Black-Eyed Stranger (2 page)

Ambielli's thin fingers walked up and down the stem of a fork. “The one thing I need to decide about is the collection.”

Baby scowled, indicating that he pondered. “Take old money,” he suggested. “Tell him, and wrap it like a package. Check it in one of them parcel places.”

“Go on,” said Ambielli. “How do we get the key? How do we go there and unlock the lock? And who will be waiting for us when we do?” All this was calm, fluent.

Baby looked hurt. His lip trembled. “They're not going to the cops,” he scoffed.

Ambielli smiled. His shoulders moved in a delicate comment. He took from his wallet a piece of paper, a clipping from a newspaper's Sunday rotogravure.

“That's her, boss?”

“Do you know the man?”

The paper was frail in the sausage fingers as Baby began to read the caption. “Miss Katherine Salisbury,” he read aloud, clumsily.

Ambielli made a noise through his teeth, like a swift whisper, which seemed to pass like a knife between the paper and the hand. The paper fell. The big man quaked. “Boss, I thought you wanted me to read it?”

“Read in your head. Keep your mouth shut.” Am bielli's quick hand adjusted the paper on the table. “That's her fiancé.”

“Oh? Oh, her boy friend?” Baby's brows were conciliating and humble.

The fingernail tapping the pictured face was well manicured. “And he is money, too.”

“Yeah, boss?”

“A great deal of money.”

“Can I read it, boss?”

Ambielli began to laugh. When he did so, the tan, too thin, but not unhandsome face changed its soft quiet character and was wolfish. “Can't you read without moving your lips? Do it while I'm here, then. Keep it down.” His laughter was contempt.

Baby rolled his eyes over the forbidden name, and, moving his lips, muttered, “‘In the Easter Parade is wearing a dove-gray soft woolen suit by Mary Kane, tricked out …' Tricked?”

“That's right.”

“‘In mulberry.' Huh?”

“Go on.”

“‘Garnished at the throat by a pure silk scarf in mulberry and white, an exclusive Jonadab print from Jonadab, Madison Ave. Pumps, mulberry swede …'”

“Suede.” Ambielli was entertained.

“‘by Martine'” read Baby. “‘Bare-face bonnet by Bellamy.' What!”

“Fashion. That's fashion.”

“‘Her escort—'” Baby clamped his mouth over the name.

“Alan Dulain,” said Ambielli softly.

“‘is wearing—' Oh, no, boss! It's going to tell what he's got on!” Baby was going to laugh.

Ambielli made the hissing sound through his teeth again. Quick. Commanding. Baby brought his hands down at the sides of his body. Fred brought their food.

“Cup of coffee,” the small man said languidly.

“Yes, Mr. Ambielli.”

Now, a man came in, came by, skirting the waiter's rump. This customer was in the act of taking his hat off his dark head, and he did not seem to see the pair at the table but passed by and settled himself in the booth next in line.

“How long ago's this chicken cooked?” asked Baby belligerently, his fork poised.

“Since yesterday, only yesterday, Mr. Hohenbaum.” Fred, the waiter, backed off.

He flourished his napkin, turned to the newcomer. “Yes, sir, Mr. Lynch?”

“Bring me two lamb chops, French fries, cup of coffee, and,” the black-eyed man pinched the rolls in the basket, “a couple of fresh rolls while you're at it.”

“Yes, sir. Drink, sir?”

“No.”

Ambielli took salt. Baby picked up the ketchup bottle and slopped it on his salad. “Say, boss, I've been thinking …”

“Yes?”

Sam Lynch's ears pricked at that one soft syllable. His black eyes moved.

“You know …” Baby slurped food, “if you want to live you got to eat.”

“True.”

“Well, that means groceries, don't it? I mean for the—”

“For the week end?” said Ambielli smoothly. But some move of the hand or eye had set Baby Hohenbaum to trembling again. The silence grew a little odd. “Go on,” said the boss. “What's on your mind?”

“Well, it'd be cheaper, you know, if … uh … it was just you and me had to eat, for one thing.”

“You want to be alone?” said Ambielli mockingly.

“I don't mean that.” Baby looked hurt. “It's just, you take a dame, you got to go to all kinds of trouble. You can't …”

“Wait a minute,” Ambielli said. He pushed out of the booth. He took a step or two. “I thought so,” he said genially. “Hello, Sam. How's the boy?”

