She repeated the instructions and nodded. She looked as empty-eyed as a sleepwalker. I could only hope that she’d remember what I’d told her, that she wouldn’t panic and ruin everything.
“We’ll catch a plane first thing in the morning,” I added. “One night in the hotel and then we’ll be out of this town for good, with no trail behind us. Good enough?”
She hesitated.
I knew what was on her mind.
“You’re thinking I could cross you,” I said. “You’re thinking how easy it would be for me to disappear with the money and leave you high and dry. Right?”
She flushed.
“You’ll just have to trust me,” I said. “Or else figure out a better way.”
She couldn’t figure out a better way so she decided to trust me. I gave her twenty for the cab and the room and stood where I was until I saw her catch a cab at the corner of Broadway. Then I lit a cigarette and smoked it all the way down, then dropped it to the sidewalk and squashed it to shreds.
I was ready.
I went back to Amsterdam and walked down to 72nd Street, then headed east until I was opposite her building, or as close to it as I could tell. If I was in luck there would be a driveway I could take.
I was not in luck. The buildings presented a united front and there was no passageway to the rear of her building. I swore softly and tried to think.
Then I got lucky. One of the buildings was a huge apartment building complete with a doorman. I nodded to the doorman and walked inside. He let me go, proving that doormen are as necessary as they are useful, which is to say not at all.
With luck there would be a rear exit from the building’s lobby.
I looked for it and found it. I opened the door slowly and stared at the back of the building where Cindy lived and my heart soared. Then I stared some more and my heart sank like a stone.
I saw her window, the one I could drop through to her apartment.
I also saw the mug.
He was small but he looked wiry. He was wearing a grey sharkskin suit with peaked lapels and there was a bulge inside the jacket that meant one of two things. Either he had a breast or he was carrying a gun. This was a complication.
I tried to figure what my chances might be of taking him and decided they were infinitesimal. Even without the gun he’d be a good bet to set me on my ear. With the gun I was finished. All I had to do was walk out from the doorway and I was as dead as a lox.
I thought for a few seconds about just how pleasant it would not be to be dead. The notion of spending a few hours bleeding on the sidewalk, a few days in a morgue on a cold gray slab, and a few eternities in a hole on Riker’s Island was most unappetizing.
So?
Another possibility came to mind. I could turn around, walk back through the lobby, mumble absurd pleasantries to the silly doorman and be on my way. I wasn’t in too deep to do that. It would be a cinch.
A cinch. I could say a fond goodbye to Cinderella Sims, another fond goodbye to fifty grand, and that would be that. What the hell, it was better than saying a fond goodbye to life, wasn’t it?
Well, wasn’t it?
I wasn’t so sure about that. I thought about fifty thousand dollars, which was one hell of a lot of dough. I thought about Cinderella Sims, which was one hell of a lot of woman. I thought about the town in Arizona and the newspaper and the family and all sorts of things.
I thought about how empty life had been for a while there, and how empty it would be without the money and the girl.
I thought about that a long time.
And then I thought about something else, something fairly obvious to anybody with half a brain in his head. The monkey in the sharkskin suit didn’t know who I was. He didn’t even know I existed. And this gave me a hell of a fine edge on him.
If I tried to sneak up on him I was dead. If I tried to rush him I was dead. But suppose I came on openly? I decided it just might work.
I stuck an unlit cigarette in the corner of my mouth and gave the door a heave. It flew open and I went through it and the guy turned around with a look of panic on his face.
“Hey,” I called. “Hey Mac!”
He looked at me.
I walked over to him, talking as I went. “Can’t find a light in the whole damned building,” I complained. “You got a match on you?”
He pulled out a lighter, still not talking. He flicked it and I leaned toward him to accept the light. Then I grabbed him.
My thumb and forefinger took him by the throat and he couldn’t make a sound. Then I gave him the right to the stomach, throwing it low for luck.
He doubled over.
I let go of his throat and cupped his head with both hands. He was on his way down so I gave him a hand. Two hands.
I brought up a knee and broke his face over it.
I had to let him down slow so he wouldn’t make a noise. Then I rolled him over and looked at him. He was a mess. There were a batch of teeth missing from his mouth and his nose was so broken you couldn’t tell where it had come from. I had to check his pulse to make sure he was alive, not that I really cared about him.
I used his shirt to cover the pane of glass, then knocked it in with the butt of his revolver. The glass all fell inside the apartment and the noise didn’t carry.
I followed on the glass, landed on my feet and looked for the bed. It was a big one and I momentarily regretted that I wouldn’t have the pleasure of bouncing around on it with Cindy. But there wasn’t time to worry about that sort of thing. It was only a question of time before one of the monkey’s pals came around to check on him and I had to work pretty damned fast.
I found the satchel and discovered that fifty grand in twenties is heavy. But I managed to get out with it, climbing up on a chair and then out through the window. From there on it was a cinch.
I kicked the monkey in the face on the way out for luck, then stuck his gun back in his holster. He might need it when he tried to explain things to the rest of them. Then I went right back the way I’d come, straight through the lobby and past the doorman and out onto 72nd Street. There was a cab at the curb and I hopped into the back seat and told him to go to the Sheraton-McAlpin. He went, and I sat there trying to relax.
I had the money. If I wanted to I could ditch Cindy and forget her forever. She’d never find me, not in a million years.
But I couldn’t.
I needed her as much as I needed the money. I couldn’t settle for half the dream. It had to be all or nothing, the money and Cindy or the hell with the whole shooting match. So I sat back and pretended to relax and the cab finally managed to get to the McAlpin.
I found out which room we were staying in and I went to her.
6
She wasn’t just surprised to see me. She was totally astounded. Her eyes went round as saucers, then darted from me to the satchel and back and forth. They had love in them, but I wasn’t sure whether the love was for me or for the money.
I didn’t care.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “You did it. You actually did it!”
I tossed her the satchel. She unzipped the zipper and upended the bag over the bed. Money spilled out of it, neat stacks of twenty dollar notes with cute little rubber bands around them.
“Look at it,” she said reverently. “Fifty thousand dollars. Did you ever see that much money before?”
Once, when I was a little kid about to graduate from grammar school, they took the lot of us to Washington to look around and admire the miracle of democratic government. The package deal included a visit to the bureau of engraving and printing, and in the course of a half hour I saw well over a million dollars. But I didn’t have the heart to tell her about it.