“ . . . Well, yesterday afternoon he and some more men moved it outside on to the loading platform, but the junk man forgot to pick it up. It was unlocked. And this morning about eight-thirty, some first-graders on the way to school—”
I could feel myself growing sick. “Oh, Jesus, not that!”
“No,” she interrupted. “Not one of the children. A dog. Judy Weaver’s miniature poodle—”
My knees bent, and I sat down. “Well, don’t tell me the whole goddamned town—”
There was another knock on the door.
“Harris! will you please stop swearing! That silly girl is practically out of her mind. They’ve got her under a sedative now, but when she wakes up she’ll start all over again. The Humane Society is driving me crazy. Mrs. Weaver says they’re going to sue you. Everybody in town is simply furious, and people have been calling up here until I’m ready to scream. Some machine shop has drilled a hole in the safe so the stupid dog can breathe, but they can’t get him out. The radio news got hold of it, and now the New Orleans papers are calling up. Barbara says you’ve got the combination—”
Maybe it would help, I thought bitterly, if she told me that again. Whoever it was in the corridor was banging on the door again. I had to get away from that voice and try to think.
“Hold it,” I said. “Somebody’s at the door.”
I put down the phone and answered it. It was a porter. “Telegram, sir,” he said. I handed him a coin of some kind, and took it.
I closed the door and leaned against it. We’d had it. It wasn’t on the tapes; I knew that. I’d been through everything in the wallet. The little address book! I grabbed it out of my pocket and flipped madly through it. Nothing but addresses.
I looked at the phone lying on the desk. This was the way it ended. You learned everything there was to learn, you took care of every contingency, you memorized, you rehearsed, you perfected—and then some kid locked a dog in a safe a thousand miles away and you were done.
I still had the telegram in my hand. Through the little glassine window I could see some figures, and Brindon, La. I’d never heard of it.
Louisiana!
I slashed it open and stared at the text.
RIGHT THIRTY-TWO LEFT TWO SLANT NINETEEN RIGHT THREE SLANT SIX REPEAT RIGHT THIRTY-TWO . . . TAPED BENEATH PENCIL DRAWER.
I sighed, and pushed myself off the door on watery knees. Picking up the phone and holding it a little way from my face, I said, “Sit down, and I’ll be right with you, as soon as I deal with this crisis.”
I spoke into it. “Coral? You there? That combination is taped to the bottom of the pencil drawer in my desk. But, hold on, I’ll give it to you. Write it down—” I repeated it off the telegram.
“Thank Heavens—”
I interrupted crisply. “One of you go see Mrs. Weaver right away and see if you can smooth this over. Mrs. English, maybe; she’s good with people. Buy Judy the biggest stuffed toy you can find, one of those thirty-five dollar jobs. And, Coral, I hate to be crabby, honey, but I’m working on a real big deal down here—”
“Darling, I am sorry about it.”
When I’d hung up I went over and lay down on the bed. I could have used a drink, but I doubted I could pour it.
She’d heard about the uproar and driven to some nearby town to send the telegram, probably from a pay phone. I closed my eyes, and I could see her so vividly it hurt. When they made her, I thought, they made only one.
It wasn’t only that she’d saved us this time; she’d put the thing on ice once and for all. I could make mistakes by the dozen from now on and it wouldn’t matter in the slightest. Only Chapman could have known that combination.
* * *
Her name sounded like something dreamed up by a cheap press-agent. Justine Laray. Not that it mattered. What did matter was that I was sure I’d found what I was looking for.
She knocked on the door around eleven p.m., and when I opened it and she came in, she sized me up, appraised the luggage and the fat wallet lying on the dresser—all in one glance and without even appearing to—and gave me a bright smile that promised unimaginable ecstasies and almost concealed the contempt she felt for any jerk who couldn’t get a woman without buying one.
It would be a hundred dollars, honey. And when I fatuously agreed to this overcharge it merely increased her contempt. I was sweet, and much better-looking than a lot of those fat expense-account creeps—ugh! Not that she’d ever done much of this, of course. She was really in show business. A song stylist.
