She didn’t understand, but she didn’t say anything.
It was almost six when I pulled the Auburn in the alley behind my building and squeezed it in the recessed space next to my Chevy coupe where Barney’s Hupmobile sometimes was but right now wasn’t. I took her by the hand like a child and moved right along and she had to work to keep up. Past the deli on the corner, the El a looming reminder we were back in the city, to the door between Barney’s Cocktail Lounge and the pawnshop, and up the stairs, four flights, her feet echoing mine as she followed me up.
I unlocked the office door.
“But this is a detective’s office,” she said, looking at the lettering on the door’s frosted glass.
“That’s right.”
I shut the door behind her. She stood clutching her purse to her, looking around.
“Isn’t that a Murphy bed?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. Back behind the desk, pulling the phone book out of a drawer.
“Gee. I saw furniture like this at the world’s fair.”
“Everybody did,” I said, looking for the number.
“Whose place is this?”
“A friend,” I said, dialing.
“Wonder if he needs a secretary.”
“Who knows,” I said, getting a busy signal.
I sat behind the desk. Yanked the window-glass wire-frames off and flung ’em in a drawer. So, the line was busy over at the Banker’s Building. It was just five after six. The pickup wasn’t to be made till six-fifty. Plenty of time.
She sat across from me in the chair her father had sat in not long ago.
“Why are we here?” she asked. Her eyes wide and brown and confused.
“It’s a safe place,” I said. Drumming my fingers on my desk.
“What about Ma, and Paula and everybody?”
“They’re in the past, sugar.”
“The past.”
“That’s right. And you’re leaving the past behind you, understand?”
“No. Not really...”
“Do you know what’s happening today? What’s set to happen in about forty-five minutes?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“A kidnapping. Do you want to be part of that?”
“No,” she said. But she didn’t seem sure, as if I was posing some abstract problem that went way over her head.
“Forget Ma and Paula and all of them. Got it?”
“Why?”
“Because those people are going to be in trouble. You don’t want to be in trouble, do you?”
Her face fell, her eyes got even wider. “Why... you’re not going to rat on them...”
“Never mind what I’m going to do,” I said, dialing again.
Busy signal.
“I don’t want you to rat on them,” she said. “Jim. Please don’t.”
“You’re with me, now, remember?”
“Jim...”
“Are you with me now?”
“Yes...”
“Then you’ve got to go along with me. You went along with Candy Walker, you can go along with me, for Christ’s sake.”
“Please don’t yell at me, Jim. Please don’t yell.”
I didn’t know I was.
“Sorry,” I said.
She stood; leaned her hands against the desk, and those big brown eyes I loved so much begged me. “Jim, if you call the police, leave Ma and Paula and Dolores and Helen out of it. Please. You got to promise.”
“Okay. I promise.” But I was thinking about the police she’d mentioned. Maybe I should call them. But I figured Cowley and Purvis would want to handle this themselves; it would mean the difference to them between a feather in the cap or a major embarrassment. Squelching the kidnapping themselves beat hell out of having the local cops pull their director’s butt off the burner.
And I could use Purvis and Cowley’s goodwill — I was involved in this just deep enough to need to explain myself, and better them than the Chicago cops, Christ! I was an accomplice in the murder of Dr. Joseph Moran, if you got right down to it. You could make a case — a convincing one — for me being part of the kidnap ring. But time was slipping away — if the snatch went down, I wouldn’t just be up shit creek, I’d be drowning in it. Maybe I should call the cops anyway; take my chances with Chicago’s finest — hell, I hadn’t been fed the goldfish in weeks.
The number at the Banker’s Building was still busy.
It was six-ten.
I got up and pulled the Murphy bed down.
“Jim! What are you doing?”
Now she thought I was a sex fiend.
“Are you sure this is all right with your friend...?”
“It’s fine with him. And it ain’t whoopee time, so relax. You’re just going to take a rest. I have to step out for a while.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just a few blocks over. I got an appointment.”
“But what if your friend comes back?”
“It’ll be okay.” I sat her on the edge of the bed. “Just catch a nap. Okay?”
“Jim, I’m so confused... what’s going on? What’s this about?” She had tears in her eyes.
Shit.
Without knowing it, without meaning to, I’d joined the club: joined the ranks of men who’d abused this girl, pushed her around, hurt her. Damnit. Fuck. Shit.
I sat down on the bed next to her. Slipped an arm around her. “I won’t be gone long. Just stay here and take it easy. Tomorrow, I’m going to take you to see your daddy.”
“Do you think that’s for the best?”
“I do.”
“But you said I should leave the past behind me, Jim.”
“Some things you simply got to face before you can put ’em behind you. Now, I’m going to be with you, all the way. Right at your side. And then we’re coming back to the big city and find you some honest work. In fact, my friend who runs this office just might be able to use a secretary, at that. Would that suit you?”
She smiled, but it was forced. “Sure, Jim. Any friend of yours...”
I kissed her cheek, and she grabbed me, clutched at me. Kissed me hard on the mouth. There was more desperation than passion in it, and I held her close to me, hugged her close, and whispered in her ear, “I’m not going to hurt you, Louise — nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.”
I tucked her under the covers and smiled at her and she smiled at me, a brave-little-soldier smile, and turned on her side and shut her eyes.
I locked the office behind me, and got the hell out of there. It was six-fifteen. I was only a few blocks away from the Banker’s Building; three or four minutes by foot, five tops.
All I had to do, I thought as I walked briskly by Binyon’s, was head over there and take the elevator up to the nineteenth floor and tell ‘em the tale. It was late enough that most, maybe all, their agents would be gone for the day — but at least the call to the cops could be placed by Purvis or Cowley — at least they could initiate and coordinate the effort to stop the kidnapping and nab the kidnappers. Somehow I didn’t think Hoover would grab a gun, though.
I was walking by the Federal Building, now; sidewalks were all but empty, this time of day, and I could move right along. It felt good to be home, where the buildings were taller than the corn, where the cattle was lined up in the stockyards where it belonged. It would be over soon — already, I was out of the outlaw’s world and back in my own; and the girl I’d come to get was tucked safely away in my office. I almost smiled.
But around the next corner there was one last street to cross.
Maybe the feds, maybe Cowley anyway, could keep this thing from turning into a bloodbath. Just as I couldn’t allow myself to be party to Hoover’s kidnapping — even for twenty-five goddamn grand — a massacre of Floyd and Nelson and the others was nothing I cared to be part of, either.