“You fixed yourself up nicely, didn’t you, Walker?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t seem to be much point in doing anything else. Call it corny. Just say I was paying a debt.”
“To whom?”
“Maybe to myself. Maybe to you.”
“Why to me?”
“If I hadn’t gotten in this jam, maybe I would have asked you to let me come and see you in a year. I need another year to burn this black cloud off my mind. Maybe because I can’t do it now, I’ve got the courage to tell you. I would want to get a job on a construction gang or in the woods. Work each day until I dropped. In a year I’d be okay. I know that now. I found out too late.”
She fished in her bag and found a clipping. She handed it to him.
He read: “POST AND LIMPING DISH WIN OUT. Valiant Walker Post and his skinny gal friend, heiress to the Benderson hundreds, battled their way through seventeen thousand bushes yesterday, only to collapse on the highway. Happy couple refuse to explain why her ankle was bandaged with his shirt.”
He looked at her in amazement. “What’s this? How come?”
“You’re a little thick, friend. I printed it myself. Printed it with the stuff they found in the back of Drake’s car. Drake isn’t his name. He’s a confidence man who was expanding. He didn’t buy that lake either. Both the clippings he showed you were fakes. Had his own newsprint, ink and hand printing set. Nobody ever heard of a Victor Hessler. He just wanted to get his hooks into you so he could use you. He confessed to the whole works. The three of them killed a ‘patient’ out West somewhere, and moved here. He found the lake and took over. Bold guy, I’d say.”
“How did he know so much about me?”
“He said he got some information from your landlady. She apparently was annoyed at you. Didn’t you wonder how he knew you had a checkbook? Didn’t you wonder why, if the police had a picture of you it wasn’t printed in the paper, instead of your description? You need somebody to take care of you, Walker. You shouldn’t be around loose. You might hurt yourself.”
“How about Strane? I didn’t exactly mean to kill him, but I did.”
“The police don’t say that they’d exactly hang you. I heard one of them say something about an award of merit or a pension. You probably saved a western state a few execution expenses. They say you’ll be out this afternoon sometime. Oh, and by the way, we’re not to mention the Burke man. He and his lady were smuggled out to go separate ways. I saw her. She was wearing a handsome purple eye and an injured expression.”
She stopped and he looked at her. She had been gay and bright and glad to tell him that he would be free. She looked at him steadily and her smile faded.
She looked away and said, “And you’ll come back in a year?”
He waited for long seconds. He wanted to be certain. At last he said quietly, “I’ll be back.”
She stood up and walked quietly out of the room that was no longer a cell. She left the door ajar.
Secret Stain
The girl was young with a dancer’s body and a dress that clung expensively and just right. She was the hostess and knew everyone around her. He stood over near the draperies drawn across the windows against the dusk, watching her drink heavily, hearing the dissonant tautness of her voice—and he thought how incredible it was that she had given up all the things she could have become in order to marry Gus Lench, in order to have this Westchester home. And in this long room softly lighted, here in the mechanical babble of the cocktail party, she had become the assistant executioner.
He saw that murder did not become her. He saw that her mouth was too wide and too thicky-shiny. The many drinks did nothing to glaze the faintly feral alertness of her eyes.
Of course, the others did not know, and thus they did not feel the strain of it.
Most of the guests had come up from the city. Lawrence Hask stood near the draperies and took his eyes from Gail Lench for a moment to look around the room. Often he thought that these cocktail party guests had no reality, that they were rented for such affairs, wound up by a key inserted in the small of their backs. Men with gestures, and pouched eyes and deft conversation. Women who posed, holding one stance, moving slowly to another, with sleepy words of idle warmth.
At the far end of the room a sallow man played muted and professional show tunes at a baby grand. A girl, her face putty overlaid with glaze, stood raptly behind him and foolishly massaged the nape of his lean neck as he played. He seemed not to know she was there.
