Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

She hesitated. “I don’t know. 1 didn’t see him close, Lieutenant. He had his hat pulled down over his eyes.”

The phone in the attendant’s shack rang. One of the plainclothesmen answered. “Hello,” he said, and “Yes,” and “Just a sec.” He came to the door.

“For you, Miss Kenyon. Your mother, 1 guess.”

They must have put it on the radio already then, she guessed. Otherwise, how would they have heard, at home? She hadn’t called anybody but Don.

“This is Annalou.” Her hand shook as she picked up the receiver. There was a spatter of dark red on the floor beside the phone shelf. This was where it had happened!

“One minute, honey-chile.” That throaty, velvety voice!

Annalou could only gasp.

“Listen, kid!” It was the man’s voice, now. Those brittle tones were unmistakable, though she’d only heard him speak one word. The murderer! “I’m givin’ you some friendly advice, babe. You talk all you want to, to those Little Boy Blues. But you’ll sleep better if you kind of forget to remember what 1 look like. You didn’t see me very good. Catch wise?”

“Yes,” Annalou breathed, almost paralyzed. “Yes, I catch.”

“That’s a smart kid,” the man at the other end of the line went on, smoothly. “That’s being sensible. I’d hate to have to do — what I had to do there in the office where you are now — again. Understand?”

Annalou nearly fainted. “Yes,” she managed to say. “Oh, yes, I understand.”

“So just be kind of vague, undecided. That’s right. And you won’t hear from me any more. If you play it that way.”

She didn’t hear him hang up. She didn’t hear anything. The plainclothesman picked her up off the floor. Don slopped a wet handkerchief on her forehead. The lieutenant found a flask in his pocket.

When she recovered enough to talk, she told them.

Lieutenant Wiley studied her narrowly: “So now you’re going to find it hard to remember, huh?”

Don snapped: “Why shouldn’t she! What would you do, if your life had been threatened!”

The lieutenant regarded him morosely. “Let the little lady do the talking and me the thinking. We’ll get along. How about it, Miss Kenyon?”

Annalou looked at Don, but she thought about Bill. Good old amiable Bill, crawling across the gravel there, with a hole as big as your fist in his stomach.

“I don’t know if I can describe the man.” She brushed her taffy-bright hair back off her forehead, wearily. “But I might be able to pick his picture out if you have a photo of him in the Rogues’ Gallery.” She bit her lip. “I hardly ever forget a face.”

A few hours later the lieutenant came into the file room with a typed report and an air of resignation.

“A lot of quick thinkin’ — for nothing. That license number you spotted, Miss Kenyon—”

Don exclaimed eagerly: “They picked up the sedan, huh?”

Wiley raised his eyebrows sardonically. “You in again? How’d it be if you pretended you’re just an innocent bystander, hah? Leave me and the little lady go into this kind of private like, hah?”

Don retorted defensively: “I just thought if they got the car—”

“They did. Half an hour ago. Parked. Right here on State Street. It was a stolen heap. We knew that, anyway. The doctor who owns it had reported its loss earlier tonight.” Wiley laid the report on his battered flat-top desk. “There weren’t any prints on the steering wheel or door handles. All wiped off, of course. So we’re back where we started.”

Annalou snapped a fingernail briskly against a glossy black and white print. “Not quite, Lieutenant.”

Don flung an arm around her shoulders, bent to examine the photo. “That him?!”

“Yep.”

Wiley reached for the picture. He had to reach around Don. “Pardon me, Dick Tracy. You positive this is the man, Miss Kenyon?”

“Uh-huh.” Annalou shuddered a little. “If this is the same fellow who stuck up those other stations,” Wiley said, “and we’re pretty sure he is, we’d better get busy. All those other attendants could remember about him was that he had eyes like a couple ice-cubes.”

“Maybe they also had phone calls which might have affected their memories no little,” Annalou suggested.

“Could be. Still and all, you wanna be absolutely certain,” counseled the officer. “Remember you didn’t get a gander at this guy within fifty or seventy-five feet. He had his hat on, then, too.”

“He could have been wearing an Eskimo parka,” Annalou said bitterly. “I’d know that pug nose and cleft chin anywhere.”

Wiley turned the photo over, studied the data on the back. “I hope you’re right about this.”

“Who is he?” Don asked.

Wiley ignored him. “This lug you identify, Miss Kenyon, is Larry, the Gong. There are readers out for him from Cleveland, Pittsburgh and points east.”

“Larry, the gong?” Annalou’s eyes made inquiry.

“They gave him that handle because he is all the time booting that gong around, Miss Kenyon. Y’understand? He is one of those wacky heroin hounds who never know themselves what they’ll do next.”

Don Rixey stuck his chin out aggressively. “I got a pretty good idea what he’ll try to do. He’ll try to fix Annalou’s wagon so it won’t squeak. That’s what he’ll try to do!”

Annalou’s mother was in the kitchen, washing the breakfast dishes. Annalou sat on the sofa in the living-room, chain smoking and arguing with Don.

“What do you want me to do? Stay shut in here all the rest of my life?”

Don patted her shoulder. “I don’t want you roaming around where this Larry, the Gong, might get a shot at you. Particularly I don’t intend to have you going out to that ’burg joint where you been working. It’d be the first place he’d look for you.”

“But, Don, if I don’t show up, I’ll lose my job,” she wailed. “I can’t afford to lose my job. Don’t forget how hard we’re trying to save up for our marriage.”

“They won’t fire you for being out a few days, snooks.”

“Who says the police’ll round him up in a few days, anyhow!” Annalou wanted to know.

“Every cop in six states is looking for him. They’ve been broadcasting his description every hour on the hour. That’s just why he’ll go gunning for you. He’ll be sure you’re the only person who could have identified him.”

“I don’t care,” Annalou persisted, “I’m not going to be cooped up here like a hermit, for weeks, when all the time this Larry is probably a thousand miles away, in Miami or Los Angeles or some place. He wouldn’t dare stay around this city. He’d be sure to be caught.”

“Lieutenant Wiley thinks he’s still here.” Don was grim. “He says none of the trainmen or bus conductors or airports or bridge tenders have seen anyone answering that description, heading out of town. It’s a cinch he can’t be traveling very far by car, because every gas station within three hundred miles is on the lookout for him. Chances are he’s holed up right here close by somewhere, waiting until the heat is off, before he tries his getaway.”

Annalou ground out a cigarette she’d just lighted. “And you think I’m going to stay penned in all that time until the heat is off! Well, let me tell you something, darling!”

He beat her to it. “No, I don’t expect you to hole up here, indefinitely. I have an idea. Listen.”

She listened. Right up to the time he grabbed her with one hand, his hat with the other — and kissed her good-by...

The sergeant behind the desk squinted dubiously at the clock on the wall behind him.

“Lootenant Wiley goes off duty at four o’clock. ’Tis now half-past three. What might be the nature of your business with him?”