A. Fair - The Bigger They Come

Sandra said, ‘We’d better go up and look things over before we—’

‘No, we hadn’t,’ I interrupted. ‘There’s been enough delay already. We call the police.’

Sandra said, ‘What’s the matter? Haven’t you a dime?’

I met her eyes, and said, ‘No.’

She opened her purse, took out a dime and gave it to me. I walked back to the telephone booth. Sandra and Alma stood there by the elevator, talking in low tones; and just then I heard the low wail of a police siren, sounding close at hand. I was just taking the receiver off the hook in the telephone booth when a radio patrol car drew up in front of the door. I started dialing blind, stalling along to keep out of sight. An officer climbed the two stairs, tried the door, and rattled the knob. Sandra walked across and let him in.

I could hear him say through the door to the telephone booth, ‘Someone reported a shot was heard in 419. Do you know anything about it?’

‘I live there,’ Sandra Birks said.

‘Oh, you do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was there a shot?’

‘I just came in.’

‘Who’s this dame?’

‘She lives with me — it was a shot, I guess — she heard it.’

‘Let’s go up.’

He pushed them along with him into the elevator. The door rattled shut, and the elevator started swaying upward. Over the phone I heard the noise of the ringing bell and a sleepy masculine voice said ‘Hello.’ I thought for a moment, then put the receiver back on the hook.

Apparently no one had said anything about me.

I watched the indicator swing upward in an arc until it came to the fourth floor. Then it stopped. I waited a minute or two to see if the elevator was coming back down, and when I saw it wasn’t, jabbed the button. The indicator remained stationary. Evidently, they’d left the door open when they went up. At that hour of the night, there was only one elevator running, and it was an automatic.

It took me a couple of minutes to climb the four flights of stairs and walk down the corridor to apartment 419.

The apartment door was open. I could hear the sound of voices coming from the bedroom on the right. The lights were on. I stepped into the apartment, and looked through the bedroom door. The two women were standing facing the officer.

Alma Hunter, white-lipped, defiant; Sandra Birks, poker-faced. Sprawled on the floor with his arm outstretched, lying on his back, his glazed eyes reflecting the lights from the ceiling, lay Morgan Birks.

The officer asked Alma, ‘Where did you get this gun?’

‘I had it.’

‘When did you buy it?’

‘I didn’t buy it.’

‘Who gave it to you?’

‘A gentleman friend.’

‘Where? When?’

‘In Kansas City, of course. It was some time ago. I don’t remember how long ago.’

Sandra Birks looked past the officer and saw me. Her eyes narrowed. She raised her hand to her lips, and as she lowered it, flipped the wrist in a signal to go away.

The officer caught either her motion or the expression in her eyes. He whirled and saw me standing there.

‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, staring down at the figure on the floor.

Sandra Birks said evenly, ‘I think he has an apartment somewhere on this floor.’

The officer came pushing toward me. ‘You get out,’ he said. ‘This is a homicide. We don’t want a lot of people trooping in. Who are you? What—’

‘Why don’t you put a sign on the door?’ I said. ‘I thought there was some trouble here. You left the door wide open and—’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘On your way, and we’ll close it right now.’

‘Well, don’t get hard about it. I have a perfect right to look in here when the door’s open, and you can’t keep me out. I’m not—’

‘The hell I can’t keep you out,’ he said, and clapped his big hand on my back between my shoulders. He wrinkled my coat up in his fingers to give him a good grip, and shoved. I went out in the hall so fast I had to put up my hand to keep from slamming into the wall on the other side of the corridor. Behind me, the door slammed shut, and I heard the lock click.

Cops are that way. If I’d tried to leave, he’d have dragged me in and given me the third degree. Getting hard and insisting that I had the right to stay, resulted in getting thrown out with no questions asked. He’d proved his point and established the superiority of a police officer over the poor dumb citizen who pays the taxes.

I didn’t know just what had happened, but Sandra Birks’ signal had been enough. I didn’t need to have a brick house fall on me. I walked to the elevator and took it down. My ribs ached every time I breathed, and the shove the officer had given me hadn’t helped any.

The radio patrol car was waiting at the curb. The second officer was seated in it, listening to broadcasts. He was taking notes as I came out, and looked up at me sharply; but the radio was blaring a description of a man wanted for something or other, and he let me go.

I tried to walk casually until I got to the corner, swinging out to the curb once or twice as though looking for a cruising cab. Behind me, I could hear the blare of the police radio as a voice said in a droning monotone, ‘—about thirty-seven or thirty-eight, height five feet ten inches, a hundred and eighty pounds, wearing a gray felt hat-wide black brim-shirt-tie spotted red. When last seen-running-scene-crime—’

I turned the corner. A taxicab hove into sight. I flagged it. ‘Where to?’ the driver asked.

‘Straight down the street,’ I said, ‘until I tell you to stop.’ It wasn’t until we’d got half a dozen blocks that I suddenly realized I hadn’t a cent to my name. I figured the meter would register about sixty-five cents getting to Bertha Cool’s address. I gave him the number and settled back against the cushions.

‘Wait here,’ I said, and got out of the cab, crossed the curb to the apartment house, found Bertha Cool’s name on the directory, and leaned against the door button.

There was going to be an embarrassing moment for me with that taxi driver if Bertha Cool wasn’t in.

To my surprise, the buzzer sounded almost immediately. I pushed against the door, and it opened, letting me into a dark hallway. I groped around, found a light switch, and located the elevator. Bertha Cool was on the fifth floor. I had no difficulty finding her apartment. The light was on. She opened the door as I tapped on the panel. Her hair was messed from sleeping and hung in strings around her face. Her features looked bloated, but her eyes were cold and hard as diamonds glittering out at me from above the puffy folds of flesh. A silk bathrobe was knotted around her waist. Through the opening in the top, I could see the sweep of her massive throat, a V-shaped section of her big chest.

‘You look like hell,’ she said. ‘Who beat you up? Come in.’

I entered the apartment, and she closed the door. It was a two room affair with a kitchenette opening from the back of the living room. The bedroom door was half open. I could see on the bed with the covers thrown back, a desk phone on a stand within a foot of the pillow, a pair of stockings thrown over the back of the chair, a wadded bundle of garments, which looked as though they’d been balled up and tossed onto the seat of another chair. The living room was close, and smelled of stale tobacco. She walked across to the windows, flung them open, looked at me sharply, and said, ‘What’s the matter? Been run over by a truck?’

‘Beaten up by mugs and pushed around by the police,’ I said.

‘Oh, like that?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right. Don’t tell me about it until I’ve found the cigarettes. Where in hell did I put those things? I had a full pack when I went to bed—’