The Fugitive Pigeon

Chapter 12

The Packard was still parked next to the fire hydrant, but now Artie was in the back seat with Miss Althea. I slid into the front seat next to Chloe, and Artie explained, “She tried to duck out again.”

She was being silent and grim at the moment, sitting hunched into the corner, staring straight ahead and ignoring everybody.

I said, “She’s more trouble than she’s worth. Maybe we ought to get rid of her.”

“She’s insurance, Charlie,” Artie said. “She’s our hostage.”

I wasn’t all that sure a hostage would stop Mr. Gross and his organization, particularly when the hostage’s father was already dead and couldn’t complain, but if it made Artie feel safer it was worth it. I’d already come to depend on Artie’s presence, not to do anything in particular to help me but just to be there to talk to, and I wouldn’t want to see him scared away. So I said, “All right, we’ll keep her.”

Chloe said, “Did you get the address?”

“Right.” I took the paper from my pocket and read the address aloud: “One twenty-two Colonial Road, Hewlett Bay Park, Long Island.”

Chloe said, “Hewlett Bay Park. Where’s that?”

“On Long Island, I guess,” I said. “Have you got a map?”

“I don’t know. Look in the glove compartment.”

There was nothing in the glove compartment but a pair of ladies’ black gloves and the automatic I’d taken from Miss Althea.

From the back seat, Artie said, “We need gas anyway. Get a road map at the gas station.”

“Fine,” said Chloe. The motor was already running, purring away as though it were brand-new and born to be in a getaway car. Chloe turned the wheel, ignored the traffic coming down 65th Street from behind us, and pulled away from the curb. She was a very individualistic driver, Chloe, and I wasn’t at all surprised when I learned, some time later, that the State of New York refused to give her a driver’s license.

We were already on the East Side, so we decided to drive on over to the 59th Street Bridge, go over to Queens, and find a gas station there, which we did. Miss Althea told the attendant we were kidnapping her, but we were used to that sort of thing from her by then, so we all laughed it off and the attendant got a chuckle out of it, too. He wasn’t a sourpuss like the toll taker at the George Washington Bridge. Artie bent Miss Althea’s thumb back, to make her stop yelling, and then everything was fine. I got a road map of Long Island, paid for the gas, and we drove away from there.

Hewlett Bay Park turned out to be on the south shore of Long Island, in the midst of a little flurry of places named Hewlett. There was Hewlett Harbor and Hewlett Neck, Hewlett Bay and Hewlett Point, and even a town just called Hewlett.

From where we were there didn’t seem to be any sensible way at all to get to Hewlett Bay Park, or any other Hewlett. With all of us but Miss Althea studying the map and making suggestions, we finally decided on what looked to be the simplest route of all. By a complex series of local streets, we got from Queens Boulevard, on which we were now situated, to the Long Island Expressway, which we took to Grand Central Parkway, which we took to the Van Wyck Expressway, which we took to the Belt Parkway (at this point for some reason called Southern Parkway), which we took to Sunrise Highway, which we took to Central Avenue in Valley Stream, which we took to the general vicinity of the Hewletts, at which point we would ask directions.

Of course, it didn’t work that way. It was now a little after six, and we were caught up in the tail end of the rush hour, and evening was beginning to edge toward us from the east, and Chloe kept getting confused by the signs, and so we managed to be lost more often than not. Still, by fits and starts we approached our target.

We’d been approaching it for an hour and a half, and had attained Sunrise Highway, when, at about seven-thirty, while we stopped for a traffic light, Miss Althea caught us all by surprise — she’d been quiet as a mouse for nearly an hour — and got the car door opened and leaped to the street.

Artie shouted, “Hey!” and leaped out after her.

She was off like a deer across the highway and down the side street. Artie pelted after her, shouting, “Hey! Hoy! Hey!” And there were Chloe and I, just the two of us, with the light turned green in front of us and several drivers turned dangerous behind us. With horns honking away, I said, “You better pull forward. Get over to the side of the road as quick as you can.”

Of course, we were in the farthest left lane of three, so it took us nearly half a mile to get over to where we could pull off the road — in a discount carpet center’s parking area — and try to figure out what to do next.

Chloe gazed worriedly out the rear window. “He won’t know where we are,” she said.

I said, “What if he doesn’t catch her? In fact, what if he does? He can’t drag her screaming and kicking along beside a big highway full of cars.”

Chloe squinted and squinted. “I don’t see him coming,” she said.

“He’ll be along,” I told her.

But he wasn’t. We waited fifteen minutes, and he never showed up. I was feeling pretty impatient anyway, this whole trip taking so blasted long, and sitting there fifteen minutes, in an unmoving automobile and waiting for somebody who continued not to show up, was getting to me.

Finally I said, “He’s not coming back, you know.”

“He’ll be here any minute,” she said, squinting away out the rear window.

I said, “If he was going to get back here, he’d have done it by now. Either he’s chased her so far away he figures there’s no point looking for us here anymore, or she’s managed to get him arrested.”

“Arrested?” She looked worried. “Are we out of the city limits?”

“I don’t know, I think so. Why?”

“Artie has to avoid the city police,” she said, and let it go at that.

I said, “Well, in any case, he wouldn’t expect to find us here any more. He knows I’m in a hurry, I’m trying to protect my life, so he’ll naturally expect us to go on. He knows the address where we’re headed, maybe he’ll meet us there.”

“How will he get there?” she wanted to know.

“How do I know? Maybe he’ll take a cab. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he got there before we do.”

“And what if he isn’t there?” she said.

“Then he’ll meet us back at his place, after I see Mr. Gross.”

“Do you want to try to see Mr. Gross alone?”

“I didn’t count on Artie coming in with me anyway,” I told her. “I wouldn’t want him to risk getting himself killed on my account.”

She stopped squinting out the rear window at last, and looked rather searchingly at me. “Do you mean that, Charlie?” she asked me.

“Well, sure,” I said. It was true; I hadn’t expected Artie would come in with me. I’d assumed he’d wait out in the car, the same as at Uncle Al’s.

“You’re really something, Charlie, you know that?” she said.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “If I had my way, I’d be right back in Canarsie this minute, behind the bar, watching television. This isn’t the life for me, believe me.”

“I know that,” she said. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“We’d better get going,” I said.

She turned her head and looked out the rear window again. “Do you really think so?”

“He’d have been here by now,” I said.

She sighed. “I suppose so.” She faced front. “I hope nothing’s happened to him. He’s an awful sweet guy, you know.”

“I know that,” I said.

“He looks up to you,” she said.

I stared at her. “Artie? Looks up to me?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I thought it was the other way around,” I said.

She laughed. “You don’t know yourself at all, Charlie,” she said. Looking neither to left nor right, she started the Packard rolling forward and angled it out into the traffic.