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CHAPTER TWO

THE POLICE

I was so startled I had to sit down on the edge of his bed and smoke a Camel. I looked at him, the big slob.

He was wearing little trunks and a singlet such as athletes wear. Only, no athlete ever tried to shove a stomach as big as his into such a vest. He was without his glasses, but he could see me all right. Sometimes I used to think he didn’t need glasses at all, but wore them to impress people. There was a lot of chicken around the heart of that big man.

B.G. got mad. That’s what I wanted. I like to get him mad. It’s a hobby of mine, getting bosses mad, and I’m expert at it, and perhaps that’s why I’ve had more bosses than most men.

He shouted for me to get him out of those things, but I just looked dumb and went on smoking.

I could see what it was. There were springs round those chains and it was one of these physical culture fads that grip men at times. That big stomach of B.G. had got him physical-culture conscious, and it seemed I had discovered his secret. He did exercises to reduce it, here in his bedroom.

The idea was that you slipped your hands through a kind of handcuff, which was attached by springs and little chains round your bedposts. Your feet were thrust through similar footcuffs. And then you did exercises, like trying to sit up against the tension of those springs and trying to draw your knees up against the even more powerful springs, which fixed your ankles to those bedposts.

Me, I don’t see any use in this sort of nonsense. Keep-fit is a pastime for adolescents. I stopped being an adolescent quite a few years back, and I just enjoy feeling out of condition. Maybe I’m not much out of condition, at that, and I don’t have any bothers about a belly like the boss.

I looked at him coldly when he shouted at me, and in time he got around to it that I didn’t like being shouted at. So he became persuasive, and I like bosses better that way,

After a time I said: “How do you get out of those things?”

He was exasperated but tried not to show it. He had also a confession to make, and he didn’t like making it and he mumbled over it. He was a man, in any event, feeling the indignity of his position. It seemed that you simply slid your hands through the cuffs but B.G. had thick wrists and big fleshy paws, and the exercising had caused them to swell and he couldn’t get the cuffs over his hand. I felt inclined to leave the slob there, but that isn’t the Heggy way. Joe P. Heggy is always a guy to give a man a hand in trouble, even if it is the boss.

Anyway, this was a good time to make profit out of the situation.

I said to him quite nicely: “I don’t know whether I can help you. I mean, I’m not working for you any longer, why should I dig you out of those damn bracelets?”

B.G. spoke earnestly. He said: “Joe, what are you talking about? Who says you’re not working for me? You get this into your mind, Joe, that you’ll always be working for me. Only, doggone it, dig me out of these bracelets, can’t you!”

Well, that was good enough for me. I was still on the payroll. I dug him out. It took a lot of hair oil over his fat wrists, and he lost some of the skin in the process, but I didn’t feel it, and I didn’t smell like a nice boy afterwards.

He was ashamed of himself, as fat men always are ashamed when they’ve been caught out. I said: “It’s a good thing I came when I did.”

He stopped washing himself under a tap labelled: ‘Chaud’ but it wasn’t. Like the elevator, the hot water system never worked in this hotel, either. He looked at me and said, suspiciously: “What did you want of me at this time of night, anyway?”

I said: “If anything happens to me, B.G., I want you to remember what I’m telling you now.”

I saw that big, flat pancake face come round quickly, apprehensively, the electric light reflecting greasily upon his featureless face. That B.G. got in a panic quicker than any man I’ve ever known, and him with all his millions.

“What d’you mean, Joe? Don’t tell me you’ve got into more trouble?”

Now, that’s good, coming from the man who employs me. Back in the States my job was trouble-buster. If there was trouble anywhere within the Gissenheim empire, I was the boy who was sent down to eliminate it. You know what sort of trouble you can get—rival firms sabotaging your supply trucks; trouble among two-timing salesmen who are selling out to rivals; and some labour disputes, though I don’t like them. I even had to go and take part in a revolution once, in the Central Americas, when a lot of Gissenheim property was at stake.

Well, here I’m employed as a trouble-buster, and the man who employs me suddenly turns round and asks sharply if I’ve been getting into trouble! I shut him up with a flip of my paw. You could always shut up that big fat slob if you knew how to flip confidently and contemptuously enough. You should try it on the boss someday. You’ll probably be surprised at the result.

