A Girl Called Honey

Seven

Joshua Crawford was sitting with a phone in his hand. The line was dead but he had not yet replaced the receiver. He was staring at a spot on the far wall and his fingers were clenched tight around the receiver.

After a moment he finally did hang up. But he remained in the same position, propped up in front of his desk by his elbows, his eyes still focused absently on the spot on the far wall.

He thought about the conversation. It had been an interesting conversation, to say the least. Almost a fascinating conversation.

It had gone something like this:

“Joshua, this is Honour Mercy. I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you tonight.”

“Really? What’s the matter?”

“I just got a call from Richie.”

Guardedly: “Oh?”

“We have to leave town right away. We’re catching a train for Albany.”

“I see. How come?”

A moment’s pause. Then: “He wouldn’t tell me. He said something about getting false identification there. I don’t know. I think he’s afraid the Air Force is after him.”

“Is he with you now?”

“No, I’m supposed to meet him right away at Grand Central Station. I have to go now, Joshua. I wanted to call you, though, so you wouldn’t worry when I didn’t come tonight.”

“Well. Thanks for calling.”

And that had been that.

The question, Joshua Crawford thought, was just where you went from here. His first reaction, one of cold fury for the little pipsqueak who had the colossal nerve to take his money and use it against him, changed to somewhat renewed respect crossed with determination. The little punk had guts, albeit his own brand of guts. He was putting up a fight, and whether or not that fight consisted of sticking a knife into an obliging back didn’t appear to be too relevant.

Whatever way you looked at it, Joshua Crawford was damned lucky. Because this fool Parsons hadn’t had the brains to tell her not to, Honour Mercy had given him a more or less complete run-down on their plans. Evidently, Parsons wasn’t sure enough of himself to let Honour Mercy know just what was coming off, and this was just fine with Joshua Crawford. The ball had been handed to him; now it was up to him to decide where to throw it.

He toyed with the idea of tipping off the Air Police. The Air Police were, he knew, a most efficient group of gentlemen. In addition to catching Richie as soon as they heard about him, they were almost certain to kick the crap out of him before turning him in. Which, when Joshua Crawford gave the matter a little thought, was just what the little son-of-a-bitch had coming to him. A fast arrest, and a good beating, and as long a sentence in the stockade as they were handing out these days, and Richie Parsons would disappear from his life like a pesty fly stuck on a ribbon of flypaper.

Crawford hadn’t even thought about it before, about what to do if Richie crossed him. The possibility hadn’t even occurred to him. Richie, a skulking sneak, a cowardly clod, would take the cash and run like the devil. Period. But things weren’t that simple.

Crawford thought about calling the Air Police, thought about Honour Mercy’s instant and obvious and inevitable interpretation of such a move, and tried to put himself in her place. If he were Honour Mercy, and if some son-of-a-bitch hollered copper on his own true love, he would be somewhat annoyed.

It stood to reason that Honour Mercy would react along similar lines.

This more or less ruled out the Air Police. Crawford sat at his desk, thinking, growing even more annoyed. He was beginning to realize that he had blundered, had perhaps done a seriously stupid thing. Everything had been going his way: Honour Mercy and Joshua Crawford were growing more and more together, Honour Mercy and Richie Parsons were sliding further and further apart. In time, with Honour Mercy seeing him constantly and discovering how much more enjoyable his companionship was than Richie’s, the battle would have been won.

But he had been too impatient, and in this case impatience and stupidity were identical. He couldn’t leave well enough alone — he was like a lawyer with a safe case who tries to bribe the judge for a dismissal instead of waiting for the jury to exonerate his client legally. By rushing things, by being a stupid man, he had forced Honour Mercy and Richie closer together.

Now, he realized, the question had been put. If Richie had a source of false identification papers in Albany, then he no longer had to fear Joshua Crawford, no longer had to be quite so much of a sneak. He would be in a position to offer serious competition to Crawford. It was, all in all, one hell of a mess.

Crawford sat and thought and smoked. The ashtray overflowed and he was developing a callous on his rear from sitting and doing nothing.

There wasn’t one hell of a lot he could do. That was the sad part, and it was very sad, but the fact remained that there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do.

He could forget Honour Mercy Bane.

Sure, that’s what he could do. He could forget all about her, forget what she was like in bed, what she was like walking and talking and sitting and simply doing nothing but look beautiful. He could forget how he felt alive when he was with her and dead when he was without her.

