The Mammoth Book of Pulp Action

Goodbye Hannah Steve Fisher

The captain said: “You’ve been drinking,” and that was all he said about it so Smith thought he couldn’t be looking so badly; yet Smith knew it wasn’t the whisky — or anyway, not just the whisky — that made him look as if he had been hit in the face with a ton of wet towels. His skin was a greyish-white; and there was that glazed ebony in his eyes; and there were lines coming around his mouth. Oh, he was different, everything about him had changed, it was only that in the grey suit, and the felt hat that was shoved back on his head, and the unlit cigarette which hung in his mouth, he looked somewhat the same, so that people hadn’t begun yet to really notice.

“Listen, Smitty,” the captain went on, “what I called you about was 277, a new one, see? I want you to look at it. It might be Hannah Stevens.”

Smith grew rigid with pulse throbbing in his throat, and light flaring in his eyes. He gripped the captain’s arm, and the captain looked around and down at where his hand was.

“What’s this?”

Smith released the grip and gradually found his voice. “You mean you think you’ve got Hannah here?”

“Well, we don’t know. Suicide, nose dive. Battered head — no face that you can recognise. No other identification, either.”

Breathing again, Smith said: “Oh.” Then: “Let’s have a look at it.”

They moved through the morgue along the rows of numbered ice-vaults. The captain was saying: “Since you’ve got that case you’d know if it was her if anybody would. You know all about her, don’t you?”

He said: “Yes, all about her. What kind of perfume she used, and where she got her hair done, and what movie stars she liked the best. I know what time she went to bed every night, and what time she got up. I know what her breakfasts were, I—”

“What are you — her brother?”

“No, I’ve never seen her. I’d never heard of her until you handed me the case three days ago. She was just another missing person. How many thousands have we every year? She was just a name on a card—”

But he stopped talking suddenly for the captain had turned in front of vault 277 and was pulling it out. It slid like a drawer. Smith’s heart was massaging his chest, but he knew he had to look down and he did. There wasn’t much of a head left. The hair had been copper. The body had been beautiful and young.

The captain said: “And still they come to New York in droves every year to act or model or write or marry a millionaire. I wish they could see her.”

Smith was looking at the body and saying: “It isn’t Hannah Stevens.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

“How can you tell?”

“Hannah had a scar on her little toe. The hair on her legs was lighter, and there was a mole just over her hip.”

“Listen, screwball, are you sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay,” the captain said, and he shoved back the drawer. “Another one unidentified, that’s all.” They started walking back towards the office. “What kind of a dame is this Hannah Stevens?”

Smith was looking straight ahead of him. “She’s beautiful,” he said. “She’s the most beautiful thing that ever walked on the earth. Her parents are worth half a million. She made her debut in Boston three years ago and then her folks moved to Newport and she spent most of her time in New York with the young crowd. I have a dozen pictures of her and so have about six of the town’s biggest detective agencies.”

“Well, you seem to know as much about her as—”

He held up his hand. “I haven’t begun to know anything about her yet. She was engaged to a young man by the name of Ronald Watt. I intend to interview him. After that—”

“Listen,” said the captain, “I think you’ve gone wacky, but it’s all right. Just keep your face clean and let me know anything new that develops.”

“Okay,” said Smith, and he turned the cigarette around so that the dry part was in his mouth now. He moved past the captain and through the door.

He sat in his room with a bottle of rye on the table beside him and a lot of peanut shells scattered across the floor. He sat there with his hands folded, staring at the wall, or past it; and then he got up and did a turn around the room and came back, pouring more rye. Now he fixed his gaze on the dresser where her pictures were lined like a display in front of a motion picture theatre. He picked up the first picture and looked at her shining eyes. Someone had told him they were grey and her hair was the colour of crystal-clear honey. He saw the strong cleft of her chin, and the thin, yet definite, nose line. He saw her beauty in a radiance that blinded him and he put the picture down and picked up the next.

