Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer

by George Axelrod

  “Is it true?”

  “You know some of it,” she said. “You don’t know all of it. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

  “It’s bad enough.”

  “It’s pretty bad, darling.”

  I looked at her, and I realized I was crying. “Help you? How can I help you?”

  “They had me in a trap. Max and Walter. They cheated me out of everything I’d saved. I was desperate. When Anstruther died it was an accident. I was there. I lost my head. We were arguing and I lost my head. I started to hit at him. First with my fists and then with an empty bottle. All the time we were talking he was playing with the gun. I don’t think he knew it was loaded. We were half wrestling. I was screaming and swearing at him. I’m very strong and he was drunk. Then the gun went off. I didn’t kill him. It was an accident.”

  She stopped and looked at me.

  “I love you, Dick. Do you believe me when I tell you Anstruther was an accident?”

  I shook my head.

  “No good, darling. A nice try, but no good. Jean Dahl wasn’t lying when she talked to Walter. She said she heard you come in. She heard you arguing with Anstruther. Then she heard the doorbell ring. Max came in. Then she heard Max threaten to kill him and she heard you beg him not to. And then she heard the shot. I believe she heard all those things. Just the way she told them.”

  Janis began to cry very softly.

  “I believe she heard all those things. But she couldn’t see what was going on. She could only hear. If she could have seen what was going on, I think she would have seen something like this. I think she would have seen you arguing with Anstruther. I think maybe you did hit him with a bottle. But I think you probably hit him so hard you killed him. Then I think maybe you heard a noise. Or you saw something. I don’t know which. I think maybe, some way or other, you suddenly got the idea you weren’t alone in the apartment. So what I think you did was this: I think you rang the doorbell, and then started talking in Max’s voice. You had a pretty good idea there was someone listening. So you made sure whoever was listening heard you begging Max not to kill him. Then you shot him. But he was already dead when you shot him. You killed him and you framed Max. Now, how did you know there was someone in the apartment?”

  Janis looked at me and, after a moment, she spoke. Her voice was very low. “I was outside the door for almost ten minutes before I rang the bell. I heard them talking. I knew there was a girl with him.”

  “Well. Now we’re getting someplace.”

  “You’re right, Dick. It happened just like you said. Except for one little thing. One little thing. I didn’t mean to kill him. We were fighting. He was very drunk. I did hit him with the bottle. I hit him very hard. But I didn’t mean to kill him. He was a sick man. It wouldn’t have killed him if he wasn’t. I killed him, but it was an accident. Then I got frightened. And I did what you said. I knew someone was listening, so I tried to make it look as if I hadn’t done it. It was a terrible thing. I know that. But I didn’t mean to kill him. You have to believe that, Dick. It was crazy and foolish and terrible. But I didn’t mean to kill him. Do you believe me now? Do you believe me when I tell you it was an accident?” she sobbed.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Do you believe I love you?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “Try me.”

  “Go on,” I said. “What about Jean Dahl? What about her? Was that an accident, too? And what about Max? Another accident?”

  “It wasn’t me in the dark. It was Max. If he says it wasn’t, he’s lying. Jean Dahl was blackmailing him. I don’t know what with. But she was blackmailing him. He tried to get her twice before. And then in the dark he did it.”

  She let go of the sheet.

  She sat on the bed, naked to the waist.

  “I love you, Dick. You say you love me. You say nothing ever changes. If you love me, believe me.”

  “You tried to kill Max.”

  “That’s the bad part. I told him this afternoon I wouldn’t marry him. He’s a gangster, Dick. You don’t know anything about it. This isn’t the book publishing world. This isn’t nice people who read the Saturday Review of Literature and make witty remarks at cocktail parties about people they hate.

  “You don’t know anything about this. This is the jungle. You have to fight and lie and cheat to get where I am. You have to knife your friends and go to bed with your enemies. You’ve got to be hard. You’ve got to be so tough they can’t hurt you. When you’re trying to make it the people on the top are kicking you, trying to keep you down. And when you get there, the people below are trying to pull you back down. It’s a jungle, Dick. And it’s been my life for ten years.”

  I watched her. I could feel a pulse in my temple throbbing.

  “Max wanted me to marry him. I told him I wouldn’t. He said I had to. He said I had no choice. He’d tell about faking the book. And he would have. He was just as desperate as I was. He would have ruined me forever. He’s a gangster, Dick. You don’t understand him. I tried to kill him. I thought I had. I wish I had. I’d do it again.”

  She stood up slowly.

  “Look at me, Dick. Look at me.”

  I looked at her.

  Her arms were at her sides. Her body was firm but soft. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

  “I belong to you, Dick. I always have.”

  I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.

  “Help me, Dick.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Tell me you believe me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I love you, Dick. You believe that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Kiss me. You’ll know. You’ll have to know.”

  “Janis...”

  “You’ll know. You’ll know if I’m lying or not. You’ll be able to tell. I love you, Dick. Kiss me.”

  I looked at her. I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell at all.

  “Darling, I don’t know...”

  “You’ll know.”

