Women Crime Writers

by Sarah Weinman

  “How about letting us see for ourselves?” Skip was easy and unworried. “Let’s have the key, huh?”

  Karen was about halfway up the stairs. She came on up as Mrs. Havermann turned into her bedroom and opened a closet door. Skip tensed, perhaps thinking she had a gun hidden, but when she had fumbled for a moment in the pocket of a hanging coat she came out with the key. It had a new look; the ridges were sharp-cut. Skip grabbed it and nodded.

  He glanced from Eddie to Karen. “Okay. Now tie her up.”

  Karen cried, “You promised!” and Skip said coolly, “Tie her up or I’ll knock her out.”

  Mrs. Havermann licked her lips. “You tie me, Karen.”

  Skip was grinning twistedly inside the mask, and Eddie wondered if Karen knew how she had betrayed herself, crying out like that. Mrs. Havermann had a very thoughtful look as she sat down on the edge of the bed, where Skip motioned her. She looked as if she were thinking of things which had happened long ago, or over a long period of years. She looked as if there might be a bitter taste in her mouth.

  “Turn over on the bed,” Skip said to Mrs. Havermann. “Karen, tie her arms behind her. Tight. Wrists, then higher. And put juice in it.”

  “What shall I use?”

  “For Chrissakes, tear up a towel or something.”

  Mrs. Havermann turned her head. “Karen, do you know these men?”

  “I never saw them before,” Karen answered, a confused childish lie. Everything she did showed that she knew Skip, was aware of his every move and glance. “What shall I use to tie you?”

  “Don’t destroy something good,” Mrs. Havermann said, much more calmly now. “Go to the linen closet and get one of the worn things.”

  Karen hurried out, came back in a moment with some pillowcases over her arm. She tore strips and tied Mrs. Havermann’s arms and then, at Skip’s orders, her ankles.

  “Any cotton in the bathroom?” Skip demanded. “That fuzzy stuff.”

  “I guess so,” Karen stammered, her eyes full of dread.

  “Go see.”

  Karen backed around the edge of the bed, and Mrs. Havermann said in a low tone, “Please don’t put a gag in my mouth. I promise I won’t call out.”

  “Who’s running this thing?” Skip inquired of the room. He went into the bathroom and came out with a blue box of absorbent cotton. He threw it on the bed. “Stuff her mouth with it. A rag over it to hold it.” He looked at Karen, who hadn’t moved.

  “Please!” Mrs. Havermann gasped from where she lay. She had turned her eyes so that she could glimpse Skip. “I promise not to make a bit of trouble.”

  “You’ve got a choice,” Skip said, unconcerned. “A gag. Or I’ll clip you behind the ear and you won’t see or hear anything for a while. Would you like that better?” He stepped forward, as if thinking she might really want him to knock her out, and she cringed on the counterpane, trying to inch her head away.

  “No. No, I wouldn’t want that.”

  “Okay. Karen, you’d better get busy.” Skip regarded the shaking girl with a wry amusement. “Time’s wasting.”

  Karen moved tremblingly nearer the older woman and said uncertainly, “Will you open your mouth, Aunt Maude?”

  “I’m not your aunt,” Mrs. Havermann said, looking directly into Karen’s eyes. “I wonder why I asked you to call me that. I wonder why I sheltered and fed you—now you’ve brought these two into my home.”

  Karen looked at Mrs. Havermann as if in an agony of regret.

  “I don’t know how you became acquainted with these two, the kind of creatures they seem to be. You’ve never been sly and secretive, slipping out at night, or acting in any way delinquent. You’ve seemed a straightforward girl. And now you’ve done this.”

  “Gag her, for Chrissakes,” Skip said, his temper rising.

  “The other one never says anything, does he?” Mrs. Havermann remarked harshly, looking at Eddie. Eddie knew that he was sweating through the silk mesh. It did not occur to him that his features were as distorted, as unreadable as Skip’s.

  Now Mrs. Havermann spoke directly to Eddie. “If you are sensible, young man, you’ll leave now before a serious crime is committed.”

  An indignant growl escaped from Skip. He grabbed up a wad of cotton, and as Mrs. Havermann finished speaking he jabbed it between her teeth. Mrs. Havermann worked her jaws, trying to spit the cotton out, and then Karen rushed to pull it away and Skip straight-armed the girl back into the wall. He looked at Eddie.

