The Wheel is Fixed

by James M. Fox

  And that left poor little Figaro, who’d only come to warn her, warn her about me and my funny-peculiar questions. The door had been open, he must have arrived while she’d run off to me for help. He hadn’t realized that Stu was still alive, hadn’t noticed the first-aid stuff she’d been trying to use on the boy. There were just she and I who knew these things, and she clearly intended to keep it that way. Somehow it shocked me that she’d let him pay the bill, though I had to admit to myself that they wouldn’t have listened to her, and as it was we’d all of us been carefully tagged for the undertaker from the minute they walked in on us.

  My hands kept hammering out Ravel’s jerky rhythms, and my eyes kept flipping back and forth between the gun butt under Max Gonzalez’s arm and the grisly, pathetic little scene at the pool. They were getting pretty cross down there—they’d been looking for a quick return on their money, and it wasn’t coming off that way. Steve was playing the hose some more, and this time his victim did not come up for air when he shifted the stream. They stood around watching for a while, and then Mike made a sprint for the tool house and brought back a long-handled rake. He dragged it through the water from the end of the diving-board and brought up the body, guiding it along and bracing himself to hoist it out on the tiles. He went through all this with the sober disdain of a workman performing his chores for the day; if you paid him his wages he’d drive your car or plant your petunias or skin you an elephant exactly like that.

  Steve had turned off the hydrant and checked the deal. I didn’t need his sneer, or the way he tapped his heart. It was all over, no more Figaro or Pagliacci or Rigoletto, no more flashing smiles and pretty girls and three hundred grand for a couple of songs in the movies. No Fiat convertibles with horns that would play “O Sole Mio,” no chemmy or dice or roulette, or gin at twenty bucks a point. Not any more. There was nothing left now but a clumsy, waterlogged bundle of rags and human waste. My fingers went cold and stiff and slipped off the keyboard of their own accord.

  The Luger quickly swung around to look at me, and Max said, “Nuh-unh!” cozily, as if he’d caught me reaching for the jam behind his back. I shrugged at him again, and struck up the “Bolero” again, and just then they shouted to him to send down Lorna. That was when I almost rushed him, regardless, and he appeared honestly surprised at the snarl on my face.

  “What’s with you, Mister Bailey? Who spiked your Ovaltine?”

  “Leave her alone. I’ll talk to them.”

  “Sure you will,” he promised me cheerfully. “You and her both, you’ll be doing the talking. You seen the whole thing, when the wop takes a swing with this poker at Mister Stuart, and we come in, and he lams outta there. So we all chase after him, and he does a flop into that pool and his ticker conks out on him cold. Ain’t that how it was?”

  He sounded casual enough to make my hair stand up on end. The girl was already walking slowly down the ramp to where they were waiting for her, and I said hurriedly, “Yeah, that’s how it was, all right,” very loud. She gave no sign of having understood; she walked without pausing for an instant, gracefully, her head held high, her back quite straight and slim to the verge of fragility. Steve Kovacs was holding a chair for her with a gaily striped sponge-rubber pad, and on the glass-topped patio table he’d laid out his writing-supplies; they were apparently determined to get something down in black and white. Mike seemed to be fiddling with his pipe again; the big fellow himself stood aside and was scowling on her without much interest. Max turned to watch and said over his shoulder, “Let’s have a tune!”

  I swore at him under my breath and slapped both hands back on the keys. My knee struck a shelf below the board and reminded me about the electrical player attachment. I stole a peek, and the blood started pounding at me from inside like a man with a hammer who wanted out. The “Poet and Peasant” overture was still in place, all set to roll.

  They were cracking the whip at her down there. I could see Steve’s expression and the motion of his arm, like a hatchet on kindling wood—make pretty music, basta! They had no more time to waste on arguments, and she kept on shaking her head and refusing the pen he held out to her. I dropped Ravel and started improvising fast; it was a question of getting from a Spanish caprice in F to this piece of noisy German corn in D major, without the transition offending Max’s suspicious ear. I made it at last, and flicked the switch on the keyboard at the top of a swift arpeggio; the motor picked up with a sudden whine, and the roll jerked ahead, the Blüthner’s keys snapped to life independent of my faltering touch.

