“Now, we’re not interested in prosecution, for several reasons. One of them is that my uncle is a banker, and naturally the publicity wouldn’t help the bank very much. The other reason, of course, is that Mr. Charles, the mastermind, is already in prison, or on his way there, on another charge, and we understand from some of his testimony that you and Mrs. Lane are more or less newcomers to the field of crime.
“So I have been empowered to offer you a little proposition. If you will return the whole sixty-five thousand dollars—which we understand from Mr. Charles’s testimony you have—we will drop the case and not call in the police at all.”
I grabbed at it. It was the only thing we had left. “All right. I’ll give it back. But how do I know I can depend on you not to call the police?”
“You don’t,” he said coolly. “Except that you have my word for it. But on the other hand, what else can you do?”
“You tell me,” I said wearily. I stood up. “Just wait in the lobby. I’ll bring the money down.”
“Very well,” he said. “But I’d advise you not to try to run.”
“Run where?” I asked.
“I see what you mean. All right, Reichert.”
I went up in the elevator and walked along the corridor.
My fingers were shaking as I fitted the key in the lock. Would she be back? And where did we go from here if she was? She had lied about Goodwin to get me to go into the thing with them. I opened the door and the apartment was empty. The silence rang in my ears.
I had to get hold of myself. There was no use trying to figure anything out now. I wasn’t capable of rational thought, and there wasn’t any time I could look for her later. The thing I had to do now, before anything else, was get rid of that money. Give it to Gerard, get it into his hands before he called the police. There were seventy one thousand-dollar bills in the drawer, the money we’d taken from Lachlan, and by giving Gerard sixty-five of them to return to Goodwin we could stay out of jail. That was the only thing that mattered now.
I hurried across the room to the desk and yanked the drawer open, and then just stood there staring into it. The money was gone. I straightened up and rubbed a hand across my face, hard, and shook my head. The money’s here, I thought. I’m just going crazy. I’m looking right at it and don’t see it. I’ve just had too much of this. I’ll be all right in a few minutes.
She’d put it there. Burglars don’t read Poe, she’d said, putting it in there, slipping it into an old bank-statement envelope and throwing it carelessly in among a bunch of letters in this drawer. Not in some other drawer; in this one. I jerked it all the way out and letters and envelopes flew across the rug as I emptied it. I gathered them up one at a time and put them back. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t in any of the others.
This was the end of the line. She was gone, the money was gone, and I was holding the bag after the rest of the snipe hunters had gone home.
Eighteen
I was a bug in a tin cup. I was the only one left, and Gerard was waiting for me in the lobby. When he got tired of waiting, he would call the police.
I tried to light a cigarette. The lighter wouldn’t work, and I crumpled the cigarette and threw it on the floor. It wasn’t Gerard and the police I was trying to get away from in my thoughts; it was the awful knowledge that she had done this to me. She’d lied about Goodwin, and now she’d calmly cut my throat.
But wait. That was exactly the same thing I’d thought that awful afternoon in Wyecross, and she hadn’t deserted me. Maybe it wasn’t true. There must be some way out of it, some other explanation. If she had the money, why had she gone with Lachlan? Had she gone with him? But she must have; they’d both left here within five minutes. Maybe Lachlan had taken the money. Maybe he’d been wise to the thing all along, and had gone after the police. Maybe Bolton had tipped him off. I stopped suddenly.
What had Gerard said? I forced myself to stand still and think back over every bit of it, word by word, as well as I could remember it. Charlie had been arrested in Florida three weeks ago. That was it.
I grabbed the telephone and called the desk. “There’s a Mr. Gerard waiting in the lobby. Would you page him and send him up to Nine-A?”
I could be wrong, but what did I have to lose? I was headed for San Quentin either way. When the buzzer sounded I opened the door and let him in.
He looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Really, Reichert, I must ask you to hurry.”
