Catch-As-Catch-Can Page 12

  The man with the handkerchief seemed to sigh.

  Someone was shouting, “Break it up. Let the wrecker in now.”

  The cop said, loudly, “Wait a minute. What about the trailer?”

  Clive said, spinning nervously, “Oh my God, the trailer! And he turned, the handkerchief half over his face.

  Frank saw the cop push by and leave the picture frame. Gently, he let the girl rest on the cushioning sacks and he, himself, came forward. He leaned to see around the open door. Mike Torres was making his way through the tangle. They were breaking up this jam, now. They’d have to be moving. He pulled his head back and looked at his blue angel. Gee, he didn’t want to lose her. He didn’t want to let her go. She just didn’t look as if she’d have such a thing as a telephone number.

  He saw that she looked like a very frightened angel, now. She was staring at something behind him. He turned his head and saw that the tall man with the bloody handkerchief, from about twenty feet away, was staring in and straight at her.

  Frank said, sharply, “Do you know that guy? Is he a friend of yours?”

  She stiffened. She said clearly, “I know him but he tells too many lies.” Her eyes lifted to Frank and Frank felt it like a blow in the heart. She said, “Would you help me?”

  “Would I!” He turned again. The man was just staring. Frank lashed him with a look like a sword. He said, “Ma’am, do you live around here?”

  “No. Oh, no.”

  “You don’t want to get down? You don’t want to be with him?”

  “No. Oh, no.”

  “You want to go home?”

  Her eyes filled. “I can never go home.…”

  Frank said, “Don’t cry. How can I help you?”

  “Take me to the hospital.”

  “I will. I will. Just lean back. And don’t worry. I’ll see that you’re all right. Just let me shut these doors. I’ll be in front, right over that wooden wall. My driver’s coming. He might not let me.… But you be quiet for a little bit until we get away from here. Then we’ll call up and we’ll find out and we’ll go anywhere you want.” She wasn’t crying! She was smiling and her face was rosier. “I’d do anything to help you,” said Frank and he meant every throbbing syllable.

  He leaped to the ground and closed the doors. He closed her in there.

  A cop said, “Get this truck outa here, will you, bud?”

  “O.K. O.K.”

  Frank gave the motionless, staring man one more sword-sharp defiant so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it glare, and then he ran around the truck and got in. He reared up immediately and peered over the partition. She was snug. She was there. He hadn’t lost her yet. “O.K.” he whispered.

  Mike came jolting down into his seat, grumbling. “Aw right, officer. I’m getting gone. Can’t a man try and do a little service to his fellow citizens …?”

  “They get your name and address?” snapped the cop.

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  “O.K. then. Move.”

  So the linen service truck began to move along.

  Clive stood in the road. He began to mop his cheek again.

  Laila lay on the linen sacks. She felt comfortable, and quiet and protected. This strange young man knew about the hospital. He was taking her there. In Laila’s tired and confused and too ignorant mind, there was only one hospital. She knew he wasn’t afraid. She resolved she would not be afraid, either. She felt safe.

  CHAPTER 16

  Vince Procter sent his cab along at a steady, skillful pace that was not spectacular but truly speedy. He said to this Talbot, “Sure. I could pick him out blindfolded. You know, I thought there was funny business, right away. So I hung around and when he comes outa the house alone, I sez to him, ‘What’s your angle, bud?’ I sez, ‘Anything in it for me?’ I figure, see, if he bites on that why that gives it away. I mean, for instance, if I sez. ‘Ain’t she the girl that’s supposed to go to the hospital?’ And he sez, ‘No, it ain’t.’ What can I do?”

  “What did he say?” Andy’s tone didn’t commit him to belief in this version of Vince’s behavior.

  “Said nothin’. Looked scared. Said nothin’.” Vince sucked a tooth loudly. “So then I go and call in. I figure.…”

  “Wait a minute.” Andy cut in. “You told him, right then and there, that the girl had been poisoned and needed treatment? You told him by what you said?”

  “Why, I … I … yeah, I guess I … I dunno.” Vince felt chagrin.

