The lights were on.
I went all hollow in the middle. I slid on into the room. Patsy was sleeping on the twin bed nearest the wall. She was sleeping on her back, and her lips were parted.
I closed the door softly behind me. He’s waiting in the bathroom, I thought. Or maybe in the dinky wardrobe there in the corner.
I slipped the bolt on the door as silently as I could. I saw then that my suitcase was on the bed. Everything had been thrown out of it in careless wads on the floor. Whoever had been through my things wanted me to know it.
I felt that I was walking on eggs as I went around the walls toward the wardrobe. I kept my eyes on the bathroom doorway. The small room was in darkness.
At the wardrobe, I slipped off my right shoe. My heart was pounding. Carefully, I turned the small knob on the metal door. I jerked open the door.
There was nothing inside it.
And that meant he had to be in the bathroom, in the darkness. Breathing through my mouth, I started toward the bathroom.
At that instant, Patsy awoke with a scream. Involuntarily I dug myself in against the wall. Her eyes were wide open and she was sitting up in bed.
She looked at me and began to cry. Her eyes filled with tears, they rolled down her cheeks and into her mouth. She sobbed brokenly and put out her tiny arms to me.
And the yawning, dark bathroom doorway was between us.
“Go to sleep, baby,” I whispered. “Go to sleep, Patsy. Go to sleep.”
I tried to make my voice reassuring. But she must have sensed the terror in it. She screamed louder, and I knew in a minute she would roll off the bed.
The bathroom door swung out. I stood her crying as long as I could. Bracing myself, I slammed the door shut, expecting to hear the blast of gunfire. There was only silence. There was a makeshift lock on the door and I fastened it, knowing it wouldn’t restrain a growing child.
I went across to Patsy and picked her up. With my hand on her chest, I could feel her heart. It was thudding almost as raggedly as my own. I held her soft hair against my mouth.
“It’s all right, baby,” I whispered. “Its all right.”
I dropped the right shoe I’d intended to use as a club. I kept whispering to her until her sobs subsided to hiccups. I held her head against my shoulder then and walked her back and forth across the room until she fell asleep again.
I began to smile at the way I was walking with one shoe off. Her hand against my throat relaxed and she was sleeping. I felt a little better now.
There was a wide dresser across from the twin beds. I pulled out the top drawer, padded it with pillows and lay Patsy in it to sleep. She snuggled down in the pillows, and I stood there thinking, I’m alone again.
I tilted a straight chair against the bathroom door. The air forced into the room by the ventilating system was heavy and cool. It made you sluggish.
But I knew I couldn’t sleep.
I reached up and snapped out the light. Moonlight made the room gray. I could hear the throb of the motors, the waves slapping endlessly against the hull of the ship. From up in the salon I could hear the small ensemble playing music. It seemed so far away. I tried to imagine people up there laughing and dancing and drinking.
But I couldn’t even envy them. All I could really see was my brother Ray’s face, the way that man had looked in the road the night they said I was drunk. I could see Nelson begging me to find Connice for him. And I began to see Nelson’s face as it would look when I was through with him. I didn’t try to see beyond that moment. That was all there was for me.
What a plan Nelson and his brain men hatched up! Even that tramp asking me for a cigarette on the bridge down by that park in Honolulu. The attack by Eddie Alkao and the hopped up knifer. All part of that plan. He’ll find Connice and we’ll be rid of both of them.
One thing was sure, Nelson had sent along somebody to hatch that plan. Who was it? The minute the first part of it flopped, and Alkao’s knifer missed, they went into the second part. Frame him for Connice’s murder!
I shivered. The nearer I got now to Henry Nelson, the higher the walls around him would get, the sharper the spikes in the nets he’d toss up to stop me.
And that brought me back to Mike Rafferty. He’d always been decent to me. And in thirteen years I’d done him a lot of favors. Big favors. They hadn’t ever paid off, because once I was the imitation of the honest cop. I lived on the salary they paid me. Honest to God I did. My kid brother Ray was the idealist in the family, but I tried to be worthy of him, by sticking off the graft. Sometimes Sally, Ray’s wife, said she was impatient with both of us. “Get it while you can,” she said. “Do you think the people are going to appreciate what you’re trying to do? They’ll be the first to laugh at you!”