  I dropped the gun onto the floor and moved toward her. I took her arms at the elbows and drew her close. She lifted her head. Her eyes were open. They were very serious and very deep.

  I kissed her.

  Only our lips touched. Her mouth was soft and warm.

  “All right, darling,” I said. “We’ll see. But wait a minute. Just a minute. I have something to do first.”

  I went to the door and locked it.

  Then I walked to the mirror. I picked up a chair and shattered the mirror. It broke into a thousand jagged pieces. Through the emptiness we could see the back of the picture.

  I walked to the head of the bed and began to examine the headboard.

  It took me a few minutes to find the hidden microphone. It was very cleverly concealed but I knew what I was looking for. I had to rip the whole headboard off the wall in order to get at it. I smashed through and tore out the wires.

  “So much for dear Walter,” I said.

  Then I turned to Janis.

  She began to speak again. “I’m telling you the truth, Dick. I’ve done terrible things. I admit that. But you have to believe me when I tell you I didn’t mean to kill Anstruther. And you have to believe me when I say I love you. If you believe those two things none of the other terrible things matter.”

  I looked at her for a long while, trying to decide what to do.

  “Kiss me, darling, and then you’ll know. You’ll know one way or the other. You’ll know.”

  Her lips parted and in a moment we were clinging together. My hands held the small of her back. Her arms were around me. We sank backward to the bed.

  “Darling,” I whispered. “Darling.”

  “Don’t you know? Don’t you know?”

  “I know.”

  I lay beside her kissing her again. She unbuttoned my shirt and ran her hand inside, caressing my back.

  We were close together, holding each other.
She was trembling.

  “Nothing changes,” she whispered. “It was always us. From the first. Always.”

  Then my mouth was on hers.

  The time fell away. Two bodies, two brains, two souls driving, straining, aching to be united—to become one.

  At the end, I knew.

  She was right. I knew.

  We lay breathless in each other’s arms.

  “Darling,” I said. “My darling.”

  For a long time we lay quietly, holding each other. Not speaking, not thinking. Then I sat up and found us cigarettes.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t care what you did. I don’t care what you do. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Only us. There’s a way out of this. We’ll find it. I’ll stick with you. I’ll lie or steal. Or cheat. Or kill. I don’t care. I believe you. I believe and I’ll get you out of this. I believe you.”

  “Oh, my darling.”

  “Come on,” I said. “We haven’t got much time. Max is lying in the next room. I was in his apartment this afternoon. I was seen there. My fingerprints are on the gun. What we’ll do is this: I’ll go to the police and confess. They know he was a gangster. They know my apartment was wrecked and that I was beaten up by Max’s boys. That sets it all up. I went up to talk to him. To tell him you were marrying me. We had a fight. He’s a violent man. He lost his temper and pulled a gun. I got it away from him and shot him in self-defense. We can make a case. They can’t hang me. The worst would be a year or two in jail. But they won’t do that. We’ll fix up a case. Walter will have to help us. And he’s good at that. He’s had plenty of experience framing things. Here’s one more thing for him to frame.”

  Janis’ eyes were wide. “But what about Max?”

  “He needs help,” I said. “He’s very badly hurt. Maybe nobody will find him for a while. This is the jungle. I can play rough too.”

  I put on my pants and shirt, walked to the bar and poured myself a drink. Janis pulled on her robe.

  “Listen, darling,” I said. “This is going to be tough. This is going to be the hardest thing either of us ever did. I’m betting everything on you. I believe you when you say you didn’t do it, and I’m betting my life that you’re telling me the truth.”

  “I love you,” Janis said. “You know I’m telling the truth.”

  “Now you’ve got to tell me all of it. From the beginning. If I’m going to do this I have to know it all. There can’t be any slip-ups. Any details we’ve overlooked. I’m going to ask you questions and I want you to answer them. I believe you. So I know you have nothing to hide. I know you’ll tell me the truth.”

  “Ask me anything.”

  “The first thing I have to know is this: Why did Jean Dahl come to my office and offer me a book, if she had no book? That’s one thing that worries me. And I don’t think Anstruther would have sold a book he didn’t have. In other words, I think there was a genuine Anstruther book. I think I saw one page of it. And, I think there were three hundred forty-six more pages. And I think Jean Dahl had them. She offered them to me. And she said she had another customer. Do you know if she had them? Do you know if there was another customer?”

  Janis Whitney extended her left arm.

  On her wrist was a heavy gold bracelet and a thin gold bracelet and a charm bracelet. One of the charms was a small gold key.

  It was so quiet in the room that I could hear us breathing. Janis Whitney’s breathing was soft and regular. I was breathing hard.

  Janis opened the drawer of her dressing table and took out a leather jewel box.

  She fitted the key into the lock and opened it.

  The yellow pages were not clipped together.

  There was just a loose stack of them. There were a lot of them. There could have been three hundred and forty-seven of them. She took the manuscript out of the box.

  “Is that it?” I said.

  Janis nodded. “It’s the only copy in the world,” she said. Her voice was barely a whisper. “There were two copies. I had one and Jean Dahl had the other. I didn’t know there were two. I thought I had the only one. But Jean Dahl took the other copy with her when she left Anstruther’s apartment. She sold me this one for five thousand dollars. Now I have the only copy.”