I hit him. He just grunted like a rabbit and started to sway, and I hit him twice more on the way down. It was dirty, and he didn’t have a chance because I outweighed him by thirty pounds, but I wasn’t in any position to be squeamish about it. He didn’t try to get up. He just crawfished backward across the rug until he came to rest with his head against a chair. Blood ran out of the corner of his mouth.
His chest heaved as he fought to get his breath. When he could speak, he said, “That was a stupid thing to do.”
“I do a lot of stupid things. I’ve been doing them for several weeks.”
“I have no choice now. I’ll have to call the police.”
“I don’t think you will,” I said. “Where’s Bolton? And Wolford Charles?”
He stared blankly. “Bolton?”
“You want some more?”
“Really, Reichert—”
I started toward him. “Come on. We haven’t started yet.”
He began to look really scared.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Charlie, or Bolton, or both of them, sent you up here. They’re still after that Goodwin money. You said Charlie was arrested three weeks ago and spilled himself. Didn’t you?”
He put a hand to his jaw and stared at me, puzzled. “Yes.”
“Well, he couldn’t have told anybody three weeks ago that I was here and that the name I was going under was Rogers, because he didn’t know it. He got it from Bolton. So where are they?”
He started to shake his head. I reached down for his shirt to haul him up, and he began to whimper. He didn’t look so efficient now. I cocked a right to let him have it.
“All right,” he said. “Don’t hit me again. I’ll tell you.”
I heaved him into a chair and stood there watching him. My hand hurt and I was out of breath myself. “Let’s have it.”
“It was all their idea, but they needed somebody you didn’t know to do it. Bolton called her and asked her to meet him downtown. That was to get her out of the way so we could work on you. They didn’t think she’d fall for it, but maybe you would.”
“Wait,” I said. “When did he call?”
“About two-thirty. But she didn’t come. I waited here anyway, thinking I might see her go out. And then I did. She went out with some man wearing a white Texas hat and they got in a car and drove off. I was just getting ready to call you when you came down.”
I thought swiftly. The reason she hadn’t gone down there to meet Bolton at two-thirty was that Lachlan was in the apartment, waiting to get the results of the race. She couldn’t leave, even if she’d wanted to. But then she had, later, with Lachlan. But why? Had she gone to see Bolton then? And why had she taken the money?
“Where are Bolton and Charlie now?” I demanded.
“At the Sir Francis Drake. That’s where she was supposed to meet them.”
“Sit where you are,” I said. I’d just started to reach for the telephone when the buzzer sounded. I leaped for the door with my heart pounding in my throat. But it wasn’t Cathy. It was Bolton.
I watched his face as he looked toward Gerard sprawled back in the chair with blood on his face. There was only flicker of regret, and then it was gone. I wondered why he had come; there was no way he could have known the thing had already failed, and he was taking a chance of wrecking it.
“If you’re looking for your boy,” I said, “you can have him.”
But he had already forgotten Gerard. He was out of breath, as if he had been hurrying, and I didn’t l
ike the way his face looked. “Belen, have you heard anything from Cathy?”
It began to get to me now. I didn’t like the way he asked it. I grabbed his arm. “What is it? Damn it, Bolton—”
He shook my hand off with savage impatience. We were about to snarl and pile into each other like two men who had suddenly gone crazy, and it wasn’t from anger. It was fear.
“Where is she?” I was crowding him, forcing him back.
He put out a hand and shoved me and I got set to swing at him. Then he barked, “Get hold of yourself, Belen,” and we both realized we were acting like fools.
“All right,” I said furiously. “All right. But, good God, can’t you say something? What is it?”
“I don’t know. But I think it may be Donnelly.”
“Why?”
“She was talking to me on the phone, and then—But I’d better explain. I called her about two-thirty and said I had to see her about something very important. She seemed to have something on her mind, and practically hung up on me. I was still waiting in the hotel room, hoping she might show up, when I saw her come down Powell with Lachlan in that foreign roadster of his. That was just after three. And a few minutes later she did call. From a pay phone somewhere. She was warning me. She had an idea I was up to something—that is, that Charlie and I were—and she’d tried to get you and you didn’t answer.”
