But I forced all that out of my mind. I had to get this evening over with. I had to get Ronny Chernow, get that signed statement of confession back and get him arrested for all he’d done. That was a big order.
What would happen if I went straight to Chernow, now, confronted him with the whole thing? He’d laugh at me, deny it, say I was drunk. Or possibly he would kill me. Or Vivian and Smitty, his hired help would either be there, or get there after I arrived. No. That was out. I had to learn more, first, at least.
I remembered that the confession I’d been forced to sign implicated Liz Tremayne. I didn’t doubt but what she’d been in on all this with Chernow. But I could not figure his mentioning her in the confession. Monday, when the whole thing came out, she’d be on the spot, too. She certainly wouldn’t protect Chernow, then. There was only one answer to that. She’d been killed, probably, with another note and with the murder made to look like suicide, also. That would round it out nicely for Chernow. If that hadn’t happened yet, it would soon. If it hadn’t happened yet, I could save Liz’s life. Once she saw the way her partner was double-crossing her, she’d turn on him, substantiate my story. If she was still alive.
I went back into the cigar store, called Liz Tremayne. There was no answer. But I had to find out whether she was dead yet or not. Her address was on West End Avenue and I took a subway up there. It was an old, run-down apartment building, still bearing some trace of its glory days in the faded and torn canopy over the front and in the fat, whiskey-flushed doorman in his soiled uniform. There was no switchboard, but I learned from the mailboxes that Miss Elizabeth Tremayne lived in Apartment 3 M.
There had been no police cars in front of the place, no sign of excitement. I figured I’d gotten a break, that she was still alive. I rang the bell outside of her apartment. There was the click of high heels across the floor inside and the door cracked open. Then it was thrown wide. The girl who stood there didn’t look like the Liz Tremayne of Emcee Publications, Inc. Business Office. In fact, for a flashing second I didn’t even recognize her.
The hair that was always pulled into a tight, unattractive bun at the back, now flowed softly, silkily about her shoulders. It had been just washed and treated with some kind of light rinse and it looked alive and all full of shiny highlights. It was a honey color, instead of just brown.
Liz was wearing makeup, tonight. Her lips were smoothly painted and glistening. There were artfully blended touches of color at her high cheekbones. Without glasses, her eyes were beautiful. They were a flame-blue, in striking contrast to the thick, black, spiky lashes and the thin, dark, neatly formed arch of the brows above them.
She was wearing a blace lace and silk negligée, trimmed with what looked to me like pink angora. It was just held together by a belt in the front. She had everything necessary to wear something like that. What Ronny Chernow had said about her that day long ago, was true in spades. This Liz Tremayne knocked you out, all right. I couldn’t get my breath that first moment of looking at her.
“Kip!” she said. She didn’t even sound like the same girl I’d seen around the office for several years. When she’d changed her appearance she’d apparently altered her whole personality. “Kip Morgan, what are you doing here?”
I’d wanted to see what emotions registered in her eyes when she first recognized me. But it didn’t work out. I wasn’t looking at her eyes. When my gaze did finally rise to her face, she was smiling, puzzled.
“Something’s happened,” I said. “I – we’d better not talk out here.”
“Of course,” she said. “Come on in.”
She stepped aside and I moved past her, down a short hallway and into the living room. The room was large, high-ceilinged. It was furnished more like a studio than an apartment. Instead of a sofa there was a studio conch. There was no matching furniture, no upholstered chairs. There were two leather-covered lounge chairs and several straight-backed ones. There were scatter rugs on the floor and prints of good paintings decorated the blue-tinted walls. Between two enormous windows was a ceiling-high bookcase, with every other shelf decorated with knick-knacks, instead of books. I turned to Liz Tremayne.
“How well do you know Ronny Chernow?” I demanded.
She blinked. The color on her cheekbones seemed to darken. She held her hands clasped in front of her. Her voice was distant, cool, when she said: “What’s this all about? You have no right to come barging in here, uninvited, questioning me about my private life!”
