And Now the News (7 page)

The first corner we came to was the one where the Radio City Music Hall squats like a kneeling elephant with its big friendly mouth open, and in the entrance stood two girls. One of them reminded me of mint leaves and the other was as real and pretty as a field of daisies. I saw the man in the brown bowler hat walk up to them and he bowed from the waist, that stiff, slight, quaint little gesture
that can only be done by a certain sort of person, because it makes the rest of us look silly. He raised the hard, neat hat a trifle and by the tilt of his head and the pleasure just beginning on the girls' faces, I knew he was smiling a special smile. From his pocket he drew something and handed it to one of the girls, the field-of-daisies one, and without pausing, with never a break in his leisurely stride, he went on.

Then it was my turn to pass the girls. They stared after the man and their mouths were round as a thumbprint. Then one of them looked down in her hand and “Lark!” she said, “Oh, Lark, look: he gave us tickets for ‘JUPITER'S DARLING!' How did he know I wanted to see it so much?” They stared after him spellbound as I passed, and happy as Christmas. I followed the man across the avenue, thinking, “Lark, Lark. Now what a nice name for a girl that is!” and watching him. A few doors up from the corner is a hardware store, and the hardware man had set a tall ladder against the building. He was up there looking at a place where his awning had slipped off its little hooks where I suppose the wind had bent them. And before I knew what was happening my man in the brown bowler had skipped up two rungs of the ladder. He stood there balanced easily, and with one hand he tipped his hat and with the other he took from his pocket a pair of pliers and handed them up to the hardware fellow. Then off he went again, up the avenue, and when I passed the ladder I could see from the hardware fellow's face that he, too, had gotten a special smile from the man: a piece of it was on
his
lips. He took the pliers, scratched his head. I heard him laugh, and then he began to fix his awning as if the pliers were exactly the tool he needed, which I'm sure they were.

I hurried then, because I wanted to see the face of such a man as this, and I hadn't, yet. I caught up with him at 50th Street. He had paused there, waiting for something. Maybe he was waiting to decide which way to go, and maybe he was waiting for me; I don't know. As I drew abreast he turned to face me.

Now, I don't want to disappoint you but I can't tell you what his face was like. All I can say is that it was as neat as the rest of him, everything about it just where it should be. He smiled.

It was like looking into a bright light, but it didn't dazzle. It was warm, like the windows of farmhouses late at night when there's snow. It made me smile too, the biggest, widest smile that ever happened to me, so wide that I heard a little … (ONE CLEAR
CHUCK
, AS WHEN ONE CHUCKS TO A HORSE: BUT ONLY ONE) … somewhere in my back teeth. I must have been bemused for a second or two, because when I blinked the feeling away, the man was gone. Still smiling, I got into a cab that pulled up for the light just then; I suddenly wanted to be home, next to Robin and Tandy and my wife, while I felt just that way.

As the cab started to move, I turned and looked through the rear window and I saw the man briefly, just once more. One of those poor, cowed, unhappy men had sidled up to him, and in every line of his shabby figure I recognized him and all like him, and I could all but hear the cringing voice, “Dime fer a cuppa cawfee, mister?” And the last thing I saw was the reflection of that incredible smile on the man's dirty face, as Mr. Brown Bowler Hat reached into his impossible pocket and handed the man a thick, steaming china mug of hot coffee and walked on.

I leaned back on the cushions and watched New York streaming past outside, and I thought: “Well, if this city has something for everyone, then I suppose it has in it a man who can reach into his pocket and grant anyone's smaller, happy-making wishes.” And then I thought, “he has tickets and tools and cups of coffee and heaven knows what else for other people, but he apparently couldn't give me the one thing I wanted at the time, which was a little story for ‘PULSE.' ” So here I am home again, feeling sort of nice because my wife and kids appreciate the bit of smile I brought in, but otherwise disappointed because, whatever else happened, I don't have a story for you. I guess the man in the brown bowler hat didn't have one in his pocket at the time.

P.S. On the other hand, maybe he did.

