by Lionel White
When you get him,” Isaid, “don’t say anything. Just hand me the phone.”
Fleming stood up and moved over beside Sarah. He dialed the number and I could hear it ring. It rang three times and then stopped. I heard a voice at the other end.
Silently he handed the instrument to me.
I took it, being careful to keep the gun on him. I knew he was a hero-type. I didn’t trust him.
"Hardie?” I said.
There was a yes at the other end.
“This is Sam Russell. Listen to me carefully. I want you to get hold of your contact. I want you to tell them that I am at Cutter s Cabins on Route 301, just before you come to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. I am in cabin number six. I have what they want. Do you understand me?”
There was a long silence and finally he spoke.
“I understand you.”
“Can you do it at once? I will be here for not more than an hour. An hour at the most. Do you follow me?”
"What do you have for them, Russell?” he countered.
“I have the money,” I said. “The money. But only for an hour.”
“Stay where you are, ” he said. There was a click at the other end of the line.
Fleming was staring at me. Suddenly he spoke.
“You are a bigger fool than I took you to be, Russell,” he said. “I guess the state won’t have to kill you after all.”
“Nobody will kill me,” I said.
“No? Well it happens I know who Hardie represents. What do you think you can do? Just ask them here and turn the money over to them? That they will thank you? You damned idiot, they’ll take the money and gun you down. They’ll kill you and they’ll kill us, too.”
“They won’t kill me, Mr. Fleming,” I said. “And if you will just shut up for a few minutes and do what I tell you to do, they won’t kill you, either. They have no reason to kill you.
He turned to Sarah. “The man is insane,” he said.
I could tell by the way she was looking at me that she agreed.
“All right,” I said, “we have nothing to do but wait. So just sit there and make yourselves—”
He started to argue again but I finally shut him up and at last the three of us were just standing there in the room, waiting. Sarah had gotten out of the chair and she and Fleming were back against the wall. I stood just inside the door, where I could watch the road from the window.
I had figured it would take at least a half an hour. I was wrong by a full fifteen minutes.
The first car to pass was the black Chrysler sedan. A heavy-set man was driving and I figured it was Leopold. He must have been shacked up very close by. He was alone in the car. A couple of hundred yards behind him was a second car. A green station wagon. Four men were in it. Neither car slowed up or hesitated as they passed. But I could see the occupants carefully eying the cabins.
I turned quickly to Fleming.
‘' If you want to be alive in time for breakfast, do exactly what I say, ’ ’ I said. “How long will it take to get the state police here?”
He hesitated, looking at me as though I wasn't making good sense.
“How long?” I yelled. “Quick!”
“About eight minutes,” he said. "Why—?”
“Shut up,” I said. “Get on that phone. Call them. Tell them not to spare the horses and tell them to bring riot guns. You,” I turned to Sarah, “duckoutof the back door and head for the barn. Get inside and don’t stir. Fleming, as soon as you get that call through, follow her. Unless you see a car coming. If you do, just stay where you are. Understand?”
He lifted his head from the phone which he had just finished dialing and nodded. But I could see that he didn’t understand. He still thought I had blown my stack.
“All right, Sarah, ’ ’ I said. *‘Now. ’ ’ I opened the door and I ran for cabin number six.
I thought eight minutes would do it. That it would be just about right.
I was wrong.
Even as I slammed the door of number six, out of the comer of my eye I saw two cars screaming back down the road toward Cutter’s Cabins.
Suzy started to say something but I didn’t have time for casual conversation.
“On the floor!” I yelled. "Under that bed!”
She started to protest, but I didn’t have time to join any discussion group. I hated to hit a woman who had recently finished giving me one of the greatest thrills a man can have in this life, but I had no option.
My right caught her on the point of the jaw and her slight, small-boned body fell back on the bed.
I pulled her and the mattress off together and I half rolled her up in it and shoved it behind the bed. I wasn’t going to take a chance on a stray shot getting her if there was any possible way to avoid it.
And then I shifted the gun back to my right hand. I went to the window then and knelt down so that I could see out of the crack between the shade and the window, which faced the road.
Chapter Twelve
I got one break and it probably saved my life.
The Chrysler screeched to a stop in front of the cabin, but the station wagon went on and didn’t stop until it as fifty yards up the road.
The fat man got out of the front seat. He looked around for a moment and then he walked slowly to the door. He wasn’t three feet from where I was squatting when he softly knocked.
“Mr. Russell?” he whispered, his voice a hoarse, nervous croak.
He rattled the knob. The door was open but he didn’t come in.
"Mr. Leopold?” I asked. “Come right in.”
But he wasn’t having any.
"This is Leopold,” he said. “I understand you have something for me. Do you want to give it to me? If you do, please come out.
“I have your money, Mr. Leopold,” I called through the door. “Or at least I understand it is yours. But you will have to come in for it.”
He hesitated for several moments. I could see what was going through his mind. He felt it would be a mistake to open that door. It would have been.
