Dangerous Legacy

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Sergeant Esteban told me Sanchez had an alibi. He was in his office with some man.”

  Rankin swallowed some beer. “Guys like Sanchez always have alibis.”

  “There must be something,” she said. “If we think hard enough and try to—”

  “There’s the gun,” Rankin said. “A .32 automatic, Esteban thinks. All we have to do is find it on Sanchez or—” He stopped as a faint hope flowered in his brain. He sat up, blue eyes steady and his mouth grim. “Do you ever go to his house?” he asked. “Are you known there?”

  “Oh, yes,” Marie said. “I go there often to see Lynn.” She thought a moment, her interest mounting as she saw what Rankin had in mind. “You mean you’d like me to look there, for the gun?”

  “Maybe it’s crazy.”

  “No, not crazy. Not if there is a chance. Yes,” she said, “of course I’ll do it. No one pays me any attention in that house. I know where things are.”

  She talked on, arranging details of the things she could do until Rankin, knowing it was a wild hope, got back some of his enthusiasm, and was ashamed for being so easily discouraged. He said it was worth trying but she must be careful, for if the gun was there and she was caught by Sanchez—

  “I know,” Marie Dizon said. “I will be most discreet.”

  Rankin grinned and gave her a conspirator’s nod. He slid his hand across the table and she put her small thin hand in his to bind the bargain of their partnership. Then he remembered something else and was instantly sobered.

  She sensed this change at once but waited, not prompting or questioning him, and it was this patience and apparent trust that influenced his decision as much as anything.

  “Have you ever heard that Ulio’s father might be alive?” he asked.

  She started a smile and it died unborn. She held her breath. Her lips formed the word No, but no sound came out, and she waited, pale and immobile, while he told her about the note Ulio had received.

  “He put it in the envelope with the will,” he said. “I have it hidden upstairs.”

  “But,” she breathed, the bewilderment still in her eyes, “if he were alive, wouldn’t he know about Lynn? Wouldn’t he let her know or try to reach her?”

  Rankin said he didn’t know. He did not know if the note was authentic or not, though Ulio had said the signature was his father’s.

  “Then what does it mean?”

  “I don’t know that either,” Rankin said, though this was not the whole truth. He considered his own reasons as to why John Kane might be afraid and knew they did not matter now. He signaled the waiter and made sure Charlie Love was waiting. “I just wanted you to know how it was with Ulio and me,” he said, and then when he had paid the check, he saw that her eyes were full and she was blinking hard to keep the tears from spilling over.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s all that for?”

  She stood up and kept her head averted as he came round to take her arm.

  “For the things I thought about you,” she said. “For what I wanted to do to you tonight.”

  He took her out quickly then, knowing what she meant and deeply touched that she should remember these things now. He did not try to comfort her, but ignored the incident, believing that it would be kinder this way until she had herself in hand.

  Charlie Love was already in the sedan, displaying no interest in the address Rankin gave him and driving stolidly down Rizal and through the Plaza and over Santa Cruz bridge. By the time he stopped in front of the Kane home, Marie was smoking one of Rankin’s cigarettes and she made no protest when he told her he had something to show her and asked her to get out.

  While Charlie Love remained in the car, Rankin led the way past the blackened, gutted walls of the house and into the front of the garage, holding her arm and guiding her steps across the front half of the building and into the little hall separating the two rooms.

  “In here,” he said. “It’s all right. I know where I’m going.”

  “So do I,” Marie said. “Before the war I knew this garage well.”

  He gave her matches and she struck one for him, leaning down so he could see more clearly, not saying anything as he moved the bricks, then lighting another match from the first and then a third until she knew what was there and the bricks were back in place.

  “Why?” she asked when they were back in the driveway. “Ulio must have shown you this place, but why should you tell me?”

  “We have to trust each other, don’t we?” he said when he had explained what was in the metal box and how, on the day the Japs came in, Ulio and his father had put the papers and the fifty thousand pesos there.

