Deadline at Dawn

Chapter 6

So he left her, and he struck out down the night-charred street, thinking: Oh, this is hopeless. It’s no use. Why not admit it, why not recognize it? If he’d been alone in it, he would have gone over to the park and planked down on a bench and waited for the daylight to come around, and for it to end that way. Or maybe he would have even beat the daylight to it by getting up again in a little while, after a reflective cigarette or two, and walking around to the nearest police station and marching himself in.

But she was in it now, so he didn’t. She was in it now, so he kept going.

So she was helping him by that much at least: she was keeping him going.

They do that to you. For you. Sometimes, as now, even in spite of you.

He was sorry he’d dragged her into it. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair. He was almost sorry he’d gone up there to that dance-hall at all earlier in the evening. But gee, that would have meant — not knowing her. He couldn’t be sorry for that, he couldn’t make himself that unselfish.

All right, he said to himself. Get started.

I’m him, now.

I’m leaving there, where I’ve just killed a guy. He’s lying back there behind me, and I’ve just killed him. Where do I go? What do I do?

He stopped short, held his forehead. I’ve never killed anyone, so how do I know? That’s the whole trouble, I’ve never killed anyone, so how do I know what I’d do? What they do?

He shook his head. Not in negation, but violently, as if to clear it, to get any loose preconceptions out of it.

Take it up again. Take it from where you left off.

I’ve just killed someone, and he’s lying back there. Now what do I do?

He was at the corner by now.

Which way do I turn?

There’s a cab. Do I get in one? A bus-line stops here. Do I get on one of them? Two blocks over, on Lexington, there are subway steps. Do I go down them? Three blocks over, on Third, there’s the El. Do I climb the stairs of that? Or do I just keep walking, do I steer clear of all those things and just keep using my own two feet, as the safest and best way? Or maybe I didn’t even come this far. Maybe I had a car of my own waiting up the street, just a door or two away from the place where I killed him. Maybe I got in that.

Six choices. And splitting each into its two possible main directions, uptown and down, that made twelve altogether. An even dozen. A maze of getaways, and I’m lost in the middle of all of them. And even if I picked the right one, what good would that do? I still wouldn’t know where it led to, what the destination at the end of it was.

Don’t keep doing that, don’t keep giving up. You wouldn’t want her to think you were that kind of a guy, would you? Start over. Start over fresh. Now.

I’ve just killed a guy, and I’m at the corner now, I’ve come as far as the corner. Never mind about what did I do, this time. How did I feel, try it that way. Maybe the emotional approach will get you there quicker.

Well, how did I feel? I’m shaky all over, I guess, inside and out — unless I’m a pretty hard case. The nervous reaction has caught up with me, along about here; the anger is gone, or whatever it was that made me do it, and I’m getting the after-effects.

I’m shaky all over, pretty well shot.

Wait a minute, there’s a drugstore over there, still lit up. It’s got a little sign in the window, it says “Open all Night.” If it’s still open now, it was surely open then.

Well, if I’m shaky all over, inside and out, maybe I go in there and ask for something to steady me up. Gee, that’d be dangerous, wouldn’t it, right after killing a guy in the immediate vicinity? The druggist would notice my condition, he’d remember it later and tell them about me. I wouldn’t go into such a place, right after killing a guy. But maybe I’d have to, maybe I’m so shaky I wouldn’t stop to think of all that, I’d go in anyway.

He’d remember and tell about me. That’s it, right there. Let’s see if he does.

He went in.

There was only one man in the place. He was behind the prescription-counter, at the back. Quinn went up to it, and just stood there.

He took such a long time to bring it out, that finally the prescriptionist said, with a sort of impersonal asperity. “What can I do for you, young man?”

He brought it out slow. He’d been rehearsing each word, and he wanted to keep them the way he had them arranged. “Mister, look. Suppose I walked in here, and I was — well, kind of upset, shaky all over, nerves shot, what would you recommend?”

“Best thing I know of is a little spirits of ammonia in half a glass of water.”

Quinn came out with part two. “That what you usually give?”

The pharmacist chuckled with a sort of tart geniality that seemed to be a characteristic of his. “Want to be sure what you’re getting before you take it, eh? Sure, I usually give that.”

Quinn held his breath.

It came. “Matter of fact, I already gave that to one fellow, couple hours or so ago. You’re the second one tonight.”

Quinn let his breath out, soft and slow. As easy as that. As simple as that. He couldn’t believe he’d actually hit bull’s-eye like that, at the very first shot. Wait a minute, he cautioned himself. Take it easy. Find out a little more about it first, before you go jumping to conclusions. It mayn’t be it at all. It’s too good to be true, too pat, too easy.

