I made a record getting downstairs to see Peter Warren Winthrop. He had plenty to say and not much breath to say it with.
“It’s the truth, Ransom, so help me,” Pete Winthrop said. His athletic shoulders twitched under a gabardine topcoat and he sounded like a guy who has experienced a profound shock, like encountering a herd of polka-dotted zebras. “I know it’s hard to believe. I could scarcely believe it myself. But it’s true.”
We were outdoors, pacing the patio flagstones. Behind us, Heinrich’s cubistic wigwam was buttoned up tighter than a bald man’s scalp, and I’d warned the butler to keep it that way when I ankled out to parley with the Chaple Arms bellhop. Keeping step with him now, and holding to the thick shadows, I had my gat in my grasp and my peepers peeled for possible peril.
“How’d you discover it, son?” I said.
“I – I had put through another call to your friend Brunvig at Homicide Headquarters, but as soon as I mentioned your name to him and said I was phoning to report the same murder you had told him about, he slammed up on me. Then I got an idea.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded, and told me about it. “I decided I would go out and try to find any kind of policeman – you know, a motorcycle officer or radio prowl car cop, maybe even a flatfoot pounding a beat. Anybody with a badge and a little authority. But first I wanted to make sure none of the tenants up on three would wander into Three-seventeen and see Duffy’s corpse and throw the whole house into a panic. I couldn’t remember whether we had left the door of the suite open or closed, locked or unlocked.”
“So you went up there.”
“Yes. And he was gone. Duffy, I mean. Vanished. Not a trace of him. Do you realize what that means? It means that Fullerton, or Barclay as you called him – it means he was there in the hotel all the time. Hiding some place. Hiding while you and I went down and started phoning from the lobby.” The punk shivered visibly in his topcoat. “You’d gone away and left me there with a killer. And he had moved Duffy’s body as soon as the coast was clear.”
“Moved it where?”
“How should I know? Not in any of the broom closets or linen pantries. I looked. I was scared, but I looked anyhow. But I didn’t try any of the rooms. We’ve got a full house, everything occupied. I couldn’t very well start knocking on doors, asking guests to let me in so I could search for a dead man. I didn’t know what to do. Then I figured I’d better come here and tell you about it. I figured you might have some angles.”
“All I ran into was curves,” I said dourly.
I was thinking of Marian Heinrich and her star bath. She would do no more star bathing tonight. Thick, sinister clouds were drifting in from Santa Monica, sullen and ominous, wrapping up the stars in black cotton batting. You couldn’t see the surrounding hills, you couldn’t even see the flagstones you were walking on. All you could see was a mental image of something maniacal and monstrous, something on artificial legs stalking you through a darkness as thick as oatmeal cooked in a vat of dye.
“He was clever,” Pete Winthrop said. “Nobody can prove he murdered Duffy if Duffy’s corpse can’t be found. The cops will never believe your story, now. Which gives him a clear field to ambush Heinrich.”
“Not while we do sentry duty,” I said.
“We?”
“Beat it if you’re yellow,” I growled. “I’ll do what has to be done.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said apologetically. “I was just flattered to think you wanted me.” Impressed. Boyish. A punk with a chance to assist a private dick and overwhelmed by it. And a little uncertain, too. “Mightn’t it be a good idea to phone the law again and try to persuade them to send somebody to help us stand guard?”
7. Fingers of Guilt
We had paced all the way back to the front door by that time, Peter and I. And as if in answer to his suggestion, the portal opened not more than half an inch.
“Mr Ransom, sir,” came through the opening in a shaky whinny.
“Close that door and keep it locked!” I rasped.
“Y-yes, sir,” the butler said. “But I thought you should be informed that I fear I delayed too long in attempting to call the police as you originally suggested. Our line seems to be dead, sir.” The door swung shut and the latch clicked.
“Golly!” Pete Winthrop made a gulping noise in his gullet. “A dead phone. A cut wire. Barclay’s here – on the grounds!”
I gave him a shove. “Scatter. Stay up here on the patio level. Keep moving. I’ll patrol down along the driveway and garage. That way I’ll be set in case he tries to dry-gulch Heinrich coming home in his car. I don’t suppose you’ve got a heater?”
