He exploded.
“Call me when you’ve got that foul mind of yours cleaned out. Hang up. I got work to do.”
I did. I eased out of the booth, chuckling. Benny looked at me, his fat face asking me a question. The bookie had disappeared. I walked over to him.
I took my wallet out and laid a fin on the bar. Benny picked it up without a whimper.
“Benny, do me a favor.”
“Sure, Ed, sure.”
“Watch the store while I’m gone. If you see anybody at all hanging around this afternoon, give me the high sign when I get back.” Benny had a clear view of the front of my building which was directly beyond his saloon window, on the other side of the street.
“Anytime for you, Ed.” Benny and I were friends. But I imagine that the five-dollar bill always helped. Another good argument for Capital over Labor.
“If someone has been hanging around, tap out a beer for yourself to drink. That way I’ll know enough to come over and ask you about it. Okay, Benny?”
“I get it, Ed. Like this.” He shoved a glass under the bar tap and let some beer foam into it. He scooped it up with a smile. “A signal. Just like in the movies.”
“That’s it, Benny. Just like in the movies.”
I moved out of his joint across the street again to where the jalopy was parked.
The rain had fallen off to a light mist. A chill wind stole softly down the street. I turned up my collar against it and climbed into the front seat.
I let the car motor warm up before shoving her in gear. For a heap that had gone well over its own particular hill, the jalopy was still plenty serviceable. I felt the same way about it another man might feel about a dog he owned.
Only my dog had wheels. I rolled away from the curb and got nailed by a red light at the first corner. I lit a cigarette waiting for the light to change and checked the traffic.
I was flanked by a bright green coupé and one of those mile-long trailer cargo trucks that are jamming the streets of the city these days. I had nothing particular in mind except maybe my surprise visit to Randall Crandall at his business office.
The light changed and we moved out, the jalopy, the bright green coupé, and the trailer truck, like race horses leaving the starting post. I always like to be a winner. I gave the jalopy some gas and shot ahead of them. I had my wheels up and my flaps down. And I was headed for the East River Drive like a bat out of hell.
But I had two other bats for company.
The trailer truck plowed ahead of me with its mightier motor by all of three lengths. The bright green coupé edged alongside and then nosed ahead of me completely. I narrowed my eyes at that because it’s not exactly standard vehicular behavior to play tag with automobiles when it’s not a national holiday.
I gave the jalopy more gas and the bright green coupé fell behind again.
I shrugged, thought the hell with it, and then grabbed the steering wheel as if an electric charge had coursed right through it. I nearly rubbed my eyes in disbelief. Except that I needed them for the wheel.
New York wasn’t Denmark. But something was awfully rotten in little old New York.
The trailer truck had slammed on his brakes up ahead, and the big-as-life cab had angled across the lane right in front of me. There wasn’t room enough for a snake to wiggle past. And I was doing nearly forty.
I cursed, hitting the brakes hard. It was going to be close. Closer than I cared.
It was. The jalopy’s tires screamed like the agony of birth all over again and the wheel fought with my hands. The tonneau gave a sickening lurch as it tried to climb off the chassis. Joints screeched out of tune. The universal seemed to rear on its hind legs and then settled down with a thudding shock.
But I got the jalopy stopped. Barely three yards from the high-nosed cab of the truck. I cursed again. Because a quick look at the cab had shown me there was no one in it to curse.
Instinct made me look at my rear-view. It was a scene out of a Hitchcock movie.
The bright green coupé was bearing down on me like a line drive. And the somebody that was driving it was just leaving the car like one of those daredevil car drivers at crash rodeos.
I got the picture in two seconds.
It was the old sandwich treatment. The trailer truck was one slice of bread. The bright green coupé was the other slice.
And me and the jalopy was the jam.