That would have been when I was down in the lobby with Gerard, I thought. Wouldn’t he ever get to the point?
“She said she was on her way back to the apartment. And then she suddenly quit talking. There was a gasp, as if somebody’d thrown water on her, and that was all. It was a pay phone, because the operator came on in a minute, while I was still yelling, and wanted another dime. Donnelly’s here—”
“I know he’s here,” I said. “I know the hotel he’s in.” Bolton caught up with me. “I’m going with you,” he said. Then we both remembered Gerard. He got out of the chair, looking dazedly at us, not even knowing what we were talking about.
“You’d better go on back to the Drake,” Bolton said to him. He came with us. We nagged a cab and went off and left him standing there on the sidewalk.
I didn’t know the name of the hotel. I gave the driver the general location, talking too fast and having to repeat it. We shot down off the hill, weaving through traffic, while I prayed there would be something there. It was our only lead, the only thing we had to go on. I turned and looked at Bolton. His eyes were tired, and I could see the lines of strain around his mouth. Even in the mad confusion and the fear that had hold of me, some part of my mind noticed it and wondered. Why was he taking it so hard? An hour ago he was coolly trying to swindle her.
I spotted the hotel and yelled for the driver to stop. We got out and paid him and ran across the street. There was no one in the lobby except the clerk behind the desk. He was reading a Racing Form and looked up boredly as we hurried through and up the stairs. I didn’t know the number of the room, but I remembered which one it was. Bolton was right behind me as I ran down the corridor.
It hit me then, but it was too late to do anything about it. There would be two, or maybe three of them, and they all had guns. We had nothing. But it couldn’t be helped.
I pounded on the door. There was a sound of movement inside, and somebody was fumbling at the bolt. I got set to crash against the door when it opened, and then caught myself just in time.
It was a man I’d never seen before. He was wearing a pair of glasses and nothing else, and he was holding a highball glass in his hand and there was lipstick on his face. “‘Shgoin’ on?” he demanded. “You lookin’ for shmack in the kisser?”
I stared blankly at him. “Sorry, Mac,” I said dazedly. “I—I was looking for my wife.”
“Whash she look like?” he asked. Then he drew himself up indignantly. “You gidda hell out of here.”
We turned away. I felt sick. It was our only chance and now we didn’t have that. Could it have been the wrong room? No. That was one hotel room I could remember. We ran down the stairs to the lobby.
The clerk glanced at me with surly disinterest. “What you want?”
“A man named Donnelly. Did he check out?”
“Nobody here by that name.” He dismissed us and went back to his paper.
I reached across the desk and got his collar and heaved. When he was straight up and clear of the chair I let go and shoved. He bounced against the mailboxes. “Maybe we could have your attention for a minute,” I said.
He stood up. “I tell you—”
“We’re looking for a man who was here. I don’t know what name he was registered under. He’s a little guy who looks like he was made out of pipe cleaners and he’s got the face of a forty-year-old baby. There was a big guy with him. Where are they?”
“They checked out.”
“When?”
“Two days ago.”
“Did he have a car?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
We went outside. What chance did we have, in a city of eight hundred thousand, and not even a place to start? Bolton flagged a cab and we went back to the apartment.
“We’ve got to call the police,” I said.
“We can’t. She wouldn’t have any chance then.”
I waved him off wildly and reached for the telephone. He jerked it out of my hand. I was raging. I tried to swing at him. He caught my arm.
“Look, Belen. We can’t call the police. Our only chance is to wait here. Donnelly may call you. Or make her call.”
“Why the hell would he call us?”
“I’ve got to tell you something.” He had gone over by the window, and when he turned back I could see the strain in his face. “Maybe I can make you see what I mean. And stand back till I get through. Cathy’s in a bad spot, and it isn’t going to help any to have us swinging at each other. Donnelly’s not what I said he was. I invented him.”
I stared at him. We were all going crazy.
