Ghost of a Chance (9 page)

I stopped before the inner door and peered through the dirty glass and the dirtier curtain over it. The hall was empty. I eased open the door inch by inch. It must make no sound. On tiptoe I moved to the bottom of the stairs. From a skylight far above a gray, cheerless light fell on the worn gray stairway and the flaking brown walls of the stairwell. I stood still, listening, and above me a door slammed. The bang of it was so close to me, just above my head, that I almost screamed. I found myself half-turned toward the street. I had started to run. I put my hands on the newel post and held on tight.

I couldn’t lose control now. Joyce was in a room one flight of stairs above me. In ten seconds I could be at that door. He would be talking to someone, possibly saying things that I should hear. He might even say a name, a name I needed desperately to hear. The name of a woman.

I put my hand on the balustrade and eased my foot onto the first step. I must be careful now. It had been luck that had brought me this far, nothing else. It had been sheer luck that Joyce had stopped to buy a newspaper, more luck that he had stopped to light a cigarette.

My right foot was on the fifth step, but I couldn’t put my weight on it. I stood there unable to move, paralyzed.

I knew then that it wasn’t luck that I had followed him to this house. I had been carefully, skillfully lured into it. The cigarette, the newspaper—they were accidents. They were parts of the trap into which I had fallen. Somewhere, probably in the cafeteria, Joyce had seen and recognized me. Somewhere right above me he was waiting for me now.

My eyes were on a level with the second floor. There was no sound, no movement there. I searched the hallway as far as I could see without moving. There was nothing there, nothing but two blobs of black protruding from the niche a doorway made. Flattened against that door, almost lost in the murky light, was Joyce.

Without turning, I lowered my foot to the step beneath me. The black shoes hadn’t moved. I took another backward step and then another. I eased myself down again, straining for a sound above me.

I heard it then. A quick rush of movement, the pound of heavy steps. But I was already at the door, wrenching it open, shoving against the outer one. I felt the cold, clean air on my face as I raced blindly out into the street.

The warmth of the waldorf
lobby was a comfort to me, but not quite enough. The well-fed contentment of the people, solid-looking citizens all, was reassuring, but I needed something more. I needed Jeff. I needed him to put an arm around me, to tell me everything was all right, that he would personally see to it that I never again followed a strange man into a strange place. The tremors returned to my solar plexus. I lit a cigarette and used the smoke to blot out the image of a pair of shoes with a man in them, waiting for me to come just a little closer.

Jeff was not in the lobby. In a moment I would go to the desk and ask if there was a message for me. But first I needed the rest of my cigarette to get me back in shape. The ride uptown to the Waldorf hadn’t been quite long enough to accomplish that. But now I was safe, I was sound. There was nothing like a Park Avenue hotel lobby to make a girl feel fine again. I took a deep drag on my cigarette, enjoying it.

A voice, hard and cold as steel, spoke into my ear. The man was standing behind me. I started to turn toward him and his hand grasped my arm, held me straight forward. The words came again.

“Get going. Right out that door.”

I didn’t answer him; I couldn’t. My lips were stiff, my mouth suddenly dry as dust.

“Come on, Toots,” the voice said softly. “Move.”

“No,” I whispered. Then I found my weapon. “Let me go or I’ll scream. I’ll scream until the police come.”

The voice laughed. “The police, that’s good. I’m the one who’ll call the police. Go on now back to Sixth Avenue where you belong. This is out of your territory.”

“Out of my…” I wrenched myself loose from the man, turned to face him. “What are you talking about? I am waiting for my husband!”

“I knew, I know.” He smiled mirthlessly at me. “All you girls are waiting fer your husbands.”

I gasped. If I hadn’t gathered what the man meant, the mirror on the wall across the lobby would have told me. I still had on my snazzy Harlequins. The two spots of red stood out on my cheeks like two red lamps. My painted mouth seemed to be saying, “C’mon up, big boy.” And my high, high heels and sable coat were exactly what one of the girls would save for a week to buy. I almost wept with shame. I didn’t look cute and pixie as I had thought. I looked like the newest apprentice in the oldest profession in the world.

The house detective took my elbow.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“No!” I cried. “No, I’m not a… I’m not a-babe! I am
so
waiting for my husband! He… there he is over there now!”