He replaced his empty glass on a tray, took a fresh drink. It seemed so obvious, the tension in the air, that he wondered that Carter didn’t feel it. Halfway down the room August Lench sat on a couch with a puffy little blonde. She giggled too much. August Lench, at sixty, carried two hundred pounds on his five-foot-four frame. His naked skull was marked with discolored spots. He appeared to be the incarnation of evil, and this in itself was his greatest business advantage, people saying, “Of course, no man who looks like that could be as wicked as he looks.”
And, of course, Lawrence Hask knew that Lench was exactly what he seemed to be.
Carter, carefully marked for death, stood in the group near Gail. She favored him with her most animated moments, with the huskiest of her strained laughter. Lawrence saw Lench glance over from time to time, his eyes flickering across Carter’s broad back, and Lawrence wondered that Carter, through the well-tailored suit, could not feel the icy cold of those casual glances from Lench’s colorless little eyes.
The room was smoke, and rustle-hum of conversation. The room held the pale flower-stink of gin. The room was suggestion and counter-suggestion. And, of course, the room was death.
Lawrence Hask stood, tall and lean and detached, a half smile on his lips, a casual, cocktail party smile, and he caught the gesture when Gail self-consciously touched her hand to her dark hair.
She took three steps out into the room and said, “Everybody! Your attention! With this party the House of Lench inaugurates the all-weather pool. As it’s a surprise and we knew you wouldn’t come prepared, we’ve laid in a stock of swim togs for guys and gals. Come along, now. The pool is in the new pavilion. Steam-heated, my dears. With bar. Men’s dressing room on the left, women on the right.”
Lawrence quickly drained his drink. This would very probably be it. He glanced over and saw Carter’s bodyguard, Lochard, pull himself together with an effort. The tall redhead clung to his arm. Lawrence knew that she would not be in on it, that, under pressure, she would merely say that she had been told to be nice to Lochard as he was a friend of Mr. Carter.
The pool was large, oval, the water in it placid and green. The pavilion had glass walls, steamed with the thick heat. The chill glasses on the tiny bar were beaded with moisture.
Hask knew that it was in a style that Lench would well afford, and only Carter could more easily afford. With Carter out of the way, it would be that much easier for Lench to afford it, because then Lench would not only receive his own cut, he would get Carter’s also. And that made a proper motive for murder. Lawrence guessed that Gail’s few improbable ad-lib courtesies to Carter would figure very small in Lench’s mind, if at all. Lench had arranged Carter’s murder with care, and, in the mind of Lench, it would have the same importance as the purchase of a new gross of stitching machines to be planted in Brooklyn lofts to enlarge the daily issue of treasury pool tickets, thus enlarging Lench’s personal cut.
As Lawrence Hask followed the other men into the dressing rooms, as he selected a garish pair of trunks, he wondered what Gus Lench would say if he knew that Lawrence Hask not only knew about the pending murder but planned to prevent it.
In a way, Lench’s weakest point was his inability to think of any motive beyond profit. Given another few days, Lawrence could have ferreted out, from Gail, the precise method. But there hadn’t been time.
If Lench had thought of there being any motive except profit, he might have been a bit more wary on the day that the three route men had brought Hask,
bleeding, to Lench’s office.
The biggest one had said, “Gus, we found this cutey peddling on our route.”
Lench had frowned. “You look like somebody I knew once, friend. Who are you?”
“Larry Hask. West Coast. A big fix on a number broke my little combine out there, so I came here where it’s soft.”
“Soft, he thinks it is!” Lench had said in slow wonder.
“Soft is right,” Lawrence had said. “You’ve got no penetration in your area. Stinking little candy stores and horse rooms and newsboys. Hell, you’ve got half a hundred big plants in your area. One out of every three foremen and sweepers and setup men ought to be peddling for you.”
Lench had picked up Hask’s crude pool tickets and had looked them over. “Amateur work,” he had said. “Hand-stitched, mimeographed. How could you unload these?”
Lench had flinched when Larry reached for his inside pocket, but one of the route men had said, “He’s clean, Gus.” Larry had thrown a pack of stubs onto the desk.
