Ghost of a Chance (2 page)

“Now, Aunt Ellie…”

“Come on, Haila,” Jeff said.

“Haila,” Aunt Ellie said, “do you have your Uncle Myron’s address?”

“Yes. Are you going to write him?”

“No. In case anything happens to me while I’m left here all alone, I want you to notify Myron first. He’ll make ail the arrangements about where to ship my body and all.”

“Haila,” Jeff pleaded.

He steered me out into the hall, hastily pulled the door shut behind him. Before we reached the vestibule the radio blared out from our living room. There was nothing Aunt Ellie liked so much as to settle down with a good book beside a radio going full blast. Sometimes, if the book and the radio weren’t up to her standard of interest, she crocheted while reading and listening, so as not to waste a moment. I have never known Aunt Ellie to complete a book, finish any piece of crocheting larger than a coaster for a shot glass or know what had been said, sung or played on the radio. But I knew that for an hour or two she would be happy and I prepared to forget about her. There was another lady somewhere in New York who apparently needed some thinking about.

The snow plows were out in force. The little buglike ones nipped futilely at the mounting drifts and even the huge sanitation trucks with blades attached to their fronts were battling the storm to no more than a draw. New York City, whether it liked it or not, was being inundated. It would take a hundred thousand men to dig us out. I could hear the Mayor’s tears bouncing off the budget.

At Sixth Avenue we gave up even trying for a taxi. We struggled down to West Fourth Street and headed east. Crossing the lower edge of Washington Square was acute agony. The wind seemed to have sworn out a personal vendetta against me. I clung to Jeff’s arm, lowered my head against the driving, slashing pretty snowflakes and kept my mind on the brandy I would have at our journey’s end.

We turned right into Thompson Street, plodded on across West Third, and there was the Belfast Bar. I followed Jeff down the five steep steps from the sidewalk.

The Belfast made no claim to being part Grille, part Cafe; it was all saloon. The hot, heavy air was untainted by frying onion or hamburger; it reeked pure beer. To our right stood the bar, one of those Victorian masterpieces of mahogany and brass that had managed to survive Prohibition. Along the opposite wall a row of narrow booths built for two stretched into the gloomy rear of the freight-car shaped room. There was a frowzy moose head, the sword of a swordfish, a picture of a 1901 stag picnic, a reproduction of Abe Lincoln’s tavern license. This was a man’s place, a perfect hideout for the neighborhood’s harried husbands. Although no one so much as glanced at me, I felt like an intruder.

Business was brisk. A scurrying waiter delivered a drink to one booth, snatched an empty glass from another, slapped at the table of a third with a sleazy towel. At the bar a dozen customers appreciatively watched the old bartender tighten the collars on a row of beers. At a wall telephone a man was dialing a number. Another man, one who had obviously closed the joint the night before and opened it that morning, stood in front of the cigarette machine and argued with himself about which brand of smokes he liked. One of these men was Frank Lorimer.

“What’ll it be, folks?”

The old bartender made it an important question, something to consider carefully and thoughtfully. His pale eyes peered solemnly out of his thin, wrinkled face. A fringe of gray hair encircled his nude, battle-scarred skull. He reached beneath the bar and brought up an ashtray, rubbed it clean with a swivel of his shirted elbow and set it before us. He smiled a broad, professional smile.

“I’ll have a beer,” Jeff said.

“And the lady?”

Before I could answer, a tenor voice chirped, “Hey, you, two more of the same!” A little man had roughly jostled a place for himself beside me at the bar. His chubby, apple-cheeked face with its bushy eyebrows jeered as the old bartender glared at him. He repeated his order and the bartender cut him short.

“I’m serving the lady,” he said. “Lady, what will you have?”

“I’d like a brandy, please.”

“We got brandy, lady, but I wouldn’t recommend it to my worst enemy. Have something else. Do yourself a favor.”

“Well… a sherry?”

“A sherry and a beer. Right.” He picked up the two empty glasses that the man beside me had thrust across the bar. He said to him, “Your friend in the booth want the same?”

“That’s what I said.”

“That’s what I thought you said, but I couldn’t believe my ears. Your friend has no respect for his stomach. A martini is tough enough when it’s vermouth with gin, but… well, it’s his stomach.” Jeff asked, “What’s he doing to his stomach?”

“Sherry,” the bartender said, “instead of vermouth. Gin and sherry. Well, it takes all kinds to make a world.”

