A Hell of a Woman (Crime Masterworks) (8 page)

"Dillon, good friend. Dere is somet'ing-"

"Drink your drink," I said. "Hurry! We're running late."

"But-"

But he drank his drink, and I drank mine. I switched off the lights, took his elbow and started him toward the door in the darkness.

"It iss only a small t'ing, Dillon. Unimportant but it hass been running through my mind. Since last night, yen ye vere-"

"You hear me?" I said. "I said we were late. Now, come on."

He came along, but that question, whatever it was, was still bothering him. And all the way across town he was kind of mumbling and muttering to himself. I guess I told you that the house was out beyond the university, the only one in that block? Well, it was, anyway; sitting off by itself. But I still didn't take any chances. I speeded up a little at the end of the adjoining block, then cut my lights and motor and coasted the rest of the way.

I opened the door. I told Pete to stay in the car until I called him.

"Oh?" He turned and looked at me. "But I t'ought-"

"I know," I said, "but she might hear you come up on the porch. Figure that something screwy was going on, and it would blow the whole deal."

I left him sitting in the car, mumbling and muttering. I was about half way up the walk when I thought, what if someone should come by, a prowl car, and ask him what the hell he was doing. But… well, I couldn't help it. It wasn't good, but it wasn't good to have him come up on the porch either like I'd told him to last night. That wasn't good and this wasn't-and maybe nothing could be that I would dream up. But goddammit, I just hadn't had much time to think, and I was a hard luck bastard to begin with, and

I knocked on the door, and, man, it just sounded like an echo from my heart. The old pump was beating that hard. After a long time-a dozen years, it seemed like-the old woman tipped the shade back and peered out at me.

There was only a dim light on in the hail where she was standing. But it was apparently enough for her to recognize me. She opened the door and unlatched the screen, and I went inside.

Her face fell a little when she saw I wasn't carrying anything. Then she jerked her head toward the door, and started grinning again. Rubbing her hands together.

"You bring my coat? You got it in your car, hah?"

I didn't say anything, do anything. I was like a mechanical man with the batteries run down. I wanted to boff hell out of the old bitch, and I just couidn't move.

"You bring it in, mister. That's why you came, ain't it? You bring in the coat, and then…" She winked and jerked her head toward the rear of the house. "She's already in bed, mister, and you just br-"

She just shouldn't have said that. Honest to God, I'd planned it and I'd already come three-fourths of the way. But if she hadn't've said that, I don't think I could have gone any further.

She brought it on herself when she said that. She asked for it.

And she got it.

I left-hooked her, I right-crossed her. I gave her just the two haymakers, left and right. Fast. Batting her one way, then the other. Batting her back before she could fall. And then I let her go down, back against the foot of the stairs; and her neck looked about four inches longer. And her head was swinging on it like a pumpkin on a vine.

Kill her? What the hell do you think it did?

Mona had been standing behind the living room drapes. Now, she came out, and she took just one look at the oid woman and then she looked away again. And she threw her arms around me, shivering.

I kissed her on top of the head, gave her a little squeeze. I pushed her out of the hall, into the living room.

"D-Doliy. What are we g-going to-"

"I'll tell you," I said. "I'll tell you exactly what to do. Now, which room is your aunt's?"

"A-at the head of the stairs. On the right. Oh, DDolly, I'm-"

"Save it," I said. "For God's sake save it! Where'il she have her key? Where's her key?."

"I d-don't-maybe in h-her-"

I ran out in the hall, and frisked the old woman. I found a key in her pocket and took it back into the living room.

"Is this it? Now, what about the gun? In her room? Goddammit, answer me!"

She nodded, stammered that the gun was in the old gal's room. She gulped and tried to smile, tried to get ahold of herself.

"I'm s-sorry, Dolly. I'll do whatever-"

"Swell," I said. "Sure, you will, and everything's going to be fine." I smiled back at her-did the best I could at smiling, anyway. "You go get the money, now-how long will it take you? Can you get it in five minutes?"

