Ghost of a Chance (3 page)

The swine had gone too far. “Jeff, did I complain about your Uncle Niel?”

“Uncle Niel has no small talk. He’s a man of character.”

“Yes! For one month he sat in stony silence, staring at me!”

“That, Haila, should have flattered you.”

“It gave me the creeps. He was staring at me because he claims that smoking cigarettes kills women. He was waiting for me to keel over.”

“We were not discussing Uncle Niel, Haila.”

“Oh, no! We never discuss your side of the family.”

“Frankly, I don’t blame your Aunt Ellie’s husband for hiding in a cave.”

“He is not hiding. He’s a guide in the Great Mountain Cavern.”

“Haila, he knows that Cavern like a book. He gets himself lost for days at a time on purpose. To avoid Ellie.”

“That isn’t true. He’s devoted to her.”

“Then why doesn’t he ever go home? Because he finds it more invigorating to sit on a stalactite and talk to a stalagmite.”

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Nobody can sit on a stalactite. They’re the ones that drip down. If my uncle ever finds time to sit while on duty in the cave, he sits on a stalagmite. Honestly, Jeff, you don’t seem to…”

“She’s cute, isn’t she?”

I turned around. A lanky, gawking newsboy stood beside our table. With one hand he clutched a thin sheaf of early edition tabloids, with the other he rubbed his face in embarrassment. He gulped before he spoke to Jeff.

“Is that your hat and coat there?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. “Would you like to borrow them?”

“No.” The boy was serious.
Now
he was looking at my seedy old storm coat. “Is that a fur coat, Missus?”

“It was in its day.”

The boy looked once more at Jeff’s hat and coat, then at mine. He made a decision. He thrust a newspaper abruptly at Jeff’s hand and skipped for the door. Jeff dropped the tabloid in my hands as he chased after him. While he towed him back to our table I glanced at the paper. Jeff had known without reading it what made this copy of the tabloid a very special edition.

In the top margin of the first page, written in the same labored printing as the message on the match fold, was another bulletin for our information. It said: “Still followed. See you in the lobby of the Royale.”

The newsboy was frightened. He kept saying over and over: “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“It’s all right,” Jeff said.

“I was just supposed to give you the paper, that’s all.”

“I know and I want to pay you for it.”

“The guy paid me. Five bucks.”

Jeff picked up a five dollar bill from the remains of a twenty that lay on our table. He passed it to the boy and his eyes bugged. “That makes ten! I guess I can stand gettin’ into trouble for ten.”

Jeff was annoyed. “I’m not going to do anything to get you into trouble.” He laughed at the kid. “I have a son your age.”

“Yeah?” The boy grinned and sat on the chair Jeff swung toward him.
“
Aw, you’re not old enough.”

“He’s really my step-son. It’s her child.” Jeff nodded at me. “By a former marriage to an old Harvard, Princeton, Yale man.”

The kid looked at me and laughed. He was feeling a lot better. He said, “I’d be glad to help you if I could. But I don’t know nothin’.”

“Tell me what you do know.”

“Well, I was leanin’ against an El pillar watchin’ a snow machine when this guy spoke to me from the other side of the pillar. He scared the pants off me because I didn’t know he was there even. First thing he says for me to pretend he wasn’t talkin’ to me. Then he passed me the five bucks around the front of the pillar and tells me to pass him a paper around the front of the pillar, too. He made that sound important—the front of the pillar—so I knew for sure then somebody was in back of us on the sidewalk watchin’. It was all I could do to keep from turnin’ around.”

The boy had started off at a fast clip, but now he was speaking like a machine gun, as if the quicker he did his part the more money he would be earning per minute. He was enjoying his job now, too.

“I give the guy the paper and he tells me to wait a second. All I could see of him was his hands writin’ on the paper. He slides the paper back to me and he says for me to bring it in here to you. He told me what you two was wearin’. Then he said for me not to move till he was out of sight. I stood there pretendin’ to watch the snow machine and all of a sudden he runs across the rest of the street and out of sight. That’s it, that’s all.”

“You must have got a look at him when he crossed the street,” Jeff said.

“No. All I seen was a hat and a big overcoat. And a red scarf.”

“Was he tall or short?” Jeff asked.