“Heater?”
“Gun.”
“No.”
“Barclay has, so watch out. Don’t jump him if you see him.”
“What shall I do?”
“Yell for me and duck for cover. Don’t let him get you in the open.”
We separated, and I went catfooting down the long monolithic stairway. There was one thing in our favor – the rear of the estate was walled in by a precipitous hill, barricading it against approach or escape. You couldn’t get in that way unless you used a block and tackle or descended by parachute. You couldn’t get out without a helicopter.
This made my strategy valid. The lower-level driveway was the only entrance, and the only exit. And the house itself was practically impregnable when its doors and windows were locked. Clenching my cannon, I was ready for the payoff.
Silence pressed down around me. With the coming of the clouds, even the hillside crickets had quit being chirpy. I kept listening for anything that might sound like the metallic clank of artificial legs in motion, the scrape of soles on cement paving.
Away back in the recesses of my think-tank something bothered me, something that refused to be dragged out so I could inspect it. It was an evasive wisp, a fragment that played hide-and-seek with my subconscious. I felt the same way about it that I’d felt when I had first heard an empty room speak my name with Ronald Barclay’s voice. Haunted, uncomfortable.
I had a curious sensation that Barclay didn’t exist, that he never had existed; that everything had been a figment of my imagination. But the throbbing lump on top of my noggin contradicted any such nonsense.
Barclay had been real enough. Figments of the imagination don’t slug you to dreamland, and they don’t croak poor old deaf guys like Duffy. And I had glimpsed the maimed ham with my own optics. I had lamped him in his wheelchair, definitely legless under the lap blanket, definitely one-armed, with a shirt sleeve pinned up emptily.
“Ransom!”
The shout came hoarsely from above, and then I heard a series of scuffling sounds, the violent rustling of underbrush. I leaped for the steps, took them three at a time, catapulted across lawn and patio toward those continuing noises.
Hard by the tiled area bordering the swimming pool there was a row of clumped hydrangea bushes. I couldn’t see them stirring, but I heard them.
Flying blind, I plunged forward – and overshot the mark.
Something reached out, tripped me. As I stumbled, a heavy and panting burden landed on my back with an impact that drove me down on all fours like a bear. I didn’t lose my roscoe, but for all the good it did me I might as well have pitched it into the pool. The hand that held it was pressed knuckle-deep in loam and I couldn’t raise it, couldn’t even move it.
Weight crushed me, flattened me, and then fingers clamped around my throat from behind. They were hot, inexorable fingers as relentless as steel springs.
They throttled me, pressing against my jugular and carotid artery, collapsing my gullet and robbing my bellows of air. I bucked and arched my spine and sunfished like a rodeo bronc, but all I threw was snake-eyes. I didn’t throw my rider.
Then I didn’t throw anything. I got thrown. I was propelled headlong into the swimming pool and I sank like an anchor.
They say a drowning gee sees his whole life pass by him in a series of
flashback montage memories. Not me. I just saw the scenes of the past few hours. Plummeting downward in cold water, I reviewed everything that had happened.
My head stopped throbbing and my mind sharpened like a razor on a hone. I saw the cat eating a bird on the steps of the Chaple Arms. I saw Ronald Barclay’s hotel suite, the trick mirror in the closet door, the little padlocked alcove workshop where he had dabbled in prosthetics. I saw the defunct Duffy lying with his temple crushed in, a button fastened in one ear and wires running down to a switched-off hearing gadget he would never need again.
I saw a legless figure in a rolling wheelchair, a one-armed form with a vague blur of face and a gat in his lap, and the voice of a guy I’d once considered my friend. I had the memory of a kraut director named Heinrich who had climbed to the top of the cinema heap, slowly but implacably, until he was chief poobah of a major studio.
And I saw a voluptuous and uninhibited quail, feather-brained, black of hair and gorgeously white of skin, lolling in a darkened solarium taking a star bath, letting her lovely contours soak up cosmic rays while she expressed a fervent wish that her hubby would drop dead.
I hit bottom. And, as I hit, I found all the answers. A fine time to be finding answers, when you’re drowning at the bottom of a swimming pool.