  It was too late, about fifteen seconds too late. From the pool came a scream, a high and rising keening of bewildered agony, like a child being hurt by witches in her dreams. Steve was holding her down in the chair, while Mike had spread her left hand on the table top and applied the jet from his blowtorch lighter to her nails. The red-carnation polish had caught fire and was already burning rapidly with nasty, crackling little flames. I choked back the spurt of nausea in my throat and scrambled off the bench, with “Poet and Peasant” thundering along behind.

  Max never knew. I hit him in the neck, where they’d taught me to hit them in basic-training camp, eight years ago, and he dropped like an ox with the butcher’s mattock in its skull. I grabbed the gun before it bounced and got Mike in the sights and yelled at him, the yell of a raving dipso in the alcoholic ward. He must have realized what was coming to him, no matter what, but he still had the lighter, and Lorna’s right hand on the table, spread out flat. He actually grinned at me and passed the flame across her nails once more and collapsed with my bullets tearing his grin to bloody shreds.

  By that time the big fellow himself had a gun and was blasting away at me. He stood up to me all right, on his own two feet, still scowling angrily and firing from the hip; he couldn’t be bothered running for cover from a stooge. But twenty yards is quite a distance to a man who has long been accustomed to having his killing done for him by the help. The Luger’s second burst sent him spinning into the diving-board and ripped him apart.

  Steve Kovacs confronted me with his arms flung high and a ghastly, fawning smile that told me he wanted to crawl right on over and lick my boots. Between us, the girl crouched whimpering and sobbing on the tiles. She had quenched her flaming fingers in the pool, but her slender body still rocked and contorted itself from the pain. The cool, jasmine-and sagebrush-scented night air had been sharply tainted with a reek of gore and burned cordite.

  From the desert came the fast-approaching roar of an engine bucking the cross-country grade, and almost instantly the jeep poked its blunt khaki nose through the tangerine brush. On the hood it displayed a crudely stenciled star, and the driver rising from behind the wheel was in faded-brown denims and a khaki shirt where the moon caught a sparkle of his silver badge. He was hefting a shotgun, and pushing back his Stetson for a better look at us.

  “Hold it, you guys!”

  His companion wore city clothes—gray slacks, tweed coat. He came running on the balls of his feet, swerving briskly to circle the carnage on the tiles. His snub-nosed Detective Special wasn’t picking any favorites, yet, but I’d already clicked up the safety catch on the Luger and was holding it out to him butt first. He snatched it away from me and gave me a puzzled stare.

  “The musician!” he said, almost reverently surprised. “Now ain’t that something for the book!”

  It was only then I dazedly recognized him—Sergeant Dettlinger, the cynical Formosa cop who’d dragged me from his nice clean gutter just the night before. Behind me the Blüthner struck its final crashing chord on the “Poet and Peasant” roll and relapsed into silence.

  Chapter Sixteen: SCREAMING SIRENS

  IT was Eve Garand who practically ordered us to make a break for it.

  She met us on the path below the tennis courts; she’d been running with the billowing skirts of her dinner gown clutched high above her knees, and her mannish gray hair flying out Valkyrie-like behind her neck. She insisted on shepherding us all the way to
Lorna’s bungalow while dragging the facts out of me in a rapid staccato of questions and sob-sister tricks.

  “You’ll have to get out,” she told me crisply. “Both of you. Right now.”

  I frowned, and Lorna did not even hear. I was carrying her in my arms—she hadn’t quite fainted, but she’d hardly have been capable of walking that far. They’d let us go, the sheriff’s deputy and Dettlinger, to get her hands fixed up. They’d heard shots from the highway, and they’d come charging in, but now they were out of their depth, disorganized; the jeep was not equipped with radio, it had gone back to town for help. The Formosa detective had handcuffed Steve and Max together and waved us away as soon as he got the sketch. He’d come down with a magistrate’s warrant for Mike, who had been recognized that afternoon when he disposed of the Club Gaucho with a stink bomb and two sticks of dynamite.

