Old Sinners Never Die (10 page)

“He did?”

The General leaned back on the couch. He was giving a fine imitation, he hoped, of a man about to pass out. Actually he was doing everything but bite his tongue to fight the lure of sleep.

“What for, honey? What’d he give you the thousand dollars for, Ransom?”

“That’s a … secret,” the General said. “But I’ll tell you—if you’ll tell me a secret. Or aren’t you that kind … of a woman?”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Remember at dinner, my dear—how many years ago?—you said there were some women who couldn’t make conversation if they weren’t telling secrets?”

“I remember now. But I just don’t have any secrets, Ransom.”

“You’ve got lots of them. F’rinstance, why do you want to know my secret?”

“I don’t. I just don’t really care … now.” She got up and lit a cigarette.

No more pretence of love-making, no more come-ons, the General thought. She was a little woman in trouble, fighting hard against despair, whatever her game with Ransom Jarvis. She had, of course, lost a young lover—or so it would seem, and there were not likely to be any more of them in her life, not of that age. And a queer duck he was. Social provender.

“Ransom, why don’t you just stretch out there and take a little nap? You can go back to town any time before daybreak, can’t you? I mean, there’s no one waiting up for you, is there?”

“Anyone waiting up for you, my dear?”

“No,” she said, and gave a little sob.

“What did you put in my drink, Virginia?”

“Just a little something to make you sleep,” she said with disarming directness. “I didn’t want you going off and leaving me too soon.”

“And why did you want to know about the Russians?”

“Oh, Ransom, it wasn’t just the Russians. You don’t understand me. I love intrigue, excitement. I wish I was Mata Hari. I’d be a spy right now if anybody’d hire me.”

“The trouble with hiring you, my dear—it would be very difficult to tell which side you were on.”

“That’s very perceptive of you, Ransom. I don’t even know, myself.”

The General put his head down then and swung his leaden legs up on the sofa. He began counting backwards from a hundred—in Russian. The little lady brought a blanket presently and covered him. He was quite touched when she leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Goodnight, sweet Prince,” she said, and he wondered if she did not live in a dream world after all. He went back to the counting in Russian. “Goodnight, sweet Prince,” was said in epitaph. He lost count again. Surely she hadn’t poisoned him!

Virginia was smoothing out the blanket, tucking it in, apparently, and very close to his pockets. So, deftly, as though trained in the art of pickpocketry, she withdrew the ignition key to the Jaguar from his pocket.

She was a few minutes then putting the room in order, or so it seemed, as she moved about some chore; he dared not move to investigate. She went into the kitchen to wash the glasses, he realized, hearing the tinkle of crystal. He was having less and less trouble fighting sleep now, certainly. But he was fairly reassured that he had not been poisoned, although he did not like to hear her washing glasses.

She started to sing a little tune then, and he relaxed. She was doubtless merely planning to move the Jaguar, perhaps just to see if she could move it. Not a very tuneful voice. But soothing. She would be a great soother. He began to think about her in the altogether—as perhaps a woman he might strike up a permanent liaison with. A little dull, probably, monotonous of voice and far, far too talkative. Too sweet, too talkative, too expensive. …

He just caught himself about to drop off when he had thought he was safe from sleep. He began to count furiously against the rhythm of the sudden pounding of his heart. At that moment he heard the Jaguar motor, the scream of gears badly shifted, but shifted nonetheless, and before he had got his legs loose from the blanket, he heard the rev of the motor, acceleration, diminution. Virginia and his car were already halfway down the hill.

“Y
OU KNOW,” TOM SAID
, starting the car and idling the motor, “we ought to make provisions in case we have to split up.” They had been watching from the street corner for ten minutes. “For example, what if he’s already come out and gone the other way on foot?”

“Nobody goes anywhere on foot in Washington from what I’ve heard,” Mrs. Norris said.

“Aye, ’tis true,” said Tom. “They’re all beggars on horseback. Still … do you think you could drive Sophie?”

“I’ve never been behind the wheel of a car in my life,” Mrs. Norris said, with the air of one who didn’t really think it was a woman’s place.

Tom was torn between admiration and petulance. “It’s a handy thing to know all the same.”

