Or the World Will Die

V

I left her after coffee and caught a midmorning day coach to New York. I sat in the smoker and stared out at the grey industrial landscape. I had lunch in the station, took a subway uptown and found a vacant room on 94th Street. I was safe in the assumption that I wasn’t followed, because during the Uptown Express ride, I stood near the doors and waited at one stop until they were ready to close, in fact, had started to close. I slid through, crossed over and waited on the platform for a downtown local. I went through the same procedure again, the second time catching an uptown local. The subways of New York City provide the only certain method in the world of shaking off a suspected tail.

I went to the Public Library and memorized everything I could find out about Lessault, Wing, Hurz and Brinker. Memory is a good tool. Notes taken on a case are tickets to death. I left at five-thirty, in possession of their individual histories and their home addresses.

It was too late to search the newspaper files for the reports of the Hurz accident. A while-you-wait printer on 39th made up some cheap cards for me, one dozen. They said:

Back in my room after dinner at a cafeteria, I carefully soiled the top two calling cards and put the small pack in my wallet. I didn’t leave the room until eight-thirty the next morning.

The old newspaper gave me a fair picture of the accident. It had happened near the Jersey end of the Holland Tunnel. An unknown truck swerved over into the passenger lane and crushed the cab against the stone wall of the tunnel. The truck had kept on going. The driver’s name was Julio Deressa, company not given. Deressa suffered facial lacerations and a broken shoulder. The report said that Dr. Hurz had been picked up at his home. I had the address. An apartment in the sixties.

As I had hoped, there was a taxi stand down the block. If Dr. Hurz had picked up a cruiser, my job would be complicated, making it necessary for me to go to the license bureau. There were two cabs parked at the stand and both the drivers were in the front seat of the first one. Their radio was blaring baseball scores in the American League.

As I approached, the man behind the wheel stuck his head out the window and said, “Taxi, mister?”

“Maybe. I’m looking for Julio Deressa.”

“Julie ain’t back on the job yet. He’s supposed to start next week I hear.”

“You know where he lives?”

“It’s way the hell and gone out in the Bronx, mister. I’ll take you out if I get to bring you back. I can’t take a chance on getting a return this time of day.”

I opened the door and climbed in the back. The other driver got out and we drove away.

Deressa lived in a pleasant two family house on a quiet street. There was a man in the yard in a G. I. field jacket pushing a heavy roller. My driver yelled, “Hey, Julie!”

The man dropped the roller and walked, grinning, over to the cab. I got out and he looked at me quickly, stepped to the window and said, “How’s it going with you, Joe?”

They exchanged company gossip while I stood waiting. Finally Joe said, “This guy wants to see you, Julie.”

I shook hands with him. Deressa was a stocky man with a swarthy skin and large open pores in his flat nose. I gave him a card and he read it carefully, handed it back.

“Look,” he said, “the doc from the company was out here yesterday and he says I can go back to work on Monday. Isn’t that good enough for you guys?”

“I’m not with your insurance company, Mr. Deressa. Can we go somewhere where we can talk for a few minutes.”

We walked toward the porch. He said, “I don’t mind, but I filled out enough forms to paper a room with. What do you guys need, moving pictures?”

“I’m making an accident survey, Mr. Deressa, and there’s just a few things that weren’t covered on your report that I wanted to get straightened out.”

We sat on the top step of the front porch. I gave him a cigarette. I noticed that he handled his left hand and arm a bit awkwardly. “Shoot,” he said.

“The truck that forced you over, did you notice the truck at any time before you went into the tunnel?”

He frowned. “Yeah. I saw the guy. I had him cased for a wise punk because just as I was going into the tunnel he passed me on the right, in his lane, going like a bat out of hell.”

“Did you see him at any time before that?”

“No, why?”

“Our survey is beginning to show that some accidents are the result of anger. In other words, if you had cut in on the truck in traffic before you entered the tunnel, he might have passed you in order to swerve toward you and frighten you.”

Deressa scratched his cheek. “I hadn’t thought of that. Hell, we have to skin through every hole we can find in traffic in order to make a dime a day. There’s nothing personal in it. I guess I wheel it around as fancy as any of the boys. I’ve been hacking for nine years now, except for two years in the army. I might have made the guy a little sore without even noticing him. Could be. He sure picked a dirty way to get even. I’m creeping up on him and my hood is about even with the middle of him when he cuts over. Nothing I could do. He squeezed me right against the wall. Crunch, and I didn’t remember a thing until I woke up in the ward and there was Maria looking down at me and crossing herself.”

“You haven’t remembered anything about the truck other than what you put in your report?”

“Not a thing, Mac. Just a square red job, not new, with New York plates. I think there were two guys in it. I’m not sure of that. When he swung over on me, we were close enough to the other side so that I could see daylight ahead. I didn’t even hear the guy behind me pile into me. Nobody knew what happened until I came out of it and told them. Then it was too late to find the truck.”