“Right’s right,” Ray said. “And wrong’s wrong.”
Sally said we were fools. But Ray couldn’t see it that way right up to the last. And I tried to pretend that I agreed with him, for his sake. It was a hell of a big thing he was trying to do, and I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t on his side, for all the good it would do him!
I had to get that out of my mind to keep from bawling. So I tried to dig into this thing about Mike Rafferty again. There were those favors. As I said, I’d never taken anything. But there was the understanding. At least, I thought so. Mike Rafferty had said it enough. “If there’s ever anything I can do, Dan. Call on me. Half of what I’m doing for your brother Ray, is for you, kid, whether you want it that way or not. But I’m on the cuff to you, Dan. And when you want help, holler Rafferty.”
But there had been none of that in Mike Rafferty’s face tonight. The only thing I could think was that maybe he had thought I had sold out to Nelson. But what the hell. Me. A punk. An ex-cop, with two years in Raiford behind me? He wouldn’t walk across the street to spit on such a nobody. He sure as hell wasn’t going to trail me to Hawaii to kill me because I’d gone to work for Henry Nelson.
The fact that I couldn’t find a reason for Mike Rafferty’s hatred of me, didn’t lessen the reality of it. He meant to kill me. He thought I knew why, and he wasn’t waiting for me to ask questions.
I have never been so sleepy in my life. My eyelids were so heavy I had to dig my fists into them to keep them open. Twice I almost fell asleep. The third time my head sank on my chest, I couldn’t lift it. I must have fallen asleep.
I heard this pounding on the door at my head a long time before I even knew where I was. It took that much longer to realize someone was insistently pounding on the door.
“Well,” he said expansively. “I guess you’re free now.
I got up from the chair and leaned sluggishly against the wall.
The pounding continued.
“Who is it?” I said.
“Captain Spoor,” said the voice. “Open the door, please.”
I snapped on the light and pushed the chair out of the way. I opened the door slowly.
It was the Captain all right. An executive officer was beside him.
Captain Spoor was smiling broadly.
“I’m sorry to waken you, Mr. Henderson. But I’ve just had wonderful news. Both by wireless and over the twelve o’clock newscast from Honolulu. An American tramp was run over on Kam Highway. He is in the hospital. A gun was found on him, the ballistics check showed that it was the same gun that killed Mrs. Connice Nelson. He has confessed that he murdered her while you were being attacked in the Bombay Grill. Isn’t that wonderful news?”
I just looked at him.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. It’s wonderful.”
You’ve nothing to worry about when you reach San Francisco, have you? I think that’s a wonderful thing, Mr. Henderson. That’s why I didn’t wait until morning to tell you the news. Well … Congratulations, Mr. Henderson. It’s good to know you’re out of trouble.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. It’s wonderful.”
He looked at me and frowned. “Well, goodnight, Mr. Henderson. I know you’ll sleep a lot better
now, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Now I’ll sleep just ducky.”
He gave me an odd look, and then said goodnight again. I locked the door and stood there. Then I went over and fell across a bed.
But I couldn’t sleep. I kept staring at that chair tilted against the bathroom door. At last I got up and kicked the chair out of the way.
My eyes were burning. My face was all twisted up as I half tore the lock from the door.
“All right,” I said hoarsely, “come on out. Or I’m coming in to get you.”
I threw the door open.
The light from behind me lighted up the little room. Dorothy had strung diapers all over the place. Otherwise it was empty. I stood there staring at it.
But I was too damned tired even to laugh.
CHAPTER SIX
I TOOK PATSY up to breakfast the next morning at seven-thirty.
I had just finished getting the last spoonful of oatmeal splattered all over both of us, and Patsy was crowing happily and beating her tray with her spoon when Dorothy sat down at our table.
“Hello,” she said. “May I eat breakfast with you?”
