Forget-Me-Not Killer

Chapter Three Cold-Deck Showdown

I came out of it in a clean white bed. I was looking up into Sally’s face. “It’s all right, Eddie,” she was saying. “I called in little Doctor Conway from downstairs. He’s a tired little man who has seen a lot of things. He turned in a report you shot yourself in the shoulder while cleaning a gun.”

“But we want to know the truth, young man. What really happened?” I looked at Peggy’s Aunt Lettie. Small and wrinkled, she wore a vinegary expression, but you learned that expression hid a heart as big as a mellow pumpkin.

I had no idea if I’d been seen entering Sally’s apartment. All I could think was I had to get out of there before I caused her any more trouble.

But at the moment, I had no choice. I was too weak to move. I could only lie there being cared for by Sally and her aunt, or looking over all Peggy’s playthings that she brought in to cheer me up.

I felt like I was resting on a keg of lighted dynamite. I made up my mind to tell Sally the truth about who I was. But the longer I stayed there, being cared for and loved as Eddie Green, it made telling the simple truth more impossible.

The second day, while Sally was at work, I slipped out of the apartment. I grabbed a taxi and went to Dr. Maddigan. He wasn’t hopeful about my lack of memory. He even suggested further treatment. But I had no time now for doctors.

When I left the doctor’s office, I was sure I recognized fat Saul Levine, the detective-sergeant. So he’s tailing me, shadowing me doggedly, I thought, probably even knowing that I am staying with Sally and her aunt.

I caught a taxi and rode to my own apartment. I used my key and when I walked into the front room, Felix and Marlene were there, as casual as though I’d been out for five-minutes stroll. But I didn’t miss the quick look of caution that passed between them.

“I’ve been looking things over,” I told them evenly. “I figure now that not many of the boys recognize me, it would be a good time to check up on things.”

I saw the color seep from Varden's face. His slate eyes flashed. I smiled grimly to myself. I knew a warning would go out as soon as Varden got away from me.

“There’s one other thing,” I told Varden. “A couple of Blackie’s out-of-town hoods tried to jump me. One of them is dead. If it happens again, Blackie will be one of the dead. Will you tell him that for me, Felix?”

Felix nodded numbly. “I’ll tell him, Chief,” he said. “But Blackie’s in fine. There musta been some mix-up.”

I just looked at him. His gaze fell away under mine.

“I’m going out for a while,” I told Marlene. Then I turned back to Varden. “I don’t want to be followed, Felix. I've been pretty nice to you since I got out of the hospital. But get this. If I’m followed, I’ll hold you responsible.”

He only nodded, without speaking.

As I left the apartment, I knew that Marlene and Felix Varden were hatching some plan. But it wasn’t ready yet. Felix was still afraid of Dash Smith, and the plan had to be perfect, fool-proof and final before Felix Varden would touch it. Meantime, he would nod and yes me.

Sergeant Saul Levine, in a taxi, pulled away from the curb as my own cab left it. I knew what I had to do. Whether it lived in my memory or not, my past was catching up with me. Saul Levine trailing me, Blackie daring to make a move, Marlene and Varden watching. I had to tell Sally the truth, and it would be the last time I would ever see her...

I bought some trinkets at a store on the corner near Sally’s place. Dropping them in my pocket, I made a few false trails to throw off anyone who might be trailing me. When I thought it was clear, I hurried up the back way and rang Sally’s doorbell.

You'd have thought I was somebody, the reception I got there. Aunt Lettie managed a vinegary smile and hoped I was stronger. Peggy squealed with delight. I tossed her in the air and let her fish inside my coat pockets for the trinkets, a toy wrist watch, a packet of balloons that blew up into funny-looking men.

Only Sally didn’t speak. She only smiled at me, and that was enough. It ripped me to pieces inside.

“Come on, Sally,” I said. “Get your hat. We’re going to an Italian restaurant for supper.”

We were half through our meal when Saul Levine came in without even looking at us. He sat alone at a table across the room.

I looked at her. My throat was dry, my palms were sweaty. “There's something I have to tell you, Sally. I can’t put it off any longer.”

