Three by Cain: Serenade/Love's Lovely Counterfeit/The Butterfly

by James M. Cain

  “Terribly sorry, Mr. Kugler.”

  I hung up. I knew then that Sholto knew what he was talking about. I didn’t know any Mr. Kugler.

  Harry kept bringing up new editions as they came out, and the stuff that was coming in for me. They still hadn’t got her. They found the taxi driver that rode her from Twenty-third Street. He said he took her down to Battery Park, she paid him with a five-dollar bill, so he had to go in the subway to get change, and then went off, carrying the valise. He told how Tony had flagged him, and Tony took another trip down to headquarters. It said the cops were considering the possibility she had jumped in the river, and that it might be dragged. The stuff that was coming in was a flock of telegrams, letters, and cards from every kind of nut you ever heard of, and opera fan, and shyster lawyer. But a couple of those wires weren’t from nuts. One was from Panamier, saying the broadcast would temporarily be carried on by somebody else. And one was from Luther, saying no doubt I preferred not to have any more opera appearances until I got my affairs straightened out. The last afternoon edition had a story about Pudinsky. I felt my mouth go cold. He was the one person that might know about Winston and me. If he did he didn’t say anything. He said what a fine guy Winston was, what a loyal friend, and defended him for calling up the Immigration people. He said Winston only had my best interests at heart.

  I went out to eat around seven o’clock, dodged the reporters again, and had a steak in a place off Broadway. My picture was in every paper in town, but nobody seemed to notice me. One reason was, most of those pictures had been taken while I was in Hollywood, and I had put on a lot of weight since then. I wasn’t exactly fat when I arrived from Mexico. Then I had a little trouble with my eyes, and had got glasses. I ate what I could, walked around a little, then around nine o’clock came back to the apartment: All the time I was walking I kept looking back, to see if I was followed. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help it. In the cab, I kept twisting around, to see what was back of us.

  There was another mountain of stuff when I came in, but I didn’t bother to open it. I read back all the newspaper stuff again, and then there didn’t seem to be anything to do but to go to bed. I lay there, first trying to think and then trying to sleep. I couldn’t do either one. Then after a while I did drop off. I woke up in a cold sweat with moans coming out of my mouth. The whole day had been like some kind of a fever dream, chasing in and out of cabs, dodging reporters, trying to shake the police, if they were around, reading papers. Now for the first time I seemed to get it through my head the spot we were in. She was wanted for murder, and if they caught her they would burn her in the chair.

  What waked me up the next morning was the phone. Harry was on the board. “I know you said not to call, Mr. Sharp, but there’s a guy on the line, he kept calling all day yesterday, and now he’s calling again, he says he’s a friend of yours, and it’s important, and he’s got to talk to you, and I thought I better tell you.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He won’t say, but he said I should say the word Acapulco, something like that, to you, and you would know who it was.”

  “Put him through.”

  I hoped it might be Conners, and sure enough when I heard that “Is that you, lad?” I knew it was. He was pretty short. “I’ve been trying to reach you. I’ve called you, and wired you, and called again, and again—”

  “I cut the phone calls off, and I haven’t opened the last bunch of wires. You’d have been through in a second if they had told me. I want to see you, I’ve got to see you—”

  “You have indeed. I have news.”

  “Stop! Don’t say a word. I warn you that my phone is tapped, and everything you say is being heard.”

  “That occurred to me. That’s why I refused to give my name. How can I get to you?”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute.… Will you call me in five minutes? I’ll have to figure a way—”

  “In five minutes it is.”

  He hung up, and I tried to think of some way we could meet, and yet not tip off the cops over the phone where it would be. I couldn’t think. He had said he had news, and my head was just spinning around. Before I even had half an idea the phone rang again. “Well, lad, what’s the word?”

  “I haven’t any. They’re following me too, that’s the trouble. Wait a minute, wait a minute—”

  “I have something that might work.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you remember the time signature of the serenade you first sang to me?”

  “… Yes, of course.”

