A Killer is Loose (3 page)

The sun was hot. There was no wind. Along the park the trees hung green and dark and heavy, like dead hands, and the world was a winding tunnel, spaced with motionless shadow in black splotches, and the decaying lawns turned up and over into a pale yellowing sky, and far away through the dying bleat of traffic the City Hall clock tolled a slow and darkly maddening reminder of noon.

Noon and busy lunch counters, the restaurants, with business deals over cooling coffee, across polished tables and bread crumbs, among empty, gravy-stained plates, or the homes filled with searing sizzles of frying meat and laughter and sadness and the loneliness of empty waiting and the hushed whisper-touched trays of sickrooms or the cold stoves and silent unhungry patience of death.

I went on past the big hotels with the bright yellow or red or green marquees, their en trance ways touched with that nostalgic assurance of shadowed sanctuary beyond the depthless shade of muted lobbies where a switchboard buzzed and buzzed. Pretty soon I was in the business section of town, trying not to think at all any more, or remember. It was like being lost. There was no way to turn, nowhere to go, nothing to do. Ruby was waiting, and that’s what I was really doing, waiting.

The streets were quite empty with noon. About a block away a city bus was tearing along toward me, with papers gusting in its wake. Then I saw him.

He was standing on the corner, looking down my way.

“Hey!” I called. “Watch it!”

He didn’t hear me. Still looking absently down the street, he stepped briskly off the curb into the path of the speeding city bus.

I
MOVED FAST
. I left the curb and ran up the street toward the bus. Already I saw the driver in the window up there, over the big flat wheel, wrestling, and probably trying to find the brakes, only the brakes weren’t doing anything and the bus kept coming.

“Jump!”

He didn’t jump. He just ceased walking directly in the path of the bus and stood there staring at me as I came up to him. The bus was on us. I heard the brakes then. Somebody across the street screamed. I rammed my right arm under his left with all my weight, diving. We rolled over against the curb and the bus screeched to á halt in the middle of the street.

I stood up and my leg hurt. He pushed himself onto the curb and sat there with one shoulder against a big aluminum can lettered with the black warning:

• • •

I had fallen on my knees and left shoulder, so the Luger was all right. I wanted to haul it out and look at it, but I couldn’t because people were crowding around now.

“You all right?” I said.

He didn’t answer.

The bus driver came around the rear of the bus. He had left it parked in the middle of the street now. Some bus driver. He’d been going like hell and he knew it and he was scared, it showed in his face.

“What you trying to do?” he said. “My God,” he said. “Look where you’re going. My God.”

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Did your foot go to sleep? Or was it your head?”

“Where’s a cop?” the driver said, looking wildly around.

“He’s probably having a sandwich and a beer someplace,” I said. “Like everybody else. Maybe you’ve had the beer,” I said. “Is that right?”

“I want a cop,” the driver said. He had a pad and pencil in his hand now. “Hey, you,” he said to an old lady in a straw hat, holding a shopping bag. “You see this thing? Eh? Eh?”

“Yes,” she said. “I saw it, young man.”

“What’s your name?”

“What’s
your
name, young man? You were going too fast.”

He turned quickly away from her, brandishing the pad and pencil. The crowd was already dispersing. “Somebody must of seen it,” he said. He took a step toward me. “He hurt? He ain’t hurt. He’s drunk, that’s what.”

The man seated on the curb stood up. His face was very pale. He leaned over and brushed his pants two or three flicks with his hand, hitched at his belt, stepped up to the bus driver.

“Case out,” he said softly.

The bus driver blinked at him.

“Look,” the man said kindly. “Go back to your bus, get in, and drive away.” He turned, came over to me, rapped me lightly on the arm. “Come on, pal,” he said softly.

I stood there a moment as he walked off.

He stopped, turned, grinned at me. He jerked his head. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go have a drink.”

I went on over. He looked at the few people still standing around and they got out of our way and we went on up the street. I glanced back once. The driver was climbing into his bus. I heard it start with a roar.

We walked along. It was a fine, sunny spring day, as I said, with not much traffic and very few people on the streets, and we walked along.

