Too Hot to Hold Read online

  Day Keene

  Too Hot to Hold

  ONE

  ALTHOUGH HIS ACTUAL physical death didn’t take place until two days later, Mike Scaffidi began to die the moment he picked up a fare in front of Grand Central Station at exactly 9:25 on the morning of November 3, 1958.

  The day was gray and raw. A cold rain was falling. Scaffidi was late getting his cab on the street. His windshield wipers were giving him trouble. He barely glanced at the girl as she got into his cab. If he had thought of her at all as a woman, he would have compared her slight body unfavorably with that of big Serafina. Jesu-Giuseppe e Mari. There was a woman. All two hundred pounds of her.

  Although she took no physical part in his murder—tried desperately, in fact, to prevent it—the frightened girl in the red plastic raincoat killed the good-natured cab driver as surely as if she’d triggered the gun.

  A good many factors were involved. If Linda Lou hadn’t been so frightened she wouldn’t have bolted from Scaffidi’s cab and run directly in front of the truck. If Brady hadn’t quarreled with his wife he wouldn’t have missed the 8:01 from Stamford. If Scaffidi had yielded to his amorous impulses, he would still have been burrowed between mounds of Serafina’s fragrant flesh. And if the elder statesmen of the Mafia hadn’t been pressing Lew Dix for an accounting, there would have been no need to transport the parcel in the first place.

  Technically, it began as an accident report:

  Female, white, blonde hair, gray eyes.

  5’2”-110-19

  The traffic officer’s name was Coogan. While he was waiting for the ambulance to arrive he covered the girl with his slicker before adding the rest of the information he found in her wallet:

  Illinois driver’s license—Linda Lou Larson. Occupation, model. Clark Street Arms Hotel. Contents of wallet: $444.65 plus return half of round-trip ticket to Chicago.

  Foremost in the circle of traffic-blocking, rain-drenched, morbidly curious onlookers, the driver of the truck was vehemently vocal in protesting his lack of blame.

  “Ast anybody,” he insisted. “The dame run right in front of my rig. On account of it being raining like it is and what with traffic this time of morning and all, I’m barely crawling along, see? Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there she is.”

  Several onlookers confirmed his statement.

  The girl on the pavement would have been happy to do likewise. Despite all that had happened to her since she’d left Della’s Place, she was an inherently decent and honest, if very frightened, girl. After all of Mr. Dix’s warnings as to what was certain to happen to her if she failed to deliver the parcel, she had been terrified when the big man with one hand in the pocket of his rain-sodden trench coat had wrenched open the door of the cab. All she remembered was crying out, “No!” Then she was out in the rain and running until the hard grille of the truck had violently impeded her flight…

  It had been bad enough to miss the 8:01. And now the 8:25, Stamford-to-New York, was ten minutes late. It was the second time in several days. When he reached the office there was certain to be a scene.

  There were times when Brady wished he and May and the children still lived in a Manhattan apartment. He’d been out of his mind when he’d agreed to buy the G.I. resale in Stamford. True, the country was good for the children. So was fresh air.

  As the commuter train limped past a ground crossing in a wet blur of clanging bells, Brady studied his reflection in the rain-silvered window beside him. The lines in his face were deepening. His black hair was beginning to gray. He was beginning to look like an old man. He was growing old at 34, just when he should be beginning to live.

  Brady continued to study his face. Life hadn’t turned out at all as he’d planned it. He’d intended to do big things, perhaps even have his own import-export firm. There were to have been buying trips to Paris, Seville, Milan. The Champs Elysées in the springtime. The Cathedral Santa Maria de la Sede at Easter. Snow on the Piazza del Duomo. The places he’d known as a child.

  And here he was at 34, still working for Harper, Nelson and Ferrel, a $6500-a-year translator, afraid for his job because he was a few minutes late. His only traveling, besides the morning and evening commuter’s train, was done via a 21-inch television set he couldn’t afford and for the use of which he had to compete with a bored wife, a ten-year-old stepson with a pathological addiction to sports and a 15-year-old stepdaughter with a pathological addiction to him.