He kept doing this, going over the pictures one by one, and then going back for another drink of rye. He had long ago ceased trying to reason with himself. He had quit looking at his vision in the mirror and saying: “You’re going nuts, Johnny. They’re going to come and get up and slap you in a straitjacket if you don’t snap out of it.” There was no longer comprehension, understanding, or sanity of motive. The pictures, her history, the fragments of things he had learned about her; the odour of her perfume that was on the handkerchief that was in his drawer; the torn stocking that he had picked out of the wastebasket in her apartment; the spilled face powder that he had scooped up and wrapped in tissue paper, all of these things he had of hers, all of the stories he had been told of her; everything secondhand, everything old and used; memories of someone he had never known, told him that he loved her.

At first it had been fascination and this had grown to obsession, and then beyond obsession, beyond all reason. When he tried to sleep he thought he heard what they had said was the rich lilt of her voice; he saw her in a shimmering gold gown, walking and talking and dancing; set against a background of a dazzling cut-glass Fifty-second Street cocktail bar, he saw the honey of hair on her shoulders, and he saw her lift a drink to her lips...

The clangour of the telephone jarred him. He went back to the bed and sat down. He picked up the instrument. “Johnny Smith,” he said.

“This is Mrs Stevens,” said a soft, restrained voice. “Hannah’s mother.”

“Yes, Mrs Stevens.”

“I hope you don’t mind — you said I could keep in touch with you. It helps, you know.”

“Yes,” he said, “I know it does.” Then: “Have the private detectives—”

“No trace,” Mrs Stevens said.

There was a silence...

“I see.”

She lifted her voice for the first time. “We all loved her so — we all want her back so badly, I can’t understand why—”

“I know,” said Johnny, quietly.

“I’m sending Ronald Watt over to your hotel,” she went on; “you wanted to see him.”

“Yes, thanks. It may help.”

He talked to her for a moment longer and then hung up. He sat there wondering if Hannah’s voice had been something like that — if it had had the same softness?

He put the liquor away and cleaned up the peanuts, after a fashion, brushing them all into one corner; then he got up and straightened his tie. He stuck an unlighted cigarette in his mouth and let it dangle there. Then he went to the window, waiting; he looked down ten storeys on Manhattan. All of those lights she had known and loved. Where was she? Why had she gone?

He stood here for some time, and then there was the telephone again.

“Mr Watt downstairs.”

“Send him up.”

When Watt tapped on the door Johnny opened it, standing there, the cigarette in his mouth, his eyes flickering. “Come in,” he said. He looked after the young man as he walked past him into the room; and then he closed the door, leaning back against it. He stood leaning against the door, not saying anything, watching Ronald Watt. Watt was wearing country tweed but he would have looked better in tails and white tie, Johnny decided; his face in one way seemed weak, and in another showed strong possibilities. He had a high forehead, and brown eyes — bleak now — a drooping, though handsome mouth. His hat was in his hand and a boyish cowlick of hair overhung his forehead. He sat down on the edge of the bed.

“She was engaged to you?”

“You mean Miss Stevens.”

“I mean Hannah Stevens,” said Johnny.

“Yes, we were engaged.” Watt was nervous.

“When did you see her last?”

“On the night before she — she disappeared.”

“Explain everything leading up to that. I know after she left you she was seen in two other places alone, at the bars. I know she got in a taxicab and said to the driver: ‘Just drift around the park, please,’ and that she got out of the cab, in the park, at around Ninety-sixth Street, and that no one, apparently, has seen her since. But tell me up to the point where she left you. Everything!”

“Why, there isn’t much to tell, Mr Smith. For a month she’d been avoiding me. I kept calling at her apartment. I kept leaving messages; several times I sat all night in front waiting for her to come in, but she never did. And she wasn’t at home. But finally she gave in and saw me twice for lunch — that is, twice in succession, and then she agreed to go to dinner with me. Well, we’d had dinner, and we were drinking cocktails, and everything seemed swell again; she seemed to be her old self, warming up to me, and I thought pretty soon I’d say, ‘Honey, let’s hurry up and get married. I can’t stand being without you.’ Then she saw someone pass through the dining room.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I asked her and she laughed and said: ‘Only the friend of a friend,’ but after that she seemed nervous, and finally she took my hand and looked at me in the way that only she can, Mr Smith. She said: ‘Angel, you’re rich and spoiled, and a no-good scoundrel, but I love you. Always remember that, will you? That I love you.’ She said that, and then she got up. I thought she would be right back. So I sat there. I sat there for an hour and a half.”

