by Roy Huggins
“No, nothing like that, I’m sorry to say.”’
She stood up and held out her hand, and Breach took it and held it a little longer than he should have. Jane pulled it away from him gently and they went to the door and said good-by again. And then he was gone and Jane was leaning against the door laughing. He had looked so knowing, so brutal, so uncompromising and ruthless. And he was nothing! He hadn’t even asked what she had been doing all morning. Cherchez la femme! Beat the bushes! Poor Mrs. Palmer. The wife is always the last to know. She went into the bedroom and lay on the bed and laughed warm and delicious laughter; and when the laughter was spent, she stood up and got the service automatic and put it in her handbag. She walked to the door and opened it and looked out. No one there. She walked down to the sixth floor and took the elevator from there.
DANNY FULLER was asleep. He lay stretched in adolescent awkwardness on his day bed in the two-room bungalow on Detroit Street. The afternoon sun lay upon him, and he frowned heavily and perspiration rose on his brow. The heavy frowning and the dampened brow were not the sun’s doing or because the air of the room was warm and stale. Danny was dreaming. He was walking among his friends and he was waiting to die. Danny had been bitten by a snake, although the others didn’t know this. Danny walked about talking with them and waiting in gripped tension for the moment when he would feel the first sharp pang that would be the beginning of death. He waited to die, but he didn’t die. It just hung over him as he moved about in the misty light of the dream.
Danny moved restlessly on the bed, fighting back to reality, where the substance was less unbearable than the dream. He woke up slowly, the tensions still with him, exhausted. He sat up slowly and glared back at the sun. He stood up and went into the bathroom and washed his face and brushed his teeth and shaved. He wondered if a shower would help, and decided it wouldn’t. He mixed a drink and picked up his wallet and counted the money in it. Twenty-two dollars.
He sat on the edge of the bed with his drink and rolled bitter thoughts about in his mind. He had always been small time, just a quiet gandy dancer, no truck in corpses, taking small bites from small people. He had had a nice thing doing the spread with Joe in the two-bit card games in the small towns south of L. A. Now Joe had another partner to spread the four-card hands and make them into a nice five-card combination. No, Danny boy had to get up in the world. He was for the big time. And now he was pulling a murder rap and counting pennies. How did he ever get into this anyway?
He wondered if he ought to go up to that tiger’s den. He decided not to, and then wondered if it was because he was afraid. No, it was because there might be cops around for a while. He bad nothing to worry about. She wouldn’t make a move until the heat was off and it was officially totted up as a disappearance. He suddenly grimaced. He was remembering that he still had the coat and the hat to get rid of. How was he going to do that? He couldn’t just toss them away. Maybe he could keep them. He needed a topcoat. He shook his head. He decided he was hungry. The sun wasn’t so bright now. He wondered what time it was. What was the difference as long as lie was hungry? He would go out and eat. Twenty-two bucks.
Danny put on his suit coat and unlocked his door. He locked it again outside and walked down the broken path and across the street to his car. He slid under the wheel and put the key in the ignition lock, but he didn’t turn it He felt the press of cold steel against the back of his neck, and someone said, “Don’t move. And don’t do anything silly. I don’t intend to kill you. I want to talk to you.”
Danny kept his head straight and croaked. “Somehow, gorgeous, I can’t believe you. Not that I don’t want to.”
He felt the muzzle, warm now, leave his neck, and Jane said, “We’ll go back inside. I’ll be right behind you, so don’t do anything stupid.”
Danny thought, I don’t have to go inside. She won’t shoot me out here, and she might shoot me in there. Then again, she might not shoot me in there, and she might shoot me out here. Danny said, “All right, we’ll go inside.”
