Case Pending

FIVE

Martin Lindstrom put on the blue corduroy jacket that was getting too small for him, and buttoned it up slowly. He didn't feel very good.

"Where you going?" she asked sharply.

"Just out awhile." He still had fifteen cents left but that wasn't enough to get into a movie, except the one over on Main that had Mexican pictures, and those were never any good even if you could talk Mexican, nothing interesting in them.

"You be back for supper, mind! I don't want you gallivanting all over the streets alla time like these kids their mothers don't care what they're up to. Why you got to go out, Marty? It's raining something fierce, you better stay home."

"I-I-got to see a guy's all," he said. "One o' the guys at school, Ma, I said I'd help him with his homework, see."

"Oh." Her tight mouth relaxed a little; she was proud of his good marks at school.

It was a lie; and he didn't want to go out in the rain, but he didn't want to stay here either; he felt bad, but he wasn't sure about what exactly, just everything. He'd been feeling that way a long while, all wrong but not knowing how or where, seemed like. Of course he knew when everything had sort of started to get on top of him like this, it was after Dad went. He wondered where Dad was now. The funny thing was, and it was part of the bad feeling now, he ought to be feeling better about everything because of what that guy this morning said about finding Dad.

"Ma," he said. "Ma, you think that guy will-you know-find him, and-" He looked back at her from the door; right then, he dimly knew himself, he was begging her for the reassurance, Things will get like they used to be.

"I don't care if they do or not," she said, and besides the crossness in her voice there was the quivering fear he sensed from her almost all the time now. "It's not right," she whispered to herself, "asking a person all them questions. Just because you get where you got to ask relief, they think they can go nosing into ever'thing. Not as if I like to take charity-didn't ask till I had to. Nobody in our family ever been on charity before-comes hard to a respectable woman allus held her head up an' took nothing from nobody. Way they act, you'd think I was doing something wrong, ask for enough keep a roof over our heads 'n' food in our mouths. Forty dollars a month!" She sat hunched in the rocker, thin arms hugging her flat body. "County's got millions. Come poking around with their questions before they let me have forty dollars!"

"He only ast four-five things, Ma-"

"He ast four-five things too much! What business is it of theirs? No, acourse, they won't find your dad, they'll never find him." She said that with fear, with hope, with insistence. "If your dad was minded go off like that, he'd be real careful make it so's nobody'd ever find him, an'-an' it's seven-eight months back he went, too."

The boy was silent. He knew all sorts of things in the dumb, vague way thirteen does know-hardly aware that he knew. She made out she didn't mind Dad going off, except for the money, but she did. She was afraid and making out she wasn't. He knew there were things in her mind that for years she'd shut away somewhere, and now they'd got out, they were shapeless unseen monsters, crowding in on her and him both.

"Don't you stay out later than six," she said. "Six is supper like allus."

Then, all of a sudden, he knew why he felt bad-why he'd been feeling like this all the time since. In awful clarity it came to him that things never stayed the same, or even got back to what they'd been before. However bad things were, you were safe, knowing what a day would be like, tomorrow and next week; but it would change so you didn't ever know, and you couldn't stop it any way. She wanted to, and she thought she had, and now she'd found nobody ever could. One of the invisible monsters right here with them now was the threat and promise of change to come.

It was knowledge too big for thirteen, and he turned blindly and ran out, and down the dark rickety stair into the rain.

The rain was cold coming down but like mostly in California when it rained it wasn't really cold, not cold like back in Minnesota with the snow and all. The snow was kind of nice, though-Dad said-Dad didn't like California much-maybe he'd gone back east, and he stopped, breathless, and leaned on the window of the drugstore on the corner there, as if he was looking at the picture of the pretty girl saying Instant Protection, but he didn't see anything in the window. Oh, Dad! he cried in silent agony.

He'd lost Dad too, just then, and forever. It wouldn't matter if Dad came back, things would never be like they were, ever again.

"Hi, kid," said Danny behind him.

Marty turned, eager for companionship, for anybody to talk to. "Hi, Danny, wh-what's new?" It came out kind of squeaky-sounding, like a real little kid, and embarrassed him all the more because of Danny being-well, Danny.

