The Long Wait Page 12

  “I’ll fix myself up,” I said.

  “You’ll do that all right, down in those joints.”

  I fished a buck out of my pocket and started to get up. Jack picked the bills off the table and I waved at them with my thumb. “Keep whatever’s left over.”

  “Sure, thanks. If you need me again, look me up. I’ll see what I can do finding the broad for you. Maybe the dames know something.”

  “Swell.” I paid for the coffee, let Jack have a few minutes start while I picked up some butts, then got back in the car. This was the day I was going to dig up my life history. Or Johnny’s rather.

  It didn’t take long. In a way it was fun. Here I was practically a celebrity and nobody knew who I was. Five years sure go a long way with the public when it comes to remembering. I started off with the records in City Hall, found out I had been born December 9, 1917, lost my parents while I was in high school and was legally adopted by a bachelor uncle who died while I was overseas. I checked the registration rolls of my family, found out where we had lived, went back to the library and dug around in the papers and got a partial history of my service record. Along with several hundred others I had enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, taken basic training down South, then was assigned to O.C.S. and sent overseas.

  I went over all the details until I had them set in my mind and if anybody asked there wasn’t much I couldn’t tell them. When I left the library I didn’t stop to light a cigarette on the steps. I used the side door, ducked down the back alley to the car and hopped up to the main drag for a quick lunch.

  At a quarter after two I called Logan. There was something funny about his voice when he told me to meet him in the parking lot outside a bowling alley on the west side of town.

  I found the place without any trouble, drove up to the fence and killed the engine. A couple minutes later I saw his car turn in the drive and I waved him up next to me. He got out, opened the door next to me and sat down.

  “Any news?” I asked him.

  “Plenty.” He glanced at me queerly.

  “You found out who the boys were?”

  “No ... I found out who you were.” He reached in his side pocket for an envelope. I waited while he drew out some clippings and a folded printed circular. “Take a look,” he said.

  I spread it out and took a look. I took a good look because it was a police circular with a picture of me on it that said my name was George Wilson and I was wanted for armed robbery, burglary and murder, and the description it gave fitted me to the screwy color of my eyes and the tone of my voice.

  Chapter Seven

  ALL I could say was, “Where’d you get it?”

  “Our little hick paper has a big city morgue. Read the rest of it.”

  I did that, too. They were accounts of the crimes I was suspected of committing. They were all dated and the date of the last one was about three weeks before I forgot who I was. I stuffed them back in the envelope and handed them to Logan. I felt like something that should be crawling instead of walking. “What’re you going to do about it?”

  He started out the window. “I don’t know,” he said, “I honestly don’t know. You’re wanted, you know.”

  “I could get away with it.”

  “Yeah, your fingerprints. You might get away with it if they can’t bring them out. You might get away with it if you throw everything on the real Johnny McBride. He’s dead. He wouldn’t mind.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Say something else.”

  “Okay, I will. I went further than just digging this stuff out of the files. I checked back on your story. Everything you told me was corroborated by the outfit you worked for. Maybe you were a lot of things before the accident, but those things aren’t what you are now. It’s quite possible that you are a completely different personality from what you were and there’s no need making you stand trial for something another self did.”

  I turned my head and grinned at him. It felt like it was plastered on: “Thanks, pal. What happens if I get my memory back?”

  “Let’s wait until it happens.”

  “You think I’ll tell you about it?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not kidding. If I have a conscience it won’t bother me so much that I’ll go and make a public confession of murder and do a jig at the end of a rope. Not me, pal.”

  “Nuts, you’re taking that chance right now.” Logan snorted derisively. “Although it would be funny if you hung for Minnow’s murder and not the right one.”

  “Oh, that would be great all right.” I tapped the bulge in his pocket. “Does Lindsey know about all this?”

  Logan shook his head. “He’s much too interested in you as Johnny McBride. You’ll be safer if you let him keep thinking you are.”

  “Someplace you come in, Logan. You’re still a reporter and if you’re the right kind nothing’s going to make you squelch a good story.”

  He nodded abruptly. “Nothing except the possibility that a better one might come out of waiting,” he said. He turned slowly and stared at me. “I’m destroying this stuff. It can be duplicated, but it wouldn’t do to have it on file where it might get picked up accidentally. I’m going to wait, Johnny. I’m enough of a reporter to know when a story is brewing and I think one is coming up. Don’t pull anything fast on me, understand?”

  “Perfectly. Now how about Vera West?”

  “Not a trace. She disappeared completely. I even checked through Washington with a friend of mine in the Social Security office. If she’s employed nothing is being paid into her account.”

  “And my friends who tried to knock me off?”

  “They’re tagged, but that’s as far as it goes. If they were working for somebody here in Lyncastle they didn’t leave any evidence of it.”

  “Something else’ll happen soon,” I said. “There were three of them and the other got away to carry the story home. It’ll happen again. If it does I’ll call you.”

  “If you’re still alive. If that happens you can usually reach me at the Circus Bar.”

