Blood on the Mink

  After a while you get to be a pretty fair psychologist. You size up your people and you decide what stimulus A will produce effect B. And if you’re lucky, it happens that way. If you aren’t, they bury you.

  The X in my equation now was Chavez. And that goes to show you: Chavez hadn’t been on the scene at the start, hadn’t even figured into my original hazy size-up of the situation. Neither had Litwhiler. You have to be prepared for new developments. You have to know how to turn them to your own advantage.

  The hours slid by. The pile of cigarette butts in the ashtray grew top-heavy.

  I started phoning Chavez at half past one. I got no answer. I called every fifteen minutes, until the Bingham switchboard girl got to recognizing my voice, and every time I asked for Chavez she said sweetly, “I don’t believe he’s back yet, but I’ll ring his suite for you, sir,” and then she rang, and then she chirped, “I’m terribly sorry, sir, but Mr. Chavez still does not answer. Shall I take a message for you?”

  “No thanks. I’ll keep trying.”

  I did. I hung on the phone for two hours, ringing every fifteen minutes. I don’t know how that Bingham switchboard girl kept her patience.

  And then, at quarter to four, I was reaching wearily for the telephone again when it began to ring of its own accord. I picked up. “Hello?”

  “Vic? Carol here.” She sounded breathless. “I’m calling from a payphone in the lobby of the Burke. I can’t talk long. Klaus thinks I went down to buy some candy bars. Vic, there isn’t any time left. They’re going to kill you!”

  “They tried it once and it didn’t work.”

  “No, not Minton this time. Klaus and Chavez.”

  “What?”

  “Chavez was here all afternoon. I heard them talking. Vic, are you—are you really Vic Lowney?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Chavez said you weren’t. He said you were somebody named Manners, from Las Vegas, and that you had—killed Lowney and were impersonating him. Is that true?”

  “It might be,” I said tightly.

  “Well, Chavez suggested to Klaus that they get rid of you. As long as they don’t have to worry about the Hammell organization avenging you, Chavez said, it was the smart thing to do. And Klaus agreed. So they’re going to get you before you leave Philadelphia. Vic, is it true—what Chavez said?”

  “It’s true,” I told her. “I’m not Lowney. I’m an independent. A lone wolf. Chavez is afraid I’m going to cut in on him.”

  “I’m all mixed up. Vic—Joe—”

  “Did they say when they were going to jump me?”

  “Tomorrow, I think. Or maybe even tonight if they can work it. Listen, darling, we’ve got to move fast. You remember what we talked about before? Killing Klaus and going west together?”

  “Are you still with me?” I asked. “Now that you know I’m not Lowney?”

  “Of course. It’s you I want—whoever you are.”

  I didn’t stop to ponder the philosophical implications of that statement. I said, “Okay. How are we going to work it?”

  “Klaus has a roadhouse just outside of Philly,” Carol said. “It’s on Route One down near Lansdowne. Restaurant and a bar, and dancing Saturday nights, and rooms for rent upstairs. It’s closed today. I’ve got a spare key, though. I stole it from Klaus a long time ago and he’s never missed it.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’ll meet you now and give you the key. You go down there, let yourself in, and wait. Then I’ll get Klaus in a frisky mood and make him take me for a drive.”

  “Are you sure you can?” I asked.

  “I was very nice to him last night. Very nice,” she said bitterly. “And he’s in a good mood now, on account of tying up with Chavez. Don’t worry—I’ll twist his arm a little. I’ll make him drive me south on Route One, and when we pass the roadhouse I’ll suggest that we get out and use one of the bedrooms for a while. Klaus will be agreeable.

  “The moment he steps out of the car, bang, you shoot him from one of the upstairs windows. When the chauffeur gets out, you shoot him too. It’s deserted down there; nobody will hear anything much. Then we get into the car and drive back to town. We grab Szekely and the plates, and head for the Coast.”

  “You’ve got everything figured out nice and neat,” I said.

  “I have a lot of spare time to think about things.”

  “Where can we meet for the key?”

