Three by Cain

by James M. Cain

  C H A P T E R

  12

  She spit into the blood, stepped back, and picked up the cape. For a second all you could hear was Pudinsky, over at the piano, gasping and slobbering in an agony of fright. Then they made a rush for the door, to get out before the police came. They fought to get past each other, the women cursing like men, the fags screaming like women, and when they got to the hall they didn’t wait for the elevator. They went piling down the stairway, and some of them fell, and you could hear more curses, and screams, and thuds, where they were kicking each other. She came over and knelt beside me, where I had folded into a chair. “Now, he no get. Goodbye, and remember Juana.” She kissed me, jumped up, and rustled out. I sat there, still looking at that thing that was pinned to the sofa, with its head hanging over the back, and the blood drying on the shirt. Pudinsky lifted his head, where it was buried in his hands, saw it, let out a moan, and ran over to a corner, where he put his head down and broke out into more sobs. I picked up a rug to throw on it. Then something twisted in my stomach, and I stumbled back to a bathroom. I hadn’t eaten since afternoon, but white stuff began coming up, and even after my stomach was empty it kept retching, and horrible sounds came out of me from the air it forced up. I saw my face in the mirror. It was green.

  When I came out two cops were there, and four or five of the fags, and one of the girls in a dinner coat, and a guy in a derby hat. Whether he was the dick that had been waiting for Juana, and he grabbed some of them on the way out, I didn’t know. When the cops saw me they motioned me to stand aside, and one of them went back to phone. Pretty soon two more cops came up, and a couple of detectives, and next thing, the place was full of cops. There was one guy that seemed to be a doctor, and another that seemed to be a police photographer. Anyway, he set up a tripod, and began setting off bulbs and throwing them in the fern pot. Pretty soon a cop went over, motioned to me, and he, a detective, and I went out. I didn’t have any coat there, but I didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t know whether they had Juana, or even where she had gone, and I was afraid if I asked them to let me go to the apartment, they would come with me and find her. We went down in the elevator. Harry ran us down. When we got to the lobby, more cops were there, talking to Tony.

  We got in a police car, drove down Second Avenue, then down Lafayette Street, and on downtown to a place that seemed to be police headquarters. We got out, went in, and the cops took me in a room and told me to sit down. One of them went out. The other stayed, and picked up an afternoon paper that was on the table. We must have sat an hour, he reading the paper and neither of us saying anything. After a while I asked him if he had a cigarette. He passed over a pack without looking up. I smoked and we sat for another hour. Outside it was beginning to get light.

  About six o’clock a detective came in, sat down, and stared at me a while. Then he began to talk. “You was there tonight? At this here Hawes’s place?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “You seen him killed?”

  “I did.”

  “What she kill him for?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Come on, you know. What you trying to do, kid me?”

  “I told you I don’t know.”

  “You live with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what do you mean you don’t know? What she kill him for.”

  “I’ve got no idea at all.”

  “Was she in this country illegal?”

  I knew by that Tony had spilled what he knew. “That I can’t tell you. She might have been.”

  “What the hell can you tell me?”

  “Anything I know I’ll tell you.”

  He roared for a minute about how he could make me tell him, but that was a mistake. It gave me time to think. That illegal entry was a way he could tie me in, and hold me if he wanted to, and I knew the only way I could be of any use to her was to get out of there. Whether they had got her or not I didn’t know, but I couldn’t be any good sitting behind bars. I kept looking at him, thinking over the entries on my passport, and by the time he began asking questions again I had it all in hand, and thought I could get away with a lie. “So you quit that goddam stalling. One more thing you can’t tell me and I’ll open you up. Come on. She was in illegal, wasn’t she?”

  “I told you I don’t know.”

  “Did you bring her in?”

  “I did not.”

  “What? Wasn’t you in Mexico?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Didn’t you bring her in with you?”

  “I did not. I met her in Los Angeles.”

  “How you come in?”

  “I rode a bus up to Nogales, caught a ride to San Antonio, and from there took another bus to Los Angeles. I met her about a week after that, in the Mexican quarter. Then I began working for pictures, and we hooked up. Then she came with me to New York.”

  I saw I had led with my chin on that, on account of the white slave charge. He snapped it back at me before I even finished. “Oh, so you brought her to New York.”

  “I did not. She paid her own fare.”

  “What the hell are you trying to tell me? Didn’t I say cut that stalling out?”

  “All right, ask her.”

  Then came a flicker in his eye. I had a quick hunch they hadn’t got her yet. “Ask her, that’s all I’ve got to say. Don’t be silly. I’m not paying any woman’s fare from Los Angeles to New York. I heard of the Mann Act too.”

  “Who turned in the tip against her?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Come on—”

  “I told you I don’t know. Now if you’ll cut out your goddam nonsense, I’ll tell you what I do know, and maybe it’ll help you out, I don’t know. But you can just drop this third-degree stuff right now, or I’ll be starting a little third-degree of my own before long that you may not like so well.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know what I mean. You’re not talking to some Hell’s Kitchen gunman. I’ve got a few friends, see? I don’t ask any favors. But I’m claiming my rights, and I’ll get them.”

