Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

I walked back two blocks to 3rd Avenue and started out afresh from that point on. He had lived on 3rd Avenue, so he had probably walked all the way up it looking for work until he got to 59th, and then turned either east or west. West there was a department store on one side, a five-and-ten and a furniture store on the other; they wouldn’t interest him. East there were a whole line of mangy little shops and stalls; I turned east. I trudged along; I was Amato now, worrying about where my next half dollar was coming from, not thinking about my tooth at all — at least not just at that moment.

A shadow fell before me on the sidewalk. I looked up. A huge, swaying, papier-maché gold tooth was hanging out over the doorway. It was the size of a football at least. Even Amato would have known what it was there for. Maybe he’d gotten a bad twinge just then. The only trouble was — I’d seen it myself yesterday, it was almost the first thing that had caught my eye when I started out. I’d investigated, you may be sure. And the card on the window said “Dr. Carter” as big as life. That was out — or was it? Amato couldn’t read; “Carter” wouldn’t mean any more to him than “Jones.” But then where had he gotten “Jones” from? Familiar as it is, it would have been as foreign to him as his own name was to me.

No use going any further, though. If that gold tooth hadn’t made up Amato’s mind for him, nothing else the whole length of the street could have. I was on the point of going in anyway, just for a quick once over, but a hurried glance at my own appearance decided me not to. Serge business suit, good hat, dusty but well-heeled shoes. Whatever had happened to Amato, if he had gone in there, wasn’t likely to happen to anyone dressed like I was. If I was going to put myself in his place, I ought at least to try to look like him. And there were a few other things, too, still out of focus.

I jumped in a cab and chased down to Headquarters. I didn’t think they’d let me see Steve, but somehow I managed to wangle it out of them. I suppose Keenan had a hand in it. And then too, Steve hadn’t cracked yet, that may have had something to do with it.

“What enemies have you?” I shot out. There wasn’t much time. “None,” he said. “I never harmed anyone in my life.”

“Think hard,” I begged. “You’ve got to help me. Maybe way back, maybe some little thing.”

“Nope,” he insisted cynically, “my life’s been a bed of roses until day before yesterday.” He had a purple eye at the moment and a forty-eight-hour beard.

I turned cynical myself. “Let’s skip it then and look at it the other way around. Who are your best friends — outside of myself?”

He ran over a list of names as long as a timetable. He left out one, though. “And Dave Carter?” I supplied. “Know him?”

He nodded cheerfully. “Sure, but how did you know? We used to be pretty chummy. I haven’t seen him in years, though; we drifted apart. We started out together, both working in the same office I have now. Then he moved out on me, thought he could do better by himself, I guess.”

“And did he?”

“He hit the skids. All the patients kept on coming to me, for some reason, and he just sat there in his spick-and-span office twiddling his thumbs. Inside of six months the overhead was too much for him and here’s the payoff: he ended up by having to move into a place ten times worse than the one he’d shared with me. What with one thing and another I lent him quite a bit of money which I never got back.”

“And did he turn sour on you?”

“Not at all, that’s the funny part of it. Last time I saw him he slapped me on the back and said, ‘More power to you, Stevie, you’re a better man than I am!’ ”

“In your hat!” I thought skeptically. “When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.

“Years back. As a matter of fact, I clean forgot him until you—” I stood up to go without waiting for him to finish. “Excuse the rush, but I’ve got things to do.”

“Dig me up a good lawyer, will you?” he called after me. “Price is no object. I’m getting sick of hitting these dicks in the fist with my eyes!”

“You don’t need a lawyer,” I shouted back. “All you need is a little dash of suspicion in your nature. Like me.”

I got Keenan to take me in and introduce me to the chief while I was down there — after about an hour or so of pleading. The chief was regular, but a tough nut to crack. Still he must have been in good humor that day. If he reads this, no offense meant, but the cigars he smokes are fierce. I had a proposition to make to him, and two requests. One of them he gave in to almost at once — loving newspapermen the way he did. The other he said he’d think over. As for the proposition itself he said it wasn’t so hot, but to go ahead and try it if I felt like it, only not to blame anyone but myself if I got into trouble.

From Headquarters I went straight to a pawnshop on 3rd Avenue. It was long after dark, but they stay open until nine. I bought a suit of clothes for three dollars. The first one the man showed me I handed back to him. “That’s the best I can give you—” he started in.

“I don’t want the best, I want the worst,” I said, much to his surprise. I got it all right.

From there I went to a second one and purchased what had once been an overcoat before the World War. Price, two fifty. The coat and suit were both ragged, patched and faded, but at least the pawnbrokers had kept them brushed off; I fixed that with the help of a barrel of ashes I passed a few doors away. I also traded hats with a panhandler who crossed my path, getting possession of a peculiar shapeless mound he had been wearing on his head. I was doing more than laying down my life for my friend; I was risking dandruff and Lord knows what else for his sake.

I trundled all this stuff home and managed to hide it from my wife in the broom closet. In the morning, though, when she saw me arrayed in it from head to foot she let out a yell and all but sank to the floor. “Now never mind the hysterics,” I reproved. “Papa knows just what he’s doing!”

“If this has anything to do with Steve, you’re a day late,” she told me when she was through giggling. “They’ve dismissed the case against him.” She held out the morning paper to me.

I didn’t bother looking at it; in the first place it was one of the two requests I’d made at Headquarters the night before; in the second place it wasn’t true anyway.

Keenan was waiting for me on the southwest comer of 59th and 2nd as per agreement. Anyone watching us would have thought our behavior peculiar, to say the least. I went up to him and opened my mouth as though I was Joe E. Brown making faces at him. “It’s that tooth up there, that molar on the right side. Take a good look at it.” He did. This was for purposes of evidence. “Got the picture?” He nodded. “I’m going in now, where that gold tooth is, half-way down the block. Back in half an hour. Wait here for me and keep your fingers crossed.”

This statement wasn’t quite accurate, though. I was sure I was going in where the gold tooth was, but I wasn’t sure I was coming back in half an hour — I wasn’t sure I was coming back at all, any time.

I left him abruptly and went into the office of Dr. Dave Carter. I was cold and scared. The accent bothered me too. I decided a brogue would be the safest. No foreign langi ages for me. Carter was a short, dumpy little man, as good-natured and harmless looking as you’d want. Only his eyes gave him away. Slits they were, little malevolent pig eyes. The eyes had it; they told me I wasn’t wasting my time. The office was a filthy, rundown place. Instead of a partition, the dental chair was right in the room, with a screen around it. There was an odor of stale gas around.