All the way

by Charles Williams

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  She inhaled smoke and regarded me coolly. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? If you were speaking over the telephone to anybody who knew Harris Chapman but didn’t know you, you’d be Chapman.”

  “I’m not so sure—”

  “Let me explain,” she interrupted. “If you said you were Harris Chapman, why should he doubt it? Your voices are almost identical, and they’re not there side-by-side for comparison. Add to that the way you both speak—which is almost exactly alike, and very much unlike Southern speech in general. He lives in Thomaston, Louisiana. You follow me, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “In other words, he’s unique—at least, in his manner of speech. They hear it—it’s Chapman.”

  “Exactly. You could fool anybody who knows him.”

  “For just about five seconds,” I said.

  She smiled. “No. You’re wrong.”

  “If you’re speaking of impersonation, it takes one other thing. Information.”

  “I was coming to that,” she said. “It happens that I know more about Harris Chapman than anybody else in the world.”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “This. In ten days of intensive study, you could become Harris Chapman—that is, to the extent that Harris Chapman as a personality or an individual is projected over a telephone circuit.”

  I stood up and crushed out my cigarette. “And why should I?”

  “Would you consider seventy-five thousand dollars a good reason?”

  I paused, still holding the mangled cigarette stub. “You’re joking.”

  “Do I look as if I were?”

  “Where would you get that much money?”

  “From him, naturally.”

  “You mean steal it?”

  She nodded coolly. “I suppose you would call it stealing. A rather unusual type of theft, and one that’s absolutely fool-proof

  “There is no such animal.”

  “In this particular case, there is. It’s unique. I suppose you’ve heard the expression “perfect crime”. This is the perfect crime, the one that’ll never be solved.”

  I lit another cigarette, still looking at her. She had me badly confused by now. I sat down on the corner of the bed near her. “I’ll admit I don’t know nearly as much about girls as I did when I was nineteen,” I said. “But, even so, your picture and sound track just don’t match. Perfect crime—Offhand, I’d say the worst crime you’ve ever committed was taking advantage of a stuck parking meter.”

  She gestured with a slim hand. “I didn’t say I’d ever stolen anything before.”

  “But you’re going to now. Why?”

  “We can go into the reasons later. I want to know if you’re interested.”

  “I’m always interested in money.”

  “Have you ever stolen anything?”

  No. But I doubt that’s highly significant. Nobody’s ever tried me with seventy-five thousand before.”

  ”Then you could?

  “Probably. But it couldn’t be as fool-proof as you say.”

  “It is,” she said definitely. “As a matter of fact, nobody will ever know it was stolen.”

  “Why? Money doesn’t evaporate. And just where is it?”

  She studied me thoughtfully. “Your stepfather was a broker, I believe you said. So you know what a trading account is?”

  “Sure.”

  “All right. Harris Chapman has a trading account with a New Orleans brokerage firm. The man called Chris you just heard on the tape is the registered representative who handles it for him. And at the present moment the stocks and cash in the account add up to just a little over a hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”

  I whistled. Then I glanced sharply at her. “So?”

  “Well, you know how a trading account like that is handled.”

  “Sure. The stocks he buys are credited to his account, but they’re kept there at the brokerage house in the vault, so he doesn’t have to go through all the rigmarole of endorsing them and sending them back when he wants to sell. He buys and sells all the time, just by picking up the phone—” I got it then, and she was crazy.

  “You see?” she said.

  “I see nothing,” I replied. “Money in a brokerage account is just as safe as money in a bank account. It takes a signature to get it; you ought to know that. Two signatures, as a matter of fact. You have to sign a receipt for the transaction, and then endorse the check to cash it.”

  She interrupted. “Will you listen just a minute? The idea is nothing like as simple as that. Of course it wouldn’t work in any other set of circumstances, but as I told you before, this is unique. All it’ll require is the most elementary sort of forgery because nobody”ll ever look at the signatures anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’ll never be the slightest doubt but that Harris Chapman drew the money out himself. I’ll take care of that—”

  “You’d better fill me in a little,” I said. “Just who is Chapman, and what’s your connection with him?”

  She leaned over to tap ash off her cigarette. “He’s a businessman, and for a small town a fairly wealthy one. He owns Chapman Enterprises, which consists of a newspaper, a radio station, cotton gin, and a warehouse, among other things—”

  “And you worked for him?”

  Her eyes met mine without any expression at all. “I worked for him. I was his private secretary, mistress, executive officer, fiancée—you name it. I went to work for him eight years ago, and for the past six I’ve been a sort of combination of executive vice-president and full-time wife. Except that I wasn’t married to him.”

  “Why not?”

  “For the tired old reason that he already had a wife.”

  “You don’t look like the type that’d dangle that long.”

  “Shall we drop that part of it for the moment?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “But I still don’t see how you think you’re going to get away with it. What’s Chapman going to be doing all the time you’re looting his trading account?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “He’ll be dead.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m going to kill him.”