“Tell me,” she smiled.

I looked about the place and shook my head. “When we get home,” I said. She nodded and patted my hand. I never felt lonelier in my life...

We entered the darkened front room of her apartment. From the street outside enough light flowed in from corner lamps and neon signs to suffuse the room in a hushed, unearthly glow.

“We’ll be real quiet,” Sally whispered. “We won’t wake Peggy or Aunt Lettie.”

“Don’t even turn on the lights,” I said, catching Sally’s arm as she reached for the lamp switch. I wanted the darkness of the room to hide me from my own words. “Sally, there’s something I have to say to you.”

She turned. The dim, soft oval of her face was very close to mine. “Eddie!” she whispered softly. Her arms were soft about my neck, her lips sweet against my mouth. “I never believed it could happen to me again, Eddie, until I met you!”

She misunderstood! She thought I was asking her to marry me!

I was trembling. My lips felt parched. I was thinking, never tell her! Take her and run. As Levine had said, run for your life! For what life would I have without Sally, no matter how long I lived? But I knew better. I knew it had to be right for Sally. I had to have the courage to make it right, no matter how much it hurt her at first, or what it cost me.

“Sally.” My voice was so hoarse I hardly recognized it. “Did you ever see the man who caused your husband to be killed — did you ever see Dash Smith?”

She looked up at me wonderingly, and nodded. “But, Eddie, what has that to do—”

“I’m Dash Smith,” I broke in. “Sally, I never meant for it to be like this. I love you, deeply, with all my heart. You’ve got to believe that.”

She spun away, snapped on the lights. The sudden white blinded me. When I could see, her face was a stranger’s. I put my hands on her arms. I felt her go taut, move away from me. The way she shrugged away twisted my insides. There were no tears, recriminations, accusations. There was only that stark stillness in her face as she stared at me.

“Sally...”

“Don’t speak, Eddie. There’s nothing to say.”

“You love me, Sally.”

“I love a boy named Eddie Green. With all my heart and soul. And with all of me I loathe Dash Smith who wrecked my life. Please. Just go. I’ve dreamed of killing you. Now I know I can’t do that. But I never want to see you again!”

There was nothing left for me to do but turn and go. Woodenly. Like a walking dead man.

Marlene and Felix were in the apartment when I got back there. They were having a drink together. The gayness in Felix Varden’s smile should have warned me.

Varden stood up as I crossed the room. I stood over Marlene. “You like this guy pretty well, don’t you?”

“Dash, whatever—”

“I’m not blind! Well, take him! I’m through, understand? Finished.”

“There’s only one way to quit,” Varden said in a cold, dead voice.

I spun. He had slipped a gun from his shoulder holster, was holding it on me.

“The talk of the mob has been Dash Smith going soft,” he said. “You were right. I found out tonight. Even Blackie wasn’t afraid to step out of line against you. He did try to have you killed. Ever since the fire, the talk has been you’re through. Well, that fire saved you then, Smith. I guess you knew that? Yes, I’m sure you suspected. I thought we — Marlene and I — would have to kill you at the first chance when you came from the hospital. But with Smith going soft, I decided to play a wait-and-see game.”

“You want control? And Marlene?”

“I want everything.” he said simply. “I started in your organization as a numbers runner. I set my eyes on the top. Even before that cottage fire, I was about ready to move in and take over, with key men in the- mob seeing things my way. I figured you were beginning to suspect when I discovered you were quietly salting money away in secret before the fire. Well, none of it will do you any good, Smith. You’re finished all right. But not the way you mean!”

Under the prodding of his gun, I moved toward the door of the apartment. For the second time, a discovery hit me hard. So hard it almost toppled the blank wall to my memory. With the gun in his hand, Felix Varden was no longer fearful to me. He was just another hood, and for him, I felt only contempt.

I heard him speak to Marlene. “My car is in the alley. When I’m through with this, I’ll be back. I never left here tonight, understand?”

Marlene’s face was white, her lips like blood. She said, “You can depend on me to alibi you, Felix!”

