Ghost of a Chance (20 page)

Chappawan lay just below us when the black sedan emerged from a curve and climbed the slope toward us. Jeff ducked below the level of the dashboard.

“My glove,” he muttered, “I dropped my glove.”

“I’ll help you find it,” I said.

I bent low beside him. My head between my knees, I scrabbled around the floor with one hand. The sound of the black sedan’s motor joined the sound of the truck’s. There was a roar as the other car came opposite the open cab of our’s. I lifted one eye above Jeff’s shoulder.

Blinky was in the driver’s seat, his head bent over the wheel. Beyond him I could see a flash of red hair. They made a cute couple. They would have looked especially cute standing above us with guns in their hands while we wallowed below on a five-foot ledge. Jeff and I straightened up. We peered out the back window. We heaved sighs of gratitude.

“Find your glove?” the driver asked.

“Yeah,” Jeff said.

I leaned back in my seat. “May I have a cigarette? I’d love a cigarette.”

“Mind if we smoke?” Jeff asked the driver.

“Not a bit.”

“We’ll be careful not to get ashes all over your truck.”

The driver laughed. “That’s rich,” he said. “That’s really rich.” Ahead of us the covered bridge hove into sight. We rattled through it. The town of Chappawan was just awaking. There were lights in kitchen windows. A boy was throwing newspapers at front doors. Some men were digging free their garage doors. We rounded the corner into the main street; the store fronts were still closed and dark. We pulled up before the station.

“Here we are!” the driver chirped. “With five minutes to spare.” We thanked the man, profoundly, from the bottom of our hearts. “Look,” he said, “all I give you was a ride.”

He tipped his hat, the shovelers waved, and the truck wheeled on. We went into the station.

In the center of the small room stood a fat-bellied coal stove. It was unlit, cold and black, but two men and an elderly woman had crowded around it, as if to get some warmth from its reputation. To our left was a ticket office; its window was closed.

Jeff said, “I’ve got to find a phone booth. Quick.”

I looked around. “There doesn’t seem to be one.”

He went to the ticket office window and tried to look through its frosted glass. The woman glanced at Jeff. She called to him and her voice was loud and friendly.

“You’ll have to buy your tickets on the train.”

The door opened and slammed shout behind us as a short, stocky man stamped into the waiting room. His heavy cheeks glistened with the cold. He thrust out his lower lip and blew the tears out of his thick-browed eyes. Jeff and I turned back to the woman.

Jeff said, “Is there any way to make a phone call from here? Or from near here?”

“If you waited until the office opened… but then you would miss your train, wouldn’t you? It’s due in a few minutes.”

Her cheerful face darkened in thought. Her companions were thinking, too. Everyone in the station became interested in solving our problem. We didn’t tell them that this phone call might save a girl’s life. We didn’t tell them that and yet they were behaving as though our call was the most important thing in the world. It was nice, it was warming. It was a fine antidote for the low opinion of human nature that had been forming inside me for the last two days.

The woman said, “The gas station has a phone and it’s open now. But it’s so far. I’m afraid you’d miss your train.”

“Wait a minute,” one of the men said. “Would a telegram do just as well?”

“But he can’t send a wire,” the woman said, “until Mr. Morton opens the office at eight.”

“He can write out the message,” the man said, “and leave it with the money at the window there. Morton will send it when he comes in. I’ve known Morton for forty-five years, fifty years. I went to school with him. He’s reliable.”

“All right,” Jeff said, “I’ll do that.”

The frozen little man stopped beating his hands together. “I’ll see he sends your wire,” he said. “My train don’t get in till after eight.”

“Thanks,” Jeff said, “thanks.”

A whistle, moaning and eerie, sounded in the distance.

“You’ll have to hurry!” the woman cried. “Have you got pencil and paper?”

“Yes,” Jeff said.

Hastily he scribbled his wire, a message to Hankins at New York Police Headquarters. He folded it around a pair of dollar bills and tucked it in the crevice beneath the ticket window. The conductor was shouting “All aboard!” as we ran across the platform. He followed us up the steps, the train jerked to a start, and Chappawan was behind us.

