The Long Wait Read online

  He was flat against the door, his eyes wide, showing white all around. “Just the other day ... Logan, that reporter. He came in and ... asked me the same thing.”

  So Logan had figured it out first. He remembered before I did that Philbert’s did photograph and photostat work. Nice going, Logan.

  I said, “Why can’t you find it?”

  “Hell, mister ... we handle thousands of jobs like that. All the companies, they take us their work. Maybe I can find it. I’ll look if you want. It’ll take a couple of weeks, but...”

  “Damn it, I haven’t got that long!”

  “Golly, without a ticket ...”

  “Shut up.”

  I pulled in on the butt and flicked it out the window. It landed on a guy’s foot and he was going to say something nasty when he saw my face. He kept on walking.

  When I reached for my wallet the guy followed my hand every inch of the way and he relaxed when he saw it wasn’t a gun. My pile was going down. I slipped out a crisp hundred and passed it to him. “Mac, keep something in mind. Every cop in town is looking for me, so it’s no secret that I’m around. You mention one word to anybody that I’ve seen you and I guarantee that for the rest of your life you’ll be afraid to walk home alone at night. You understand that?”

  He got all white. His hands shook so bad he almost lost the bill.

  “How late do you stay open?”

  “Until t-twelve.”

  “Good. You stay there until you hear from me.”

  A frantic nod said he would and he almost broke his neck getting out the door. I was back in traffic before he reached the store, cut down a side street and turned north.

  Fifteen minutes later I was driving past the white house with the fence around it. Mrs. Minnow was on the porch in a rocker with her head going up and down the street every few seconds. She rocked too fast. Mrs. Minnow was nervous.

  There were two of them, one on each end of the street. New sedans with a man behind the wheel. They were young men, not smoking or reading. Not doing anything. If there were more I didn’t see them and wasn’t about to go looking. I kept on going until I found a soda store that served snacks, went into a booth and ordered a sandwich and coffee. When I finished I ordered the same thing again, bought a magazine and dawdled over it until it was dark. The owner of the joint was coughing and looking over my way trying to let me know he wanted to close up, so I paid my bill. An extra buck made him smile again. For luck I tried Logan’s office. He still hadn’t showed up.

  I hung around the street for a while smoking the last of my butts. I picked up another pack in a delicatessen and started on that. Overhead, a rumble of thunder rolled across the city and the sky lit up in the west. I took my time drifting back to the car and made it just as the rain started.

  It wasn’t too bad, sitting there watching it roll down the windows. It kept time with everything I was thinking, a nice background to dream against. In a way I hoped it would keep up. Later, perhaps, I would sit someplace listening to it slam against the roof while I put all the pieces where they belonged.

  My watch read nine-twenty. I kicked the engine over and turned around at the corner.

  Smart. I had to be smart. The boys with the badges were thinking along the same lines I was and expected me back at the Minnow house. Or else they were bodyguarding the old lady in case the Johnny McBride they wanted had further ideas of revenge.

  This time I parked on the street behind the house. I left the key in the lock in case I had to get away fast, rolled up the windows against the rain and pulled on my jacket. I went back a few houses until I found a driveway, turned in and walked back to the fence line that separated the yards.

  I wasn’t worried about being seen. My clothes blended with the foliage and if anybody was staked out behind the place they weren’t out in the open in this weather. When I reached the garage behind the house I huddled in the shadows until I had every detail in my mind.

  The guy I was looking for was just inside the enclosed porch and for an instant I saw his hat silhouetted against a night light in the kitchen. It was enough. He probably was being very careful, but not quite careful enough.

  I followed the hedge line, moving slowly with my body down low to the ground. I was all the way up to the house before I realized how mechanically I had done it.

  Almost like I had done it before.

  Something was there like a battery of floodlights winking on and off in my brain while cold hands pulled at my back. Just like that the sweat started to move down my shoulder blades. I hit my belt with my hands and felt for something that should be there, damn near going crazy when I couldn’t find it.

  It passed. It took a little while and left me with the shakes, but it passed. I was cold all over because something that was buried years back in time almost came back to me. I cursed and tried to think of what it was.

  The house was a ghostly wall pressing against my back, the vine on the trellis wet fingers against my hand.

  This.

  Had this been what I had done before?

  Had I stood in this same spot, climbed up that trellis and gone in that window up there before?

  I shook the thought out of my head. Someplace I had read about twins, how there was thought transference. Maybe it happened to people who looked alike too. If there was anything to be remembered I didn’t want to know about it. The rain muffled the curse on my lips and I swung up on the trellis.

  It didn’t take ten seconds to reach the window and two to open it.

  The room smelled of a woman and the outlines of a bed were visible against the wall. I left the window open, eased across to the door and put my ear to it. Downstairs a radio was playing softly, but nothing else. I opened the door, looked out in the hall and stepped through.

  Stairs ran down on my one side and to my left a pair of doors opened off the corridor. The one in the middle was too pinched in to be a room so I picked the last one.

  I was right this time. The door was unlocked and probably hadn’t been opened often in the last five years. The musty smell of disuse hung in the air and every step I took tossed back dust from the carpet. The light from the street lamp out front put a yellow glow on everything, casting long dim shadows across the floor.

