A Trace of Memory. Keith Laumer
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of the arrival in the city yesterday of a notorious northern gang member. A number of firearms, including army-type machine guns, were seized in the raid on a house 9 miles from Mayport on the Fernandina road. The raid was said by Chief Chesters to be the culmination of a lengthy investigation.
C.R. Foster, 50, owner of the property, is missing and feared dead. Police are seeking the ex-convict who visited the house last night. It is feared that Foster may have been the victim of a gangland murder.
I banged through the door to the darkened room and stopped short. In the gloom I could see Foster sitting on the edge of the bed, looking my way.
“Look at this,” I yelped, flapping the paper in his face. “Now the cops are dragging the state for me—and on a murder rap at that! Get on the phone and get this thing straightened out—if you can. You and your little green men! The cops think they’ve stumbled on Al Capone’s arsenal. You’ll have fun explaining that one....”
Foster looked at me interestedly. He smiled.
“What’s funny about it, Foster?” I yelled. “Your dough may buy you out, but what about me?”
“Forgive me for asking,” Foster said pleasantly, “But—who are you?”
*
There are times when I’m slow on the uptake, but this wasn’t one of them. The implications of what Foster had said hit me hard enough to make my knees go weak.
“Oh, no, Mr. Foster,” I said. “You can’t lose your memory again—not right now, not with the police looking for me. You’re my alibi; you’re the one that has to explain all the business about the guns and the ad in the paper. I just came to see about a job, remember?”
My voice was getting a little shrill. Foster sat looking at me, wearing an expression between a frown and a smile, like a credit manager turning down an application.
He shook his head slightly. “My name is not Foster.”
“Look,” I said. “Your name was Foster yesterday—that’s all I care about. You’re the one that owns the house the cops are all upset about. And you’re the corpse I’m supposed to have knocked off. You’ve got to go to the cops with me—right now—and tell them I’m just an innocent bystander.”
I went to the window and raised the shades to let some light into the room, turned back to Foster.
“I’ll explain to the cops about you thinking the little men were after you—” I stopped talking and stared at Foster. For a wild moment I thought I’d made a mistake—that I’d wandered into the wrong room. I knew Foster’s face, all right; the light was bright enough now to see clearly; but the man I was talking to couldn’t have been a day over twenty years old.
*
I went close to him, staring hard. There were the same cool blue eyes, but the lines around them were gone. The black hair grew lower and thicker than I remembered it, and the skin was clear.
I sat down hard on my bed. “Mama mia,” I said.
“¿Que es la dificultad?” Foster said.
“Shut up,” I moaned. “I’m confused enough in one language.” I was trying hard to think but I couldn’t seem to get started. A few minutes earlier I’d had the world by the tail—just before it turned around and bit me. Cold sweat popped out on my forehead when I thought about how close I had come to driving off in Foster’s car; every cop in the state would be looking for it by now—and if they found me in it, the jury wouldn’t be out ten minutes reaching a verdict of guilty.
Then another thought hit me—the kind that brings you bolt upright with your teeth clenched and your heart hammering. It wouldn’t be long before the local hick cops would notice the car out front. They’d come in after me, and I’d tell them it belonged to Foster. They’d take a look at him and say, “nuts, the bird we want is fifty years old, and where did you hide the body?”
I got up and started pacing. Foster had already told me there was nothing to connect him with his house in Mayport; the locals there had seen enough of him to know he was pushing middle age, at least. I could kick and scream and tell them this twenty-year-old kid was Foster, but I’d never make it stick. There was no way to prove my story; they’d figure Foster was dead and that I’d killed him—and anybody who thinks you need a corpus to prove murder better read his Perry Mason again.
I glanced out of the window and did a double take. Two cops were standing by Foster’s car. One of them went around to the back and got out a pad and took down the license number, then said something over his shoulder and started across the street. The second cop planted himself by the car, his eye on the front of the hotel.
I whirled on Foster. “Get your shoes on,” I croked. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We went down the stairs quietly and found a back door opening on an alley. Nobody saw us go.
*
An hour later, I sagged in a grimy coach seat and studied Foster, sitting across from me—a middle-aged nut with the face of a young kid and a mind like a blank slate. I had no choice but to drag him with me; my only chance was to stick close and hope he got back enough of his memory to get me off the hook.
It was time for me to be figuring my next move. I thought about the fifty thousand dollars I had left behind in the car, and groaned. Foster looked concerned.
“Are you in pain?” he said.
“And how I’m in pain,” I said. “Before I met you I was a homeless bum, broke and hungry. Now I can add a couple more items: the cops are after me, and I’ve got a mental case to nursemaid.”
“What law have you broken?” Foster said.
“None,” I barked. “As a crook, I’m a washout. I’ve planned three larcenies in the last twelve hours, and flunked out on all of them. And now I’m wanted for murder.”
“Whom did you kill?” Foster inquired courteously.
I leaned across so I could snarl in his face: “You!” Then, “Get this through your head, Foster. The only crime I’m guilty of is stupidity. I listened to your crazy story; because of you I’m in a mess I’ll never get straightened out.” I leaned back. “And then there’s the question of old men that take a nap and wake up in their late teens; we’ll go into that later, after I’ve had my nervous breakdown.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve been the cause of difficulty,” Foster said. “I wish that I could recall the things you’ve spoken of. Is there anything I can do to assist you now?”
“And you were the one who wanted help,” I said. “There is one thing; let me have the money you’ve got on you; we’ll need it.”
Foster got out his wallet—after I told him where it was—and handed it to me. I looked through it; there was nothing in it with a photo or fingerprints. When Foster said he had arranged matters so that he could disappear without a trace, he hadn’t been kidding.
“We’ll go to Miami,” I said. “I know a place in the Cuban section where we can lie low, cheap. Maybe if we wait a while, you’ll start remembering things.”
“Yes,” Foster said. “That would be pleasant.”
“You haven’t forgotten how to talk, at least,” I said. “I wonder what else you can do. Do you remember how you made all that money?”
“I can remember nothing of your economic system,” Foster said. He looked around. “This is a very primitive world, in many respects,” he said. “It should not be difficult to amass wealth here.”
“I never had much luck at it,” I said. “I haven’t even been able to amass the price of a meal.”
“Food is exchanged for money?” Foster asked.
“Everything is exchanged for money,”