Tellers automatically referred him to executives. The executives passed him up the line to their superiors. He was questioned, quizzed, studied narrowly. Again and again, his credentials were examined—the description on them checked off, item by item, with his own appearance. By ten minutes of three, when he disposed of the last check, his nerves were in knots.
He and Babe drove to a nearby bar, where he tossed down a few quick ones. Considerably calmer then, he headed the car toward El Ciudad.
“Look, honey,” Babe turned suddenly in the seat and faced him. “Why are we going back to that joint, anyway? We’ve got the dough. Why not just dump this car for a price and beat it?”
“Just go off and leave our baggage? Start a lot of inquiries?” Mitch shook his head firmly.
“Well, no, I guess that wouldn’t be so good, would it? But you said we ought to disappear fast. When are we going to do it?”
Mitch slanted a glance at her, deliberating over his reply. “I can get a guy here in LA to shoot me a come-quick telegram. It’ll give us a legitimate excuse for pulling out tomorrow morning.”
Babe nodded dubiously. She suggested that Mitch phone his friend now, instead of calling through El Ciudad’s switchboard. Mitch said that he couldn’t.
“The guy works late, see? He wouldn’t be home yet. I’ll call him from that phone booth out on the golf course. That’ll keep anyone from listening in.”
“I see,” Babe repeated. “You think of everything, don’t you, darling?”
They had dinner at a highway drive-in. Around dusk, Mitch brought the car to a stop on El Ciudad’s parking lot. Babe reached hesitantly for the briefcase. Mitch told her to go right ahead and take it with her.
“Just don’t forget, sweetheart. I can see both entrances to the joint, and I’ve got the keys to this buggy.”
“Now, don’t you worry one bit,” Babe smiled at him brightly. “I’ll be right inside waiting for you.”
She headed for the hotel, waving to him gayly as she passed through the entrance. Mitch sauntered out to the phone booth and placed a call to Bette. Rather, since she hung up on him the first two times, he placed three calls.
At last she stayed on the wire and he was able to give her the pitch. The result was anything but reassuring. She said she’d be seeing him—she’d be out just as fast as she could make it. And he could depend on it. But there was an ominous quality to her voice, a distinctly unwifely tone. Before he could say anything more, she slammed the receiver for the third and last time.
Considerably disturbed, Mitch walked back across the dead and dying grass and entered the hotel. The manager-clerk’s eyes shied away from him. The elevator-bellboy was similarly furtive. Absorbed in his worry over Bette, Mitch didn’t notice. He got off at his floor and started down the hall, ducking around scaffolding, wending his way through a littered jungle of paint cans, plaster, and wallpaper.
He came to the door of his room. He turned the knob and entered.
And something crashed down on his head.
3.
IT WAS DARK when Mitch regained consciousness. He sat up, massaging his aching head, staring dizzily at the shattered glass on the floor—remains of a broken whiskey bottle. Then he remembered; realization came to him. Ripping out a curse, he ran to the window.
The Cad was still there on the parking lot. Yes, and the keys were still in his pocket. Mitch whirled, ran through the bath, and kicked open the door to the other room.
It was empty, in immaculate order, sans Babe and sans baggage. There was nothing to indicate that it ever had been tenanted. Mitch tottered back into his own room, and there was a knock on the door and he flung it open.
A man walked in and closed it behind him. He looked at Mitch. He looked down at the broken bottle. He shook his head in mild disapproval.
“So you are supposedly a sick man, Marty,” he said gutturally. “So you have a great deal of money—my money. So drunk you should not get.”
“H-huh? W-what?” Mitch said. “Who the hell are you?”
“So I am The Pig,” the man said. “Who else?”
The name suited him. Place a pecan on top of a hen’s egg and you’ve got a good idea of his appearance. He was perhaps five feet tall, and he probably weighed three hundred pounds. His arms were short almost to the point of deformity. He had a size six head and a size sixty waistline.
Mitch stared at him blankly, silently. The Pig apparently misunderstood his attitude.
