Roy Carroll - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 4, April, 1953

“She’s transferred to Surgery.”

“You be here from now on?”

“Probably,” the nurse said.

Gil made kissing sounds loudly. “We’ll get to know each other real well. I’m with the Star. Gil Bratcher.”

“That’s nice,” the nurse said. She found the card and passed it to Alf. He put it on the corner of her desk and, bending over, placed his copy paper beside it and prepared to write down the information.

“What time you get off, baby?” Gil asked.

Alf straightened up, very slowly, his eyes still on the card. “We don’t want this one, Gil,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Huh?”

“I think we better...”

“Hey! What the hell is this? Let me see that card!” He reached out and scooped it up in his soft, meaty hand. “I’m looking for her phone number.”

Alf glanced toward the room where Gil Bratcher’s wife was being treated for scalp wounds. “I’ll see it’s killed on the city desk,” he said. “No one has to know about it. Just you and me.”

Quite a card, that Calligy. Always joking about murder — and about other guys making time with Rocky’s wife.

Things have been real nice since I got out of the Fights. Retired, Janie calls it. Just like I’d been a big business man or something. That’s one thing I like about Janie, her sense of humor. Lot of guys might think she was too quiet. Not me. I like Janie. She’s a swell wife. It was her idea we come way up here to Maine and buy this place, miles from nowhere, where we don’t even get mail or see anybody maybe weeks on end, and I go the thirty miles into town for supplies about once a month. It’s kind of primitive, no electricity, no phone, getting water from a well and all. But it’s fun. It’s nice.

We don’t get lonesome. Except right after Mr. Calligy was here.

That was a funny one, him coming here. I never did really find out why he came. Of course he gave me a silly reason, kidding around the way Mr. Calligy and all those guys from the rackets do. You never hardly get a straight answer out of guys like him. I remember the first thing I said, when he drove up and stepped out of that big car of his:

“Well, Mr. Calligy,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you say, Rocky?” he answered. “I’m hidin’ from the cops. No kiddin’, Rocky, what do you think of that? I’m wanted for murder, for killing that big schnook of a manager of yours, Leo Mace. Remember Leo? Well, say a prayer for him, Rocky. He’s dead. I knocked him off.”

I looked at him. He didn’t look so good. His expensive suit was all rumpled and he needed a shave. Those heavy-hooded eyes of his were all bloodshot and tired, too. I said: “You kiddin’, Mr. Calligy?” As soon as I asked, I knew it was a foolish question. Guys like Mr. Calligy, in the rackets, don’t go around knocking people off. They’re like business men, not like the old gangster movies. Mr. Calligy maybe mixes in the numbers business, fixes a few fights like that last one of mine. But none of this strong-arm stuff.

“I wouldn’t kid you, Rocky,” Mr. Calligy said. “I—”

He stopped cold, looking past me. I turned and saw that Janie had come out of the house. She was wearing shorts and a halter and she looked nice. I was real proud of Janie. Her legs were long and curved real pretty, like a chorus girl’s legs and they were smoothly tanned. And that halter — well, Janie would have looked good in a burlap bag, but that halter was the end. The real end. And with her reddish hair pulled tight over her forehead and balled up in the back, with the sun shining on it like on liquid copper, Janie looked beautiful that moment. Mr. Calligy thought so, too. He said:

“Well, maybe this country life can be real invigorating, after all.” He made a whistling sound. “Who’s that, Rock?”

“Janie,” I called. “Come meet Mr. Calligy.”

She walked toward us. Her eyes never left Mr. Calligy’s and her lips looked a little pursed, as though she was frightened or maybe sore about something. I couldn’t figure that out. I heard her say: “I’ve already met Mr. Calligy, long, long ago.”

“Why, sure,” he said. “I remember you now, Baby. You’re the little chick with the mousy look and the big horn rimmed glasses used to work for Farnsworth, the promoter.”

“She just wears glasses when she reads or types or close work like that,” I explained.

“Sure,” Mr. Calligy said. “With or without glasses, she can do some close work for me, anytime. How about that, Janie? Like to put your glasses on and do a little close work for me some time?”

I laughed. He’s a great kidder, that Mr. Calligy. All these bigshot racket guys are. But Janie was a little white around the lips. She didn’t seem to get it. She said:

“How did you find us? Nobody’s supposed to know where we are. Only Leo Mace knew and he wouldn’t have told anybody — especially you.”

“You got it figured,” he told her. “Mace let me in on the little secret. Just before he died. I sort of sweated it out of him. And you know what I was going to do when I got here, honey? I was going to shoot some holes in a punching bag. You know what I mean?”

I didn’t. What was he talking about? Since I quit the Fights, I don’t do any training. We ain’t got any punching bags, no gloves or nothing, up here in the country.

Janie said: “You can’t do that. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember what happened. You can’t blame him. Please!”

Now I didn’t understand Janie, either. It was like they were talking double talk and it was setting my head to aching. It does that sometimes, since that last fight with Barney Phelan, when I took a dive like Mr. Calligy paid me to, especially. Sometimes I don’t seem to see too good, either. Sometimes I don’t even hear right and yet at the same time I sometimes hear sounds and noises that ain’t even real, Janie says. I guess she was right and I was in the Fights too long. But it paid off. Janie and I got enough money to live on, way out here in the country, the rest of our lives.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Mr. Calligy said to Janie. He was looking her over and over and I felt kind of proud that a bigshot like Mr. Calligy admired my wife so much. He rubbed his hands together. “Since I got here, I got other plans. Much better plans.”

He looked at me. “You got a car?”

“No,” I told him. “A jeep. I can drive it, too.”

Mr. Calligy winced and looked at Janie. He said: “How do you stand it? What do you do, day in, day out, sit around here, listening to the sound of the bells in his crazy cranium? Hell, honey, I’ll bet you’re glad to see a human being, huh?”

You see what an education this Mr. Calligy had, the words he used. I laughed as though I knew what he was talking about. Janie said: “Lay off of that. Leave him alone, you hear?”

Her eyes got blazing mad. I was surprised. I said: “Aw, Janie, Mr. Calligy was just kiddin’ around.”

“So you got a jeep,” he said. “Then when I get ready to go, I can get into town with that. Swell. I’ll be back in a minute. Got to get rid of the car, just in case anyone does come snooping around, looking for me. I passed a nice deep-looking creek, up the road about half a mile. You follow me in the jeep, Rocky.”

I watched him get back into the Caddy. I looked at Janie. “What’s he doing?” I saw Mr. Calligy drive off, back the way he had come, down the narrow, rutted dirt road that led out to the main highway, ten miles back.