Shooting Star / Spiderweb

  “You were in radio?”

  “Yes. Back in Iowa. I—”

  “Come on. I’ve told you about me. Now it’s your turn.”

  I stood up. “Getting late.”

  “There’s time. You haven’t an appointment?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then you can’t wiggle out of it. Talk.”

  I sighed. We walked arm-in-arm into the beach house. The large living room held nothing but divans and a chaise longue set near the fireplace. Rousseau reproductions graced the walls. I sat down on a sofa and stared at The Snake-Charmer. Dark figure, staring eyes...like the Professor.

  “Come on. What’s the matter?”

  “Look, Ellen, this isn’t going to be easy. I’m trying to make up my mind. I want to tell you, yes. But right now it’s a risk, wondering how you’ll take it. And I must tell you the truth.”

  “Yes. You must.” She came over and sat next to me. She lit two cigarettes and placed the first in my mouth. It was somehow, to me, the most intimate gesture in the world. We puffed and sped smoke in silence.

  “Judd.” She came close, very close. “You said you wanted to help me, didn’t you?”

  “Right.”

  “Well—one of the things that will help me most is to know the truth, about you.”

  She called me “Judd” because she thought I was Judson Roberts, and if I was Judson Roberts I’d tell her something all right. It wouldn’t be the truth but she’d believe it. Then she’d put her arms around me—those soft sun-ripened arms—and I’d taste apricots and I’d have what I wanted. Only I wouldn’t have it really, because I wasn’t Judson Roberts but Eddie Haines. And Eddie Haines would rather tell her the truth and take his chances.

  “All right,” I said. “Here goes.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled. Then I talked.

  Half an hour elapsed between the time I said, “My real name is Eddie Haines,” and my last sentence, “Here I am.”

  In between there were two cigarettes—the second one left in the ashtray to burn unheeded—and a grateful deepening of dusk that hid my face in shadows.

  I didn’t want her to see my face. There was enough nakedness as it was, because I held nothing back. The failure, the suicide attempt, the meeting with the Professor, the Y-O-U setup, what we did to people like Caldwell, everything.

  Everything except the murder of Mike Drayton, that is. I couldn’t tell her that. I wanted to, but I knew what her reaction would be. What I did say was bad enough, and I expected the awkward silence, the stiff, impersonal phrases, the cold, “We’d better go,” with which she’d conclude our relationship when I finished.

  What I didn’t expect was the scent of apricots, the strong arms around me, the leaping fire of her lips.

  “And I thought I had troubles,” she whispered.

  “Then you don’t—?”

  Her mouth answered me first, then her voice. “Of course not. Oh, I’m so glad you told me, Eddie! I knew I’d never get used to spending the rest of my life with a man named ‘Judd’!”

  It got dark fast, after that.

  It was black as midnight when I came home. In fact, it was midnight. There were no lights shining inside the house, not even from Rogers’ upstairs room. I let myself in and clicked the living-room switch.

  Immediately, the phone jingled.

  I answered. The Professor’s voice snapped across the wire. “Where have you been? I’ve called many times.”

  “Sorry. Just got in.”

  “Answer my question, please. Where were you?”

  “Visiting Ellen Post.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  “I do. By the way, we collected the first fifty thousand tonight. No trouble.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “And that brings up another matter. I’ve got to invest the money, right away. I’m leaving for San Francisco for a few days, perhaps a week. Taking Rogers with me. You’ll carry on as usual, with one new assignment.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Keep on seeing Ellen Post.”

  “Very pleasant assignment. I intend to.”

  “You might enjoy going out and doing the town with her. She likes to drink, doesn’t she?”

  “Now wait a minute. You sound as if you have ideas. And you promised me—”

  “Nothing to worry about, I assure you. I just think you’re in need of relaxation. The tension of recent weeks seems to be wearing you down. Why not have some of that amusement you’re always talking about?”