I settled back into my seat. My head was throbbing now, my eyes burning, my feet were wet and cold. But for the first time in thirty-six hours I felt at ease. In half an hour Hankins would have Jeff’s wire. He would know that the girl who needed his protection was Sally Kennedy at the Hotel Sultan. In a few minutes more he would be on his way to her.

I put my head on Jeff’s shoulder and closed my eyes. Our responsibility was ended. Sally Kennedy’s life was in far better hands than ours. For the first time I knew surely that she would not die.

My head bounced off Jeff’s shoulder and I was wrenched awake with a jolt. I glanced out the window. The train was moving slowly along in the stone-walled slot of upper New York. Everything was all right. I looked at Jeff. His face was white, his lips drawn in a tight line. I knew that everything was not all right.

I said, “Jeff, what is it?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so.”

“Jeff…”

“Listen, Haila. The day before yesterday… when we first heard from Frank Lorimer… he asked us to meet him at the Belfast Bar…”

“Yes?”

“He couldn’t talk to us there, he had to slip us a note. He couldn’t talk to us at the Belfast… because there was a member of the gang at the Belfast…”

“Yes, Jeff?”

“It’s been a long time since then, Haila, but try to think back. Think hard. Can you remember any of the people in the Belfast then? Can you remember who was there?”

I thought back. I remembered the jovial bartender and the old, sweet-faced sweeper who had been Frank Lorimer. I remembered the drunk who had talked to us. There had been several people in the booths and a little, stalky man who had come to the bar beside us and ordered drinks… I saw his chubby, blooming face, his bushy eyebrows…

“Jeff, no! Jeff, the little man in the Chappawan Station… was he…”

“Yes.”

“The little man who volunteered to take care of your telegram to Hankins.”

“Yes,” Jeff said, “he’s taken care of it by now.”

The train moved along through the Bronx. A clock hanging outside a store slid by us. It said nine twenty-five. In one hour and thirty-five minutes it would be eleven o’clock.

The police had not got Jeff’s wire. Hankins didn’t know what eleven o’clock would mean for Sally Kennedy. Sally Kennedy didn’t know.

Only Jeff and I could help her now. And we were on a train, train that moved slowly, haltingly, over the middle of the Harlem River.

All the way into the 125th Street station
, our train marked time. Inching along, jerking to a complete stop, then crawling on again. I found myself pressing my knees against the seat before me, subconsciously trying to use my weight to keep us moving. Under his breath Jeff muttered things that I was glad I couldn’t hear.

Then, at last, the train went into a sprint, a sprint that carried us into the station. Before we had stopped Jeff was down the steps of our coach and onto the station platform. He ran along it, his hand extended to me. I hit the platform, stumbled into a run and kept on going. We were the first to reach the stairs, the way before us was clear.

Jeff was ahead of me, almost to the street, when he stopped. I piled into him.

“Jeff, what…”

He was turning me around, pushing me back.

“Joyce,” he said.

Even before he spoke, I had seen him. He was standing in a position from which he could watch both flights of stairs to the street. He wasn’t leaning indolently against a wall, a cigarette drooping from his lips. He was crouched forward, on his toes. Then he was coming toward us, running to beat the truck that would momentarily block his way. His right hand was in the breast of his overcoat, fumbling there.

I stumbled on the steps and fell. Jeff caught me around my waist. My feet only touched every third step as he dragged me up with him. Halfway to the top we met the first of our train’s ex-passengers. We struggled through them to the platform. The train was creeping out of the station when we clambered back on it. Jeff waited on the bottom step, leaning out to look back. Then he climbed up, into the car.

“We made it,” he said. “He’s still back there.”

“He’ll take a cab. He’ll beat us to Grand Central.”

“No. It can’t be done… not without a police escort.”

We started forward, to the front of the train, closer to the street when we reached Grand Central. It would take ten minutes to get there, ten more to reach the Sultan Hotel. It would be quarter after ten, forty-five minutes before eleven o’clock. We still had a chance, Sally Kennedy still had a chance. We stopped on the rear platform of the smoker, at the door farthest forward.

Through the window we watched the lights click by in the tunneled wall. I counted off the streets above us… Eighty-fifth Street… Eighty-fourth… I knew that I was counting too fast. We would be at Sixty-eighth Street and then, after that, we would be moving away from Sally Kennedy, moving away while the minutes ticked off.