“All right,” I said. I gave it to her right between the eyes. “Chernow has been embezzling Emcee Publications out of thousands of dollars for a full year. You’ve been his accomplice. I have proof, so don’t try to deny it.”
She fell back away from me as though I’d slapped her. She went deadly pale and now the spots of rouge on her cheeks stood out like red poker chips. Her hands clenched together until the knuckles stood out whitely.
“You must be insane!” she said. “Making an accusation like that! What in the world’s the matter with you, Kip? What’s made you say – or even think a thing like – embezzling funds? How?” She glanced toward the door of another room, a reflex action, but then caught it and turned her gaze quickly back to me again.
I got a crawling feeling up my spine. Supposing Ronny Chernow, when he heard from his gun-goons – Vivian and Smitty – that I’d escaped, had anticipated me, come straight here. He could be hiding in that room, right now, waiting to kill me himself, not trusting to hirelings this time.
I took a big, gulping breath and without waiting, or giving myself a chance to get really scared, I whirled around Liz Tremayne and walked to that room. While I was fumbling inside the door for the light switch, Liz leaped at me, tried to yank me away. But she was too late. My fingers found the wall switch and the room flooded with light. Liz stood trying to pull me away from the doorway.
It was a bedroom, furnished with cheap maple furniture. There was nobody hiding there. But on the bed were two expensive alligator leather suitcases and a woman’s purse. I started toward them and Liz grabbed my shoulder, wheeled me around, got in front of me, blocking me off.
“You have no right!” she half screamed. “This is my apartment. Get out of here! Get out! I’ll call the police – have you thrown out!”
She was strong. She kept pushing me back toward the doorway to the living room, away from those bags on the bed. She was so strong, she kept throwing me off balance, gradually forcing me out of the room. It was no time to be gentlemanly. I grabbed her by the wrists and flung her with every bit of strength in me, away from me. She went spinning and hit the wall with her back, jarring her, so that hair fell down over one eye. She leaned back against the wall, her head forward and lowered a little, her beautiful eyes, frightened, angry, blurred with tears, looking up at me through the thick black lashes. She was half sobbing.
“Call the police?” I said. “Go ahead. I’m going to do it, anyhow, when I get through here. Now, stay away from me. If you interfere, I’ll have to knock you out.” Big, tough Kip Morgan, a real rough cookie – when he was up against an unarmed girl. But I had to do it.
I went over to the bed and snapped open one of the suitcases. It was filled with women’s clothing. On the top, lying face down, was a framed photograph. I turned it over and looked down into a portrait of smirking, handsome Ronny Chernow, dressed like Mr John K. Rockabilt. I put it back down, shut the suitcase. I picked up the purse, opened it. Along with all the usual feminine junk, there was an airlines envelope, containing two one-way flight tickets to Mexico City. I put them back, then tossed the purse back onto the bed.
“You and Ronny were running out on the whole thing, eh?” I said. “To Mexico.”
She was still leaning against the wall. The tears had finally squeezed out of her eyes and were running down her cheeks. She pushed the hair back from her forehead and shook her head. Her gaze dropped away from mine, fell to the floor.
“How did you find out about it, Kip? We – we thought we
had plenty of time. Until Monday, at least, maybe longer. Where’s Ronny? Have the police got him?”
She could have been acting, but I didn’t think so. There was a whipped tone to her voice. And the packed bags and the airline tickets told of her innocence. She was getting the big double-deal from Chernow and didn’t even know it. Yet. She was being made a patsy, too, right along with me.
“I don’t know where Ronny is!” I told her. “How’d I find out about this? Because Chernow paid a guy and a girl to lure me to a hotel room. They beat me into signing a confession that I’d been the one taking the money, pulling that phoney check racket for the past year. Then they were going to throw me out of the window. It would look as though I’d committed suicide. You and Ronny Chernow would have been beautifully cleared. Neither of you would have had a thing to worry about Monday morning.”
