No Questions Asked

8

Right after I rented the Ford sedan from Hertz and bought a flashlight it began to snow again. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon and the snow had started coming down thick and steady and wet in a determined sort of way as though it had made up its mind to cover everything up at least twelve inches deep even if it took all afternoon and the rest of the night.

According to the radio the federal government had made up its mind a little more quickly this time. It had decided to let all of its employees go home at four and I got caught in that traffic and it wasn’t until five that I got back to the hotel.

I checked with the desk to see whether there were any messages. There weren’t so I used a house phone to call Max Spivey. “I’m downstairs,” I told him. “Because of this weather and one other thing maybe you’d better turn the money over to me now.”

“I’ll be right down,” he said.

I waited for him at the elevator and after he got there we went over to the desk and Spivey asked for and was given the suitcase. Before he handed it to me he said, “You mentioned one other thing.”

I nodded. “There’s a Washington cop who wants me to take him with me. I don’t want to, so I may have to leave early to make sure that he’s not tagging along. Also I don’t know what this snow will do. It may make them want to move the switch up to an earlier time. If they do, it could be pretty short notice so I thought I’d better get the money now.”

“It’s all yours,” he said and handed the suitcase over.

“I’ll sign something if you want me to.”

He shook his head. “No need. You want to have dinner?”

“I’d better stick by the phone in case they call. I’ll have something sent up.”

“Anything else I can do?” he said.

“I can’t think of anything. I’ll check with you before I leave. Will you be in your room?”

He nodded.

“Okay. Then I’ll go on up.”

Spivey said he wanted to pick up something to read so I rode the elevator up alone. Once inside the room I locked and bolted the door and put the money in the closet. After that I ran some water into the tub as hot as I could stand it, eased down into it, and thought about the absurdity of my calling. I decided that if it were nothing else, it was good experience. I could always get a job as a Western Union messenger, providing that Western Union still used messengers, which I wasn’t at all sure that it did. I tried to remember the last time that a messenger had delivered a telegram to me and what his uniform had looked like, but I couldn’t. By then the water had grown cool so I got out of the tub, dried off, got dressed, and turned on the television set. It was time for the evening network news and I watched Walter Cronkite, as avuncular as ever, reduce complicated stories to twenty-five oversimplified words or less.

When the news was over I called room service and ordered a roast beef sandwich, a glass of milk, and a pot of coffee. When they came I sat there and ate and watched some more television and thought about nothing other than how awful it was and always is.

At ten I rose, went over to the window, and looked out. It was still snowing as hard or perhaps even harder than before. I turned, picked up the phone, and called Max Spivey. After he answered, I said, “This is St. Ives. I’m leaving.”

“Aren’t you a little early?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Not with this weather.”

“Well, hell, all I can say is good luck.”

“I’ll check with you when I get back.”

“Do that.” he said.

The car was in a garage a block away. When I had left New York I hadn’t counted on snow and all I had was a light topcoat I put it on, turned the collar up, took the suitcase out of the closet and rode the elevator down to the lobby. The doorman was standing outside watching the snow come down.

“Any chance for a cab?” I said.

He shook his head. “There hasn’t been one out there in an hour.”

I looked around the lobby. It was deserted except for the hotel staff. I clutched the collar of my topcoat, ducked my head, and went out into the snow.

I suppose that it was as close to a blizzard as Washington gets. A wind had come up out of the north and drove the flakes into my face as I walked up Sixteenth Street. I could see a yard in front of me, possibly two. I looked back a couple of times but there was nothing to see but more snow. There seemed to be almost no cars in the street.

By the time I got to the garage I was half frozen. I took my topcoat off and shook it to remove the snow. When I gave the black attendant my parking ticket he said, “You ain’t goin’ out in this shit, are ya?”

“I’m a doctor,” I said.

He went off to get the Ford. I could hear him start the engine and then there was a clicking sound which was the chains that I had ordered put on when I rented it. The attendant pulled the car up in front of me and got out. I gave him fifty cents, reached in and got the keys, cutting off the engine. I went back and unlocked the trunk and put the suitcase in it and slammed down the lid.

The attendant was still hanging around when I got in the car. “You gotta operate tonight?” he said.

I nodded. “Brain tumor.”

“Jesus,” he said.

I don’t know why I bothered to lie to him. Perhaps because the reason that I gave for my going out into that snow made us both feel better. At least it made sense.

I turned left and drove down I Street until I came to Fifteenth. I turned left again, crossed K, and drove past the Washington Post and the Madison hotel. I drove slowly, not more than fifteen or twenty. There was almost no traffic except for an occasional police cruiser. It was half past ten and Washington apparently had gone to bed early. It usually holds out until eleven.