  “Write those figures down, the two of them, one beside the other. Now write them again, the same way. You should have a number of four figures.”

  I jumped up, and got a pen, and wrote the numbers on the memo pad. It was the Don Giovanni serenade, and time signature is 6/8. I wrote 6868…. “All right, I’ve got it.”

  “Now subtract from it this number.” He gave me a number to subtract. I did it. “That is the number of the pay telephone I’m at. The exchange number is Circle 6. Go out to another pay telephone and call me there.”

  “In twenty minutes. As soon as I get dressed.”

  I jumped into my clothes, ran up to a drugstore, and called. Whether they were around the booth, listening to me, I didn’t care. They couldn’t hear what was coming in at the other end. “Is that you, lad?”

  “Yes. What news?”

  “I have her. She’s going down the line with me. I’m at the foot of Seventeenth Street, and I slip my hawsers at midnight tonight. If you wish to see her before we leave, come aboard some time after eleven, but take care you’re not detected.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “I didn’t. She found me. She’s been aboard since yesterday, if you had answered your phone.”

  “I’ll be there. I’ll thank you then.”

  I went back to the apartment, cut out the fooling around, and began to think. I checked over every last thing I had to do that day, then made a little program in my mind of what I was to do first, and what I was to do after that. I knew I would be tailed, and I planned it all on that basis. The first thing I did was to go up to Grand Central, and look up trains for Rye. I found there was a local leaving around ten that night. I came out of there, went in a store and bought some needles and thread. Then I went down to the bank. I still had over six thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, but I needed more than that. I drew out ten thousand, half of it in thousand-dollar bills, twenty-five hundred more in hundreds, and the rest in fives and tens, with about fifty ones. I stuffed all that in my pockets, and went home with it. I remembered about the two shirts I had worn out of the hotel in Mexico, and pulled one just like it. I took two pairs of drawers, put one pair inside the other, sewed the bottoms of each leg together, then quilted that money in, all except the ones, and some fives and tens, that I put in my pockets. I put the drawers on. They felt a little heavy, but I could get my trousers over them without anything showing. Tony came up. They had got out of him how he had called the taxi, and he was almost crying because he had squealed. I told him it didn’t make any difference.

  When dinner time came, instead of going out I had something sent in. Then I packed. I shoved a stack of newspapers and heavy stuff into a traveling case, and locked it. When I dressed I put on a pair of gray flannel pants I had left over from Hollywood, and over my shirt a dark red sweater. I put on a coat, and over that a light topcoat. I picked out a gray hat, shoved it on the side of my head. I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked like what I wanted to look like, a guy dressed up to take a trip. After drawing the money, Í knew they would expect that. That was why I had planned it the way I had.

  At nine thirty, I called Tony, had him take my bag down and call a cab, shook hands with him, and called out to the driver, “Grand Central.” We turned into Second Avenue. Two cars started up, down near Twenty-first Street, and one left the curb just behind us as we turned west on Twenty-third. When we turned into Fourth, they turned too
. When we got to Grand Central they were still with us, and five guys got out, none of them looking at me. I gave my bag to a redcap, went to the ticket office, bought a ticket for Rye, then went out to the newsstand and bought a paper. When I mixed with the crowd at the head of the ramp I started to read it. Three of the five were there too, all of them reading papers.

  The redcap put me aboard, but I didn’t let him pick the car. I did that myself. It was a local, all day-coaches, but I wanted one without vestibule. It happened to be the smoker, so that looked all right. I took a seat near the door and went on reading my paper. The three took seats further up, but one of them reversed his seat and sat so he could see me. I didn’t even look up as we pulled out, didn’t look up as we pulled into a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, didn’t look up as we pulled out. But when the train had slid about twenty feet, I jumped up, left my bag where it was, walked three steps to the car platform, and skipped off. I never stopped. I zipped right out to a taxi, jumped in, told him to drive to Grand Central, and to step on it. He started up. I kept my eyes open. Nobody was behind us, that I could see.

