Alice by Howard Fast

Author:Howard Fast
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

8: Lenny

I backed out the car. If the house was being watched, I couldn’t see the watchers. Then I drove to Dave Hudson’s store, trying to keep my mind free of thought, free of everything except what I had been instructed to do.

Dave Hudson has a hardware and sporting-goods store that he set up after World War II. He had enlisted with his twin brother, both of them nineteen years old, and they had taken out small insurance policies with each other as the beneficiary. His brother was killed, and after the war Dave used the money to open the store; but half of him was gone. He never married and he kept late hours at the store, working at the small machine shop he had set up there. He invented things, and someday one of his inventions will make its mark and he will become fabulously rich. If that happens, he won’t be very happy because he’ll have to give up the store. A millionaire can’t run a hardware store in a small town.

I got to be pretty close to him because I taught him how to prepare blueprints and diagram devices. He was grateful and gave me good buys on whatever I bought in his place. He was a small man with sad blue eyes and a face that seemed to be trying to remember; his face said that he had forgotten something, lost it somewhere along the line, and was trying to recollect where and what.

It was six o’clock when I got to his store. There were no customers there, just Dave, hunched over the counter and reading a book. It was Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey. He had finished only the first year of college, and he read things that he felt would improve him and give him some of the education he had missed.

When he looked up at me, he said, “What is it, Johnny? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Dave,” I replied impatiently. “I’m in a hurry. I need a favor.”

“Anything you say, Johnny.”

“I got a check for seventy-five dollars. Can you cash it?”

“I think so.”

Watching me curiously, he went into his pocket for his money, took out a roll of bills, and peeled off seven tens and a five. I gave him the check. Nervously, I had been glancing here and there, and I noticed a case of target pistols behind the counter. They were automatic pistols.

“What are those?” I asked him, pointing.

“Target pistols, Johnny.”

“What caliber?”

“Twenty-two.”

“That’s the only caliber you carry?”

“What is it?” he asked curiously. “What’s eating you, Johnny? These are target pistols. They only come in twenty-two. I don’t carry any heavy-duty stuff.”

“Is it twenty-two long or short?”

“These are longs.”

“How much?”

“This is a fine pistol, Johnny. The magazine holds twelve shots. It costs thirty-eight dollars—”

“Give me one, Dave, and trust me for it. I’ll bring you the money tomorrow.”

“No.”

“Why not? Haven’t I dealt with you enough to trust me for a lousy thirty-eight dollars?”

“God-damn it, Johnny, you know it’s not any lousy thirty-eight dollars. You want fifty dollars or a hundred dollars—tell me.

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