The Brass Cupcake

by John D. MacDonald

  Maybree turned and patted Kathy on the shoulder. “See? It’s all set. Now go back and finish your work, dear.”

  “Yes, Andrew,” she said softly.

  Andrew glanced at the clock and cleared his throat sententiously. “Men, I think we should get under way. Kathy, I’ll be back to pick you up.”

  As Arthur went to get the money out of the safe I looked over at Kathy, her head bent obediently over the keys, and I felt oddly sad at something that had been almost mine and now was forever lost. But she and I would have been misery for each other. Now her world would be bright. From now on I would be a mistake, cleverly avoided. Carriages and diapers and play pens and a trick bottle warmer for the six-o’clock feeding. I hoped none of them would inherit Andy’s teeth.

  Arthur started to sweat again as he came out with the white package. He rode with me, the package between us. Andrew followed us in his car. I pulled up a few hundred yards from where 808 turns right. Fast traffic hummed by.

  Andrew stood in the shadows beside Arthur Myers as I put the cross of tar tape on my right headlight.

  When I straightened up I saw that Arthur was holding his automatic in his hand. He laughed with harsh, unreal joviality. “Cliff, boy, we won’t have to go looking for you south of the border, I hope?”

  “Point that damn thing down at your own feet, Arthur.”

  “You’ve still got ten minutes, Cliff,” Maybree said.

  “You better head back now.”

  “Come right to the office, Cliff,” Arthur said with a quaver in his voice. “Right to the office. We’ll check the stuff against the inventory.”

  I got behind the wheel. The white package was beside me on the seat. When I was a hundred feet down the highway I saw Andrew swing around in a U turn and head back for the city. I still didn’t like my odds. Any part of them. If no murder has been involved, you can feel fairly safe on a purchase. If you’re known, you can meet the boy face to face for the switch. But this one was sour. There was nothing more for my unknown friends to lose. A neat little hole in my head and they keep both the dough and the stones. But that was what my bonus was for. The risk of that hole in the head. And if it went like glass, there would be certain other parties eager to make up for the oversight.

  At the corner I turned and pulled up. The dashboard clock was accurate at three minutes to nine. I put the special between my thighs very gently. It was on full cock, and the brass under the hammer was alive.

  Relax, Bartells. Johnny’s sure they’re pros. They can’t risk crossing you. The grapevine will have them pinned down by name in no time, and they’ll never make another sale. They know that too.

  Thinking is no good now. See that minute hand? Get the heap rolling. That’s it. Now ten miles an hour. Right on the button. Careful, Bartells. Your hands are pretty greasy on that wheel.

  The gravel rolled slowly back under the wheels and the headlights waved up and down as the front wheels bounced over the cross ruts. I picked the special out of my lap and held it in my right hand, steering with my left. The right window was down. My right ear itched. I had the crazy idea that it itched right where the slug would hit. At that range I’d never hear the sound of the shot.

  The hardest thing I ever did was to keep from pushing down on that gas pedal. I teased it along at ten miles an hour.

  One mile, two, three through the night, trees leafed together overhead, blotting out the stars, the headlights shining down the dark tunnel.

  Fifty yards ahead a flashlight blinked twice. I shoved the shift up into second with the heel of the hand that held the gun. The car walked, complaining, at five miles an hour. It walked slowly on by where the light had been. ’Way beyond where the light had been.

  I gasped with the shock as the hard package hit my arm. It was plain damn fool luck that my finger didn’t clamp on the trigger. I jammed on the brake and sat for an instant, breathing hard. I pulled the shift into neutral and down into low, my foot on the clutch. I transferred the special to my left hand, found the package with my right. It weighed about a pound and a half, a chamois bag with a drawstring. I worked my fingers into the neck of it, pulled out a ring. The dash lights hit the stone and refracted into a hard rainbow gleam. I stuffed it back in the sack, put the gun in my lap, picked up the white bundle, and chucked it out through the window, using my wrists, the way you throw a basketball. Over the hum of the motor I heard it crash in the brush.