He could forget her, just as he could forget his name, just as he could remember that he was married to a slob named Selma, just as he could forget that he was alive.

Or, damn it to deep hell, he could get rid of Richie Parsons.

Get rid of him. Get rid of him because he was in the way, because he was an infernal fool who did not fit in with Joshua Crawford’s plans. Get rid of him, squash him like the insect he was, use him up and throw him away like a discarded sanitary napkin. The image, he had to admit, was a damned good one.

Get rid of him. Who would miss Richie Parsons? Who could feel anything for him other than a mixture of com-passion and contempt?

Joshua Crawford thought some more, then opened his desk drawer and hunted around for a small book of telephone numbers. Acme Paper Goods was listed in that book, as was Honour Mercy’s home phone and a good many other numbers that didn’t belong in the official business telephone book. The number Joshua Crawford was looking for was the number of a man named Vincent Canelli. He found the number and dialed it, remembering who Canelli was and what Canelli had said.

Canelli had come to him once, years ago. Canelli did something, God knew what, and Canelli had some sort of mob connection. Along with whatever illegitimate racket the man ran, he also had a dry-cleaning route business that was having hearty tax problems. Crawford had saved the day for him, partly by legal means, partly by reaching people whom Canelli could not have reached on his own.

Canelli had paid a fat fee, which was fitting and proper, but Canelli had also said something else in parting. “Josh,” he had said, “you’re a right guy. Anything has to be done sometime, you let me know. The way I figure it you got a favor coming. You want a man killed, you just let me know.”

The phone was answered on the second ring. Joshua asked for Canelli.

“Who wants him?”

“Joshua Crawford,” he told the man, wondering whether Canelli would remember him. Canelli, as it turned out, remembered him perfectly.

He asked if the offer was still good.

“Your phone clear?” Canelli wanted to know. “This line’s safe. You sure yours ain’t tapped?”

“It’s okay, Vince.”

“Right. We still better keep it sort of up in the air. Even the telephones have ears. I make it you want to order a hit. Right?”

“Right.”

“Here in town?”

Crawford thought for a minute. “No,” he said. “Upstate. Albany.”

Canelli whistled. “I know people in Albany,” he said. “Not too many, but enough. You got somebody to finger the mark?”

The conversation was a little too far up in the air and Crawford had to ask for a translation of the question. “Somebody to point out the prospect so that we make sure we contact the right man,” was how it came out the second time around.

“Oh,” Crawford said. “Well, no.”

“You got his address?”

Crawford thought again. He did not know where Richie would be staying, and he did not know what name Richie would be using, and all in all he did not know one hell of a lot. He considered giving Vince a description, having him meet the train, but he realized that if there was one distinguishing characteristic about Richie Parsons, the insect, it was the utter impossibility of describing him.

“Vince,” he said finally, “I guess it won’t work. I can’t give you enough.”

“It’s rough without a finger, Josh.”

“Yes,” Crawford said. “I can understand that.”

“If he makes it back to the city—”

“Right,” Crawford finished. “I can always call you. In the meantime forget I ever did, okay?”

A low laugh came over the wire. “Josh,” Canelli was saying, “I ain’t seen you or heard from you in... hell, it must be three years.”

“Fine,” Crawford said. And, as an afterthought. “How’s business?”

“Legit,” Canelli told him. “Mostly.”

It is no particular problem to get from New York to Albany. The state capital is located approximately one hundred miles due north of the only worthwhile city in the state, and train service between the two points is frequent and excellent. There are a whole host of milk trains departing every few minutes from Grand Central, as well as a bevy of long-haul passenger trains that make Albany the first hitch of a journey that starts from New York and ends up anywhere from Saint Louis to Detroit.

Richie Parsons and Honour Mercy Bane took the Ohio State Limited. The train’s ultimate destination was Cincinnati, and it planned on getting there via the indirect route which included Dayton, Springfield, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and, happily, Albany.

Richie and Honour Mercy were on the train when it pulled out of Grand Central at a quarter to six. They were also on the train when it pulled into the Albany terminal at 7:30. The hour and forty-five minutes of monotony which they spent on the train was uneventful, which was just as well as far as Honour Mercy and Richie were concerned. Excitement was the last thing they craved at this point.