  “The north side of City Hall. In forty-five minutes I’ll hand you the key and you get down to the roadhouse by seven-thirty or so.”

  “Right.”

  “And—be careful, Vic—Joe—whoever. Klaus’ men may be out looking for you already. Klaus wants to kill you real bad, now that he knows you aren’t Lowney after all.”

  I promised I’d take care of myself, and told Carol I’d be at City Hall at four-thirty sharp.

  Hanging up, I stubbed out my cigarette and walked to the window. I was in a spot now.

  Chavez ratting to Klaus, that was okay. I had wanted him to do just that and he had cooperated. But this other business, of knocking off Klaus at a roadhouse outside town, that wasn’t in my scheme of things at all.

  It was handy to know about the roadhouse, handier to have the key. But I wasn’t eager to do a hatchet-job on Klaus. Leave that sort of stuff for the judges and juries. My job is just to get them behind bars.

  On the other hand, if I failed to eradicate Klaus, if I backed down in any way, I’d lose Carol’s sympathy and possibly even arouse her suspicions. And Carol was a valuable ally. She was my one reliable pipeline out of Klaus’ organization.

  I stewed over the problem for a while, trying to figure out some way I could keep Carol interested in me and simultaneously not have to shoot Klaus. I didn’t have any easy answers to that one. Carol had been very useful to me, but now her enthusiasm was fouling things up, as she tried to collect on the promissory note I had given her in the matter of knocking off Klaus and carrying her off to the sunny southwest.

  One thing I hate is stepping into a situation without knowing which way I’m heading. I don’t like to play by ear. But I had no choice now. I would just have to go along from one minute to the next, and trust to luck.

  At quarter after four I left my room and went downstairs. I stepped warily out of the hotel, looking in all directions. For all I knew, Klaus’ murder squadron was squatting right across the street, waiting to blow my head off the moment I set foot outside the Penn Plaza. But nothing happened. I pulled my coat collar up around my ears and started walking east along Market toward the big hunk of masonry that is Philadelphia’s City Hall.

  It was growing dark already, and a chill wind was blowing. I picked my way through the heavy Sunday afternoon traffic circling round City Hall, crossed the plaza and took up a station at the north end, just under the arch. It was half past four. No sign of Carol. I lit up a cig and waited.

  Five minutes later, a taxicab pulled up about a hundred feet away, and a tall girl in a mink got out and started running toward the arch.

  She never got there.

  The instant the taxi pulled away, a long black sedan glided into the spot vacated. A window rolled down and a hand came out. A hand holding a gun.

  “Carol!” I yelled.

  She didn’t stop. She was too busy running toward me, grinning and waving. I saw Minton’s face peering out that car window, taking dead aim.

  He fired.

  The shot smashed into Carol from behind and knocked her down. He fired a second time, as she fell, but the slug glanced off the pavement. Catching sight of me, he pumped two quick bullets my way. I hit the sidewalk fast and heard the echoes of the shots go shuddering past me through the arch. Then the traffic light changed, and the sedan sped away.

  I sprinted to Carol.

  ELEVEN

  She was lying on her side, in a twisted position, and the blood was soaking right through the mink and forming a little puddle on the sidewalk. I knelt by her side. Her eyes were glazing fast
, and her face, drained of blood, looked ghostly. She looked up at me, her head lolling, and tried to say something. “Minton...never trusted me...always jealous. Tapped...phone...they knew I was seeing you.... Vic....”

  She sank back. I threw open her coat and saw that there wasn’t much use calling an ambulance. One shot had been enough. For once Minton hadn’t bungled. He had used a .45, and the big slug had entered right between her shoulder blades, bored through her body at tremendous force, and had emerged smack between her lovely breasts, half an inch to the right of the sternum.

  There was a hole in her blouse with the diameter of a half dollar, and that hole went right through her body, heart and all. She had stayed alive for thirty seconds after the shot on sheer willpower, nothing more.

  The key, I thought.

