Cinderella Sims, page 8
A cinch. I could say a fond goodbye to Cinderella Sims, another fond goodbye to fifty grand, and that would be that. What the hell, it was better than saying a fond goodbye to life, wasn’t it?
Well, wasn’t it?
I wasn’t so sure about that. I thought about fifty thousand dollars, which was one hell of a lot of dough. I thought about Cinderella Sims, which was one hell of a lot of woman. I thought about the town in Arizona and the newspaper and the family and all sorts of things.
I thought about how empty life had been for a while there, and how empty it would be without the money and the girl.
I thought about that a long time.
And then I thought about something else, something fairly obvious to anybody with half a brain in his head. The monkey in the sharkskin suit didn’t know who I was. He didn’t even know I existed. And this gave me a hell of a fine edge on him.
If I tried to sneak up on him I was dead. If I tried to rush him I was dead. But suppose I came on openly? I decided it just might work.
I stuck an unlit cigarette in the corner of my mouth and gave the door a heave. It flew open and I went through it and the guy turned around with a look of panic on his face.
“Hey,” I called. “Hey Mac!”
He looked at me.
I walked over to him, talking as I went. “Can’t find a light in the whole damned building,” I complained. “You got a match on you?”
He pulled out a lighter, still not talking. He flicked it and I leaned toward him to accept the light. Then I grabbed him.
My thumb and forefinger took him by the throat and he couldn’t make a sound. Then I gave him the right to the stomach, throwing it low for luck.
He doubled over.
I let go of his throat and cupped his head with both hands. He was on his way down so I gave him a hand. Two hands.
I brought up a knee and broke his face over it.
I had to let him down slow so he wouldn’t make a noise. Then I rolled him over and looked at him. He was a mess. There were a batch of teeth missing from his mouth and his nose was so broken you couldn’t tell where it had come from. I had to check his pulse to make sure he was alive, not that I really cared about him.
I used his shirt to cover the pane of glass, then knocked it in with the butt of his revolver. The glass all fell inside the apartment and the noise didn’t carry.
I followed on the glass, landed on my feet and looked for the bed. It was a big one and I momentarily regretted that I wouldn’t have the pleasure of bouncing around on it with Cindy. But there wasn’t time to worry about that sort of thing. It was only a question of time before one of the monkey’s pals came around to check on him and I had to work pretty damned fast.
I found the satchel and discovered that fifty grand in twenties is heavy. But I managed to get out with it, climbing up on a chair and then out through the window. From there on it was a cinch.
I kicked the monkey in the face on the way out for luck, then stuck his gun back in his holster. He might need it when he tried to explain things to the rest of them. Then I went right back the way I’d come, straight through the lobby and past the doorman and out onto 72nd Street. There was a cab at the curb and I hopped into the back seat and told him to go to the Sheraton-McAlpin. He went, and I sat there trying to relax.
I had the money. If I wanted to I could ditch Cindy and forget her forever. She’d never find me, not in a million years.
But I couldn’t.
I needed her as much as I needed the money. I couldn’t settle for half the dream. It had to be all or nothing, the money and Cindy or the hell with the whole shooting match. So I sat back and pretended to relax and the cab finally managed to get to the McAlpin.
I found out which room we were staying in and I went to her.
6
She wasn’t just surprised to see me. She was totally astounded. Her eyes went round as saucers, then darted from me to the satchel and back and forth. They had love in them, but I wasn’t sure whether the love was for me or for the money.
I didn’t care.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “You did it. You actually did it!”
I tossed her the satchel. She unzipped the zipper and upended the bag over the bed. Money spilled out of it, neat stacks of twenty dollar notes with cute little rubber bands around them.
“Look at it,” she said reverently. “Fifty thousand dollars. Did you ever see that much money before?”
Once, when I was a little kid about to graduate from grammar school, they took the lot of us to Washington to look around and admire the miracle of democratic government. The package deal included a visit to the bureau of engraving and printing, and in the course of a half hour I saw well over a million dollars. But I didn’t have the heart to tell her about it.
Besides, this was different. The dough at the bureau was not my money. This was.
“Tell me how you did it,” she said. “Oh, I knew I was doing the right thing when I told you about it. You saved everything, Ted. Tell me how you did it. Tell me everything.”
I told her everything, omitting only the occasional temptations to forget the whole thing that had crossed my mind in weak moments. Her eyes shone all the way through and there was a special gleam in them when I told how I’d made a mess out of the monkey’s face. The recounting of the fight, one-sided as it was, seemed to give her a special charge.
When I had brought the yarn up to date I relaxed and took her in my arms. But she didn’t relax. I could sense the wheels going around inside that pretty head. And I wondered if her mind ever slept.
“Bunkie Craig,” she said.
I looked at her, questioningly.
“The one you pushed around. That’s who it must have been. The others wouldn’t carry a gun, but he’d be naked without one. And the description fits. It must have been him.”
Naturally the name meant nothing, but it was comforting to know that the gorilla wasn’t some innocent bystander. I nodded.
“You should have killed him.”
