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

He spat on the floor with compassion.

“Mike has no son now.

“Mike’ll never forget that.

“You can’t win, except my way.”

The eyes had stopped their wary flickering now. They were suddenly still. Dead-still, as if reflecting back the very thing that they were looking at: the face of death. Then he covered them briefly with both hands, palms against sockets, with a fling of hopelessness. Then lie dropped his hands again as quickly, as if to symbolize mutely the very hopelessness even of hopelessness itself.

Terry said, speaking low and very slow: “I don’t have to tell you what your situation is, but I will anyway, so we can go on from there. You can’t get out of here. You’re barricaded, like in the Middle Ages when a guy took refuge in a church — a sanctuary — and they couldn’t come in there after him and get him because that would have meant desecrating the church. So they waited outside and finally cut him clown when hunger or something else drove him out again. This is like that pretty much, except that the church is now a hotel. The hotel-chain that owns it has considerable influence in the right places, and it doesn’t want you removed by force from its premises — unless you have been first charged with some crime on the books, and you haven’t been — not only because of the bad publicity it would give them, but also because of the risk of an eventual damage-suit. Since there is no outright crime of violence against you down on our books — it’s more a case of alleged moral turpitude — the powers-that-be have agreed to go along with them on this, and wear you out by waiting just outside for you. As long as you don’t commit any violations (and you’re very careful not to, from what we can see), the hotel likes having things just the way they are: they’re milking the situation for all it’s worth. Where else can they get five-hundred dollars a month for one of their rooms, and from a tenant who’s practically handcuffed to them for the rest of his natural life?”

Terry looked at him almost curiously.

“It’s the most unusual case that’s come along in years, there’s nothing else like it to be found in our files.”

Without saying a word, the man broke a fifth of Courvoisier out of a Louis XV liquor-cabinet and swallowed a jigger of it neat, as if he couldn’t get it down fast enough. He forgot to offer any to Terry, only he didn’t know it, but that was one thing Terry wouldn’t have mooched from him right then. Terry wanted to keep his head with him.

“The way it stands right now, it’s what you might call — stabilized. But it won’t stay that way long, it’ll start going downgrade on you. Within a few months, or a year, human nature being what it is, you’ll find yourself at the mercy of every conniving employee in the hotel, because they’ll know they have you over a barrel and you can’t fight back. You’ll be disrespected, things’ll be stolen from you — who you going to complain to, us? Until one fine clay some good-looking chambermaid with a shifty boyfriend will let him put her up to the idea of walking into your room with her hand stretched out in front of her and calmly saying ‘Five hundred dollars, please, or else I’ll scream and say you made a pass at me.’ You’ll have to pay, you can’t afford not to. Then somebody else will see how easy it was, and they’ll try it too, only the second time it’ll be a thousand. You’ll be bled white by the time they’re through with you. Then the hotel will throw you to the wolves anyway.”

The man squeezed his eyes tightly shut with one hand held over them, and pounded his fist against the top of a chair in helpless frustration.

Terry watched him closely, carefully, to see how he was doing. He, Terry.

“Now here’s the other side of the picture, let me give you that. You’ve got money enough to live like a king the rest of your life, anywhere in the world, Paris, Rome, Rio, name it. Once you’re there you’re safe up to a point. You’re not a wanted criminal, so no extradition would be involved. The most we could do would be to tip off the authorities over there that you’re a person of doubtful moral character and to keep an eye on you. If they start crowding you too close, all you would have to do is move on again to the next place. At least you wouldn’t be cooped up in a single hotel, like here. And there are some places where you would be out of reach entirely. Tangier used to be one of them, I don’t know if it still is. That Arabian kingdom where Eichmann holed up before he went to Buenos Aires — Kuwait. Andorra, in the Pyrenees. But even if you just keep moving on without stopping anywhere, always just one step ahead of your reputation, roaming the world like a man without a country, that isn’t so bad if you have the money. In today’s world, the champagne is just as good one place as the next, the girls are just as pretty one place as the next, the little sport-cars race just as fast one place as the next.”

He stopped and looked at him keenly. “Have I told you any lies? Have I told you the truth of it, or haven’t I?”

The man lowered his head in unspoken admission.

“Now here’s the one catch there is to the whole thing. There’s just one little stretch you can’t navigate, you can’t manage on your own. And that’s the short haul from here to Kennedy. Or to one of the piers along the Hudson. Whichever way out you try to make it. You’ll be picked up just as you get there. There have been standing orders out to that effect for over a year and a half now.”

The man nodded somberly as though he already knew all about that. Now he was the one to light a cigarette, or try to. It vibrated like a triphammer between his lips. Finally he had to throw it away.

“ I can help you across that one little hurdle, which is all that stands in your way.”

There was a long-time silence. Two minds measuring each other. Two pairs of eyes shadow-boxing. Two pulses beating with the same emotion: strained hope. But hope that came from two different directions.

“What for?”

“Good question. Twenty thousand dollars.”

Another long-time silence.

Terry had been in the room with him now about fifteen or twenty minutes. In those fifteen or twenty minutes he’d only said two things so far: “But you are a cop” and “What for?” Now at last he said some more, quite a lot more. He started to thaw out.

“I give it to you. Then I’m stopped at the airport anyway. What come-back do I have? You’re in twenty thousand, I’m in custody.”

“You don’t give it at this end. You give it at the other. After you get out there. After you’re on the plane, even, if you want it that way. You can pass it clown to me from the top of the ramp.”

“That’s no guarantee. You’ll be riding out there alongside me. I’ll have it on me. You can take it away from me by force anytime you feel like it, from one minute to the next. You have a gun on you.”

“I can get you one too. That’ll equalize us.”

“Then they can get me on the Sullivan law.”

“The gun doesn’t increase your risk. There’s only one risk, and it’s there already: that of being stopped. And the deal is, I see you past that. You can’t run two risks, you can only run one. Do you follow me?”

The man shook his head troubledly. “I can’t believe the whole thing. Just like there’s an old saying, ‘All’s fair in love and war,’ there ought to be another one, ‘All’s fair between a cop and the man he’s tracking.’ ”

Terry sighed patiently. “Look,” he pointed out, “ I’m the one taking all the chances, much more than you are. If this ever comes out, demotion is the very least I can expect. There’s a good chance I’d be kicked off the force altogether. And let me tell you, twenty thousand bucks may be nice in a lump sum when you still have your promotions and your pension ahead of you, but stretched out thin to cover all the rest of your life, with a black mark against you and no chance of getting a decent job any more, it can come down to pretty measly nickels and dimes, by the month and by the year.”