“Fifty dollars,” Tina said hastily.
“Most right,” Carl agreed. “Fifty American dollars. I can say as a fact that we would be healthy and happy beyond our utmost dreams three years ago, except for the danger. The danger is that we did not follow your rules. I will not deny that they are good rules, but for us they were impossible. We cannot expect ourselves to be happy when we don’t know what minute someone may come and ask us how we got here. The minute that just went by, that was all right, no one asked, but here is the next minute. Every day is full of those minutes, so many. We have found a way to learn what would happen, and we know where we would be sent back to. We know exactly what would happen to us. I would not be surprised if you felt a deep contempt when you saw me trembling the way I do, but to understand a situation like this I believe you have to be somewhat close to it. As I am. As Tina is. I am not saying you would tremble like me — after all, Tina never does — but I think you might have your own way of showing that you were not really happy.”
“Yeah, I might,” I agreed. I glanced at Tina, but the expression on her face could have made me uncomfortable, so I looked back at Carl. “But if I tried to figure a way out I doubt if I would pick on spilling it to a guy named Archie Goodwin just because he came to the barber shop where I worked. He might be crazy about the rules you couldn’t follow, and anyhow there are just as many minutes in Ohio as there are in New York.”
“There is that fifty dollars.” Carl extended his hands, not trembling, toward me.
Tina gestured impatiently. “That’s nothing to you,” she said, letting bitterness into it for the first time; “We know that, it’s nothing. But the danger has come, and we had to have someone tell us where to go. This morning a man came to the barber shop and asked us questions. An official! A policeman!”
“Oh.” I glanced from one to the other. “That’s different. A policeman in uniform?”
“No, in regular clothes, but he showed us a card in a case, New York Police Department. His name was on it, Jacob Wallen.”
“What time this morning?”
“A little after nine o’clock, soon after the shop was open. He talked first with Mr. Fickler, the owner, and Mr. Fickler brought him around behind the partition to my booth, where I do customers when they’re through in the chair or when they only want a manicure, and I was there, getting things together, and he sat down and took out a notebook and asked me questions. Then he—”
“What kind of questions?”
“All about me. My name, where I live, where I came from, how long I’ve been working there, all that kind, and then about last night, where I was and what I was doing last night.”
“Did he say why he was curious about last night?”
“No. He just asked questions.”
“What part of last night did he ask about? All of it?”
“Yes, from the time the shop closes, half-past six, from then on.”
“Where did you tell him you came from?”
“I said Carl and I are DPs from Italy. That’s what we had decided to say. We have to say something when people are just curious.”
“I suppose you do. Did he ask to see your papers?”
“No. That will come next.” She set her jaw. “We can’t go back there. We have to leave New York today — now.”
“What else did he ask?”
“That’s all. It was mostly about last night.”
“Then what? Did he question Carl too?”
“Yes, but not right after me. He sent me away, and Mr. Fickler sent Philip to him in the booth, and when Philip came out he sent Carl in, and when Carl came out he sent Jimmie in. Jimmie was still in the booth with him when I went to Carl, up front by the rack, and we knew we had to get out. We waited until Mr. Fickler had gone to the back of the shop for something, and then we just walked out. We went to our room down on the East Side and packed our stuff and started for Grand Central with it, and then we realized we didn’t know anything about where to go and might make some terrible mistake, so there in Grand Central we talked it over. We decided that since the police were after us already it couldn’t be any worse, but we weren’t sure enough about any of the people we have met in New York, so the best thing would be to come to you and pay you to help us. You’re a professional detective, and anyway Carl likes you about the best of all the customers. You only tip him a dime, so it’s not that. I have noticed you myself, the way you look. You look like a man who would break rules too — if you had to.”
I gave her a sharp look, suspicious, but if she was trying to butter me she was very good. All that showed in her blue eyes was the scare that had put them on the run and the hope of me they were hanging on to for dear life. I looked at Carl. The scare was there too, but I couldn’t see the hope. Still he sat solid on the chair, with no sign of trembling, as I thought to myself that it would have been no surprise to him if I had picked up the phone and called the cops. Either he had his full share of guts or he had run out entirely.
I was irritated. “Damn it,” I protested, “you bring it here already broke. What did you beat it for? That alone fixes you. He was questioning the others too and he was concentrating on last night. What about last night? What were you doing, breaking some more rules?”
They both started to answer, but she let him take it. He said no, they weren’t. They had gone straight home from work and eaten in their room as usual. Tina had washed some clothes, and Carl had read a book. Around nine they had gone for a walk, and had been back in their room and in bed before ten-thirty.
I was disgusted. “You sure did it up,” I declared. “If you’re clean for last night, why didn’t you stay put? You must have something in your heads or you wouldn’t have stayed alive and got this far. Why didn’t you use it?”
Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn’t make me want to smile back. “A policeman asking questions,” he said in the level tone he had used before, “has a different effect on different people. If you have a country like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home — especially when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country at all. The country we had once, it is no longer a country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman’s questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I — we do not have one.”
“You see,” Tina said. “Here, take it.” She got up and came to me, extending a hand with the money in it. “Take it, Mr. Goodwin! Just tell us where to go, all the little facts that will help us—”
“Or we thought,” Carl suggested, not hopefully, “that you might give us a letter to some friend, in this Ohio perhaps — not that we should expect too much for fifty dollars.”
I looked at them, with my lips pressed together. The morning was shot now anyway, with Wolfe sore and my chores not done. I swiveled to my desk and picked up the phone. Any one of three or four city employees would probably find out for me what kind of errand had taken a dick named Wallen to the Goldenrod Barber Shop, unless it was something very special. But with my finger in the dial hole I hesitated and then replaced the phone. If it was something hot I would be starting PD cars for our address, and Wolfe and I both have a prejudice against cops yanking people out of his office, no matter who they are, unless we ourselves have got them ready for delivery. So I swiveled again. Carl was frowning at me, his head moving from side to side. Tina was standing tense, the money clutched in her fist.