A Choice of Murders, page 6
It developed that Lola had grown impatient as no peanuts were forthcoming and made shrill and penetrating complaint. So the men had peered over the partition anxiously and the lady had seized Lola’s leash and run out of the bar, forgetting her red handbag.
“I’d seen the vet’s sign; it wasn’t far away. So I thought I’d leave Lola there and then go to a hotel and phone the police. I’m afraid to go home because my name—charge tags, club cards, everything —is in my handbag. They knew I had heard them. They couldn’t let me get away. And one of them followed me, you saw him, so I had to hurry, and you have such a kind face I knew you’d see to Lola and—”
“The man who followed you was shot.”
“Oh, yes, I know. I was hurrying for the subway. I heard the shot behind me. I turned and saw him on the sidewalk and all the people running and…”
“Who shot him?”
“Why, the other robber, of course,” she said simply. “In the booth they were quarreling about the—the loot. One of them insisted on—I think it was two thirds, but the other one kept saying, no, it was just fifty-fifty. Really it was dreadful.
“Just then they heard Lola and saw me. I think both of them followed me out of the bar, and one waited in the street while the other followed me into the vet’s. After the dogs scared him out, the other robber shot him, grabbed my handbag and then saw me. He had to get away fast, but he had to get rid of me, too! So he followed me. In the subways. Took every train I took. Brown coat and hat. Young. Nice looking, really—but dreadful! Of course there were always people around. He couldn’t do anything. But he’s outside now.”
I may have uttered a startled word. She nodded firmly. “Another taxi was behind the one I took. So then I ran around to the back door of your house.”
I told myself to count ten. When I got to three, I said, “How do you know that the men were in the bar at—you said they came into it at six-thirty. Was there a clock? How could they expect to establish an alibi?”
“Oh, that was easy. There’s a clock near the door, set rather low. One of them must have turned it back while the other talked to the bartender. And then you see they must have intended to set it up again, the same way when they left. I saw the clock as I ran out of the bar and it was half an hour slow.”
“Did you—see him turn the clock back?”
“Oh, no. It wasn’t necessary to see it. I knew. I have a perfect sense of time. It’s like perfect pitch. I always know exactly what time it is. Like—like dogs, you know, when it’s dinner time. I knew that it was six-thirty when they came into the bar.”
This, to speak bluntly, finished me; being a banker, approached in the course of duty for loans, I have listened to some preposterous stories, but none as preposterous as this. I said sternly, “What about all that money in your handbag? There was at least five thousand dollars—”
“Twenty,” she said. “It’s mine, and I want it!”
The story was preposterous—a perfect sense of time indeed! And why was she carrying about twenty thousand dollars? There was no accounting for her motive in telling me such nonsense unless, in a confused way, it was intended to enlist my sympathy. There was clearly only one thing for me to do and that was call the police. I started for the kitchen telephone and someone knocked at the back door.
“No, no!” she cried, but I opened the door.
A man came in swiftly; he wore a brown hat and coat; he was young, handsome, slick and polite.
“Oh, there you are, Aunt Maisie,” he said. “I’ve come to take you home. I’m sorry if she’s troubled you, sir. She’s quite all right, really, doesn’t need to be in a sanitarium. But she does let her fancy run away with her—”
“You’ve been listening at the door,” the lady—and almost certainly the gun moll—cried with unexpected spirit. “You’re the other robber! You shot the man with my handbag!”
And he had told a good story, too, I reflected skeptically; a story that was almost certain to get his accomplice out of my house. There must be wheels within wheels, a complex situation between the two of them to which I had no key, except my previous conclusion that thieves do fall out.
“Come now, Aunt Maisie,” the young man said and advanced upon us.
The lady clutched my arm practically to the bone and cried, “He’s got a gun!” I looked down, naturally, to see if she had broken my arm, saw her white bare wrist—and suddenly saw the truth.