My eyebrows went up. “What’s the matter? Did you hate him that much?”
“I hated him, but that’s neither here nor there. You should have killed him.”
“Why?”
“He saw you,” she explained patiently. “Before they didn’t know who you were, didn’t realize there was anybody helping me. Now they know. If you had killed him he wouldn’t be able to finger you.”
“Dead men tell no tales?”
“Something like that.”
I shrugged it off. “He won’t tell any tales for a while, Cindy. He’ll be in the hospital first.”
“But not forever. Maybe it won’t make a difference, but I wish you’d finished him permanently. I hate to take chances.”
I tried to shrug it off again but I didn’t quite make it. I was getting a new picture of her now, a picture with a lot less of the softness and gentleness; a picture of a woman who could be as cold and calculating as an adding machine. I suppose it should have scared me. Somehow it didn’t.
“We’ll get a good night’s sleep now,” I said optimistically. It was after four and there didn’t seem to be too much chance of our getting a night’s sleep. A morning’s sleep, perhaps. But there wasn’t much left of the night.
“Then we catch a plane in the morning to Phoenix. I’ll buy a car there and we’ll head for a small town, pick up a copy of Editor & Publisher and look at the newspaper listings. From there on it’s a cinch.”
“My clothes are in my room.”
“You’ll buy new ones in Phoenix.”
“I can’t go on the plane like this.”
“Neither can I,” I said. “I need a jacket and a tie at the very least. And you need something a little more formal than dungarees and a shirt of mine. But for fifty grand I can stand a few hours of mild embarrassment. So can you.”
She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course I can. I wasn’t thinking.”
“We’ll take a hack to Idlewild,” I went on. “We’ll check first on the phone, catch the time so that we don’t have to sit around the waiting room. We might be spotted. It’s not worth the chance.”
“Right.”
“Once we’re in Phoenix we’ll be clear. As long as we’re in New York we’ve got to be on guard. I’ll be glad to get out of here.”
She nodded, agreeing.
There wasn’t anything more to say. I reached for her and hauled her down on the bed, pulling her close to me. Her body was warm and her eyes very beautiful. She looked very tired but I didn’t let that stop me.
I was tired myself. The fun and games with Bunkie Craig had hardly been designed to relax a person. On top of that I’d had more in the way of horizontal harmony in the past twenty-four hours than most men have in a month.
Still, I needed her. I was tense and my nerves were strung tight and fine as piano wire. I had to relax and I needed the relaxation she could bring me.
I unbuttoned her shirt. I played with her breasts until her nipples saluted me.
I took off her pants.
I found other things to do with her.
“Ted—”
“I was a good boy, Cindy. I beat up the bad guy and got the money and brought it straight to you. Wasn’t I a good boy?”
“You were a very good boy.”
“And a good boy deserves a reward, doesn’t he?”
“Of course.”
“Do I get my reward, Cindy?”
I got my reward.
Her hips heaved me to heaven and her mouth drained my mouth and her breasts were softer than snow. She made everything worthwhile—the risks, the flight, the whole thing. I had earned my half of the fifty grand when I got the satchel from her apartment. Now she was earning her half flat on her back in a big double bed in room 53 of the Sheraton-McAlpin, earning it very well.
It began, it endured, it ended.
I slept.
She woke up before I did. I felt her lips on mine and I opened my eyes. I reached for her and she jumped away, a pixyish smile on her face.
She looked good in the morning.
“Rise and shine,” she said. “We’ve got a plane to catch.” I tried to put my eyes into focus. It didn’t work. I sat up in bed and stared at the wall.
“What time is it? I better get dressed and call the airport.”
“I called them already.”
“From here?”
She nodded and I swore under my breath. “You should have called from a payphone,” I said. “They can trace it this way. If the switchboard operator is in on it—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You know what the odds against that are?”
I knew. I still didn’t like it.
“When does the plane leave?”
“Three-thirty.”
I calculated rapidly. “Call Room Service,” I said. “Have them send up some ham and eggs and a pot of coffee. Then we’ll sit around here until a quarter past two. That way we’ll get to Idlewild just in time.”
“I already did,” she said. “I hope you like your eggs scrambled.”
The food came and we ate it, then sat around until it was time to go. I settled with the hotel, grabbed a cab for the airport. It was silly, but I was tense as a wire on the way. The weather was good and the ride was pleasant but I couldn’t relax.
“Did you reserve tickets for us?”
She nodded.
“What name?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Stone. Same name as we used at the hotel.”
I got mad at her. “That was pretty stupid. If they trace us to the hotel they’ll be able to trace us to Phoenix. That wasn’t too bright, Cindy.”
“I had to. The call went through the switchboard. I couldn’t use another name.”
“That’s why you should have called from a payphone, dammit. Jesus, of all the brilliant moves—”
She looked sick to her stomach and I forced myself to relax. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It probably won’t make any difference. They’ll never even trace us to the hotel.”
I tried to sound sure of myself. If I did I was a good actor.
Because I was scared.