"Nothin' much. Say, Marty-"

Mr. Cummings had already turned on the lights in the drugstore, the rain made it so dark-it was getting dark anyway, fast-and Marty could see their blurred reflections in the glass of the window. They looked funny together, him and Danny Smith, but maybe only to anybody knew them. Because he was so big beside Danny, he'd grown so fast just this last year-Dad said their family always did start to grow awful young-last month when all the kids got measured for gym in school, he'd been sixty-eight inches and some over, and that was only four inches shorter than Dad. In the glass there, sideways, he saw himself looking man-size, looming alongside of Danny-but it was the other way round inside them. Danny was like a grown-up somehow, things he knew and said and did, not having to be in any special time, and always having money, and sometimes he smoked cigarettes. It wasn't just Marty, he guessed most of the guys around here felt the same about Danny, and Danny sort of bossed them around, and they let him.

The figures in the window glass weren't sharp, just shapes like, but just the way the smaller one moved you'd know it was Danny, didn't have to really see his sharp straight nose and the way his forehead went up flat, not bulgy, into black hair that was wavy like a girl's with a permanent, or his eyes that moved a lot and were bluer than most blue eyes.

"Say, Marty, why'd you run off las' night?" Danny was asking. "At the show, alla sudden-we hadden seen it right through yet either. You scareda your ole lady, hafta get home when she says?"

"I didn't so sudden," he said quickly. Danny and a lot of the guys around here, they thought that was funny-both kinds of funny; they sort of needled you if your mother said a certain time and you did what she said. "I just decided to," he said. "It wasn't a very good pitcher anyway."

"You kiddin'? It was-"

"I seen it before," said Marty, desperately.

Danny just looked at him. Then he said, "You been down t' see where the murder was?"

Something moved a little, dark and uneasy, at the very bottom of Marty's mind. "What murder?"

"Jeez, don't you know anything happens? Right down at Commerce 'n Humboldt, you know where that house burn down across from the wop store. It was some girl, an' boy, was she a mess, blood all over an' one of her eyes punched right out-whoever did it sure musta been mad at her-I dint get there till after they took her away, but you could still see some o' the blood, oney the rain-"

Marty's stomach gave a little jump. He put his right hand over that place on the left sleeve of the blue corduroy coat, where the mark was. It wasn't a very big spot, but it showed dark against the light blue and it was stiff. It hadn't been there this time last night when he put the jacket on; he'd noticed it this morning.

I got it in the theater last night, he told himself. Of course it wasn't blood. Something on the seat in there, it was.

Empty lot where a house had burned down. All of a sudden he remembered how it had been, in the dark last night: something tripping him, hard squarish cement something when he felt of it, like what was left when a house was burned. A lot of grass around it.

No, it wasn't, he said in his mind frantically, it wasn't like that, I must remember wrong. His mind said back at him, Like you remembered wrong before?

Danny was going on talking but he couldn't listen. Please, oh, please, it can't have happened again. It never did happen, nothing happened before, you just remembered wrong is all. You can't ever be sure in the dark, and it was night then too, of course it had to be, it was always night when-When things happened. A light green shirt that time because it was hot, it was summer, and the mark didn't come out when she washed it, you could still see where it'd been. That wasn't blood either, acourse it wasn't, how could it be?

He said louder than he meant to, "I-I got to go home, I better not be late for supper," and walked away fast as he could. He didn't want to hear any more about it, or he might remember too much. There wasn't anything to remember, he was just making up stories in his head to try and scare her, because he There were long times when he never thought about it, but when he did, it was all right there sharp and clear, more like it pounced at him instead of him remembering. That other night. The first time. Wet red mark on the green shirt and her scolding-because it was late. The big doll with the pink dress and goldy hair. And next day people talking about-what had happened-to that colored girl.

He was almost running now, trying to run away from the voice in his mind, and he blundered into a man walking the other way. The man said something and put out a hand to steady him on his feet, but Marty pulled away and dodged round the corner into Graham Court. He leaned on the broken-down picket fence of the corner house and he hit it with his fist, the breath sobbing in his throat, tears squeezing out from tight-shut eyes.

