Who Has Wilma Lathrop?

WHO HAS
WILMA LATHROP?

DAY KEENE

a division of F+W Media, Inc.

THERE WAS
a pay phone in the lobby of the Juvenile Court Building. Jim Lathrop used it to call Wilma. He could hear the phone in the apartment ring, but no one answered. He hung up, mildly puzzled. It was the first time in the three months they’d been married that Wilma hadn’t been home when he’d called.

Night had fallen while he’d been talking to Judge Arnst and the juvenile case worker assigned to the Eddie Mandell affair. The wind was cold, driving at an angle, but the blizzard predicted by the
Chicago Tribune
had so far failed to materialize. The paved parking lot was slick with frozen slush. Keeping his head down against the wind, Lathrop did not see the man who stopped him until he stepped from behind a parked car.

“Hey, you,” the man said. “Just a minute.”

The man was big, exuding an aura of authority. It was too dark to see his face. Lathrop moved into the shelter of the car. “Yes?”

“Is your name Jim Lathrop?” the man asked.

Lathrop had forgotten to put on his gloves. He blew on his hands to warm them and his breath steamed his glasses. “That’s right.”

“You’re a high-school teacher?”

“I am.”

“You teach maths at Palmer Square High?”

“I do.”

The man who had stopped him said. “He’s the right one, all right,” and a second man stepped out from behind the parked car.

“What’s this about?” Lathrop asked him.

The second man said, “We’ll come to that.”

As he spoke, the side door of the building opened and Juvenile Officer Cave crossed the poorly lighted parking lot with Eddie Mandell in tow. The youth recognized Lathrop and stopped. “Ya couldn’t he a little. Ya couldn’t give me an alibi.”

Lathrop found his gloves and put them on. “No. Not under any circumstances.”

“Why not?”

Lathrop tried not to sound smug. “For your own sake, Eddie. Right now, in your book, I’m a heel. But perhaps in a few months you’ll feel differently.”

“Sure,” the youth jeered. “Sweating it out at Saint Charles.” His voice turned ugly. “But it may just be you’ll be sorry. I got friends.”

Juvenile Officer Cave tightened his grip on the youth’s arm. “Are you threatening Mr. Lathrop, Eddie?”

Eddie shrugged. “He can take it any way he likes.”

Lathrop ‘watched the youth swagger across the lot and get into a police car. He felt sorry for Eddie. He liked the boy. Until Eddie had started running with the wrong crowd and one wrong minx, he’d been an excellent student. Then he’d suddenly tried to grow up too fast, in the wrong way. It was tough to be seventeen and face spending the next three or four years of your life in a reform school.

The man who’d stopped Lathrop asked, “What did the kid do?”

“He stuck up a drugstore,” Lathrop told him, “for money to spend on a little tart.”

“What’s his beef with you?”

“It was a daytime stick-up. He told the officers who arrested him a few hours later that he was in one of my classes when it happened. And he wanted me to back him up.”

“Why didn’t your?”

“Why didn’t I what?”

“Why didn’t you give the kid a break?”

Lathrop considered his answer. He had no patience with the school of thought that insisted that modern youth was riding to hell in a hot rod. As far as he could tell by delving into history, every adult generation had made the same claim. But the time to stamp out a fire was when it started. “I did,” he told the man. “I gave him the best break I could. If Eddie had got away with this stick-up, he’d have tried another and another. Then one night he’d have to use a gun, maybe kill someone, and he’d wind up facing a lot tougher rap than a few years in a reform school.”

“Yeah. I see what you mean,” the man said.

The other man agreed. “I hear those things happen.”

It was cold in the parking lot. Lathrop had had a hard day. The three hundred boys and girls who allegedly absorbed some learning by being sprinkled from his fount of knowledge had been unusually wearing. He wished the two men would state their business. He was eager to get home to Wilma. “Just who are you gentlemen and what do you want with me?”

The headlights of the police car leaving the lot bathed the men briefly with light. Both men were heavy-set and appeared to be well dressed. They looked as if they might be plain-clothes men. The larger of the two said, “Our names don’t matter to you. Let’s just say we’re friends of Wilma’s.”

“You know my wife?”

The second man held up a gloved hand with two fingers pressed together. “Like that. That’s why we had a kid point you out. So we could tail your car from the school. See?”