They walked across the street, Jane carrying the gun gangster-style in her pocket. There was a pine tree growing just a little to the left of where Danny would step up onto the curb. He could dodge behind the tree. Then again, they make coffins of pine. Danny went on down and unlocked his door and swung it wide and walked in. Jane closed the door behind her and switched on the overhead light and pulled down the blind. Danny faced her in the center of the room, his hands stiff at his sides, his stomach a tight cold band. He knew that he was pale, that he was afraid of this blond girl with the beautiful face, and that she knew he was afraid. And he was suddenly ashamed. He stared at the gun Jane had taken from her pocket, and for a brief, hot moment he wanted to force her to use that gun, to fire it into his tight cold stomach and kill him. For the first time he remembered the dream he had had just before he woke up, and the fear of death.
Jane said, “What did you do with the coat—my husband’s coat?”
Danny thought about that carefully, and the tightness at the back of his neck began to ease away and his blood to flow again. She wouldn’t kill him here. She was worried about the coat. She was picking up loose ends. It was all right.
He grinned slowly, “Do you need a gun to talk about that?”
“I feel better with it.”
“With a gun in your hand you’re not beautiful.”
“Where is the coat?” She said it quietly between clenched teeth.
Danny felt it only vaguely, a mild wonder that worry about the coat could produce the eager tightness in her face, make her feel the need of a gun. He lay down on the daybed casually and put his hands under his head and looked up at her, “Forget it, gorgeous. I took care of the coat.”
“How?” The strident urgency in her tone made Danny look at her sharply, but he still couldn’t make anything out of it. She added quietly, “Don’t you see? The coat could undo everything if it turned up in the wrong way.”
“Yeah, I guess it could. But right now I don’t much care. Tell me, tiger, why don’t I get a break? I don’t drink much. I play cards only for a living. Take my word for it, it’s not gambling. But the only girl I ever thought I could love insists on talking to me from behind a gun.”
Jane took a single step and leveled the gun at Danny’s heart. The words choked out. “What did you do with the coat?”
“I can’t help wondering why you don’t worry about the hat. It had his initials in it.”
“Yes, and the hat too,” she said weakly, “What have you done with them?”
“Do you want ’em?”
A muscle tightened across her jaw and her eyes dropped suddenly. “I want to see that they’re disposed of, yes.”
Danny rolled over and sat up. “Okay. I’ll let you get rid of ’em.” He stood up and walked to a closet at the back of the room. There was a shelf a little above eye height, and Danny reached back out of sight along the shelf and pulled. The coat came down in his hand and the hat rolled out onto the floor. He turned and walked toward Jane with the coat in his right hand. He said, “Here, catch.” But he didn’t throw the coat. He brought it around in a swift swipe at the gun and knocked it aside. He closed in and pinned Jane’s arms to her sides and held them tight. “Drop the gun, gorgeous.”
Jane’s face was empty and gray, and she dropped the gun. It hit Danny’s foot, and he kicked it behind him and pushed Jane away. He stepped over and picked up the automatic and put it in his pocket.
“Now sit down over here.” He pointed at the daybed. “Sorry it isn’t a little tidier. I didn’t know you were going to drop by.”
Jane sat down and let her coat fall from her shoulders. She put her golden head against the wall and crossed her legs.
Danny said, “How’d you find me?”
“You had lunch at Bill’s Beanery. I followed you away from there. I suppose you can figure out how I found Bill’s Beanery.”
Danny nodded and the cold sense of fear began to stir again within him. What the
hell! Didn’t he have the heater in his pocket?
He picked up the coat and said, “Tiger, let us see what there is about this coat.” He held it out and studied it casually. He glanced at Jane. There was nothing there to help, unless the hushed stillness and the mannequin face meant something. “Must be important,” he muttered. He felt the sleeves, put his hands into the pockets, studied the lining. Then he smiled and said conversationally, “There was a hole in one of the pockets. Let’s see if there’s anything down there.” He turned the coat up and began to feel along the hem. He glanced at Jane again. Her lips looked dry and there was a sickness in her eyes.
He had to go over it a second time before he felt the small square of cardboard in the corner of the hem. He looked up. Jane was studying her left hand as if she were wondering how it had got there. Danny whispered, “Hey, I found it.”
