Deep is the Pit

by Dixon, H. Vernor

  Marty read his own description with greater interest: “A burly, powerfully built middle-aged man with flaming red hair and mustache and the ruthless manner of a killer. The police believe he may be the same man, known from coast to coast as “Red” Martin, who was involved in the $450,000 Chicago payroll robbery last August.”

  Marty pushed the paper aside, as satisfied as if he had written it himself. He was not burly and he was not middle-aged. That, along with the red hair and mustache, made everything perfect. He was safe — again.

  Over the dessert and coffee he considered the relative degree of his safety. He had always used exactly the same disguise on every job, red hair and mustache, longer sideburns, and his mouth disfigured with sponge-rubber inserts. His object had been to make the police, as well as his own transient confederates, believe that such a person as Red Martin actually existed. Red Martin had been seen so many times and described in exactly the same way so many times that the idea of a masquerade had probably never entered the mind of any interested person. The very few masqueraders in the business always tried to come up with a new disguise on each job. Red Martin remained always the same. And of them all, he was the only one who actually did not exist. He knew of no witness, or anyone connected with his many robberies, who could describe him as he actually was or pick him out of a line-up. His one great hazard had been that he would be picked up during one of his brief masquerades as Red Martin. But that had never happened and now could not happen.

  Dotty Kimball was the only person who had ever noticed that his red hair was phony. Perhaps that little interlude had been a mistake. Dotty was sharper and wiser than any other woman he had ever known. Yet even she did not know who he really was. She knew him only under the alias of George “Red” Brown. Tonight, however, she would know that her lover had been Red Martin. Even if she had already left town she would know. The robbery, after all, would be front-page news clear across the nation. Bank jobs had become increasingly rare. The underworld generally shied away from them because the F.B.I. automatically took over. So the papers would play it up big, and Dotty would remember the gloves and the gun and the time involved, and would know a little more about Red Martin than anyone else.

  He sipped at his coffee, frowning thoughtfully, wondering about Dotty. She was aware of his disguise, at least a part of it, and she could easily learn of the steep insurance-company rewards offered for his capture and conviction. Assuming that she would try for the rewards, what had she to sell? One fact only, that his hair was dyed. That would be a help to the law, a very great help, but probably not enough. They would still lack his present description. They would still not know whom to look for.

  He dropped Dotty from his mind for a moment and thought of witnesses. They were all extremely unreliable when a job was pulled in a hurry. It took them some time to get over the initial shock and start using their perceptions, and by that time it was all over with. The police, too, were usually operating in the dark. They generally got the man they wanted, but mainly because of underworld contacts with stooges, fences, stool pigeons, and disgruntled characters. Women, quite often unwittingly, helped the police. Then there was the man himself, his vanity, his habits, his prison records, and the powerful urge to spend money and show off and enjoy himself while “on the outside.” Usually he landed on the inside.

  Marty felt that he was safe from all that. He had planned well and executed all of his plans to the last detail. There was only one ever present danger, his fingerprints. He doubted that the police had his prints. He had always taken elaborate precautions never to touch anything unless he had gloves on his hands, even though on occasion it had almost cost him his life. Until the present moment, at least, they did not have his prints. Otherwise, they would know for whom they were looking. While he had been in the Army, Marty’s prints had been taken dozens of times. If the police had them they would be looking for Marty Lee, not Red Martin.

  There, again, Dotty Kimball could be a danger. She could take the police to his former room on Haight Street. He had used that room as little as possible and had always worn gloves, except when washing. Also, before leaving it, he had scoured thoroughly every conceivable spot that he might have touched. Yet the risk did remain that, somehow, his prints could be in that room. That he had to live with, never sure, never positive, always wondering.

