Built for Trouble

by Al Fray

  But it couldn’t have been just nerves. Something was off beat. Carefully I slid the automatic between the mattress and the box spring. Crawling into bed, I pulled the sheet up, reached over to wiggle the pack of smokes out of my sports shirt, which was draped over my jacket and pants on a chair, and lit one last smoke. Nola came back, stretched luxuriously like a beautiful cat, took one puff on my cigarette, and crawled in. By the time I finished my smoke her breathing was rhythmic, untroubled. I ground out the butt, turned out the light, patted her lightly on the fanny, and rolled over on my side.

  There was a light in the bathroom, and something had caught my attention. Or maybe it was those nerves again, but I was suddenly alert. I cautiously swept a hand behind me. The bed was empty. I lay still and listened for the usual small sounds—the scraping of a foot, the turn of a paper roll, water in the basin; but there was only silence. Bright yellow from a street lamp fell through a crack in the curtain and lined the far wall, matching the streak of light under the bathroom door.

  I breathed softly, turned onto my stomach, and let the sheet hang down over the side of the bed. My right hand fumbled between mattress and springs and closed lightly over the butt of the automatic, my finger not quite touching the trigger. Then I lay still again, and listened.

  Something moved in the bathroom. There was the jingle of a belt buckle. I was almost sure it was that; and turning my head slightly I glanced toward the chair. My sports shirt was on the floor; my pants were gone and so was the jacket. The white paint of the chair was bald and bare in the dim light. I lay there for a long time and listened. Finally the switch clicked in the bathroom and the door opened. When I heard Nola’s bare feet padding around toward my side of the bed, I closed my eyes and waited. There were sounds of cloth on cloth as she arranged my pants, the shirt, and the sports jacket over the chair, and then she came back to the other side and slipped into bed. Her hand touched my shoulder momentarily, and then she relaxed and sighed. Her breathing became slow and even.

  Very carefully I returned the gun to its place under the mattress. This time there couldn’t be any doubt—they were looking for something in no way resembling a beer tin and photographs. The thing was idiotic—the can alone would have been so big that I couldn’t have hidden it in a car or on my person—

  But suppose they still didn’t believe my story about mailing the package out. Suppose, now, they figured I’d buried the can at the beach and kept the photographs and—well, naturally they’d want to have a look. Seventy-five grand is a hell of a lot of boodle, even with the tax dodge Nola and Joe were figuring on, and I couldn’t blame them for taking a long look before they kicked in.

  I grinned in the darkness. Let them look. The car, my wallet, my pockets—make it a regular field day. Good! And the more they worked at it and found nothing, the more certain they would be that I’d given them the straight scoop—the more they’d know that the only answer was a pay-off.

  So I was clear. Eddie Baker was right on top of the heap. I relaxed my fingers and brought the hand back under the covers and let the tension ebb away.

  I shouldn’t have. I should have jumped up and hauled the stacked job next to me right out of the sack and I should have backhanded her until I got the real story. But I didn’t get out of bed. There’s a quote that says “Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad,” but there are quite a few things besides madness that would fit. Make lazy! Or make gullible or over-confident or hot-blooded. Name it and I was guilty. I drifted off into the sweet dreams of a fool’s paradise.

  Chapter 10

  THE MORNING was hazy and gray, the air heavy with moisture. I raised up on one elbow and looked toward the sound of the shower running beyond the bathroom door, then eased the automatic out from under the mattress and returned it to my coat pocket. The envelope with the two thousand dollars was still in place, and my clothes were draped over the chair once more.

  The shower cut off and I lit a smoke. A couple of minutes later she came out of the bathroom with her slip on. She smiled as she came toward me.

  “Up and at ’em, Eddie. I’ve got an eleven o’clock appointment in Hollywood.” She sat down on the bed and went into that stocking routine again, but when I rolled over and made a grab for her she slipped off of the bed and over to a chair in the corner.

  “Good God! At this hour, Romeo?”

  “So what’s the matter with the hour. It’s eight o’clock.”