“That’s the last you saw of her?”

“That’s the last,” said Watt. He had noticed the pictures of Hannah on the dresser and was looking at them.

Smith said: “Why did she call you a scoundrel, Watt?”

“Just an affectionate term. Nothing—”

“Don’t lie, Watt.”

Ronald Watt leaped to his feet. “I’m not!”

Johnny grabbed the front of his coat and shoved him back down on the bed. “You are, you little punk, and I’m going to wallop the head off you if you don’t tell me the whole truth. I told you I had to know everything. I don’t know what’s the matter with those private cops you’ve hired, but to me it’s obvious that she disappeared on account of you.”

“That’s a—”

Johnny slapped him across the mouth. “The sooner you talk, Watt, the better.”

“Let me out of here!”

“You’re not going to get out, and you’re going to talk if I have to kill you.”

“Blast you, you let me out,” Watt said between clenched teeth, and he rose, shoving against Johnny. Johnny clipped him under the jaw, and then he held him up against the wall and slapped him. When he finally let him drop to the bed Ronald Watt sat there with his face bloody and said:

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you. Unless it’s why Hannah turned cool towards me in the first place. I was doing a little gambling.” He looked up, his face pale now. “Old story, isn’t it? My family didn’t know, no one did except Hannah and she found out by accident. Well, I got in pretty deeply. Damn deeply. I didn’t dare open about it to my father and Nicki said I had my choice. He said welshers, no matter who they were, usually had a bad time of it, if I knew what he meant, and I did. They had accidents, maybe playing polo. At least that was the rumour, and I was scared stiff.”

“I’ll bet,” said Johnny.

“So he said I had my choice, either that or... or I could work for him. My family was social and... well, he just wanted a little information now and then and... ah, letters and things I might be able to pick up.”

“You mean you were to be the go-between for a blackmail racket that Nicki was running.”

“Well—”

“That’s what you were. Well, the last mug that did that got made the fall guy when the thing fell through — and landed in prison. But go on.”

Watt’s face was strained. “What could I do? I pleaded with them, and — as it turned out—”

“I suppose Nicki told you to go home and forget it. To forget you owed him money, that he had reconsidered and decided you were too nice a guy to do work like that.”

“No,” Watt said, “not exactly that. They let me play again one night. I won back every cent I had lost and more on top of it. So what could Nicki do? He had to let me go. That’s why I saw, and still see, no reason for telling it. I never did the work. It was just a proposition, and then I got out of it by—”

“—By winning back the money. Fool! You didn’t win it back. Nicki gave it back to you! Know why?”

“Why?”

“Hannah!”

Ronald Watt stared for a moment, and then his jaw gaped open, and his face turned crimson.

“Now get out,” said Johnny. “Get out before I kill you.”

When Johnny Smith got outside, it was raining. He ducked across the sidewalk and got into a cab. He slammed the door and mumbled an address, and then he sat staring at the shining streets, and the lights along Broadway, at the streetcars, and buses, at the nightclubs, and the big cars pulling up in front of theatres; he sat seeing the rain slap against the window, and hearing the music from the radio, and remembering the words Watt had told him Hannah had said before she left. He remembered that Hannah had taken his hand and said to Watt: “You’re a no-good scoundrel, but I love you. Always remember that, will you? That I love you?” He thought of this, and of a song Noel Coward had written: “Mad About the Boy”; and he kept watching the rain on the window of the taxicab.