“A guy asked me for my draft card,” Richie had explained. “He gave me a funny look when I said I left it in my other pants. If he was a cop it would of been all over.”

Honour Mercy had nodded sympathetically, but Richie had the feeling that the lie needed a certain amount of embellishing. “So I kept walking,” he elaborated. “And I get a few blocks away and I take a quick look over my shoulder, sort of casual-like, and I see the guy. He was trying to be real cool about it but I could tell he was following me.”

The additional trappings were obviously just what the lie had needed. Honour Mercy caught her breath and looked worried. Richie had to think for a minute to be sure that it really was a lie, that there hadn’t been anybody following him, that no one had asked for his draft card.

“I lost him,” he went on. “Leastwise I think I lost him, but maybe he just passed me on to somebody else. I read about how they do it. When one of them gets spotted he signals another one and the other one takes out after you. I looked hard but I couldn’t see any other one following me so I guess I got clear.”

“It’s good you called me,” Honour Mercy said. “We have to stay out of town until you have some identification.” She was about to tell him that she had called Crawford but she decided not to. He might be jealous, and she didn’t want that to happen. It was all perfectly natural discussing Richie with Crawford — he was the kind of man who could listen calmly to anything she said. He understood things. But for some reason it was not perfectly natural to discuss Crawford with Richie.

The private compartment on the train had been Richie’s idea. It cost a little more but it was worth it for two reasons. First of all, it was a safety measure — there was no telling when somebody would recognize him, somebody who had known him before. Secondly, it made it look as though he was really worried about being discovered. By this time it was his own private conviction that a visit from the Air Police was about as pressing a danger as an atomic attack on south-central Kansas, but there was no point in letting Honour Mercy in on the fact.

The private compartment, however, accomplished something else. It left Honour Mercy and Richie thoroughly alone with each other, more alone than they had been in quite some time. There they were, the two of them, and with the compartment all closed up they were alone. The togetherness and the aloneness, combined with the marvelous feeling of security that was bound up in the whole idea of false identification papers and the false new identity they would bring, made Richie suddenly very strong, very much the dominant personality. He took Honour Mercy on his lap, and he held Honour Mercy close to him and kissed her, and after he had kissed her several times and touched her breasts, he wished fervently that the trip was over already and they were in a hotel room in Albany.

Which, before too long, is where they were.

From the terminal they taxied to the Conning Towers on State Street. The Conning Towers was, and had been for more years than Richie had been alive, Albany’s finest hotel. He had never so much as stepped into the lobby before. It was hardly the most inconspicuous place in town, but Richie reasoned this way: the better the place they stayed in, and the nicer the restaurants they ate in, and the more exclusive neighborhood they roamed around in, the less chance he stood of running into anybody who had known him before.

He figured this out, and he had explained it to Honour Mercy on the train. Even so, he had a tough time telling the cab driver where he wanted to go, and a tougher time actually squaring his shoulders and walking into the lobby. Once inside it was even worse. The high ceilings and the thick carpet made him more nervous, and his voice squeaked when he asked the thin gray clerk for a double room.

The clerk nodded and handed him the register and a ballpoint pen. Richie got enough control over his fingers to get a tentative grip on the pen and leaned over the register to sign his name.

He almost wrote RICHIE PARSONS. The pen was actually touching the paper, ready to make the first stroke of the “R,” when it occurred to him that he was no longer Richie Parsons, not if he wanted to stay alive and free. His hand shook and the pen dribbled from his grasp and bounced onto the floor. He reached over to pick it up, hating himself, hating the thin gray clerk, hating everything, and suddenly incapable of thinking up a name for himself.

Then, the pen recovered and poised once more, he remembered the author of a book he had been reading the day before and signed the register ANDREW SHAW. The clerk nodded, attempted a smile, and rang for a bellhop. The bellhop picked up the suitcase that Honour Mercy had packed and led them up an impressively winding staircase to their room on the first floor. The bellhop opened the door, ushered them inside, took an idiotically long time opening the window and checking for soap and towels, and finally accepted the quarter that Richie barely remembered to hand him. Then, mercifully, the bellhop left and closed the door after him.

Only then did Richie relax. He relaxed quite visibly, throwing himself down on the big double bed and letting out his breath all at once.

“Well,” Honour Mercy said, “I guess we got here all right.”