Her eyes widened. “But – but I don’t understand. Why didn’t Ronny tell me about all this? He told me that because I was implicated there wasn’t any way of framing it on anyone else. We – we talked about that. We discussed trying to put it all onto you. Kip. But Ronny said we couldn’t – not and keep in the clear. He still had over five thousand left when he sold out what was left of his stocks. He said with just a few thousand we could live well for a few months in Mexico and that he had some connections down there, that there was plenty of money to be made down there for a man with brains and looks and personality. So we were going to run for it. By now, I didn’t care. I–I was just glad that it was over . . . I–I guess he must have made a last minute change in plans and figured some way to put it onto you and still keep me in the—”
“No,” I cut in on her. “He didn’t. He planned it this way right from the beginning, Liz. I forgot to tell you. Your name was mentioned in that confession letter I was forced to sign. It fully implicated you. The only one Ronny Chernow kept in the clear was himself. The way he was going to do that was to kill you, too. Another suicide. That would tie it all up.”
She shook her head violently from side to side. Her mouth was slack, her eyes wild, trapped-looking. “No!” she cried. “You’re wrong! It couldn’t be that. Ronny wouldn’t do that to me!” Her voice broke. “He loves me. We were going to be married in Mexico! You’re wrong, wrong, all wrong!”
“He never loved you,” I told her. “Or he wouldn’t have gotten you into this in the first place. A guy like Chernow isn’t capable of love, not real love. He liked you – he went for you – big, maybe. But not any more, Liz. He got tired of you. He was through with you. He wanted to get rid of you. This gave him an out on that, too.”
She had her face in her hands, now. Her soft, silky, honey-colored hair hung over her hands as she bent her head. I couldn’t hear her sobbing but I could see her shoulders shaking. I could see a vein standing out in her throat. She was pitiful. I felt a little sorry for her.
“Liz,” I said softly. “How could you get mixed up in a thing like this – with a big-mouthed, phoney louse like Chernow? How do these things happen?”
After a moment she got control of herself. She looked at me, her eyes raw-red from crying, her makeup smeared. “How?” she said. Her voice was ragged, bitter. “All right, I’ll tell you how. Maybe you’ll feel sorry for me. Maybe you’ll figure some way to give me a break.”
She told me. The beginning was an old story. Ronny Chernow was her boss. They worked late together a couple of nights. He bought her dinner. They had some drinks. It went on from there. She’d never known a man like Chernow, before. She was impressed, awed, overwhelmed by the way he dressed and the way he spent money, the places he took her.
“Places girls who work for a living, who are drab and plain, dream about, see in the movies, read about in the papers and that’s all,” she said. “The most expensive nightclubs. The clubhouse at Belmont. Flashy gambling places over in New Jersey. And Ronny – he was so smart about everything. He taught me how to fix myself up, how to dress. He made me – pretty! So that I felt as good as any of the women in those places. He drove me around in a Cadillac – a Caddy, Kip!”
“Didn’t you wonder where he got the money, how he did all that on his salary?” I asked.
“He told me he was very lucky at gambling and played the market shrewdly,” she said. “Listen, every night I was in such a dream world, I didn’t think, didn’t care how it was happening. Do you question miracles? Of course, in the daytime, at the office, I’d go back to my old personality. Ronny said it would be better that way, wouldn’t cause any talk.”
Then she told me how he trapped her. They went to Atlantic City for a weekend. He took a fifty-dollar-a-day hotel suite. He lost several hundred dollars at the race track there. When it was all over, he told her about the four fake artist’s checks that he’d put through and held out and cashed, how it was a plan he’d long had in mind. He told Liz Tremayne that she was going to have to cover for him.
At first she refused. She was horrified, sick over it. But he cajoled and threatened. He said if she didn’t cooperate with him and he got caught, he’d involve her, anyhow. He told her that it would just be this once and there was no possible way of it being found out for nearly a year. She gave in, then. She covered for him. Then she was trapped and it became a regular thing.
“I knew we were going to have to face the music at the end,” she finished. “But by then I didn’t care, Kip. I didn’t care. I was so damned in love with the man that I didn’t care about anything. Do you understand, Kip . . . But now he’s – done this – to me!”