I said: “Listen.” And then I told him what I had seen out in the alley, and then what had happened down at the police station—though, come to think of it, just nothing had happened there.

“But I want you to know this, B.G.—there’s something very deep and very nasty afoot, and I’ve got myself mixed up in it.” I lifted my hand when I saw his fat mush splitting to make some heavy statement. “And you can forget what you were just about to say. Any time I see a girl in trouble like that, I feel I’ve just got to jump in with both feet.”

“But now you’re in with both feet—?”

“Things might happen to me.” I brooded over my Camel. I’d got a hunch that things were going to happen to me, and B.G. was something in the nature of an insurance policy. I looked at him. He was scared. He didn’t like foreign parts, because he was far out of his depth in dealing with people beyond his own family circle. That’s how I always looked at it, anyway.

“I’ve got a hunch that I might get slung into a sedan like that dame. Okay, B.G., if you don’t see me around for a while, you go down to the American Embassy and bellyache to high heaven about me. Get the dragnet out and find me. I’ll be somewhere around, though my guess is I won’t be wanting to be where I am.”

That was a good sentence, and it made B.G. think a bit. It made me think a bit, too. I didn’t want to be where I didn’t want to be. B.G. wasn’t much of an insurance policy, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do right then. I tell you, I’m a timid kind of guy, always running away from trouble. But I can take care of myself if trouble comes running after me.

B.G. put his glasses on, as if that helped him to think better. His thinking didn’t seem to do him any good because he finally took them off and went in for a shower without saying so much as a word to me. Perhaps he would have liked to have made cutting comments, but he must have been remembering the undignified position I’d found him in a few moments ago. And he knew by now that Joe P. Heggy could hold his own when it came to making cutting remarks.

He closed the door of his bathroom, and locked it. That’s the kind of sap B.G. is. He doesn’t like to be seen, not even by his own sex, when he’s in the nude. I don’t go that way myself at all, but that’s the way some men are built, I guess.

So I shouted through the keyhole. “Hey, are you plannin’ to go out?”

Because one of my jobs was to keep the boss’s son out of trouble. He was such a sap that his father knew he needed a nursemaid, and so he’d picked on me.

B.G. yelped back: “I think I’ll go to the Gazino for supper.”

I shrugged. That meant I had to go, too. So I went back to my room to get changed. Anyway, there was nothing for me to hang around this hotel for, and the Gazino was a pleasant place for supper, anyway.

It was only when my hand was feeling for the door key that I remembered that body in the bathroom. I felt sick inside. I just naturally hated what I’d just done.

But there was nothing else for it. I had to go in and face it.

And then I found I had no key.

And then I found Benny standing by my side and he had a key in his hand. Benny had anticipated this moment and had come up the stairs or the elevator to help me in distress.

He spoke quickly. “I guessed you’d have locked yourself out.” My key was inside my room. He was a good guesser.

I took the key and looked hard at Benny. I thought: “You slimy so-and-so, you’re trying to get around me, aren’t you?”

But I didn’t say anything aloud to Benny; I just let him read what I was thinking in my face. Benny mustn’t have liked what he read there, and he quit trying to be nice. He went away, and I heard him say something that sounded suspiciously like: “The hell, you can get yourself out of trouble in future.”

I didn’t beef after him. I don’t give a damn if hotel servants do stand on a level with their patrons. After all, aren’t we supposed to be democratic?

I went into my apartment. I turned to go into the bathroom, because there was something I had to get over. I’d got to dispose of that body.

There was something moving on the floor, just inside. I reckon it was its mate. It was about four inches long, and brick red, and it ran around in quick frantic circles when I switched the light on. A kind of cockroach, you’d say, only the granddaddy of all cockroaches if it was. Anyway, I don’t know if cockroaches ever go brick red, as these Turkish crawlers do. I jumped on it. That made two bodies to dispose of. And, boy, how my stomach turned as I felt my heel go crashing through that shelly body. That’s the worst of some of these Middle East hotels. You’ve got to share your room with things which shouldn’t be there.

I scooped up the remains and put them in the marble pan which had been made in Victoria’s time by some firm at Gateshead, England. Then I flushed them away.

I’d just finished my shower and was climbing into my natty white suiting, when there was a polite tap on the door.

I went across, fastening my shirt. When I opened the door I saw the corridor was filled with uniforms.

