Black-Eyed Stranger Page 3

  He leaned back and made himself limp as if with relief. “Quite a little man,” he murmured. “Yeah. You know anything about writing, Baby?”

  “Who? Me?”

  “It’s a bug,” Sam said. “Like a germ, see? Bites you. Eats you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Now I’ve thought of it, I got to get my mystery story out of the trunk again.”

  “Yeah?” said Baby. He couldn’t have been less fascinated.

  “It’s easy to work out the first part, you know. The way they picked up this banker. He had habits.” Sam drew triangles with a spoon handle.

  “What banker?”

  “Never mind,” Sam said. He spun the spoon. “I’m thinking about my work, Baby. My story.”

  “Stories,” said Baby Hohenbaum, looking as if he were about to spit.

  “If I ever write a book about your boss, I’ll put you in it.”

  “Huh?”

  “For relief,” Sam said.

  “Listen, Sam,” Baby’s brow furrowed. “You wrote this story about this snatch, didn’t you?”

  “Sure. Sure.”

  “You’re smart.”

  “Sure.”

  “What did you do with the … who was it, again, that got snatched in this story?”

  “The banker.” Sam was patient.

  “Yeah. Well. Did he stay alive?”

  Sam’s jaw cracked. His cheek trembled. “If I know what you mean,” he said slowly, “you mean, did they hide him out and figure to let him go home once they collected. Or not?”

  “Yeah. Or not?” said Baby. “That’s what I mean. Or not?”

  Sam didn’t answer. He devoted himself to breathing easily, to making that effort.

  “The thing is,” Baby pouted, “what would be the use? Believe me, a lot of trouble would be saved, Sam. You wouldn’t need to bother with …”

  “Groceries.” Sam shifted in the seat, his eyes fixed on the sausage finger that was scratching the tablecloth with a dirty nail. “Lots of things. I get what you mean, Baby. I … kept him alive,” he said feebly.

  “Why?”

  “For the happy ending, naturally,” said Sam savagely.

  “Oh, yeah. In the story.”

  Sam watched the finger smudging ashes in a pattern. “Anyhow,” he said feebly, “it’s smarter to keep him alive.”

  “Why?” said Baby Hohenbaum.

  Sam said angrily. “Okay, I told you I couldn’t finish it!” He clenched his hand and relaxed it again. “There’s nothing to worry about, providing you fix it so they got a safe place. Safe, quiet, you know the kind of place.”

  Let Baby tell him the kind of place!

  “But,” pouted Baby, “they got to cover their faces and all trouble like that, and what’s the difference? They’d still get the money.”

  Sam felt his heart beating. It was pounding, although slowly, slowly, the blood surged. He thought, I’d better get out, out of here. I can’t sit here much longer. He said brittlely, “I gave it a lot of thought, Baby. Believe me. The most danger is the pickup. After dark is best.”

  “Naw,” said Baby, full of scorn. “You’re old-fashioned, Sam.”

  “That so? Okay. You write the book.” He shrugged. He leaned on the wall.

  Baby’s fat lips pulled open to laugh. “Great ladder, you, Sam. Listen, you said it already. You’re smart. Habits. People do the same thing, same time, like once a week. Like …”

  Sam looked stupid.

  “Like music lessons, say,” pressed Baby. “Like …”

  “Like going to school?”

  “I mean, after school.”

  “Like playing poker,” Sam went on with smooth speed. “People play poker once a week.”

  “Who?”

  “My banker. He always—”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Of course, you have a car.”

  “Sure.”

  “Nothing to it,” said Sam bitterly. “Nothing at all. But I don’t know how to finish the damn story.” His ears pricked. “Hell, I’ll never finish it.” He leaned chin on hands mournfully. “I’m only kidding myself. That’s all it is. Most people do, Baby. You know?”

  That soft voice said something, down the room, near the kitchen door.

  “The boss don’t kid,” Baby said, looking around rather uneasily. “Well, take it easy, Sam. Don’t get discouraged.” He brayed.

  Sam reaned against the back of the booth. He made himself lazy. “So long,” he drawled, lifting his hand halfway to a salute. “See you around sometime.”

