Джон Макдональд - Flight of the Tiger

He got out a dime and bounced it in his hand a few times. Heads he’d call Davis. It came out heads. Two out of three then. The coin fell tails and then heads again. Three out of five. The next two flips landed tails. As he pocketed the coin, he knew he was going to go up there to that farm, and he was going to make certain that he was not followed. He told himself it was something he was doing for Dick MacLane. This was his direct offer of assistance to the widow, his good deed for the day; he was the hero in action. Or maybe, he thought wryly, this was just a case of one fugitive helping another.

He walked through the tunnel from the hotel to the Grand Central. He got a timetable from the information desk and took it into the waiting room. There was a Sunday train leaving Grand Central at nine fifteen in the morning, arriving in Rhinecliff at eleven thirty-six. He folded the timetable and shoved it into his pocket. He looked around. The terminal was not busy at this hour on a Saturday. All the faces had the same closed, guarded look of subway faces. Yet he had the uneasy feeling that he was under observation. He wished that he had been more guarded in his contact with Freimak. But it was a bit too late to think about that. Yet Davey Lemon had seemed convinced of his lack of information.

He got up and went to the nearest newsstand and began to look at the magazine titles. He turned casually and walked slowly down the ramp into the main part of the station, toward the ticket windows.

At the foot of the short ramp he turned, his back to the wall, and lit a cigarette. Two women went by, talking to each other excitedly in some language he couldn’t place. Then a large family came through, and then a man alone who walked briskly to the information desk. On the far side of the station people were waiting behind ropes for a train to come in.

It seemed perfectly safe to go over and buy a ticket. But he felt ill at ease about it. You could buy a ticket on the train. Yet if he had been seen studying a timetable, loitering around, not buying a ticket might be as unfortunate as buying one. He looked at the timetable again, and walked directly to the nearest window selling coach tickets and bought a one-way ticket to Peekskill — that was only halfway, but it was a precaution. He stowed the ticket in his wallet as he turned away from the window. There was no one within fifteen feet of him.

He walked out of the station feeling a bit ridiculous, as though he were trying to fit an Eric Ambler script to a Martin and Lewis movie. Yet he had been knocked down in broad daylight on a busy street. That was not Ambler — that was more Alfred Hitchcock. It had that same peculiar quality of horror as in the good Hitchcock movies, where violence happens in incongruous environments.

He had been too late for the six-twenty-five evening train. There hadn’t been time to check out of the hotel. And now there were blank hours to fill. The unfilled hours were the bad ones. Traveling had not been too bad; enough motion dulled thought.

The city lights had come on. He walked without purpose through the streets. He looked at display windows, at the faces of the people, and felt very alone. He ate a poor steak in a gaudy noisy tourist trap on Broadway, and studied the huge signs over the movie houses, and settled for a picture where there was no line at the ticket window. There was a newsreel and, without warning, it showed a jet fighter squadron climbing steeply in a British air show. He got up quickly and walked up the aisle, not looking back, hearing the sound track — a feeble imitation of the original — and when he was out on the street the air dried the sweat on his face.

He had a drink at a 52d Street bar, watched a listless floor show and then walked back to the Hotel Mara-lane. He had the key in his pocket, so he went directly to the stairs. Night seemed to bring out special odors that he had not noticed in the daytime. The lobby air held a taint that he had always associated with public buildings, with shabby courthouses, with license bureaus.

His room door was unlocked and as he went in, the girl on his bed sat up quickly, leaned over and pulled her shoes on, smiling up at him as she did so. Her hair, dyed to silver-blonde, looked as lifeless as glass fibers, and as hard. Her face had a soft Mexican look, black-browed and heavy-lipped, faintly dusky. A fur cape hung across the back of a chair, a red purse lay on the foot of his bed. She wore a white blouse, dark blue skirt, dark blue pumps with high heels.

She got her shoes on quickly and stood up, smiling, saying, “Hi!” She was taller than he expected.

“What do you want?”

“Shut the door a minute.”

He closed the door behind him. “Who let you in?”

“A friend of mine, Ben. You got any cigarettes? I ran out while I was waiting.”

He gave her one, and as he held the light he was aware of the heaviness of her perfume. She put her hand out and said, “I’m Candy.” She shook hands in an engagingly forthright way, then sat once again on the edge of the bed.

“I was a friend of Denny Young,” she said. “We ran around together. I was up to that Helen MacLane apartment lots of times.”

“Who sent you here?”

“I’m here on my own, Ben. Davey Lemon told me you were a friend of Dick MacLane’s. Understand, I figured Davey for one hundred per cent no good, but he told me where you were because he knows I’ve got an interest. He knows finding Helen means something to me personal.”

Ben Morrow sat down. “How do you mean?”

“No man has the right to do that. I mean bash a girl up that way. Denny was a friend of mine. You just don’t do that to a girl.” She hunched her shoulders a bit, as though she were cold. “I never had the looks for modeling. Anyway, they want you to starve so you photograph good. I’m not what you’d call fat, you know. I’m five seven, and a hundred and thirty-five is where I feel good. I took off tonight. I’m the photographer at the River Roof. After Paulie left town with Gorman, I had to go back to work. You don’t have a drink around? I couldn’t find one.”

“No.”

“Don’t sit there looking like I’d bite or something. Like I said, Davey knows I’ve got an interest. I used to go wake Denny up around noon. Helen was working usually. We’d drink and yak up there before we’d go meet the boys about five. Helen wouldn’t come along. She was all broken up over MacLane, I guess. Me, I like a taller guy with more hair.”

“Taller?”

“Sure. I saw the picture of that MacLane lots of times. Hairline back to here. Denny said Helen told her Dick MacLane was about five six.”

“I don’t know who you are or what the gag is, but Dick MacLane was a shade over six feet and his hair hadn’t receded a bit.”

She stared at him. “You positive you got the right guy, Ben?”

“Are you trying to find out whether I knew him or not?”

“There’s some people don’t think you did.”

“Lemon, maybe?”

“Lemon and the people he’s working for. There’s some people think she sent you here to make some kind of a deal, Ben.”

“Lemon saw my papers.”

“So he told me. He got hold of me because I was a friend of Denny’s. He thinks that if you knew MacLane you’d know what MacLane called her.”

“She could have told me that. And what he looked like, too.”

“She could have told you what he looked like, but Davey doesn’t think she would have got into the pet-name department.”

“Tell him Dick called her Golden Girl. What’s this all about?”

Her face looked harder. “Davey doesn’t want to take any chances. He needs money. This whole deal is hot. You don’t know how hot. Davey said to me that we got to check you all over again because he can’t figure why you should want to go to Peekskill, unless maybe it’s to take Davis’ offer back to her. There’s some people think she’s got what Denny took out of Eric’s apartment.”