That’s how it looked to me, anyway. There was a big guy, some sort of officer I guessed, in the Istanbul police. He was built on mighty lines, though young, A really powerful man, smooth-shaven, red-faced, rather good-looking, but tough, boy. Mighty tough.

Back of him I saw several other cops. Maybe there were only two or three, but right then my mind kind of exaggerated everything. That corridor looked lousy with police.

I said, firmly: “I don’t want to buy anything,” and tried to shut the door.

One of the cops had his foot against it, and it didn’t move. So I looked sourly at that big, young officer and said: “I’ve got my passport. It’s in order. The best in the world. American.” I wanted him to know what he was up against if he was looking for trouble...Uncle Sam.

For I was expecting trouble. I’d got this hunch in my mind that trouble was going to come dropping down on me because I’d seen something I wasn’t supposed to see...and kicked up a fuss about it afterwards. Now it looked as though that hunch was correct. Cops don’t fill a corridor for nothing.

He gave a little deprecating wave of his gloved hand, and said: “I’m quite sure your passport is in order, Mr. Heggy.” He said it politely, too, and that added to the surprises of the night.

He spoke with an American accent that was assured and told of residence in the States rather than tuition in our language at the American College along the Bosphorus. Clearly he had received his education in America.

I looked at him suspiciously, all the same. I just didn’t trust these monkeys at all.

He went on to say, still so politely: “Your visit to the police station was reported to me. I thought that I would like to speak to you on the subject personally, Mr. Heggy. Please accept my apologies, but your statements, you see, do demand police investigation.”

I said: “The hell, what is there for you to investigate?” That girl, I was still sure, had been whipped away by Turkish police, and I wasn’t to be kidded by this big, well-spoken, calm-looking young man.

But he was shaking his head. “Mr. Heggy,” he said, and his voice was very firm, “we can’t allow girls to be abducted forcibly from hotels in this city. You may have imagined what you say you saw—”

“Brother, I never imagined what I saw,” I rapped with equal firmness.

“Then you see, Mr. Heggy, we’ve got to enquire into these statements you have made.”

He was so calm, so polite, but so firm with it. I kept looking at him, trying to read what was behind that big, brown-red healthy face of this young police officer. And my eyes sometimes flickered beyond him, to those monkeys of his in the passage. They were all such big men, filling their uniforms with solid muscle, and I couldn’t help feeling that if it came to a shindig I was going to get the worst of it.

And Joe P. Heggy just naturally hates to get the worst of any fight.

The officer said: “Perhaps you would like to discuss this matter further inside your room, Mr. Heggy.” He looked significantly down the corridor, where a few guests, heading for the elevator or stairs, were caught in that irresolute pose of people wanting to do two things at once—and one of them was to gawk at a man in trouble with the police.

I thought there wasn’t anything else I could do about it. I had a feeling that if I said: “No, to hell with it, you stay out in the corridor,” these monkeys would just force their way into my room.

I stood by grudgingly, and I felt like giving them Lincoln’s Address at Gettysburg. I was fully determined to kick up the goddamnedest row ever heard in Istanbul if they tried any police tricks on me.

Brother, I was in for yet another surprise! The police officer stepped into my apartment, and closed the door after him upon his men.

I said rather suspiciously: “Don’t you want your strong-arm boys in with you?”

He laughed and took off his gloves. I had a feeling he was laughing at me. He said, tolerantly: “No, Mr. Heggy, I don’t think we need any witnesses to our conversation. This is a friendly call, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, and I’m out to help you.”

Suspiciously—“Help me? Now why in hell’s name should I need helping?”

His eyes widened in surprise, and yet I was sure he was mocking me. He said: “But you told them at the station that this girl who was carried away was a friend of yours?”

I swallowed. That comes of telling lies. One was coming home to me now. I thought George Washington had something, right then, and I made a lot of vows for the future. One of them was to keep my big nose out of other people’s affairs.

The officer said, patiently: “Now, Mr. Heggy, will you please tell me in your own words exactly what you saw? Please tell me absolutely everything, and don’t omit any detail.”

I found myself telling him the tale. I started by thinking it was a waste of breath, that this guy must have known the full story better than I, but I ended up feeling entirely different.

