The Wheel is Fixed
Page 17
“Protect me, hell,” I said. “You’ll protect me right into the clink and throw the key away, that’s how you’ll protect me.”
“But Rick, they’ve excused you, the jury says it was all done in self-defense!” She was crying now, and laughing, and shouting at me. “Darling, where have you been? It’s on the radio, in the newspapers, everywhere! Don’t you realize what a wonderful break this is for you, this grand publicity and everything? You’ll be able to start your band again, and get hundreds of offers for jobs, and people will fall over themselves to listen to you play. I heard the coroner myself when he called you a hero!”
I tugged at my collar and tore at my hair in dismay. The local Sunday paper lay beside me on the floor. I’d bought it off the stand at 6 a.m.; it was probably an early edition, printed on Saturday afternoon. “That’s just dandy!” I yelled back at her. “What were you doing there? How did you ever get mixed up in this?”
“You don’t need to worry, Rick, the jury cleared me, too,” she assured me earnestly. “They said it was only an accident, when he cursed me and hit me and threatened to kill me, and I grabbed the poker and hit him back with it. I was looking for you, because Pablo had noticed a sticker from this place in Palm Springs on the windshield of your car. So on Friday I left the office early and drove out, and a bellboy pointed out your bungalow to me, but he made a mistake, and I walked into that awful girl’s apartment, and I found Stu Hitchcock there, and he said you were out with her. He was nasty about it, at first, but then he suddenly got ideas, about both of us being alone in there, getting the run-around. That’s when he made a pass at me, of all the stupid things to do, and I finally had to hint at something you’d told me, about him being just a silly college boy you’d been hired to get out of a mess, and that’s how we got into this horrible fight. So of course I was frightened, at first, and I drove all the way back home, but in the morning I saw Mr. Jeffries and we both decided I should go to Riverside and give myself up at the inquest. Rick, what’s the matter, can you hear me, darling? Are you still there?”
I hung up and sat on the bed for a while, trying to dig my fingers deep into my head. The phone started ringing again almost immediately and kept it up at intervals for another ten minutes or so. I’ve gone back to the desk at last, and spent some little time on writing all this down, for no good reason any more. I suppose Dr. Schwartz would approve; he always made us do it at the hospital, whatever bothered us, down to the last detail. Then he’d kid us along about how he was going to sell it to the movies and charge us ten percent commission on the deal.
He could not sell this one; they tell me irony is poison to the customers. And the worst of it is where she must have believed that Vanni killed the boy. That’s why she bit her tongue, to all of us. There was nothing to say; in her philosophy the truth’s disloyalty would have defeated her as badly as the self-conviction of a lie. Rick, it’s no use—There’s a knock on the door. Room Service has been slow. I guess they needed time to cool the wine.