NINE
Ten long years ago with the army in Kansas, I had kissed a tree going forty miles an hour in a jeep. It was four o’clock in the morning and the temperature was ten below, which were a pair of good reasons for hitting the tree in the first place. I was asleep at the time and so was the driver, a much older man then myself. The cold had put us out like birthday candles. When we woke up a couple of hours later with the jeep all out of shape, pretzel-style, shock set in. It was either the biting cold or the realization of just what could have happened if the jeep hadn’t unseated us when we ran into the tree.
The bright green coupé bearing down on the stalled jalopy’s tail was something like that. I had a better-than-average idea what was about to happen.
There was only one thing to do. Get out of the car and get out fast.
I hit the door handle with my elbow, hit it hard. If it stuck even for an instant, I was cooked. The click of the opening door was like the first sound a deaf man hears when he regains his hearing. I took the wet gutter on my left shoulder and rolled frantically. I kept on rolling, over and over, with the concentrated direction of a beer barrel rolling down the delivery ramp into the delicatessen cellar. I wasn’t thinking of anything but getting as far away as possible from what I knew was going to be one of the nastiest pile-ups of three vehicles in traffic history.
If it wasn’t the nastiest, it was certainly the noisiest. Somebody ripped the lid off the screaming hellhole of the Inferno. The skies flashed thunder, belched fire and flame. Either that or Thor’s hammer had come smack down from the heavens and pounded the spire of the Empire State Building like it was the biggest nail of them all.
The far sidewalk brought my rolling to a sudden halt. I went to a half-sitting position on the curb. I looked to see what I had missed.
It’s not easy describing. My breath came hard.
The bright green coupé was buried somewhere in the jalopy’s fanny and both cars were glued to the exterior of the big cab, which had been jolted loose from whatever had moored it to the trailer truck. There was just a huge mass of twisted, shiny metal and junk cluttering up the uptown sidewalk.
The trailer truck had changed position a little but, aside from that and losing the cab, was none the worse for wear.
I bit my lip, saying the hell with the dirt on my clothes, the rain, and a million other things. The jalopy was gone forever. Just a pleasant memory like so many other things.
A police whistle blasted my eardrums. The present came back with a noisy bang. I got to my feet, flinging a glance back up the street. I got the surprise of a lifetime.
Someone was staggering onto the sidewalk, struggling past a jam of halted cars, trying damn hard to get out of sight in a hurry. Car horns squalled in irritation. The hell with them too. I had my one break. Daredevil Danny, the driver of the bright green coupé, had slipped up on his specialty.
He’d hurt himself when he bailed out. I wish he’d broken his neck, the bastard.
I unshouldered my .45 and took off after him. He didn’t have a prayer. He was limping badly and a crowd was forming. The crowd didn’t bother me a bit. They did exactly what I expected. When a man is running with a .45 in his mitt, crowds evaporate.
This one evaporated in a hurry.
Daredevil Danny looked back, saw me. Something happened to his face. He tried to redouble his speed. He only succeeded in hurting his already-hurt leg. It folded under him like jello and he took the pavement hard.
I snapped a shot off at him, made it chew up some of the concrete a few feet from his face. Just to convince him he ought to st
ay where he was. He was convinced. He was lying where he fell, collecting some oxygen when I reached him.
I turned him over and wasn’t gentle about it. Daredevil Danny was the right name for him. He was young, so young that he didn’t even look like he had the vote yet.
Disgusted, I pulled him to his feet. He winced.
“I’m pretty mad at you, fella,” I said. “That car meant an awful lot to me.”
“The hell with your car.” Pain made him tough. “You’re lucky you’re alive.”
“Thanks for being tough,” I said. I slapped him hard. “Now I’ll know how to act in front of company.” I slapped him again.
Surprise washed away the toughness.
“Whaddya do that for? Picking on a guy with a bum leg—”
“You’ll be drowning in my tears if you keep that up. Talk. Fast. Say something. Make sense. The cops’ll be here in a minute.”