“Donnelly’s not a gangster. He just thinks he’s one. He’s a punk, a cheap horse player with a warped mind. You described him when you said he had the face of a forty-year-old baby. Movie gangsters are his heroes. He goes to crime pictures and patterns his speech and clothing and mannerisms after movie killers.”
That was it, the thing that had puzzled me for so long.
Even in all this madness I could remember the odd impression I’d had every time I’d seen him, that feeling that I was watching a killer in a B movie. But what was Bolton trying to say?
“He was a punk who always wanted to be a big-shot gangster and didn’t have the nerve,” he went on harshly, “and now he thinks he is one. I did it. I built him up. God knows I didn’t intend it to end this way. How did I know how near the edge he was?”
“What are you driving at?”
“Shut up and listen! I’m trying to tell you. It was a game I was working on Cathy. I invented that story about the four-hundred-dollar bet and got hold of Donnelly to play the part. I pretended to be scared to death of him to scare her, to make her pay off the eight thousand she was supposed to owe him.”
I went for him. I was wild, not even half seeing him, just asking for it. He rolled with the punch and countered. His fist crashed under my jaw and I slid down beside the chair.
He was raging. “Will you stop acting like a fool, for God’s sake?”
I shook my head and tried to get up. The blow had knocked a little sense back into me. We had more on our minds than fighting each other.
“Maybe he’s not so dangerous,” I said.
“He is dangerous. Can’t you see that? He’s kidnapped a girl, and when his nerve goes back on him, how do we know what he’ll do in a tight spot? That’s the reason we can’t call the police. If a patrol car pulled up alongside him he might fold up like a wet paper towel, and on the other hand he might start blasting away at everything. There’s nothing crazier than a cowardly punk with a gun.
“I could see it beginning to get
him when he looked me up in Los Angeles—after I was up here the first time. You’d already bounced him around and locked him in that freight car, remember? I told him the deal was off. He couldn’t scare Cathy; it was useless. He began to pull that tough stuff on me and I could see he had begun to believe it himself, so I slapped him down. But it didn’t do any good. He was already the Napoleon of the underworld, and he’d picked up a couple of hoodlums who think he’s just what he pretends to be. What’ll they do when they find out they’ve been sucked into committing a serious crime by a crazy punk who’d cry at a parking ticket?”
“All right, all right,” I said desperately. “But what makes you think he’ll call? What the hell would he want to call me for?”
“Because that’s just what a movie gangster would do. He wants money, and that’s the way they do it in the movies.”
All they had to do was take it. Just take the money and kill her, on a back road somewhere in the Marin County hills. I didn’t want to say it, but I had to.
“He won’t have to call to get it,” I said. “She’s got it with her.”
He stared at me. “How much?”
“Seventy thousand dollars.”
“Good God,” he said. “Oh, good God.” He went striding across the room. “Look, Belen, maybe they’ll just take the money and throw her out.”
“Yes,” I said. “Except that he’s crazy. And if we were crazy too, maybe we could guess.”
I started for the telephone again, to call the police anyway, when something suddenly occurred to me. I stopped. “Didn’t she say on the phone that she’d tried to get me? And she was warning you to lay off?”
“Yes. That’s right,” he said. Then he began to see it too. “Say—”
“Then maybe she hasn’t got the money with her. It may be still here in the apartment.” I had it now. It all fitted. That call from Bolton had put her on her guard. She had a hunch they were trying to get her out of the way so they could try some kind of sucker game on me to get their hands on that money. But there was no way she could warn me during that act in the apartment for Lachlan’s benefit. And afterward she’d had to leave with Lachlan. That was the thing I hadn’t been able to understand before, but I could see it now. We’d made it too convincing. He’d thought I was going to come back and kill her, and had insisted on taking her with him when he left. She had to go, to make it look right. But after she’d left him, downtown somewhere, she’d called Bolton and warned him to lay off, and had tried to call me. She wouldn’t have worried about it if she’d had the money with her. So it must be here.