A Shroud for Jesso

Chapter Twenty

He watched the runway fall away and then the city where it lay flat below with a green park spreading at one end and factory chimneys at the other. It disappeared after a while as they entered the overcast. Jesso pulled out his passport again. The green cover was properly worn and inside there were his name and his picture and his signature, and there was nothing wrong with any of it as far as he could tell. He stuck it back in his pocket with the envelope and the airplane tickets. One of them said Hannover to Frankfurt-am-Main and the other one hadn’t been used yet. It said Frankfurt-am-Main to New York. There was a return ticket too. A week at the most and he’d be back. Everything was running so smoothly that he would be back even sooner.

Jesso sat in his seat and didn’t feel right, even though the feeling made no sense. Renette? How could he feel uneasy about something he wanted so much and had altogether? Helmut? Why waste time thinking about a thing like him? Perhaps Kator. He thought of Kator when the plane went down at Frankfurt, when he got off and went along the airport corridor to the other ramp. His connecting flight was there. Jesso stood in the line that went through customs, and if there was any reason to think of Kator, this was it. Maybe the passport wasn’t as good as it looked. Almost Jesso’s turn in line. Maybe they’d take one look, pull him out, and that was Kator’s play. Jesso could see the two guys in green, customs officers. Two German policemen with those crazy shakos on their heads, like flowerpots. And two M.P.'s. They wore khaki and white for the occasion.

The line moved and Jesso stepped closer. He had a very calm thought and it was that he’d kill somebody if they tried to pull him out. “Pass, bitte,” and Jesso handed it over. Then he got it back and walked through the gate. Then the plane, the stewardess who was a living doll from Cleveland, Ohio, and the seat. The seat. The plane took off and that was that.

He didn’t take a deep breath of relief, because he hadn’t been holding his breath. It was a weird state to know that nothing was right and to find nothing wrong that he could do anything about; and weirder still to know that even inside of him nothing was happening. They shipped eels that way, curled inside a block of ice in suspended animation. The whole trip went by without any real passage of time. He didn’t come out of it until the pilot invited everyone over the loud-speaker to look down below, the United States coast was coming up. Jesso thought it was the weirdest yet to be going in one direction in order to go in the other.

Jesso had only one suitcase and got through customs fast. He took a taxi from Idlewild and they made the Queens Midtown Tunnel in less than an hour. It was five in the morning. He knew a nice family hotel on Forty-fifth Street and he took a room at $7.50 with bath. Then he went to sleep until nine. He woke up the way he rarely did, with a quick, wide-awake jump, but there were just the Chinese mandarins on the wallpaper and the thing with the house rules on the door. He showered and shaved and wanted breakfast. There was a hamburger place across the street and he had an English muffin with jam and drank coffee.

That was at nine-forty-five. He smoked a cigarette in the taxi and from nine-thirty till three in the afternoon he kept the same cab going from one bank to the next. He got some cash and a lot of traveler’s checks. They cost a fortune, but that was the least of his worries. He was stepping out of a bank stuffing an envelope into his brief case when he came awake as he hadn’t been since the trip had started. Manufacturers Trust Company, it said next to him on the brass plate. That time in Delf’s office with nothing on his mind but racking up a list of New York banks, that’s when he had picked Manufacturers Trust. He would; he knew it well enough. He shouldn’t have, because Gluck’s office was in the building right across the street.

Jesso hefted the brief case and made for his taxi at the curb. It was double-parked, so all he saw was the rear fender, and then the fender started moving. Jesso made it to the curb, ran out between the cars that stood there, and yelled, but the hacky either didn’t hear or didn’t want to, because the cab was off, moving with the traffic.

“He stood there twenty minutes, bud. At twenty minutes even I draw the line,” said a cop, coming out from between the cars.

He didn’t look mean, he didn’t look as if he were part of a plot, or maybe planted there, maybe no cop at all. Jesso was wide awake now, so much so that he felt he was going to shake any minute.

