Ghost of a Chance (8 page)

I stayed at the door end of the narrow store and kept my eyes on the street. With the help of the huge mirror behind the counter I was able to see in both directions. There was no sign of Joyce. But I decided to wait another few minutes. Then a minute more.

Then I couldn’t stay any longer. I couldn’t loiter in the butcher shop indefinitely. I had work to do. Jeff was counting on me. I edged to the door; I took a deep breath and plunged out onto the sidewalk.

Joyce was gone.

I ran. I was quickly off that block and on my way to Tollman’s Stable. Jeff, when he discovered that he wasn’t being followed, would undoubtedly go there. I had to stop for a light at Sixty-fourth. A gust of cold wind threw a swirl of gutter-soiled snow at my face and I wheeled away from it. I was looking across First Avenue and directly at Joyce. He was ambling along the opposite sidewalk. For a moment we were staring straight into each other’s eyes.

I pivoted and left First Avenue, walked rapidly west along Sixty-fourth. The least I could do, I thought, was to lead Joyce away from Tollman’s Stable and lose him in some remote, unimportant, to us, part of town. Then I thought again. Jeff hadn’t planned to lose Joyce. He was too valuable to discard. He was our only direct link to the murder plan; he should be used to lead us to its chief engineer. Somehow I had to reverse matters as they stood now. Somehow I had to trick Joyce into a position where I was following him.

At Second Avenue I glanced over my shoulder. Joyce was still with me. Now he was making no attempt at concealment. I might have imagined it, but he seemed almost to grin at me. I didn’t grin back. Ahead of me, a long block away, was the Third Avenue elevated. That was what I wanted, the El. Now I knew what I was going to do about Mr. Joyce, and I was in a hurry to get it done.

There was just a scattering of people on the stairs that led up to the Fifty-ninth Street El stop. I went up them quickly, as though I were running for the train that was pulling in. But I didn’t go near the train; instead I walked straight through the uptown platform and down the other flight of stairs. That, of course, didn’t throw Joyce for a second. I hadn’t meant it to. But I acted as if I thought I had lost him. I looked pleased with myself, I relaxed. I was a girl who had just done a very clever thing and now had not a fear in the world.

Unhurriedly, I crossed the street, climbed to the downtown El platform. In a few minutes when the train came in I boarded it. Not once did I look for Joyce. He was somewhere on the train, somewhere where he could watch me. I didn’t have to check on that; I could feel it.

I kept my eyes on the advertisements above me. One of them caused me to make a slight alteration in my plans. I had been on my way to Klein’s on Union Square, but this ad convinced me that I should go to Klingman’s, Klothes for Ladies, on Fourteenth Street, just twenty steps from fashionable Fifth Avenue.

Klingman’s turned out to be just what I needed. They had everything for milady from tip to toe. It took me only a few minutes of window shopping to make sure of that; it took only a few seconds to make sure surreptitiously that Joyce was still with me. He was across Fourteenth Street, half-hidden by a parked car. He had apparently decided to keep me from knowing that I had not lost him. My little deception, with any luck, was about to pay off.

Immediately, I had a stroke of that luck. Klingman’s first counter was laden with all shapes and colors of “Sno-Glasses.” I bought a pair of fancy Harlequins and went on to the rear of the store. I had only thirty-two dollars with me, but I made it do, including the fur coat.

The long racks of furs fascinated me. There were lapin dyed leopards, lapin dyed mink, lapin dyed sable, lapin dyed beaver—almost everything except lapin dyed rabbit, and they were all genuine lapin and sensationally priced at $19.95. I was stymied finally between the mink and the sable. I tried them both on; the saleslady told me frankly that the sable did more for me. I took the sable.

The hat I found might have been designed for my coat. It was two dollars and ninety cents, which I thought a little high, but the saleslady told me frankly that it did a great deal for me and, furthermore, it was genuine felt. The high heeled pumps with the cut brass buckles were four-eighty, and now I was complete.

The saleslady showed me a cubicle of a dressing room. I handed my tweed coat and hat and brogues to her. She left me to have them wrapped.

First I put on the ultra-high heels; they increased my height two inches. I broke the blue glass out of the blue-rimmed Harlequins and donned them. I swept my hair to the top of my head and sealed it there with my new hat. I rouged my cheeks with lipstick and made myself a super-Hollywood mouth, larger than life and luscious as a wax plum. I slipped into my sables; they were a little short for me. I pulled my dress up three inches and belted it there. I inspected myself in the mirror.

