Sally's in the Alley by Norbert Davis (best color ereader .txt) 📕

ROSEWATER LANE STARTED OUT WITH QUITE a splurge. It was paved, and there were four houses in the first block. The second block was only half paved and contained three houses. The third block didn’t have any pavement or any houses, either, and after that the lane circled in a discouraged way around a knoll, and there was the abandoned dump truck like some armored prehistoric bug that had been tipped over on its back and decided to make the best of it.

The shack was low and unpainted and swaybacked, pushed in against the darker blot of the knoll. There were no lights showing, and Doan stopped the Cadillac a hundred yards away from it and opened the rear door.

“Take a look,” he ordered. He pointed at the shack and made a circling motion with his forefinger.

Carstairs got out of the car and faded quietly and expertly into the darkness. Doan waited. After about five minutes Carstairs came back and put his front feet on the running board and snuffled over the lowered glass.

“Okay,” said Doan.

He got out of the car and went around to the back and opened the trunk compartment. The man inside hadn’t changed any, for the better or the worse. Doan took hold of his arm and pulled. The man slid out of the compartment with a horribly fluid laxness and sprawled all over the ground.

Doan said some things to himself in an undertone. He leaned down and picked the man up, trying to avoid the dried blood, and then carried him toward the shack with Carstairs coursing on ahead alertly. The front, and only, door had a padlock and hasp on it, but the padlock had rusted open. Doan maneuvered it off the hasp with the toe of one shoe and then kicked the door open.

He turned sideways and slid through the door, still carrying the dead man. Inside the darkness was as thick and smooth as molasses, but it had considerably more odor. Carstairs snorted disapprovingly. Letting his burden slide down to the floor, Doan struck a match.

The flame reflected in a little sparkle from the unshaded electric light bulb that hung from the ceiling on a limp yellow cord. Doan pulled the string attached to it, and the darkness retired, quivering malignantly, to the corners of the room.

There was a table with a stained and splintered top just under the light, and there were two tin cups and two tin plates and two forks, all dirty, on top of it. Doan regarded the setup thoughtfully for a moment, and then picked up the dead man, and put him in the swaybacked chair in front of one of the plates and maneuvered his arms and legs around carefully until he stayed there.

Doan stepped back to look things over, his head tilted in a speculative way. He was frowning a little. Then his eye caught a battered deck of cards resting between two old gin bottles on a board that had been nailed against the far wall to form a shelf. He picked the cards up and ran through them quickly. They were marked with invisible little nicks along the edges.

Doan smiled. He piled the tin plates and cups at one end of the table and then scattered the cards over its surface, letting a few fall on the floor.

He stepped back and surveyed the scene again. Things looked a little better. He took Free-Look Jones’ knife from his pocket and wiped the blade and handle carefully on his handkerchief and then, still using his handkerchief to cover his hand, he put the point of the knife against the purple-edged wound in the dead man’s neck and pushed.

The blade went in slickly and easily up to its hilt. Doan let go. The handle of the knife was made of some green composition material that caught the light and glittered sinisterly, sticking out under the lax line of the dead man’s jaw.

Doan nodded to himself, satisfied. He pulled the string on the light bulb and felt his way toward the door. He bumped into Carstairs in front of it and said, “Go on. Outside.”

He shut the front door and put the rusted padlock back on its hasp, and then headed for the car with Carstairs trailing along behind in disapproving silence. Doan began to whistle to himself in a mildly pleased way.

He pushed Carstairs into the back seat, turned the car around, and headed back for the center of town. Things were looking up a bit now. The signs were brighter, if possible, and parts of the populace, prowling like zombies in the weird light, sauntered aimlessly and stared or merely stood, hip-shot and dejected on the corners, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and spitting in the gutters. Cars, with sand on their hoods and spades lashed over the front fenders, were parked in thick clusters in the street center.

Doan found a place for the Cadillac, and he and Carstairs got out and walked across to the Bar B Grill. The one-eared bartender was still in sole charge, and he sighed deeply and began to clatter bottles around in a very absorbed manner when Doan and Carstairs appeared.

“Mr. Doan!” Harriet Hathaway called. “You’ve come back again!”

“I think you’re right,” Doan said.

She was sitting at the table she and Doan had occupied before, and the man with the black glasses was sitting opposite her. He was eating a steak, but he didn’t look as though he were enjoying it. His shoulders were hunched, and he had the numbly suffering air of a man unbearably buffeted by fate.

“This is Mr. Blue, Mr. Doan,” Harriet said. “He’s eating your steak.”

“That’s thoughtful of him,” Doan remarked.

“I didn’t want to eat it,” Blue said.

“Nonsense,” said Harriet. “Of course you did.”

“I don’t like steak.”

Harriet laughed. “Now isn’t that a silly thing to say! Everyone likes steak. And besides, it’s good for you. You just go right ahead and enjoy it.”