  “She needs a doctor,” I reminded Eve. “And the cops took us off the leash because they figured we’ve no place to go. They don’t even know about Stu Hitchcock yet.”

  “Young man, do you have money and a good fast car?”

  We’d arrived at the cottage by then, and between us we were helping Lorna up the porch. It was the mentioning of money that jerked my thoughts back suddenly to Steve’s black satchel that still had to be in there, with Vanni’s eighty grand they had meant to return to him, because of his connections. “Money,” I said, somewhat bemusedly. “Yeah, we’ve got money all right. But my car’s an old wreck that’ll do no more than sixty tops.”

  “You can use mine.” She opened her bag and thrust keys into my hand. “It’s in the yard, a Pontiac sedan, last year’s. Just leave it somewhere, mail these back to me. And that’s not charity, my friend, just common decency. Start running and keep on the go—I presume you know where and how. If the rest of those mobsters catch up with you two they’ll cut you up in little pieces.”

  She turned her back on me and carried Lorna off into the bedroom, soberly drawing her skirts aside to pass Stu’s body where it blocked the arch. I checked my breath and looked around; the black satchel was there, on the little console where Steve had put it down when he came in. Lips clenched between my teeth I stared at it until it seemed to fill the room. I had asked her to call the man and make him bring some money for a getaway, and here it was, enough for both of us. Enough to see us through the years of running, through the years of danger, fear, and constant vigilance that lay ahead. His money or hers; it all depended on your point of view or on whose story you wanted to believe. If she had been his niece—

  She’d denied having any family at all, but it occurred to me now that at the time she might not have felt free to tell the truth. It was his secret just as much as hers, and one she’d long been taught to keep; he had said so himself, all very confidential, very discreet. Yet he’d fooled me deliberately, pretending he had no idea she was here in Palm Springs. And she’d let me accuse her with never a word of protest, as if it could not possibly make any difference to us.

  But that was just before the others had arrived. I had crowded her, bullied her, proved it to her that the guy she loved was nothing but a bum who had been hired to kick her heart around. How could I expect a protest from her then? There would have been no sense to it—a bum does not care about the truth, and a murderess can’t afford it. I shrugged it off and concluded the money was hers, all right. She’d killed one man with her own hands and another by biting her tongue; it was only fair that she’d get something out of it, considering she’d have to take me in the bargain.

  She came out of the bedroom, wearing the green linen suit and too much make-up, her finger tips neatly bandaged, trailing a racy scent of iodoform. She circled Stu’s body and stepped across the poker without faltering, and stood before me lowering her eyes into the shadows. All the things you are—

  “I’m ready, Rick,” she told me quietly.

  From the archway Eve Garand looked in on us, wiping her hands on a towel.

  “Be kind to her, Bailey,” she prompted me, and her lean, clever features were gravely composed.

  In the courtyard I found the Pontiac, and parked right next to it the low-slung, dusty-gray Lagonda that had clipped a fender off my car last Monday afternoon. On the highway a distant red spotlight pricked the desert night. The sirens came shrilling in from town, five miles away.

  Chapter Seventeen: ESCAPE

  HERE in my room at the Cortez Hotel in El Paso I’ve switched on the desk lamp and rested my pen. It’s getting dark outside, and I have spent all Sunday setting down these facts, as clearly as my weary senses would allow. I had meant to conceal the result in the trunk of our new car, where the Federal agents would have found it if the syndicate should find us first. But as it is I think I’ll drop it in the mail to Eve, who’d be less hampered by formalities if it should come to counting up the chips.

  I must wake Lorna now—when I looked in on her an hour ago she was still fast asleep. I’ve used the phone to order dinner for us, and a bottle of champagne. It means taking a chance on the Room Service people connecting us, but we’ll need that extra touch to brace ourselves against the strain. In an hour or so the week-end crowd will be hitting the roads, and we’ll be pulling out of town with them. It is a thousand miles to New Orleans, and we must try to make it by tomorrow night. There are cargo tramps sailing for Cuba and Puerto Domingo and San Juan, and there’s a man who owns a water-front café, who used to be the bouncer at the Chien Qui Rit, when I was playing there in ’41.

