The Fear Makers, page 18
It was one of those old-fashioned, Washington, D. C., elevators in the birdcage frame. While it creaked upward from the fourth to the fifth level, the people inside the elevator were talking. That ice-cold blonde voice, I recognized. The trick hat I saw and heard a snatch of words, very angry, “…don’t say I didn’t tell you, dear, not to come here first instead…”
I had my break of luck, there.
Vivian and Loder were too intent on each other to see anyone waiting for an elevator. Blindly, I turned. I was halfway to the end of the corridor when I saw it was the dead end. The stairs were on the other side of the elevator. I entered the men’s washroom. No one was there.
I tried opening a window. Either it was caught, or I didn’t have enough push in the bum leg to exert the necessary pressure. Besides, one can tear a hundred flimsy, legal-size work sheets into confetti in a hurry, but with over a thousand small pasteboard punched cards, more time is required.
It’s funny how difficult it is to destroy something when one has only two or three minutes. I tried shredding half a dozen cards and flushing them down the drain. They clogged. They were too stiff.
Already, I imagined the search was on for me.
I stood on the seat and was just able to reach the overhead steam pipes. One thing about Washington, D. C., in early spring, the building supervisors are convinced the climate is warm enough to shut off the steam.
By using the cane, I managed to push the fiber-board box onto the steam pipes, and back against the wall. When I got down to the floor, the box was hidden.
I opened the door. The corridor was still clear. I cut to the other end and descended by the stairs, and I walked along Connecticut, trying to walk in a hurry and not being too obvious with the cane. Whenever I heard the thudding engine of an automobile coming along the street from behind, automatically I wanted to look back. I expected Loder’s blue Cadillac.
Connecticut Avenue was too exposed. I turned right. I turned right on any street. I wasn’t thinking about streets. I turned right on this side street and felt the bum leg gradually developing the pains. The double vision began, again, too.
I stopped on a corner, hoping I’d be taken for the man waiting for a bus. The cane helped; it acted as the third element in the tripod. I looked across and saw this two and a half story building with the big glass windows. Except for the signs it might have been an automobile showroom. Over the door the two signs blurred into “La Salle du Bois.” It was a fraud. It was a cheat. That building wasn’t any wooden hall. It was white plaster. Or brick, painted white. I concentrated and the double vision faded into something normal. They’d have black coffee there. Lots.
Inside, La Salle du Bois isn’t an automobile showroom. It fitted as a place in which to meet any Miss Nelson. Somebody had gone and found a frame for all the Miss Nelsons in Washington, D. C., the tall redheads, the honey-blondes, the brown curly heads, all of them in the new expensive dresses and the fur coats, loaded down with what they had from here and there, this guy and that, the rings, the gaudy little gold bracelets. In the square tan and white anteroom, the invisible drift of perfumes from so many women became something else, the flowers and the allures and the advertised scents all reverting. These mixed perfumes resynthesized into the sweetish chemical smell. For every man waiting, three women were waiting. They waited in white, stuffed chairs, legs crossed, each woman exuding her own perfume into the common supply.
From one of the chairs, unhurriedly Miss Nelson remarked, “For a minute I thought you might have forgotten, baby.” Next, she asked, “What’s wrong with you? You’re not sick?”
I said I was fine, only, I’d walked too fast. I was out of condition.
She said, “Who else are you expecting?”
I stopped looking around. This was safe. I’d have the black coffee and get a few minutes’ rest and telephone Senator Walder a little later, after Miss Nelson had shoved…
The head waiter evidently knew her. He produced soft noises. He clucked. He led us into the big room. Here someone had worked with a brush, using pastel shades and off color tans. A bas-relief in white plaster was on one huge wall. It might have been an eagle or a crow. I never did have a chance to notice distinctly.
Along the walls were the high, white, banked seats, satin, I think. Each one was indented, forming the standard horseshoe shape. Customers on the other side couldn’t hear too much or see over.
