“Did they phone in about John Cassidy while we were in there?” Helen asked.
“I forgot about that. He’s conscious now. They let his wife and the kid see him for a while. They had to or he would have torn up the place. A groove in his skull, and a concussion. Gorman I’m not sorry about. He might have found some angle and beat the rap. But that Brath I dearly regret. He got off too easy. The slug that killed him was out of Gorman’s gun. Right in the back of the neck. A nice wing shot, but not what Gorman figured on. He meant to bust your oil line.”
“But if it hadn’t been for Lemon—” Ben said.
Davis held up his hand. “I know what you’re going to say. Don’t waste your breath, boy. He’s been out of line a long time. And he’s the one who hurt the kid. There’s enough on him in this, adding up one charge and another, to give him a nice long vacation. So that’s what he gets.”
There was a silence. Helen said, “Why did you report me dead?”
“It was something to do. The case was dragging. I thought it might stir something up. It didn’t fool anybody but you, I guess.”
“I thought my brother really believed it.”
“No. I even let him phone your folks and tell them it was just a carom shot.” Davis sighed. “Gorman could have gone on for years. But just once he had to do some of his own rough stuff. That tripped him.”
“What were they looking for in the apartment?” Helen asked.
“I heard a slight rumble on that, Mrs. MacLane. Some photographs of Gorman having a happy time with some people who should never have let the picture be taken. Celebrities who will be seriously embarrassed if they ever come out. The pictures may turn up. I think that Young girl mailed them to a fake name, care of general delivery. That would be the smart move. Gorman kept them around because he was proud of his connections. Denny Young sensed he was cooling off on her. She figured, rightly, they’d have some resale value — this is all based on the assumption that the rumor I heard isn’t wrong. Gorman lost his temper and now he’s dead. And you, Morrow, deserve to be dead. After seeing Freimak you should have come to me, like I told you to do if you uncovered anything.”
“Will you need us for anything else?”
“We’re through. In fact, you’d better get out of town, both of you. That treatment you got from the reporters was just a starter. They’ll make your life hell if you hang around town. Like the man says, this is one of those dramatic situations. They’ll put arm locks on you and get you in front of television cameras.”
Davis got up. He grinned wryly. “The old lady is on a tear. We heard from our kid today. He got himself tattooed in Tokyo. Now it’s like I’m to blame. I’ll see you around sometime.” He gave them a mock salute and walked out into the rain.
“Nice guy,” Ben said.
“They’ve all been nice. Oh, Ben, I can’t believe that we can sit here and not have to be afraid.”
He didn’t answer. She was suddenly contrite. “I’m sorry, Ben, I forgot that you—”
“Let’s drop it.”
“Of course, Ben.”
She had a friend she could stay with, and after a phone call he took her there in a cab and sat for a time in the small apartment, feeling beat and weary. He telephoned from there and located an available room on the third call, a room at a good hotel. He said good night to Helen in the hall by the elevator.
“I’ll see you, Ben?”
“Sure. Sure.”
He checked into the hotel without luggage and they gave him one of those overnight kits. He lay in darkness and thought of the small plane and the sunlight and the colors. He thought of the plane as a toy, like one of those on a string on the end of a stick that you buy for children at a carnival. It was a fluttering plane; it was not a bomb that rode at the hot end of streaks of fire. When the fire went out, those jets had the glide angle of an iron pump handle. It had felt good for a few minutes, handling the little kite, but it meant nothing. It had been like a man afraid of guns daring to face up to a cap pistol. The tiger’s teeth had been pulled, his claws blunted. Helen knew that. It was no good pretending with her. It would never be any good hiding anything from her...
The next morning he checked out and took a train north to Rhinecliff. After lunch he crossed the river and went to the hospital in Kingston and saw John Cassidy. Cassidy’s eyes looked bright and young, and his handshake was firm. The bandages looked white against his face.
“Ben, you ought to hear Mike’s story of your exploit! I’m sorry I missed it. How’s Helen? Where is she? How did they treat you?”
Ben told him the whole story. John said the farm had been overrun by the curious, and probably still was, and that damage to the station wagon had been slight. “Why don’t you go over and move into the cabin, Ben?” he asked.
“I want to go down to Philadelphia and see my people.”
“I’ll be home tomorrow. Stay there tonight, why don’t you? Then I tell you what, Ben. We can get along fine with one car for a while. You go on up and pick up the MG and keep it until your leave is up.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“I insist. That’s a small enough favor. If it hadn’t been for you — well, you know what I keep thinking of.”
A day or two delay wouldn’t make much difference, Ben decided. “All right, John. And thanks.”
“I promise not to report it stolen.”
A nurse bustled in officiously and Ben had to leave. Over at the farm there were cars parked on the shoulder of the highway, people wandering around and pointing, making airplane motions with their hands. Ben paid the cabdriver. Mike met him at the door, his eyes filled with an embarrassing amount of adulation. Katey thanked him all over again, calmly enough at first, but then she had to turn away quickly. Ben felt as if there should be some way to explain to all three of the Cassidys that this was like a case of mistaken identity, that he felt as though he were representing someone else, as if he were receiving an award given in absentia.
Ben took over the cabin and John came home the next day. It was decided that on the following morning John and Mike would take him to Poughkeepsie in the station wagon in time to catch the advance Empire State Express at five minutes of ten. That would get him to Utica by a little after one, and he could make a bus connection down to Route 20 to pick up the MG. He took a long walk in the afternoon, and when he joined them for dinner, their good spirits brought him out of his depression for a time.
In the morning John and Mike drove him down to Poughkeepsie. Over John’s protests he bought his own ticket. He had John’s note to Captain Walther in his pocket. He waved at them as the train pulled out, and wondered why they should both stand there with such conspiratorial grins.
Five minutes later he knew why they had grinned so widely, when Helen said demurely, “Is this seat taken?”
He stared at her. She sat beside him and said, “It’s a lovely morning, Ben.”
“What on earth are you—”
“I phoned John yesterday afternoon. Let me see, where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?”
“You can’t—”
She leaned toward him. “Keep that up and I’ll begin to think I’m not wanted, Lieutenant.”
“You’re wanted, but—”
She put her hand on his arm and was instantly serious. “Ben, if there’s any possible way I can help, I want to. Not as a returned favor, but just because I want to. Do you understand?”
“I guess I do.”
“And it’s all right?”
“Of course, Helen.”
She settled back in the seat. “Where are we going, then?”