  * * *

  I caught a no-show out of the Miami airport at four-fifteen, and was at Idlewild a little after eight. I took the limousine over to town. It was one of those blustery November nights, not really wet but with scattered shot-charges of rain hurled on a cold north wind. I didn’t have an overcoat. People looked at me as if I were crazy as I came out of the terminal and caught a cab. The small hotel on West 44th Street where I’d stayed once before was all right, but the room faced an airwell and was small and cheerless.

  I sat down on the bed and counted my money. I had three hundred and sixty left. Three hundred, I thought, after I buy a coat. No, I had to have a hat, too. This was New York. I couldn’t go job-hunting along Madison Avenue looking like a refugee from Muscle Beach. It was going to be tough enough as it was; the last reference I could give was two years old. I went up the street to a bar and had a drink, but it only made me feel worse. After a while I went back to the room and tried to read, but it was futile. I kept thinking about seventy-five thousand dollars and blue water and sunlight and a sleek dark head. I threw the magazine on to the floor and lay on the side of the bed staring down at it.

  What did I care what happened to some man who was nothing to me but a name? If I were so concerned over his safety, why didn’t I call him and tell him she was going to kill him? I knew she was, didn’t I?

  That was it. She still was; my walking out on her hadn’t changed anything. The money he had in that account was only a collateral issue as far as she was concerned. I remembered the way she’d lain there in the darkness, rigid and wide-awake and staring, with her hands clenched, and wondered what he’d done to her. Well, I’d never know; but the chances were very good he’d never do
it to anybody else.

  So what had I accomplished by running, apart from doing myself out of seventy-five thousand dollars? Well, hell, I’d kept myself from being implicated, hadn’t I? I wasn’t going to kill anybody, and wind up in the death-house.

  But she hadn’t asked me to, had she? All she’d wanted me to do was get that money for her—from a man who would already be dead. Still, I’d be an accessory.

  What had she meant?

  How would I know? I thought. I’d run off before she could tell me.

  The next morning I bought an overcoat and hat and started out. I answered some ads first, without any luck, and then started hitting the agencies blind. My feet got tired. I filled in forms. I left my name and telephone number. The weather was still blustery and cold, with a lowering gray sky like dirty metal. If this were the movies I thought, I’d pass a travel-agency window and there’d be a big sun-drenched picture of a brunette in a bathing suit sitting on the beach in front of a white hotel with the caption: COME TO MIAMI. She was a blonde, as it turned out, and the invitation was: COME TO KINGSTON. A man was landing a marlin off the end of a pier. With a flyrod, as nearly as I could tell. You could see Jamaica was a fisherman’s paradise. I came back to the bar across the street from the hotel around two and had a Scotch while I wondered what she was doing. And how a girl managed to look elegant in a bathing suit. Not lifted-pinkie elegant, but 18th-century elegant. I went up to my room and lay down on the bed. It was raining now; I could see it falling into the airwell. I picked up the phone and asked for Long Distance.

  ”Miami Beach,” I said. “The Golden Horn Motel. Personal call to Mrs. Marian Forsyth.” At least I could talk to her.

  “Hold the line, please.”

  I waited. I could hear the operator.

  “Golden Horn,” a girl’s voice said. “Who? Mrs. Forsyth? Just a moment, please . . . I’m sorry; she’s left.”

  I dropped the phone back on the cradle. Well, it wasn’t everybody who was smart enough to turn down a seventy-five-thousand-dollar proposition before he’d even heard it. And I’d never see her again. I lit a cigarette and watched the rain, and thought of some of the places we could have gone together—Acapulco, and Bimini, and Nassau. . . .

  Thirty minutes later the phone rang. It was Miami Beach. Her voice was exactly as cool, urbane, and pleasant as ever. “I finally decided you were never going to call, so—“

  I suppose I could ask, I thought. But why bother? There was something inevitable about her; if I’d been holed up in a Lamasery in Tibet it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.

  “You win,” I said. “I’ll be there some time tonight.”

  “That’s wonderful, Jerry.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “You’re sweet. Then you did try to call me?”

  “You know damn well I did. Where?”

  “Two hundred and six Dover Way,” she replied. “It’s a wonderful place to work.”

  I caught a flight out of Idlewild at five forty-five. The rain had stopped, but it was colder. As I was going up the loading ramp of the DC-7, a colored boy from the catering department was coming down. I dropped the overcoat on his arm. “Have a good Christmas,” I said.

  When we were airborne and the NO SMOKING sign went off, I lit a cigarette. How she’d learned where I was in New York was routine, actually. She’d known all the time. All her detectives had to do was notify their New York office what flight I’d taken out of Miami, and have me picked up at Idlewild again and tailed to the hotel. The rest of it, however, was considerably more subtle—waiting me out till I called first and learned she’d left the motel without a forwarding address. And then giving me a long half-hour to think about what I’d thrown away for ever, like an old man remembering some girl who’d done everything but draw him a diagram when he was fifteen. That was a nice touch.