“You sold all these?” Lench had said.
“Yes, and right in the middle of your area, friend.”
Lench had put his fat white fingertips together. After a long pause he had said, “I can use you.”
“So can a lot of other people. But I come high. Three hundred a week and expenses.”
“You think a lot of yourself, eh?”
“So much that I don’t like your pet poodles laying their fat little hands on me. That’s the offer. Take it or I go in business for myself. And I import some talent for protection.”
Lench had hedged for two days, and Lawrence knew that he was checking higher up. Approval had come through and Lawrence Hask went on the combine payroll at the figure he requested, under the very sedate title of promotion manager. And it had taken a full year. One full year of gently prodding Gus Lench, of telling him how smart he really was, of how unappreciated he was by the higher-ups.
Carter was the top and Lench was one of the three main underlings. Carter, at Lench’s party, looked as out of place as a banker at a crap game. Tall, heavy, he had a massive dignity.
Lench had asked plaintively, “Why are you all the time pushing me? Why should you want a bigger cut for me, Larry?”
“Bigger for you, bigger for me,” Larry said.
And so the germ, once planted, had grown.
Two nights before, he had arranged the meeting with Gail. She had left Lench snoring at the city apartment, had stood on a corner with the spring wind whipping her long coat, standing where the streetlight touched her face.
When he had parked on a quiet block in the Seventies, Gail had come into his arms, half moaning, half sobbing, “Why so long, Larry? Oh, why do you make us wait so long?”
“Gus is no dummy.”
With her face at his throat, she ground her forehead hard against the line of his jaw. “Oh, how I hate him, Larry!”
He had the bottle in the glove compartment. She tilted it often. Each time, as before, he only pretended to drink, letting a slur creep into his speech.
She giggled emptily then and said, “Gus is going to be really big. Really the tops. It’s all set for the cocktail party, Larry. Mr. High-n-mighty Carter is going out.”
And then, with a sort of primitive caution, she refused to say any more, and he didn’t dare pump her.
He dropped her near the apartment. After she had gone, quickly, swayingly, around the corner, he had mopped the caked lipstick from his mouth, had rolled down the window and spat out onto the dark asphalt.
During the next two days Lench had acted much as usual, moaning because there were three five-hundred-dollar hits to be balanced against a twelve-thousand take on the first day, and gloating because, on the second day, there were no hits at all. The route men left their take at the drop-off points as usual, picking up the tickets for the following week.
Only once did Lench give Larry a slight clue that Gail had been talking the truth. He said, “How would you like a nice fat district of your own, kid? A new district with a lot of promise.”
“Carter gives out the districts in this combine.”
Lench had pawed at his loose chin. He had grinned. “Maybe he’ll let me do that. You could make a G and a half a week instead of the peanuts you’re getting.”
“When you can give it to me, Gus, I’ll take it.”
“Having a cocktail party tonight, kid. Out at the Westchester house. You know where it is. Come around about five, hey?”
“Thanks.” That solved a problem. It saved having to angle for the invitation.
Lawrence dressed quickly, came out in the trunks onto the apron of the pool before Carter left the dressing room. The water was almost unpleasantly tepid. He came up from the long dive, shook the water out of his eyes, thrust strongly out for the far edge of the pool.
Gail sat on the edge in a brief white two-piece suit. Her feet were in the water. In spite of the heat her smooth shoulders were pimpled with an odd chill and she hugged herself.
He looked up at her from the water and said, “All set?”
“For what, Larry? For what?” she asked in a flat empty tone.
He pushed off and floated on his back, looking up at the night sky through the overhead glass. When he rolled on his side he saw Lench walk out of the dressing room. Lench looked as though he were made of white wax, as though he were a clumsy Buddha that had begun to melt and then had cooled again in the moment of melting.
Lochard did not swim. He stood, sweating in the steamy heat. The redhead had changed to a golden suit. She clung to his arm and giggled up into his perspiring face.