  As I half expected, she was clutching it in her hand. The fingers hadn’t started to get stiff yet, of course, but her grip was tight. I pried the key loose and slipped it into my pocket, and not a moment too soon, either, because the next minute the place was full of cops.

  I got to my feet. Two of the cops bent to examine Carol, a third went running off to call an ambulance, and a fourth pointed to me.

  “What happened here?”

  I shrugged. “The girl got out of a cab. Another car pulled up and somebody shot her. They fired four shots altogether and drove away.”

  “Which way?”

  “Around the building. How should I know?”

  “What were you doing here?” he snapped.

  “Just looking around,” I said. “I’m from out of town. This the way it always is in Philly on a Sunday afternoon? Seemed more like Chicago just now.”

  He had his notebook out and wasn’t smiling. The cops examining Carol had decided by this time that she was dead, which didn’t take any great powers of observation. Sherlock said, “Let’s have your name.”

  “Wait a second, officer. That girl was shot from behind and I was in front of her. If you think—”

  “You’re a witness, Mack, not a suspect,” he said with irritation. “In fact, you’re just about the only good witness there was. What’s your name?”

  “Vic Lowney.”

  It didn’t register on him. Evidently he wasn’t up to date on the big names of California crime. “Where are you from?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “Local address?”

  “I’m staying at the Penn Plaza.”

  “You know the girl at all?”

  I shrugged. “I was just standing here, officer, and she got out of a cab. That’s all I know.”

  I heard the wailing of an ambulance, and a moment later it pulled up at the curb. The stretcher crew came barreling out, but they could see right away that they weren’t needed. The only place that girl was going was to the morgue.

  My man wouldn’t let up. “You say there were four shots?” he continued.

  “That’s what I said, yes.”

  “Only one wound on the body,” he said. He turned to the other cops and set them looking around under the arch for the slugs. It didn’t take long for them to find all four, including the one that had ripped the life out of Carol Champlain.

  For a moment I thought they were going to take me down to headquarters. That would have been a nuisance; they might have asked questions, demanded identification, and generally made trouble for me—even jugged me overnight, which would have been very very awkward. In that case a phone call to Washington would clear things up. But I didn’t want to tip my hand to the locals about being an undercover agent. I preferred to do my work without any well-meant assistance of that sort.

  The policeman, though, was satisfied that I was just an innocent bystander who had happened to see the murder. Telling me to stand by and remain available for an inquest, he let me go—warning me to notify the police if I checked out of the Penn Plaza.

  It was only a couple of blocks back to the hotel, but I got a lift in the police car. I didn’t mind that at all. Klaus’ men had succeeded in eliminating Carol, but they were still hot to plow me under. And you can’t always count on being able to duck in time.

  I paced around my room for a while, using up half a pack of cigs in the process. Things were coming to a head, now. I didn’t have much time left. Maybe twenty-four hours at the most to wrap everything up.

  I felt sorry for Carol, the poor dumb hotpants. Not that she deserved any pity. In her world it’s dog eat dog, and her tragedy was simply that she didn’t get to Klaus before Klaus had gotten to her. But I missed her all the same. She had fed me a lot of helpful information, and she had made Thursday night bright and warm and cozy for me.

  I told myself she was better off where she was. She had had it good for twenty-five or thirty years, and now she didn’t have to worry about losing her figure, sprouting wrinkles, and ending up on the scrapheap.

  She was there already. The fast way.

  It was half past five before I had everything worked out. I checked it backwards and forwards, looking for weak spots. There were plenty of them. Even after long figuring, I couldn’t eliminate them all. But I had a fifty-fifty chance, I figured, of making everything work out the way I wanted it to. An even break is all I ever ask. Given that, I can usually bend the odds in my direction.

  I picked up the phone. Litwhiler had given me a home telephone number, to use on Sunday if I had to, and I used it. I gave it to the operator and told her to make it person to person.

  There was the usual Alphonse-and-Gaston routine with the operators. And then finally I was connected to Litwhiler.

  “I’ve been waiting to hear from you all day, Lowney,” he said. “What’s holding things up?”