  Chapter Eighteen: WHICH WAY?

  SHE’S gone—

  I can’t believe it, but she’s gone. I went down the hall, and scratched on the door of 1264, and walked on my toes into an empty room. She’d managed to dress herself, somehow, and on the bed were my old yellow gloves and a note she’d painfully scribbled out on the back of a laundry list, because I’d used up all the paper in her desk. I stood looking at it in a daze, and then like a fool I rushed around searching the closet and the bath, scanning the street from the window, as if this were some crazy game of children’s hide-and-seek. She’s gone—she can’t be far away, but it’s hopeless trying to find her in this busy little city. She may be anywhere by now—in a drugstore, taxi, rooming-house, movie, anywhere at all. She may be on a train, or in jail with those bandages of hers worn openly, or in the receiving-room at the accident ward, if they have spotted her. I should never have left her alone, not for a minute, regardless of the risk.

  The note doesn’t help. I’ve taken it back to 1259, and I’ve been staring at it ever since, until the words are nothing but a blur. Rick, it’s no use. You cannot love me as I am, for what you think I am. You only feel you must make up for what you were compelled to do to me. How can I go with you, knowing that now you’d marry me just so they could not make you testify to what you saw? You said last night you would “pick up the check” for me, but I won’t let you, darling, I just won’t, that’s all.

  She means to go back, of course, see it through by herself. She had some money in her purse, perhaps enough to take a plane. If she tried that, they’ve already arrested her. In that case they’d be here now—no, they wouldn’t, she’d probably refuse to tell them where I am. At the railroad station or the bus depot she might slip by; they won’t be watching westbound traffic very close. Her best bet would be hitching a ride, almost the only way she could expect to travel back to California without a matron pushing her around. Maybe I should get out the car and start driving west on the chance of heading her off—Oh, God, it’s dark, and there must be at least three different roads she could be on. She doesn’t realize what she’ll be up against. I’ve got to stop her in some way, I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to do something.

  Chapter Nineteen: VOICE OF THE KILLER

  I’VE just phoned Marion. It does sound like a crazy thing to do, but I remembered that her boss knows the big politicians and calls the Governor by his first name.

  The circuit was humming and buzzing, twelve hundred miles across the vast, eroded
plains, the cactus-covered mesa and the snow-topped mountains, through the cattle towns, the oil towns, the railroad towns—Las Cruces, Lordsburg, Tucson, El Centro, Pomona, to a click and a strange gruff masculine voice, saying Hello, noncommittally blunt, and the operator’s sweetly officious Western drawl demanding Miss Marion Faraday, please.

  “Who wants her?”

  “El Paso callin’.” The dulcet vowels had grown tart. “Is Miss Faraday theah, please, suh?”

  I almost hung up in despair, but it wouldn’t have done any good; the fat was in the fire. I heard a mutter at the other end, and then Marion’s voice sounding tense and excited. “Yes, who is it?”

  “Ready with Los Angeles,” the operator told me coldly, clicking out.

  For a moment the line hummed emptily while the sweat coursed down my spine and the knuckles cracked in my hand where it gripped the receiver. “Sure you want to know?” I asked her finally, when I managed to choke up the words.

  “Rick, where are you? Are you all right? Oh, my dearest, my love, what’s happened to you, why did you go away? That awful girl—Are you alone?”

  “Yeah, I’m alone.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you called! You’ve packed her off, haven’t you, Rick? You’re coming hack, aren’t you?”

  “Take it easy,” I said. “Who was that answering your phone?”

  “My bodyguard. Now aren’t you proud of me? There’s a man and a woman from the Governor’s Crime Commission here all the time. Mr. Jeffries arranged for it, right after the coroner’s jury adjourned last night. Oh, darling, you’ve got to be careful for the next few days, until they round up all those filthy crooks. You’d better go straight to the FBI and let them put you on a plane, and we’ll protect you here when you arrive.”