(16 page)

She
didn’t turn her head when I entered. I walked across the
bedroom to her. “Crooked Nose was downstairs,” I said.

The
news did not create a sensation. “Did he see you?”

“
No.
He was having pie and coffee, and talking to Tilly. I’m sure
they’re strangers to each other. Where can he fit in?”

“
I
can’t imagine,” she muttered to the window.

“
He’s
not a cop. Lieutenant Woodfinch didn’t know him, and he didn’t
come forward and corroborate my story that Larry had been taking me
to Coney Island. He wasn’t working with Jasper Vital and Larry.
He kept out of their sight and then tailed Larry in his own car when
Larry could have used help to take me to Coney Island. He isn’t
in Moon’s organization if he comes here as a stranger. What
does that leave?”

“
A
lone wolf after the bag.”

“
But
if he’s here for the bag, he’s about the only one who’s
pretty sure that I haven’t got it. What makes him sure?”

Molly
stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and immediately lit another.
She didn’t seem to want to talk or do anything but sit there.

I
leaned the backs of my thighs against the windowsill and looked down
at her. “What’s the matter, Molly?”

“
I’m
scared, Adam.” She put a strained smile to her, mouth. “It
got me when I realized that Tilly would let us stay here. I guess I’m
not, as brave as I thought.”

I
nodded. “I know how you feel. But I’ve been scared for so
long, since Monday evening, that a crust has formed over my fear.
It’s like the first couple of minutes shells come flying at
you. After that you don’t stop being afraid, but you stop
giving a damn. Or you think you stop, and then suddenly you go to
pieces.”

“
I
won’t go to pieces.” She leaned forward and took my hand
and held it against her cheek. “Now you know why I acted so
rotten to you. It was sheer nerves. I think I’ve got over it.”
My hand tingled against the soft warmth of her cheek and palm. Gently
I pulled it away from her and used it to reach for the pack of
cigarettes on the windowsill. I told her what I had found in the car
lot and in the barn.

“
There’s
nothing exactly wrong,” I said. “This place seems
out-of-the-way for a used-car lot, but if it’s the only one for
a good many miles and offers bargains it might pay. The way those two
men in the barn acted when I looked in doesn’t mean much. Rufus
Lamb could be one of those irritable men who doesn’t like to be
gawked at. The practically new Planet which was being repainted could
have been in an accident. The fact is that there’s almost
nothing to go on.”

“
Except
that the people who run the car-lot are crooks,” Molly said.
“Maybe they do need a mechanic, but you’ll get the job
only if you convince them that, you’re also a crook.”

“
The
car-lot could be a cover for something else.”

“
Maybe.”
She didn’t appear to be greatly interested. She was back in the
dumps.

I
went to the bathroom and washed up. Through the small bathroom window
I could look down to the front of the building; A two-door ’42
Plymouth was parked beside Molly’s coupe. Crooked Nose had told
Tilly he had a Plymouth.

I
returned to the bedroom. Molly hadn’t stirred.

I
said: “I’ve got to have your gun. Crooked Nose knows me
by sight. There’s no telling what he’ll do or tell the
others if he catches sight of me.”

The
back of her head shook. “I need it more than you do. My fists
aren’t good enough to protect me. Yours are.” Her
alligator bag was on the dresser. I went to it and through the mirror
I saw her looking at me. She didn’t say anything. She waited
with the cigarette dangling from her mouth and smoke flowing across
her face.

“
You
want that gun in case you have to use it against me,” I said
tightly. “Like last night in your apartment. That’s
another thing that’s scaring you, having to share a room with a
man who might be a killer.”

“
I’m
keeping the gun, Adam “ She blew a thin line of smoke toward
me. “Don’t waste your time looking in the handbag. I’m
not that stupid.”

I
said angrily: “I guess I’ve no right to ask anything of
you. You’re after your story and to hell with me. That’s
all right. But may I ask a small favor? May I borrow your car?”

