Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

“He’s got a guilt-complex about it, for one thing,” I decided. “That’s not so good from Trainor’s point of view. If he feels guilty about it, he’s liable to kill for it, too, before he’s through.”

He straightened and walked out at the 99th Street station, in the heart of the teeming, jostled Upper West Side district. I left by the opposite end of the car, to avoid being too noticeable about it. I gave him a headstart by pretending to stop and tie a shoe lace, so I wouldn’t be treading on his heels.

He plunged from the stair-shed straight into his favorite bar. So he wasn’t going to any bank to verify its genuineness. He was going to put it up to that Solomon of the lowly, the saloon-keeper. I suppose a professional sleuth would have carefully stayed outside, to attract as little attention to himself as possible. I was no professional, however, and I had no great hankering to hang around on a street corner in that strange neighborhood waiting for him to come out again. I barged right in after him.

It seemed the right move to have made. It was within an hour of closing time, and the two of us were the only customers. It was an empty barn of a place with swell acoustics; you couldn’t whisper if you tried. I was just in time to hear the barman boom out sociably: “Lo, there, Casey, where’ve you been keeping yourself?” So that gave me his name.

I had a beer and regretted it even at six inches away from my nose. I became very interested in the slot machine, to give myself something to do, but timed the noise so it wouldn’t interfere with their husky undertones.

“Where’d you find it, bejazes?” The barman was holding it up to the light, shutting one eye at it. I got that in the machine mirror.

Then after he had been told, and the inevitable question put to him, “I nivver saw them that big before, but it looks rail to me.”

“But waddya suppose it’s cut in two like that for? ’Tis no tear, it’s a clane-cut edge.”

Casey’s bosom friend in the white apron was doing some mental double-crossing. I could read it on his face in the mirror. Or maybe he just thought it would look nice framed on his wall. “I’ll stand ye a drink for it!” he offered with sudden fake heartiness.

I started to get uneasy. I hadn’t bargained on the thing passing from hand-to-hand all over town. And if a saloon-keeper took over, that was piling the odds against Trainor too high for my liking. They aren’t the most unmurderous breed in the world. I made up my mind, “If Casey parts with it, I spill the beans to the two of them right here and now!”

But Casey wasn’t parting with it that easy. The barkeep’s argument that it was unredeemable, no good, not worth a cent as it was, fell on deaf ears. The ante rose to fifty cents, then a dollar, finally a two-dollar bottle of rye. Casey finally stalked out with the parting shot, “I’ll kape it. Who can tell, I might come acrosth the other part of it yet.”

“Ouch!” I said to myself. “You’re going to, before the week’s out. Then what?”

On an impulse, I stayed behind instead of following him. The cagier way to find out everything about him was to remain behind, at this fountainhead of gossip, instead of tracking him home through the deserted streets.

The barman drifted over, brought the subject up himself. I was the only one left in the place to talk to. “That fellow that was just in here, found half a thousand-dollar bill on 42nd Street just now.”

I showed proper astonishment. “Yeah? Who is he?”

“Name of John Casey. He comes in here all the time. Lives right around the corner, the brownstone house, second from corner of 99th. He’s an electrician’s helper.” Not all at once like that, of course. I spaced my questions, making them those of a man obligingly keeping up his end of a conversation in which he has no real interest.

“He’ll take me up on it yet,” he wound up. “As soon as he finds out it’s no good, he’ll be glad to take me up on it.” But there was a glint in his piggy eyes, as though if Casey didn’t, he’d do something about it himself.

I went out of there telling myself, “Brother, if you’re this steamed up about half a bill, what you won’t do when you find out who has the other half!” Trainor’s thousand was as good as gone. There was certainly going to be a murder somewhere within this triangle before the week was out. And no matter who committed it, the barman or Casey or tomorrow night’s unknown finder, Fredericks would be the actual murderer. And Trainor and I the accessories.

If I’d been dealing with a square guy, I might have persuaded him to drop it, after what I told him next day. There would have still been plenty time enough. But I found out how skunkish he was when I put it up to him. Trainor of course was present.

“The bet isn’t with you,” he told me. “If Trainor wants to call it off — because he can’t possibly win — I’ll play ball with him. All he has to do is refund me the thousand dollars, the amount of the bill I sacrificed. Are you ready to do that, Trainor?”

Trainor just looked at me and I looked at him, and the three of us went back to 42nd Street and 7th Avenue. Somebody’s death warrant had been signed. Just barely possibly that avaricious crooked barman’s. More likely Casey’s. Most likely still, somebody we hadn’t even set eyes on so far, walking unsuspectingly along the midnight streets at this very moment to his doom. It gave me the creeps. I hated Fredericks — and I almost hated Trainor too. Too stubborn to back down. Playing the gods of the machine. Thinking they’d be able to stop it in time.

We were in a cab again, almost over the same spot as the night before. It happened quicker this time. For one thing, it was drizzling lightly and there were far fewer people passing. There were no trials and errors like the night before. Trainor hided his time, made his choice carefully. He had to be careful whom he pitted against Casey, for his own sake, and he knew it. He’d gone a little wrong on Casey. His answer to the man that had asked him if he’d lost anything, and what had occurred in the barroom, showed Casey had a well-developed streak of stubbornness in him, that might easily turn into pugnacity. Trainor had to be careful whom he matched against him now.

Presently a reedy-looking individual, coat collar turned up against the rain, came shambling along. Probably the weather and the turned-up collar and his soggy hat-brim made him look more dejected than he was. A single glance, as they come walking down a street, is no way to judge character, anyway. But his face was wan, and whatever his inner disposition, he looked frail enough to be harmless.

“Drop it,” signalled Trainor under his breath. The second half-bill fell on the gleaming sidewalk.

I couldn’t help feeling I was looking at a dead man, as he came on toward us, so unaware. Almost wanted to veil out to him in frantic warning, “Don’t pick anything up from the sidewalk, whatever you do, or you’re a goner!”

He saw it and he stopped in his tracks. He brought it up to face-level. His mouth dropped open. We were so close we could even hear what he muttered. “Holy smoke!” he ejaculated hoarsely, and pushed his water-waved hat to the back of his head.

He stood there a long time, looking stunned. He went on uncertainly after awhile, and the mist started to veil his figure.

“Hurry up, before you lose him,” Fredericks said, and unlatched the door for me.

“Why do I have to do all the dirty work in this?” I grunted, stepping out.

“Because you have no stake in it. Not to put too fine a point on it, Trainor doesn’t altogether trust me, and I’m not sure I altogether trust him. We both trust you implicitly. You’re the contact-man in this.”