The Valentine Estate

by Stanley Ellin

  As he approached the BOAC check-in counter, the suspicion that this might be nerves hardened into the chilling conviction that it wasn’t. Somewhere close by, that face was turned his way, those eyes were following him. At the desk he suddenly looked around. The arcade was crowded – any Sunday evening at the close of the season it would be – but every face in sight was apparently intent on business that had nothing to do with Chris Monte. It was worse than being followed in the car. The car had been like a protective shell. Here he felt completely vulnerable.

  It still wasn’t the police, he was sure. They didn’t have to go pussyfooting after him, they could play their cards wide open. They knew he wanted to get to London, and all they had to do to block him off was post his name at the trans-Atlantic airline counters. In fact, their knowing about his BOAC reservation was in his favour, because when he cashed in the ticket it would show Greenberger his warning had been heeded. No question now, he’d have to cash in the ticket and take his chances on getting aboard the Tuesday night flight from Boston to London without a reservation. Merely exchanging his ticket here for one aboard that flight would leave too much of a trail behind him.

  He had no trouble cashing in the ticket, but it was a different matter when he approached the airline counters offering non-stop flights to Boston. The early evening flights were all solidly booked, it turned out, so he finally settled for a seat on the late flight which would get him to Boston at one in the morning. It cut his time perilously short if he didn’t make contact with his wife and Prendergast soon after arrival, but he found there was even a vicious satisfaction in thinking of their expressions when he walked in on them at that hour.

  The name he gave the girl filling out the ticket was Frederick Walker, his father’s name, which, as he reflected, might have been his had Group-Captain Frederick Walker of the Royal Air Force lived long enough to attend the baptism. The home address he gave was a Jefferson Avenue number on the Beach which would have had him living somewhere in the middle of Flamingo Park. Paying cash had its advantages. A credit card, he thought, bought status. Cash bought anonymity.

  The suitcase, he told the girl at the desk, he’d like to keep with him a while, then, ticket in his pocket, he went over to a bank of pay lockers and shoved the suitcase into one. Better that than have it on its way to Boston if he were kept from boarding the plane. The suitcase was a left-over from the good years, the key to its twin locks long since misplaced, and one of the locks immediately sprang open, as it frequently did at any jolt. He left it that way, irritably certain that when he hauled the bag out again the same thing would happen anyhow. Then he waited until there was no one near by and slipped the gun and silencer into another locker. He breathed easier after that. The plane’s departure was scheduled for ten o’clock, it was now only six, so he had four hours to kill at the airport. Whatever happened during those four hours, he wouldn’t be found with the gun on him.

  At a news-stand he got change in silver for a couple of dollars and shut himself into a phone booth. Beth had used Prendergast’s Commonwealth Avenue address on the wedding licence as her Boston address, and that he had no trouble remembering. The phone number was something else again. He dialled long distance information for it, wondering what his next step would be if it were unlisted. His wife and Prendergast should have reached the house by now, but suppose they were heading for a different destination in Boston? Some place where busybody neighbours wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on them?

  Luck was with him. He got the number and dialled it, each coin, as it dropped into the box, sounding like a melodious stroke of doom.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Yes?’

  It was Prendergast’s voice all right. And from the eager note in it he was expecting an urgent call.

  Chris hung up the receiver. So that Commonwealth Avenue address was correct, and Prendergast was there. Which meant Beth was there, too. It didn’t make a very pretty picture, but, he told himself, fifty thousand dollars and a pretty picture along with it would be a little too much to expect.

  There were several bars along the arcade. He walked to the nearest, then forced himself to pass it by. If he could settle for a couple of drinks while in this mood it would be different. But he couldn’t, and this was no time to lie to himself about it. It was the same with the drinking as the betting. You went to Hialeah with a couple of hundred bucks hard-earned money in your pocket, figuring half of it for the day’s investment, and you came home with the pocket empty and your IOU’s all over the place.

  He passed by another bar, more uneasily aware than ever of someone just beyond his peripheral vision keeping watch on him, then retraced his steps and walked into the bar. At least, seated against the wall in that semi-darkness he could put aside that tight-bellied feeling of waiting to have a knife jammed into his back any instant.

  When the waitress came up to him he settled for a bottle of beer, admiring his own self-control. Then he said to the girl, ‘Is there another way out of here? Another door out?’

  ‘No, sir. That there’s the onliest one. Just one beer?’

  ‘One at a time,’ Chris said.

  Two hours later, bloated with a succession of beers, he walked out blinking into the brightness of the arcade. The next morning’s Herald was now piled high on the news-stand, its headline blaring out the news of McClure’s death, a subhead asking, Gang War On Beach?

  They were headlines, he knew, calculated to give Greenberger bleeding ulcers.

  He bought a paper. The news story, as he had suspected it would, suggested revenge by the Zucker mob, but there was no mention in it of Chris Monte or Joseph Prendergast. That was good in one way, bad in another. He already had plenty to use against Prendergast when the time came, but any additional information about the man would strengthen his hand that much more. The gun was a stage effect. Polite blackmail was the real weapon, and it struck him that he was fast learning to think like some of those top-level guests at Cobia who always made executive suite politics sound like happy adventures in blackmail.

