The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (25 page)

So there it was. Now what was I going to do with it? Chernow was my man. He knew I stopped in at the Marlo bar for a cocktail every Friday night. He’d hired Vivian and Smitty to do a job on me. He’d had her planted in the bar, then came in, himself, to put the finger on me, so she wouldn’t make any mistake and get the wrong guy. He’d even suckered me into staying for another drink, when I was ready to leave, tried to plant the idea in my mind of making a play for Vivian. It all tied in, nicely.

A
CROSS
the street was a barber shop, with a clock in the window. The time was 8:10. It hardly seemed possible that all this had happened in only a couple of hours. It seemed like I’d been up half the night, already. And then I remembered Fran. She’d be expecting me home. I should have been there, even, before this. She’d get upset, worried. I had to call her. But I wondered what I could tell her. The truth would drive her crazy with anxiety. I’d have to make up something to tell her.

I decided not to wait any longer for Vivian and Smitty to leave the hotel. Now I knew who was behind all this, I didn’t necessarily need them; I walked down to the corner, entered a cigar store and called Fran. While I was waiting for her to answer, I counted the money I had in my pocket. I’d taken a five-dollar bill from my pay, this noontime, put that in my pocket and placed the rest of my cash in my wallet. Smitty had gotten that. Lunch and the drinks tonight had left me with a dollar bill and a few cents change from the five.

Fran came on and sounded relieved at hearing from me. I told her that as I was leaving the bar with Chernow, we’d bumped into a couple of other men from the office. They were going to the fights at the Garden, I told her and one of them had an extra ticket, so I decided to go along. I said I hadn’t been able to get to a phone before. I hoped she wouldn’t mind.

“Of course not, darling,” Fran said. “Just don’t be too late. And have fun!”

I hung up and sat there for a moment. Yeah. Have fun. I was going to have a lot of fun.

I left the cigar store and stood out on the street in front of it. I looked down Forty-Sixth Street toward Broadway. It was a long alley of flickering neon lights. I hadn’t been in New York at night like this for years. But if I saw it every night, I think it would have affected me the same way. New York, even the Times Square area, is a business world by day. It’s speed, turmoil, excitement. But it’s in black and white. After dark the whole thing changes.

The pace doesn’t slow, but now it’s in full color and the moving neon lights heighten the effect of continual action. Reality, ugliness, is gone. You don’t notice the dirt-littered gutters, the unpainted buildings, the grimy bricks and windows. Manhattan by day is a businesswoman, crisp, efficient, an executive, stern, no time for anything but making money: a salesman, loud, swaggering, confident. By night the town’s an exciting, painted woman of the evening; a young girl out on her first New York date; an actor between performances, out on the street in costume and greasepaint.

You stand in a midtown side street at night and all your values change. The pulsing nightlife around you gets into your own bloodstream. Obligations, duties, ideals, slip away. Life is a carnival. Perspectives change. Nothing counts, suddenly, but laughing, singing, drinking, dancing. You need a pretty girl, to look at the promise in her eyes, to watch her tongue moisten her red lips, to watch her teeth shine in the saying; you want to feel that girl in your arms as the chrome-like polish and smoothness of a name band stirs the rhythm in you both; you want to get drunk, where all is beautiful, all gaiety, fast funny talk, and none of it will ever end and there will be no morning, no hangover, no regret.

In spite of what I’d been through this evening, and the jam I was still in, I felt all that, for a moment. I could imagine what it would do to some people,
living
in all that, going out into it night after night. Because you weren’t a part of it – and little of it was for nothing, you had to buy it – unless you had money in your pockets. Lots of money. I could imagine that this was what had happened to Ronny Chernow and perhaps Liz Tremayne, too.

But I forced all that out of my mind. I had to get this evening over with. I had to get Ronny Chernow, get that signed statement of confession back and get him arrested for all he’d done. That was a big order.

What would happen if I went straight to Chernow, now, confronted him with the whole thing? He’d laugh at me, deny it, say I was drunk. Or possibly he would kill me. Or Vivian and Smitty, his hired help would either be there, or get there after I arrived. No. That was out. I had to learn more, first, at least.

