Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

“Instead of following you, suppose we arrange to meet somewhere?” Helena suggested. “I’d like to do a little shopping.”

“You know Chicago?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Then we’ll make it somewhere simple.” I looked at my watch, noting it was nearly ten A.M. “The Statler Cocktail Lounge at two P.M.?”

“All right.”

“Be careful you don’t get picked up for anything,” I cautioned. “Even a parking ticket would put us in the soup with that Missouri plate on the Dodge.”

“I’ll be careful.”

I drove off while she was unlocking the coupe door.

I didn’t have any trouble arranging for the car to be fixed. I stopped at the first Buick service garage I saw.

The chief repairman, a cheerful middle-aged man, carefully looked over the damage. “What’s the other guy look like?” he asked.

“There wasn’t any other guy,” I told him. “My wife mistook a tree next to our drive for the garage.”

He told me he could do the whole job, including a check of wheel alignment, in three days for approximately a hundred dollars.

“That’s a rough estimate, you understand,” he said. “May vary a few bucks one way or the other.”

I gave him the name George Seward and a South Chicago address a couple of miles from the repair garage. When he asked for my phone number, I said I didn’t have a phone and just to hold the car when it was finished until I picked it up.

My business was all completed by noon and suddenly I was exhausted from lack of sleep and the strain of driving three hundred miles at night. I began to wish I had arranged to meet Helena at twelve-thirty instead of at two.

There was nothing to do but kill two hours, however. I took a taxi to the Statler, had lunch and then slowly sipped four highballs in the cocktail lounge while I waited for her. She showed up at ten after two.

“Want a drink?” I asked. “Or shall we go back to the court and collapse? I’m ready to fall on my face.”

She looked me over consideringly. “You do look tired,” she said. “We’ll pick up a couple of bottles of bourbon and some soda on the way and I’ll have my drink at the court. Maybe we can get some ice from the proprietor.”

My four drinks had relaxed me just enough so that I had difficulty keeping my eyes open. I let Helena drive.

I was just beginning to drift off to sleep sitting up when the car braked to a stop, then backed into a parking place at the curb. I opened my eyes to see we were in front of a liquor store.

Reluctantly I climbed out of the car. “You say bourbon?” I asked Helena.

When she merely nodded, I went on into the store. I bought two quarts of bourbon and a six-bottle carry-pack of soda.

When I raised the Dodge’s trunk lid to stow away my purchases, I was surprised to find the floor of the trunk was soaking wet. There hadn’t been any water on it when I had searched the trunk for tools to change license plates.

But I was too sleepy to wonder about it much. Slamming the lid shut, I climbed back in the car and let myself sink into a semi-coma again. Helena had to shake me awake when we got back to the tourist court.

I slept straight through until eight o’clock that night. Presumably Helena did the same, for when I finally looked outside to peer next door, her cabin was dark and the Dodge was still in its car port. She must have awakened about the same time I did, though, because she knocked at my door just as I finished dressing.

She was carrying the two bottles of bourbon and the carry-pack of soda.

“I thought we’d have a drink before we went out for dinner,” she said.

I found two glasses in the bathroom, but the prospect of warm bourbon and soda didn’t appeal to me.

“I’ll see if I can get some ice at the office,” I said.

But the proprietor told me he was sorry, they had only enough ice for their personal needs. When I returned to the cabin, I suggested we have our before-dinner drink at the same place we picked to eat.

“Maybe I can get some ice from him,” Helena said.

A drink didn’t mean that much to me, but since she seemed so set on one, I didn’t argue. From my open door I watched as she moved toward the office. The movement walking gave to her body would have made a corpse sit up in his casket. It occurred to me the motel proprietor would have to be made of ice himself to refuse her.

In a few moments she reappeared carrying a china water pitcher.

She stopped at her own cabin door, said to me, “I’ll be with you in a minute, Barney,” unlocked the door and went inside.

What she was going into her cabin for, I couldn’t decide, because when she reappeared a few moments later, she still carried nothing but the pitcher. Carefully she locked the door behind her and came over to my door. When she handed me the pitcher I saw it was full of cracked ice instead of cubes.

“What’s he have, an old-fashioned icebox?” I asked in surprise.

“I didn’t inquire,” Helena said. “I just asked for ice.”

We had two highballs each before going out to hunt a place for dinner.

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