“I’d give more right now,” Mrs. Norris said, “to know where Mr. James is.”

“There!” said Tom. “There’s a car coming down the alley. We’re off!” Sophie gave a lurch and a shrug. And died. “Oh, my God,” said Tom, “I never thought you’d do this to me.”

The car he was proposing to follow gave a sudden turn in their direction.

“Down in back of me!” Tom screamed, and he and Mrs. Norris collapsed over one another like a jack and a queen. The headlights of the oncoming car raked them over as the driver took the turn with his tyres squealing, and drove past his own house.

“That was close,” Tom said, and stepped on the starter. Sophie caught on immediately. “She must’ve known,” he added reverently, and turned her around in pursuit.

“She has more sense than we have,” Mrs. Norris said. “I wouldn’t like to crowd him just now anyway.”

“I’m going to leave the lights off till we get into traffic,” Tom said, “Oh, Lord, don’t let me lose him now. Is there a patron saint of detectives, do you know?”

“Are you asking me?”

“Aye, who else?”

“I never heard if there be,” Mrs. Norris said, who, herself a good Presbyterian, was not very strong on the saints.

“I dare say St. Anthony’d do. It’s him you pray to for something you’ve lost.”

“Well, we haven’t lost him yet, thank God,” Mrs. Norris said.

Sophie was at least able to keep pace with Tom’s prayers and despite the speed, the Frenchman stayed within their vision. Once they almost lost him as Tom looked around driving over a bridge.

“God have mercy, do you know where we are?”

“No. Turn to the left,” Mrs. Norris cried.

Tom jerked Sophie around and once again the two small red eyes were visible in the distance. “That was the Key Bridge we just went over,” he said. “I was fearful he’d stop.”

“I’m glad I didn’t know,” Mrs. Norris said.

The car ahead, turning into a residential area, mercifully slowed down. He seemed to be trying his lights, or else there was something wrong with them.

“That’s a signal,” Mrs. Norris said. “He’ll be meeting someone or someone will follow him from here.”

“We’ll make a hell of a sandwich, won’t we?” Tom said. “I’m going to drop back a block, in case there’s someone waiting for him on a side street.”

There was a park to the left, fairly nice spacious homes to the right. Tom braked Sophie. Then he stopped. Far ahead the car they were following had stopped.

“If I can get into the park,” said Tom, climbing out of Sophie, “I might get close to him unbeknownst. You stay here, Mrs. Norris, and cover me.”

“With what, man?”

“Sophie’s horn if you have to. If there’s anybody crawling in behind me you think, give it a touch. But don’t bring me back if you don’t have to.”

“I hope,” Mrs. Norris said, “you’ll be able to bring yourself back.”

She watched him lope across the street and take the park fence with the lightfooted leap of youth. Then she took the measure of the distance between her and the next block. She decided to have a look about for herself on foot. She needed to be a bit closer in any event in order to see. She had reached the age in life where her vision was no longer match for an owl’s though once it had been.

Quite elegant houses, really, she observed. Lots of money, and the carelessness typical of America—toys left out, expensive things … Ahead of her then, she saw that the man they were following had got out of the car and crossed quickly into the park. Mrs. Norris stood stock still as close as she could get to the trunk of a great tree near the curb. She bent her whole concentration on the sounds and movements of the night. The frogs were still at it here, curdling the silence. No other sound reached her, not even the motors of distant cars, until the running footfalls of Tom. She had not seen the other man return to his car.

She hurried back to the car herself. “I’d swear there was nobody in the park but the two of you,” she said.

“Now listen to me,” Tom said. “He’s in there hiding something in a tree trunk like a bloody squirrel. It might be whatever it was you saw him take out of the post. Do you know where we are?”

“Where?”

“I mean, have you any notion what part of town?”

“None.”

“We’re in Arlington, no more than a mile or two from the Key Bridge. Would it trouble you terrible to part with me, Mrs. Norris?”

“It wouldn’t have troubled me never to have met you,” she said. “Say what you have in mind.”

“I think one of us should stay here and see who comes for whatever it is he’s putting in the tree, and the other of us should keep him in sight. I’m sure that must’ve been a signal of some sort he gave with the car lights.”

