Short Story:
A SIMPLE KINDNESS
by Chris F. Holm
It’s funny, really. Even after all these years, I’m still not sure where I went wrong. It was a simple kindness, nothing more. I couldn’t have known.
I might not know where I went wrong, but I know what’s to blame. If she weren’t beautiful, none of this ever would have happened.
She was, though. Beautiful. Distracted, too. I’d seen her picking absently at the hem of her skirt, one long, slender leg bobbing in time with the clack of the rails beneath us. I’d been watching her since the 116th Street station, when she sidled into the seat opposite me, clutching a large black messenger bag and looking about with obvious apprehension. She didn’t look like a tourist. New job, maybe. First day jitters. She scanned the faces of our fellow passengers as they boarded in their suits and ties and practiced scowls, her auburn hair falling across her face, and I was struck by the urge to comfort her, to tell her she had nothing to worry about. Of course, I was wrong about that. I was wrong about a great many things.
By the time the train jerked to a halt beneath Grand Central, it was crammed tight with commuters, and I could barely see her at all – just a glimpse of red-painted nail, a flash of bare leg. As the crowd shuffled toward the sliding doors, she went with them. And in her seat, left behind, was her bag.
I hesitated, but only for a moment. My stop wasn’t for another twenty blocks, but picturing her face, so beautiful and so worried, I knew that work could wait. I snatched up the bag and sprinted for the door, skipping sideways through it as it hissed shut.
I stood on the platform, scanning the crowd. She was maybe twenty yards away, headed for the stairs. “Miss!” I shouted, trotting after her, clutching her bag like a football as I weaved through the crowd. “Miss, your bag!” If she heard me, though, she didn’t react, and anyway, there were three dozen Misses between me and her. She reached the stairwell and headed upward toward the terminal. I cursed under my breath and hit the stairs myself.
The stairwell opened onto the main concourse, the inviting scents of the Market wafting across the expansive, crowded hall. She was in the center of a sea of business suits, serious folk untempted by the terminal’s chintzy tourist wares. By the time I caught up with her, I was out of breath; I grabbed her by the shoulder, noting guiltily her involuntary squeak of fear as she wheeled around to face me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“What do you want?” Terse, angry.
“Your bag,” I said. “You left it on the train.”
Her eyes widened. “I think you’ve made a mistake,” she replied, backing away. “That isn’t my bag.”
“But I saw –”
“I’m sorry, but I have to go.” She turned and fled, heels clicking against the floor.
I watched her disappear into the crowd, heading toward the 42nd Street entrance. She must have misunderstood, thought me some kind of scam artist or something. I hurried after her, hoping I could catch her before she got to where she was going, maybe explain myself.
I spotted her by a bank of pay phones, not far from the entrance. She was talking to a mountain of a man in a rumpled brown suit, his back to me. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She stepped backward, he advanced. I looked around, but in the morning crowd, no one else had noticed them. I approached slowly, quietly, straining to hear.
“...come on, Holly,” he said with a voice like a rock tumbler, “you know how this is gonna end.”
“I can’t,” she said, her voice wavering. “I won’t.”
“Way I see it,” he said, “you don’t have much choice.”
His hand reached into his coat and he stepped toward her. Panic in her eyes. I knew what I had to do. I stepped toward him, swinging the bag. It connected with his head with a dull thud, and he staggered sideways. His feet lost their purchase and he went down, hard, clipping his head on a payphone. A streak of crimson on the chromed corner, blood on his temple. He hit the ground. Limp, unmoving.
I looked around. No one was coming. They would soon, though. I bent over the man and checked for a pulse, like in the movies. He was alive. I mostly felt relieved.
I turned my attention to the woman. She was shaking. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“What?” Her gaze was distant, her voice thin.
“Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m fine. I have to go.”
“The cops’ll be here soon, I imagine. They’ll want to talk to you.”
That roused her. “Right,” she said. “Cops.”
She hunched over her unconscious assailant, patting him down. She pulled a gun from beneath his sport coat and handed it to me. Matte black, and heavier than I expected. I resisted the urge to drop it. “Shouldn’t we wait for a cop?” I asked.
“Not a good idea,” she said. “You got cab fare?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Now let’s go before Kong here wakes up.”
I stuffed the gun into my suit pocket and followed her out the door. Seconds later we were in a cab. She told him to drive, said she didn’t care where.
“You wanna tell me what that was all about?” I asked.
“Later,” she said.
Twenty minutes and thirty-seven dollars later, she told the cabbie to stop the car. She climbed out of the cab. “Well, come if you’re coming,” she said with a smile.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Just follow me,” she said, so I did.
Our first stop was a drug store. Hair dye, blond, and a cheap pair of scissors.
