“Oh, no, Mr. Roche. Far from it. A small initial payment was made. No more.”
“Ten thousand dollars, I believe.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s a small payment?”
“Under the circumstances, yes. For the type and quality of the work, I mean. A very small payment, I should say.”
His voice was bland, a smooth, smooth voice, and Peter wondered if this was the sound of destruction, a sound as soft and smooth as a dentist’s dun, and he felt the return in force of the cold hatred that had begun and grown with persuasion, and he was all at once no longer depressed, no longer anxious on the dark edge of terror, and he felt, instead, nothing but the cold, complete hatred and a kind of excitement that was collateral to the realization that twice was not enough and that there would have to be, after all, one more a third time.
“What’s the balance of the bill?” he said quietly.
Foresman’s voice took on a tone of expansion, of subtle patronage. “You understand, of course, that we dentists are rather like doctors in that we try to keep our fees flexible. In this way, they can be made commensurate with the patient’s ability to pay. I hear that you have come into quite a considerable amount recently, Mr. Roche. The balance of the bill is fifty thousand dollars.”
“Don’t you think that’s rather exorbitant?”
“Not at all. In the beginning, you’ll recall, the actual fee was reduced in consideration of a bonus of sorts. It is now apparent even to an optimist like me, Mr. Roche, that the bonus will never be paid. In lieu of the bonus, the fee itself has been raised.”
“I see. I think we’d better meet to discuss this.”
“I thought you might want to do that, and I’m perfectly agreeable.”
“When?”
“No time like the present. I think we should get this settled as quickly as possible.”
“Where?”
“My apartment should be a congenial place. I’m calling from there now. It’s in the Bellmar Arms on Northeast Boulevard. The corner of 76th. The apartment is first floor rear on the left as you enter. Just walk straight down the hall from the entrance. I’ll have a cocktail waiting for you.” His voice was friendly.
“Thanks very much.”
Cradling the phone, he went back into his room. He looked at his watch and saw that it was close to nine o’clock. Moving with certainty under the impulsion of the cold hatred and intense excitement that left him strangely assured and decisive, he put on coat and hat and removed a .38 calibre revolver from the top drawer of a chest. With the .38 a kind of definitive weight in his pocket, as if it were the final answer to everything, he went downstairs and outside to the garage. Driving with a light foot on the accelerator, he followed the bluff road to the corner where Etta had died, not long ago, by proxy, and turned up the short grade to the crest and down toward town.
On the lower level of the town, he hit Northeast Boulevard at 52nd and turned right toward higher numbers. At 76th, he passed in front of the Bellmar Arms and made a left turn, parking at the curb in comparative darkness near the alley. Getting out, he walked back along the side of the building and around to the front entrance. Through the glass of the doors, he could see the first floor hall running from front to rear directly ahead of him. He went inside and up three shallow steps and down the hall to the last door on the left. He rang a buzzer, and the door opened, and Dr. Foresman was very polite and gracious with a smile on his face.
“You’re very prompt, Mr. Roche. Won’t you come in, please?”
Peter went past him into the room and turned. Dr. Foresman followed and stopped, his deteriorated athlete’s body poised with a kind of vestigial grace, the ceiling light glittering on the hard waves of his hair. He gestured toward a table on which sat a cocktail shaker and glasses.
“I promised you a drink. Martinis. May I pour you one?”
“No, thanks. I’m only staying a minute.”
“Oh? In that case, I assume you want to get right down to the matter of the fee.”
“The blackmail, you mean.”
Dr. Foresman smiled and shook his head. “Not at all. You will agree, I’m sure, that I was led to anticipate a bonus. I won’t say that I was actually double-crossed, but at least I was permitted to believe something that was never really intended. However, I’m prepared to be agreeable and accept the additional fifty thousand instead. You, of all people, will surely not consider that amount excessive for such a bonus.”
“How much will the next fee amount to? And the next, and the next?”
“No. I thought you might be afraid of something like that. This closes our association. I give you my word.”