“He’ll be back,” said the cop. “Just making a circle around the block.” He turned and walked across the street.

Jesso watched him leave, knowing it was just that, a cop moving a cab that was double-parked too long and nothing more, but Jesso felt the sweat creep out even though it was all over. Till then he hadn’t known just how much asleep he’d been, hiding his fear that something would go wrong under a thick blanket of nothingness. He yanked at his tie, wiped a hand across his face, and looked down the street. He felt like a fool for the way he’d taken that business with the cab. Any more of this and it wouldn’t need any Kator to trip him up. Just keep stumbling along with almost a quarter of a million under his arm, just keep goofing the way he’d picked a bank right across from Gluck’s place, and he wouldn’t have to wait for any monster mind like Kator’s to spring a trap for him.

Jesso didn’t see the cab right then, so he looked elsewhere, alert now. He saw the guy in the Brooks Brothers suit across the street and the way he watched the backside of the girl in front of him. He saw the same cop down by the fire plug, and this time he was pinning a ticket on a car. And when the two-tone Buick pulled out of the basement garage opposite, Jesso saw that too. He saw Murph behind the wheel before Murph saw Jesso, but then he didn’t jump back to the curb behind the cars, because first he took another look down the length of the street. No taxi yet. Jump, Jesso. The subway, two blocks down. That damn taxi…

“Hey! Jackie!”

That’s when he jumped.

The Buick had swung around and Murph slowed down. He blinked at Jesso at the bank, trying to get the door open, but it was past three-thirty so Murph got a good look.

Jesso had seen him too. Gluck sat in back, spread out, and when Murph started his yelling Gluck had looked up, but he was looking at Murph. There are millions of Jacks. Jesso didn’t see him by the bank, turning away from the door, not knowing whether to run or stand right there because his taxi was coming down the street. That taxi was going to pull up right behind Gluck’s Buick. And Murphy, stopping the car to crane his neck-was that idiot ever going to catch on and move? Then Gluck looked up again. He said something and Jesso could imagine what it sounded like. If Gluck looked down again… Gluck lowered his head and Jesso made his sprint. And that’s when Gluck looked up again.

There wasn’t any turning back, and if this was going to be the end, it was going to be full of action. There wasn’t going to be any more waiting around for dreamed-up traps to spring, because there weren’t any. And no more clouts on the head in some Brooklyn button shop, because from now on Jesso had a pair of eyes in the back of his head. He slammed the taxi door shut and yelled, “Drive like hell.” Just for good measure he threw a bill next to the cabbie to make it legal. Forty-five bucks was the fare so far; the rest was tip. The cabbie grabbed the C note and took off. Jesso sat behind him and the cabbie hadn’t missed a thing; how Jesso sat and how he held that gun. The taxi took a wild swing around the Buick to get clear, because one door had opened and Gluck had scrambled out. Through the rear window Jesso saw Gluck taking the wheel. Good old trusty Murph. Gluck didn’t trust him.

They could have made it easy the way the cabbie started to roll except that soon all of Manhattan would have known about it. About one crazy cab, one crazy Buick, and traffic scattering itself into a snarl wherever they went.

“Pull up,” Jesso said, “and then keep going.”

He jumped near the corner and ran. Going down the subway stairs, he caught a glimpse of the Buick roaring by and the taxi up ahead turning into a one-way street.

The subway was good. He could barrel along underground and like a mole come up just about anywhere. He took the first train coming through and then watched for the stations. He could come up anywhere, today, tomorrow-and then he remembered about Gluck. That bastard wasn’t one man, he was a thousand. And any place Jesso would come up there’d be a subway station, and in that station would be one of Gluck’s gorillas. Unless he got out now.

He passed two more stops, just for the distance, and then he got out. It looked good. It wasn’t far from Beekman Place. He was fingering for a dime while he was still running up the stairs, and then he was inside a drugstore, dialing a number.

“Bard residence,” said the maid.

“Get me Miss Bard.”

“Who shall I say-”

“Get Miss Bard!”

It took a while and then her voice said, “Hello?”