He knew I had changed towards him, because when I had finished, he said, quietly: “This has nothing to do with the police. I think now you are believing me, aren’t you, Mr. Heggy?”

I was grouchy in my admission of the rightness of his statement. The hell, a man doesn’t like to admit he’s been a bit of a fool. It made me feel like some kid stuffed with fantastic novelettish or filmic notions. But I was convinced, and Joe P. Heggy at times can do the big thing.

I growled: “Yeah, I’ve got to change my mind, I reckon.” I changed it so much I went over to a sideboard and dug out a bottle of best Scotch. I said: “I’ll make amends with a drop of good liquor.”

The young police officer laughed. He said: “That’s unnecessary, Mr. Heggy. We’re rather used to other nationals getting curious ideas about our police forces.” He shrugged. “You’ve got to remember, though, that we’re not an advanced country such as your own.”

He didn’t continue, and maybe he was wise, because there was no sense in taking up time arguing about degrees of democracy—or totalitarianism.

Instead he said: “What you have told us sounds very serious. We’ve got to find out who has kidnapped this girl. You think she was Turkish?”

I nodded. “Could be. Or maybe a Bulgarian or from one of the adjacent countries.”

He smiled. “That,” he said dryly, “won’t help us very much. I want you to give me your description of this girl.”

I said: “Look, brother, why don’t you go down to Reception and ask that two-timing Benny something about his female guests in this hotel? He should know who’s in the hotel, and he should be able to say who’s missing now.”

That young officer was watching me all the time I spoke. There was a thoughtful look in his calm, rather humorous-looking brown eyes. Then he said: “I’ve already spoken to the night receptionist.”

“Yeah?”

“The man you call Benny says he has been round the hotel and can account for all the female guests.”

We looked at each other for a few seconds. And then I took a deep breath and I came out heavily with: “Benny’s in on this, whatever it is. He’s a slimy sonavobitch, and money will get him to do anything or say anything.”

I looked at the police officer to see what he thought about my statement. But he was a police officer, and trained to be diplomatic. He merely nodded, and that could mean anything.

I was raw inside about Benny’s statement, because it clashed with my own. In fact it made my story sound like the hotted-up imagination of an incipient D.T. And I hadn’t been drinking so far this evening.

I started in to say: “Look, that girl was wearing pyjamas. Leastways, some of the pyjamas was still on her.” I was thinking of that glimpse of firm, rounded young breasts when the buttons came off her jacket in the struggle. “That girl must have been staying in this hotel to be dragged out in her pyjamas like that.”

But even as I said that I saw the fallacy of the argument. Or at least I saw a possible explanation of it all, and I reckon that young officer saw it, too, but he didn’t say anything.

It won’t be the first time that a husband and friends have surprised an unfaithful wife with some ardent lover in an hotel apartment. Maybe this was just such a case. Maybe those big, heavy-muscled men had been dragging home a naughty little wife.

Maybe.

But I didn’t think so. It just stuck in my craw, that theory. I mean, when things like that happen they’re not planned to include a cop standing guard to cover the proceedings—and a bribe sufficient to keep a man like Benny lying to the police.

I didn’t feel she was any erring wife. I felt there was something infinitely more sinister behind this carefully laid scheme to snatch a girl out of her bedroom at night.

The. young officer was very serious. He said: “The important part of your statement, so far as we are concerned, Mr. Heggy, is that you insist that one of our policemen was complicit in this affair. Now that’s a most serious statement to make.”

I said: “Serious? Well, brother, I repeat it. There was a cop in on this snatch.”

I heard the officer murmur: “I believe you, Mr. Heggy. Or at any rate, I believe that someone masqueraded as a policeman to help in this abduction “

You know, at that I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief. I’d just got around to believing this cop when he said that the Istanbul police had nothing to do with that kidnapping, and now I was mighty glad to realize that this big officer believed my story. I mean, without any other witness, I had to admit that my story sounded thin. Okay, to have it believed, was quite a touch of flattery to the old Joe P. Heggy ego.

He was looking thoughtfully at his big smooth hands—hands that hadn’t done much manual labour in their time. They were strong and well-cared for. Then his eyes lifted to mine and he said, very thoughtfully: “We don’t allow people to masquerade as police. We’re going to find out who these people are.”