  When he re-entered the bar, the waitress, his prodigal tip warm in her pocket, greeted him like an old friend and left him to nurse a solitary final bottle of beer until his flight was announced. He waited up to the last possible minute – better to cut it close than stand in line with the hatchet-faced unknown taking his measure – and then quickly made his way back to the lockers where the gun and valise were stored. He got the suitcase out first, and, since he couldn’t wait for some slow-motion bystanders to clear away from there, had an awkward time of it getting the gun back under his shirt unobserved.

  He had cut it so close that his bag was the last to be checked through the desk and on to the loading belt. Then it was trundling along on its way, and he sprinted for the departure door.

  He stood there poised, prepared for any disaster, as a dapper attendant in uniform and flight cap examined his ticket. This was the acid test, he knew. If there was any notation against the name of Frederick Walker on the flight list, that steel door might as well be five thousand miles away instead of five short steps. As the attendant’s neatly manicured finger slowly ran down the names on the list, he could already feel the official hand clamping down on his shoulder. Then suddenly it was all over. He was through the door and into the plane. He was in his seat. Soft music was playing, and the stewardess was telling him with more than the usual solicitude to fasten his seat belt. He could guess how he looked from her tone. She probably figured he was suffering flight panic.

  He fastened the seat belt and sat back, his eyes closed, his breathing still ragged. The music stopped, the rising whine of jet engines coming to life replaced it. The plane moved, turned, started to roll bumpily along in search of its take-off strip.

  The valise.

  What was it about the valise that bothered him?

  At the moment of take-off he realized what it was. When he had thumped the valise down on the weigh-in counter a few minutes before he had noted with satisfaction that the c
ranky catch remained tight shut.

  It had not been shut at all when he had stored the bag in the locker.

  Part Three

  1

  The plane levelled off, the ‘No Smoking’ light blinked out. His seat was the middle one of three abreast, and, pushing his way into the aisle, he had to knee aside the legs of the man in the aisle seat, a darkly sun-tanned customer who snarled at him under his breath. Put together sun-tan and sour mood, Chris thought, and you had the authentic homeward bound Gold Coast tourist, male or female. Making his way back to the toilet, he took note that everyone around him seemed to fall into that category, but one of them, he was sure – at least one – was here on business, and Chris Monte was the business.

  In the toilet he locked the door behind him, pulled out the gun and flipped it open. Surprisingly, it was still loaded. He could have sworn he would find it empty. If the enemy had watched him store away the suitcase and could so easily get at it, it seemed logical to suppose they had marked the locker the gun was in, too, and had removed the cartridges. Snapping shut that tricky catch on the suitcase after they had combed through it was a freak accident, it could be written off as a fluke. Leaving him fully armed was stupidity.

  Stupidity? He turned the gun over and dumped the cartridges into his hand. One had been fired, the one used to intimidate Mookerjee. And five were blanks. Phonies. Just made for noise, not violence. If it had come to a showdown he would have been disarmed and helpless without even knowing it.

  And it wasn’t Leon who had loaded the gun with blanks. Not a chance of that. It was a much more capable and dangerous operative who had done it.

  Those blanks were the nitty-gritty. He didn’t know much about gun calibres, but this revolver was a hefty one, at least a .38, and the kind of blanks one could most readily obtain for such use as starters’ guns was small-calibre .22 stuff. These big blanks were special merchandise, and it took special people to either cart them around for such wild contingencies or to be able to dig them up on the spot.

  But who?

  And why this passionate interest in him?

  If all they wanted of him was a lead to Beth, they only had to stay close at his heels until he caught up to her himself, not move in on him this way.

  He gave up trying to answer the unanswerable. He reloaded the blanks into the gun, buttoned the gun under his shirt, flushed the toilet as justification for hogging the premises, and made his way back to his seat. The dimly lit cabin was funereal with its half-asleep cargo, and when the stewardess, taking orders for drinks, reached him at last, he gratefully ordered bourbon in lieu of the cognac she couldn’t provide.

  He took down his allotment of two bourbons as soon as it was delivered. He didn’t have to worry about working up a thirst for more, because airline regulations, he knew, were hard and fast about setting limits, where conscience wasn’t.

  2

  Except for the passengers gathered before the baggage rack, the Boston airport terminal was a vast stretch of emptiness at this ungodly hour of the morning. His bag was among the first to come skidding on to the rack, but he hung back, letting the others snatch up their luggage and hasten off. The crowds at Miami International had offered good cover for whoever was tailing him. This way he had a chance of spotting the man.

  Then his bag stood solitary on the rack, and he was there all alone. Which, he was sure, didn’t mean he had gotten clear of his shadow. There had been the two scoutmaster types on the Beach, there had been the flickering suggestion of a sharp-featured man close behind him in Miami airport, there had been at least one other going through his belongings in the lockers, and what it added up to was that the enemy, like dragon’s teeth, had an uncanny ability to spring up out of the ground wherever he was.

