Wait For The Wagon

by Mary Lasswell

  Dr. Freemartin grinned feebly. He was greenish-white and holding on by his eyebrows.

  “Just the same,” Mrs. Rasmussen said, “I’m gettin’ out the tax receipts, my widow’s pension card from the Veteran’s Association an’ the bill o’ sale to the car.”

  “That oughta settle their hash,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “I have my honorary life membership card in the National Education Association,” Miss Tinkham said, “and the rent receipts from my agent in Ohio.”

  “What about Ol’-Timer? Got your driver’s license handy?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “He’s my hired man,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Besides he knows more grips than the United Commercial Traveler’s put together.”

  “I suggest”—Miss Tinkham leaned over the front seat—”that you have some kind of identification ready, Doctor Freemartin, just as a time-saving measure. You should have no difficulty producing your narcotics number.”

  “Narcotics? Narcotics?” Dr. Freemartin screamed. “I don’t know anything about narcotics. I’m not that kind of a doctor. I’ll just have a little gin while we’re waiting.”

  “Take a good swig, bub. You’re gonna need it.” Mrs. Feeley leaned out and hailed a passing motorcycle cop. “What’s the hitch?”

  “Simmer down, Grandmaw,” he said. “Somebody is trying to put a fast one over on Uncle Sam. They’re trying to bring in dangerous freight. Strictly against the law—and we’re going to find it if we have to stay here all year. The cars aren’t moving till we get it. It was seen, plain as day. We know it’s here somewhere and we mean to have it, so get out your knitting or play Canasta. You’ll have a long wait. There’s a store and restaurant across the highway there, if you’re hungry.”

  “Thanks, pal,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Guess there’s nothin’ for it but to toughen it out. May be here for hours, so we might’s well have a beer.”

  Miss Tinkham spied the store.

  “I have a violent headache,” she said. “I’ll just step across to the store and get some coffee. One gets so accustomed to one’s morning coffee…”

  “Bring some for all of us.” Mrs. Rasmussen handed her some bills. “How about you, Doctor Freemartin?”

  “Never touch it. Keeps me awake.” “You look nervous enough without it,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “You ain’t got nothin’ to be nervous about, have you? You’re with respectable people, citizens an’ taxpayers. You got money on you, enough to keep you till you set up shop. You ain’t carryin’ nothin’ illegal, are you?”

  “Certainly not,” Dr. Freemartin said angrily. “I told you they had nothing on me.”

  “Then sit quiet an’ stop bitin’ them fingernails. Drives me to destruction, that’s what it does. Just relax an’ be lack-a-daisy like us.”

  “Just call up some of your old defensive engrams,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “I got nothing to defend,” Dr. Freemartin squeaked.

  “Of course not,” she said, “but may I say that I have seen you more…chipper? You are facing a new and different future. Unless I am much mistaken, you will find more than one person in California waiting for you with open arms. Please to excuse me; I am perishing for my coffee.”

  Miss Tinkham returned forty minutes later to find that the cars had scarcely advanced a foot. She handed Mrs. Rasmussen the carton of coffee and the paper cups.

  “Where is Old-Timer? Doctor Freemartin?”

  “They got T.B., too.” Mrs. Feeley pointed to the cactus clump.

  “What luck! I could not get a satisfactory answer out of Mike Shea’s office in San Diego. They were quite uncivil. They said he was on an important case and couldn’t be bothered by cranks, if you please.”

  “Ain’t that a crock!” Mrs. Feeley said. “Don’t sound like our police.”

  “Then I tried Inspector Connolly in Pittsburgh; that’s what kept me so long. No luck there either. The same answer from his wife. I think she must have swallowed a dictaphone: ‘Don’t let Freemartin out of your sight, and keep going.’ It infuriated me, because he got us into this mess and he simply must help us out of it. Obviously, they have been tipped off as to what we are carrying. Since I can reach neither the San Diego officials nor Inspector Connolly, the only solution I see is to turn the cargo and passenger over to these men. They represent the federal government. It is too dangerous for us to handle by ourselves any longer.”

  “You’re right,” Mrs. Feeley said. “We’d never get by ’em otherwise, ’cause they’ll search the car sure as shootin’.”

  “We haven’t a prayer,” Miss Tinkham agreed. “They would find the prize in a routine search.”

