Blonde on the spot, p.5
Blonde on the Spot, page 5
Then I switched back to thinking about Sally again, and when I did, it was like the whole world had become grey and empty. Sally was there in that hotel. But she mighta been a million miles away or even dead for all the comfort that give me. Because I knew from the way she had looked at me and the way she had spoken that I meant nothing to her – probably less than nothing. All that had meant anything to us was now finished.
The grey light of morning was beginning to flush out the dark night. The ashtray was littered with stubs and the bottle of Scotch lay on its side, empty. I still paced the room in my stockinged feet, feeling like hell, with a sickness deep down inside me and a lump that needed only a momentary relaxation of control before it leaped into my throat.
And suddenly I felt stifled. I just had to get outta that hotel and get some fresh air. Maybe Sally would be packing to clear off somewhere. Well, I couldn’t stop her going. I just didn’t wanna be around when she did go. That would hurt too much.
I washed up a bit at the basin. The radio was still crooning away. I cleaned my teeth thoroughly, because my mouth tasted like the floor of a chicken run. My feet had swollen while I’d been pacing up and down, and it was a job to squeeze them into my shoes. I didn’t dare pull the laces tight.
I grabbed my hat and walked over to the radio to switch it off. Just as I did so, the announcer said: ‘How’re you doin’ folks ? Five o’clock now. Are you tired like I am? I’ve been playing these records for five hours now. Only half an hour longer and yours truly, Victor Lane, will be signing off …’
I didn’t listen to any more, because the face clicked in line with the voice. Victor Lane! I knew Victor Lane right enough. We’d been buddies in New York. He’d been a scriptwriter then, writing vaudeville shows for radio.
I clicked off the radio and walked over to the door. Then I stopped. Victor Lane! He’d be through in half an hour. Why not pick him up at the radio station? I wanted somebody to jolt me outta the depression I was in. He’d be the fella to do it.
There were a coupla telephone books by the bedside. I thumbed through until I found the address of the radio station he was working for, and I quit the place in a hurry. I had only half an hour to get there, and it was over on the other side of the town.
CHAPTER FOUR
I got there exactly three minutes before Victor was due off the air. A sleepy-eyed attendant in the reception hall showed me a chair and asked me to wait.
I didn’t have to wait more than ten minutes, and then Victor Lane came busting out through the swing doors leading to the relay stations.
‘Hank,’ he yelled. ‘Gee, boy, it’s good to see ya.’
He pumped my hand up and down and it made me feel good to be there with him. There was something warm and invigorating in his make-up that made me feel better.
I looked him over. He seemed bigger than I ever remembered him being, and he was sporting a walrus moustache, of the type that the fellas in the British RAF use. His eyes grinned and twinkled mischievously and one eyebrow arched itself whenever he spoke.
‘Oklahoma agrees with you,’ I said.
‘Anywhere agrees with me. If it don’t, I make it agree.’ He laughed infectiously and his eyebrows arched.
Then he introduced me to a slim young fella with black hair plastered down over his head. ‘Meet Jimmy Chark,’ he said.
I shook hands with Jimmy, and his white teeth flashed a welcome. I liked his eyes; they were brown eyes, thoughtful and kindly eyes.
‘Pleased to meecher,’ he said.
‘That goes for me, too.’
Victor put one burly arm around my shoulders. ‘I’m going for a steak and egg,’ he said. ‘What say you come join us?’
‘Why d’ya think I’m here?’
‘What are we waiting for then?’
We went across the road to an all-night café. Apparently Victor was a regular customer there. His steak and egg was waiting for him, cooked and smelling delicious. Me and Jimmy had to wait for ours to be cooked.
‘Whatya doing here?’ Victor demanded, his mouth full of grub.
‘Just looking around,’ I said. ‘Heard your show last night, recognised your voice and came on over.’
Victor pointed his knife at Jimmy. ‘He’s half the show,’ he said, and swallowed a mouthful of steak that shoulda choked him.
I looked enquiringly at Jimmy. He grinned. ‘I put on the records,’ he said.