  “Nothing, anymore. We’re ready to roll.”

  “About time,” he said. “Go on, fill me in.”

  I ran a hand through my hair, took a deep breath, and said, “The engraver is being kept in a roadhouse on Route One, south of Philly. Klaus owns the place. Dining and dancing downstairs, rooms for rent upstairs. They keep him in one of the rooms, under round-the-clock guard.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “The place closes around three in the morning,” I said. “At half past three ayem, you and your boys come busting in. There are only a couple of guards, and you can take them easy.”

  “You’re sure they won’t hurt the old man any?” Litwhiler said uneasily. “I mean, if we come smashing in there, maybe they’ll kill the engraver. Then it won’t be worth our while.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I assured him. “Klaus doesn’t think that way. Anyhow, they won’t be expecting trouble. The roadhouse is way out in the sticks, and nobody knows the old man lives there. You can just march in and take the place over. I’ve got the key to the front door.”

  “How’d you work that?”

  “I lifted it from Klaus. He doesn’t know. So you can meet me and I’ll let you have the key. The rest ought to be child’s play, Litwhiler.”

  He was silent a moment, thinking it over. Then he said at length, “Okay. I’ll come down tomorrow night. How long does it take to reach this place from downtown Philadelphia?”

  “Forty minutes,” I said, guessing.

  “Okay. We’ll stop off at the Penn Plaza around quarter to three in the morning and get the key from you.”

  “And don’t forget the twenty-five grand.”

  “You get that when the engraver’s in our hands,” Litwhiler said. “Say, do they keep the plates out at this place too?”

  “The whole megilla,” I said. “Plates, press, engraver, everything. There’s a regular printing plant in the basement. You’ll really have it made, Litwhiler.”

  “Great,” Litwhiler said. “If everything works out right, I’ll make this worth your while, Lowney. I never forget a man who helps me. I mean that.”

  He sounded so maudlin that it hurt. He went on in the same vein for another minute or so—piling it up on my phone bill—and then I got rid of him. Quarter to three, Tuesday morning, he and his bunch would be
down to get the old man out of the roadhouse.

  Of course, the old man wasn’t in the roadhouse. But Litwhiler didn’t need to know that.

  I pondered things for a little while, and then started feeling hungry. I put away a good meal in the third-floor chophouse. My expense account on this caper was going to be a beaut. If I survived to submit a swindle sheet, that was.

  After dinner, I checked my ammunition, changed my coat, and headed out again. Half the pincers had been forged, now—Litwhiler’s half. Klaus would supply the other half and Chavez would be the bolt to hold the whole thing together. And once all was assembled, I just had to grab the handles and close everything nice and tight.

  Except that there was a fly in the ointment, and a big one. The hitch was Elena Szekely. I needed to contact her, but I had no way of doing it. All the other times, she had come to me. I didn’t dare phone her at home, with Klaus’ goons all over the place, and I didn’t know where else to reach her. So unless she contacted me some time in the next twenty-four hours, I’d be unable to communicate my plan to her, and things would be tougher than otherwise. She would be a floating variable in my equation. Well, it couldn’t be helped.

  I had to see Chavez first. And without making any appointments in advance.

  I phoned the Bingham and said to the switchboard girl, “Is Mr. Chavez in?”

  “I’ll ring his room for you, sir.”

  On the second ring, Chavez picked up. He said hello, and the voice was unmistakably his. I hung up without saying a word, and went down to the Penn Plaza lobby. The bellhops bristled expectantly—they had learned that Vic Lowney meant lots of easy tips to them—and I called one over. Dropping some change into his eager little palm, I said, “Get me a taxi, boy. Have him pull up right outside the hotel.”

  “Yes, Mr. Lowney,” he said briskly, and off he went.

  A moment later the cab was there. The doorman of the hotel held the cab door for me, and I scuttled quickly out and across the fifteen feet or so to the curb, and into the cab. I managed it so fast that any lurking Klaus assassins wouldn’t have time to take aim.