He was whistling through his teeth, no tune, not even a whistle, just hissing something or other through his teeth with the melody back there in his head someplace. He walked fast and purposefully, rolling his shoulders some. He wasn’t quite as tall as I was, but broad in the shoulder and with a big chest and cross-swinging arms. He wore a dark gray single-breasted suit with the coat flapping open across a white shirt that was unbuttoned at the throat. He wore no tie. The suit was too heavy for down here at any time of year. The suit looked brand-new, yet it was a mass of wrinkles, as though it had been slept in on a clean bed for maybe three days running.

We walked along like that, with him whistling through his teeth, for a good three blocks. He walked too fast for down here. I was sweating plenty, but he wasn’t. He looked pale and cool.

“You feel O.K. now?” I said.

He turned his head, still whistling through his teeth, swinging his arms. “Sure, pal.” He started whistling again and we walked along.

The hell with this. “Well,” I said, “I’ll see you. I turn off here.”

“Me too, pal.”

We went around the corner and walked along for a while. The Luger was banging against my hip and beginning to chafe, what with all this fast walking and the sweat. Up ahead on the far corner by the railroad tracks was Jake’s Place. Jake Halloran owned the place and he had seen the Luger and wanted to buy it. Well, maybe I should sell it to him. We’d have a little money, anyway, enough to stock up on some food. I didn’t feel much like holding up a gas station any more, not much like anything. And now this guy.

A car stopped by the curb and somebody called my name: “Steve!”

It was Betty Graham.

I went over to the car. The guy in the suit stood there watching, then he looked down the street and just stood there.

“Stevie, Stevie!” she said. “You get your tail right over to the hospital.”

“What?”

“It’s happening,” she said. “Ruby called me over and she was having pains and I took her to the hospital and the doc says any time. She told me you might be at Jake’s—that’s where you used to hang out, anyway. What a break, my finding you!”

“The baby,” I said.

“Get over there, Steve. Ruby’s worried about you.”

“Yes.”

“Shall I drive you over, Steve?”

“No, I’ll walk. It isn’t far, only a couple blocks.”

She grinned behind the wheel of her old blue coupé. She was still in the shorts and sweater and her red hair was in damp ringlets across her forehead. She looked over my shoulder where I leaned on the door of her car and whispered, “Who’s that guy there? He with you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Listen. All right. I’ll get right over there. Is Ruby all right?”

“Sure. She’s fine.” Betty frowned. “Only she’s worried about you, Steve. She wouldn’t tell me what, but she’s plenty worried. Everything all right, Steve?”

“Sure,” I said. “Everything’s fine. You go ahead now. I’ll get right on over there.” I backed away from the car. “And thanks, Betty. Thanks for taking care of Ruby.”

“Forget it.” She grinned, slapped the car in gear, shot another look at the guy who still stood waiting, and drove off.

“Baby, huh?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“That’s great, pal.”

“I got to get right over there.”

“Sure, pal. Sure. Here’s a place, down here. Let’s have that drink.” He nudged me and we walked along toward Jake’s Place. I could use a drink. Maybe that was his way of saying thanks, or something. The hell with it. Anyway, it would give me a chance to sell the gun, if Jake still wanted it. I was pretty sure he did. Then I’d get on over there to the hospital with our twenty-five or thirty bucks. It was like a thick black cloud inside me, empty and sick and black. Lost, that was it; lost and lost and lost. Like being way up there in the sky in a goldfish bowl with Ruby down here calling for me and no way to get to her with any good. Like when you need a drink of water, or you’ll die, and all the taps run dry. You crazy bastard, I thought, go sell the gun and get a drink and eat a hamburg and get the hell over to the hospital and shut your face.

The world hasn’t changed, or ended, I thought. It’s just you’re hungry and broke and you need a job and things are a little tough right now, so quit knocking yourself just because you’re out of gas. So your wife’s going to have a baby, so what? That’s what women are made for, having babies. Almost every one of them has a baby sometime or other. You’ve got the house, haven’t you? Well, all right, so the bank’s got the house, but you’re living in it, aren’t you? You’ll pay off the bank and everything will be fine. What’s this about not letting them leave the hospital until the bill’s paid? Now, that’s a great one, isn’t it? Well, we’ll pay the bill, somehow. There’s a way. There’s always a way.

“Something bothering you, pal?”