The drunk who played slotmachine at Phoenix coffee-pot. He was the one who got aw
Chapter Twenty: TRUTH VIA TELETYPE
SX 115 (ATTN. L.A., HW, PS)
URGENT 4
1ST LEAD BAILEY SHOOTING
BY KENNETH FOSTER, UNITED PRESS STAFF CORRESPONDENT EL PASO, TEX, MARCH 27—(UP)—RICHARD L. BAILEY, HEROIC SLAYER OF CALIFORNIA GAMBLING BOSS WALTER HITCHCOCK, WAS HOSPITALIZED AT 7.45 PM TODAY IN A CRITICAL CONDITION AT EL PASO SISTERS OF MERCY FOLLOWING A SECOND SHOOTING AFFRAY IN A LOCAL HOTEL. POLICE AND FBI AGENTS, WHO HAD BEEN TIPPED TO THE IMPENDING TRAGEDY, ARRIVED IN TIME TO ARREST NICK MAROS, 44, OF PHOENIX, ARIZONA AS HE ATTEMPTED TO MAKE HIS ESCAPE INTO THE STREET, AND JAIL HIM ON SUSPICION OF ASSAULT WITH INTENT TO KILL. IN BAILEY’S ROOM THEY FOUND THE HANDSOME VETERAN, NOW A HOLLYWOOD SALESMAN, UNCONSCIOUS WITH A FRACTURED SKULL AND BULLET WOUNDS IN THE ABDOMEN AND IN BOTH LEGS. BESIDE HIM LAY THE LIFELESS BODY OF STEPHEN S. KOVACS, 51, OF BEL AIR, CALIFORNIA, HITCHCOCK HENCHMAN, WHO ESCAPED FROM THE RIVERSIDE COUNTY JAIL DURING SATURDAY NIGHT WHILE BEING HELD FOR INVESTIGATION IN THE PALM SPRINGS POOL-SIDE DEATH OF MOTION PICTURE STAR ALFREDO VANNI. EL PASO POLICE CHIEF PAT MCCALL SAID BAILEY APPEARED TO HAVE ADMITTED BOTH MEN, DESCRIBED AS GANGLAND TORPEDOES, TO HIS ROOM, AND A STRUGGLE DEVELOPED IN THE COURSE OF WHICH, THOUGH ALREADY SEVERELY WOUNDED HIMSELF, HE SUCCEEDED IN WRESTING AWAY KOVACS’S GUN, A .45 COLT AUTOMATIC, AND SHOOTING ITS OWNER THROUGH THE HEART.
LP815P
SX 116
SAN FRANCISCO, MARCH 29 (UP) SATURDAY LIVESTOCK REPEAT:
CATTLE SALABLE 1,200. SUPPLY INCLUDED AROUND 11 LOADS STEERS. TRADE OPENED VERY SLOW WITH PRICES GENERALLY STEADY ON FEW SCATTERED SALES. LOAD HIGH-MEDIUM 980-LB STEERS 24, SOME MEDIUM 1025-1070 LB STEERS 22-22.50. MEDIUM HEIFERS 17-21. CALVES 275. NO EARLY SALES.
HT827P
SX 117 (LP TO PX)
CORRECTION
IN BAILEY SHOOTING EL PASO READ IT NICK MARCOS (STED MAROS)
I.P83IP
HW 26S TO LP
PRESSURING FULLEST ON BAILEY PLS URGENT
HW832P
SX 118
YR 1147A SAT: BUREAU RECLAMATION SEZ NO SALT WATER BARRIER SURVEY BEING MADE DUE LACK PERSONNEL BUT ONE AUTHORIZED UNDER WELCH RESOLUTION 80TH CONGRESS, WHICH ORDERED COMPLETE STUDY BAY AREA WATER PROBLEMS.
BC19 M839P
HW 27S TO LP
SIGNALS OVER WILL YOU GUYS HURRY UP PLS LA CONCUR
HW 842P
SX 119
HW, LA
ADD BAILEY SHOOTING EL PASO XXX HEART.
HOTEL WORKERS ASSERT BAILEY REGISTERED SATURDAY ABOUT I PM AS DONALD WELLS OF NYC RENTING SUITE ON TWELFTH FLOOR, SOON AFTER WOMAN HAD REGISTERED ON SAME FLOOR AS MRS. MARY HENDRICKS OF BTM. CHIEF MCCALL TENTATIVELY IDENTIFIED THIS WOMAN AS LORNA RYAN, MOTION PICTURE ACTRESS AND THE SECOND MISSING WITNESS IN FRIDAY’S PALM SPRINGS TRAGEDY. MRS. HENDRICKS HAD LEFT THE HOTEL BEFORE THE AFFRAY.
LP 849P
HW 28S TO LP
TIPPED CONFIDENTIALLY RYAN GIRL NOT ACTRESS BUT VANNI’S ILLEGITIMATE DAUGHTER. CHECK WHEN PSBLE PLS. MORE
HW 854P
SX 120
ADD BAILEY SHOOTING EL PASO XXX AFFRAY.
