William McGivern: The Seven File

The clerk was a plump, pink-cheeked young man with a contempt for the hotel’s trade which he didn’t bother to disguise. He knew that most of the men who stopped there were only a notch above vagrants, and he saw no earthly reason to treat them as anything else. Without looking up he shook his head in answer to Duke’s question.

“I’m expecting a wire from my brother.” Duke said gently. “From up in Maine. It’s important.”

“I’ll watch for it. Don’t worry.”

Duke hesitated a second or so, smiling at the clerk. Then he said dryly, “It’s nice of you to put yourself out. Thanks very much.”

The clerk stared after him as he limped toward the elevators. Then his lips tightened with exasperation. He knew the type. Sarcastic and boorish. If they weren’t kept in place they became impossible...

Upstairs Duke removed his work clothes and put on a gray flannel suit and a white shirt with a neat dark blue tie. Smiling at his reflection in the mirror, he poured a drink of whiskey into a plastic toothbrush glass. He liked the look of his dark, arrogant features and the hard expression in his deep-set eyes.

Then the smile left his face and he swore softly. Why hadn’t Hank answered his wire? It wasn’t like his brother to ignore him; Hank had been trained like a dog. painstakingly and thoroughly. Even after all these years he wouldn’t have forgotten his lessons. But still — he hadn’t sent word that they could use his cottage. Grant wouldn’t understand the delay. And he wouldn’t like it.

Sipping the whiskey, Duke smiled slightly. Well, to hell with Grant, he thought. He couldn’t keep his thoughts from straying back to the nurse. In fact, he didn’t try; he gave himself over to them with relish. She didn’t know much about men. Start with that. She’d be thinking about marriage and babies and a house with a little garden in back of it. But not about men. Not until she grew up some more. He began to place her in different frames; at a bar, walking among trees, fighting her way through the crowds in a subway, with men of all kinds. And he imagined her in evening gowns, in sports clothes, in filmy lingerie in a warm, scented bedroom, lying almost naked on a beach. Would she tan? He wondered, looking at his own dark hands. Probably not. But that would be okay. A pink tone would go great with her black hair and blue eyes.

Duke finished his drink, suddenly irritable and restless. It was time to call Grant. Tell him there was no word on the cottage yet...

When Duke dropped his key at the desk the clerk looked up at him, and said, “A wire came in for you about five minutes ago.” Turning, he took a telegram from the key rack and slid it across the counter toward Duke.

Duke stared at him, ignoring the yellow envelope. He had been drinking for the last hour, and his eyes were ugly and dangerous. “Why didn’t you send it up?”

“Well— I’m here alone at the moment. The bellboy is out for coffee.”

“Didn’t I tell you it was important?”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t expect...”

“I expect service,” Duke said, his voice cutting harshly across the clerk’s. “You’re here to say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ and do exactly what you’re told. That’s why you’re paid a small salary. Trained monkeys come cheap.”

The clerk’s cheeks trembled with indignation. “There’s no cause to be abusive,” he said. “I know your type—” He paused and wet his lips, finding it suddenly very difficult to meet Duke’s eyes.

“What’s my type?” Duke said gently. “Tell me about it.”

“I merely meant—” The clerk’s voice became high and uncertain; all of his dignity dissolved in fear. “We try to be of service, sir. This won’t happen again, I assure you.”

Ignoring the apology, Duke ripped open the telegram with an abrupt angry gesture. The wire was from his brother, Hank. As he read it, a slow, secretive smile relieved the sullenness in his face. The kid hadn’t forgotten his lessons... Turning, Duke limped across the lobby toward the public phones, and the clerk stared after his broad back with wide frightened eyes.

Replacing the phone in its cradle, Eddie Grant glanced at the slender graying man who sat facing him in an overstuffed chair on the opposite side of the living room. “The cottage is all set,” Grant said, without expression. “That was Duke. His brother will be away fishing during the week we need it. Nice timing, eh?”

The man in the chair smiled faintly. “Simply perfect,” he said, in a mannered British accent; its inflection and tone were meant to suggest a good school and good regiment, but they smacked unmistakably of pretense and phoniness, of small shady deals rushed through in an atmosphere of anxious haste and pressure. It was a voice trained to say such things as “Your coat? Why, so it is! I say, what a stupid mistake...”

The man’s name was Howard Sydney Creasy. He was small and frail, a gnome of a creature in a shiny black suit that was relieved by a gray silk tie and a tiny pearl stickpin. There was nothing unusual about his appearance; his features were small and commonplace and over the years he had cultivated a simpering smile that was, to his thinking, both civil and superior at once. He seldom allowed his confused hatreds to break through the barriers he had set up against them — and then only when he was alone. To the world he presented a bland, good-humored mien, and a whimsical courtesy that was his only defense against ridicule or anger.

Now he said to Grant, “Are you quite sure of Duke’s brother? I mean, are you sure he’ll go off fishing on schedule?”

“Duke is sure of him,” Gram said.

“Then the question is — are we sure of Duke?”

Grant stared at him for a second or two, then shrugged his wide shoulders. Lighting a cigarette, he sat down on a window seat that ran beneath the front windows of the room. From here he could look down the length of the apartment — living room, dining room, short hallway, kitchen. The furniture was cheap and the colors had been chosen without imagination; it was a depressing prospect, relieved only slightly by the knowledge that he would never see it again after a week or so. He had sublet it for two months, and the original tenant had replaced the furniture with bargain-basement specials before turning over the key. Only two more weeks, Grant thought. And then the big-time again.

Stocky and powerfully built, he was a big man, clumsy with muscle and heavy bone; he worried constantly about his weight. The morning sun touched his lifeless blond hair, and revealed the network of tiny cracks that gave his face the surface look of yellowing parchment. He was only forty-five, but the stamp of worry and tension was on him; most of those forty-five years had been spent solving the simple but violent problem of keeping alive.

“Duke’s okay,” he said at last. “Don’t worry about him.”

“Do you know anything about his brother?” Creasy said.

“I’ve never met him, if that’s what you mean. But Duke’s filled me in on him. They’re different types.” Grant smiled faintly. “There’s an understatement for you. The kid brother, Hank, went off to Korea and piled up a big record. After that he didn’t come home. His parents were dead. Maybe it was that. Or maybe he wanted to get away from Duke. Anyway he went to Maine, and got into the real estate business with an old-timer up there. He’s a very respectable type, which is just what we want.”

“They don’t sound like chips from exactly the same block,” Creasy said.

“Splinters is the word maybe. They’re half-brothers. Same father, different mothers.”

“Do they see each other regularly?”

“No, they had trouble in the past. I don’t know just what, but Duke’s got the kid over his hip. When he needs dough he just shoots off a wire, and back comes the cash. The kid’s afraid of him, I guess. But that doesn’t matter to us.”