*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79795 ***




                           Mistaken Identity

                           by Ralph Williams




Connor did not like to travel by air. He did not get airsick, but he
had a chronic sinus condition which plugged his ears and gave him
headaches, so that he lost more time recovering from a trip by air than
was saved. When he could, he traveled by train.

The company, however, had just bought a new Beech executive transport,
and the sales manager was determined to get his fair share of use from
it. Connor had tried to explain about his sinus, but the sales manager
was a hearty, beefy type who considered infirmity in his subordinates
as a rather sly form of malingering. When Connor saw it was not going
over well, he dropped it. He was not too well satisfied with his job
anyway, it was easier to just ride along and start looking quietly for
a company that did not have a plane, or at least did not insist on
salesmen using it.

So Connor came into Springfield by air, and because the company pilot
was an eager beaver and found a hole twenty miles out and came down
through it fast for a VFR approach, thus lopping fifteen minutes off
his block time, Connor climbed out of the plane as deaf as a bat, with
a splitting headache. Luckily, it was after five when they got in, too
late to make any calls. Connor went directly to the hotel, took three
aspirins, and flopped on the bed to sleep it off.

He woke about midnight with his headache gone, feeling much better. His
ears were still plugged, but they would probably be OK by morning, and
with luck he could finish his business tomorrow and be out of town by
train before the plane came back through on Thursday. Meanwhile, he was
hungry, he had been much too miserable to bother with dinner earlier.

The hotel dining room closed at ten PM, according to the sign on the
glass door. Connor walked on through the lobby and out under the
marquee and stood there looking up and down the street for restaurant
signs. A few doors down there was a larger, somewhat more opulent
hotel, with a dining-room sign lit. He strolled over and glanced
inside. Apparently this was one of the popular night spots. There was
a bar, a small dance floor and a band, and the place was crowded and
noisy. Food would be expensive and probably limited to sandwiches
at this time of evening, and with the noise and his ears plugged he
did not feel up to coping with a waiter he was pretty sure would be
covertly impolite to a coffee-and-sandwich customer.

He walked down a block to a cross street and looked both ways along
it, teetering indecisively on the curb under the stop light. A few bar
signs, but no restaurants there either, not even a hamburger joint.

Fine town.

Well, perhaps the night clerk at the hotel might know of some place.

He went back to the hotel and found the night clerk leaning over the
desk, talking to one of the guests. As Connor came up the guest nodded
and smiled and went on upstairs, swinging a folded newspaper. The clerk
turned and gave Connor an inquiring look. Connor told him what he
wanted and the clerk said something Connor did not quite catch because
of his plugged ears and nodded in the direction of the other hotel.

Connor shook his head. “Cheese sandwich and a lot of racket for a
dollar, plus a half buck tip,” he said pleasantly. “I know those
places. Any quiet restaurant around here where a man can just get
something to eat, a dinner?”

“It’s pretty late for dinner,” the clerk said. His tone implied that
anyone so irregular in his habits had only himself to blame if he went
hungry.

Connor’s business often placed his temper under serious strain which
could not be discharged in open aggression, and he had developed a
standard way of dealing with rudeness, a little trick of throwing
out deliberately confusing or irrelevant statements in a dogmatic,
challenging fashion. He said coldly:

“I never eat before midnight. Bad for the digestion.”

The clerk looked satisfactorily startled. “You don’t?” He studied
Connor doubtfully and leaned over the desk and asked something in a
low, embarrassed voice.

“What?” Connor asked with deliberate loudness.

The clerk glanced nervously around the lobby. “Are you on a special
diet, sir?” he asked, leaning far over the desk and half-whispering
still, but shaping his lips exaggeratedly with the words, seeming to
give them some specially solemn significance.

Probably thinks I’m nuts, Connor thought. To hell with him. He nodded
shortly.

The clerk licked at his thin lips and doodled absently on the scratch
pad before him, studying Connor out of the corners of his eyes. “Well,”
he said finally, in a somewhat louder voice as a reluctant concession
to Connor’s infirmity, “there’s a place up the street a way, kind of
a hole in the wall, but they’re supposed to have a good cook. Lot of
local people on special diets eat there. He might be able to find
something for you.” He gave Connor directions and Connor thanked him
and left before he could frame any of the questions that were obviously
itching him.

Connor had some trouble finding the place; it did not open directly on
the street, but on a narrow alley off the street; you would never know
it was there unless you happened to look down the alley and see the
small red “Cafe” sign.

