The Fall Guy

by Joe Barry

  “Where did he take you?”

  “Around the Loop for a little while. Then he catches a movie and I sit right behind him. It was a pretty good movie, too. It’s about a guy that—”

  “Skip the movie, Merwin. Where did the guy take you?”

  “He don’t sit it out. He blows before the end of the picture.” Merwin mourned. “Now, I got to go back and see what happens to this guy in the movie.”

  “Skip it,” Rush said.

  “Oh, yeah. Well, after we leave the movie he takes a quick walk around the Loop, and goes into Marshall Field’s. It’s almost closing time and there’s a pretty big crowd because of a sale on something. Then all at once he ain’t there any more. I don’t know where he goes. He just takes a powder. I looked around till they kicked me out of the store and then I made the Loop a couple of times, but he don’t show. So I flag back to Barney’s to find you and I miss you. I been out looking for the guy since, only I don’t find him. Then Barney says you’re up here and up I come.”

  Rush was silent for a long time. He had not paid much attention to the dark man, but if that person was anxious not to be followed, maybe he was important.

  “That’s okay, Merwin. Run along now, but see me at Barney’s tomorrow. I want you to do some snooping tomorrow sometime.”

  “Okay.” He fidgeted a while. “I’m sorry, Rush.”

  “That’s okay, Merwin. Beat it.”

  Merwin left and Rush sat there trying again to find a pattern, but none came. He stood up and turned out his desk lamp and headed out through the darkened outer office. He opened the door to the hall and tripped, falling headlong in the corridor. It was dark in the hallway and Rush had tripped over the body that lay across his door-sill.

  Rush’s first thought was that someone had teed off on Merwin. Then he knew better. Merwin wore pants and this body was covered by a dress. He picked it up and swung back through the door into his inner office, where he stretched the girl on a divan and switched on the desk lamp. “Quite nice,” he thought, “and still alive, too.” A spatter of water from the carafe on his desk brought her to.

  “Wha—wha—where am I?” she sputtered through the water that gagged in her throat.

  Rush changed from water to scotch from a bottle in his desk drawer. She made a face and sat up looking round the room, her eyes photographing every detail. She said, “Are you Rush Henry?”

  Rush nodded.

  “I want to see you,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “I want to retain you as a bodyguard.”

  Rush didn’t say so, but he thought, “Here we go again.” He said, “I don’t take that kind of business.”

  “But you must. I’ll give you a thousand dollars for a retainer.”

  A light flickered in the gray-green of Rush’s eyes. “Why do you think you need a bodyguard a thousand dollar’s worth?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “Start with where you pass out on my door-sill.”

  “I was badly frightened. I must have fainted.”

  “Frightened of what?”

  “Well, you see those men have been following me for so long and there are so many of them that I can’t recognize them all and I saw a face peeking around the corner of the hall and—”

  She ran on, and Rush turned his back to pour himself a drink. He kept his back to her till she stopped suddenly in mid-sentence.

  “You’re not listening.”

  “No,” Rush said. “What you were saying didn’t mean anything. Start back at the beginning and tell why and I’ll listen.”

  “It started when my mother died.”

  “What started?”

  “My stepfather, he wanted to marry me.”

  “Why?” Rush asked.

  “Mother left me all of dad’s money. Mr. O’Hara, he’s my stepfather, didn’t get any. He wants to marry me so he can get his hands on mother’s money.”

  “So,” Rush said.

  “So I ran away. Then it started. Those men following me wherever I went. At first there were only two of them, but they must have realized that I recognized them because different men started to turn up wherever I was.”

  “What do you want me to do for the thousand dollars?” ,

  “Find out who those men are and make them stay away.”

  “That’ll cost money. Somebody’s paying them, and you’ll have to pay more to make them stop.”

  “I don’t care how much it costs, I’ll pay it. I can’t stand it this way any longer. I’m afraid to go to bed at night. I jump at shadows. You saw how I fainted just now in the hall.”

  “Yes,” Rush said. “About the thousand dollars.”

