“Give me a minute,” I said. “Go over by the restroom. If anyone comes, step in there.”
I watched her go, walking slowly, wearily, discouragement in her carriage. Then I went to the public phone booth, stepped in, and fed the slot.
The hotel answered and I asked for Chimp. He was in, his voice surprised when I identified myself. I said, “What’s Powers doing?”
“Looking for you.”
“I went to Edna Loomis',” I said.
“Yeh?” There was a long wait.
“Someone got to her.”
Chimp swore. “Johnny?”
I didn’t answer that. I said, “I’ve got to get out of here, get home fast, Chimp.”
“Powers has the town covered,” Chimp warned me. “I heard him talking to the local cops.”
“I expected that,” I said.
Chimp waited again and then said, “Where are you, Nick?”
“Considine’s office.”
Chimp grunted. “They cleaned that place out weeks ago.”
“It was a long shot,” I admitted. “I’ve got to get home,” I said again. I started talking more rapidly. “With what I’ve got maybe Hall can come through with a few answers that make sense.”
Chimp was evidently thinking it over. “I’m sticking my neck out,” he said. “But … okay, Nick, wait for me.”
“You’re a pal,” I said, and hung up. I left the booth, wiping sweat from my forehead. Nelle was still by the restroom door and I signalled to her. She came up quickly. “We roll,” I said.
Outside, we linked arms and tried to look as if we were just another couple strolling home after a late evening. After three blocks of it we caught a street car.
It took a little while, two transfers and a short walk down a silent street, but at last we were back at the used-car lot where we had parked the big coupe. It was still there, gleaming amid smaller, more tawdry jobs like a queen at a chowder party.
No one challenged us; there was no traffic at all. We got in, backed out of the lot, and started for the bridge. I said, “Lie down in the back seat, Nelle.”
She said, “I’d rather sit here by you, Nick.” Her voice had that quietness with which there was no arguing.
We were at a stop sign. Turning, I kissed her lightly on the lips, and there was a lot more to it than to that other, much longer kiss of so long ago.
I put the car into gear and we headed north.
• • •
It was so ridiculously easy that I began to get suspicious. No one acted as if the big coupe was anything but just another car, and Nelle and I just another couple riding in the early morning hours.
Crossing the bridge was the part I dreaded the most. Every taillight and every pair of headlights behind knotted my stomach. I was well across and through Vancouver before I could relax at all.
And then it felt good to be on the road, to be moving with the smooth, powerful motor pulling us along.
“It’s about time we squared things away,” I said.
“I know.”
Her voice was low and subdued. She moved a little so that she was closer to me, and then she was quiet again.
“Will we get out of this, Nick?”
“It looks that way,” I said, and tried to make my voice sound as if I meant it.
Nelle said, “Before—that time in your apartment …”
I stepped on the dimmer switch as a car approached. A truck ahead slowed me and I applied the brake lightly. When the approaching car had whooshed by, I blinked my lights at the truck, got an answering signal, and went smoothly around it.
“I figured that out,” I said. “I don’t want things that way.”
Nelle stirred. “Do you want them at all?”
“I have for too long,” I admitted. “Legally.”
She made an attempt to smile. I could see the quirk of her full mouth in the rear view mirror. “Why didn’t we admit it to each other a long time ago, Nick?”
“You were too damned young,” I said.
“If we ever get out of this …”
“We’ll get out of it,” I cut in, and put some force behind my words. Dropping my eyes to the instrument panel I saw that the speedometer needle was hanging on fifty. A safe speed, the legal limit. It was good enough to make time.
“But I still need your help,” I added.
“All right, Nick.” This time she sounded as if she meant it.
“Let’s start from scratch,” I said. “I’ll tell it the way I see it. You can correct me or fill in where I miss.”
She made an attempt at gaiety. “Shoot.”
Before I could say anything I caught the glow of headlights in the rear mirror. They came rapidly, then slowed, then blinked. I blinked back. There was a swishing sound and a car came even with us, throttle open. A tall aerial waved with the speed of the car. A big emblem was on the side. The car slowed as it came abreast.
Two state patrolmen were sitting in the front seat.
22
A HAND big enough to wrap around a basketball clamped itself over my stomach. Then the police car picked up speed again and went on by.
Nelle’s sigh was like a gush of air from a punctured tire. She gave a shaky laugh. “Right then,” she said, “I was thinking how nice it would be to have a little house in a quiet neighborhood. Just now I’d be getting up to give the baby his formula.”
For a minute I thought she was nuts; then I got the idea. “What’s his name?” I asked.
Nelle’s laugh wasn’t quite so shaky. She laid her head momentarily on my shoulder, then lifted it. “Things aren’t that easy, Nick. We aren’t out of this yet.”
I said, “When you propositioned me you weren’t trying to get me to help Johnny, you were trying to get me into a position so I couldn’t turn him in.”
“I was playing on your feeling for me.”
“You knew then?”
“You’re rather transparent, Nick. I was taking advantage of that.”
“And you would have gone through with it?”
“Yes,” she said. “And probably hated you for accepting me that way.”
“But done it, nevertheless. Because Johnny told you to?”