“C’mon,” the little man squealed, “c’mon.”

“Yes, sir.” The bartender was being sarcastic. “Very well, sir.”

His hands moving like dancers, he lined four glasses in the groove of the bar, added a shaker, a bottle of gin, a bottle of sherry to the row. He drew two beers. He flipped ice into the shaker, poured gin onto the ice, lifted the other bottle, flipped it briefly over the shaker and, without righting it, switched it to my glass. Everyone watched him; it was a performance. He twisted a sliver of lemon peel into the cocktail glass. With one hand he spun the ice in the martini, with the other he corked the two bottles. He poured the cocktail, recapped the beers and that was that.

“You’re a handy man around a bar,” Jeff said.

The old man grinned. “I’ve made a study of it.” He hurried away in answer to an urgent cry for another beer.

I watched the little tenor take the two drinks back to his booth. I saw a hand stretch across the table corner and snatch at the martini. It disappeared behind the booth’s high back.

“I’ve been here before,” Jeff said to me. “That moose head… I remember that moose head.”

I looked at it. It was ignoring me; its bulging eyes were directed straight at Jeff. “It seems to remember you, too. Jeff, we just sit here and wait?”

“That was what Mr. Lorimer suggested.”

We sipped our drinks, each smoked two cigarettes. We listened to a discussion of the future of the helicopter, a debate on Jim Corbett versus Joe Louis, a heated argument about the advisability of tearing down the Third Avenue El. We ordered two more of the same. Newcomers stamped in, shaking snow from their hats. The line at the bar grew until it was two deep. We were jostled and nudged by bending elbows. Still no one introduced himself to us as Mr. Frank Lorimer.

In the bar mirror I carefully inspected the wall of reflected faces. It only proved that if Lorimer was in sight, his was a face I’d never seen before. A few women had drifted in, but if one of theirs was the life in danger, she was not at all unnerved by the fact.

The beery gentleman who had been shopping for cigarettes when we arrived tapped Jeff on the shoulder. “What do you know?” he inquired.

“Not much,” Jeff said.

The man shoved his hat back on his head and a smug look spread over his face. He had watery blue eyes set too close to a long, thin nose and a twisted, colorless mouth. “Twenty years,” he said, “I been asking people what they know. Always get one of two answers. ‘Not much’ or ‘You’re drunk.’ Never misses. Sure fire.”

“Try him.” Jeff nodded toward our red-faced neighbor who seemed to have permanently deserted his friend in the booth. “See what he says.”

“I did. He said, ‘You’re drunk.’ Convinced?”

“Never misses,” Jeff agreed.

“Sure fire,” the student of human nature said.

A new voice wheezed over my shoulder and into my ear. I could hardly hear the two whispered words. “Excuse me.”

A little white-haired old man was standing at my elbow. His face was a gnome’s with a thousand crisscrossing wrinkles. The unmatching trousers and coat of his ancient suit had been patched until parts of it were a crazy quilt and each patch looked like a bid for a prize in a sewing contest. His decrepit but spotless shirt was multi-mended, even his necktie had been stitched back into service. He was immaculate, exquisite, obviously a bum. In his hands was a long-handled broom.

I slid down off my stool and stepped back from the bar; Jeff did the same and we watched the little old man sweep the worn, shredding floor beneath our chairs as meticulously as if he had been cleaning the royal rug in the bedchamber of His Majesty, the King. “Hello, Pop,” the drunk said to him. “What do you know?”

“Not much,” the old man whispered, and smiled.

The drunk turned triumphantly to Jeff. “See? But it get monotonous. Any wonder I drink?”

“No wonder,” Jeff said.

“I’m justified. But I been drinking too much.” He placed his glass firmly on the bar. “I’m on the wagon. I’ll never touch another drop.”

There was a moment’s silence in honor of the gentleman’s good intentions. Then Jeff said, “How about a beer?”

The drunk said, “Don’t care if I do. Thanks.”

He deeply drank our health and wandered away. The little old man was sweeping his way down the line. The bartender placed a double shot of whiskey and a large beer chaser at the end of the bar. As the sweeper drew closer to it he speeded up. The last few feet of floor got only a lick and a promise. Flinging the broom in a corner he settled himself before his reward. He was like a man come home from a too long journey.

I looked at the clock framed in the whiskey advertisement. We had been waiting now for almost an hour. “Darling,” I said, “how do we decide how long to stay here?”