  There was a studio couch, a desk, a pair of filing cabinets ard a safe against the walls, reminders of a man who had made this room his den. I had to be right the first time. There wouldn’t be any second chance. I started across the room to the safe when the beam of light that hit me in the back threw a monstrous shadow on the wall.

  I damn near screamed, swung around and stood there trembling in every muscle of my body. The light hit me in the eyes went over my face and she said, “I knew you’d come.”

  It left me with hardly enough voice to say, “Turn that damn thing off before they see it!”

  The light snicked off.

  “How’d you know I was here?”

  “I sensed it, young man. I have lived in this house so long listening for footsteps from this room that never came that when someone was in here I knew it. One of the benefits of old age, you might say.

  “Who’s downstairs?”

  “Two men.”

  “F. B. I.?”

  “One is. The other is a state man. They don’t know you’re here.”

  I picked the light from her hand. “Do you know the combination of that safe?”

  “No, only Bob knew it. He never wrote the combination down and it has never been open since his death. There was never anything of any value in there. He kept all his personal papers in a safe-deposit vault.”

  “What went in there?”

  “Just important things he brought home from the office.”

  “I’m going to open it.” I was sweating without knowing why.

  She said it very simply. “Go right ahead.”

  The darkness hid my grin, but she heard the shallow laugh I let out. “You have one hell of a lot of nerve. I’m supposed to be a killer.”


  “It hasn’t been proven to me ... yet.”

  Some woman. Her husband would have been proud of her. I snapped the light on, shielding the beam with my hand. I walked over in front of the safe, knelt down and took a good look at it. I reached for the knob and in the soft glow of the light saw the tremble in my hand.

  Everything was familiar again. Everything. I looked at the face of that damned safe and no matter where I looked every rivet, every detail of the thing was an old friend. My breath was coming in short jerks that racked my chest. There were things coming into my mind that clawed at my guts with steel nails and tried to rip them out.

  I was cold. Damn, I was cold. The past was pushing by the present and I felt it ooze out where it could be seen. The dial on the safe was a face laughing at me and I knew that it wasn’t just this safe I was familiar with, but a lot of them. My mind knew every one of them!

  Now I was all right. I was a guy with a short memory. It was clean. For five years I had searched for the past without finding it, and when it did begin to show I didn’t want to see it.

  I knew she was watching me from behind. I made my hand go back to the dial and let my body follow some unnatural instinct that put extra nerves in my fingers and gave my ears some uncanny perception. I knelt there for twenty minutes patiently exploring the supposedly foolproof workings of that lock and at the end of that time I heard what I was listening for, turned the knob and opened the door.

  A ten-year-old newspaper lay on the bottom shelf. A tobacco tin of Indianhead pennies was on the other. I pulled open the top drawer and there was a pink numbered ticket from Philbert’s lying against the back.

  My back ached from kneeling so long. I stood up, pushed the door shut and stuck the ticket in my pocket. Mrs. Minnow took the light back and I saw her face. She was looking pleased.

  “There was something there?”

  “Yes. Do you want to see it?”

  “Would it be any good to me?”

  “Not now. Later, maybe, but not now.”

  “Keep it,” she said, “and good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  She let out a sob as I left the room, but didn’t follow me. I went back the way I came, took the same route to the car and climbed in. It was still raining and my pants were soaked from knocking up against the bushes.

  But I didn’t feel cold any more. Just hot. Good and damned hot.

  The guy behind the counter was as white as I had left him. His mouth was dry from licking it so much and the shreds of a block of a rubber eraser were scattered all across the woodwork. He took the ticket, went in the back where I heard him pulling the drawers out, then returned with a large brown envelope. Without a word he passed it across the counter, took the two bucks the tag said the job was worth and rang it up.

  He was very slow in turning around. It was necessary that I wait until he turned around because I wanted him to see my face. His eyes got glassy and he nodded without anything having been said and I went out.

  I drove down a block, parked under a street lamp and opened the envelope. Inside were two identical positives and the negative of a photostated letter. It had been written in longhand and addressed to Robert Minnow.

  It read: Dear Mr. Minnow,

  This letter is to inform you that in the event of my death it is entirely likely I was murdered. Somewhere among my possessions you will find positive evidence of my connection with Leonard Servo and photographic evidence of others who may be implicated in my death.

  Gracie Harlan

  That was all there was to it, but it was enough. I stuck the stuff back in the envelope, pulled up the rubber carpet on the floorboard and laid it against the boards. The carpet fell back and covered it nicely.

  I drove on up the street to a bar, went in and ordered a drink and carried it back in the phone booth with me. Then I shoved in a nickel and sipped the top off my drink while I was connected with police headquarters.

  A voice said, “Sergeant Walker speaking.”

  “Captain Lindsey.”

  “Hang on, I’ll connect you.”

  A couple of clicks later Lindsey growled into the phone. I said, “McBride, Captain. I have news for you.”

  “I have news for you too.” His voice sounded raw. “Where are you?”

  “Downtown.”

  “We just found your friend.”

  I grabbed the phone. “Troy?”