“Somebody else was in my fix, hunh?”

He got a nod on that; that was all that one got. “Well, do you want me to give you some?”

“Yeah, you can.” He had to have some excuse for staying in there and talking to him.

The prescriptionist went behind the fountain and shot a little water into a glass. Then he dumped something cloudy into it from a large bottle and stirred it a little. He took the spoon out and handed it over to Quinn. “Try that,” he said. “Ten cents, please.”

It didn’t smell bad, but it looked like soapy water. He wondered how it was going to taste.

“Don’t be afraid of it, drink it down.”

He wasn’t afraid of it. It was just that he wanted to make it last as long as he could.

The druggist was eying him shrewdly. “You don’t act very jumpy. Fact you act sort of absent-minded.”

Quinn dipped his tongue in, hauled it out again in a hurry. He quickly blocked the verbal opening that had been made by shoving his foot into it. Again verbally, “Maybe his grief wasn’t mine. He acted sort of jumpy, hunh?”

The prescriptionist chuckled again in that tart way of his, this time reminiscently. “He sure had ants in his pants. He couldn’t stand still. He kept going from here over to the entrance, looking out into the street, coming back again. He couldn’t stand still, the guy.”

Quinn made an ingenuous discovery. He said, “Hold on.” He looked up at the topmost row of bottles on the shelf, to make it more plausible. He said, “That sounds like someone I know. Just like someone I know.” He wetted his tongue in the mixture again, without allowing its quantity to diminish any. “What’d he look like?” he said artlessly.

“Worried,” the druggist chuckled.

Quinn threw in a name gratuitously, to act as a stimulus. “I bet it was Eddie. What’d he look like?”

This time it paid off. The druggist fell for it, it had been woven into the fabric of the conversation so dexterously. “Thin sort of a guy. Little taller than you are.”

Quinn nodded raptly. He would have nodded if he’d said he was an Eskimo. “Little taller than me. And—” He made a pass up toward his own hair, but left out the color-adjective that the ear expected to hear accompany the gesture.

Automatic response did the rest. The druggist supplied it without realizing he was filling a void. His tongue tripped; he thought he was just corroborating, not making a unilateral statement. “And sandy hair.”

Quinn said it after, not before him. “And sandy hair.” He nodded in completely hypocritical confirmation. Then he added quickly, “Did he have on a brown suit?”

The druggist said, “Come to think of it, he did. Yeah, he did, he had on a brown suit.”

“That’s Eddie all right,” Quinn said. He took a deep breath. Now he was going good. Now he was on the beam. Now he was coming in for a landing, he told himself. “Yeah,” he repeated. “That was Eddie.” And to himself, unheard: Eddie, hell. That was Death.

He’d milked that for all it was worth. There didn’t seem to be anything more he could get out of it.

Suddenly something more came. Like a left-over drop dripping from a faucet after it’s already been turned off.

“He acted like he was having some kind of a chill,” the druggist said.

“Shivering, hunh?” Quinn said.

“No, but he was holding his coat up close, like this, the whole time he was in here.” The druggist grasped both his coat-reveres with one hand to show him and drew them together up under his chin.

“Maybe he was coming down with flu,” the druggist said. “It ain’t cold out tonight, you couldn’t ask for a milder—”

It is if you’ve just committed a murder, thought Quinn. It’s fourteen below.

“Then what’d he do, go out again?”

“No, he asked me to break a dime into nickels for him and he went back there.” He motioned to an alley leading back, offside to the counter. “To use the phone, I guess. He took the ammonia-water with him.”

“Did you see him go out again?”

“No, as a matter of fact I didn’t. Busy waiting on someone else by that time, I guess. But he must’ve, without my noticing.”

Quinn handed back the glass. He’d drained it and he’d never even known he had, he was so steamed up. But it had been worth it. Even if it had been prussic acid, it would have almost been worth it, the way he felt.

The druggist was still a mile and a half behind him. He thought they’d been carrying on a desultory, aimless conversation. “Guess you’re looking for him, is that it? You sure must want to see him bad.”

“I do,” Quinn said. “Bad.” He turned away. “I guess I’ll go back there myself.”

He turned into the little dead-end aisle and passed from the druggist’s sight.

There were two booths there, both on one side. There was a rack on the other side, with the directories in it. One had been up-ended, opened, was lying there flat. The others were still underneath in their grooves.

The glass was standing there, the empty glass, on the exposed directory-page. He’d forgotten to take it back with him again when he left.

Page-finder for murder.

Quinn looked at it first, the way you do a sudden unexpected apparition. Almost as though afraid it would disappear again if he put his hand on it. His, all right.