I wiped oatmeal off my face and said sure. “What are you doing up this time of the day?”
She blushed. “I wanted to eat breakfast with you.”
“How’d you know we’d be up here this time of the day?”
She smiled now. “Oh, I just asked myself what I would do if I wanted to avoid an old maid school teacher at breakfast, and I got this answer.”
“I’ll bet you were a whiz at arithmetic.”
“I was forever good at it,” she said. “Two and two are always four.”
“In all the nice safe lives it is,” I said.
She ordered her breakfast. “I couldn’t get you out of my mind,” she said. “I tried to. But I kept thinking you’d think I was a silly fool last night if you thought of me at all.”
“I thought about you,” I said.
She looked up quickly. Her cheeks were bright. “Did you?”
“Yes. I thought you were afraid of me. I was glad. It’s better that way.”
“Why? Because you were mixed up in that murder back in Honolulu?”
That was letting me have it straight, all right.
I gave it back to her. “Partly,” I said. “Mostly because I’m the sort of person I am — and you’re the sort you are. We don’t go together. I never met any school teachers before.”
“And I never met any one like you before,” she said.
I stared at her. “And what are you looking for? A thrill? Don’t tell me you’re one of those wide eyed little — ”
“No,” she said. “I’m not. I could be all right. I’ve been starved long enough for excitement. But I’m not. I’m honest with you, Dan. I — I — you — you’re the first man I ever met who makes me feel the way I do inside. I — I want to run away from you. And because I do, I know that I mustn’t. Do you understand?”
“No,” I said quietly. “Two and two didn’t make four this time.”
“I’ve got to get over Fred. I’ve got to get him out of my mind. Since I first saw you, I haven’t thought about him at all, except when I was telling you about him. If I’m not afraid of you — if I don’t run away — you can help me. And — maybe — only you — ”
“Gonna take me for medicinal purposes only, eh? Okay, that’s fine. That’s the way it should be — for us.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I didn’t mean that at all.” They brought our breakfast. She sat there punching at her scrambled eggs with her fork. “I’m not that selfish and self centered. I — I really thought I might help you, too. I told you — you looked unhappy — miserably unhappy — ”
“Forget it,” I told her coldly. “I’m not unhappy. I’m scared. Scared silly. Inside, here. In my guts.”
“Why, Dan?” She looked at me. “It might help if you told me about it.”
“No thanks. It’s a long story. And it would frighten you. You couldn’t listen to it, and go back to your first grade and tell your kids that two and two are always four. Sometimes two and two are sixty, and sometimes they don’t add up at all. You just forget it, honey, and run back to your ten school teachers. You go on dreaming about your Fred, and how you gave him everything, and how all men are lice. You go on believing that until you meet some poor insurance salesman, and marry him; he’ll take care of you as long as he lives, and after he dies.”
She looked up at me. Her eyes were wet. “Please don’t,” she said. “You are unhappy, Dan. And you are bitter. You do need someone so terribly.”
I shook my head. “I got Patsy, and my hands are full.”
Dorothy tried to smile. “At least,” she said. “Let me help you with her today. I’d like to, really I would. And I’ll try to really help this time.”
I looked at her. She had temporarily stopped Mike Rafferty down in my room. Why should I send her away? As long as she was with me, there was a chance. And a chance was what I wanted.
“Sure,” I said. “Sure. After breakfast, we’ll take Patsy up on the deck and sun her.”
• • •
THEY BROUGHT A play pen up on the sun deck. We put Patsy in it, along with a little brownskinned baby whose mother was Hawaiian, and whose father was a flop eared, orange headed kid from Kansas. The babies played and beat each other over the head with rattles.
Dorothy and I lay back in deck chairs. I stared at the sky. It was gray around the edges, although the sun was bright on us. Dorothy was sitting up watching the wide trail of white that stretched out in our wake.
“You know a lot about babies,” she said. “How did you learn to make up those fancy, one pin diapers?”
“My brother Ray and his wife Sally,” I told her, watching the sky, “had a baby. A boy named Donnie. Raymond Donald. I always wished they’d named him Daniel, after me. But I guess Ray was kind of ashamed of me. Anyway, I used to baby sit for them.”