  “Take it easy, for Chrissakes,” Eddie muttered.

  Skip took a length of cotton cloth and wrapped it over the lower part of Mrs. Havermann’s face and tied it tight. Mumbling noises came through the gag. Mrs. Havermann’s skin grew red, then darkened.

  Skip said to Eddie, “Take Karen out in the hall.”

  Eddie went over to Karen. “She’s passed out, she doesn’t feel anything.” He didn’t want to look at Mrs. Havermann’s flabby, suddenly sprawled body.

  Karen was crouched against the wall, staring at Skip. “I’ll have to stay with her. Don’t touch me.”

  Skip held the key; he was tossing it, and the bright brass color sparkled in the light. “You’re coming with us,” he said to Karen. “I don’t trust you much up here with the old woman. What the hell’s the matter with you? I didn’t do anything to her.” He went to Karen and gripped her upper arm between his fingers, lifting her, and Eddie heard the gasp of pain she gave. “Now come along.”

  Karen went as if she were sleepwalking. Eddie was nervous, and Skip walked jauntily, snapping the key into the air and laughing under his breath. Skip unlocked the new lock on Stolz’s door and they went in. Karen remained by the door. She seemed utterly indifferent now to the fascination of the money. Skip snapped on the light and hurried to the old-fashioned mahogany wardrobe against the inner wall. He stretched a hand to its door. The look of his curled fingers was hungry. He threw open the door and stood there blanked out with shock. Finally he looked at Eddie, then at the girl.

  The wardrobe was empty.

  Skip and Eddie searched hastily for the next few minutes, every cranny and hidey-hole in the room, expecting at any moment to run across the money. When it was obvious that the money wasn’t in the room Skip would have turned on Karen. Eddie knew it, knew that his being here was the only thing which saved her from Skip’s violence.

  Trying to control his voice, Skip said to her, “We’ll go back and see the old woman. Maybe you can get her to understand—we want the money Stolz kept here. We’re going to get it.”

  Upstairs, they found Mrs. Havermann conscious again. Above the gag her eyes bugged at them.

  Eddie felt hot and sick. He wished he had never seen the house or the old woman, never heard of the money.

  It didn’t occur to him to wish that he had never known Skip.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE CITY spread below the foothills made a great blaze in the sky and frosted the tips of the hills with reflected light; but here in the canyon it was dark, quiet except for the rustle of trees under the wind, and nothing moved except the small car creeping up the grade. The car rolled to a stop below Big Tom’s house, the motor died, the lights went out, and a short stocky man in a black suit got out and looked all around. The only light in all that darkness was beside Tom’s door.

  Harry sniffed the breeze, noting the absence of exhaust fumes and city smoke. He looked back down the hill, toward the turnoff from the canyon highway. There was no traffic whatever. The canyon might have been a thousand miles from L.A. Big Tom had certainly picked him a spot.

  Harry climbed to Big Tom’s porch and rattled the screen door. The door within opened promptly. Big Tom was all dressed, ready to leave. A couple of cats were sitting attentively in the middle of the room, looking at their master as if wondering what possible business he had out at this hour.

  “Just a minute. I want to check the back door.” Big Tom started away, and the phone began ringing. Big Tom ignored it, went into the kitchen f
or a minute, then came back. Harry had his head inside, holding the screen ajar with his shoulder.

  “Aren’t you going t’ answer the damned phone?”

  “I know who it is. Benny.” Big Tom walked by the table where the phone sat, didn’t give it a glance. “To hell with him.”

  “Maybe he knows something,” Harry said. “Maybe you ought t’ hear what he says, anyhow.”

  “I know what he says. He’s been saying it all day.”

  “Well, then, maybe I ought t’ hear what he says,” Harry declared. A touch of truculence had come into his manner. He stepped into the room.

  Big Tom gave him a cool stare. “Are you going with me, or aren’t you?”

  “I might be going, after I hear from Benny. He saved me one hell of a blowup in Frisco. I just want t’ hear what he says.”

  “Oh, hell, go ahead and listen.” Big Tom sat down on a chair and folded his hands between his knees and looked unlovingly at the cats sitting together in the middle of the rug.

