The Collection (133 page)

I gave her my best smile and went into my spiel.

“You might as well come in, Mr. Hunter,” she said, stepping
back. I followed her into a nicely furnished, bright and cheerful double room
pretty much like the one Uncle Am and I live in on Huron Street.

“I'm willing to help if I can, Mr. Hunter,” she said, “but I
hope this won't take very long. Lissa and I were just about to go out to eat.”

It was the perfect opening. I said, “I'm ravenously hungry
myself, Miss Howard. May I invite both of you to have dinner with me? Then we
can talk while we eat, and it won't take up any of anybody's time.” I grinned
at her. “And we'll all eat for free because I can put it on my client's expense
account.”

She gave a quick glance at her roommate and apparently got
an affirmative because she turned back and returned my grin. “All right,
especially if it's on Mr. Nielson. After the way Albee ran out on me without
even telling me he was going, guess the Nielsons owe me at least a dinner.
Let's go.”

And we went, although first I instigated a conversation as
to where they wanted to go so we could phone for a cab. But the place they
wanted to go, I had in fact been intending to go anyway, was only two blocks
south on Clark Street, only a few blocks away and they'd rather walk.

It turned out to be a fairly nice restaurant, called
Robair's.
The proprietor knew the girls and came over to our table while we were
having cocktails and I was introduced to him and he grinned and admitted that
his name was really Robert but that he knew how the name was pronounced in
French and thought it a little swankier to spell it that way. He was colored
and so were the waitresses and most of the clientele, but I was far from being
the only ofay in the place.

When I started asking questions, Honey Howard answered them
freely, or seemed to. Of course I didn't ask anything about her personal
relationships with him; that was none of my business.

She'd last seen him Thursday evening, two evenings before
the time he'd been seen last. No, he hadn't said anything about going away
anywhere, not even about a possibility of his going up to Kenosha to see his
father. Nor anything about his job or a possibility of his losing it. But he
had been moody and depressed, and had admitted he owed a bundle to his bookie
and was worried about it. She'd told him she had fifty bucks saved up and
wanted to know if lending him that would help. He'd thanked her but said it
would not, that it was a hell of a lot more than that.

No, she hadn't heard from him since. And she made that convincing
by admitting she was a bit hurt about it. Quite a bit, in fact. The least he
could have done would have been to telephone her to say goodbye and he hadn't
even done that.

No, she had no idea where he might have gone, except that it
would have been another big city---like New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco.
He hated small towns. Or maybe Paris---Paris was the only specific place he'd
ever talked about
wanting
to go to.

I considered that for a moment because it was the only
specific place that had been mentioned thus far as a place he'd like to go. I
asked Honey---we were Honey and Lissa and Ed by now---whether he spoke French.
He didn't, and I pretty well ruled Paris out. With only eight hundred bucks and
little chance of getting a job there, it would be a silly place for him to go,
however glamorous it might look to him. Besides, with a sudden change of
identity that left him no provable antecedents, he'd have hell's own time
getting a passport.

No, I wasn't going to learn anything helpful from Honey.
Jerry Score, tomorrow, would be my last hope. And a slender one.

We'd finished eating by then and I suggested a brandy to top
the dinner off. Honey agreed, but Lissa said she had to leave; she worked as
hat check girl in a Loop hotel and her shift was from eight-thirty on. She'd
just have time to make it.

Honey and I had brandies and, since I'd run out of questions
to ask her, she started asking them of me. I saw no reason not to tell her
anything I'd learned to date, so I started with Nielson's phone call and went
through my adventures of the day.

She looked at me a moment thoughtfully when I ran down, and
smiled a bit mischievously. “Since you want to take a look at it, should we
take a look together---at Albee's pad?”

“You mean you have a key?”

She was fumbling in her purse. “Pair of keys. Outer door and
room. Just hadn't got around to throwing them away.” She found them and handed
them to me, two keys fastened together with a loose loop of string.