  When he turned into upper Park, I tapped on the glass and said I was too late for my train, that he should go to Eighth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. He nodded and kept on. I took off the hat, the topcoat, and the coat and laid them in a little pile on the seat. When we got to Eighth and Twenty-third I got out, took out a five-dollar bill. “I left some stuff in the car, two coats and a hat. Take them up to Grand Central and check them to leave them. Leave the three checks at the information desk, in my name, Mr. Henderson. There’s no hurry. Any time tonight will do.”

  “Yes sir, yes sir.”

  He grabbed the five, touched his hat, and went off. I started down Eighth Avenue. Instead of a guy all dressed up to go away, I was just a guy without a hat, walking down for a stroll on a spring night. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to eleven. I back-tracked up to Twenty-third Street and went into a movie.

  At twenty after, I came out, started down Eighth Avenue again, and walked to Seventeenth Street. I took my time, looked in windows, keep peeping at my watch. When I cut over to the pier it was a quarter to twelve. I followed the signs to the Port of Cobh, strolled aboard. Nobody stopped me. Up at the winch I saw something that looked familiar. I went up and put my arm around him.

  “She’s back in your old cabin—and you’re late.”

  I went back there, knocked, and stepped in. It was dark in there, but a pair of arms were around me before I even got the door shut, and a pair of lips were against mine, and I tried to say something, and couldn’t and she tried to say something and couldn’t and we just sat on one of the berths, and held on to each other.

  In almost no time there was a knock on the door and he stepped in. “You’ll be going ashore now. Why didn’t you get here sooner?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I cast my hawsers in two minutes.”

  “Hawsers, hell. I’m going with her.”

  “No, Hoaney. Goodbye, goodbye, now you are free, remember, Juana, but come not. No, I have much money now, I be all right. Now, kiss, I love you much.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No, no!”

  “Lad, you don’t know what you’re saying. Alone, she can vanish like the mist. With you, she’s doomed.”

  “I’m going with her.”

  He went out. A bell sounded on the tugboat, and we began to move. We looked out. When we straightened out in the river we were looking at the Jersey side. We slipped past it, and pretty soon we stepped out and found him on the bridge. He was at the far end of it, looking out at the Long Island side. I said something, but he paid no attention, and pointed. A cluster of lights was bearing down on us. “It’s a police boat, and she’s headed right for us.”

  We stood watching it, hardly daring to breathe. It came on, then cut across our bows toward Staten Island. We picked up speed. The first swell lifted our nose. She put her hand in mine, and gave it a little squeeze.

  C H A P T E R

  13

  We were in Guatemala, though, before we really knew what we were up against, or I did. The trip down was just one nightmare of biting our fingernails and listening to every news broadcast we could pick up, to see if they were on our trail yet. In between, I stuffed myself with food and beer, to put on more weight, and let my moustache grow, and plucked my eyebrows to give my face a different expression, and stood around in the sun, to tan. All I thought about was that radio, and what it was going to tell us. Then at Havana I was running around like a wild man, still trying to beat them to the punch. I found a tailor shop, and put in a rush order for clothes, and then at a little bootleg printshop I got myself a lot of fake papers fixed up, all in the name of Guiseppe Di Nola and where she figured in them, Lola Deminguez Di Nola. I speak Italian like a Neapolitan, and changed myself into an Italian as fast as the tailor, the printer, the barber, and all the rest of them could work on me. As well as I could tell, I got by all right, and none of them had any idea who I was. But one thing kept gnawing at me, and that was the hello I had said to Conners on that first broadcast. Sooner or later, I knew, somebody was going to remember it and check back, and then we would be sunk. I wanted to get a thousand miles away from that ship, and any place she would touch on her way down to Rio.

