Authors: Hartley Howard
“That's the first question you haven't to ask,” I said.
Cartwright sucked at his tongue and made a thoughtful face. He said, “O.K. . . . O.K. I'll make like a clam. What do I have to do?”
“Just this.” And I told him.
Outside the Winchester Hotel, I gave him one minute flat and then I followed him in.
It was a plush jointâloaded with warmth and artistic lighting, and smelling of ten-spot Havanas and mink wraps and Schiaparelli. Through a half-open door, I caught a glimpse of the cocktail bar and a lot of bare shoulders and diamonds.
Cartwright was at the desk talking to the clerk. Among the few people in the vestibule, there was no one I knew. And no one who should've known me. I loitered near the news-stand and bought an evening paper. Now and again I looked at my watch. I was just a guy who was waiting for someone.
The clerk had gone some place through a door behind the desk. Cartwright smoked a cigarette and doodled with the fancy pen attached to the blotter. He didn't once look at me.
Then the clerk came back and handed him a bulky envelope and a nice smile. A bell-hop took the room key and
waited for Cartwright to stub out his cigarette. They went across the vestibule and an elevator took them up.
I read my paper. Nobody was interested in a guy who'd been stood up on a date. People came and went and none of them even glanced at me. A youngster with a girl who could've been his sister sat discussing something earnestly on a bench-seat near the entrance to the cocktail bar: a dumpy woman with a small girl stood watching the revolving doors to the street: an elderly dame dozed in a club chair in the far corner of the vestibule.
King Gilmore and his kind seemed a long way off. But I couldn't be certain; with enough money, you can buy most anybody. Even the old party in the corner could be suspect. I went into the bar and had a short and killed another five minutes.
When I went back, the old biddy had gone. The woman and the kid with pigtails had been joined by a boy in short pants, and the girl near the bar was now alone. I took a slow stroll over to the desk.
The clerk said, “Yes, sir? Can I help you?” He had an egg-shaped head and a centre-part in his plastered hair and round spectacles with gold rims. His smile was as sincere as a commuter's handshake.
I said, “A Mr. StoneâValentine Stoneâis supposed to be meeting me here. I wonder if he checked in before I arrived . . . could you tell me?”
“Why, certainly, sir. If you'll give me a momentââ” he adjusted his spectacles more firmly on his thin nose and swung the register round towards him “âI'll have a look . . . and see. . . .” His well-manicured forefinger began to travel down the open page.
I took out a cigarette and lit it at the constantly-burning gimmick on the desk. Below the gimmick there was an ashtray. And in the ashtray there were two stubs. With the tip of my cigarette, I turned them over idly while I waited for the clerk to dig up Mister Valentine Stone . . . whoever he might've been.
One stub was just a stub smudged with lipstick. The other had the number 731 printed in ink below the maker's name. I used the red end of my cigarette to scorch the paper until the numerals disappeared.
By that time, the clerk had reached the foot of the page and he was beginning to make little negative noises. Then he looked up at me and shook his head and made a small, round mouth. “I'm afraid not, sir. It doesn't appear that Mr. Stone has arrived yet. And we have no reservation in that name. . . .”
“He'll be here,” I said. “If you don't mind, I'll wait.”
“Not at all, sir. Perhaps you'd care to go and have a drink while you're waiting? . . . I'll page you when Mr. Stone checks in. . . .”
I went back to the bar and had another bourbon. When I returned to the vestibule there were three or four people clustered at the desk and the clerk was busy. He didn't see me go past and skip upstairs.
On the first floor I positioned myself at the elevator gates where I could see both ways. No one came up after me. I allowed two full minutes and then I pushed the call button.
The elevator had no other passengers. Without looking at me, the jockey said, “Seven . . .? Yes, sir.”
We went up with no in-between stops. I got out and the elevator slid down quietly out of sight and I began walking along the corridor past 703 . . . 705 . . . 707 . . . 711 . . . 719 . . . 725 . . . 729. . . .
