The Long Wait Page 20

  “Tough,” I said. “Thanks again.” I shut the door and let the elevator take me downstairs again.

  I found a newstand not too far off and picked up a copy of the Lyncastle News. It was a good copy for my scrapbook. My picture was on the front page with the story of George Wilson, the one-man crime wave, and how he was someplace in Lyncastle. The reporters must have been right on hand when Lindsey got that anonymous phone call and he let them go to town on it. There was a paragraph at the bottom of special interest. It said the F.B.I. was interested in George Wilson too and were looking for him.

  Big deal. I get Lindsey to give me a break and Uncle Sam takes over.

  But the item I really wanted was on the back of the second page. It was a small squib about four inches long and recounted the details of a woman who committed suicide early that evening. Two kids had seen her jump into the quarry and by the time help arrived she was dead. An autopsy showed she was drunk at the time and a close check on her activities disclosed that she had been making the rounds of the highway taverns. Her fingerprints were on file with the local Board of Health and identified her as a waitress in the ABC Diner. The cause of death was remorse over the recent murder of her roommate. They gave her name as Irene Godfrey, her address at the Pine Tree Gardens and that was all.

  There was a picture coming out now. It was like walking in at the middle of a show and wondering how it started. If you stayed long enough you could pretty well guess the cause by seeing the effect. But not quite. You were still guessing. If you asked somebody in the next seat who had been there all along you might find out. If he wanted to tell you.

  I folded the paper up and stuck it under the seat. My hand brushed the cold butt of the gun I had put there earlier, so I took it out, checked it and stuck it back. It might come in handy.

  I was twenty minutes getting down to the bus station. The lights in the ports were out, but on the train side two hand-cars loaded wih mail sacks and packages were standing together waiting for the next connection. I parked the car, got out and walked down the end without getting out of the shadows.

  Inside, two men were asleep on the benches. There was another woman with a wailing baby in her arms. The ticket grill was shut on the inside, but through the screened window I could see Nick perched on his stool shuffling papers into a drawer.

  Tucker was all the way around the other side, just standing there with an unlit cigar in his mouth trying to be part of the night. I looked again and saw the other guy, a dark blob sitting on a crate. Tucker struck a match and held it to the cigar and I saw his face. He was young, well dressed. Like a lawyer. And F.B.I. agents have to be lawyers.

  I made the round trip once more but I still didn’t see what I came to see. Troy wasn’t making any connections out of Lyncastle by bus or train. I slid inside the door nearest the office, yanked the knob and damn near scared Nick off his stool. He slammed the drawer shut with a bang that knocked over a stack of books and turned eyes on me that were ready to fall out of his head.

  “Good gosh, you don’t have to scare a man half to death, do you? Get over there and squat down till I get the shade down.”

  He reached up and tugged at the partition that covered the grill. When he had it down he shot the bolt through the hasp and turned around. His hands were shaking.

  “You got company outside, Nick.”

  “Sure. All day I’ve had company. You know who’s out there?”

  “I can make a pretty good guess.”

  “Damn ’em.” He reached in back of him and pulled a sheet of paper from the top of the pile. “Look here. I have to post it.”

  I took it out of his fingers and looked at it. The likeness was perfect. It was the same one they ran in the paper, but this one had a reward notice tacked on the bottom.

  I handed it back to him. “Funny place for those things.”

  Nick shook his head and stared at the photo. “Law says in public places and this is a public place. Out where you can’t see it is a whole bulletin board of these things.” His fingers gave a sharp snap to the sheet before he folded it out and stuck it in the drawer behind him. “You’re wanted pretty bad, son. You shouldn’t have come down here.”

  “I’m looking for a dame, Nick. She was Servo’s girl until something scared her and she took off. She was red headed, wearing a green dress and probably bawling her head off ... or looked like she had been. Seen anything of her?”

  A frown made furrows in his forehead. “No, not that I remember.”

