by Lionel White
Nothing happened.
“She must be shy,” he said. “Come on, we’ll get her. Maybe she wants an escort.”
He reached out, grabbing me by the hair and swinging me around. The gun prodded me in the back. We started marching into the bedroom. I was just about at the door when I felt the gun muzzle leave my back and sensed that he had stopped. There was a long low whistle. Mr. Battle had finally found what he had come looking for.
Well, twist my dirty—” he said, using an expression I hadn’t heard in twenty-five years. He whistled again and I half turned around.
His eyes went from the suitcase full of money to my face and he slowly shook his head.
“You really are the most careless man I have ever known,” he said. “Leaving this loot just lying around like so much hay in a hopper. Tish, tish.”
Almost reverently he reached over and flipped the lid of the suitcase shut.
“Let’s see if the girl is one half as pretty,” he said.
But Battle was disappointed and his disappointment was only matched by my own surprise. Because Marilyn K. was no longer in the bedroom. She wasn’t in the bedroom and she wasn’t in the bathroom. In fact, she wasn’t any place in the suite at all. The moment I saw that the Venetian blind was pulled up and the window open a crack at the bottom I realized what had happened. I understood the noises I had heard.
I don’t know whether Battle realized that she had been there and had sneaked out while we had been talking or not. But in any case, her absence didn’t seem to bother him.
“So the chick is gone,” he said. “Too bad, but after all, a man can’t have everything.” He pulled the window tight and dropped the blind.
I had finished up with all the jokes and now I was getting a little desperate for something to say. And I was getting a little tired of playing charades.
“So you have me and you have the money,” I said. “That doesn’t prove it is Marcus ’ money and even if it is, it doesn’t prove that I took it from him. But you are an officer of the law. I suggest you take me in and book me—on any charge you like. I’ll do my explaining in front of the proper authorities. ”
I had decided to play it serious from now on, but so, unfortunately, had he. He slapped me again and froze the other side of my face.
“Right now I am the proper authority,” he said. "And let’s stop with the wise-guy stuff. I know all the answers. You killed Marcus and you took his dough.”
“Sure,” I said. “Sobook me.”
My face had only the two sides so he decided to start on my abdomen. This time he used his fist and I doubled up and went down on the bed. I was still trying to get my breath as he outlined it for me.
“We don’t need no higher authority,” he said. “I got you and I got the evidence. You, I don’tcare about; the evidence, I do. I’m not even going to bother to take you in.”
“But you are going to take the evidence?”
Yeah—I’m going to take the evidence.”
I ma great one for talking before I think what I am going to say and I did it again.
Great, I said. “I can’t think of a quicker way for you to commit suicide. Those friends of Mister Marcus are going to be around soon, looking—”
I should have saved my breath.
Thats where you fit in, buddy,” Battle said. “They’ll find you. And—
don’t interrupt me now—they’ll find the money. Some of it. Say maybe a few grand. That I can spare.”
The canvas was complete at last. He had finished his diagram.
"And of course I am going to tell them that I just swallowed the remainder of the money,” I said, “and they will believe me.”
“I don’t think they would believe you,” Battle said, “but that doesn’t really matter. You see, Russell, you are not going to be in any position to talk. When they find you—or later—or ever.”
It hit me then—full in the face. I knew exactly what he had planned from the second he keyed that door open. If he found the money—and he fully expected to—I was to be set up as the patsy. But not a live patsy. A dead patsy.
I was no longer afraid of the gun in his hand.
He’d kill me—he had to kill me—but he couldn’t do it with the gun. The sound of the shot would bring people and people were the one thing in the world he couldn’t stand to have around. Not until he had knocked me out and gotten me and the suitcase away from the motel.
Oh, he was going to murder me all right. There wasn’t the slightest doubt about that. But not with a gun and not until he had me safely away.
I opened my mouth to yell.
The hand is faster than the eye and it is certainly faster than the larynx. His hand was over my mouth and his knee buried itself in my groin. I would have bent double in agony but I couldn’t. He had already slammed me to the bed and with his knee still in my lower stomach, he was holding me now by the throat, cutting off my breath. I knew he wanted to get me out of the place alive if he could.
I could feel the blood throbbing in my temples and the room began to grow dim. I couldn’t retain consciousness for more than another couple of seconds and I was completely powerless to move. My eyes were popping and I could barely see when suddenly it seemed that a shadow drifted over his shoulder. I was dimly wondering if I was seeing some sort of optical illusion when there was the sudden unmistakable sound of a hard object smacking against solid flesh.
I blanked out for a matter of seconds and when I opened my eyes, the pressure at the throat was gone. The knee was still in my groin but again there was no pressure. I was in agony but I heaved and he rolled off me.
I shook my head, pulling myself to a sitting position on the bed as his body slid to the floor. It took me another few seconds to focus.
Marilyn slowly came to life out of the fog which surrounded her and she looked just as sweet and young and adorable as she always looked. Even standing there with the tire iron in her hand and the tiny frown between her azure blue eyes.
“A very nasty man,” Marilyn K. said. “Did he hurt you bad, baby?”