“So you are not sure of me,” he said. “So I will take it from the top and give you proof. So you are The Man’s good and faithful servant through all his difficulties. So The Man passes the word that you are to pay me fifty thousand dollars for services rendered. So you are a very sick man anyway and have little to lose if detected while on the errand—”
“Wait a minute!” Mitch said. “I—I’m not—”
“So you are to transport the money in small traveler’s checks. So you cannot be robbed. So they can be easily cashed without attracting unwanted attention. So you have had a day to cash them. So”—the Pig concluded firmly—“you will give me the fifty thousand.”
Mitch’s mouth was very dry. Slowly, the various pieces of a puzzle were beginning to add up. And what they added up to was curtains—for him. He’d really stepped into something this time: a Grade-A jam, an honest-to-Hannah, double-distilled frammis. The Pig’s next words were proof of the fact.
“So you know how I earned the fifty G’s, Marty. So you would not like me to give you a demonstration. It is better to die a natural death.”
“N-now—now, listen!” Mitch stammered. “You’ve got the wrong guy, I’m not Martin Lonsdale. I’m—I’m … Look, I’ll show you.” He started to reach for his wallet. And groaned silently, remembering. He had thrown it away. There was a risk of being caught with two sets of identification, so—
“So?” The Pigs said.
“I—Look! Call this Man, whoever he is. Let me talk to him. He can tell you I’m not—”
“So,” The Pig grunted, “who can call Alcatraz? So—” he added, “I will have the money, Marty.”
“I don’t have it! My wife—I mean the dame I registered in with—has it. She had the room next to mine, and—”
“So, but no. So I checked the registry myself. So there has been no woman with you.”
“I tell you there was! These people here—they’re hungry as hell, see, and she had plenty of dough to bribe them …” He broke off, realizing how true his words were. He resumed again, desperately: “Let me give you the whole pitch, tell you just what happened right from the beginning! I was trying to thumb a ride, see, and this big Cadillac stopped for me. And …”
Mitch told him the tale.
The Pig was completely unimpressed.
“So that is a fifty-grand story? So a better one I could buy for a nickel.”
“But it’s true! Would I make up a yarn like that? Would I come here, knowing that you’d show up to collect?”
“So people do stupid things.” The Pig shrugged. “So, also, I am a day early.”
“But, dammit!—” There was a discreet rap on the door. Then, it opened and Bette came in.
This Bette was a honey, a little skimpy in the chin department, perhaps, but she had plenty everywhere else. A burlesque house stripteaser, her mannerisms and dress sometimes caused her to be mistaken for a member of a far older profession.
Mitch greeted her with almost hysterical gladness. “Tell this guy, honey! For God’s sake, tell him who I am!”
“Tell him …?” Bette hesitated, her eyes flickering. “Why, you’re Martin Lonsdale, I guess. If this is your room. Didn’t you send for me to—”
“N-nno!” Mitch burbled. “Don’t do this to me, honey! Tell him who I really am. Please!—”
One of The Pig’s fat arms moved casually. The fist at the end of it smashed into Mitch’s face. It was like being slugged with a brick. Mitch stumbled and fell flat across the bed. Dully, as from a distance, h
e heard a murmur of conversation …
“… had a date with him, a hundred-dollar date. And I came all the way out here from Los Angeles …”
“So Marty has another date. So I will pay the hundred dollars myself …”
There was a crisp rustle, then a dulcet, “Oh, aren’t you nice!” Then the door opened and closed, and Bette was gone. And The Pig slowly approached the bed. He had a hand in his pocket. There was a much bigger bulge in his pocket than a hand should make.
Mitch feigned unconsciousness until The Pig’s hand started coming out of his pocket. Then Mitch’s legs whipped up in a blur of motion. He went over backwards in a full somersault, landed on the other side of the bed, gripped and jerked it upward.
Speed simply wasn’t The Pig’s forte. He just wasn’t built for it. He tried to get out of the way and succeeded only in tripping over his own feet. The bed came down on him, pinning him to the floor. Mitch sent him to sleep with a vicious kick in the head.