‘He’s smart,’ said Victor. ‘He don’t make no mistakes, ever. Always puts on the right record and always the right side.’
‘That’s easy,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ve got the easy side of it. I’d hate to do all the gabbing you do. Talking all through the night to folk you can’t see.’
‘Waste of time, isn’t it? ‘I asked.
Victor shook his head and grinned. He wasn’t annoyed that I should be thinking he was wasting his time. ‘You ain’t got no idea, Hank. We reckon there must be fifty thousand folks listen in all night.’
‘Are there that many guys with something on their conscience in Oklahoma?’
‘There are nightworkers,’ said Jimmy. ‘Think of all the nightworkers, watchmen, garage hands, all-night cafés, factories, fellas with insomnia, folk who have to get up at three in the morning to go to work. Don’t you get it wrong, fella. Any time you wanna say during the night, there’s fifty thousand folk on the other end of that mike.’
It had never occurred to me before that there’d be all them folk listening all through the night.
Victor pointed out: ‘You were one of the fifty thousand tonight.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But that was different. I had something on my mind.’
Victor looked at Jimmy and grinned. It was like they had a secret joke between them.
‘What goes on? ‘I demanded, looking from one to the other of them.
Jimmy explained. ‘It’s like a mad house in that radio station,’ he said. ‘Folks keep ringing in all night. Some want us to play this record or that record, others threaten us with all kinds of torture if we don’t stop broadcasting what they call rubbish.’
‘And you answer the telephone?’
‘In between playing the records,’ said Jimmy. ‘And we get some queer customers on the phone, too.’
‘Maybe I shoulda rung you instead of coming down here?’
‘At least you’d have been a pleasant surprise,’ said Victor.
‘Ain’t some of them pleasant?’
Jimmy said: ‘What would you do? There’s a fella that’s gonna sling himself outta window five stories high on account some dame has passed him up. So just before he tries to fly, he rings us on the telephone, sobs his heart out and asks us to play ‘Forever in My Heart,’ so he can die happy, remembering that his dame useta like this song.’
I remembered that I coulda been doing just that thing myself if I’d had just a little less self-control. I said: ‘Are there folks who are that screwy?’
‘It’s happening all the time,’ he said. ‘But what would you have done?’
I thought about it. ‘That’s his business,’ I said. ‘Maybe he wasn’t gonna jump anyway.’
‘Victor fixed it,’ said Jimmy. ‘He talky-talked with the guy. The guy was anxious to talk, too. Told Victor what she looked like, what she wore and what her aunt said about the way she dressed. Him and Victor sure did have a heart to heart talk.’
‘And Victor talked him outta jumping,’ I guessed.
‘Naw,’ drawled Jimmy. ‘You can’t talk nuts like that outta what they’re gonna do. I got to work on the other phone, told the cops, they traced the call, and he was still talking on the phone to Victor when they busted into his flat and put the arm on him.’
‘So you save lives too, eh?’
‘It’s all in the service,’ said Victor.
We’d finished eating by this time, and we went over to the counter and grabbed ourselves another coffee apiece. As we stood there talking, a young, fresh-faced fella of about twenny-two ambled in, threw his hat on a hat-rack and came over to the counter.
Victor said: ‘Howya Flash? What’s hot this morning?’
Flash grinned uncomfortably. ‘Can’t you drop this Flash business?’
Victor grinned at me and thumbed towards Flash. ‘This fella’s a reporter, Hank. Leastways, that’s what he says he is. But nobody ain’t sure what he is yet; they’ve never been able to get his diapers stripped off him.’
‘Shuddup, you big-faced baboon,’ said Flash.
Victor playfully cuffed his head. ‘You know why he’s called Flash?’ he asked. ‘He’s the guy they sent out one night to get a story on a reported oil strike. He came back with the story the next day, seventeen hours after the rest of the papers had given the same story headline build-up.’
Flash growled. ‘Everybody knows what happened. I got a hot lead on something else.’
‘Which turned out to be colder than an iceberg.’
Jimmy asked: ‘What’s special this morning, Flash?’