I thanked him for his cooperation and rode on back to the city with the driver. On the trip back I had a lot of time to consider how simple and how effective the stunt had been. The truck had undoubtedly been waiting up the street for Hurz to come out and take a cab. Then it had followed along, awaiting the opportunity to pass the taxi, swerve and crush it against something.

Probably they had known that Hurz frequently went over into Jersey where he did advisory work at a commercial laboratory. If so, the exact spot in the tunnel could have been selected in advance, with the truck staying just ahead of the taxi until the proper spot was reached.

But they hadn’t been as successful as they had hoped. Hurz was still alive, though unable to work. The paper had described it as a bad, depressed fracture, necessitating operation. A lovely sort of operation, picking bone fragments out of brain tissue, probably replacing the bone with a metal plate. I had actually gotten very little from Deressa, except a conviction that the thing had been planned — and Quinn had suspected that much. But I had gained something more — a deep respect for the caliber of the opposition.

I tried to imagine what interest the opposition would have taking in Hurz. Probably very little, having satisfied themselves that he would be out of the running for many months. It would thus be a fair chance that his apartment would not be watched. Nor would his hospital room. I had seen his picture in the paper and in two of the more profound scientific journals. He looked vaguely like Frank Morgan, except that he wore glasses with heavy black rims. I had discovered that he had one daughter, married, and a wife to whom he was very devoted. I decided to risk visiting the wife.

She turned out to be so young as to be very evidently a second wife. Not much over thirty. Slim and trim, with the pleasantly crooked, sly, friendly face of a street urchin. She showed me into the main room of the apartment and glanced at my card again. Her eyes told me that she thought I was a poor dear man saddled with a frightfully dull job.

I asked how the Doctor was and worry wrinkles appeared between her thick eyebrows. “They tell me that it will be a long time before we can even bring him home, Mr. Korby. I see him every day and he’s so weak, the darling. So white. But he’s mending. It was really a frightful thing, wasn’t it, and happening just when he was about to start a new job for the government. I don’t know what it was, but Walter seemed to feel that it was important.”

“Does he remember anything at all about the accident?”

“Nothing at all. He won’t even discuss it.”

She sat opposite me and I looked at her carefully. She had intelligent eyes and a good mouth. A small woman, but full of emotional sturdiness. I liked her.

“Mrs. Hurz, I’m going to say something that may startle you. And before I say it, I want your promise that you won’t tell it to anyone. Your telling it to someone might very well result in the death of your husband.”

She gasped and then bit her lower lip with even white teeth. She held her hands tightly together. “Before you tell me anything, Mr. Korby, let me guess. This accident... it happened on purpose. Someone wanted Walter... out of the way.”

“Right. What made you say that?”

“Oh, little things. Before it happened. About a week before it happened Walter got two phone calls. He didn’t volunteer to tell me who they were from. I never ask him questions. I know they were long distance calls because he talked so loudly. Walter and I, we respect each others’ privacy. I didn’t pry.

“But after those calls he got very depressed and nervous. He would sit by these windows and look out for almost hours at a time. And he got much more affectionate to me, kissing me each time he went out as though he were going away for years. I asked him once if there was anything I could do, if anything was bothering him and he said, ‘No, darling. I’m just being heckled a little by a man who should know better.’ I couldn’t escape the feeling that he thought he was in personal danger. He seemed to hate to leave the apartment.”

I was silent, my mind working rapidly. ‘A man who should know better.’ That implied a friend or an acquaintance, not a stranger. Long distance calls. Possibly an offer of money to refuse to take the government work, and when that was turned down, an active threat. I suddenly realized that I had been very wrong about assuming that the opposition would have no more interest in Dr. Hurz. He had the name of the man who had called him. He possessed a clue to the identity of the opposition.

I said suddenly, “Have you been followed?”

“Why, no. I don’t think so.” She looked startled.

“Think of this for a moment, Mrs. Hurz. Suppose somebody tried to kill your husband after they had warned him. Suppose this somebody suspected that he had told you about the warning. Suppose they knew that Dr. Hurz would recover and tell the police. That somebody, if the deal was of sufficient importance, might find it very desirable to fix both you and your husband so that neither of you would do any talking.” I paused and let her absorb that much. I said, “And this matter seems to be of that much importance.”

Her eyes flicked toward the apartment door and back. “You’ve frightened me,” she said.

“Let me tell you how I would handle it if I were the opposition. I would watch this apartment and see if you had any undue number of calls from the police. If you did, I would make the assumption that you had been told by your husband and had talked to the police, giving the name of the man who called your husband. Then it would be too late to deal with you. Nothing would be gained thereby. If no police called, then your husband could be assumed to have kept his mouth shut. Then it would appear to be desirable to eliminate him before he could talk. Both schemes would involve watching this apartment for a time. Maybe they’ve stopped watching it.”

“Who are you?” she demanded. I looked into her eyes and saw the familiar flicker of fear. I had talked too much. She was making the assumption that I was of the opposition. She already was fairly certain that I wasn’t what my card had told her.

