“Do you think Donnelly had anything to do with killing him?”
Bolton shook his head. “No. They caught the man who did it. Donnelly couldn’t have had anything to do with it, anyway. He was in jail.”
“In jail? Well, how’d he make the bet?”
“Earlier. The police picked him up on suspicion of something around noon that day, and it was several weeks before he was in circulation again. And that’s the reason he didn’t have the betting slip to back up his claim. He says the police lost it when they took all his stuff away from him at the jail.”
“It sounds fishy to me,” I said.
He shrugged. “As I say, I wouldn’t know. The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m glad it’s not me he’s after.”
I felt a little cold, thinking about it. “So Donnelly wants eight thousand. And how much is it you’re after?”
“Thirty-two thousand, five hundred. I’m presenting Charlie’s bill, too.”
I stood up. “I wish you both luck,” I said. “You’ll need it.”
“You think so?” He smiled coolly. “Just give her my message.”
I went off and left him sitting there. Everything was ruined. And on top of that, she had lied to me. I was burning with anger as I stalked over to the Montlake.
She wasn’t in the apartment. I waited, walking up and down the living room, smoking one cigarette after another. I don’t know how long it was. It was the sound of bumpers clashing that finally took me to the window. I looked down and I could see her. She was trying to park the Cadillac. If it had been anyone else I’d have said she was drunk, but I knew she couldn’t be because she never drank that much. She was trying to put the car in a parking space at least two cars long and she was as clumsy at it as a rhinoceros in a tearoom. She would bang into the car in front and then go slamming back to crash into the one behind, and she never did get close to the curb. I watched her coldly, wondering what it was this time. She could put that Cadillac anywhere a parking-lot attendant could, and in half the time.
Then I saw what it was. Another car had apparently just pulled up a minute or two before, nearly up at the end of the block. It was a foreign car of some kind, and I could see the man getting out. Even nine floors up I recognized the Texas hat and the arrogant walk. It was Lachlan. He looked toward the bumper-crashing and walked back to her instead of going in the doorway. I could see them talking, and then she slid over in the seat while he walked around and got in behind the wheel. He eased it into the parking place and they both got out. They were directly below me and I could see the white blur of her face, tipped up a little, thanking him and smiling. Then they came on inside the doorway.
In a few minutes I heard her key in the apartment door. I sat down on the arm of a big chair. She came in smiling, her eyes shining with excitement, and ran over to kiss me.
“Mike, darling. I was hoping you’d be back. I did it.”
I said nothing.
She went on, babbling with amusement. “It was easy. Just a slight variation on an old theme.” She began to notice something was wrong. She looked at me questioningly. “Darling, what’s the matter?”
I reached out and caught her arm and pulled her toward me. “Nobody knows about Lachlan except us,” I said roughly. “He’s ours, our own private project.”
“Darling,” she protested, “of course nobody knows.” She took another look at my face then, and I didn’t have to spell it out for her.
“So Bolton is in town?”
“Why’d you lie to me?”
I let her hand go and she sat down, looking at the floor. At last she glanced pleadingly up at me. “Please try to understand, Mike. Don’t you see? I’d found Lachlan at last, after all those years. And I didn’t even know where to start looking for you, to help me. I had to have somebody, because I couldn’t do it alone, so I got Bolton.”
What difference did it make? I thought wearily. The whole thing was washed up anyway. “Well, for your information,” I said, “you’ve got Bolton. Right around your neck. Unless you want to hand him thirty-two thousand dollars.”
“What!”
“He says if you don’t call him, he’s going to call Lachlan and tip him off.”
She raised her head and stared at me. “Oh, he is?” she asked. She was getting that thoughtful look in her eyes again. “And just where is Mr. Bolton?”
“At the Sir Francis Drake.”
“And he wants me to call him? Well, isn’t that nice?” She stood up.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
She smiled. “Why, I’m going to call him, Mike. That’s what he wanted.”
I just sat there and watched her. She picked up the telephone and asked for the hotel.