  He picked up the bag and made his way to a car rental counter. In the car, heading towards the traffic tunnel from East Boston, he kept checking the rearview mirror trying to determine if the headlights close behind him might be following him with menacing intent. It was no relief when he slowed dangerously to test this, and the headlights whisked past him, because, inevitably, they were immediately replaced by another pair, just as menacing.

  There was a thickening mist in the air as he approached the tunnel. Emerging from it into waterfront Boston, he found that in the chill wetness which fogged the windshield and sent beads of water trickling down it everything was shadows against shadows, street-lights showing only as pale nimbuses with the grey mist swirling through them.

  It offered a chance to pull away from anyone following, and he seized it at once, cutting corners into side streets now and again and circling a block or two before getting back on the track. To try more than these simple tricks, he realized, he’d have to know Boston a lot better than he did. No use going too far down a side street when it might wind up in a dead end.

  As far as he could see, the one lucky break he had gotten was that the address was on Commonwealth, because he had a fair idea of where Commonwealth was. And Beacon. And Boylston. Those three and no more. Because all three led across Boston to the Longwood Cricket Club where the tennis action was. Had been. One or another was the route you took to the action every morning of a tournament and back from it every afternoon, as long as you were a winner.

  In his time, until the knee went bad, he had come to know a lot of cities that way from Miami to Melbourne. A city was a place with a hotel at one end and a tennis tournament at the other. And scattered around it were some luxurious homes and duplex apartments where high-seeded talent from all over the world were always welcome, and where they could learn expensive tastes along with which forks to use and how to speak to the rich. The very rich, with chauffeured cars and go-go finishing school daughters. Bad enough those expensive tastes. Worse if you flipped for one of the daughters. The knife she kept handy to use on you when the time came would measure clean through you from back to front.

  Above all, a city was a place of nemesis. A place where you lay awake at night in twitching misery, replaying lost points even when you had won the match that day. Where, against the unmelodious music of Frenchy’s snoring in the other bed, you saw the diabolic images of Fraser, Hoad, Cooper, Olmedo, teeth flashing in a triumphant grin, rackets poised for the kill.

  Frenchy liked that. That, he pointed out, was the way he had been. That’s how one should be. The nerves were part of the queepmen. Tight in bed meant loose on the court. If they kept you awake, eh bien, a nice glass of wine would settle that. Or, as time went on and the wine didn’t work any more, a nice stiff cognac. And if there was a little head the next morning because of the cognac, a little pill for energy. And another little pill surreptitiously washed down by lemonade between sets in a hard match. And maybe one more later to make sure. And at midnight when the pills had you so wound up that you felt as if your skin was slowly being peeled off you with a scalpel, an extra measure of cognac to get them out of the system and bring on sleep.

  Longwood and the pills at one end, a hotel room and cognac at the other, that was Commonwealth Avenue.

  He found it after a couple of wrong turns, recognizing it by the aisle of trees running along it as a divider, but it was impossible to make out any house numbers in the mist. He had to get out of the car twice to check the numbers, and near the corner of Exeter Street when he judged he was about a block from his destination, he parked the car. Sitting there, he waited out five tedious minutes by his watch, but no one else parked in the vicinity during that time.

  He walked the block to the house, and at first sight of it was sure he had the wrong address. Prendergast had smelled of money, big money, and this house didn’t. It was a frame building, large but weatherworn. Almost shabby. And the early springtime lawn before it, unlike the ones on either side, was patchy and untended. But it was the house all right, he saw when he mounted the porch. Beside the door on a small, unobtrusive brass plate was the name and vocation of the owner. Joseph Prendergast, Real Estate.

  For a man in the real estate busin
ess, Chris reflected, this house was one hell of an advertisement.

  He rang the bell, bearing down on it hard, until Prendergast flung open the door and stood there looking at him thunderstruck.

  3

  The man seemed in the grip of a paralysis. He might have been looking at a corpse sit up in its coffin. Then as Chris coldly surveyed him from head to foot, taking in the incongruously gaudy pyjamas and handsome Japanese robe, Prendergast recovered himself, clutching the robe together at his chest like a woman petulantly putting on a display of modesty.

  ‘What are you doing here, Monte? What are you up to?’

  ‘Calling on my wife, Joe.’

  ‘Here? At two in the morning? You’re drunk, Monte, aren’t you? The last time I saw Elizabeth –’

  ‘Knock it off, Joe.’ Chris shouldered his way past the man and pushed the door shut behind them. The light in the foyer was dim and was the only one showing downstairs. But a bright band showed from a door near the head of the staircase on the first floor. ‘Where is she? Up there?’

  ‘I’m alone here, Monte. And this is an outrage. If you’re not out of this house in one minute flat, I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Sure you will. Then I can tell them to get in touch with the Miami Beach police. Lieutenant Greenberger might even give me a citation for it. He’s wondering where you are.’

  ‘Why?’ Prendergast was all wariness now. ‘What business could he have with me?’