"I tole her," he said low in his throat. "I tried tell her!" It was all he could do, wasn't it? What else could thirteen years old do? But there wasn't much to tell, that time or this time-he really remembered, knew his own self. She said so. He didn't know, he must've remembered wrong, or he was a wicked boy just trying to scare her. Making up stories that couldn't be so.

And she washed the green shirt but the mark still showed after.

After a while Marty straightened and went on, slowly, down the little cul-de-sac. He didn't want to go home; just two things pulled him that way, drearily, as they had before. Habit, and Dad's voice that time a while back, slow and easy like always, Dad saying, "You want to be nice t' your ma, Marty, an' help her all you can, an' don't do nothing to worry her. I know it ain't easy, times, but things ain't easy for her neither. You got to remember she come of folks had a lot more than the Lindstroms, back home-her pa Ole Larsen was a rich man, eleven hundert acres he had all good land too, an' his girls never wanted for nothing. Maybe them Larsens did give theirselves airs, but maybe they had reason to, an' anyways your ma never had cause to makeshift an' scrims on nothing, till she married me-an' it ain't exactly been a easy row to hoe for her, not noways. I know she gets cross-tongued once in a while, but you got to remember things is hard for her too."

That had been before-anything happened. If it had.

Marty went up the stairs of the apartment building slow, hanging onto the shaky railing. He felt another thing he'd got to feeling almost all the time lately, and that was as if there were two of him: one was a little kid whose ma was right whatever she said or did, just naturally because she was Ma-and the other was, well, nearest he could come was Marty-separate-from-Ma, who knew Ma might be wrong about some things. He tried to push that Marty away, because he didn't want to really know that, but seemed like that Marty was getting stronger and stronger in him. At the same time there were two other Martys, the one that was just a wicked little boy making up stories-and the one that knew different.

That one was scared, deep and cold inside. Because it was all his fault, must be, even if he'd never meant, never known, if he'd just sort of forgot for a while.

And the bad feeling had begun maybe when Dad went away, but what had made it so bad ever since was-that first time, back there on Tappan Street on a breathless night in late September.

He'd had to tell her. Things happened that were too big for you, frightening and confusing, that you couldn't do anything about yourself-you told your ma or dad, and they knew what to do. Only Dad hadn't been there.

And there was a third place the real bad feeling started, after she wouldn't believe, wouldn't listen-when she did something she'd never done before, ever: when she went out and bought a newspaper, and read about-It. And said like to herself in a funny kind of whisper, "Only some nigger girl, anyways. Prob'ly trash-just trash."

And the next day she'd gone and found this place for them to move, account it was cheaper, she said.

He got to the dark top of the stairs, and he thought frantically, I got to tell her. I got to try. Because He was sick and shaking with fear, with guilt, with the weight of a thing thirteen couldn't bear alone. The door was locked like always and he knocked and she said sharp, "Who is it?"

"It's me, Ma, let me in." And there wasn't any other way to say it than he did, then: "Ma, it's happened again! Ma-please listen-I didn't mean to-I never meant nothing to happen-but it must've, because-"

She just stood and stared at him.

"-Because it was blood on my coat's morning." He gulped and went on through the lump in his throat, "And-and the place they found-it-it was right where I-"

The fear pulled her face all tight and cross looking for a minute, but then it changed to being mad at him, and she said quick, "I don't listen to a boy tells lies!"

He looked at her dumbly. He knew what else she'd say, like she had before; but this time he knew something else-that what she said wasn't just at him, it was at that place she had way inside her where she knew it was so-it was to shut the door to that place and forget it was there at all. And now she was asking him to help her, seemed like, not mad any more but asking.

"You get washed an' eat your supper while it's hot, an' then you set right down to that schoolwork you shoulda done last night-I'm allus tellin' you, don't want to end up like your dad, not enough schoolin' for a decent job-you're a real smart boy, Marty, you take after my folks, an' last thing I do I see you get educated good, maybe even college. But you got to remember you don't know ever'thing yet, see, an'-an' kids get mixed up in their minds, like, that's all-"

He whispered, "I'm not awful hungry, Ma."

And all the while the secret was there in the room with them, neither of them daring to look at it open: that she wouldn't see for what it really was, that he was getting more and more afraid of-that they had to live with somehow.

