The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (79 page)

Oscar purred, “Then I take it we’re friends, Abby?”

“Oh, yes.” She put her highball glass down on the coffee table. “And in a way we’re partners, aren’t we? When will I get my share?”

Suddenly there was frost in the room. The cheekbones ridged Oscar’s lean face.

“What share?” he said softly.

“Why, Wally’s share. He earned it, didn’t he?” She was completely relaxed; she was free and easy and charming. “I read in the papers that there were twenty-two thousand dollars. One-fifth of that—”

“Young lady,” Oscar cut in, “are you trying to blackmail me?”

“Not at all. I simply ask for what I’m entitled to. If money is owed to a man who dies, it goes to his wife.”

She said that wide-eyed and innocent-faced, her earnest manner holding no hint of threat – merely a young and probably destitute widow wanting to clean up financial matters after her husband’s untimely demise.

Huh! A few minutes ago I’d thought she wasn’t so bright. Now I changed my mind.

I spoke up. “She’s got something there, Oscar.”

“You keep out of this.”

“Not this time,” I said. “I suggest we each give her five hundred bucks.”

Oscar pushed his fingers under his glasses to rub his eyes. Then he nodded. He had no choice. We’d be in a bad way if she were to chirp to the cops.

“How much will that come to?” Abby asked me.

“Two grand. Wally wouldn’t have gotten a fifth anyway. He was only the driver. Believe me, we’re being more than fair.”

“I’m sure you are,” she said, and gave me a smile.

This was why I’d jumped in to negotiate – to get some such smile out of her, a smile of sheer joyous gratitude. A man has already gone quite a distance with a dame who thinks she’s beholden to him for money. And with this one I was after going on and on and maybe never stopping.

“Just a minute,” Oscar said.

Abby and I shifted our attention from each other to him.

“Prove you’re Wally’s wife,” he said.

“But I am.”

Oscar looked stern. “I know every switch on every con game. We don’t even know Wally had a wife. If he did, we don’t know you were the one. Prove it.”

“Why, of course,” she said. “I have my marriage license and other things at home. If you want me to bring—”

“I’ve a better idea,” I said. I wasn’t one to pass up any chance when I was on the make. I got off the hassock so quickly I almost spilled what was left in my glass. “I’ll go with you right now and look over whatever you have.”

“That’s so good of you,” she said so sweetly that my heart did a complete flip.

Oscar nodded and closed his eyes. When we left, he appeared to have fallen asleep in the armchair.

According to the marriage license, they’d been married seven months ago by the county clerk here in New York.

I sat in the only decent chair in the place. Nearby a train rumbled on the Third Avenue El. She didn’t quite live in a slum, but the difference wasn’t great. There wasn’t much to this room, and there was less to the bedroom and kitchen and bathroom. They were all undersized and falling apart.

Wally’s cut of the loot would have meant a lot to him and her, if he’d lived through it.

I handed the marriage license back to Abby. She fed me other stuff out of the shoebox on her lap – snapshots of her and Wally, his discharge papers from the army, the deposit book of a joint savings account containing less than fifty dollars, a letter from her mother from somewhere in Iowa complaining because she’d gone and married a man named Wallace Garden whom none of the family had met.

“Good enough,” I said.

“How soon will I get the money?”

“Soon as I collect it from the others. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Two thousand dollars,” she reminded me.

“That’s right,” I said.

Abby put the lid on the shoebox and carried it into the bedroom. She didn’t jiggle and wiggle like Stella. Her tight, slender figure in that trim gray dress seemed to flow when in motion.

I wanted her as I hadn’t wanted anybody or anything in a very long time.

Take it easy, I warned myself while waiting for her to return. I could mark myself lousy in her book by rushing. All right, she’d been married to that round-faced kid, who’d been what he’d been, meaning no better than I, and she hadn’t acted particularly upset over his death. But I didn’t yet know what made her tick. I only knew that she looked like moonlight and roses and that it would be wise to handle her accordingly. She was already grateful to me. She’d be a lot more grateful when I brought her the two grand. Then would be time enough to take the next step – a big step or small step, depending on how she responded.

So I was a perfect little gentleman that evening. She put up a pot of coffee and we sat opposite each other at the table and she was as pleasant to talk to as to look at. She spoke of her folks’ farm in Iowa and I spoke of my folks’ farm in Indiana.