For a moment an ambitious idea occurred to him. Fingerprints. It must still have his prints on it. Wrap it up and turn it over to the police.

Then it deflated again. No, that was no good. Take too long. The night would be gone. The bus would be gone. Besides, who was to turn it over to them? They were looking for him himself. Or soon would be. It wouldn’t prove this unknown to be the killer anyway. This wasn’t the scene of the crime. The house around the corner was. That was where they’d have to be found, not around here outside a telephone-booth.

So I’ve followed him this far, he mused, and now I’ve lost him again. He’s gone up in smoke, here at the back of this drugstore, leaving behind an empty glass reeking of spirits of ammonia.

He called someone, though. He came back here to call someone. Whom did he call? He stepped inside the first booth, without closing the front after him. Ah, if the slots on that little wheel could only speak. He sat down on the little ledge, put his hand to his forehead, tried to think.

Whom do you call after you’ve just killed someone? That depends on who you are, what type you are. You call and say: “I’ve done as you told me to, boss; it’s all taken care of.” That was one type. Or you call and say: “I’m hot, pal; I’m in trouble, I’m in a jam, you’ve got to help me out.” That was another type. Or maybe you even call someone and don’t say anything about it one way or the other; call someone and say: “I’ve got that dough I owe you, never mind how. I’m ready to settle up, you can turn off the heat.” That would be still a third type. And then there was even another, more hideous to contemplate. Calling and saying: “I know it’s late, baby, but how about me dropping over for a little while and lifting a few with you? I feel like a little relaxation.”

But he wouldn’t be that last type. Not if he’d had to go into a drugstore for a dose of something to settle his nerves.

He turned his head and looked out of the booth, over at the glass. It was directly sideward to him. The pages it stood on were cornmeal-yellow. It was the Classified.

He got up and crossed quickly over to it and peered down.

The heading at the top of the page was “Hospitals-Hotels.”

He looked straight down through the center of the glass, using it as a sort of sight-finder. This is what he saw through the transparent bottom:

Hospitals. He hadn’t thought of that. That was one type of call you made after murdering someone, if— He remembered something the prescriptionist out there had said just now. “Holding the front of his coat up like this, as if he was having a chill.” That wasn’t from any chill, that was from something else.

He jumped back again into the booth he’d just been in, struck a match, floated it all around just over the surface of the floor. Nothing, just the usual debris of phone-booths. Tinfoil from chewing-gum, the masticated end-product of the same, a cigarette-husk or two. They all came floating into the matchlight, floating out again, as he circled it.

He whipped it out, turned, jumped into the second booth, the one he hadn’t been in until now. He struck another match and paid that around, turning the floor tawny-pale.

There it was. A gorgeous blob of clue. Right there in front of his eyes. Four big dark glistening polka-dots on the floor, close together, making almost a four-leaf clover pattern the way they had dropped. And there, in the corner, was what he’d been using to staunch it. A wad of ordinary paper facial tissue, two or three ply thick in this case, crumpled tight and thrown away. It was clotted, mired with blood. Only one edge of it still showed white.

He’d probably replaced it with a fresh one while he was in here, and it was during the process that those four drops had escaped.

So that was why he’d hugged his coat tight over his chest. And that was why the tell-tale glass stood atop the hospital-page of the classified directory. That was the type of post-murder call he’d made. He’d killed Graves, but not before Graves had—

It couldn’t have been a very large wound, for him to remain on his feet like that. But the one on the side of Graves’ head hadn’t been either, and it was probably the same gun. Maybe just a flesh-wound or a nick.

He straightened, went back to it again. This time he lifted the glass, set it aside. It had served its purpose well, it had betrayed him. He was at some hospital in the city at this very moment, getting treatment. They had to report gunshot wounds. Would he be willing to run that risk? He must be, or he wouldn’t have telephoned in ahead of going there. No doubt he had some trumped-up story he’d give them, to account for it. It mightn’t be a gunshot wound at that, there was no absolute certainty that it was; Graves might have inflicted some gash on him, struck at him with something, even though there had been no evidences of a struggle visible up there. In which case he’d be that much safer in presenting himself for emergency-treatment.

The thing was, which? Which one had he called? Which one had he gone to? There were so many, from A to Y. The position of the glass meant nothing; he must have set that down at random, to rid his hand of it, after having already ascertained the number of his choice.

But then, why phone ahead? Why not just go there? That part he couldn’t understand. But again — there was no actual proof that he had phoned. True, the bloodied waste was in one of the phone-booths, but he might simply have gone in there to change improvised dressings and not touched the instrument itself. Simply looked up the address that he wanted in the book, opened his coat a minute to apply fresh staunching-tissue, and then gone on outside again.

