He sat down on the edge of the divan and sampled his drink, his eyes shadowed and remote and his rugged face thoughtful. “When Marie showed me the gun that afternoon I was sure of it. And then tonight, finding the gun beside Sanchez—”
He paused as John Kane opened the metal box and looked through the papers inside. When he started to inspect the two yellow sheets Marie had put there Rankin explained how they got there.
“That’s right,” Charlie Love said. “Of course, I didn’t know what she went into the garage for but I know she did. We drove from the café there, and then to Marie’s house and that’s where I got grabbed.”
Rankin took the sheets. He did not open them then. He thought he knew where they had come from but he did not know what they would show. He took a breath and when he thought of Ulio and Marie Dizon it did not matter that he felt tired and old and sick to death of all that had happened. He said, not looking at anyone:
“I should have known better.”
Out in the bay a ship whistled mournfully. The rumble of a heavy truck came faintly from the avenue a quarter of a mile away, and somewhere close a cock crowed to be answered distantly by another. Someone put a glass down. A chair squeaked.
“What was that?” John Kane asked softly.
“I jump to conclusions,” Rankin said. “I don’t think enough. Ulio said he expected trouble here and that’s why he brought me along.” He told about the note Ulio had found under the hotel door and mentioned his call on Claire Maynard and what she had said. “Sanchez wrote that note and copied the signature and it was a cinch he wanted Ulio here in a hurry. I figured—and I think Ulio did too—that Sanchez wanted him here to put him out of the way.” He shook his head. “That’s what I mean by jumping to conclusions. If Sanchez wanted Ulio out of the way it could have been handled very nicely in San Francisco by a guy named De Borja. For a specialist like De Borja the killing could have been done there or on the boat or in Honolulu. When I got that much figured out,” he said, “I knew why Sanchez wanted Ulio here.”
He glanced at Lynn. “Sanchez was nice to you because he thought he might get to your father by keeping tabs on you. When that didn’t work, when he found that Ulio was looking for money and credit, he saw another way. He wanted Ulio here because Ulio might be the bait that would bring his father out of hiding. The way I look at it, that is the only reason Sanchez wanted Ulio here. Kane was the guy he wanted, not Ulio.”
He paused and they waited for him to continue. “I finally did some thinking tonight,” he said. “It should have dawned on me before, but it didn’t, that the guy who grabbed me didn’t have to be planted there by Sanchez. The thing he said to me could have been said to make me think what I already wanted to think—that he did work for Sanchez.”
“Pardon me.” Esteban cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair. “There is doubt in your mind that Sanchez murdered Ulio and Marie?”
“I know he didn’t.”
“But”—Lynn turned on him instantly—“you’re the one who was so sure of it.”
“I know. I guess I wasn’t very bright. You see, the thing that bothers me most is the gun.”
“What about it?” Esteban said.
“I’m wondering how Sanchez got it after Marie took it from his study—and how he happened to have it tonight.”
“But look, Spence,” Austin said. “According to you, Marie had it in her bag. She was murdered that afternoon and Sanchez took it, didn’t he? You didn’t find it on her.”
Rankin plugged ahead doggedly, not answering Austin but turning to Charlie Love. “What time did they grab you?”
“Umm—must have been just about a quarter of four.”
“That’s close, I think. Because she came out a minute later and she asked for a key to my room at four ten. Did those four guys bring you here?”
“Yes.”
“Sanchez was waiting?”
“With De Borja. We went right downstairs.”
“How long before Lynn broke it up?”
Love looked at the girl and she said, “It was four thirty when I got home. Maybe ten minutes later when I got downstairs.”
“And how long did Sanchez stay with you?”
“I’m not sure but—I’d say five to ten minutes. Then he locked us both down there.”
