With a splash the weapon sank under the surface.
“All right, get moving. Sorry, though, I can’t let you near the cottage. I don’t want anyone poking around there afterward. Give him a hand, Julian. Where we’re going’s just a little further down the path.”
“Don’t be idiotic.” The detective’s face was pale, but his emotion seemed more fury than fear. “There’ll be an army of lawmen here any minute.”
“I’ll take my chances. Come on, or do I do it now?”
Bright and unblinking, her eyes were tinged with the brand of madness brought on by desperation. I had seen eyes like that before, in the faces of rioting convicts bent on slaughter even when their cause was hopeless.
Without a doubt she intended to kill us.
Forbes put his left arm around me. Slowly we walked to the path, which cut away from the lake again. Rose Huff followed five yards to the rear, the shotgun trained at our backs.
“How’d you guess?” she asked.
“The picture.” Angrily Forbes stared straight ahead. “Only you knew where to find it. You were with me when I got it from St. Clair’s mailbox and left it in my apartment. You and Curley were the only people who knew I’d be at the Dijon that night, so you could break in and destroy it. The other vandalism was misdirection, the ‘I Hate You’ signs a subtle touch to keep me from reporting it to the police. And come to think of it, you gave yourself away at St. Clair’s. Called the picture a Polaroid before I’d even opened Helen’s envelope. You couldn’t have known that unless Helen told you or you’d seen it before.”
“Too bad it didn’t occur to you sooner. Yes, I’d seen it. I was there when it was taken, before Iris decided to hide out here. Figured out anything else?”
“Victor was Iris’s boyfriend. Shanahan was curious about Powell’s club. I’ll bet Victor was too. I think he struck up an acquaintance with Iris and made her one of his informants, hoping to expose a scandal Jaraba could break in his newspapers. Iris was one of several Powell girls with a prostitution record.”
“That’s right. He hung out at a bar she patronized, they hit it off immediately. He paid her to bug Powell’s office. She got a tape of Maxwell, Powell and Claude White working out the whole scheme. We decided to hijack a shipment. It would have set us all up for life. We discussed it at our house at first, but Jaraba and some politicians walked in one night so we started coming up here. My father’d owned that cottage. Victor and I spent summers there as kids. Later we put it behind a bank trust and forgot it, but up here last year we posed as renters. Fake names, no mingling with neighbors. Nobody remembered us.”
I realized now what Forbes was doing. He was drawing her out, and she seemed perversely eager to respond. It was an intensely personal exchange between them and I decided not to interrupt.
The path forked, one leg veering back toward the lake. Rose Huff ordered us to take the other one, a thin trace of a trail barely visible under overhanging bushes.
“Victor and Iris,” she went on, “found the Taylor place. A perfect hideout. If we stole a shipment, she’d have to disappear. They’d check everyone who’d ever worked at Powell’s. We began building a fake identification for her—a Milwaukee address, a car with Wisconsin plates. Then Victor was killed in that accident. There went the hijack plan, but Iris and I still wanted that money. Finally she suggested that she confide in St. Clair to see if the old con man could figure how to steal a shipment.”
“But she didn’t tell him about you. He’d work harder, thinking he’d get a fifty-fifty split. Of course you and Iris planned to stiff him. And you’d decided not to split with Iris either. You’d kill her instead. You wanted the money that much?”
“She was just another of Victor’s sluts. She’d have frittered it away. With her dead there’d be no link between me and the Major. And I’m busted. It cost plenty keeping Victor in businesses, paying for tramps like Iris. St. Clair’s plan cost plenty too. I had to finance Iris’s part. His escape route was the big item. We had to let him go through with it, though, or he’d get suspicious.”
“Where’d you murder Iris?”