‘Papers will be out any time now.’
Victor said: ‘Just in case you’ve never met a real reporter, kid, get a load of our friend here, Hank Janson. He’s covered some of the toughest assignments New York can dish out.’
I said: ‘Can it, Victor.’
Flash said: ‘Gee, have you been on a New York paper?’
‘Forget it,’ I told him. ‘It’s ancient history. I’m leading a quiet life now. I wanna forget the bad things in my life.’
‘Gee,’ he said. ‘I’d give my ears to get on a New York paper.’
‘If you’re ever silly enough to wanna go that far, kid,’ I told him, ‘it’ll cost you more than your ears. It’ll probably cost you twenty years of your life.’
We were standing up by the counter, sipping at our coffee, which had been really hot, and there was nobody else there except for the café proprietor, who was in the back, washing some dishes.
The door swung open, but none of us took any notice until a voice said: ‘Say, you’re Sid Gordon, aincher?’
Flash turned round. We all did. The fella who had spoken was short and squat with a bulbous nose. There was another fella with him. A taller fella with thin lips and eyes that were slits.
Flash said: ‘Yeah, I’m Sid Gordon.’
The squat fella moved right up close to him, and the tall guy kept right beside him.
Squatty pushed his face forward so it was only inches from Flash’s face. ‘I gotta message for you,’ he said.
Flash looked mystified. His fresh, round face looked quite boyish. ‘Who from?’ he said.
‘From a fella that don’t like the articles you’ve been writing recently.’
‘Yeah? What’s the message?’
‘This,’ said Squatty, and all at once he seemed to be greased lightning. His ham-like fist stabbed out and sunk deep into Flash’s groin, and as the kid doubled up in pain, and his face came down, Squatty’s knee jolted up, flattening the kid’s nose and arching him over backwards. There was a squelching sound as flesh and bone were pulped, and blood spattered the floor as it gouted from the place where the kid’s nose useta be. The kid sprawled backwards onto the floor, and Squatty drew back his boot and planted it right in the centre of the kid’s face.
All this had happened so quickly that it was over before we realised it. Victor was quicker off the mark than me. He swung a left at Squatty that caught the side of his head and caused him to stumble. He was gonna follow this up, but the tall fella moved up. Victor was in my way and I couldn’t see what happened. But Victor staggered back with his hand to his face just as I sensed movement from the tall guy.
I tried to get round Victor but cannoned into Jimmy, who was trying to do the same thing. And Squatty and his pal seemed to melt outta the door.
Victor was swearing and holding his face. I could see blood spilling out between his fingers. I looked at the still swinging door, undecided if I should chase after Squatty and his pal or go to Victor’s help.
Jimmy said: ‘Leave them, Hank. We’ll get after them later. I’m worried about Victor.’
Victor had been a very lucky guy. He’d been slashed with a razor. And the beginning of the slash was on his bottom eyelid and it ran right down to his chin. Half an inch higher and the razor would have cleaved his eyeball in two. As it was he had a wound in his cheek that looked like a bleeding mouth that wouldn’t stop bleeding.
I held the lips of the wound together while Jimmy got the café proprietor to ring for a doctor. Victor was moaning and swearing. I kept telling him to shut his mouth.
‘Just a scratch,’ I told him.
‘Scratch, my Aunt Jeroma,’ he said. ‘It’s gone right through my cheek. It’s bleeding inside my mouth too.’ And to prove it he spat blood out on the floor.
‘Shut your trap,’ I said. ‘How can I stop this bleeding when you keep wriggling your face around?’
Jimmy came back. He went white when he saw the amount of blood Victor was losing. ‘Can I do anything?’ he asked.
‘Sure, take over from me, willya? My fingers are getting stiff. I’ll take a looksee at the kid.’