“Live and breathe,” said Sam. They shook hands.

“How are things with you? Still on the paper, Sam?”

“Free-lancing these days.”

“I saw your piece about Emanuel.” The thin lips curved in the tan face.

“That so? Like it?”

Ambielli shrugged. “Did Emanuel like it, Sam?”

“He should have. It was a pack of lies.”

Ambielli showed his teeth. “Come, eat with us, boy?”

“Sure. Glad to. Hello, Baby. You back, too, eh?”

The big one was on his feet, his body bent over the table. His head turned on the thick neck, so that the short hair bristled on the fat creases. “Oh, it's you,” he growled.

“It's only me.” Sam started to shove into the booth, but Baby said, “Wait, get away.
I
got to sit on the outside.”

Amiably, Sam let him out, and then slid into the corner. “What's the matter, Baby? Nervous?”

“He's habitually nervous,” said Ambielli in his well-spoken way. “That's his quality. Over here, Fred.”

The waiter brought Sam's rolls. “Everything all right, Mr. Ambielli?”

“Bring me a bottle of ale.”

“Me, too,” Sam said. “Company makes me thirsty.”

“What d'you mean by that crack?” said Baby angirly.

“Never mind,” said his boss with a certain weariness.

“What would this nervous wreck do,” asked Sam with an eyebrow up, “if anybody took a notion to make a real crack?”

“You want to try?” snarled Baby.

“Shut up. Eat your potato chips.” Ambielli cut meat. “They pay you money for those pieces, Sam?”

“They do. Inside stuff, you know.” Sam pulled his mouth awry. “
You
might make me a good piece of copy.”

“It's possible,” said Ambielli, amused.

“Been West, I understand.”

“I've been West.”

“You didn't die.”

“I didn't die.”

Fred brought Sam's food and the coffee.

“I presumed not,” Sam said when he had gone, “or we'd have heard.”

“Listen,” Baby's hackles rose, but Sam patted his sleeve, patted him down.

“You pay this sensitive soul for hanging around?” he kidded.

“Has his quality,” Ambielli took cream. “It's well known that he would kill whoever hurt me.”

“With or without pay, eh?” Sam blinked understanding.

“Without question,” Ambielli said. “It's insurance, Sam.”

The big man's expression was ludicrously like a small child hearing praise. He fidgeted. He growled. “You don't need to make cracks about pay.
I'll
get paid. I don't need to—”

Ambielli moved a finger, and the big man's mouth closed.

“Seems to me,” said Sam gently, “I did hear that the organization was more or less dispersed, at the time. Or so I heard.”

“Boss,” pleaded Baby, “you like this earsy, nosey guy?

“Keep quiet.”

“A
W
, everybody likes to talk a little shop,” said Sam easily. “Relax, Baby. I may be earsy and nosey, but mouthy I am not.” Ambielli looked up briefly. “For instance,” said Sam airily, “I could say a lot about a certain Emanuel. But I don't say.”

“You keep well that way,” Ambielli remarked mildly.

“Tell you.” Sam grinned. “I've got to have a pretty complete idea of the facts or I can't cover them up neatly in my little pieces I write.”

“I can see how it is,” said Ambielli sympathetically.

“I'd have thought though,” Sam continued daringly, for he had a demon, and it was curiosity, “a man like you would've had a little nest egg someplace.”

“Doctor's bills,” said Ambielli ruefully. “We're in the wrong professions, Sam. The doctor takes the money. Took mine.” He shrugged. “Also, there was always a great deal going out. Maintaining discipline.” He smiled faintly. “Overhead.”

“You were quite a disciplinarian, yeah,” Sam said. He could calculate a risk. He could test, with some extrasensory antenna, a mood. It seemed to him that the man across the table was hungry for an exchange of thought, lonely for speech. He took a chance. “Discipline comes free, sometimes, eh? You see where the old man had an accident?”

“What old man is that, Sam?”

“Watchman. Night watchman on the warehouse. Died Monday in the night. It was in the paper.”

“Oh,
that
watchman,” Ambielli's mouth smiled. “I saw it in the paper.”