  His greatest margin of safety lay in Dotty’s character, and her attitude toward him. She was not a particularly moral person, she was not law-abiding, and she lived, worked, and played in a half-world frequented by racketeers, gamblers, chiselers, pimps, prostitutes, and other underworld characters who needed to buy glamour. Her philosophy was undoubtedly the simplest imaginable: Live and let live. Besides, he had picked her up when she was broke, put her on her feet, treated her well, and placed the one big opportunity within her reach, the chance to go to New York and try for her own version of the big time. Dotty would be grateful. There was little reason to worry about her.

  For the moment, he was safe. That was the main thing. He could relax.

  He walked down to Market Street to watch the crowds and later went to a movie. That night he slept well. In the morning he dressed with care and took his brief case with him down to the coffee shop, where he had breakfast. He went through the morning papers and talked with the waitress about the daring robbery.

  He laughed and slapped his hand down on the brief case. “Don’t tell anyone, sweetheart, but the loot is all right in here.”

  “Says you,” she snickered.

  “Care to look?”

  “Aw, go on. Them characters are a thousand miles away from here by now, or hiding out in some hole in the ground. That Red Martin seems like a pretty smart cookie. Plenty brains. Funny,” she said, “a fellow like that don’t put his talents in something legitimate. He’d probably clean up.”

  “Maybe he will.”

  She shook her head and said wisely, “Nope. They never do. They keep goin’ on and on and one day they slip.”

  “I guess you’re right. Anyway, I don’t think I’d care to meet him.”

  She said musingly, “That’s where you and me differ.” Then she laughed nervously and asked, “More coffee?”

  He left the hotel after ten and visited a number of downtown banks. In each one he turned in varying amounts of cash from the brief case for cashier’s checks, which he then forwarded for deposit in two Los Angeles banks, where he had accounts. He did not get rid of all the cash, intending to take a week or so to accomplish that. There was no hurry.

  After lunch he returned to the bank he had robbed the day before. It was dangerous, it was perhaps a foolhardy gesture, but he had to satisfy himself that he was safe. The only person in the bank who had really had a good look at him was the middle-aged woman at the first teller’s cage. He walked directly to that window and faced the woman. He explained that he wanted to open a new account and asked whom he should see. The woman regarded him kindly, with no apparent interest or recognition, and told him to see a Mr. Rankin at the second desk on the other side of the bank. Marty thanked her and turned away.

  His heart pounded and his breath caught in his throat as he walked toward the New Accounts desk across the room. At the adjoining desk, that of the vice-president, were two obvious plain-clothes men from the police force. They eyed him coldly as he approached, but turned away to continue their questioning of the vice-president. Marty took a deep breath and quieted his racing heart. He was beginning to enjoy the situation.

  Mr. Rankin was a flustered and excited man who babbled enthusiastically of the bank robbery while making out the necessary papers for Marty’s account. Marty asked him, “Do you think my money will be safe here?” at which Mr. Rankin giggled and hastened to assure him that it would be.

  “We are well protected, Mr. Lee.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Did you, personally, get a good look at the men?”

  Mr. Rankin rolled his eyes. “Indeed I did. One of them stood just over there” —
he waved toward the entrance — ”and the other, the redhead, was directly across from me. My, I’ve never seen anything happen so fast in my life. There was time to set off an alarm, of course, but I do believe it happened too fast for anyone to think about it. But I’ll tell you one thing.” He leaned forward and whispered confidentially, “I’d know those men again, anywhere, the minute I set eyes on them. I’ll never forget what they look like.”

  “I imagine that will be a great help to the police.”

  Mr. Rankin pursed his lips and looked puzzled. “This may be hard to believe, Mr. Lee, but they don’t take much stock in our descriptions. Of course, I can see their point, in a way. None of us in here really agree on just what they did look like.”

  “I guess that’s the way it goes.”

  Marty gave him a check for five thousand dollars, drawn against a Denver bank, entered it on the new account, and returned to the woman teller. He tried to cash a small check on a Los Angeles bank, but first she had to have it endorsed by Mr. Rankin, who was willing to oblige. Marty had created a little turmoil, which was what he had been after, and left the bank satisfied that he was now known and would be remembered — as Marty Lee, a well-heeled young man with substantial accounts in many banks.