I picked up the tickets at the TWA desk and paid for them with some of McGuire’s twenties, hoping the serial numbers hadn’t been recorded anywhere. It didn’t seem likely but it gave me something else to worry about. Not that I needed it. There was plenty to worry about as it was.
We waited by the flight gate for the plane to open up for us and I felt about as conspicuous as a whore in church. We weren’t exactly dressed for the flight. She was attired cleverly in dungarees and one of my shirts and I didn’t look a hell of a lot better. I had on a pair of khakis and a dirty white shirt without a tie. I needed a shave pretty badly—a few more days without one and we could head for Frisco, get a loft on North Beach and pose as beatniks.
And the satchel was much too heavy. I had the eerie feeling that anyone looking at it could tell at a glance that it was loaded with money that didn’t belong to us. I wanted to put it in my pocket or something. It really worried me.
They called our flight and we were the first passengers on it. We found seats up front and I let her have the one by the window. I set the satchel in my lap and tried to cover it up with my hands. It didn’t work.
The plane filled up. The stewardess welcomed us aboard and said some other silly things, we put out our cigarettes and fastened our safety belts, the flight took off. It was a smooth takeoff and smooth flying all the way. The ham and eggs stayed in my stomach.
The three of us landed at Phoenix—me, Cindy and the fifty grand. The three of us got out of the plane and into a cab. Cindy and I looked like wilted flowers. The money was fresh as a field of daisies.
I checked us in at the De Milo Arms, a slightly better-than-average hotel off Schwerner Square in the middle of downtown Phoenix. Now we were Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Harris. The Ronald Stones had disappeared for good.
The bellboy tried to take the satchel from me but I didn’t let him. He led us to our room and I tipped him and he disappeared. When he was gone I locked the door and put the chain on. I pulled down the window shade, then sat down on the edge of the bed and opened the satchel.
The money, miraculously, was still there.
“Look at it,” she said. “Just look at it.”
She scared me. She sounded like a knight gazing upon the Holy Grail. I wondered just how much she would do for fifty thousand dollars, just how much she had already done. There was something phony about her story of the con game operation, something that didn’t quite ring true. I’d been thinking about it on the plane ride but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I was fairly certain she’d lied somehow about her own part in the proceedings but I wasn’t sure how or why.
And I didn’t want to think about it.
What did it matter? We were free, clear, safe. We were in Phoenix and no one knew it. We had fifty thousand dollars and the world belonged to us.
She echoed my thoughts. “We’re safe, Ted. We’re out of New York and no one knows it. We’re safe.”
I was too exhausted emotionally to say a damn thing.
She stood up. “I’m taking some money and going shopping,” she said. “You stay here until I come back. Then you can go out and see about a car, pick up some clothes for yourself, things like that. Okay?”
It was okay with me.
I waited until she was out of the building. I watched through the window and saw her head down the street toward the section where the stores seemed to be.
It was only four-thirty. We’d gotten a break—the time in the plane had been largely offset by the time belts we had crossed on the way. There was still time for her to get some shopping done, maybe even time for me to see about a car after she got back.
Meanwhile I had things to do.
I picked up the phone, called Room Service. I told them to send up a fifth of Jack Daniels and some ice. I signed for the tab, slipped the bellboy a buck and smiled while he thanked me.
The Jack Daniels was silky smooth and I needed it desperately. I made myself a tall cool one and relaxed in an easy chair with it, sipping it slowly and tasting it all the way down.
I had a lot of thinking to do.
With the liquor clearing my head and with Cindy’s pleasantly disturbing body out of my way I could concentrate on all the things that were hard to concentrate upon otherwise. The con game was too elaborate to be a lie and her story was a little too rough to be entirely true. I could have ignored it all but something made me go back to it, run it through my mind for a quick check. I knew a little about the standard bunco routines from my police beat days, and I couldn’t quite see how an innocent doll like Cindy could have come home with fifty thousand dollars that belonged by all rules to the smoothies who’d conned it out of McGuire in the first place. Con men don’t work that way. True, there’s a maxim that every con man is by definition a sucker. The big boys in the business don’t hold onto much of the money they pick from the marks. But there are several ways of being a sucker, and the idea of Cindy Sims walking off with their take struck me as a little on the silly side.
I told myself to relax and forget it. Suppose she was lying. What earthly difference did it make? I had the money and the girl and that ought to be enough. The money made it fun to be awake and the girl made it fun to go to sleep. To hell with reality.
But something nagged at me. Maybe it was the combination of the liquor that cleared my head and the fact that she wasn’t there to muddle me up again. I don’t think I could have looked at her and thought about how she must be lying to me. But with her out of the room it was easy.
Did it make a difference? If we split up now it didn’t. If I took my twenty-five thou and she took hers it didn’t matter at all. I’m not the type to get conscience traumas. For twenty-five grand I can forget a hell of a lot of things, such as the moral aspects of almost anything.
But we weren’t going to split, and with the two of us together as man and wife, her role in the episode became very relevant. I knew next to nothing about her, just the superficial trivia that she had seen fit to tell me. The dream I’d been dreaming called for full knowledge of her, full knowledge and full understanding and full love. And my knowledge of her was far from full.