Jeff, in fact, was there. He was crossing the lobby toward the desk. In my excitement my voice rose.

“That’s my husband!” I screeched.

Everyone in the place turned to stare at me, including Jeff. He saw me pointing at him. His eyes widened in horror, not the horror of recognition, but in plain, unadulterated horror. His face flamed with embarrassment.

“Darling!” I screamed.

Jeff turned and fled.

When I caught up to him, he was standing outside the Waldorf, trying to light a cigarette. His hands were trembling. He didn’t see me until I was at his side. He recoiled, fell back a step, then recognized me. He fell back three more steps, recoiled some more.

“My God,” he said.

He tried to say something else, but he could only moan softly. His attitude irritated me just a little.

“Call a cab,” I said coldly.

“You need an ambulance. What happened to you?”

“I’ll explain everything in the cab.”

“Haila, at least take off those horrible glasses.”

I took them off.

“No,” Jeff said, “put them back on.”

“Here’s a cab. Get in.”

I held the door open for Jeff, helped him through it. I told the driver to take us up Park Avenue. Jeff leaned forward and spoke earnestly to him.

“Buddy,” he said, “believe me. I never saw this woman before in my life. I’m doing a favor for a sick friend.”

Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I said, “Shut up.”

“Haila!” Jeff shouted. “What the hell happened to you?”

“This,” I said, “Is a disguise.”

While I wiped that disguise off my face and put on the one I used every day to fool my husband and friends, I told Jeff how things were with me. He wasn’t annoyed that I had so stupidly let Joyce outsmart me. The narrowness of my escape left him too weak for that. He patted my knee; I moved the other one over to be patted, too, but Jeff was looking out through the rear window.

I said, “Joyce never caught up with me. He isn’t following us now.”

“Haila, you’d better go home.”

“Why?”

“I think it would be better if you went home.”

“No! Darling, maybe Joyce was just trying to scare me.”

“Sure,” Jeff said. “That’s all.”

“But I won’t let anything like that happen again. And, Jeff, I did find out something. The time. Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“That was good going, Haila, but…”

Jeff was looking out the back window again.

“Darling,” I said, “you’re the one with the jitters, not I. Nobody is following us. I know I shook Joyce.”

Jeff looked at me. “Joyce picked you up when we separated,” he said. “Somebody else followed me.”

“Somebody else… you mean there were two of them? They ganged up on us! Jeff, who is yours, what does he look like? Have we seen him before?”

Jeff shook his head. “I haven’t even spotted mine yet, Haila. I don’t know who he is.”

“Then how do you know he’s following you?”

“Haila,” Jeff said, “I wish you’d go home. I wish you’d let me handle this. In a little while I’m going down to Headquarters and see Hankins again and—”

“Jeff, what’s happened? Something’s happened!”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t going to tell me.”

“No, but… look, Haila. They killed Frank Lorimer when he got in their way. Joyce would have done the same thing to you.”

“Hut how can you be so sure?”

“Because,” he said, “they’ve already tried to get me.”

“Jeff…”

“They took a shot at me.”

“Jeff!”

“I’d rather not tell you how close it was.”

“The stinkers.”

“See, Haila, that’s why I want you to go home. The bad company you’re keeping is making you use bad language.”

“Jeff, when did it happen, how?”

“As soon as I was sure Joyce wasn’t following me, I went on to Tollman’s Stable myself. When I came out someone was up on a roof across the street. Fortunately, it’s awkward carrying rifles around town. It was a tough shot for a revolver. I dug the bullet out of Mr. Tollman’s floor. Maybe Hankins would like to see it.”

“Don’t show it to me. I don’t want to see it.”

“I wish you’d go home, Haila.”

“No,” I said. “I won’t unless you do.”

Jeff was silent. He was trying to think of a way to ditch me. I didn’t give him a chance. I said, “Did you learn anything at the stable?”

“I talked to old Tollman himself. He didn’t know Frank Lorimer, he couldn’t tell me anything about him. But he did tell me about the hansom cab.”

“Yes?”

“Tollman bought it years ago from Hiram Kennedy.”

“That name,” I said, “Is familiar.”

