“I’ll call ’em again.”
“Cut it out, Eddie,” Sam snarled.
Eddie’s eyes suddenly lit up. “So that’s how he raised the dough this morning!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The ten bucks Mr. Fletcher paid on the rent. He hocked your suit, didn’t he?”
Sam reseated himself on the bed and groaned. “Peabody was gonna lock us out this noon.”
Eddie Miller drew a deep breath. “That’s one of the best ones I’ve ever heard — he pawned your suit and now you’ve got to stay in bed until he makes a stake. Boy, oh, boy!”
“Keep your trap shut about it,” Sam snapped.
“Oh, don’t worry about me, Mr. Cragg. I only wish you’d tell me how he gets the money when he does make the stake.”
“He’s out now, trying to put the bite on the fellow from who we buy our books.”
“How come he didn’t do that before pawning your suit?”
“He tried — Mort wasn’t around.”
There was a knock on the door, a gentle, but determined knock. Eddie Miller looked questioningly at Sam. The latter shrugged and called:
“Come in!”
The door opened and Susan Fair stepped into the room. Sam took one glance at her and threw himself into the bed, dragging the covers up over his chest.
“For the love of...”
“My name is Susan Fair,” the girl said. “You’ve... heard... about my sister?”
Sam looked in alarm at Eddie Miller. The bell captain eased himself gently past Susan. “Excuse me, Miss,” he said, smoothly, “I’ve got to leave...”
He went out, closing the door and leaving Sam and Susan Fair alone. Susan came forward. “My sister was murdered,” she said stiffly.
“Yeah, I know,” Sam said.
Susan looked past Sam through the window, across to the room where her sister had met her doom. “You were her closest neighbor,” she said. “You must have seen a lot of her these past few weeks, when...” She stopped.
“I never talked to her,” Sam said.
“But living so close, with the windows... you couldn’t have helped but look across now and then.”
“Yeah, sure. I saw her through the window, lots of times. Only...”
“Yes?”
“Well, Johnny and me — we ain’t been doin’ much with girls lately...”
“Johnny is your roommate? I understand there are two of you living here?”
“Yeah. Johnny’s my sidekick. We been together for years.”
“I’m sorry you’re ill.”
“Oh, I ain’t... I mean, yeah... I ain’t feelin’ so good, so I thought I’d stay in bed today.”
Susan Fair seated herself on the threadbare mohair-covered chair. “My sister and I were very close, until she came to New York a year ago. She had a beautiful voice.”
“Yeah? I never heard her sing.”
“She wrote that she was doing very well,” Susan Fair continued, “but her letters became fewer and fewer and it seemed to me lately that she — she was holding things back. So I came here.” She stopped, while her lips were pressed tightly together. Then she said softly: “I was too late... too late, by minutes...”
Sam cleared his throat awkwardly. “Your sister was a good-lookin’ babe, uh, I mean girl.”
“She was beautiful! And she was... good...”
Chapter Seven
Johnny tapped the thin pad of check blanks on the counter. “Now, let me get this straight,” he said to the teller. “These checks cost me ten cents apiece, whether I write them for fifty cents or fifty dollars...”
The teller shook his head. “You’ve started a Ten-Plan account with this bank; that means you don’t need any minimum balance in the bank but naturally your checks will only be honored to the extent of your deposit... In other words, you’ve got five dollars in our bank. We’ll honor your checks up to a total of five dollars, whether it’s in one check or in ten...”
“Okay,” said Johnny.
The teller looked after him, a worried frown creasing his forehead. That was the trouble with this Ten-Plan business — you got undesirable people to open checking accounts.
On Seventh Avenue, Johnny walked a block and a half and entered a haberdashery. He tried on a few hats and finally decided on one for $4.95. When it came to paying for the hat, he searched his pockets and exclaimed, “Doggone, I forgot to bring some money with me. But how about a check...?” He pulled out his pad of Ten-plan checks.
The clerk shrugged. “For the amount of the purchase.”
Johnny nodded and wrote out a check for $4.95 and left the store wearing the hat. In the same block he went into a music shop and bought a harmonica for $4.50. The man who ran the store fingered Johnny’s check and finally picked up the phone. “Mind?”
Johnny shook his head.
The music shop man called the bank, found that Johnny’s account would stand a four-fifty check. Johnny left the store with the harmonica, annoyed. He couldn’t stand another phone call to the bank.
He walked over to Eighth Avenue and entered a shop that had three gold balls hanging over the door. Uncle Ben, a very youthful Uncle Ben, grunted when he saw Johnny.
“You want the suit back?”
“Well, not yet,” said Johnny. “As a matter of fact, I need a little more money.” He took the fedora off his head. “Brand new.”
“You wore it, it’s secondhand... fifty cents.”
“Cut it out,” Johnny cried. “I just paid nine-fifty for it a couple of days ago.”
“And the price tag inside says four-ninety-five. I’ll allow you seventy-five cents — no more.”
Johnny brought out the harmonica. It was still in the box. “What about this?”
“Say,” exclaimed Uncle Ben. “Are you shoplifting?”
Johnny glowered. “How much?”
“Same’s the hat — six bits.”
“Uncle Ben,” said Johnny sadly, “I’ve got a watch in a hock shop in Duluth, Minnesota, a genuine diamond ring in a little spot in Pocatello, Idaho, an overcoat in Kansas City, snowshoes in Tucson, Arizona—”
“It’s a tough world,” sympathized Uncle Ben.
“It’s guys like you that make it tough. What I’m saying is, I’m a man who’s had experience with pawnbrokers. I know to a nickel what they should give on any object. But goddamit, you’re the tightest, stingiest Uncle of all the uncles I’ve ever met in this great, big country of ours.”
“Would I be in this business if I wasn’t tight?” Uncle Ben exclaimed. “Somebody’s got to run hock shops and there’s gotta be some compensation, ain’t there? I’ll give you two bucks, not a red penny more.”
“Make it three,” Johnny pleaded.
Uncle Ben ran up No Sale on the cash register and took out two dollars and fifty cents.
Johnny carried the two dollars and fifty cents to his bank and deposited it along with the forty cents that he still had left. That gave him a balance of $7.90.
A jewelry store on Sixth Avenue received his patronage next. He emerged with a “shoful” wrist watch that had cost him $7.00, reduced from $9.95. The jeweler had not called the bank. In the same block he bought an overnight traveling bag — genuine leatherette, for $7.75. They, too, did not call the bank. That enabled Johnny to essay into another jewelry store and dicker for a plain band wedding ring. The jeweler reached for the phone and Johnny exploded.
“What kind of a crummy joint is this?” he cried. “Don’t even trust a man for a cheap wedding ring. Here—” He thrust the purchase back at the jeweler — “keep your ring.” In high dudgeon he stalked out of the store.
But he couldn’t chance it; the jeweler might call up the bank for spite. He took the suitcases and wrist watch to a pawnshop on Eighth Avenue — two blocks from Uncle Ben’s. He realized $4.30 on them, which he took to his bank, giving him a balance now of $12.20.