Out of the Frying Pan

 

Frank Klein figured he was being watched the moment the doors closed behind him with their pneumatic hiss. 

There was a mechanical whoosh as the 96 bus disappeared south on Alameda leaving him well alone.  A quick scan of the depot confirmed it.  He swallowed the feeling, you're being paranoid.      

What he ought to be feeling was like he had a million dollars - he was free.  He had on a cream raincoat that came up slightly shorter in the arms than it used to.  A string necktie with an un-ironed white shirt and lace-up Oxfords – like Bogart in Casablanca.

Any day's a good day when you're out of prison, he thought, mounting the curb.

Union Station looked like one of those eighteenth century Catholic missionaries.  The ones they took you to on field trips to when you were a kid.  He saw the clocktower.  Pink and blue lights glimmered on the clock face and showed it was a quarter to midnight.  It was a beautiful evening in June.  It wasn't windy but there was a sharp gust as a 7.3-liter Isotta-Fraschini screeched into the no parking zone.  A dangerous-looking redhead sauntered out of it.

She hardly noticed the driver holding the door the way all rich people ignore the help.  She turned in Klein’s direction.  Their eyes meeting for a fraction of a second.  Hers were a greyish blue. 

She had one of those faces that may or may not have belonged to a big European actress.  The cheeks rosy and perfectly-formed.   Her blood-red lips and auburn hair complemented them.  But all those colors clashed with her pear-green fur coat which was likely the cost of a small apartment in Golden City.        

Klein realized his jaw was lying on the sidewalk and busied himself setting it back on his face.  The redhead glided through the station doors making music with her hips and followed by two to three years’ worth of luggage.

He made a noise and found a bench.  Setting his briefcase down, he sat on it and smoked and took in the night air.  When he was done, he fitted the fedora back on his head and went inside.  Missing the two guys sitting in a car watching him.

Union Station was no-one-about-quiet.  He reminded himself to walk like a normal person, tried not to shuffle like an ex-con.  He walked.  The clacking of his heels echoing through the ticket hall, over to the attendant on the farthest side.  'Shoot me to San Francisco,' he said.

The attendant was a geezer a cap sitting lopsided on his head.  He looked like he ought to be idling outside one of those rooming houses on Bunker Hill.  Rocking away in a rocking chair on the porch.  Grabbing the sun, gathering dust.  At his age he oughtn’t need to pull graveyard shifts.  'Last train leaves at midnight,’ he said matter-of-factly.  'That'll be four dollars.'

Klein thanked him and paid.  Leaving him with a few wrinkled dollars in his pocket.    

The walk to the gates is always shorter in an empty station.  On the way he passed the Streamline Moderne cocktail bar which had shut up for the night.  There was a waiter inside mopping and not looking very happy about doing it.

The corridor narrowed.  On his right was the Southern Pacific lounge.  There was a man inside who looked like he didn’t want to be bothered.  Klein didn't see anywhere else to sit so he pushed open the door and went inside.     

The man wore a similar-looking fedora and a similar-looking double-breasted cream raincoat.  He was of similar height and similar build.  In fact, he looked very similar to Klein who left a chair between them.

The man had his legs folded, showing some salmon-colored socks which were enough to make a rattlesnake wince.  He was reading the L.A. Tribune.  "PRESIDENT TRUMAN DECLARES NATIONAL EMERGENCY – COMMUNIST THREAT IMMINENT”.

Klein set his briefcase down and got a cigarette ready.  He held out his case to offer the man one. 

‘Eyes forward,’ he told him.  ‘You are early.’

Frank Klein looked around.  There’s no-one else here.  He’s talking to you, Klein.  ‘What’s the idea?’

‘I flat asked you to look forward,’ said the man.  He was no expert but he knew a German accent when he heard it.  ‘I trust it’s all there.’  The man grabbed up his briefcase.  ‘Wait a minute.  Viel Glück.’

Then he went across the hall to the rest-room.

What the hell was that all about?  He thought about it and smoked and didn’t come up with any answers.  The tall hand on his wristwatch touched ten.  Time to go, but first...

He checked his briefcase to make sure he hadn’t forgot anything.  There were a lot of tan-colored shirts and slacks from Sears, Roebuck.  They were nice but they weren’t his.  The guy had the wrong briefcase.  Klein snapped it shut and made for the door.

His fingers barely touched the pull handle when a volley of gunshots rang out.  He didn’t have time to count how many of them there were but there were a whole lot of them.  Klein let go and waited around the corner.

He made them out in the door’s reflection.  Two killers exited in hats, gloves and overcoats that were too tight for them.  They gave the place the lookover, concealing their guns and once satisfied they were alone, split.

It was an eternity before Klein dared to go inside.

There were four cubicles.  He was in the second one.  That was the one where all the blood was flowing from.

Klein flung the door open with a crash.

The man had been shot no less than six times.  There were holes in both legs, both wrists and both sides of his chest.  He was clutching his left breast.  Klein barged in and kept pressure on it.   

He watched the cream raincoat turn dark. 