The cab stopped at an apartment on Ninety-seventh Street near Central Park West, and Johnny got out, looking at the entrance of the building. He walked across and went inside, and showed the elevator man his badge, and put a twenty-dollar bill in his hand, saying: “I want a pass-key, and directions to Nicki Spioni’s apartment.” He had no trouble at all. The elevator man unlocked the door for him and then beat it.

Johnny stepped inside, closing the door behind him. There were a man and two women in the living room, drinking cocktails, and then Nicki, squat, and hard-faced, came in from the kitchen with a drink in his hand. He saw Johnny and the drink slipped and fell, the glass breaking. He said:

“What is this, mister?”

“Get your friends out, Nicki,” Johnny said.

“Listen to him,” said Nicki.

“I came about Hannah,” Johnny murmured.

Nicki’s face changed. “Who are you?”

“I’m a cop.”

Nicki looked at his friends and they got up, staring coldly at Johnny but not saying anything. They found their wraps and got out. Johnny locked the door. When he turned around Nicki had a gun in his hand.

“All right, copper, now you can tell me just what kind of a caper this is.”

Johnny smiled thinly and put an unlit cigarette in his mouth. “Too bad you weren’t at your club tonight. I telephoned, had a couple of federal men go down to look at your books; couple of city cops went along, think they might pick up a little evidence that will send you up for blackmail.”

Nicki gulped, his Adam’s apple bulging from his throat. “Is this — a pinch?”

“Not this,” said Johnny, “the pinch will come later. But not from me.”

“Get out of my way then,” Nicki said; “I’m getting out of here.”

Johnny put the sole of one foot against the door and folded his arms. “You aren’t going yet. I have a few questions about Hannah.”

Nicki’s face muscles flinched. “I don’t know anything about her.”

“No?”

“No, I don’t. And you’d better move, or one of these slugs will move you, and I’ll roll you aside.”

“You won’t shoot,” Johnny said. “You’re too yellow to shoot anybody, Nicki. You go in for blackmail. You go it the dirty way. But you wouldn’t kill anybody. You’re too afraid of the chair. We both know that, so you can put the gun down and tell me about Hannah or you’ll go to the chair anyway — for her murder.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were the last one to see her. She got out of a cab at Central Park near Ninety-sixth, and came over here. What happened then?”

“She didn’t, she— How do you know what she did?”

“Listen, Nicki, we won’t go into that. I just want to know what happened.”

The squat man was sweating. He put his gun in his pocket, and mopped his face with a handkerchief. But the sweat came faster then he could wipe if off. There was a wild look in his dark eyes; he raised heavy brows, said:

“What else do you think you know?”

“That you made a bargain with her. She was a pawn for Ronald Watt. What did you tell her you were going to do to Watt?”

Nicki was trembling, he seemed to go all to pieces. He suddenly put his arms up over his face and sat down on the divan; he sat there for a moment, and Johnny stood at the door watching him.

“Somebody told me — about her—” he whispered. His fists were clenched. “I told her I was going to use Watt but if she could get the money he owed it’d be okay. She tried — couldn’t get the money. Couldn’t explain why she needed thirty thousand dollars. She got an allowance, but I wouldn’t take payments on instalments from Watt so why from her? Then I... I got that idea — I told her after we’d used Watt awhile we’d kill him. I made her think Watt didn’t have a chance, and the little punk didn’t. I wouldn’t have killed him, that was bluff, but he thought I would, and so did she—” He stopped here.

“Go on,” Johnny said.

“I told her — if she’d come around — if she’d be regular to me — if she wouldn’t see anybody but me for a month and—”

“Never mind the details.”

“Well,” Nicki went on, “that was all right. It was all right, see. I let her see Watt win back his money. I let her see that he was clear. He told her he’d never gamble again. So she thought — that she had saved his life — or I had, and—”

“So what happened?” said Johnny.

“That’s it,” Nicki whispered, “that’s it. I’ve wanted to tell somebody.” He pounded his chest. “It’s been here, up inside me. It’s been killing me. She was a good sport. She was the squarest kid that ever lived. Never a peep out of her, do you see? Never a squawk. There was never a finer woman ever lived—” Nicki’s hands were in his hair now; it was awful to look at him. “Then do you know what happened—”

“Tell me,” said Johnny quietly.