# “He damn near killed me, ” I said, choking out the words. I looked down at
Battle, surprised to see him lying there at my feet with his nasty mouth opened wide and the gurgling sounds coming from his throat. He was out like an exploded flash bulb. I hadn’t believed that even a tire iron could make an impression on that anthropoid skull. I had to hand it to Marilyn—whiskey bottle or tire iron, she was a genius.
“I heard everything he said,” she said. "Everything. And Suzy still hasn’t showed up.”
She was also a genius with the non sequiturs.
Chapter Six
I started to stand up, but fell back to the bed and my hands went to where his knee had been. The pain was excruciating.
“He’s a filthy man,” Marilyn said, looking at me with eyes filled with sympathy. “If he has injured you I’ll kill him. And the language he used. Have you got a pocketknife with you, honey?”
I looked up at her in quick alarm.
“He didn’t do anything permanent,” I said. “And for God’s sake, I’m not going to—”
“Silly,” she said. “I just want the knife to cut the cords from the Venetian blinds. We have to tie him up.”
“He doesn’tlook like he’ll be moving around for some time,” Isaid. Iman-aged to reach down and get the gun which had fallen to the carpet.
“We’ll tie him up anyway,” Marilyn said.
I had a knife and while she cut the cords from the blinds, she explained how, while we had been talking, she'd climbed out the window and gone around and gotten the tire iron from the trunk of my car. She came back through the door he’d left open and she’d come just in time.
Who is he, anyway?” she asked. “And how did he know you?”
His name’s Battle and he’s a deputy sheriff. The private stooge of an as
sistant D. A. named Fleming. I met him this morning down the road when I went out for a breath of
air.”
She looked at me curiously.
Well, he was right about one thing. You do manage to get around. Here,” shesaid, handing me a length of cord. "Tiehim.”
It will be a pleasure, ’ ’ I said. ‘ ‘And then, honey, we are leaving. We are leaving just as fast as we can get out of here. Suzy or no Suzy, you and I are blow-
ing. This place is getting hotter than the hinges of hell.”
“Please don’t swear, Sam,” Marilyn said. “And we are not leaving. We can’t leave now.”
“We can’t leave?” I guess I must have raised my voice to a near scream. “Dear God, don’t you realize that this guy is a deputy sheriff? You said you overheard what he had to say. That someone spotted my car when I stopped to pick you up. Honey, we have to get out of here. Right this minute.”
She shook her head, looking stubborn.
“I don’t care about Suzy,” I yelled. “I tell you—”
“But it isn’tSuzy any longer,” she said.
I opened my eyes wide.
"Well, if it isn’t Suzy then just why—■?"
“Socks,” she said.
“Socks?”
“Socks. Socks Leopold. He's outside. In the cocktail lounge. Isaw him when I was coming in with the tire iron. He has Binge and Hymie with him.
I sank back on the bed.
“Give it to me slow,” I said. “I’m still a little punchy. I’ve been through a lot today. Who is Socks and who is Binge and who is Hymie?”
She sighed and spoke slowly, as though she were explaining the facts of life to a not too bright thirteen-year-old.
“Socks is Marcus’ boss. He's the one who really runs things—both in New York and Florida and in Cuba. Aurelio—Mr. Marcus—was just really a sort offrontforhim.
“Great,” I said. “Just great! And who are Binge and Hymie?”
“Well, I don’t really know. Except Mr. Marcus always called them in when someone gave him trouble. Binge and Hymie took care of the trouble.
“So Binge and Hymie are the muscle and your Socks is the brain,” I said. “God, this is just great. Here we are, with a half-dead deputy sheriff on our hands and outside we have a little reception committee. Tell me, did they see you? Do they know you are here?”
“I’m sure they don’t,” Marilyn said. “I saw them first and I am sure they didn’t see me.”
“Then why did they come here?”
“It’s simple, silly,” she said. “Don’t you see? They heard about what happened to Mister Marcus and they drove down here. They went to find out what happened to the—well, they just want to find out what happened. So they had to stay some place and this is the only decent place around.
And so they just accidentally came here and checked in,” I said, my voice a little desperate.
But they didn't check in. They just stopped by to have dinner. Maybe they will check in, but they haven’t yet.”
“How can you tell?”
“There was no one in the lobby and I looked in the registration book. They weren’t checked in.”
“Under other names?”
“No. I saw Socks’ car outside and checked the license number. The book has the license numbers of the cars which check in. They will go away after a while, but in the meantime we have to stay here.”
I shook my head.
"Honey,” I said. “You are not thinking very clearly. Suzy is due any minute now. Remember? When she comes, and they see her—”
“That’s all the more reason why we have to stay,” Marilyn said. She saw the expression on my face and hurried on. “Please,” she said. “Please, I have it all figured out.”
“You have what figured out?” I guess I sounded a little hysterical.
“Everything,” she said. “I overheard just about all that this horrible man said to you.”
She was beginning to lose me again.
“Don’t you see his plan?’ she asked, shaking her head sadly.
“His plan?”