“Money,” Jeff said. “Oh, so much, much money. But the 1929 crash nearly wiped old Hiram out, the poor guy. Fie died a millionaire. All he had left was a couple of lousy millions.”

“And Frank Lorimer was his coachman in the old days?”

“I think he must have been,” Jeff said. “But we’ll find out for certain at Gramercy Square. The Kennedy town house is still there.”

He told the driver to take us to Gramercy Square.

“Jeff,” I said, “who are we going to see? You said old Hiram was dead.”

“I don’t know who we’ll see, if anybody. Tollman told me about the house. He doesn’t know if there’s even anyone in it. And I haven’t had time to find out.”

I opened the package of my own clothes. I took off the fancy high heels and got into my plain, heavenly brogues. I switched to my old hat. I slipped out of my sables and Jeff enthusiastically helped me into my tweed coat. I rolled the sables up in a ball.

“Jeff,” I whispered, “I’m going to leave this fur coat in the cab.”

“Go ahead,” he said, “but you’ll probably be imprisoned for committing a nuisance.”

We went straight through Gramercy Square without stopping. Halfway down Irving Place Jeff had our driver make a sudden U-turn and come to an abrupt stop. No car seemed to have been following us. But we walked back to the private, iron-fenced park that formed the Square called Gramercy. We walked slowly twice around the park.

If Joyce had picked me up again, he wasn’t letting us know it. If Jeff’s shooting acquaintance was watching us, he didn’t tip his hand, He might have been any one of the scattering of men walking about the square. He might have been the man reading his newspaper as he sauntered along, or the man so engrossed in the pigeons foraging in the tiny park, or the man talking to the nurse as he patted the tow head of her small charge. He might have been anyone. It wasn’t a nice thing knowing that, it wasn’t conducive to a feeling of well-being. It was frightening. My hands ached from holding so tight to Jeff’s arm.

We headed for the Kennedy place on the eastern side of the square. The house was the eighteen-nineties at their most. It was overweighted with cornices and elaborate stone work that was as practical as a bustle. It made the refaced, modernized building next to it look positively naked and indecent.

Jeff rang the bell a second time. Someone, apparently an ancient, infirm family retainer, needed his help to swing in the great door. A female hand stretched through the widening opening. In it was a dollar bill. Then the hand quickly withdrew.

A female voice laughed and said, “A thousand apologies! I thought you were from the delicatessen.”

We could see her now, all of her. She was something to see. Her jet black hair swirled about her round face in that obsolete coiffure, the wind-blown bob. Her eyebrows were thinned to a pencil-line arch, her lashes dripped mascara, her lips were a crimson, carefully-painted cupid’s bow. She wore a baby blue cardigan that was taxed to capacity by her bra-ad bosom. She wore a skirt that was too tight and too short, no stockings, pumps with heels higher than the ones I had just discarded because they were dangerous. She was a sweater girl, aged forty.

Jeff, when he could speak, said, “No, we’re not from the delicatessen.” He sounded as though he were sorry we weren’t. “Are you… is your name Kennedy?”

“No!” she cried vivaciously. “A thousand times, no!”

“Do any of the Kennedys still live here?”

“My pal, Thelma. You want to talk to Thelma?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Well, come in, why don’t you? Whatcha standing there for?”

She beckoned us into a great dusky hall that gave the impression of being kept open only because it was a necessary thoroughfare. As she bounced along ahead of us she sang to herself, snapping her fingers rhythmically at her sides. I would have sworn the words to her song were “Boop-boop-a-doop, boop-boop-a-doop.” She led us past several closed giant double doors with drifts of dust on their thresholds. We followed her into a large, square room that opened off the end of the long hall.

It seemed to have once been, a long time ago, a dining room. There was a fireplace with a magnificent white marble mantel. Above it, reaching clear to the high ceiling, was a huge mirror with a lovely, gold-leafed frame; before it stood a battered kitchen table that held a two-burner gas hot plate, now being used to perk some coffee.

There were handsome tapestries on the walls, rich, heavy draperies masked two windows. Taking up almost all one wall was a mammoth Victorian sideboard. It was covered with magazines, a portable phonograph and a stack of records. In a corner was a studio couch, so carelessly made that you could see it was doubling for a bed. This was certainly a house of twenty rooms, but apparently all the living that was done in it was done in this room only.