Case Pending - Dell Shannon (10 page)

The boy-
led to Janny and he
mustn't think about Janny
.  Quick,
something else.

Another boy. Barging into him in the street there,
dodging past. Didn't know it was a boy—big as a man, as tall as
Morgan himself until he heard the sobbing light breath, had a glimpse
of him close in the reflected street light. That was the Lindstrom
boy, that one; they lived around here, of course. Clumsy big ox of a
kid, one of those got all his growth at once, early, and wouldn't
quite learn how to handle his size for a while; and still so
baby-faced, any roundish, smooth, frecklenosed thirteen-year-old
face, that you expected to see half a foot below where this one was.
Lindstrom was what, Danish, they grew big men mostly.

Generalizing again, he thought; you couldn't, of
course. The archetype Scandinavian wasn't a wife-deserter, but this
one was. That report wasn't made up yet either, and he had to have it
ready Monday morning for Gunn. . . .Something queer there about the
Lindstroms, something that smelled wrong, hard to say what. It could
be another case of collusion to get money out of the county, but
Morgan didn't think so; he didn't think that, whatever was behind the
indefinable tension he'd sensed in that place, it came from
dishonesty. Anything so—uncomplicated—as dishonesty. The woman
was a type he knew: transplanted countrywoman, sometimes ignorant,
frequently stubborn at clinging to obsolete ways and beliefs, always
with a curious rigid pride. That type might be dishonest about
anything else, but not about money.

Invariably the first thing that kind said to him was,
"I've never asked nor took charity before." Marion
Lindstrom had said that. She hadn't told him much else.

But the report had to be made out, and the hunt
started for Eric John Lindstrom.

It was a quarter to seven. Morgan kept himself from
watching the door; his mind scrabbled about desperately for something
else irrelevant to occupy it. He heard the door open, couldn't stop
himself looking up to see: outside he was still uncomfortably warm,
but there was an ice-cold weight in his stomach, and it moved a
little when he saw the man who'd come in—a stranger, not the one.

And right there something odd happened to him.
Suddenly he knew what was behind the queerness he'd sensed in that
Lindstrom woman, this morning. The few minutes he'd been there,
talked to the woman and the boy. It was fear: secret fear. He knew it
now because it was his own feeling: the sure recognition was
emotional.

He thought without much interest, I wonder what
they're afraid of. At seven o'clock, because of the looks he was
getting from the barman, he drank the whiskey and ordered another. It
was cheap bar whiskey, raw. At a quarter past seven he ordered a
third; he decided the whiskey was just what he'd needed, because his
mind had started to work again to some purpose, and suddenly too he
was no longer afraid.

That was a hell of a note, come to think, getting in
a cold sweat the way he had without ever even considering whether
there were ways and means to deal with this, come out safe. What had
got into him, anyway? There must be a way, and what he'd told himself
this morning still went: to hell with any moral standards. If—

When at half-past seven someone slid into the booth
opposite him, he'd almost finished a fourth whiskey. He looked up
almost casually to meet the eyes of the man across the table, and he
wondered with selfcontempt that didn't show on his face why he'd ever
been afraid of this man.

"You been doin' some thinkin', Morgan?" The
man grinned at him insolently. "Ready to talk business?"

"Yes," said Morgan, cold and even. "I've
been doing some thinking, but not about the money. I told you before,
I haven't got that kind of money."

The man who called himself Smith laughed, as the
barman came up, and he said, "You'll buy me a drink anyways.
Whiskey."

The barman looked at Morgan, who shook his head; he'd
had just the right amount now to balance him where he was. "Don't
give me that," said Smith when the man was gone. "You're
doin' all right. You got money to throw away once, you got it to
throw away twice."