Danny stood there by the drugstore awhile after Marty left. On top of his mind he thought, That big lummox of a Lindstrom kid, sure a dumb one. But most of him was occupied with the job he was on, and he felt kind of tensed-up because it was the first time his dad had taken much notice of him, acted like he was a person with any sense, and he wanted to do this right.

It had been a big surprise to him to feel the way he did. Asked him last week, he'd have said it wasn't nothing to him, whatever his dad did or said-been three and a half years since he'd laid eyes on him, anyways-and that went other way round too, they'd always just sort of stayed out of each other's way. Same as with his mother, but she was just a nothing, like a handful of water, and there was at least something to his dad. And he'd felt a new, funny feeling when his dad said that: Kind of a sharp kid, you can maybe be some use to me.

Besides, this was different from hooking little stuff off store counters or stripping cars at night. This was a big job.

When the man came, he spotted him right off from what his dad had said he looked like; but he waited awhile, just went on looking in the drugstore window. The guy stopped and stood there too, waiting, under the store canopy. Nobody came past after him, and when Danny walked down the block there weren't any cops watching from alleys, nobody at all. It was all going just like his dad had planned, but of course you had to play it smart. Danny walked back to the drugstore; he didn't stop by the guy waiting there, just slowed down, and he said, "He's changed his mind, mister, he says meet him at the Paradise Bar on Second, right now."

The man said, "What?" sort of dumb and surprised, and then he made as if to grab for him, but Danny slid away in the dark, into the alley round the corner, and waited. After a minute the man started to walk up toward Second Street, not very fast; he looked back a couple of times, but once away from the corner lights it was dark and Danny stayed close up against the buildings.

On Second Street there were more lights, but people on the sidewalk, too, to hide him; he stayed farther behind, but he could still see the guy when he turned in under the pink neon sign that said PARADISE. So that was O.K. And no cops.

Danny turned and sauntered back to the corner; another man stood there, looking in the window of the liquor store. "O.K.," said Danny.

"He's in, and no cops."

"You sure?"

"You think I can't smell a cop?"

The man relaxed a little, grinned. "Maybe you ain't so smart as you think, but I guess you're not so dumb neither. Chip off the ole block like they say, huh? O.K., you go along. Now I just let the guy stew awhile an' get real worried." He went back to looking in the window.

Inside the bar a jukebox was pounding, and the blood-hammer in Morgan's head began to keep time with it. He went all the way in to the last of the little booths opposite the bar, and sat down; the waiter who came up gave him a sour look for taking a booth instead of going to the bar, but he didn't say anything and he'd come over promptly because Morgan was a lot better dressed than the usual customer in here and might be drinking something besides beer or wine.

Morgan asked for whiskey, but when it came he just left it there on the table; he'd never been much of a drinker and not at all the last eight years, since- Which was a useless gesture, maybe: morbid.

He sat there and waited. The place wasn't crowded on a rainy night, only ten or a dozen men at the bar. It was stuffy, too hot after the street, and he realized he still had his coat on, slid out of the booth to take it off, fold it beside him. The clock on one side of the bar said half-past six, but Morgan knew he'd better keep his eye off the clock-the man wanted him to sweat, and might not show up for hours. In his mind he knew that, while all the rest of him was tense and agonizing to get to it, have it done, the ultimate doom arranged.

He lit a cigarette and set himself to wait, and wait, and wait some more; and his intellect told him further (methodical, plodding Morgan) that if he let himself go over and over this thing emotionally, he'd be in just the softened-up state the bastard wanted, at the end. So he made himself think about anything, everything else than Sue and Janny. The first thing he seized on to think about was that boy. Using a youngster, for this. That was a conventional thought out of the small neat circle of life he'd always lived in up to now: correction, up to being on the job he held now, for that (even before his own private nightmare) should certainly have taught him about lives lived elsewhere and otherwise, where children weren't automatically screened from the uglier realities because they were children.

