The Girl Who Wasn't There by Thomas B. Dewey

Author:Thomas B. Dewey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: anthology, mystery, detective, crime, sleuth, murderhort stories
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A man runs out of drive. I had switched the phone to answering service but, as you know, even with that system, you still get the first two or three rings on your own gadget. At around noon on Sunday these began getting through to me. I tried to ignore it, but somebody was hot to talk to me. The thing would ring three times, click off, be quiet for one minute, then again three times. A concerted campaign. After half an hour of it, I gave in.

A male voice.

“You’re in trouble,” it said.

“The hell with it.”

“You know how long it takes a man in concrete boots to get to the bottom of Lake Michigan?”

“Oh, knock it off,” I said. “It’s Sunday—”

“Stay away from Mrs. Brophy—every day, all day—at home, the club or on the street. Hands off.”

He hung up.

I felt lousy. Trouble is for after breakfast. I dressed and went over to Tony’s, which was pretty well filled with the Sunday hang-over crowd. The chatter was a pleasant blend of dirge and hilarity. Tony’s “girls” were serving up their best macabre suggestions with gusto and leering delight. The one who took my order leaned close and spoke behind her hand.

“How about a Bloody Mary? Special today. Thirty dollars a pint—”

“On the side, huh?” I said. “With coffee.”

She waggled her fanny at me, going away.

This sort of thing—I mean in general, not just the fanny waggling—has been going on at Tony’s for at least fifteen years to my knowledge, but I understand it started back in the thirties, when whisky was ten cents a shot and the beer chaser came free.

I tried reading the paper, but the house copy was so messed up I couldn’t make any continuity out of it. I ate breakfast at a leisurely pace and with accumulating relish. Somebody started the jukebox and I hung around awhile in spite of it, not admitting the hope that Bonny Thompson, my redheaded nurse, would drop in. But she didn’t and I decided that maybe she went to church on Sunday and spent the rest of the day in meditation. It wasn’t a gloomy picture. She was a girl who could do no wrong. She didn’t know how yet.

When I stepped outside there was a long, new-looking Cadillac parked in front of the office across the street. I stood on the corner, fussing at my mouth with a toothpick, until the two guys sitting in it had moved around some. They turned out to be Paul Budge and his associate, Salford. So I went on across.

They came in and I offered them something and they turned it down. Unlike my neighborhood pals, they were not equipped with hangovers, but Budge looked as if he had been up all night, worrying. He probably worried quite a lot. I estimated that the Cadillac would wipe out about a third of his annual income, but that he was in that bad middle place where you had to spend money to make it and you couldn’t ever make quite enough.

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