The Good Old Stuff (34 page)

Charles Hanneman was exceedingly dead. He knelt beside the bed, chest and face flat against it, hands all tangled up in the blankets. The hole, like a wet coin slot, was on the left side of his back, just below the shoulder blade. Blood had run down his white shirt into the waistband of his trousers. Not much blood. I had recently seen some very messy bodies. This one had all its parts and did not bother me. And it didn’t seem to bother Marj.

“I’d hate to think you did this, Marj,” I said.

“I didn’t, if that makes any difference to you.”

“Where’s his place?”

“The second bedroom down the aisle.”

Hanneman’s suit coat was there. I worked his putty arms into the sleeves, rolled him onto his back onto the floor, and buttoned the coat in front.

“How do you want to do this?” she asked.

“I can manage him alone. Take a quick look and see if his bedroom is okay. Then come back and make like a guide.”

I pulled him into a sitting position, then hoisted him up onto the edge of the bed and held him so he wouldn’t topple over. His fat flesh jounced peacefully in the vibration of the train.

She came back and nodded. I pulled his arms over my
shoulders, held his wrists down in front of me. Then I stood up, leaning forward like a man carrying a trunk.

I staggered like a nine-day drunk. I was carrying the horrid results of too much pastry and too many mashed potatoes. The motion of the train didn’t help a bit. By the time I rolled him off onto his own bed, my eyes were out on the end of stalks and I was puffing like an also-ran at Santa Anita.

She tried to hand me the knife.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “You take that into the women’s room, and if you’re real bright you’ll find some way to drop it out onto the tracks.”

Hanneman’s wallet had fallen out of his pants pocket. Marj sat on her heels on the floor and opened it. She looked at the sheaf of Uncle Sugar’s IOUs and her eyes shone like a bride’s.

“This will make it look like robbery,” she said.

“Odd, isn’t it? Let me see the wallet.”

She gave it to me, without currency. The card case was quite full. It was very interesting. Charles Hanneman, Attorney at Law. And some others, equally crisp, equally new. C. Arthur Hineman, M.D.; Charles A. Hand, Bursar, Powelton College; C. Andrew Hanson, Broker.

“What do you know!” I whispered.

“What’s that? What’s so interesting?” she said, breathing down my neck.

“Never you mind. Pop will take care of this.”

She used the blue thing to wipe the door, inside and outside. The coast was clear and we parted. I disposed of the wallet and cards in the manner I had suggested to her. I went back and sat on my bed and thought about obese, florid confidence men.

When she tapped on my door, I let her in without turning on the light. She came into my arms, trembling and whimpering. I held her and made comforting sounds. Pore little girl. Pore tired little girl. She was nice to hold. Her lips came up tentatively, then enthusiastically. I broke the clinch with the heel of my hand against her pretty chin. She blundered around in the little bedroom, grumbling and kicking anything handy, and then left in a tizzy.

As soon as she had gone, I put the light on and started
hunting. It didn’t take long. It was under the bed where she’d tossed it, covering the sound with her pretended anger. I reached under and pulled the knife out and presently sent it to join the wallet.

Skipper Moran gave me a pretty smile that meant, Join me for breakfast. She said aloud, “Does your little head still burn where I patted it, Simon?”

“Burned all night. Throbbed like a toothache. All I could do was lie there and pant.”

“You lie as good as you pant, Mr. Pell.”

“We’re in Chicago in another hour or so. Are you going all the way through to New York? Can we get on the same train?”

She smiled. “Poor throbbing boy.” I made another inventory of the face. Sweet stubborn chin. Flower-petal eyes. “Why are you staring?”

“It’s just pleasant to look at a woman with a certain amount of decency in her face. You’ve a good face, Skipper. It has been around, and it has gotten wisdom instead of toughness.”

She looked at me oddly. “That’s quite nice. That you should think so. Trying to disarm me, Simon?”

“That’s a splendid idea.”

She grinned. “You’re too soon out of the hospital for the big leagues, rookie.”

Something was wrong. I didn’t catch on until the second strip of bacon. “I didn’t mention any hospital, Skipper. I mentioned Vietnam, nothing more. What kind of spy are you?”

She looked upset. Prettily confused. “You must have said something about it, Simon.”