  “I wish you knew,” said Andy. “Because if you did and he turned right around to go back into that house, knowing something he had not known until then … why, we’ve got to give him the benefit of the doubt. He is still a liar. But he may have been trying to wiggle out of looking like a damn fool or worse. Yet, he did put us on her trail.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Never mind. Try and remember, though. Will you? If you didn’t tell him the news about Laila Breen, then he knew it before you spoke to him. Because he sure knew it, all right, three seconds after you drove away. I heard him say so.”

  “I don’t remember exactly what I said, every word,” said Vince sulkily. “I didn’t take no recording.”

  He remembered, well enough. It made him a little uneasy, too. It didn’t sound so good or so clever. Sounded entirely too much like Vince had been trying on a little blackmail. Like Vince might have been willing to throw in with that Clive or whoever he was.

  He said bitterly, “What a crumb! For the money, eh? Let the little girl get so sick she’ll probably die, huh?”

  Andy said savagely, “If he knew she’d been poisoned when he took her there, crumb is not the word.”

  They sped along in silence. “Hit Lemon Grove as soon as you can,” Andy told him again. “You’re going to do that?”

  “I am,” said Vince. “Listen, I know this town.”

  “Lemon Grove is the only one I’m sure of. It’s five o’clock. If we don’t catch up with them while they are still on this Lemon Grove, we’ll be sunk.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve lost my guide.”

  “Yeah?” Then Vince asked curiously, “Whadd’ya mean, guide? Who was your guide?”

  “My— A red-haired girl.”

  “Ran out on you, did she?”

  “We parted. Are we making time?”

  “Good time,” soothed Vince. “Say, Mr. Talbot, what’s your interest in this kid? The one with the long hair. What hair, huh?”

  “My interest?” said Andy. “To save her life.”

  “How come she got away in the first place?”

  “She—just ran away.”

  “Baby stunt, eh?”

  “She’s rather a baby. She can’t help it. She was—hurt.”

  “Dames,” said Vince. “Young and old. All the same. They get hurt and boy, this explains anything. How about the redhead? She run away?”

  “No,” said Andy. “That one never ran away in her life and never will. She guessed right, that’s all. How far to Lemon Grove—?”

  “Not far. Not far.”

  “Now, tell me, you were there,” Andy went back to worrying at the problem of Clive. “You heard the Fleming woman tell the police that the girl was with Pearl Dean. Did she say anything about Breen?”

  “Nope. Said nothing but ‘yes’ when they asked her. Far as I heard. That made any sense, I mean. She was all confused. Man, she was crying and talking about ‘Dearest Pearl’ and universal healing or sumpin like that. She was a mess. They couldn’t get no sense outa her.”

  He licked his lips. “You know what I’d like to see, Mr. Talbot? Huh? I’d just like to see us walk up to that crumb and say nothin’. No, I’d look at him and if it’s the same one, I’d give you a nod or sumpin and you sock him. This I’d like to see.”

  “I’d like to sock him,” admitted Andy.

  “This I’d like. Just the two of us walk up, and whammy, he’s cold.” Vince was dreaming a pleasant dream. He liked the drama of it. He liked the conseque
nces. This cousin or whatever he was, out cold. And speechless. Vince thought it would save a lot of argument if this Clive got speechless pretty fast. It was just a dream.

  Andy Talbot wasn’t dreaming. He was feeling a cold rage, but all his training and conviction were telling him to make sure it rested on a fact. So he said, “Go over that conversation for me.”

  “What conversation?”

  “You and Breen.”

  “I told you the gist of it,” Vince said shortly.

  “We’ll know something,” said Andy out of his own thought stream, “if and when we catch up with Pearl Dean. If Clive has caught her in good faith, that will be that.”

  “Yeah,” said Vince gloomily.

  “But if he has not, if he’s got Dee held up somewhere instead.…” Then Andy grinned, “Although I don’t think it’ll be easy to hold up Dee Allison.…”

  “That the redhead?” said Vince.

  “Red as they come.”

  “Your girl friend, Mr. Talbot?”

  “She’s a friend,” said Andy rather bitterly.

