“Not a bad day’s work!” Gilley horned in.
“That’s not all,” Stan went on. “The big wheel makes for the burglar alarm. And the crook plugs him right through the head. Killed him too.” Someone whistled and Stan paused for a minute.
“Then the crook walks right through that crowded building with all that loot, stops a guy right on Woodward Avenue who was driving this here ’58 Caddy... boots him out and makes off with his car! All this in broad daylight, just before lunch hour! There’s only a little gas in the car, but the crook drives until it gives out. Then he ditches the car up near Flat Rock. Cops all over the place. Floodlights and all. They got roadblocks all along 25... clear down to Toledo!”
I thought of the well-dressed slicker with the cold eyes and my stomach did a flip-flop. “What’d he look like, Stan, this gunman?”
“Hard to say, Sam. The secretary was scared stiff. The elevator guy told the police the heister was a big, hulking brute in a rainhat and a plastic raincoat. The starter claims the crook was a little guy, wearing glasses. You know how kooked up these I.D. things are.”
“More’n likely it’s a Chinaman wearing Bermuda shorts!” Gilley roared, but no one laughed.
“One thing the cops are sure of, Sam. The leather bag...”
My heart skipped a couple beats. “Leather bag, Stan?” My voice must have sounded thin and far away. Like somebody else’s.
“Yeah. He was carrying this tan leather bag. The secretary said he put the payroll money in it before he lammed out of the office.”
I thought of the phoney named “Coffee.” The way he acted when Mary Ellen reached for his bag. It was a leather bag, too. A tan leather bag!
My brain was racing like a bad clock. I reached in my pocket for a kerchief and touched the fifty dollar bill. My lips seemed parched, but my forehead was suddenly wet with sweat. “Stan...” I started to say. He looked at me with that funny, puzzled look of his. I balled the fifty into my fist. Held it hard. How many fifties in twelve thousand? How many hamburgers add up to fifty bucks? How many hunks of pie? Gross minus outlay equals net. And what the hell is my net! Thank God I don’t have a salary to pay! I’d have gone under a long time ago. And how long could I go on paying Mary Ellen with board, room, and pin money? Scatterbrained Mary Ellen with show business pulling at her like a magnet! Twelve thousand bucks in a tan bag not a hundred yards away! What couldn’t I do with twelve thousand dollars!
Right there at that battered ruin of a counter I’d varnished a dozen times... halfway between the broken grill and the rusty sink... I got the Big Idea. But Stan’s face came swimming into the Big Idea like bright yellow noodles in a thick goulash.
“Hey, get with it, Sam,” Stan was saying. Then as my mind stopped spinning with dollar signs, he said, “Anything wrong, Sam?”
I recovered fast. “No, nothing’s wrong, Stan boy. Just thinking, that’s all. Wondering what the hell this world is coming to, that’s all. All this robbing and killing. It’s not safe to get out of bed anymore, is it?”
But still that puzzled, screwed-up look on Stan’s face and those china-blue eyes of his boring into me. “How’s about some pie, Stan? Cherry’s fresh this morning.” He said O.K., and I cut him a fat wedge. But my mind went sailing again after I shoved the platter in front of him.
“How many cherry pies could I buy with twelve thousand dollars...?”
I had to work the supper rush all alone, but I’m only kidding when I say “rush.” There wasn’t a dozen customers all told from five to six o’clock, and that’s counting those factory hands and Gilley. Stan was just killing time waiting for Mary Ellen. But I didn’t tell him anything until he fired pointblank, “What the blazes is taking her so long?” I told him she was cleaning up for weekend business. I was worried stiff but would not let it show. We listened to the Detroit news out of WJR at 6 o’clock... it was full of the holdup and murder. The killer had been identified by the owner of the Cadillac from photographs in the police files. A Chicago hoodlum named Marty Klegman.
Stan left about 6:20 promising to double back about 7. He lived over in the village about a mile off the highway at a rooming house run by an old widow named Markwitch.
Ten minutes after Stan left Mary Ellen breezed in, her green eyes shining like traffic lights. She pulled a ham-pose at the door with her chin up and her hands high like a ballet dancer. She waltzed over to me, leaned over the counter, and planted a kiss on my head. “Oh, what news, Unk! What news!” Then she noticed the look on my face and laughed. “Look at the pilly Pilgrim!”
“What the devil do you think this is!” I started, but she stopped me with that patient, longsuffering look her mom used to wear.
“Now wait a minute, Unk... before you have a stroke. I just auditioned for Mr. Henderson. Joe Coffee was only a name he made up to conceal his real identity. You guessed that, didn’t you? Look, Unk. Here’s his card!”
She shoved a name card into my hand... a rich looking hunk of paper finely engraved in gold and blue: BERNARD K. HENDERSON... REGALITY PICTURES. There was a Sunset Boulevard address and a phone number. An ornamented coronet backed the name. I handed the card back to Mary Ellen and she dropped it down the front of her dress.
“He’s a real movie producer, Unk. A real Hollywood producer!”
I felt as though I’d just taken the big dip on a roller coaster. I didn’t want him to be Joe Coffee, Bernard K. Henderson, or Walt Disney! I didn’t want Snake Eyes to be anybody but Marty Klegman. The hood with twelve hot G’s in a tan bag.
“An hour and a half!” I griped. “Some audition!”
She gave that high whinny of hers that she likes to think idly is a tinkle, like in bell. She perched happily on the end stool, looking like a green and ivory pixie, all life and color and kid excitement. Jeez. I felt old looking at her...
“Mr. Henderson knew I was an actress, Unk! Think of it! I didn’t have to tell him anything about the Albion Amateurs, or the Community Players, or the Footlight Club at church. Nothing! He said he recognized talent ‘on sight’. He said I shot sparks and color. Like a Roman Candle on the Fourth of July!”
There was no interrupting her or stopping her. This was American Youth in high gear loaded with bright future and daydreams. She gushed adjectives like my old soda tap gushes fizz. I was glad the place was empty. There was enough talk in the village about Mary being fast and flighty with a cobweb head.
“He had me sing for him, Unk! I did ‘Temptation’ for him... in my sexy voice, you know... and he said he’d never heard it rendered like that before! Imagine, rendered! Then I got that ‘Complete Works’ you gave me and read Lady Mac-Beth to him. Oh, Unk! You should have been there! He wants to take me to Hollywood with him for a screen test! What do you think of that?”
I caught her wrist and held it hard. “I think you’re acting like a silly, damned little fool!” She winced at that, as though I’d punched her in the belly. “How corny can a guy get with that old Hollywood routine! That was old when they turned movies with a crank. I thought you had more brains than that!”
“Oh I didn’t believe him at first! I’m not that thick! But when he showed me those credentials and started talking about the people he knows out there — Cary Grant, and... and... Rock Hudson, and Doris Day... and all the rest of them... I just knew he wasn’t kidding me along.”
“Then, Mary Ellen, what was all that bushwash about ‘Joe Coffee’ and ‘riding in on a moonbeam’ he gave out with in here?”
“Oh, that! He told me all about that, Unk.”