The Long Wait (3 page)

Instead of a print there was a solid black smudge because I didn't have any fingerprints.

I shouldn't have laughed, but I couldn't help it. The back of his hand smashed into my mouth and before he could do it again I hooked him under the chin and he and the desk and the junk slammed the floor. Tucker had time to get the billy unlimbered but not enough time to place it right. The thing ripped my coat open all the way up my sleeve and went back for another try. I had him then. I had him so goddamn good I nearly took his gut off. He folded up and never felt his face get turned into a squashed ripe tomato. I had time to see him vomit all over himself before my own head burst open in a blaze of fiery streaks that sent a curse of ungodly pain down into every single little nerve fiber throughout my body and I knew that this was what it was like to die. There was a crazy, violent screaming behind me that came from Lindsey's contorted mouth and it was the last thing I thought I'd ever hear again.

It was, for a long, long time.

Sound came back first. It was a voice that said, “You're a fool for doing that, Lindsey.”

Then another voice that quavered slightly. “I should have killed him. Honest to God, I tried. I hope the bastard dies.”

Somebody else was there too. “Not me. I hope he lives. I'll work him over like he's never been worked over before, so help me!”

I wanted to answer that and couldn't. My head was shrieking with the pain in it and I felt my legs pulling up in a tight knot. I waited until it passed and made my eyes open. I was on a metal bed in a room that was filled with people. Everything else was white and the air had a sharp, pungent odor.

There was Lindsey with a lump on his jaw and Tucker still faintly recognizable through a maze of bandages and two other men in dark suits, a flat-faced girl in a white uniform talking to two more white uniforms with stethoscopes around their necks. The last two were looking at a set of films and they were nodding.

When they reached a decision one said, “Concussion. Should have been a fracture. I don't know how he got away with it.”

“That's nice,” I said, and everybody looked at me. I was popular again.

Things were quiet too long. Lindsey smiled when he shouldn't have smiled. He came over and sat on the edge of the bed like an old friend and smiled some more. “Ever hear of Dillinger, Johnny? He went to a lot of trouble getting his fingertips cut off too. It didn't work. You're a little smarter than Dillinger ... or you had a better job done. We can't make them out yet, but they'll come through. Up in Washington they have ways of doing those things, and if there's so much as an eighth of an inch of ridging left they can prove it if it matches up. You got a little time yet, kid. With Dillinger they had Bertillon measurements and photographs and we don't have anything like that on you. It's a cute setup if ever I saw one ... everyone and his brother knows you and we can't prove it.”

Tucker made a loud noise behind his bandages. “Hell, you ain't letting him get away with it, are you?”

There was no mirth in Lindsey's laugh. “He's not getting away with anything. Not one goddamn thing. The only way he can get out of this town is dead. Walk around, Johnny. Go see all your friends. Have yourself some fun because you don't have much time to do it in.”

I thought Tucker was going to make a try for me right then. He would have if Lindsey hadn't put his arm up to stop him. His eyes under the gauze were red little marbles that tried to do what his hands couldn't do. “Damn it, we gotta hold him! Lindsey, if you let him....”

“Shut up. We can't do a thing right now. If I try to book him a lawyer'll have him out in five minutes.” He turned back to me. “Just stay in town. Remember that. I'll be one step behind you all the way.”

Hell, I had to get in my two cents worth. It wouldn't be any fun if I couldn't sound off when I felt like it. “You remember something too. Every time you put your hands on me I'll knock you on your goddamn ass like I did before and that goes for your stooge as well.”

Somebody choked a little.

Somebody swore.

The doctor told them to go and the nurse closed the door. He pointed to the closet. “You can get dressed and go if you want to. My advice is to say here awhile. There's nothing wrong with you some rest won't cure, though I don't know how you got away with it.”

“I'll go,” I told him.

“Okay with me. Be sure to take it easy.”

“Yeah, I'll do that I reached up and felt the back of my head. ”What about the bandage?”

