A low laugh came over the wire. “Josh,” Canelli was saying, “I ain’t seen you or heard from you in... hell, it must be three years.”
“Fine,” Crawford said. And, as an afterthought. “How’s business?”
“Legit,” Canelli told him. “Mostly.”
It is no particular problem to get from New York to Albany. The state capital is located approximately one hundred miles due north of the only worthwhile city in the state, and train service between the two points is frequent and excellent. There are a whole host of milk trains departing every few minutes from Grand Central, as well as a bevy of long-haul passenger trains that make Albany the first hitch of a journey that starts from New York and ends up anywhere from Saint Louis to Detroit.
Richie Parsons and Honour Mercy Bane took the Ohio State Limited. The train’s ultimate destination was Cincinnati, and it planned on getting there via the indirect route which included Dayton, Springfield, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and, happily, Albany.
Richie and Honour Mercy were on the train when it pulled out of Grand Central at a quarter to six. They were also on the train when it pulled into the Albany terminal at 7:30. The hour and forty-five minutes of monotony which they spent on the train was uneventful, which was just as well as far as Honour Mercy and Richie were concerned. Excitement was the last thing they craved at this point.
“A guy asked me for my draft card,” Richie had explained. “He gave me a funny look when I said I left it in my other pants. If he was a cop it would of been all over.”
Honour Mercy had nodded sympathetically, but Richie had the feeling that the lie needed a certain amount of embellishing. “So I kept walking,” he elaborated. “And I get a few blocks away and I take a quick look over my shoulder, sort of casual-like, and I see the guy. He was trying to be real cool about it but I could tell he was following me.”
The additional trappings were obviously just what the lie had needed. Honour Mercy caught her breath and looked worried. Richie had to think for a minute to be sure that it really was a lie, that there hadn’t been anybody following him, that no one had asked for his draft card.
“I lost him,” he went on. “Leastwise I think I lost him, but maybe he just passed me on to somebody else. I read about how they do it. When one of them gets spotted he signals another one and the other one takes out after you. I looked hard but I couldn’t see any other one following me so I guess I got clear.”
“It’s good you called me,” Honour Mercy said. “We have to stay out of town until you have some identification.” She was about to tell him that she had called Crawford but she decided not to. He might be jealous, and she didn’t want that to happen. It was all perfectly natural discussing Richie with Crawford — he was the kind of man who could listen calmly to anything she said. He understood things. But for some reason it was not perfectly natural to discuss Crawford with Richie.
The private compartment on the train had been Richie’s idea. It cost a little more but it was worth it for two reasons. First of all, it was a safety measure — there was no telling when somebody would recognize him, somebody who had known him before. Secondly, it made it look as though he was really worried about being discovered. By this time it was his own private conviction that a visit from the Air Police was about as pressing a danger as an atomic attack on south-central Kansas, but there was no point in letting Honour Mercy in on the fact.
The private compartment, however, accomplished something else. It left Honour Mercy and Richie thoroughly alone with each other, more alone than they had been in quite some time. There they were, the two of them, and with the compartment all closed up they were alone. The togetherness and the aloneness, combined with the marvelous feeling of security that was bound up in the whole idea of false identification papers and the false new identity they would bring, made Richie suddenly very strong, very much the dominant personality. He took Honour Mercy on his lap, and he held Honour Mercy close to him and kissed her, and after he had kissed her several times and touched her breasts, he wished fervently that the trip was over already and they were in a hotel room in Albany.
Which, before too long, is where they were.
From the terminal they taxied to the Conning Towers on State Street. The Conning Towers was, and had been for more years than Richie had been alive, Albany’s finest hotel. He had never so much as stepped into the lobby before. It was hardly the most inconspicuous place in town, but Richie reasoned this way: the better the place they stayed in, and the nicer the restaurants they ate in, and the more exclusive neighborhood they roamed around in, the less chance he stood of running into anybody who had known him before.
He figured this out, and he had explained it to Honour Mercy on the train. Even so, he had a tough time telling the cab driver where he wanted to go, and a tougher time actually squaring his shoulders and walking into the lobby. Once inside it was even worse. The high ceilings and the thick carpet made him more nervous, and his voice squeaked when he asked the thin gray clerk for a double room.
The clerk nodded and handed him the register and a ballpoint pen. Richie got enough control over his fingers to get a tentative grip on the pen and leaned over the register to sign his name.
He almost wrote RICHIE PARSONS. The pen was actually touching the paper, ready to make the first stroke of the “R,” when it occurred to him that he was no longer Richie Parsons, not if he wanted to stay alive and free. His hand shook and the pen dribbled from his grasp and bounced onto the floor. He reached over to pick it up, hating himself, hating the thin gray clerk, hating everything, and suddenly incapable of thinking up a name for himself.
Then, the pen recovered and poised once more, he remembered the author of a book he had been reading the day before and signed the register ANDREW SHAW. The clerk nodded, attempted a smile, and rang for a bellhop. The bellhop picked up the suitcase that Honour Mercy had packed and led them up an impressively winding staircase to their room on the first floor. The bellhop opened the door, ushered them inside, took an idiotically long time opening the window and checking for soap and towels, and finally accepted the quarter that Richie barely remembered to hand him. Then, mercifully, the bellhop left and closed the door after him.
Only then did Richie relax. He relaxed quite visibly, throwing himself down on the big double bed and letting out his breath all at once.
“Well,” Honour Mercy said, “I guess we got here all right.”
“I almost ruined everything down there. Signing the book, I mean.”
“That’s all right,” she told him.
“He must figure it’s not my name, the way I had so much trouble getting it written.”
“Sure,” she said, smiling. “He probably thinks you signed another name because we aren’t married and you’re embarrassed. It’s better that way. Surest way in the world to hide something is to pretend you’re hiding something else.”
Richie thought about that. It made a lot of sense, especially in view of the fact that he had adopted much the same tactics in getting Honour Mercy and himself the hell out of New York. The only difference was that he had hidden what he was running from by pretending to be running from something else, but it worked out to about the same.
“Andrew Shaw,” he said aloud, testing the name. “Sounds okay to me. Maybe you ought to practice calling me Andy.”
She said Andy twice, then laughed. “Sounds funny,” she complained. “Can’t I call you Richie any more?”
“Not in public. Not when we’re out where people can hear and get suspicious.”
“How about in private?”
“That’s different,” he said. He watched her, moving about and unpacking things and putting them away, and he thought that it was time for him to get out of the hotel and get in touch with the man who could fix up the phony identification for him. He watched her some more, watched the way her body moved and studied the way it was formed, and he decided that although it was definitely time to get in touch with the man, the man would be around for a few more hours.