  At three o’clock he was in the Montgomery Street offices of Mr. Frank Stannard, broker, realtor, member of the stock exchange, speculator, owner of vast properties, of which the Stannard Hotel was but a small unit, and present head of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in California. It was a shock to Marty to learn from his secretary, who was eagerly scanning the latest papers, that Stannard was also a majority stockholder of the Farmer’s Valley Bank, where Marty had freely helped himself the day before.

  The secretary was a rather comely blonde of some vague age between thirty and forty. Her hips had spread from years spent in hard chairs, she had office pallor, there were circles under her eyes and tired lines about her mouth, but the curve of her throat was smooth and well blended into shapely shoulders, and her animated expression hinted at vitality and some degree of intelligence. At the moment, she was bubbling with excitement over the robbery.

  “I think it’s perfectly amazing how daring those men were. Why, it’s almost like the old days of Jesse James and his gang. Really, I had thought that bank robberies were a thing of the past.”

  Marty smiled as he said, “They still happen now and then.”

  She looked up to appraise Marty closely for the first time and forgot all about the bank and the robbers. Her smile broadened and she straightened in her chair. When she reached up to brush a wisp of hair back from her forehead Marty knew that she was on his side.

  She spoke into an interoffice phone, then indicated Stannard’s door, marked “Private,” which was directly behind her desk. Marty opened the door and entered Stannard’s office. The room was not at all what he had expected it to be. It was rather small, the carpet was worn, the desk was old and scarred, and papers, books, and files were scattered everywhere. In one corner of the room was a boxed-in lavatory and alongside that a glass water container. The only indication of wealth was the half-dozen large oil paintings of other Stannards hanging on the walls. Otherwise the room was an ordinary-looking office and, though cluttered, rather drab. Marty had expected something swank. He was disappointed.

  Stannard, too, was far from Marty’s preconceived image of him. He had expected a smoothly polished individual, corpulent, probably with a red face and white hair and the expansive smile of a man who could afford to beam at the world. But he was a man of about average height, with not the slightest indication of the glamorous majesty of the Stannard name. His eyes were green and cold, with all the craftiness and guile of a pawnbroker. His crisp hair, though shot with gray at the temples, was thick and black, his lips were thin, the skin of his face was drawn tightly over high cheekbones, he stooped slightly from all the time spent at desks, and his clothes, though of expensive cut and material, appeared badly in need of pressing. Marty’s revised estimate was that he would be a hard man with a dollar and difficult to do business with under any circumstances.

  Stannard took his time appraising Marty after they had shaken hands and were seated. He swung lightly back and forth in his chair, the tips of his fingers pressed together, his piercing eyes never leaving Marty. A great many seconds ticked by before he finally placed his elbows on the desk, cupped his chin in his hands, and said, “Well, sir.”

  Marty’s heart sank. He felt he had lost the battle even before it had started. He had intended being suave and subtle and using all his charm on Stannard. He had meant to take his time, using their first meeting merely to make himself known. They could go into exploratory discussions later, at their leisure. He had envisioned luncheons together, a few rounds of golf, closer social contact, perhaps a few poker sessions. Feeling each other out. Discovering. Analyzing. All the time in the world.

  But Stannard, simply through his appearance and his coldly deliberate appraisal of Marty, had upset all that. That was not the way a man like Stannard would ever conduct his business. Sudden anger welled up in Marty and thinned his lips and beat behind his eyes. To think that anyone, even a Stannard, could ruin all his careful planning. The man was strictly a pawnbroker. Put it on the counter and let’s have a look at it. Very well. He would say what he had to say and then get out. He realized later that he had chosen the only approach Stannard could understand. His former plan would have taken less than five minutes to collapse.

  Marty leaned forward and fastened equally cold eyes on Stannard’s. “I know you’re a busy man, sir, so I’ll put my cards on the table. As I wrote you a month ago, I am interested in the Stannard Hotel.”