When I was leaving, she went to the door with me and put her hand in mine. And she said, “I’ll see you soon, Johnny.”

“Do you want to see me or the money?”

“Both,” she said and squeezed my hand holding hers.

I walked on a cloud clear across town and then a couple of miles uptown to Oscar’s apartment. I hadn’t as much as kissed her good-night, or tried to, but what of that? My hand still tingled from the feel of hers.

I laughed at myself. Johnny Worth, the cynical hard guy, acting like a love-sick schoolboy! But I laughed at myself happily.

Oscar and Stella were in bed when I let myself in. Oscar heard me and came out of his bedroom in a bath-robe.

“She was Wally’s wife all right,” I told him. “Tomorrow I’ll go collect the dough from Georgie and Tiny.”

“You seem anxious,” he said with an amused twist to his mouth.

I shrugged. “We promised her.”

“I can read you like a book, Johnny.” He nudged my ribs with his elbow. “Make much headway with her?”

I shrugged again.

“I guess not if you’re back so early,” Oscar said, leering amiably. “I can’t imagine what she saw in that punk Wally. She has class. Well, good hunting.”

“Good-night,” I said and went into my room.

Next afternoon I set forth to make the collection for Abby. Oscar had given me his five hundred in the morning, and of course I had my own, so that left Georgie and Tiny to go.

Georgie Ross lived out in Queens, in a neat frame house with a patch of lawn in front. His wife and two teenaged daughters hadn’t any notion of how he picked up extra money to support them. His regular job, as a traveling salesman in housewares, didn’t keep him very busy or bring in much income. He had time on a weekday afternoon to be mowing his lawn.

He stopped mowing when he saw me come up the street. He stood middle-aged and pot-bellied.

“For God’s sake,” he complained when I reached him, “you know better than to come here.”

“Relax. You can say I’m a bill collector.”

“Just don’t come around, that’s all I ask. What d’you want?”

“To collect a bill. Five C’s for Wally Garden’s widow.”

His eyes bugged out. “You’re kidding,” he said. Meaning, if I knew him, not about the widow but about the money.

I told him I wasn’t kidding and I told him about Abby’s visit last evening.

“Listen,” Georgie said, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his suddenly sweaty face, “I’m not shelling out that kind of dough for anybody’s wife. I have my own family to think of. My God, do you know what my two girls cost me? Just their clothes! And my oldest, Dinah, is starting college next year. Is that expensive! I got to hang onto every penny.”

“Some of those pennies were supposed to have gone to Wally.”

“It’s his tough luck he wasn’t around to collect.” He leaned against the handle of the mower. “I tell you this: we give her two grand now, she thinks she has us over a barrel and keeps coming back for more. Oscar ought to handle her different.”

“How?”

“Well, he handled her husband,” Georgie said.

That was a quiet, genteel street, and he fitted into it, by looking at him, the way anybody else in sight did. He resumed mowing his lawn.

I tagged after him. “Use your head, Georgie.”

“You don’t get one damn penny out of me.”

I knew I was licked. I’d ask Oscar to try. He could persuade him if anybody could. I left Georgie plodding stolidly behind the mower.

Tiny was harder to find. He was like me, without anywhere to stay put. He was paying rent on a mangy room he’d sublet downtown, but he only slept in it. I made the rounds of the neighboring ginmills. What with lingering in this place and that and shooting the breeze with guys I knew, I didn’t come across Tiny until after nine o’clock.

He was sitting wide-shouldered and gray-haired at the bar, drinking beer. He was always drinking beer.

He said, “Gee, am I glad to see you.” Picking up his glass, he slid off the stool and we went to an isolated table. “I’ve been trying to get Oscar on the phone,” he said, “but he ain’t in. Stella says she don’t know where he went.” He glanced around. “Johnny, there’s been a city dick asking me questions this afternoon. A fat guy.”

“Brant?”

“Yeah, that’s the name. He’s got it, Johnny. He knows who was in on it and what happened to Wally and all.”

I thought of Abby.

“Go on,” I said.

“Remember last Wednesday when the five of us went over the route in Oscar’s car? It was hot and when we came back through the Holland Tunnel from Jersey we stopped for beer on Tenth Avenue. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“Somebody that knew us saw the five of us sitting in that booth together.”