"Yes. Like he was going to do to you. Only we will do it to him. You go out and get the car and drive around to the carport in back. We’ll gag him if he comes to and then you just take him in the car and you leave him somewhere. With some of the money on him. I hate to give up any of the money, ’ ’ she continued, rather sadly, “but it will be best. A whole package of hundred-dollar bills. They have the Havana bank wrappers still around them.
“Well, wherever you leave him, you have to make it look like it was an accident. Like he was hit by a car or something. And then you get right to a phone and you call the state police and you tip them off to where he is. Then they find him and the money and put two and two together.”
“And your pal Socks will figure he was the first one at the scene of the accident and got away with the loot,” I finished for her. “And in the meantime, those apes will see your sister and will case this joint and turn up the real loot and—”
Please,” Marilyn said. “Please, honey. Listen. Of course Suzy will come and they may see her. But they won’t dare actually do anything as long as Suzy and I stay here at the motel. They are much too smart for that. And I want them to come in. I want them to look for the money. But they won’t find it.”
“Why not?”
Because you will have the money with you. Don’t you see, honey? They search the room and they don't find the money. And then the story is out that this Battle is found unconscious with some of the money on him. They won’t be bothering me anymore. They’ll be trying to get to him to see who was in it with him when he found Marcus’ body. While they are doing that, well, that’s when Suzy and I will duck out to meet you. ”
I drew a long sigh and shook my head. She was good. She was very, very good.
“And you trust me to take the money?” I said.
She gave me that almost sly look from under her eyelids. A look that suddenly wanted me to forget the pain in my groin and forget just about everything but the hours we had spent together that afternoon.
“Of course I trust you, honey.”
I nodded. She could make a guy feel wonderful.
“There’sjust one flaw,” Isaid. “I’ll have the money and Socks can’t, or his boys can’t, know about that. But one guy will know. Battle. And sooner or later, after he is found, he is going to—”
I didn’t like the way she was looking at me.
“I’mnotgoingto kill him,” Isaid. “Baby, I love you a great deal and I love money, but I am not—”
"Sam,” she interrupted in shocked surprise, “who ever suggested anything like that? Of course you aren’t going to kill him. Who ever suggested that you should? There will be no reason to. By the time he does come to and tells his story—which I don’t think he would even dare tell—why, by then you won’t have the money if they do pick you up and it will just be his word against yours.”
“I won’t have the money? I thought you said—”
She sucked in her lips and shook her head.
“After you drop Battle,” she said, “you must drive straight into Baltimore. I don’t think it is very far and as I remember you pass an airport on the way. Friendship Airport, I think it is called. Well, cut in and go to the waiting room. You will find a whole lot of lockers where passengers on the airlines check luggage while they are waiting between planes. So you just check the suitcase with the money.”
“And then?”
“And then you put the key in an envelope, but be sure to wrap it well in a couple of pieces of paper. Address it to General Delivery. But not to yourself. Just in case you are picked up for questioning, which I don’t think you will be. Address it to, well, say Mr. and Mrs. Harold O. Southern, General Delivery, Baltimore.”
“Why Mr. and Mrs.?”
“Why so either one of us can pick it up if the other one can’t make it. And then, whichever one does, takes a train and goes to Washington. Checks into
the Statler and waits and the other one comes as soon as he can. Either you— I orSuzy a
nd me.”
Boy, I had to hand it to her. She had it figured. I began to wonder why she had ever wanted me around in the first place, except to drive her to the nearest telephone after she had been stymied there at the side of the road.
For the first time I really began to look forward to meeting sister Suzy. She had said Suzy was the bright one and took care of her. Suzy must really be something in the mental department.
One thing, however, I was quite sure about. No one in this world could top Marilyn K. in what was a far more important female activity.
Battle began to stir and his mouth opened and closed as he gasped. He reminded me, with his snaggled teeth, of a dying barracuda gasping for air.
Again she was faster than I was. She tore the pillow case in two and jammed in into his mouth, telling me to cut another piece from the Venetian blind cords. While I was cutting it, I heard a dull thwack and I turned just in time to see her again hitting him with the tire iron.
She looked up at me, shaking her head defensively.
“I really didn’t hurt him,” she said childishly. “I know how to hit so it just knocks them out and doesn’t fracture anything. Marcus' bodyguard taught me. He used to be a policeman.”
“Did he use a tire iron, too?” I couldn't help asking.
“Don’t be mean to me, Sam,” she said. “And hurry up now. It’s dark out and you better get the car around to the back. But be very careful. Don’t let anyone notice you.”
"I’ll be very, very careful,” I promised. “You don’t mind if I have a drink first, though, do you. I can use one.”
“You really should eat something before you drink any more,” she said.
I agreed with her. I needed to build up my strength. Watching her, as I poured the drink, I knew I would want every ounce of strength I could possibly get, once we were alone again. I was already dreaming about that small safe little place somewhere in South America, as I left the motel suite and went out in front to get the car.
I was tempted to stop in at the cocktail lounge on the way and see if I could pick out Marcus’ boy friends, but I resisted the temptation. I didn’t want Battle staying in that room a second longer than necessary, even if he was gagged and had his hands tied behind him. I had a lot of confidence in Battle’s resistance and his eventual capacity for making trouble, even with his hands tied.