“No, I had the idea on my own. Johnny was mad when he found out later.”
“That’s one I missed,” I admitted. “But you did know that he was in trouble?”
“Yes,” she said. “Getting you to Los Angeles on that false lead was his idea. He was afraid of your loyalty to Kane Hall.”
“I know that,” I said. “And Kane was afraid of my loyalty to Johnny. Just a one-man dog trying to decide which guy’s feet to lie down by.”
She didn’t answer. I said, “What was the deal with Edna Loomis?”
“She offered Johnny twenty-five thousand dollars to find the murderer for her.”
“Did he take the job?” I asked.
“Like you did,” Nelle said. “He told me that he was on the trail of something hot, something big.”
I said, “He found out when he first went down to Portland that she had the hundred and fifty thousand. He used his eyes and that grin on her and got a little inside information.”
Nelle said, “He was with her the night Considine was killed.”
“But not at the time,” I said. “Anyway, that alibi is shot.”
Nelle was playing with the cigarets, a little nervous again. I suggested that she light one for me. She did so and took one for herself. She puffed like a kid but it seemed to give her something to do.
“Edna Loomis,” I went on, “came to the Oxnan to keep an eye on Hall and his men. She wanted to be sure she was going to hang onto the dough. It was a nervy thing to do.”
“I don’t see how she got away with it,” Nelle said.
“She had to have inside help,” I said.
I could feel Nelle growing rigid by my side. We were nearing an all-night truck stop. The State patrol car was sitting there. I kept the same speed. My hands were aching from the gr
ip I had on the wheel. As we went by, a glance showed that the prowl car was empty.
“Too damned easy,” I said.
Nelle relaxed. I spoke again quickly, to keep her that way. “What about the ten thousand that you gave to Edna Loomis?”
“Johnny told me to give it back,” she said. “I was supposed to give her all the money. But I thought I could bargain better if I held out a little. When I saw her I didn’t trust her.”
Nelle’s help was a little abortive, I thought. I said, “Did she want it back?”
“That was the idea,” Nelle said. “Johnny was in the hotel for a while, too. She contacted him and demanded action. He was still stalling her and he told her to go to work on you—to see how much you knew. Then you showed up at her apartment.”
I remembered the phone call between Johnny and Edna Loomis. I said, “So returning the money the first time was a bluff to keep her in line.”
“Yes,” Nelle said. “Then last night, in Portland, she said that she’d changed her mind and wanted it all back.”
“That’s because she thought she could get me cheaper,” I said. “She was the kind to work that woman’s privilege gag to death.”
“She worked more than one gag to death,” Nelle said surprisingly. She lit herself another cigaret from the stub of the first. Her hand shook a little.
I watched dirty gray daylight coming over the mountains, and it reminded me of an earlier morning. “That’s what I was doing at her place,” I told Nelle. “Guarding her.”
I could see that talking of Edna Loomis’ death kept reminding Nelle of Johnny’s connection with it. She said, “Maybe Peone killed her, Nick—before he got killed.”
“No soap,” I said. “Too many people know that he was allergic to guns. They scared him.” Nelle bowed her head and fell silent. I went on, “By the way, how did Johnny and Edna Loomis manage to work so freely inside the Oxnan?”
“Through Quist,” Nelle said.
I knew that much. I said, “He wasn’t on duty all the time.”
“Johnny said,” she explained, “that he just went out when Quist was on duty. I only went in then—except the one time to give her the money.”
“Edna Loomis I can understand,” I said. “But what was Johnny’s idea of sticking his neck into that hornet’s nest?”
“He said that it had something to do with the big job he was working on,” Nelle answered. “He was awfully funny about it, Nick. He acted as if he were afraid to tell even me too much.”
“Maybe he didn’t like your connection with me.”
“He knew how I felt,” she conceded.
At Olympia I turned off the headlights. Shortly after, Nelle fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. As we neared the Oxnan I moved regretfully. She came quickly awake, blinking a little.
I said, “How did you and Johnny get to Portland this last time?”
“In Edna Loomis’ car. This one.”
“You all went together?”
“Yes, of course.”
“After he beefed with her?”
Nelle said, “No. She didn’t change her mind about having Johnny help her until we were in Portland. After Hall was shot, Johnny said he had to get back there. Edna Loomis decided to go too. I don’t know why.”
“I do,” I said. “Her double-cross was beginning to catch up with her. Why did you go along?”
“Johnny took me.” I caught a glimpse of a faint smile. “I guess he was afraid I’d go to you.”
“I love to be trusted like that,” I said. I swung around a final corner coasting, going slowly. The small entrance to the hotel was just ahead. A car was parked across the street, two men in it. Nelle made an unintelligible sound and I jammed the gears to second and stepped on the throttle.
We went past the standing car and our tires screamed as I made the far corner. I heard it start up, back around, and take off after us.
“Listen,” I said jerkily, “we have to lose him. I need a few minutes inside the hotel. If we can shake him long enough to let me slip out, you give them a chance to chase you.”
It was asking a lot. This would hardly help Nelle’s already dubious standing with the cops.
