I shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. But if Lachlan doesn’t go for it, it’ll be an expensive horse laugh.”
“Don’t worry,” she said calmly. “He’ll bite.”
It was one of the primary booby traps in her campaign. She’d explained it to me that day in Reno, in pointing out why we’d had to have so much money to tackle it. I didn’t understand at first.
“It doesn’t match up,” I said. “Michael Rogers is a veterinarian. Well—I mean, they probably do all right, and maybe they even eat steak twice a week, but I never heard of one who had a private pipeline into Fort Knox.”
“Well?” She smiled.
“Oh!” I said.
“You see? There it is. What would be your idea if you were a bank president and noticed one of your seventy-a-week bookkeepers or tellers was coming to work in a Mercedes-Benz and buying his wife a new mink every year?”
“I’d call the auditors. Or grab my piggie bank and scram before he got that too.”
“In other words, you might have a faint suspicion that he had some other source of income?”
“All right,” I said. “You don’t have to draw me a picture.”
* * *
It was fine that week—most of the time. I noticed, though, that the moments when she could relax and laugh or even pay much attention to my telling her how lovely she was were becoming more and more rare. She was completely absorbed in this Lachlan thing. It was becoming an obsession with her. We had to rehearse it by the hour. When we weren’t talking about it, she was thinking about it, going through each of the moves in her mind.
And I began to catch myself thinking about Goodwin more than I had. I’d quit worrying so much about the police as time went by and we still seemed safe enough half a continent away, but I had a habit of suddenly—and for no reason at all—-remembering Goodwin himself or his wife and their house in Wyecross. I wondered how he had raised the $65,000, whether it had taken everything he had. And then I’d curse myself. What did I care how he raised it? How much did I suppose he’d worried when he’d helped Lachlan ruin the rest of us?
And there was one other thing. I awoke one night to find her pounding on my chest and crying out that I was breaking her in pieces.
“Mike! What on earth are you trying to do?” she panted.
I was sweating. My pajama top was wet and my hands were shaking. I had to switch on the light and look at her to reassure myself. “It was just a dream,” I said. “A bad dream.”
“For heaven’s sake, what did you dream about? Dinosaurs?”
“Donnelly.”
“Oh, will you ever forget Donnelly?”
“No,” I said. “And I just thought of something.”
“What?”
“I shipped him out here. Remember?”
We moved into the Montlake the next day, and it must have looked like an Indian prince taking off for his summer palace. There were sixteen pieces of luggage, I think, besides all the packages and hatboxes and a fur coat or two.
The apartment was on the ninth floor. I stood by the big windows in the living room and looked out over the bay. It was sparkling and clear in the morning sunshine, and I could see a boat going out to Alcatraz. They’ve got a view over there too, I thought, but they don’t like it. A whole rock covered with tough guys and wisenheimers who knew more than the cops. And just beyond, out of sight up the bay, was San Quentin, where the state of California kept its smart characters who could never be caught. I remembered that awful minute in the hotel room in El Paso when I’d opened the door and seen her standing there with the two men in white Texas-sheriff hats. How many warnings did I need?
I shrugged it off, a little angrily. I was getting as nervous as an old woman. Either we wanted Lachlan or we didn’t. And if we did, I couldn’t spend all my time standing around shaking like a chicken. He’d taken his chances, and if we wanted a rematch we had to be as tough as he was.
We bought the Jaguar that morning and drove it over on Fillmore to try it out on a hill. After that we rolled it down Bayshore to San Mateo, went over to Skyline, and came back to the beach and to the Cliff House for lunch. For a while we were like a couple of high-school kids with a new hot rod. We had a bottle of wine with the abalone and we laughed a lot and were very happy, watching the seals out in the kelp beds and the big ground swells heaving up to batter at the rocks. When we came back to the apartment there was a Chrysler station wagon with a lot of dust on it pulled into the loading zone ahead of us and the doorman and two bellboys were unloading luggage and an armful of heavy boat rods and salt-water reels like drums. The big bareheaded man in the suede jacket was wearing sunglasses, but I saw him turn and do a double take at her as we went past, and I knew we were closing in on him at last. It was Lachlan.
* * *
I got up early the next morning and made a trip down to the Skid Row south of Market. To put on this act of ours we had to have the help of one other person—just a brief appearance in the early stages—and he had to speak Spanish. She even had that all figured out. It had to be somebody with enough intelligence to swing his part and still not a wise guy who’d ask too many questions or want to muscle in himself.
And we had to be sure he’d disappear when his job was done. There was an answer to that, which I thought of almost as soon as she did: a wetback.
I took the cable car down to the foot of Powell and walked on over to Howard. It was another beautiful morning, even here among the flophouses and cheap taverns and hole-in-the-wall cafes smelling of grease and chile. A wino slept with his head against a fire hydrant with an empty bottle in the gutter beside him, and somebody had stolen his shoes. There were half a dozen employment agencies along here with big blackboards on the walls and men standing around listlessly as if they had even forgotten what they were waiting for. I tried the first one and didn’t see anyone who looked promising. In the next one my luck was better. He was a young Mexican in clean khakis and a leather coat.