  “We might get in Dutch for protectin’ him an’ hiding the stuff,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “They ain’t nothin’ else to do. You go to the head man. Miss Tinkham. Tell him the plain truth. We ain’t got no choice.”

  Three and a half hours later Miss Tinkham came striding up to the Cadillac blowing her nose loudly into her best chiffon handkerchief.

  “Where the hell you been?” Mrs. Feeley said. “We moved up some an’ was afraid you couldn’t find us. Doctor Freemartin’s got his nails chewed off clear to his elbow. He was real concerned about you, wanted to go out searchin’ after you, but I told him Miss Tinkham always comes off winner; she’ll make ’em understand that we’re okay and let us go on our way.”

  “I have never been so insulted in my whole life,” Miss Tinkham said. “They made me wait nearly two hours before I could speak to the supervising officer and he told me to go back to the car and take my place in line with the rest of the people and wait my proper turn.” She got into the car and sat down sadly. “I insisted to every officer that I met that I had something important to communicate.” She noticed Dr. Freemartin’s deadly stillness that betrayed the fact that he was listening with every pore of his skin. “I tried to tell at least twenty officers about this poor woman ahead of us who is expiring in front of their very eyes, and all they did was accuse me of wanting to step out of place in line!”

  Dr. Freemartin slumped forward into a more relaxed attitude and reached for his gin bottle.

  “Don’t look now,” Mrs. Feeley said, “but here comes somebody.”

  The inspector stopped at the car ahead of Mrs. Feeley’s Cadillac.

  “Perhaps they did listen to me after all,” Miss Tinkham said.

  The officer had his head inside the car where the sick woman lay and suddenly withdrew it holding high in his hand a lemon that the woman had been sucking. He blew loudly on a police whistle. Immediately a group of officers joined him and turned out all the luggage in the car. After a thorough search, the people were allowed to drive off.

  “We got it!” The officer came up to the blue Cadillac proudly. “Yessir. We found it. Nobody can bring a lemon into California! Nobody. We got it.”

  “An’ a hell of a git you got!” Mrs. Feeley shouted. “Looks like you’d find more to do than take lemons away from a sick woman dyin’ o’ the heat. You an’ your tish-tish flies!”

  “Take it easy, lady. Where were you born?”

  “I squatted behind every cactus in the state,” Mrs. Feeley said. “That’d make me a native daughter, even if I hadn’t been born in Saffercisco!”

  “You’re a card, aren’t you?”

  “An’ the joker’s wild!” Mrs. Feeley laughed. “Whaddya want from us? We’re later’n hell now.”

  “You a legal resident of California?”

  “Legal resident? Own half o’ San Diego,” Mrs. Feeley blustered. “Well, anyway, the biggest junk yard an’ parkin’ lot in the city. Show him the tax bill, Mrs. Rasmussen.”

  “San Diego, huh? Big fire there coupla nights ago—burned down several blocks. This seems to be in order as far as you’re concerned. Who owns the car?”

  “I do.” Mrs. Feeley handed him the transfer of ownership paper.

  “How come these New Jersey license plates?” the officer said.

  “We went up visiting my nephew; he’s in the N
avy, a lieutenant, he is. Some of our friends gave us the car. We gonna get San Diego plates soon as we get home.”

  The inspector walked around to the other side of the car and looked at Old-Timer.

  “Show him your driver’s license,” Mrs. Feeley said. “He’s my hired man. Been with me for years.”

  “How about these ladies?” The inspector looked at Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen.

  “We live with Mrs. Feeley,” Miss Tinkham said. “I am a retired teacher of public school music.”

  “You both on the pension?”

  “I got the Veteran’s Widow Pension.” Mrs. Rasmussen waved her card proudly.

  “I mean the state pension for the aged.”

  Miss Tinkham drew herself up to her full height and snapped open her lorgnette. It was so cloudy she could no more see through it than she could see through a pair of stove lids.

  “Sir, not even the uniform of the United States Government gives you the right to insult us! For the aged, indeed!”

  “All right, Hetty Green,” the inspector smiled, “we just want to save the taxpayers a few dollars if we can. Who might this gentleman be?”

  “It might be Jones, but it isn’t,” Mrs. Feeley said. “This here is Doctor Freemartin. He’s goin’ to set up…”

  “An office for the treatment of emotional diseases.” Dr. Freemartin opened his wallet and produced his professional card.