  “So long, Sam,” said Ambielli over his shoulder pleasantly. Baby fell in behind him.

  Fred, the waiter, came to clear the table, looking ruffled and defensive. “I don’t have to take that from anybody, Mr. Lynch,” he said righteously. “Not anybody.” He gave Sam the check.

  Sam, who had been leaning on his hand, lifted his head. “Am I stuck for Ambielli’s lunch?” He was ready to bray at that.

  Fred leaned down. “They ate on the house. I can quit, you know. If Nick wants to play around, I can quit. It ain’t Mr. Ambielli. He’s always perfectly polite. Always was. The bigger the man, the better the manners. You’ve heard that saying.” He looked superior. “Too bad, when you think how Mr. Ambielli used to travel. All he’s got left is that roughneck, that fat Hohenbaum. Mr. Ambielli used to be a very dangerous man, Mr. Lynch, but he always had manners. I’ll say that. Looks terrible, don’t he? Sick, I mean. Funny, to see him down …”

  Sam didn’t seem to be listening very carefully. But he heard and his mind made its comments. Used to be dangerous. Sam thought. That’s funny. He could think of nothing any more dangerous than Ambielli, as he was now, down.

  He said aloud, “Pretty funny. I could write a book. Not the ‘Life and Times of Ambielli.’ No, Fred. ‘The Life and Times of Samuel Lynch.’ Especially the Times. Fifteen minutes here. Fifteen minutes there. Very funny. Really killing. You know that?”

  “Anything else, Mr. Lynch?” Fred said, resignedly. He was used to hearing his customers release their feelings in bitter and cryptic speeches which he must hear but never hear explained.

  “Shot of rye,” the customer said.

  Sam closed his eyes. He knew too much. Yeah, all about it. He knew the whole thing. Except, possibly, when. When, he did not know. But he thought, soon. He was like the one member of the audience who had already read the play. It was a kind of freak. He might so easily have followed the plot, like everybody else, with interest. With horror.

  This way, he wasn’t going to be able to follow. He broke into a sweat, sitting there. The pit of his stomach seemed to fall away.

  The piece of newspaper was still there on the table. He leaned his cheeks on his fists. It wasn’t very good of her. She looked like any nice-looking young girl in pretty clothes. Kind of cute. Nothing special. Teeth didn’t show. She wasn’t smiling. He shivered.

  “Who’s that?” Fred said into his neck. “Friends of yours get their pictures in the paper?”

  “Who? These people?” Sam hit the paper with his knuckles. “No, no. These people are just people. A couple of members of the human race. Oh, high class people, but just the same, ants in the anthill, pebbles on the beach, flakes in the snow.” He gulped the whisky. “You ever see a dog run over by a car?” he inquired bitterly.

  Fred looked at this customer. The black eyes were half closed. The black hair was rumpled, the chin was a little blue. This customer was, he judged from his experience, going to get drunk, now. “No, sir,” he said, “I never did.”

  “I never did, either. One time, years ago, when I was young, for I was young once,” Sam twisted his mouth, “I was a hero. I pulled a dog out from under a car that was coming right for it.”

  “That so?” Fred said dutifully. “Did you get a reward or anything?”

  “I got something. Know what it was, Fred? I got a broken collar bone. Right quick. Wasn’t that a fool kid stunt, though?” He put all his fingers in his hair.


  Fred was waiting for the inevitable order. No use to leave. This customer would want more whisky. “Was it your dog?” he asked politely.

  “It wasn’t even my dog.” Sam said slowly. “But I’d … seen it around. I’d more or less met the pooch. You know how it is. It wasn’t a perfectly strange dog.” The black eyes were despairing.

  “Another rye, sir?”

  “Minute,” Sam said. He licked his mouth. “Yes, sir, I was eighteen years of age. I’ve lived a long time since. Two times eighteen is thirty-six. Am I right? Thirty-six divided by two is eighteen years of age. Which I was. Which I am not any more. Which I … know better.” He rubbed his face. “Live and learn, Fred. The thing to do in this world, Fred, is enjoy the show. Enjoy the show.” He kept on, monotonously. “You only got one ticket to this continuous performance. So stay in your seat. That’s the way. Because it is quite a spectacle. It really is. Nobody wants to walk out on the big show, unless and until. Or, you might say, if and when.” He was scared and talking from fright. He was terrified for the little girl, the one in the blue dress, the young lady. He was swaying and sweating in that booth.