Some of the crowd was coming back. An excited jabbering had picked up behind me. I took Daredevil Danny’s collar in my free hand and twisted. Twisted until his eyes warned me to cut it out before he strangled. I eased up a little, let him choke and splutter.
“Who fingered me, Danny? Tell me before I choke it out of you.”
His face got young again. Sullen like a kid’s when his little prank backfires.
“Okay, okay. You don’t have to get tough about it. I’ll tell you quick enough. There was this dame—see? A real looker. Brunette. Like a movie star—”
“Not so fast. Start with you.”
“Me? I’m a test driver for an auto agency. Name’s Bill Murdock. Well, this dame contacted me, said she wanted me to pull a little stunt for her. Paid good money. Said it was a gag. Said nobody would get hurt. Said you were fast and the worst that would happen was that a coupla cars would get smashed up—”
“What dame? What name did she give you?”
“No name. Why should she give me a name? Five hundred bucks was all the name I needed.”
The powerful voice of the Almighty Dollar. I felt like slapping him again.
His eyes got puzzled. “Funny thing though. She never mentioned that trailer truck. I was just supposed to ram you when you stopped—”
“Listen, kid,” I cut in. “Your fairy godmother with the five-hundred-dollar wand—did she look like this?” I described the Wexler girls in detail. Whether it was April or June, it was necessarily the same description.
His eyes were no longer puzzled. “Then you do know her! Well, that makes things better. As long as you know her, you should know what this gag’s all about. For a minute I was worried.”
I looked at him and felt ancient. Because the standard lament of old-timers was on my lips: Is this what the younger generation is coming to?
I did the next-best thing. I took his ear in my fingers and twisted so that he followed the direction I was twisting in and wound up facing the scene of the accident.
“Punk.” I gritted it out. “Is that your idea of a gag? You could have killed somebody. Not to mention the poor old innocent bystander of long and honorable pedigree. Oh, Christ! Somebody ought to drag you into the woodshed.”
I didn’t have time for any more of the sermon. A beat cop had puffed up and, farther up the block, a prowl car was nosing into view, siren going full-blast.
I buried my .45 and smiled at the cop shouldering through the packed mob that had formed behind us. He had his service revolver out and his red face was angry and suspicious.
“Here—what’s going on here?”
I hid a smile because he was old and because he would have been happier with the street-crossing brigade at a school corner. I handed Daredevil Danny over.
“Here you are, Officer. Today’s version of Flaming Youth. He rammed my car and caused that mess you see. Lieutenant Monks will be interested in this cookie, too. In connection with his present investigation.”
“Lieutenant Monks, is it?” The red face got redder. “You better be showing me some identification, sonny.”
He meant me and he wasn’t kidding. I showed him my license, my permit to carry a .45. He stared at me.
“Ed Noon. I know you.” He grunted. “Heard of you, that is. Hold out your hands, sonny.”
He meant the kid, Daredevil Danny. Click went the handcuffs and one more high-flying jerk had come down to earth.
“Look at him.” The beat cop sneered. “Young and healthy and smashin’ cars. And my Timmy off in Korea.”
“I got a punctured eardrum,” Bill Murdock said indignantly.
“And I’m doin’ a little police action.” The cop looked at me when he said it. I was supposed to laugh. I disappointed him.
He grunted and got official again.
“You’ll have to sign out a complaint down at the station. But you bein’ friends with the lieutenant, I suppose you’ll be wanting to do that at your leisure. That it?”
“That’s it.”
“Any messages for the lieutenant?” He winked to show there were no hard feelings.
“Just tell him to keep the kid on ice for me. He knows where I’ll be.”
I watched the coppers break up the rubber-neckers, toss the kid in the back of the prowl car, and take off. I didn’t ask them for a lift uptown.
Riding in a police car right after losing the jalopy wouldn’t have seemed quite right. I would have felt funny about it. I’d get to the office of Randall Crandall another way. Any way but a police car.