  “Hit the showers, bum,” she said, laughing. “That will cool you down. I may have a weak moment or two on a starlit night with the pounding surf for background music, and there have been rainy afternoons when a matinee—But in the cold light of morning?” She shook her head and thumbed toward the bathroom. “Cold water!”

  She wiggled into her dress, and when I came out of the shower and dressed we tossed the key on the bed and went out to the Ford.

  “I can buy a shave,” I said as we pulled up onto the main street in Oceanside, “or you can look at these whiskers all the way home.”

  “I’ll take the beard. We—I don’t want to be late. It’s just a hairdresser’s appointment, but they like you to be on time.”

  I nodded, and we rolled north. She was still warm and cozy all the way, and when I stopped in front of her place in Los Feliz and swung the door, her eyes grew serious. I walked her to the door, and she said, “You haven’t changed your mind; we’ve made a deal on that publicity angle?”

  “I have one or two small things to check on yet,” I said, “but it looks good from here. When do we get together for a conference?”

  “Can you call me this afternoon?”

  I said I would and headed back to my own apartment. It was almost eleven when I turned the key in the lock and went to the drawer where I’d laid out the string and the wrapping paper. I slid the drawer open carefully; the ball of twine was far over in one corner and half hidden by brown paper. I smiled grimly and went into the kitchen. Here and there I could see where canned goods had been moved on the cupboard shelves. I wondered how thoroughly they had gone over the joint and whether they had stopped at pulling out the drawers to see what was in the voids behind or if they might have loosened some of the electrical fixtures to look into the wall space.

  At noon I stopped by a phone booth, checked the book for the Director of Internal Revenue, and dialed the number.

  “I’d like to ask what the tax is on one hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars,” I said.

  “Single, married, or head of household?”

  “Single.”

  “Well, just approximately now, it’ll be—that’s in the one-fifty to two-hundred bracket, takes roughly one twelve and then ninety per cent on the extra six thousand, another fifty-four hundred. She’ll fall right at one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars.”

  “Thanks. Now what would it be on just a hundred and six thousand. Same person.”

  The digit boy for Uncle Sam mumbled some more big figures and finally came up with his answer. “On that you’ll have to dig up approximately seventy-two thousand five hundred dollars. Naturally this is give or take a few hundred; on an income like that you’ll be much better off to have a tax expert work out the return for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “just doing a little dreaming here.”

  “Well, good luck,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  I went back to the apartment and got a pencil to see how far off Nola had been and if she was trying to sell me a bill of goods, but the more I figured the more it looked like she had come up with something solid. She seemed to be shooting straight across the board with Eddie Baker. Using the tax man’s estimates, declaring the larger sum would leave her a net of thirty-nine thousand—she’d said forty—and out of that she had to pay me seventy-five thousand dollars. Impossible!

  And using the lower amount she would wind up with just over thirty-three grand and pay me only twenty-five under the table, the fifty above the table being deductible. So she would come up with a net of eight t
housand dollars. She had it all worked out, or maybe Joe Lamb did, but either way it looked like they were giving it to me straight. I drove down to the corner drugstore, called Nola, and made an appointment to meet her at Lamb and Taylor agency in half an hour.

  There were three of us in the conference and we weren’t in Lamb’s office. The meeting of minds was being held in a small back room down the hall on Carol Taylor’s side of the building. It was a combination storeroom and catch-all. Joe stood with his foot on a broken easy chair, his elbow on his knee. Nola sat on the only usable piece of furniture, a posture chair that Joe dusted off as we came in. She’d been to the hairdresser, all right—her long black hair was carefully arranged into a very becoming frame for her lovely face. Her curves were straining the threads of a tight, white cashmere sweater; the skirt was snug and as black as her hair. I parked on a carton of paper towels, leaned back against the brick wall, looked around the room, and grinned.

  “I feel out of place without my cloak and dagger,” I said. Joe glanced at Nola, then back to me.

  “This campaign calls for no outsiders. If it leaks out they’ll laugh us right off Hollywood Boulevard, Baker.”