  “No. Logan. His car was run off a cliff and smashed itself to hell in the bottom of the gully.”

  The air couldn’t find its way into my lungs His words were still there in my ears and I finally got the sense out of them. “He was ... run off?”

  “Yeah. At least that’s the way I figure it. All the other experts around here think he was cockeyed drunk when it happened.”

  “He was on a bat ...” I started to say.

  Lindsey cut me short. “Yeah, we could smell it. The doctor said the same thing. There was a body in the car we couldn’t identify. Smashed to pieces.”

  “Damn it, what about Logan!”

  His voice was very soft. Too soft. “Logan’s alive. Barely. If he lives it’ll be a miracle. He’s in a coma and nobody’s going to get to speak to him for a long, long time.”

  My breath whistled out through my teeth. “When did it happen?”

  “Evidently the other night. He’s been lying there all this time.”

  “The other body?”

  “A man. They’re working on him now. He fell out of the car on the way down and the heap landed on top of him. Not much left. What was Logan working on?”

  “I wish I knew,” I said slowly. “I wish I knew.”

  “There was an envelope on the car seat beside him with your name on it.”

  I finished the rest of the drink and laid the glass beside the phone. “Yeah, now I’m beginning to get it,” I said.

  “Maybe you’d like to tell me about it.”

  “I’ll be down to see you. I still have some time left.” I dropped the phone back in its cradle and took my glass back to the bar. Maybe Lindsey would be wondering what my news was. He shouldn’t have spoken up so fast.

  I started out the door.

  The blonde in the booth said, “Hello, big feller.”

  She smiled and the guy she was with smiled too. A little unpleasantly. I said, “Hello, Carol.”

  “Have a drink with us?”

  “No, thanks. I’m pretty busy.”

  She pushed out from the booth, still smiling at her companion. “I’ll be right back, Howie. I have to talk business with this lug a second, mind?”

  He shrugged and told her to go ahead.

  The grin was impish and she backed me into a comer by the cigarette machine. “You didn’t come back to see me,” she said. “I waited in every night.”

  “Except tonight,” I reminded her.

  She nodded. “Pride. Besides, I got lonely. We could have had fun. I like famous people.”

  “My kind of famous?”

  “Especially. Will you come?”

  “Maybe. I was thinking about it earlier. I wanted to ask you if anything was seen of Servo’s playmate.”

  The grin faded. “I couldn’t tell you that.”

  “Then tell me something else.”

  “What? Ask me anything else you want to.”

  “Didn’t that peroxide sting?”

  The imp came back in her eyes and she pulled at the zipper on my jacket. “The peroxide didn’t but the ammonia did. Want me to tell you about it?”

  “Maybe I’ll come up and watch you do it some day.” I pushed her hands away and stepped past her.

  “Do that,” she said. “I’ll let you help me.”

  Pine Tree Gardens looked more dismal than before, if that was possible. I drove around it once and parked down a ways from the building. There weren’t any lights in the place.

  It was too close to the end of things to take any chances. I reached down beside the seat and pulled the gun out I had wedged there pre
viously. I tried sticking it in my waistband but the handle caught me under the ribs. The pockets of my jacket held the thing as long as I let the handle stick up. I didn’t like that either. If I bent over it would fall out and I wasn’t in the mood to be putting a bullet in myself accidentally. There was some kind of a gimmick pocket on the leg of my new work pants that it fitted in snugly enough, so I tucked it down there, closed the flap over it and got out of the car.

  The rain was slanting down, driven in my face by a stiff wind. The thunder was still upstairs, but there wasn’t any sheet lightning left in the clouds. I walked back to the building and turned in the yard. There was a new sign stuck in the ground. Wind had torn the corner loose and it slapped against the backboard.

  It read: For Sale. I. Hinnam, Realtors, Call 1402.

  Somebody could get the place cheap, I thought. There was a curse on it now. A death curse. Maybe Lenny Servo would pick it up and make another joint out of it. The location wasn’t bad. He could even have rooms for rent upstairs.

  The door was locked. A skeleton key could have opened it but I didn’t have a skeleton key and wasn’t about to waste time picking it. I wrapped a handkerchief around my hand, punched a windowpane in, opened a catch and raised it. For a minute or so I stood there listening. The rain drummed against the windows and my breath made a soft whisper in the darkness. Nothing else. I crossed the room, stopped and listened again.

  The house was the only thing that talked back to me.

  A door banged at steady intervals, keeping time to the gusts outside. There was a faint creak of wood from upstairs, a rattle of windows as the foilage bent and scraped against them.

  All the furniture was in the house, carelessly covered with sheets and wrapping paper. I crossed between the hulks of white, went out in the hall and found the steps. Every detail of that place was so plain in my mind it was as if I had studied a blueprint of the place beforehand. I tried to figure it out, but it didn’t make sense. The last time I had just come in with Logan and breezed in. Hell, I didn’t study the place at all.

  Or did I?

  What unconscious instinct did I follow if I did?

  I could even remember the curious pattern in the newel post at the top. A door to one room had been warped. There was a torn spot in the carpet beside the wall as if a phone had hung there at one time.