And there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Undoubtedly he did have a gun. The telephone was at least five feet away. Wilkins was asleep on the third floor. And at that point the lady gave a piercing shriek. “Lola,” she shrieked. “Lola!”
I have read the words, “pandemonium broke loose”; I never comprehended their meaning until the house rocked with it. Howls, yells, thuds and the rending crash of doors broke out from above; somewhere there were many madly running feet. I thrust the lady under the kitchen table and, since I am not a brave man, ducked under it myself. Happy hurtled through the kitchen door, swinging it back against the murderer, who went skittering across the floor. Lola flashed into view and into the corner from whence savage growls, thumps and curses arose; and suddenly two revolver shots crashed through the melee.
Peering out from under the table I perceived a ghostly figure in white in the doorway, which proved to Wilkins in a night shirt, who shouted in a quivering voice, “I borrowed your gun, Mr. Wickwire. Shall I shoot to kill or merely attempt to maim him?”
A panting, hoarse voice from the corner replied. “Don’t shoot—don’t shoot! Get these damned dogs off me!”
Well, since we had the young man at a disadvantage, so to speak, Wilkins and I trussed him up with roller towels before we tied up the dogs, too, and called the police. He did have a gun, which he had had no opportunity to use, being otherwise occupied. He also had the lady’s handbag under his coat. He turned sullen and stubborn about confessing, but he still had the payroll, a sizeable wedge, in his pocket; and the police felt sure that his gun was that which had killed Sol Brunk.
It developed, too, in the course of conversation, that Sol Brunk’s girlfriend was serving a term in jail.
They departed, police, murderer and all, some time later. Lola rolled a complacent eye at Happy, who was still, however, a little upset and snuffling at the back door in a menacing manner. Wilkins, the hero of the incident, draped a blanket modestly around him, made coffee for us and went back to bed. The lady said softly, “It was so sweet of you to believe me, Mr. Wickwire. About my sense of time, I mean. Some people don’t.”
I glanced at her white wrists, neither of which wore a watch. “Oh, yes,” I said. “When we were at the vet’s you said it was twelve minutes after seven. I had looked at my watch. I knew that you were right. But there was no clock in the vet’s office, and you didn’t wear a watch.” I didn’t add that I had not believed her until I remembered that small fact, and that its oddity had nudged at me earlier in the evening without making itself clear. I said instead, “It’s a very unusual gift.”
“Ah, well, it’s only one of those things,” she said and sighed. “Somehow it rather annoyed my late husband—”
“Your late—” I swallowed hard. During the chat with the police I had of course learned her name, which was Maisie Blane. But that was all.
“I’m a widow,” she said. “That’s why it was so hard to know what to do. A man’s advice especially about investments—why, what’s the matter, Mr. Wickwire?”
“Nothing,” I said. “A slight touch of vertigo.”
“Oh—that money, Mr. Wickwire, that twenty thousand. You see, I’m going to buy an oil well—that is, there’s no oil discovered there yet, but I feel sure there will be. And my banker opposed it so strongly that I just drew out the cash. But I’d like your opinion—Mr. Wickwire, really you look quite ill.”
“Not at all. I’m sure you’re right about the well,” I lied, and controlled a shudder. But I was conscious of a kind of emptiness within me as a pleasant little dream of blossoms whisked itself away.
I took her—and Lola—home. And she is an utterly delightful woman. She is also now a very rich woman, as not one but two oil wells came in on the land she bought.
But the fragrant little dream of unidentifiable blossoms has never returned. Besides, there is Lola. I really cannot permit Happy to make so shocking a mésalliance.
* * *
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT: I rather think that my point of departure for this story was observing my dogs who seem to have little, accurate, inner clocks, and thinking that humans have them too, when we care to listen to their ticking. Who has not said to himself on going to sleep, “I’ll wake and get to the typewriter at eight in the morning?” One does wake at eight; I’m not sure that one does get to the typewriter so promptly, at least I don’t.