  “I have it right here.” She pulled a coin purse from a pocket of her coat and took out a rumpled thousand-dollar bill, handing it to Rush. He examined it closely in the light of the desk lamp and stuffed it into a vest pocket.

  “You have a bodyguard, lady. What do I call you?”

  “Hope O’Hara. You may call me Hope.”

  “Thank you.” Rush said it with a straight face. He looked at her for a long moment wondering how ethical it was to take her retainer when he already had two jobs. He decided he could keep three balls in the air at once, and he could always return the thousand dollars if it got too tough. “Oh yeah?” he thought.

  “I think,” he said, “that, everything considered, I can afford to start by buying you a drink.”

  In Barney’s, the hard-bitten proprietor said, “Hello, Rush,” and nodded appreciatively at Hope. They had several drinks there and moved across the street for steaks.

  “The evening,” Rush said sixty minutes later, “is weakening, but there’s life in it yet. What would you like to do on your thousand dollars?”

  “I’ve been cooped up in a hotel room for so long I’d like to get out and dance or something.”

  “The College Inn? The Drake? The Palmer House? Take your choice.”

  “Oh, those places are all too crowded. Isn’t there some smaller place?”

  “Well, if you don’t mind a little atmosphere, there’s Cato’s.”

  “What is Cato’s?”

  “A kind of joint up the street a ways. Nothing very fancy and some of the characters that inhabit the place aren’t too regular with their Lifebuoy, but the liquor is number one and a guy plays boogie piano till you can’t stand it.”

  “That is for me.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Rush paid the checks and they walked the few blocks to Cato’s. As usual, it was crowded, but a waiter with imagination took them through the crowd to a spot almost on top of the piano. He jerked a potted plant from a small table and shoved aside two potted customers to drag up chairs.

  “What’ll you have, Rush?” he asked.

  “Rye, straight.” He looked at Hope.

  “That’ll be all right,” she said.

  The drinks came, and they tasted them. Beside them the piano burst into an orgy of eight-beat rhythm and conversation became impossible. Rush sat half-turned in his seat listening. His eyes roamed the room idly. Suddenly he stiffened. In the crowd of dancers edging the piano was Leslie Germaine, looking anything but demure, clinging to a short man in a gray flannel suit. All Rush could see of her partner was his back. A rather strange back, wider by far at the hips than the shoulders. He could see the back of a pale, colorless head of hair. Then Leslie Germaine cocked open one eye and focused. The focus centered on Rush. Over the general noise level Rush couldn’t hear what she said, but he saw her shove her partner away and grab his arm bringing him directly to the table where Rush and Hope were sitting.

  “The detective,” she shrieked at Rush. “Why aren’t you detecting?”

  “Even detectives have nights off,” Rush said. “Miss Germaine, Miss O’Hara.” He indicated Hope across the table. Her eyes, he noticed, were on Leslie’s companion. Then she saw Rush watching her and quickly turned back to him. Rush filed the look she had given the blond boy for future r
eference.

  “This is Wilmer,” Leslie screamed. “I don’t know his other name. But he’s a lovely dancer.”

  Rush surveyed Wilmer. His face was as colorless as his hair. Pale gray eyes with white lashes. “Almost an albino,” Rush thought. A pudgy nose, and full red lips the only color in his face. Then two things happened almost unnoticed and Rush got a new picture of Wilmer. Rush glanced at the bulge under the left shoulder of Wilmer’s coat and Wilmer caught the direction of his gaze. Wilmer’s eyes froze and his lips became a thin red slash.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Wilmer,” Rush said.

  “A pleasure.” Wilmer’s voice would have grated if it hadn’t been so high in pitch. It merely sounded girlishly angry. That didn’t fool Rush. He had met Wilmer’s kind before. They could only be handled safely with gloves.

  The music which had thoughtfully stilled for their round of introductions burst into frenzy again. Leslie shouted something at Rush and dragged Wilmer to the dance floor. Rush watched them go with a calculating light in his eyes. Then he turned to Hope.

  “Like to struggle?”