  “Any other way she can get out of town?”

  “Busses stop any place along the highway to make pickups.”

  “That’s the only way?”

  “Uh-huh. Unless she has a car.”

  “I doubt if she has. Okay, that’s all I came for.” I started to get up.

  Nick shoved me back in the chair. His mustache was working hard around his mouth, a hairy frame for the pink tongue that kept going over his lips. “Easy, son. You can’t be batting around any more. You see that paper tonight?” I nodded. “The same thing on the radio too. I’ve had all sorts of cops in here telling me to be watching out for you. Suppose one of ’em grabs you?”

  “Suppose they do?”

  “Johnny boy, look. You have to get away. Tomorrow morning ...”

  This time I got up. “Some other time, Nick. There’s too much I have to do first.”

  I got back to the car and managed to get it away from the station without being tailed. My head was starting to pound again and I was getting sick to my stomach. Tomorrow. I’d finish it tomorrow if it didn’t finish me first.

  I racked the Ford around a turn and lit a cigarette. It tasted lousy, but the smoke curling up around the ceiling was company. It was funny in a way. What Makes Johnny Run. Nearly like the title of a book. He had a good reason to. A long green reason or a long bloody reason, but on top if it all somebody had to run him out because he didn’t want to do it himself.

  A lot of people had told me things. I’d seen a lot of those things myself. I was part of them now. They were all there in a lump, slipping out of the pile one at a time to string out with big gaps between. When the gaps were filled I’d have the answers.

  There was a lot I could see now. You don’t play at being a detective. If you are one you work at it, but you have a knowledge of the science and details that goes in back of that work to help you along. No, I wasn’t a detective. I was only a guy trying to dig up a five-year-old body long since fallen apart with decay. It wasn’t easy. There weren’t clues laying around. Just things happening that didn’t seem to have any reason except that they all happened after I came to town.

  I was a face that made trouble for somebody. They tried to kill me first. They tried to let the cops do the job instead and when that didn’t work they tried to kill me again. Not the cops. I was so important dead that George Wilson had to be brought out in the open.

  Answers. I needed answers. I wasn’t going to be able to figure it out until I had the whole story right there in front of me. And that wouldn’t be tonight.

  No, tonight I’d sleep off the big head. It was hurting pretty bad.

  I headed west, watching out for Pontiel Road, found it and drove up to the house. I stacked the car in the garage and got the key out of the flowerpot then went upstairs.

  When I took a shower and got rid of the last of the tape that was keeping my scalp puckered together I looked in the two doors that led off the bathroom. I was too tired for games so I picked the one that smelled of both salts and powder, dumped my clothes on the back of a chair and crawled into the sack. If Wendy tried crawling in that other bed tonight she was going to find my half of it empty and she ought to be smart enough to take the hint not to go looking any further.

  The sheets were cool against my skin, the pillow a soft cloud ready to take me off to sleepytown. I closed my eyes and climbed aboard.

  The song seemed to come from far away. There weren’t any words, just a hum with a deep, bouncy rhythm throat
ed to sound like words. My eyes pulled open slowly and stared into the dark, just a little too heavy with sleep to be fully aware of where the song was coming from.

  Then the dark seemed to dissolve into something white and flexible that moved along the edge of the room. It snapped me wide awake. Her dress whispered over her head and her slip made static crackling noises when she took it off. The humming paused for a second and I waited to see her go through the double-jointed contortions all women go through to unhook a bra. I was fooled. She did something to the front of it and peeled it off like a vest. There was another whisper of silk, almost inaudible this time, and she throw the last whisper across the chair and stretched her arms up reaching for the ceiling. Like a pagan moon worshipper. Her body a nude shimmer in the dark, absorbing what little light seeped in the window. Her back bowed slowly, making every curve stand out in sharp relief. Then she relaxed into a sultry pose, ran her fingers through her hair and came over to the bed, still humming the wordless tune.