  We were down at Miami shortly after nine. I waited impatiently out front for my bag and took a cab. It seemed to take for ever, through the downtown traffic and across the MacArthur Causeway. Dover Way was on the Biscayne side, not far from the bay, a quiet side street only three or four blocks long. 206 was half of a side-by-side duplex set back off the street with a hedge in front and shadowy, bougainvillea-covered walls on both sides. I paid off the cab and went up the walk. Lights were on beside the door, but the adjoining apartment appeared to be dark. I pressed the button.

  She was wearing a dark skirt and severe white blouse. I kicked the door shut, dropped the bag, and took her in my arms. She submitted to being kissed in that same cool way—quite gracious about it but not particularly eager that it become a trend. She smiled. “How do you like our place?”

  It was small, well-furnished, air-conditioned, and very quiet. The living room, which seemed to be more than half of it, was carpeted in gray, and the floor-length curtains at the window in front and the larger one on the left were dark green. The sofa and three chairs were Danish modern, and there was a long coffee table that appeared to be teak and was protected with plate glass. There were three hassocks covered with corduroy in explosive colors. Straight opposite, an open doorway led into the bedroom. Just to the right of it another opened into a small dining area and kitchen. To the left of the bedroom doorway were some built-in bookshelves with sliding glass doors. A radio-phonograph console in limned oak stood in the corner.

  The tape recorder she’d bought was set up on one end of the coffee table, plugged into an extension cord that ran across the carpet to a wall outlet. There were several boxes of tape beside it, and some stenographer’s notebooks and pencils.

  “I was working,” she explained. She sat down on one of the hassocks beside the coffee table and reached for a cigarette. I lit it for her, and one for myself, and sat cross-legged on the floor.

  I looked round the apartment. “You were pretty sure I’d come back, weren’t you?”

  “Why not?” she asked. “I’ve been studying you for a week.”

  “And seventy-five thousand would do it? All it took was a little time?”

  She nodded. “Actually, I don’t think you care a great deal for money as such, but you have some very expensive tastes. And you’re quite cynical.”

  She was probably right, I thought. I looked at the classic line of the head and the brilliant coloring and the severe formality of the blouse that came up to end in a plain band collar round the softness of her throat and wondered if she’d considered the possibility I might have come back because of her. I asked her.

  “No,” she said. “Why should I?”

  “Because maybe I did, in part.”

  “That sounds rather unlikely. At any rate, I wouldn’t have depended on it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You’re quite an attractive young man. I doubt you have any great problem with girls; and the country’s full of them.”

  “You’re overdoing the modesty. And why did you call me a young man?”

  Her eyebrows raised. “Twenty-eight?”

  “And what’s thirty-four?”

  “So you checked my driver’s license?”

  “Of course. Not for your age, naturally, but to find out who you were. Incidentally, you don’t look thirty.”

  “You’re quite flattering,” she said. “And now if we’re through assessing my drawing power, why don’t we get down to business?”

  This was beginning to bug me a little. No woman had any right to be as attractive as she was and at the same time as contemptuous of the fact and of its effect on somebody else. I took her hand and pulled her down on the floor beside me and held her in my arms and kissed her. Instead of objecting, however, she put her arms around my heck. In a moment her eyes opened, very large and dreamy, just under mine. I kissed her again, feeling a tremendous excitement in just touching her.

  After a while I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom and turned off the light and undressed her very slowly, and she was as beautifully adept and as pleasant and as far away and unreachable as ever. Cle
arly, the simplest way to rid the agenda of distracting minor issues like sex was to get them over with.

  Four

  She lay beside me in the darkness. I could see the glowing tip of her cigarette.

  “All right,” I said. “Now tell me the whole thing.”

  “Suppose we begin right where we left off? I’m going to destroy him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I hate him.”

  “And why do you?”

  I thought I heard her sigh. “Why don’t you try a wild guess as to why a woman might hate a man after she’s wrecked her own marriage for him and thrown away her reputation and helped him make a fortune, and lived for him twenty-four hours a day for six of the last few years she’d ever have to give anybody—?”

  “Take it easy,” I said. “I’m just a bystander. So he left you?”

  “Yes.” Then she laughed. It was like glass breaking. “Of course, while I was running his business for him, I should have suggested we set up a pension plan for over-age employees. I’d have nothing to worry about. I could buy a little cottage, get a cat for companionship, and live the full, rich life every woman looks forward to—”

  “Knock it off,” I protested. “Who is she? And how do you know it’s permanent?”

  “Oh, she’s quite pretty. Honey-colored and virginal looking, with a wide-eyed and appealing sort of defenselessness about her. Like anthrax, or a striking cobra—”

  “Come off it,” I said. “How the hell could you lose out to a cornball routine like that? She’d never lay a glove on you.”

  ”It’s a little trick you do with numbers. She’s twenty-three.”

  “Well, what of it?”

  “Oh, you are a young man, aren’t you? I’d forgotten, men do go through a phase between their first and second passes at the jail-bait when they’re actually interested in women— But never mind. They’re going to be married in January.”

  “You’re getting ahead of me,” I said. “He couldn’t marry you because he already had a wife. What happened to her?”

  “What happened to her, besides the fact they haven’t lived together for the past eight years, is that she died about five months ago.