Lawrence saw the color of the man’s face and knew that the heat had gotten to the drinks and that he would soon be ill. Carter walked out with dignity and made a fairly respectable dive into the pool. The pool began to fill up, the green water dancing, smooth limbs flashing, soft music coming from the loudspeaker over the bar. No, it would not be long now. But how were they going to do it? It had to be almost foolproof. If murder were suspected, retaliation in the line of work of Lench and Carter was likely to be rather severe.
Lawrence kept his eyes moving. He saw Lench pad wetly toward the light switches. He looked quickly for Carter. Carter was coming down the far side of the pool. Lawrence launched himself toward Carter just as the lights went out.
The air was filled with shrill screams and giggles and hoarse laughter. Closer at hand Lawrence heard a gasp of surprise, then a grunt of alarm and the beginning of a yell for help, smothered by the water before it could attract attention.
He hadn’t counted on the lights being out. In sudden fear he made a surface dive, reaching out under the water. He could find nothing. He went up, gulped air, went down again. His fingers lightly brushed smooth flesh, but his wind was almost gone. The third time he went down, his hand tangled in long hair.
He pulled as hard as he could, struggled to the surface. When he broke into the dark air, a hand splatted against his face and teeth sunk into his arm. He smashed his fist out into the darkness, missed completely. And then she was gone; he had sensed that it was a woman.
He then did what he should have done before. He made the side of the pool, hauled himself out and ran for the light switches.
There was a chorus of disappointment as the lights went on, as people moved hastily away from each other.
He said loudly, “I thought I heard Carter call for help.”
“Where is he?” Lochard bellowed. “Where’s the boss?”
Lawrence did not miss Lench’s look of venomous fury. Water stung the tooth marks in his arm.
He walked to the side of the pool, poised, dived deep, keeping his eyes open. Near the tile bottom of the pool Carter floated, his gray hair drifting silkily in the water, his face composed, his eyes half open.
Larry grabbed the drowned man’s wrist, got his feet against the bottom, pushed up with all his strength. When he emerged with Carter there were people to help. They got Carter onto the concrete ap
ron of the pool, on his stomach. Larry went into the rhythmic cadence of lifesaving technique.
Lochard stood by, dancing with anxiety. All the others were clustered about. Larry dipped and pressed hard; when he sat back on his heels giving Carter’s lax lungs a chance to fill, he saw Gail on one knee beside him, her face a white mask, her hands clenched. Her eyes were venomous.
The group stood, sober now, numbed by the disaster, waiting and hoping. When Carter coughed and then sighed, something like a faint cheer went up.
Water gouted from Carter’s lungs and finally, white and shaking, he was well enough to sit up.
Lench said, “What happened? I thought you could swim good. What happened?”
Carter looked steadily at him. “I must have gotten a bit tired.” He looked around. “Who got me out?”
Lawrence Hask was pointed out to him. Carter looked soberly at Hask. “You work for Lench?”
“One of my best,” Lench said eagerly.
“Help me up,” Carter said to Lochard. Carter staggered for a moment, then walked toward the dressing room, leaning heavily on Lochard. He beckoned to Larry. Larry shrugged and followed him.
Once inside the dressing room Carter pulled away from Lochard. He braced himself, doubled his fist and hit Lochard in the mouth with all his strength. Lochard stumbled back against the wall, slipped, caught his balance and stood up. He wiped the blood on his handkerchief.
“Dress,” he said to Larry. “You’re leaving with us.”
“I work for Lench.”
“You used to work for Lench. He is out of business. He’ll find out tomorrow.”
Larry shrugged. “Okay, so I come with you.”
Minutes later the three of them went out to the pool. Lench, sitting on the edge beside Gail, struggled up, smiled wanly and said, “We’re having steak pretty soon, boss.”
Carter said evenly, “I’m sure you can eat my share. Thank you for an instructive party. Thank you very much.”
“Accidents will happen,” Lench said.
“Yes, they sometimes will,” Carter said in a dry voice. “Good night.”
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