Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994

Dan Ruscinski had been a classmate of mine at old Kent School on South Arlington. He grew up on Chit-tendon Street where boys learned to use their fists early on in life. Dan had a drunk for a father and a shopworn mother who sometimes entertained the older boys at school.

Dan’s higher education came at the reformatory in Mansfield; then he did post-graduate work at the Ohio State Penitentiary. He learned his lessons well and now lived better than anyone I knew without gainful employment. Aside from Anderson Spangler, of course.

I found him in the usual place, a Howard Street bar misnamed The Lighthouse. Several characters you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark corner of a parking lot were with him at a table near the back of the long, dimly-lit room.

A nod of Dan’s head sent the others off to stools at the bar. When they were gone he gave me a smile that would have chilled an icicle. He motioned to a chair, then slid his own so close that we were shoulder to shoulder. “Back again, huh, Bram? Keep this up and you might wreck my good reputation. Some o’ the boys get nervous when a reporter’s around. Too tight with the bulls, know what I mean?”

“It’s important, Dan. A lawyer named Damokura, I understand he puts a lot down on the nags and may have gotten in trouble with somebody. Heard anything about it?”

For a second or two Dan studied me with unblinking eyes of blue so pale they seemed transparent. Then he got up, pulling me with him. Making a show of clapping me on the back and then laying an arm across my shoulders, he led me to where the unwholesome trio was seated at the bar.

“Boys,” he said, “I wan’cha to meet Bram Geary, an old pal o’ mine from back in school. Used to buddy around together out in East Akron. You know what the big lug done? Dropped by to wish me a merry Christmas and gimme a present.”

From one of his pockets he had produced a new fountain pen in a box, an expensive Waterman with a marbled finish. I was certain the office supply store down the street was short one item supposedly in inventory.

“Not that I do a whole lotta writin’,” he said, “but I really appreciate it, Bram. Now look, stop back sometime when you ain’t in a big hurry, and we’ll hoist a few and hash over old times, right?”

As he talked I found myself being ushered out the front door. I stood for a moment on the sidewalk, dazed by my sudden exit. Then everything became clear as I walked south past the Quaker Oats plant that made the Mill Street area of downtown Akron smell like a bowl of cereal. In his own way Dan had steered the two of us through rough waters.

Any answer to the question I asked would involve people best left alone. Poking into their affairs could be risky, perhaps fatal. By keeping my visit too short for conversation and contriving a reason for it, Dan had accomplished two things, fixed me up with an alibi for being there and covered his own backside. He assumed, correctly I hoped, that I had enough sense to recognize the oblique warning.