“
What
for?”

“
I
want to see if I can learn anything in Badmont. Want to come?”

“
No,”
she said tiredly. “The car keys are in my jacket.”

The
jacket was on the bed where she had tossed it. I took the keys from
the pocket. When I got outside the house, the Plymouth was gone. I
doubted that Crooked Nose had left for good.

There
was a drugstore in Badmont which had a pretty good lunch counter and
an apple-cheeked girl behind it. I had a real cup of coffee and a
Western sandwich on soft roll.

A
phone booth stared at me through the broad mirror behind the counter.
In a house in Brooklyn, Esther was waiting in numb terror for the
phone to ring — to hear my voice tell her that I was safe or
that I had been tortured into surrendering the bag and to get it from
a certain place where I had hidden it and take it to another place.
Or the voice might be that of the kidnaper demanding the bag as the
price of my return, or of a policeman informing her that I had been
found dead. She couldn't know which it would be. Perhaps the worst of
all would be nothing at all happening, nothing but waiting.

And
Carol was waiting with her. She was old enough to understand, to
share the private hell with her mother.

I
tore my eyes from the accusing reflection of the phone. There were
New York City newspapers on a wall rack. I had to look at them. Molly
had told me there was nothing in the morning papers, and there
wasn’t. The evening papers were yesterday’s.

I
ordered another cup of coffee and started a conversation. The girl
had never heard of Tilly's place. I drank the coffee quickly, careful
not to look at the phone in the mirror.

Next
door there was a clothing store where I bought a white shirt and
socks and handkerchiefs and underwear. The proprietor said that once,
driving down from Middletown, he had stopped off at Tilly’s for
a bite. He had found it an excellent place to avoid in the future. He
remembered that there was a used-car lot, but he had never heard
anything about it.

I
crossed the road to a filling station. A man who was fixing a flat
tire said: “You mean that place over in York State? Don’t
know much about ’em. .They’re nice folks though. Last
spring I needed a transmission for a ’37 Ford 60. Couldn’t
get it nowhere, but that bald man there — his name is Lamb —
he pulled a transmission out of a Ford 60 he had on the lot and let
me have it dirt cheap. If you’re thinking of buying a used-car
there, I reckon they’re as honest as used-car dealers come.”

I
walked five hundred feet to another filling station. A man, tilted
back in a chair against the show window, said: “Sure they sell
their cars there. What d’you think they’re in business
for? But they’re funny about trade-ins. What they want are
straight cash transactions. Who doesn’t, but how can you run a
car business that way? If they take a trade-in for a good car, it’s
got to be a jalopy. Abel Wanderson had his eyes on a sweet ’46
Buick that had only three thousand miles, but they wouldn’t do
business because he had a ’42 Dodge in very good condition to
trade. And they won’t buy cars at all. I had a couple here I
wanted to make a quick turnover on, but it was no soap with them. But
they’ll sell and their prices are fair enough.”

“
Do
they run any other business at that place?”

“
Well,
there’s a lunchroom and a tourist house. If you ask me, I don’t
see how they make a living. Not many people live in the area and even
in the summer that’s not a busy road. Well, I guess they know
what they’re doing.”

I
returned to the coupe which was parked in front of the drugstore.
Across the street, at the first filling station I had stopped at, a
convertible with the top down stood between the two pump islands. The
kid behind the 1 wheel had his hair slicked down and his hands and
face washed and wore a natty tweed loafer jacket — a cleaned up
version of the kid named Beezie from Tilly’s place. He wasn’t
buying gas. He was speaking to the man who had told me about the Ford
transmission he had got from Rufus Lamb.

I
was sure that I was the topic of their conversation. They kept
glancing in my direction as they spoke. Once Beezie looked fully at
me and though he saw me looking at him, he made no gesture of
greeting. He had tailed me to Badmont and was now checking up on what
I’d been doing. That was a bad sign.

I
made time back to Tilly’s place.

