Vanishing Ladies

by Ed McBain

  “Then what?”

  “They made a phone call. Stephanie made it. To this man, Joe. They told him to get over to Hez’s place right away. When she got off the phone, Barter said, ‘Good. When he gets here, you go back to the motel, get some clothes and some luggage, and get into that cabin.’ I guess he meant the cabin they’d taken me from.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Joe arrived about a half-hour later, and he and Stephanie drove off in the Cadillac. They had me tied in the bedroom. Barter and Hezekiah left, too, but Hez had trouble starting his car. It’s a very old car.”

  “They left the truck at Hez’s place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see anything else in the truck?”

  “No. Was there anything else?”

  “I don’t know. Go ahead, what happened next?”

  “They came for me early the next morning. Stephanie saw the blood on my dress, and she washed it out. We waited until it dried before we left.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “To Sullivan’s Corners. Stephanie drove us in the Cadillac.”

  “Us?”

  “The redhead and me. Blanche. She looked like a slut.”

  “She was.”

  “She had on the most horrible purple dress. Stephanie was dressed garishly, too. A bright red dress. We made quite an interesting trio.”

  “I’ll bet you did. What happened then?”

  “We stopped for coffee in town. Blanche had a gun. She was carrying a white stole over her arm, covering the gun. They said they’d shoot me if I spoke to anyone.”

  “So you kept quiet?”

  “I kept quiet. Was that wrong?”

  “That was very right. Then what?”

  “Then we went to the train station. We walked right down the main street. I guess we attracted quite a bit of attention. Stephanie bought two tickets to Davistown. The redhead and I got on the train when it pulled in. She still had the gun in her hand, under the stole.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About nine-thirty or so.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “When we got to Davistown, we took a cab here. This man Joe tied me up. Blanche said she was going back to Sullivan’s Corners.”

  “Have you got any idea why you’re here?”

  “No,” Ann said. “But they haven’t harmed me in any way. I mean, except for Joe’s hands …” Ann paused. “He’s got hands,” she said.

  “It’s the company he keeps,” I told her. “Did you happen to run into a girl named Lois?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” I paused, thinking. “How’d you know who I was?”

  “There was a phone call earlier tonight. Joe took it. I heard him say ‘Who?’ and then he said, ‘Tony Mitchell? No, I don’t know any Tony Mitchell.’ When they brought you in … well, Phil’s described you so many times.”

  “I see. That phone call accounts for the knock on the head. They knew who I was the second time around.”

  “What’s going on, Tony? Do you know?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “I just hope that Phil gets the same idea.”

  “Do you think—?”

  The door opened. Stephanie Barter and her husband came into the room. A tall thin man was behind them. He had blue eyes and brown hair, and he was grinning.

  “How’s your head, Detective Mitchell?” Stephanie asked.

  “Still on my shoulders, thanks,” I said.

  “Hez should have hit you harder,” Barter said. “We didn’t know you were a cop when he hit you. We didn’t find that out until we went through your wallet.”

  “And now that you know?”

  “It depends on how much you know, Mitchell.”

  “I don’t know anything. I came here to help a friend find his girl. I’ve found her.”

  “You also found a lot of trouble.”

  “None that I can see. Let us go, and then you can go back to your damn whorehouse.”

  “I don’t like profanity,” Stephanie said.

  “The hell with that. I don’t like getting hit on the head by—”

  “Watch the way you talk,” the tall thin man said.

  “You’re Joe, I take it.”

  “I’m Joe,” he said.

  “Your trip last night can cause you a lot of accessory-after trouble, Joe.”

  “Accessory after what?” Stephanie asked.

  I smiled. “The fact, naturally.”

  “What fact?”

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  “I’ll bet you don’t,” Barter answered. “It doesn’t make any difference anyhow. You’re in this too deep already.”

  “In what?”

  Barter turned to Stephanie. “In a damn stupid setup that was none of my—”

  “Shut your foul mouth,” Stephanie snapped. “You’re as much to blame—”

  “If you hadn’t—”

  “Shut up!”

  Barter clamped his mouth shut. He was either afraid of Stephanie, or afraid he was about to say too much in my presence.

  “All right,” he said at last. “They’re your guests. What do we do with them?”

  “We wait for the other two,” Stephanie said.

  “And then what?”

  “You know what.”

  “That’s what I don’t like about this,” Barter said. “All because—”

  “Shut up!”

  “I won’t shut up. Goddamnit, why should …?”

  Stephanie slapped him suddenly and fiercely. “You’re filthy,” she said. “You’re filthy and slimy.” She came closer to him, and Barter shrank away as if he were expecting another blow. “Get out of here. Get out of this room. I haven’t forgotten, you slimy …”

  “Take it easy, Steph,” Carlisle said.

  “Get him out of here,” she answered. Her voice was a deadly cold whisper. Carlisle took Barter’s elbow and led him to the door. At the door, Barter turned as if he wanted to say something. Then he shook his head and went out, Carlisle after him.

  “You shouldn’t have played games with me, Mitchell,” Stephanie said.

  “How do you know I was playing?”