Miss Nelson politely said thank you to the head waiter. He snapped his fingers. The fat one with no hair came. This one asked what we were drinking. Miss Nelson wanted the champagne and armagnac cocktail. A double. I said plain bourbon was fine, with a large cup of black coffee as a chaser.
So we had the plain bourbon and black coffee and three cocktails before ordering food. She ordered squab under glass, broccoli sprinkled with cheese, and tomatoes fresh from Florida and I had a sandwich and another black. After her third champagne and armagnac, Miss Nelson placed elbows on the table. They were nice elbows, rounded and white, revealed through the black-lace net effect of the sleeves. She said, “To hell with this squab. I’m still thirsty.”
I was looking around for the fat one with no hair, to order another cocktail, when she surprised me. She asked coolly, “I suppose you think I’ve been making a play at you?”
There’s not much anyone can answer to a thing like that. Women have an instinct. All of them have. It isn’t fair. They can become invisible. They can walk behind a guy and kick out his legs from under him and instantly return to where they were and smile dovelike with wide open eyes and appear to be unaware of what they’ve done. There should be a law.
She asked, “Is there something wrong with you? You look dopy.”
I said after what she’d said, anyone would look dopy. Besides, I hadn’t had much sleep last night.
She said, “Snap out of it, will you? I’ve been waiting eight months now for you to get well. It isn’t my fault I wasn’t able to talk to you sooner after you did get here, was it? What’s a girl to do? My God, I’d saved those nylon stockings. If you’re interested, Clark bought them for me.”
I must have replied…
“Yes, Clark,” she said. “He hired me about a year after you joined the Army. After a while we went around together. I don’t think he’d have married me if he’d lived. He was always talking about what you and he were going to do after the war. He wouldn’t have had to marry me. I’d have gone with him, any time. Those nylon stockings—” She waited until I gave the order to the fat waiter. “Clark bought them about a week before he was killed. I don’t buy from the black market as long as I have two brothers flying combat. Yes, I will have another drink.”
I said the drink was coming.
When the waiter arrived with the champagne and armagnac I requested him please to bring me a glass filled with two-thirds milk and a third bourbon. He scratched his nose. He hesitated. He said, “All right.”
I told Miss Nelson that I wanted please to get it straight.
“Straight?” she said. She started on the fourth champagne and armagnac. “On the afternoon before he was killed, Clark had a hell of an argument with Megassum. I was in the outer office then, I didn’t hear it. But Megassum came out about five, his collar wilted, white as a sheet. Clark buzzed me. You know how he was.”
I replied I knew how he was…
“Never excited. He made a crack that he’d have to order himself another general manager. That was all, except for one thing.”
The waiter put the milk and bourbon on the table. I was trying to think. Out and beyond the table, people seemed to swim in a brown and white haze. Sun gleamed in through the wide windows around which green plants were trained.
She said, “Clark told me Megassum had asked to see him that night and Clark laughed after telling me and began talking about the new records he’d ordered. He wasn’t seeing anyone that night.” Miss Nelson cupped the big flat glass. She finished the yellow drink. Her lips stamped bright red quarter-moons on the rim of the glass. “Not even me.”
Her voice was hard. “After Clark was killed, I heard Mr. Megassum had spent that night with Barney Bond, discussing business.” She said “business” with a peculiar intonation.
She said, “Barney was hired. He won’t talk. I’ve waited for you. Now they’re beginning to whisper it around the office. Things like that leak out. You’ve seen Mr. Megassum. He knows people are beginning to whisper he did it. He’s scared.” She laid the big glass on the table. She asked, “Suppose I went to the police? What I know doesn’t prove anything, does it? I’m the girl who came from Waukesha, Wisconsin, to be a big success in Washington. I don’t want happening to me what happened to Clark, do I? If I can’t prove anything.”
I said talk and rumors in an office didn’t prove anything, either.
She said, “You’re here now. You can’t go until you prove something. Barney knows. Make him tell the truth. Clark was your friend, wasn’t he?”