“What do you think, honey, this one?” she asked, holding up the box.
“Sure,” I said. She held my hand at the check-out. I could have died.
Next was a liquor store, for a pint of bourbon, and after that a hotel. Nice once, it looked like, but not anymore, and not for a while. The dour man behind the Plexiglas eyed us suspiciously as he waited for my card to clear. I didn’t take it personally. I have a feeling that look just stuck one day.
Up in the room, she headed to the bathroom, breaking open the box and combing the noxious-smelling contents through her hair. I tossed my coat and her bag on the bed and sat down beside them, loosening my tie and watching her through the open bathroom door.
“So what,” I said after a while, “are you in some kind of trouble?”
“What do you know about Ben Pritchard?” she said.
“Real estate, right? Guy owns half the city. Married to that actress – Ella Walker. Not a tabloid cover around he hasn’t been on.”
“He’s my employer. Was, now, I suppose.”
“Why was?” I asked.
“Two weeks ago, I was approached by federal agents. It seems that real estate’s not all Ben is into. They needed documents – documents that, as his personal assistant, I had access to. Documents that are in that bag.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’d agreed on a drop-site, someplace crowded. I leave the bag, they pick it up. It was intended to protect me.”
“And then I showed up,” I said.
“Believe me, you did me a favor,” she said.
“The guy at the station?”
“One of Pritchard’s private security detail,” she said. “Somehow, they knew. If you hadn’t snagged the bag, chances are they would have. Without you, they’d have me and they’d have the evidence, and there’d be nothing to stop them from making sure I disappear.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Ben Pritchard is a very serious man,” she said, “one who takes disloyalty very seriously.”
“So why not wait for the cops? Tell them what you told me?”
“Tell them what? That I stole confidential documents from my employer who also happens to play squash every Tuesday with the mayor? How long do you honestly think I’d last?”
“Okay, the Feds, then. They’ve got an office, right?”
I heard running water, the snick, snick of scissors. “Yeah, but Pritchard’s guys aren’t stupid – if they know what’s missing, they must know who’d want to get it. I wouldn’t get within three blocks of the place without getting grabbed.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“I’ve gotta get out of town. Someplace he wouldn’t think to look. DC, maybe. Without Pritchard breathing down my neck, I could walk the evidence right through the Fed’s front door. Once I did, they’d take care of me. They’d have to.” She came out of the bathroom, toweling off her hair, now platinum-blonde and off the shoulder, bangs framing her face. “How do I look?” she said.
“Beautiful,” I replied, and I meant it. She picked up the bottle of bourbon from the nightstand and cracked the seal, taking a long, slow pull, and then offering it to me. What the hell, I thought, throwing some back myself. My head swam, and when I regained my senses, she was close. I could smell her perfume, and the sweet scent of whiskey on her breath.
“You know,” she said, “I don’t think I ever got your name.”
“Tom,” I said, barely able to find my voice. “Tom Mills.”
“Holly Andrews,” she said, brushing her lips against mine. “Pleasure meeting you, Tom Mills.”
We kissed then, slow and sweet, and for a moment, I forgot about the bag and the gun and the men they belonged to. For a moment, I forgot about everything.
I must have dozed for a while, because I awoke to the sounds of the shower running, and Holly was nowhere to be seen. I worried that she might have left, that the running water was simply cover, but when I poked my head through the doorway, I could see her silhouette through the frosted sheet of the shower curtain. I returned to the bed, picking up the phone and ringing the front desk. A few minutes later, my calls were done, and so was her shower. She came back into the room with a towel wrapped around her and another on her head, twisted tight around her newly shorn locks. I couldn’t help but smile to look at her. I’d never seen a woman so beautiful in all my life, and truth be told, none since. If she saw the way I looked at her, though, she didn’t show it. Her face was screwed into an expression of concern.
“Tom,” she said, “you should go. This isn’t your problem, and I feel awful having gotten you involved. I promise I’ll be all right. I just don’t want to get you hurt.”
I smiled. “You’d better get dressed.”
“Why?” she asked, wary.
“Because there’s a train leaving for DC from Penn Station in a half an hour, and we’re going to be on it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I called Amtrak while you were in the shower. We’re all booked. I figure nobody’d look twice at a couple traveling together. It’s on my card, so it can’t be traced to you. We’ll be in DC by dinner.”
“Tom, that’s fantastic! Are you sure about this?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
She planted a kiss on my cheek, and hurriedly got dressed. I stuffed my tie in my pocket, threw on my jacket, and grabbed the bag. A quick scan around the room to be sure we hadn’t missed anything, and we were out the door.