I said, heartily: “Good for you, brother. And at the same time find that gal.” I was also thinking. “And when you do, introduce me to her.” For she was quite a dish, that jane. And I’d seen more of her than most men, I suppose.

The big young officer threw back his head and laughed, and for some reason it wasn’t a reassuring sound, though there was plenty of humour in it. So I looked at him, suspiciously, and growled: “Who’s the big laugh for, brother?”

He was on his feet, pulling on his gloves. He looked at me, his brown eyes twinkling, and he said, so casually: “You’ll find them for us, unless I’m mistaken.”

I looked at him. And then I went for another Scotch. I said, sourly: “What do you mean?”

But I thought I knew what he meant, because I figured that he’d got the same sort of mind as I had. In other words, he was figuring that these boys might soon take a crack at me.

He confirmed my theory by saying: “They seem a desperate lot of people, whoever they are, Mr. Heggy. I mean, there must be something pretty big behind it all for men to do a thing as daring as that—even to posing as a police officer. So, my guess is that when they hear you were a witness to their activities, they might try to eliminate you.” He seemed to pick that word eliminate, carefully, as if he wished to be tactful on an unpleasant subject

I knocked back that Scotch and then I said: “Let ’em all come, brother. They’ll find Joe P. Heggy waiting.”

I reckon that alcohol had something to do with my bravado, because I’m telling you I’m a nervous, sensitive man.

The cop officer went out at that, and I was surprised to see that corridor empty, as if his monkeys had gone off to do some other work. He saw my questioning look, and said with a smile: “They’re checking on the clerk’s statement. They’ll be going to every room and questioning the people there.”

I thought of B.G., and his palpitations when a Turkish policeman began to question him. It did me good to think of the fat slob palpitating, and I felt pleased for the first time about this affair in consequence.

The cop went, and I realized that almost for the first time in his life, Joe P. Heggy was a friend of a policeman.

I went back and finished my dressing. Then B.G. came barging in. He doesn’t knock, ever; he figures a boss has a right to walk in on a man even though he’d gripe if anyone did that to him. So I figured I could tell him what I thought of his manners and I did. And then I thought I’d put a scare on him.

I said: “B.G., I’m a marked man. If you go with me, you run the risk of stopping a knife or some lead intended for Joe P. Heggy.”

I watched his big, fat, pancake face while I said this, and I enjoyed the quavering fear that came up from his chicken heart at my statement.

I said, hopefully: “Of course, you can always go out by yourself.”

I didn’t like playing Nurse Nelly to this egghead, and I’d been looking for a way of ditching him so that I could enjoy my own company without thinking all the time of his inhibitions.

But B.G. didn’t take the offer. He was dead scared of going out alone after dark in a foreign city. I reckon he was stuffed even fuller than I was with tales of thuggery in those primitive parts of the world outside law-abiding Detroit. He was torn between the devil and the deep blue sea, but the devil won, as he always does, in the end.

He said: “I think you’re exaggerating. It doesn’t matter, anyway—you’re coming with me.”

That was why I had been employed by the old man—to take care of little Benny Gissenheim on his travels abroad.

It made me sourer than usual, because I was in no mood to enjoy the boss’s company. I wanted to think, and if I couldn’t get a solution to my thoughts, I wanted to get drunk with the boys, and all that was denied me if I was with B.G.

But—he made out the paychecks. What he said had to be. So we went out together and down the stairs because there was a notice on the elevator: ‘Out of Order’. It was written in three languages to make sure. My guess is that notice went up every time the old man who ran the elevator had a date with one of the chambermaids.

Down in the foyer Benny got agitated so much that he began to work when he saw me. Anyway he went through the motions of doing a lot of writing in a big ledger. There was a guy sitting on a bench to one side—a hard bench reserved for visitors calling upon guests at the hotel—probably hard in the hope of making their visits infrequent. He was reading a newspaper, and I remembered thinking at the time that that newspaper must be mighty interesting to keep a man up hear midnight reading it on a hard bench.

I was going across to make Benny feel really uncomfortable when something timid touched my elbow.

Something timid said: “He didn’t have any. He says he’s run out.”

I looked down. There must be something reassuring about the Heggy physiognomy after all for timid dames twice in one evening to pour out their little troubles to me.

I looked meanly at Benny and said: “You don’t want to believe that guy. Lady, he’s holding out on you, I tell you.”