The man coughed the way you do after your first hung-over cigarette on a New Year’s morning.  Klein covered the holes but there were too many to cover with one pair of hands.      

‘Sit still,’ he cried.

The man coughed a little more.  Blood trickled down his chin.  He sucked empty air, spluttering:  'You said ... he said ... sicherheits-beamter... car.'  Then his limbs went limp and his head made a hard slap against the wall tile.  He bent up at an awkward angle, quite dead.

The cops. 

Klein found a pay-phone in the corridor.  'Operator, give me the...'  He trailed off.

'Sir?' came a woman’s voice.

He couldn't. 

‘Hullo?’

A known felon not a day out of the clink gets caught up in a shooting.  His one-liners were good but even he knew he couldn't sweet-talk his way out of a murder.  He would be giving them what they needed and some to send him back to prison.

‘Anyone there?’

He pressed the riser and killed the connexion. 

No good’ll come of it, Klein.  Nobody was there to save you from the Big Q and there’s nobody to save you from going back neither.  Find your things and get on your goddamn train.

He went stall-to-stall kicking them open.

His briefcase was gone.  The killers must have taken it.  It occurred to him to check the man’s pockets.  Who is, or was, this guy?  He didn’t hear no coppers yet so he got on with it. 

In his passport was a passenger coupon for a T.W.A. flight - New York to Paris.  It set him back $22.55 with tax.  Then he took it out and laughed at the man’s passport. 

It was a phony.  But what forger, other than one with a funny sense of humor, would try call him Alan Ladd? 

Maybe they thought he was the real Alan Ladd, maybe they thought they could get a few bucks for his hocked underwear, maybe they didn’t like him in The Blue Dahlia.  That’s three maybes, he thought.  That’s no reason to kill a man.  You’re not stuck are you, Klein?

It was then that it occurred to him – they got the wrong briefcase.

He tossed its contents.  After a minute rummaging, he felt a loose piece of material and gave it a tug.  A notebook came out of it.

It was small.  It was black.  It was everything a small, black notebook could say on the tin.  The pages filled with fractions and strange symbols.

Klein barely made junior high but he gave it a shot.  On the inside cover he saw something that made him yell.  Louder than a dormouse but not quite like a foghorn.  PROPERTY OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT.  When he saw the return address, he could have fainted. 

This was his get-out-of-jail-free card, how much would they pay to get it back?  So he pocketed it. 

On the platform a few minutes later, a smokebox-silver Southern Pacific locomotive puffed into the station like it was out of breath.  It had hardly stopped when Frank Klein hopped aboard. 

Someone touched his arm.

He whirled.

A balding man who could have been anything between fifty and sixty-five was standing there with the jaw of a park.  His ugly little gaze fixed on Klein’s face.  He wore an expensive gray suit that didn’t make him any less frightening to look at.  'You're late,’ he said.

Klein blinked. 

'Tell me you have it.'

He took out the notebook and held it out of reach: 'You first, pal.'

‘You are not Doctor Thornhill.'

‘Fork it over.’

He handed him another briefcase, resignedly.  It was his third one to-day.  Ought to start a business peddling them.  This one was heavier than the hunk of junk the Federal Bureau of Prisons had given him.   He opened it and immediately snapped it shut.  There must have been twenty-grand in small bills inside.  Klein decided he liked this one much better than the others.   

He tossed the notebook, drew the door shut and walked down the car thinking about what he’d spend it on.  A roomy little apartment on Lombard Street with one of those beds that folds out of the wall would be a good start. 

The train moved off.   

Things couldn't have shaken out any better.  Well, except for maybe Alan Ladd or Doctor Thornhill or whatever the hell the damn Kraut fancied calling himself.

Klein may or may not have heard an almighty row coming from the platform.  He figured the killers were feeling a little short-changed with his flannel shirts.  Maybe they weren’t to their taste, sucks.  But he was out of sight and out of mind and the next stop was Golden City.  There was the undeniable bang of a gunshot.    

‘What was that?’ a smoky voice snapped.

It was her – the redhead – leaning out of a first-class compartment. 

Frank Klein straightened his necktie.  ‘Don’t know,’ he said.  ‘Don’t like it much either.  Mind me joining you?’

She smiled a beautiful smile, the corners of the mouth almost touching those rosy cheeks.  Damn it, Klein. 

‘Does that work on little girls nowadays?’  The accent, European.  

‘I work with what I got.’

The redhead’s face went a little redder and she held open the cabin door and showed him the seat across from hers. 

Things were shaping up to be the best night of his life.   

She locked it and took her place across from him – whistling I’ve Got You.  He saw that picture the night he got arrested.  She settled herself and extended a hand.  He examined the cherry-red fingernails on it and shook it. 

‘Where’s the waiter?  How about a drink, what can I do you for?’ he said.

‘The attaché case, mister,’ she used her other hand to point a gun at his heart.  It had one of those Brausch silencers they used in the War screwed on the end of it.

Frank Klein laughed. 

That’s all you can do when you’ve got a loaded gun in your face and a few zingers left in you.  He’d jumped out of the frying pan, headfirst into the fire.