“Well, not tall. He was runnin’ and crouched over… I don’t know.”

“You didn’t even catch a glimpse of his face?”

“No. He never give me the chance.”

“Did you wait to see if you could tell who was following him?”

“Sure.” The kid grinned; he was pleased with himself. “Because I was wonderin’ about that myself. But it was no go. He waited till the light changed before he run, as if that was what he was waitin’ for all the time, I guess. Then a whole mob of people come across the street. You know… Third and Fourteenth.”

“Well,” Jeff said, “thanks a lot.”

“Thank you a lot! Ten bucks in all!”

“What are you going to do with it? Give it to your mother?”

The boy laughed. “No, sir! All that would come out of that would be a hangover and it wouldn’t even be me that had it.” He got up, but he didn’t seem to want to leave. “I wish there was somethin’ else I could do for you. Is there maybe?”

“No,” Jeff said. “Thanks again.”

“Okay.”

The boy headed for the door. As he passed an empty booth, he threw the rest of his newspapers into it. He looked back at us and waved and went on out into the snow.

“Read me the mail, Haila,” Jeff said.

“All right. ‘Still followed. See you in the lobby of the Royale.’ Darling, it seems I was hasty to accuse you of having enough imagination to invent Frankie to escape Aunt Ellie. I’m sorry.” “You’re convinced now about Frank and his lady?”

“Yes, of course. Let’s get to the Royale. Quickly.”

“The Royale,” Jeff said. “I never heard of it.”

“It’s on Seventy-second just off Fifth.”

“Oh. Fashionable.”

“Very. Oodles of suicides.”

“We’ll take the Lexington Avenue Subway.”

We went north and up north we found the blizzard, being closer to home, was really spreading itself. As we mushed across Park Avenue I had to hang onto Jeff two-handed or the wind would have rolled me down New York’s grandest canyon all the way to Grand Central Station. At last the marquee of the Royale took shape through the swirling snow and, as we scurried for its cover, a man and a woman swung in ahead of us. A giant doorman, wrapped to the teeth in conservative but rugged livery of maroon, majestically braved the elements to open the door. He spoke to the man.

“Mr. Troy?” he said.

“Here!” Jeff said. “I’m Troy.”

“Jeff Troy.”

“Right.”

“Got something for you.” He reluctantly doffed his admiral’s hat and fumbled inside it. “Funny business. Fellow pushed this at me and disappeared around the corner before I knew what was happening.” From one envelope he drew a second one. He handed it to Jeff. “There was ten dollars and a note for me. It said to give that to Jeff Troy when he showed up. Whoever your friend is, he’s generous.”

“How long ago was he here?”

“Not more than five minutes ago. Maybe less. Excuse me, I’m freezing.”

A wisp of beautiful warmth touched us as he opened the lobby door and slipped inside. Jeff turned his back to the wind and unsealed the envelope. I leaned close to him and read Frank Lorimer’s third order of the day.

“Please go to Times Square. Keep walking around the Times Building till I talk to you. Don’t look at me when I do. The enclosed is only part payment.”

Jeff pulled some money out of the envelope.

“Fifty dollars,” he said. “Frank must have been afraid we’d give up on him.”

We started back to Lexington Avenue and the subway.

Jeff said, “Haila, this is hardly a day to stroll around and around the Times Building. You go home.”

“No. Don’t make me, Jeff.”

“Frank mightn’t be able to connect with us this time, either. We might have to keep on moving.”

“I know.” I waited a moment until I had enough breath saved up to speak again. “If only he had given us the lady’s name in one of his messages. We could go straight to her.”

“There’s probably a great deal more to tell us than a name.”

“But a name would help.”

“It would,” Jeff said. “But on second thought, I have a hunch that Frank’s going to get to us at the Times Building.”

“I wonder,” I said, “which of the men we saw at the Belfast Bar could have been Lorimer?”

“It’s useless to try to figure that out. We saw fifty men. And maybe we didn’t see Lorimer at all.”

A half block ahead of us the subway entrance gaped a black welcome in the surrounding whiteness. We quickened our steps and ran for it.

We had turned the first corner of the steps before we heard the whistles echoing hollowly from the cavern below us. We had turned the second before we knew what they meant.