“A little forest preserve outside Chicago. After the switch I picked her up on Canal Street in her car, the one with Wisconsin plates. Supposedly we drove to the forest preserve to split the money, but I shot her and put her body in the trunk. Drove here, burned the body, drove to Milwaukee and left the car there. I came back to Chicago on a train. It looked good. Her remains might not be found until fall. When found she might not be identified, except as a nonexistent Milwaukee librarian. And even if the remains were identified, there’d be no connection between Iris and me. Except for the time Jaraba’d walked in, Victor’d been careful about their not being seen together.”
Ahead the trees thinned as we approached what seemed to be a clearing.
“But you didn’t know about the picture St. Clair had,” Forbes said. “If anyone up here saw it, they’d know where it’d been taken, on your property a short walk from Iris’s remains. Even if you beat a murder charge, Claude would know who had his million. Helen recognized the background?”
“She’d seen photos taken from that pier hundreds of times in Victor’s room. I’d even told her where the place was. I took those down before your visit. But late Monday she phoned and described the shot. Iris, on my pier, what’d I know about her? St. Clair’d hired you as a last resort obviously. We’d given Axburn’s name to Iris when she’d asked about a lawyer for the old man. Now he’d asked Axburn for a detective’s name. Small world—but not so small. I’d sold Helen on working for you, to maintain a pipeline to the Directory’s new editor. If the police learned about Powell and Giveaway, it’d change everything.”
“You stalled Helen?”
“I told her Iris was one of Victor’s old girlfriends, I’d explain at her apartment. But no matter what, I couldn’t get involved, even on her office records. Driving there, I realized I might have to kill her. Even if I put her off temporarily, she’d tell you and the police if Iris’s body was identified up here.”
We’d reached the clearing now, and at the other side of it, parked in a fire lane, was a battered gray Pontiac sedan.
“Eric,” Rose continued, “was a complication. I saw him let her off. Then I went in and learned all I could. She’d returned the original photo to the client, she didn’t say how. She showed me a blowup. No problem, the background was gone. But she said Iris’s sister was missing too, something else to worry about. Iris must have called Carmelle before I picked her up. How much had she told the girl? Maybe even about Wautoma—so I had to kill Helen. Afterward I messed the place up to suggest a prowler and got out.”
Beside me Forbes dipped his right hand into a jacket pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette lighter engraved with the letter “F.” What he planned to do with it in all that rain I couldn’t imagine, but from the strained look on his face it was plain he intended to do something.
“You went to Eric,” Forbes said, “to be sure Helen hadn’t told him about you. Then you virtually forced yourself on me and Curley, hoping we’d find St. Clair so you could destroy the picture before anyone else saw it. Through us you also hoped to learn as much as you could about Carmelle.”
“She knew enough,” Rose replied, “to send you to Wisconsin. Finding Iris’s body was a matter of time then. St. Clair didn’t count. When the body was found, he’d run, knowing Claude would come up here too. But at my apartment you told me what I wanted to know. You’d never give up. When the body was found, you’d knock on doors for miles around the Taylor place. It wouldn’t take you more than an hour to find the lake.”
“But tipping the Syndicate—you didn’t care who else got hurt up here, did you? Carmelle, Curley—”
“I had no choice. I watched from across the stream. I’m glad those girls got away. I’m glad Curley’s out of this too. Believe me, I wish I didn’t have to do this
either, but I had to intercept you before you got to the cottage. That’s far enough. Put the old man down.”
Forbes eased me to a sitting position under a big tamarack and straightened up. We were about thirty feet from the car. Rose held the revolver in her right hand now, the shotgun cradled under her left arm.
Cocking the pistol, she said, “They’ll find you killed by your own thirty-eight, they’ll think St. Clair did it. I’ll haul his body out in the trunk. That fire lane leads to a road that doesn’t go near the Taylor place. There won’t be any policemen on it. And when I get to Chicago, I’ll—”
“No,” Forbes told her. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Clumsily he broke into a run toward the Pontiac.
She fired once.