In the coach behind us people began to fold their newspapers, reach for their hats and coats. The door at the other end of the coach swung open and on its platform I saw him. I saw the short, stocky figure before it jerked back out of sight, the eyes under the bushy brows staring at me. I caught Jeff’s hand.

“It’s Shorty,” I said. “He’s on the next platform.”

Jeff’s face was white. “We’ll have to run for it. We’ve got a one car jump on him. We’ll have to keep that lead.”

“People will get between us,” I said. “That should help.”

“How do you feel, Haila?”

“Like running away from Shorty.”

“Are you frightened?”

“Of course.”

“I hope that tidbit about fear lending wings isn’t a lot of propaganda.”

“Jeff, he can’t do anything to us in broad daylight! In the middle of New York City!”

“He doesn’t have any choice. They’ve got to get us now… anyway or anyplace they can. We know too much.”

“I wish that tidbit about a little knowledge would turn out to be a lot of propaganda.”

The train slowed for Grand Central. Jeff folded up the floorboard and opened the door. We were alongside the platforms now, but still moving fast. Slowly, the speed slackened and Jeff jumped. I followed him. We didn’t look back; we ran.

We ran up a ramp and into the main waiting room. It was crowded, jammed with people. We weaved crazily through them. A wag yelled at us that we were running in the wrong direction, that the trains were the other way. We brushed past him, up the stairs toward the arcade where the taxis were lined.

A girl was getting out of the first cab. A porter took her bags from the rear seat while she fumbled in her purse. Jeff pushed her aside. “This is on me,” he said. I was in the cab and Jeff was beside me. He slammed shut the door and showed the driver a ten dollar bill. He told him that we wanted to go to the Sultan Hotel. He told him that we were in a hurry.

The cab pulled out into Vanderbilt Avenue, left-turned toward Forty-second Street. A swarm of cars trapped by a red light stopped us. We looked back. There was no sign of Shorty behind us but we both slid low in the seat. We stayed crouched down as the taxi streamed up Park Avenue.

The doorman at the Sultan hurried out as we squealed to a stop before its door. We didn’t use him; we passed him in the middle of the sidewalk. We squeezed into an elevator whose doors were sliding together. The door to room 807 was standing open. A maid was running a carpet sweeper.

Jeff said, “Miss Kennedy… is she here?”

The maid said, “No. No, she’s gone.”

I sat on the arm of a chair. I was afraid that I would be violently sick. I held my breath, clenched my teeth. I tried not to think that Sally Kennedy was gone… tried to think where she might be; if she were still alive, where she might be…

Jeff had lifted the phone from its cradle. He had told the operator how to get hold of Lieutenant Detective Hankins of the Homicide Bureau. He turned back to the maid.

“Were you here when Miss Kennedy left?”

The maid was looking at him with bewildered eyes. “Yes,” site said. “She left about ten minutes ago.”

The operator had Hankins on the phone. Jeff didn’t have to do much talking. Hankins would be here; he was on his way. Jeff hung up. He moved quickly to the hall door and turned the key in its lock. He made a fast tour of the bedroom. He locked the living room windows and pulled down their shades. He switched on the overhead light.

The maid had stood still, watching dumbly. Now she made a dive for the locked door. Jeff caught her by the arm. She opened her mouth to scream.

“Wait,” Jeff said. “Wait a minute. Listen.”

Jeff talked fast. He told her about the plot against Sally Kennedy’s life, how it was closing in upon her. He told her that the police were on their way and how, in the meantime, she might help. She sank down on the davenport and her face was filled with a helpless fright.

“I…” she said, “I… what can I do?”

“Have you any idea where Miss Kennedy went?”

“No.”

“But she was leaving the hotel? She was dressed to go out?”

“She put her hat and coat on, yes.”

“Did she say anything to you, anything at all?”

“No, nothing.”

“Not even good morning? Did she ignore you?”

“Oh, Miss Kennedy never ignores me. She… she wouldn’t do that.”

“But she didn’t speak to you this morning?”

“That was because she was busy. She was on the telephone and I went right on into the bedroom.”

“She was talking to someone on the phone? And when she hung up she left right away?”