I went over to him. “Good morning. Looking for a job?”
He nodded, a little warily. The jobs came off the board he was watching, not from strangers wandering in off the street.
“You speak English?” I asked.
He nodded again. “I was born in San Antonio. I speak much English.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I was in San Antonio myself, during the war. Stationed at Fort Lewis. You know where that is?”
“Oh, sure. I live near to it. I worked there.”
He looked pretty good and as if he might do. He was a good liar, and a wetback, and that’s what we wanted. “It’s all right,” I said in Spanish, and grinned at him. “I don’t care what part of Mexico you’re from. I’m not an Immigration man.” He was fast on the uptake, all right, for it took him only a second to see he’d gone into the bucket on that Fort Lewis thing. Lewis is in Washington.
“How are you called?” I asked.
“Juan Benavides.”
He probably wasn’t, but it didn’t make any difference. “I’m glad to know you, Juan,” I said. “My name’s Rogers. Let’s go get a cup of coffee. Perhaps I have a job for you.”
We went over to Mission and found a restaurant a little cleaner than most. He was broke, so I ordered him some ham and eggs while I got coffee. While he was eating, I gave him the proposition.
“I’ll give you an outfit of clothes, two hundred dollars American money, and a bus ticket to anywhere you want to go. The job won’t take more than a half hour, with maybe two or three hours’ coaching, but you may have to wait around a week or ten days till I get ready for you. Naturally, I’ll pay for your room and meals while you’re waiting. How about it?”
He stopped his assault on the ham and eggs for a moment to study me with grave Latin suspicion. “What class of job is this?”
“It’s just a little joke I want to play on a friend of mine. I need somebody who speaks Spanish. Very good Spanish, too, not like just any peon.”
“A serious joke?”
“Maybe there will be trouble with the police?” He was a little suspicious of that “joke on a friend” angle, as I knew he would be if he was smart enough to be of any use to us. However, I had a pretty good idea as to what form his reluctance would take.
“No,” I said. “This is not a joke that would interest the police.”
“Nevertheless,” he said, “I could not do a job of this class for less than three hundred dollars. As you can see, it would take great skill.”
He’ll do, I thought. He doesn’t even know what the job is, and already it takes great skill and three hundred dollars. Maybe we should take him in as a partner.
“Two-fifty,” I said.
“Two hundred and seventy-five, and a gold watch chain with the suit.”
“Two hundred and sixty and a gold watch chain,” I said. There really wasn’t any sense to it, but you can never afford to lose face in one of those transactions by giving in on the first round. It isn’t actually the money so much as a matter of personal honor.
“I accept your job,” he said.
I took him over to a men’s furnishing store on Market and let him pick out the whole outfit from the shoes up. He settled for a sort of semizoot affair in something that looked electric blue in the store and would probably be worse in daylight, and got a high-crowned snap-brim hat to go with it. It was about what I’d had in mind, and it all fitted the picture very well. He had to look sharp. I paid for it and gave him the alteration slip for the suit and the Montlake address and apartment number.
“The clerk says it’ll be ready day after tomorrow,” I said. “As soon as you get it, come on up to this address and see me. Here’s twenty dollars. Get yourself a room, and when you come up, be sure to bring me the hotel telephone number, or at least the name, so I can look it up. You understand all that?”
“I understand. Do you remember the gold watch chain?”
“It will be there.”
We went out and shook hands on the sidewalk. “Until later,” I said. “Until later.”
I watched him take off across the street. Of course he could always pick up his new clothes and lam, with all of it clear profit, but I didn’t think he would. He’d probably show up.
I walked back to Powell. The usual crowd of tourists blocked traffic around the cable-car turntable, but I managed to climb, onto the step as the car started clanging up the hill with people hanging on everywhere, like a subway car turned wrong side out. We only have two cars now, I thought; I have to do this. The trouble was I was just as big a sucker for the cable cars as the other tourists.
When we made the stop at Sutter some more people piled on till we looked like a bunch of grapes being dragged up a hill. Some tall guy made a landing on the step beside me and I tried to crowd over enough to give him something to hang onto. His arm was across in front of my face and our feet were so mixed up I didn’t know whether I was standing on mine or his.
“A little crowded, eh, Belen?” a voice said in my ear. I turned, and Judd Bolton and I were rubbing noses like two Eskimos. Our arms were across each other’s necks as we held onto the stanchions.
We stared at each other for a full ten seconds. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.
“Do you rumba?” I asked.
Twelve
“Yes,” he said. “But I sing better. Or maybe you’d rather have a little talk first.”
The car stopped in the middle of California Street and he stepped down and nodded at me. I got down and we both walked over to the sidewalk. I still hadn’t thought of anything. I’d know all the time this was going to happen, but maybe I just hadn’t expected it so soon.
“How about the Top of the Mark?” he asked.
“All right.”
It wasn’t crowded, and we got seats by a window with empty booths on both sides of us. We ordered Scotch, and while we were waiting for the drinks I studied his face. The cuts were healed now. You couldn’t see anything in the eyes; they were as noncommittal and hard and gray as ever. He was smooth and tough as they come, but somehow in a civilized sort of way—which made it worse, because there was no way on earth to guess what he was capable of.