It didn't occur to him that the boy was just relaying a message, didn't know what he was mixed into: he'd seen his expression. And there were two things about that, that turned this into something like a real nightmare where ordinary sights and sounds made no sense or a new monstrous kind of sense. That boy hadn't realized, maybe, that there on the rain-swept empty corner, as he swaggered past Morgan, the lights from the store fell unshadowed on him. Oh, yes, the boy had known just what he was doing.

Morgan looked down at his hands on the wet, scarred table, and as he looked they began to shake violently, so he put them in his lap. Quite a handsome boy. Even in that deceiving light, he had seen the regular features, fair skin with the black hair and blue eyes all the more emphasized for it, the thick brows going up in little wings at the end.

He knew that curve by heart, the very angle, Janny's brows winging up at the corners of Janny's blue eyes Not to think about Janny, or Sue. Janny, just about now, being tucked into bed with that ridiculous stuffed tiger Mrs. Gunn had got her, that she was so crazy about. Warm and powdery from her bath, buttoned into the woolly blue pajamas.

That boy had just had on jeans and a leather jacket. That boy who was, who must be For God's sake! said his mind to him savagely.

He glanced sideways at the clock. It was twenty-five minutes to seven. He remembered a while ago, couldn't remember where, reading an article on juvenile delinquents that had interested him. It was funny, there was a clear picture in his mind of himself saying to Sue, "The man's got something there, you know," but he couldn't recall now who the author was, some official or a senator or whatever. Anyway. Often the most intelligent children, it said, those with imagination and ability, the nonconforming minds any society needs-but for this and that reason turned in the wrong direction.

All right, yes; up to a point; some of them, the leaders. Most, well Hell, maybe the man was right.

The boy- led to Janny and he mustn't think about Janny. Quick, something else.

Another boy. Barging into him in the street there, dodging past. Didn't know it was a boy-big as a man, as tall as Morgan himself until he heard the sobbing light breath, had a glimpse of him close in the reflected street light. That was the Lindstrom boy, that one; they lived around here, of course. Clumsy big ox of a kid, one of those got all his growth at once, early, and wouldn't quite learn how to handle his size for a while; and still so baby-faced, any roundish, smooth, frecklenosed thirteen-year-old face, that you expected to see half a foot below where this one was. Lindstrom was what, Danish, they grew big men mostly.

Generalizing again, he thought; you couldn't, of course. The archetype Scandinavian wasn't a wife-deserter, but this one was. That report wasn't made up yet either, and he had to have it ready Monday morning for Gunn… Something queer there about the Lindstroms, something that smelled wrong, hard to say what. It could be another case of collusion to get money out of the county, but Morgan didn't think so; he didn't think that, whatever was behind the indefinable tension he'd sensed in that place, it came from dishonesty. Anything so-uncomplicated-as dishonesty. The woman was a type he knew: transplanted countrywoman, sometimes ignorant, frequently stubborn at clinging to obsolete ways and beliefs, always with a curious rigid pride. That type might be dishonest about anything else, but not about money.

Invariably the first thing that kind said to him was, "I've never asked nor took charity before." Marion Lindstrom had said that. She hadn't told him much else.

But the report had to be made out, and the hunt started for Eric John Lindstrom.

It was a quarter to seven. Morgan kept himself from watching the door; his mind scrabbled about desperately for something else irrelevant to occupy it. He heard the door open, couldn't stop himself looking up to see: outside he was still uncomfortably warm, but there was an ice-cold weight in his stomach, and it moved a little when he saw the man who'd come in-a stranger, not the one.

And right there something odd happened to him. Suddenly he knew what was behind the queerness he'd sensed in that Lindstrom woman, this morning. The few minutes he'd been there, talked to the woman and the boy. It was fear: secret fear. He knew it now because it was his own feeling: the sure recognition was emotional.

He thought without much interest, I wonder what they're afraid of. At seven o'clock, because of the looks he was getting from the barman, he drank the whiskey and ordered another. It was cheap bar whiskey, raw. At a quarter past seven he ordered a third; he decided the whiskey was just what he'd needed, because his mind had started to work again to some purpose, and suddenly too he was no longer afraid.