“Let’s smoke one more cigarette.”

Jeff lit mine, then muffed his own. He tore another match from the packet, but he didn’t use it. He was looking at the inside of the packet. Without speaking, he handed it to me.

The words were printed in pencil, printed minutely with a labored, desperate clarity that shouted the importance of the message:

“Can’t talk here. Meet me at Carlin’s Bar. 14th Street near 3rd.” There was one more word; it was
“hurry,”
and it was underlined twice.

“Jeff, how did Lori…”

He stopped me from saying the name. “Someone must be watching him,” he said very softly. “He doesn’t want that someone to know about us and start watching us, too. That would end our value to him… and to his lady friend.”

Involuntarily, I glanced around the room. It might have been any neighborhood bar on any snowy Sunday afternoon. At the moment everyone seemed to be minding his own business, no one minding ours.

I slipped into my coat while Jeff paid the bill. We said good-bye to the old bartender and worked our way out of the Belfast Bar, out into the unabating storm. There wasn’t a cab in sight. We headed for Fourteenth Street and, obeying the plea in Frank Lorimer’s message, we hurried. As far as Ave could tell, we were not followed.

Carlin’s bar was as public as
the Belfast had been intimate. It was a huge, flashy place, all personality, no character. The decor was in key with the juke box that looked like a rainbow on a bender. It was no place for a quiet drink. It was Fourteenth Street at its gaudiest. Even the trio, of bartenders seemed to be on leave from Coney Island.

Jeff and I sat halfway back in the imitation leather and chromium tunnel where we could watch the door. For over an hour we had been watching it. We had seen it open and close dozens of times. We had examined a hundred faces; not one of them had we recognized from the Belfast Bar. We had peered into a hundred pairs of eyes and waited for some sign; no one did more than glance indifferently at us.

“Jeff,” I said, “maybe Frank has changed his mind about saving the lady’s life.”

“I don’t think Frank would do that.”

“You don’t know about Frank. Maybe he’s got a fickle streak in him. That he inherited from his father.”

“He’s doing the best he can, Haila. You can be sure of that.”

“If only he’d given us more of a message at the Belfast.”

“He was being watched.”

“I wonder if we’re being watched.”

“Relax, Haila. Give Frank a chance.”

Jeff leaned back, lit a cigarette, lapped at his beer with enjoyment. I tried to lean back in my chair and only some adroit squirming prevented me from falling completely off it. Jeff laughed at me; I didn’t laugh back. A suspicion had crawled into my mind and it blossomed into a fact. There was no doubt about it. Jeff Troy was a swine. I could prove it and I would.

“Darling,” I said, “may I see that match fold?” He handed it to me and I examined it again. “You know,” I said, “anyone could have written this.”

“What?” Jeff asked.

“You wanted some beer,” I said enigmatically, and enigmatically I continued. “Before Frank Lorimer called you mentioned that you would like some beer.”

“Did I?” He was playing it cagey, but it was futile. I had him.

“Yes, you did. Then the phone rang and a guy named Frank Lorimer wanted to see you in a place where there’s beer. Then Frank sent you to another place where, also, there is beer. But,” I said and I paused to torture Jeff, “but I didn’t hear the phone ring. And… and anybody could have written this message. Jeff, you swine! I say it once and I say it again. You swine.”

“Me?” Jeff said incredulously. “A swine?”

“Precisely. You staged that phone call. You wrote that message. There is no Lorimer. This is all some ill-conceived treachery on your part to get away from Aunt Ellie and drink some beer.” “You’re wrong, Haila. I’m fond of Aunt Ellie.”

“You needn’t be fond of her. There’s no reason for you to be fond of my relatives. But to go to such lengths to get her out of your sight is an insult to Aunt Ellie. After all, she is my mother’s sister.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say about your mother.”

“You see? You do detest Aunt Ellie!”

“No. She calls me ‘Jeffie,’ but I do not detest her.” He was speaking carefully, formally and with great feeling. It made me realize that he had a lot to get off his chest and I let him go on. “I spend,” he said, “an exhausting week at the studio, clicking a heavy camera all day, and on Sunday I want to recuperate. But I don’t detest Aunt Ellie for sapping my remaining strength with her giddy chatter. I realized when I married you that you undoubtedly had some rather eerie relatives who would be coming to New York to see Grant’s Tomb and the Flatiron Building and to buy some store clothes.”