There was a short counter with stools and three booths along one wall.
In the back booth, two nondescript individuals were drinking beer and
talking. A short chubby man with a hat on the back of his bald head was
sitting on one of the stools reading a newspaper with a toothpick in
his mouth and a cup of cold coffee before him, and the counterman, in a
greasy apron and T-shirt, was scraping rancid grease from the hotplate.

A cheap-restaurant smell pervaded the place, the ripened bouquet
of years of neglected scraps of decaying food, uncleaned iceboxes,
over-heated skillets and scorched eggs. It did not look very promising,
and Connor thought about going back to the hotel bar, but at least it
was quiet, and about as clean as you could expect of a place of its
type.

He sat down on a stool at one end of the counter and the counterman
came up and asked him: “What’ll it be?”

“I’m not particular,” Connor said. “Just so it’s dead and plenty of it.
I’m hungry as a goddam wolf. What have you got?”

The counterman wiped absently at the counter with a rag. “Steak OK?” he
asked. “French fries?”

Connor nodded. “That’s OK. Medium.”

The counterman went back to the refrigerator, and the fat man put his
newspaper down and looked at Connor. “Warm out tonight, ain’t it?” he
offered.

Despite his trade, Connor was basically a reticent man, he probably
was not really very well fitted for selling. He disliked strangers who
tried to strike up acquaintances in public places. Besides, he was not
in a mood for conversation. One ear had come unplugged, with a little
sucking plop, while he was walking from the hotel, but there was still
a ringing that made it hard for him to understand what was being said.

He grunted noncommittally and sipped at his coffee.

The fat man was not discouraged. “Stranger in town, ain’t you?” he
asked.

“Not exactly,” Connor said, resenting the fat man’s bucolic assurance,
and besides he wasn’t really a stranger. He had never lived here, but
he had been quite often in Springfield on business, though perhaps not
so much in recent years. “What makes you think so?”

The fat man grinned ingratiatingly, showing bad teeth and whitish gums.
“Why, my gosh, I know _everybody_ in this town. I’m the undertaker,
it’s my business to know everybody.” His brow wrinkled in thought.
“Say, though, how’d you come to find this place? Not very many
out-of-towners come in here to eat.”

“Smelled it, of course,” Connor said matter-of-factly. He glanced at
his watch. “What’s keeping him with that steak?”

The fat man chuckled. “It’ll be along,” he said. “Ernie just don’t
believe in rushing things.”

The two men in the back booth finished their beer and left. The fat man
tried a few more remarks which Connor did not bother to reply to, and
then went back to his newspaper. Eventually, the steak came.

It was bad. Connor could smell it when he lifted the first bite. He put
the fork down again without tasting it and lit a cigarette, wondering
whether to make a fuss, or just walk out. He could have the man fry a
couple of eggs, he supposed, but the way things were falling tonight,
they’d probably be bad too. And anyway the counterman had gone back
into the kitchen and did not seem in a hurry to return. Maybe he’d
better just go back to bed and forget about dinner.

The trouble was, he was still hungry.

The coffee was not bad, he sipped at it and smoked, trying to make up
his mind.

The fat man had been watching him covertly around his newspaper. He
put it down now and leaned over toward Connor. “What’s the matter?” he
asked confidentially. “Meat no good?”

Connor looked at him and said nothing.

The fat man grinned. “A little ripe, I bet, huh?”

“No, not exactly,” Connor said considering, turning the fork and
examining it clinically, “too fresh, I’d say. I can’t eat fresh meat.”

“Too fresh?” the fat man’s eyes widened. “I sure wouldn’t expect that
of Ernie. No, sir, not Ernie, Ernie don’t believe in wasting his dollar
beef on strangers.” He reached over and picked up the fork with the bit
of steak still impaled and sniffed loudly at it. “Boy, you’re nuts.
That ain’t fresh, it’s damn near rotten.”

Connor stared at him in quiet rage. So Ernie didn’t believe in wasting
good beef on strangers? He grasped the fork and shoved it roughly
against the fat man’s scraggly mustache. “I say it’s too fresh!” he
said harshly. “Look at it, look at that blood! What’s he think I am, a
goddam vampire?”

The fat man reared back on the stool, startled, and then laughed.
“Vampire, huh? By gosh, that’s pretty rich, I’ll have to remember
that.” He called out: “Hey, Ernie! Come on out here! You know what,
you’re serving blood for vampires now; this fellow here says so.
Wait’ll I tell the boys about that.” He wheezed and chuckled happily.

Ernie came up and looked at the untouched steak on Connor’s plate.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked.

“It’s too fresh and bloody,” the fat man chuckled. “He says he ain’t no
vampire, he can’t eat it.”

“Well, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it,” Ernie said to
Connor. “That’ll be a dollar six bits.”