“Mr. Bolton,” she said sweetly. “Mr. Judd Bolton. Would you ring him, please?” Then she looked at me, completely deadpan, and winked.
“Hello, Judd. How are you? This is Cathy,” she said. What now? I thought. It was old college chum greeting old college chum after an absence of five years. “Mike just now told me you were in town and said you wanted to see me. Of course, dear. Come on over. Dr. and Mrs. Rogers. We’re in Nine-A at the Montlake. Hurry over and we’ll pour you a drink.”
After she had hung up she called the desk and asked the clerk to send a boy up with some Western Union blanks. When they came she sat down at the coffee table and wrote out three or four telegrams. I merely shook the ice in my drink and waited. There was no use even trying to guess what was going to happen.
He came up about twenty minutes later. I let him in, we nodded coolly to each other, and I went out in the kitchen to fix him a drink. When I came back Cathy was still sitting at the coffee table with her telegrams and he was smoking a cigarette and smiling complacently from a big chair across from her.
“Lovely place you have here,” he said. “Nice view.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
“Nice of you to ask me over.”
“Not at all,” she said sweetly. “We’re just sorry we didn’t know sooner you were in town. I understand you were thinking of trying to get in touch with us through Mr. Lachlan.”
I sat down at the other end of the sofa, stretched out my legs, and watched them. Bolton held all the cards. You could see that in the complacent and almost patronizing way he was beginning to put the pressure on. He had us, and he knew it. He’d sweat us for a few minutes first, though, just for laughs.
“Oh, I didn’t really think that would be necessary,” he said smoothly. “I was sure you’d agree to my proposition as soon as you had a chance to examine it.”
“Why, certainly, Judd,” she said. “But how can I agree to it if I don’t know what it is?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it.” He gazed thoughtfully at the end of his cigarette like a banker getting ready to grant a two-million-dollar loan. “It would be a shame to give up this Lachlan deal, now that you’ve got so much invested in it. So why don’t we work out a deal along these lines? You turn over the thirty-two thousand, five hundred you owe me and Charlie, and then cut me in for half of this Lachlan negotiation.”
I whistled softly. There was nothing bashful about Bolton when he started tightening the screws.
“Oh, I meant to ask you,” she said smoothly, “do you know where Charlie is?”
He shook his head and smiled. “In the East somewhere, I believe. I’m not sure.”
“Well, if you’re collecting for him, how do you expect to deliver the money if you don’t know his address?”
He smiled again. “That does raise an interesting question, doesn’t it? But we needn’t go into that. I’ll be glad to accept full responsibility for delivering it, and relieve you of the worry. I know it’s been bothering you.”
“That’s very nice of you, Judd. But what if we can’t agree to your terms?”
“Oh,” he said easily, “I think you can come around to my way of thinking. Life is essentially a series of compromises.”
“But just supposing,
for the sake of argument, that we didn’t?”
“In that case, I’d have to call Lachlan.”
“Would you, really?”
“Certainly.”
She smiled. “I like your frankness. I’ll be equally open with you. The telephone is right over there by the door.”
I couldn’t see what she was driving at. Neither could Bolton. He studied her face, trying to figure it out.
“You mean that?” he asked.
“Why, surely. And I’ll even let you use it, first,” she said. “I’ll send my telegrams after you’re finished talking to Mr. Lachlan.”
“Telegrams?” he asked. I hadn’t got anything yet, but maybe he could hear the bomb beginning to tick.
“Yes. Oh, I didn’t show them to you, did I? I wrote them out while we were waiting for you. Here.” She shoved them across the table, all except one. “The first one is to the chief of police in Denver. And the other is to the bunco squad in Miami. They’re still anxious to contact a Major Jarvis Ballantine, I understand. And, of course, as far as the police here in San Francisco are concerned, I could just call them on the telephone and suggest they check with Denver and Miami and that they might find you at the Sir Francis Drake or the airport.”
He was the one who was sweating now. You could see it working on him. “You don’t mean that,” he said.
