Headed for a Hearse

by Jonathan Latimer

  Miss Hogan, leaning a perfectly sculptured hip against the white sink, said, “I wouldn’t give two bits for Westland’s chances. I think the ‘great detective’ is about as daffy as they come.”

  Williams said, “Aw, I wouldn’t say that.”

  Charged water gurgled from the neck of a White Rock bottle, ran up Finklestein’s sleeve. “He’s supposed to be a hot shot,” he said. “His agency has done some big jobs.”

  “He doesn’t take this job very seriously, then,” said Miss Hogan. “I haven’t seen him sober yet.”

  Over the fresh drinks they discussed the case. Williams maintained that Woodbury was the guilty party, asserting he was the only one who could have stolen Westland’s pistol.

  “How about Simmons?” asked Finklestein. “He could have taken the pistol.” He sipped his drink, added, “I don’t like his looks.”

  Miss Hogan said she’d pick Bolston just because they didn’t seem to have much against him. She suggested they see who the great detective favored. They went into the front room, but they were unable to ask him. The great detective was lying face upward on the davenport, his jaw resting on his chest, his breathing deep and regular. The great detective had passed out.

  Isadore Varecha’s eyes followed Westland’s movements like those of a devoted spaniel. He took an orange from the wicker basket. “Onc’t I sell oranges,” he volunteered. He giggled a little, twitching his mouth.

  Westland nodded. He had found that the little murderer cried less when somebody talked to him occasionally, and he had made a point of doing so. Then Varecha helped get rid of the fruit Emily Lou showered upon him.

  “Onc’t I got a girl, too,” Varecha added. He stuck a discolored thumbnail into the orange peel and jerked off a piece. “I used t’give her candy.” His mouth twitched, he glanced swiftly over his shoulder, then smiled slyly at Westland. “I killed her.”

  “What!”

  “Yeah.” Varecha slobbered a little. This was good! You betcha! Him showing that nice fella what a guy he was! “I push her in front of a car on Lawndale Avenue and run. Nobody even seen me.” His head made that mechanical, furtive jerk to let his eyes peer over his shoulder. “Her name Anna.”

  The electric light in the corridor was milk-pale on the murderer’s face. Hair grew in quarter-dollar patches on his chin; his neck was still raw from the attempt to hang himself. Westland watched the bubbles of spittle form on his quivering lips, asked, fascinated: “How did they get you if nobody knew it was you?”

  “Ho! Ho! Dat wasn’t what they got me for.” This was good! You betcha! Varecha stuttered with eagerness to tell his story. “Dat was another goil. I went up to this floosie’s room, see?—and give her a dollar an’ she lay down and she was big and fat like she was with a brat, see? and I took my knife an’ cut her open at the stomach.” Varecha’s face was fanatic, exultant. “You oughta heard her holler.”

  “My God! Why did you do that?”

  “Why?” The ecstasy faded from Varecha’s eyes, his thin shoulders hunched forward, he shrank into himself. His head ached now. What was this man asking him? Oh yeah. Why? He mumbled his answer. “I don’ know.”

  Deep rumbling snores came from Connors’ cell: the snores of a healthy man in good natural sleep.

  Varecha reached around the cell, touched Westland’s shirt with his fingers. “I ain’t scared to go with you along,” he said. His eyes were like those of a devoted spaniel.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Thursday Morning

  He could feel the sunlight upon his face, but he didn’t open his eyes because he was afraid the shock would kill him. He had been lying on his back with his mouth open, and his throat felt like freshly dried rawhide. He tried to swallow, and the quivering movement of his neck muscles made his head throb viciously. He abandoned the idea of clearing his throat and tried to go back to sleep. In this he was unsuccessful, but he discovered that as long as he lay motionless his head didn’t ache.

  Indeed, he discovered that by not moving he was able to achieve in himself a remarkable sort of duality, a beautiful separation of body and mind. It was almost as if his body didn’t exist—except for some minor trouble about breathing—and he was nothing but brain, functioning smoothly and splendidly, in an absolute vacuum. He pondered on this perfect state of unfleshliness for a while, thinking how unnecessary were the long fasts, the flagellations, the pillar-sittings, the cave-dwelling through which the ancient saints achieved mastery of the flesh when they could have, like himself, gained their end quite speedily by drinking bourbon and absinthe and gin.