He stumbled, fell, rolled over, got to his knees and kept crawling. As she walked toward him, he pulled himself up by the rear bumper and leaned over the trunk, apparently spent, an ugly hole in the back of his poncho.
A few feet from him and a little to the side, she stopped and raised the pistol again. It would be a head shot, to end it quickly. Her hand was unsteady. Clearly she had no stomach for this business and didn’t suspect a thing. I knew now, though, what Forbes had in mind.
His body shielded the cap to the gas tank. The lighter was hidden in his palm. And as her finger tightened on the trigger, he shoved himself backward. With a loud, whooshing sound the rear of the car erupted in a dense cloud of dirty black smoke…
* * * *
Shanahan folded the manuscript and put it into his pocket.
“What are you doing?” St. Clair asked angrily. “That’s mine!”
“Sorry, you won’t be selling stories for a while. But I’ll see to it that this winds up in good hands.”
“It’s an outrage! It’s my literary property! By the way, I assume that in view of my attitude, the Cook County state’s attorney will have no interest in pressing a charge of grand larceny for the theft of that million.”
“I don’t know anything about that. But don’t count on it.” The lieutenant got to his feet. “Get dressed. We’re leaving in an hour.”
“My condition—”
“If you could hike to a road and flag a sheriff’s car down earlier today, you’ll make it to where I’m driving you tonight.” He went out and down the corridor to Forbes’s room. Forbes lay on his side, his body swathed in bandages but his face unscathed. Curley was with him, hunched on a chair and smoking a cigarette.
“Here.” Shanahan dropped the manuscript to a table. “A memento. Don’t talk. The doctors don’t want you exerting yourself.”
“Screw the doctors,” Forbes said weakly. “What about Rose?”
“Died twenty minutes ago. Took the blast head-on, sheet-metal fragments from the gas tank lodged in her skull. Made a full confession though. The million’s in safe-deposit boxes. Where’s the O’Bradovitch woman?”
“With the Feds,” Curley said. “Popular girl. She’s agreed to testify at the Senator’s hearings too. O’Bradovitch, Forbes and St. Clair—they’ll be a road show. Grand juries, trials, television—congratulate me, by the way. I’m the sole owner of a detective agency now.”
“No kidding. When this is over, what’ll Forbes do?”
“Go back to school. Law. The Senator’s old alma mater. Can you imagine? Leaving a nice, clean business like ours for a dirty line like that?”
“Incredible. I came to tell you,” Shanahan said to Forbes, “that Axburn’s driving your son here. The boy walked in late last night and made a statement. He’ll have to face a drug charge, but under the circumstances probation’s almost a certainty.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, I have to run. I don’t approve of how you withheld facts from my brothers in Homicide, but I can’t quarrel with your results either. Take care.”
When he was gone, Forbes said, “Eric wants to see me. I’m sure Axburn pressured him into it. But still—”
“Yeah.” Curley paused. “Julian, it’s none of my business, but the O’Bradovitch woman. When she was here with the Feds, I got the impression—”
“You’re right. It’s none of your business.”
“Okay.” Curley shrugged, stubbed his cigarette out and rose. “You’re both adults. Get some rest. I’ll drop in tomorrow before I drive back to Chicago. Hell, I’ll have to hire an assistant of my own now, won’t I?”
“And a secretary.”
“I already have a secretary. I phoned a neighbor of mine. Graduated from business school this month. A quick thinker, should make a great skip-tracer. Types a hundred words a minute, takes dictation faster than I can talk, doesn’t mind working nights and weekends and is just dying to learn about the private detective business.”
“What’s her name?”
“John.”
Curley went into the hall and on to the reception room. As he squared his hat there, thinking of the good job he could do for Forbes’s clients now that he was free of Forbes’s ridiculous rules about not lying to people, he observed Carmelle, who sat in a corner talking to a circle of sympathetic young newsmen. She had dried her tears and was telling them she’d never met any reporters before, and it must be an interesting line of work.
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