  Fred thought, incredulous, one drink!

  The customer put his palms to his eyes. “Mother, mother, I can see the car coming.” And he shuddered.

  “Looks like you got the shakes a little bit,” Fred said, more or less sympathetically. “Maybe you don’t feel well. I’ll bring you another, will I?”

  But the customer took out his wallet and put down the amount of his check, plus tip, and the customer reached for his hat. He was not going to get drunk, after all. Fred was just as pleased. “Come in again soon.”

  The customer, holding his hat against his breast, began to laugh. “I’d like to, Fred. I’d sure like to. I’ll see if I can make it.” He clapped Fred on the shoulder. “Excuse me. I’m a little high. Just made up my mind. Think I’ll quit my racket.”

  Fred grunted.

  “Silliest thing you ever heard of,” Sam said hilariously. “At my age. Looks like I’m going on the stage.” He left, laughing.

  Chapter 4

  SAM LYNCH was thirty-six years old. He lived alone. He had been married, once, for an unhappy period of three years. He no longer knew where his ex-wife was living or even whether she were alive.

  He had come to New York, as young people do, from the middle of the country. And he had gone earnestly to Columbia University for a year. But it was the city that drew him, the city that kept him.

  He got a humble job on a newspaper and during those first years he progressed rapidly. He became a reporter. Violence attracted him. He was curious about people and especially about people reacting with violence to violent circumstances. He was always probing and prying to find out how such things had come to pass.

  He married, in that good period. He found he did not care, at all, for violent emotions over trivialities around the house. After his divorce he became more and more detached. After the war, in which he was shunted about the world, always landing in lonely places, seeing little or no violence at all, he gave himself over to his demon. He wanted to know.

  Inevitably, there came a time when Sam was telling less than he knew. This was because so much he knew he had picked up from a mouth’s quiver or the timing of a cough. So that what he knew would come out in the telling as a suspicion only. And so often to try to tell would, quite uselessly, have cut off his chance to learn more. But his bosses began to mistrust him, just the same.

  As that side of the balance sank, the other side rose. Professionally violent people about the city began, if not, to trust him, at least to put him down as an odd duck, who liked to listen, but who was detached. What he heard he seemed to swallow and keep. And he was alone. He ran with nobody.

  What he wrote for the paper was perhaps no more barren and dry than what others wrote for other papers, but his superiors were annoyed. They, too, could sense without proof, and were convinced that Sam knew a lot, and they could not forgive his reticence. He kept gleaning. He didn’t gossip. So they began to believe that he was loyal to the wrong side.

  He lost his job. And he lost two or three more. And he entered into a shady half-world in which no one entirely trusted him. Yet he was able to glean; he listened; he learned, and he knew. No one could prove how much. Those on the wrong side, who let him gather bits and pieces, never heard what other bits he had. Those of the right side suspected him angrily of being an accessory before and after many a fact, but the anger was at this reticence and the suspicion was unjust.

  Sam wrote feature stories for one publication or another, in which he skated rapidly over summaries of sensational events, with only here and there a gleaming perception to hint at the hidden wealth of information and understanding from which it sprang. He made a living. He lived alone.

  He was close to being what he thought he was—a spectator. Someday, he knew, if no one else did, he would stop gathering and start telling. But he knew that once he did so he would become the historian of one decade. This one, and only this one.

  Sam was tall but he did not hold himself well. He stood and walked tired. He slouched out of Nick’s that April Wednesday, and went across town, walking no faster, no taller than usual. But he was not laughing any more. He knew that for him an era was ending. At the very least, an era.

  And because he knew there was also a good chance he, Sam Lynch, would end, would not see or hear or know much more at all, everything in the world was bright and dear to him. He seemed to see the subtlest variations of gray in the pavements, and each pane of glass, every brick, every stone were vivid and precious. And the old matchbooks in the gutters were pathetic and spoke to him of man.