On the other hand, when you’re a murderer and you’ve strangled a guy and dumped him in the deep six, you’ll likely stand by to see if he floats to the surface again. That’s so you can shoot him, bludgeon him or shove him under to make certain he dies – if he’s not already dead. Naturally, if he’s dead he’ll stay beneath the water and you needn’t worry about him any more.
I stayed under water.
I wasn’t deceased. I wasn’t even unconscious. But I knew if I came up for air I would be a goner. The instant my conk popped out it would be a bull’s-eye, either for a bullet or a fractured skull if I happened to be within reaching distance of the pool’s edge. I realized this even while my lungs were bursting and every muscle struggled to impel me off the bottom.
I fought it. I reverted to my stunting days when I could stay immersed as long as the scenario demanded. I held my breath, got my feet planted solidly on the slippery tile floor of the immense pool and slowly started walking. Very slowly, so I couldn’t create surface ripples. And keeping my mental fingers crossed, hoping I was headed in the right direction.
My soles detected a slant – downward.
I reversed myself. My ears were pounding now, and my chest was full of molten metal that seared and burned like a blast furnace. But I had learned which way the pool’s bottom tilted, and I was heading for the shallow end. All I needed was another minute.
Too bad Emil Heinrich was such a big shot at Paragon Pix. Too bad he had so much dough. If he had been less wealthy his swimming pool would be smaller. I could reach the shallow part sooner. But no, Heinrich had to be in the top chips. Try that on your philosophy. A guy earned too much geet, and because of it people died.
I couldn’t hold my breath any longer.
I let some of it out and it streamed up over my head like an immense balloon. Like a drifting blister. Like bubble gum. It popped and broke on the surface. I could hear it.
Okay, killer. You happy now? You know what that air-bubble spells. You’ve murdered me. That was the last of my air. Now you can go away. I’m on the bottom and I’m croaked.
Oh, yeah? That’s what you think.
The pool’s floor slanted more abruptly. I kept walking. I got my cigarette holder out of my inside coat pocket. It was a plastic cigarette holder with silver filigree. A client had given it to me one time, by way of showing gratitude. I never use it, except when I’m trying to impress other clients. Cigarette holders are an affectation. I like to inhale my poison straight.
Nice cigarette holder. Not as long as a symphony conductor’s baton, but long enough. A hollow tube, slightly flared at one end; a mouthpiece on the other.
Shallow water now. Still deep enough to cover me, but shallow. Careful now. Keep at least six inches of water over your head, Ransom, old boy. Don’t break the surface.
I stuck the holder in my mouth and poked its opposite end out of the pool. I blew through it, cleared it.
Then I breathed through it. I breathed air. Wonderful element, air. Puts oxygen in your blood and hair on your chest. I breathed air through the plastic tube, and nobody knew it. Nobody could see me. To all intents and purposes I was a cadaver at the bottom of the water. For a cadaver I was feeling pretty spry.
I kept breathing, not moving. No telling how long it would be before I dared take a chance and scramble out onto dry land. I couldn’t tell who was watching, any more than the watcher could tell I was alive. I breathed, and waited. I waited and breathed.
Nobody lives forever. I walked and broke water and found the hand rails of a ladder and got my feet on the rungs, hauled myself to the bordering tiles. No gunshots. No swat on the steeple. Nothing but darkness and the squishing of my shoes and the splashy drip-drip-drip from my ruined tweeds.
That, and distant bitter dialogue, and a motor idling lazily on the driveway down below.
The motor had a rich hollow chuckle from its exhaust, like an Indian tomtom in a rain barrel. It sounded healthy and powerful and expensive. It sounded like five miles to the gallon, provided the driver did a lot of coasting.
The masculine voices sounded sore.
I skittered to the steep concrete escarpment the Heinrich menage used for an outdoor stairway and probed my way down through a night that was just as dark as it had ever been. On the parking area this side of the driveway there was something that could have been a Cadillac, a Packard, a Lincoln or a streamlined Diesel locomotive.