Tilly
and Rufus were in the lunchroom. They gave me deadpan nods when I
entered and I nodded back the same way and went upstairs. Molly
wasn’t in our room. I went out to the t hall and heard a car
pull up. I continued on to the bathroom and looked out of the window.
Beezie was getting out of his car. He moved like a man with urgent
news that couldn’t wait. He must have burned up the road to
have arrived so close behind me.

My
throat was parched. I took a drink of water from the bathroom tap and
returned to the hall. I could hear them talking in the lunchroom, but
they kept their voices too low for me to catch words. I started down
the stairs, changed my mind, walked noiselessly back to the door,
closed the door. I reached, for the key, but there was none.

Molly’s
handbag was on the dresser.

I
opened it. There were the usual cosmetics, keys, handkerchief, and a
fountain pen and the wallet was well-filled. But no gun.

I
laid her airplane bag on the bed and rummaged through it. I found
blue silk sleeping pajamas with little white polka dots and a robe to
match, underwear and slippers, but no gun. I felt the pillows. I
searched the dresser and the closet. Then there was nowhere else to
look.

Where
was Molly?

I
shook a cigarette out of a pack on the dresser and without lighting
it went out to the hall. The voices were still in the lunchroom. From
the downstairs hall I would be able to listen unseen to whatever they
were saying, and if it became necessary I could slip out through the
side door.

I
was halfway down the stairs when Rufus Lamb and Beezie appeared at
the foot of the stairs. Rufus had a gun in his hand. “Come on
down, mug,” he said.

Molly
hadn’t told me how I could use my fists when a man was pointing
a gun at me. When I reached the foot of the stairs, I saw that Tilly
and Milton were also in the hall. All the faces were grim,
remorseless.

“
What’s
this?” I demanded. ,

Nobody
would answer me. Rufus had stepped behind me; I felt his gun against
my spine. Beezie ran his hands over my body. I stood with the unlit
cigarette between cold lips and a matchbook in one hand.

“
He’s
clean,” Beezie announced.

I
was taken into a downstairs room I had never been in before.

It
was larger than the lunchroom and everything in it was new. A red
broad loom rug gave the place warmth. A brown leather couch and two
brown leather chairs were grouped about a fireplace. Newspapers and
magazines were scattered like in any private^ home. A very large
round table had plenty of tubular chairs around it. An oak cabinet
radio looked as if it had just come from the factory. It was a cozy
room, a sitting and lounging and probably eating room.

I
walked away from Rufus Lamb’s gun as far as the table and
turned. “What the hell’s going on?”

Tilly
polished her elaborate ring against her vast bosom. “So you
came here for a job, but you didn’t bring a thing to change
into,” she sneered. “You had to go to Badmont to buy
clean shirts and underwear.”

“
Was
that all ? My stomach muscles loosened. “We brought a bag.
Those were just some extras I needed.”

“
I
looked in the bag,” Tilly said. “A few woman’s
things, very few, but nothing a man can wear.”

“
I
forgot my bag. I remembered when I was in the car, but didn’t
bother to go back. Anyway, what’s the difference?”

“
The
hell with that!” Rufus Lamb said. The gun was held lightly
along his thigh. He stuck out his long jaw. “What were you
asking questions about us for .in Badmont? Beezie shadowed you. Them
questions sound like spy work to me.”

I
put disgust into my voice. “I've a right to know what I’m
getting into.” “But you don’t answer questions.”
Tilly said.

Rufus
brought up his gun a little. “You’ll answer ’em
now. Start talking about yourself. How you knew Ray Teacher and what
your record is and where you’ve been and so on.”

I
pressed my dry tongue against the tip of the unlit cigarette in my
mouth. This was the showdown. I had tried and failed. The only
consolation was that Molly wasn’t here.

“
So
you can’t talk?” Rufus’ voice was deadly quiet.

“
I
told Tilly I’d talk to George Moon,” I said.