Jane looked up, and her face was composed, but Danny saw the tightness in it and knew that it was ready to fly apart like a clay pigeon. He reached down through the pocket and felt for it and got it between two fingers. He brought it up and dropped the coat and held it out before him. He heard Jane draw a quick, rasping breath. She stumbled up from the daybed, and he jumped back, his hand at his pocket where the gun was. But Jane wasn’t moving toward him. She stood quite still for a moment staring at the thing in his hand, then she dropped to the floor with a heavy, sickening sound.
Danny glanced down at her mildly, then looked back at the piece of cardboard in his hand. It was about two inches square, brown in color, and quite blank on both sides. He put it in his pocket and went into the bathroom for a cold rag.
PART FOUR
SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING INSTALLMENT
Driving rebelliously homeward, beautiful, callous JANE PALMER told her ex-Navy flier husband, attractive, mild ALAN, now clerking in a small bank, that she was leaving him. Fearing he would wreck the car, she reached for the ignition key, but turned off the headlights. This apparently was a signal; a bag holding a large sum of money was thrown into their car from another car which it passed them. Jane decided they would keep the money, and she would stay with Alan. Alan, however, at first wanted to call the police; he weakened the next day and decided to hold the money for a time. He checked the bag at the Union Station, said a few words, which Jane could not hear, to the attendant, and put the check in his topcoat pocket, from which it dropped into the lining. They breakfasted with Alan’s pleasant sister, KATHERINE, who noticed that a mysterious constraint had come between them. Later, Alan grew fearful again; he insisted that the bag be sent to the police with a note, and Jane was filled with fury. She thought of getting rid of Alan, and the arrival of lean, seedy DANNY FULLER, a minor gangster to whom the money belonged, hardened her reserve. She decided to use Danny, and made a dale to meet him at a lake in the public park that night. She removed the labels from Alan’s clothes and bought wire and sash weights; after dark she talked Alan into taking her for a boat ride on the lake. She killed him and removed his topcoat. Then she went to the place where she was to meet Danny, but he wasn't there. He appeared later, and Jane watched him wire the sash weights to Alan’s body, and drop it into the lake. When she got home, Katherine was there, and Jane told her that Alan had gone to a liquor store. When he didn’t come home the next day, she told Katherine they had quarreled and Alan had left her. Realizing that Danny had worn Alan’s topcoat home, she traced him; together they ripped the coat’s lining, but Alan had replaced the ticket with a piece of cardboard.
KATHERINE PALMER fitted the passkey into the lock with a casual air that might have surprised her if she hadn’t, just come from a greater surprise. She had never thought of herself as an accomplished liar, but to get the key she had told the manager an elaborate and effective story bearing only a slight though imaginative relation to the truth. And even while she had glibly told it, a detached part of her had listened with a kind of admiring horror. But then, she had also never thought of herself as a housebreaker, but she was about to become one. That is, if the key would work. She was pushing it carefully into the lock for a fifth try, and the casual air was becoming something of a strain. She said, “Oh, damn!” and shook the door. The key turned with a smooth and easy insolence.
Kathy was not happy with what she was doing. It was prying, intrusive, everything she had always liked to think that she was not. But she had to decide whether or not to go to the police, and the answer lay in Alan’s apartment. Here there would be something to tell her if he had simply gone away—things missing, perhaps even a bag or some of his clothes. But she found that these things were not gone, and she stood by the bedroom window looking out into the hard sunlight while her vague fears rolled into a cold conviction. But she had no affinity for despair, and there was something she hadn’t looked for. His service automatic had meant a good deal to Alan. It was the one thing he had kept of all the things that were a part of him through the long war. If he had gone of his own will, he’d have taken it with him. Perhaps nothing else, but he’d have taken his gun.