  “You’re partial to the little one with the black hair?” Vince couldn’t get this boy and girl stuff.

  “Call me just a friend to both of them,” snapped Andy, “but if she dies, I’m nobody’s friend.”

  Vince swallowed. “I sure hope I can do something to help this work out all right,” he said. “Sure like to see him get his, that crumb.”

  Talbot said harshly, “Don’t worry. If I get convinced Breen’s been trying to let the girl stay lost, I’ll let him have it.”

  “Yeah,” said Vince, brightening.

  Old Mrs. Gilman leaned so far out of her chair that she nearly tipped over. She could see and she could hear and she could understand but she could not speak. And sometimes her mind went frantic. She had to use all the control she could muster to keep from fainting in despair. For, because she could not speak, people assumed she was no longer intelligent. People spoke to her in simple words, slowly and loudly. People spoke before her as if she were not there, or as if she were a child and could not understand swift sentences with polysyllabic words in them. No one expected her to bear witness and now, when she was an intelligent and competent witness, she was not asked.

  The policeman was looking for the girl with the long black hair. He had searched the trailer and found it empty. The man with adhesive on his face was tearing his hair about it. The girl, he said, was in danger and must be found. He was making a frantic fuss.

  So now they were asking questions, asking the neighbors who knew nothing. Asking Agnes Nilsson, who stood and answered with the nothing that she knew. And would not heed Mrs. Gilman’s tapping fingers at all.

  It was deliberate. Mrs. Gilman knew this. The signal was well understood between them. It meant, “Give me pencil and paper. I have something to communicate.” Mrs. Gilman could not walk into the house to get pencil and paper for herself. Nor could she lift her chair over the eight-inch threshold. But no one but Agnes knew this signal.

  The policeman had said, “What’s wrong with the lady? Can’t talk, can she?”

  And Agnes, just as if Mrs. Gilman were incompetent to understand, had shaken her head and said in a low voice, “She’s a little unstable emotionally since her accident.”

  Mrs. Gilman had seen the policeman nod sagely and seen his eyes evade her own with the distaste of the normal for that which is not. She vowed again in her soul to get rid of Agnes Nilsson. Next time her sons came, she would insist. She would write it and write it, until they took heed. She would make them listen. She still thought, Listen.

  But she knew Agnes would only purr the long words that Agnes loved. The words that people respected, not for their sense but their implication of wisdom. Lies. Lies in polysyllables. If Agnes had said “She is crazy,” they would soon resent it. Agnes was too smart for that.

  Oh how Mrs. Gilman wanted paper and pencil to tell the policeman, and the poor chap who was so anxious, exactly where the girl was now. She had seen. She had understood. She could read. She knew the name of the firm, painted on the side of that truck. Paramount Linen Service. She even knew the license number. Her memory was firm. Her mind was clear. She could tell them where the girl had gone.

  Agnes was saying, “I don’t think there was any such girl as you describe. Of course, I left this porch. I am not an R.N.” Agnes always said this in such a huff that it seemed to be someone else’s fault, not hers. “But I’ve had so much experience, I felt I might be useful.…”

  “You went the other side of this trailer, then? Maybe the old lady.… You don’t think …? Can she talk on her fingers?”

  “A little,” said Agnes condescendingly. “She craves attention, you see.” Mrs. Gilman could hear that soft sly statement. Then Agnes with her face hardening spoke more loudly, “I should not have left her. After all, she is my charge.” Agnes looked locked to her duty.

  But Mrs. Gilman sighed and fell back. So, Agnes felt guilty. No use, then. When Agnes felt guilty, there was only one person she could take it out on.

  Mrs. Gilman’s tired eyelids fell. They’d have to find out where the girl had gone, in some other way.

  The truck marked Paramount Linen Service scooted north and then west. Mike Torres was lecturing on the subject of authority. Once you gave a man a uniform and a little authority, Mike proclaimed, he is not the same man as he was. Frank Turner appeared to be listening with grave respect. But he was wondering just how he was going to get the girl in the blue coat to the hospital, as he had promised. He didn’t know yet, the name of that friend she wanted to see. And he didn’t know which hospital it was, where that friend had been taken. He was pretty sure the truck was going farther and farther away from whichever hospital it was.