She said, “All right,” as if she didn’t mind being made a sacrificial goat.
We had a start on them because they had been forced to turn around, and now I did a few whips through the streets, cut into an alley and came out near the Oxnan again. I went down the alley that ran behind it, stopped so sharply that Nelle nearly went through the windshield, and climbed out.
She slid beneath the wheel.
“Sit tight when they get you,” I said.
“Powers won’t do much,” she said. “Not to me. Not now.” Her voice was dull, as if she had done everything that she could and nothing else mattered. She added, “Didn’t you see the back seat of that car?”
“All I saw was cops,” I said.
Nelle put the big coupe into gear. “Johnny was sitting there between two detectives,” she said.
23
I MADE it through the can-cluttered doorway and into the rear of the hotel as the prowl car swept into the alley. Nelle was already at the far end and they kept on going after her.
I hoped that she could keep ahead of them for only a little while. I didn’t need much time. All I needed was enough information to make Powers listen to me for a while.
The rear hallway was empty, stretching away on my right toward the lobby, on my left toward the service stairs. I went up them, two at a time, and hit the second floor on the run. I ran some more and came up against Quist’s door, gasping for breath.
I hammered with my fist. I heard a stirring but no answer. I hit the panel with my foot. “Open up,” I said. “It’s Mercer.”
There was no further sound and I stepped back, then lunged with my shoulder against the door. The lock creaked, but it held. I stepped back again. The door came open to show me Quist’s fat, sweat-streaked face. I was on the forward drive again and I made no effort to check myself. I hit him under the chin, carrying him into the room. Stopping in the center of the room, I kicked the door shut.
Quist picked himself up from the floor and stared at me with his mouth hanging. “What the hell, Nick?”
“I’m not going to bite you,” I said.
Quist was shaking. I watched him go to the crumpled, unmade bed and take a cigaret from the nightstand beside it. The room stank of staleness, of sweat and ancient wine. Quist was in his greasy suit, obviously just recently off night duty. He got the cigaret lighted and reached for his bottle of wine. It was two-thirds full.
“Lay off that,” I said.
Quist tilted the bottle greedily. I made a grab for it and knocked it out of his hand. It went spinning across the bed and fell at the foot, letting sticky, colorless liquid trail sluggishly over the sheets. Quist sat down, whimpering a little.
“How much did you get altogether for letting people come in and out of here, Quist?”
“Me, Nick?”
I balled up a fist and showed it to him. “How much, Quist?”
He looked at the fist and then at the cigaret he held. He looked at my fist again. “Only a hundred, Nick.”
The sweat funnelled off his face and dripped down from one chin to the other. The smell of the room made me almost sick. I said, “And you never told that to Hall?”
He licked the end of his cigaret as if it were a cigar. His eyes strayed to the wine bottle, not quite empty. “But you told Chimp,” I said.
He shook his head violently. “I told nobody nothing. Johnny paid me and …”
“And Loomis paid you, too,” I said shortly.
Quist made a scrambling motion and got the wine bottle. He tilted it to his lips and sucked out the last drops. He looked almost smugly at me.
I said, “You’ve had your drink. Now tell me the truth. And fast.”
“Honest to God, Nick. I …”
“How much did Edna Loomis pay you?”
“She n
ever paid me nothing, Nick. That’s the truth. She never went out while I was on the desk.”
I took a turn around the room. I had no time and yet I had to waste some on this grub. I swung back. “Put a call through to the airport for me, Quist.”
“There’re cops in the lobby.”
“Who’s on the switchboard?”
“Some punk Hall hired yesterday.”
“Make the call,” I said.
Quist got off the bed and waddled to the phone. He did as I told him. I took the phone when he had the connection and made my requests. While I waited I kept looking at Quist. I could see the fear gobbed like mud on his fat face. I got some information and asked for more.
While I waited this time, I said, “What would Chimp do if he knew?”
“Beat hell out of me,” Quist whimpered.
“And Hall?”
“Send me back to the pen. You know that, Nick.”
“It’s going to be tough on you,” I said. I listened as someone spoke to me on the phone. I said, “Thanks,” and hung up. It didn’t matter now if the cops did make sense out of this call. I hadn’t really needed that information—it just substantiated what I already knew—but it was a good talking point to use on Powers.
Not even Powers mattered, really. Not a damned thing mattered now except that my time had run out.
I left Quist, going down the hall at a dead run. The elevator indicator was hanging on three and I thought I’d go nuts before it got to me. When it finally arrived, I pulled open the doors and started in.
That was all. Two large cops were there waiting for me. I did a quick turn and started for the stairway. From the direction of the front stairs I saw two more plainclothesmen coming my way. I turned for the service stairs. Another pair was there.
Lieutenant Powers was visible behind them.
I stood by Quist’s door and waited. All the sap was out of me; I didn’t even have the strength to curse Powers. I wanted to bawl.
Two of the cops got my arms. I said, “Tell them to lay off. I haven’t any gun.”
Powers looked smug. “You’re not so smart, Mercer.” He jerked his head at the cops. “Get him out of here.”
Blondes are Skin Deep Page 15