  “Not even the fourth member?” I thumbed toward the front and Carol Taylor’s office.

  “Damn it, Baker, we told you before, Carol isn’t in this all the way. She doesn’t know a damn thing about Hank Sawyer’s—about Sawyer. She was in on the rescue bit. She’ll help us here and there as we go, but only because she thinks this is strictly publicity.”

  Nola crossed her legs carelessly and looked up at me. “We hope, Eddie, that you’ll go along with us on that. Carol is—well, she isn’t the type to hold still for—for what happened to Sawyer. She quite likely would become excited or emotional and that wouldn’t be good for any of us. You follow me?”

  “All right. So it’s a top secret conference.”

  Nola nodded. “Carol is involved financially only to the extent of her ten per cent agent’s fee on the money we pay Alex for doing the script. She does figure in our plans and will help, but later when she comes in will you remember that we aren’t going to bother her with too many minor details?”

  “You’ve made your point,” I said shortly. “Now somebody outline those plans, the part you’re cutting me in on, and we’ll synchronize our watches.”

  “The general idea you already have,” Joe said. “You disappear from the Hollywood scene, dig yourself into some small berg not too far away, make yourself scarce, and wait for us to break the thing on this end. Now you’ve got a problem. As I see this, you’ll have to be in and out of wherever you’re staying—in enough to establish that it’s a permanent residence, out enough to establish the fact that you’re busy as hell at something and have no time to lie around with the newspapers. We’ve got to milk the search angle for several weeks to get any good out of it. You can’t be found right away; it would collapse the bubble.”

  “I’ll think of something,” I said.

  “You will find, Joe,” Nola said softly, “that Eddie here is a man with ideas.”

  More snow, but I let it pass. Joe reached out to flick ashes from his cigarette, then glanced at the watch poking out of his sleeve. He opened the door, looked up the hall, and called Carol. A few seconds later she came into the tiny cubicle, fitted in a Kelly green business suit that was still a hundred per cent feminine. Joe dusted the arm of the chair, but she shook her red head.

  “We’re setting up this publicity deal with Baker, here. You met him the other day.”

  “Twice,” I said. She raised an eyebrow and looked at me coldly.

  “Now when will Alex have that script on the line?” Joe asked. She smiled then, at both Nola and Joe.

  “Since he’s on a flat fee, Alex is going right ahead. It should be finished in two more weeks, then allow a few more days for differences with the studio and it’s done.”

  “Good,” Joe said. He looked thoughtfully at the tip of his smoke. “Shooting scheduled for next month—we’ll have a couple of weeks in between. Now Baker leaves town right away. He’s out of communication something like four or five weeks when we break the publicity that Nola’s looking for him to share her good fortune. We’ll get a lot of pix in the papers, shots of her on the beach at Catalina and—”

  “Whoa!” I shook my head and pointed a finger at Lamb. “We’re missing one rather important step along the way. I was to collect fifteen grand when the script was finished.”

  “That’s a detail. We’ll get it to you after you’re found and come back to Hollywood.”

  “It isn’t a detail, it’s crucial. And don’t talk about my getting it later; I want it when Apex pays you the second installment.”

  “By all means,” Carol said. “The man must have his pound of flesh.”

  “Damn it, Baker, we can’t have you running around here in L.A. First thing you know you’ll bump into some guy who knows you and later, when we break our publicity campaign, he’ll remember and—No, Baker, you’ll have to stay put. It’s important to the over-all plan.”

  “Unless I get my dough, there won’t be any plan.”

  “Now wait, you two,” Nola said smoothly. “It was agreed that we would pay, and we will. I’ll see to it.”

  “You’ll see to it!” Joe took a shot at the door with his smoke, then went over to step on the butt. “Good God, Nola, you can’t be seen anywhere near this guy. You’ll blow the whole deal sky high.”

  “I didn’t say I’d take it to him; I said I’d see that he got it. Let’s consider that part settled and go ahead.” Joe Lamb looked at her for several seconds, then swung back to me.