“Four stitches in your scalp. Come back in a week and I'll take 'em out for you.”

“You're giving me a long time to live,” I said.

The doctor grinned at me.

I got dressed and went downstairs to the window where they took a twenty and gave me back five. My legs were wobbly and my head throbbed, but a good sniff of the night air put me back together a little.

It was pitch black and the stars were under cover. A worried guy sweating out a maternity call was pacing back and forth the ramp outside the door. He looked up hopefully when I opened it, saw me and went back to pacing. I walked down the ramp, turned onto the sidewalk and headed for the lights that marked the center of town.

Behind me the glowing tip of a cigarette traced an arc through the air, splattered out in the grass that bordered the gutter and a pair of heavy feet began to match my stride.

The vigil had begun. Lindsey was behind me all the way.

Metaphorically speaking, that is. The guy wasn't Lindsey, but he was all cop. I was beginning to think that they didn't have any little cops in this town. The one behind me was a barrel on legs weaving from side to side. He was such a good cop that it took me nearly two blocks to shake him.

When I got to town I stopped at a drugstore and climbed into the phone booth. I dialed the hotel and asked for Jack. When I had him I said. “This is McBride. You remember that barber who worked on me today?”

“Sure. Name's Looth. We call him Looth Tooth. Why?”

“Just curious. Thanks.”

“Don't mention it. By the way, where you calling from, Mr. McBride?”

“A phone booth.”

“Oh?” He sounded surprised.

“Why?”

“You see the papers tonight?”

“Hell no. I just got out of the hospital. I had my head examined.”

“Well, you oughta see 'em.”

He hung up before I could ask any more questions. I picked up a paper at the front of the store and I saw what he meant. It was quite an item. In fact, the whole front page was scrambled because the story that was supposed to go in had been yanked at the last minute. All that was left was a one-column squib squeezed in by an irate compositor who had to work overtime. The heading was: Police Hold Murder Suspect.Under it the item read, “Held in the five-year-old slaying of former District Attorney Robert Minnow was John McBride, tentatively identified by police as a former resident of Lyncastle who fled following the shooting of the District Attorney during the sensational gambling probe of his era. McBride was released after questioning and Captain Lindsey of the Lyncastle Police refused to comment. Since the grand jury returned a murder-guilt verdict against the original McBride, this was the first suspect held in the affair.”

And that, dear children, is all. Nobody knew from nothing. I was a story that didn't happen ... yet. Somebody had done a lot of pretty string-pulling in the police lab. I grinned until my mouth ached, remembered what I came after and went back to the phone directory and rummaged through it until I found what I wanted.

Looth Tooth was listed, but he wasn't home. Somebody told me the name of a bar where I could find him. I paid a hackie a buck to take me there and when I walked in Looth Tooth had himself an audience of eager listeners and he was telling them in details that never happened how he practically caught McBride all by himself.

He was doing great until I got into the crowd. I stood there and looked at him until something got stuck in his throat and he couldn't breathe. He believed everything I told him with my eyes, then Looth Tooth was something with pale blue lips and eyes that rolled up in his head, dropping to the floor in a dead faint.

I had one beer and left just as they were carrying Looth Tooth out the door. Everybody agreed that it was a pity he didn't get to finish his story.

Tomorrow I'd go down for a shave and ask him to finish it for me personally. He was going to be one barber who'd never go peddling his lip to the police again.

But it was still tonight and I had things to do. The hackie who brought me was still outside and I told him to take me to the railroad station. From where we were we had to go straight up the main drag of town so I had a chance to see what it looked like during business hours.

It looked pretty good. It looked like everything the newspapers, radio and magazine articles said it would look like. Maybe you've heard of the place. A long time ago it started out as a pretty nice town. A smelter turned ore into copper bars over under the mountains and everybody was happy. They were rough-and-tumble boys who built their houses and minded their own business.