“What makes you think you can get away with this? You’re in this yourself, you know. Suppose I simply refuse to pay.”
“That would be unfortunate. It’s true that I’m involved, but not so deeply as you, I think you’ll admit. I’ve thought it through very carefully, and I’m sure I could manage to escape any very serious consequences for my part in this business. At any rate, Mr. Roche, don’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t go through with this. To put it rather crudely, you’ll pay or else.”
The fury and the hate were very exhilarating. Actually, Peter felt better than he’d felt for many long months. There was in him a kind of perverted happiness that was wholly unreasonable. He took the .38 from his pocket and pointed it at Foresman.
“Oh, I’ll pay,” he said. “I’ll pay in full.”
He shot him twice in the chest and watched the succession of fear and shock in the dentist’s face, watched with pleasure the collapse and terminal twitching of the big body that would go no further to fat. Then, swiftly, before blood could stain the carpet, he heaved the body into his arms and carried it the length of the living room and into a bedroom and across the bedroom to a window overlooking the alley. Depositing the body on the floor with its back against the wall in a sitting position, he raised the window and unfastened the screen and saw that there was a narrow strip of grass between the building and the alley. Some low-growing foundation shrubs had been planted close to the building. Pushing the body through the window, he lowered it to the ground behind the shrubs. Then he refastened the screen and closed the window and went back through the bedroom and living room into the hall and outside. He saw no one. So far as he knew, no one had seen him. Or heard him. He had gambled on sound-proofing and apparently won.
On the side street, he turned his car into the alley and stopped behind the Bellmar. Still moving swiftly and with the blind assurance that precluded in his mind the possibility of detection, he dragged Foresman’s body from behind the shrubbery and onto the rear floor of the car. Behind the wheel, he drove on down the alley, emerging on the side street at the far end and turning back onto Northeast Boulevard.
Behind the lodge, he stopped beside a weathered plank shed and went inside. Fumbling in almost total darkness, he found a spade and a pick-ax and carried them out to the car. He leaned the tools against the car and turned his attention to the rear seat. Under persuasion, the beginning of the last that he would be subjected to, Dr. Norton Foresman slipped out.
The body was cumbersome and elusive, a monstrous burden that bore down upon him with terrible weight and threatened with every step to slip from his shoulder. Climbing the slope against which the lodge was built was grueling labor, but after that, beyond the crest, it was easier going, downgrade a short distance into a dry gulch. In the gulch he dropped the body with a dull, sodden thud and stood for a minute with his chest heaving, gulping the cold night air. Then he returned to the car for the tools.
CHAPTER 10.
He went into the lounge of the hotel that had been designated and looked around for an empty booth or table, but there wasn’t any, so he sat instead at the bar on a stool with a vacancy on the left. He could see the entrance from the lobby reflected in the bar mirror, and after about ten minutes spent with a bourbon and water he could see Etta in the entrance. The vacancy still e
xisted on the left, and she came across and filled it.
“Darling,” she said, “I thought it would take forever.”
“There was a lot to do. Assets to liquidate, debts to pay. The old man had a lot of debts. I didn’t dream he owed so much.”
“I told you that. Remember? I said we’d need the insurance.”
“Well, we’ve got it. A hundred grand.”
“I considered getting in touch with you, but I didn’t think it would be wise.”
“It’s just as well you didn’t.”
“Will they ever find him?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sure of it.”
“You did it well, darling. I’m proud of you.”
He drained his glass and waited again for the bartender’s bit. Then he said, “Well, it’s over now. All over and done.”
“The bad part. The good part just beginning. Are you free to go away?”
“Yes. Everything’s been taken care of.”
“Good. I’ll take a plane south tomorrow. You follow in a couple of weeks. You know where to meet me.”
“I know.”
Then he lifted his fresh drink and looked up into the reflected, red-rimmed eyes of the fat little man named Smalley.
“Good-afternoon, Mr. Roche,” Smalley said. “I don’t believe I’ve met your stepmother.”