  I sat still and sweat ran into my left eye, acid and stinging. I heard a rattle of the brush and then nothing more. A mosquito, out of season, whined around my ear.

  The instant the harsh white beam of the flashlight struck me, I stepped down on the gas and let the clutch out fast. The wagon leaped ahead, the back tires skidding on the gravel. I let the hammer down with my thumb and stuffed the special back into the spring. The car slewed on the next turn and I fought it back. Just as it straightened out, under control, I heard a thin popping sound back where the transfer had been made. Five distant shots and silence, then one more. The boys had wasted no time.

  At the end of 808 I turned right as directed, slammed on the brakes, and skidded on dry pavement toward the sawhorse across the road. I ducked below the window level, yanking out the special.

  Harry’s voice called softly, “Cliff? That you, Cliff?”

  I sat up, weak with relief. “Me, Harry. This where they stuck you?”

  “Out in left field,” he said. He carried the rifle through the crook of his arm.

  “Did you hear the shots?” I asked him.

  “Listen,” he said. I cut the motor. We both heard the thin distant cry of a siren in the night. He laughed without humor. “I’ll wait like a good boy until they come and tell me to go home. You go ahead. Take the shoulder and you can get around O.K.”

  “Be good, Harry,” I said.

  Arthur was staring down the stairs as I went up, three at a time. When he saw the bag in my hand his smile started to grow. It spread all over his face.

  “Good boy! Good boy, Cliff!”

  Maybree still hadn’t returned from taking Kathy home. We went into Arthur’s office and locked the door. I dumped the contents of the bag on his green desk blotter. The collection winked and glittered with an evil fire of its own. Diamond and emerald bracelets, sunburst diamond brooches, pins and clips and rings. Decorations for aged sagging flesh, puffy fingers, dough-soft wrists. The rubies had the gleam of blood.

  Arthur’s fingers danced over them like little white fat legs and I could hear his breath wheeze in his throat. As he identified each piece he ticked it off on the inventory with a bookkeeper’s check mark.

  The last item was the diamond that had been pried out of the gold locket.

  He looked close to tears of happiness as he said, “All here, Cliff. All here. Everything.”

  We put it all back in the bag and put it in the safe. He spun the big dial. He patted his comfortable little stomach and danced behind the desk. He stopped suddenly and peered at me. “You look funny!”

  “I am a very funny fellow. A natural humorist. Master of the quip.”

  “O.K. Be snotty. You make more money in one day than I make in five years. Go and laugh yourself to death. But don’t tell anybody. You know the company policy. When we make a recovery, it’s our own business. You’re leaving town tonight, I guess.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  His eyes widened and he jigged nervously. “I don’t know what’s going on. Something funny. You ought to go away for a while. We’ve got the stones back. That’s all I care.”

  I went out to the switchboard, changed the night plug to Wilma’s line, and phoned the hotel. Melody answered after a long time. Her voice was slurred a bit.

  “Progress report, darling,” I said. “Now I could almost buy insurance. Almost, but not quite.”

  “Are you coming over?”

  “Not tonight. Go to sleep and dream of me.”

  Her voice was small and shy. “I could dream better if you were here. L
isten to me! I told you I was a no-good woman.”

  “That hotel gets pretty stuffy about things like that.”

  “Please tell me how you would have acquired that interesting morsel of information. Who was she?”

  “She sold power shovels, sang baritone, and wore Queen Mary hats.”

  She sighed into the phone. “You’re all through now, Bartells. Ball and chain. No more freedom. ’Night, darlin’. Phone me in the morning.”

  I went directly to headquarters. The fantastic building was aglow with light.

  Al Case, the police reporter for the Messenger, was leaning against the wall outside Powy’s office, sulking. He stared hard at me. He grumbled, “God knows what’s going on. A fat lot of co-operation I get around here. Eleven years doing their dirty work, getting their pictures in the paper, and when something pops, a new stiff going into the ice chest, everybody running around tearing the hair off their chests, do they say, ‘Let’s give the news to good old Al?’ In a pig’s upper plate they do!”

