There is usually an idle cab or two parked in front of Milkshake Mike’s place, but this time I had to wait for one.
Maybe the heavy snow and the cold weather were responsible. Alike himself was nowhere in sight, so to kill time I first went to the City Hall and filed an application for the renewal of my license, and then walked over to the library to see what the woman had found.
She had a south-side Chicago address for me, the name of the recruiting chairman of the Fantasy Amateur Journalism Society. I thanked her again and hit her up for a penny postcard. The expression on her face told me she expected a penny for it.
On the card I scribbled a short note to the recruiter, telling him I had recently acquired an interest in amateur journalism, that I expected to be in Chicago the next day, and that I wanted very much to drop in on him. I used my office as the return address but didn’t mention my line of business. The bloke at the General Delivery window in the postoffice said it would go out on the afternoon train and be delivered in Chicago tomorrow morning.
Then I walked back to Mike’s for a cab. A checkered one was just pulling into one of the two parking spaces reserved for them. The driver, a weazened, runtish man in a black cap and glasses whom I knew only slightly as “the Sultan,” was out of his cab and half way across the sidewalk before I could stop him.
“Sure bud, be gladda run you, but not’ll I have a cuppa coffee see?”
I hadda cuppa with him. He paid both our checks and left the waitress a nickel tip but he didn’t fool me: I’d pay it all back when he counted up the fare.
“Wheretobud?”
I described the old barn standing out behind the lake. He squinted up at me.
“Joint’s closed up untildarkbud,” he counseled.
“Someone will be in the office.”
I sat in the front seat with him. It was warmer there. We followed the same route the Chinese babe had driven the night before. The Sultan had no more to say.
When we reached the park he pulled the cab around in an easy curve into the rutty path I had traversed last night in the darkness. In broad daylight the Sultan was less sure of himself than the babe had been. The fender tips flirted with the edge of the frozen lake.
Down at the far end of the lake a sluggish knot of men were cutting ice. They were using a team of horses and as I watched the team hauled a huge slab up out of the water and pulled it to the shore line. We drove on past the lake to the barn and stopped on the shack side.
I got out and told the Sultan to wait. I tried the little shack first but five minutes of insistent pounding brought no response. Around on the other side of the barn I found a push button at the bottom of the railing that ran down alongside the steps. Five minutes of that brought nothing.
Feeling damned uncertain and uncomfortable, I climbed the stairs and banged on the outside door. They let me wait for several more minutes. Finally it opened.
The character with the knife scar peered out at me. He didn’t seem pleased at my appearance.
“You said you wouldn’t come back,” he pointed out.
“—unless I was invited,” I reminded him.
“You haven’t been.” The voice was flat, unfriendly.
“And I have no intention of coming in. You have something of mine.”
He raised his eyebrows mutely. It made him resemble a “wanted-dead-or-alive” picture I had seen in the postoffice.
“My gun. The Judge has it. He said he would return it to me when I left last night. He didn’t.”
The character glared at me and abruptly shut the door in my face. I waited. When it opened again the gun and holster were in his hand. He seemed as happy as a dead fish. Undoubtedly he was wishing I was anywhere on earth but at the top of those stairs, in his company.
“Thanks,” I said, and pulled the gun from the holster to examine it. The chamber was empty.
I tried to make my voice flat, “Well?”
He dropped a half a dozen cartridges in my outstretched hand. I put them in my pocket, pushed the gun down in the holster and turned to go. On the second step I thought of something and turned back.
“Tell the boss I also want to thank him for that other favor he did me. He’ll know what I mean.”
He closed the doors without a sound.
The Sultan watched rather curiously while I slipped the cartridges into the chamber. The motor was still running.
“Downtown bud?”
“Right. We — wait a minute.” I pointed across the lake. “What the hell’s going on over there?”
The ice-cutting operations had ceased. One of the men stood on the bank to one side, holding the team of now skittish horses.
A commercial ambulance, one belonging to Boone’s leading undertaking establishment, was pulling away from the lake edge. A motionless knot of men stood staring after it. The ambulance picked its way leisurely across the park, reached the rutted lane and finally the highway. It turned towards town, still taking its time. At the intersection where the lane met the highway two cars had pulled up in mute deference to it, but as it continued its slow pace they soon picked up speed and passed it.
