The Fugitive Pigeon

Chapter 28

It was rush hour. When the train reached West Fourth Street I had to claw my way through a mass of sullen humanity to get through the door and out onto the platform. That was possibly the most dangerous moment I’d lived during the past week.

But I did make it to the platform, and the doors snicked shut behind me, and the subway raced its squirming mass of innards southward through the black tunnel. I went up stairs, and up stairs, and up stairs, and eventually got to the street. I walked west through the begining of evening, through the Village.

I didn’t know her home address, and I didn’t know her parents’ address in the Bronx. This was the only place I knew her, so this was where I came.

I walked down Perry Street and I saw light gleaming in those windows, but did that mean Chloe or did it mean Artie back at last from his unexplained disappearance? Although I wanted to know what the hell Artie had been doing the last couple of days, at the same time I wished desperately for it to be Chloe up there.

Murder wasn’t the only thing I’d been figuring out this afternoon. I’d also been figuring Chloe. I’d come to some realizations about Chloe, and I was eager to get started acting on those realizations.

Like for instance her telling me her life story last night, all about her marriage and her little girl and everything. She wouldn’t have told me all that if she thought we were just a couple of ships passing in the night. No, it meant she was interested in me, interested in me, and willing to see where the interest might lead.

And also, like for instance, her telling me she knew I had a letch for her because she heard me tossing and turning until practically dawn. What I didn’t stop to realize at the time, what I only figured out hours later when my brain was all tuned up and figuring out everything that came its way, was if she had heard me tossing and turning until practically dawn that had to mean she was awake until practically dawn herself. And what did that mean?

You betcha.

So I hurried across Perry Street toward those lighted windows, second-floor front, hoping it was Chloe and not Artie, and I dashed up the steps outside the building, found the door unlocked yet again, and bounded on up the stairs to the second floor. I knocked on the door, and waited, and knocked again, and at last it opened.

Chloe.

She had changed clothes. She was wearing a black skirt that flared out over her hips, with a lot of fluffy petticoat sort of things underneath to make the skirt stand out even more, and she had a scoop-neck white blouse on that did nothing bad at all for her breasts, and she was wearing stockings and high heels, and she had a good moderate amount of make-up on, and she looked absolutely fabulous.

I suddenly felt raunchy. Still in the same slacks I’d been wearing since this thing started. Same shoes too. Borrowed underwear. Borrowed white shirt that was too small for me. Borrowed raincoat.

I wished I’d thought to stop off at my place in Canarsie first to get cleaned up.

She looked at me standing there in the hallway, and she smiled in a tentative kind of way and said, “You looking for a place to hide out, mister?”

I shook my head. “It’s all over,” I said. “We won.”

“What? Really?”

So the first thing I had to do was come in and sit down and have a cup of coffee and tell her what had happened, tell her the whole day in the tiniest detail. Which I did, and she made suitable comments here and there, and when I was done she said, “So you came back to get your own clothes and leave Artie’s stuff here, is that it?”

I shook my head again. “No. I came back here to get you.”

“Me?” Said as though she had no idea what I was talking about.

So I reached out and pulled her close and kissed her. We melted awhile, and then we split and looked at each other and both started giggling. “And here I’d given up on you,” she said, giggling.

“The hell you did,” I said.

“What do you know about it?”

“Plenty.” I kissed her again, and then I said, “Shall we spend the night here or at my place down in Canarsie?”

“We? What do you mean, we?”

“You know what I mean.”

She disengaged herself from my arms, backed up a couple of steps, and looked me over. “You’re going to run that bar again?”

“I guess not,” I said. “The organization won’t be operating it any more, and my contract with the organization ended with Uncle Al. I guess I’ll just have to settle down and find myself a sensible job somewhere with good pay and nice fringe benefits and a top-flight retirement plan.”

“You’re overstating it,” she said. “But you do really mean to settle down and start behaving like an adult.”

“Definitely,” I said.

“In that case,” she said, “I imagine you’ll ask me that question again a little later this evening, in a more acceptable manner.”

“I imagine I will,” I said. “And how would you like to eat dinner in a real restaurant?”

“Fine. Just—”

The doorbell rang.

We looked at each other. Chloe said, “Do you suppose that’s Artie?” Her voice was hushed.

I said, “I don’t know.”

“What if it is?”

“You mean, because of us?”

She nodded.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “Don’t worry, I know Artie pretty well. He never had any long-term plans with you anyway, you or anybody else.”

“I know,” she said.

So I went over and opened the door and it wasn’t Artie, it was a Western Union boy. He handed me the envelope and went away, and I shut the door and opened the envelope and Chloe came over and put an arm around my waist and rested her cheek against my upper arm, and we read the telegram together.

It was from Huntsville, Alabama. It was addressed to both Chloe and me at this address, and it said:

“Oh!” said Chloe. “If that isn’t the end!”

She was right.