It wasn’t I. I wouldn’t have known myself from Eve; I wouldn’t have recognized myself in a million years, and there was small chance that Joyce would.

I was ready to go.

The saleslady gawked at my new face when she gave me my package of old clothes, but I didn’t enlighten her. I walked blithely out of the store and, without even a glance across the street toward the man for whom I had gone to all this trouble, I turned right to Fifth Avenue. I threw myself into my part. I was a Miss Somebody from Someplace, New Jersey, in town for a day’s shopping. I tried to look as though I were on my way to Schrafft’s for a soda and a cigarette. When I got to the corner I would reconnoiter, locate Joyce and slip into a position to follow him.

Then I nearly dropped in my tracks. Joyce had moved from across the street. He was standing not ten feet in front of me, leaning against a jeweler’s window, smoking a cigarette butt so small it should have burnt his fingers. His eyes were fastened on me, but fortunately not on my face, not looking past my disguise. They were on my ankles which were now propped up on shiny, four-eighty, two-inch pedestals. They moved up to my knees and… they stopped there, stayed there. I tried to keep my knees from knocking together.

I walked on. I was getting away with it. I was directly in front of Joyce now and he, bless his heart, still hadn’t lost interest in my gams. This was very flattering, but rather unnerving. I was a half-step by him, a half step from victory, when a pudgy hand grabbed at my elbow and swung me around. A woman, buxom and overpowering, was beaming at me.

“Tessie!” she exclaimed. “Tessie Franken! How are you?”

My back was toward Joyce. I could have kicked up a heel and touched him on his shin. He couldn’t help hearing the woman. He would hear my voice. If I denied that I was Tessie Franken it would be a much more arresting conversation than if we were just Tessie Franken and an old friend meeting unexpectedly. I camouflaged my voice.

“Hello, yourself!” I said. “What are you doin’ on Fourteenth Street? Of all places!”

“Why, Tessie! I work on Fourteenth!”

I giggled. “I’m always kiddin’!” Behind me I heard Joyce suck greedily at his cigarette butt. My voice went up a half octave. “You know better than to take me serious!”

“You never used to be always kiddin’, Tessie,” the woman said. “I guess Earl has done you a lot of good. Why, I hardly recognized you. Of course, it’s been years.”

“Years and years practically,” I admitted. Smoke from Joyce’s cigarette drifted over my shoulder. I tried to adjourn the meeting. “Why don’t you mosey up to the house some night after work? After all!”

“I just might,” Tessie’s friend said. “I don’t see how Earl could still hold that grudge against me.”

“Earl hold a grudge? No! When it comes to holdin’ a grudge Earl is a regular butterfingers. Which way you goin’? Walk me to Fifth Avenue.” I took the woman’s arm and tugged her along with me, away from Joyce. I could feel his eyes on me like runs in my stocking. “Tell me,” I babbled, “how’s tricks?”

“Oh, I can’t complain. Tessie, you put on some weight, didn’t you?”

I giggled and didn’t say anything.

“Tessie!” the woman cried joyfully. “Don’t tell me!”

“Yes,” I breathed ecstatically. We were almost to the corner. “Yes, indeedy.”

“When?”

“Next November.”

“Can you beat it! You want a boy or a girl, Tessie?”

“One or the other.”

“Tessie, did you say next November?” The woman wanted to stop, but I urged her along. “Next November it’s ten months.”

“I know,” I said. “I believe in long pregnancies.”

“What? What did you say?”

We were at the corner; I pulled her around it. Now I was in a hurry. “Scram,” I said to the woman out of the corner of my mouth. She gaped at me. “Huh?”

“And if you ever show your kisser at our house, I’ll have Earl beat your brains out. Of all the nerve! Tellin’ me I’m gettin’ fat. Scram.”

I ran to the curb and across Fourteenth Street. On the other side I slowed down to a walk. Joyce was still where I had left him. He thought that I was still in the store. I was doing all right; in fact, I was doing fine. Jeff would be proud of me.