I remembered that the confession I’d been forced to sign implicated Liz Tremayne. I didn’t doubt but what she’d been in on all this with Chernow. But I could not figure his mentioning her in the confession. Monday, when the whole thing came out, she’d be on the spot, too. She certainly wouldn’t protect Chernow, then. There was only one answer to that. She’d been killed, probably, with another note and with the murder made to look like suicide, also. That would round it out nicely for Chernow. If that hadn’t happened yet, it would soon. If it hadn’t happened yet, I could save Liz’s life. Once she saw the way her partner was double-crossing her, she’d turn on him, substantiate my story. If she was still alive.

I went back into the cigar store, called Liz Tremayne. There was no answer. But I had to find out whether she was dead yet or not. Her address was on West End Avenue and I took a subway up there. It was an old, run-down apartment building, still bearing some trace of its glory days in the faded and torn canopy over the front and in the fat, whiskey-flushed doorman in his soiled uniform. There was no switchboard, but I learned from the mailboxes that Miss Elizabeth Tremayne lived in Apartment 3 M.

There had been no police cars in front of the place, no sign of excitement. I figured I’d gotten a break, that she was still alive. I rang the bell outside of her apartment. There was the click of high heels across the floor inside and the door cracked open. Then it was thrown wide. The girl who stood there didn’t look like the Liz Tremayne of Emcee Publications, Inc. Business Office. In fact, for a flashing second I didn’t even recognize her.

The hair that was always pulled into a tight, unattractive bun at the back, now flowed softly, silkily about her shoulders. It had been just washed and treated with some kind of light rinse and it looked alive and all full of shiny highlights. It was a honey color, instead of just brown.

Liz was wearing makeup, tonight. Her lips were smoothly painted and glistening. There were artfully blended touches of color at her high cheekbones. Without glasses, her eyes were beautiful. They were a flame-blue, in striking contrast to the thick, black, spiky lashes and the thin, dark, neatly formed arch of the brows above them.

She was wearing a blace lace and silk negligée, trimmed with what looked to me like pink angora. It was just held together by a belt in the front. She had everything necessary to wear something like that. What Ronny Chernow had said about her that day long ago, was true in spades. This Liz Tremayne knocked you out, all right. I couldn’t get my breath that first moment of looking at her.

“Kip!” she said. She didn’t even sound like the same girl I’d seen around the office for several years. When she’d changed her appearance she’d apparently altered her whole personality. “Kip Morgan, what are you doing here?”

I’d wanted to see what emotions registered in her eyes when she first recognized me. But it didn’t work out. I wasn’t looking at her eyes. When my gaze did finally rise to her face, she was smiling, puzzled.

“Something’s happened,” I said. “I – we’d better not talk out here.”

“Of course,” she said. “Come on in.”

She stepped aside and I moved past her, down a short hallway and into the living room. The room was large, high-ceilinged. It was furnished more like a studio than an apartment. Instead of a sofa there was a studio conch. There was no matching furniture, no upholstered chairs. There were two leather-covered lounge chairs and several straight-backed ones. There were scatter rugs on the floor and prints of good paintings decorated the blue-tinted walls. Between two enormous windows was a ceiling-high bookcase, with every other shelf decorated with knick-knacks, instead of books. I turned to Liz Tremayne.

“How well do you know Ronny Chernow?” I demanded.

She blinked. The color on her cheekbones seemed to darken. She held her hands clasped in front of her. Her voice was distant, cool, when she said: “What’s this all about? You have no right to come barging in here, uninvited, questioning me about my private life!”

“All right,” I said. I gave it to her right between the eyes. “Chernow has been embezzling Emcee Publications out of thousands of dollars for a full year. You’ve been his accomplice. I have proof, so don’t try to deny it.”

She fell back away from me as though I’d slapped her. She went deadly pale and now the spots of rouge on her cheeks stood out like red poker chips. Her hands clenched together until the knuckles stood out whitely.

“You must be insane!” she said. “Making an accusation like that! What in the world’s the matter with you, Kip? What’s made you say – or even think a thing like – embezzling funds? How?” She glanced toward the door of another room, a reflex action, but then caught it and turned her gaze quickly back to me again.