Money to throw away ... But that was perfectly
logical reasoning, thought Morgan, if you happened to look at things
that way. He looked at Smith there, a couple of feet across the
table, and he thought that in any dimension that mattered they were
so far away from each other that communication was impossible. He
found, surprisingly, that he was intellectually interested in Smith,
in what made him tick. He wondered what Smith's real name was: he did
not think the name the woman had used two years ago, Robertson, was
the real name any more than Smith. Smith's eyes were gray: though his
skin was scoffed with the marks of old acne and darkened from lack of
soap and water, it was more fair than dark. And his eyebrows curved
up in little wings toward the temples. Morgan stared at them,
fascinated: Smith had worn a hat puffed low when he'd seen him
before, and the eyebrows had been hidden. The eyebrows were, of
course, more confirmation of Smith's identity. With detached interest
Morgan thought, might be Irish, that coloring.

"You know," he said, "you might not be
in such a strong position as you think. Your story wouldn't sound so
good to a judge—not along with mine."

"Then what're you doin' here?" asked Smith
softly.

And that of course was the point. Because it was a no
man's land in law, this particular thing. anyone might look at Smith,
listen to what that upright citizen Richard Morgan had to say, and
find it incredible that any intelligent human agency could hesitate
at making a choice between. But it wasn't a matter of men—it was
the way the law read. And in curious juxtaposition to the impersonal
letter of the law, there was also the imbecilic sentimentality, the
mindless lip service to convention—the convention that there was in
the physical facts of parturition some magic to supersede individual
human qualities. He could not take the chance, gamble Janny's whole
future, Sue's sanity maybe, on the hope that some unknown judge might
possess a little common sense. Because there was also the fact that,
as the law took a dim view of buying and selling human beings, it
didn't confine the guilt to just one end of the transaction.

Smith knew that, without understanding it or needing
to understand it; but the one really vital fact Smith knew was that
there had never been a legal adoption. They had hesitated,
procrastinated, fearing the inevitable questions . . . .

"—A business proposition, that's all,"
Smith was saying. "Strictly legal." His tone developed a
little resentment, he was saying he had a legitimate grievance. "You
made a Goddamn sharp deal with my wife, a hundred lousy bucks, an'
you got away with it, she didn't have no choice, on account she was
up against it with me away like I was, flat on my back in the
hospital I was, an' the bills runnin' up alla time—you took
advantage of her not knowin' much about business, all right! I figure
it same way like a bank would, Morgan—interest, they call it, see?"

There was an appalling mixture of naive satisfaction
and greed in his eyes; Morgan looked away. (Interest, just how did
you figure that kind of interest? Twenty-six months of a squirming
warm armful that weighed fourteen pounds, eighteen, twenty-two, and a
triumphant twenty-nine-and-a-half?—he forgot what the latest figure
was, only remembered Sue's warm chuckle, reporting it. Twenty-six
months of sticky curious baby-fat fingers poking into yours, into the
paper you were trying to read, into what was almost a dimple at the
corner of Sue's mouth: of the funny solemn look in the blue eyes: of
ten pink toes splashing in a sudsy tub. That would be quite a thing
to figure in percentages.)

"You can raise the dough if you got to,"
said Smith.

"Not ten thousand," said Morgan flatly. "I
might manage five." And that was a deliberate lie; he couldn't
raise five hundred.

"I don't go for no time-payments, Morgan."
The gray eyes were bleak. "You heard me the first time. I give
you a couple days think about it, but don't give me no more stall
now. Put up or shut up."

Poker, thought Morgan. Bluff?—that he'd bring it
open, go to law? You couldn't take the chance; and in this last five
minutes it had come to him that he didn't have to. There was only one
way to deal with Smith, and Morgan knew how it could be done, now: he
saw the way. He could take care of Smith once for all time, and then
they would be safe: if necessary later, he could handle the woman
easier, he remembered her as an indecisive nonentity. There was, when
you came to think of it, something to be said for being an upright
citizen with a clean record. And it would not trouble his conscience
at all. In the days he'd worn Uncle's uniform, he had probably killed
better men, and for less reason.