It was a real break, a chance to see Albee's pad and to have
Honey see it with me. She'd be able to tell me how much of his stuff he'd
taken, things like that. Besides,
I
could get in trouble using those
keys by myself. But not if I was with Honey; if he'd given her keys he'd given
her the legal right to use them, whether he was there or not. Even Mrs.
Radcliffe couldn't object to our going up there, not that we'd alert her if we
could help it.

I bought us each a second brandy on the strength of those
keys, then paid the tab and phoned for a taxi.

The landlady's door stayed closed when we passed it, and we
didn't encounter anyone in the hallway or on the stairs. Albee's room, No. 9,
was the front one on the third floor.

The moment I turned on the light and looked around I saw why
Tom Chudakoff had called it a “padded pad.” Except for a dresser there wasn't a
piece of furniture in sight, but the floor was padded almost wall to wall. In
one corner was a mattress with bedding and a pillow. The rest of the floor was
scattered with green pads, the kind used on patio furniture. In all sizes. You
could sit almost anywhere, fall almost anywhere. Real cool.

At the far end a curtain on a string masked what was no
doubt the kitchenette, at one side there were two doors, one no doubt leading
to a John and the other to a closet.

Honey closed the door and was looking around. She pointed to
a bare area of floor on which there was a small stack of LP phonograph records.
“His portable phono's gone. And part of his records. I'll check the closet.”

She kicked off her shoes and started for one of the doors. I
saw the point; it made sense to kick off your shoes in here. Then you could
walk in a straight line; it didn't matter whether you stepped on floor or
padding. Luckily, I was wearing loafers and I stepped out of them and followed
her.

She was looking into a closet behind the door she'd opened
and I looked over her shoulder. There were some clothes hanging there, but not
many.

“There were two suitcases in here, and a lot more clothes.
He cleared out, all right. With his phonograph and as many clothes as he could
get into the two suitcases. I think he probably went to Los Angeles.”

“Huh?” I said.

She pointed to one of the garments still in the closet. “His
overcoat. He'd have taken that, even if he had to carry it over his arm, if he
was going to New York. Or even San Francisco. It's an almost new overcoat; he
just got it last winter.”

“Why rule out Florida?” I asked.

“He told me he went there once and didn't like it. And that
was Miami, the nearest thing there to a big city. And he didn't like the South,
in general. Or Southerners, or Texans.”

I tried the dresser while she looked into the bathroom and
reported his shaving things were gone. The top three drawers of the dresser
were empty. There was dirty linen in the bottom drawer; he hadn't had room for
that. I ran my finger across the top of the dresser; there was at least a
week's accumulation of dust.

“Doesn't seem to be any doubt he took off,” I said.

Honey was disappearing behind the curtain that screened off
the kitchenette. I wondered what she was looking for there. Not food, surely,
after the big dinner we'd just eaten.

Then she pulled back the curtain part way and grinned at me,
holding up a bottle. “Anyway, he left us half a bottle of Scotch.”

“Going to take it along?”

“Not in the bottle,” she said. “I'll find us glasses. Pick
yourself a chair, man.”

I laughed and picked myself a pad.

And jumped almost out of my clothes when a buzzer buzzed.
Someone had just pushed the button under Albee's mailbox. I looked at Honey and
she looked back, as startled as I was.

My first thought was to ignore it and then I realized that,
as this was a front room, whoever was ringing would know that there was a light
on, that someone was here.

I stood up quickly as it buzzed a second time. “I'll handle
it,” I told Honey. “Stay behind that curtain out of sight,” I told her. I found
the button beside the door that would release the catch on the door downstairs
and held it down a few seconds.

“If it's someone you know,” I told Honey over my shoulder,
“come on out. Otherwise stay there.”

It was probably, I told myself, some casual friend of
Albee's who, happening by, saw his light on. If that was the case, I could
easily explain, identify myself, and get rid of him.

I stepped back into my loafers, for dignity, and waited.

When there was a knock on the door, I opened it.

I never really saw what he looked like. He stepped through
the door the instant it opened and hit me once, with a fist like a piledriver,
in the stomach. I hadn't been set for it, and it bent me over double and
knocked the wind out of me,
all
the wind. I couldn't have spoken a word
if my life depended upon it.

