Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  He struck a stretch of badlands, the alkali crunching under the wheels and rising in clouds to dry their lips and sting their eyes. He stole a glance at Hope. She was using one hand to shield her eyes from the sun; the other hand held the corner of the puree that lay in her lap. She was powdered with alkali dust.

  He ran out of the alkali into soft sand. He had to drop into first, in order to pull through it at five miles an hour. The sand seemed endless. He had driven through a mile of it when a rear tire blew with a sound like a pistol shot.

  He got wearily out. He had used the jack at dawn that morning: after they’d got out of the tules, so it was on top of everything else in the luggage compartment. But he couldn’t find the lug wrench. He began throwing everything out of the compartment. He had tossed all the stuff out on the sand except the two cans of gas when he found the wrench.

  “Can I help?” Hope asked.

  “No!”

  He realized, as he hunted for a stone to put under the jack, that he had yelled the word at her in anger, as if it were her fault that the tire had blown. His shoes were full of sand when he found a proper stone and went back to the car.

  He jacked up the offending rear wheel. He got it high enough and the foot of the jack slipped off the stone into the soft sand. He centered the jack on the stone and tried again. The car stayed up until he tried to get the spare wheel off. The spare was stuck. He put his foot against the car and yanked. The car fell off the jack. He was too hot and tired to swear.

  He got the spare on finally and knelt in the sand to tighten the nuts on the studs. He had to rest before he’d finished. He sat down and wiped his sweating forehead with a sand-encrusted arm.

  Hope came around the car with an open can of tomatoes and a tin cup.

  “Try this,” she said.

  She poured the cup full and gave it to him.

  He drank the liquor and ate the tomatoes and remembered that it was an old desert trick to carry tinned tomatoes where there was no water. He’d been stupid not to have thought of the tomatoes sooner. He had bought them and the other tinned stuff in San Diego on his way to Baja.

  He got up on his knees again and tightened the nuts methodically and put the hub cap back on with a blow from the heel of his hand.

  Hope climbed into the compartment and he handed her the things he had thrown out and she fitted them neatly into place. She put the aluminum pail in which she’d made coffee that morning into the larger pail, with the cups nestled inside. She took the canned stuff out of the wooden box it was in and arranged it on the floor. She gave him the box.

  “It’s good for kindling,” she said. “If you break it up it’ll pack better.”

  He jumped on the empty box and smashed it and pulled it apart and gave the pieces back to her. Then he passed up the blankets rolled in the tarps.

  “How about letting me drive awhile?” she asked when she had finished.

  “If you like,” he said.

  She got in behind the wheel and tucked her purse under her. He found dry matches in the pocket of the jacket he’d laid back of the seat and lit a cigarette as she drove. He saw that she knew how to drive in that country. She wasn’t taking it as hard as he had. But she didn’t have Solid Man Johnson on her mind. She didn’t know that Johnson was somewhere back yonder, plugging along.

  Toward sundown they came to a watercourse that wasn’t quite dry.

  Hope stopped the car. “Can we take time to eat?” she asked.

  “If we hurry it up,” he said.

  She ran the car off the road under a tree. Without another word, they went down to the nearest pool and washed their faces and hands and arms.

  “If you’ll open tins,” she said, “I’ll make coffee.”

  They ate canned salmon and biscuits and tomatoes. The coffee was too hot to drink quickly.

  “Come on,” Jim said.

  “Why are you in such a hurry?” Hope asked, taking a sip of coffee.

  “I’m trying to catch up with a guy,” he said.

  “You’re sure it isn’t the other way around?” she said, and got in another sip of coffee.

  “Have it your own way,” he said.

  “I thought you were pretty thick with Colonel Ortega, even if he did tell his men to stop you.”

  “The colonel is friendly. We went to the same prep school. He may have felt he had to go through the motions of stopping me. But he must have known there was a back way. He knows who I am.”

  “That’s more than I know, Meestair ‘Ovard.”

  “My name is Jim Howard, and ‘Ovard’ is just a Mexican mispronunciation.”

