Dangerous Legacy

by George Harmon Coxe

“Yes,” he said to Sanchez. “Why don’t you do that? Then we can hash it all out in court. You can tell the jury all about it, and that I’d like to see; you being judged by a jury of your peers…. What happened to the blonde, Charlie?”

  “I put her in the closet out there,” Charlie Love chuckled. “She was right nice about it too.”

  After that Rankin kept his attention centered on Sanchez and let Ed Kelly do his stuff, seeing the room brighten as the lights went on, hearing Kelly’s soft whistle as he worked. There was another five minutes of this when no one said anything and then Kelly walked up and put the two documents on the desk.

  “That does it,” he said blithely. “I guess those two thumbtack holes won’t hurt ’em any.” He went back to pack his case and when he was ready he laughed and said, “You know, maybe I should have held out for three drinks of that Scotch.”

  “Make good prints and you might even get drunk,” Rankin said and backed toward the door.

  “Don’t forget the blonde,” Charlie Love said. “Do you want to let her out, Mr. Rankin? Or should we let one of the boys do it?”

  Rankin said why not let one of the boys have that pleasure. He said good-by to Sanchez as Charlie joined him, and then they went quickly through the anteroom and out to the elevators where Ed Kelly was waiting.

  14

  WAITING FOR THE ELEVATOR, Rankin reviewed the half hour’s work and was very pleased with himself and his assistants. He did not worry at all about the threat Sanchez had made to prefer charges, but recognized it as a threat and nothing more. For Sanchez was too well versed in the advantages of force to use a doubtful substitute. Direct action was a thing he understood and though he might retaliate in kind, Rankin was confident that there would be no legal steps taken.

  “When do I see prints?” he said to Kelly, riding high on the wings of his exultancy and finding it difficult to stand still.

  “I have to go to Marakina,” Kelly said. “How about tomorrow?” He paused seeing Rankin’s frown. “Or tonight. Say around eight thirty.”

  “That’s better.” Rankin nudged him. “And don’t forget to blow up the bottom half where the signatures are; I don’t care about the rest.”

  Kelly said he would blow them up, all right, and then the elevator stopped and the door swung back. Rankin had to step aside to let a passenger out. He saw it was a woman but the light was bad and it was a second or so before he recognized her. When he did his new exultancy blew away and he put out his hand, thinking fast, knowing what he had to do.

  Lynn Kane stopped, not recognizing him either in that first moment. “Oh, hello,” she said, giving him no more than a passing glance and starting away as though unaware of the hand on her arm.

  Rankin wasted no time. Still holding her arm he turned her neatly but not roughly back into the car before she knew it. “Hello,” he said, a nice heartiness in his voice. “Come on downstairs with me. I’d like to talk to you…. Go ahead, boy,” he said to the operator.

  “I—I wanted to see Packy,” Lynn said. She sounded uncertain but not angry and when the elevator door clanged shut she moved her shoulders and was resigned.

  “Thanks,” Rankin said. “It won’t take long.”

  Charlie Love and Ed Kelly slipped away unnoticed as they gained the sidewalk, and when Rankin saw Howard Austin waiting by the little sedan he said, “There’s Howard,” and started toward him.

  “I saw him,” Lynn said dryly. “I just talked with him. What is this?” she asked when they joined Austin. She frowned quizzically and with some suspicion, as if suspecting some game she might not like. “First you talk my ear off and say if I wait a minute Spence will be down,” she said to Austin. “And then you”—she eyed Rankin again—“bring me back down before I can argue.”

  Rankin pretended he did not hear and spoke to Austin. “We might as well get it straight—about how you stand. She’s going to find out anyway. Let’s call the meeting to order.”

  He glanced round but Charlie Love was not in sight so he opened the sedan door. He asked Lynn if she’d like to sit down, and she said not particularly but she might as well.

  “If there has to be a meeting,” she said.

