You Might As Well Die (2 page)

Ten minutes before midnight, Dorothy and Robert Benchley, her closest friend, were at Tony Soma’s, their favorite speakeasy.

Earlier in the evening, Tony had been waltzing around the loud and lively crowd, chatting with all the customers, singing opera and pouring drinks. Now he approached Dorothy and Benchley. His smile had disappeared.

“Mrs. Parker. Mr. Benchley,” Tony said sternly. “There’s a little matter I’d like to discuss. It’s about the bill.”

“Ah, yes.” Benchley rocked back on his heels, nearly spilling the drink in his coffee mug. “Our cups and our tab runneth over.”

“Tony, you know we’re good for it,” Dorothy said, gently swatting him on the arm. “We’ll pay in full next time.”

Tony’s deep-set eyes turned darker. “That’s what you said last time. It’s been weeks since you paid.”

He slid his hand inside his vest pocket. Dorothy, less than five feet tall, instinctively edged behind Benchley.

Tony pulled out an envelope. “Your bill.”

Benchley glanced at Dorothy. He reluctantly took the envelope and gingerly pried it open.

This prompted Dorothy to remember MacGuffin’s envelope. She hadn’t given him a single thought since lunchtime. She didn’t care much for Ernie, but she hoped he had gotten over whatever itch had been bothering him.

Benchley gasped when he read the bill. Dorothy grabbed her purse and quickly pulled out her horn-rimmed glasses. She scanned down the long column of numbers to the total....

Four hundred and eighty-five dollars! Her big, dark brown eyes grew wide. That was well more than she earned in a month.

“Have we really drunk all this?” Benchley asked her.

She silently returned his glance. Of course they had. The bill was only a column of prices. It didn’t list the many different types of drinks. But she could imagine—double scotches, whiskey sours, gin martinis, gin rickeys, gin and tonics, sidecars, orange blossoms, Tom Collinses, Rob Roys, old-fashioneds . . . and more Manhattans than they could remember.

Dorothy felt unsteady. She needed a cigarette—and another drink. She reached into her purse for her pack of Chesterfields, but her hand touched paper. She pulled an envelope from her purse—MacGuffin’s envelope.

“What’s that, Mrs. Parker?” Benchley asked, his thin mustache twitching. “Another bill?”

“You pay mine first,” Tony said, folding his arms over his barrel chest.

“Might be nothing,” Dorothy said, holding it in her quivering hand. “Might be something.”

MacGuffin must have slipped it into her purse after lunch. He had told her not to open it until midnight. She grabbed Benchley’s arm and looked at his wristwatch. Just a few minutes until midnight. Something told her to open it right now.

She ripped it open, unfolded the plain white paper and skimmed through the handwritten note.

To whom it may concern. At midnight tonight . . . will meet my fate in the waters beneath the Brooklyn Bridge . . . My last will and testament . . . Once I am dead and gone in this life . . . A new and better life awaits me. Good-bye, cruel world
.

“Oh crap!” She clutched Benchley’s arm. “It
is
a suicide note. That Ernie! Come on, we have to go.”

She stepped forward, but Tony blocked her way. “Sorry. I cannot let you leave until you pay.”

“Tony, what is this?” she said. “A friend of ours—well, a man we know—is about to kill himself. We have to stop him. We have to leave now.”

Tony shook his head. “Nobody leaves until the bill is paid up.”

Benchley was puzzled. “We don’t carry that kind of money around with us. How can we get you any money if you won’t let us leave?”

Tony merely kept his arms folded and jutted out his round chin.

“Please, Tony,” Dorothy said. “A man might be dying. Right at this moment.”

He shrugged, indifferent.

“Oh, Tony, old pal—” Benchley began kindly; his eyes were merry and twinkling.

Dorothy interrupted. She had had enough. “Don’t make me make a scene,” she said quietly, but Tony heard every word. “Really, is that what you want? A short, hysterical woman shrieking in your speakeasy?”

Underneath it all, she knew Tony was a softie. His tough facade cracked. His eyes changed from unforgiving to apologetic.

“My friends, I’m so sorry,” he sighed, his hands cradling his sagging cheeks. “It’s the wife, Mrs. Soma. She’s on my back day and night. No more freeloading, she says.”

“Freeloading?”
Dorothy gasped. “Well, I never.” She eyed Mrs. Soma across the room. Mrs. Soma returned Dorothy’s glance with an icy glare.