  “It’s a neat place,” he added. “And if you should find the right gun—or anything else that might be too hot to hang on to—and I’m not around or you can’t locate me—”

  “Yes,” Marie said. “I can always come here where it will be safely hidden. Yes,” she said again, “I will remember.”

  Driving her home, he warned her again to be careful in her examination of the Sanchez house. Then, as they turned into the rutted side street where she lived, he asked her to do one more thing.

  “When you go to work tomorrow, tell Austin that I’m calling on Sanchez in the morning. Tell him I’ll meet him out in front of Sanchez’s office building at ten thirty.”

  13

  SPENCE RANKIN SLEPT LATER THAN USUAL the next morning and it was after nine when he came downstairs to find Charlie Love drowsing behind the wheel of his sedan. When he began to unfold his gaunt weathered frame Rankin told him to lock the car and come and get some breakfast.

  “I ate,” Charlie said.

  “You can have a cup of coffee with me, can’t you? Come on. I want to talk to you.”

  Charlie obeyed with misgivings. He felt his leathered neck and played with the collar button which closed his shirt but held no collar. “I ain’t dressed for fancy places,” he argued as they walked along.

  Rankin said this place was not fancy and took him to the restaurant he had patronized since his first morning. When they were seated and had ordered he said:

  “I’m calling on Pascual Sanchez this morning. Want to come?”

  Charlie’s pale eyes opened and things happened behind them; vague lights flickered there and were gone. “I don’t mind,” he said. “Though it’s for you to say, Mr. Rankin.”

  “Have you got a gun?”

  “A small one,” said Charlie and from some recess inside his coat and possibly inside his waistband, he hauled a .38 revolver that must have weighed five pounds. “Think we’ll need it?” he asked with mild expectancy.

  “Probably not,” Rankin said. “But you may have to wave it around.”

  “I’m good at that,” Charlie said. “Ain’t often I get the chance any more.”

  Rankin grinned and felt better. He enjoyed his breakfast thoroughly and since Charlie was not given to idle chatter he had plenty of time to make his plans. The result was that he had settled on what seemed like an adequate pattern when he picked up Ed Kelly, the press photographer who worked for Jerry Walsh.

  Kelly was a black browed youth with an Irish slant to his jaw and an early edition of the five o’clock shadow the razor companies talk about. He had his plate case ready on the sidewalk and shook hands with a grin when Rankin introduced himself.

  “Jerry told you this was a personal job, didn’t he?” Rankin said. “And we make our own deal on the price, right?”

  “The price,” said Kelly, who knew what he wanted, “is two drinks of that good Scotch you brought in.”

  Howard Austin, big and blond and clean-looking in his duck suit, was waiting at the entrance to the office building where Sanchez worked when Charlie Love stopped the car. Rankin got out and drew Austin to one side.

  “You said you thought you could prove it if Sanchez’s bill of sale is a phony,” he said.

  “I think I can.”

  “I can too—I think. Check me now and see if I make sense.” Rankin worri
ed his lower lip while he put his thoughts in the proper sequence. “Sanchez has one legitimate bill of sale with John Kane’s signature, the one where he sold the auto agency. The paper that says he bought the mine has Kane’s signature—or one that Lynn accepts—and if that one is a phony, and if it isn’t we’re whipped anyway, it must have been copied from the authentic document.” He waved at Ed Kelly. “I brought a photographer,” he said. “You know what I’m going to do?”

  “You’re going to photograph both documents. Photograph the signatures.” Austin’s smile was tentative, as if he approved the idea but was not quite sure of its origin. “How did you know?” he said, a new respect in his voice.

  Rankin told him. He said he just happened to copy his own signature a few times and start comparing one with another.

  “I found out that none is identical,” he added. “They look alike but when you inspect the details there is always some difference. You just don’t get identical signatures unless you copy one from another. If Sanchez copied—or had someone else copy—Kane’s signature from the auto agency paper, a blown-up photograph will prove they’re the same identical signature, which couldn’t happen if John Kane really signed that bill of sale. Was that your idea?”