“No, I don’t see,” Lathrop said. “I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about.”

“Wilma never told you about us?”

“No.”

“That’s your story.”

“It’s the truth. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me — ”

As Lathrop started towards his car, the big man struck him without warning. The blow caught him off balance. He slipped on the pavement and fell, striking his head on the door of the car beside which they were standing. His hat flew from his head. He picked it up and got to his feet, indignant. “What was that?”

The man who had struck him said, “That was just to show you we mean business. What kind of dumb clucks does Wilma think we are? Now, listen close. Then you tell her what I tell you, chum. Tell her fun is fun but not when the bite is too big. You got the envelope, Charlie?”

His partner took a bulky Manila envelope from his inside overcoat pocket and handed it to him.

The man who had struck Lathrop said, “Give this to her from us. Just to show her there’s no hard feelings. Tell her it’s from the Prentiss job, but that we’re getting a little tired of waiting for our cut on the big one.” He put the envelope in Lathrop’s side overcoat pocket. “Tell her to meet us at Louie’s between one and two o’clock to-morrow afternoon. And just to impress the time on your memory, here’s a little sample of what will happen to you if she goes on being greedy.”

A hard blow to the side of the head blinded Lathrop momentarily. He slipped and almost fell a second time, but managed to retain his balance. “Hey! What the hell?” he said.

“Hit him again,” the larger of the two men ordered his partner. “Knock out a couple of teeth so Wilma will know we ain’t fooling.”

Lathrop blocked the blow to his mouth with his left forearm and lashed out in return. The man who had tried to hit him said, “Whoosh!” and slid down the side of the car.

“You’re not bad,” the other man said. “In fact, you’re good, pal. Charlie used to fight professionally.” He took a blackjack from his overcoat pocket. “But we’ve wasted enough time with you.”

He swung the blackjack in a vicious arc. Lathrop sidestepped the blow and hit the man so hard he staggered backwards and fell.

The man got to his feet spitting blood and brushing granules of frozen slush from his coat. “Where did a schoolteacher learn to hit like that?”

Lathrop told him. “As a captain of combat engineers. Look. I don’t now what this is all about. I don’t care. But you have the wrong Lathrop and the wrong Wilma.” He turned to walk towards his car and the man lying on the ground wrapped his arms around his legs and yanked him from his feet.

“Wise guy,” a voice panted.

The toe of a heavy shoe with all the force of a powerful leg behind it thudded against Lathrop.

When consciousness returned he was lying face down in the frozen slush. The two men were gone. Before they’d left they’d rolled him under a car. Lathrop crawled out from under the car and stood, weaving, wiping the blood from his mouth with his glove. In the semi-darkness of the lot the attack had gone unnoticed. As he stood waiting for his head to clear, a uniformed officer emerged from one of the doors of the Juvenile Detention Home.

Lathrop debated reporting the incident and decided against it. He wasn’t seriously hurt. He felt for his wallet. The two men hadn’t robbed him. It wasn’t good publicity for a male high-school teacher hoping for a principalship to get his name in public print as a common brawler. Then there was Wilma to consider. The two men had claimed to know her.

Lathrop examined his mouth with his tongue. Two of his teeth were loose, but he’d given a good account of himself. The prissy male teacher of fiction was a figment of some longhaired writer’s misconception. True, corporal punishment had no part in modern education. A man didn’t have to lick the biggest boy in his class to maintain order, but it was an unspoken secret between them that if the occasion arose he could.

He felt in his overcoat pocket. The men had left the bulky envelope with him.

“Give this to her from us,” the man had said. “Tell her it’s from the Prentiss job….”

The statement didn’t make any more sense than the attack on him. The men couldn’t possibly have anything in common with Wilma. Still, they had used her name in a familiar manner. They knew she was married to him. They knew he taught maths at Palmer Square High School.

Lathrop walked to his car and got in. He was so cold that his teeth were chattering. He turned on the car motor and sat for a few minutes, waiting for the heater to warm up. He should go to the police. He really should. It was dangerous for two such men to be at large.

When warm air began to come from the heater, he tugged the envelope from his pocket and changed his mind about going to the police, at least until he’d talked to Wilma. The envelope was stuffed with bills. Most of them, as far as Lathrop could see by the illuminated dials on the dash, were fifties and hundreds. He’d never seen so much money.