  “In that mob? I’d rather get my massages in private.”

  Rush laughed and ordered another round of drinks.

  It got to be quite late. Rush looked at his watch and at Hope. She held her drinks well, but there was something in her eyes. It might be fright. Rush didn’t know.

  “I don’t want to go home, Rush.”

  “I suppose living in bars is all right if you like them, and I do,” Rush said. “But I also am fond of sleep.”

  “Take me home with you, Rush.”

  “Can you cook?”

  “I mean it, Rush. I’m afraid.”

  Rush looked at her for a minute.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I want to talk to you a little more and that’s as good a place as any.”

  They took a cab to the small bedroom, living room, kitchen and bath that Rush called home. As Rush opened the door and switched on the light, surprise was evident in Hope’s eyes. It wasn’t quite the apartment she had expected of Rush. Not many people, aside from Merwin, had ever seen this side of him. But Merwin wouldn’t know that the pictures on the walls and the books on the shelves were good pictures and good books. He would never get close enough to the books to realize that they had been read.

  Rush went into the kitchen and ran a coffee pot full of water. In the top he measured five careful spoonfuls of coffee. The pot he placed on the stove and lighted the burner beneath it. From a wall cupboard he took cups and saucers and a sugar bowl, from the refrigerator a bottle of cream. These he set on the table and waited for the coffee. In the living room Hope had finished an inspection and redemption of her features before the wall mirror and was looking over the books. The coffee was ready and Rush called to her.

  “This will do you good.”

  She came into the kitchen and sat across the table from him. They sipped coffee in silence for a time. Rush broke the silence.

  “Isn’t there anything else you can tell me about your stepfather?”

  “Well, he’s a tall, handsome, senatorial looking man with a great shock of white hair. When you first see him you feel as though here was a man you could trust with your last dollar. A man who could shoulder all your troubles and never feel them. That’s how he got mother. She had all of dad’s money and she didn’t know what to do with it. And she had me to look after. She was worrying all the time about how things would turn out. Then he turned up. She was an easy mark for him. It wasn’t until later, after he’d lost money for her, that she began to realize that she’d bought a pig in a poke.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know exactly. He may be back in Indianapolis. That’s our home town. But he may have followed me to Chicago. He’s always turning up somewhere and wanting to have a nice long talk with me. It always ends up with his wanting to marry me, the old goat.”

  “I? there anyone else you want to marry?”

  Hope looked at Rush curiously. “No, I’ve never had much contact with people my own age.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’ll be twenty-three in September.” That gave her an idea. “You’re not married, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then—“ she stopped, embarrassed.

  Rush got the thought. “Then why am I not in the army?”

  She nodded.

  Rush had a stock answer for that. “I was in an accident and now I have a silver plate in one shoulder. That makes me 4-F.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” Rush said. “Where have you been staying in Chicago?”

  “I had an aunt who lived on the North Side. I didn’t write that I was coming and she was in Vermont for the summer. I didn’t want to go back to Indianapolis so I took a room in a hotel.”

  Rush drained the last drop of his second cup of coffee. “Damn! Two o’clock,” he said. “I’ll never he able to get up in the morning. I’m going to bed.”

  “I’m tired, too,” Hope said. She rose from the table and went into the living room ahead of Rush. “Where’s the bedroom?”

  Rush pointed to a door. “There’s a very nice bed behind that door. You’ll like it. I’ll sleep here.” He indicated a studio couch along one wall.

  Hope’s eyes widened a little and she stood for a moment looking at Rush. He returned the stare unblinkingly, then turned away and started unbuttoning his coat.

  “Good night,” Hope said.

  “Good night,” Rush answered over his shoulder. The door closed behind Hope and Rush watched it for a second then went to the telephone on a stand beside the couch and lifted the receiver. He waited a moment and then whispered:

  “Call me at five.”