That's the way it would have stayed if Prohibition didn't come and go like it did. Lyncastle took the switch in stride, but the three big cities on each side of it voted an option and kept themselves dry, so anybody who wanted a drink simply crossed the river into Lyncastle and got themselves a package. It wasn't long after that you could get anything else you wanted too. Lyncastle became what is known as a wide-open town. Little Reno. Ten feet off the sidewalk you had crap tables, slots, faro layouts, roulette ... hell, everything. Nobody bothered to work in the smelter any more. The gambling rooms were paying high for bouncers, croupiers, dealers, shills and whatnot.

I wondered what they'd pay a killer to knock off a D. A. who didn't like what they were doing.

The hackie was holding the door open for me. “Here y'are, buster. Buck and a half.”

“Take two. They're little.” I slammed the door shut and stepped up on the platform.

The station was practically deserted. A young colored boy was curled up in a handcart, his head nestling on a pillow of mail sacks, and inside a woman with a baby m her arms was dozing off on a bench. Across the platform a bus, dark and dead looking, was hiding in the end port. Over there was where the bruiser hung out and I looked for something moving in the shadows.

I waited a long time, but nothing moved. Evidently he only checked incoming schedules. I crossed the platform and stood in the doorway, looked around quickly and stepped inside.

The old boy was just closing his ticket window when he saw me. His voice was lost in the slamming of the grillwork and the rattle of the shade being drawn over it. A door opened in the side of the booth and he was waving me inside furiously. He was so worked up he hopped around like a toad making sure the door was locked tight before he pulled a couple of benches together.

“Damn, Johnny,” he said with his head wagging from side to side, “you sure beat all. Sit down, sit down.”

I sat down.

“Anybody see you come up here?”

“Nope. Didn't matter if they did, Pop.”

I got the puzzled squint again while he fingered his mustache. “I heard talk an' I read the papers. How come you're here and what's the bandage on your head for? They do that to you?”

“Yeah, they did it,” I told him easily.

“Damn it all, finish itl”

“Not much to finish. Guy named Lindsey wanted to talk to me. We talked. It got a little bit rough and we finished talking in the hospital. Nobody got around to saying much. Lindsey seems to think we'll be having another talk soon.”

“Never took you to be a fool, Johnny. Took you to be a lot of things, but never a fool.”

“What else did you take me for?”

I put it to him too fast and he shifted uncomfortably. “I'm ... sorry, son. Didn't mean to bring that up again.” Then his face pinched together. “Maybe I was wrong.”

You can cover a situation nicely by sticking a butt in your mouth. That's what I did. I still didn't know what he was driving at and I wasn't tipping my hand asking questions about something I should have known.

“Maybe,” I said through the smoke.

“There's a bus going out tonight.” He checked with his watch. “Better'n two hours yet so you can wait here. If nobody saw you come in they won't know you're here.”

“Forget it, forget it. I like it here.” I grinned at him slowly. “Pop, what do you know about Lindsey?”

“Johnny, you ...”

“I asked you something.”

“You ought to know what he's like. After Bob Minnow died he swore he'd get the guy who done it and he's never stopped trying. He'll never give up, Johnny. He ain't like the rest. Lmdsey's straight as they come. He's the only decent guy left and he stays that way because that's the way he's made. I'm telling you, Johnny, nothing'll pull him off your neck. Not money or nobody or nothing. God knows they tried. He woulda been ousted long ago for not playing ball the way everybody else does, only he knows too much. He don't talk, but if he did it would be pretty tough.”

He stopped and took a breath. I said, “Spell it out. A lot of things happen in five years. What's the pitch?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “I guess you might not know about it at that. Things ain't peaceful anymore like they was. You saw the town, didn't you? Sure. Gin mills on every comer and nothing but gambling joints in between. Drunks and lushes all over the place. Prostitution in the North End and who cares? Nobody cares so long as the money rolls in. There's more of it in this town than the state capital and just like the boys want it. You'd think that the people would say something.