“All right,” said Blue glumly. He put another piece in his mouth and chewed with grim concentration.

“You seem to be getting along a little better than you were at last reports,” Doan observed.

Harriet laughed again. “It was all a mistake. It was just because Mr. Blue is so ignorant.”

Blue looked up at Doan and nodded solemnly, his blacked-out glasses winking in the light. “I sure am. I’m awful ignorant, Mr. Doan.”

“Is that so?” said Doan.

Harriet said, “He didn’t even know there was a war! He really didn’t. He can’t read, and he doesn’t have money enough to buy a radio, and he’s so shy he never talks to people. Isn’t that incredible?”

“Yes,” said Doan.

“You know,” Harriet said, “he thought when I was talking to him before about the emergency that I meant the depression! And when I told him about the WAACs, he thought I was referring to the WPA!”

“Did he?” said Doan.

“But when I explained things, he became very interested at once. Didn’t you become interested?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Blue, starting stubbornly on another piece of steak.

“When I told him about our brave boys fighting in all parts of the world on land and on the sea and in the air, he was astounded. Weren’t you?”

“Uh-huh,” said Blue. “Sure was.”

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Doan?” Harriet asked. “I’m just going to describe to Mr. Blue the wonderful work our Air Force has been doing. I’m fascinated by the Air Force, and I know all about it. Wouldn’t you like to listen, too?”

“Thank you, no,” said Doan. “I have a little business to look after. Perhaps I’ll see you later.”

He went over to the bar and drummed on it with his fingers.

“Want some whiskey?” the bartender asked, staying at a safe distance.

“No. You. Come here.”

“You ain’t mad, are you?”

“No.”

The bartender slid a little closer, keeping an eye on Carstairs. “What?”

“Where’d you dump the debris I left here?”

“Oh, him. I called Doc Gravelmeyer to look at him, and the doc took him over to his office. I wouldn’t want to offer any advice or anything, but if I was you I’d sort of step over and look into that situation.”

“Why?”

“Well, Doc Gravelmeyer has been readin’ a book again, and when he was over here he was talkin’ about acute something-or-other that I didn’t like the sound of. He said right away that Parsley Jack—that’s the guy you tangled with—looked like a first-class incipient case of it and that he’d better open Jack up and look around a bit. Now the trouble with Doc Gravelmeyer is that he’s liable to get so interested when he gets to prowlin’ around that it’s sometimes fatal.”

“I should worry.”

“You’re right,” said the bartender, “you should. Doc’s the coroner. The last guy that kicked off while he was operatin’ on him got listed as an accidental death due to drowning in a sand storm. Doc is a very humorous guy sometimes.”

“He sounds like it. Where can I find him?”

“His office is down the street over the undertaker’s parlor. Does the undertaker, too. Just for a laugh, he claims he always gets you, comin’ or goin’.”

“Ha-ha,” said Doan sourly. “Come on, Carstairs.” They went out into the street again, but Doan didn’t attempt to find Doc Gravelmeyer’s office. Instead, he went to the Cadillac, got his two suitcases out of the rear seat, and headed for the Double-Eagle Hotel.

He went up the three slick marble steps at the entrance and through the brass bound doors and right back into the nineteenth century. The lobby was two stories high and featured a crystal chandelier as big as a dive bomber, and potentially as dangerous to any innocent bystanders if it happened to fall. There were rubber plants in all the available corners and chairs with red plush upholstery and gilt-knobbed legs, and shiny brass spittoons with gracefully curved necks. All this was overlaid neatly with an odor of fly-spray that made Carstairs sneeze indignantly.

The only concession to the present was the desk clerk. He was as slick and shiny as a new cocktail shaker, and he owned a smile that hit you in the face like a wet towel.

“Yes, sir!” he said.

“I want a room for myself and my friend. Twin beds.”

“Yes, sir!” said the clerk. He twirled a big leather-bound register around on the desk and pointed a pen at Doan.

Doan signed as “I. Doanwashi, Tokyo, Japan.”

The clerk didn’t bat an eye. “Glad to have you with us, Mr. Doanwashi. I hope you enjoy your stay. Joshua! Joshua! Front!”

A man came out of the door at the rear of the lobby. He was a very small, very frail man, wearing a uniform that would have enabled him to join a Civil War infantry regiment without attracting undue attention. He leaned over the desk and held out his hand blindly. The clerk slapped a key into his palm.

“Two-one-four.”

“Two-one-four,” Joshua repeated numbly.

He leaned over to pick up Doan’s bags and fell flat on his face. He got up carefully, took a deep breath, and picked up the bags. He headed for the red carpeted stairway in a wavering, loose-kneed quickstep. He missed by ten feet and disappeared in the shadows under the staircase.

The clerk smiled amiably at Doan. There was a crash and a thud, and Joshua backed out into the lobby and made another run