“You? A baby sitter?”
I didn’t smile. I didn’t turn my head. “I’ve done a lot of things in my time,” I said. “I used to listen to Donnie’s prayers, and it had been so long since I’d said the Lord’s Prayer, I had to have Sally teach it to me all over again so I could check on the kid when he was going to bed nights.
She lay back and smiled.
“What is Sally like?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Nothing like you. She’s a brunette. Very dark. She was getting a little heavy when Donnie was a baby. But the last time I saw her — ” I stopped talking and thought about Sally the way I’d last seen her.
“Was she pretty?”
“Sure. She was the only pretty woman I ever saw that I could trust. Ray had all the taste in our family. He got the only one as far as I’m concerned.”
“You sound like you’re a little in love with her yourself.”
“I’m not in love with anybody in the world,” I told her sharply.
“Oh, you wouldn’t admit it. Your own brother’s wife. I don’t know if I’d like her.”
I sat up. “Stop it!” I said. “Lay off it. Right now!”
She sat up, too. “Dan! I — my goodness I — ”
Patsy was staring at us. She began to scream. Dorothy got up and went to the play pen. She picked the baby up, but Patsy went right on screaming.
She just stared at Dorothy and wailed.
I took her. “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.” I just kept saying that until she stopped crying.
“What a man,” Dorothy said when I returned Patsy to the pen. “What a way with the ladies.”
I lay back in the deck chair again. “Not ladies, honey,” I said. “Dames. I don’t care anything about ladies.”
She laughed. “You care about Patsy. You love her enough so that she knows it. She feels safe with you. And goodness knows, that’s more than I do.”
“She doesn’t talk so much,” I said. I sat up and we faced each other. “Get th
is straight. I don’t love anybody. Not Patsy there — or a soul on the face of this earth. I won’t let myself. Life’s short. I don’t know, but if it’s love you’re counting on with me, you had better forget it right now.”
Dorothy didn’t say anything. When I looked up, I saw Rafferty standing about three yards away, across the baby pen. I put my hand on Dorothy’s arm to keep her in that chair.
“Have you changed your mind already?” she said. Then she saw what I was looking at. “Who is he?” she whispered.
“I told you,” I said evenly, “his name is Rafferty. Mike Rafferty.”
“Who is he?” she repeated in a whisper. “Why are you afraid of him?'”
“I don’t know,” I said. “And that’s the God’s truth.”
When I looked up again, he was gone.
By now the metallic gray overcast had moved up the sky. I called a steward from the railing.
“The man who was there by the ladder, what was his name?”
The steward shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m afraid I didn’t see him.”
“All right,” I said. “Thank you.”
Dorothy’s hand was tight on my arm.
“Dan you must talk to me,” she said. “You’ve got to tell me what this is all about. You must.”
Well, she was my protection at the moment. And she was all I had. So I told her. It was easy after I got started. I told her about how I came home from the Navy. Ray had come back from the Marines. He’d married Sally while he was away, and they lived in a trailer out near Sulphur Springs, and he rode the buses in to his law offices. He was a lawyer and a smart one. Ray worked his way through the University. I gave him the only help he got, and I couldn’t afford much on my salary. He didn’t like to take my money, and said he was keeping strict tab on it. I was going to get it all back.
He didn’t like cops. A lot of lawyers don’t. He was always saying he wished I would get into something honest. “You’ve a good mind, Dan. There’s no use your being a cop.”
But I went on being a cop, and Ray had a hard time after he got out into practice. Before he got into service though, he was in the County prosecutor’s office. That was the worst place in the world for a man like Ray. He was fine and honest, but he was intolerant of crime and criminals. Tampa is made up of all kinds of people. There are thousands of Spanish who speak no English. There are Negroes. There are mixtures of backwoods Floridians, and old families, and rich northerners. It goes in for gambling, and strong politicians with rugged methods. Ray put the pressure on in a lot of the wrong places. He was plenty hated.
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