That would be just like Benny, I thought. Benny would take it out of a timid dame like this fluttery female just because he lost out in an encounter with Joe P. Heggy.

She looked wistfully at the pigeon-holes behind Benny’s bowed head where he worked at a table behind the desk. Benny, I knew well enough by this time, was trying hard to avoid the Heggy eye.

I heard her say: “I would have loved to have seen those mosques in the moonlight.”

Next second I heard B.G.’s big mouth yapping. He wanted to show off, I suppose, and this timid little dame must have made him feel big and good.

He said: “That’s no place for a lady after dark. You should keep away from such places because you never know what sort of characters are waiting around for the innocent tourist.”

That little dame turned on him, all fluttering and pink and her eyes hardly daring to lift to his face. It’s routine No. 1 with most dames, but I reckon that B.G. isn’t worldly wise. She kept saying: “Oh, thank you for warning me. It’s very good of you. I hadn’t realized that it might be dangerous.” And then a lot more eye fluttering and then she said: “That’s the disadvantage of being a frail woman instead of a big strong man.”

She did everything except say: “...Like you,” but that would have spoilt things—it would have overdone it, if you see what I mean. And I, standing there nodding my head cynically, saw the fish take the bait and the hook and the line and everything.

It made him feel big and strong and good, and I could see the air go into his chest and fill it out, and I knew he was holding that fat gut of his so that he looked muscular instead of beefy. He was looking at her tolerantly, in a strongman manner, through his impressive-looking American businessman’s glasses, and he was saying: “Perhaps I might find the time to escort you around the mosques, if you’re staying at this hotel.”

She started fluttering again and thanking him and putting in the odd sentence, which made him feel pleased with himself. I had to hand it to the old gal. She may have been doing it unconsciously, but she had the right line of patter to please B.G.

I even looked at her suspiciously, because she never struck a false note. And yet she was innocent. She was just a timid middle-aged dear saying the right things because she had been brought up to say them, and she couldn’t think differently.

I also thought that she looked better than when I’d first seen her. Her face was pinker, and it seemed to give her a little—shall we call it—bloom of youth? And when I looked down her trim, neatly-dressed little figure I thought that maybe the gal wasn’t in too bad shape after all.

That’s something I’ve noticed before. Every woman has some pretension to beauty. It’s queer, but the first time you see some women you don’t think anything about them at all. Then, when you’ve seen them a few times, you begin to wonder how you missed those little feminine things which make them attractive to we wolves of the world. Some women kind of grow on you. Like oysters and a lot of other things, I suppose.

I turned. I wanted to speak to Benny. And as I turned I let my eyes trail on the big boob who was my boss.

He was simpering. You tell me if there’s anything more sickly than the sight of a big fat sham-businessman simpering!

He was making small play with his glasses. You know what I mean, taking them off and polishing them and then sticking them back on his stubby little wart of a nose. He was still holding his stomach in, and by now it must have been hurting a lot, because there was a lot of stomach and he hadn’t held it in for years.

Before him, eyes modestly downcast, was that small, rather dainty, rather dowdy piece of goods from England. It was queer to think that that passed-over portion of feminine frumpery could arouse anything in the male breast. Honest to God, not in ten thousand years could she have quickened my pulse by so much as one extra heartbeat.

And yet in some way she appealed to B.G. I suppose at heart he knew he was a sap and that most men regarded him as such—and most women, too. And I suppose he was wanting a bit of flattery from the other sex, just as we all do. Now he was getting it, and he didn’t seem to see the old-maidishness of his flatterer.

I let my eyes trail contempt across his face, letting him see my cynical amusement. It made him blush and become indignant, and he switched off that sickening expression of simpering coyness. I never miss a chance to make a boss feel uncomfortable. Why the heck should I do otherwise? Don’t they make me feel uncomfortable all the time?

I left them. There was a whole lot more important things on my mind than B.G. and the old maid.

Benny saw me coming and pretended he didn’t. He was making out bills, I suppose, and doing a lot of frowning, as if he was mightily preoccupied.

I leaned on the reception desk, and never said a word but just stared at him. After a time he had to drop his pose, and then he looked up at me, and with the fear in his brown, shifty eyes, was anger. At that moment I knew that if there was anything mean and nasty that could be done to Joe P. Heggy, Benny would clamour for the job.