“Look around,” Tony said, exasperated but with a touch of pride. “We’ve paid for a lot of improvements. If we get raided, we put in trapdoors behind the bar where the bottles can drop out of sight.”

Benchley nodded approvingly.

Tony continued. “See all these new potted plants with the big ferns? If the cops bang on the door, you dump your drink in there, and we fill up your cup with tea or coffee. And don’t forget all the palms that need to be greased—the patrol cops, the lookouts, the city officials. I can’t run the place on goodwill!”

“Of course,” Benchley said. He held out a few bills. “Take this for now. We’ll pay you the rest as soon as we can.”

Tony took it and stepped aside. “Go on. Go help your friend. But please bring in the money soon, okay?”

“Sure,” Benchley said, patting him on the shoulder. Dorothy kissed him on the cheek.

They hurried outside and down the steps of the brownstone. They looked in vain for a taxi. The darkened street of town houses was quiet as usual.

“Stop right there!” Mrs. Soma shouted from the doorway. “You pay your tab or you’ll never drink in this club again!”

Tony grabbed her arm to drag her back inside. She shook him off easily and pushed him away.

Dorothy and Benchley paused only a moment. Then they turned and ran.

Mrs. Soma yanked off her apron and threw it back inside. “Tony Jr.! Get your backside out here and catch these scroungers! Now!”

“
T
ony Jr.!”Mrs.Soma yelled again.

Dorothy looked over her shoulder. She expected to see a dark, strapping, muscle-bound young man appear in the doorway of the speakeasy. Instead, she saw a boy only about twelve years old.

Tony Jr. spotted them. Even from such a distance in the dark, Dorothy could see him smile like a wolf on the hunt. The boy’s dark eyes sparkled. His huge grin was full of big white teeth. Suddenly, he tore down the steps, his jacket flying, his mother hurrying down the steps after him.

“Wait for me, you little rat!” she called.

Tony Jr. bounded across the sidewalk in one long leap, then flung open the door of a parked Studebaker. He jumped into the driver’s seat. He could hardly see over the steering wheel. Mrs. Soma hurried into the backseat as the boy started the engine roaring.

Benchley and Dorothy reached the street corner but stared back in amazement at the scene in front of Tony’s speakeasy.

Tony Jr. yanked the wheel and gunned the engine, and the car shot forward.

Benchley turned to Dorothy. “I think we need a taxi.”

“I think we need a flying chariot,” she said. “But a taxi will do.”

They turned toward the busy traffic of Sixth Avenue, their arms flailing to hail a cab—any cab. In the street behind them, they could hear the car with Tony Jr. and Mrs. Soma speeding closer.

A cab slowly pulled in front of them and came to a leisurely, agonizing stop. Frantically, they jumped in.

The man behind the wheel was old, fat and gray. “Where to?”

“Brooklyn Bridge, and step on it,” Benchley said.

“What’s the big hurry? You going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight?”

“If only,” Benchley said. “We have a bloodthirsty adolescent and his wicked, speakeasy-running mother after us.”

Dorothy said, “And we have to stop a mediocre illustrator from drowning his sorrows in the river. Please hurry.”

The cabbie turned to face them, annoyed and sarcastic. “Are you a couple of nuts, or have you had too much to drink?”

“A little of both,” Dorothy said. “Please hurry.”

At that moment, the Somas’ Studebaker turned onto Sixth and came parallel with the cab. Tony Jr. stuck out his tongue at them.

“Jeez, what is this?” the old cabbie yelled.

Then the boy turned away, reaching for something.

“My word,” Benchley said. “You don’t suppose he’s got a gun?”

“A gun?” the cabbie cried. His anger had given way to fear.

Suddenly, something splattered on the passenger window. The cabbie visibly jumped in his seat. “Holy—!”

“Just a tomato,” Dorothy said.

They looked at the pulpy red burst. As it slid away, it revealed the grinning, fanged face of little Tony Jr.

The cabbie, breathing heavy now, threw the taxi in gear, stepped hard on the gas and pulled away fast into the swiftly moving traffic. Dorothy and Benchley turned to see the Somas’ car quickly follow them.

Dorothy looked down to see the suicide note still clutched in her hand. Ernie MacGuffin’s sprawling, loopy penmanship was more like that of a teenage girl than an artist.

