The Long Wait (27 page)

“Beautiful,” I said. “You're beautiful.”

She sucked her breath in so hard it caught in her throat and froze her there. I reached up for the light over the bed but before my fingers found the pull chain her hand grabbed my wrist and forced it down. “No lights, Johnny,” she said.

Her mouth came down slowly. Her lips were moist and parted. Warm. I could feel their warmth before they even touched me. I ran my hand up the small of her back and she shivered deliciously, making those animal sounds in her throat again.

The outlines of her face and body were tenuous things in the darkness, all the hardness obliterated until she was nothing but beautiful. And warm. And hot. Fiery hot. Her mouth a live, grasping thing squirming on top of me. The darkness closed in around us like a blanket until it exploded and left us there, tired and close, talking about tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

When she would do something for me.

Find out all she could about a cop named Tucker.

WENDY was gone when I woke up. There was the impression in the pillow her head had left, the mark of her cheek on my arm. I could still smell the spicy sweetness she left behind.

I didn't like the way I felt. I didn't want to feel that way about any woman. Not yet. There was something about her that was different from most women, something direct and honest. Something that made a guy feel like he had lost an arm when she was gone.

I shook the thought out of my head and got up. There was a note on the dresser that said for me to take the car and she'd see me that evening, signed with love from Wendy. The marks of her lips were overlaid on the signature.

After I had had something to eat I backed the car out of the garage, filled it up at the nearest gas station and picked up a road map. I marked out a route up to the state capital, skipping all the main roads in case the cops had decided to throw up a road block and picked the macadam road that started the run.

At least I didn't hit any traffic. I barreled the Ford along at a steady seventy, slowing down for a turn here and there and making up the loss on the straight stretches. Ten minutes to eleven I was on the outskirts of the city.

The public buildings were grouped in a towering gray huddle that stuck up above everything else like a sore thumb. In the rear of the mess was a parking area. I left the car there, went inside and scanned the directory until I found what I wanted. The State Auditor. His offices were on the fourth floor.

A very tall, very thin girl peered at me through her eyeglasses and told me to have a seat, so I flicked off the dust with my handkerchief and sat down. She didn't like that a bit and sniffed at me. All the seats were dirty. Visitors were probably at a premium here. The phone rang on her desk and after she answered it said, “All right. Mr. Donahue will see you now. Go right in, please.” She sniffed again disapprovingly. They weren't the friendly type here like in Lyncastle.

Mr. Donahue beamed at me and showed out a pudgy little paw. “Sit down, sir, sit down.” He tried to give me the big squeeze that said he was a handball player every Friday at the gym. He was a little round guy with a big nose and a bigger smile, but you didn't have to look twice to tell that there was a lot of brain power behind the light blue eyes that seemed to dance in his head.

I took the seat and one of his cigarettes. I said, “Mr. Donahue, do you like excitement?”

He paused in the middle of lighting a butt and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Well ...” he chuckled and pulled on the butt, shaking the match out. “That's an old question. Yes, might say that I do. In moderate doses, of course. Never find excitement around here.” His hand swept the room. “Unless it's an error in bookwork. That's my only form of excitement. Why do you ask?”

“Because you're going to be able to kick up a lot of it in a few minutes if you want to ... unless you're not the kind of a guy who likes a little fun.”

His face said he was interested. “I ... don't quite understand. Perhaps ...”

“According to the police, Mr. Donahue, I'm a bank absconder, thief, murderer and a few other things. One word from you and I'll be in the jug.”

His eyebrows really did nip-ups this time.

“The name is McBride. Five years ago you checked the books of the National Bank of Lyncastle that proved me an absconder.”

“I remember.”

“How much do you remember?”

Mr. Donahue was nervous. The cigarette shortened in a series of jerky little puffs. He didn't know whether to look at me or not and was afraid to make a move toward the phone.

I said. “I'm not here after you, friend, so stop worrying.”

He showed his teeth in a smile, but didn't stop sweating. “I ... remember the details quite ... clearly.”

I sat back and folded my hands behind my head. “Give.”

He stamped the butt out, paused, then raised his face to mine. “That information is confidential, you know. I'm sure the bank ...”

“I can't go to the bank. I can't go anywhere. Cops are all over the damn city looking for me now. I was framed, Mr. Donahue. I didn't have a thing to do with that business.”

“My job wasn't to prove you guilty, young man. I only checked the books. There was complete evidence of a fraud. The books had been juggled in a neat, but no uncommon manner.” He stopped and stared out the window a moment. “Some time ago I had another request similar to yours. A young lady. She made a point of cultivating me until she openly asked the same thing you did.”

My mouth went into a sneer all by itself. “Vera West.”

“That wasn't the name she gave.”

“A blonde. A real honest-to-goodness blonde a little on the tramp side.”

“Er, yes. She managed to extract the information from me. I thought you'd know about it.” His face reddened and he wouldn't look at me. “I never mentioned it before. Perhaps I should have.”

“No,” I told him. “You did right. It wouldn't do to open your mouth when she had something on you that could turn you upside down. I'm not blaming you. What I want are the details.”

His fingers picked up a pencil and tapped it against the desk. “There really isn't much to it. The District Attorney of Lyncastle, the one who died later, called me in. I made a routine check of the bank's books and found the error.”

“Two hundred thousand dollars' worth?”

“Approximately. A shade over to be more nearly accurate.”

“You found something else, too, didn't you? Something you might have mentioned to the blonde.”

Between his eyes a shaded V formed. It deepened until he was squinting at me. “You certainly have a wealth of information. I did tell that young lady something else. It was a mere suspicion. It couldn't be checked. In my opinion you ... I mean, whoever was responsible, took out considerably more than that amount, but managed to pay back all but two hundred thousand of the total.”