  “Beautiful,” I said. “You’re beautiful.”

  She sucked her breath in so hard it caught in her throat and froze her there. I reached up for the light over the bed but before my fingers found the pull chain her hand grabbed my wrist and forced it down. “No lights, Johnny,” she said.

  Her mouth came down slowly. Her lips were moist and parted. Warm. I could feel their warmth before they even touched me. I ran my hand up the small of her back and she shivered deliciously, making those animal sounds in her throat again.

  The outlines of her face and body were tenuous things in the darkness, all the hardness obliterated until she was nothing but beautiful. And warm. And hot. Fiery hot. Her mouth a live, grasping thing squirming on top of me. The darkness closed in around us like a blanket until it exploded and left us there, tired and close, talking about tomorrow.

  Tomorrow.

  When she would do something for me.

  Find out all she could about a cop named Tucker.

  Chapter Eleven

  WENDY was gone when I woke up. There was the impression in the pillow her head had left, the mark of her cheek on my arm. I could still smell the spicy sweetness she left behind.

  I didn’t like the way I felt. I didn’t want to feel that way about any woman. Not yet. There was something about her that was different from most women, something direct and honest. Something that made a guy feel like he had lost an arm when she was gone.

  I shook the thought out of my head and got up. There was a note on the dresser that said for me to take the car and she’d see me that evening, signed with love from Wendy. The marks of her lips were overlaid on the signature.

  After I had had something to eat I backed the car out of the garage, filled it up at the nearest gas station and picked up a road map. I marked out a route up to the state capital, skipping all the main roads in case the cops had decided to throw up a road block and picked the macadam road that started the run.

  At least I didn’t hit any traffic. I barreled the Ford along at a steady seventy, slowing down for a turn here and there and making up the loss on the straight stretches. Ten minutes to eleven I was on the outskirts of the city.

  The public buildings were grouped in a towering gray huddle that stuck up above everything else like a sore thumb. In the rear of the mess was a parking area. I left the car there, went inside and scanned the directory until I found what I wanted. The State Auditor. His offices were on the fourth floor.

  A very tall, very thin girl peered at me through her eyeglasses and told me to have a seat, so I flicked off the dust with my handkerchief and sat down. She didn’t like that a bit and sniffed at me. All the seats were dirty. Visitors were probably at a premium here. The phone rang on her desk and after she answered it said, “All right. Mr. Donahue will see you now. Go right in, please.” She sniffed again disapprovingly. They weren’t the friendly type here like in Lyncastle.

  Mr. Donahue beamed at me and showed out a pudgy little paw. “Sit down, sir, sit down.” He tried to give me the big squeeze that said he was a handball player every Friday at the gym. He was a little round guy with a big nose and a bigger smile, but you didn’t have to look twice to tell that there was a lot of brain power behind the light blue eyes that seemed to dance in his head.

  I took the seat and one of his cigarettes. I said, “Mr. Donahue, do you like excitement?”

  He paused in the middle of lighting a butt and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Well ...” he chuckled and pulled on the butt, shaking the match out. “That’s an old question. Yes, might say that I do. In moderate doses, of course. Never find excitement around here.” His hand swept the room. “Unless it’s an error in bookwork. That’s my only form of excitement. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’re going to be able to kick up a lot of it in a few minutes if you want to ... unless you’re not the kind of a guy who likes a little fun.”

  His face said he was interested. “I ... don’t quite understand. Perhaps ...”

  “According to the police, Mr. Donahue, I’m a bank absconder, thief, murderer and a few other things. One word from you and I’ll be in the jug.”

  His eyebrows really did nip-ups this time.

  “The name is McBride. Five years ago you checked the books of the National Bank of Lyncastle that proved me an absconder.”

  “I remember.”

  “How much do you remember?”

  Mr. Donahue was nervous. The cigarette shortened in a series of jerky little puffs. He didn’t know whether to look at me or not and was afraid to make a move toward the phone.

