Saint in New York (17 page)

Papulos steadied the car clumsily and flashed
it under
the indignant eyes of a traffic cop who was deliberating
the
richest terms in which he could describe a coupla mugs who
seemed to
think they had a P.D. plate in front of ‘em, and who
deliberated a second
too long. The trip hammer inside his
ribs slowed up to a heavy, rhythmical
pounding.

“I’m glad to see you,” he said, in
a voice that croaked oddly
in his throat. “I was goin’ out lookin’
for you.”

With the glowing lighter at the end of his
cigarette, Simon half turned to glance at him.

“Were you, Pappy?” he murmured
pleasantly. “What a
coincidence! It seems as if we must be soul
mates, drifting
through life with our hearts singing in tune. Tell me some
more bedtime stories, brother—I like them.”

Papulos swallowed. The Saint’s almost
miraculous appear
ance had caught him before he had even had time to con
sider a
possible line of approach; and for the first time since
he had
plunged out of Charley’s Place on that mad quest he became aware of the
hopeless obstacles that didn’t even begin
to crop up until he
had found his quarry. Now, unasked and
uninvited, his quarry
had obligingly found him; and he was
experiencing some of the almost
hysterical paralysis that would seize an ardent huntsman if a fox walked up to
him
and rolled over on its back, expectantly wagging its tail. The
difference
in this case was that the quarry was much larger and
more cunning and more
dangerous than any fox; it had a wickedly mocking gleam in its steel-blue
eyes; and under the ban
tering surveillance of that clear and
glittering gaze Mr.
Papulos recalled, in a most unwelcomely apt twist of
reminis
cence, that on the last occasion when he had seen the quarry
face to
face, and there were a considerable number of armed
and husky hoodlums
within call, he, Mr. Papulos, had been misguided enough to poke the said quarry
in the kisser. The
prospects of establishing a rapid and brotherly
entente
seemed a shade less bright than they had appeared in his first exuber
ant
enthusiasm for the idea.

“Yeah—I was lookin’ for you,” he
repeated jerkily. “I
thought you and me might have a talk.”

“One gathers that you were in no small
hurry to exercise
your jaw,” Simon remarked. “You nearly left the
back part of
the bus behind when you started off. What’s after
you?”

Something inside the Greek rasped through to
the surface
under the pressure of that gentle bantering voice. His
breath grated in his throat.

“If you want to know what’s after
me,” he blurted, “it’s a
bullet. A whole raft of bullets.”

“Do they travel on rafts?” asked the
Saint interestedly. “I
didn’t know you were joining the navy.”

Papulos gulped.

“I’m not kidding,” he got out
desperately. “The finger’s on
me—on account of you. I sent you to
Morrie, with that knife
on you, an’ they’re saying I double-crossed
‘em. You gotta
listen to me, Saint—I’m on the spot!”

The Saint’s eyebrows lifted.

“So you figure that if you go out and
bring my head back
in an Oshkosh they may forgive you—is that it?” he
drawled.
“Well, well, well, Pappy, I’m not saying it wasn’t a
grand idea; but I’ve got a morbid sort of ambition to be buried all in one
piece——
”

“I tell you I’m not kidding!”
Papulos pleaded wildly. “I
gotta talk to you. I’ll talk turkey. Maybe we
can make a bar
gain——”

“How much credit do you reckon to get on
that sock you
gave me last night?” inquired the Saint.

Papulos swallowed again and found difficulty
in doing it.
His eyes, mechanically picking a route through the
traffic,
were reddened and frantic.

“For God’s sake,” he gasped,
“I’m talkin’ turkey. I’m tryin’
to make a deal——
”

“Not for sanctuary?”

“Yeah—if that’s the word for it.”

The Saint’s eyes narrowed. His smile suddenly
acquired a
tremendous skepticism.

“That sounds like an awful lot of
fun,” he murmured. “How
do we play this game?”

“Any way you like. I’m on
 
the level, Saint!
 
I wouldn’t
double-cross you. I’m
shootin’ square with you, Saint. The
mob’s after me. They’re putting me on
the spot—an’ you’re
the only guy in the world who might get me off of it.
…
Yeah, I
took that sock at you last night—but that was different.
You can
take a sock back at me any time—you can take
twenty! I wouldn’t
stop you. But what the hell, you wouldn’t
see a guy rubbed out
just because he took a sock at you—”

Simon pondered gently; but beneath his benign
exterior it
was apparent that he regarded the Greek with undiminished
suspicion
and distaste.

“I don’t know, Pappy,” he said
reflectively. “Blokes have
been rubbed out for less—much less.”

“I was just nervous, Saint. It didn’t
mean a thing. I guess
you might of done the same yourself. Lookit, I
could help
you a lot if you forgot last night an’ helped me ——
”

“In exchange for what?” asked the
Saint, and his voice was
even less reassuring than before.

Papulos licked his lips.

“I could tell you things. Say, I ain’t
the only guy in the
racket. I know you were waitin’ to take me for this ride
when
I came out, but ——
”

For the first time since he had been there the
Saint laughed.
There was no comfort for Papulos in that laugh, no more
than there
had been in his soft voice or his pleasant smile;
but he laughed.