“I fell in love with her. Me, Nicki Spioni, I fell in love with her. I was crazy for her. I wanted to marry her. I told her I’d marry her and go straight — just run my club or go away, out West, to Honolulu, anywhere. I’d give her jewels, money, anything in the world she wanted. But she had all that. All of it. She was no cheap chorus girl. She was no Cinderella model, no ham actress. She had everything, I wasn’t giving her a thing, I was taking... taking—”

“I don’t want to hear that, I want to know what happened.”

“The month ended, and she started seeing Watt again. She was crazy for that yellow rotter. I don’t know why. She loved him like I loved her. She ate and slept and dreamed him. There wasn’t anything in the world she wouldn’t do for him. I had taken her pride, I had taken everything from her, but she thought she could go back to him because it had been his jam, and she had gone to bat. She figured that put them on the same plane, and they could go on and be happy even though she’d never tell him about it.

“I was insane with jealousy. I wanted to kill the guy. I wanted to shoot myself. I was going nuts. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. Just the thought of her with him turned me inside out. But I couldn’t do anything. She had kept her bargain and I was supposed to keep mine. I was supposed to but finally I couldn’t. I couldn’t, see? I cracked, do you get it? Went wacky!

“I found out where she was dining with Watt and sent one of my boys there. He passed the table and gave her a signal. When she went out to meet him he told her I wanted to see her, and double quick, or Watt was going to get bumped. Well, she went to pieces then. She had thought I’d be square, too. Oh, what a fool she was to trust me — to think that Nicki Spioni could keep his word!” He sucked in breath.

“Well, she came up here to have it out with me,” Nicki went on; “she came up here, and I was blind drunk. She was going to marry Watt and she never wanted to see me again. I did everything to keep her. I cried. I got down on my hands and knees and begged. I crawled on the floor for her. But she wouldn’t listen. I kept drinking. The room was spinning in a waltz. All I could hear was her saying: ‘No! No! No!’ I went out in the kitchen and got a knife and said if I couldn’t have her nobody would. I said that, then I changed it and said if she went out I’d cut my throat right there in front of her. I said everything and anything that came to my mind. But she started to go anyway. She started to go, and I tried to stop her, and there was a scuffle. But she got out. I stood there looking at the door and then I came back here to the divan sobbing. Oh, I know men don’t cry. But I did, I tell you. Like a damn kid. I fell on the divan crying, tearing out my heart, and then I passed out cold. I haven’t seen her since.”

“You didn’t kill her?”

“No! I loved her! I loved her!” Nicki said.

“But more than that—?”

Nicki looked up, his face strangely white, his voice suddenly quiet. He seemed to be looking past Johnny. Then he slipped to his knees. He looked like nothing human. “One of — the boys — thought he saw her — on Seventy-second Street.”

That was all he said, Johnny couldn’t make him say another word. When the federal agents came about the tax evasion he was still there on his knees looking as if he had lost his mind. He didn’t seem to see them at all. When they led him through the door he leaned on them for support as though the flame that was Hannah had burned his eyes from his sockets, and had taken his soul from his miserable body.

West Seventy-second Street: rain and sleet, night after night. You start at West End Avenue, at the drugstore on the corner and walk up. An apartment here, a hotel there. The corner of Broadway, the subway island, on across, the cigar store, the bank, a fur shop, the automat... Up and down... Faces, old, young, haggard, painted. Eventually a repetition of faces — the same faces, the same people, up and down...

Night after night.

