Стивен Марлоу - Catch the Brass Ring

“I only tripped.”

Not without regret, the crowd dispersed. Maybe that’s the kind of sideshow the people at Coney Island really like. It would make the topic of conversation at a dozen noontime lunch counters. Such a strong-looking young man, too.

The bullet had gouged a hole in the wall, head-high. If it had come in on an angle I never would have found the slug. Actually, I found only pieces. Someone had cut an X in the nose of the slug to fashion a makeshift dum-dum. Some of the pieces had stuck in the wall like grape shot, but most of them had fallen to the sidewalk. Had the bullet even creased my forehead I’d have contracted a bad case of lead poisoning right through my thick clay pigeon skull.

Horns tooted and squawked as I darted across the wide street, giving a bus driver and a few hacks apoplexy. Directly across from the shooting gallery stood a comfort station. Everything cost money at Coney Island. There was a turnstile and a big, fancy sign which said: SANITARY TOILET — 5 cents.

An old lady in a starched blue uniform sat on a folding chair near the turnstile. The expression on her face indicated she was aware she ran the one sure-fire concession at Coney Island.

“Any customers?” I demanded.

“What do you think, dearie? It’s a hot day, so people do a lot of drinking. Some dope even set off a firecracker in here.” That was my man. “Any windows looking out the front on the first floor?”

“You don’t see any, do you?”

“What’s up on the second floor?”

“Only some storerooms. You looking to rent some space?”

“No. Listen, did someone come in here with a rifle?” It had to be a rifle, from that distance.

“A rifle — in here? You mean it wasn’t a firecracker?”

“Well, then a package.”

“A lot of people come with packages. We’ve got lockers and they cost another five cents. Everything is cheap, you see, and…”

“Forget it,” I said. I slid a nickel into the slot, pushed through the turnstile and went inside. It was sanitary, all right. The smell of disinfectant almost made me gag.

I entered a dark waiting-room which contained folding chairs, a trash can and a soda dispenser. On my left was where the men went, on my right the women. Straight ahead was a flight of stairs which I ascended three at a time. Upstairs, cartons of toilet paper, soap and paper towels were strewn about a large, musty room. My footprints joined others in the dust on the floor but there were far too many to tell me anything. Big, wind-driven drops of rain had started to fall outside, splattering in through an open window up front. This was my sniper’s perch, for his elbows had cleared dust from part of the window-sill. I sniffed and sniffed and thought I smelled the sharp odor of gunpowder.

I plunged downstairs and to the back of the place. The rear exit opened out on a parking lot which extended all the way back to the elevated line. Reading the first of a stack of comic books, a skinny kid with a crew haircut and cup-handle ears sat near an old shack with a 75 cent sign faded and peeling on the gray wood.

“Hey!” I said. “Did someone just leave the John through here?”

“Huh?”

“The John. Did someone just leave?”

“I heardja.” The kid didn’t bother to look up. “Umm-hmm.”

“Who was it?”

“How should I know? They already drove away. I was reading.”

“Do any of the people over at Tolliver’s park their cars here?”

“You kidding? If they didn’t we’d be outa business tomorrow.”

“Who?” I asked desperately.

“Lemme see. There’s Mr. Soolpovar, Mr. Kellum, Miss Tanner, Mr. Lucca. Oh, yeah. And Miss O’Keefe.”

“What kind of cars do they drive?”

“Well, Mr. Soolpovar, he drives a Studebaker Commander ’49. Mr. Kellum, now he—”

“Never mind. Whose car is missing?”

The kid stood up and folded the comic book back in the pocket of his dungarees. He squinted around the lot myopic-ally and scratched his scalp through the bristle of his hair. “All of ’em,” he said finally. “There ain’t a Tolliver car in the whole lot. You looking for someone, mister?”

“The person who came out of the John. Didn’t you get a look at him at all?”

“Naa. For all I knew it could have been a dame. I just heard somebody come out, that’s all. I should look every time? Hey, mister, are you a cop?”

“I’m J. Edgar Hoover,” I said, and walked across the parking lot toward the street. The wind had stopped but the rain came down harder, spilling out of a dreary gray sky. I caught the elevated train at West 8th and let it rock me to sleep until my stop downtown. I didn’t have much to tell the coroner. I hoped he had more because I knew it was murder but couldn’t prove it.

When I reached the address indicated on the subpoena it was raining so hard I couldn’t even light a cigarette. I paused at the revolving door when someone honked a horn and called my name. Turning back into the rain I saw a car which definitely did not belong to the Tolliver set. It was a long Caddy limousine which you’d have difficulty parking at a bus stop. A black leather top had been fitted over the metal and the whole thing was spanking new and six or seven thousand dollars worth at least. The wipers were going slipslop across the one-piece windshield. A man sat beside the woman who piloted the two and a half-ton monster.

My legs got rubbery. My mind fled back through the rain and through more rain like it but worse in Korea and through three years of a second Army hitch although I’d realized I was too old to play tin soldiers or anything else. Her name was Allison and she wore copper hair piled high on her head and had eyes you could tell were green even through the rain. Her father had owned an eight-pump Amoco station at the other end of Staten Island near Outerbridge and for all I know he still owns it. I’d foremanned the repair shop that went with it and got to know his daughter and forgot about my bank account and started spending all my money on her and liking it because she liked it and responded by giving me what virile men dream about. (“Allison’s got wild blood in her, Gid, but you can tame her, boy,” old man Hiller had said.) Everything got rosy red until people started pointing at me and snickering and talk-big in whispers and I really believe old man Hiller never knew.

Allison was the reason I’d joined the Army although I’d served my time with George Patton in World War II. Allison had wild blood, let me tell you. She collected bedfellows like other girls collected jewelry. I had been laboring under the kind of misapprehension that grows horns on men.

So now Allison waved at me from the driver’s seat of the big black Caddy and the rain soaked me while I stared and thought myself back three years.

“It is you! Gideon. Gideon Frey. Come on in out of the rain, Gid.”

I debated it. Looking at my watch I saw I was still fifteen minutes early for the coroner’s inquest. If I accepted her invitation I’d feel like a fool. If I didn’t accept I’d feel like a bigger fool. I opened the back door of the Caddy and stepped inside.

Allison was full of tricks. There was no seat in the back of the limousine and none of those pull-down chairs that accommodate two additional people. Rubber matting covered the floor and a couple of hard rubber toys were strewn about. Something in the far corner under the fly window growled sullenly, then subsided as I closed the door and squatted on my heels.

A boxer glared at me with its black, pugnacious, flattened face. Sixty pounds of brindle-colored dogflesh with sturdy forelegs and a deep chest and one of those stout harnesses that seeing-eye dogs usually wear.

“Who is your friend, my dear?” The man next to Allison spoke for the first time. He had a calm, cultured voice and the kind of accent which said he might have gone to the same schools as Roosevelt and Dean Acheson. He didn’t turn around to look at me. He merely asked. And the dog wore one of those harnesses. Allison was chauffeuring around a blind man.