I got a crawling feeling up my spine. Supposing Ronny Chernow, when he heard from his gun-goons – Vivian and Smitty – that I’d escaped, had anticipated me, come straight here. He could be hiding in that room, right now, waiting to kill me himself, not trusting to hirelings this time.

I took a big, gulping breath and without waiting, or giving myself a chance to get really scared, I whirled around Liz Tremayne and walked to that room. While I was fumbling inside the door for the light switch, Liz leaped at me, tried to yank me away. But she was too late. My fingers found the wall switch and the room flooded with light. Liz stood trying to pull me away from the doorway.

It was a bedroom, furnished with cheap maple furniture. There was nobody hiding there. But on the bed were two expensive alligator leather suitcases and a woman’s purse. I started toward them and Liz grabbed my shoulder, wheeled me around, got in front of me, blocking me off.

“You have no right!” she half screamed. “This is
my
apartment. Get out of here! Get out! I’ll call the police – have you thrown out!”

She was strong. She kept pushing me back toward the doorway to the living room, away from those bags on the bed. She was so strong, she kept throwing me off balance, gradually forcing me out of the room. It was no time to be gentlemanly. I grabbed her by the wrists and flung her with every bit of strength in me, away from me. She went spinning and hit the wall with her back, jarring her, so that hair fell down over one eye. She leaned back against the wall, her head forward and lowered a little, her beautiful eyes, frightened, angry, blurred with tears, looking up at me through the thick black lashes. She was half sobbing.

“Call the police?” I said. “Go ahead. I’m going to do it, anyhow, when I get through here. Now, stay away from me. If you interfere, I’ll have to knock you out.” Big, tough Kip Morgan, a real rough cookie – when he was up against an unarmed girl. But I had to do it.

I went over to the bed and snapped open one of the suitcases. It was filled with women’s clothing. On the top, lying face down, was a framed photograph. I turned it over and looked down into a portrait of smirking, handsome Ronny Chernow, dressed like Mr John K. Rockabilt. I put it back down, shut the suitcase. I picked up the purse, opened it. Along with all the usual feminine junk, there was an airlines envelope, containing two one-way flight tickets to Mexico City. I put them back, then tossed the purse back onto the bed.

“You and Ronny were running out on the whole thing, eh?” I said. “To Mexico.”

She was still leaning against the wall. The tears had finally squeezed out of her eyes and were running down her cheeks. She pushed the hair back from her forehead and shook her head. Her gaze dropped away from mine, fell to the floor.

“How did you find out about it, Kip? We – we thought we had plenty of time. Until Monday, at least, maybe longer. Where’s Ronny? Have the police got him?”

She could have been acting, but I didn’t think so. There was a whipped tone to her voice. And the packed bags and the airline tickets told of her innocence. She was getting the big double-deal from Chernow and didn’t even know it. Yet. She was being made a patsy, too, right along with me.

“I don’t know where Ronny is!” I told her. “How’d I find out about this? Because Chernow paid a guy and a girl to lure me to a hotel room. They beat me into signing a confession that
I’d
been the one taking the money, pulling that phoney check racket for the past year. Then they were going to throw me out of the window. It would look as though I’d committed suicide. You and Ronny Chernow would have been beautifully cleared. Neither of you would have had a thing to worry about Monday morning.”

Her eyes widened. “But – but I don’t understand. Why didn’t Ronny tell me about all this? He told me that because I was implicated there wasn’t any way of framing it on anyone else. We – we talked about that. We discussed trying to put it all onto you. Kip. But Ronny said we couldn’t – not and keep in the clear. He still had over five thousand left when he sold out what was left of his stocks. He said with just a few thousand we could live well for a few months in Mexico and that he had some connections down there, that there was plenty of money to be made down there for a man with brains and looks and personality. So we were going to run for it. By now, I didn’t care. I–I was just glad that it was over . . . I–I guess he must have made a last minute change in plans and figured some way to put it onto you and still keep me in the—”

“No,” I cut in on her. “He didn’t. He planned it this way right from the beginning, Liz. I forgot to tell you.
Your
name
was
mentioned in that confession letter I was forced to sign. It fully implicated you. The only one Ronny Chernow kept in the clear was himself. The way he was going to do that was to kill you, too. Another suicide. That would tie it all up.”