“That right?” I said heartily. I slapped her on the behind. “We’re going to get along fine, sweetie. I always like people with talent. Never had any myself, except for making money. And women.”
It might have been a little cruder than usual, but she’d heard the tune. “You don’t mind if I get it now, do you?”
“Hell, no,” I waved a hand toward the wallet. “Take it out of there. Why not take two while you’re at it, and stay all night? Christ, if you don’t get it the Government will, and they don’t even kiss me. I’ll mix us a little drink, huh?”
I’d been cashing the traveler’s checks at a steady rate, and the wallet held close to three thousand dollars now. The rest of the checks were lying beside it.
“You know, I just might do that,” she said archly. She took four fifties from the wallet.
She was around twenty-five, a rather slender girl with nice teeth, short dark hair, and eyes that were almost black. There was nothing of the Latin about her, however. Her skin was dead white, and the eyes were cold. I put ice and Scotch in two glasses and set them on the dresser.
“Come on, sweetie, get out of those hot, sticky clothes and into a cold highball. You still got to meet the Credentials Committee.”
We went to bed. I’d had more fun in dentists’ offices. She probably had, too; but at least she was being paid to endure it. If she drank enough, she might talk about herself.
“You’d never think I was thirty-nine years old, would you?” I said. “Come on, you’d have said thirty-two, wouldn’t you? Hit me in the stomach. Hell, go on; hit me. . . .”
I went to Notre Dame. No, I didn’t play football. I didn’t have to; my old man had plenty of money. But don’t think I was one of those pantywaists that had it all given to me. I made it myself. Radio stations, newspapers, real estate. I was going to be around here at least a week, on a real-estate deal. Stick with me, if you can stand the pace, and we’ll have a ball. Feel the muscles in that stomach, Marian. Like the old washboard, huh?
She drank; she had to, to stand me. She began to get a little tight.
Miami, hah! And Miami Beach. Brother, you could have ’em. What a girl had to put up with from those fat expense-account types that think they’re better”n she is, the hairy pigs. Vegas was for her. Or L.A. She could go to work tomorrow. Did I know she was a song stylist? Brother, the crummy breaks she’d had in this crummy place. That agent of hers—Hah! this was an agent? He couldn’t book Crosby. And that room-mate running off with three of her best dresses. Imagine, stealing from another working girl. . . .
Hey, where you get this Marian routine? My name’s Justine. I already tolja that three times already. Sure, you called me Marian. Three times, for Crissakes. Whatta you carryin’ a torch, or something? Look, don’t call me Marian, or Sweetie, or Hey You. I got a name, just like anybody else. And you use it, buster. You think I’m some cheap tramp that you just grunt or point or something and hand me ten bucks and I fall over. . . .
In the morning she gave me her telephone number so we could eliminate the middleman. I gave her an extra fifty.
“You call me, honey,” she said, putting on lipstick and giving me an arch glance. I was a crude, repulsive, egocentric blow-hard who couldn’t even remember her name, and she detested me, but oddly enough I seemed to have nearly as much money as I boasted I had, and I threw it around.
* * *
The registered airmail from Webster & Adcock arrived at nine-thirty. I
slit it open, and looked at the check for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Five minutes after the bank opened, I endorsed it, wrote out a deposit slip, and added it to the account.
Back at the hotel, I called Fitzpatrick. He’d already notified me, shortly after noon yesterday, that the owner had accepted the offer.
“Fitzpatrick,” I said now. “I just received the money from my broker, and deposited it. I’ll be able to give you a check for a hundred and seventy thousand dollars by Friday. Or Monday, at the latest.”
“That’s fine, Mr. Chapman. Just fine.”
“In the meantime I’m going to take a good look at the whole South Florida real-estate picture, and may get into it a little deeper. Keep me in mind.”
“Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, we have a number of other real good listings I’d like to show you-”
“Thanks. But I think I’ll run over to the Naples area for a day or so. I’d keep in touch. G’bye.”