“You flatter yourself, Pappy,” he
said. “You aren’t nearly
so important as that. We step on things like
you on our way, wherever they happen to wriggle out—we don’t make special
appointments
for ‘em. I thought this car belonged to Dutch.
But since you happen
to be here, Pappy, I’m afraid you’ll have
to do. As you kindly
reminded me, we have one or two slight
arguments to settle—
”

“You want Dutch, don’t you? You want
Dutch more’n you
want me—ain’t that right? Well, I could help you to get
Dutch.
I can tell you everything he does, an’ when he does it, an’
where he
goes, an’ how he’s protected. I could help you to
get the whole mob, if
you want ‘em. Listen, Saint, you
gotta let me talk!”

Simon smiled pleasantly. His face was tolerant
and kindly,
but Papulos did not see that. Papulos saw only the cold
blue
steel in his eyes—and a vision of death that had come to Irboll
and
Voelsang and Ualino. Papulos heard the hard ring behind the gentle tones of
his voice and knew that he had yet
to convince the Saint of his terrible
sincerity.

The Saint gazed at him through a wreathing
screen of smoke;
and his left hand did not stir from his coat pocket,
where it
had rested ever since he had been in sight.

A checkered and perilous career had done much
to harden that tender trustfulness in which Simon Templar’s blue eyes had first
looked out upon the light of day. Regretfully, he
admitted that the
gross disillusionments of life had left their
mark. It is given to
human faith to survive just so much and
no more; and a man
who in his time has been scarred to the
core by the bitter
truth about fairies and Santa Claus cannot
be blamed if a
certain doubt, a certain cynicism, begins in
later life to taint
the virgin freshness of his innocence. Simon
had met Papulos
before and had taken his measure. He did
not believe that
Papulos was a man who could be driven by
the fear of death to
betray the unwritten code of his kind.

What he forgot was the fact that most men live
in frightful
fear of death—frightful fear of that black oblivion which
will
snatch their lusts and their enjoyments from them in a single
tortured
instant. He forgot that though a man like Papulos would fight in the battles of
gangland like a maniac, though
he would stand up brutally unafraid under the
hails of hot
death that come whistling through the open streets, he
might
become nothing but a cringing coward in the threat of cold
blooded
unanswerable obliteration. Even the stark panic
that showed in the
Greek’s eyes did not convince him.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Papulos
was babbling hoarsely.
“This is on the level. I got nothin’ to
gain. You don’t have to
promise me nothin’. You gotta believe
me.”

“Why?” asked the Saint callously.

Papulos swung the car round Columbus Circle
and headed
blindly to the east. His face was haggard with utter
despair.

“You think this is a stall—you don’t
believe I’m on the
level?”

“Yes,” said the Saint, “and
no.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“Yes, brother,” said the Saint
explicitly, “I do think it’s a stall. No, brother, I don’t believe you’re
on the level.
…
By
the way, Pappy, which cemetery are you
heading for? It’d save
a lot of expense if we did the job right on
the premises. You
can take your own choice, of course, but I’ve always thought
the Gates of Heaven Cemetery, Valhalla, N. Y., was the best
address of
its kind I ever heard.”

Papulos looked into the implacable blue eyes
and felt closer to death than he had ever been.

“You gotta listen,” he said, almost
in a whisper. “I’m
shootin’ the works. I’ll talk first, an’ you
can decide whether
I’m tellin’ the truth afterwards. Just gimme a break,
Saint..
I’m shootin’ square with you.”

Simon shrugged.

“There’s lots of time between here and
Valhalla,” he
pointed out affably. “Shoot away.”

Papulos caught at the breath that would not
seem to fill
the void in his lungs. The sweat was running down his
sides
like a trickle of icicles, and his mouth had stiffened so that
he had to
labour over the formation of each individual word.

“This is straight,” he said.
“Puttin’ the snatch on that kid
was an accident. That ain’t the racket
any more—it’s too
risky, an’ there ain’t any need for it. Protection’s the
racket,
see? You say to a guy like Inselheim: ‘You pay us so much
dough, or
it’ll be too bad about your kid, see?’ Well, Insel
heim stuck in his
toes over the last payment. He said he
wouldn’t pay any more;
so we put the arm on the kid. You
didn’t do him no good, takin’ her
back.”

“You don’t tell me,” said the Saint
lightly; but his voice was
grim and watchful.

Papulos babbled on. He had spent long enough
getting a
hearing; now that he had it, the words came in a flood
like a
breaking dam. In a matter of mere minutes, it might be too
late.

“You didn’t do no good. Inselheim got
his daughter back,
but he’s still gotta pay. We won’t be snatching her again.
Next time, she gets the works. We phoned him first thing
this
morning: ‘Pay us that dough, or you won’t have no daugh
ter for the
Saint to rescue.’ Even a guy like you can’t bring a
kid back when she’s
dead.”

“Very interesting,” observed the
Saint, “not to say blood
thirsty. But I can’t somehow see that even a
story like that,
Pappy, is going to keep you out of the Gates of Heaven.
You’ll
have to talk much faster than this if we’re going to fall on
each other’s shoulders and let
bygones be bygones.”

The Greek’s hands clenched on the wheel.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to
know!” he gabbled
wildly. “Ask me anything you like—I’ll
tell you. Just gimme a
break——
”