Nightmare Alley

He made it.

“Andy? I’m perfectly all right-just can’t talk very plain. Something’s the matter with one side of my face. Probably neuralgia. Andy, for the Lord’s sake, stop fussing. I tell you I’m all right. It doesn’t matter where I am. Now keep quiet and listen. Get Dr. Samuels. Get him out of bed and have him up home when I get there. I’ll be there in two hours. I want a checkup. Yes, this evening. What time is it? Get Russell up there too. I’ve got to find out what happened at the meeting this morning.”

The voice at the other end of the wire was frantic. Grindle listened for a time and then said, “Never mind, Andy. I’ve just been-away.”

“One question, Chief. Are you with that spirit preacher?”

The Chief’s voice grew clearer. “Andy-I forbid you ever to mention that man’s name to me again! That’s an order. You and everyone else in the organization. Is that clear? And I forbid anyone to ask me where I’ve been. I know what I’m doing. This is final.”

“Okay, Chief. The curtain is down.”

He made two more calls. One was for a cab and the other was to Dr. Lilith Ritter. There was one chamber in his brain that wasn’t functioning yet. He didn’t dare open it until he was safely in Dr. Ritter’s office.

Molly had not stopped for clothes. She pulled on her shoes, threw a coat around her, grabbed her purse, and ran from that awful house. She ran all the way home.

In the flat Buster miaowed to her, but she gave him a quick pat. “Not now, sugar. Mamma has to scram. Oh, my God!”

She heaved a suitcase onto the bed and threw into it everything small and valuable she could see. Still crying in little bubbling starts, she drew on the first panties and bra that came out of a drawer; she got into the first dress she touched in the closet, shut the keyster, and put Buster in a big paper bag.

“Oh, my God, I’ve got to hurry.” Play dumb and give them an Irish name. “I’ve got to hurry, somewhere. Stan-oh, damn you, damn you, damn you, I don’t feel dirty! He was just as clean as you, you damn cheap hustler. Oh-Daddy-”

The hotel people were nice about Buster. She expected cops any minute but nothing happened. And the address she found in the Billboard was the right one. A reply to her telegram got back early the next morning:

SENDING DOUGH NEED GIRL SWORD CABINET ACT COME HOME SWEETHEART

ZEENA

CARD XV

Justice

holds in one hand a balance, in the other a sword.

LILITH opened the door; she said nothing until they were in the office and she had seated herself behind the desk, asking softly, “Did she?”

Stan had discarded clerical bib and collar. He was sweating, his mouth cottony. “She went all the way. Then she blew up. I -I knocked out the pair of them and left them there.”

Lilith’s eyes half closed. “Was that necessary?”

“Necessary? Wounds of God! Don’t you think I tried to weasel out of it? The old bastard was like a stallion kicking down a stall to get into a mare. I dropped both of them and beat it.”

Lilith was drawing on her gloves. She took a cigarette from her purse. “Stan, it may be some time before I can meet you.” She swung open the panel and dialed the safe combination. “He may come to me-I’ll try to persuade him not to hunt for you.” She laid the convincer wad and the two brown envelopes on the desk. “I don’t want to keep this any longer, Stan.”

When he had stuffed the money into his pockets Lilith smiled. “Don’t get panicky. He won’t be able to start any action against you for several hours. How hard did you hit him?”

“I just pushed him. I don’t think he was all the way out.”

“How badly is the girl hurt?”

“For God’s sake, she isn’t hurt! I just dropped her; she’ll come out of it quick. If she stays groggy it will give the chump something to worry about: what to do with her. If she gets clear she’ll head straight back to the flat and wait for me. She’ll have a good long wait. I’ve got the keyster parked uptown in a check room. The phoney credentials and everything. If Molly had any brains she could put the con on that mark for hush money: claim he attacked her in the dark seance room. Christ, why didn’t I think of that angle sooner? But it’s sour now. I’m on my way.”

He lifted Lilith’s face and kissed her, but the lips were cool and placid. Stan was staring down into her eyes. “It’s going to be a long time, baby, before we get together.”

She stood up and moved closer to him. “Don’t write to me, Stan. And don’t get drunk. Take sedative pills if you have to, but don’t get drunk. Promise me.”

“Sure. Where you going to write to me?”

“Charles Beveridge, General Delivery, Yonkers.”

“Kiss me.”

This time her mouth was warm.

At the door he slid his arm around her, cupping her breast with his hand, and kissed her again. Suddenly he drew up, his face sharp with alarm. “Wait a minute, baby. He’s going to start thinking back on who tipped me to that abortion. And he’s going to think straight to you! Come on, sweetheart, we’ve both got to scram.”

Lilith laughed: two sharp notes like the bark of a fox. “He doesn’t know that I know that. I worked it out from things he wouldn’t say.” Her eyes were still laughing. “Don’t tell me how to look out for myself, lover. Tell me-” A black-gloved hand pressed his arm. “Tell me how you made that precision balance move!”

He grinned and said over his shoulder, “Yonkers,” as he walked swiftly out of the door.

Mustn’t use the car. Cab drivers remember people. Subway to Grand Central. Walk, do not run, to the nearest exit. One hundred and fifty grand. Christ, I could hire a flock of private cops myself.

In a dressing room under the station he opened the traveling bag and pulled out a shirt and a light suit. There was a fifth of Hennessy; he uncapped the bottle for a short one.

A hundred and fifty grand. Standing in his underwear he fastened on a money vest with twelve pockets. Then he took up the roll of currency-one handful-his profits from the church racket. Take a fifty and a few twenties and stash the rest away.

Snapping off the rubber band from the fat roll he peeled off the fifty. The next bill was a single. And the one after it. But he hadn’t cluttered up the convincer boodle with singles! Had he added any money to the pile that night in Lilith’s office? Singles!

He spread out the wad, passing the bills from one hand to the other. Then he turned so that the light above the wash bowl would fall on them and riffled through them again. Except for the outside fifty the whole works was nothing but ones!

Stan’s eyebrows began to itch and he dug at them with his knuckles. His hands smelled of money and faint perfume from bills carried by women.

The Great Stanton took another pull of brandy and sat down carefully on the white dressing stool. What the hell had gone sour now? Counting over showed three hundred and eighty-three dollars in the boodle. There had been eleven thousand- and the “take”? Good Christ!

He let the dollars fall to the floor and snatched at one of the brown envelopes, cutting his thumb as he tore it open.

There was a shuffle of feet outside and the attendant’s white duck trousers appeared beneath the door. “You all right in there, sir?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

This pile ought to be all five-century notes-