She said she could, she thought she could. She'd do it just as fast as she could. "But what are you-"

"Never mind, goddammit!" I said. "Just go get it, and leave the rest to me. Move, for God's sake!"

She moved. She turned and went off at a run.

I went back out into the hail, slung the old woman over my shoulder and carried her up the stairs.

I got to the top, and dropped her on the landing. I unlocked the door to her room, and went inside.

There was a chair, a bed, an old dropleaf writing desk. Nothing else. No books. _No pictures. And with an old house like this, an old woman like that, there should have been pictures_…

I opened the dropleaf of the desk, scared sick that there wouldn't be any gun or that it wouldn't be loaded. And I thought, man, oh man, how stupid can you get? You could have checked on that, anyway. You've gone too far to back out, and if that gun isn't… But it was there; a big old forty-five, of all things. Just about the last gun you'd expect an old woman to have. And it was loaded.

And there was some money, too; a little roll of bills in one of the desk drawers.

I took the money and shoved the gun into my belt. I jerked the drawers out and dropped them on the floor, and I knocked over the chair as I went back into the hall.

I walked down the stairs a few steps. I reached back up and got the old woman by an arm, and pulled her down head first.

I left her lying about half way down. I went on down the rest of the way, scattering the bills on the steps. I switched off the light, opened the door and called to Pete. Then, I went back up the stairs a little way and waited.

I was sweating like a chippie in church. It wouldn't work; it _couldn 't_ work. It was like some of those stupid jobs you read about in the newspapers. Guys tackling some big deal and doing everything bassackwards, tripping over their own feet in a hundred places until it's almost like a comedy. I'd read some of those stories, laughing out loud and shaking my head, thinking, what a jerk! The damned fool ought to have known, he ought to have seen: if he'd done any thinking at all, he'd- The door opened. Closed. I heard him breathing heavily, nervously; and then his whisper in the darkness:

"Dillon? Vot-"

"Everything's swell." I spoke softly. "She's up in her room now writing the statement. I'm going up to check it over."

"Oh?" I could almost see the frown on his face. "Den vy am I-"

"I want you to look at it before we leave. It's okay. She won't know you're here until I get my hands on it.''

"Vell," he said, hesitating, trying to unravel things. And then he gave it up and chuckled. I was his pal, I was the brain man. I was taking care of him, just like I'd been taking care of him. And he was a simple guy; and there was this other thing on his mind:

"… all day I haf been trying to remember, Dillon. Soch a crazy thing. How does it go, dot song ye vere singing: der vun about der bastard king of England?"

"Song!
"I gasped.
"Song!"
Is that what-" I brought my voice down. "Turn on the light, Pete. I accidentally brushed the switch with my sleeve when-when-" _When what?_ "You'll have to turn around. It's there on your right, back near the door."

I saw the black shadow that was his body revolve in the darkness. I heard his fingers tracing their way along the wallpaper. Then, the chuckle again, almost childish:

"… soch a foolish t'ing at a time like dis. No attention you should pay me. Later, perhaps, yen-"

"No," Isaid. "This is a good time. Here's the way it goes, Pete:

'_Cats on the rooftops, cats on the tiles_,

'_Cats with their bottoms wreathed in smiles_

The light went on. His back was to me like it had to be.

I got him six times through the head and neck. He pitched forward, and that was the end of him.

I made sure of it. I checked him before I left. His face was pretty much of a mess, but it looked like he'd died happy. It looked like he was grinning.