  Austin nodded, his blue-gray eyes respectful behind his glasses. “That’s it, all right. I didn’t know how to get at it though, unless we went to court and made him produce both papers.”

  “This is better,” Rankin said. “Now we’ll know before we go to court.”

  “If he shows them both to you.”

  “He will. That’s where you come in. You’re my lawyer and you demand to see them,” he said and explained the rest of the plan.

  Austin made his lips round and looked uncomfortable, as if he was ashamed of what he had to say.

  “The only thing is, he’s liable to have a couple of thugs up there and—”

  “So he’s got a couple of thugs. I’ve got Charlie Love, and I’ve got me.”

  “What I meant was,” Austin said, “is that I don’t want to lay myself open for any actionable charge. I live here. I’m just beginning to get started. I came out here in ’37 to work for an insurance company in the claim department and that was all right but I wasn’t getting anywhere so in ’41 I opened my own office. The war killed that and since then I’ve been trying to build up a little practice and I’m just beginning to make a dollar or two. Pascual Sanchez doesn’t scare me any but I don’t dare get out of line. With you—”

  “Yeah,” Rankin said. “With me it’s different. Sure. All right, you don’t have to know how I get the pictures. We go in and make him produce the documents and you can beat it. You can wait for me down here.”

  Going up in the elevator Spence Rankin felt very good indeed. Some of the old pre-game excitement bubbled inside him as he explained a detail or two to Charlie Love. This was action, a thing he understood, and when he walked into the outer office and approached the mascaraed blonde one would have thought he owned the place.

  The man in the thatched oxfords and Panama, who had been there during Rankin’s first visit, was hiding behind a newspaper in his usual corner and Rankin, wondering if it was the same paper, nodded to Charlie Love, who winked back. Then Rankin asked the blonde to tell Mr. Sanchez that Mr. Austin and Mr. Rankin were here to see him.

  The blonde stopped chewing gum and viewed with some suspicion Ed Kelly and his plate case, and the gaunt, untidy figure of Charlie Love.

  “They’re with us,” Rankin said. “They’ll wait out here.”

  The blonde spoke her piece in the voice-box. A newspaper rattled and the man in the corner was watching the scene, his brown face impassive and his little eyes unfathomable.

  Ed Kelly sat down and looked bored. Charlie Love, looking everywhere but at the man in the corner, took a near-by chair and perched his battered felt on one knee. Then the blonde said Mr. Sanchez would see them and Rankin and Austin entered the adjoining office.

  Pascual Sanchez watched them move across the room from his high-backed leather chair. At the window a bent-nosed man turned to inspect them. His black hair was slicked down and shiny and he had big ears. His name was Carlos de Borja and when he saw Rankin his eyes narrowed and his mouth warped, as if wanting to spit on the floor and thereby show his contempt.

  “I decided I’d better look at the papers on the mine and that auto agency deal,” Rankin said, “before we went to court.”

  Sanchez moved nothing but his deep-set eyes, which focused on Howard Austin. “You’re the lawyer in this, Howard? Aren’t you getting a little careless in your choice of clients?”

  Austin colored but there was no hesitation in his answer.

  “A client’s a client, Mr. Sanchez. Now that Rankin has a half interest in the Kane estate he’s entitled to an accounting. He doesn’t believe John Kane sold that mine.”

  “He has a half interest, of course?”

  “Certainly,” Austin said, though he looked quickly at Rankin for reassurance.

  “You have the will?” Sanchez said.

  Rankin pulled it from his pocket and Austin seemed relieved. “You want to see it?” Rankin said, and spread it out on the desk.

  Sanchez took a quick glance and somewhere in his face the muscles tightened and his mouth got hard. He brushed the paper aside with a thick-fingered hand and Rankin retrieved it.

  “Marie Dizon lost her copy,” he said, elaborately casual as he folded the paper. “And if you should have any ideas about this I’d forget them. There’s a third copy.” He paused, wondering where the idea came from. He did not know if what he said was true but he liked the sound of it and the effect it had on Sanchez. “The skipper of the Molokai has it,” he said. “He should dock in a week or so.”

