“That’s convenient. What else?”
“Nothing, chum. Don’t know him.”
“Liebscher, you’re slipping. Tell Rothman I called. I want to talk to him next time; he’s intelligent. If either of you pick up anything on Evans, wire it. Same goes for Ashley if it’s tied to Evans. So long, now.”
“So long, chum.” Liebscher rang off.
And that, Louise, is how I happen to have five hundred dollars in my desk drawer at the moment. Can you guess what I’d like to do with it? I’d like to take you to Florida or someplace and court you all over again. I wish you weren’t so stubborn. We’re over the hump — three of the five years have passed and I’ve demonstrated often that I can make a first-class husband and provider. Do we have to finish out the full five years? Can’t we bring this experiment to an end right now? We can have a lot of fun on that five hundred dollars.
You’ll get the brief facts of the hit-and-run over the wires in your city room, but I couldn’t resist adding what I know. Besides, the news story won’t mention my name. This town has maybe 35,000 inhabitants. And probably two thousand of them own automobiles. I wonder how many of those two thousand drive a Studebaker sedan with a supercharger attachment?
I intend to find out.
Chapter 2
Boone, Ill.
Wednesday, very A.M.
Dear Louise:
Last night, at dusk: it was a fairly new Studebaker and it carried a supercharger attachment on the hood. But it wasn’t a sedan. It was a coupe — I looked twice for assurance.
The young woman driving it pulled up to the traffic light on the corner where I was standing, threw open the door nearest me, and motioned with her hand in an unmistakable gesture.
I suppose I gaped at her like a damned fool, Louise, but I couldn’t help it. The spectacle caught me completely off guard.
It was just dusk. I had gone into Milkshake Mike’s for my supper and to pass a few words with Mike. You’ve never met him. Mike is a rotund, jovial Greek and his real name is Thaddeus something-or-other.
He hadn’t heard of the day’s occurrence nor did the dead man’s name mean anything to him. Mike has a wealth of unusual information at his fingertips if you can pry it out of him. Sometimes I can.
After eating, I had gone outside and walked the short distance to the corner of Main and Lincoln, stopping there to watch the red and green neon lights playing on the snow. I remembered you once telling me that the green wasn’t neon but some other gas, although I’ve already forgotten the name of it. Light snow was falling and the air was getting colder.
Then, out of the snow and the silence of my thoughts, this coupe had slid up to the red light and the door was pushed open.
The woman behind the wheel waved to me again.
“Please hurry!” Her voice came through the gathering darkness, elfin and insistent. “Quickly, before the lights change.”
Put it down as foolishness, or even curiosity. The woman and her gesture had startled me; her Studebaker and its supercharger aroused something else. I trotted off the curb and climbed into the coupe just as the red light changed to amber and the driver shifted gears. She turned the corner onto Main Street and shot the car forward while I pulled the door closed, wrapped my overcoat about me, and tried to find room for my legs down around the heater. It was then that I looked at her.
A Chinese picture.
With the exception of that dancing troupe you and I once saw in Chicago (the trip we intended for a honeymoon, remember?), my driver was the prettiest Chinese girl I have ever had the good fortune to see. And I’m eliminating the showgirls because their faces were artificial, whereas this one was natural. There was a bit of make-up, just a bit. Only enough to accent the natural beauty of the girl.
She looked to be little more than a kid, possibly fifteen or sixteen years old, but I realized that to be a patently false impression; not only because Chinese girls’ appearances are usually deceptive as to age, but because she had to be older than that to get a driver’s license. She was probably twenty, possibly more. And she was a honey.
The coupe nimbly skirted a red-white-and-blue painted streetcar and roared west on Main Street. She hadn’t spoken a word to me beyond the invitational demand at the traffic signal.
“You’re new here,” I opened the conversation, meaning that I hadn’t seen her around town before. It struck me that I was meeting a lot of strangers in Boone.
“Yes sir.” She didn’t remove her eyes from the street. “My second trip.”
Some other things were on the tip of my tongue, idle things to break the ice and pry a measure of information from her. Instead, I shut my mouth with a snap and thought about that queer answer. And no matter which way I turned it, it remained uncooked on all sides. I simply couldn’t read sense into it.
To make matters worse she offered no amplification whatever. The best I could grasp was that I was supposed to know where we were going, who (or at least what) she was, and why. A flash of white caught my eye in the rear vision mirror. It was a prowl car crossing an intersection behind us, traveling south. She had seen it, too.
Frankly, Louise, I hadn’t time to become worried about what I had stepped into. I felt that I could hold my own with this doll, and somehow, this didn’t have the feel of a ride — if you know what I mean. Not that I’m an authority on rides. But all this was too... too gentle, so taken-for-granted.
I was pretty certain I could and would come back on my feet; but where the hell was I going, and why? And how did I expect to tie in Evans’ death with another car that had a supercharger? Don’t ask me, I don’t know. I didn’t then and I don’t now.
“Bad driving?” I asked, after the slick snow threw the rear wheels around a trifle.
“No sir.” The pretty face remained in fixed position.
“Have you been driving long?”
“Yes sir.”
“This heater is getting damned hot on my legs. Mind if I turn it off?”
“No sir.”
She refused to bite on anything. Wouldn’t even nibble at the hook. The coupe jounced suddenly and I peered out the window.
We were crossing the Illinois Central tracks and would soon be leaving the city behind. After that there would be maybe a half-mile of frame houses and ramshackle buildings and then the wide open spaces. I tried to remember what lay out this way.
To the best of my knowledge there were only some truck farms, one or two second-rate roadhouses, an occupied red brick building which people called “the long distance office,” and a small lake. Adjoining the lake there were a bath house, an open-air dance pavilion, a postage-stamp size picnic park, and a bandstand. All these latter establishments had long ago shut down for the winter, and their utility services turned off. For a higher tax rate, Boone furnishes them with electricity, drinking water and fire protection.
And I had heard vague rumors that somebody was running a gambling den out here, and that there was — or would be in the very near future — a girly house, in defiance of the ladies armed with tomahawks who had previously run them out of town.
I turned and shot a look at the Chinese doll.
No.
She no more looked the part of an inmate than you do, Louise. But I had a hunch in another direction and fired a trial rocket.
“Is there ice on the lake yet?”
“Oh — yes sir.”
She hesitated over the three words and I watched her reserve crumble. She reflected upon herself for some minutes and then added the first real bit of conversation.
“Perhaps by tomorrow it will be safe enough for skating, sir.”
That was a good opening. I followed up with, “Do you like to skate, too?”