  5

  Five o’clock came speedily and Rush silenced the urgent ring of the phone with a quick stab at the receiver. Silently he dressed and as silently opened the door to the bedroom. With economy of motion he ran practiced hands through Hope O’Hara’s clothes. The coin purse he found and put on the dresser until he had finished his search. It was the only thing he found. He replaced the clothes exactly as he had found them and opened the purse. It contained a few dollar bills, a twenty, and some silver. It also contained a hotel key bearing the number 1001 and the tag of the Royal Hotel. He put the key in his pocket and the purse in the coat pocket he had taken it from. Then he slipped from the room and left the apartment.

  A cab took fifteen minutes to land him at the entrance of the hotel and he walked through the lobby entirely oblivious of the stare of a tall, pale man in black, wearing a string tie and sitting in a chair hidden by palms at one side of the lobby. Rush wasn’t looking for anybody. He was trying not to be seen himself. In the elevator he called ten as his floor and got out there, walking only a few steps from the elevator to room 1001. He placed his ear briefly against the door, then inserted the key in the lock, turning it with quiet care. Silently he pushed open the door and entered the room. It was a small anteroom off which opened a bedroom and bath and sitting room. A quick survey found no one in the apartment so he switched on lights and went to work. With an entire lack of waste motion Rush gave the apartment a thorough going over. He found nothing. The lack of anything in the three rooms to tie Hope O’Hara to any place or any person gave him pause. What few clothes hung in a closet or rested in the drawers bore no labels. It was a complete lack of identification that was a sort of identification in itself. He stood in the middle of the room with his back to the door thinking. It was a mistake.

  “There must be something I can do for you.” The voice caught Rush in mid-thought and he started to turn. The voice stopped him. “No, don’t turn yet. First, raise your hands just above your head, palms out, then turn slowly.” The man chuckled deep in his stomach as Rush’ followed his directions. He turned slowly and found a chubby, smiling man of about fifty framed in the doorway, a businesslike flat automatic held loosely in his fat fingers. “Tell me about you,” he
said. Rush detected the hardness beneath the pudgy smile.

  “Put up the gun and we’ll talk,” Rush said.

  “No,” the fat man said.

  Rush recognized the tone. “Okay,” he said. “I’m a private detective. I’ve been hired to protect a girl. This is her room and I’m giving it the once over. I like to know where I stand.”

  “Quite right. What are you protecting this girl from?”

  “She says from her stepfather.”

  “I see.”

  “And you?” Rush asked.

  “I am the stepfather.” He chuckled amiably. “What am I supposed to be doing that she needs protection?”

  “Trying to marry her.”

  “So.” The man seemed to meditate. “Maybe we’d better talk.” He put the gun in a side pocket and nodded at Rush to follow him “Come into my apartment. It’s just next door.” He ushered Rush through the next door down the hall. The interior was a duplicate of Hope O’Hara’s apartment. The man nodded through the door to the sitting room and Rush went ahead of him and walked to a chair which stood opposite a desk. He sat down. The older man followed him, going on to sit behind the desk. He pointedly took the gun from his pocket and laid it on the desk top. Then he looked up and let his eyes rest on Rush. It was a calculating glance.

  “I might as well introduce myself,” he said finally. “I am George O’Hara. Hope, as she told you, is my adopted daughter. There, however, the truth of her story ends.”

  “Yes?” Rush said.

  “Yes. I have control of the money her mother left her until she reaches the age of twenty-five. Her argument with me is, in truth, over an orchestra leader she wishes to marry. By the way, where is she?”

  “I don’t think I should tell you without consulting her. She is still my client.”

  “Commendable impulse, my good fellow, but I think you’d better tell me. You fellows operate under a license, I think, but it doesn’t give you license to break and enter. I would hate to mention this morning’s episode to the police.”

  “I wasn’t breaking and entering. I had a key, and perhaps my client’s permission. I’m in the clear.”

  “Well taken, young man, well taken.” He chuckled again. Then he stopped and the smile left his face. “You might indeed have had permission, but that was a fact entirely unknown to me. I pay the rent on that apartment and to me you could have been a common sneak-thief. I could have shot first and asked questions later.” He picked up the gun and let it hang from his index finger. “Where is my daughter, sir?”