  From a contemplation of the saints he turned his mind upon himself. His first problem was to determine who he was. This would have been easy if he had dared open his eyes, but he knew better than to do that. Instead, he lay on his back and thought and thought and suddenly he remembered that his name was William Crane and that he was a detective. He then directed his precise and machinelike mind upon the Westland case.

  About an hour later, Miss Hogan came into the room and said, “Hey! Are you going to sleep all day?”

  Crane knew what would happen when he opened his eyes, and it did. As soon as the sunlight struck them, it seemed as though a million needles had been driven into his skull. Not only the part of his brain directly back of his eyeballs hurt, but the top of his head hurt. The pain even extended down the back of his neck.

  “My Gawd! You look awful,” Miss Hogan said.

  She was wearing Chinese-red lounging pajamas with huge sleeves which exposed bare arms, and her hip line under the silk was muscular, and even in his extremity William Crane was unable to repress a feeling of interest. However, he said, “Go away, I’m dying.”

  “Well, please die somewhere besides in my bed.”

  Crane rolled his eyes and saw that he was indeed in bed, in a nice wide bed with fine sheets and peach-colored blankets. The top blanket had JW embroidered on it in silk thread. He looked further, exclaimed: “God! I’ve got pajamas on!”

  “I should think you had. No guy’s goin’ to sleep raw in——”

  He interrupted placatingly. “They’re nice pajamas. They’re swell pajamas. I wouldn’t ask for better pajamas, even if they are yellow. But what I want to know is, how did I get them?”

  “Fink and your friend put you to bed. I gave them the pajamas for you.”

  “So!” He pondered for a moment. “Where are they?”

  “Your friend went to his hotel, and Fink is seeing about an audit of Mr. Westland’s account.”

  “The rats! Deserting a pal in trouble!”

  “You didn’t expect them to wait for you all morning?”

  “All morning!”

  “Yes, all morning. It’s after half-past ten.”

  He sat up, and at once the bed began to turn on its axis. He sank back on the pillow and groaned.

  Miss Hogan’s teeth were like an Ipana advertisement. She thrust a glass in his hand. “Drink this and you’ll feel better.”

  It tasted dry and bitter, but sure enough he did feel better.

  “Now,” said Miss Hogan, “you take a shower while I fix something to eat.”

  He put his hands to his head and was surprised to find it was still in one piece. “I’m never going to eat again.”

  Miss Hogan did not answer him. She picked up the glass and walked, neither hurrying nor lingering, out of the room. Under the sheer red silk he could see her slender legs and the tapering, muscular lines of her dancer’s thighs.

  In the black-and-white tile bathroom, because he wasn’t sure how long he could stand up, he took a very hot bath first. The tub was a big one, and he sank into the slightly muddy water until only his knees and his nose were exposed. After a time he began to feel pretty good. There were three kinds of bath crystals—pink, green, and white—in jars on a shelf beside the tub, and he dropped two handfuls of each in the water. Such a stink presently arose that he was forced to climb out and step into the glass shower cabinet. Spinning the stainless steel handle t
o the point marked Hot, he let the stream nip at his back. Mist silvered the sides of the cabinet; the spray roared; water ran into his parched mouth, through his burning eyes; he burst into off-key song:

  “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do.

  It won’t be a stylish marriage,

  I can’t afford a carriage,

  But you’ll look sweet upon the seat

  Of a bicycle built——”

  Abruptly he halted his rendition, turned off the shower. In the silence which followed he said, “Hello.” The word echoed in his ears. He repeated it, “Hello.” Shivering, he stepped from the cabinet, wrapped an orange and black towel about his middle and thrust his head out the bathroom door.

  “Hey, tutz,” he called.

  Miss Hogan slouched into the hall, a Lucky Strike dangling from her sullen lips. “There’s a razor in the cabinet over the wash bowl,” she said. “Too bad it’s a safety so you can’t cut your throat with it.” Her violet eyes were inscrutable.

