance to the burrow.
“I’d like to talk to you a few minutes,” the new man said.
But that was all. No more. He would never say anything else because there was the muted sound of a silenced gun from behind Malone and the man slumped to the sidewalk. Malone stood like a stalk of frozen broccoli. Then he got his motor centers going again and whirled around. But immediately he froze again as he stared into the mush-mouthed face of Toothy Spaatz. Toothy stood frozen also, the silenced gun hanging at his side, his eyes like two surprised saucers.
“Oops!” Toothy belched and turned and fled.
Toothy was no longer playing the role of the expert tail. He was playing the role of the Olympic sprinter—getting away from there in a clatter of frantic heels.
Dazed, Malone turned to look at the fallen man. He was stretched directly under the street lamp—a man of undeterminate age. He could have been in his late thirties or early forties. Not that it mattered to Malone—or to the man either, for that matter. Malone stared down at him, seeing the unobtrusive type you sometimes catch in the corner of your eye while you are turning to look at someone else.
But that didn’t make any difference, either. Malone was concerned with his own welfare. And in general terms, the law of survival said it was bad practice to be found where someone had just been shot.
Obeying this dictate, Malone left quickly. He moved south on Wells and rounded the corner and passed up the hotel altogether. He hurried along, staying in the shadows, turning into Washington Street, to arrive finally in the quiet sanctuary of his office. There, he dropped into his desk chair-or rather collapsed into it, and let his mind run by itself.
His mind did the logical thing. It denied everything in stream-of-consciousness fashion. Me? … What the hell would I be doing in the alley behind my hotel? … You’re nuts, von Flanagan. I left Jake Justus’s Casino and came straight to my office…. Body? … What body? … If I saw a dead body I’d report it to the police like any other good citizen…. Put those damn handcuffs away and let’s talk this over….
But then Malone again took command of his mind and the maundering stopped. He wiped the sweat from his face. Just what the hell had happened, anyhow? He sat back, forced a synthetic calm, and began to piece it together.
His tail had been Toothy Spaatz, but Toothy had been there to protect him. The mush-mouthed little felon had discovered, somehow, that Malone was in danger. And with a devotion that now touched Malone deeply, he had set himself up as a bodyguard.
That was it. The truth of the matter. But it wasn’t, because Malone’s phone rang and everything went to pieces again.
“Hello—Malone? This is Toothy Spaatz.”
“Toothy! Where the hell are you?”
“In a phone booth. I just killed a guy, Malone.”
“I know damn well you just killed a guy. I was there, remember?”
“It was a big mistake.”
“Certainly it was. Killing any guy is a big mistake. I’ve told you that over and over.”
“You gotta help me, Malone. You’re my mouthpiece.”
“Damn it! There’s nothing I can do for you!”
“But the gun ain’t mine. I never saw it before. Besides, nobody’ll ever find it. I threw it in the—”
“I know the patter. You don’t have to—”
“But I had this contract, Malone.”
“You had a contract on the guy?”
“Uh-uh. I had a contract on you.”
Malone had a cigar in the corner of his mouth. He took it out and flicked the ash delicately with the tip of his little finger. He surveyed the result and found it satisfactory.
“Say that again.”
“The contract was on you.”
“I thought that was what you said.”
Malone took the receiver from his ear and looked at it thoughtfully—as though it were some new invention that intrigued the hell out of him. When he spoke again, it was in kindly, gentle voice.
“Now let’s start at the beginning. Who let out this contract on me?”
Toothy hesitated. “I kind of think that wouldn’t be ethical some way—telling the guy who the guy is that wants him dead.”
“You’re right. It isn’t entirely ethical. But this is a special case.” Malone’s voice was rising with each word. “This is a case where some jerk is trying to get a lawyer rubbed out by his own client and goddam it I want to know who it is!”
“It was Cats Gavin,” Toothy said reluctantly.
Malone did not reply. When the silence had stretched out into a long minute, Toothy said, “Malone—you still there?”
Malone had put the phone down to relight his cigar. The question came to him as a rumble from the surface of his desk. He picked it up and said, “Go jump in the river, you ingrate,” and slammed it down again, breaking the connection.