There were trains in the station, but there was no sound of sliding doors, of rolling wheels, of motors starting and dying. The trains were standing still. There were people on the platform, but they were strangely quiet. There was only the shriek of whistles and that came from the black depths of the tunnels beyond.

I clung to Jeff as he moved forward. They were lifting a still, limp figure from the tracks when we reached the platform. I saw a dark overcoat, a nondescript hat. A subway guard stooped and, for a moment, he was swallowed in the gully of the tracks, down between two cars. When he stood up again there was a length of red wool in his hands.

I stood on tiptoe as two men lifted the body. The man’s head fell to one side. I saw the round, wrinkled face, the wisps of white hair. I caught Jeff’s arm.

“Jeff,” I whispered, “he…”

“Yes,” Jeff said. “We did see him.”

Frank Lorimer had been in the bar with us. He had stood close beside us; we had watched him at his work. Frank Lorimer was the little man with the broom at the Belfast Bar.

The bartender at the Belfast
smiled a pleased welcome at us. He seemed to have won a bet with himself that we would be back again that evening. He stepped to the only pair of empty chairs at the bar and waited for us to make ourselves at home.

“The same?” he asked. “A sherry and a beer?”

“No,” Jeff said. “We came to talk to you about Frank Lorimer.”

“What’s that name again?”

Jeff repeated it.

The bartender shook his head. “It don’t register with me.”

“He works here. He was working here this afternoon.”

“No. I was the only one working. Sunday I take the whole day and, believe me, it’s a long one.”

“Frank Lorimer,” Jeff said, “was sweeping up this afternoon while we were here.”

“Oh, you mean old Pop!” The bartended chuckled. “I never think of what he does as being work. Every time he sweeps out the place we give him a drink. Finally we had to cut him down to sweeping once an hour. What did you say his name is?”

Jeff told it to him again.

“Well, well.” The bartender called down the bar. “Say Harry, did you know Pop’s name was Frank Lorimer?”

Harry said he didn’t, that he had always thought it was James Pierpont Morgan. The Belfast rocked with laughter. The bartender wiped tears of mirth out of his eyes and turned back to us.

“Everybody just calls him Pop. Why, I never thought about him having a name.” He stopped grinning. “What’s wrong? Pop get himself in some kind of trouble? I noticed he was gone. But sometimes Pop gets so thirsty he goes all around the neighborhood sweeping the bars. Something happen to him?”

“He was killed about an hour ago,” Jeff said. “A subway train ran over him.”

“No!”

The bartender slapped his hand down on the wet bar. It made a spanking sound and then the room was quiet. After a moment the customers came crowding around, staring curiously at us. Somebody asked a question, then all of them asked questions at once.

“We don’t know much about it,” Jeff said. “We were at the subway stop at Lexington and Seventy-seventh. We saw them lifting him off the tracks. They took him away in a police ambulance.”

“He’s in the morgue,” somebody said.

“I suppose so,” Jeff said. “We came here because we thought somebody should know. His family should be told.”

“His family,” the bartender said.

“Sure,” the man who was Harry said, “the family should always be notified in a case like this. But Pop never gave the impression that he had any family.”

“That’s right,” another voice said. “Guys like Pop don’t have no family.”

“Where does he live?” Jeff asked.

“Live?”

Two or three voices said the word together and it was as though it was a new idea to them that Frank Lorimer had ever lived anyplace. Somebody guessed that he must have had a room but nobody knew where it might be.

“When I bought this place four, five years ago.” the bartender said, “Pop come with it just like one of the fixtures. He never talked to no one unless they talked to him. And I guess none of us ever did talk to him except we was kidding him. You know how you do to a drunk.”

“He didn’t look like a drunk to me,” Jeff said.

“You’re right about that. I been watching people drink longer than you been alive, and I never seen a man like Pop. He didn’t look drunk, he didn’t act drunk, but he was drunk every minute he was awake. I guess he’s been like that for all his life. Being stewed was the same as breathing to Pop. He would have died if he’d stopped drinking, just like as if he stopped breathing. I can’t explain it.”

“Being sober to Pop,” Harry said, “was like being drunk to other people.”

“Yeah,” the bartender agreed, “that sums it up. He was a stew.”

“Did he have any special friend?” Jeff asked.

“Everybody was Pop’s friend,” the bartender said.