I called Chris and told him the check had arrived and that I’d deposited it. He was cool, but polite. I was still a client, if a rather shrunken one. The public stenographer in the hotel addressed an envelope for me and I signed the receipts and mailed them back to him. Next I called Captain Wilder in Marathon. He was out in the Stream, but I left a message with his wife that I’d got tied up on a business deal and would have to cancel the other three days’ fishing.
Coral Blaine was next. She started to tell me of some trouble at the radio station. There’d been an FCC violation of some kind. I cut her off. I was in the saddle now.
“Tell Wingard to take care of it,” I said shortly. “Authorize him to order anything he needs. I’m up to my ears in this real-estate deal. In fact, I’ve canceled the rest of my fishing reservations, and I’m going to spend the balance of the trip looking over the situation down here.”
“Darling, I wish you wouldn’t work so hard.”
“I like to work. So aside from the FCC, everything’s serene there? No more dogs locked in safes?”
She laughed sheepishly. “I am sorry about that. Wasn’t it the silliest thing?”
“It could have been serious as hell. And I’m not so sure it was an accident, either.” The dog thing had been a break we hadn’t counted on, but it was too good to waste.
“Harris, what do you mean? Of course it was an accident.”
“Maybe. But, look-Suppose somebody was trying to cut my throat? Give me a bad name, and make me lose advertisers? A thing like that could ruin me—people going around saying Chapman’s a sonofabitch that’d leave an unlocked safe around where kids can play in it. Suppose she’d actually—I mean, suppose it had been one of the kids? Instead of just a dog—”
“Harris, what on earth are you talking about?”
“Oh, I guess it’s silly,” I said, abruptly changing tone. ”Well, angel, I’m off to Naples to look over some property. I’ll call you later.”
* * *
I arrived in Naples early in the afternoon, and checked in at a motel. After driving round a while I called a few real-estate people on the phone, introduced myself, and made some inquiries. I plugged in the tape recorder, and began erasing the tapes, running them through the machine on “Record” with the volume turned all the way down. It was a slow process, as each took nearly an hour. I finished three of them. Once, I put one of them on “Play Back” for a few minutes just to hear her voice. I sat on the floor with my eyes closed, and I could almost imagine she was there in the room.
Around ten that night I was sitting at the bar in a very dimly lighted cocktail lounge. Among the eight or ten customers at the tables behind me was a dark-haired girl in her late twenties. She was sitting at a table for two, with a man about my size. I watched them from time to tune in the mirror. After a while her escort excused himself and went to the men’s room. I stuck a cigarette in the holder, lit it, and got off the stool as if to go out. Then I saw her, and stopped. I walked over to her table.
“Look, Marian,” I said angrily, “what are you doing here? I know you’re up to something. Why don’t you leave me alone?”
She was too amazed even to speak. People nearby turned and stared.
“Spreading lies behind my back!” I went on, beginning to shout. “Well, you’re wasting your time, Marian. Everybody knows how fair I was. I was more than fair—”
She had recovered now. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked coldly. “I never saw you before in my life.”
The bartender was on his way; and so was her escort, just emerging from the John. I straightened, and looked blankly around, and then at her. “Oh,” I said in confusion. “I—uh—I’m sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”
Her escort wanted to swing on me, but the bartender broke it up. He put his hand on my shoulder in friendly fashion and we walked to the door. “Easy does it, Jack.” Just as the door was closing, I heard him say to someone at the end of the bar. “Mother, dear. You never know. I’d have sworn he was cold sober.”
The next day I drove up to Fort Myers. I spent several hours driving round and talking real estate, mostly over the telephone, and finished erasing the tapes so I could dispose of them. Even if they were ever found, they’d be harmless.
I called Coral Blaine. I told her how much I missed her, and that I’d probably be home a little ahead of schedule. “The minute I clean up that real-estate deal on Monday, I’m going to start back.”
“That’s wonderful, darling.”
“I wonder if I ought to hire detectives to watch her?” I said.
