Эд Макбейн - Learning to Kill - Stories

“No, I ain’t,” he said. He hadn’t even noticed the girl sitting there, and he wondered now when she’d come in. She reeked of cheap perfume but there was something exciting about the perfume and her nearness.

“These 3-D things are good,” she said, taking the glasses from his lap, her hand long and tapering, brushing against his arm. “Supposed to put these Hollywood women right in your arms. Don’t you go for Hollywood women right in your arms?”

“I... look, I’m busy,” he said.

“Too busy to watch the picture?”

He felt an instant panic. Had she heard about him? Did she know he was the one the cops wanted?

“Yes,” he said slowly, “too busy.”

“Too busy for other things, too?”

He caught the pitch then, and an idea began kicking around in the back of his mind. “Things like what?” he asked.

“Things like a way to kill the night. Better than doing eye muscle tricks in a movie.”

“How?” he asked.

“A room on Lex. Not the Waldorf but clean sheets. A bottle, if you can afford it. And a price that’s right.”

“Like?” His mind was racing ahead now. A room on Lex, away from the eyes of the cops, more time to think, more time to work it out.

“Like seven-fifty for all night. Plus the bottle. You got seven-fifty?” she asked.

“I’ve got seven-fifty,” he whispered.

“Don’t let the price fool you. It’s quality merchandise, germ-free. I’m feeling generous.”

“You’re on,” he said, making up his mind.

He saw her grin in the darkness. “I knew you was an intellectual,” she said. “Come on.”

They moved out of the row into the aisle, and she started for the rear of the theater.

“This way,” he said. “We’ll use the exit down front.”

“You ashamed or something?” she asked, her hands on her hips.

He decided to give it to her straight. “I got in a fight. My arm is bleeding. I don’t want to attract attention.”

She stared at him for a few moments, and then said, “Okay. Come on. Down front.”

He gave her money for a jug and then he waited in the darkness of a hallway while she bought it in a brilliantly lighted liquor store. When she came back, she walked on the side of his wounded arm, blocking it effectively from inquisitive eyes.

They walked in silence to a brownstone set next to a delicatessen. She led him up the steps then, and opened the wooden door to her room. It was a small room with a bare bulb hanging overhead and a dresser in one corner. A bed occupied most of the room, and there was a table with an enamel washbasin on a stand alongside the bed.

“Like I said,” she told him, “it ain’t the Waldorf.”

She was not as big as he’d thought she was in the movies. She was, in fact, almost small, except for the breasts that crowded the woolen sweater.

“Which shall we treat first? The arm or the gullet?”

“Have a drink, if you want,” he said. “I can wait.”

“Yeah, but you’re bleeding on my imported Persian rug.” She grinned and went to the dresser, taking out a bottle of peroxide and a roll of gauze. She brought him to the basin, rolled up his sleeve, and then said, “You run into a buzz saw?”

“No, a hophead.”

“Same thing,” she said pouring the peroxide onto the wound.

He winced, holding back the scream that bubbled onto his lips.

“You got glass in there,” she said.

“Pull it out, if you can.”

She looked at him curiously. “Sure,” she said. She wrapped absorbent cotton around a toothpick and then began fishing for the glass splinters. Each time she got one, he clamped down on his teeth hard, and finally it was all over. She drenched the arm in peroxide again, and then wrapped the gauze around it, so tight that he could feel the veins throbbing against the thin material.

“That rates a swallow,” she said. She broke the seal on the fifth, poured whiskey for them both into water glasses, and handed him one. “Here’s to the hophead,” she said.

“May he drop dead,” Johnny answered, tossing off the drink. It burned a hole clear down to his stomach and he remembered abruptly that he hadn’t eaten for a good long while.

The girl took another drink, and then put the glass and the bottle on the dresser top again. “Well, now,” she said. “Let’s try and forget that arm, shall we?”

She moved closer to him, and he thought, The hell with the cops, the hell with Angelo, the hell with everyone. The sweater moved in on him, warm and high, soft, beating with the soft muted beat of her heart beneath the wool and the flesh. He pulled her to him, his head pressed tight against the wool.

“Easy now,” she said, chiding, smiling. “Easy now, boy. Slow and easy.”

A knock sounded on the door.

She broke away from him, and he leaped to his feet.

“Who...” he whispered.

More knocking.

“Get in the closet!”

“The clos...?”

“Go on, move,” she whispered urgently.

He went to the closet, thinking, Why’s she acting like an unfaithful wife? feeling foolish as hell, feeling like the jackass in some low comedy of errors. The closet door closed on him, leaving him in darkness, leaving him with trailing silk dresses flapping around his face, high-heeled shoes crushed under his big feet. He could not stop feeling foolish, and then he heard the outside door open, and the man’s voice.

“What took you so long, Bess?”

“Oh, hello, Tony. I was... napping.”

Why? Johnny thought. Why that? Why didn’t she say, I’ve got someone with me, Tony. Come back later, come back in the morning. Why the runaround?

“Napping, huh?” The voice was a big voice. It belonged to a big man. It belonged to a suspicious man. Johnny did not like that voice, and the voice was in the room now, moving in from the outside door.

“What’s this?” the voice asked.

“What? What’s what, Tony?”

“This jacket. You wearing Army jackets now, Bess? That what you doing?”

“Tony...”

“Just shut up! Where is he?”

“Where’s who? Tony, I was just taking a nap. The jacket belongs... belongs to... a fellow came to fix the plumbing. He must have left it here. The plumbing leaked. He...”

“Did the plumbing leak blood? Did it leak blood in that basin there?”

“Tony...”

“You’re a slut,” he shouted. “I’m going to break that guy in two! Where is he?”

“I told you, Tony. There’s no one...”

“And I told you! I told you what would happen if I caught you up to your old tricks again. Where is he?”

The footsteps were advancing across the room now, and it was a cinch Tony would look in the closet first. He dropped to his knees quickly, rooting around on the closet floor for a shoe. He found a sturdy-feeling job with a spike heel, and he got to his feet again and waited.

“You got him in the closet?” the voice asked, close now. And then the door opened on Johnny, and the shaft of light spilled onto his face. He didn’t hesitate an instant. He brought the shoe up, catching Tony on the bridge of his nose.

Tony was big all right, big and bearded, wearing a leather jacket and corduroy slacks. The shoe caught him on his nose, and the line of blood appeared magically, and then he stumbled backward. Johnny swung out with his left hand, catching Tony in the gut. He hit him again with the shoe, and as Tony went down, he heard the girl screaming, screaming, her voice like an air-raid siren. She dropped to her knees beside› Tony, took his head into her lap, and then looked up at Johnny.

“You crumb!” she shrieked. “You filthy crumb! He’s my brother! He’s my brother!”

Johnny was already halfway to the door.

“My brother!” she kept screaming, and he didn’t hang around to listen to the encore. He ran down the steps and out into the street, a little sorry Tony had arrived when he had, and a little sorry he’d left an almost full fifth of good whiskey in the room.