“I almost ruined everything down there. Signing the book, I mean.”

“That’s all right,” she told him.

“He must figure it’s not my name, the way I had so much trouble getting it written.”

“Sure,” she said, smiling. “He probably thinks you signed another name because we aren’t married and you’re embarrassed. It’s better that way. Surest way in the world to hide something is to pretend you’re hiding something else.”

Richie thought about that. It made a lot of sense, especially in view of the fact that he had adopted much the same tactics in getting Honour Mercy and himself the hell out of New York. The only difference was that he had hidden what he was running from by pretending to be running from something else, but it worked out to about the same.

“Andrew Shaw,” he said aloud, testing the name. “Sounds okay to me. Maybe you ought to practice calling me Andy.”

She said Andy twice, then laughed. “Sounds funny,” she complained. “Can’t I call you Richie any more?”

“Not in public. Not when we’re out where people can hear and get suspicious.”

“How about in private?”

“That’s different,” he said. He watched her, moving about and unpacking things and putting them away, and he thought that it was time for him to get out of the hotel and get in touch with the man who could fix up the phony identification for him. He watched her some more, watched the way her body moved and studied the way it was formed, and he decided that although it was definitely time to get in touch with the man, the man would be around for a few more hours.

“In bed,” he said. “In bed you can call me Richie. When you’re in bed with me.”

She turned and looked at him. “You want me now?”

He nodded.

“Now?”

“Now.”

She started to come toward the bed and he stood up to take her into his arms. When he kissed her he sensed something that he couldn’t pin down, some uncertainty or anxiety, but he didn’t care to spend any time analyzing it. Anyway, it was gone when he kissed her a second time, and during the third kiss when they were lying together on top of the big bed he forgot that the uncertainty or anxiety had ever existed at all. He needed her very urgently and he could not wait this time, could not wait and do things nice and slow the way she usually liked to do things. He was in a hurry.

“Honey, you’ll rip my dress!”

“I’ll buy you a new one.”

The voice did not even sound like his own. And the hands that hurried with her clothing were much stronger, much more certain of themselves than his hands. The hands, the clever and hungry hands that touched that perfect body all over, they were not his hands at all.

He took her and it was good, very good. It was hard and tough and fast and the blood pounded against his brain. It was an affirmation, a declaration, and when it was over he felt not exhausted but reinvigorated, as if he had taken a vitamin pill instead of a woman.

Usually, after they had made love, he would lie limp and weak in the shelter of her arms. This time, however, he rolled away from her as soon as the initial glow had passed from him. He lay on his side, not facing her, and for some reason he did not want to look at her just then.

A moment later he was on his feet, drawing the covers over her nude body and heading for the bathroom. “I want to take a shower,” he called over his shoulder. “Then I’ll go see about the papers. You stay right here until I come back.”

He turned on the shower and stepped into the tub. From the bed Honour Mercy could hear the water pounding down in steady torrent. Then, above the roar of the shower, she heard another sound, one she had never heard before.

He was singing.

After the abortive phone call to Canelli, Joshua Crawford had sat at his desk for perhaps twenty-five seconds. Then, all at once, he sprang to his feet and hurried out of the office without saying goodbye to anybody. He hailed a cab and left it at the corner of Third Avenue and 24^th Street in front of an establishment known only as HOCK SHOP. That was what the black letters on the dingy yellow clapboard proclaimed and that was what the three golden balls were there to signify. That was enough.

The owner, a round-shouldered man with thick glasses who looked like all pawnbrokers everywhere, was speedily persuaded to sell a .38-caliber police positive revolver to one John Brown for the sum of two hundred dollars. The pawnbroker, who had bought the gun from a sneak thief for ten dollars, was pleased with the transaction. Joshua Crawford, who didn’t give much of a damn what the gun cost him, was equally pleased. He put the gun in his briefcase, tucked the case under his arm, and strode out of the store.

He called Selma from a pay station in a candy store two doors down the street. “I’m working late,” he told her, hardly caring whether or not she believed him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Another cab took him to Grand Central. He bought a ticket on the Empire State, boarded the train and collapsed into a coach seat. The train seemed to crawl and the briefcase on his lap weighed a ton but he lived through the trip without knowing just how he managed it. It was a few minutes to nine when he was on his way out of the Albany terminal with the briefcase once again under his arm.