  “Okay, that only leaves one small point. You’ll have to be careful about dames, Baker. Don’t get too friendly with any of them around the town where you’re camping. Women usually watch the movie sheets, and we don’t want anyone making the connection too soon. You get me?”

  “I got you the first time you said it; you want to string the search out as long as possible. So now?”

  “So that’s it. You can start by leaving through the back exit. Write us—no, write to—” Joe stopped and looked at Nola. “We’d better make sure nobody has a chance to spot incoming mail, even with a fake name. Tell you what; Carol, let Baker send his whereabouts to you. at your home address. That way we’ll be playing it safe all the way around.”

  “That will be all right.” She said it stiffly. I wrote down the address she gave, then grinned at her.

  “Climb off your high horse, duchess. This is just business.”

  “I don’t think I care for your kind of business, Mr. Baker,” she said coolly.

  “My, my, the pure in heart,” I said. “The redhead with the short memory. Maybe I’d better remind you that you were up to bat in the first inning of this game. At the beach, remember? All I’m trying to do is get fair payment for my part of the work, so shut off the tears.” I tucked her address into my wallet and opened the back door, said they’d hear from me, and let myself out.

  By evening I had cleared out my junk at the apartment and packed it into the back of the Ford. I did a little shopping down on Main Street. There were a couple of buckets, a used Geiger counter, three well-worn books on Uranium hunting, and some other gear in the car when I left Los Angeles. The boots were new but I’d stopped long enough to rub some dirt into them. Now I was on my way, destination Ojai. I rolled along the coast highway in the cool freshness of a sea breeze. At Ventura I turned inland. At nine I pulled into the restful, easy-going little town half hidden by the low mountains that ring it in. I made the short section of the main drag several times, then decided on an older but well-kept hotel. It was low and rambling, the old patio sporting a nice new heated pool. It looked like a place a man could be let alone. I signed B. J. Edwards on the register.

  “Will you be with us long, sir?” The man at the desk asked. He was bald and getting heavy, but his smile seemed sincere.

  “Don’t know,” I said, and shifted the prospecting m
anual under my arm. “Depends on what I find. Maybe you’d better give me something I can get to from the back way. I may be a little dusty from time to time.”

  “That we can do,” he said, and rang the bell. My room was at the end of the hall; it would be possible to go and come without too many people seeing me, and that was just fine. I unpacked the two maps I’d brought and laid them out on the night stand by the bed, then added two of the books on prospecting. I hung my clothes in the closet, then slipped a sheet of paper and pen out of the drawer and dropped a short note to Nola. I mentioned that the room number was eighteen. I also said that I’d be looking forward to a contribution in the near future and that it would be a mistake to let me dangle on the end of the line very long after the check from Apex Pictures came through. Then I addressed the letter to Miss Carol Taylor at the address I’d written down and put the letter in my jacket pocket.

  In the morning I went out through the hotel lobby, nodded briefly to the man at the desk, and got into the Ford. I dropped the letter in a corner box. Breakfast, then a trip into the hinterland. I drove a few miles out of Ojai and turned off the main highway, followed a dwindling road, and wound up on private property at the end of the line. Bad shot! I drove back to the highway once more.

  It took a while. I explored for two days and then found the kind of spot I was looking for, a secluded, end-of-nowhere type of place which in all probability was a lover’s lane as soon as the sun set. The evidence lay strewn around—pop bottles, beer tins, a pint whisky bottle here and there and an occasional Kleenex fluttering in the hot breeze that moved the cactus. There was one small patch of shade where a rock cliff rose fifteen feet on one side of the road. I got out, picked up enough rocks to fill a couple of small canvas sample bags, and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in my car with the door open. I read some in the book on Uranium prospecting until it bored me. Then I glanced through some of the papers I’d picked up at the bus depot back in Ojai; there wasn’t anything of interest there, either. I flattened out on the back cushion, let my feet hang over the window, and snoozed for a while. Finally I drove back to the hotel, stopping at a city refuse can along the way to deposit my daily paper.