Luckily, it didn't. He could have swung a second time, to my
chin, and knocked me cold and I wouldn't even have seen it coming. But he
didn't. He stepped back and said, quite pleasantly, “Red would like you to drop
up and see him. I think you better.”

And he walked away. Honey was beside me by the time I could
even start to straighten up. She was the one who closed the door. “Ed! Are you
hurt?”

I couldn't talk to tell her that I couldn't talk and that
that was a damn silly question anyway. She helped me to cross the room and to
lie down on the mattress and she moved the pillow so it was under my head when
I was able to straighten out enough to put my head down. She asked me if a
drink would help and by that time I had enough breath back to tell her not yet,
but if she wanted to help sooner than that she could hold my hand.

I'd been partly kidding, but she took me at my word, sat
down on the edge of the mattress and held my hand. And maybe it did help;
pretty soon I was breathing normally again and the acute phase of the pain had
gone. I was going to have somewhat sore stomach muscles for several days.

What time I got home that night doesn't matter, but Uncle Am
was already asleep. He woke up, though, and wanted to know what gave, and I
made with the highlights while I undressed. He frowned about the Kogan goon bit
and wanted to know if I wanted to do anything about it. I said no, that
obviously he hadn't known Albee by sight and had made a natural mistake under
the circumstances, and that what I'd got was no more than Albee would have had
coming.

I said, “I'll talk to this Jerry Score tomorrow, but I guess
that'll wind it up, unless I get a lead from him. Up to now, the only thing
that puzzles me is why old man Nielson still thinks there's a chance Albee
didn't do what he obviously did do.”

Uncle Am said, “Uh-huh. I didn't set the alarm, kid. I got
to sleep early enough so I'll wake up in plenty of time. You sleep as late as
you want to, since you can't see Score till afternoon.”

I slept till ten. I was surprised when I got up to find a
note from Uncle Am: “Ed, I've got a wild hunch that I want to get off my mind.
I'm taking the car, and a run up to Kenosha. We won't bill our client for it
unless it pays off. See you this evening if not sooner.”

I puzzled about it a while and then decided to quit
puzzling; I'd find out when Uncle Am got back. I took my time showering and
dressing and left our room about eleven. I had a leisurely brunch and the
morning paper and then it was noon. I phoned our office to see if by any chance
Uncle Am was back or had phoned in; I got our answering service and learned there'd
been no calls at all.

I went back to our room and read an hour and then it was
time for me to leave if I wanted to get to the Graydon Theater at one-thirty.
Rehearsal hadn't started yet, but Jerry Score was back and Carey Evers
introduced us. He'd already explained about me to Score, so I didn't have to go
through the routine.

He was a tall blond young man about my age or Albee's. Maybe
just a touch on the swish side but not objectionably so.

And quite likeable and friendly. He gave me a firm handshake
and suggested we go into the manager's office to talk. He wasn't in the first
scene they'd be rehearsing and had plenty of time.

The manager's office contained only a battered desk, a file
cabinet, and two chairs. He took one of the chairs and I sat on a corner of the
desk.

His story matched what I'd learned from Honey and from
everybody else. Yes, he was convinced Albee had taken a powder, and like Honey
he was annoyed with Albee for not even having said so long before he took off.

I asked, “He didn't even give you a hint when he gave you
back the car keys that Saturday night?”

“I didn't see him Saturday night. The last time I saw him
was Saturday morning when he borrowed the car. He just dropped the keys into my
mailbox when he brought it back.”

I said, “But Lieutenant Chudakoff said that you said---” And
then realized Tom hadn't said Score had
seen
Albee, just that Albee had
returned the car keys.

I asked Score if he'd been home Saturday evening and he said
yes, all evening. But that if I wondered why Albee had left the keys in the box
instead of bringing them upstairs to him, the answer was simple. Since he'd
decided to lam anyway he wanted to keep his get-away money intact, and he'd
promised Jerry ten bucks for use of the car on the trip to Kenosha. If he'd
seen him he'd have had to fork it over.