Rankin emptied his glass and nodded. “That takes care of Sanchez from four o’clock until ten minutes of five and Marie was murdered between four ten and four fifty. It takes care of De Borja and the four guys who grabbed Charlie. So how could Sanchez have taken the gun from her handbag? He might have hired someone else but I doubt it. Not for a job like that when he had to be sure—assuming that he knew she had the gun.”
He stepped to the table and put his glass down. “No,” he said. “The guy who murdered Marie took the gun all right. And he had that gun with him tonight. But it wasn’t Sanchez. It was you, Austin.” He looked at the big man. “You switched guns with Sanchez after you’d shot him and you gave Esteban the one you wanted him to have.”
For a second then the porch was quiet again. Then Austin put his head back and laughed. Lynn started to laugh, nervously, and then stopped. Austin stopped and peered at Rankin.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Are you crazy?”
Rankin said he sometimes thought so. The weariness was pressing in on him again and it was hard to cope with, for it was not the physical sort of weariness that he was so familiar with but a nervous fatigue that came from thrusting his mind ahead, from always scheming and analyzing and never forgetting that this might be his only chance.
“You can prove this?” Esteban asked.
“I can try.” Rankin opened the papers Marie had hidden in the metal box. He explained how he had been surprised in the Kane garage by the four men before he had time to examine them. “But I had an idea what they might be. I’d seen similar sheets, a little different in shape and color but with that perforated edge, and stiffer than ordinary letter paper. Bank statements,” he said. “And it was a good guess. Two of them. One your private account, Austin—as if you didn’t know—and one for the account of the Kane Company.”
“What’s that?” John Kane asked.
Lynn said it was a company Austin had set up for her when they had sold the copra acreage. “For sixty thousand pesos,” she said.
“What about it?” Austin said. “The account’s in order, isn’t it?”
Austin’s tone was wonderful. He did not sound angry; he sounded surprised and a little curious, and his blond face was so perfectly controlled that Rankin faltered and had to tighten his resolve before he could continue.
“The day we got here,” he said, “Ulio told me he had given forty-five thousand pesos to a friend just before he was reported killed in action. He said the friend was to use whatever was necessary for Marie Dizon and keep the rest. That afternoon Ulio went to collect, and he did collect. He came back that night with forty-five thousand pesos in new bills. He gave me five hundred. He said that Marie Dizon had needed no help—which was a lie since she told me she’d had a hard time until recently—and that the entire amount had been returned to him.”
He gestured with the statements. “The Kane Company account shows a withdrawal on that day of forty-five thousand pesos. It shows a deposit the following day of forty-five thousand pesos. On that same day, Austin’s private account—with a total of less than a thousand pesos—shows a withdrawal of five hundred pesos, the amount Ulio gave to me and which had to be made up after Austin had killed him and discovered that much missing.”
He stopped talking to Esteban and faced Austin. “You’re the friend Ulio gave the money to over a year ago. You didn’t spend a dime on Marie, though she needed help badly. You heard Ulio was dead and no one would ever know, so you used the money yourself and when he popped up again that afternoon and asked for it you had to give it to him. And there was only one way—get it from the Kane account and put it back the next day before Lynn or someone else found out you w
ere short. You knew then you were going to kill him.”
“You’re still crazy,” Austin said.
“You had to kill him, not just because you’d go to jail when Ulio found out what you had done—and he would have found out since he now had an interest in the Kane Company and would have checked on its assets—but because you knew you’d never be able to marry Lynn. I don’t know about the love part but I do know—and so do you—that she could expect to be a fairly wealthy young woman.”
Austin grunted softly. “That’s a lot of theory. You can prove I withdrew forty-five thousand pesos one day and deposited it the next. I can give you a half-dozen reasons for a transaction of that kind…. What do you think, Sergeant?”
“I would like to hear what else Mr. Rankin has to say.”
“Do you like the motive?” Rankin said.
Esteban nodded. “I like it if you can prove it.”