Finding them, he knew, was going to be a problem. He had to nose them out all on his own, and he had to do it without attracting any undue attention, and this was not going to be the easiest thing in the world. Then, when he did find them, he had to get to Richie without Honour Mercy seeing him. Then, and only then, he had to put a bullet into Richie, a bullet that would forever eliminate Richie as any sort of competition whatsoever.

Then he had to get away. If nobody saw him and if he got clear of the scene of the crime, then he ought to be safe all the way. There was no connection between him and Richie other than Honour Mercy, and it was extremely unlikely that she would have any suspicion at all that he had killed Richie. The gun was untraceable. The anonymity of a coach seat on the Empire was complete.

But the big thing went beyond guns and witnesses. It was simply that the police would never suspect him, and unless they started investigating him, they would have to leave the crime forever unsolved. If they had any idea it was him, they would get him in no time, no matter how much trouble he took in covering his trail. That was why murderers got caught — because they had motives for their murders. If a man had no motive, or if his motive was sufficiently obscure, getting away with murder was a lot easier than it sounded.

But first he had to find them. And before that he had to eat — there was no point in killing a man on an empty stomach. He went to Keeler’s, on State Street, because it was supposed to be the best restaurant in Albany. The steak they brought him was tender and juicy and the baked potato was powdery with a crisp skin. The coffee fit the three traditional tests — it was black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. He had three cups of it and felt one hell of a lot better when the caffeine got to work on his system.

It was almost ten when he left the restaurant. The night was cold and clear, the streets virtually empty. He started walking downtown on State Street, wondering just how he was going to find that idiot Parsons, when, impossibly, he saw him.

At first he did not believe it. For one thing, the guy a block ahead of him wasn’t walking like Richie had walked. His head was held high and his shoulders were back; there was even a certain amount of spring to his step. That didn’t jibe with the picture Crawford had of him.

But it was Richie. Crawford got a look at his face when he stopped to study a window display at a sporting goods store, and there was no longer any question in his mind. It was Richie, and Richie was just standing there waiting to be killed, and now all he had to do was catch up with him and take the revolver from the briefcase and blow a hole in Richie Parsons’ head.

Which would be a pleasure.

But how?

He kept following Richie, staying about a block behind him, hoping he would leave the main street and find himself a nice quiet alley to get shot in. That would be the best way, the easiest way all around. Shooting him dead on State Street would be a pretty tricky proposition, especially since the damned gun didn’t have a silencer. He had tried to buy a silencer, but that ass of a pawnbroker hadn’t had one to sell him. When the gun went off, it was going to sound like a cannon, and State Street was hardly the place to shoot off a cannon.

When Richie went into the Conning Towers Hotel, Crawford felt like crying. But there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about it. He had missed his chance for the night, but there was always a chance that he would get a crack at Richie in the morning, or later on if the two of them didn’t go back to New York the next day. The identification Richie had come for might take a while to prepare, in which case Richie Parsons would never leave Albany alive. If Crawford never got another chance at him, then Canelli could have the job in the city and Crawford would do the fingering. That would be safer in the long run, anyhow, even though there was a certain personal satisfaction in doing the job on his own.

Joshua Crawford decided to have a cup of coffee in the beanery across the street from the Conning Towers. The coffee was not at all good and he almost left after the first sip. But for some reason he stayed, sipping at it from time to time and smoking constantly, his eyes flashing from the glowing end of his cigarette to the impressive entrance of the Conning Towers.

If he had not lingered over the coffee, he would not have been there to see Richie Parsons emerge alone from the hotel about a half-hour after entering it. When he did, a jolt of excitement went through him and he dropped a dime on the counter and left the diner in a hurry. He waited until Richie was half a block ahead and then began to follow him.

This time Richie didn’t stay on State Street. This time he walked into just the sort of neighborhood Crawford would have selected — a warehouse district, empty of people and homes and apartment buildings. An ideal setting for a quick and quiet murder.

Crawford began walking faster. Without breaking stride he opened the briefcase, got the gun in his right hand and closed the briefcase again. He kept walking faster and in no time at all he was just a few feet behind Richie.

The gun was already pointed at Richie when he turned around. He stared and his eyes took in first Crawford and then the gun, and then both Crawford and the gun at once. For the shadow of an instant he stared and his face was a study.

Then there was a hole in it.