James Cain - Serenade

What waked me up the next morning was the phone. Harry was on the board. “I know you said not to call, Mr. Sharp, but there’s a guy on the line, he kept calling all day yesterday, and now he’s calling again, he says he’s a friend of yours, and it’s important, and he’s got to talk to you, and I thought I better tell you.”

“Who is he?”

“He won’t say, but he said I should say the word Acapulco, something like that, to you, and you would know who it was.”

“Put him through.”

I hoped it might be Conners, and sure enough when I heard that “Is that you, lad?” I knew it was. He was pretty short. “I’ve been trying to reach you. I’ve called you, and wired you, and called again, and again—”

“I cut the phone calls off, and I haven’t opened the last bunch of wires. You’d have been through in a second if they had told me. I want to see you, I’ve got to see you—”

“You have indeed. I have news.”

“Stop! Don’t say a word. I warn you that my phone is tapped, and everything you say is being heard.”

“That occurred to me. That’s why I refused to give my name. How can I get to you?”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute... Will you call me in five minutes? I’ll have to figure a way—”

“In five minutes it is.”

He hung up, and I tried to think of some way we could meet, and yet not tip off the cops over the phone where it would be. I couldn’t think. He had said he had news, and my head was just spinning around. Before I even had half an idea the phone rang again. “Well, lad, what’s the word?”

“I haven’t any. They’re following me too, that’s the trouble. Wait a minute, wait a minute—”

“I have something that might work.”

“What is it?”

“Do you remember the time signature of the serenade you first sang to me?”

“... Yes, of course.”

“Write those figures down, the two of them, one beside the other. Now write them again, the same way. You should have a number of four figures.”

I jumped up, and got a pen, and wrote the numbers on the memo pad. It was the Don Giovanni serenade, and time signature is 6/8. I wrote 6868... “All right, I’ve got it.”

“Now subtract from it this number.” He gave me a number to subtract. I did it. “That is the number of the pay telephone I’m at. The exchange number is Circle 6. Go out to another pay telephone and call me there.”

“In twenty minutes. As soon as I get dressed.”

I jumped into my clothes, ran up to a drugstore, and called. Whether they were around the booth, listening to me, I didn’t care. They couldn’t hear what was coming in at the other end. “Is that you, lad?”

“Yes. What news?”

“I have her. She’s going down the line with me. I’m at the foot of Seventeenth Street, and I slip my hawsers at midnight tonight. If you wish to see her before we leave, come aboard some time after eleven, but take care you’re not detected.”

“How did you find her?”

“I didn’t. She found me. She’s been aboard since yesterday, if you had answered your phone.”

“I’ll be there. I’ll thank you then.”

I went back to the apartment, cut out the fooling around, and began to think. I checked over every last thing I had to do that day, then made a little program in my mind of what I was to do first, and what I was to do after that. I knew I would be tailed, and I planned it all on that basis. The first thing I did was to go up to Grand Central, and look up trains for Rye. I found there was a local leaving around ten that night. I came out of there, went in a store and bought some needles and thread. Then I went down to the bank. I still had over six thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, but I needed more than that. I drew out ten thousand, half of it in thousand-dollar bills, twenty-five hundred more in hundreds, and the rest in fives and tens, with about fifty ones. I stuffed all that in my pockets, and went home with it. I remembered about the two shirts I had worn out of the hotel in Mexico, and pulled one just like it. I took two pairs of drawers, put one pair inside the other, sewed the bottoms of each leg together, then quilted that money in, all except the ones, and some fives and tens, that I put in my pockets. I put the drawers on. They felt a little heavy, but I could get my trousers over them without anything showing. Tony came up. They had got out of him how he had called the taxi, and he was almost crying because he had squealed. I told him it didn’t make any difference.

When dinner time came, instead of going out I had something sent in. Then I packed. I shoved a stack of newspapers and heavy stuff into a traveling case, and locked it. When I dressed I put on a pair of gray flannel pants I had left over from Hollywood, and over my shirt a dark red sweater. I put on a coat, and over that a light topcoat. I picked out a gray hat, shoved it on the side of my head. I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked like what I wanted to look like, a guy dressed up to take a trip. After drawing the money, Í knew they would expect that. That was why I had planned it the way I had.

At nine thirty, I called Tony, had him take my bag down and call a cab, shook hands with him, and called out to the driver, “Grand Central.” We turned into Second Avenue. Two cars started up, down near Twenty-first Street, and one left the curb just behind us as we turned west on Twenty-third. When we turned into Fourth, they turned too. When we got to Grand Central they were still with us, and five guys got out, none of them looking at me. I gave my bag to a redcap, went to the ticket office, bought a ticket for Rye, then went out to the newsstand and bought a paper. When I mixed with the crowd at the head of the ramp I started to read it. Three of the five were there too, all of them reading papers.

The redcap put me aboard, but I didn’t let him pick the car. I did that myself. It was a local, all day-coaches, but I wanted one without vestibule. It happened to be the smoker, so that looked all right. I took a seat near the door and went on reading my paper. The three took seats further up, but one of them reversed his seat and sat so he could see me. I didn’t even look up as we pulled out, didn’t look up as we pulled into a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, didn’t look up as we pulled out. But when the train had slid about twenty feet, I jumped up, left my bag where it was, walked three steps to the car platform, and skipped off. I never stopped. I zipped right out to a taxi, jumped in, told him to drive to Grand Central, and to step on it. He started up. I kept my eyes open. Nobody was behind us, that I could see.

When he turned into upper Park, I tapped on the glass and said I was too late for my train, that he should go to Eighth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. He nodded and kept on. I took off the hat, the topcoat, and the coat and laid them in a little pile on the seat. When we got to Eighth and Twenty-third I got out, took out a five-dollar bill. “I left some stuff in the car, two coats and a hat. Take them up to Grand Central and check them to leave them. Leave the three checks at the information desk, in my name, Mr. Henderson. There’s no hurry. Any time tonight will do.”

“Yes sir, yes sir.”

He grabbed the five, touched his hat, and went off. I started down Eighth Avenue. Instead of a guy all dressed up to go away, I was just a guy without a hat, walking down for a stroll on a spring night. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to eleven. I back-tracked up to Twenty-third Street and went into a movie.

At twenty after, I came out, started down Eighth Avenue again, and walked to Seventeenth Street. I took my time, looked in windows, keep peeping at my watch. When I cut over to the pier it was a quarter to twelve. I followed the signs to the Port of Cobh , strolled aboard. Nobody stopped me. Up at the winch I saw something that looked familiar. I went up and put my arm around him.