  “All right, Sharp. Shoot it.”

  “We went to the party, she and I.”

  “Yeah, that drag was a funny place for a guy like you.”

  “He was a pixie, but he was also a musician, and I had worked for him, and when he asked us to his housewarming—”

  “Are you a pix?”

  “Starting up again, are you?”

  “Go on, Sharp. Just checking up.”

  “So we went. And pretty soon one of the boys came up, and— ”

  “One of them pixes?”

  “One of the bellboys. And I found out there was a guy downstairs waiting to see me. And I found out Hawes had put in three calls that day to the Immigration Office—”

  “Then he did turn her in?”

  “I told you I don’t know. I wasn’t taking any chances. I told her what the boys had told me, and tried to get her out of there. I told her to leave, and she did, but then she came back with this sword, and they started up again this bullfight game they had been playing—”

  “Yeah, we know all about that.”

  “And she let him have it. And goddam well he had it coming to him. What the hell business was it of his whether she—”

  “What he turn her in for?”

  “That I don’t know either. He had tried to tell me once or twice that living with a girl the way we did wasn’t doing me any good, that it was hurting my career—”

  “Your singing career?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What he have to do with that?”

  “He had plenty to do with it. I don’t only sing here in New York. I’m under contract to a Hollywood picture company, and he controlled the picture company, or said he did, and he was afraid— ”

  “Hays office stuff?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Oh, I get it now. Go on.”

  “Th
at’s all. It wasn’t just morals, take it from me it wasn’t, or friendship, or anything like that. It was money, and fear that the Mann Act would ruin one of his big stars, and stuff like that. All right, he went up against the wrong person. She let him have it, and now let him count up his Class A preferred stock.”

  He asked me a few more questions and then went out. As near as I could tell I had done all right. I had fixed her up with a motive that anyway made sense, him trying to bust us up, and it would look a hell of a sight better after we were married, as I knew we would be before the case ever came to trial. I had kept out of it what was really between Winston and me. I would have even told him that if it would have done her any good, but I knew that one whisper of that would crack everything wide open, and ruin her. I had anyhow made some kind of a stall about the Mann Act and the illegal entry, and they couldn’t disprove it unless she told them different, and I knew they’d never get anything out of her. Around seven o’clock they gave me something to eat, and I waited for their next move.

  Around eight o’clock a cop came in with one of my traveling cases, with clothes in it. That meant they had been in the apartment. I was still in evening clothes, and began to change. “You got a washroom here?”

  “O.K., we’ll take you to it. You want a barber?”

  All I had in my pocket, after giving her the money was silver, but I counted it. There were a couple of dollars of it. “Yeah, send him in.”

  He went out, and the cop that was guarding took me down to the washroom. There was a shower there, so I stripped, had a bath, and put on the other clothes. The barber came in and shaved me. I put the evening clothes in the traveling case. They had brought me a hat, and I put that on. Then we went back to the room we had left.

  A little after nine I was still pounding on it in my mind, what I could do, and it came to me that one thing I could do was get a lawyer. I remembered Sholto. “I’d like to make a phone call. How about that?”

  “You’re allowed one call.”

  We went out in the hall, where there was a row of phones against the wall. I looked up Sholto’s number, rang it, and got him on the line. “Oh hello, I was wondering if you’d call. I see you’re in a little trouble.”

  “Yeah, and I want you.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  In about a half hour he showed up. He listened to me. About all I could tell him, with the cop sitting there, was that I wanted to get out, but that seemed to be all he wanted to know. “It’s probably just a matter of bond.”

  “What am I held for? Do you know that?”

  “Material witness.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “As soon as I can see a bondsman—that is, unless you want to put up cash bond yourself.”

  “How much is it?”

  “I don’t know. At a guess, I’d say five thousand.”

  “Which way is quickest?”

  “Oh, money talks.”

  He had a blank check, and I wrote out a check for ten thousand. “All right, that ought to cover it. I think we can get action in about an hour.”

  Around ten o’clock he was back, and he, and the cop, and I went over to court. It took about five minutes. An assistant district attorney was there, they set bail at twenty-five hundred, and after Sholto put it up, we went out and got in a cab. He passed over the rest of the cash, in hundred-dollar bills. I handed back ten of them. “Retainer.”

  “Very well, thanks.”

  The first thing I wanted to know was whether they had got her yet. When he said they hadn’t, I grabbed an early afternoon paper a boy shoved in the window, and read it. It was smeared all over the front page, with my picture, and Winston’s picture, but no picture of her. That was one break. As well as I could remember, she hadn’t had any picture taken since she had been in the country. It was something we hadn’t got around to. There was one story giving Winston’s career, another telling about me, and a main story that told what had happened. Everything I had said to the detective was in there, and the big eight-column streamer called her the “Sword-Killer,” and said she was “Sought.” I was still reading when we pulled up at Radio City.