I guess her one aim in life was always to be sure she picked the winner.

The stairs were long, the alley dark. I saw the hulk of Varden’s car before us.

“Here are the keys,” he ordered. “You’ll unlock the heap.”

It was my last chance. I reached for the keys, but caught his wrist instead, spun his body with a snap, my other hand stabbing for his gun. Lithe and quick, he jumped back, slashed my forehead with his gun barrel. I shouted in hoarse rage, trying to close in on him. My shoulder was on fire from the bullet wound.

But Felix Varden was cautious, too. He was afraid of the noise of gunfire here in the confines of the alley.

He struck me again, and I staggered back. The next blow of the gun barrel across my temple knocked me nearly senseless.

Then I was waking again. Waking with an urgency, with lights blurred and flitting against my closed lids. But there were no lights. My eyes snapped open to darkness, the darkness of the alley. The scrape of feet, the gasping for breath came from two men locked in struggle near me. I pushed my way up the wall. In the dim light of the alley, I saw the shadowy figures sway.

One of them fell. It was Sergeant Saul Levine.

As Varden brought up his gun, I lunged against him. I carried him back hard against his car. I saw his gun coming in a sweeping arc. I threw up my hand to ward it off. Then Levine was moving behind me. Varden groaned and doubled from Levine’s blow.

Levine looked at me. “I heard a man shout in here, the sounds of a struggle. I was covering your apartment, Smith. But I don’t want any thanks for coming to your rescue.”

Through the blinding pain in my head, only one thing was clear, a fact that wrung my throat. I said thankfully, “The name isn’t Smith, Sarge. It’s Quincy. Lieutenant Les Quincy.”

He snorted. “You’ll have to think up a better one than that!”

“No,” I said quietly. “We’ll just go to headquarters and check my fingerprints against those of Les Quincy on the civil service records.”

It took some explaining, but when it was over, the boys at headquarters threw a party for me. I’d been hot on some of Dash Smith’s rackets. I’d cornered a stoolie who would talk and had gone out to his lake cottage to pick up Smith that night.

But he’d known he’d just about played out his rope, known too that Marlene and Varden were going to take over his organization.

He’d salted away nearly a hundred grand for a rainy day. And it was raining plenty in his life. He’d slugged me that night as I had approached his lake cottage.

Then and there, he’d seen what he believed a safe and sure way out. Dash Smith would die, and he would be free forever with a hundred grand. Free from the long shadow of the law and the vile shadow of intrigue in his own organization.

It was so simple and logical, a far lesser brain that Smith’s could have thought it out. We were the same build, the same coloring. He’d loaded me with his identification, watch, ring, clothes, removing all trace of Lieutenant Les Quincy. He’d seared the prints from my fingers, which accounted for the bad burns I’d suffered, then he’d set the dry, flimsy lake cottage afire, sure that the flames would finish his work.

When the young couple had pulled me out of the burning cottage, no one who knew Smith saw my face until it came through the ordeal of skin grafting, surgery, and from under the heavy pile of bandages.

I had looked different, but they had expected that, and hairless and changed, I had looked nothing at all like Les Quincy, the lieutenant of the Rackets Squad.

It was a face that belonged to no man. But it belonged to me now, and I was proud of it. I was glad too that memory had been trying to come back, that the doctors said it would have returned in time.

Felix Varden’s blows to the head there in the alley had only hastened things, brought memory back at once.

Levine said, “We’ll get Smith, Les, and when his organization starts cracking, it’ll go like a rotten melon.” He smoked thoughtfully a moment. “And Marlene — attempting to pick only winners will end up an also-ran. She’ll be lucky to get a job singing her blues in a cheap club after this.”

That night I went back to Sally’s place. I saw that she had been reading the papers. They were scattered over the couch. We stood a little awkwardly for a moment in the living room. Tears brimmed on her lids, and then a smile broke on her lovely face.

“There is only one question,” she said. “Does Lieutenant Les Quincy have a wife?”

I laughed. “He does not. But he will have shortly,” I said.