Джо Горес - Gone, No Forwarding

For Ballard it was a word. Gambling. And an absolute knowledge that Greenly, as an accountant himself, would never run dirty money through his bank account. And finally, the fact that it was Friday, and people need extra cash over the weekends.

Thus he was parked on O Street off Seventh at 12:06 when Greenly emerged from the Business and Professions Building. So sure had Ballard been that he’d already fed the meter an hour’s worth of change, so he had only to get out and saunter along half a block behind the spare figure moving through the noontime lunchers, strollers, and window-shoppers from the adjacent government offices.

Right into a savings and loan company eight blocks from Greenly’s office. Since Ballard’s face meant no more to Greenly than a cantaloupe, he was close by when Greenly strode back to the safe-deposit window and read the number off his key to the girl. “Box eleven eighty-seven, please.”

“Yes, sir.” The bright-faced girl riffled through the signature file, compared it with the name Greenly had written on the slip. “Right this way, Mr. Maling.”

Ballard, standing at the closest customer table, wrote “1187” on the back of a withdrawal slip, along with “Maling,” and put the folded slip in his pocket. Greenly shortly emerged from the gate into the big, steel-gleaming vault. Several minutes and three blocks later, Ballard watched Greenly, in a quasi-skid-row area a detour away from his office, enter, in turn, a cigar shop and a Chinese laundry.

Since he was stuffing no cigars in his pocket as he emerged from the cigar store and carried no shirts under his arm from the Chinese laundry, Ballard deduced that he had been placing bets with cash gotten from the safe-deposit box. Not a bad trick for a feller whose sole source of income, according to retail credit, came from his salary with the State of California.

The rest of the day was anticlimactic. Out at the huge echoing United Parcel Service warehouse on Shore Street in West Sacramento he learned that Madeline Westfield had left her job as a package sorter nineteen months before, when her Civil Service job as a clerk-typist for the State of California had come through. No idea where she had landed as a clerk-typist, except that it was indeed with the State.

Back downtown, for miles and hours of red tape from office to office, until he was brought to the cubicle of the lady who could tell him where Madeline was now employed — the lady in this cubicle in the Department of Employment on Eighth Street. Only it was empty. Its occupant had left forty-seven minutes early for the weekend and no, nobody else could help him because, see here, mister, this is Friday and we have to clear our desks. Come back Monday, fellow. Who do you think you are?

Nobody, my friend. Nobody at all. Just a taxpayer.

Ten minutes before the streetlights went on, a purple hog with two black men and three white women in it pulled up in front of 428 Madison Street. Heslip came erect behind the wheel of the Pinto, happily jerked from his thoughts by the arrival. They had not been pleasant thoughts because his mind, unbidden, had kept returning to the venomous, weak, hurt, frightened voice of Fleur. God almighty, her nose cut off, an ear gone — could a plastic surgeon fix things like that?

Whatever it cost, DKA was going to pay for it, either out of the health plan or out of pocket.

And then the Cadillac showed up. Behind the wheel was a hard-faced dude wearing a wide-brimmed hat and smoking a cheroot. That would be Willy. The pusher. The other man got out, with one of the girls. Dressed in funky plaid threads and a floppy cap. He would be Johnny Mack. Peanut butter. Off the wall.

The purple hog whispered away as Johnny Mack and the girl, who looked like she was right off the Greyhound, went up the front steps. No hairdo for the girl, a skirt to cover her knees instead of barely covering her pudenda. Yeah. Johnny Mack would be taking her application, recruiting her to his string with a tumble in the sack. As they went through the front door he was all over her, squeezing and touching and loving up.

By this time Heslip was out of the Pinto and halfway across the street. As he reached the sidewalk the streetlights went on, casting his abrupt, moving shadow around his ankles. He looked up and down the street — and froze.

In the next block two bulky men were getting out of the Chrysler. For the first instant he recognized only the stance: the set of the feet, the way the arms were held, the slight arrogance in the tilt of the head. That edge of contempt that physical competence gives one. It is a stance with no innocence. Heslip had some of it himself from his years in the ring, which was why he could successfully pose as muscle when the need arose.

In the next instant he recognized the men — the ones who had tailed him from Fleur’s house to the airport in New Orleans. Sure to have been two of the four who attacked Zeb Rounds. Also sure to have been those who slashed up Fleur Lisette.

Here in Boston. Here, now.

Heslip was taking the outside stairs of the three-decker two at a time. He was sure Johnny Mack was taking the girl to the upstairs flat. If the two strongarms caught up with him, they would have Verna next. Johnny Mack would be a slender reed.

Johnny Mack was at the door of the third-floor flat, key in hand and free arm around the giggling, clinging girl, when Heslip kicked in the outside door and came through from the porch. Johnny Mack thrust the girl toward Heslip and backed up against the wall with his hands out toward Heslip, palm first. “You want Willy Brown,” he babbled. “I ain’t him. Ain’t even a friend, jus bummed the borrow of his apartment fo—”

“You,” Heslip snapped at the girl. “Out of this.” He saw she was stoned on weed. He grabbed an arm, almost threw her across the hall at the interior staircase by which she and Johnny Mack had just come up. “Downstairs, and if you’re smart, get a bus back to Podunkville and stay there.”

With a drug-tranquilized look, she shrugged and went down the stairs. As she disappeared from sight, she started to giggle. Heslip crowded Johnny Mack up against the door frame and bunched both muscular hands in the lapels of his suitcoat. “Where’s Verna? Fast and quick.”

“Man, I don’t know where that bitch—”

Heslip slammed the back of his head against the edge of the frame so hard he cried out. “There’s two men on the way up who cut the nose off a girl in New Orleans for giving them that answer. Talk, goddam you!”

Johnny Mack split wide open as Heslip had expected. “I ain’t seen her since she had the baby, like three months ago. Only heard she’d been in the hospital after she was gone—”

“Which hospital?”

“Boston Lying-In.”

“Doctor who?”

Johnny Mack was almost crying with tenor. “Man, how in hell’m I gonna know...”

Heslip slapped the keys to the Pinto into Johnny Mack’s hand. More than anything else, he had to keep this dude out of the hands of the strongarms. They’d get the hospital lead and go from there to Verna. “It’s a red Pinto on the other side of the street down near the corner. Go through the apartment and use the rear stairs to the alley. Go around to the car. Wait in it for me. If they spot you, take off with the car. Otherwise, wait — or I’ll find you and splinter your elbows. Go!”

Johnny Mack went. As soon as the apartment door clicked shut behind him, Heslip started pounding on it and shouting. “Open up there!” he yelled. “Goddammit, Verna, I know you’re in there. Open that door, or...”

From behind the locked door he heard the distant slam of the rear door. Johnny Mack on his way down the back staircase. Heslip hoped the bastard wouldn’t steal his car, but it was better than letting the strongarms get him.