The glass? Should he make use of that, concentrate on the ones that had appeared through its bottom? But that was childish, that was sheer mumbo-jumbo. Why not go by accessibility, then, nearness to this immediate neighborhood? There was no time to go through the entire list, he had to have some short-cut.

He chose that one. He ripped the entire page bodily out of the directory, folded it and stuffed it into his pocket, for quick reference. Then he strode on out.

The prescriptionist looked up, from a small supply-room at the back of the counter to which he had retired, as he heard him pass. “Steadier now?” he called after him.

Quinn couldn’t integrate the remark for a minute; he’d forgotten his own invention on entering a few moments before.

“A lot steadier,” he replied across his shoulder.

He went up the entrance-steps with the leg-spread of a runner taking a hurdle-jump. The ground-floor corridor was coolly dim and the flooring shiny. He went over to the receptionist seated within a lighted alcove at one side, only her head and shoulders visible.

“Did a man come in here for treatment, within the past couple of hours?”

“An ambulance case?”

“No, walking in by himself.”

“No, there hasn’t been anyone like that all night.”

“Wearing a brown suit. Holding himself like this.” He gripped his coat together to show her.

“No—” she started to say.

He turned away, reached for the torn page from the directory within his pocket.

“Oh, wait a minute—” she called after him abruptly.

He turned and went back again, so swiftly he nearly skidded on the floor.

“I think I know who you mean.” She gave him a weazened smile. “You’ll find him on the fourth floor. He’s waiting up there to get in—” Then she called after him: “To your right as you get off the elevator. Turn this way.”

He went over to the car and got in.

He got out at the fourth and turned this way, the way she’d said. Another of those long coolly dim corridors stretched before him. No one in sight along it. He passed doors, but kept going. He followed it to the end, and then made still another turn, that she hadn’t told him about. It broadened into a sort of waiting-room, or at least a place with a couple of benches, and he didn’t have to go any further. There he was.

He saw him from the distance, and he knew him right away, before he’d even come up to him. He hadn’t been admitted yet. He must have just gotten here after all, to be still outside like that.

He was huddled there on a bench against the wall, disconsolate and in distress. He was still holding himself there where he’d been shot. Or at least holding his coat convulsively clenched over it. It must be hurting him a lot. His head was way over, tilted back against the wall, as if he were staring straight up at the ceiling. But he had his free hand pasted over his face, hiding his eyes. Or holding them or something.

His mouth was a little open, and he was doing his breathing through that.

There was room on the bench for two, and Quinn sat down next to him. There was silence for a moment, just the heavy sound of Quinn’s own breathing after his fast hike along the corridor.

The man beside him didn’t look at him right away. Too much pain or too much misery or something. He didn’t care who it was next to him, didn’t even want to know.

Quinn reached for a cigarette and took one out and lit it. Then he blew the smoke straight at the side of his face, to attract his attention. Straight into his ear almost. It was calloused in a way, that occurred to him even at the moment of doing it. But he wanted him to know he was there. He said to himself: That’ll get him. That’ll make him turn. Watch.

The hand came down off his face, and then the face itself came down to a level, and he turned around and looked at Quinn.

Quinn thought he’d never seen such hopeless misery in his life. A sort of shock went through him. But not on that account. Some strange feeling of kinship got to him, and he couldn’t understand why, at such a moment. He didn’t look like a murderer. He looked like — just anyone at all you sat down next to. Quinn thought: Why, he looks like me, almost. At least, he looks like I feel I look like. Sort of harmless, and helpless, and he’s no older than me. Why, it might be me sitting there, looking back here at where I am, with a bullet in my chest.

He looked down and he saw a paper tissue there on the floor, bloodied up. Like the one in the booth.

He spoke first. He said to Quinn: “Can I have one of those?”

Quinn let him have one. He said drily, “Yes, I guess a guy like you, he needs a smoke pretty bad.”

The man beside him gave him a wan sort of smile back, and he said: “Does he? He sure does.”

Quinn waited for him to light the cigarette, but instead he aimed it toward Quinn’s own and ignited it from the tip of that. Quinn let him. He thought: This is the closest I’ve ever come to a murderer yet. Some of the other’s smoke-laden breath got in his face.

He spoke again. He said to Quinn: “Are you here for the same thing I am?”

“No,” Quinn said grimly. “Just the opposite, about. Just the reverse.”

He waited a moment. Then he said: “You ran out of cigars, I guess.”

The man said: “Yes, I did. I only had one left, and I used that up hours—” Then he got it. “How’d you know?” he said.