  My lips jerked back and left my teeth bare. “I stay alive through a lot of things, Logan. I’m not easy to take at all.”

  He grinned back at me and got out of the car. I stayed there until he had walked away then kicked the engine over. A half hour later I was down in the red light district looking for a parking place.

  Some people might have called it a slum section, or if they saw it when it wasn’t too light, an old residential spot gone to seed. There was a swamp on one side and a road that led to the smelter plant on the other, with four or five blocks nestling in the V of the two. Along the road were a dozen gin mills, a gas station and a few stores. Most of the section was given over to providing homes for the poorer element of Lyncastle, but the one block along the outer edge of the section made no bones about being what it was. Elm Street. There wasn’t a tree in sight.

  The houses were the same style and age, but they looked alive. Some were sprawled out with extra wings added on in ranch-type style and others had fairly new second stories added.

  Hell, all you had to do was look in the garbage cans. They were loaded with booze bottles. I spotted some of the babes sunning themselves in the backyards and on the front porch of one place a drinking bout was just getting started.

  No. 107 was the last place on the road. Originally it had been a two-story job with a garage. Now the garage was part of a wing that crossed the back of the house like a T, extending on the other side into three small cabin affairs. It was a white house with red shutters, a red door and red Venetian blinds on all the windows.

  Very appropriate.

  I went up and rang the bell. Inside a radio was playing softly. The Moonlight Sonata. It didn’t go with the business at all. I rang the bell again and lit a cigarette.

  Then the door opened and the bag Jack told me to see was standing there smiling gently at the creature that was man, glancing quickly and
humorously at the watch on her wrist because it was only four o’clock and not the time for that sort of thing at all.

  But she wasn’t a bag at all either. Somebody had taken a statue of Venus, patted it until it was soft, colored it with jet-black hair and rich magenta lips and poured it into a dress that had an elastic quality of being stretched too tight, needing only one touch to burst.

  I said, “Jack sent me,” then felt like a damn fool. I must have looked it, because her smile got wider. “If I knew you’d be here I would have come anyway and kicked the door down to get in,” I added.

  She had a nice laugh. She looked even prettier with her head thrown back. “Please come in. I really wouldn’t want you to kick my door down.”

  So I went in. I sat down and gaped at a room that had all the trimmings of a mansion and let her serve me a drink from a small bar built into the wall. On either side it was flanked with books and they weren’t just dummy copies. There was a record library built in around a console player that held a selection of classics and only a handful of popular pieces.

  “Like it?” She swayed over with a bottle and ice and put them on an end table.

  “It fooled me. I’ve never been in one of these places before.”

  “Really?” She took a sip of her drink. “I’m alone until six o’clock. The girls won’t be in until then.”

  It was a nice way of putting it. Just so I didn’t get ideas, you know. Venus was the owner and operator, not a hired hand. I finished my drink and the cigarette at the same time and waved off seconds. “I’m not too early because I’m not after merchandise, kid. I’m after information. Jack thought you might be able to supply it.”

  “Nice boy, Jack. Who are you?”

  “A friend of his and names don’t matter. Ever hear of Vera West?”

  “Certainly. Why?”

  She said it so coolly that I got caught short for a second. “Where is she?”

  “That I couldn’t tell you. For a while she was Lenny Servo’s girl, but then that isn’t unusual. A lot of women were Lenny’s ... for a while.”

  “You too?”

  “A long time ago. For a week.” She took a deep pull on the butt and exhaled it slowly, watching the smoke curl around the glass in her hand. “You really meant to ask me ... if Vera was ... one of us now, didn’t you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, fella, as far as I know, she never had anything for sale. She certainly never got this far. She wasn’t the type.”

  “You don’t look like the type either.”

  I got that laugh again. She reached over and ran her fingers through my hair. “That’s a long story and a rather interesting one. Now tell me about your Vera West.”

  “Hell, I don’t have anything to tell about her. I want to find her.”

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “Quite a while. It’s a cold trail.”

  “Have you tried the police?”

  I let out a short snort and she knew what I meant.

  “You can try the bus station and the trains. If anybody knew her there they might have seen her leave. It’s possible that she might have gone to some large city and taken up her former occupation. She was something in the bank, wasn’t she?”

  “Secretary,” I said.

  “Then she’d be a secretary or steno somewhere else.”

  “You know a lot about things, don’t you?”

  “A little,” she said, “I used to be married to a cop.”

  I squashed out my butt and stood up. “I’ll try everything I can. This was an angle and it didn’t pan out so at least I know where not to look now.”

  “Have you tried Servo? He might know where she is.” My fist kept pounding against my palm slowly. “I haven’t seen him ... yet. Maybe I will pretty soon now.”

  Her eyes went a little bit cold. “Say hello for me when you do,” she said.

  “In the teeth?”

  Her head moved up and down once, and slowly. “Snap them off. Right across the front.”