The taste of blood in his mouth became more pronounced. His body ached from the beating it had taken. What was it the larger of the two men had said? “Tell her that fun is fun, but not when the bite is too big.”

The word “bite” had an unpleasant connotation. It was an assumption of guilty knowledge on Wilma’s part. Guilty knowledge of what? And who was Prentiss? Lathrop moved the lever to “Drive” and left the parking lot. There was at least five thousand dollars in the envelope. He hoped Wilma could explain both the attack and the money.

The Juvenile Court Building and the Juvenile Detention Home were in the 2400 block on Roosevelt Road. Lathrop drove east to the 1700 block, then north on Kedzie Boulevard. The bulk of the rush-hour traffic had dissipated. The wind had increased in velocity. The boulevard was still lined with dirty windows from the last snowfall and it was going to storm hard before morning. It was so cold that the street lamps were wearing haloes. The globes looked like so many blurred crosses.

Lathrop reached up to adjust his glasses. It was small wonder everything was blurred. His glasses were somewhere back in the parking lot. The last flurry of blows had knocked them from his nose. He thought of turning back, but he was eager to talk to Wilma. Besides, his glasses were probably broken, stepped on in the struggle. He’d have to order a new pair in the morning. They didn’t matter. Although nothing was quite clear, he could get along fairly well without them.

As he drove, Lathrop realized for the first time how little he knew about his wife. Wilma’s background hadn’t seemed important. It wasn’t important. All that mattered was the fact that he loved her and she loved him.

He tabulated the new facts he did know. He knew Wilma was twenty-one and blonde and very lovely. He knew he’d met her at one of Bill Hendry’s clambakes. It had been one of those studio parties on the near north side, with people, some invited, some not, streaming in and out all evening. The attraction had been mutual. The moment he’d seen Wilma he’d known she was for him.

There’s the girl I’m going to marry, he’d thought. And three months later he had.

He knew her name was Wilma Stanis. He knew that she had lived at the Devonshire Hotel and she had been secretary to some lawyer in the Loop, but, perhaps because of the beating he’d taken, he couldn’t remember the lawyer’s name. It wasn’t much for a man to know about his wife.

Palmer Square was white with the snow that had fallen two days before, tracked by the feet of children eager to try out their sleds and disappointed that the fall had been so light.

Lathrop manœuvred his car into a parking space at the kerb in front of the grey-stone three-flat house he had inherited from his parents. It was one of the few remaining three-flat buildings on the square. The square, in reality a four-block-long rectangle, had changed since he’d been a boy. Except for his own and a few other, older, buildings, the area was lined with huge modern apartment buildings.

There was a light in the window of his second-floor flat. Wherever Wilma had been when he’d phoned, she was home now and waiting for him. As he walked through the dark areaway to the rear stairs, Lathrop was pleased to note that Nielsen, the janitor, had shovelled both the areaway and the walk leading to the back alley. From force of habit, before going upstairs he opened the basement door and checked the heating plant. There was a hot fire in the low-pressure boiler. Nielsen was a good man, the best janitor he’d ever had.

Lathrop closed the basement door and climbed the enclosed back stairs. Mrs. Metz, the tenant on the first floor, was cooking Hungarian goulash. Its spicy aroma sepeed out of the lighted kitchen and was intensified by the cold. Lathrop wondered what Wilma was cooking. He hoped she wasn’t worried about him. It was the first time he’d been late for supper. As he climbed the stairs he experienced a mild resentment towards Eddie Mandell. If the youth hadn’t held up a drugstore and attempted to use him for an alibi, he wouldn’t have had to confer with Judge Arnst and the scene in the parking lot wouldn’t have taken place.

When he reached his own porch he could see Wilma’s back through the steamed kitchen window. She was cooking in the black net négligé he’d given her as a second-month anniversary present. The porch door was locked, but she heard him fumbling with the knob and unlocked the door for him.

Her grey eyes were sullen. Her blonde hair gleamed in the overhead light. Without his glasses, he saw it, too, haloed by a nimbus. “I thought you’d never get here,” she said. “Did you every try to keep a standing rib roast warm for an hour without drying it out?”