Suddenly I was conscious of an odd sort of flashback to that night in the bar in New Orleans and the way he had cringed before Donnelly. It still puzzled me. The evidence didn’t add up right.
The drinks came. “Salud,” I said. And then, as soon as the waiter was gone, I went on quickly, trying to beat him to the punch. “Well, don’t keep me guessing all day. I want to hear about it. How’d you get away? And what about Charlie? Did he—”
“Cut it out, Belen,” he interrupted impatiently. “Let’s dispense with the fairy tales and get down to business. Where’s Cathy?”
I could see that routine was out. As she’d said, they’d known they were sold as soon as they took a look at the car. I had to try something else.
“Cathy?” I asked in surprise. “How would I know?”
“Oh, I see. She’s not with you?” he murmured politely.
“No,” I said. “I went off and left her in El Paso. She’s lucky I didn’t strangle her. Leaving me there in Wyecross to get away the best way I could.”
“Two down,” he said boredly. “Now, if you’re sure you’re finished with that one, we’ll get on with it. You left Reno together just a week ago, if that’s any help to you, so where is she?”
He had me. He knew all the answers. I lit a cigarette to stall for time. “You don’t think I’m going to tell you, do you?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think so. As a matter of fact, you probably won’t have to. If you’ll just tell her you saw me and give her a message, she’ll probably call me.”
“She won’t,” I said. “But let’s have the message.”
“Tell her if I don’t get my share of that money, I’m going to call Lachlan.”
He had us. He had us right over the barrel. One word to Lachlan and the whole thing would blow up and drift away in a cloud of smoke before it even got started. I sat there looking at the wreckage of all our plans with a sort of numb helplessness, and it was a long minute before the full implication of it hit me.
“What do you mean, Lachlan?” I snapped. “What do you know about him?”
“Why, practically all there is to know,” he said calmly. “After all, she and I were planning the deal together until she picked you up in New Orleans.”
I felt the anger burning inside me. So nobody knew about it except us! Lachlan was ours.
“And just in case you think I don’t know where he is now,” Bolton went on smugly, “I’ll dispel that little illusion. He’s back at his apartment in the Montlake. He came in yesterday.”
“All right,” I said helplessly. “I’ll tell her.”
I’d tell her plenty, I thought.
“Just ask her to call me at the Sir Francis Drake.”
“And you think she’s going to split that money with you? After the way you and Charlie double-crossed us?”
It didn’t bother him at all. “That was Charlie’s idea,” he said with urbane composure. “And as far as splitting the money’s concerned, I don’t see that she has much choice in the matter.” He smiled. “Do you?”
I didn’t. There was no use arguing about it. He held the cards. I wondered what she’d do. Nobody could make her give up that much money, and nobody could make her give up Lachlan. It was a variation of the irresistible force and the immovable object. Either way it was unthinkable. I looked out across the Bay Bridge with its cables shining in the sun. There was no use searching for a way out. There wasn’t any. Suddenly I thought of something else, a question I’d never been able to get her to answer.
“By the way,” I said, “since you seem to know everything, there’s something I wish you’d clear up for me. Who is Donnelly?”
He glanced at me, slightly puzzled. “Don’t you know?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t ask
if I did.”
“He’s a hophead, for one thing. Used to peddle the stuff, till he got to using it himself, or maybe it’s the other way around. Kind of a handyman for a gang around Chicago, and later in New York.”
“How bad is he?”
He shook his head slightly. “It’s always hard to say. You have to know how much of the stuff he has in him at the time, and a number of other variable factors. Unloaded, so to speak, and without a gun, he’s about as harmful as the Easter bunny. He may be a little cracked at times, I think, and seems to hate women. Probably his hormones are out of kilter. I don’t know. All you have to do is guess all these factors at any precise moment.”
I felt a little sick. “But where does he get this dream that Cathy owes him some money? Out of the pipe?”
Bolton picked up the glass and looked at it, frowning a little. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if for the first time in his life he might be on the right side of something. It all depends on the way you look at the ethics of gambling debts.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, legally, they have no status, of course. Gamblers, I understand, look at the matter differently.”
“They do,” I said curtly. “But get to the point.”
“All right. It’s a simple thing. You knew Lane was a bookie, I guess, and that he was killed by a holdup man? Well, the day he was killed he accepted a bet from Donnelly for four hundred dollars on some horse named—I don’t remember now. Silver Stream or Slip Stream or something like that. Donnelly’s a terrific plunger and all the money he doesn’t spend for dope goes to the ponies. But once in a while he gets hold of a good tip and makes a killing. This horse was one of them. He was a long shot, and maybe Lane took it and laid it off somewhere and maybe he didn’t. Nobody knows, because that night Lane was killed right in front of his house in Connecticut as he and Cathy were getting out of the car. The horse had come in and paid a little better than twenty to one. She says Lane didn’t accept any such bet as that. Donnelly says he did. Take your choice.”
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