“I’ll tell you an excellent way to find out. Call Mr. Lachlan and see.”
“You couldn’t.” He was blustering a little.
“I’ve already suggested a way you can test it. You won’t know for sure until you do. You say life is a series of compromises; in a way, it’s also a series of uncertainties.”
“Yes, but there’s one thing you’ve forgotten,” he said. “And that is that I could call the police in Wyecross and tell them where you are.”
“But, why, Judd, for heaven’s sake?” she asked innocently. “Or have you forgotten something? I didn’t have anything at all to do with that, but you did.”
She had him there, in this colossal game of bluff. There was no way Goodwin or the police could ever pin any of it on her. All she had was the money.
He ground out the cigarette in a tray and got up. His face was dark with anger.
“You’re not going, Judd?” she asked. “Why, you haven’t even finished your drink.”
“What’s in it?” he asked harshly. “Arsenic, or cyanide?” He stopped at the door and looked back, and I could see him beginning to get hold of an idea. Some of his assurance returned.
“You won’t get away with it,” he said, grinning coldly. “You really overlooked something, Cathy.”
“And what is that?”
“I might—I say, I just might call Lachlan tomorrow or next week or ten days from now from Seattle or Los Angeles or Jersey City. And you wouldn’t know it. Maybe you didn’t think of that. There’s an interesting little uncertainty for you. How would you like working on a mark who’s been wised up and has the bunco squad sitting on the side lines waiting for you to make your pitch?”
I hadn’t thought of that, and now that I got a look at all the deadly beauty of it I could feel the butterflies in my stomach. Wouldn’t that be a setup? We’d never know whether Lachlan had been tipped off or not until the actual moment they closed in on us. It would be like trying to disassemble an unfamiliar land mine in the dark; the only way you’d know when you had the trigger was when it went off. She couldn’t have any answer for that one. Or did she? I looked at her and she was smiling again.
“Oh, how stupid of me,” she said. “I knew I had forgotten something. I didn’t show you the other telegram.”
“The other one?”
“Why, yes. This one.” She held it out, but he made no move to take it. “It’s to the Chicago police. Just a little tip that they might get in touch with you by contacting your mother out in Oak Park. Think what a revelation that’ll be. To both the police and your mother. Can’t you just see the headlines? ‘Son of Prominent Committeewoman Sought.’”
I watched his face. It was the first time I’d ever been able to see very far into Bolton, and now that I did I didn’t find it a very comforting sight. He looked at both of us with his hand on the door and said, “That’s one I’d advise you not to send, Cathy.”
That was all. He went out and closed the door.
Thirteen
He’d called it an interesting uncertainty, and that was probably the understatement of the year. Would he, or wouldn’t he? It could drive you crazy. Who had outbluffed whom?
Fortunately, I didn’t have time to stew about it that night. I met Lachlan, at last.
We were going out to dinner and stopped in the cocktail lounge in the building. It was the usual chi-chi sort of place, with white leather upholstery in the booths, a girl playing a Hammond organ, and just enough light to grope your way around. The place was almost empty. We had just sat down at a booth and ordered our drinks when I saw him come in. He didn’t notice us at first, and sat down at the bar. When his drink came he looked up and saw her in the mirror.
He didn’t know me, and she hadn’t asked him. He came over anyway, with his drink in his hand. “Hello, there,” he said.
It was just the sort of break we’d been hoping for, but it still got under my skin. She looked up, pretending she had just noticed him, and smiled. “Why, hello. It’s Mr.—ah—”
“Lachlan, folks,” he said heartily. “Remember? The parking-lot attendant.”
She made the introduction. “This is my husband, Dr. Rogers. Darling, Mr. Lachlan. The man who helped me park the car.”
I stood up and we shook hands. “Join us?” I asked, with as little invitation as I could get into it. I was supposed to play it very cold and close-mouthed, the way we had it worked out, but it wasn’t any act.
He jerked his head for the waiter to bring a chair, and sat down at the end of the table. We’d hardly touched our drinks, but he insisted on ordering two more.