We sat there, the two of us. By and by, the head waiter noticed. Probably there was a crowd in the anteroom. He put on the professional smile, laying down the bill. Miss
Nelson rubbed monotonously at the white tablecloth with her fingers. The tan and white room stretched out. It became thin and long. Sun sparkled on all the heads floating in the bright mist. On a wall, an eagle flopped plaster wings. No one noticed it was moving. I had so much to do. I had to tell Senator Walder where I’d hidden the summary cards and ask him to retain a lawyer for me because Megassum had forged Clark’s signature. I had to see Elizabeth. I had so much to do and so little time before going away from Washington, D. C.
Suddenly, angrily, she said, “Make Barney or Mr. Megassum tell. Haven’t you been where they don’t waste time just asking somebody to move off a beach or surrender a town? Get Barney or Mr. Megassum alone and make one of them admit the truth!”
So I said how that method wasn’t the one generally approved over here and she said, “You’ve washed out of it, have you? You don’t care?” and she sat there and the tears filled in the hard eyes and her eyes weren’t hard at all and I wondered I’d ever thought they were. She sat there and she began crying, silently, and I looked away and around and focused on the head waiter.
He was wearing one of those long swallowtail coats. He resembled a black bird with big nobby feet and all the plumage stripped off his head. He clucked among the tables. I watched him drifting off into the tan and white mist, among the floating heads. Everything was removed. All the dimensions vanished. I saw the head waiter drifting toward the anteroom, the big black bird, and at the same time I had the vision of someone lying on the grass in the night, the middle of him busted into and coming out on the grass, with all the voices whispering louder and louder.
Then the head waiter was lifting the white rope separating people in the anteroom from the people in the dining room and like one of those bouncing balls they used to have in the first Silly Symphonies, to indicate the words of the song, this red ball bounced above the white rope toward the black bird. Then I saw it wasn’t a red ball, after all. It was a cinnamon-colored ball. It was cinnamon-colored hair over a face round as a ball. It was Barney Bond. Behind Barney Bond was Loder.
CHAPTER XI
Next, quickly, I asked Miss Nelson why she hadn’t quit sooner and angrily she said, “Because like a fool I waited for you to get well, hoping something would happen when you came,” and I said to Miss Nelson she ought to be pleased to know at this moment she was resigning from Megassum.
I asked would she please listen and stop sniffling? If she never wished to be run over by an automobile, during the next few minutes I’d appreciate having her do precisely as I requested.
She’d get up and march direct to the powder room. In there she’d remain as long as possible, at least half an hour, not going out until several women got their hats fixed and were heading for the street.
After that, she wouldn’t ever return to Megassum’s. Instead she’d take a cab and make certain no one from the office was a passenger in the cab and if someone in there was, she was to scream bloody hell.
The idea was for her to go to Senator Walder in the Senate Building and explain I believed I was being delayed and if I didn’t reach him before tonight he was to take what action he thought advisable. I finished by saying for her not to look now but that ought to be Barney Bond over there by the large red-headed party.
She looked; she asked me, “Say, are you nuts like Mr. Megassum thinks? Barney isn’t there.”
So I looked and he wasn’t but I caught a glimpse of his head as he passed into the street with Loder. Then, Miss Nelson saw him, too, and I wasn’t nuts any more. I told her I had a hunch they didn’t like me and it would be a good idea for at least one of us to be able to get out of here, for sure, without being prevented.
She was smart as well as a big, good-looking girl. She asked, “You’re doing something about Clark, baby?”
I said, baby, I’d done it.
“I’ll telephone the Senator or see him and if you haven’t talked with him tonight, I’ll start things myself. All the luck.”
People at other tables watched her until she entered the women’s powder room. She had that kind of hip action.
So that part was done and for about a minute longer I sat there. Barney and Loder were probably waiting to hook me when I walked out. I didn’t know how they’d handle it but I didn’t like being educated.