  Hope finished her coffee and stood up. “Just the same,” she said, “men run faster when there’s somebody after them.”

  They threw stuff into the car and started on again.

  “So you think I’m a fugitive from justice,” Jim said.

  “I think you probably are. You act like it. It doesn’t matter, does it? You drop me off when I ask you to and I’ll pay you the hundred dollars I promised you. It’s not my affair what you are.”

  “It’s not my affair what you are either,” Jim said. “But just the same, I’d like to know.”

  “I told you.”

  “But your story wasn’t good enough. No American who knows anything about Mexico would bother with a mine in Baja. No matter how good a prospect it is, he can’t make money out of it under the present laws. So I don’t believe your boss has gone into the Sierra San Pedro Mártir about a mine.”

  “Did I say anything about the San Pedro Mártir?”

  “I don’t remember that you did. But that’s the name of the range that’s thirty or forty miles inland from here.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “The name isn’t on my map.”

  Jim watched her face when he spoke again. He could only see it in profile.

  “I don’t believe you’ve got papers for Fitz Jordan in that purse you’re so careful of.”

  “What do you think I’ve got?” she asked, without turning her head.

  “Money,” Jim said. “Probably stolen money.”

  Her face didn’t change. “You’re a romantic guy, aren’t you, Jim?” she said.

  The sun went down. The dark came on so fast that it was as if someone had put a lid over the earth.

  Neither of them spoke for two hours and then Hope leaned over and looked at the speedometer.

  “We’ve come a hundred and ten miles,” she said, “We should be there.” Jim drove on for another two miles and came suddenly to an open space. On the right was a graveled drive. He turned into it and they saw a long low adobe building without a light showing. The drive led to an open gate in a wall. Jim went on through the gate and they were in a big patio. He could smell the sea, and when be stopped the motor he heard the sound of surf on a beach beyond the building ahead of him.

  Hope got out of the car. “I see lights,” she said, and pointed.

  “I’ll get your bags out,” he said. He found her bags and his own suitcase and set them down. “I’ll carry them in as soon as I’ve found a place to put the car,” he said. “I think that’s a shed over there.”

  He started the car again and turned toward the open shed. As he drove closer he saw a car parked in one corner, gray with alkali dust. He drove in behind it and put his ignition keys in his pocket, but left the lights on. He got out to look at that car and make sure. It was the long low black coupé that Fitz Jordan drove. It had his initials in small gold letters on the door. Jim put his car in gear and turned out the lights and locked the doors. Fitz Jordan couldn’t get his car out of there—not unless he broke a hole in the adobe wall of the shed big enough to drive through.

  Hope was a dim figure in the moonlight, standing beside their luggage. He walked toward her, and as he did so he made sure the belly gun was easy in its holster. If Fitz Jordan was in this place, he’d come across or die.

  JIM picked up Hope’s bags and his own and they walked toward the lighted windows. S
he opened the door for him and they went into a large low-ceiled room, lighted with oil lamps. A plump young Mexican in a white jacket sat behind a counter in an alcove near the door, intent on the colored comic section of an American Sunday newspaper.

  “I’m Miss Graham,” Hope said.

  “Sí, señorita,” the young Mexican said. “We expect you. Your room is waiting for you.”

  “Is Mr. Jordan here?”

  “No, Señorita. Señor Jordan rode into the Sierra this afternoon. But he left a letter for you.”

  He reached under the counter and found the letter. Hope tore it open, read it in one long look, and crumpled it in her hand. Jim heard someone coming down the corridor and his hand moved closer to the belly gun, as he turned. He faced Colonel Ortega. A sergeant with a .45 automatic pistol on his hip was right behind the colonel.

  “Señor Howard,” Colonel Ortega said, “you have let me down. You have presumed on my friendship and abused my confidence. Consider yourself under arrest.” He turned to Hope Graham. “And you also, Señorita. You both go back to Ensenada with me on my plane tomorrow.”