“May I see that?” Benchley said. She handed it to him.

She had only skimmed it before. He read the whole thing aloud by the light of the quickly passing streetlamps.

“ ‘To whom it may concern,’ ” he began. “ ‘At midnight tonight, October twentieth, I will meet my fate in the waters beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. I hereby make my last will and testament. To my wife, I bequeath all my paintings, including those well-known to the public as well as the vast majority of finer ones the public has rarely seen. Once I am dead and gone in this life, perhaps these superior yet unknown works will speak for me in the afterlife. Then the world will know I’m not a hack. A new and better life awaits me. Good-bye, cruel world.’ ”

“Hello, cruel afterlife,” Dorothy said.

Benchley shook his head. “Why would a guy like Ernie try to kill himself?”

“Why would anyone? Sometimes life is just too much.”

Benchley, who was almost always cheerful, didn’t seem to comprehend this answer. Dorothy tried a different one. “Clearly, he thinks no one takes him seriously as an artist.”

“But suicide?” Benchley said. “Not Ernie. I’ve rarely met a more eager beaver.”

“That’s true. Ernie’s about as melancholy as a newly adopted puppy. He certainly didn’t have the blues this afternoon.”

Something thumped loudly. The taxi lurched forward.

“Jeez,” the cabbie cried. He was almost in tears. “That damned kid rammed into us!”

Dorothy and Benchley peered out the rear window at the vicious face of Tony Jr. dangerously close behind them.

Turning around, Benchley handed the note back to Dorothy.

“I don’t know what Ernie hopes to achieve,” Benchley continued. “He thinks no one takes him seriously now? Just wait until he kills himself. Certainly no one will take him seriously then.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dorothy said. “Nothing’s more serious than suicide.”

Bang!
The taxi lurched again as Tony Jr. rammed the Studebaker into it.

The cabbie wailed, “Stop it, you dirty little monster!”

“Give him a break,” Dorothy said primly. “He’s only a child.”

Benchley, who had two boys of his own, shook his head. “Why is that child up this late on a school night? Some parents have no control of their children.”

From behind them, they could hear the shrill voice of Mrs. Soma. “Stop playing games, Tony Jr., and run them off the road!”

On a street corner ahead, the cab’s headlights illuminated a policeman on a motorcycle.

“Oh, thank the Lord!” the cabbie sobbed. He drove right for the cop and brought the taxi to a lurching halt inches from the motorcycle. The cop peered in the window.

“Help, Officer!” the cabbie pleaded breathlessly, his words tumbling out almost too fast to make sense. “There’s a damned boy monster. And his mother. Trying to kill us!”

The policeman put his gloved hands on his leather-belted hips. “You drunk, buddy?”

“Officer Compson, is that you?” Dorothy called from the backseat. “It
is
you! Don’t you recognize me? From the printing plant?”

The young officer rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah, I remember you.”

“Officer,” Dorothy said, all business now. “There is a colleague of ours who is about to throw himself off the Brooklyn Bridge at this very moment. Please call in a squadron of squad cars and an army of ambulances.”

Mrs. Soma and Tony Jr. had pulled their car alongside. “You won’t need an ambulance once we get ahold of you,” she spat. “You’ll need a hearse.”

“Arrest them!” the cabbie babbled. “They’re a menace!”

Officer Compson ignored this. He replied to Dorothy. “The Brooklyn Bridge? Is that where you’re headed in such an awful hurry? And what’s that kid doing driving that Studebaker?”

“Never mind them,” she said. “A man’s life is at stake.”

“All right,” Compson said. “Let me call it in. Then I’ll lead you to the bridge.”

His motorcycle was parked next to a police call box. In less than a second, Compson dismounted the cycle, popped open the small door of the call box, and grabbed the telephone receiver in his hand. He talked quickly, closed it up again, and jumped back on his motorcycle.

Siren on, lights flashing, Compson kick-started the cycle and took off, waving the taxi to follow.

The fat old cabbie sat stupefied. “Isn’t he going to arrest them?”

“Follow him!” Dorothy said.

The cabbie jumped again in his seat, threw the cab in gear and hurried to catch up to the motorcycle cop.

“See?” Tony Jr. jeered as he drove alongside. “Even the cops won’t help you. Give it up now and call it quits!”

The cabbie ducked his head down and gunned the taxi’s engine.