Дональд Уэстлейк - Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

“Manhattan or New England?”

“Uh...New England.”

“Cup or bowl?”

All these decisions. I looked at the menu again, at the comparative prices for a cup or bowl of chowder, and the cost decided me. “Cup,” I said. That would leave me with fifteen cents; I might even have a doughnut for dessert.

She was about to leave. I said, “Would you have a felt-tip pen I could borrow?”

“A what?”

“You know; the kind of pen with the soft tip.”

“Oh, those damn things,” she said. “They don’t go through the carbon paper.”

“That’s right.”

“Yeah, I think there’s one in the cash register.”

“Thanks.”

She went away, came back with my coffee and a black felt-tip pen, and went away again. The table had already been set for two, facing one another, so I reached across to the other setting, pushed the silverware out of the way, and took the paper place mat. I folded it in half with the diner name inside, and carefully lettered my sign on the white back:

CLOSED

FOR REPAIRS

USE BOX

Below that I drew an arrow pointing straight down. I made the letters as thick and even and official-looking as possible, and drew the arrow blunt and solid, for that no-nonsense effect.

The waitress brought my clam chowder while I was still printing. She pursed her lips when she saw what had been done to the other place mat, and wordlessly gathered up the extra silverware before I did something terrible to that . She marched it away to safety, and when she came back a third time, with a plate of crackers, I gave her the pen and once more tonight said, “Thank you.”

“Any time,” she said, though without much conviction, and went off to be chummy with the cops again.

Hot food. It was delicious. While I ate I thought about this scheme and tried to decide what I would do if it didn’t work, which it probably wouldn’t. I had planned on calling my mother, but what did I have to say to her? I still had no way for her to send me money, and even if I did it wasn’t a solution to the problem of tonight.

The salesman walked slowly by, burping, popping Tums into his mouth. He paid the waitress and I heard him say to the cops, “What’s the weather up north?”

“Cold,” one of them said.

The salesman expressed gratitude for that news, and left.

When I finished eating I carefully reversed the contents of the sugar canister and salt shaker. Then, just as carefully, I rolled my homemade note to keep it from creasing, and put it in my shirt pocket, where it stuck up almost as high as my collar. I kept it in place by zipping up my jacket, took my eighty cents out of my pocket, and left the excess fifteen cents as a tip, mostly because of the place mat. Then I walked down to the group at the other end of the counter, gave the sixty-five cents to the waitress under the incurious glances of the two cops, and left.

It was a brisk walk back, retracing my steps through the residential area. Half a block from the business street I tiptoed silently up onto a front porch, opened the milk box there, and took out the four empties I found inside. Then I carried the box away with me, and hurried on downtown.

The banks were two blocks to the left, on the other side. There was no traffic at all now, which for my purposes was both good and bad. I wanted privacy, but I also needed customers, who might not be forthcoming at eleven-thirty at night in a small town in the middle of the week.

I considered both banks, and the gray stone monolith of Western National seemed somehow better suited architecturally to my milk box, which was a steel-colored metal cube with a lidded top plus thick sides for insulation. I put it on the sidewalk under the night deposit slot, took the note from my pocket, unrolled it, and tried to find some way to attach it to the building. I should have asked the waitress for some Scotch tape.

Then the simple solution came to me: I opened the night deposit slot, slid the back half of the place mat into it, and closed the slot again with the note hanging out. Stepping back near the curb, I surveyed my handiwork and decided it wouldn’t fool anybody.

But it was all I had; and in any case I shouldn’t hang around here, admiring my work. Checking both ways, still seeing no traffic and no pedestrians. I hurried off, and had gone nearly a block before I began wondering where I was going.

Nowhere. With no more money, I couldn’t go back to the diner. The air was getting steadily colder, so I couldn’t stay outside. There was nobody around for me to try with my panhandler imitation. I did see an open bar up ahead, but I was afraid to go in there with no cash to spend.

So I went back to the Dombey house. The lights were out, so Bob and Alice had gone to bed. Vaguely, to distract myself, I tried to work up some prurient thoughts about that, an inmate outside the prison and in bed with a woman, but it was impossible. I hadn’t met Alice Dombey, but I’d met her husband, the first man I’d seen passing the laundry-room door, the hunch-shouldered skinny one with the shifty weasel expression, and there was just no way to fantasize him married to a sex symbol.

I went through the side door and downstairs to the corridor Vasacapa had constructed. The twenty-five watt bulb burned dimly in the ceiling. There was no radiator in here, but some heat did seep through from the rest of the house. I sat down on the carpeting, leaned my head against the paneled wall, and gave myself over to brooding thoughts.

And sleep. I don’t quite know how it happened, but the next thing I knew I was lying on my side, all curled up, and I’d been sound asleep. Cold had awakened me, and when I moved I was as stiff as a motel towel. I creaked and cracked, moaned and groaned, and slowly made it to my feet, where I hopped up and down and flapped my arms around in an effort to get warm.

Christ, but it was cold; the Dombeys must be the thrifty type who turn the heat down during the night. I’d been in prison a month and a half and this was the worst night I’d ever spent anywhere, and I was outside the goddam jail.

Well, there was no point in it. A warm bunk awaited me in the gym, so I might as well get to it. Awkwardly I lowered myself to my knees again and entered the tunnel.

I was about halfway back when I remembered the note and the milk box, and realized I ought to go back and see if I’d caught anything.

I really didn’t want to. There wouldn’t be anything in the milk box, I was sure of it, and I was cold enough already without another long useless walk. I also wanted to go back to sleep.

But I had to check, didn’t I? Facing Phil and Joe and the others tomorrow with no money to show them — no, not if there was any alternative at all. So I had to go back.

Did you ever try to turn around in a three-foot-wide concrete pipe? Don’t. At one point I was wedged in so completely, with my head between my knees and my shoulders stacked up together somewhere behind me, that I was convinced I’d never be able to move again; I could see Phil, tomorrow afternoon, sending Billy Glinn down to dismantle me in order to clear the blockage.

Finally, though, I did get myself facing the other way, and by then the exercise had made me warmer, more limber and very nearly awake. Except for a splitting headache and a total sense of despair I was in pretty good shape as I crawled back through the tunnel and hurried through the still-dark streets toward the bank. A clock in a barbershop window told me it was twenty minutes to four.

There was a gray canvas bag in the milk box. I stared at it, refusing to believe it, then stared suspiciously all around, expecting a trick. Practical jokers, of course, always have to believe that someone else is going to return the favor in kind.