Cartwright opened the door an inch and showed me the snout of a little belly-gun. I went in and he shut the door and locked it. He said, “I been thinking.” He still had the gun in his hand.
I said, “What've you been thinking?”
He took the fat manilla envelope out of his inside pocket and tapped it on the barrel while he stared right through me. In a wooden voice, he said, “Before I get in too deep, there's one question you gotta answer whether you like it or not, so I don't go around leading with my chin.”
“Let's have the question,” I said.
“There's a lotta dough in this envelope and you got me to sign the book in your name so you can work a double-cross and maybe somebody won't like it . . . right?”
“You're asking three questions, not one. But they've all got the same answer; it's yes. You getting cold feet?”
“Not so cold as to make me pass up a thousand bucks. I just wanted to know before I set myself up as the fall-guy.”
He came away from the door and handed me the envelope. With no expression on his face he put the gun in his hip pocket. He said, “Nothing like being prepared. There's twenty-one lonely nights in three weeks and you never know who might go walking in my sleep.”
“You shouldn't have any trouble,” I said. “Nobody knows me in this town. If anyone checks, Bowman collects his key each night and goes out the next morning, day after day. My guess is that any checking will be done by long distance from New York. If you should have to take a phone call, act Bowman and say as little as you can . . . got it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I got it. But I don't like it.”
I said, “For a thousand bucks, I could've found ten guys who wouldn't do any griping.”
He grinned with one side of his face as he held out his hand. “But you had to pick on me . . . and who's griping, anyway? Gimme. . . .”
I never saw Cartwright again. Sometimes I wonder what he thought about while he lay in bed in room 731 . . . night after night . . . with a gun under his pillow . . . waiting . . . and saying, “Maybe to-morrow. . . .”
I guess we've all got to take a chance in this life. He took his for a thousand dollars. Now and again, I don't feel so good about Cartwright.
FOR THREE days, I hung around Washington, eating, sleeping and thinking in a semi-respectable rooming house where nobody poked his nose into his neighbour's business. Each night, I called Cartwright. Each night, he said he was O.K. No phone calls, no visitors. He didn't ask me why I was still in town.
On the fourth day, I went back to New York in two stages. At Elizabeth, I got off the train and caught a bus the rest of the way. Just to be on the safe side. Gilmore might've had a watch on the railroad depot and the airport, but he could hardly have kept tabs on the bus terminal as well. Or so I hoped.
Believe it or not, when I got in it was still raining. More important, I didn't have any reception committee to greet me.
Within an hour I was holed up in a nice quiet diveâthe kind of place that doesn't remember your name or what you look like or where you come from . . . and doesn't want to. I had a room with a clean bed and a sound lock on the door and complete privacy for two dollars a day.
Soon's it got dark, I went out and got myself a solid meal. Then I set off on a one-man scouting patrol. I had a yen to see what came off in or around the home of a certain Mr. Lloyd Warner.
As Long Island establishments go, it wasn't a big houseâmaybe six or seven bedrooms at the most. The gardens were nicely laid out from what I could see in the light of an uncurtained window on the ground floor. A concrete drive ran in a straight line from the gates to a roomy garage, with a curving off-shoot leading up to the front door.
The gates were open and fastened back like somebody was expected shortly. Young chrysanthemums in bud flanked the drive on both sides; floral bushes surrounding the lawns
had shed their petals on the sodden earth; close-cropped grass and trimmed hedges were a wet, shining green in the streamer of light from the window. House and gardens dripped unhappily after five days and nights of unending rain.
Down where the road joined the main highway, headlights rode the darkness. Far out on the Sound red and green sailing lights trained their reflections on the black water. Where I stood, there was only an occasional street lamp and a few scattered windows painted on the night.
I got wet. While I snooped around and learned nothing that was worth knowing, I got very wet. It might've saved me possible rheumatism to have rung the bell and asked for Miss Susan Warner. But I didn't want to do that. Not yet. Sometimes in my line of business, if you let yourself drift for a while and wait to see what comes off, you get a break. Only a genius can get by without a break. I'm no genius.