  We stood there looking at each other for quite a while. Everything she was thinking came out in her eyes and I knew the kind of a deal she had gotten from Lenny Servo too. I was working up a nice feeling for that guy. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  “I’d like that. Maybe if you called me back later I’ll have news for you. The ... girls usually know pretty much of what goes on in town. The number’s unlisted—1346.”

  She walked me to the door and twisted the knob on the lock. She was close and smelled faintly of jasmine, the way Venus should smell. Every bit of her was outlined in detail against the clinging fabric of the dress. She caught me studying her and smiled again.

  “How do you get into that thing?” I asked her.

  “It’s a trick.” She handed me a silken tassel that was suspended from a gimmick on her shoulder. I held it in my fingers a second, she kept on smiling, so I gave it a pull. Something happened to the dress. It wasn’t there any more. It all came apart and fell on the floor with me still holding the tassel and Venus looked like she was supposed to look. She was tall and lovelier than when she had clothes on.

  “Now you know,” she laughed. “What do you think?”

  “Baby,” I said, “on some people skin is skin...”

  “And on me?”

  “A beautiful invitation in black and white.”

  I opened the door, stepped out and closed it behind me. Venus had made it too plain that I didn’t have to wait until six o’clock if I didn’t want to, but I just couldn’t afford the time. Later maybe.

  I drove back downtown and picked out a joint that didn’t look too flashy and went in for a beer. The bartender set one up, took my change and stood by until I finished, then got me another. The slots were making music all around the walls and over the noise there would be an occasional yell from the back room when a number came up on a wheel. The two guys next to me were spending some of their winnings from the craps table and getting ready to go back and give it another whirl.

  One of them tried to talk me into making it a threesome and I turned it down and had a beer instead. I had just started on it when somebody moved into the space they left at the bar and said, “Hello, tough boy.”

  I said, “Hello, flatfoot,” and Tucker’s beefy face got real nasty.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “I’m not hard to find.”

  “Shut up and pick up your change. You’re going for a ride.”

  That was nice. I wanted to tell him I already had one and didn’t feel like another, but I didn’t. I said, “You arresting me?”

  “If you want it that way.”

  “What for?”

  “A little double murder out at the quarry. Suspicion, you know. Captain Lindsey wants to talk to you.”

  I picked up my change and went for a little ride.

  It was silent all the way. Nobody said anything until I was back in that same office where it all happened before Lindsey was behind the desk and two other guys in suitcoats were sitting beside him. Tucker leaned back against the door and let me stand in the middle of the room.

  When I pulled out a cigarette Lindsey barked, “No smoking in here.” I put the butt back and walked over to a chair. “McBride,” Lindsey said, “you stand there until I tell you to sit down, understand?”

  I picked the chair up by the legs and looked at him and the rest of them. “I don’t understand a thing, you goddamn pig, you! I’m making it nice and plain so there won’t be any mistake about it. There’s four of you here and some more outside, but just get wise and I’ll smash your lousy head in. I’d like to see who’s got the guts to try and take me.”

  Tucker would have tried it. He had his gun out and was moving in when Lindsey stopped him. “Cut it, Tuck. When it comes this guy is mine. He’s talking big and I’ll let him talk big, but by God he’ll be talking mighty small soon and I’m going to show him the kind of gadgets we got in the cellar and let him see how t
hey work.” He nodded to me curtly. “Sit down, sit down. I have some questions to ask you.”

  I put the chair down and sat on it. Tucker got behind me and stayed there playing with his gun. “What is it now?”

  “I suppose you have an alibi for last night?”

  “I got a beauty,” I lied.

  It turned out better than I expected. I was doing some fast thinking when Lindsey gave me credit for really having one. I could tell it by his expression. He took in the men beside him with a glance. “We recovered two guns that had several prints on them. Over one was a peculiar sort of smudge. That make any sense to you, McBride?”

  “Sure. The killer was wearing gloves.”

  “No, the killer had no prints.”

  “Good for him.”

  “Not so good for him. These men are from Washington. They specialize in that sort of thing. They’re going to take you downstairs and check your fingerprints.”

  Then I saw why he wasn’t too concerned about my alibi. Hell, he didn’t care about the two at the quarry. He wanted to get me for Minnow’s murder. There he had a set of prints to go on, not a smudge.

  I shrugged like I didn’t give a damn and that much was the truth.

  I didn’t give a damn.

  For two years I had had experts work those same finger over just to find out who I was, and now I was damn glad nothing came of it. The two guys got up, led the way, I got in the middle and Lindsey and Tucker followed along behind me.

  The whole thing took better than an hour. I let them play with their gadgets, do things to my fingers that left them raw and bleeding, take sample impressions one after the other and never squawked when I got blisters from holding my hands too near the ultraviolet lights.

  I was the most co-operative subject the boys had ever had and when it was over all they had was a bunch of smudges and a brand-new case history for rookie cops to study because I was the first one who ever had his fingerprints removed completely. The boys were shaking their heads when I left, Lindsey was cursing to himself trying to hold his temper in check and Tucker was watching me like he was glad because he might be able to even things up with me his way.