Peter looked at Etta and felt for a second a thrill that could not be sustained and died almost instantly. She was sitting very upright on the stool with her chin lifted and her cheeks burning with color. Her eyes, focused unwaveringly on Smalley’s reflection, were shining with a bright, hot light. Unable to bear the sight of her terrible excitement, he turned his own eyes down to the untasted drink before him and said dully, “So you’ve known all along.”
Smalley looked startled and shook his head. “On the contrary. I haven’t been very smart in this business, Mr. Roche. I didn’t suspect a thing until after Dr. Foresman disappeared.” He sighed and drew the fingers of one hand across his eyes. “It’s no credit to me that I know anything now. It was really Dr. Foresman himself who put me straight. You see, we went through his office files when he disappeared, and we found a certain dental chart there. A kind of map of a person’s teeth, you know. It was clearly labeled as being Mrs. Roche’s, and it was not identical with that of the woman who died in the accident at all. Not even similar. That tore it, of course, and a child could have reconstructed what had actually happened. That was lucky, I guess, because otherwise I’d probably never have been able to do it. Naturally, we kept quiet until you got around to leading us to your collaborator. Which you have. And now if you could see your way clear to leading us to Dr. Foresman’s body, it would wrap things up nicely, and we’d appreciate it greatly.”
Again Peter looked at Etta, and she hadn’t moved, and he realized with a kind of incredulous, weary wonder that she was already thinking beyond the moment of ruin and planning the moves and countermoves of the final deadly game still to be played with the gathering forces of retribution, and his submission was completed by the evidence of her strength.
“He’s buried in the hills,” Peter said dully. “I’ll take you there.”
TRESPASSER
Originally published in Manhunt, September 1957.
She was beautiful in black. Even climbing the hotel stairs, flight after long flight upward, she moved with ease and ineffable grace. Anyone seeing her might have wondered, however, why she bothered to climb the stairs at all. Why she did not, that is, take the elevator. But no one saw her. She was very careful that no one did.
On the floor to which she was climbing, which happened to be the twelfth, she walked with assurance to the numbered door which was her objective. She knocked without hesitation, and the door was opened after only the slightest delay. The man who opened it was neither particularly young nor particularly old, having reached that interim span of years which has, in certain instances, a charm superior to its past or future. He smiled graciously and bowed slightly, bending ever so briefly from the hips. He was extremely handsome, she noted at once, his black hair and thin black mustache neatly trimmed and meticulously groomed, his white teeth flashing in his face. Together, she and he, they made a striking pair.
“Mr. Agnew?” she said.
“You’re an hour early, Mrs. Fenimore,” he said, nodding. “But it’s unimportant. Won’t you come in, please?”
“Thank you.”
She walked past him through a short hall into the sitting room of a small suite, simply and expensively furnished. She could look at an angle through an open door into a corner of the bedroom, and she thought that the rental on the suite, though not exorbitant, was certainly substantial.
“You’re living quite comfortably,” she said. “I understood from our conversation over the telephone that you were desperately in need of funds. Practically destitute.”
She turned to face him as she spoke with a dry inflection of irony, remarking with a faint feeling of admiration, which did not show or significantly modify her predisposition toward him, that he was not in the least disconcerted. He smiled again, ruefully, rather like a philosophical delinquent caught out of hand in mischief.
“I’m anticipating an improvement in my financial condition. A quite considerable sum of cash, to be exact.”
“Really? Isn’t it rather risky to obligate yourself on the strength of a possibility?”
“I’d say that this is somewhat more than a possibility. Probability, I’d say. The truth is, I consider it a certainty. I’m so confident that I’ve even obligated myself for a bottle of very fine brandy. May I offer you some?”
“No, thanks. I’m not particularly fond of brandy.”
“Too bad. A cocktail, then?”
“A cocktail would be pleasant. A martini if you have it.”
“Of course. I hardly ever drink martinis myself, but I’m aware of your partiality to them. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Fenimore, I know quite a great deal about you in general. But we’ll get to that in good time. Won’t you sit down while I mix the drinks?”
