A Sad Song Singing Page 2

  On a shelf above the hangers was a suitcase.

  “Could we use this to pack in?” I said.

  “Sure,” she said.

  When I got it down, a flutter of newspapers came with it and drifted to the floor at my feet. I looked on the shelf and saw a large stack of folded papers. I picked up one that had fallen and it was a weekly, published in a small town in Indiana that I had never heard of. I looked at some more of those on the floor and there were a couple from that same town and three or four from other small towns in Indiana and Illinois.

  “These papers—” I said.

  She looked at them over my shoulder.

  “Richie’s,” she said. “He bought them from a big stand where they sell out-of-town papers.”

  “Was he looking for notices—about himself?”

  “Oh no—he used them for material—for songs. Richie said small-town newspapers were one of the best places to get ideas for where to look for songs. ‘That’s where folks really live,’ he used to say.”

  “I see,” I said.

  I opened the suitcase on the bed and she began to gather up the things off the chiffonier. I went to the wardrobe again and started through Richie’s pockets, surreptitiously, watching her with an edge of my vision. She didn’t seem to notice. She lingered awhile over the photograph, finally folded it into one of her sweaters and laid it away in the suitcase. I didn’t find anything in the jeans and I had my hand in one of the pockets of some slacks when she said:

  “What are you looking for?”

  It startled me and I had no ready answer.

  “Just nosy,” I said. “That’s my business.”

  “You won’t find anything in his clothes. I checked all his pockets before I took them to the laundry.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “You’re a hard man to convince.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well, Cress, that’s my business, too, being hard to convince. How long has Richie been gone?”

  “About a month.”

  “And you haven’t heard anything from him?”

  “No, but I didn’t expect to. When would he write letters? Most of the time he’s probably way back in the country somewhere and there’s no post office even.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  I opened a drawer in the chiffonier and there was a collection of handouts and fliers in various sizes and colors, some of them with Richie’s picture and an announcement of an appearance somewhere. There were half a dozen brochures from The Mill, featuring Richie along with a group called the Nelsons, three boys and three guitars.

  I picked out three or four of them with Richie’s picture on them and folded them into my pocket. I couldn’t tell whether she noticed or not. She had cleared out her side of the wardrobe and was taking down the jeans and slacks. I was still pawing through the papers in the chiffonier and my hand ran across a sharp edge, not quite hard enough to draw blood, but causing me to jerk away from it. Cress looked at me.

  “Have you given notice here yet?” I asked.

  “No—is it important?”

  “I guess not, as long as the rent’s paid. How about your job?”

  “I told Roger I wouldn’t be at work for a while.”

  “Did you tell him why?”

  “No, but maybe he guessed. He’s not stupid.”

  Feeling around carefully, I had found the handle of a long knife. I brushed the papers away from it and saw it was a stiletto type, razor sharp on the edges and pointed like a needle; a knife to kill with.

  “This was Richie’s?” I said, holding it up.

  She shook her head vaguely.

  “I guess so. I never saw it before.”

  I wrapped it in my handkerchief to dull the edges and laid it in the suitcase on top of a pair of his slacks. Cress went to the chiffonier and started taking out some men’s shirts and a small wad of feminine undergarments. I looked into the bathroom, and it was clean and contained nothing except the usual facilities. When I got back, Cress was wrapping Richie’s shoes in some of the newspapers and laying them in on top of the other things in the case, which was well filled without being stuffed.

  “I guess that’s everything,” she said.

  “There were some stockings in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot.”

  She went out there and I looked through the rest of the chiffonier without finding anything. I stood beside her, leaning over the bed, while she put the stockings in the suitcase.

  “Shall we close it now?” I asked.

  “I guess so. I can’t think of anything else.”

  I pulled the lid up and over and let it fall. It didn’t quite click shut. I was leaning over it, preparing to push it down, when she spoke sharply under her breath:

  “Listen…!”

  She had good ears. By the time I heard them, the steps were at the door, the hand on the knob. Every hair on my body stood straight up. I pushed at her with my right hand and moved along the bed to the straight chair. Cress made it to the other side of the bed. I picked up the telephone and tossed it onto the bed.

  “Call the police,” I said.

  The door opened and they came in. I had time to half turn, and two of them were into the room and I could see the third one behind them.

  Nobody said anything. It wasn’t that kind of a party. I flipped the lid of the suitcase back and groped for the knife, now buried under shoes and stockings. I couldn’t find it. One of the trio started around the bed and another one approached me. I could hear Cress dialing the telephone. The bed lurched heavily as the nearest of the three came at me. There was a tearing sound and I knew somebody had ripped the phone from the wall connection. Cress gasped. I brought one of the shoes up out of the suitcase and rapped the heel into the guy’s nose. By then I had found my balance and I twisted and hit him in the belly. It stopped him all right, but the third one was coming around him and he had a gun in his hand, holding it by the muzzle. He lifted it and I ducked into him in the midsection. The gun butt came down hard on my kidneys, but he was off balance. I kept after him, to get into the clear, and when he was ready to hit me again I kicked at him where it would hurt bad and shouldered him into the chiffonier. I heard him grunt and his feet slip under him.