Rankin turned again to Austin. “You think it’s a lot of theory? Okay, I’ll give you some more. I’ll start at the beginning after Ulio called on you and asked for his dough and you had to rush down to the bank and get it for him—from the Kane account. You knew how you stood then. You could go to prison and be washed up for life as a lawyer with a criminal record, or you could go on as you were, marrying a swell girl who would have all the money you’d need. A lot of guys have been killed for less.”
“That is true,” Esteban said. “Particularly in Manila.”
“Anyway,” Rankin said, “you made up your mind. Ulio probably told you why he’d come back. If he did you knew he expected trouble with Sanchez and that gave you a fall guy. You knew about the appointment Ulio and I had with Sanchez at nine thirty that night. You agreed to bring Lynn at ten and get word to Marie to come at the same time.”
“That much isn’t theory anyway,” Austin said casually.
“So here’s what I think you did,” Rankin said. “That first evening before dinner while we were on the porch you went into the study to make a phone call, so you said. You’d been around the house a lot and knew where things were. You knew there was a gun in the study and you took it then. You were in that bedroom of Ulio’s when we came, taking a chance but knowing that the way to get away with murder is to do it boldly and not pussyfoot around. If I had turned on a light you would have had to kill us both and take your chances, but I didn’t and you were set.”
Rankin said, “The guy that grabbed me that night pulled my head back against his shoulder when he had me around the neck. I didn’t stop to think until tonight that only a tall guy could do it that way, taller than I am—and if Sanchez had anyone like that around I’ve never seen him; I didn’t stop to think because you made that deliberate crack about me not bothering the boss so I’d think what you wanted me to think.” He took a breath, expelled it in a grunt. “Okay, I fell for it. I was positive Sanchez was my boy.”
“Like you’re positive now,” Austin said sardonically.
Rankin ignored this and said, “You killed Ulio after Sanchez had left—it was hardly more than a five minute drive from there to here where you picked Lynn up—and when you got the chance that night or the next day you put the gun back where you got it, hoping the police might find it. They didn’t because they didn’t look.” He paused, hearing some embarrassed comment from Esteban that he didn’t understand and said, “And you couldn’t do anything about that without arousing suspicion, but it did not matter too much with my story pointing to Sanchez. It didn’t matter at all until Marie loused things up for you.”
“She was not killed for the gun?” Esteban said.
“For these.” Rankin indicated the bank statements. “Marie was killed on the first day of the month—I remember looking at the calendar in Jerry Walsh’s office—and that morning the statements came from the bank and she opened them. She’d talked a lot with me and she knew about the forty-five thousand pesos and she was a smartgirl, smart enough to wonder and to take them with her until she’d talked with me. But she made one mistake. Like you did,” he said to Austin.
“Your mistake was in not getting to the office before she did—or forgetting the statements were due that day. Her mistake was in not taking the envelopes. You had those envelopes when you emptied your pockets the night I stayed with you, and when you saw them that morning—in the wastebasket or somewhere—you knew what had happened and went looking for her. You caught up with her in my room’ sometime after four ten that afternoon and you searched her bag and saw the gun; you searched her either before or after you killed her—and you knew then you had to kill her—but she didn’t have the statements.”
“That’s when the gun really became important. You didn’t know where the statements were or where they’d turn up. With what I knew about the money Ulio had they made a beautiful motive. You might think of explanations but none of them would be worth a damn until the murder case was closed and the police had a victim. It was nice thinking,” he said. “And quick. The gun was worthless as evidence if you left it but it would pin both murders on Sanchez if it could be found in his possession.”
He took another breath and said, “You got a break then. What happened to Lynn and our plan to have me act as a decoy was perfect. You stuck with Esteban, knowing that if the thing worked you could bust in on Sanchez with that gun in your hand. You could kill him easily then. They might even buy you a medal for it. Well, that’s how it worked and you only had one thing to worry about.”
“Only one, hunh?” Austin said, his voice no longer casual but clipped and tight.