  I had to work fast, because all we had was a three-day layover. As soon as my first suit was ready, I put my fake papers in a briefcase and went over to Pan-American. I found all we would really need was a vaccination certificate for each of us. The rest was a matter of tourist papers that they furnished. I told them to make out the ticket and that I would have the certificates at the airport in the morning. I went over to American Express and bought travelers’ checks, then went down to the boat and got her. I had her put on some New York clothes, and we went ashore. Then we went to a little hotel off the Prado. Conners wasn’t there when we left, and I had to scribble a note to him, and call that a goodbye. It seemed a terrible thing to beat it without even shaking his hand, but I was afraid even to leave our hotel address with anyone on board, for fear some U.S. detective would show up and they would tip him off. So far, none of them on the ship knew us. He had run into a strike at Seattle in the winter, and cleared with an entirely new crew, even officers. He had carried us as Mr. and Mrs. Di Nola, and Mr. and Mrs. Di Nola just disappeared.

  There was no hotel doctor, but they knew of one, and got him around, and he vaccinated us, and gave us our certificates. About six o’clock I went around to the tailor and got the rest of my suits. They were all right, and so were the shoes, shirts, and the rest of the stuff I had bought. The tropicals were double-breasted, with a kind of a Monte Carlo look, the pin-stripe had white piping on the vest and the gray had black velvet, the hats were fedoras, one green, the other black, with a Panama thrown in to go with the tropicals. The shoes were two-toned. On appearance, I was as Italian as Mussolini, and I was surprised to see I looked quite a lot like him. I got out my razor and gave the moustache an up-cut under each corner. That helped. It was two weeks out now, and plenty black, with some gray in it. Those gray hairs startled me. I hadn’t known they were there.

  In the morning we went to the airport, showed the certificates, and were passed through. The way the trip broke, we could make better time by going through to Vera Cruz, and then turning south, than by making the change at Mérida. There had been some switch on planes, and that would save us a day. I didn’t want to spend one more hour in Mexico than I had to, so I said that suited me. Where we were going I had no idea, except that we were going a long way from Havana, but where we were booked for was Guatemala. That seemed to be a kind of a terminus, and to go on from there we would have to have more papers than they could furnish us with at Havana. She got sick as a dog as soon as we took off, and I, and the steward, and the pilots thought it was airsickness. But when it still kept up, after we got to the hotel in Vera Cruz, I knew it was the vaccination. She was all right, though, the n
ext day, and kept looking down at the country we were going over. We had the Gulf of Mexico under us for a little while after we hauled out of Vera Cruz, and then as we were working down toward Tapachula we were over the Pacific. She had to have all that explained to her. She had never got the oceans quite straight, and how we could leave one, and then pick up another almost before we had time to look at the pictures in the magazines, had to be blue-printed for her, with drawings. To her, I think all countries were square, like a bean patch with lines of maguey around it, and it was hard for her to get through her head how any country, and especially Mexico, could be wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.

  At Guatemala, we marched from the plane into the pavilion with a loud speaker blaring the Merry Widow waltz, a barefoot Indian girl gave us coffee, and then after a while an American in a flyer’s uniform came and explained to me, in some kind of broken Italian, what I would have to do to go on down the line, if that was what I expected to do. I thanked him, we got our luggage, and went to the Palace Hotel. Then I got to thinking:

  Why are we going down the line? Why is Chile any better than Guatemala? Our big danger comes every time we fool with papers, and if we’re all right so far, why not let well enough alone, and dig in? We couldn’t stay on at the hotel, because it was full of Americans, Germans, English and all kinds of people, and sooner or later one of them would know me. But we might rent a place. I sent her down to the desk to ask how we went about it, and when we found out we didn’t have to sign any police forms, we went out and got a house, it was a furnished house, just around the block from the hotel, and the gloomiest dump I ever laid eyes on, with walnut chairs, and horse-hair sofas, and sea shells, and coconut shells carved into skulls, and everything else you could think of. But there was a bathroom in it, and it didn’t look like we would find one any better. The lady that owned it was Mrs. Gonzalez, and she wanted it understood that she didn’t really have to rent the house, that she came of an old coffee family, that she preferred to live out of town, at the lake, on account of her health. We said we understood that perfectly, and closed at a hundred and fifty quetzals a month. A quetzal exchanges even with a dollar.