Джон Макдональд - More Good Old Stuff

I fought my way back to sanity and opened the car door. I stood out in the night, breathing in the cool air in great gulps. When I turned and smiled at her, her face was pale but composed.

“Thank you,” she said in a little-girl voice.

I knew it was time to go back. There was work to do. I left her at her door, kissed her lightly on the lips and walked back out to the waiting car.

Chowder had bribed his way into my room. He was sitting on the bed, waiting for me. One of the punks he collects was standing by the bureau, cleaning his nails with my file.

After I shut the door, Chowder said, “The boss thought you were taking too long, Wally. He wants it for tomorrow.”

“Okay, he gets it for tomorrow. Bright and early,” I said.

Chowder liked the plan I outlined. The best plans are the simple ones. This was simpler than most. Three blocks from the hotel was a small freight depot. Big trucks. Fosting left the hotel at seven sharp every morning. To get to the City Hall, he walked down a street with a narrow sidewalk, walled with red brick buildings.

At a quarter to seven there was only one man in the freight depot, a driver who came to hook his tractor onto a trailer full of groceries.

The plan was to get into the freight yard, sap the driver, hoist him into the cab and time it to move up over the sidewalk and crush Fosting against the bricks. The man handling it, which would be me, could then pull the unconscious driver over under the wheel, slip out and make like he was a witness.

The driver’s lack of memory would be taken to be the result of concussion. Shock amnesia. Routine accident. Too bad.

Chowder questioned me in detail. The punk filed his nails as he listened. I explained how the man with the sap could hide just inside the freight-yard gate and lay it gently over the driver’s ear as he came in. He’d never be seen.

All the time I was telling Chowder, I was thinking of Janet. She was a clean kid, a good kid. Fosting, in spite of the age difference, would be right for her.

But there wouldn’t be any more Fosting. And if there was the slightest slip, she knew enough to point the finger right at me. And that wasn’t good.

Chowder had a bottle and he kept nipping at it. He told me his room was right down the hall.

I couldn’t stop thinking of Janet, of the smell of her hair and the taste of her lips.

“What’s the matter with you?” Chowder asked. “You nervous?”

I was pacing around. I stopped and grinned at him. “Should I be?”

“I don’t know. You look edgy to me, pal. I hope you can handle this picnic okay. The front office wouldn’t want any slips.”

“But you wouldn’t mind, would you?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You’d like to see me nailed for it, wouldn’t you, Chowder?”

He sulked. “Ah, shove it, Wally.”

He sat on the bed and I could see that he was getting an idea. It was slow coming to him, and he had to nibble on it for some time. Then, when he had it set, he looked up at me without expression.

“You’re too nervous for the job, Wally,” he said.

I got it right away. “That’s right. Things weren’t going good. You came down here. Poor old Wally had a good plan lined up, but no guts. So you took over. Yep, Wally is all right for dreaming up things, but no follow-through. That means Wally wouldn’t ever fit into a responsible position like yours. Very cute. The point is, Chowder, how do you make it stick?”

Like a sucker, I had let the punk ease around behind me. I caught the signal that Chowder gave him, I ducked, and the sap nearly tore my ear off. I spun and he gave it to me, backhand across my mouth. I felt the teeth give as I dropped toward the floor. I never felt myself hit the floor.

When I came out of it, I was on the bed. Chowder was in the chair. His jaw sagged open and he was snoring. My ankles were tied together and my wrists were tied to the two bedposts at the head of the bed. Some kind character had stuffed a pair of my soiled socks in my mouth and tied them in place with a necktie. One end of a sock stuck out just far enough so I could see the pattern when I looked down my nose.

My head hurt just enough so that I knew the punk had sapped me again as I was falling.

Chowder slept like he’d had a lot of practice. I had a lot of time to think. And none of the thoughts were good. I knew that Chowder wouldn’t do the job himself. He’d get the punk to do it. Then he’d pay off the punk and say he did it. If it went wrong, the punk would be on a limb and Chowder would be out of town.

The organization would never forgive me after a foul-up like that. I’d never be paid more than muscle rates.

And yet, those reasons didn’t seem to be enough for the way I felt. I felt dirty all the way through — as dirty as that pair of socks that kept me from waking up Chowder.

The feeling of being dirty was all tied up with Janet Calder. It was as though I had been living in a box and she had torn off one wall and let some light in so I could see my own pigpen.

There aren’t any other words to explain it.

I stayed right there, thinking thoughts that hurt, until, as the windows started to get gray with dawn and the light from the lamp began to look watery and pale, there was the sound of a key in the lock, and the punk came in. He was a dark kid, with a weak mouth and long sideburns.

He saw that my eyes were open and he said, “Good morning, Glory!”

I got a look at his eyes and saw that he was stoned. Chowder was a damn fool to use a snowbird for that kind of a deal.

He shook Chowder, and the broad white face slowly came back to life, the eyes squinting at the light, the little upside-down U of a mouth working as though there was a bad taste inside.

“Whatsa time?” he demanded.

“Six. I just got back from the freight yard. I can get in okay. Everything set?”

“Sure. Get on your horse. Don’t let the driver see you when you sap him. You saw the street. And I showed you the picture of Fosting. Cruise along behind him until the street is empty. Then go in fast, Joey.”

Joey left. Chowder squinted at me and heaved himself out of the chair. He tested the neckties he had used to tie my wrists. Fifteen-dollar ties. And he had soaked them in water to get the knots tight enough. He cuffed me alongside the head, making my ear ring.

Then he went into the bathroom and pulled the door shut. I pulled hard, but those were good ties.

They hadn’t tied my ankles to the footboard. They had just tied them together.

I swung my legs up over my head until I was standing on the back of my neck. I got my toes on the headboard and pushed. The headboard was a good foot from the wall. They had moved the bed out, apparently, to fasten the knots and hadn’t pushed it back.

I got my numb fingers wrapped around the posts.

As I pushed with my legs, wood splintered and with a sudden, startling crash the whole pillow end of the bed dropped onto the floor.

I rolled up onto my feet, bringing the headboard with me. I held it above my head. I struggled for balance, made one hop toward the bathroom door. It was a good thing the room was small.

The bathroom door swung open and a startled Chowder ran out. I swung down with all my strength and the edge of the headboard hit him right at where his hairline would have been if he’d had hair on top.

He went back into the bathroom faster than he had come out. He slid across the short tiled space and piled up half under the john. I turned sideways to get the headboard into the bathroom and hopped in. When I got close enough to him, I jumped up in the air and came down on his face with my heels. It had to be that way because my ankles were tied together. The bad footing spilled me, and I hurt my back as I fell.