  He had to do something about Alice and soon. But what? He couldn’t confide in May. If he did, with her filthy mind, she would say it was all his fault, that he’d encouraged the child.

  Brady stared down at his hands. Nothing ever happened to him. Nothing. Period. He got up. He ate. Unless he and May had a fight and he was delayed, as he’d been this morning, he caught the 8:01. He spent the days translating French, Italian and Spanish business letters. He caught the 5:15 back to Stamford. He ate again and then went to bed. When May was in the mood, they made love purely as a matter of mutual convenience. Then he set the damn alarm clock and the whole thing started all over again.

  Brady clenched his fists. It wasn’t fair. Where had he made a wrong turning? He glanced down at his shabby brief case, wondering why he bothered to carry it. There was seldom anything in it but bills.

  His depression deepened. Both Jimmy and Alice needed new school clothes. May had to have a new coat. He’d promised her one last winter. More, it was time he had a new suit. No matter how little they paid them, Harper, Nelson and Ferrel demanded that their employees be well dressed at all times.

  It wasn’t fair. He was a capable linguist. He’d spent most of his childhood in Europe and he could read, write and speak four languages fluently. He was more than a translator. He was a public relations man for Harper, Nelson and Ferrel. Whenever a big-shot French, Italian, German or Spanish businessman came to New York, who had to show them around? Jim Brady. Who had to cement good relations? Good old reliable Brady. In the Velasquez affair alone he had saved the firm almost $40,000. And what had he gotten for it? Nothing. What he ought to do was to walk into Mr. Harper’s office and pound his fist on the desk and demand a substantial raise.

  Suppose Mr. Harper fired him instead? Who would make payments on the house and buy oil and groceries? Who would buy school clothes for the children? And pay for the refrigerator and the car and the television set? Who would keep up his insurance? What would happen to himself and May? It had taken him ten years to get as far as he had. He couldn’t start all over. He was stuck.

  Linguists and translators were a dime a dozen in New York. When the U.N. had sent out a call recently for interpreters, men who could speak four or more languages, the line of applicants had stretched for blocks. He knew. He’d spent his lunch hour in it.

  Brady rode the rest of the way into New York glowering out the window. Just outside the train shed there was another short delay and word spread through the coach that it was because the Twentieth Century from Chicago was also late.

  It was raining even harder in Manhattan and Grand Central smelled of plastic raincoats and wet wool. Brady’s minor mental rebellion persisted. Instead of joining the rush for a cab, he walked out onto the street and into the nearest bar. He ordered a double rye. It was already past nine. A few more minutes wouldn’t matter.

  As he sipped his whiskey he stared through the rain-smeared window at the people scrambling for taxis in the main cab rank outside the station. A light-haired girl in a red plastic raincoat attracted his attention. The rain had molded the transparent fabric to her body. She was pert and pretty and worried. Her breasts thrust forward as she walked. Her small behind waved like a flag. Brady liked her. He liked her very much. She looked like the girls he used to see before he married May.
/>   Brady paid for his drink and left the bar. It was raining too hard to walk to the office. The scramble for cabs was still going on in front of the station and Brady decided he’d stand a much better chance of getting one on the other side of 42nd Street. He started to weave his way through the traffic, only to step on a slick of oil and have his feet fly out from under him. Two cars narrowly missed running over him.

  An irate Irish policeman helped him to his feet. “You drunk or something, Mister?” he demanded. “You trying to get yourself killed?”

  Brady took his dripping hat from one bystander and his brief case from another. His trench coat was sodden with oily water. He’d torn a hole in the knee of his trousers. The wet brim of his hat dripped water in his eyes.

  “No,” he assured the policeman. “I like to roll in the street. I do it every rainy morning. It’s part of my Yogi exercises.”