  “But, Colonel Ortega,” Jim said, “let me tell you—”

  Colonel Ortega turned to his sergeant and spoke in Spanish. “Take this man’s gun and the key to his car.” Jim could only hand over the belly gun and the key.

  “Colonel Ortega,” Jim said, “can’t we sit down and talk about this?”

  “What good will it do?” Colonel Ortega asked. “You are under arrest.”

  “I don’t mind being arrested, I will gladly go back to Ensenada with you if only you will let me do something else first. Can’t I talk to you alone?”

  “No,” Colonel Ortega said. “Not alone. Bring the Señorita.”

  He led the way to a table near a big fireplace and held a chair for Hope Graham. As she sat down, she tossed the crumpled letter she had in her hand on a red ember in the fireplace. It flared up quickly and turned into a pale blue-gray wisp and floated up the chimney.

  “Señorita,” Colonel Ortega said, “you are making trouble for yourself.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was nothing.”

  Jim took a chair facing the door, so he could see anyone who came in. The sergeant had taken his place near the door. The Mexican in the white jacket came quickly.

  “Juan,” Colonel Ortega said, “bring us some of the Kentucky whisky we make in Juárez. I think we all need it.”

  “I’m sorry you feel this way, colonel,” Jim said when Juan had gone.

  “How else could I feel? First you told me that you were a United States detective named Johnson, looking for a counterfeiter named Howard. You wanted to go south to hunt for him. I warned you of the difficulties. But you still wanted to go. I liked you. I discovered that you were an old Harkness boy. That was enough for me. I gave you permission. Then I learned that you were not Johnson, but Howard. You didn’t deny it. I let it pass. You were still an old Harkness boy. I told you I would see you in the morning.”

  “I didn’t understand that,” Jim said. “I said, ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ What else could I mean? You and the Señorita were occupied with each other. Who am I to stand between an old Harkness boy and a pretty girl?”

  “Really, Colonel Ortega,” Hope said, “you assume a great deal.”

  “I assumed that Señor Howard and I understood each other. Naturally, I told my men not to let him go south. But I didn’t think he would try it, I thought he was more interested in you than in going south. I expected him to call on me in the morning.”

  “I didn’t get it,” Jim said.

  Colonel Ortega turned to Hope. “Señorita, you yourself told me that you had known Mr. Johnson for years; that you went to high school with him.”

  “You didn’t believe it,” Hope said. “I knew it wasn’t true.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But the nature of your acquaintance did not concern me. It seemed to be progressing when I saw you at the Fiore di Alpíni. And why not? I am a policeman and not a censor of morals.”

  Juan came back to their table with the whisky and a siphon.

  Colonel Ortega raised his glass to Hope and then to Jim. “If I take the trouble to explain to you, Señor, it is only because you are an old Harkness boy. I hope I shall never have to arrest another from my alma mater.”

  “Here’s to Harkness,” Jim said. Colonel Ortega shook his head. “I think our alma mater would prefer to forget you.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve annoyed you,” Jim said. “I thought we were friends.”

  “What did you think when my men told you to go back to Ensenada?”

  “I thought that was your official act. But if I could get around it—well, we were friends.”

  “That is what I thought—that we were friends. I began to learn this morning. The real Johnson arrived in Ensenada. He is not an amiable man, this Johnson. He told me that you were a fugitive from justice, escaping with large sums of counterfeit money. I stuck my neck out, as we used to say at Harkness. I told him you were an old Harkness boy, who did not look like a criminal to me. He laughed at me. He said you had made a sucker of me. I do not like being made a Bucker.

  “Señor Johnson insisted on searching Ensenada for you, Señor. I told him that if any searching was necessary, my men would do it. He could go along if he wished to identify you. Even so, this Johnson made trouble. When he found a bad ten-dollar bill at the Fiore di Alpíni, he demanded it. I had again to remind him that he was not in the United States, but in Mexico. If he wanted the bad bill he could give a good one in return.