  “This seems to be in order.” the inspector said. “Do you think it’s safe to carry that much cash with you?”

  “With these women,” Dr. Freemartin said cockily. “I’m beginning to think they drove the escape car in the Brink job. You’ll never get anything away from them.”

  “No lemons, oranges, citrus fruit of any kind?” the inspector looked inside the car.

  “Orange, cherry, lemon and lime. You sound like the Jello program,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Nothin’ but beer for us.”

  “No plants? Roots? Cuttings?”

  “Gawd, no!” Mrs. Feeley said. “Got too many of ’em at home now. We’re hurryin’ fast as we can to get home an’ take care of the garden. Damn thing will be growed up so high you can’t see the house. Them red geraniums will be meetin’ us at the front gate.”

  “That does it.” The inspector wrote notes in a small book. “On your way, girls.”

  “Ain’t you gonna give us no sticker?” Mrs. Rasmussen was disappointed.

  “He knows where to stick it! Step on it, Ol’-Timer,” Mrs. Feeley muttered, waving pleasantly to the officer. “The back o’ my hand to you, you great gossoon. You seen the last of us! Are we in California for real?”

  “We are indeed,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “Stop the car, Ol’-Timer, while I get out an’ kiss the ground.”

  “Never seen them orange trees before, did you?” Mrs. Rasmussen said to Dr. Freemartin.

  “The hills of home!” Miss Tinkham was rapturous. “Eucalyptus fills the air. See the graceful palm and pepper trees! The purple jacaranda. Fill your eyes, glut your soul with the beauty of the scene.”

  “Reckon we can make it in by sixteen hundred?” Mrs. Feeley said. “Nothin’ wouldn’t convince me I was home like seein’ a liberty boat full o’ sailors comin’ ashore. We can drive by the foot o’ Broadway on the way to the Ark.”

  “Gonna get us a slab o’ Monterey jack-cheese to go with the beer, an’ some green hot peppers an’ fresh crabmeat to make us a gumbo. Good we never had the gas shut off at the Ark or nothin’. Don’t forget we need ice.”

  “An’ beer!” Mrs. Feeley said. “We’re just about gonna come out even. How’s your stinkin’ gin holdin’ out, Doctor? I’m so glad to be home, I don’t even have no hard feelin’s toward you.”

  The proximity of the promised land had restored Dr. Freemartin’s self-confidence in large measure.

  “Why should you have hard feelings toward me? You have adjusted yourself to my personality, you have stopped glorifying the reflex, your infantile aggressiveness has decreased…”

  “Don’t admit nothin’, Mrs. Feeley,” Mrs. Rasmussen cautioned from the back seat. “He’ll be sendin’ you a bill!”

  Mrs. Feeley roared. “His first goddam customer—in a pig’s eye! What’s keepin’ you so quiet in the jubilee, Miss Tinkham?” Mrs. Feeley turned to look at her. Miss Tinkham tipped her head backward, indicating the rear window of the car.

  “Traffic is moving in too close for comfort,” she said. “The encroachment of civilization. I am saving my private celebration until we are safely inside the Ark.” While she was talking, Miss Tinkham held her right hand low in her lap pointing vigorously with her thumb to the car in back of the blue Cadillac.

  Mrs. Feeley’s eyes grew so big that the whites showed all the way around them. Her mouth made a capital O, but Miss Tinkham held her finger to her lips in warning. An inconspicuous gray sedan behind them held five men dressed in rough clothing, sport shirts minus ties. They all wore heavy dark glasses. Two men sat in the front seat. One drove the car and the other cradled a machine gun in his arms. Mrs. Rasmussen turned for a look and Miss Tinkham felt her grow tense on the seat beside her.

  “Where are we, exactly?” Miss Tinkham’s voice was studiedly vague. “Take a left turn on University, please, Old-Timer. See if we can lose some of this annoying traffic.”

  Mrs. Feeley reached up and twisted the rear view mirror out of the line of Dr. Freemartin’s vision.

  “Damn thing gets in my way,” she said, “three of us squashed in here like this. Old-Timer has to lean halfway out the car now.”

  “It’s the Welcome Wagon from the Chamber o’ Commerce, most likely,” Mrs. Rasmussen said in a weak voice.

  “I don’t think that is quite the kind of atomizer they use,” Miss Tinkham said. “It is more likely a reception committee for Visiting Firemen.”

