Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

‘Shut up, you sap, you’re making it tough for yourself,’ someone hissed.

‘Lemme see a list of your entries,’ Smitty told Pasternack.

The impresario fished a ledger out of the desk drawer and held it out to him. ‘All I got out of this enterprise was kicks in the pants! Why didn’t I stick to the sticks where they don’t drop dead from a little dancing? Ask me, why didn’t I!’

‘Fourteen,’ read Smitty. ‘Rose Lamont and Gene Monahan. That your real name, guy? Back it up.’ 14 jerked off the coat that someone had slipped around his shoulders and turned the inner pocket inside out. The name was inked onto the label. The address checked too. ‘What about her, was that her real tag?’

‘McGuire was her real name,’ admitted Monahan, ‘Toodles McGuire. She was going to change it anyway, pretty soon, if we’dda won that thousand’ — he hung his head — ‘so it didn’t matter.’

‘Why’d you say you did it? Why do you keep saying you didn’t mean to?’

‘Because I could feel there was something the matter with her in my arms. I knew she oughtta quit, and I wouldn’t let her. I kept begging her to stick it out a little longer, even when she didn’t answer me. I went crazy, I guess, thinking of that thousand dollars. We needed it to get married on. I kept expecting the others to drop out any minute, there were only two other couples left, and no one was watching us any more. When the rest-periods came, I carried her in my arms to the washroom door, so no one would notice she couldn’t make it herself, and turned her over to the old lady in there. She couldn’t do anything with her either, but I begged her not to let on, and each time the whistle blew I picked her up and started out from there with her—’

‘Well, you’ve danced her into her grave,’ said Smitty bitterly. ‘If I was you I’d go out and stick both my feet under the first trolley-car that came along and hold them there until it went by. It might make a man of you!’

He went out and found the ambulance doctor in the act of leaving. ‘What was it, her heart?’

The AD favoured him with a peculiar look, starting at the floor and ending at the top of his head. ‘Why wouldn’t it be? Nobody’s heart keeps going with a seven- or eight-inch metal pencil jammed into it.’ He unfolded a handkerchief to reveal a slim coppery cylinder, tapering to needle-like sharpness at the writing end, where the case was pointed over the lead to protect it. It was aluminium — encrusted blood was what gave it its copper sheen. Smitty nearly dropped it in consternation — not because of what it had done but because he had missed seeing it.

‘And another thing,’ went on the AD. ‘You’re new to this sort of thing, aren’t you? Well, just a friendly tip. No offence, but you don’t call an ambulance that long after they’ve gone, our time is too val—’

‘I don’t getcha,’ said Smitty impatiently. ‘She needed help; who am I supposed to ring in, potter’s field, and have her buried before she’s quit breathing?’

This time the look he got was withering. ‘She was past help hours ago.’ The doctor scanned his wrist. ‘It’s five now. She’s been dead since three, easily. I can’t tell you when exactly, but your friend the medical examiner’ll tell you whether I’m right or not. I’ve seen too many of ’em in my time. She’s been gone two hours anyhow.’

Smitty had taken a step back, as though he were afraid of the guy. ‘I came in here at four-thirty,’ he stammered excitedly, ‘and she was dancing on that floor there — I saw her with my own eyes — fifteen, twenty minutes ago!’ His face was slightly sallow.

‘I don’t care whether you saw her dancin’ or saw her doin’ double-hand-springs on her left ear, she was dead!’ roared the ambulance man testily. ‘She was celebrating her own wake then, if you insist!’ He took a look at Smitty’s horrified face, quieted down, spit emphatically out of one corner of his mouth, and remarked: ‘Somebody was dancing with her dead body, that’s all. Pleasant dreams, kid!’

Smitty started to burn slowly. ‘Somebody was,’ he agreed, gritting his teeth. ‘I know who Somebody is, too. His number was Fourteen until a little while ago; well, it’s Thirteen from now on!’

He went in to look at her again, the doctor whose time was so valuable trailing along. ‘From the back, eh? That’s how I missed it. She was lying on it the first time I came in and looked.’

‘I nearly missed it myself,’ the intern told him. ‘I thought it was a boil at first. See this little pad of gauze? It had been soaked in alcohol and laid over it. There was absolutely no external flow of blood, and the pencil didn’t protrude, it was in up to the hilt. In fact I had to use forceps to get it out. You can see for yourself, the clip that fastens to the wearer’s pocket, which would have stopped it halfway, is missing. Probably broken off long before.’

‘I can’t figure it,’ said Smitty. ‘If it went in up to the hilt, what room was there left for the grip that sent it home?’

‘Must have just gone in an inch or two at first and stayed there,’ suggested the intern. ‘She probably killed herself on it by keeling over backwards and hitting the floor or the wall, driving it the rest of the way in.’ He got to his feet. ‘Well, the pleasure’s all yours.’ He flipped a careless salute, and left.

‘Send the old crow in that had charge in here,’ Smitty told the cop.

The old woman came in fumbling with her hands, as though she had the seven-day itch.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Josephine Falvey — Mrs Josephine Falvey.’ She couldn’t keep her eyes off what lay on the floor.

‘It don’t matter after you’re forty,’ Smitty assured her drily. ‘What’d you bandage that wound up for? D’you know that makes you an accessory to a crime?’

‘I didn’t do no such a—’ she started to deny whitely.

He suddenly thrust the postage-stamp of folded gauze, rusty on one side, under her nose. She cawed and jumped back. He followed her retreat. ‘You didn’t stick this on? C’mon, answer me!’

‘Yeah, I did!’ she cackled, almost jumping up and down, ‘I did, I did... but I didn’t mean no harm. Honest, mister, I—’

‘When’d you do it?’

‘The last time, when you made me and the girl bring her in here. Up to then I kept rubbing her face with alcohol each time he brought her back to the door, but it didn’t seem to help her any. I knew I should of gone out and reported it to Pasternack, but he — that feller you know — begged me not to. He begged me to give them a break and not get them ruled out. He said it didn’t matter if she acted all limp that way, that she was just dazed. And anyway, there wasn’t so much difference between her and the rest any more, they were all acting dopey like that. Then after you told me to bring her in the last time, I stuck my hand down the back of her dress and I felt something hard and round, like a carbuncle or berl, so I put a little gauze application over it. And then me and her decided, as long as the contest was over anyway, we better go out and tell you—’

‘Yeah,’ he scoffed, ‘and I s’pose if I hadn’t shown up she’d still be dancing around out there, until the place needed disinfecting! When was the first time you noticed anything the matter with her?’

She babbled: ‘About two-thirty, three o’clock. They were all in here — the place was still crowded — and someone knocked on the door. He was standing out there with her in his arms and he passed her to me and whispered, “Look after her, will you?” That’s when he begged me not to tell anyone. He said he’d—’ She stopped.

‘Go on!’ snapped Smitty.

‘He said he’d cut me in on the thousand if they won it. Then when the whistle blew and they all went out again, he was standing there waiting to take her back in his arms — and off he goes with her. They all had to be helped out by that time, anyway, so nobody noticed anything wrong. After that, the same thing happened each time — until you came. But I didn’t dream she was dead.’ She crossed herself. ‘If I’da thought that, you couldn’t have got me to touch her for love nor money—’