FBI AGENT IN CHARGE JOHN HARRIS REFUSED COMMENT ON REPORTS THAT A LARGE SUM OF MONEY HAD BEEN FOUND IN BAILEY’S LUGGAGE. INQUIRIES AT SISTERS OF MERCY HOSPITAL ELICITED HIS INJURIES ARE OF A GRAVE NATURE AND HE MAY NOT REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS, THOUGH EMERGENCY OPERATIONS FOR REMOVAL OF THREE .45 CALIBER BULLETS HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED. XXX HOLD FOR FLASH XXX. FLASH: LORNA RYAN, 20, MISSING WITNESS IN FRIDAY’S PALM SPRINGS POOLSIDE TRAGEDY WAS LOCATED HERE WHEN SHE RETURNED TO THE HOTEL WHERE SHE HAD BEEN REGISTERED WITH BAILEY UNDER ANOTHER NAME. MISS RYAN EXPRESSED INSTANT CONCERN WHEN INFORMED OF THE INCIDENT AND STATED TEARFULLY THAT BAILEY IS HER FIANCE. SHE WAS RUSHED TO THE HOSPITAL IN A POLICE CAR BY CITY DETECTIVES H. J. WILLAMETTE AND WILLIAM LYNCH.
LP 902P
HW 29S TO LP
CHECK OUR 28S WHEN PSBL PLS. IMPORTANT. MORE.
HW 903P
Chapter Twenty-One: THE $64 QUESTION
THE ragged yellow coil of teletype carbon spilled across my blankets and hung limp over the edge, almost into Lorna’s lap where she’d sat beside me for the best part of the past three days. The UP man watched us quizzically, straddling a chair at the foot of the bed and ducking the weights on pulleys that were keeping the splint on my leg under traction where one slug had cracked a tibia. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, straw-blond young Westerner who looked slightly uncomfortable in his neatly pressed city clothes; his drawl brought up pictures of oil derricks, magnolia blossoms, and pearl-handled six-guns.
“Ah reckon thet last one theah might be the sixty-fo’ dollah question for me to ask you-all,” he observed cheerfully. “Ah’ve been pahkin’ on yore doorstep, waitin’ all this while till the sawbones would let me in. Cain’t help mahself—they want the answer awful bad, out California ways and every other place.”
“No comment,” I said.
; He winced a little, and the early-morning sun slanting in through the window blinds of my hospital room flashed back from his horn-rimmed spectacles. Lorna frowned at me and gently touched the helmet dressing’s stiff white folds where they encased my head above the ears.
“Off the record,” I said, “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Miss Ryan offered to tell me, and I shut her up. That may not make sense to you, but it happens to be the way I feel about it. This confidential tip your Hollywood office claims to have may be the McCoy, or it may be just another publicity deal, I don’t care which. You’ll never be able to print it, not without her confirmation and consent. If there had to be a trial, and she were forced to disclose her relationship to Mr. Vanni on the witness stand, that might be a different matter, but as it is there’s nobody left to try. Not where she’s concerned.”
He actually had the effrontery to wink at me. “You did a job of makin’ suah of thet.”
“Wanna make something out of it?”
The bandaged finger tips brushed my lips and the cool, childish little voice said anxiously, “Darling, please—” I relaxed and felt less like a consummate idiot. The UP man said, “No offense, suh, no offense. Ah kin see how you-all might look at this heah situation. Reckon you sho’nuff earned the right to have a little privacy, the hahd way. How’d this fellow from Phoenix know wheah to catch up with you-all, kin you tell me?”
“You’d better ask Harris or Chief McCall,” I said. “They may not want to turn up cards just yet. That part of it will show in court all right.”