  I got out another cigarette, lighted it and put it in my mouth. My mouth was dry.

  “I’m telling you everything. I love you, Dick.”

  She put the manuscript on the dressing table.

  “Go on.”

  “Give me a cigarette.”

  I tossed her a single cigarette. She caught it. I tossed her my lighter. She lighted the cigarette and inhaled deeply.

  “Go on,” I said tensely. “Go on, darling.”

  “Dick, I can’t.”

  “You’ve got to, darling. What was in the book?” I asked softly. “What was there about it? Why did you think you had to hide it? Why did you pay five thousand dollars to get the second copy when you already had a copy?”

  Then Janis began to laugh.

  It was not a pretty thing to see.

  The sickness hadn’t showed before. It hadn’t showed even during her imitation of Max. But it showed when she began to laugh. The laughter began to get out of control.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s so funny. I can’t stand it. It’s a great joke. It’s the biggest joke. It’s so terribly funny.”

  “What is it?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I have a book,” she said. “It’s a war story.”

  She couldn’t control the laughing now. It was a terrible thing to hear.

  “What I bought was a story with an all-male cast. There’s no part for a woman. There’s not a single woman in the whole book.”

  She was laughing and sobbing now.

  I could feel the sweat break out on my forehead as I watched her.

  “The book Jimmie wrote has a wonderful part for a woman. I’ll be magnificent in that. But we have to get rid of this one first. I got rid of one copy. Now we have to get rid of the other.”

  Before I was aware of what she meant, she was holding the cigarette lighter to the bottom of the pile of yellow pages.

  “My God,” I shouted. “Stop that!”

  She went on laughing.

  “It’s my book,” she said. “I bought it. I can do whatever I want with it.”

  I was shouting hysterically as I went after her. But she was too quick for me.

  She threw the burning manuscript into the fireplace. I dove for it, and as I did so she tackled me.

  She was a dancer with a beautifully conditioned body. She was wiry and strong. I couldn’t get away from her.

  We wrestled on the floor near the fireplace.

  I got my hand into the fireplace once. Enough to burn my fingers. But she threw herself on top of me again and dragged me away. Then she hit me with something hard and scrambled to her feet.

  I got up and she was holding the gun. The look in her eyes made me forget about the book.

  “O.K.,” I said. “I was wrong. You fooled me. I believed you and I was wrong. I was wrong about everything except one thing. You’re a great actress. The greatest. You fooled me. I believed you. You killed Anstruther and Jean Dahl. And you tried to kill Max.”

  She aimed the gun carefully at me.

  “You almost did it,” I said. “You almost got me to take the rap. But you didn’t.”

  “You son of a bitch,” she said.

  “I killed Anstruther,” she said. Her voice was flat and hard. “I killed him because I wanted to kill him. It was no accident. He tried to double-cross me and I killed him.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “But the funny thing is, I believed you just now on the bed. You gave a very good performance, but then I guess you’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “I’ve had plenty of practice,” she said. She raised the gun till it was pointing to my head.

  “Don’t be a fool,” I said. “They can get you off. No jury in the countr
y will hang you. They don’t hang insane people. They just put them away.”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  My eyes were fixed on the finger on the trigger of the gun. I watched her knuckle tighten.

  I screamed as the gun clicked. The small click was loud in the quiet room.

  The safety was on.

  She did not blink. With her thumb she snapped off the safety. Then behind me, from over my shoulder, I heard Walter say, “What a touching scene!”

  The picture covering the broken mirror had slid noiselessly away and Walter stood in the opening framed by the jagged pieces of the broken mirror. He was holding a revolver very elegantly in his hand.

  “All right, my dear,” Walter said from the other side of the opening. “Drop that gun or I shall shoot you. You know I would have no hesitation in doing so.”

  She hesitated only an instant.

  But it was long enough. I had her wrist and this time there was no trouble. I twisted the gun out of her hand.

  “Keep an eye on her,” I said.

  I knelt quickly by the fireplace.

  There were a few of the pages that might possibly be salvaged. But she’d fanned them out and most of them had burned rapidly.

  “The book,” I said. “She burned the book.”

  The life had gone out of Janis Whitney’s face. Her hair was disheveled and her robe hung open.

  Mechanically, half in a daze, she picked up her hairbrush and began to brush her hair.

  My lighter was lying on the floor. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

  Inside my pocket my hand touched something.

  I pulled out Jean Dahl’s lipstick.

  It seemed like I’d been carrying it in my pocket for days.

  “Here,” I said. “Fix yourself up. Your picture’s going to be in the papers.”

  I started to toss her the lipstick.

  But I didn’t.

  I stood holding Jean Dahl’s lipstick.

  With my thumb I pushed the top up.

  I looked at it. I looked at it for almost a minute. Then I began to laugh.

  I stood there for a long time holding the lipstick in my hand and laughing. Then I put the lipstick back in my pocket.

  “The hell with it,” I said. “I’m going to remember you for a long time, darling. And it’ll be better if I remember you looking like this. It’ll be easier.”