  “And don’t play with me now!” she snapped. There was anger in her eyes, and impatience. Together, they were a fearful combination. The lady had something eating her, and she wouldn’t be happy until the last bite was swallowed.

  “When does the party begin?” I asked.

  “As far as you’re concerned,” she said, “the party’s over.”

  “Who are the other two we’re waiting for?”

  “You guess.”

  “Offhand, I’d say Phil Colby and a fellow named Simms.”

  “That’s right,” Stephanie said somewhat proudly. I didn’t know whether she was proud of my deductive ability or of her own scheming.

  “And when they get here?”

  “You tell it. You tell stories beautifully.”

  “You kill us,” I said simply.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?”

  Stephanie didn’t answer. She kept watching me with a small smile on her mouth.

  “You’re going to a lot of trouble for a simple thing like abduction, aren’t you?”

  “There’s a little more than abduction involved,” Stephanie said. “Just a little more than that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a half-million dollar business I don’t feel like seeing washed away.”

  “Who’s going to wash it away?”

  “Any number of people,” she said. “But especially you four.”

  “What could we do?”

  “There’s a district attorney in this state,” Stephanie said. “A smart cop would know where to find him.”

  “A smarter cop could know when the quiet payoff is due. A cop like that might want to trade his life for silence.”

  She looked at me steadily. “Only one thing wrong there,” she said.

  “What
’s that?”

  “You’re not that kind of a cop.”

  “Try me,” I said.

  “And wind up with another broken contract? Sorry.”

  “You’d rather do murder, huh?”

  Stephanie didn’t answer.

  “You’d be wasting your time, anyway,” I said. “The lieutenant at my precinct knows the whole story.” Actually, he didn’t know the whole story, but Stephanie didn’t know that, and I was grabbing for straws.

  “Let him come after you,” Stephanie said.

  “He’s a stubborn guy. He’s just liable to do it.”

  “Let him. He’ll find an automobile accident.”

  “A what?”

  “A car that skidded into the lake or over the gorge. A car with four occupants. You, the girl, Colby, and Simms.”

  Ann drew in a sharp breath.

  “It’d never work,” I told Stephanie.

  “I’ll chance it. You don’t throw away something you’ve worked for all your life, Mitchell. You hold onto it.”

  “There’s just one thing I’d like to hold onto,” I said.

  “What?”

  “My life.”

  Stephanie smiled. “You can be cute. It’s a shame.”

  “It’s a damn shame,” I agreed.

  “If you’re going to start swearing,” Stephanie began, and I said, “Oh, shit!”

  The smile dropped from her mouth.

  “They’re looking for the other two now,” she said tightly. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to find them.”

  “It might be a little more difficult than it was with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Those two haven’t been bitten by snakes.”

  16

  That’s the end of Tony’s deposition except for the “Sworn to before me on this seventeenth day of July” business at the end, which I won’t read.

  I have to admit that when his call didn’t come at midnight, I began to get a little worried. I’d talked to Simms in his room as soon as I’d finished dinner and checked in. Simms told me that Lois and a redhead had boarded the 9:44 A.M. train to Davistown. From the way the station-master had described the redhead to him, and from the way Simms in turn described her to me, she couldn’t have been anyone but Blanche.

  I’d seen Blanche in town at about two in the afternoon at the restaurant. If she’d gone to Davistown that morning, she had hightailed it back in a hurry. And apparently without Lois. Simms was all for scouring the town until we turned up Blanche. I asked him to wait until the call from Mitchell came, and he agreed that would be the best course to follow.

  I left him in his room at 11:30. I gave him my room number in case anything important came up, and I told him I’d go back upstairs to him as soon as I heard from Tony. Then I went down to wait. Midnight came too fast. Tony is a punctual guy, and when that phone didn’t ring at midnight, I began to have my first doubts. At 12:15, the phone still hadn’t rung.

  Someone knocked on the door instead.

  “Who is it?” I called.

  “Bellboy, sir,” the voice answered, and I fell for the oldest gag in the universe and opened the door.

  Tex Planett was standing in the corridor. Two deputies I’d never seen were standing behind him. The last time Planett and I had met, he was wearing his .45 in a side holster. This time, he was wearing it in his fist.

  “Get your coat, Colby,” he said. He was smiling. He was enjoying himself.

  “What for?” I said.

  “Want to talk to you in my office.”

  “What for?”

  Planett shrugged. “Suspicion of burglary. How’s that? Get your coat.”

  I moved toward my jacket on the bed. Sandy’s revolver was in the inside pocket of that jacket.

  “Hold it, Colby,” Planett said. He gestured to one of the deputies, and the deputy went to the jacket, frisked it for about half a second, and found the gun. He handed the gun to Planett, and the jacket to me.

  “Now put it on,” Planett said.

  I shrugged into the jacket.

  “Where’s your pal?” he asked.

  For a moment, I thought he meant Mitchell, and my hopes rose slightly. “What pal?” I said.

  “Simms. We were just up to his room. He’s not there.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  Planett smiled. “We’ll find him. One of us is sure to find him. Come on.”