That was a hell of a note, come to think, getting in a cold sweat the way he had without ever even considering whether there were ways and means to deal with this, come out safe. What had got into him, anyway? There must be a way, and what he'd told himself this morning still went: to hell with any moral standards. If When at half-past seven someone slid into the booth opposite him, he'd almost finished a fourth whiskey. He looked up almost casually to meet the eyes of the man across the table, and he wondered with selfcontempt that didn't show on his face why he'd ever been afraid of this man.

"You been doin' some thinkin', Morgan?" The man grinned at him insolently. "Ready to talk business?"

"Yes," said Morgan, cold and even. "I've been doing some thinking, but not about the money. I told you before, I haven't got that kind of money."

The man who called himself Smith laughed, as the barman came up, and he said, "You'll buy me a drink anyways. Whiskey."

The barman looked at Morgan, who shook his head; he'd had just the right amount now to balance him where he was. "Don't give me that," said Smith when the man was gone. "You're doin' all right. You got money to throw away once, you got it to throw away twice."

Money to throw away… But that was perfectly logical reasoning, thought Morgan, if you happened to look at things that way. He looked at Smith there, a couple of feet across the table, and he thought that in any dimension that mattered they were so far away from each other that communication was impossible. He found, surprisingly, that he was intellectually interested in Smith, in what made him tick. He wondered what Smith's real name was: he did not think the name the woman had used two years ago, Robertson, was the real name any more than Smith. Smith's eyes were gray: though his skin was scoffed with the marks of old acne and darkened from lack of soap and water, it was more fair than dark. And his eyebrows curved up in little wings toward the temples. Morgan stared at them, fascinated: Smith had worn a hat puffed low when he'd seen him before, and the eyebrows had been hidden. The eyebrows were, of course, more confirmation of Smith's identity. With detached interest Morgan thought, might be Irish, that coloring.

"You know," he said, "you might not be in such a strong position as you think. Your story wouldn't sound so good to a judge-not along with mine."

"Then what're you doin' here?" asked Smith softly.

And that of course was the point. Because it was a no man's land in law, this particular thing. anyone might look at Smith, listen to what that upright citizen Richard Morgan had to say, and find it incredible that any intelligent human agency could hesitate at making a choice between. But it wasn't a matter of men-it was the way the law read. And in curious juxtaposition to the impersonal letter of the law, there was also the imbecilic sentimentality, the mindless lip service to convention-the convention that there was in the physical facts of parturition some magic to supersede individual human qualities. He could not take the chance, gamble Janny's whole future, Sue's sanity maybe, on the hope that some unknown judge might possess a little common sense. Because there was also the fact that, as the law took a dim view of buying and selling human beings, it didn't confine the guilt to just one end of the transaction.

Smith knew that, without understanding it or needing to understand it; but the one really vital fact Smith knew was that there had never been a legal adoption. They had hesitated, procrastinated, fearing the inevitable questions…

"-A business proposition, that's all," Smith was saying. "Strictly legal." His tone developed a little resentment, he was saying he had a legitimate grievance. "You made a Goddamn sharp deal with my wife, a hundred lousy bucks, an' you got away with it, she didn't have no choice, on account she was up against it with me away like I was, flat on my back in the hospital I was, an' the bills runnin' up alla time-you took advantage of her not knowin' much about business, all right! I figure it same way like a bank would, Morgan-interest, they call it, see?"

There was an appalling mixture of naive satisfaction and greed in his eyes; Morgan looked away. (Interest, just how did you figure that kind of interest? Twenty-six months of a squirming warm armful that weighed fourteen pounds, eighteen, twenty-two, and a triumphant twenty-nine-and-a-half?-he forgot what the latest figure was, only remembered Sue's warm chuckle, reporting it. Twenty-six months of sticky curious baby-fat fingers poking into yours, into the paper you were trying to read, into what was almost a dimple at the corner of Sue's mouth: of the funny solemn look in the blue eyes: of ten pink toes splashing in a sudsy tub. That would be quite a thing to figure in percentages.)

"You can raise the dough if you got to," said Smith.

"Not ten thousand," said Morgan flatly. "I might manage five." And that was a deliberate lie; he couldn't raise five hundred.

"I don't go for no time-payments, Morgan." The gray eyes were bleak. "You heard me the first time. I give you a couple days think about it, but don't give me no more stall now. Put up or shut up."