I got up and headed in the direction of the men’s place and struck on by, using the cane to speed the process. I followed the flat-footed waiter with sideburns into a kitchen where the brass pots probably weren’t entirely for show.
The large gent inside the white apron put down the carving knife. He was pleasant about it; he was perfectly agreeable. He didn’t act like they say a cook acts when one walks into his kitchen.
He said, “Sir, if you wish to inspect the kitchen, on alternate Mondays and Fridays, at noon, the management arranges to—”
I said that was fine; some day, I’d do it. At present this was the way on the exit route because two brothers had seen me dating their sister. They wouldn’t like it. One was fattish with cinnamon hair. The other was big, red hair undiluted. The cook couldn’t miss if they entered. I gave him five dollars, asking him please to tell the red-headed men he hadn’t seen any guests in here since the last raid.
He started to say, “We haven’t had any—” and caught on. He shuffled up the white apron, sticking the five dollars where it was on the way to drawing interest. He said, “I never saw you. Nobody here saw you.”
I turned right past the refrigerator holding the meat, and aimed for the door. Outside was a long, narrow alley abutting at one end next to a high brick wall. Behind the brick wall was one of those old-fashioned brick Washington houses, about Van Buren’s time possibly. There must have been a tiny garden—or dirt behind, too, because I heard kids’ voices as they played.
I hurried south toward L Street, going over the old, uneven bricks. Water from recent rains formed stagnant pools between the bricks. Halfway toward L a big bare tree grew crookedly in the alley. I was abreast a building which had “Joe’s—” something printed in big faded black letters above the closed back door when the Cadillac heaved inside the alley.
I was still trying to walk through a locked door when Barney Bond reached me. His cinnamon hair was disheveled; the red tie hung crooked outside the striped blue suit. His mouth wobbled as he tried to talk. I shook off his arm, stepping back, leaning against the brick.
He said, “Please, Allen. We haven’t finished discussing this.”
By that time the big guy had pushed himself through the Cadillac. He came running. He converged on the left-hand side of me. I half swung around. The trouble with only a single educated leg is, one doesn’t have too much leverage. Besides, Loder was ready for the cane.
He jerked it from my hands. He broke it across his knee. He said, “Chum, you shouldn’t ought to do that twice.” Broken cane clattered in two pieces on the bricks.
I want to say this for Barney Bond: I believe seeing Loder bust my cane hurt him more than it ever did me. It must have touched something inside of him. In his youth, when he was training his body and muscles, he must have depended upon a cane.
With his left hand, Loder had clamped my mouth. It was like being stiff-armed, my head pushed onto the bricks. I couldn’t produce the necessary noises to alert that cook and have him emerge with his knives.
I know how a stork feels. I was the stork, one leg holding me up, neck stretched where the head was clamped between brick and a hand. No leverage to do much moving. Over the hairy red fingers I could see a blur that was Barney Bond. I tried punching Loder’s belly, and missed.
Barney said, “You broke his cane.”
Loder said, “Sure, Doc. Get the heap backing out. Run the motor fast, Make it backfire, Professor.”
First Barney emitted a gurgle like a kid trying to talk with mush in his mouth. Next, he said, “You can’t do that—”
To try a step forward I used the bum leg. After that I went partway down, I guess; and with his other hand, Loder attempted the stunt he’d done with his kid this morning. His kid should have had a Barney Bond in there, helping. I don’t know where Bond ever learned all the obscene words he used on Loder. The big guy’s two hundred pounds were an advantage. He could swing me back against the wall and kick Bond away at the same time. He freed his right hand again, shoving it in the checked pocket.
Barney said, “You imbecile. I’ve told you, he’s hidden the data for the Michigan—”
“I don’t give a goddamn, Doc, for the survey.” Loder turned his head. Barney must have been something new to him. “If he bleeds to the F.B.I. about those letters, me and Viv are fixed for at least twenty years.” He got the pistol out of the checked pocket, and shoved me closer to the wall.