  When we got up to his office I began going over what I had told the detective, the illegal entry stuff and all, and why I had said what I had, but pretty soon he stopped me. “Listen, get this straight. Your counsel is not your co-conspirator in deceiving the police. He’s your representative at the bar, to see that you get every right that the law entitles you to, and that your case, or her case, or whatever case he takes, is presented as well as it can be. What you told the detective is none of my affair, and it’s much better, at this time, that I know nothing of it. When the time comes, I’ll ask for information, and you had better tell me the truth. But at the moment, I prefer not to know of any misrepresentation you’ve made. From now on, by the way, an excellent plan, in dealing with the police, would be to say nothing.”

  “I get it.”

  He kept walking around his office, then he picked up the paper and studied that a while, then walked around some more. “There’s something I want to warn you about.”

  “Yeah. What?”

  “It seemed to me I got you out very easily.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “If they had wanted to hold you, there were two or three charges, apparently, they could have brought against you. All bailable offenses, but they could have kept you there quite a while. They could have made trouble. Also, the bond was absurdly low.”

  “I don’t quite follow you.”

  “They haven’t got her. They may have her, tucked away in some station-house in the Bronx, they may be holding her there and saying nothing for fear of habeas corpus proceedings, but I don’t think so. They haven’t got her, and it’s quite possible they’ve let you out so they can locate her through you.”

  “Oh, now I see what you mean.”

  “You going back to your apartment?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

  “… You’ll be watched. There’ll probably be a tail on you day and night. Your phone may be tapped.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “They can, and they do. There may be a dictaphone in there by now, and they’re pretty good at thinking of places to put it without your finding it, or suspecting it. It’s a big apartment house, and that makes it all the easier for them. I don’t know what her plans are, and apparently you don’t. But it’s a bad case. If they catch her, I’ll do everything I can for her, but I warn you it’s a bad case. It’s much better than she not be located.… Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “The big danger is that she phone you. Whatever you do, the second she rings up, warn her that she’s being overheard.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “You’re being used as a decoy.”

  “I’ll watch my step.”

  When I got up to Twenty-second Street a flock of reporters were there, and I stuck with them for about ten minutes. I thought it was better to answer their questions some kind of way, and get rid of them, than have them trying to get to me all day. When I got up to the apartment the phone was ringing, and a newspaper was on the line, offering me five thousand dollars for a signed story of what I knew about it, and about her, and I said no, and hung up. It started to ring again, and I flashed the board and told them not to put through any more incoming calls, or let anybody up. The door buzzer sounded. I answered, and it was Harry and Tony, on hand to tell me what they knew. I peeled off a hundred-dollar bill as they started to talk, handed it over, and then remembered about the dictaphone. We went out in the hall, and they whispered it. She didn’t leave right after it happened. She went to the apartment, packed, and changed her dress, and about five or ten minutes later buzzed twice, like I had told her to. Tony had the car up there all that time, waiting for her, and he opened, pulled her in, and dropped her down to the basement. They went out by the alley, and when they came out on Twenty-third Street he got her a
cab, and she left. That was the last he saw of her, and he didn’t tell it to the police. While he was doing that, Harry was on the board in the lobby, and didn’t pay much attention when he saw the fags going out, and neither did the guy from the Immigration Service. How the cops found it out they didn’t know, but they thought the fags must have bumped into one outside, or got scared and thought they better tell it anyway, or something. Tony said the cops were already in Winston’s apartment before she left.

  They went down and I went in the apartment again. With the phone cut off it was quiet enough now, but I began looking for the dictaphone. I couldn’t find anything. I looked out the window to see if anybody was watching the building. There wasn’t anybody out there. I began to think Sholto was imagining things.

  Around two o’clock I got hungry and went out. The reporters were still down there, and almost mobbed me, but I jumped in a cab and told him to drive to Radio City. As soon as he got to Fourth Avenue I had him cut over to Second again, and come down, and got out at a restaurant around Twenty-third Street. I had something to eat and took down the number of the pay phone. When I got back to the apartment house, I whispered to the boy on the board if a Mr. Kugler called, to put him through. I went upstairs and called the restaurant phone. “Is Mr. Kugler there?”

  “Hold the line, I’ll see.”

  I held the line, and in a minute he was back. “No Mr. Kugler here now.”

  “When he comes in ask him to call Mr. Sharp. S-H-A-R-P.”

  “Yes sir, I’ll tell him.”

  I hung up. In about twenty minutes the phone rang. “Mr. Sharp? This is Kugler.”

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Kugler. About those opera passes I promised you, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you for the time being. You may have read in the paper I’m having a little trouble now. Can you let me put that off till next week.”

  “Oh, all right, Mr. Sharp. Any time you say.”

  “Terribly sorry, Mr. Kugler.”

  I hung up. I knew then that Sholto knew what he was talking about. I didn’t know any Mr. Kugler.