Call me nuts, call me sentimental, but don’t ever kid me about it. You’ve got your crazy little wheels, I’ve got mine. That’s the kind of a world it is.
I walked back three blocks and took a bus.
TEN
Randall Crandall’s offices didn’t let me down. His manner had led me to expect something special. I’d been in plenty of lawyer’s offices in my time. They all pretty nearly follow the same pattern.
Usually cluttered with row upon row of musty law books to impress the customer, leather-backed chairs with brass nail-heads bordering the woodwork, the framed law diploma prominently displayed on the center of the wall, a portrait of the current president of the United States or its alternate, the Constitution. All of these things and a carefully contrived atmosphere of honesty and hard work.
Sam Foley’s office had been like that. But Sam Foley was dead and if he could ever get a ghostly gander at Randall Crandall’s office, two to one he’d be spinning in his grave.
First off, Randall Crandall had a male secretary. A tall, studious type who was nearly as good-looking as his boss. He ushered me into the office. Without comment. I put two and two together but it was adding up to five.
Secondly, the office looked like the main salon of some of the best fashion shops in town. It had a particularly uncrowded look which is exactly what all those places try to achieve. There was one huge desk, two chairs, strictly the floor-hugging modern furniture that takes up no room at all. Purple drapes closed off any view you might want of the wallpaper design.
Everything was subdued but with that rich look that almost screams how much the subduing actually costs.
Also, there were no law books, no diploma, no picture of the president or the Constitution. There was also no suggestion whatsoever of honesty and hard work.
Maybe Randall Crandall had the right idea calling himself a “solicitor.” No lawyer would ever feel at home in a joint like this.
The male secretary motioned me to one of the two chairs just across from the desk. Without comment he disappeared.
I sat back in the chair and lit a cigarette, trying awfully hard not to feel like a guy lost in a girls’ dormitory.
I concentrated on the latest turn of the wheel. Daredevil Danny and the beautiful brunette who was either April or June Wexler. I couldn’t figure this thing out. It was like having spots before your eyes when two murder suspects look exactly alike. Of course, June had been with me when Anton hit the deck so that really let her out. But what let out all these other attempted murders? With the cops you
know, you never get ruled out for trying. Trying was just as bad as doing. Or nearly as bad anyway. They locked you up for both kinds of effort.
“Pardon the cliché, but to what do I owe this unexpected visit?”
I nearly jumped a foot. Randall Crandall had materialized from a wall in one murky corner of the room.
I made myself smile. The guy gave me the willies, frankly. Because no man should ever be that good-looking.
“I couldn’t keep myself away, Crandall. We have loads to discuss.”
He didn’t snort but I heard him just the same. He sat down behind his fancy desk and regarded me across his manicured fingernails.
“It’s only fair to tell you, Mr. Noon, that the sarcasm in your tone is poorly concealed. We may as well talk plainly to each other before we begin any form of parlance whatsoever.”
“Shoot,” I said.
“That’s it exactly. You say shoot. I say let’s talk plainly. We are at opposite poles, Mr. Noon. Yesterday’s introduction was sufficient, I thought. You are coarse, Mr. Noon. I am not.”
“Hooray for your side.”
“Your type of man despises my type of man as much as mine despises yours. It is one of the few constant rules of society. You are a rugged individualist, hair-on-your-chest, and very proud.”
“Hooray for my side.”
“Do you wonder that I can talk to you in the face of your almost suffocating boorishness’? A man of breeding can do that, Mr. Noon. If I had been talking in such a manner to you, you would have offered me violence by this time.”
“Agreed,” I said, enjoying myself. “But my kind of man would at least have offered you a drink first.”
“Forgive me. I was concerned with stating the facts.” I nearly changed my opinion of him because he drew two glasses and a decanter from the desk drawer in a hurry. As he poured, he kept on coming: “I’m sorry, Mr. Noon, we can never be friends. Frankly, after you have stated your reasons for coming and I have dispensed with them, I shall be extremely happy never to see you again.”
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