Its rear end was pointing inward, twin tail-lights and amber back-up lights glowing like a Christmas tree. Apparently the guy at the wheel had come up the drive and then jockeyed the massive heap around so he could back into the garage and be ready for a fast straight-ahead takeoff in the morning.
His head lamps made the driveway and parking level as bright as a movie set under sun arcs, but he wasn’t at his tiller now. He had got out and walked around to open the garage doors, and I recognized him in the red-and-amber glow of his stern lights. He was Emil Heinrich, short, dumpy, potbellied, with a face like a full moon. His wife had said he wouldn’t be home until late, but he had fooled her.
He was talking in a thick, guttural monotone to somebody who lurked in the shadows at the sedan’s far side.
“Zo. You want me to bay you one hundred thousandt tollars for dis diary. The diary of a dead man, agguzing me of murter. You zay you vill turn me ofer to the law if I revuze. Pah! Id iss ridiculous. I vill gif you one thousandt tollars cash, vich I habben to haf in mein bocket for small change. One thousandt, for your nuisanz walue.” He spat. “Take id or leaf id.”
“I’ll take it as first payment.”
I knew that voice. How well I knew that voice! Resonant. Determined. I didn’t have to gander its owner, hidden around the far side of the sedan. Hearing it was enough.
Heinrich reached into a coat pocket as if to bring forth the promised lettuce. He made a mistake. A bad mistake. He dragged a roscoe out instead.
Flame lanced out around the sneezing ka-chow! of gunfire. It wasn’t Heinrich’s gun that fired, though. He never got around to it. He lurched, took three mincing steps backward, crossed his ankles awkwardly and twisted as he fell. After he fell he didn’t even move.
8. Last Kill, Last Chase
Catapulting down the remaining steps, I was unable to draw a bead on the killer because the chuckle-purring sedan was in the way. I had my own heater ready, but I couldn’t use it. A car door slammed. The chuckle-purr snarled into a roar. Rear tires spun, screeched, got traction. The sedan made like jet propulsion going down the driveway.
I snapped a cap at where I thought its gas tank ought to be. Nothing happened. My rod had been too long under water. The cartridge must have been just slightly defective, enough to let the powde
r get soaked.
I swore, ejected it, jacked another shell into the firing chamber and tried again. But by that time the getaway crate had careened onto the road and was gone. The gat jumped in my fist and my slug went pee-yowp! against the opposite cliff. Clean miss.
Then I wasted time. I bent down in the darkness, inspected Heinrich’s porky poundage. His wife had got her wish. She was a widow now. Scratch one studio executive. A tunnel that only a .38 could make was drilled all the way through his chest. No matter how important you are in Hollywood, a .38 slug in your heart brings you down to size.
The nickel-plated revolver on Ronald Barclay’s legless lap had been .38 caliber. That was the final clue.
I lunged to my coupé where I’d parked it over to one side of the garage apron. Unfortunately, I’d left it headed inward. Now I had to get it started, get it horsed around in the opposite direction. That wasted more time. I finally made it and went thundering down the driveway, around the bend into the road. Then I widened out, fed my clattering cylinders all the coal they would take. I made knots. I bored a hole in the night that the night would never repair.
Down out of the hills, a siren cut loose behind me and a red spotlight stabbed my rear-view mirror.
I pulled over. A prowl car drew abreast. I bounced out, rushed to the cop chariot and yodeled:
“Boys, you’ve got a passenger!” I flashed my badge, piled into the police buggy. “Let’s go! And get me Lieutenant Ole Brunvig on your two-way short wave. Brunvig of Homicide. This is murder.”
The cops bought it. I must have sounded plenty sincere. They believed me. The one sitting alongside the driver cut in his transmitter, talked to his hand mike. Presently Brunvig’s voice rasped in the cowl speaker.
I snaked the hand mike away from the cop and made with the words. Terse words that boiled out of me like Mount Vesuvius in eruption. After a while the loud-speaker snapped back at me. I had a date with Brunvig at the Chaple Arms.
The prowl car picked up velocity. The guy at the wheel was good. He sent only three pedestrians scampering up palm trees. He took only the first skin of red paint off a passing Pacific Electric bus. He should have been a barber. He could shave you with his front fender and never leave a whisker.
The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction Page 28