She knelt at the tall chest and pulled open the bottom drawer. The flannel lay at the back, flat and empty. Her hands flew at the things in the drawer. The gun was gone. She sat back and felt the tensions slowly letting go. She smiled at the realization that she was much less ashamed of what she had done than she was afraid that Jane might come home and find her there. She hurriedly refolded a sweater and put it back where it had been. She drew her hand away, and a finger caught and lifted the newspaper lining the bottom. There was something under the paper. A corner of it had shown fleetingly against the brown wood. She lifted the paper and brought out a small white claim check with the imprint of the Union Passenger Station on it. The stamped date caught her attention and held it. Just one week ago. Her face flushed slowly and she stood up, touched with excitement, yet feeling a vague unease. The so recent date and the careful hiding of the ticket seemed to contradict the testimony of the empty flannel. She dropped the ticket into a pocket and finished straightening the things in the drawer.
She hurried to the door and stood for a moment listening. The hall was suddenly an alien and hostile place, but time was running out. She caught her breath, gripped the knob and pulled open the door. A tall man in a gray flannel suit was standing in the open door with a lightly closed fist half raised.
He said, “I’ll bet you do that with electronics.”
Kathy said nothing at all. She had to get out, and the man was blocking her, pinning her there until Jane came home. She thought vaguely of merely pushing him over and going on her way, but he seemed a little large for that. And she had the quick conviction, accompanied by a sinking sensation, that he wasn’t selling anything.
“There’s no one home,” she said weakly.
“That’s hard to believe,” he grinned.
“Were you looking for . . . anyone in particular?”
“A man named Palmer, but I can hardly remember why.”
Kathy smiled halfheartedly up at him and said nothing. The problem wasn’t simple any more. He was looking for Alan, which meant he would see Jane eventually and would mention this. Alan would never forgive her for suspecting Jane, let alone checking on her. And, she reminded herself, neither would Jane.
The silence lengthened, and the man suddenly put in, with an almost shy laugh, “Well, as you said, there’s nobody home.” He took a tentative step backward.
“Oh! I’m sorry. Are you a friend of . . . Mr. Palmer’s?”
“We flew together in England. In a weak moment he asked me to drop by if I ever got to Hollywood.”
His eyes fell for a moment to something Kathy was holding in her hand. She looked down and dropped it hastily into a pocket. It was the passkey, and when she looked up again, his expression was unchanged. She stepped out and locked the door behind her.
“I’m Alan’s sister,” she said.
“Then you’re Katherine. My name’s Blake—Don Blake.”
She nodded and said, “I—I live just down the hal
l.” She moved toward her door, telling herself that there ought to be some way out without embarrassing herself and Alan and Jane. Blake walked beside her and they were at Kathy’s door and nothing had suggested itself. She opened the door and turned back to Blake. The sound of the elevator doors drawing back broke sharply into her thinking.
She took Blake’s arm and cried, “Wouldn’t you like to come in?”
She stepped back, and Blake stumbled a little on his way over the threshold. Kathy closed the door behind him and stood there while a deep bright flush spread upward from her throat and across her cheeks.
Blake looked at her with a broad and puzzled amity. “Ah, Hollywood,” he commented.
Kathy could only shake her head, holding her full red lips tightly closed out of a fear that she would break out crying or laughing; she wasn’t quite certain which.
After a while, Blake said, “They’re probably gone now. Would you like me to leave?” There was still no gravity in the tone.
“Wha—what?”
“Whoever it was we were avoiding. I think they’ve gone now.”
“Yes,” she breathed, “they’re gone now.”
“Is it anything,” he grinned, “where time and a strong back might help? I have a little of both.”
Kathy smiled then and shook her head. “I don’t think so. But . . . sit down, won’t you?” And sitting across from him she said, “It’s Alan. He’s missing.”
“Since when?”
“He drove out of the garage last night about ten o’clock. He hasn’t been heard from since.”
Blake smiled and seemed to relax visibly. “He’s still practicing to be a civilian,” he said. “I did that kind of thing for months. You get a sudden impulse to cut loose just to prove that no one’s going to come around and tell you how to wear your necktie.”
“Thanks, Mr. Blake. You’re trying to tell me it’s too soon to get upset about it. But it’s more than—Oh, I don’t know!”