  Sure. The Professor was right. Live it up a little. He was my friend. My friend, who wanted me to get Ellen Post drunk in public, preparatory to working some new blackmail scheme I wasn’t supposed to know about. He and Rogers would go away and line it all up, and I’d be here laying the groundwork. But suppose I double-crossed him and wouldn’t play?

  He answered that without my asking. “Don’t worry while I’m gone. Miss Bauer will communicate with me regularly. And I’ve told Jake to keep an eye on you.”

  “That was thoughtful.”

  “You ought to know by this time—I think of everything.”

  “All right.” I kept my voice even. “Have a good trip.”

  “Thank you,” said the Professor. “Enjoy yourself, while I’m gone.”

  Click.

  Well, there it was. Mike Drayton was dead, Edgar Caldwell was framed and not long for this world, and Ellen Post was next on the list. Everybody I touched was marked for doom. Because I was a puppet named Judson Roberts, and the Professor pulled the strings.

  Only he was going away. I’d have four or five days to work. Four or five days to straighten things out, pull out forever, with Ellen. It was my only chance. I’d have to make my plans and execute them quickly.

  I switched off the light. I could think better in the dark. Picking up a cigarette en route, I walked over to the window and stared down at the street. There was a beat-up old Ford parked before my door. It was empty. But lounging in the shadows, staring up at me, watching and waiting patiently, was Jake.

  That’s how the nightmare began...

  Sixteen

  Maybe he went away before dawn. Maybe he slept in the car. All I know is that when I went downstairs the next morning, he was standing there.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hello. What are you doing around here?”

  “Oh, I’m just gonna stick around for a while, if you don’t mind. You know, the Professor’s going away and he sort of hinted you might need a little protection. In case this gay Caldwell hollers copper or somethin’. If it’s all right with you.” He grinned.

  I grinned back. “Sure, Jake. But you needn’t bother.”

  “No bother. I’ll come along to the office with you now.”

  “I’ll be there all day. I can call you when I decide to go anywhere.”

  “Thanks. But I’ll come along. I like hanging around your office. That May, she’s a dish all right.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  He rode with me to the office and I got inside my private room and closed the door. I picked up my personal phone and dialed Ellen at the beach house. I had to watch what I said in case the Professor had thoughtfully tapped the wire for May to record my conversation.

  “Darling, when can I see you? About two be all right? No, I’ll come on out. Like to talk to you. No, I’m not upset. Everything’s fine. Goodbye until then.”

  No, I wasn’t upset. Merely petrified. But I had to figure something out, and I had to move fast.

  Jake had a time keeping up with me in his battered Ford, but he managed.

  “Why you going to drag me off to Malibu?” he grumbled.

  “I’m going to see a woman. And you’re going to sit out in the hot sun and sweat. Professor’s idea, remember?”

  He called me a name and I gave him a sweet smile. Then we were off.

  The same sun shone over the beach today, shimmering in Ellen’s hair. Jake stayed
up on the roadway. But even if he’d seen us, it wouldn’t have stopped me from taking her in my arms.

  “My! You did want to see me, didn’t you?”

  “Let’s go inside,” I suggested.

  “Good idea.”

  “No—I must talk to you.”

  “You disappoint me greatly, sir,” she said.

  “Listen, Ellen, this is serious.”

  “All right. What’s the matter, Eddie?”

  Funny how the little things count. Even then, I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to go through with what I planned. But she called me “Eddie.” That was enough. That did it.

  I told her everything, then. I told her the Professor had plans to blackmail her uncle through her. I told her that I was to be a part of the scheme. I told her what I suspected.

  She shook her head. “But that’s utterly insane! People don’t go around doing such things. Imagine him thinking that you would go for such a scheme!”

  “I did go for it, Ellen. I’m taking you out tonight and getting you drunk.”

  “You’re what?”

  “It’s the only way. I think I’ve figured an angle. If we go to some place like The Gin Mill—”

  I explained my angle to her in detail. She nodded.