  Sanchez moved his hands from the chair arms. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and unlocked a desk drawer. He brought out two sheets of paper and placed them on the desk, anchoring them with his fists.

  “These are recorded, you know,” he said.

  “We know,” Rankin said. “We’re interested in the signatures.… Take a look, Howard.”

  Austin stepped up and bent over the desk. Sanchez kept his gaze on Rankin, who stood waiting, seeing from the corner of his eye the alien shadow by the window that was De Borja. Austin straightened.

  “The signatures look alike,” he said.

  Rankin nodded. “That’s what we wanted to know. Thanks very much, Mr. Sanchez.”

  Sanchez leaned back, still holding the papers and eying Rankin strangely, as though this was not at all what he had expected. Howard Austin was already at the door and as Rankin joined him he saw Sanchez start to put the papers away and knew he had to hurry. Then, as Austin opened the door and started through, Rankin stopped.

  “By the way—” he said, making it sound like an afterthought.

  Sanchez glanced up. De Borja was still standing by the window, his bent-nosed face no longer alert. Then, counting on Charlie Love but not knowing what had happened in the anteroom, Rankin took the gun from his hip pocket as he turned back and stood away from the door.

  Sanchez stiffened in his chair, his surprise robbing him in that moment of any chance he might have had to reach into a drawer. De Borja’s hand moved six inches and stopped, his eyes on Rankin’s automatic.

  Then the newspaper fan with the Panama hat marched into the room, his hands at his sides. His eyes looked scared and he could not keep them still and the reason for this was the big .38 prodding him in the spine as Charlie Love followed.

  Ed Kelly came in and closed the door. When he had counted the roll he grinned, not knowing what it was all about but apparently liking the way things were shaping up.

  Charlie Love jabbed his man with the gun, knocking him aside so he could get a better look at Carlos de Borja. “I’ll take these two, Mr. Rankin,” he said.

  Sanchez finally came to life. His lids dipped and he shifted in his chair, watching Rankin, then trying to sneak one hand below the desk. Ranki
n shook his head and waved the gun.

  “I wouldn’t,” he said amiably. “I’d keep them right there on top.”

  Sanchez looked as if he wanted to lift the desk and throw it. At that moment, choking as he tried to speak, his thick face dark with fury, he looked as if he could do it too. He swallowed and his voice came out hoarse and rasping.

  “You can’t get away with this. I’ve got Photostats of these papers.”

  “That’s fine,” Rankin said. “Just sit still, stout boy…. Go ahead, Charlie,” he said.

  Charlie Love needed no direction. Already he had taken an automatic from under De Borja’s coat and now he slipped out the clip and one-handedly thumbed out the bullets, dropping them one by one on the floor. This done he jacked the remaining shell from the chamber and then tossed gun and clip into a wastebasket.

  “There,” he said with the voice of a man who had finished a worthy job. “Now you boys stand there and do what Mr. Rankin says,” he added and perched on the window sill, the big revolver easy in his sinewy hand.

  By that time Ed Kelly had his plate case opened and was setting up a tripod. When he began setting up his light standards and reflectors, Rankin leaned over the desk and picked up the two documents.

  “All we want,” he said, “is a couple of photographs of these, Mr. Sanchez. Nothing to get worked up about is there?—if they’re genuine.”

  Sanchez’s fists were white rocks on the desk top. He tried to lean back in the chair but could not without removing his hands so he stayed that way, his eyes vicious and half-hidden by the thick brows, his color high.

  But he had control of his voice now. There was no way of telling whether he knew what was behind Rankin’s plan, but it was clear now that he knew Rankin had a plan. He made a disdainful sound in his throat. He flattened his lips in a fixed grin.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said. “I’ll prefer charges against all three of you as soon as you leave.”

  “That’ll be a switch,” Rankin said, “you preferring charges against anybody. Here you are, Ed,” he said, holding the papers out to one side until Kelly took them.