It was nearly three o’clock when we climbed out of the cab, the massive structure of Madison Square Garden blotting out the afternoon sun. I suppressed a shiver and held tight the bag that rested between elbow and ribs, its strap slung over my shoulder. We strolled arm-in-arm past the closed box-office as though we hadn’t a care in the world and descended the steps to the station.
At the foot of the steps, we were buffeted by the scents of fried food and subway exhaust. We’d arrived well short of the evening rush, and the concourse was nearly empty. A haggard-looking man in dingy coveralls shuffled past us, pushing along a large plastic bin half-full with garbage. I smiled. He didn’t.
We reached the central atrium of the station and paused a moment beneath the Departures screen to find our platform. That’s when I saw him. Brown suit. Broad shoulders. Ugly knot above his left eye. He stood at the entrance to the atrium we’d just come through, scanning the crowd, radio in hand. He hadn’t seen us yet. That was good. The radio meant there were more of them. That was bad.
As casually as I could manage, I stepped between Holly and our pursuer. She shot me a quizzical glance, one that quickly turned to panic when she saw the look on my face. “He’s here,” I said. “Our friend from this morning.”
“Oh, God,” she said. Her voice wavered. “I can’t let them get me.”
“We’re not caught yet. He never got a look at me, and the one he got of you won’t be much help,” I said, eyeing her bleached locks. “Just head for the platform, and don’t look back.” That was what I told her. If they were fishing, I was right. If they had followed us, I was wrong. If I was wrong, we were already caught.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be there. But right now, I’m gonna keep an eye on him.”
She kissed me, hard. “Tom,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “Go.”
She strode toward the escalators that led to the boarding gates, never looking back. I watched until she descended out of sight, and then turned my attention to our pursuer. He was half a terminal away, talking to ticket agents, his back to me. Let him talk, I thought. Chances were, he had the wrong name, the wrong description. We’d be halfway to DC before he found out there was nothing there to find.
I took the escalator down to the boarding area. It was empty. The door to our gate was open, and I jogged through it, passing from age-yellowed tile to grimy concrete staircase. The train sat waiting to the right of the stairwell, doors open. The platform was empty, or nearly so. Below me, to my left, was Holly. Another man, another suit. He had her by the shoulders, pinned to the concrete stairwell, screened from sight of the train. She struggled against him. He didn’t let up. I heard him speak, but his words were swallowed by the low rumble of underground machinery.
I took the stairs two at a time, drawing the gun from my suit pocket. It was cold and heavy in my hand. At the base of the stairs, I wheeled around the corner, gripping the gun in both hands.
“Let her go,” I said.
“Listen, guy, you’ve got the wrong idea here,” he said, still holding her fast to the wall. Tears streaked down her cheeks.
“I said let her go.”
He released her, turning slowly to face me. “You’re making a mistake,” he said.
“I don’t think I am,” I said. “Holly, go.” Holly scrambled along the wall and disappeared from sight around the corner.
“Look,” said the man, his hand creeping slowly inside his jacket. “Why don’t we talk about this like civilized men. Just put the gun down and we can discuss it.”
“Keep your hand where I can see it.”
“Relax, man, I’m just getting out my ID –”
“I said keep your hand where I can see it!”
The gun thundered in my hand. The kick surprised me, knocked me back. I dropped the gun, and the bag as well. The man fell backward, chest spattered red. I felt sick, slid to my knees.
Clutched in the man’s hand was a billfold. In the billfold was a badge. A cop.
Beside me, the bag. Its contents, scattered across the concrete. Polaroids, dozens of them. Pritchard. Pritchard and her. Her hair was red then, and longer as well, but there was no mistaking that smile, that body.
I was vaguely aware of a whoosh of air, a rush of sound. Photographs danced like autumn leaves. The train, I knew, was gone. She was gone.
They searched the train in Newark. She wasn’t on it.
It was blackmail, pure and simple. Pritchard’s divorce would have cost him half of everything. Holly’s pictures cost him less. The money went to a numbered account in the Caymans. Twenty seconds later, it was transferred to God-knows-where. He sent a guy to get the bag, and another to grab the girl. When the photos weren’t at the pick-up, he figured he’d been burned. Then his guy at the station got clocked, and Pritchard got pissed and brought in the cops. Now there’s one fewer, and I’m the reason why.
Not a lot of leniency for a cop-killer. My story got me some. Life with no parole. Beats the alternative, I suppose. I never should have grabbed that bag.
But there was just something about her. If I had a hundred chances to do it again, I’d probably have played it the same.
She was smart, and she was beautiful. I never stood a chance.
About the Author:
Chris F. Holm is a writer and scientist who currently manages amarine biology lab on the coast of Maine. His short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Back Roads. He recently completed his first novel, a supernatural thriller titled THE ANGELS' SHARE. You can visit him on the web at www.chrisfholm.com.