“The money is mine,” he said at last. “I suggest if you are telling the truth, you come outside. And bring it with you. ”
“You come in, Mr. Leopold.”
He waited again for a moment and I saw the knob begin to turn. But then he must have changed his mind. The knob stopped turning and the next thing I saw was his big meaty shoulders as he slowly walked back to the Chrysler.
He must have made some sort of signal that I didn’t see. The next moment I heard the sound of a motor as someone stepped on a throttle and an engine suddenly roared. There was the scream of tires spinning in a torturous start on the cement pavement.
I knew what was going to happen next. So did Mr. Leopold. But he made one mistake. He figured that because he didn’t have a gun, that because he was just simply walking away and getting back into his car, he was safe.
I only waited until the crack of the first shot and even that was risky. But I took the chance. Mr. Leopold had no chance at all.
The single shot I was able to get off before I flattened out on the floor, caught him just in back of his right ear, a little to the left.
And then all hell broke loose.
If Fleming’s estimate was right, I had two and a half minutes to go.
Their strategy would have done credit to a brigadier general, but unfortunately, it wasn’t correct for the current target. They drove past, firing everything they had at the cabin and they went up the road a hundred yards or so and braked and came back and tried it all over again. I just lay there, not moving.
They did it once more, and then, on the last trip back, the wagon screeched to a stop. I heard the doors open.
I didn’t get up but just raised the gun and fired blindly out of the window. I didn't care if I hit anyone or not. I j ust wanted them to know that I still had firepower. I knew if I could stall them for another half minute, I would have it made.
A couple of them must have had Tommy guns, bec
ause the woodwork just above my head began to open up as though a buzz saw was going through it.
I rolled over, past the door and fired through the other window.
The Tommies opened up again and I started to change my mind about guessing right. And then I heard the sirens.
For the next three or four minutes it sounded like a busy morning on the Western Front. And then suddenly it was over.
The cabin looked like a sieve.
I stood up, went over to the iron bed. I reached under it and pulled out the mattress.
Suzy slowly got to her feet. She was as white as a sheet and I truly believe it was the only time in her entire life that she was really frightened.
A half-hour later seven of us were crowded together in the tiny office of Cutter’s Cabins. Sarah Cutter, Fleming, Suzy, myself and three husky state troopers. One trooper had a notebook in his hand and Fleming, as usual, was popping off.
Outside were a half dozen state police cars. An ambulance had just left with the last of the dead and a couple of troopers were hurrying traffic past.
“All right, Russell, you have proved your point,” Fleming said. "You almost got us all shot down by that gang of killers, but you proved your point. You have only made one mistake. You haven’t proved anything which changes my mind. Officer,” he turned to one of the troopers, "put the handcuffs on that man. I am holding him for murder.”
I sighed.
“Will you listen to me for just one minute,” I said. “Just one minute, please.”
He hesitated and the trooper hesitated. I hurried it up. He wasn’t going to give me anything.
Just which murder are you talking about now?” I asked. “The prisoner should have the right to know.”
The murder of a woman named Marilyn Kelley will do as well as the next,
Literature & Fiction Dept.
Los Angeles Public Library 630 W. Fifth Street Los Angeles, CA 90071
he said.
I laughed.
“You have the evidence?” I asked.
“I have the corpse.”
It was the time for the gambit.
“You have a corpse Mr. Fleming, but you have the wrong corpse.” I said.
There was a sudden gasp and I looked quickly over at Suzy. I went on quickly.
"Fingerprints don’t lie,” I said. “This girl here is Marilyn Kelley, or as she likes to be known, ‘Marilyn K.’l”
There was a sudden din of voices and then Fleming yelled for silence.
“Let him finish,” he said. “It’s pathetic, but let him finish.”
"Thanks,” I said. "Thanks a lot. As far as identity is concerned, that’s easy. The Kelley sisters were entertainers. In New York. They would have had to have been fingerprinted, according to municipal regulations. The fingerprints of this girl here—” I looked over to where the girl who had been calling herself Suzy stood—”of this girl and the corpse can be checked. You could save time by not bothering with any denials.”
They all looked at her then. She didn’t move; her expression remained cold and unchanged. She just stood there, saying nothing. I looked back at Fleming. I could see that for the first time I was beginning to reach him.
“Now can I have a couple of minutes?” I asked.
He nodded.
“This is Marilyn К.” I said. “The dead girl is Suzy, her twin sister, whom she murdered. And here is exactly what happened. I will start with Marcus.”
No one said a word. I took a deep breath and went on.
"Itwastheway Itoldittoyou, Fleming,” Isaid. "I stopped when I saw her at the side of the road and picked her up. There was just one thing that I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand that she had just finished murdering a man named Aurelio Marcus. She got him with a blackjack, at the root of the neck. She’s an expert with that sort of thing. I know. I have witnessed her at work.”
This time is was Marilyn who interrupted.
“You louse,” she said. “You dirty louse. You can't prove a thing. Not a thing. Nobody can prove that Marcus—”
“You’ll have your turn to talk,” Fleming said. “Let him finish.”