I WAS BORN in New York City one score and ten years ago, of poor but honest parents, and from my earliest recollections I was out working and trying to make something of myself and be somebody. But from my earliest recollections someone was always trying to give me a hard time. Like this time when I was runningerrands for a delicatessen and, hell, I wouldn't have stolen a damned dime from anyone: I was only about eight years old and just wasn't smart enough. So this old bag shortchanges me on an order, and the delly owner says I took the dough myself. Weil, anyone could have seen she was a goddamned bag, dirty dishes and clothes strung all over her apartment, living like a hog. And later on she pulls the same stunt on some other delivery boys around there, and everyone gets wise to her and they know I didn't take the money. Meanwhile, though, this deily owner has canned me and told my old man I was a thief, and the old man beats me black and blue.

So a hell of a lot of good it does me.

That is one thing I can't figure out. Why your own parents will take some outsider's word for something before they will yours. But I realize that this incident is of no importance, so I will get on with my tale. I simply wished to demonstrate how right from the beginning people were giving me a bad time.

Well, it went on and on, and I will not trouble you with a full recital of it all. Because all the crap I caught, it's pretty hard to believe, and you'd probably think I was a damned liar.

So finally I'm in my second year of high school, and people have been giving me trouble all the way, trying to hold me back, and I'm pretty big not to be any further along. Anyway, there's this English teacher, and she's pretty young; not a hell of a lot older than I was, I guess. And she keeps giving me the eye and putting her hand on my shoulder when she shows me how todo something. And I figure, well, you know. So one day when she keeps me after class-it's the last class of the day and we're all alone-one day when she's leaning over me and kind of rubbing up against me, why I give her a feel. I thought she wanted it, you know, so I did it. But dear reader it was a trap.

Well, I suppose it was an invaluable lesson, and one that profited me greatly in the future. That little bitch taught me something I never forgot,
viz:
the prettier and the sweeter they act toward you, the less you can trust 'em. They're just leading you on, see, to get you in trouble. And maybe you don't see it right at the time, but, brother, you will.

But it was sure a lesson purchased at great cost. I get the chilly drizzles right now when I think about it.

She yells and slaps my face, and some of the men teachers come running in, and I try to explain how it was, what I thought, and that just makes it worse. They call the principal, and they all start knocking me at once. It's their fault, see, that I'm not any further along. But they claim it's me. They give out with a lot of craperoo about how I won't study, I haven't really got my mind on school, and I'm uncooperative and antagonistic toward the other kids. And they make it sound like I'm public enemy number one or something; and it all started because this babe gave me a play, and I foolishly picked her up on it.

Well, to make a long story short, I got expelled and thus through no fault of my own, my formal education was terminated at a tender age. But to hell with 'em all, I say. People that act as dirty as that, they're not worth soiling my mind thinking about, and I don't.

You are aware by now that I am one hard working bastard with plenty of experience in many fields. But incredible as it seems, my earnest efforts and ability were never appreciated. The rookings I got right from the time! left home and took to the road are something to challenge the imagination. You'd have to see it to believe it, by God!

There was the manager of this circulation crew I first went out with. A crook from way back, and, man, what a crap artist. He gives me the old bull about traveling to California and back in new cars and making seventy-five bucks a week. And me, I'm just an innocent kid, unwise in the ways of the world, so I swallow it like candy. I sign on with the crew, there's about eight of us in this ten-year-old Dodge, and it seems like our first stop on our way to California is Newark, NJ. and- You ever do the door-to-door in Newark? Well, don't do it. They get all the crews coming out of New York, see. These circulation outfits and so on, they shake the crews down in jersey, and it's not reaily a fair test because the goddamned place is worked to death, but that's the way it is.

They shook out two of the guys in Newark, and another one before we're out of the state. Then, the rest of us go on westward, the crew manager and us four men. Well, I really knocked myself out. I made the doors and I made the sales. But it don't do me no good. It's like it's always been with me: working hard and being honest, and getting nothing for it. The crew manager, this bull artist, would do the cali-backs on my orders, and on about two-thirds of 'em he'd give me a can't-confirm. He'd look me right in the eye and say the lady had changed her mind or her husband wouldn't let her go through with the buy. And then he'd write the orders up as his own and take the commission.