  Harry went to the phone and lifted it out of its cradle and put it to his ear. “Yeah. No, this is Harry. We’re ready t’ roll.” He listened and pretty soon his tongue came out and licked at his lips. “You think it’s on the level?”

  The silence made a cup, a kind of vacuum, around the house, and Big Tom sat moveless as if he might be listening for some scratch of sound, the tiniest indication of a break in that envelopment. He didn’t look at Harry. Harry’s nervous fright rolled from him in waves, like a smell.

  Harry put the phone into its cradle, went to a chair facing Big Tom, sat down. “My God,” he said. He took out a white linen handkerchief and mopped at his neck under the collar. “What a hell of a break.” Big Tom made no reply, showed no curiosity, just waited; and Harry went on: “All day Benny’s been following this character, buying him drinks and trying t’ chum him up . . . when he wasn’t ducking out t’ phone you . . . and he finally got the character drunk enough and he talked. He talked about Stolz.”

  Big Tom grabbed one of his cats and inspected behind its ears for fleas. He didn’t look in Harry’s direction.

  “This boy Benny’s been with is a real hard-nose. Tough. Benny thinks he’s a gun from El Paso, somebody he met once. Worked for Stolz for a year or so. Not working for him now. Uses a different moniker. Won’t be needing any moniker at all if he blabs much what he’s been blabbing t’ Benny.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re working around to the big news,” Big Tom said.

  “The news is bad, real bad,” Harry answered, his eyes shining like wet soap. “The word is that Stolz bought a chunk of the Hartfield ransom. Got it for about ten cents on the dollar. No bargain at that. You remember about the Hartfields?”

  Big Tom put the cat down carefully on all four feet. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “The job was a ripperoo all the way around,” Harry went on breathlessly. “The punks who snatched Hartfield and his wife didn’t have sense enough t’ specify the kind of money. So they got hundreds, all consecutive, every goddamn number taped—— Oh, my god! And we nearly walked int’ that!”

  Big Tom lifted his eyes slowly. “You’re not going?”

  “Good God! Good God!” Harry cried loudly. “You’re not going either!”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Harry lowered his face and peered at Big Tom as through a haze. “Now, now wait up——”

  “I’m going,” Big Tom affirmed. “I didn’t know it myself until just now. I kept thinking all day, if Benny dug up something smelly I’d have to drop it, but then I quit answering the phone so I wouldn’t hear what he said. All the time I knew I was going and didn’t realize I’d made up my mind. Till now.”

  “What in the blazing hell,” Harry wondered, his mouth puckering, “can you do with dough as hot as that?”

  “Stolz must have had a plan for it,” Big Tom said. “Maybe I can figure out what it was, use it myself.” He stood up, checked his keys, adjusted the gun inside his belt against his belly. He said as if to himself, excluding Harry, “I’ll have to go it alone.”

  “You sure will,” Harry agreed.

  Big Tom walked over to the door. “Will you phone Snope for me?”

  “He’ll blow his stack. They don’t want hot moola!”

  “It’s his cut anyway,” Big Tom said. “Hot or cold.” He had a look of ironic amusement as he went out, not even bothering to shut the door. Harry sat for a minute or more as if undecided. He plucked at his lip. He heard Tom’s Ford, first inside the garage down by the road, warming up, then out in the open. Finally Harry stood up, went to the front door to listen. The sounds of Tom’s car died in the distance, and Harry shook his head in relief.

  He said to the listening cats, “He’s crazy as a bedbug. He ought t’ be in the loony bin.”

  Harry went out, snapping the lock but leaving all the lights on. The cats wandered around the room for a brief while, annoyed at being alone, then settled in the shabby chairs to sleep.

  And then after all, along with the terrific fright there was desperate defiance. Mrs. Havermann had had time to gather her forces somewhat. When Skip had taken out enough of the cotton wadding so that she could speak she croaked, “Mr. Stolz is on his way here. I’m doing you a favor by telling you. When he comes he won’t stand for any nonsense, and he certainly won’t let you take his money!”

  For the first time Skip’s assurance slipped. He grabbed Mrs. Havermann by the shoulders and dragged her up and shook her. “When? When’s he coming?” Karen, trying to interfere, got in his way then, and he jabbed viciously with an elbow, still hanging onto Mrs. Havermann. Karen gave a cry and put a hand to her cheek. “When? When is Stolz coming?”