So I tried to shelter as best I could under a skinny plane tree on the sidewalk and I let time drip on. Maybe twenty minutes in all.
Then I heard a car climbing up from the highwayâclimbing fast and without slowing on the bends. Twin beams of light probed through the rain and lost themselves in the laden sky. Either the driver knew the road very well, or he or she was in a big hurry.
The car rushed nearer and its lights levelled out and the noise of the motor slackened. Fifty yards from the open gates, its indicator began winking on and off for a left-hand turn. When it swung across the road, it was still knocking up a fair lick.
There was a dame at the wheel. That much I managed to see in the time I had to make up my mind. And a dame was as good a break as I could expect in the circumstances. When the nose of the car was almost on the kerb, I stepped away from the tree and into the glare of the offside headlight.
She must've got a helluva fright. I know I did. Soon's I'd done it, I was filled with more regrets than a middle-aged virgin.
If her reflexes were slow . . . if she'd been hitting the bottle . . . if her philosophy said, “The hell with a jay-walker!” A lot of ifs . . . and not a lot of time to do much about it.
With the scream of brake-shoes all around me, I flung
myself back. The glittering chrome grill grinned over me below two white-hot eyes . . . I struck the sidewalk and skidded on one shoulder and a fender flipped the skirt of my coat . . . the squeal of the brakes died and the car jolted to a stop.
I lay in the shadow like I was cold meat until I heard her fumble with the catch of the door above me. Then I groaned. And while I was groaning, I wiped a wet, dirty hand down the side of my face. After that, I lay very still again.
The door clicked shut and somebody got down beside meâsomebody who smelled nice and who had smooth, soft hands. She started to raise my head and then she changed her mind. She opened a rear door and rummaged around for a couple of seconds. Then she lifted my head again and put a cushion under it. I loosed another deep groan that made even me feel bad.
In a shaky voice, she said, “Are youâare you badly hurt?”
It was the same type of voice as the one that had called me on the phone the night Judith died. Same type, but not quite the same voice. I was glad about that. This one sounded like it belonged to a nice girl. And whichever way you look at it, Judith hadn't been exactly a nice girl . . . not if she'd been a tootsie of King Gilmore.
I said, “I'm not deadâif that's what you mean. What was it hit me?”
She took her soft hand away from my face. In the rearward glow of the headlights, I could see her looking at her fingers. I could also see she was wearing a fur coat and a pair of pendant ear-rings and an attractive hair-do. When I got that far, she said, “You walked in front of my car. I tried to stop but . . . it was very silly of you.”
“What's so silly about walking on the sidewalk?” I said.
“You don't understand. I live here. And I was turning into the drive when you stepped right in front of the car andââ”
“-âand you hit me for a home run. That's as much as I need to understand.”
“But it was your own fault. I didn't expect anyone to do a thing like that and I hadn't a chance to avoid you.”
“Me, too,” I said. “I didn't expect to have a car chase
me across the sidewalk. Must've been because I'm not hep to your old Long Island customs . . . but don't give yourself a February face, sister. I won't sue you. Just help me to get up so I can count the broken bones.”
“You should really lie still where you areââ” she used both hands to hold me down and her eyes looked big and frightened “âuntil I get a doctor. You might do yourself harm if you move. Please don't get up.”
“I'll die faster from pneumonia than from a cracked bone,” I told her. “And haven't I said I won't sue you?”
She helped me to my feet before she said, “I've nothing to be afraid of whatever you do. I was only considering your welfare . . . lean on me if you feel faint.”
I leaned on her and I said, “Maybe I've forgotten how to recognise consideration . . . you wouldn't have a drink handy, would you?”
She twisted back her head to look up at me and I felt her draw away. She said, “No, not with me . . . but if you can manage to get into the car I'll take you up to the house and get you fixed up with anything you need.” There was rain on her face and on her hair. It looked cute on her. The rain on her long lashes looked like tears and they sparkled more brilliantly than her diamond ear-drops.
When I'd propped myself against the side of the car and I was standing alone, I said, “What would your folks say if you took home a guy like me?”