“I found it up at Graves’ place, chewed to ribbons,” Quinn said quietly.

The man just looked at him. It was beginning to sink in now.

Nothing more came, so Quinn spoke again. “Did the spirits of ammonia make you feel any better? The dose you had at the drugstore over on Madison near Seventieth?”

The man’s face was starting to go a funny color. The profile of his throat joggled a little. “How did you know?” he breathed.

“I found that too; on the directory, outside the phone-booths at the back.”

The cigarette Quinn had given him fell to the floor. He hadn’t wanted to discard it, his mouth got too loose to hold it, and it fell out before he could catch it.

Quinn kept looking at him, looking at him, and he kept looking back.

Quinn said: “Does it hurt you very much? There where you’re holding it?” And he ran his bent knuckle past the up-ended reveres without actually touching them.

“Did you lose a lot of blood?” he said. Then he took the man’s hand and disengaged it forcibly, but still trying not to jar it too much, trying to be gentle about it.

The coat peeled open and there was nothing, just blank whiteness, unbroken whiteness all the way down to his belt.

Quinn sat back with a jolt on the bench.

The man said: “I haven’t any undershirt on. I came out this way, with my coat on my bare back.”

He tightened it up again, with a gesture that must have become almost second-nature by now.

Quinn leaned forward again. “So he didn’t get you,” he said. “I thought he did. Then where was the blood from?”

“From my nose. Any time I get excited it does that. All night off and on, it’s been—”

“That’s a bad combination,” Quinn said. “A killer with a chronic nosebleed. That puts a strike on you.”

The man’s jaw hung slack. “What?” he said idiotically, as though he hadn’t heard him right.

“You know you killed him, don’t you? You know you left him up there dead behind you? You know that, don’t you?”

The man tried to get up off the bench. Quinn put his hand lightly on his shoulder, and then bore down a little. “No, stay here,” he said with deceptive unconcern, “don’t try to get up right away. Stay where you are a while.”

The whole lower part of the man’s face was dancing now.

“Graves, I’m talking about,” Quinn said. “Where you chewed the cigar to ribbons, remember? Seventieth Street.”

“Sixty-ninth,” the man quavered. “And he said his name was — I don’t remember what it is now myself. But it wasn’t Graves. He has the flat under me, and I only went down there and smoked a cigar with him for ten minutes because I was too nervous to stay by myself— If somebody killed him, it happened after I left there.”

The man’s face was stunned. It was like slow ripples spreading outward over it, and freezing as they went. He said, “I don’t like the way you’re talking. I’m going to get away from you.”

“You’re wrong about one of those two things,” Quinn said stonily. “You bet you don’t like the way I’m talking, but you’re not going to get away from me.”

This time the man got up off the bench, taking Quinn’s hand on his shoulder along with him. He tried to get rid of that, so Quinn came up after it, and put the other one on him, got a good tight hold on him with that.

“Get out of here, now,” the man kept panting hysterically. “Get out of here.”

They started to thresh around and stagger to and fro in a locked embrace. They hit the edge of the bench, and it squealed and jumped a little along the floor.

“It was you, wasn’t it,” Quinn said through his clenched teeth. “It was you, wasn’t it. Graves — Seventieth Street — I’ll get it out of you if I have to—”

“Haven’t I been through enough for one night— Look, see what you did? It’s starting in again, after I had it quieted down—”

A thin line of red started to edge down from under one nostril. The man wrenched one arm free, clawed at his pocket, brought out another fistful of paper tissue. He slapped it violently against his own face. Then he removed it again, looked at it. The sight of the red on it seemed to enrage him; he stopped being just passively resistant in Quinn’s grasp. He swung out at him violently, missed, followed it up with another panicky punch.

The door opened suddenly and a nurse stood glaring out at them. “Here! What’s going on out here?” she said sharply. “Stop it! What’s the matter with you two?”

They both became reluctantly quiescent, still hanging onto one another and breathing laboredly.

She gave them a black look of reproof. “The idea. I never heard of such a thing. Which one of you is Mr. Carter?”

“I am,” the bedraggled individual in Quinn’s grasp heaved. The red line had reached his chin now; a second one was beginning to venture downward parallel to it. His coat had been wrenched open by Quinn’s continuing hold on it. His thin, unclad stomach was going up and down like a bellows.

“I’ve got some news for you. Don’t you want to hear it?” she said disapprovingly.

“What is it?” he quailed.

“You’ve got a son.”

She turned quickly to Quinn. “You better hold that man up a minute. I think he’s going to faint. These prospective fathers give us more trouble than the mothers and the babies do put together.”