“And how am I expected to keep track of whoever it is that comes?”

“You could get their licence number and see if they leave anything in its place. And if I’m alive, I promise to come back here for you.”

And, Mrs. Norris thought though it was a bit too grim to say, if she wasn’t alive, she’d be here. “What direction is the bridge, did you say?”

He pointed.

“If I have to, I’ll try to get there.” She was remembering that among the expensive toys so carelessly left outdoors a few houses away was a bicycle. She hadn’t been on one in years. But there were a good many things she hadn’t done in years, that she would not admit for a moment she was past doing.

“Where’s the tree—can you tell me exactly?”

“I can. It’s a few feet to the right of the drinking fountain as you go in the park through the gate, and I’ll tell you how you’ll know it. He’s working round the cement plate—the kind a nurseryman puts in to patch up a sick tree, d’you know what I mean?”

“I think so,” Mrs. Norris said.

“It shines like a mouthful of teeth in the night.”

“He’s just come out of the park,” Mrs. Norris said, and herself got out of Tom’s car.

“You’re a brave woman,” said Tom.

“Take care yourself, lad, and don’t lose him, whatever you do.”

“Up the rebels!” Tom cried, and gave Sophie’s starter a kick.

As the car ahead pulled out, Tom pulled out, and Mrs. Norris watched the one of them vanish after the other in the night’s darkness. She stood by the tree she had begun to consider a friend and waited to be sure no one was in pursuit of them in a car. She crossed the street and entered the park at the first gate, and then took up a position there from which she could watch the patched tree near the fountain.

W
HERE, TOM WONDERED, WOULD
a man be going with a suitcase at this hour of the night that he could be followed? Would the Frenchman, having challenged the boss, be getting cold feet now himself? The truth was he wasn’t behaving at all like a man who expected to keep an appointment at dawn … unless it was the pistols he had packed in the suitcase, and was off right now to await the fatal rendezvous. In that case all the hocus-pocus with the tree and the balusters was his own way of putting affairs in order before going into the fight. There were some people, sure, who had no use for banks. He knew people at home, in fact, who didn’t even trust the post office.

But the Frenchman drove over the bridge with nary a puff of recognition and into Washington again. This time he began working north of M Street. Tom kept on his tail though he wiggled and waggled it, but was very grateful when the route straightened out on Sixteenth Street. He settled Sophie at a steady gait, and began to imagine a chase like this in the daylight: he would need a police escort then to ignore the stop-lights, and in his mind’s eye he could see the people leaping out of his way and turning after him to gawk in envy. Ah, but wasn’t this the country! The only thing you could scatter in his home town in Ireland was a flight of crows.

The realization suddenly came to him that he was a long way from the heart of Washington, and getting farther all the time. It would be a devil of a note if the Frenchman was skipping the country, on his way now maybe to the Canadian border—and Tom with a dollar and fifty cents in his pocket.

Tom pressed his foot down on the accelerator, pushing Sophie up the hill a little faster because the car he followed was now going over the crest. When Tom reached the top himself, there was not a car in sight the whole long street before him.

“Holy, holy, holy,” he said aloud, going slowly down the other side that he might peer both ways up cross streets. The Frenchman had vanished, automobile, suitcase and all. “Oh, Sophie, what’ll we tell her at all?”

Tom slowly circled the streets, but nowhere did he find the car he had been following. He turned his own car back toward the city and meekly obeyed every traffic light. He longed now to find the boss, which was his first quest anyway, and before facing up to Mrs. Norris, for many a time had the congressman rescued him from a well-earned folly.

There was no one home, he was sure, driving up. And in the kitchen the only response he got from the cat was a few angry whacks in the air of her tail and the burying of her head into another part of the cushion.

“You’re fortunate all that’s disturbed is your sleep,” he said.

But where was the boss?

A plan had been knocking around in the back of his head for the last few blocks home: if the boss had a girlfriend who got him into this mess, sure, the least she could do now was share the anxiety. And the most she could do just possibly, was tell him where the boss was.

“Be bold,” he told himself in the words of an Irish proverb, “be ever bold, but be not too bold.”