Poker, thought Morgan. Bluff?-that he'd bring it open, go to law? You couldn't take the chance; and in this last five minutes it had come to him that he didn't have to. There was only one way to deal with Smith, and Morgan knew how it could be done, now: he saw the way. He could take care of Smith once for all time, and then they would be safe: if necessary later, he could handle the woman easier, he remembered her as an indecisive nonentity. There was, when you came to think of it, something to be said for being an upright citizen with a clean record. And it would not trouble his conscience at all. In the days he'd worn Uncle's uniform, he had probably killed better men, and for less reason.

There was hard suspicion now in the gray eyes; Morgan looked away, down to his empty glass, quickly. He'd been acting too calm, too controlled; he must make Smith believe in his capitulation. He made his tone angry and afraid when he said, low, "All right, all right-I heard you the first time! I-I guess if I cash in those bonds-I might-but I'll get something for my money! You'll sign a legal agreement before you touch-"

"O.K., I don't mind that."

"You've got to give me time, I can't raise it over Sunday-"

"Monday night."

"No, that's not long enough-"

"Monday," said Smith. "That's the time you got-use it. Make it that same corner, seven o'clock, with the cash-an' I don't take nothing bigger than fives, see?" He slid out of the booth, stood up.

"Yes, damn you," said Morgan wearily. Without another word Smith turned and walked toward the door.

Morgan took out his wallet below the level of the table, got out the one five in it, held it ready. When Smith looked back, going out, Morgan was still sitting there motionless; but the second Smith turned out of sight to the left, Morgan was up, quick and quiet. He laid the five on the table and got into his coat between there and the door; outside, he turned sharp left and hugged the building, spotting the back he wanted half a block ahead.

Because Kenneth Gunn, who had been a police officer for forty years and sure to God ought to know, had once said to him, "They're a stupid bunch. Once in a long while you get a really smart one, but they're few and far between. The majority are just plain stupid-they can't or won't think far enough ahead."

Maybe this was Smith's first venture into crookedness, but it should qualify him for inclusion in that; Morgan hoped so. There was a chance that the boy was posted to watch, of course; but he had to risk that. The precautions about the meeting place, beforehand, were to assure Smith that Morgan came alone: and satisfied of that, Smith's mind might have gone no further.

Smith had made another mistake too, one frequently made by men like him. They always underestimated the honest men.

It had stopped raining and turned very cold. This was the slack hour when not many people were out, and it was easy to keep Smith spotted, from pool to pool of reflected neon lights on the sidewalk. If he had looked back, he'd have found it as easy to spot Morgan; but he didn't look back. He walked fast, shoulders hunched against the cold, round the next corner to a dark side street.

When the trail ended twenty minutes later Morgan told himself, almost incredulously, that his luck had turned; he was due for a few breaks… He'd had a job to keep Smith in sight and still stay far enough back, down these dark streets, and he'd lost all sense of direction after they got off Second. But at that last corner, stopping in shadow, watching Smith cross the narrow street ahead, Morgan realized suddenly where they were. He was at the junction of Humboldt and Foster, a block down from Commerce; it looked as if Humboldt ended here, where Foster ran straight across it like the top bar on a T, but it only took a jog, started again half a block to the left. What made the jog necessary was Graham Court, a dreary little cul-de-sac whose mouth gaped narrowly at him directly opposite. He'd been here before, just this morning. And Smith was going into Graham Court.

Morgan jaywalked across Foster Street and under the lamppost whose bulb had been smashed by kids, and into Graham Court. It was only wide enough for foot traffic: there were three dark, dank, big frame houses on each side, cheap rooming places, and right across the end of the court, a four-story apartment building of dirty yellow stucco. A dim light from one of the ground-floor windows there showed Smith as he climbed the steps and went in.

"I will be damned," said Morgan half-aloud. Luck turning his way?-with a vengeance! The building where the Lindstrom woman lived: where on his legitimate comings and goings Richard Morgan, that upright and law-abiding citizen, had every reason to be, a real solid beautiful excuse, good as gold.

And that was just fine, better than he could have hoped for: he saw clear and confident how it would go, now.