On the other side of Massachusetts Avenue, Fifteenth Street became one way and I pulled over into the left lane. The windshield wipers were doing a good job of getting rid of most of the snow and the rear window was being kept fairly clear by its beating element.

I turned left on R Street, which was also one way, drove a block, and pulled over to the curb. A car went past me and disappeared into the snow. I started up again, found a driveway, turned into it, and backed out, now going the wrong way on R Street. I drove slowly and carefully until I reached Fifteenth again and then turned left. There was no traffic, at least none I could see.

After that I drove aimlessly, turning left and then right after every few blocks. By a quarter to eleven I found myself on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. On the left was a hamburger place that had tables at its window. I parked the car and went in.

It was one of those places that are self-service. I got a cup of coffee and carried it over to one of the window tables. There was nobody in the place except for the two kids who ran it and who kept arguing with each other about how soon they could close up and go home.

I sat there for three-quarters of an hour and drank three cups of coffee. A few cars went by outside, but not many. There were almost no pedestrians. I checked the city map that the Hertz people had given me and figured out my route. At 11:30 I went out, brushed the snow off the windshield and got back into the car.

It was snowing even harder than before. I drove east on M Street through Georgetown until I came to Twenty-third Street and turned south. I kept driving, went around a traffic circle, and on past the State Department until I came to the Lincoln Memorial. After I went around the memorial Twenty-third Street was supposed to turn into something called Ohio Drive. I found it, or hoped that I did, and after crossing a small bridge I drove for another five minutes. I looked at my watch. It was six minutes until twelve. I stopped the car and waited four minutes. Then I drove slowly on for two minutes more until Ohio Drive started to bend sharply left, which meant that I was where I was supposed to be, at Haines Point. I saw the car a moment later. It was parked and its lights were off. It should have been a green or a blue Chevrolet, but because of the snow I couldn’t be sure. I decided that it would have to do. I stopped my own car, put it in reverse, and backed up slowly until I was what I hoped was fifty feet away. I looked at my watch. It was exactly midnight.

I switched off the Ford’s headlights, remembered the flashlight that I had bought earlier, took it out of the glove compartment, got out of the car, went around to the rear, and opened the trunk. I stood there and listened. I’m not sure what I was listening for because there was nothing to hear other than my own breathing.

I took the suitcase out of the trunk and started walking toward the car that was supposed to be a green or a blue Chevrolet. The snow came well over my ankles and I wondered whether the car up ahead had chains or snow tires.

I had switched the flashlight on and its beam picked up the car. It was about fifteen feet ahead. When I reached it I put the suitcase down on my right so that I could open the trunk. The trunk was locked. I remember saying, “Shit,” and then there was a sudden movement on my right. It was only a blur, but I ducked and something cold and hard slammed into my neck just below my right ear. If I hadn’t ducked, it would have slammed into my temple.

I remember that I sat down in the snow. I sat down in it because I could no longer stand up. I watched an ungloved hand pick up the suitcase. I tried to see who the hand belonged to, but I couldn’t make him out because he had already turned. The engine of the car started and I watched the back door open. The suitcase disappeared inside the car and the back door slammed shut. I decided it was time to get up and say something, perhaps something such as, “You can’t do that,” or “What the hell’s going on here?”

Somebody else said something instead. A voice said, “Hold it right there, police!” The figure by the car hesitated, but just for a moment. Then he had the front door open and he was getting in, or starting to, and then there was the shot. The first shot must have caught him in the back because he arced backward and then stumbled forward toward the car. Its door was still open and he was still determined to get into it. He might have made it except that the car started moving away. He tried to throw himself into the moving car, but there was a second shot that caught him and spun him around until he was facing me and I wondered how I could see him so clearly in all that snow and dark until I noticed that I was still holding the flashlight. He went down on his knees first, not three feet away from me, and stayed that way for a moment. His mouth worked a couple of times, as if he were talking to himself, perhaps about his rotten luck. Then he pitched forward into the snow and lay still.

I sat there and stared at him for a moment. Then I noticed that his face was buried in the snow. I bent forward and tugged at him until I got his head turned around so that he could breathe. I needn’t have bothered.

A voice to my right and behind me said, “You all right?”

“Oh hell, yes,” I said. “I just like to sit in the snow.”

It was Fastnaught. He knelt down near my feet and touched his fingers to the man’s neck. He held them there for what seemed to be a long time.

“I guess he’s dead,” Fastnaught said.

“You guess?”

“He’s dead.”

I decided to move my head. I turned it to the left and it felt all right. Then I turned it to the right. That was a mistake. A sharp pain tore through it and made me gasp. I touched my neck just below my right ear. There was a pronounced swelling but nothing seemed broken or cracked. I found that if I held my head just so, bent slightly to the right, the pain wasn’t so bad. It also must have made me look a little odd because Fastnaught said, “What’s the matter with you? I thought you said you were okay.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just a broken neck.”