  “Any minute now.” She was tied, helpless, and the nerves twitched in her face, but she kept her eyes angrily on Skip. “You’d better leave at once.”

  Perhaps she thought she really had frightened him. Skip grew quiet, bent over the bed, his foxy eyes suddenly still and watchful. So she pressed it a little further. “I believe I hear Mr. Stolz at the front door downstairs now.”

  The three of them waited, frozen, listening for some sound from below. Skip went softly out into the hall, listened, came back. “She’s giving us a line of crap. I’m going to work her over.”

  Karen flung herself between him and Mrs. Havermann. “Don’t hurt her! You promised. I wouldn’t have let you in if you hadn’t promised!”

  Mrs. Havermann writhed up on one elbow and the head of the bedstead. “Karen, look at me.” When Karen had turned, Mrs. Havermann went on: “I don’t want you pleading for me. I don’t want a word from you in my behalf. You no longer mean anything to me. The love and loyalty I might have expected from you are as ashes. I want nothing from you. You owe me nothing.” Tears filled Karen’s eyes, ready to spill; and then Mrs. Havermann forced her head forward a little, and from between the cotton-flecked lips she spat into Karen’s face.

  Skip laughed. Eddie moved to the rim of the room, anxious, hating the delay, hating his own feelings of fear and inadequacy.

  “Why do we take time to argue?” Eddie said. “She’s hidden the money to save it for Stolz. So we find it. We don’t have to hurt anybody.”

  “In this place we find it?” Skip hollered.

  “Karen can help. She’ll know the places it could be hidden.”

  Karen had gone away from Mrs. Havermann and the bed. She had wiped the spit off her face with her sleeve. At the moment Mrs. Havermann had leaned forward and spat, a look of unbelieving shock had flooded Karen. But now she seemed to have regained a dull composure.

  “How about it?” Skip demanded of Karen.

  She looked around at them, at Eddie and Skip. She didn’t look at Mrs. Havermann. “Yes, I guess so.”

  They split up. Karen said she’d take the attic and the upper bedrooms, let Eddie and Skip search the easier area downstairs. There was a basement too, she told them; nothing in it but the oil furnace, though they’d have to check.

  In the kitchen, in a l
ower cupboard behind a stack of canned dog food, Skip found two packets of hundred-dollar bills. For an instant he was about to let out a shout, thinking he’d located the hoard; but then in sizing it up he noted that the two packets were out of the way in a dark spot, as if Mrs. Havermann might have started to put the money in there and then changed her mind, retrieving what she had stored. These two packets had escaped her searching fingers.

  Skip, wary for steps outside the kitchen door, flipped through the money. It looked new. He studied it closely; it wasn’t counterfeit; the bills were perfect. He noted a number on a bill, then two, then three. This new money was numbered consecutively, as if it might have just come from the mint. Skip shook his head and grinned. Stolz had converted something—surplus profits, a payoff, a sale of shares—into this easily stored and beautifully legitimate currency. The newness of the bills, the consecutive numbering were to Skip an indication that there was nothing wrong here. Stolz had his cash where he could get it and spend it easily if he wanted to. He’d just forgotten to keep an eye on it!

  Skip rose, having made sure there were no other packets scattered in the depths of the cupboard. He put the two packets inside his shirt against his skin, buttoned his shirt over them. He kept on smiling to himself, the smile distorted by the silken mask. The old woman hadn’t been so smart after all. She was just a stupid, panicky old bag, putting new locks on doors and then getting scared the locks weren’t enough and trying a trick or two. She was the kind of old bag would keep dimes and quarters in a sugar bowl. He wished he could go up and be allowed to punch her face in.

  He happened to be looking toward the door when Eddie appeared there. “I’ve been thinking about what Mrs. Havermann said about Stolz,” Eddie told Skip. “If he’s really on his way here, apt to arrive any time, it might be better to have Mrs. Havermann out of sight.”

  Skip regarded him thoughtfully.

  “If he comes in,” Eddie continued, “you and I could hear him in time to slip out the other door. Then if he caught Karen upstairs she could pretend nothing was wrong, the old lady was out seeing some friends or something. If she wasn’t out where he could see her, tied up like that, he’d have no way of knowing right off that anything was going on.”