“She killed Marcus. I didn’t know that at the time but I know it now. I know because she planted the blackjack in my car. The one you found. But I did know she had the money. She told me, right away.
“The second time she murdered she killed Herman Battle, your deputy. Battle was more or less an accident. He smelled something and moved in,
98
LIONEL WHITE
planning to shake us down. It cost him his life. And it was deliberate murder. Battle was tied up; I had tied him up myself. And then, for a moment, I stepped out of the room. When I came back, his forehead was caved in and he was dead. She used the tire iron from my car for that one.”
Again she interrupted, her voice a harsh croak. “Proof, ” she said. “Where’s the proof?”
“I’m the proof,” I said. “I saw you do it. But let’s go on. As I say, Battle was a sort of innocent bystander. But her twin sister, the girl who lies in the marble slab, was not just a casual little piece of homicide. That was the real murder. The one she had planned all along. The one she has probably been planning for years. Because sister Suzy was the only person in the world who could give her something that she absolutely had to have.”
Her voice was sarcastic now. And she wasn’t bothering to deny her identity any longer.
“And what could Suzy ever give me that I needed or wanted?” she asked.
"Her identity,” I said. “Her identity, baby. Your sister was clean, she had a decent reputation, she didn’t fool around with mobs. She had talent, although God knows you have your share of that, too, in a slightly different field. But you knew one thing. That the only way you would ever get away from your Mob friends was to lose your identity—or trade it for your sister’s. This would be especially true if you stole money from them.
“And so you planned it. Planned it beautifully. The one thing you lacked, I came along and supplied. You lacked a patsy. If there was to be a murder, there had to be a murderer. Leopold might fit the bill, but that would be a calculated risk. I was a perfect setup and I played right into your hands. You arranged to have Suzy arrive at the motel after I left. When she walked into that room, you killed her. And then you did the kind of job on her that no one would ever believe a woman would do. But I know you, sweetie. I know what you are capable of. Your trouble is you made one big mistake.”
Yes—and what was that? ’ ’ The voice was bitter with sarcasm.
“You didn’t sucker me completely. You didn’t get the money. And so you had to come back and try all over again!”
“You dirty louse,” she said. “You promised!”
I really had to laugh at that one. I promised!
“Sure I promised.” I said. “I’ll keep that promise, too. The money is still in the locker at the airport where I told you I would stash it. The key is at the General Delivery window in Baltimore, just like I said.”
“You’re a liar!” she screamed. “There was no key.”
“Yes, there was and there is, toots,” I said. “The trouble with you is you aren’t used to using your own name. You see, I wanted to make doubly sure you got that money. I mailed the key under your name—I mailed it to Marilyn Kelley!”
That was the one that finally got her. It took all three troopers to hold her. After about six minutes they finally got her calmed down and they put the cuffs on her.
They were starting to take her out when she balked. She turned to me.
“Tell me something,” she asked and her voice was as calm as a summer’s breeze. “Tell me something. How did you know? You couldn’t have checked fingerprints. I am a good actress and my sister and I were absolutely identical. So how could you tell?”
“I couldn’t—at first,” I said. “You did a great job with the hair bleach and the lack of make-up was a disguise in itself. You are a great actress—you don’t know how great, b
aby. But there is one thing you couldn’t change. You couldn’t change that birthmark on your leg. And the chance of twins having identical birthmarks just doesn’t exist. But don’t feel bad about it. I knew, even before I switched on the light early this morning and saw that heart-shaped mark.”
“You’re a liar,” she said. “You couldn’t have known.”
I shook my head sadly.
“I knew,” I said. “I knew, all right. You see, baby, there is one thing a woman can never lie about successfully and one thing which a woman can never forget.”
“And they are?” she asked, still sardonic.
“She can’t lie about being a virgin,” I said, “and she can’t forget her technique in a bed—not if she really has a technique. And you do, Marilyn K.— you do!”
They took her away then and I felt sick about it. No matter what she was or what she had done, it made me sick to see her go out of that room.
But I was glad about one thing. I was glad I had kept my promise and that she would get the three hundred thousand dollars.
A woman like Marilyn K., with her talents and three hundred grand, can do amazing things with a jury.
THEEND
THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR Lionel White
This book is for Helene My wife
Whom I Love
Chapter One
A man not reticent in accepting credit when credit was due, Gerald Tomlinson was particularly proud of his wisdom in selecting Fairlawn Acres as a base of operations.
The choice of Fairlawn, of course, was just another of the endless details in Tomlinson’s overall planning; a mere cypher, but in a sense, symptomatic of the extreme care and vivid imagination Tomlinson exercised in laying the groundwork. Tomlinson, a tall, thin man with a complexion like aging newsprint, had been at one time a policeman, a second grade detective in fact, before the scandal broke and he’d been forced to leave the department in disgrace.
That early training had come in handy more than once and it was largely responsible for the slightly unorthodox, but rather brilliant arrangements which the ex-policeman made before embarking on the venture.