  “Of course, Señor, we did not find you in this searching. I knew we would not. My men had already reported to me that you had got away along the beach behind the hotel and through the tules. Señor Johnson demanded the privilege of going south to arrest you. I explained to him that he could remain in Ensenada until you were brought there to await extradition.” Colonel Ortega finished his whisky and nodded to the sergeant at the door. The sergeant came to the table with his pistol in his hand.

  “Sergeant Gomez,” Colonel Ortega said, “go look through the Señor’s car and report to me.”

  The sergeant marched off.

  “Colonel Ortega,” Jim said, “would you listen to my story?”

  “Why not? I have listened to several of your stories. Perhaps the newest one will be interesting.”

  “All right,” Jim said, “I’ll tell you the whole story. I am an official of the Treasury Department. I live in a small flat in Los Angeles. Late one night Johnson came to see me. He and several other detectives had raided a counterfeiter’s hideaway. Johnson made his report to me and left with me a package a foot square of counterfeit bills—a hundred thousand dollars—that he had picked up in the raid. When I woke up the next morning the package was gone. I reported that to the department. I thought some member of the gang who hadn’t been caught in the raid bad followed Johnson to my place and robbed me. The department agreed with me and reprimanded me and Johnson for not taking the package to a safer place. That night I had dinner with a friend of mine in a Hollywood restaurant. I paid the check with a ten-dollar bill. Somebody must have reported to the department that my bill was one of the counterfeits. My bill was good. But the café had one of the bad ones.”

  Colonel Ortega raised his eyebrows. “How could that be?”

  “Sleight of hand, perhaps,” Jim said. “I knew nothing about it until late that night. Johnson woke me up. He searched the place. He found four thousand dollars in bad ten-dollar bills under my living-room rug. He said he’d have to take me in. I wanted time to think. He agreed to wait till morning. When he went to sleep, I left.”

  “With his shield and papers,” Colonel Ortega said.

  “Yes,” Jim said.

  “What you tell me is not so different from what Johnson told me,” Colonel Ortega said.

  “The evidence against me is strong,” Jim said.

  Colonel Ortega nodded, “Conclusive.”

  “So strong that my o
nly chance was to find the man who has the rest of the bad bills, and find him quickly. When Johnson came to arrest me I had no idea who had robbed me. I didn’t know about the bad bills under the rug. I didn’t even know about the bad bill in the café. I had no suspicion of anybody. But when I began to put two and two together, I knew the man I wanted. I drove to his ranch in the hills. He was gone. I got a break in Ensenada—I learned he had gone south. This noon I found one of the bills I was looking for at the grocery store kept by the Indian woman at Santo Tomás, Later I met a peddler. He also had one of the bad bills. He told me he got it here at Carmichael’s when he sold gasoline.”

  Jim took the two bad bills out of his pocket, and the magnifying glass. “If you know what to look for, you will find it.”

  Colonel Ortega took one of the bills and the magnifying glass.

  “Look at the olive branch,” Jim said, “You will see there is a gap where one branch joins the other.”

  Colonel Ortega nodded. “It is the same as the one Johnson found at the Fiore di Alpíni. Who is this man you are hunting?”

  Jim saw that Hope was excited, leaning forward, her lips slightly parted, her breath coming fast.

  “His name,” Jim said, watching Hope, “is Fitz Jordan.”

  Hope half rose out of her chair. “It isn’t true,” she said. “Colonel Ortega, I have been Fitz Jordan’s private secretary for four years. I know all about his business. He is one of the finest men I ever knew. It’s inconceivable that he would have anything to do with counterfeit money.”

  “I know him by reputation,” Colonel Ortega said. “He is a man of standing.”

  “Of course,” Hope said.

  “Señor,” Colonel Ortega said to Jim, “I do not believe your story.”

  “But, Colonel Ortega,” Jim said, “how could I have found that bad bill there on the table at Santo Tomás if it hadn’t been there before I left Ensenada?”

  “I have only your story that you did find it in Santo Tomás,” Colonel Ortega said.

  “Hope,” Jim said, “you know where I got that bill.”