When I got over to the kid, he looked bad. His face was a mask of blood, and bubbles of blood formed on his lips as he breathed. I got a bowl of water and cleaned off the blood. He didn’t look so bad then. His nose was bent around a bit, and I got hold of it and pulled it straight. The bone gave a nasty grating noise, but the kid was out, and it was better to do this now while he was unconscious than when he came around. I ran my fingers down the bone of his nose and could feel two distinct breaks. I moulded again and then stepped back to survey my handiwork. His nose looked straight enough now except just at the tip, where it had a very slight twist to the left.
Well, he was lucky. If the broken bones started knitting together the way they were, he wouldn’t have suffered too badly.
I got out my hip flask and fed him some rye. After a time he began to make noises. He was swallowing a lotta blood, and a lotta blood was dribbling out from his mouth. He’d got a haemorrhage inside at the back, where the nose was joined on. But after a time that stopped.
By this time the doctor had arrived. The doors of the café had been closed and he was getting to work on Victor with stitches.
‘Hold it,’ the doctor said, ‘this is the last one.’
Just as he spoke, Flash’s eyes opened. ‘How d’ya feel, kid ?’ I asked.
He looked at me dazedly, and raised a hand towards his nose. It musta been hurting him pretty bad. I grabbed his hand and pulled it back to his side. ‘Your nose is okay, kid. Just don’t pull it around until the bone has set.’
I saw memory return to him. His eyes showed a glint of fear as h recalled the fist driving into his guts. He looked around apprehensively.
‘They’ve gone,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if you can walk.’
I got my- hands under his armpits and helped him to his feet. He stood there unsteadily, resting one hand on the counter. He looked a real mess. Blood had clotted on his shirt and run down the front of his grey suit.
‘Why did they do that?’ he asked weakly.
‘Forget it for a while, kid. And don’t touch that nose of yours, if you wanna keep it straight.’ I turned him around so he could see his reflection in the mirror behind the counter. He looked at himself in disgust.
Then he caught sight of the doctor bending over Victor. ‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘Victor got cut up a bit. He kinda horned in when those guys waded into you.’
‘He ain’t hurt?’ he said, and made like he was gonna walk over to him.
I held him back with my arm. ‘He won’t die, kid. In a minute or two, we’ll be able to get outta here. Better let the doc look you over first.’
When the doctor was through with Victor, I called him over and he made a rapid examination of Flash.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he said eventually. ‘Better get yourself a nose-truss to wear in bed at nights if you wanna stay pretty.’
Victor lounged over. A strip of sticking plaster stretched across his face, blood had dripped all over his clothes, and his face had gone white from the blood he’d lost. But he’d got that cheerful smile of his spread right across his puss.
‘How d’ya feel, Flash ? ‘he asked.
Flash swallowed, looked at Victor and said: ‘Jeepers, you asking me how I am!’
‘It’s nothing,’ Victor replied. He grinned at me. ‘Ask Hank. He’ll tell you. It’s just a scratch.’
Jimmy said: ‘Let’s get outta here. Let’s get some place where you can take it easy, Victor.’
‘Sure,’ said Vic. ‘Let’s go up to my flat.’
I said: ‘Me and Jimmy have got work to do. You take the kid with you, Victor. We’ll be along later.’
Victor looked at me steadily for long moments. Then he said heavily: ‘We’ll go up to my place first.’
‘Yeah, but there’s …’
He interrupted me. ‘Quit arguing, Hank. Let’s get up to my flat.’
I didn’t argue no more. And the four of us called a cab and went off down town to Victor’s flat.
CHAPTER FIVE
When we got up to Victor’s flat we settled ourselves down while Victor opened up his cocktail cabinet. He had a fine brand that was just what I wanted to loosen up the stiffness inside me caused by the sleepless night I’d had and the excitement of the last hour.
Flash was still white-faced and very, very nervous. Victor, on the other hand, had completely recovered from what musta been a very nasty shock, to say nothing of the loss of blood he’d endured.
‘Look, Victor,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what’s in your mind, but I reckon this is a job for the cops.’
His eyebrows arched. ‘How long you been in Oklahoma, Hank?’
‘Two days.’
‘Yeah.’ He looked down at his glass, and his brow puckered.
‘You ain’t been here long enough yet to know how the cops are fixed around this neighbourhood.’