“I’m on your side,” I said quietly, and watched the fear slowly leave her eyes.

She laughed with a little edge of hysteria in her tone. “This is like a cheap movie,” she said.

“I imagine you’re safe,” I said, “but I am not at all certain about your husband.”

The hysteria was gone as soon as it had come. “What should I do?”

I glanced around the apartment. I said, “Pardon me for being blunt, but do you have as much money as this place indicates?”

She grinned and I liked her more than ever. “Even more than that.”

“Then locate a good agency who will provide you with a man on duty at all times to watch your husband. It will cost you about thirty dollars a day and expenses. Provide that man with a list of the people who will be permitted to see your husband and a means of identifying them. Get him back here as soon as you can and have a decent bolt put on the inside of that door. Don’t let Dr. Hurz get too near the windows. This place can be seen from a hundred different roofs and windows.”

She thanked me and her handshake was warm when I left. I had her promise that she would find out the name of the man who had phoned her husband and give it to me over the phone.

I called her at four in the afternoon. “This is Korby, Mrs. Hurz.”

“Oh. Yes, I... I talked to him.”

“What is the name he gave you?”

“He wouldn’t. He said that the only name he could give me would be that of a man who had no active part in it. He said that there was no point in going ahead.”

“He is either very brave or a very stupid man,” I said.

“I’ll do the other thing you suggested. I have the name of a good... place.”

“Take good care of him,” I said and hung up.

There was no point in trying to see Hurz. If he wouldn’t tell his wife, it was highly unlikely that he would tell me. I had made the call from a drugstore a block and a half from the Hurz apartment. I walked toward it, on the other side of the street. Joe, the cab driver, was leaning against his cab talking to a young man in a greenish topcoat and a pale grey felt hat with a green feather. From their postures, I guessed that the young man was asking Joe questions. I leafed through my mind and remembered Joe’s last name from the license inside the cab. Fontelli. I turned the corner and walked rapidly to another drugstore. I called the taxi company, the Greystar Cabs, and asked if I could be connected with Joseph Fontelli at once.

The girl on the other end of the line said that she could take a message, and I told her that it was imperative that I speak to Fontelli in person and that I was Sergeant Keller at Police Headquarters. She said she’d see if he was at the stand. I waited and in a few moments Joe said, “Fontelli.”

“This is the man you took to Julio’s place.”

“Say, that’s funny! There’s a guy here asking questions about you. Just a second. I’ll see if he wants to talk to you.”

I hung up and walked out of the store and down to the corner. I crossed the street and looked into a shop window which gave me a decent reflection of the scene diagonally across by the taxi stand. Joe was talking into the phone which was fastened to the side of the building.

He hung up and said something to the young man in the greenish coat. Green coat lifted his head sharply and then turned and looked up and down the street. I could barely see his face, sharply aquiline. I turned and walked away.

I had been picked up too quickly. There were several ways that it could have been done. The most logical seemed the assumption that the Hurz apartment was being watched when I went in, and the watcher identified me as the man who had taken a cab from the nearby stand earlier in the day. I was confident that green coat and the one watching the apartment weren’t the same man. That green coat that he wore was almost a certain indication that he wasn’t a shadow.

I caught a cruising cab in the next block and had him take me to a false address a few doors beyond the Hurz apartment. Green coat was walking away from the cab stand in the other direction.

I said to the driver, “You see back there, the guy in the green coat?”

He peered in the rear vision mirror and said, “Yeah.”

“That’s the punk who’s been calling on my wife in the afternoons. I want to see where he goes. I don’t want him to see me. Five bucks if you stick to him.”

“A pleasure,” he said. “I don’t care for those guys.”

He drove around the block, cut over two blocks and parked near the corner. He stepped out of the cab and looked casually down the street. He sauntered back. “Coming this way on the other side, walking fast. Better duck a little when he goes by.”

Just opposite the street, green coat stopped and looked in a shop window. I saw by the angle of his head that he was taking a long look back in the direction from which he had come. I knew that he had sensed the situation, had guessed that I had seen him talking to Joe and had put through the call. He went on and the driver turned out and went down three blocks and cut back around so as to park near the corner of the second block. There was a subway entrance across the street. The driver said, “The punk may duck down there. He acts nervous like he thought you were following him.”

I held the door ajar and handed the driver a five. He said. “Hope you get him.”

The guess had been right. Green coat sauntered along as though he was going to pass the subway entrance and then ducked down. I hurried across and went down the stairs. They branched off to left and right. Uptown and Downtown Local. I picked the right side and went slowly down the stairs. I could see the other tracks across the way. My platform was deserted. A train was in on the other tracks. It pulled away and, as I looked at it, I saw a young man in a greenish coat sitting down in one of the middle cars. I crossed over and took the next uptown train. I got off one station beyond my street and walked slowly back.

I packed my bag again and took the subway down to the Pennsy Station. I changed from a local to an express and back to a local. I made certain that I wasn’t followed.