She started to cry again, but suddenly jerked convulsively all over. She cut off the weeping. She forced a little half-smile around her mouth. The negligée was half falling away from one shoulder but she didn’t do anything about it, even though she was conscious of the way I was staring. I couldn’t help it. Even now, after all this, she was still breathtakingly beautiful.
“Kip,” she said. She started slowly toward me. “Kip, I–I can’t go to prison. I–I just can’t! Kip, I never noticed before, but you’re handsome, too. And you’re clever. You’ve got personality, too, Ronny Chernow isn’t the only one. You’d make out fine in Mexico, too. I’d help you, Kip; help you a lot! We’d make a striking couple!”
“Don’t be crazy, Liz,” I said. “I’ve got a wife, a family. Are you out of your mind? Stay away from me. It’s no good, Liz.”
But she kept walking, slowly, provocatively, her hands running down over her own hips, pulling the negligée tautly over them, lowering it from the shoulder some more. Watching her, little electric shocks started shooting all through me. My breath seemed to catch and hurt in my chest. Her eyes had cleared from the crying spell, now. Her teeth were very white and even against the red lips as she smiled.
“Mexico, Kip,” she whispered. “You must’ve had dreams, too. I – I’ve got five hundred dollars in cash in my purse. That’s worth a lot more in Mexico. We’ve already got the ticket. The plane leaves at seven in the morning. You’re going with me, Kip. We’ll both put all the past behind us – all of it. We’ll start over.”
I tried to back away from her, but my legs bumped against the bed. She came right up close against me. The faintly musky scent of her filled my nostrils, my whole head. I began to tremble. She pressed against me and her long, carmine-nailed fingers grasped my lapels.
“Just you and me, Kip,” she said, her voice so low and throaty I couldn’t have heard it if her lips hadn’t been only an inch or so away from mine.
Her hands slid from my lapels up around my neck, then to the back of my head. They pulled my head toward her. Her mouth burned against mine and the lights in the room seemed to pinwheel. All thought, all reason went up in a burst of flame in my brain.
I found myself holding onto her by the upper arms, my fingers digging into their soft flesh.
And then the whole thing exploded. It was a muffled explosion, like clapping two thickly gloved hands together hard. Liz Tremayne went limp and, still gripping her upper arms, I was half pulled over with her.
I looked at her face. Her eyes stared up at me, wide open and completely blank and horrible.
Her mouth hung slack and wet. I looked over her head toward the doorway.
Ronny Chernow was standing there. He was holding one of the pillows from the studio couch bent over double across one of his hands. For a second I wondered what he was doing with it. Then I saw the smoke wisping out from under the folded pillow. I couldn’t see the gun at all but I knew it was there.
My hands eased from Liz Tremayne’s arms and she went down to her knees and then toppled over onto one side. There was a very tiny black hole in the back of the negligée, near the left shoulder blade. Red shiny stuff was beginning to ooze out of it onto the floor.
“She’s quite a gal, eh, Morgan,” Chernow said. “She can really turn it on, can’t she? She was giving you full voltage. I taught her that stuff, Morgan. And all you jerks in the office thought she was such a pot, not worth a play. How wrong can you get?”
“Very,” I said. “Very wrong, Chernow. As wrong as you’ve gotten. Now, you’ve just committed murder on top of everything else.”
Ronny Chernow’s thick, masculine brows raised. His hair was still curly and tousled, boyishly. He was still the expensively dressed, handsome, arrogant man-about-town. If you didn’t look too closely. But now I could see the glassy gleam in his eyes, and there was a brutal twist to his thin, well-shaped lips. There was a nervous tic at one corner of his mouth. Maybe he didn’t realize yet but this was all having an effect on him.
“You’ve got it wrong,” he said. He gave a quiet, confident laugh. “I haven’t killed anybody. I didn’t embezzle all that money. I didn’t sign that confession that’s in the mail right now, will be in old Malkom’s hands, Monday morning. I didn’t come here and shoot Liz . . . You did all those things, Morgan. Don’t you see the way it is?”
The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction Page 20