Guilt-Edged Blonde
Ross Macdonald
A man was waiting for me at the gate at the edge of the runway. He didn’t look like the man I expected to meet. He wore a stained tan windbreaker, baggy slacks, a hat as squashed and dubious as his face. He must have been forty years old, to judge by the gray in his hair and the lines around his eyes. His eyes were dark and evasive, moving here and there as if to avoid getting hurt. He had been hurt often and badly, I guessed.
“You Archer?”
I said I was. I offered him my hand. He didn’t know what to do with it. He regarded it suspiciously, as if I was planning to try a Judo hold on him. He kept his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker.
“I’m Harry Nemo.” His voice was a grudging whine. It cost him an effort to give his name away. “My brother told me to come and pick you up. You ready to go?”
“As soon as I get my luggage.”
I collected my overnight bag at the counter in the empty waiting room. The bag was very heavy for its size. It contained, besides a toothbrush and spare linen, two guns and the ammunition for them. A .38 special for sudden work, and a .32 automatic as a spare.
Harry Nemo took me outside to his car. It was a new seven-passenger custom job, as long and black as death. The windshield and side windows were very thick, and they had the yellowish tinge of bulletproof glass.
“Are you expecting to be shot at?”
“Not me.” His smile was dismal. “This is Nick’s car.”
“Why didn’t Nick come himself?”
He looked around the deserted field. The plane I had arrived on was a flashing speck in the sky above the red sun. The only human being in sight was the operator in the control tower.
But Nemo leaned toward me in the seat, and spoke in a whisper: “Nick’s a scared pigeon. He’s scared to leave the house. Ever since this morning.”
“What happened this morning?”
“Didn’t he tell you? You talked to him on the phone.”
“He didn’t say very much. He told me he wanted to hire a bodyguard for six days, until his boat sails. He didn’t tell me why.”
“They’re gunning for him, that’s why. He went to the beach this morning. He has a private beach along the back of his ranch, and he went down there by himself for his morning dip. Somebody took a shot at him from the top of the bluff. Five or six shots. He was in the water, see, with no gun handy. He told me the slugs were splashing around him like hailstones. He ducked and swam underwater out to sea. Lucky for him he’s a good swimmer, or he wouldn’t have got away. It’s no wonder he’s scared. It means they caught up with him, see.”
“Who are ‘they,’ or is that a family secret?”
Nemo turned from the wheel to peer into my face. His breath was sour, his look incredulous. “Christ, don’t you know who Nick is? Didn’t he tell you?”
“He’s a lemon-grower, isn’t he?”
“He is now.”
“What did he used to be?”
The bitter beaten face closed on itself. “I oughtn’t to be flapping at the mouth. He can tell you himself if he wants to.”
Two hundred horses yanked us away from the curb. I rode with my heavy leather bag on my knees. Nemo drove as if driving was the one thing in life he enjoyed, rapt in silent communion with the engine. It whisked us along the highway, then down a gradual incline between geometrically planted lemon groves. The sunset sea glimmered red at the foot of the slope.
Before we reached it, we turned off the blacktop into a private lane which ran like a straight hair-parting between the dark green trees. Straight for half a mile or more to a low house in a clearing.
The house was flat-roofed, made of concrete and fieldstone, with an attached garage. All of its windows were blinded with heavy draperies. It was surrounded with well-kept shrubbery and lawn, the lawn with a ten-foot wire fence surmounted by barbed wire.
Nemo stopped in front of the closed and padlocked gate, and honked the horn. There was no response. He honked the horn again.
About halfway between the house and the gate, a crawling thing came out of the shrubbery. It was a man, moving very slowly on hands and knees. His head hung down almost to the ground. One side of his head was bright red, as if he had fallen in paint. He left a jagged red trail in the gravel of the driveway.
Harry Nemo said, “Nick!” He scrambled out of the car. “What happened, Nick?”