  I pushed into Powy’s office. Guilfarr and De Rider were with Powy. All three men looked at me and Powy rumbled, “Don’t you know how to knock on a door?”

  “Gee, I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I was too excited to think.”

  “Quite all right, Bartells,” Guilfarr said, glaring at Powy. “We want to tell you what happened. First, did you get your stones back?”

  “All of them, checked with the inventory.”

  “Excellent! Excellent!” he assumed a doleful look. “I am afraid that our success doesn’t quite measure up to yours.”

  “They got away!”

  “Heavens, no! There were two of them. The man is dead and the woman is in the hospital. Bob Gilman is in the hospital too, with a smashed knee. The group that contacted the couple was composed of Chief Powy, Gilman, and De Rider here. Chief, suppose you tell Clifford what happened.”

  “We had men posted all around the area the way you suggested, Bartells. At eight o’clock the three of us took a car back into the groves, and then we went up on foot, being as careful as we could. We stopped about a hundred yards shy of the road and about two miles in from the highway. Right after nine you came along. We saw the cross on the headlight. When you’d gone by we knew they were in farther, so we got out in the road and came along after you. I’m carrying too much weight to make good time, so Gilman and De Rider went on ahead of me. You fill in, Nick.”

  De Rider gave me a quick look. “We were beginning to get pretty bushed when we saw the light blink ’way ahead of you. We slowed down then and came on careful-like. When you stopped, we stopped. We saw the money when you tossed it out and we moved up close. When you gunned it and took off, we went in fast. Gilman had the big flashlight and he was swinging it back and forth to catch them. Soon as I saw the shadows of them there, I let fly and saw one of them go down. I didn’t know until later it was the woman. I sure didn’t want to shoot any woman. Well, right then Gilman went down, yelling he’d been shot. The guy took off through the brush, me after him.”

  “But he got away from you in the dark?” I asked politely.

  De Rider coughed nervously. “Now, that’s just what he did. I sure lost him. I circled around but I couldn’t pick him up again. I went back to where Gilman was. The Chief came up and pretty soon the sedan came over because the boys had heard all the shooting. The Chief called in for an ambulance for Bob and the woman. The Chief told me to go back after the car we’d come in. I hiked back down the road and I got the other sedan to take it back to town. As I got to the edge of the groves I saw a shadow and I swung and caught it in the headlights. Soon as I did that, he let fly a shot and ducked back into the groves. I swung and chased him with the car. I just wanted to make him give up. I fired in his general direction and…”

  “Unfortunately got him in the heart? Or was it the head?”

  “Right through the head,” Chief Powy said. “Damn miserable luck. You see, Bartells, while he was dodging around in there he stashed that money someplace. He had time to bury it or stuff a rock in it and sink it in one of those pools. We’ve left Harry there to guard the entire area until morning, when we can make a regular hunt for it. But I’m sure afraid we’re going to have trouble—yes, sir, a lot of trouble—finding out what he did with it. Hadn’t been for Nick’s bad luck with that shot, he could have told us himself.”

  “Is the woman hurt badly?” I asked.

  “She got it in the shoulder. She’ll be all right. The doc says she can answer questions in the morning.”

  “You won’t mind if I ask her some questions, too, will you? Just for the company records. Red tape. You know how it is.”

  Powy looked questioningly at Guilfarr. The Commissioner shrugged. “I can’t see anything wrong with that. After we talk to her in the morning, that is. On your way out, Bartells, please tell Al Case to come in. It will be all right with you to give him the full story?”

  “Leave my name and the name of the company out of it, Commissioner. Matter of policy. Just say it was a representative of the estate trying to buy back the stones who co-operated with the police on setting the trap for the thieves.”

  “Sure thing,” the Commissioner said with a smile.

  “Too bad about the money,” I said.

  Powy looked sympathetic. “A damn shame.”

  16

  I SAT AT THE END of the corridor the next morning and chatted with an intern and a nurse with the giggles while the police group was in with Mrs. Frey.

  They were taking a long time. “Will she be in shape to talk to me?” I asked.