T
HE
M
YRTLE
B
ANK
H
OTEL
in Jamaica has a marquee built out over the blood-warm water of Kingston Harbor. It overlooks the swimming pool with its lounging, laughing bathers. Drinks are served swiftly by white-gloved waiters. It is warm and shadowed, restful and luxurious.

Cotrell, the C.I.D. man, sat there with the most extraordinary woman he had ever seen.

This had never happened to him before. He was a good man—the Criminal Investigation Division's best in the district—and he hung doggedly to a case until he had it cracked. But at the same time he had always been able to separate business from pleasure. For weeks now he had been under the spell of Brunhilde Moot, and yet, for all her effect on him, the Half-Way Tree affair kept circling back into his mind.

He watched her while she watched the sea, the haze across the Harbor that was the wicked sunken pirate city Port Royal, the distant mountains marching up and away to meet the heavy, brazen sky. Her eyes always returned to the fishing boats which worked close inshore, and she watched them … perhaps she watched the crews, the half-naked, sweating, muscular black and brown and bronze and tan bodies as they worked.

Cotrell felt a smoky surge of distress at the thought; he shook himself angrily. He had a great deal more to do than to help an exotic brown-eyed blonde enjoy the mysteries in which she cloaked herself. And he could ill afford to let the spell deepen.

He watched her while she watched the sea, or the mountains, or the boats—or was it the men and their nets, the men and their rippling backs?—and he thought, who is she? She had come off a cruise ship three months before, because she liked Jamaica. She would stay
indefinitely, leave when it seemed a good idea—tomorrow, next week, or never.

She apparently had unlimited credit. Her clothes told nothing about her but that she had exquisite taste, and that she shopped wherever she found excellence. He knew she spoke Dutch and Spanish, and her English was accented by no accent at all. Her passport was Swiss, which might mean anything. When pressed for information about herself, she used an ancient, woman's weapon—an abrupt, courteous, smiling silence which was like a slap in the face.

“You're hypnotized,” he said abruptly.

She drew her attention in to herself, turned and looked at him and away. When she did that, he felt the heat, as from the opening and closing of an oven door.

“I am,” she admitted. “Jamaica is so—
old
. The old buildings, the old society, decayed and polished. I met a man at Constant Spring last evening who quite naturally clicked his heels when he bowed. And yet, just back a little from the coast, it's savage. Wild growth and rot, breeding and steaming and killing itself, and breeding and growing again.”

“You like that.” It was not a question.

She knew, and did not answer. She looked at her drink, lifted it, tilted it so that the liquid beaded up on the edge. Not a drop spilled on her steady hand. “Any news on the Half-Way Tree affair?”

“How did you know I'd been thinking of it? No, nothing new. I was going to ask you—”

“Yes?” Her eyes were so wide apart that he sometimes thought they were set on the sides of her head rather than in front. That, and her sharply pointed teeth, and the breadth and strength of her, were what was so strongly animal, for all her impregnable dignity.

“Forgive me—one shouldn't make analytical comments. You are not like other people, Brunhilde. You don't think like other people. I—shall I be frank?”

“Of course.” Was she laughing?

“I can't say I always like the way your mind works. It—”

“It's too direct?” She did laugh, now, like wind through a cello. “I've heard it before. Too direct … there are things I want, and things
I like, and I get them. There are things I have no use for, and I avoid them.” She looked again at the boats.

Cotrell hung manfully to what he wanted to say. “I need a new point of view on the Half-Way Tree murder. I would like you to help me.”

“Well,” she breathed. After a moment she said, “Jeff, I'm hardly flattered. I've heard a great deal about you. You took in at least four extremely important foreign agents during the war. It was you who broke up the Panamanian drug ring. You have a reputation for cracking cases without any but routine help. And now you ask me to look at a thing like this—a simple murder, a month old, of a crossroads Chinese shopkeeper who was killed by a black hill boy for a few shillings. It's not worth bothering with, Jeff.”

“It's murder.”

“Murder!” she said scornfully. “It was killing, and the jungle's full of it. From what you've told me about the case, it's quite simple. The boy Stanton—”

“Stanley.”