There was hard suspicion now in the gray eyes; Morgan
looked away, down to his empty glass, quickly. He'd been acting too
calm, too controlled; he must make Smith believe in his capitulation.
He made his tone angry and afraid when he said, low, "All right,
all right—I heard you the first time! I—I guess if I cash in
those bonds—I might—but I'll get something for my money! You'll
sign a legal agreement before you touch—"

"O.K., I don't mind that."

"You've got to give me time, I can't raise it
over Sunday—"

"Monday night."

"No, that's not long enough—"

"Monday," said Smith. "That's the time
you got—use it. Make it that same corner, seven o'clock, with the
cash-an' I don't take nothing bigger than fives, see?" He slid
out of the booth, stood up.

"Yes, damn you," said Morgan wearily.
Without another word Smith turned and walked toward the door.

Morgan took out his wallet below the level of the
table, got out the one five in it, held it ready. When Smith looked
back, going out, Morgan was still sitting there motionless; but the
second Smith turned out of sight to the left, Morgan was up, quick
and quiet. He laid the five on the table and got into his coat
between there and the door; outside, he turned sharp left and hugged
the building, spotting the back he wanted half a block ahead.

Because Kenneth Gunn, who had been a police officer
for forty years and sure to God ought to know, had once said to him,
"They're a stupid bunch. Once in a long while you get a really
smart one, but they're few and far between. The majority are just
plain stupid—they can't or won't think far enough ahead."

Maybe this was Smith's first venture into
crookedness, but it should qualify him for inclusion in that; Morgan
hoped so. There was a chance that the boy was posted to watch, of
course; but he had to risk that. The precautions about the meeting
place, beforehand, were to assure Smith that Morgan came alone: and
satisfied of that, Smith's mind might have gone no further.

Smith had made another mistake too, one frequently
made by men like him. They always underestimated the honest men.

It had stopped raining and turned very cold. This was
the slack hour when not many people were out, and it was easy to keep
Smith spotted, from pool to pool of reflected neon lights on the
sidewalk. If he had looked back, he'd have found it as easy to spot
Morgan; but he didn't look back. He walked fast, shoulders hunched
against the cold, round the next corner to a dark side street.

When the trail ended twenty minutes later Morgan told
himself, almost incredulously, that his luck had turned; he was due
for a few breaks. . . .He'd had a job to keep Smith in sight and
still stay far enough back, down these dark streets, and he'd lost
all sense of direction after they got off Second. But at that last
corner, stopping in shadow, watching Smith cross the narrow street
ahead, Morgan realized suddenly where they were. He was at the
junction of Humboldt and Foster, a block down from Commerce; it
looked as if Humboldt ended here, where Foster ran straight across it
like the top bar on a T, but it only took a jog, started again half a
block to the left. What made the jog necessary was Graham Court, a
dreary little cul-de-sac whose mouth gaped narrowly at him directly
opposite. He'd been here before, just this morning. And Smith was
going into Graham Court.

Morgan jaywalked across Foster Street and under the
lamppost whose bulb had been smashed by kids, and into Graham Court.
It was only wide enough for foot traffic: there were three dark,
dank, big frame houses on each side, cheap rooming places, and right
across the end of the court, a four-story apartment building of dirty
yellow stucco. A dim light from one of the ground-floor windows there
showed Smith as he climbed the steps and went in.

"I will be damned," said Morgan half-aloud.
Luck turning his way?—with a vengeance! The building where the
Lindstrom woman lived: where on his legitimate comings and goings
Richard Morgan, that upright and law-abiding citizen, had every
reason to be, a real solid beautiful excuse, good as gold.

And that was just fine, better than he could have
hoped for: he saw clear and confident how it would go, now.
 

SIX

Mendoza realized they'd have to let the Danny go: it
might not be impossible to find the Danny Elena Ramirez had known, if
it would be difficult; but more to the point, there was no way of
identifying the right Danny. What was interesting about this matter
was that by implication it narrowed the locale.