  The policeman wasn’t happy with him. “If I had time I’d give you a ticket. I’d take you in myself,” he promised. “Now get on with you while I clear up this mess you caused.” He pushed Brady roughly back toward the curb and moved off into the rain blowing his whistle and waving his arms to get the stalled traffic started.

  Brady stood on the curb and looked down at himself. His trench coat was a mess. He’d thrown out his right hand in an attempt to break his fall and his barked knuckles were streaming blood. He doubted that the tear in the knee of his trousers could be repaired. Now he’d have to buy a new suit. And there went another dent in the budget.

  No longer caring how late he was, his brief case under one arm, Brady thrust his bleeding hand into the slash pocket of his trench coat and started to walk toward Fifth Avenue. He was immediately sorry for his decision. The rain was slanted from the west. It knifed into his eyes, almost blinding him. Then he saw a seemingly unoccupied cab at the curb. Its hood was raised and the cursing driver was trying to re-attach the small rubber hose feeding power to his balky windshield wipers.

  Pressing his brief case to his side, Brady used his good hand to open the door of the cab and started to get in, only to realize it was occupied.

  The girl in the red plastic raincoat was pressed as far as she could get against the side of the seat, staring at him with frightened eyes, while her numbed lips tried to scream.

  Brady stopped awkwardly in the door of the cab, the rain dripping from the brim of his hat still partially blinding him, the raw flesh of his torn knuckles scraping against the pocket of his trench coat. He was annoyed with her, so annoyed that his apology came out more curtly than he intended it to sound.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But—”

  The girl looked from his face to his hand bunched up in his trench coat pocket. “Oh, no,” she pleaded. “Please don’t.”

  Before Brady could back out of the cab she’d opened the door on the far side and scrambled out and was running across the street through the rain. A moment later there was the frenzied blast of an air horn and an even more frantic squeal of brakes and, Brady thought he heard a scream, a scream quickly drowned out by the sounds of traffic and the shrill blare of a police whistle.

  Brady eased his bleeding hand from his pocket to wipe the rain from his face as he fought down a desire to be sick. It wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t be.

  He walked to the rear of the cab and stared across the street. It was raining too hard to see clearly but it looked as if two men, one a uniformed policeman, were kneeling on the wet pavement looking at someone or something lying in front of the high grille of a massive semi-trailer.

  Mike Scaffidi closed the hood of his cab and joined Brady. “What gives, Mister?”

  Brady was truthful. “I don’t know. I thought the cab was empty and I started to get in, and a girl in a red raincoat begged me to please don’t. Then before I could back out she opened the door on the far side and ran across the street and I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”

  Scaffidi wiped the rain out of his eyes. “The things a guy runs into hacking. You know her, Mister?”

  “I never saw her before.”

  “You want to talk to the cops?”

  Brady considered his answer. He hadn’t seen the accident. If he crossed the street and talked to the police, it would be another half-hour, perhaps longer, before he could get to the office. He might even have to appear in court. And Harper, Nelson and Ferrel didn’t look kindly on employees who took time off for any reason. Besides, there was nothing he could tell the police. All he’d done was open the door of the cab.

  “No, I guess not,” he said finally.

  He got into the cab and closed the door as the driver slid behind the wheel. “Me neither,” Scaffidi admitted. “Yackity, yackity, yack. That’s all them dumb cops know. And me, I got a living to make.” He eyed the ticking meter sourly. “So the broad changes her mind about going to the Piccadilly and sticks me with a tripped meter. It’s not the first time I been stuck.” He raised the flag and lowered it again. “Where ’bouts for you, Mister?”

  “Forty-sixth and Fifth Avenue.”

  As the cab pulled away from the curb and merged with the traffic Brady sat back on the seat and attempted to relax. Something sharp and pointed dug into his hip. It was a wonder, Brady thought, with the prices they charged, that the cab companies didn’t check their cabs once in a while for broken springs.

  TWO

  BRADY SHIFTED IN the back seat of the cab and felt around for the broken spring. Instead he found the package.