  I said. “I’m not here after you, friend, so stop worrying.”

  He showed his teeth in a smile, but didn’t stop sweating. “I ... remember the details quite ... clearly.”

  I sat back and folded my hands behind my head. “Give.”

  He stamped the butt out, paused, then raised his face to mine. “That information is confidential, you know. I’m sure the bank ...”

  “I can’t go to the bank. I can’t go anywhere. Cops are all over the damn city looking for me now. I was framed, Mr. Donahue. I didn’t have a thing to do with that business.”

  “My job wasn’t to prove you guilty, young man. I only checked the books. There was complete evidence of a fraud. The books had been juggled in a neat, but no uncommon manner.” He stopped and stared out the window a moment. “Some time ago I had another request similar to yours. A young lady. She made a point of cultivating me until she openly asked the same thing you did.”

  My mouth went into a sneer all by itself. “Vera West.”

  “That wasn’t the name she gave.”

  “A blonde. A real honest-to-goodness blonde a little on the tramp side.”

  “Er, yes. She managed to extract the information from me. I thought you’d know about it.” His face reddened and he wouldn’t look at me. “I never mentioned it before. Perhaps I should have.”

  “No,” I told him. “You did right. It wouldn’t do to open your mouth when she had something on you that could turn you upside down. I’m not blaming you. What I want are the details.”

  His fingers picked up a pencil and tapped it against the desk. “There really isn’t much to it. The District Attorney of Lyncastle, the one who died later, called me in. I made a routine check of the bank’s books and found the error.”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth?”

  “Approximately. A shade over to be more nearly accurate.”

  “You found something else, too, didn’t you? Something you might have mentioned to the blonde.”

  Between his eyes a shaded V formed. It deepened until he was squinting at me. “You certainly have a wealth of information. I did tell that young lady something else. It was a mere suspicion. It couldn’t be checked. In my opinion you ... I mean, whoever was responsible, took out considerably more than that amount, but managed to pay back all but two hundred thousand of the total.”

  “Interesting.”

  His tongue fl
icked over his lips. “There was a matter of eighty-four dollars in an acount that by rights should have been cleaned out. It would have been just as easy to take the whole amount as part. In fact, easier, and the books would have been easier to balance out. I speculated on it and arrived at the conclusion that at the time of the investigation a theft was not in evidence as much as a replacement of the theft. Money was being put back into the bank with the intention of eventually making up the theft. Whatever was put back filled up the last account eighty-four dollars’ worth.”

  “A sort of no interest loan on my part, you mean.”

  “It’s been done successfully before, I imagine. More often not enough.”

  “I see.” I dropped my hands to my lap and tilted back on the chair. “You couldn’t noise your suspicions around very far either, could you?”

  He knew what I was getting at. The red crept up in his face again and he shook his head. “Actually, it didn’t occur to me until I returned home and thought it over. It was too nebulous a thing to bring out without absolute proof. I forgot it until I was, ah, approached by this young lady. I realize that I never should have said anything, but under the circumstances it couldn’t be helped. She made what I took to be a veiled threat if I ever mentioned the subject to anyone after that.”

  “Why bring it up now?”

  Mr. Donahue seemed to be a little pained. “Because I’ve had a nagging worry about the matter ever since and I’ll be damned glad to see it come out in the open.”

  My chest coughed up a laugh that startled him. “Don’t worry about it then,” I said. “A lot of things will be out in the open before long, but you won’t be dragged into it. You can forget the blonde too. She’s going to have more on her mind than trying to shaft you.”

  “You ... know who she is?”

  “Yeah, I know who, but I don’t know where. She’ll turn up.”

  I let the chair down and stood up. He shook hands again but without as much force as the last time. I caught him looking down at the phone once so just before I left I said, “You can make up your own mind about it, but you’ll do better if you keep this little visit under your hat too.” He licked his lips. “And if you’re interested enough, read the Lyncastle News.”