I let out my breath. Not Abby.

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Search me. This Brant, he wasn’t telling. Some goddamn stoolie. He knew four of us – me and you, Oscar and Georgie. The one break is he hadn’t never seen Wally before. Brant is one cagy cookie, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I figure they showed the stoolie Wally’s picture, but he wasn’t sure. If he’d been sure, they’d be piling on us.”

“That’s right,” I said. “The cops can’t make any move officially unless they can link us to Wally. I saw Georgie this afternoon and he didn’t mention being questioned.”

“He’s been by now, I guess. The way I figure, this stoolie didn’t spill till today.” Tiny took a slug of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I don’t get it, Johnny. A stoolie sees four of us and a strange guy in a beer joint. What makes this Brant so all-fired smart he can tell from that Wally was the strange guy and we was the ones did the job way over in Jersey a couple days later?”

“Because Oscar is too good.”

“Come again?”

“The caper bore the marks of genius,” I said, “and Oscar is a genius. Then Brant drops into Oscar’s apartment a few days ago and finds me staying there, so he’s got two of us tagged. Then he learns we two plus you and Georgie were drinking beer with a fifth guy who could’ve been Wally Garden, and he’s got us all.”

“The hell he has! All he’s got is thoughts running in his head. He needs evidence. How’ll he get it if we sit tight?”

“He won’t,” I said.

This was a good time to tell him about Abby. I told him.

When I finished, Tiny complained, “What’s the matter with Oscar these days? First he lets us all be seen together in a beer joint—”

“I don’t remember any of us objected. In fact, I remember it was your idea we stop off.”

“Sure, but Oscar should know better. He’s supposed to have the brains. Then he don’t know the kid had a wife and would blab every damn thing to her. Where’d he pick up Wally, anyway?”

“He never told me,” I said. “But there’s the widow and we promised her two grand. I want five C’s from you.”

Tiny thought about it, and he came up with what, I had to concede, was a good question. “You said you saw Georgie this afternoon. Did he shell out?”

“Not yet.”

“Expect him to?”

“Sure.”

“Bet he don’t?”

“Look, Oscar will get it out of him. I’m asking you.”

Tiny said cheerfully. “Tell you what I’ll do, Johnny. When Georgie shells out, I’ll shell out.”

And he looked mighty pleased with himself. He had confidence in Georgie’s passion for hanging onto a buck.

So after chasing around for hours I had only the thousand I’d started out with. Well, that wasn’t hay and the evening was young. I could bring the thousand to Abby and tell her it was part payment. She would be grateful. She would thank me. One thing could lead to another – and perhaps tonight would be the night, the beginning.

I took a hack to her place.

Through her door I heard music going full blast. I knocked. No answer, which wasn’t surprising considering all the row a hot dance band was making. I knocked louder. Same result. I turned the knob and found the door unlocked.

Abby wasn’t in the living room. The bedroom and the bathroom doors were both closed. The band music, coming from a tiny table radio, stopped and a disc jockey’s voice drooled. In the comparative quiet I heard a shower running in the bathroom. I sat down to wait for her to come out.

The music started up again. It was too raucous; my mood was for sweet stuff. I reached over the table to turn off the radio, and my hand brushed a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses. She hadn’t worn them when I’d seen her, but women were vain about such things. Probably only reading glasses.

She’d stopped showering. Now with the radio off, there was no sound in the apartment. Suddenly it occurred to me that I ought to let her know she had a visitor. Thinking she was alone, she might come trotting out without anything on. I wouldn’t mind, but she might, and I was still on the perfect little gentleman technique.

I went to the bathroom door and said, “Abby.”

“I’ll be right out.”

I hadn’t time to wonder why she hadn’t sounded surprised to hear a man in her apartment and why at the least she hadn’t asked who I was. The explanation came almost at once – from the bedroom.

“What did you say, baby?” a man called.

“I’ll be right out,” she repeated.

Then it was quiet again except for the thumping of my heart.

I knew that man’s voice. If there was any doubt about it, there were those eyeglasses on the table. A minute ago I’d given them hardly a glance because I hadn’t any reason then to take a good look to see if they were a woman’s style and size. They seemed massive now, with a thick, dark frame.