“Lynn, listen close and don’t talk.”

He heard her gasp.

“You alone, Lynn?”

“No, but-”

“Out of earshot?”

“Yes, Jackie. My God, Jackie, I heard-”

“Shut up. Is your place on Long Island empty?”

“Yes, Jackie.”

“And nobody coming out there?”

“It’s closed. Daddy is in-”

“I’m two blocks away. Get your car out, roll by the drugstore, and I’ll meet you on the curb. And keep the motor going.”

“Right now, Jackie?”

“Who’s in the apartment?”

“Winnie, but you don’t know him. He’s just somebody I know and when I heard about you-“

“Never mind. Can you leave?”

“Of course, Jackie.”

“Ten minutes. And bring the keys for that house.”

He hung up, waited five minutes, and Lynn’s convertible pulled up. She had the top down. She looked anxious and beautiful.

“Lynn. Now don’t talk. Let’s have those house keys and get out of the seat. In two days you can come out to the place and pick up your car. I’ve-“

“I’m coming along,” she said, and she looked at him as if she weren’t ever going to let go again.

He bent over the door, talked fast.

“This is trouble. Lynn. Stay away and I’m sorry I had to call you. Thanks for the car. I’ll-“

He didn’t have to finish. There wasn’t any point to it unless he was going to toss her out of the car and leave her lying in the street. She had moved over, wanting him to drive, but that’s as far as she was going.

Jesso jumped in and slammed the door. They sat like that while he made the top come up, and when he pinched his finger putting the catch on the top he swore as if nobody were listening. Then he drove. Once she tried to ask him questions, but it didn’t work. He took the Queensboro Bridge and headed out Northern Boulevard.

They weren’t far from La Guardia. Why sit around in Oyster Bay when he could take off for California, three thousand miles away from Gluck, pick up the rest of his dough, and then head back for Germany? The only trouble was he didn’t know about the flight, had no reservation. Better yet, forget about that loot in L.A., head back for Europe, leave Gluck and Lynn and all of it behind.

He made a sharp turn south and headed for Idlewild. His ticket back to Frankfurt was good any day, there was a good chance of getting a reservation at short notice, and it was seven-thirty. The Stratoliner was due to leave the same time every day, nine P.M.

“Darling, Oyster Bay is the other way. You shouldn’t have turned off.”

“I changed my mind. We’re going to Idlewild.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t know where he was going from Idlewild, but she thought she was going along.

“It’s better that way all around. You won’t get involved any more.”

“Jackie-”

“Give up, Lynn. I’m just using your car.”

Then they both kept still. When he approached the airport he could recognize it by the lights. It was dark by now. The traffic tower glowed with a bluish light and the building below had a long bright line of windows that looked like teeth. Almost by instinct he swung away from the drive leading to the gates and cruised the parking lot first. Take it slow, check how it looks, because maybe Gluck has notions about airports and railway stations and maybe not.

He didn’t see a thing. He cruised the entrance once, didn’t dare try it twice. Park a while, maybe? And let the reservations get used up. Or maybe do some necking in the front seat just so time would pass and he wouldn’t have to risk it out there, risk the trip, the dough, Renette, and his life.

“I’m getting out.” He braked the car past the entrance. He gave it one more look, picked up his brief case from the floor. “Lynn, now hear me good. I’m going out there and maybe nothing happens.” He paused, reached to his belt. “See this?” She saw the gun. “And this?” She watched him cock the hammer. “I’m going out there with this thing in my hand. Here, in my pocket. And maybe you’ll hear about it from where you’re sitting. So sit, don’t move, and if I’m not back ten minutes later, take off and be glad you’re rid of it all. So long.” He got out of the car.

And then he was by the bright entrance. There were cars parked along the curb, one was empty, one had an old couple in it, the other one a G.I. and his mother. Nobody looked like a gorilla or like Gluck.

When Jesso had his hand on the glass door he didn’t freeze, he almost died. The man’s voice said, “Wait, Jackie!”