  “This is our only chance, Ellen,” I told her. “I’ve tried to figure it all out. The Professor is gone, but Jake is tailing me. I’ve got to shake him sometime during the next few days, without his realizing that I’m shaking him.

  “Then I can get hold of whatever cash is available and disappear with you. We’ll go down to Mexico together, and further south if necessary. We’ll run away for good.”

  Ellen pulled away from me. “For good?” she said, softly.

  “I don’t understand. Can it be that you don’t want to go away with me?”

  “You know I do, Eddie. But we can’t run. You’ll never be safe or sure.”

  She was right. She didn’t even know about Drayton’s death, but she was right. I sensed that.

  “No, there’s another way. A better way. You told me about this man, Caldwell, and those pictures.”

  “Yes.”

  “The Professor and his friend Rogers will be gone. Jake is trailing you. Where do you think those pictures would be?”

  “At the Professor’s office—no, wait a minute, that would be too risky. Probably at his house.”

  “And where does he live?”

  “Way off someplace. Vista Canyon. I’ve never been there. Come to think about it, he’s pretty cagey where his private life is concerned.”

  “Eddie, I’ll bet those pictures are at his house. And while he’s gone, if you can get away from Jake, you can go out there and find them.

  “Then you’ll have a real weapon! Turn those photos over to Caldwell. You’ll save him, and you’ll also save yourself. Because once Caldwell has the pictures, he can threaten to expose the Professor if he makes trouble for you over leaving. Don’t you see? You can turn the tables and blackmail the Professor!”

  She would have said more, but I was kissing her.

  “Darling,” I said, “you’re on the first team. Now, go change your clothes. You’ve got an important date to go out and get stinking drunk.”

  The Gin Mill was one of those fake “atmosphere” joints—with singing waiters complete with false mustaches, steins of beer, a “free lunch” which you paid for, and sawdust on the floors. There were also cuspidors alongside the booths.

  That’s what I needed—the cuspidors. Jake shambled over to the bar and roosted there for three hours, while Ellen and I kept the waiter rushing to our booth with refills on scotch.

  We drank a lot. At least, Jake thought we did. He’d glance in the mirror out of the corner of one bloodshot eye and catch a glimpse of us raising glasses. But he never noticed us as we emptied the shots into the cuspidor.

  As the evening progressed our voices rose, and we began to muss each other up. That part was fun—and there was no need to fake. Around eleven I suggested a little singing. Ellen had a nice voice, but when she cut loose on some old favorites it was murder. Even I couldn’t stand it.

  “Stop, you’re overdoing the act,” I whispered. But she kept right on singing. She was singing as I dragged her out of there. We staggered over to the car. Jake lumbered along behind at a discreet distance.

  I drove Ellen up Wilshire to the apartment hotel where she stayed when she planned to be in town. It was her uncle’s place, but right now the legislature was in session and she had it all to herself.

  “You coming in?” she asked.

  “I wish I could,” I said. “But I’ve got work to do.” I watched Jake’s Ford in the rear-view mirror, but Ellen pulled my head around.

  “Don’t try anything foolish, darling. That big gorilla could tear you to pieces.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to bother Jake at all. He’ll see me home, watch me stagger up the steps and call it a day.”

  My prediction proved correct. I dropped Ellen, helped her lurch into the lobby, returned to my car and wove my way home to New Hampshire. Jake pulled up behind me.

  “How’m I doin’, huh?” I yelled. “Some number, isn’t she? Some number, isn’t she? Some—”

  “Not so loud!” Jake was actually embarrassed. “Look, you better turn in. You’re loaded to the eyeballs.”

  “Good idea. See you tomorrow, same time, same sta’shun. ‘Bye now.”

  He watched me locate the keyhole. I stepped inside, went upstairs and turned on the bedroom light. Then I went into the darkness of the bathroom and peered out of the window. Jake’s car was pulling away from the curb. Good. So far, everything checked. I looked at my watch. 11:35 by radium paint. Late, but not too late for me.