The crawling man lifted his heavy head and looked at us. Cumbrously, he rose to his feet. He came forward with his legs spraddled and loose, like a huge infant learning to walk. He breathed loudly and horribly, looking at us with a dreadful hopefulness. Then he died on his feet, still walking. I saw the change in his face before it struck the gravel.
Harry Nemo went over the fence like a weary monkey, snagging his slacks on the barbed wire. He knelt beside his brother and turned him over and palmed his chest. He stood up shaking his head.
I had my bag unzipped and my hand on the revolver. I went to the gate, “Open up, Harry.”
Harry was saying, “They got him,” over and over. He crossed himself several times. “The dirty bastards.”
“Open up,” I said.
He found a key ring in the dead man’s pocket and opened the padlocked gate. Our dragging footsteps crunched the gravel. I looked down at the specks of gravel in Nicky Nemo’s eyes, the bullet hole in his temple.
“Who got him, Harry?”
“I dunno. Fats Jordan, or Artie Castola, or Faronese. It must have been one of them.”
“The Purple Gang.”
“You called it. Nicky was their treasurer back in the thirties. He was the one that didn’t get into the papers. He handled the payoff, see. When the heat went on and the gang got busted up, he had some money in a safe deposit box. He was the only one that got away.”
“How much money?”
“Nicky never told me. All I know, he come out here before the war and bought a thousand acres of lemon land. It took them fifteen years to catch up with him. He always knew they were gonna, though. He knew it.”
Artie Castola got off the Rock last spring.”
“You’re telling me. That’s when Nicky bought himself the bulletproof car and put up the fence.”
“Are they gunning for you?”
He looked around at the darkening groves and the sky. The sky was streaked with running red, as if the sun had died a violent death.
“I dunno,” he answered nervously. “They got no reason to. I’m as clean as soap. I never been in the rackets. Not since I was young, anyway. The wife made me go straight, see?”
I said: “We better get into the house and call the police.”
The front door was standing a few inches ajar. I could see at the edge that it was sheathed with quarter-inch steel plate.
Harry put my thoughts into words. “Why in hell would he go outside? He was safe as houses as long as he stayed inside.”
“Did he live alone?”
“More or less alone.”
“What does that mean?”
He pretended not to hear me, but I got some kind of an answer. Looking through the doorless arch into the living room, I saw a leopard-skin coat folded across the back of the chesterfield. There were red-tipped cigarette butts mingled with cigar butts in the ashtrays.
“Nicky was married?”
“Not exactly.”
“You know the woman?”
“Naw.” But he was lying.
Somewhere behind the thick walls of the house, there was a creak of springs, a crashing bump, the broken roar of a cold engine, grinding of tires in gravel. I got to the door in time to see a cerise convertible hurtling down the driveway. The top was down, and a yellow-haired girl was small and intent at the wheel. She swerved around Nick’s body and got through the gate somehow with her tires screaming.
I aimed at the right rear tire, and missed. Harry came up behind me. He pushed my gun arm down before I could fire again. The convertible disappeared in the direction of the highway.
“Let her go,” he said.
“Who is she?”
He thought about it, his slow brain clicking almost audibly. “I dunno. Some pig Nicky picked up some place. Her name is Flossie or Florrie or something. She didn’t shoot him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You know her pretty well, do you?”
“The hell I do. I don’t mess with Nicky’s dames.” He tried to work up a rage to go with the strong words, but he didn’t have the makings. The best he could produce was petulance: “Listen, mister, why should you hang around? The guy that hired you is dead.”
“I haven’t been paid, for one thing.”
“I’ll fix that.”
He trotted across the lawn to the body and came back with an alligator billfold. It was thick with money.
“How much?”
“A hundred will do it.”
He handed me a hundred-dollar bill. “Now how about you amscray, bud, before the law gets here?”
“I need transportation.”
“Take Nicky’s car. He won’t be using it. You can park it at the airport and leave the key with the agent.”