  We went down to the waiting police car. The town seal was painted on the side of the car. The car was blue with an orange top. It was, at that hour, the loudest thing in Sullivan’s Corners. We drove to Planett’s office. When we got there, he didn’t bother booking me. He took me straight to the cell block, opened one of the cells, and then locked it behind me.

  He was starting off when I called him back.

  “What’s the story, Planett?”

  “The story? No story, Colby.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “You’re waiting for somebody. As soon as I make a phone call, somebody’ll pick you up.”

  “Who?”

  Planett smiled.

  “And when I’m picked up, where do I go?”

  Planett smiled again.

  “Come on, what’s the story?”

  “The story is simple. We don’t want D.A. trouble. We don’t want State’s Attorney trouble, either. We like the setup the way it is. Sometimes things happen that can foul up a situation. We take care of those things. Simple?”

  “Simple. What happens to me?”

  “I think you die, Colby,” he said flatly.

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” Planett smiled. “It’s nothing personal, believe me. A setup has to be protected. I earn about $6,000 a year. That’s not so much. A man needs a setup.”

  “I earn $5,230 a year,” I said, “and I don’t have any setup.”

  Planett shrugged. “You’re the one’s going to die—not me.”

  “All this to cover a whorehouse?” I asked.

  “All this to cover a murder,” Planett said, and he wasn’t smiling any more. He turned and started off down the corridor. He unlocked the door at the end, and I watched him, and then he began backing into the corridor again, and he puzzled me for a moment until I saw what he was backing away from.

  Johnny Simms was coming through the door. Johnny Simms had a fire ax in his hands. Planett was reaching for the .45 at his hip when Simms swung. He swung as if he were about to fell a tree, except that he used the broad flat side of the ax. His aim was true. He caught Planett on the side of his head, and Planett slammed sidewards into the corridor wall, and then collapsed like a dish rag. Simms stooped and pulled the ring of keys from Planett’s belt. He unlocked the cell door, and I said, “You might have killed him.”

  “Maybe I did,” Simms answered. He grinned. “You should see his two deputies out there. I caught them in the middle of a card game.”

  “Where’d you get the ax?”

  “In the hotel corridor, alongside a fire hose. I was coming down to your room when I saw Planett and his boys. I didn’t think he was taking you here for a piano recital.”

  “Where’d you learn to use that ax that way?”

  “I was a Marine,” Simms said. “Remember?”

  “I remember.” I stooped down and pulled Sandy’s gun from Planett’s belt. Then I yanked the .45 from his holster and handed it to Simms. “This should feel familiar to a Marine.”

  He took the gun. “It does.”

  “Come on.”

  We passed through the outer office. The deputies had been playing poker. One of them had obviously been trying to fill an inside straight. He had filled a knock on the head instead.

  “My car’s down the street outside the hotel,” I said. “Let’s get it.”

  “Where we going?” Simms wanted to know.

  “To the motel.”

  “Good.”

  We were walking rapidly, our heels clicking on the sidewalk of the silent town.
I turned to Simms. “There may be trouble.”

  “I’m just itching for trouble,” he said. “Can’t you tell?”

  “I mean big trouble.”

  “Lois is gone,” Simms said simply. “That’s the biggest trouble I can imagine.”

  “All right,” I said. “Come on.”

  When we reached O’Hare’s convertible I started the engine and then reached for a knob on the dash. “You may get chilly, but I’m putting the top down,” I said. “I want to be able to get in and out of this thing in a hurry.”

  “All right,” Simms said. He watched the top as it folded back over his head. Then he looked up at the sky. “It looks like rain.”

  “Yes,” I said as I pulled away from the curb.

  We didn’t talk much on the way to the motel. When we got there, the grounds were pitch black. I kept the headlights up, splashing across the office door. “There’s a flash in the glove compartment,” I said to Simms. “You’d better get it.”

  I drew the .38 and went to the door. I banged on the door with the gun butt. There was no answer. Simms was out of the car, splashing light on the ground with the flash.

  “Tire tracks here,” he said. “Leading into the woods.”

  I walked over to where the flash made a circle of light on the soft earth just off the gravel court.

  “Truck tires,” I said.

  “Want to check it?”

  “Yes.”

  Simmms walked ahead of me, the flash in his left hand, the .45 in his right. The truck had made big ruts in the soft earth. It wasn’t a difficult trail to follow.

  “There she is,” Simms said.

  The truck sat in a clearing ringed with tall pines. The air smelled good. There was no moon and no stars, and the sky was sown with rain clouds, but the pines smelled antiseptic and the silence was pure. The truck sat like a brooding prehistoric monster. Simms splashed the light onto the tailgate.

  “Let’s see what’s inside,” I said. We were talking in whispers. There’s something about the darkness of night and the silence of woods that makes men automatically lower their voices. Together, we lowered the tailgate. I climbed up into the truck.

  “Want to hand me the light, Johnny?”

  He passed the flash to me. I ran it over the floorboards. In one corner of the truck was a burlap sack. It was empty, but it was soggy and limp, wadded into the corner, huddled there like a frightened amoeba.

  The sack was red with blood.