I had forgotten about him. He was still with me. We were in front of Jake’s now.

“No,” I said. “I’m all right. I got to go in here.”

“Good a place as any.”

I started inside. He took hold of my arm and held me back. He looked at me levelly.

“Thanks, for that back there,” he said.

“What?”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m just telling you thanks. You saved my life. We’re buddies now, pal.”

“Forget it,” I said. “You didn’t see the bus, is all.”

“No.”

“Anybody’d do the same thing.”

“No,” he said. “Not anybody.”

“What do you mean?”

“You,” he said. “We’re buddies.” He banged me on the shoulder. “See? Like that. You’re my pal.”

“All right.”

“You saved my life. I’ll never forget that. Never.”

“All right,” I said. “But-” Then I got a look at his eyes and changed it, and said, “O.K.”

“Let’s have a drink on it.”

“Sure, but I got to get right over to the hospital.”

He said nothing. We went on inside. I had got a look at his eyes and there hadn’t been anything there. That’s what was the matter. There was not a damned thing there, nothing. Just eyes, like a blind man. Nothing registered, you could tell. Just plain eyes. They were gray eyes and they were open and that’s all you could say about them.

Otherwise he seemed a very energetic young guy who had maybe done considerable farm work, lots of energy, talking soft and fast and moving around a lot, even when he stood in one spot.

It was cool and shady in Jake’s Place. I liked it because it was one of the last of the real bars you find anyplace. There was no red plastic and no chromium and the bar was wood, all the way. There was sawdust on the floor, good clean, fresh sawdust, and you drank wine, beer, or whisky just the way they were. If you asked for a Whisky Sour, you got a glass of whisky. You asked for a Martini, you got a glass of gin. And that’s the way it was, because Jake didn’t believe in cocktails or in mixing “the grape,” as he called it, with anything but water. Everything was “the grape,” and “water ain’t good for the grape, either, but you want water, you get water. Now why not catch hold of yourself, man? Drink the grape the way it’s naturally got to be drunk. You want ice, I got ice, sure. You want ice water, drink ice water. You want the grape, for your own sake, drink the grape. God wants it that way.” And his name was Jake Halloran. Big and black-eyed and black-haired and loud-laughing, and there was always a plate of cheese and crackers on the bar, and it never went empty for long.

If you asked for gin, Jake would pour and say nothing, then lean on the bar with the bottle in his big hairy fist and stare at you until you’d drunk it. “You like that?” he’d ask. “Sure, I like it,” you’d say. “Have another, then,” Jake would say. And he’d pour you another. “You like that one, too?” he’d ask gently, leaning there with the bottle, watching you drink it, and by now you feel like ha-ha … well. “You still like it?” Jake would say. “Then get the hell across the street to the Tangerine Bar and Grille and drink up. They got better stuff.” Then he would stand there with the bottle and watch you soberly and pretty soon you’d grin because you for cripes sake had to do something and you saw that’s what it was. That he was waiting for you to do something, so he’d bust out laughing and you’d say, “Give me a whisky,” and he’d slap the bottle of gin on the bar in front of you and have a whisky with you, on the house. “The grape,” he would say. “Good, hey?” And all the time you were there, the bottle of gin would stand in front of you, and every time Jake passed by, he’d lift the bottle and rap it on the wood. Well, if you didn’t like it, that was too damned bad, and you could get out. Because he owned the place and that’s the way it was. He didn’t like gin. And by this time you didn’t either. You’d never take another drink of gin without looking over your shoulder first, either.

There was a man and a woman at one of the booths, a couple of men drinking beer at the far end of the bar, and one tall fellow brooding in his whisky in the center of the bar. He was pretty well shot, too.

“Well, Steve,” Jake said, balling up the bar rag. “No time long see.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You know how it is. Ruby—”

“Gosh,” Jake said, “that’s right. Not five minutes ago. Steve, your wife’s at the hospital, an’ you gotta get right over there. Mrs. Graham was in here.”

“I saw her.”

“You did?”

I nodded, and all the time the man in the suit, my pal, kept staring at Jake. Then he nudged me and straddled a bar stool. I went over and stood beside him. “Give me a beer, Jake,” I said, and then to my pal, “What’re you going to have?”