I hid behind the same car that Joyce had used for the same purpose a half hour before. I relaxed and lit myself a cigarette. Now it was his turn to worry and he was beginning to do just that. He walked past the store several times, peering through its glass doors. At last he went in; in a few moments he came stamping back out. He was perplexed and angry. He stood for a minute, gnawing at a knuckle. Then he made a decision. He started rapidly down the street toward Union Square. I followed him.

Halfway down the block he abruptly right-faced and darted into a cigar store. Carefully I crept up on the place, toward its wide window, and I nearly outwitted myself. He was standing just behind the window, in one of the row of telephone booths that used the glass for a fourth wall. I saw him dial the last two digits of his number.

I went quickly into the cigar store and slid into the empty booth just behind Joyce’s. The side of the booth didn’t quite meet the plate glass of the window and though the crack I could hear his words clearly.

“I’ll pick her up again, don’t worry. I’ll find her.” His voice rose in anger in response to something that was said at the other end of the wire. “I know I better and I will! Stop crying about it!” Then he lowered his voice. “When is it?” He listened and he was angry again. “It damn well is my business to know! Maybe I’ll screw it up if I don’t.” I could hear his heavy breathing as he listened to what it was his business to know. “Why so late?” he asked. “What are you waiting for? The whole damn world can end before eleven tomorrow morning!” He heard something then that made him laugh, a nasty, chuckling laugh. He said, “That’s right, you’re right.”

I heard him hang up. The door of his booth squealed as he opened it. When he stepped past me, within twelve inches of me, my back was to him as I bent close to the mouthpiece of my phone. I stayed where I was.

Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. It could mean only one thing.

The way he had said it, the voice he had used as he had said it, made it mean but one thing. It was a death sentence. Jeff and I had less than twenty-four hours to find out for whom, three hours less than twenty-four. We would have to do better than we had been doing.

I glanced out the window beside me. Joyce was crossing the street. He disappeared into a huge cafeteria on the opposite side. I ran after him.

He hadn’t seated himself. He was standing at the beverage station drinking a cup of coffee. I was through the revolving doors and into the place before I saw that. It was too late then for me to back out. I sidled along the front wall away from the door and watched him from there. He drank a second cup of coffee, as quickly as if it were a glass of cold water. He turned toward the door. His eyes took in the vast field of crowded tables, but I had dropped into the only empty chair in sight, putting a big man eating vegetable soup in front of me. I didn’t entirely trust my disguise. A few minutes before Joyce had seen and heard a girl in a mock sable coat and blue Harlequins talking to a friend. The coincidence of seeing her again might attract his attention. I couldn’t afford to take any chances; I mustn’t let my success make me careless.

The revolving doors spun behind him. I would have to hurry. It was a long way to the door, and it took me too long to get to it, through it. Joyce had been swallowed by the crowd on the sidewalk. Frantically, I started toward Fifth Avenue. It was no use. I reversed myself, running back past the cafeteria. I ran to the corner, across Broadway, and I pulled up just in time. Another ten steps and I would have raced past him.

Diana, or some other goddess of the chase, was with me. Joyce had stopped at a kiosk to buy a newspaper. He had shaken out the front page and was scanning it. Now he folded the paper and stuck it in his overcoat pocket. He started walking, purposefully but not quickly, toward Fourth Avenue. I kept twenty-five yards behind him.

I followed him down Fourth to Thirteenth Street, along Thirteenth to Third, across Third. At Second I nearly lost him again. It was pure, idiot luck that I didn’t. I misjudged the traffic and the lights. A bunched line of huge trailer trucks was across my path, moving too fast for me to dart between. I stood there helplessly while Joyce walked away from me. I gritted my teeth and darted in front of a truck. I felt a fender flick my flying coat, the driver shouted profanely at me. But I was across the street, looking at Joyce and thanking my lucky star.

He had turned off Thirteenth Street and started down Second Avenue. It was only because he had stopped to light a cigarette that I was able to spot him. He had stepped into a doorway out of the wind and that was the break I had needed. I swore that I wouldn’t need another. I wouldn’t lose him again.

I moved along behind him. When he turned onto Twelfth Street I crossed to the far side so that I could be closer to him without his becoming aware of me. Then, abruptly, he turned and walked into a house in the middle of the block. It was a rooming house; I could tell from the decrepit sign swinging from a pipe over the door. I ran across the street and into the vestibule of the house.