  “Sure,” the intern said. “That woman has a lot of vitality. She’ll mend fast. Nice-looking, too. You just can’t figure people, can you?”

  “How’s her attitude?”

  “What do you expect? She’s pretty bitter. Her husband’s dead. She’s facing a hell of a long prison term when she recovers. She isn’t what you’d call cheery. Would you be?”

  The nurse went off into another gale of giggles. That intern was killing her. They beamed at each other.

  I looked down the hall as the group came out. Powy’s face was an angry brick red. He glared at me as I approached. “Go in and have a nice chat, Bartells,” he said. “Go in and get real chummy.”

  “You didn’t get anything?”

  “I’m glad we got the name they were living under. If we hadn’t traced their car back and found out they stayed at the Pelican House, I wouldn’t even know that much.”

  The nurse swept by me with a crisp rustle. I followed her in. “Are we comfortable, Mrs. Frey? Is there anything I can get you?”

  The woman on the bed had dark hair, a strong handsome face, a band of white running through her hair at the left temple. She looked at me rather than at the nurse. She rolled her head back and stared up at the ceiling. The shoulder and arm had already been placed in a cast. It looked lumpy and uncomfortable.

  “Shut the door on the way out,” I told the nurse.

  She rustled out and closed the door quietly. The room still stank of Powy’s cigar. I pulled a chair over close to the bed, sat down, and lit two cigarettes. I put one between the fingers of her left hand. She raised it slowly to her lips. But she didn’t look at me.

  “The best thing you can do is keep your mouth shut when they come around,” I said. “Talking to the law won’t do you any good.”

  She turned her head and looked at me. The dark eyes were bottomless. “You say,” she murmured.

  “I say. You and your man hit a sour one. As sour as they come. It could have been a breeze.”

  She sucked on the cigarette again, exhaled slowly toward the ceiling. “When you’re casing them, they’re all breezes, friend.”

  “You’re no punk kid. And I don’t think your man was. I think you both knew how to handle yourselves. It smelled funny to me from the beginning. Where did it go off the rails?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Didn’t you have a hunc
h this one would turn sour, Mrs. Frey?”

  “I’d like to go back to sleep, copper.”

  “I’m no copper. I’m checking for the insurance company. The room isn’t wired for sound. Anything you tell me you can deny. It’s just you and me.”

  “The insurance company! A nice cross. Bartells, they tell us. If you want to sell, go through Alfrayda to Bartells. Dandy!”

  “That only goes for the pros, honey. Not fumblers. Not people knocking off old ladies.”

  I saw her fingers squeeze the end of the cigarette into a thin wet line. “Not us. We handled our end.”

  “You fumbled it. You got excited and fumbled it.”

  Her mouth took on an ugly twist. “He’s dead now. Wally’s dead. Dead because we were crossed.”

  I leafed through the mental card file. Wally. A faint and distant bell rang. An almost legendary couple. Wally and Bea. Something about a very big one in Paris right after the war.

  “You and Wally should have stuck to the Continent, Bea.”

  Sticking a pin in her arm would have had the same effect.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “The guy who can let the word get out that you two fumbled it. Or maybe I’m the guy who can find out more about the old lady.”

  “Then you can’t be a cop. They won’t worry about the old lady any more. Not with Wally dead and me on the string.”

  “The more I have to go on, the better I can do.”

  She dropped the cigarette over the side of the bed. “Light me another.”

  I handed it to her. “Here it is. But I’ll deny every damn word of it,” she said. “Wally made the contact with that Franklin. It looked good. We made the contact in October, and we wanted to pull it in Boston. Things didn’t shape up right. We had to come down here. I wanted to give up and find a new one to work on, because I didn’t like that Franklin the one time I met him. Wally said it would be even easier down here. We were down to our last couple of thousand. We had to live cheap down here. Franklin got the key to us and we got the duplicate made. The old lady went to bed early. Franklin got the combination of the safe. He didn’t have the nerve to do it himself. There was a big party on at one of the other apartments downstairs in that Tide Winds. A good night for it. We wouldn’t be noticed coming and going by anyone.