  Stannard nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes. All sorts of people are interested in it. Always have been. But in what manner? You failed to say.”

  “Naturally. My proposition can’t be put in the limits of a letter.”

  “Come to the point, young man. Just what is it about the hotel that interests you? If you are seeking a job there, I warn you that you have come to the wrong person. The manager handles all that.”

  Marty blinked at him, his anger rising dangerously high. A job! What the hell, he thought, get it over with. He cleared his throat and plunged. “I’d like to buy it. You can take any job you’ve got there and shove — ” He paused, a warning bell ringing in his mind.

  Stannard’s eyes had opened wide. He leaned back in his chair and stared at Marty. The simple statement was not at all what he had expected. He was now the one caught off guard. It took him almost a full minute to revise his own estimate of Marty and start thinking on another level.

  “Well,” he said, again pressing his fingertips together, “that is quite a large order. Whom do you represent?”

  “No one. I am strictly on my own.”

  Stannard looked amused and doubtful. “Indeed? No syndicate or organization?”

  “I represent myself only.” He paused a moment as a small doubt crept into his mind. When he had first conceived the idea of buying the hotel he had intended organizing a dummy company and operating for the purchase behind a battery of attorneys. That would have been the safer way to do it. But, eventually, he would have had to come out in the open and make himself known, at which time he would naturally be investigated. So he had decided against that method. If a slip-up occurred then, he would be committed so deeply that he would run the risk of losing everything, including his freedom. He had decided that it would be better to run that risk in the very beginning. If an investigation could uncover anything wrong, he would rather know about it at once and take his chances on getting out before too many avenues were closed. He erased the doubt. It was still the best way. Plan and execute. Speed.

  He said, “There is no one else involved and I have no partners or anyone behind me. But I am damned serious about buying that hotel.”

  Stannard’s amusement was growing. It was obvious that he was balancing the millions involved against Marty’s age and appeara
nce, and that the scales were tilted the wrong way. He smiled thinly as he commented, “That property is worth a considerable fortune, young man. I would hate to tell you what a square foot of land is worth in that area.”

  “I have a pretty fair idea.”

  “And you still — ah — wish to buy it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you intend making an offer?”

  “If it is for sale, yes.”

  “It is not exactly for sale, but I have had offers and at times I have considered selling it. The bare property itself, without anything on it, is probably worth more than any similar piece of real estate in the city. Naturally,” he shrugged, “it’s worth very little as a hotel.”

  Marty shook his head. “That where you’re wrong. I don’t give a damn about the property. I am interested only in the hotel.”

  Stannard spun about in his chair to stare out the window for a long minute. When he turned back to face Marty all amusement had disappeared and his face was dark with anger. He pushed some papers impatiently about the desk and growled, “You’re wasting my time, Mr. Lee. Apparently you know nothing about the hotel business or you would know that the Stannard is a white elephant and can’t be anything else. It has been losing money steadily for years. We can afford to lose on it, taxwise of course, which is the only reason it’s still open. No one in his right mind could be interested in it as a hotel. You are definitely wasting my time and your own.” He reached to the clock on the desk and studied the time. “Now, then, if you don’t mind — ”

  Marty leaned his elbows on the desk, so that he was closer to Stannard. His anger was still at the boiling point. “That,” he said, “is what you think, and you’re all wrong. Let me tell you something. I was born and raised in the hotel business. I have forgotten more about hotels than you will ever know. My father was a hotel bum.”

  Stannard blinked at him with interest. “A what?”

  “A hotel bum. There are thousands of them in the business. Just a desk clerk, never any better than that, and always bouncing from one hotel to another all over the country. Hundreds of hotels, big ones and little ones and summer resorts and winter resorts and everything else in the business from whistle stops in Texas to the plush establishments of Miami Beach. We worked in them all, and I was dragged along. So when you start talking hotel business with me, you’d do better to listen. You’re looking at a man who knows the subject from the basement to the penthouse.”