“He wasn't important,” Sam said deliberately. And he read, in the turn of Ambielli's eyeballs where pride was leaping to deny and in the tension existing in the lump of Baby's body on the bench beside him, a truth he had only suspected. All right. There it was. Now, he knew. The old watchman's death had been no accident, and to Ambielli, anyone who interfered with him was important enough to be disciplined.

There it was. Yet, who could take the jump of an eyeball, the stiffening of a spine, before a jury? Sam knew, but how could he tell? Probably, somewhere in the Police Department, it was known, also, and some cop cursed the same helpless conviction.

Sam leaned back. “Never could understand why they had to have a watchman for a warehouse full of biscuits,” he grinned, keeping it light, keeping it easy. “That was a funny angle. Old man got excited, saw mysterious black automobiles in the nighttime. It was none of his business. Nobody was after his biscuits.”

“Should have remained a private affair,” said Ambielli in soft regret.

Oh, yes, the man was hungry, lonely for speech. Sam's demon pushed from behind. “I always figured it was the watchman, calling in the law that night, last year, that threw the monkey wrench into your … uh … plans.”

“You did?” The words said nothing.

“Well, because,” Sam said, lightly, easily, “Emanuel's boys were never all that shrewd. Something must have happened that gave them a golden opportunity.”

Baby Hohenbaum twitched convulsively where he sat.

But his boss leaned over, erasing the big man's impulse to speak with a wave of his hand. “You could write a book, Sam,” he said, and the words came spitting from the bitter line of his lips. “You know what I was. Emanuel's boys took the golden opportunity to shoot four bullets into me.” The red-brown eyes had a yellow flame behind them, and Sam could feel, tangible as heat, the danger in this man. “Emanuel saw to it that, as you say, the organization dispersed. While I went West with holes in my chest, I didn't die. I'm back. I'm broke. I'm sick, I'm out. You going to write a book?”

“Someday,” said Sam flatly. “Yeah. But I'll wait for the end of this story because I don't know how it's going to end. It hasn't ended yet.”

The eyes warmed. Then the cheeks were sucked in on Ambielli's face. White lids went down, shutters over the windows. When they lifted, you could no longer see in. He began to eat, once more. “You know, Sam,” he said, “a roadhouse in the country is a good place to convalesce.”

“So nice,” Sam nodded. “Money in it, too.”

“Darned right,” said Baby, and he, too, was happier in the more relaxed atmosphere.

“Takes a little capital,” Sam said. “Got a backer, boss?”

“In a way,” said Ambielli. Baby snickered and slurpped food.

Sam paid no attention to him. “How much do you figure to start with, place like that?”

“Oh, fifty thousand.”

“Lot of dough.”

“Some people got lots of dough,” Baby said, with elephantine glee.

They ate silently a little while. Sam was pleased, as pleased as a hunter with his first duck down. But he was still curious. Also, sifting back into his mind came some words he had heard. Something about groceries. Something about a dame.

“So you're going to write a book, Sam?” Ambielli used his napkin daintily.

“It'll be fiction, you know. The big book. The one I keep telling myself. Someday.”

“That's the piece in which you'll use the facts,” said Ambielli shrewdly.

“That's the piece,” Sam admitted.

There was an amiable silence.

“Started to write a piece of fiction once,” Sam said, half laughing, and never knew if he stumbled or if he was led. “Going to do one of those mystery stories. It was good, too. It was so good, I couldn't finish it. I couldn't figure out how anybody could solve the mystery.”

“Too good, eh?” Ambielli grinned.

“It was good.”

“What was the plot, Sam?” Ambielli was amiable.

“Oh, murder, naturally. Fellow kidnapped a banker.”

“A snatch, eh?” said Baby Hohenbaum. He turned his big body in the booth and unmistakably he had the air of one who greets with surprise a charming coincidence.

There was a moment of queer, not entirely amiable, silence. Of waiting to see.

Sam said, dreamily, “I wonder where I put that manuscript. You know, I'm smarter now than I used to be. I ought to look it over.”

Ambielli said, casually, “Maybe you could finish it?”

“I don't know.”

“It's a bad way to be,” Ambielli was thoughtful. “Too smart for yourself.”

Sam grunted. Baby was glancing under knotted brows from one to the other.

“You ran into the collection problem, I imagine. In your story,” Ambielli went on smoothly, “how did you figure out a foolproof collection, Sam?”