  The trouble was, he was attached. He was attached to this thing that was coming. He could not bear to watch it happen. He could not stay in the audience. He was going to take a part. And he knew, better than most, exactly how dangerous a thing this was to do. Ambielli, up, was bad enough. Ambielli, down, was murder.

  He would have to be careful.

  Still, he thought, he would not do it by telephone. That was too light a medium, weightless and unsatisfying. If he were going to break a rule of his life and tell, he was at least going to do it effectively. And take whatever flavor he could from a deed firmly done. He would convince. He would succeed. Even a futile gesture, he well believed, might be fatal for him. He was bound he would not put himself in danger of his life for nothing.

  He would be in danger of his life, all right. He had no doubt of it. Once Ambielli knew who told.

  But he would be careful. He would not go to the Police Department. No one knew better than he how quickly and surely the word could travel on the cancerous network within that body. And get out. No, he would tell her people and they, gratefully, could perhaps protect him by their silence. Yes, he would be as crafty and as careful as it was possible to be, and still tell.

  Sam had a car, nothing fancy, which he used only occasionally. He thought he would get it out. It wasn’t wise to take a cab, or even two cabs, uptown, where he was going. He neither wanted to leave a trail or seem to be trying not to leave one. He didn’t think he was being watched at the moment, although he felt vulnerable and conspicuous on the sidewalk. After all, Ambielli no longer had an organization. Only Baby Hohenbaum, that last leaf on a dead vine. But it would be better if he took the car. It couldn’t answer questions three days later.

  He would have to park it, but even if it were to be seen, parked, in that neighborhood, it might not be connected with him, for it was as anonymous and unnoticeable as a car could be. Yes, among risks, he would choose the car.

  For the good reason that he had a plan. His best plan, he saw, was to go on, afterward and get out of town. He’d go up to the shack at the lake. Sam had vestiges of country memories, and he owned a summer place, crude and cheap, and too chilly in April. It was about an hour and a half away. There he would go. And show himself in the village. Be accounted for, elsewhere. Few knew about his place. He took a
friend up, once in a while. Once in a great while. Perhaps three people in the city knew he had it, where it was, how to get there. But he thought he knew just how he could fix a kind of alibi.

  The thing to do was to pick up, say, a carpenter in the village. It would look as if he had been out to the shack already and found one was needed. Easy to find something for a carpenter to do. Take the winter boards off the windows, for instance.

  The worst danger to him would come later, with the consequences of his telling, the abortion of the crime. There would be questions asked. But he would get up to the lake, fast, and be ignorant and innocent, and far away, and pretty well alibied for what he was now about to do.

  And after all, he had his reputation. This would be the first time he had ever told. Leaning on the spring wind, he walked toward his garage.

  He did not need to look up the number of the Salisbury apartment, for he had looked it up two months ago. It was upper east side, a corner near the river. The main entrance was on one of those queer quiet blocks in which the strong currents of the city did not flow. If traffic were water, then in this place it was stagnant. Sam pulled around to the side of the building and parked. He felt conspicuous at the empty bottom of a stone canyon.

  He walked around the drafty corner, and it was like walking a plank, dangerous in itself, and a worse drop coming. The apartment building was staffed like a hotel. He was required to give his name.

  Slouched in the lobby, he listened to the words, irrevocably spoken. “Mr. Sam Lynch is downstairs, to see Miss Katherine Salisbury.” The sentence, to him, reeked of danger, and of the discipline that “never failed.” He was for it, now. His neck was out, all right. Already.

  “You are to go up, sir.” She was at home. That was lucky. At least it was lucky for somebody.

  “Thanks.” He turned away, walking tired. He went up in the elevator. A manservant admitted him to a foyer of size from which he was conducted to a living room, vast and dim because of heavy dull green fabric more than half across the daylight. “Miss Katherine asks you to wait a moment, sir. She will be down presently.”

  Sam saw the stairs curving up out of this big room. It was quite an apartment. He said, “Okay.” The manservant picked up a cigarette box and offered it. “Thanks,” said Sam. “I’ll smoke my own.” The man contrived without a change on his face to communicate a certain washing of the hands of this caller. Nevertheless, he held the lighter. Then he went away.