  “Like the spokes of a wheel across the country it spreads out,” Mrs. Feeley said. “That’s what the man told us in Pittsburgh.”

  “Oh, you are thinking of the Rotary Club,” Miss Tinkham said. She had proof that the car was tailing them as they made the turn onto University and her hunch about local hijackers was confirmed. “Turn back onto Broadway, Old-Timer, please. There is nothing more annoying than having ill-bred persons breathing down the back of one’s neck. See if you can’t just put a bus or a streetcar between us and them. Shocking lack of privacy. What a grapevine!”

  “Loaded, ain’t it?” Mrs. Feeley stuck her head out of her window in an effort to distract Dr. Freemartin’s attention. She grabbed his arm and dragged him close to her side.

  “See that there?” she shouted, “that’s the Useless Grant Hotel. Bet you never seen nothin’ like it in your life.”

  Miss Tinkham reached forward and slid Aphrodite from between the jump seats to a position next the door on her side of the car. Mrs. Feeley turned for a quick glimpse of what was going on.

  Miss Tinkham signaled for silence.

  “Doctor Freemartin, ain’t the fountain beautiful on the Plaza?” Mrs. Rasmussen said. She peeped back and saw the gangsters’ car gaining on them. There was only a panel truck between them and the gray sedan. She drew her breath quickly, but decided she better keep talking: “You wouldn’t hardly believe, Doctor Freemartin, would you, that that there fountain’s been covered with icicles many a time!” She saw Miss Tinkham open the car door on her side noiselessly.

  “Yes, sir”—Mrs. Feeley raised her voice—”froze as cold as a Minnesota well-digger’s…”

  Old-Timer stopped for the red light.

  “Feet,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  Miss Tinkham flashed out of the car like a rocket, carrying Aphrodite with her. Mrs. Rasmussen saw Miss Tinkham duck into a pawnshop on the corner. The sign of the three golden balls was disappearing from view when Dr. Freemartin whirled in the front seat.

  “Where’s she gone? Lemme out! Lemme out!” He had Mrs. Feeley by the throat choking her with his long, agile fingers. Mrs. Rasmussen cracked him over the head with his own c
ase knife just as Old-Timer succeeded in breaking the dope-peddler’s grip on Mrs. Feeley’s neck. A line of cars in the four-thirty traffic jam honked angrily behind the Cadillac.

  “Go on with the light,” Mrs. Feeley shouted. “I’ll take care of this bastard! Took me by surprise, he did.”

  She was pounding him lustily over the head with her fists when Old-Timer came to a halt at the red light in the next block. The gray car slid in close. Mrs. Rasmussen recognized the sport shirts and dark goggles. The man with the machine gun got out, opened the door of the Cadillac, and sat next to Mrs. Rasmussen.

  “Follow that car,” he said. “You’ll have to hand it over now, Freemartin.”

  Old-Timer followed the car as he was instructed to do. Mrs. Feeley sat as though turned to stone.

  Dr. Freemartin turned and looked at the man. His face was the color of a man’s who has been drowned three days, but his voice was insolent.

  “A heist?” he sneered. “You’re going to get everything the hen laid but the egg. I haven’t got anything. You boys are looking for some of Crusher’s mobsters; I’m in the legit. Nothing but analysis. You fellows can’t pin anything…” He stopped short when he saw the building in front of which the first car stopped. The American flag flew from its staff and the whole building had an uncompromising air about it. Another man got out of the car and came up to Mrs. Feeley’s side. He opened the door and reached across her.

  “You better come quietly.” He snapped the handcuffs on Freemartin. “How are you, Mrs. Feeley?” He took off his sun goggles.

  “Goddlemighty!” Mrs. Feeley cried. “It’s Mike Shea! No wonder we couldn’t get you on the phone!”

  “Busy day. Do you mind getting out while we go over the car?”

  “Then you ain’t gangsters?” Mrs. Rasmussen sounded slightly disappointed.

  “Well, you know all the things the Republicans call us, ma’am.” He helped Mrs. Rasmussen out of the car. Old-Timer got out and stood on the sidewalk with the Chief of Police. They watched goggle-eyed as two experienced federal men went over the Cadillac.

  “Gawd,” Mrs. Feeley shrieked, “you’re smashin’ our car! You can’t rip out upholstery like that! You can X-ray it, but don’t wreck it. Timmy give it to us—I’ll have the law on you.”