  The first one jumped on my back then and we were in it good. Nothing scientific—just desperate clawing and slugging—them or us, right now. I twisted out from under the one and hit the other with all I had, as low under the ribs as I could get any drive into. It stopped his heart for a second and he sagged down, clawing the cover off the chiffonier as he came. I turned into the other one, who somehow had come by the gun, or had one of his own, and the only chance I had was to get inside and grapple with him. He hit me once on the cheekbone and a glancing blow on the side of the head and I couldn’t see well. I kept hitting him with both hands, and he backed off and swung at me again but lost his footing and fell against the wall beside the door. I was gasping for breath, trying to clear my head and wondering what was happening to Cress and why somebody didn’t come around to see what the noise was about. But they never come. They stay home and pound on the ceiling—or call the manager.

  So call! I thought frantically.

  The one on the floor had turned the gun around to make full use of it and I brought my left foot down on his wrist on the floor and kicked at his face with my right. I connected well enough to quiet him, but it threw me backward onto the bed. The third guy was trying to drag the suitcase across the bed while, as it turned out, holding Cress by the neck with his free arm, with his hand clamped over her mouth. I rolled up over the suitcase and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. He let go of the suitcase and hit at me, but he had too many irons in the fire. I pulled myself up by his jacket and pushed, and when he reared back, I hit him in the stomach. He doubled down on his knees and I looked around in time to see the one with the gun coming across the bed at me.

  “All right—” he said.

  But things were going for me now and
I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted to. I dived into him at his knees and the luck held; he lost his balance on the shifting springs and fell backward and I heard the gun bang against the wall and drop. I swam on over the edge of the bed and got my hands on it, and when he picked himself up, I was holding it by the butt and he saw that and stopped.

  We were both shaking like leaves in the wind. I didn’t dare stick my finger inside the trigger guard for fear of squeezing off unintentionally. I don’t know whether he noticed that or not, but he kept staring at my hand and he didn’t come on. He was smallish, with black-rimmed eyes, scrawny in the throat. He looked young, twenty, twenty-one maybe. There was a cut on his left cheek where I had hit him at some time. The other two I could see only vaguely in the background, not to identify. There was a lot of sweat or something running into my eyes and my throat kept clogging.

  “Back off,” I managed to say.

  He hung there for a few seconds, staring at me with his mouth open, then backed away toward the door.

  “Hold it,” I said.

  He stopped and I fought for breath and time. They were all over the room and I couldn’t figure out how to gather them up. They could have taken me then, the way they were spread out, and I don’t know why they didn’t, except that I would have hit at least one of them and none of them knew but that it might be him.

  The standoff lasted about three seconds. Then there were scrambling, lurching movements on the bed, over my left shoulder. I looked around and Cress was on her knees with her right hand in the suitcase and the one I had brought down by the bed was going after her. I heard a strangled protest from the one at the door and when I got my eyes on him, he had the door open and was going out. I couldn’t shoot him going away, for various good and bad reasons.

  The third one had got up and was hanging onto the chiffonier, still gasping for breath. I was on my knees. Pushing up to my feet, I turned to the bed. Cress had the long knife in her hand, trying to jab at the other guy, who was holding her off with both hands. I yelled at him and he looked into the gun dead level and growled something. There were heavy steps and I knew the one by the chiffonier had left us. I could hear him going down the hall. Somewhere in the building a voice swore loudly.

  On the bed, he was holding Cress down by her wrists, crouching over her. I wiggled the gun at him.

  “Get up off her, no fooling,” I said.

  He was cut in two or three places on the face and neck, but superficially. He had a long nose, slightly bent to one side, and black hair cut square and low across his forehead, with deep sideburns. He stared at the gun for about a watch tick and a half, then let go of Cress’s wrists and started back off the bed.

  At least I’ll hang onto this one, I was thinking.

  Then Cress, in fury and frustration, lunged up at him with the knife. It brought her between us and the gun was useless. The guy threw himself to one side, away from her, rolled off the end of the bed and kept going, on his knees at first, then, with a lunge, on his feet. I ran along the bed to head him off and tripped over the disarranged bedclothes. I went down helplessly, sprawling, and banged my head against the wall near the door. It stunned me and I went through a period of buzzing in the head and then some silence.

  * * * *

  When I came to, my first impression was of pain in my right hand. Working the fingers around, I found they had a death grip on the gun, which was bruising my knuckles against the wall.

  Anyway, I thought, I held onto the gun.

  Then I felt nausea and next a warm wetness on the upturned side of my face. I could hear Cress’s voice nearby but couldn’t make out the words. Finally I understood her to say:

  “…you all right?”

  I rolled onto my back and she was on her knees on the floor with this wet cloth in her hand. My head was still clanging and I felt lethargic. She asked again:

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right,” I said. “How about you?”

  “I’m all right. They didn’t hurt me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  She put the cloth on my forehead and pressed lightly, then removed it.