“You know him?”

“Who?”

“Him. There.”

“Oh, you mean the guy you shot. The one there at my feet in the snow. That one. No, I don’t think we’ve met. Since you shot him, I thought you probably must know him.”

“You’re babbling,” Fastnaught said. “You better get up out of that snow.”

I got up, or started to, and then sat back down. Things had started to grow dim. I picked up a handful of snow and smeared it over my face. The shock of the cold made me start to shake.

“You got the trembles,” Fastnaught said.

“Is that what they’re called?”

“You better let me help you up.”

He helped me up. I stood there for a moment and continued to shake with cold or shock or both. Fastnaught said, “Give me that,” and took the flashlight. He shined it in my face. “You sure nothing’s busted?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“How come you’re holding your head like that?”

“It’s what’s called a faintly quizzical angle,” I said. “People in books do it a lot.”

“It looks silly.”

“Maybe that’s because I’ve got a lot of silly questions for you.”

“Later,” Fastnaught said. He knelt down and started going through the dead man’s pockets using the flashlight to examine what he found. Some of the light splashed over the man’s face. It was a fairly young face, which now would never reach middle age. The grey eyes were still open and snow had fallen into them and melted, which made them appear to be full of tears. But tears didn’t go with that face. Even dead it had a smart, clever look to it with a thin, tight mouth and a sharp nose and a tough, biggish chin. It was a hard face, I decided, and the last time that those grey eyes had been wet with tears must have been thirty years ago when the dead man was six or possibly seven.

Fastnaught grunted and stood up. He held a thin black wallet under the flashlight. “Well, guess who we got here?” he said.

“My first guess,” I said, “is going to be Jack Marsh, late of Los Angeles.”

“Huh,” he said. “You figured it out. My theory about Marsh was pretty good, wasn’t it?”

“It was wonderful,” I said. “Even brilliant. And now I’m sure you’re going to tell me, just before I freeze to death, who drove off in that car with a quarter of a million dollars.”

“They got the money?” he said. “Shit. I didn’t see that. I saw you go down and that’s when I shot at him. But I didn’t see him get the money.”

“He threw it into the back seat,” I said. “I was to give them the money and get the book, but it didn’t work out like that. He threw the money into the back seat and then you shot him and then the car drove off with all that money without bothering to leave the book unless it’s somewhere over there in the snow.”

“Wait a minute,” Fastnaught said. He moved over to where the car had been parked and shined the flashlight around. He bent over and picked up something and came back to where I stood. “No book,” he said.

“Somehow I didn’t think there would be.”

“But I found this,” he said and held it out for me to look at. It was an automatic pistol. I thought that it looked like a Colt .38, but I wasn’t sure. I decided that it really didn’t matter.

“That’s a great help.”

“It is to me,” he said.

“It gets you off, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. They don’t like us just to go around shooting just anybody. They like ’em to be either armed or dangerous or both. And that’s what he was, wasn’t he, St. Ives? Armed and dangerous.”

“I didn’t see any gun,” I said.

“You felt it. That’s just as good.”

“I’m freezing,” I said.

“Let’s go get in my car. I got a bottle in there. You can suck on it while I call this thing in.”

Fastnaught’s car was parked twenty or thirty feet behind mine. When we were inside he started the engine and switched the heater on full blast. Then, he used his radio to talk over, but I didn’t listen to him. I was busy drinking his whiskey.

When he was through with the radio he reached for the bottle. “You gave me quite a little ride tonight,” he said. “I nearly froze my ass off. Backing up and going the wrong way on R Street. That was cute.”

“I thought so.”

“You woulda lost me if it hadn’t been for the snow. In snow you can stick real close to somebody with your lights off and they can’t even tell.”

“I’ll remember that next time,” I said.

“You think there’s gonna be a next time?”

“Why not?”

“Well, you sorta fucked this thing up, didn’t you? You lost the money. You didn’t get the book back. I don’t know, but if I was looking for a go-between in the Yellow Pages, I think maybe you’d be about the last one I’d call.”

“I guess I’ll have to learn to live with it.”

Fastnaught tipped the bottle up and took another drink. “Now me on the other hand, I’m sittin’ sorta pretty. I got Jack Marsh out there in the snow. That’s half of it. I figure I can pull in the other half without too much sweat. It might take a little trip but I figure they’ll go for it now.”

“A little trip where?” I said.

“Out to Los Angeles.” He turned in the seat and I could feel him looking at me. “Knowing you, maybe I’ll see you out there.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think you will.”