He knew every store by name, he knew every merchant, he had been in every apartment and hotel. Over and over he had said: “Beautiful — the most beautiful creature that ever walked on this earth. Honey-blonde hair, about five feet four, carries her shoulders back, has a proud walk. Beautiful, the most beautiful creature...” The echo of his descriptions. Laughter. Parties. The Sunday papers on Saturday night. “Her name is Hannah Stevens, she’s the most—”

He watched her name fade from the papers as other news crowded out the story of her disappearance. The last news he read was that anyone who discovered Hannah would receive ten thousand dollars reward. He read that and smiled grimly, and kept walking. At night he looked at her pictures, and talked to them. Other cases were piled a foot deep in his file. Missing persons. Family hysteria. Descriptions. Suicides. The click of ice-vaults, in and out. “Is this the man you were looking for?” “Is this the child you lost?” “Is this your mother who wandered off last Tuesday night?”

Everything in a swirl. His mind going — gradually. Hannah dominating every thought. The captain’s lectures. “Lay off the drinks. Smith.” The sobbing women at the office, the laughing husband. “My wife just disappeared.” The cranks: “I’m going to commit suicide, so don’t look for me!” The captain again: “Now, Smith, you’ve got to find this one, she’s probably right over the bridge in Brooklyn; didn’t she have a boyfriend who—”

But the nights were his own. Seventy-second Street. Up and down, heavy steps, nodding to the merchants.

He saw her on Saturday of the sixth week.

He had been in a market looking for her when she brushed by him and he caught the odour of the perfume and the powder, though it seemed heavier than he had imagined Hannah would use, and he turned to see her back, to see her moving off down the street. He stood watching, trembling, petrified. He had not seen her face and yet he knew that it was she. He knew her better than she knew herself.

He began following, watching the even swing of her legs. He ran a little to catch up, and he heard the click of her high heels on the sidewalk. She walked down to Riverside Drive and turned right. In a moment she entered an old apartment building. He hurried now to stop her, but the door clicked shut, and locked, and she went on in, through the inside door. He had seen no more than her back, the honey colour of her hair, but he knew it was she.

He waited there, hearing the traffic on Riverside Drive, seeing the lights on the Parkway beside the Hudson. He had always known, had always been certain that some day he would find her, but now that he had he could not diagnose his emotion beyond a feeling of great triumph. To see her, to talk to her in the flesh, not to her picture.

He climbed the steps of the apartment and scanned the names under the bells. Her name was not there, but she had changed it, of course. He rang the manager’s bell. It buzzed and he went in and stood in a dimly lit hall. A fat woman clad in calico waddled out and looked him over.

“Can you tell me where I can find a blonde girl who lives here. She’s the most beautiful creature that—”

“Upstairs, first door on your right. Only blonde we have in the house.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” He hurried up the stairs, making a lot of noise, and then he stood in front of her door. In front of Hannah Stevens’ apartment. A door opened down the hall and a young woman clad in a kimono looked at him. She kept standing there. He looked the other way, and then another door opened. He did not glance towards it. Hannah’s door opened finally. She was there, there in front of him. Her cheeks were rouged, and she was dressed in a red kimono.

She smiled woodenly. “Come in, honey,” she said.

But he stood there, staring at her, and at a jagged knife scar that was slantwise across her cheek. It was puffed and red and made her look ugly. Words tumbled through his mind. “I had the knife and I told her I was going to stab myself, but she tried to go anyway, and there was a scuffle... One of the boys saw her on Seventy-second Street...” He remembered these words, looking at her, into her grey eyes, at her honey-coloured hair; then he remembered farther back than that, the last thing she had said to Ronald Watt: “You’re rich, and spoiled, and a no-good scoundrel, but I love you. Always remember that, will you? That I love you.”

“Well, are you coming in or not?”

“No, it... it was a mistake.”

He fled down the steps like a fool, rockets exploding in his temples.

At the corner of Seventy-second and West End Avenue he went into the drugstore and telephoned.

“Listen, Captain,” he said, “remember that old case — Hannah Stevens? Well, I’ve found out that I was all wet. Yeah — isn’t that funny? I was screwy. First time in my life. I just found out tonight. She was the corpse in ice-vault 277 — that one with the battered head—”

When he hung up the telephone, he whispered: “Goodbye, Hannah,” and then he put an unlighted cigarette in his mouth and got up and left the booth. He walked briskly towards Broadway.