“Doctor?” he asked. “Are you an M.D.?”
I shook my head curtly. “Veterinarian.”
He dismissed that with a grunt. “Oh?” he said, and turned to Cathy. “You know, Mrs. Rogers, I could swear I’ve seen you somewhere before. You’re not in the movies, are you?”
It was pretty crude, especially from a middle-aged goat who was old enough to be her father. I had a pleasant moment thinking of how, normally, she’d let the air out of any oaf who’d pull something like that, but now she took a bow on it, looking flattered and a little overcome, like a girl at her first prom. “No,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “I’ve never been any nearer Hollywood than right here.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” he boomed. He turned and included me in the conversation again. “Doctor, I notice you drive a Jaguar. How do you like it?”
“Pretty well,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to race it yet.”
“They’re not bad. I had one for a while, but I got rid of it and picked up that Italian job I’ve got now. There’s a car. Of course,” he added, with an offhand wave of the paw, “it costs a lot more.” He was one of those people who manage to rub their money in your face like grating a nutmeg.
“By the way,” he went on, “Mrs. Rogers said you lived a long time in Peru. You ever do any fishing around Cape Blanco?”
This was one of the ticklish parts of it. Cathy’d been to Peru with her mother one year, but I’d never been there. We were pretty sure he hadn’t either, but weren’t absolutely certain of it.
I shook my head. “No. I was mostly up in the mountains. Little trout fishing was all.”
“Oh, trout.” He consigned trout fishing to the category of sissy pastimes like making your own clothes or painting teacups. “I was hoping you might have tried it. Never been there myself. The usual places, Bimini, Acapulco, and so on, but somehow I always missed Blanco.”
“Oh?” I said.
He brought us up to date on what kind of physical condition you had to be in to fight martin, and
asked us to guess his age. We both knew he was either forty-eight or forty-nine, so I said forty-one and Cathy said forty. He told us he’d played football in college, and that he could go out there right now and run through a scrimmage without raising a sweat. He knew several movie stars. He kept a forty-foot cruiser at San Diego. But I kept noticing he never mentioned Central America. That was good.
Most of this was directed at Cathy, but occasionally he would remember I was there too and make an effort to work me into the conversation. “What kind of work do you do mostly, Doc?” he asked. “Horses? Dogs? That sort of thing?”
“I’m not doing any at all at the moment,” I said.
Cathy took it off the backboard. “Dr. Rogers hasn’t practiced for several years, though he used to work mostly with race horses. Lately, he’s become interested in research.”
“For the government?”
She shook her head. “Just for himself. You see, his father was a medical missionary in the Andes and as a child he became interested in the Indians and—”
I shot her a dirty look, trying not to make it too obvious, and she let it trail off rather lamely into something vague about high altitude and diet. While she was still floundering around with it, I glanced at my watch and said curtly we had to start to dinner. The whole thing was brusque to the point of rudeness. I shook hands rather coldly with Lachlan as we stood up, thanked him for the drink, and said with no sincerity at all that I hoped we would see him again. As we were leaving and were almost, but not quite, out of earshot, I snapped at her in Spanish, “Long tongue!”
* * *
That night after dinner we worked on the plan some more. We had an argument to begin with, but she finally won me over. I said her whole idea was too subtle for a meat-headed egotist like Lachlan, that he never stopped talking about himself long enough to be curious about anything or anybody.
She disagreed with me. “You’re wrong, darling. He’s just intelligent enough to get it, without being smart enough to see through it or be afraid of it. God knows you’re right about his egotism, but you shouldn’t cry about that. I’m the one who’s going to have to listen to him. And it’s in our favor, anyway. What could be more intoxicating to a conceited gas bag like that than the knowledge that he’s outsmarted us and found out what you’re doing—when he does, of course? And he’s already put one thing over on us. He understands Spanish as well as we do, and we don’t know that. I suppose you noticed that in all that monologue of his there was never anything about Central America.”
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