“Watch who?” she asked, puzzled.
“Marian Forsyth!” I said angrily. “Good God, Coral, she can’t fool you that easily, can she? Don’t you know she’s up to something? She’s dreamed up some kind of grudge she thinks she has against me, and there’s no telling what she’ll do. You keep all my papers locked in the safe every minute. And especially my income-tax records—”
“Dear,” she broke in wearily, “I wish we could stop talking about Marian Forsyth. I’m sick of her. I don’t trust her any more than you do, but I don’t see what she could do to you.”
”All right, angel,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. I hope so.”
Late that night I threw the blank tapes and the recorder into the Caloosahatchee River. Thursday afternoon I was back in Miami, at the Clive. I called Justine Laray. She was glad to hear from me; she thought she’d lost me.
Eleven
Chumps of my caliber didn’t come along every day, and she was beginning to get bigger ideas. She didn’t ask for the money in advance this time, and she did a better job of hiding her contempt and being professionally gay in the face of my crudities and oafish bragging about money, sexual prowess, and stomach muscles.
It now appeared that this crummy room-mate had stolen all her clothes.
“I could go back to work in night clubs tomorrow if I had the wardrobe,” she said, lying naked in bed with the highball glass and a cigarette. “But, God, you got no idea, honey, what those gowns cost—”
“Where’s the strain?” I asked. “Hell, at a hundred bucks a jump—”
She was very brave about it. She never told anybody, as a rule, but I was so understanding and, well, sort of nice— There was her little boy, see. Oh, yes, she’d been married. And this lousy bas— Her husband had died, that is, after a long and expensive illness. . . .
The Carthaginian B-girls had probably used more or less the same version during the Punic Wars. “Gee, that’s rough,” I said. “And he doesn’t even know? I mean, all the money you send him at that school, he thinks you’re a big-shot singer? Well, how about that?”
“So if I can just get back on my feet—”
“You just stick with me, Marian,” I said expansively. Maybe we’ll do something about this gown business. Maybe tomorrow, huh, if I can get free for a few minutes from this deal. Say, did I tell you I stood to clean up about eighty thousand? Not bad for a little over a week, huh, baby?”
In the morning I gave he
r three hundred dollars, slapped her on the rear, and winked. “We got to stab Uncle for a little business expense some way, don’t we, kid?”
Sure, I still had her phone number. And if I got a chance I’d pick her up and we’d go shopping.
* * *
As soon as she left, I checked out of the hotel, had the car brought around and the bags loaded, and drove over to Miami Beach. I left it in a parking lot six or eight blocks away, and walked to the apartment. It was hot and intensely still with the air-conditioner turned off. The minute I opened the front door and stepped into the room where we’d spent so many hours she was all around me, as if the slender elegance, and color, and grace of movement were physical things that could reverberate in an empty room like sound waves and keep on echoing long after the person who had set them in motion was gone.
I tried not to look at the water-stained spot on the rug.
I changed into flannels and a sports shirt, left off the glasses and the hat, put my own wallet in my pocket, walked back to Collins Avenue, and took a cab to Miami. At another car-rental agency I rented a pick-up truck, using my own name and driver’s license, and took off for the Keys. On the way out of town I watched closely for that roadside curio place where I’d stopped before so I’d have its exact location fixed in my mind.
I had a large-scale map, and a pretty good idea of where I’d find the type of place I was looking for, but it was a long way down the small Keys and interminable bridges of the Overseas Highway. On Sugarloaf Key, some hundred and thirty miles from Miami, there was a back-country road that took off through the mangroves and salt ponds and ran along an outer line of small keys parallel with the highway. It was a wild area with practically no houses and plenty of places a car could be hidden.
Shortly after two p.m. I found just the spot I wanted, and checked the mileage back to the nearest bus stop on the highway. I started back. Just before three, I stopped at a roadside place on Big Pine Key and called the bank. Marian had said that on an amount that large they’d rush collection, but I had to be absolutely sure. I got hold of Dakin. He asked me to hold on, and checked.