The Long Wait (9 page)

Like the women who had everything but “for rent” signs hanging from their nipples cruising the streets for customers.

Like the expensive-looking guy who had an early load on being helped into a police car very gently with orders from the bar owner to see that he got to the train station safely.

Like the shoeshine boys who charged a half a buck for a polish and rub then griped when there wasn't any tip besides.

Oh, Lyncastle was a great town. Great.

Then I saw Lindsey. He was having a coke at the counter of a modern version of an old general store. The sign over the front read “Philbert's” in neon script and a directory listed what was to be found inside. Food and drugs on the left. Sodas on the right and beer further back. Hardware, paints and home supplies up the middle aisles. Printing, photostating and office supplies in the back.

I walked in and sat down beside him. Like the spider and Miss Muffet. I said, “Howdy, pardner,” and he didn't even look at me. His face seemed to puff up around his mouth and the straw flattened out from too much pressure at the top. I said, “Cat got your tongue?”

He turned around slowly. “Johnny, you're too goddamned wise for your own good.”

“So I've been told.”

“I'm telling you again.”

“Then get some smarter cops. That deal you pulled this morning stunk.”

“You seem to know a lot about cops.”

I ordered a coke and a sandwich for myself. “I do ... about the kind you have in this burg. You know about them?”

“I know about them.” His voice was a flat snarl.

“Then keep them off my back, Lindsey. When you slap me with a murder charge you can do what you damn well please, but until then, lay off.”

“You bastard!” He almost whispered it.

I took a bite of my sandwich and grinned at him. “You know it's a wonder you don't at least ask me whether or not I killed your friend.”

He was so mad he could hardly speak. “I don't have to!”

“Don't then, but if you're the least bit interested, I didn't kill anybody.”

His teeth made a white pattern under his lips and in the mirror behind the counter I couldn't see his eyes at all. I went ahead and finished my sandwich, drowning it with my coke. When I was done I shoved a quarter across the counter and picked a cigarette out of Lindsey's pack.

“Someday ... if you get around to it, try giving me a lie-detector test,” I said. “I won't mind a bit.”

He stopped playing with the straw and his eyes came open enough so I could see the color of them. They were blue. His mouth relaxed and that puffed-up business went away. He didn't get it. Not a bit. So I let him sit there until he did get it.

The National bank of Lyncastle was a white stone building that occupied half a city block in the heart of town. I got in a few minutes before closing when the place was about empty and I wasn't there two seconds before I noticed the sudden silence. It was a dead kind of silence that comes when machines stop operating and people are momentarily stunned.

There was a uniformed guard standing behind one of those glass-topped tables trying to decide between pulling his gun out and saying hello. I said hello first, so he didn't pull his gun out. He swallowed hard, looked a little foolish and said tentatively, “Johnny?”

“Who else, Pop?”

He gulped again, his eyes darting around for advice that didn't come.

“Where's Mr. Gardiner, Pop?”

“In ... his office.”

“Feel like telling him I'm out here?”

He didn't feel like it, but he picked up the wall phone anyway. He didn't have to. The gate down the end swung open and the guy standing there couldn't have been anything else but the president. I started the walk across the marble floor and heard the last closing of the bronze doors behind me.

“Hello, Mr. Gardiner.”

Amazement. Nothing but pure amazement was there on his face. Havis Gardiner was one of those tall, spare guys with graying hair like you see in the ads, only now he resembled a kid seeing a circus for the first time. Too damn excited to do anything but stare.

I said, “I want to speak to you alone.”

“Of all the colossal nerve ...” The amazement made a quick change into fury.

“Yeah, I have that, Mr. Gardiner. I still want to talk to you in private. In case you're worried, the police know I'm in town. Now, do we talk?”

His lips pressed together. “I'm at a board meeting.” I grinned at him just once and his hands made tight fists. “It can be postponed for this,” he added.

I went in through the gate and it made a mechanical clang when it closed. Outside everybody started talking at once, an awed murmur that disappeared when we were in the office marked “President.” Gardiner made a quick call that ended the board meeting and swung around in his chair to face me.

It was some dump, plush and mahogany with all the trimmings. He didn't ask me to sit down, but I pulled up a chair anyway. If there was going to be any talking done, I was going to have to start it. Havis Gardiner was trying so hard to control his temper he was about to blow a blood vessel.

“I'm looking for Vera West, Mr. Gardiner. Got any idea where she is?”

Instead of answering my question he picked up the phone and asked for the police. He told them I was there and wanted to know the reason why.

Somebody told him.

His face came apart at the seams and he hung up slowly. “So you think you've gotten away with itl” he rasped.

“That's right, I did. Now let's talk about Vera West.” Gardiner studied me for a full minute, his eyes going over me from head to toe. “I certainly don't know where she is, McBride. And do you know what I'd do if I were you?”

“Yeah, cut my throat. Shut up and listen to me a second. I'm going to tell you right out and you can believe it or not, but you'll be better off if you do. I never stole a cent from this outfit. Okay, so I took a powder, but that's my business.”

The study he was making of me took on an intense concentration. Every emotion he was possible of having flitted across his face until he wound up leaning halfway across the desk toward me.

“What are you saying, McBride?”

“That I was trapped in a nice frame. Is that plain enough?”

“No, it isn't.

“Let me put it this way then. Why was I accused of misappropriating that two hundred grand?”

Gardiner couldn't decide whether to be puzzled or worried. He opened his hands, stared at them, then looked back at me again. “You know, McBride, if the law had caught up with you I wouldn't even consider arguing this matter. Your coming back voluntarily, even with a possible escape like those missing fingerprints of yours, changes the matter somewhat.