“Thank you.”
She sat down on the edge of a deep chair upholstered with some heavy fabric treated to afford additional resistance to stains and burns. Holding her knees primly together, her body erect, she laid her purse on the knees and folded her hands on the purse. Watching him measure ingredients into a shaker, she was poised and perfectly still. The rise and fall of her breasts was barely discernible in the quiet cadence of her breathing. When he brought her martini to her, she took it and nodded her thanks and wet her lips in it and waited. Crossing to a chair opposite hers, with perhaps five feet of gray carpet between, he sat down facing her and crossed his legs and seemed for a moment considering what he should say. Lifting his fragile glass, containing one of the martinis he hardly ever drank, he performed what might have been a subtle salute to her beauty, or possibly to the perfect poise that disturbed him more than he liked to admit or intended to show.
“You are much lovelier than I expected,” he said. “Frankly, I’m reluctant to waste our time with the dull conditions of a business arrangement.”
“Do you concede, then, that it’s a waste of time?”
“Not at all. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“We’ll see. Suppose you state the conditions.”
“They’ve already been stated. I did that over the phone. We have met, I think, to consummate them.”
“Nevertheless, you had better repeat them. I want to be certain where I stand.”
“Certainly. Happy to oblige, of course. You are to hand me fifty thousand dollars with which to pay for my fine brandy that you are not fond of. In return for this reasonable sum, I guarantee my silence regarding a period of your life with which we are both familiar.”
“Are we?”
“I assure you that I know very nearly as much about this regrettable time as you do yourself.”
“I’m not convinced.”
“Surely you don’t want me to
give you an account in detail. I’m quite sincere in saying that I’d rather not subject you to the embarrassment.”
“Never mind that. I’ll try to bear it.”
Looking at her across the five feet of space, lifting his glass to his lips again, he was once more aware of genuine admiration for her poise. Also for her beauty. He wished for a second that he could have approached her from a different position, with a different intention. He wished it, for the second, in spite of the fifty thousand dollars and all the brandy it would buy. For another second, following the first, he was uncomfortably incredulous that this sleek woman had actually committed the extraordinary follies, and worse, far worse, that constituted the substance of the savory little case history he had begun by chance and completed by design. Both seconds passed, however, and the wish and the doubt with the seconds.
“Whatever you say,” he said. “For your sake, I’ll restrict myself to essentials. Just enough to convince you once again that I’m not running a bluff.”
“Thank you so much. I’m grateful for your consideration.”
“Sarcasm? You seemed disturbed enough on the telephone, Mrs. Fenimore—so much so that I took none of the usual secondary precautions—no messages left in case of my death, you see. Well, no matter. To get on with our business, you were born in this city thirty years ago.”
“Please. Twenty-eight.”
“Very well. I allow you the two years. What’s more important, you had the good luck to be born the only daughter of Reuben Webster, which made you heir to several million of dollars.”
“That’s public knowledge. If you know anything significant, you had better get to it.”
“Sorry. I promised to restrict myself to essentials, I know, but you must admit that the millions are essential. If it weren’t for them, I’d scarcely have gone to so much time and effort to develop my proposition. All right, then. You were the only daughter of Reuben Webster, and at the age of twenty by my account, eighteen by yours, you disappeared. Not many people knew that. Very few. It was feared at first that you had been abducted, but of course you hadn’t. You had merely run away. You wrote your father once from St. Louis to assure him you were all right. You wrote him once more, quite a while later, from Los Angeles. That was all. If you will pardon me for saying it, I have learned that you had, as a girl, what is commonly known as a queer streak. A proclivity, let’s say, for the unconventional. The sensational. Even, unfortunately, the illegal. The thing that saved you, so far as your father was concerned, was that he had the same proclivity. Therefore, he was inclined to forgive you. He wanted you to come home, but he did not insist, and when he died four years ago, he left you his fortune without any strings, just as if you had been a good, obedient girl instead of what you were.”
The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack Page 16