Well, we got into Illinois, and I'm practically dead of doughnut poisoning by that time. I've been working my can off, and all the time I have to eat in dumps, taking a lot of guff from the hired help just because I'm a kid and I can't tip or anything. Sojust about then I began to get wise. I made a few call-backs myself, and then I jumped this crap artist. I wasn't mean about it or anything. Just asked him how about shaking it out fair from now on. And that shows how little I knew of the ways of life. The son-of-a-bitch slugged me with a water pitcher, and then he kicked the hell out of me. And then he fired me off the crew. And I wanted to fight or argue about it or something, but somehow I just couldn't. Getting slugged and kicked when I'd been trying to be nice-well, I couldn't do anything for a while. Just hole up in my room and think.

Well, pretty soon I joined up with another crew, and inside of a month I was manager of it. Me, just a kid, managing a crew, so I guess you can see I had what it took. But there were a couple of these punks that were always kicking, hinting maybe that I was crapping them on the can't-confirms. So finally I got 'em alone in my room, and beat the sap out of them. And then I gave 'em the gate. But they still weren't satisfied. It wasn't enough that I had to go out and dig up a couple of more men. They wrote to the home office, and the next thing I know I'm yanked off the crew and I can't ever work for that company again.

It went on and on like that, every damn thing I tried. I work into a nice premium deal, and the superintendent robs me on territory. I buy gold, and the refinery gives me the cob; even the big buyers do it, by God. They try to kid me that my eighteen-karat is fourteen and that the fourteen is ten, and so on. And I'll bet I was skinned out of thousands of dollars before I saw I was struggling against hopeless odds, and moved into another racket.

It was that way with everything I did, the aluminum ware, the pots and pans, the premiums, the magazines: everything. One way or another, I'd get the blocks put to me; so I will mercifully spare you the sordid details. I often thought, I kept thinking, that if I had some little helpmeet to dwell with, the unequal struggle would not be so unequal. But I didn't have any more luck that way than I did in the others. Tramps, that's all I got. Three goddamned tramps in a row.. – or maybe it was four or five, but it doesn't matter. It was like they were all the same person.

Finally, I was working in this small city in the middle-west. Outside collection-sales. It could have been pleasant and remunerative, but my boss was just about the most no-good son-of-a-bitch I ever worked for. Character named Staples. He just wasn't satisfied unless he was giving me a hard time, and when I go home at night, exhausted with the struggles ainst unequal odds, it's more of the same. Because the babe I'm married to then, she's out of this world, what I mean. The queen of the tramps, and a plenty tough bitch to boot.

To get ahead of myself a little, she starts giving me a hard time one night, talking dirty to me and using bad language. So like I always do, I try to be reasonable and show her the error of her ways. I say it is not the best time to talk when a man just comes home from work, and perhaps we wiii both be in a better mood after we have a bite to eat. I say, will she please fix us a bite, and! will cheerfuily help her. Well, for answer she gives me some more of the dirty talk. And when I try to pet her and soothe her down, gently but firmly, she somehow slips and falls into the bathtub.

I helped her out and apologized, although I hadn't done a goddamned thing. "I'm very sorry, Joyce," I said. "Now, you just take it easy and I'll fix us a nice dinner – - " That's the way I talked to her, but you know how much good it does trying to be nice to a tramp. She almost caved my skull in with a scrubbing brush. Then, when I leave the house to calm myself, she ruins all my clothes and pulls out. I guess she saw that she couldn't get anything more out of me, and it was time to latch onto another sucker.

Meanwhile, to go back and take events in their proper order, I have met one of the sweetest, finest little girls in the world. Her name is Mona, and she lives with a mean old bitch of an aunt. The old woman's holding her prisoner, practically, working her tail off and making her do a lot of dirty things. She, this little girl, asks me to rescue her and let her be my helpmeet, and then we can live happily forever after. And touched by her plea, I agree to do so. I agree even before I know about all this dough the old woman had stashed away, which-when you come to think about it-is rightfully Mona's, because the old bitch has given her a hard time every day for years. And if a littie girl ever had a hundred grand coming, she did.