  Neatly wrapped in silver paper and tied with baby blue ribbon, it was wedged between the cushion and the back of the seat. Of course it could have been in the cab for some time, but Brady felt it belonged to the girl in the red raincoat.

  He leaned forward to speak to the driver and at the last moment changed his mind.

  Brady wasn’t proud of the way he’d acted. True, it had been raining. True, if he’d stopped he’d probably have been delayed for another half-hour. But he could have crossed the street and found out how badly the girl’d been hurt and why he’d frightened her so.

  Surely after an accident like that, she’d be hospitalized and the story would be in the late afternoon and evening papers. A girl with a face and figure like hers couldn’t help but make the papers. If the parcel belonged to her, he could deliver it in person and apologize at the same time. After all, he wasn’t exactly the sort of man who went around frightening pretty girls.

  He made a small tear in one corner of the silver paper to find what was in the parcel. There was a second layer of paper under the first. It looked like newsprint. He widened the tear and was certain. The underwrapping was a piece of newspaper. The bold-faced printing he could see read: CAGO TRIBU.

  That could be the Chicago Tribune. Brady widened the tear still more. His guess was right. The inner wrapping was a section of the Chicago Tribune. Even more intrigued, he played detective. When the 8:25 from Stamford had been halted outside the train shed, the rumor had been it was because the Limited from Chicago was also late. Both trains had discharged their passengers at about the same time. If the girl in the red raincoat had been a passenger on the Limited, the parcel could certainly be hers.

  Brady tore away the newsprint, then gasped and instinctively covered the parcel in his lap with his brief case. If his glimpse of the contents had been correct, he was holding a parcel of money—hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars, more money than he’d ever seen in his life.

  It was almost cold in the cab but Brady could feel beads of perspiration on his face. He looked at the back of the cab driver’s head, then at his framed license near the meter.

  The driver’s name was Mike Scaffidi. He was 42 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighing 170 pounds. He had black hair and black eyes.

  Brady perspired harder. And Scaffidi hadn’t seen the parcel. He didn’t even know it was in his cab. He was too busy with traffic and the rain to even glance back at him.

  Using the brief case to shield the parcel in the event Scaffidi should look a
round, Brady tore away still more newspaper. His first quick glimpse had been correct. The parcel held stacked sheaves of bills, none of them of less than 50-dollar denomination. There might be $10,000 in the parcel. There might be $100,000.

  Brady swallowed the lump in his throat. The money was his. He temporized: at least the reward for finding the money was his. And there would surely be a reward, a substantial reward.

  Brady barely managed to resist the temptation to rip open the parcel, spill the money on the seat and count it. The cab was crossing Forty-fourth Street now. He had less than two blocks to go. On impulse, he unzipped his empty brief case and stuffed the parcel inside. It was a tight fit. He had trouble getting the zipper shut.

  When he’d finished and returned the case to his lap, Brady glanced at the driver again. Scaffidi hadn’t even turned his head. He didn’t have the least idea of what had gone on in the back of his cab.

  Brady unwrapped the handkerchief from his knuckles and used it to pat at the perspiration on his face. He tried to tell himself this feeling like a thief was foolish. All he wanted was a reward. A little backlog. That was it. Say five hundred, possibly a thousand dollars. He had that much coming. His mind raced on. And if the money wasn’t claimed, who was to know he had it? Even if the money was traced back to the cab, what could Scaffidi tell anyone?

  “He was a man. He had two arms, two legs, one head. I picked him up near Grand Central Station. Out of 7,891,957 people in Greater New York I should describe one fare? On a rainy morning yet!”

  When the cab stopped at Forty-sixth Street, Brady opened the door and thrust a dollar at the driver and left without waiting for his change. Once safe in the crowd on the walk, he looked back. An elderly man with gray hair was helping a younger woman into Scaffidi’s cab. It was a perfect cover. No one but James A. Brady knew he had the parcel.

  Brady waited until the cab moved on with the green light, then entered the foyer of his office.