  “Listen, tutz. Will you do me a favor?”

  “The name’s Myrna.”

  “All right, Myrna. How about the favor?”

  Her eyes were suspicion-shaded. “I might…”

  “It isn’t much. You just stand here and listen for a minute or two. Then tell me what you hear.”

  He closed the bathroom door, threw the towel on the floor, went into the shower cabinet, shut its door, and turned on the shower. When the water was running well, he said loudly, “FLASH … this is Mrs. Crane’s boy, William, broadcasting from a shower bath on the fifty-second floor of the RCA Building in New York.… Here’s a torrid tip from Chicago.… William Crane, the playboy sleuth, and Myrna Hogan, lovely leisure lady, are dunking doughnuts in each other’s coffee and is a certain criminal lawyer on fire?”

  He shut the shower off and, the towel wrapped around him again, looked out at Miss Hogan. “What d’you hear?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “I didn’t think you would.” He closed the door on her puzzled face, got ready to shave.

  By the time he was dressed the pleasant effect of the bath had worn off. His head throbbed unmercifully, and there were pains in his neck. Also he had cut himself in three places while shaving. Examining these in the mirror, he critically decided his color was bad enough to give him an excuse to go to Florida. He dusted powder on his face and went out to the living room. Miss Hogan, curled in a chair, slim bare ankles exposed, was reading the society section of the Herald and Examiner.

  “They don’t dish up the dirt in these Hearst papers the way they used to,” she complained.

  He asked, “How would you like to go to Miami with me for a trip, baby?”

  “Why should I like to go with you?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe you were fascinated with my brown eyes.”

  She looked at him speculatively through long dark eyelashes. “If you had any money, you might be the sort of mug I could go for.”

  “I’ll have plenty of do-re-mi as soon as I get Westland off.”

  Her husky laugh was genuine, for once. “You’ve got as much chance of doing that as I have of leading the daisy chain at Vassar.”

  “Will you go if I get him off?”

  “Sure—that’ll be an easy promise to keep.” She came out of the chair with catlike grace. “How about breakfast? You’ll need plenty to solve the Westland case.”

  “I’ll be ready as soon as I make a call.”

  He went to the telephone and jerked out the cord to see if it was as long as he had remembered it from the night before. It was. He called Warden Buckholtz.

  “This is Crane, Warden—the detective in the Westland case.”

  “Yeah?” The warden managed to repress his enthusiasm.

  “I’d like to speak with Westland.”

  “What?”

  William Crane was very patient. “I’d like to speak with Westland.”

  “You would, would ya?” The warden’s curious voice, shrill as that of a harem eunuch, was incredulous. “What do ya think I’m goin’ to do, page him? Or maybe you think I ought to have a telephone installed in his cell?”

  Crane said, “I have to speak to him. It’s very important.”

  “I’m running a jail, not a hotel.”

  There was a click as the receiver at the other end broke the connection. Quickly Crane rang the number back, spoke angrily when the warden answered.

  “Listen, you fat son of a bitch, if you hang up on me again I’ll call the State’s attorney and tell him about the bribe you accepted from Westland. And if he doesn’t want to do anything about it, I know a certain deputy chief of detectives who is itching to get his hands on your dirty neck.” Rage made his head ache, but he continued, “You scramble down to the bottom of that jail of yours and bring Westland to the telephone.… Can you hear me?”

  After a long pause, Warden Buckholtz said, “You’ve got me all wrong, Mister Crane. I want to do everything I can to help Westland, but I can’t——”

  “Yes you can. I’m at Superior 8971. You get Westland and call me back here in ten minutes. If I haven’t heard from you by then I’ll start calling some numbers myself.”

  This time Crane hung up.

  “You certainly have a persuasive manner on the phone,” observed Miss Hogan from the dining room.

  “In another minute,” he said, “I’d have lost my temper.”