Mitch realized he had been moving in a blur. But now his mind was crystal clear, sharper than it ever had been.
Where was Babe? Simple. Since she couldn’t have ridden away from the place, she must have walked. And Mitch was positive he knew where she had walked to.
What to do with The Pig? Also simple. The materials for taking care of him were readily at hand.
Mitch turned on the water in the bathtub. He went out into the hall and returned with two sacks full of quick-drying plaster …
He left The Pig very well taken care of, sitting in plaster up to his chin. Then, guessing that it would be faster, he ran down the stairs and out to the Cadillac. Wheels spinning, he whipped it down the horseshoe driveway and out onto the highway.
He slowed down after a mile or two, peering off to his right at the weed-grown fields that lay opposite the ocean. Suddenly, he jerked the car onto the shoulder and braked it to a stop. He got out; his eyes narrowed with grim satisfaction.
He was approximately parallel now with the place where he had assumed the identity of Martin Lonsdale. The place where Martin Lonsdale had supposedly committed suicide. And out there in this fallow field was an abandoned produce shed.
From the highway, it appeared to be utterly dark, deserted. But as Mitch leaped the ditch and approached it, he caught a faint flicker of light. He came up on the building silently. He peered through a crack in the sagging door.
There was a small stack of groceries in one corner of the room, also a large desert-type water bag. Blankets were spread out in another corner. Well back from the door, a can of beans was warming over a Sterno stove. A man stood over it, looking impatiently down at the food.
Mitch knew who he was, even without the sunglasses and cap. He also knew who he was not—for this man was bald and well under six feet tall.
Mitch kicked open the door and went in. The guy let out a startled “Gah!” as he flung himself forward, swinging.
He shouldn’t have done it, of course. Mitch was sore enough at him, as it was. A full uppercut, and the guy soared toward the roof. He came down, horizontal, landing amidst the groceries.
Mitch snatched him to his feet and slapped him back into consciousness. “All right. Let’s have the story. All of it and straight, get me? And don’t ask me what story or I’ll—”
“I w-won’t—I mean, I’ll tell you!” the man babbled frantically.
“We—tied into Lonsdale at a motor court. Figured he was carrying heavy, so Babe pulled the tears for a ride. We was just going to hold him up, you know. Honest to Gawd, that’s all! But—but—”
“But he put up a fight and you had to bump him.”
“Naw! No!” the man protested. “He dropped dead on us! I swear he did! I’d just pulled a knife on him—hadn’t touched him at all—when he keeled over! Went out like a light. I guess maybe he must have had a bad ticker or something, but anyway …”
Mitch nodded judiciously. The Pig had indicated that Lonsdale was in bad health. “So okay. Keep singing.”
“W-well, he didn’t have hardly any dough in cash like we thought he would. Just that mess of checks. But we’d pumped him for a lot of info, and we figured if we could find the right kind of chump—excuse me, Mister—I mean, a guy that could pass for Lonsdale—”
“So you did a little riding up and down the highway until you found him. And you just damned near got him killed!”
He gave the guy an irritated shake. The man whimpered apologetically. “We didn’t mean to, Mister. We really figured we was doing you a favor. Giving you a chance to make a piece of change.”
“I’ll bet. But skip it. Where’s Babe?”
“At the hotel.”
“Nuts!” Mitch slapped him. “You were going to hole up here until the heat was off! Now, where the hell is she?”
The man began to babble again. Babe hadn’t known how soon she could scram. There’d been no set time for joining him here. She had to be at the hotel. If she wasn’t, he didn’t know where she was.
“Maybe run out on me,” he added bitterly. “Never could trust her around the corner. I don’t see how she could get away, but—”
Mitch jerked a fist swiftly upward.
When the guy came to, he was naked and the room had been stripped of its food, water, and other supplies. His clothes and everything else were bundled into one of the blankets, which Mitch was just lugging out the door.
“Wait!” The man looked at him, fearfully. “What are you going to do?”
“The question,” said Mitch, “is what are you going to do.”