“Whatever—the boy had motive and opportunity and can't account for his time. Try him and hang him then, mark up another successful case, and go on with your important work. There are a hundred thousand illiterate hill-runners here. One won't be missed.”

“Stanley could have done it,” said Cotrell carefully, “but he
wouldn't
.”

“That,” said Brunhilde Moot flatly, “doesn't matter.” A large red ant chinned on the overhang of the tabletop. She bent to watch it. It gained the surface and began to amble between the moisture-rings left by their glasses.

She said, “The old Chinaman had a brother who will get all his property—isn't that so? And he certainly knew where the money was hidden. Hang him, then, and have done with it.”

“He's my friend,” said Cotrell with some difficulty.

Again he felt the heat and brilliance of her gaze. She bent again over the ant. She blew the ash from her cigarette and swept the glowing tip across the ant's antennae. It curled up, straightened, blundered into a drop of moisture from one of the sweating glasses, and
struggled there.

“I want you to meet him,” said Cotrell.

“I would like to,” she said. “I would like to see what a transplanted oriental, living at the edge of the jungle, has to recommend himself to a man of your stature.” There was considerable insult buried in the phrase. Brunhilde was richer, stronger, more beautiful, and certainly more intelligent that anyone's average, and was deeply conscious of it. To her, the world was obviously composed of a handful of people and a great many members of the lower orders.

“Lunch there, perhaps?” Cotrell said. “I can offer you a pleasant drive, and certainly some native cooking.”

“You do intrigue me,” she smiled. “And I would so like to think, later, that I had helped you catch and hang your man.”

“Good,” said Cotrell. He looked at his watch and rose. “I'll send Yem Foong a wire, and we'll be on our way. I hope I'm not rushing you?”

“I can be ready in five minutes,” she said.

While he was taking care of the check, she stepped to the end of the marquee for another long look at the harbor. As Jeff Cotrell stepped up behind her a moment later, a thirty-foot dugout was moving almost directly under the end of the marquee. Brunhilde tensed as she watched it. In the bow was a giant who could have modeled for a Hercules. As he bent over the paddle, they could see three long scratches in his golden back.

“Damn,” said Brunhilde Moot. She straightened, turned, saw Cotrell. “I've broken my fingernail,” she said. “See you in five minutes. The lobby?”

He nodded and managed to smile. When she had reached the landward end of the marquee he returned to the table, picked up a glass, and with its base killed the red ant which still struggled there. He was a little surprised at himself when the glass broke in his hand. He went to compose and send his telegram.

In Cotrell's low-slung Lanchester, Brunhilde closed her eyes when the car approached an intersection and turned, opening them again on the other side. “Drive left,” she read from a sign. “I'm still not quite used to it. Pulling over to the left to let a car overtake you,
stopping in the middle of the street to wait for a right turn. I'm glad you're driving.”

“You have driven here though, haven't you?” asked Cotrell, his eyes on the road.

“Not enough to like it—oh! What a wonderful place! See—goats on the sidewalk! And that old woman with the donkey!”

“Yes, pretty much the same as it's been for the last three centuries. That's the charm of this place; but it has its drawbacks. Have you ever noticed the little Spanish-wall houses with thatched roofs and louvred windows?”

“Yes. They all seem to be the same size.”

“That's right. About a hundred and fifty years ago the Home Government put a tax on every room of a house over two, and another on glass windows. The natives simply stopped building houses with more than two rooms, and put in those slatted windows. And although the law has been repealed for over half a century, the custom persists.

“And it's the same way with their attitude toward banks. The Chinese shopkeepers particularly were suspicious of banks in the old days, and many of them still have their caches around, in, or under the shops where they make their money.”

“Yes, you told me about that right after I arrived.”

“So I did,” said Cotrell, deftly avoiding a barefoot girl who walked along the road weaving a basket, singing, and carrying a tremendous tray of fruit on her head. “Well, they're learning, I think. Yem Ching, though—he was an educated man. Too intelligent, really, to have followed the old customs the way he did. Well, he's dead. Perhaps a few of his colleagues will profit by the poor chap's murder. Somebody should, besides the brute who did him in.”