Хал Эллсон - Masters of Noir - Volume 3

He stepped into the kitchenette. He opened the refrigerator aimlessly, seeing the heavy coat of frost around the coils, arriving slowly at an idea. The freezer control was a knob that turned in a half circle from “off” through numerals to five. He worked on the knob for several minutes, and it came off in his hand. He dropped it into a drawer, then went across the hall, smiling.

He rapped four times at her door, trying to make his knuckles talk briskly rather than alarmingly. “Who is it?”

“Your new neighbor,” he said.

Silence again. After a time she repeated, “Who?”

He caught on. It was his voice she was studying. She wanted to hear it again, make sure whether she knew it.

He said quite loudly, “My name is Ron Jordan. I just moved in across the hall and I can’t figure out how to defrost my refrigerator.”

The door opened three inches; a night chain caught it there. Her face was wary and hostile.

“Sorry.” He smiled. “It is kind of late, isn’t it? But I thought maybe you had the same kind of refrigerator as mine and could show me what gadget to turn. I’ve been fooling with it for ten minutes and it’s got me whipped.”

She studied him coldly. He kept his smile, feeling a stiffness in his lips. The great lover — yeah! She was going to close the door in his face.

“Bart,” she called. Then to Jordan, “Just a minute.”

He heard the murmur of voices, then the chain dropped and the door came open. Bart stood behind her, his mouth sullen.

“I’m Ron Jordan,” Jordan repeated, catching her guarded glance down the hall.

“I’m Elsa Berkey. This is my brother Bart. Why didn’t you call the landlady?”

“You know how it is. You start griping the first day you’re in, and you get tabbed as a complaining tenant.” He grinned. “I always wait ’til the second day.”

Still unsmiling, she said, “Come on, Bart.” She closed her door carefully. The night latch clicked again. They crossed and entered behind Jordan.

She took one look in the refrigerator, said, “No wonder. The knob’s gone,” and began rummaging in the drawers. In a moment she came up with it, stuck it on its spindle and turned the control to the “off” position. “There,” she said. “Leave it off ’til morning.”

He said in genuine surprise, “How did you know where it was?”

“Any woman would know.” She had resumed her study of him in this stronger light. Her eyes were gray, under quite dark eyebrows. A hard gray, and suspicious. She said, “You just moved in?”

“Just tonight. I took it yesterday, but didn’t have time to get my stuff over from the hotel. The company transferred me from St. Louis last week. I sell.”

“Sell what?”

“Exterminator chemicals. You know. Terminate the termites. Roust the rats.”

It was moderately safe ground with him. Once he had worked six months for a pest-control company. And it got a small smile out of her.

She said, “Your wife coming out later after you get settled?”

“No wife. No kids. No nothing.”

She looked at Bart through a long, thoughtful silence. When she turned back to Jordan she gave him a smile. “I think we should welcome the new neighbor with a drink.”

The Berkey apartment was identical with his, laid out in reverse. But different. The living room was freshly painted, a soft chartreuse that fought the gloom. Wall to wall carpeting — a dark green. A gay slip cover hid the ugliness of the couch. The one big chair, too. She guided him toward it, saying, “You don’t mind bourbon?”

“Does a fish mind water?”

He couldn’t have been more trite. But she laughed. Her smile said, “You’re handsome and witty and I think I’m going to like you a lot.” He couldn’t figure it. She hadn’t looked this easy to him. Too bad this was strictly police business. She was a trim little schooner, and he liked her jib, too.

Bart Berkey was bothered. He had slumped down at one end of the couch. His eyes were puzzled as they followed his sister.

Jordan said to him, “What do you do?”

“Nothin’ right now.” He spoke resentfully. He didn’t like Jordan’s presence here. Jordan barely noticed. He was thinking. So they took the advice. They’re not working for Crider any more.

Elsa returned with three glasses in her hands. One was a different color; it looked like tomato juice. She handed it to Bart.

Jordan stood up and took his.

She took a sip, smiled at him, and moved around behind his chair to the front window. Jordan started to sit down. But he couldn’t very well sit with his hack to her. He joined her as she raised the window blind.

“Why, it’s raining!” she said.

It wasn’t actually, he saw. The night sky was depositing something less than a shower, something more than a fog. It was enough to make the streets gleam darkly, and to blur the outline of cars a block away. In this apartment-house district there was never enough garage space. He could see at least a dozen cars parked for the night. Ben Eglin might have a couple of men in one of them. They might be watching this window, seeing him, at this moment. Well, they could report to Eglin that he had made the grade.

Working on his bourbon, he wondered if Ben Eglin gave all his men that Fourth of July oration about cop killers? Remembering it, remembering Eglin’s intensity, Jordan felt again a tingling in his nerve ganglia, and resented it. It was like some high-school halfback being hopped up by his coach. If Bob Garfield was taking, he was a crook like any other crook. The department would snare his killer, sure. But they didn’t have to pull a man off traffic to do it.

Bart interrupted his thoughts. He said, “I’m going to bed.”

“Sleep tight, Bart,” said Elsa.

Jordan massaged his chin, thoughtfully. A man’s afraid of an attack, he doesn’t go merrily off to bed. It’d be especially true in the case of a nervous kid like Bart. You’d expect him to be at the window, furtively peeking out, not being able to pull himself away.

Bart stopped at the door of the bedroom nearest the kitchen and sent his sister a questioning look. Jordan saw it, saw the puzzlement that remained on his face as he dragged his foot through and closed the door. Something had Bart scared. But if it wasn’t Crider, what was it? Elsa’s tone with her brother made Jordan smile. Her throaty voice held the gentle reassurance a grownup uses with a small child. He hadn’t seen her give Bart the high sign to get out of the living room. But he knew she had done it.

“Do you know our town?” she asked.

“I’ve been here before,” he said.

“I hate it!” she said vehemently.

“Hate it? Why?”

She brought her gaze around to him, a little off balance, a little confused. “I didn’t intend to say that.” She smiled. That slow, cozy smile again. “You know how it is. Some nights you feel jumpy and restless.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. He knew some other things, too. All of a sudden he knew. Why she was giving him the business. Why she drew him to the window. Why she held him there with small talk. She thought Joe Crider might be down there on the street. The cops had instilled a strong fear of Crider in her. She wanted Crider to see, if he was down there, that she had a man with her. She had protection for Bart.

It was a laugh. Who was conning who? Jordan hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t had a chance. Not even for an opening pass at her. If he had had two heads, it would have been the same. Protection for Bart. For all he knew, Bart might have gone off to bed because he and Crider had been in on the killing together, and it wasn’t Crider at all who was troubling him.

He left the window and dropped to the couch. Now that he knew all the ground rules, he could relax. He drained his glass as she came across and held it out. “Same size, same color, hm?”