  “Do you believe me now?” she said.

  “I believe you,” I said.

  My left eye was swollen and sightless. I must have looked pretty funny, lying there peering up at her. Anyway, she smiled, not much, but enough to draw up the corners of her mouth and soften the hard line of that stubborn chin. It was the first smile out of her. When she saw I had noticed, she put the cloth over my eyes. I left it for a minute, then took it off and laid it in her hand.

  “We’d better pick up the stuff and go,” I said.

  It took me some time to get up, but once on my feet, I could move all right. All the pain was in my knees and head and I knew it would go away.

  Cress’s hair was mussed; she had lost the little white cap and there was a bruise on her cheekbone, but she was functional. I watched her walk away to the bathroom, with the cloth in her long fingers, and she walked straight and firm.

  Richie Darden, I thought, you got a good woman there. I wonder where you think you are.

  When she came back, I was repacking the suitcase on the bed.

  “Hey, Cress,” I said, “how old are you?”

  “Why?” she said.

  “Just wondered.”

  After a minute she said, “Seventeen.”

  I closed the suitcase, picked up the gun, and we turned off the light and got out of there. I carried the gun in my hand, out in the open. It felt kind of silly, but then, it didn’t feel too bad either.

  Chapter Three

  Cress was stretched out under a blanket on the couch in the office, and I was preparing to clean up, when I discovered I’d lost my wallet. It contained little cash but several credit cards, my driver’s license and a photostat of my professional license, everything necessary to lead the finder straight home. If the three musclemen had not gone back to the apartment after we left, they were not really thorough. Even if they hadn’t gone back, they surely would have lingered long enough to spot my car and license number, and soon enough they would know me and my address.

  I thought about it while washing up and smoothing out the lumps on my head and face. When I finished, I was in no shape to pose for any Vitalis ads, but I wasn’t too hideous. I could see all right with the one eye and there was only one spot where a small strip of adhesive tape was essential. The pain had dulled to a headache and my knees had settled down. The bad thing I had left was nerves. Somebody came into the building and before the sound of the outer door had faded, I was in the office with the gun in my hand. Then footsteps clomped through the hall and started upstairs and I knew it was another tenant. There was no sound from the couch, and when I took a close look at Cress, she was asleep.

  I got into a fresh shirt and a tie, took some money and the original of my license from the strongbox on the closet shelf, and sat down at the desk in the dark. After a while I got up and looked out through the blinds. Tony’s joint was closed and I couldn’t see anything hanging around on the street. It didn’t help much. I’d have felt better if I’d seen something, anything. The next time they would come prepared.

  For myself alone the problem was simple; I could lock the doors, stick the gun under my pillow and catch some sleep. But the trouble had more than doubled, and the square root of it was a slender, seventeen-year-old girl with long, blond hair.

  I went back to the bedroom, got down a suitcase of my own and put some things in it. The way it was going, I thought, we’d have enough luggage for a world tour. It was all stacked in the middle of the office: the guitar and her suitcase and the one Richie had left with her, which she had insisted on bringing in from the car. I put mine down with the rest of it and sat on the edge of the couch.

  She was sleeping on her back, her face half hidden in her hair. She didn’t wake when I sat down, but her face twisted, frowning, then relaxed slowly. I looked at my watch and it was getting on to t
hree o’clock. All the hours between now and daylight would be bad ones. She was young; if she could go to sleep so easily, she could wake up.

  I put the back of my hand to her cheek and joggled her lightly. She stretched, lifting her arms. Her eyes blinked and closed.

  “Cress,” I said quietly. “Hey, Cress—come on.”

  Her arms rose again and went around my neck. Stretching upward, she opened her eyes and mouth, searching. I shook her a little and she woke up. She clung to my neck for a while, blinking me into focus, then let her arms fall away.

  “Oh,” she said, yawning, “I thought it was Richie.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to do for now. Can you wake up? It’s time to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Somewhere else.”

  She looked thoughtful.

  “Yes,” she said, “I guess so.”

  So she knew why, and I didn’t bother to explain about losing the wallet.

  “If you want to freshen up,” I said, “I’ll load the things in the car.”

  “All right.”

  I found a clean towel for her and left her alone. I took the guitar and my own suitcase and carried them out to the car. It was a raw night, with a stiff breeze off the lake at my back. I locked the trunk and took a good long look around the neighborhood. There was nothing more than I had seen from the window, so I felt about the same as before, only colder.

  Inside, she was still in the bathroom. I picked up the other two suitcases and took them to the car. The trunk was well loaded now, but I managed to get everything in and lock it. When I got back this time, she was coming from the bedroom, smelling of soap. Her white jacket was on the sofa and I helped her into it.

  “Looks as if you lost your hat,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and went into the bedroom.

  I took off my jacket, got my gun from the closet and put it on, with the damn harness and all, and my jacket over it. When I rejoined her in the office, she had picked up the gun I had saved from the fracas and was turning it in her hand, examining it. It was a .38 revolver and far too big for her.