“My friend, a wiser man than I once said that in every ordered society wealth is a sacred thing, and that in a democracy, it is the only sacred thing. You should thank God we live in a democracy. Where are you now?”
Nolan gave him the address.
“Very well. Get out of there and walk three blocks west to Seventeenth and Cooper. There’s a taproom on the corner. Take a back booth and wait for me. I’ll be along in perhaps ten minutes. Got that?”
“Right,” Nolan said, and hung up the phone.
He walked down the corridor and opened the front door. He was conscious of Mrs. Bailey’s eyes boring into his back from the front windows of the house.
Nolan strode down the tree-lined street, past the ball-playing kids and came to the taproom at Seventeenth and Cooper. He walked in and sat down in a rear booth and ordered a beer with a shot of rye from the bartender. There was nothing pretentious about this place; it looked Eke a neighborhood hang-out, with bowling machines, dart boards and a generally unadorned atmosphere.
Nolan sipped the beer and thought about Reynolds. Dwight J. Reynolds was the full name. He was a lawyer, a bondsman, a politician, a fixer, an operator. There were those who insisted he was honest up to a point; others said he was dishonest up to a point. The distinction struck Nolan as a moot one. Reynolds was not on the opposite side of the law, strictly speaking. His machinations were intertangled and intertwined on both sides of the law, and over the top and under the bottom of it, in a manner that made any clear-cut definition of his activities impossible. He worked with gangsters and school boards, racketmen and stool pigeons, reformers and gamblers, supplying them all with whatever they needed, whether that happened to be fast transportation out of town, a hideout, a judge’s ear, the repeal of a zoning ordinance or a few decks of snow. The only consistent stipulation in any of Reynolds’ deals was that money, and generous amounts of it, wound up in his hands.
Nolan knew him casually, and wasn’t happy about getting mixed up with him. Reynolds would bleed him to death, but there were other and worse ways of bleeding to death.
He came in five minutes later, a dapperly dressed man with graying hair, a tiny mustache, and alert, shifting eyes. He sat down opposite Nolan and dropped a ring of keys on the table. “My car is outside,” he said, and put a slip of paper beside the keys. “There’s an address where you can spend the day. I’ll be along in half an hour.”
“Have you seen the papers this morning?”
“I’m not here to gossip, Nolan.”
“Is the girl dead?”
“Not yet. Now stick to business. After today you’ll be beyond help. Do you understand?”
“Sure, sure,” Nolan said. “Relax, damn it. It’s my neck, right?”
“And mine, too,” Reynolds said. “This will cost you ten thousand, Nolan. Five thousand now, and five when you start on your way.”
“Okay.” Nolan fumbled for his money, counted off five bills and shoved them into Reynolds’ cold eager hands.
“Get moving now,” Reynolds said.
Nolan finished his beer in one gulp and went outside into the hot sunlight. Reynolds’ car, a Buick, was at the curb. He climbed in, started the motor, and drove away slowly, getting the feel of the transmission. The car’s smooth power was a tonic to him; he felt fine with his big hands resting lightly on the wheel and the speedometer needle climbing swiftly as he poured gas into the motor. This was like the old days, he thought, as he made a turn and shifted easily into second gear. Like the old days in Wet Basin when he was running liquor. For an instant he was tempted to let the Reynolds deal go to hell, and get out of town on his own. He could lose any State cop with this buggy. But he knew he wouldn’t get ten miles.
He found the address Reynolds had given him and coasted half a block past it before parking the Buick. Then, pulling his hatbrim down, he walked swiftly back to the weather-beaten, two-story frame house.
The door was opened by a fat untidy woman who wore a house dress and frayed felt slippers. “You wait a minute, I’ll get Morris,” she said, and slammed the door in his face.
The door was opened a moment later by a man who stood a head taller than Nolan, but was lean to the point of emaciation. His skull was narrow and a lock of long dark hair hung over his bony forehead. He stared at Nolan suspiciously.
“Reynolds told me to come here. You Morris?”
“Yeah, I’m Morris. Come in. It’s a hell of a time to be sending a hot guy here though.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Nolan said.
“All right, come on with me.” Morris turned to the woman. “Freda, keep your eye on the street for a while, and see if you notice anybody looking out their windows this way.”
Nolan followed him to a stairway that led down to a sour-smelling basement. There Morris unsnapped a lock from the door of a room behind the furnace. “In here,” he said, leading the way. He snapped on a light and Nolan saw that the room was furnished with a cot, a table and a couple of kitchen chairs. There was no window.
Morris turned to him, an unpleasant smile on his lips. In the strong unshaded light he looked like something from a sick nightmare. “This is five hundred bucks, without maid service,” he said.
“That’s by the day, I’ll bet,” Nolan said.
“That’s right.”
“Okay,” Nolan said. He gave Morris a grand note. “I’m paid up for two days now.”
Morris accepted the bill without comment and walked to the door. He fitted the lock back into the hasp, and was about to close the door, when Nolan said, “Never mind the lock, Morris. We’ll leave the door open just in case I have some women visitors. We don’t want to make the house dick suspicious.”
“I’ve got to lock it,” Morris said, and drew his lips down petulantly. “Supposing someone comes down here?”
“Well now I’ll tell you about that,” Nolan said, and walked over and jerked the lock from Morris’s hand. “If anyone I don’t know comes down here, he’s going to be shot dead, understand? I’m not a pet monkey, Morris. I like open doors. Now how about some food?”
“That will be extra.”
“I knew that. Get me some sandwiches and coffee and a couple of bottles of liquor.”
When Morris disappeared, grumbling under his breath, Nolan removed his coat and stretched out on the cot. He stared at the ceiling, wishing he had a cigar, wishing he had a drink. Linda wasn’t dead, Reynolds had said. She was still alive.
There were two Lindas in his mind now, the one who had liked him, who had trusted him, and had been his friend: and the other one who had sold him out to Ramussen.
He didn’t think about that second Linda. She wasn’t important. They had made her do that, anyway. He thought about the first Linda, the bright and smiling one, who had patted his hand one night in the car, and who had stroked his head when he was drunk and ready to explode.
It was hot and quiet in the basement and there was nothing for him to do but think.
Reynolds arrived within half an hour. He walked into the room briskly and sat down in a straight-backed chair. “Now it’s time for serious work,” he said, as Nolan sat up rubbing his jaw. “I’ll tell you what, Barny. Your best bets are Nova Scotia or Mexico. You can have your pick, an igloo, or a hacienda.”
“What’s the difference?”
Reynolds shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, none. But I’m not going there, you see.”
“How could I get to Nova Scotia?”
“It’s a very simple matter. We’ll hire a private pilot from around this area to fly you there. Don’t look surprised; it’s done all the time for hunting trips. It’s a no-questions-asked deal. The pilot takes you to Burlington, Vermont, first, where he wires ahead to the Canadian customs official at the airfield in Nova Scotia. That’s to let them know when you’re arriving and how many are in the party. The customs man meets the plane. You aren’t allowed to leave it, by the way, until he checks your papers. But all he requires for entry is some proof of identity, such as a driver’s license. I’ll get one for you today. After that, Barny, you’re on your own. You’ll have Canadian travel papers, and you can get a commercial flight from Moncton field to Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, or anywhere in the Dominion for that matter. How does it sound?”