Well, I go over to the house that night, and, hell, I wouldn't have laid a finger on that old woman. But she keeps egging me on, talking dirty and giving me a bad time. So there just wasn't any other way out.

Well, just about then, maybe a few minutes later, this fellow Pete Hendrickson came in. I think maybe he was a Nazi or maybe a Communist-one of 'em that slipped over here during the war. But, anyway, he was a no-good bastard; he admitted being a bum, himself. And he wouid have given me a hard time, too. So there was only one thing to do about him.

Well, I'd done it to him; and I was wearing gloves, but I wiped the gun off good and put it in the old woman's hand. And just as I'd finished, this Mona shows up with the money.

And she sees this Nazi or Communist or whatever he was, and she goes all to pieces. Acts like I was a criminal or something. Acted like I hadn't done it all for her.

Well, she pulled herself together when she saw how jarred I was, the notion I was getting. She said it was just a shock, seeing him there when she hadn't expected to, that she just didn't like to have it happen to anyone unless it was her aunt. And she was sorry and so on, and she'd do whatever I asked.

So I'm a pretty understanding guy, and I kind of liked her for feeling that way. If she did actually feel that way. So everything was jake between us again.

I told her what she was supposed to do, what to say to the cops. I told her it would be a leadpipe cinch, and in a couple of weeks we could get together. Then, I kissed her and left, taking the money with me.

It-the money, I mean-was in a black leather bag, something like a file-briefcase or a doctor's medicine kit. It was packed tight and it was heavy, about sixty or seventy pounds. And all the way home I was wondering where in the hell I could keep it. I was afraid to hide it in the house. That was a pretty bad neighborhood, and it would be just my luck to have some son-of-a-bitch break in and lift it. I finally decided to carry it with me, at least for a while. I could bury it down in the bottom of my sample case-throw out some of the samples if I had to-and keep it with me all day long.

I got home, and took it into the house. I set my sample case up on the coffee table, opened the lid and tried fitting the bag inside. I kind of fiddled around with it, trying it this way and that way. I was sort of delaying the pleasure, I guess, letting my anticipation build up. And I guess probably I was a little afraid. Because with a hard luck guy like me, damned near anything can happen. That littie satchel might turn out to be filled with bricks or magazines. Or some kind of booby trap that would blow my head off when -. –

I opened it. It bulged open the second I pressed the catch, and I made myself look inside. And I sort of moaned, nickered like a colt going for its mother.

It was there, all right. Packs and packs of paperbanded bills. Fives, tens, and twenties. I dipped my hands down into it, and brought them up again. And it was all money-no false packages, no junk: I didn't have to count it. Hell, I could almost count it in my head – -. a hundred grand.

_A hundred grand!_

And Mona. I'd rescued her from her wicked aunt and meted out justice to this guy who had molested her, and I'd recovered this money which was rightfully hers. And soon we would shake the dust of this old land from our feet, depart this scene of my many tragic disappointments, and we would go to some sunny clime like Mexico. And, man, what a happy life we'd lead. Me and that sweet child, that honey babe, and a hundred thousand dollars.

Or practically a hundred thousand. I'd probably have to feed a few hundred into my accounts to keep Staples happy.

I dipped down into the money again, squeezing and rubbing it between my fingers, hating to let go of it. It was old, of course, but still clean and crisp. And, yeah, hell-you think I haven't been around?-it was the real thing. I make no pretense of being a great mental genius, but there is one thing I cannot be fooled on, dear reader. The green goods. I cannot be deceived about counterfeit. You get stuck a few times like I have, when you are an innocent, trusting kid, and have to make it up out of your own pocket. And you learn to spot the goddamned stuff a hundred yards away.