“It should,” I said. “Nobody ever heard my side of it before.”

“What is your side?”

“Tell me how it happened first.”

His hands made a gesture of resignation. “I ... I don't know quite what to think now, McBride. Only Miss West had access to those unclaimed account books. She never had use of them either. I happened to notice her with them one day and wondered why she was taking them out of the vault. She said you wanted to see them. I was curious enough to check and believed I found evidence of fraud.”

“How much was missing?”

His mouth pursed speculatively, as if I should know without asking. “Two hundred one thousand and eighty-four dollars exactly,” he said.

“That's a screwy total.”

“The district attorney thought the same thing. An indication that there was an intention of taking more and more. The eighty-four dollars was the remainder of one account that hadn't been entirely cleared out.”

“I see. What happened next?”

“When I sent you and Miss West on vacation at the same time I contacted the District Attorney who, in turn, brought in the state auditor. They found the shortage and traced it directly to you.”

“That was nice of them,” I said.

“McBride ... why did you run?”

I wished I could have answered that. If I could say why there wouldn't be a problem left to solve. I shrugged unconcernedly. “I blew up, that's all. I got chicken about it and took a powder. I'm back now and that's what counts.”

“You came back ... to clear yourself?”

“What else?”

He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “That is incredible, simply incredible. I ... don't know whether to believe you or not.”

“That part's up to you.”

“If ... mind you, if you are telling the truth, I certainly want to see you cleared of this matter. Until now I've had no doubt about it.” He smiled at me sagely. “But I've made mistakes before and I'm always thankful to be corrected in time. McBride, I'll reserve my judgment until this matter comes to a head one way or another. However, I'm going to put every means at my disposal to work to get the truth. Every indication we have points to your guilt. Can you give us something to start on?”

“Find Vera West,” I said. “She'll know.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“I've heard a few things. First Servo, then a disappearing act.”

“Then you know quite as much as I do.”

“You'll look for her?”

“I most certainly will. At least the insurance company will and they'll be notified immediately.”

“When she left here, did she leave anything behind? Letters or anything of that sort?”

“No, she cleaned out her desk completely. She's never corresponded with us since, either. If she's working somewhere else she never wrote here for a recommendation.”

I stared at him a second and nodded. I glanced around the room with elaborate casualness, smiling and bobbing my head as if I appreciated the homecoming. I said, “You know, I miss the old place. How about letting me take a look at my old stall?”

He scowled an answer. “I don't see ...”

“Ah, you know how it is after five years. Old things look good.”

He didn't like the idea a bit. It wasn't a businesslike thing to do. But he decided to let a whim be a whim and stood up. If the whole thing hadn't been such a surprise he probably would have tried having me tossed out on my ear. I followed him out the door, down a corridor, through a couple of steel-ribbed gates and into the cashier's booth that was like any other cashier's booth in any other bank in any other city in the world.

There was a guy with a permanently curved back hunched on a stool. He glanced around, then went back to his work. Packets of currency were everywhere. Little individual files flanked the guy on the stool hemming him in. Three open ledgers lay on the side tables.

I saw the alarm button under his foot and another alongside his knee. The handle of a gun stuck out of a shelf under his table top. While we watched the guy dropped a dime. He was off the stool in a hurry and went down on his knees until he found it. I guess we made him nervous.

I backed out of the booth grinning and shut the door. Gardiner said, “I don't understand...”

“Sentiment,” I muttered.

Sentiment hell. I was feeling sorry for Johnny. Even if he had copped a wad it would have been a good enough excuse to get out of that cage. Now it was easy to see why he took to the outdoors. You got dirty, rained on, cursed at and worked to death, but at least you were free. There was plenty of air around you.

Gardiner took me to the door, unlocked it, passed me through the grillwork outside and walked across the hall to the front door beside me. The animals in their cages stopped talking and tried to make like they were very busy. The guard unlocked the front door and held it open. Gardiner said, “You'll be staying around town, of course.”

I let the grin split my face in two. It was the kind of a grin that said somebody would die before I left if I left at all. “I'll be around,” I told him.

Lyncastle Business Group, the plaque read. It was made of bronze set in a mahogany frame and recessed into the wall. The office took up the first floor of the building and none of the doors ever seemed to fully close before somebody shot through them again. I picked what looked to be the main entrance and stepped inside.

A guard in a blue uniform gave me what was supposed to be a polite smile and pointed to a row of benches along the side. There were a dozen men and an elderly woman already parked there waiting. Most were fingering brief cases and casting anxious glances at the clock over the receptionist's desk.

I cast anxious glances at the receptionist.

She was worth looking at. There was no top to the dress. It was cut low across her chest and hugged each breast separately like hands reaching around from behind her. She sat away from the desk so nothing would be in the way of anybody caring for a look at her legs. The dress was black. It had to be black to set off the platinum of her hair. It had to be jersey to stick to her the way it did. Her legs were crossed, but they had to be that way to give somebody in the benches a charge when she uncrossed them.

I walked over to the desk and said, “You ought to move the clock.”

Her face came up from the cards she was filing still creased with the effort of trying to remember the alphabet. “Pardon me?”

“Nobody's looking at you.”

“Me?”

“The legs. The bosom. They're the biggest and best in town. Nobody's looking. They're all watching the clock.”

Her eyes ran up the wall to the clock then checked with her wrist watch. “The clock's right,” she said.