  It was going to be a long drive to Vista Canyon. But that’s where the Professor lived. I didn’t know exactly where, and I didn’t know how I’d locate his place in the dark. But he was gone, Jake was gone, and now was the time. Now was the time to go back downstairs and drive away very quietly. Now was the time for speed, across town and out of town. Now was the time to wheel and climb and twist and turn through the Canyon passage.

  Now was the time for midnight, and a moon, for skirling winds that clawed the clouds to phosphorescent shreds. Now was the time for silence on winding trails, for whisperings in woods, for howling in the far-off hills. Now was the time to park the car on the shoulder of the road, out of sight; to crunch through gravel and inspect the crooked signboard at the roadway’s fork.

  Names, meaningless names, names of the wealthy, names of the reclusive. No Otto Hermann. Hills rose crazily all about me, leering and looming in the moonlight; huge, white wrinkled faces bearded by titanic trees. They watched and waited, watched and waited, while a little ant crawled along the road. Me.

  I was a fool to feel that way. I was a fool to come here. Melodramatic nonsense. But if it was nonsense, why did the Professor hide his house?

  Little beads of conversation began to string themselves on a single thread of recollection.

  “It’s on the very top of the hill...the windlass and cable is convenient because we lower a little car down the hillside for groceries, and you can even ride in it yourself if you like.”

  And, “It was built back in Prohibition days. Porch on three sides, wonderful view, completely private. But the big secret is the fox pen just below the house. You see, the bootleggers had to have a place to cache their liquor, and guess what they did? They set themselves up as running a fox farm, and—”

  It hadn’t seemed important at the time I heard it. But now everything came back to me. Hillside. Look for a cable from the top of the hill. Three-sided porch. A fox pen in back, just below the level of the house.

  I began to climb, to crawl. Crickets stopped their chirping and listened. I hit a winding trail that ended up before the door of a three-car garage. An owl hooted—derisively, I thought. I went back down to the road and started up another path. The wind laughed at me. Look for the cable, fool!
>
  I found it. I followed it, through a tangle of scrub. I clung to the heavy wire as the going got tough. What was the legend—string in the lair of the Minotaur? But this wasn’t fantasy. It was all panting and sweat and dizziness. Then the house looked down at me over the edge of the hillside, and I stared back.

  There were no lights on the porches, or inside. I walked around to the front door, using the gravel path as little as possible. The door was locked, of course. I contemplated the wire mesh of the screened-in porch. I felt for my pocket-knife. Once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout.

  Supposing the Professor hadn’t left? What if somebody else was here—Dr. Sylvestro, for instance? There were no answers. There was only a duty to perform. A Scout is Obedient...

  It takes about twelve seconds to break-and-enter a house, according to the movies. Working without director, lights or camera, I managed it in twenty minutes, with the aid of scraped and bleeding fingers. My trouser legs ripped as I wriggled through the wire mesh and dropped to the porch floor with a dull thud.

  I got up and waited for an echo, a response from within the darkened house. Crickets punctuated the silence. The door opened to my hand. I was inside, groping for a light switch. I found it, then hesitated. But, a Scout is Brave...

  The light went on. I don’t know what I expected to see. A bubbling cauldron, a heap of skulls, the heads of children floating in alcohol—

  It was a perfectly conventional room in a perfectly conventional home: unpainted furniture, covered with cushions; a round dining-room table, a stone fireplace and a pile of logs, bookcases made out of boards and bricks. A single touch of luxury was the grand piano that dominated the alcove of the living room.

  I walked over to the bookshelves. It’s the first thing I do when visiting strangers. I looked at titles: Romola, Helen’s Babies, When Knighthood Was in Flower, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, Man Drowning, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.

  Professor Hermann hadn’t chosen these books. Maybe I’d made a mistake, maybe he didn’t live here at all. There were bedrooms and a kitchen to investigate now.