“Interesting.”

His tongue flicked over his lips. “There was a matter of eighty-four dollars in an acount that by rights should have been cleaned out. It would have been just as easy to take the whole amount as part. In fact, easier, and the books would have been easier to balance out. I speculated on it and arrived at the conclusion that at the time of the investigation a theft was not in evidence as much as a replacement of the theft. Money was being put back into the bank with the intention of eventually making up the theft. Whatever was put back filled up the last account eighty-four dollars' worth.”

“A sort of no interest loan on my part, you mean.”

“It's been done successfully before, I imagine. More often not enough.”

“I see.” I dropped my hands to my lap and tilted back on the chair. “You couldn't noise your suspicions around very far either, could you?”

He knew what I was getting at. The red crept up in his face again and he shook his head. “Actually, it didn't occur to me until I returned home and thought it over. It was too nebulous a thing to bring out without absolute proof. I forgot it until I was, ah, approached by this young lady. I realize that I never should have said anything, but under the circumstances it couldn't be helped. She made what I took to be a veiled threat if I ever mentioned the subject to anyone after that.”

“Why bring it up now?”

Mr. Donahue seemed to be a little pained. “Because I've had a nagging worry about the matter ever since and I'll be damned glad to see it come out in the open.”

My chest coughed up a laugh that startled him. “Don't worry about it then,” I said. “A lot of things will be out in the open before long, but you won't be dragged into it. You can forget the blonde too. She's going to have more on her mind than trying to shaft you.”

“You ... know who she is?”

“Yeah, I know who, but I don't know where. She'll turn up.”

I let the chair down and stood up. He shook hands again but without as much force as the last time. I caught him looking down at the phone once so just before I left I said, “You can make up your own mind about it, but you'll do better if you keep this little visit under your hat too.” He licked his lips. “And if you're interested enough, read the Lyncastle
News.”

At three-thirty I got back to Lyncastle. I put the car in the garage and went in the house. Wendy wasn't there and no sign that she had been there earlier. I tried the bus station and somebody on duty said Mr. Henderson had taken the afternoon off. No, he didn't know where to locate him.

The next call went to the Circus Bar and over all the background noises I finally got it across that I wanted Alan Logan. The guy on the other end yelled back that he wasn't there and hung up. I tried his office.

A girl answered the call and I said, “Alan Logan, please.”

“I'm sorry, but he isn't here.”

“Know where I can find him?”

“No I don't. We've been looking for him all day ourselves. He hasn't called in at all. Perhaps you can suggest ...”

I hated like hell putting him on the spot with his office by telling them he was out somewhere on a bat so I said, “Last I saw of him he was on a story. I'm calling because he had some information up there for me. It was from New York, a memo from a Mr. Whitman.”

“Oh, yes. It's here on his desk.”

“Could you read it off to me?”

I heard whatever it was crackle in her hand. “Gee ... I don't know. We're not supposed to ...”

“It's okay. It was some personal information I needed.”

“Well ...” The paper made a tearing noise and crackled again when she unfolded it. “It isn't much. It says, ‘Gracie Harlan and Harlan, Incorporated identical.' It's signed, ‘Whit.' ”

“Thanks,” I said. I hung up and stood there playing with the phone. The blank spaces were filling in gradually. There was a little more sense to it now. The cover was coming off the picture, but I had to be sure of what I saw.

I went downstairs and backed the car out again. Someplace across town would be another piece of the puzzle picture.

It was just like the first time, quiet, with the overtones of “The Moonlight Sonata” drifting through the door. She even had on the dress with the tassel. I said, “Hello, Venus.”

Her eyes made one quick sweep of the street. “Get in here, man!” She said it with an urgency in her voice that made me hop. I slid in the door, shut it and watched her lock it.

“Alone?”

“I haven't been.”

“What's the score?”

“Servo's boys. They've been here off and on ever since you left. What the devil have you been doing?”

“Plenty. Where are they now?”

“I don't know. They left, but they'll be back again.” She fumbled for a cigarette on the table. “The police have been here too. Oh, not the local police. These were feds.”

“Yeah?”

“Things are popping in town. The City Council convened and passed an all-out resolution to find you.” She pulled on the cigarette and walked to the window. When she was satisfied nobody was watching she tugged the curtains together. “I sent a couple of girls out to see what was going on. They made good contacts.”

“Nice. Spill it.”

“George Wilson, Johnny McBride, whoever you are ... those federal boys decided you have been in back of everything that went on in this town. You financed Servo's operations for the sheer hell of it and when things got too quiet to suit you, you went off on a spree of your own. You're back because things outside of Lyncastle got too hot for you. They even tagged you with a long scientific name that means you're chronically antisocial ever since you came back from the war.”

“So I'm the big wheel,” I mused. “I'm the guy they want from here to Washington. That doesn't count in Lenny Servo.”

Her eyes narrowed cautiously. “He has a personal score to settle. I know all about it. But there's more than that. There's a rumor that he's been splitting the take with you all along the line and now he'll be glad to see you under wraps so he can have the whole works.”

“Rumors. They have to start someplace.”

She nodded. “You've been flush ever since you came to town.”

“That I have, kid. Rumors are funny that way; there's always an element of truth in them. A little thought will blow a hole in it though.”

“How?”

“If I'm behind Servo and I get picked up isn't it logical that I cut Lenny in on half the guilt as well as half the take?”

The cigarette went down another notch. Her face lost the cautious expression and became blank. “Who are you, man?”