He departed. A mile or so back up the road, he threw the stuff into the ditch. He arrived at the hotel, parked, and indulged in some very deep thinking.
Babe had to be inside the joint. This money-hungry outfit was hiding her for a price. But exactly where she might be—in which of its numerous rooms, the countless nooks and crannies, cellars and sub-cellars that a place like this had—there was no way of telling. Or finding out. The employees would know nothing. They’d simply hide themselves if they saw him coming. And naturally he couldn’t search the place from top to bottom. It would take too long. Delivery men—possibly other guests—would be showing up. And there was The Pig to contend with. Someone must have driven him out here, and he would not have planned to stay later than morning. So someone would be calling for him, and—
Well, never mind. He had to find Babe. He had to do it fast. And since he had no way of learning her hiding place, there was only one thing to do. Force her out of it.
Leaving the hotel, Mitch walked around to the rear and located a rubbish pile. With no great difficulty, he found a five-gallon lard can and a quantity of rags. He returned to the parking lot. He shoved the can under the car’s gas tank and opened the petcock. While it was filling, he knotted the rags into a rope. Then, having shut off the flow of gasoline, he went to the telephone booth and called the hotel’s switchboard.
The clerk-manager answered. He advised Mitch to beat it before he called the cops. “I know you’re not Lonsdale, understand? I know you’re a crook. And if you’re not gone from the premises in five minutes—”
“Look who’s talking!” Mitch jeered. “Go ahead and call the cops! I’d like to see you do it, you liver-lipped, yellow-bellied—”
The manager hung up on him. Mitch called him back.
“Now, get this,” he said harshly. “You said I was a crook. All right, I am one and I’m dangerous. I’m a crib man, an explosives expert. I’ve got plenty of stuff to work with. So send that dame out here and do it fast, or I’ll blow your damned shack apart!”
“Really? My, my!” The man laughed sneeringly, but somewhat shakily. “Just think of that!”
“I’m telling you,” Mitch said, “And this is the last time I’ll tell you. Get that dame out of the woodwork, or there won’t be any left.”
“You wouldn’t dare! If you think you can bluff—”
“In exactly five minutes,” Mitch cut in, “the first charge will be set off, outside. I
f the dame doesn’t come out, your building goes up.”
He replaced the receiver, went back to the car. He picked up the rags and gasoline, moved down the walk to the red-and-white mailbox. It stood in the deep shadows of the porte cochere and he was not observed. Also, the hotel employees apparently were keeping far back from the entrance.
Mitch soaked the rag rope in the gasoline and tucked a length of it down inside the mailbox. Then he lifted the can and trickled its entire contents through the letter slot. It practically filled the box to the brim. The fluid oozed through its seams and dripped down upon the ground.
Mitch carefully scrubbed his hands with his handkerchief. Then he ignited a book of matches, dropped them on the end of the rope. And ran.
His flight was unnecessary, as it turned out. Virtually unnecessary. For the “bomb” was an almost embarrassing failure. There was a weak rumble, a kind of growl—a hungry man’s stomach, Mitch thought bitterly, would make a louder one. A few blasts of smoke, and the box jiggled a bit on its moorings. But that was the size of it. That was the “explosion.” It wouldn’t have startled a nervous baby. As for scaring those rats inside the joint, hell, they were probably laughing themselves sick.
Oh, sure, the box burned; it practically melted. And that would give them some trouble. But that didn’t help Mitch Allison any.
From far down the lawn, he looked dejectedly at the dying flames, wondering what to do now; he gasped, his eyes widening suddenly as two women burst through the entrance of El Ciudad.
One—the one in front—was Babe, barelegged, barefooted; dressed only in her bra and panties. She screamed as she ran, slapping and clawing wildly at her posterior. And it was easy to see why. For the woman chasing her was Bette, and Bette was clutching a blazing blow-torch.
She was holding it in front of her, its long blue flame aimed straight at the brassy blonde’s flanks. Babe increased her speed. But Bette stayed right with her.
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense Page 3