  The coffee was steaming hot from a silver percolator. He gulped tomato juice with a spoonful of Worcestershire sauce in it, then tried the coffee. It was excellent, as black as tar, as pungent as garlic, as clear as dry sherry, as hot as Bisbee, Arizona.

  “This is really fine coffee,” he said appreciatively, “but I can’t do anything with the scrambled eggs.”

  “Try just a little,” she urged him.

  Sunlight, peering through the windows at the table, threw her face into planes like a Cubist painting. She had a firm jaw line and a good thin nose, but you couldn’t tell about her eyes, because of the exotic blue mascara. Her neck was slender, and her breasts, only partially hidden by the low curve of her red silk pajamas, were smooth and full and firm.

  Pretending to eat the eggs, he watched her covertly. “I got pretty drunk last night,” he said. “I don’t remember going to bed at all.”

  “You passed out on the couch. Your pal and Fink got you into my room and put you to bed.”

  “Where did they sleep?”

  “Both of them went home about three o’clock this morning.”

  He tried to balance the fork on his hand, but it fell off, struck the china plate with a metallic clang. He thought how funny it was with a hangover your hands were steady enough when they were moving, but as soon as you held still they shook. Even when he leaned an elbow on the table, the hand shook.

  She watched him, disdainfully amused. “You’ve certainly got the jitters.”

  “How did you sleep last night?”

  “Swell.”

  “Nothing disturb you?”

  “No, I slept swell.”

  “I didn’t——”

  She laughed huskily. “Do you think I slept in that bed with you? I used the other bedroom. You’d remember if I’d been in bed with you.”

  Despite the hangover, which had begun to make the backs of his legs ache, he thought with pleasure: Here is a nice bawdy wench. He said, “I’d certainly hate to sleep through an experience like that.”

  She said, “Few do.”

  The telephone rang. When he answered it, Westland’s voice sounded brittle. “Have you got something? The warden said it was important.”

  “I haven’t got anything definite yet, but I think I may be on the trail. I’ve been working hard.”

  Behind him Miss Hogan said, “Liar.” He said, “Shut up.” Westland asked, “What’s that?”

  “I wanted to ask you a question,” Crane said. “I want you to think about the phone call you received from the woman you thought was Emily Lou—I mean
Miss Martin.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Can you remember if there was anything peculiar about the connection that night?”

  “You mean whether it sounded like a local or long distance call?”

  “Yes, or if there were any funny noises.”

  There was a long pause. Miss Hogan’s breath was soft on Crane’s neck; he could smell Christmas Night perfume.

  “I think I do remember something,” Westland said at last. “It was sort of a roar, like a strong wind blowing through trees, or the sound Niagara Falls makes.”

  “Niagara Falls!” William Crane exulted. “Hot damn!”

  Guard Galt lingered for a moment after the cell door had clanged behind Westland. His emaciated face was jaundiced, his cheeks were hollow, his eyes deep set and small under an unwashed forehead; he grinned with his saffron buck teeth like an Egyptian mummy.

  “Ain’t seen your friends lately,” he observed.

  “No?”

  The guard’s Adam’s apple jiggled up and down, his eyes glittered maliciously. “They ain’t deserted you?”

  “No.”

  “You look kinda sick. I thought mebbe they deserted you.” The guard licked his lips. “You ain’t scairt, are you?”

  “No.” Westland spoke dully. “At least, not much.”

  He didn’t feel very frightened; just nauseated, as if he was going to vomit.

  “You’ll get scairt tomorrow.” The guard was watching him intently, hopefully. “I expect we’ll have to carry you to the seat, from the looks of you now.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “That’s the way a lot of them go. They hold up to the last day, and then they turn into jelly, too scairt to do anything but snivel like a woman.” He rubbed the back of his hand on his trousers. “You’d be surprised at the ones who lose their guts.… There was that Tough Tony Caprio, for instance—he broke up when they shaved his head, just flopped down on the floor and——”

  “Shut up, you rat!” Connors stood with his face between the two bars nearest Westland’s cell, his jaw rigid with anger, his blue eyes ice pale. “Shut up I” His voice was unsteady. “Before Christ, I’ll have you knocked off if you don’t quit prying around here.”