Both men were out.
I used Hadley’s telephone. I made one call to the New York police and one to the Newark police.
There was blood on Max’s left side where Hadley’s bullet had scooped a groove along his ribs. I patted Max’s pockets and found his gun. I took it and hid it behind one of the filing cabinets. It would save him from being slapped with a parole violation.
Max might be sore about my clouting him over the head. But he’d get over it.
And he’d get over Lucille too.
The Caller
by Emmanuel Winters
The telephone rang and Miss Turner awoke with a start. From the next room she could hear the outraged whimpering of her mother, a chronic invalid and a light sleeper. It was precisely 2:30 A.M.
The bell didn’t stop ringing and Miss Turner got herself focussed. She snatched up her frayed chambray robe, flipped on the hallway switch enroute, and hurried, splayfooted, down the stairs. Her hand shook on the receiver.
“Is this Phoebe?” It was a man’s voice, low and peculiar.
“Why, yes. Yes. What is it?”
There was a slight pause, then, in an amused manner, the voice declared: “You’re a piece of what goes floating down the river.” The voice didn’t leave anything to doubt. It gave the four-letter synonym.
Miss Turner stiffened. “What? What did you say?”
“I said you’re a piece of — nothing. How can you call yourself a human being? Why don’t you go drown yourself in a sewer?” The voice became sly, horrible. “How about it? Would you like me to come over and visit with you a while? You know. Real cozy?”
Miss Turner was slight, around forty, with pinched cheeks, and eyes chronically tired from working all her life in an insurance office. Completely shoaled by duties and unalluring, someone to feel sorry for. Certainly not anyone who’d receive this type of call.
Now she was fully awake and began to shriek, but she thought in time to lower her voice and avoid alarming her mother. “Who are you? What is this? Are you crazy or something?”
“Me?” the voice purred.
“Yes, you.”
“Oh, no, I'm not crazy or something.” The voice was illiterate, untrained, with a bit of a cigarette rasp around the edges, but well handled. Absolutely controlled, purposeful.
Miss Turner trembled, but suddenly felt tremendous relief as a new thought came to her. She could almost laugh. “You obviously have the wrong number.”
“Wrong number?” The voice went on purring. “This is Bedford 3-5573, isn't it?”
A film came over Miss Turner’s eyes. She couldn’t speak.
“Well, is it or is it not?”
“It is.”
“And you’re this gorgeous little babe named Phoebe, ain’t you?”
Panic peered in at all the windows and its sneer rustled the string-drapes between the parlor and dining room. Miss Turner went hot and cold with perspiration, and could barely hold the receiver.
“What do you want with me?”
The snicker came over unmistakably. “Who, me? Why, nothing. Nothing at all. Except what would anybody want from the sexiest broad we got in town?”
Miss Turner prepared to slam down the receiver. “Why, you lunatic. How dare you? I’m going to hang up and if you ever have the audacity to call this number again, I’ll call the police.”
“Well, well, how cozy,” the voice said. “You going to let them in on it too? And the fire department? And the U.S. Marines?”
Miss Turner flushed and brought the receiver down, but not before the last raucous statement had come through to her ears. “You’re going to hear from me often. Day and night. Mostly nights.”
On the way up, Miss Turner felt dizzy. She decided she’d better not tell her mother. Her mother had a bad heart. “Some nut with a wrong number,” she called out in answer to the querulous inquiry from the other room. But at breakfast it almost came out. They were having orange juice and oatmeal in the alcove off the hallway when the phone rang. It was 7:30. Miss Turner jumped, then tried to take hold of herself. She went to the phone casually but at once gripped the receiver so hard her knuckles showed white. It was the voice again.
“Look you, whoever you are,” she whispered fiercely. “My mother is a very sick woman and can’t stand very much more of this sort of thing, I can tell you. If you don’t hang up this minute and stop bothering us I’ll go to the police.” Her voice became a bit hysterical. “Hang up,” she said.
“What a shame,” the man said. “Sick? Your mother?”
“Yes. Extremely.”
There was a pause, then a chuckle, deep in the throat and outrageous. “Then you and me’ll have to be real careful we don’t disturb her when I come calling. We’ll just use the downstairs couch.” The voice went down to a sexy whisper. “Ready for me yet, sweetheart — huh?”
Miss Turner slipped the receiver down without a sound and immediately raised her voice. “I’m sorry, madam. You’ve got the wrong number. This is Bedford 3-5573, not four. Please do be careful in the future.” She forced a smile and went back to the alcove and her mother.
Her mother was a wasted away woman with slipshod white hair and a deep pallor, chronically weary. She had been a vivacious woman at one time, with a good sense of humor — totally opposite from the traditional possessive mother. But after a lifetime of sickness, early widowhood, and total dependence on her daughter, her kindly humor had turned into a kind of bitterness. Complaint often crept into her voice. “Another wrong number, Marie? Who is it, a secret boy friend?” Her voice changed. “Couldn’t sleep a wink after the phone ringing last night.”
The teacup was shaking in Miss Turner’s hand. “If this goes on I just don’t know what we’re going to do, mama.”
However much you want to keep a thing like this secret from someone who shares your home, Miss Turner saw clearly, it soon becomes impossible. If the calls were going to persist her mother would finally have to know, and Miss Turner was afraid of what it would do to her heart.
That night exactly at midnight the third call came and Miss Turner again had to rush down from bed. This time she hung up right away. When he called back immediately she left the receiver off the hook. But half an hour later — just time enough for her to have crept back into bed and gotten to sleep — the phone company sent its attention-getter alarm through, and kept blasting insistently until her mother cried out, “For heaven’s sake, Marie. Answer the phone.” When the voice called shortly after, he threatened to ring all night, if necessary, and Miss Turner had to talk to him for at least five minutes. The abuse was worse with more outrageous invitations and four-letter descriptions.
“For God’s sake,” Miss Turner said, almost in tears. “What do you have against me? Who are you? Why are you doing this to us? Won't you please stop calling?”
The man laughed again, the strange, suggestive laugh. “Call you in the morning, baby. Early. Maybe I’ll catch you with your pants off.”
The first thing that morning Miss Turner decided. She’d better tell her mother. These calls were going to continue. And at breakfast she did. “In case you were to answer the telephone sometime, mama.”
To Miss Turner’s surprise, Mrs. Turner was neither amazed nor upset, just rather amused. And, staring, Miss Turner said: “Thank God, at least, mama, for that.”
Her mother said that, why, yes she’d heard of such cases, cranks getting hold of someone’s telephone number and making a nuisance of themselves for spite, an imagined grievance, or something. Had her daughter insulted or slighted someone down at the office?