“You figured that Sanchez would be carrying a gun. You had to allow for the fact that someone might see it. If it was the usual type automatic you were set because it’s not easy to tell the make unless you see a gun close and you could make the switch without anyone suspecting it. If Sanchez’s gun was a Jap or German automatic, or a revolver, you had to plant your gun in his belt and let the idea percolate that Sanchez had carried two guns, an easy thing to believe under the circumstances. Then when the gun was checked with the bullets that killed the others you were set, with no one, least of all Sanchez, to argue about it.”
He found his throat was dry and swallowed. He was watching Austin now, forgetting the others on the porch as he went ahead.
“And as I said, you were even lucky there. Sanchez carried an automatic. It’s in your pocket now, I think, and what you did—and you did it neatly—was drop through that skylight after you’d shot him and get to the body first and bend over it while you got Sanchez’s gun. After that all you had to do was hand Esteban yours, the one that would prove Sanchez killed Ulio and Marie.” He glanced at Esteban. “You never questioned the gun did you? You assumed the .32 that Austin gave was the one he took from Sanchez.”
“He still doesn’t question it,” Austin said. He sat up, stretching and arching his back. He yawned but Rankin, watching the eyes, found them dilated and strangely bright. “It’s a nice theory,” the big man added, his toothy grin fixed. “You’ve got a hypothetical motive and you’ve done some clever thinking and it makes an interesting story. The only trouble is you can’t prove it or any part of it.”
“I think I can.”
“I would like to hear this proof,” Esteban said.
“It wasn’t any mistake you made,” Rankin said to Austin. “It was a chance you had to take and you took it because it was the only way. It would have worked too if I hadn’t already made up my mind about you. As it was, well, when a suspected killer is shot to death no one cares what sort of gun killed him. No one bothers to check the bullets in his body…. Do they, Esteban?” he said, not looking at him.
“No.”
“That was the only chance you took,” Rankin said. “You had a gun and Sanchez had a gun. If you switched guns as I say you did, the bullets in his body will fit the gun that killed Ulio and Marie, the gun that you want us to believe you took from Sanchez.”
He stood up and said, “Sanchez didn’t shoot himself. You put those two bullets in his body a
nd if they match the murder gun, you’re the one who used it tonight and brought it into the room.”
Howard Austin’s move was a period to that sentence and gave testimony to his guilt. He did not speak; no one did. He did not have much of a chance either, but he tried, bounding to his feet and wheeling toward the steps as Lynn gasped and shrank back on the divan.
Rankin, perched on the edge of the seat next to Austin, moved with him because he was ready. Like an inexperienced boxer who telegraphs his blows, Austin’s chalky face had mirrored his intent and Rankin was a step behind the big man as they reached the cleared space in front of the stairs.
He saw Austin yank at the gun in his pocket as he fled, and as the gun came out, Rankin did what he had never done consciously on a football field. He left his feet and, not tackling Austin, clipped him with a vicious block from behind that had great precision and devastating effect.
One hundred and eighty-five pounds backed the shoulder that smacked Austin behind the knees, and Austin went down hard, the gun skidding from his hand and down the steps. He struck flat and face down. He kept on sliding the same way, on his face, legs pinned by the weight upon him, until the momentum was gone and Rankin rolled clear.
Rankin got up but Austin did not. He was stunned and pushed himself to a sitting position with an effort. He sat blinking foolishly and rubbing the back of one leg, his glasses dangling from one ear.
Rankin stood over him, conscious that the others had crowded up. He saw Silvestre and another of Esteban’s men take shape as they scurried up the stairs from the driveway. Then, feeling no satisfaction and too emotionally exhausted to care what happened, he went to the table and poured a drink.
The island’s western slope was still in shadow but the sun had moved in from the east, crossing the mountains and Laguna de Bay, and was reflecting now from the slopes of Mariveles. A faint, low-lying haze obscured the distant hump which was Corregidor but the bay was brightening and the shadows on the shore line had already begun their migrations.
Dangerous Legacy Page 20