  There came a moment when Mike stopped talking. Then Frank asked him whether he knew.

  “Where they took them? Sure. St. Bart’s. Long Beach, I guess. Why? Whadd’ya want to know for?”

  Frank hesitated. It was a good chance to tell. All he had to do was answer the question. If he did, he guessed Mike would dump him and the girl, right then and there. He’d be out of a job, and that didn’t bother him so much, but he kept remembering that he didn’t have but about four bucks in his pocket.

  “You got a look at that redhead, I bet,” Mike chuckled, answering his own question. “Listen, kid. She was a stunner, all right, but it don’t pay to get romantic ideas about a perfect stranger. For all you know, she’s married and got eight redheaded kids. Hey?”

  “Was she hurt much?” Frank asked. He thought perhaps the redheaded girl was his angel’s friend, for whom she was so afraid.

  “I doubt it,” Mike said. “She musta seen it coming, and she knew how to get limp and protect herself. She was out, all right, but she didn’t get no bones broken. They didn’t think. Of course,” Mike’s habitual gloom reasserted itself, “there could be something internal. You never know, you know.” Mike brooded. “For natural causes,” proclaimed Mike suddenly, “I’m going to stop here a minute.”

  As soon as the door marked Men had closed on Mike, Frank was up and back in the truck’s clean-linen compartment, looking over the partition. He was going to suggest, if she didn’t mind, that they might wait until they were near a bus line before they told Mike and got thrown out. He was going to ask if she was in any special hurry. Or if she wanted to tell him her friend’s name, so he could jump out now and call St. Bart’s on the phone and inquire. Then, maybe there’d be someplace else he could take her, and wait until visiting hours.

  But he didn’t ask any of these questions.

  She was asleep. She was just curled quietly back there, sound asleep. She must be awful tired and beat and sleep was a healing thing.… Asleep! Ah, let her sleep! Maybe he could work it so Mike wouldn’t know. He thought of a way. He’d tell Mike he’d take the truck in alone. It was so late. When they went past Mike’s corner right half a block from where Mike’s supper was waiting, all Frank had to do was suggest this. Mike wou
ld be tempted.

  Then, the girl could sleep on. Then, he could even take off, truck and all, and take her home. She’d said she could never go home. But Frank could. He had one. His heart kind of caught in his throat when he thought of it. Suppose she didn’t have any place to go for the night, for instance. He could take her home with him, then. Ma wouldn’t mind. Ma would see it the way Frank saw it. Frank considered his mother a rattle-brained female, for which he kidded and adored her. Ma wouldn’t even ask any questions except if the girl was hungry. Ma never suspected anybody of being anything but a human being, which was reckless and rattlebrained. But swell.

  Ma wouldn’t mind. He’d lift her gently to the bed in the front room. She’d never wake, so gentle he could be.

  When Mike came back he looked hard at the lad’s face, grunted, got in, snapped his headlights on. The truck started. “What’s with you?” asked Mike suddenly.

  “Hm?”

  “You got the funniest look on your puss.”

  “Have I? Gee, I … I dunno.…”

  “Nothing to sit there smiling about, that I can see. We’re going to be late as hell pulling in and the boss won’t want to believe.…”

  Frank kept his face stiff and appeared to be listening.

  When Dee Allison opened her eyes she thought for a moment she was in a hospital. The white coat on the attendant was the first thing she recognized. But then, as her senses recovered their touch on the rest of her environment, she knew she was in an ambulance.

  She promptly sat up.

  Just as promptly, the attendant pushed her down. “Now,” he soothed, “you’re O.K., Miss Allison. Nothing much wrong with you at all. Now, we’ll take care of you.” He had a smooth young face.

  Dee lay and looked at him, waiting for all her wits and a full memory to return. She thought she had better be careful. This was no time to start blazing. It was almost as if Andy Talbot said in her ear, “Use your head, Dee.” Yes, she had better be smart and avoid, if she could, showing any misery that would tempt this lad to put her out of it. Dee thought that she might be drugged, fast, if she showed cause.