I knew, of course—it had been an easy guess, the very instant when I recognized the long-nosed drunk pushing into my room at the Cortez with Kovacs on his heels. The FBI had squeezed the story out of him, and Harris had been frank with me about it, even if his own face had been red and he’d hated to knock the Riverside County cops. They’d taken Kovacs out through the Hacienda parking-lot, that Friday night, and there he’d noticed that Stu’s car was gone. He was the only one to spot it right away; not even Sergeant Dettlinger caught on, and Max Gonzalez had been on a stretcher with a broken neck. So when they booked him and they let him use the courthouse phone, according to the rules, he spilled a mouthful of Hungarian on the wires before they cut him short and long before I’d covered those three hundred miles and ditched the unmistakable Lagonda in the basement of the Westward Ho. By that time there must have been three dozen hoods like Marcos laying for us, all the way from San Francisco through Las Vegas to the Rio Grande. Harris had told me that, in California alone, Federal agents and the Crime Commission had made sixty-five arrests.
The UP man grinned at me knowingly and inquired, “How long are these heah sawbones aimin’ to keep you laid up, Mistuh Bailey?”
“They won’t commit themselves. I’m supposed to be lucky they sent back the hearse.”
“You makin’ any plans for when they let you go?”
“Back to pounding the pavements, I guess, and sell more greeting cards,” I said, returning his grin with interest.
He chuckled self-consciously and protested. “Uh-uh. Ah’ve since had time to do a little checkin’ on you, suh.”
The tall, spare colonel from Special Services cleared his throat. He’d been resting his shoulders against the mantelpiece and watching us in sober amusement. “You can quote me that Sergeant Bailey’s going back into the Army,” he said sharply. “We’ll get up a band of servicemen for him and send him on a tour of hospitals and foreign bases for a year or two. After that it’ll be up to him.”
I could feel Lorna’s hand draw tight in mine and smiled at her, probably rather foolishly. The UP man just nodded and glanced at his notes. I was quite sure he meant to ask about the money next, but instead he came up with a real corker. “If you’ll pahdon me, ma’am, Ah’m supposed to find out wheah you’d gone when these fellows came in a-feudin’ after you-all.”
“Don’t answer that!” I snapped, but she sat up very straight and faced him as serenely as if he’d paid her something of a compliment.
“I was frightened,” she told him in a calm, clear voice. “I didn’t think I could stand it, the running and hiding we’d have to do. Then I took a walk and changed my mind.”
He stared at her, dubiously, as if he did not altogether trust his ears. There was a quick, fussy tap-tap-tap on the door, and one of the Sisters came fluttering in, clutching nervously at the rustling skirts of her starched white habit. The kindly, wrinkled oval of her face was rosy with excitement.
“Please, sir, Father Dominic is here, and the people from the broadcasting studio, and the other reporters, and all those photographers want to come in and take pictures—”
The UP man was groping through his pockets in sudden comical distress. He found what he was looking for and held it up for us to see.
“Ah got the boys to chip in with me,” he declared embarrassedly. “We reckoned you-all’d be shuah to fo’get about the ring.”
Table of Contents
Chapter One: TWO ON THE LAM
Chapter Two: RUBBER CHECK
Chapter Three: FRAME-UP ON A MODEL
Chapter Four: BLONDE COMPLICATION
Chapter Five: CASING THE SETUP
Chapter Six: LUCKY BREAK
Chapter Seven: SNOW JOB
Chapter Eight: SHAKEDOWN
Chapter Nine: A NOSY OLD WITCH
Chapter Ten: WRONG QUESTION
Chapter Eleven: FIGHTING WOMAN
Chapter Twelve: EIGHTY-GRAND GAG
Chapter Thirteen: PLAYING WITH THE HOUSE
Chapter Fourteen: BLOODY HANDS
Chapter Fifteen: MORTICIAN’S PROSPECT
Chapter Sixteen: SCREAMING SIRENS
Chapter Seventeen: ESCAPE
Chapter Eighteen: WHICH WAY?
Chapter Nineteen: VOICE OF THE KILLER
Chapter Twenty: TRUTH VIA TELETYPE
Chapter Twenty-One: THE $64 QUESTION