Дональд Уэстлейк - Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

Did I see me getting away with that? I did not.

As I stood there looking at the two banks, a car pulled up over there, a maroon Chevrolet, and a man in a gray overcoat got out. He was carrying something soft and black in his hand, a small black bag. He went up to the front of Western National, just to the left of the door, then walked back to his car without the bag, got in, and drove away.

Hm.

Watching the car depart, I saw that a block or so away a movie theater was letting out after the final show of the evening. Perhaps thirty people were emptying out onto the sidewalk, turning their coat collars up, talking together, spreading out and away in various directions. Looking at them, I suddenly realized I was cold. I was still in the borrowed civilian clothing, with only the reversible jacket, and up till now I’d been too worried and distracted to think about the fact that it was colder out now than yesterday afternoon, and that this jacket was nowhere near enough protection.

God damn , I was cold! I didn’t even have a coat collar to turn up, like those people walking in my direction.

I had a sudden frightening thought. I’m a suspicious character, I thought, visualizing myself as I must look to those people coming toward me: a loner, shabbily dressed, scuffling around in the middle of the night with no apparent destination in mind. And in a town dominated by a state penitentiary. They’ll think I’m an escaped prisoner, I thought. (It was only later it occurred to me that technically I was an escaped prisoner.)

There were perhaps a dozen people coming my way along the sidewalk. I dithered, trying to decide whether to walk boldly toward them or to turn tail and run, and in the end did neither. The people approached, mostly couples, mostly young, and all at once I knew how to keep them from thinking I was an escapee; I would disguise myself as a bum.

The first couple approached. I shambled up to them, my head down, my hands in my jacket pockets. “Buddy,” I mumbled, “you got a dime for a cuppa coffee?”

He already had a quarter in his hand. He was embarrassed at being tapped in the presence of his girlfriend, and he already had the quarter in his hand, the quicker to get rid of me. “Here,” he said, brusque but falsetto, shoved the quarter into the palm I hastily pulled from my pocket, and hurried on, his arm around his girl’s shoulders.

I was astounded. He’d already had the quarter in his hand! He’d known I was a panhandler before I did!

The next couple ignored me. An older couple gave me a dime. A pair of middle-aged ladies hurried past. A fortyish man in a leather jacket grumblingly told me to go fuck myself. The next couple gave me a quarter. The final couple, mid-twenties, full of high good spirits, stopped to chat. “You want to be careful in this neighborhood,” the male said, reaching into his pocket. “The cops can get tough around here.”

What a thought; first time out on my own and get picked up for begging. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll move on.”

The girl, sympathetic but too cheerful in her own life to really give much of a damn, said, “You ought to go to the Salvation Army or somewhere. Ask people to help you.”

Advice , Ambrose Bierce said, is the smallest current coin. “ I’ll do that,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

The man had finally come up with some coins, which he pressed into my hand as though they were a message to be taken through the lines. “Good luck, fella,” he said.

I was beginning to hate them. My misfortune was merely capping their perfect day. (“And,” I could hear them telling one another later, in bed, after a perfect copulation, “we helped a bum.”) “Thanks,” I said, for the third time, and after they walked on I opened my hand to look at a dime and two nickels. I’d been given a lot of valuable advice, and twenty cents.

Which meant a total of eighty cents. I was both elated and depressed, as I walked off with the coins jingling in my jacket pocket. Half a minute ago I’d had nothing, and now I had enough to call my mother and have a cup of coffee and have a pastry or something with it. On the other hand, eighty cents was still a far cry from the kind of money the boys back in the gym were expecting to see. (It was also depressing that my bum imitation had been so thoroughly effective.)

As I walked along, it seemed to me the advice I’d been given had probably been worthwhile. Business streets would tend to be more thoroughly patrolled by the police after dark, and loitering strangers in such areas would be more likely to be picked up for questioning. Since I couldn’t think of a single question I could possibly be asked that I would be willing or able to answer, I made a right turn at the next intersection, and moved away into a residential area again.

But this wasn’t doing me any good. I was cold and moneyless, and I wanted to solve both problems, rapidly, without getting into worse trouble than I already had.

Not too many years ago I could have solved both problems by sending a telegram to my mother asking her to wire me some money, and I could have waited in the warm all-night Western Union office for the couple of hours until the money arrived. But that was back in the days when there was such a thing as a telegram. I know there’s still a company around called Western Union, but God knows how they make their money these days — not with telegraphy.

I walked two blocks in semi-darkness, traveling from street-light to streetlight, looking at the small houses on either side. It was a weeknight, and most of the windows were dark, the good citizens already in bed, resting mind and body for the honest labor of tomorrow. I could have been like them, asleep now in a conjugal bed in Rye, next to a practical and faithful yet extremely attractive wife. With a sense of wistful envy I looked at the lawns, the driveways, the slanted roofs, the curtained windows. On the open porches were toys, chairs, milk boxes, bicycles. I might steal a bicycle; I could travel faster, and the pedaling would warm me. But I wasn’t a thief, I had never stolen anything in my life.

At the second intersection, I saw some sort of open business establishment at some distance down to my left. Walking that way, I finally saw that it was a diner on a corner, with three cars parked out front. I started to enter, then noticed that one of the three was a police prowl car. I hesitated, almost left, and decided the hell with it. I could enter, couldn’t I? I had money, didn’t I?

Two uniformed cops were sitting at the counter chatting with a heavyset blonde waitress. At the other end of the counter a man in a shabby brown suit was eating a full meal; a salesman, probably, passing through. A young couple in a booth were having an intense, impassioned, embittered, nearly silent argument; whispering and muttering at one another, making constricted hand gestures, eyes blazing as each one tried to hammer a point across.

I took a booth far from the cops and the quarrelers, picked up the menu from between the sugar and the napkin dispenser, and looked to see what my eighty cents would buy me. And abruptly into my mind came the memory of a newspaper report I’d read years ago, a stunt a fellow had pulled that I had approved of completely. It had been very much in the practical joker line, but since it had been done for money I had never tried the same thing myself. Could I make it work? Was it already too late at night?

The waitress came over: huge-busted, dressed in white. She had been chipper and carefree with the cops, but was noncommittal with me. “You ready to order?”

“Oh. Ah...” Another quick look at the menu, a typewritten sheet of paper in a clear plastic holder. “Coffee,” I said. “And the clam chowder.”