“I was careful not to, Skipper. A sympathy pitch is not my style. And another thing. That empty chair in the lounge car was almost too opportune. There are never empty chairs by lovely blondes. And I did get the eye. Oh, very subtly, but I got it.”

She laughed. A good try, only faintly strained. “Oh, Simon! You’ve got to stop reading novels. I’m a gal on a train. I’m heading for New York.”

A neat brisk young man with a neat, close shave and an eye like the accounts receivable ledger came down the diner,
looked through me, and put his lips practically against my gal’s little pink bunny ear.

She had been looking at me. She started looking through me. She got up, remembered her manners, gave me a smile about three millimeters long, and departed.

When I had gotten tired of toying with my third cup of coffee and half decided it was time to pack, she came back. She sat down and ordered coffee.

She balanced me on the razor’s edge of her eyes and said, “Your ex-wife’s friend was knifed during the night. Know anything about it?”

“I never knew Dick Tracy was such a master of disguise.”

“Don’t clown, Simon. I’m talking off the record and out of order and against instructions. So don’t clown. What do you know about it?”

I forked a groove in the tablecloth and admired it for a moment. I heard her coffee being brought. I heard her tear the paper off the sugar.

“My ex enlisted me last night. The corpus undelectable was in her boudoir. It was either pull an assist or try to talk myself out of an eyewitness report. So I moved junior back to his own room.”

“You just made a very intelligent decision, Mr. Pell.”

“Moving the body, or telling you?”

“Moving the body was almost unforgivably stupid. I suppose you told her you wouldn’t give her the money.”

“If I kept a diary, I’d swear you’d been peeking.”

“Why do you feel such a compulsion to be flip?”

“Counter question. Who are you?”

“A working girl. Working.”

“You don’t know what a shock this is to me. I thought it was my good looks and sparkling personality that intrigued you.”

“When, as a matter of fact, it was the criminal tendencies of your ex-wife. Marjorie has been a cooperative little morsel, Mr. Pell. Without knowing it, of course. We’ve had the net over her ever since Juarez, hoping for leads.”

“Hmmmm. A junior G girl.”

“No. A clerk-stenographer CAF-ten filling in because our
little club is a bit shorthanded. The man who came and spoke to me is phoning ahead. I’m afraid we’re going to have to take her into custody now.”

“Do you think she killed Hanneman?”

“Oh, no. Hanneman was hired to ride herd on her and protect the investment. She must have told him you turned her down. My guess is that he tried to tell the others and they thought he was pulling a fast one. The knife work is typical of—some others we’ve found.”

“Hanneman had her convinced that he was a trustworthy legal eagle.”

She smiled sweetly. “No one is as gullible as a cheap crook, Simon.”

“Then you can just pick up the guy who did it, eh? No fuss. No problem.”

She snapped her fingers. “Sure. Just like that. All we’ve got to do is pick him or her out of a hundred and ninety-three passengers.”

“Maybe I’ve spotted him for you. The slick-looking punk in the sharp suit in the lounge car.”

“Mr. Delehanty is one of us, Simon. Sorry.”

“Nice guess, Pell. Try again. Some sweet little old lady, maybe?”

“I said others. We know of one of them. And we also know he didn’t have the opportunity to kill Hanneman. So there are two of them. That was our tip. Two aboard. Plus Hanneman and Mrs. Pell. These people are canny. They don’t contact each other. Not where it can be observed.”

I frowned. It didn’t seem to fit just right. “Look, maybe I’m stupid. But I thought, according to the comic books I read, that there was big dough in this importing dope for the twitch and glitter trade. So why the uproar over a lousy thirty thousand?”

“Thirty thousand, plus a willing tool, Simon. First they’d take the thirty thousand, and then they’d show her one of the photostats of that receipt she signed. And then they’d send her down to join the Mexican end of the organization. They have a spot all planned for her, we think. Using her obvious charms
on gullible tourists to get them to take stuff across the border. She would do it well.”

“And enjoy the work,” I said flatly.

“She did hurt you, didn’t she?”

“A long time ago, Skipper. Just the scar itches sometimes.” I frowned again. “Say, don’t they organize the smuggling better than that?”

“My dear Mr. Pell. The very best man you can get is some banker from Toledo with shining face, balding head, and sterling reputation.”