Connor shook his head. “That won’t be a cent,” he said. “That meat’s
not fit to eat.”

“Too fresh and bloody!” the fat man put in. “Oh, Jesus.” He wiped at
his eyes.

“You asked for a steak, you got a steak,” Ernie said expressionlessly.
“You want me to get a cop in here?”

“You’re damn right I do,” Connor said. “I want him to take a look at
that steak, see what kind of food you serve in here. I guess you never
heard they have restaurant laws in this state?”

Ernie clamped his jaw and said nothing. He took the plate and slid the
food into a garbage can and then came around the counter. “Now,” he
said. “You want to pay me that buck six bits, or you want me to clip
you?”

“Hey, wait a minute, now,” the fat man said. “You got no call to get
tough with this fellow, Ernie, you know yourself that meat really
wasn’t fit to eat; he just called you on it, that’s all.”

Ernie looked indecisive and the fat man pressed him. “I tell you,” he
said, “why don’t you fix him something else, something he can eat, then
he’ll pay you for that. That’s fair enough, ain’t it?”

Ernie obviously did not think it was. “I’ll fix him whatever he orders,
but he’ll have to pay for that steak too. My food costs me money. I
can’t afford to throw it away just because some fellow’s too delicate
to eat it.”

Connor shook his head firmly. “I won’t pay for that steak, and you get
rough I’ll have you up for assault so quick it’ll make your head swim.”

“You will, huh?” Ernie said. He stepped closer.

“Now wait a minute, wait a minute, how about this then,” the fat man
leaned closer and dropped his voice conspiratorially. “Ernie, you
know that quarter of ‘wild beef’ I brought you in last week, it won’t
last forever anyway, why don’t you just give us a cut off that? Then
he can pay you the same as for the steak, you don’t lose anything,
everybody’ll be happy.”

Ernie shrugged. “It’s your meat. You want to give it away, that’s your
business. Just so I get paid for the steak.”

“What is this ‘wild beef’?” Connor asked cautiously.

The fat man winked at him and grinned. “You’ll like it,” he said. “It’s
kind of special. We’ll have to go in the back room, though. Ernie’s
afraid to serve it out here, somebody might come in.”

Connor did not care very much to get involved with illegal venison, but
he was getting fed up with the argument, and he saw no good way out
of it without either paying or getting in a fight, neither of which
appealed to him either. He got down from the stool reluctantly and
followed the fat man into the back room. There was a bare table there
and a couple of kitchen chairs and an old cabinet in the corner. The
fat man went to the cabinet with an air of familiarity and took out a
bottle half full of clear fluid and two glasses. “How about a little
nip while we’re waiting, huh?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so. What is it?” Connor asked.

“Well, it ain’t embalming fluid, even if I am an undertaker, but I
expect it’d substitute real well. It’s just plain old corn whiskey.”

“OK,” Connor said. “Make it a small one.”

It was good enough whiskey, as corn whiskey goes, and they had another,
sitting at the table under the bare electric bulb, and Connor began to
feel a little mellower. The fat man obviously meant well; he had done
his best to smooth over a rough situation, and Connor began to feel
rather ashamed of his own surliness.

Presently Ernie came in with another bowl of French fries and a covered
platter. He set the platter on the table and lifted the cover. There
was a sudden overpowering stench.

“Surprise, huh?” the fat man cried jovially.

Connor swivelled his head and stared with frozen eyes at the thing on
the platter.

“Eat hearty, boy,” the fat man said.

Connor tried to rise, pushing himself stiffly up with his hands on the
edge of the table, and tripped backwards over the chair. He lay there
gagging, unable to get up. Dimly he heard Ernie shout: “You goddam
fool, Jake, you’ve done it now!” and the fat man wringing his hands and
babbling: “But, my gosh, Ernie, how was I to know? He _had_ to be the
fellow Ed Perkins said he was sending over, said he never ate before
midnight, had to have a special diet--and he didn’t like blood; why
he said himself that meat you give him was too fresh. I just thought
I’d surprise him; you know yourself I always got more than I need, my
gosh--”

“Shut up!” Ernie said sharply. “You and that fool Perkins just made
another damfool mistake, that’s all. I tell you, you damn ghouls don’t
sharpen up, you can just start taking your trade some place else.” He
looked at Connor, still tangled in the chair. “Well, we can’t let him
go bellering out of here.” He came around the table toward Connor,
picking up a steak knife.




Transcriber’s Note:


  This etext was produced from Tales of the Frightened, Spring 1957
  (vol. 1, no. 1). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
  minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.

  New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
  public domain.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79795 ***