Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

“I kept going. I crossed the State line before I ran out of gas. Then I ditched the Packard near some railroad tracks. They pointed north, that was all I cared about. I followed them on foot a while, and then I hopped a freight when it slowed for a crossing.”

Wanted, Dead or Alive, that’s how the official wording goes. They had me either way. I knew I didn’t have a chance. Dead I couldn’t talk. And alive all the talking I could do would be to scream myself to death in some other blazing shack they’d take me to and lock me in. Persons unknown, in the dead of night. It was just a matter of time; then, or a little later. Well, I settled for a little later, and the world’s been very good to me on the time I borrowed.

“And this is the little later now; tonight, in a big Spanish city, miles from there, years from then. But this is it just the same.”

He looked at Freshman and smiled wryly: “Long speech, huh? Lots of breath wasted.”

Freshman shook his head slowly, as if he couldn’t explain it himself.

“You know, it’s funny — but I believe you. It wasn’t the words you used. I could almost see it reflected all over again in your eyes while you told it; the horror and the fear came back again. It’s easy to lie with the mouth, but it’s awfully hard to lie with the eyes.”

“Thanks, anyway,” Jones said indifferently. Then he added, “I kind of like you. Too bad we couldn’t have met otherwise.”

“I kind of like you, too,” Freshman admitted. “It won’t get you anything but I do. I like you better than any guy I was ever sent out to bring back to justice.”

Jones said, “And there’s no liquor on the table either.”

With a blare of trumpets Crazy Rhythm burned out its brakes and squealed to a stop, like something coming around a fast curve. Jones returned to the table again.

“How’s your fan mail coming?” Freshman asked drily.

Jones chuckled. “This showed up in the last delivery. She paid off — the one I was telling you about.” He took out a sheaf of request-notes, all received during his last three-bagger, extracted one of them from the rest, and deftly palmed it across the table to Freshman, keeping it hidden under his hand. “Don’t let her see me showing it to you.”

Then he added: “You better reread it to me. I don’t trust the waiter, and there was a drum solo going on while he was trying to tell it to me in my ear.”

It was in Spanish, meaning he would have had to get it second hand in any case. The note read:

If you should like to know me better, as I would like to know you, perhaps you will happen to pass through Valencia Street tonight on your way home. And if you do, perhaps you will happen to stop for a minute outside of Number 126. Just for a minute, to light a cigarette. And if you do, perhaps you will happen to find the key to Apartment 44, if you look around. Perhaps, who knows?

But if you are afraid, or if your heart is elsewhere, then do not pass through Valencia Street tonight on your way home.

One Who Has Watched

You From Afar

Jones nodded. “Yeah, that’s what the waiter said.”

Freshman passed the note back to him without comment.

Jones refolded it, placed it in his pocket.

“I suppose that’s out?” he said, very casually.

“Did you ever hear of three on a blind date?” Freshman replied. “And brother, you’re not going anywhere alone tonight.”

Jones nodded, as though that was the answer he’d expected.

“What’s the legal method in Tennessee, chair or rope?” he asked after a while, as though they’d changed subjects in the meantime. “I don’t mean what am I going to get, I mean what have they got down on paper, that you’re supposed to get, if you had lived that long?”

Freshman took a long time. When he finally answered, that wasn’t the question he answered at all.

“Tell her okay,” he said. “I’ll walk over there with you.”

Jones crooked his finger and a waiter sidled over.

“Tell whoever gave you that note—”

The waiter said, “Oh, the lady’s gone long ago. She told me to wait half an hour after she left before giving it to you. She also made me promise not to tell you what she looked like, in case you asked. She gave me twenty pesetas not to. But if you really want to know, and if I put my mind to it real hard, I think I would be able to—” He kept looking down at Jones’ hand, as if expecting another twenty pesetas to show up in it.

Instead, Jones laid it arrestingly on his arm, shut him up.

“Don’t try too hard,” he said. “I like it better this way.” And to Freshman, when the waiter had gone off again, “It’s a farewell performance. It’s a one-night stand if there ever was one. And that’s how one-night stands should be; no names, and not even any faces.”

A human being dies just once. A night club dies each night. And it’s just as brutal to watch.

Freshman watched the place die.

The crowd thinned first; that was its life-blood draining away. Each time the band played there were fewer on the floor. Until there were just three couples left. And then two. And then none. Nobody wanted to be the last couple on the floor; it was supposed to be bad luck.

The pink spot went out. That died and was gone. Then somebody pulled a switch and a whole circuit of marginal lights went out while shadows took over where they’d been. That was blindness setting in.

A new kind of music replaced the old. Pails clanked and brushes rasped, and all of a sudden there were a new set of dancers moving slowly around the floor; old and ragged and down on their hands and knees. Yesterday’s dancers, coming back like ghosts, to a place where they’d once worn bright colors and paint and been straight and young; just like today’s would come back on some tomorrow.

One of them picked up a bit of ribbon-bow someone had dropped, and looked at it a minute, then tucked it away in her rags.

All the tables were jammed together now, and up-ended back-to-back. The legs of the upper layer stuck stiffly up in the air. That was rigor mortis developing.

Jones said good-by to his men. They didn’t know it was goodby; they thought it was just good night. He gave Freshman the wink, to let him understand what he was doing.

Jones had posted himself beside the exit where they’d have to pass him on the way through to the street, and said good-by to them one by one as they came by.

And each one, misunderstanding, just said good night and thought he’d see Jones again tomorrow.

“Take it easy, Bill.” And he put his hand on his shoulder a minute, pushed down hard. “Keep blowing ’em hot and fast, now.”

“‘Night.”

“Buzz, take care of this for me, will you?” He handed him his gold cigarette-case.

“What’s the idea?”

“I don’t want to carry it around where I’m going. You can give it back to me next time you see me.”

One of them called back from the street entrance:

“You coming?”

“Don’t wait for me,” Jones answered, and the walls made it echo like a death knell.

He turned to Freshman.

“And that’s the end of my fellows and me.”

Freshman scrutinized him, closely.

“You wanted it that way. You didn’t want ’em told.”

“I still want it that way.” Jones looked around at the night club’s remains, cold in death.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said distastefully, “before they bury us with it.”

It was the deadest hour of the night. It would be light in an hour, but in the meantime the darkness seemed to have redoubled itself, as if realizing it had a deadline to work against.

The towns of Spain never sleep altogether, but Barcelona was as close to a complete lull right now as it ever got, twenty-four hours around the clock.