“Marj could collect that type like postage stamps.”

“She’s still got a little too much spirit for them. They planned to break her down, flatten her out good, and then put her to work after they had taken her for as much money as they could get.”

“Lovely people.”

“I’ve seen what they’ve done. I’ve seen fifteen-year-old children who open their wrists with a pin and use an eyedropper to squirt in the dreams. I hate the peddlers, Simon. I hate their guts!”

“Look. I better pack. Not much time left.”

“You’ll have plenty of time, Simon. Everybody on this train is going to have a long personal interview and show credentials. All of them are going to be hopping mad except one. And he’s going to be scared and desperate.”

They ran
the Amtrak train over onto a siding that hadn’t been used since Casey Jones took his header. It was in a wilderness of tracks, out near a jungle of derelict boxcars and rusting steam locomotives. Chicago came equipped with its usual strong wind. The train stopped and the men were already spotted. Spaced out. A perimeter guard with shotguns and riot guns through the crooks of their arms. Neat young men who leaned against the wind while their topcoats flapped.

A puffy little man with protruding glass-blue eyes collared me in the aisle. “Friend, this is an outrage,” he wheezed.

“What’s the trouble?”

“Haven’t you heard? Look where we are. Out in the middle
of nowhere! Some bum was knifed on the train. Busybody cops have taken over one of the cars up front. We got to go up there, one at a time, and let them question us. Me, I got a meeting to go to.”

The little man stamped on down the aisle, grunting and wheezing with indignation.

An official came through. “Kindly remain in your own car until called.”

I looked out my window for a while. They were handling it pretty well. Every few minutes one person or a couple would head across the tracks, windblown Elizas crossing the ice, heading toward civilization.

I wondered about Marj and decided to pay a little social call. I went into her car and tapped on her door.

“Yes?” a stentorian female voice said.

I pushed the door open. An iron-gray slab-faced matron with eyes like roller bearings stared at me. She had three parallel scratches down her cheek. Marj sat on the bed. I forgot about the planted knife, about her greedy amorality. She was a child who now stood outside life’s candy store, nose flattened wistfully against the glass, looking in at the goodies she could no longer afford.

They’d put handcuffs on her. The sleeve of her dress was ripped and her cheek was puffed, turning blue. She looked at me and said in a soft voice, “Thanks so much, Sim. Thanks for turning me in.”

There was no hope of explaining to her. She had gone too far away. She wouldn’t hear anything I said.

“Out,” the matron said.

Out I went, feeling exactly as though, hat in hand, I had tiptoed into sickly flower scent to view a waxen face on the casket pillow. I felt soul-sick and emptied.

As I walked back, I told myself I was a big boy now. I shaved and everything. I’d even snuck up on a gook tunnel and dropped a present inside that went boom. So this was just a tramp I happened to marry once. Lots of people marry tramps. Lots of tramps marry people. The silken wench was no longer a part of my life. It would be easy to forget her. Just as easy as leaving your head in the hatbox along with your hat.

I went into the men’s room and sat on the leather bench and exchanged cool stares with a salesman type inhabiting same bench, lipping an evil cigar butt.

“Hell of a note,” he said.

“Yeah,” said I.

He got up and slapped himself vigorously in the belly, belched largely, and left, dropping the butt into a shallow spittoon, where it hissed softly like a dying balloon.

I got up and aimlessly tried the john door. Locked, of course. I had me a drink of ice water. I wondered if the lounge car was in a fluid state. I wandered back toward it.

A conductor in a dark blue shiny suit said, “Stay in your own car, mister.” He had bright red cheeks and frosty blue eyes and a shelf of yellow teeth that pushed his upper lip out of the way.

“Got the time?” I asked him.

He looked at his wristwatch. “Nearly eleven, mister.”

I clumped back to the men’s room. I stood and looked out the top of the window, the unglazed part. The staunch young men were still leaning against the wind. I wondered how they’d work out as replacements in Vietnam. Replacements are so shocked at having the countryside loaded with eager little brown men who desire earnestly to shoot them dead that they obligingly freeze and get shot. The ones who scramble fast enough to avoid this unhappy fate six or seven times thus become what the newspapers call “combat-hardened veterans.”