  She and Austin climbed in back and Rankin sat on the front seat, hooking one arm over the back so he could face them. He did not feel so good any more and was reluctant to speak his piece when he saw how fresh and exciting Lynn looked in her white suit and floppy-brimmed straw hat. Her violet eyes were steady in their appraisal and it was hard to meet them because they were no longer friendly. He saw Austin take her hand and hold it and that served to make things worse but he took a breath and plunged reluctantly into his preamble.

  “It’s about the mine. Did I tell you I didn’t think Sanchez had any right or title to it?”

  “I believe you did,” Lynn said with an air of detachment.

  “Well, now I can prove it.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you.”

  “Austin does.”

  She turned, her disbelief still written plainly on her face, and Austin said:

  “Not exactly. Not yet, I mean. Won’t that depend on how—”

  “Yes, sure.” Rankin cut him off, not wanting Lynn to know what he had done. “The point is I’ve got a half interest in the estate now and—”

  “You told me,” Lynn said frostily.

  “—that mine is worth more than the rest of it put together. I intend to go into court with the proof and I have to have a lawyer and I’ve asked Howard to represent me. We wanted to tell you now so that—”

  He let the words trail off as she carefully disengaged her hand and transferred her cool appraisal to the man who held it. “I thought we had gone into that before, Howard.”

  “Howard told me,” Rankin said. “Every time he said anything against Sanchez you got sore so he clammed up because he liked you. Well, this is different. Howard’s got nothing against Sanchez in this case. It’s just another job and I guess you can louse it up for him if you want to.”

  “And why should I want to?”

  “The thing is,” Rankin said, ignoring her question, “I’m going into court and nothing you can do will stop me. You can get sore at Howard and maybe he’ll think it isn’t worth it and call it off. But if he does I’ll get another lawyer so it makes no difference to me.”

  He said, “If I can prove I’m right—and no lawyer’ll take the case unless he thinks so—there’ll be a nice fee in it. It’s Howard’s if he wants it. I’d rather have him than anyone else, but that’s something he’ll have to decide. I wanted you to know if he acts for me it will be because he and I think we can win and not because he wants to show up Sanchez.”

  He paused, knowing she had closed her mind against everything he said, and he went on, his words direct and forceful in the last hope that he could at least plant some real doubt in her mind about this killer who had her loyalty.

  “I’m the guy that’s got it in for Sanchez.” He tapped his chest with his index finger. “I’m going to prove to you and everyone else that thinks like you do what a rat he is, and when I do I’ll accept your apologies gracefully.”

  It was, he realized miserably when he finished, quite a speech; the trouble was it didn’t mean a thing. He saw the rebellion in her lower lip, the way her hands tightened in her lap, and even in her anger she was so lovely that he wondered if there might have been a better way.

  Why was it, he asked himself, that always when they argued this way they ended up by hurting each other? Why did he have to try to explain everything to her and justify the things he wanted to do; why did he have to front for Austin and make apologies for an honest job when all he had to do was say, “Do you want it, Howard, or don’t you?” There was, he knew, no answer to any of these things and he asked himself if he might have been successful if he had used gentleness and quiet persuasion instead of logic and directness. He knew the answer to that too. The answer was no.

  He watched her reach for the door handle.
“That’s very kind of you,” she said distantly. “I take it you found the will you lost?”

  “I found it,” Rankin said and watched her get out and, not waiting for Austin, start across the sidewalk toward the building’s entrance. When Austin scrambled to the sidewalk Rankin said, “Let me know, Howard. Think it over if you like but—”

  “I’ve thought it over.”

  Austin stopped by the car and together they watched the girl’s slim straight back and the grace with which her brown legs moved in the sunlight. Then she was gone and Austin’s sigh was loud and deep-seated. He rumpled his blond hair and proceeded to clean his glasses.

  “If the photographs show what we think they will, I’m in,” he said. “What the hell, somebody’s got to cut the guy down to size and it might as well be us.”

  He put the glasses on and bent down to look at Rankin again. “Maybe,” he said, “if we do a real job, she’ll like me better for it. I’ll be seeing you,” he said, and started off down the sidewalk, his height setting him apart from the local citizenry until he was lost to sight.

  Rankin gazed moodily through the dirty windshield, the kaleidoscopic life and movement of the street passing unnoticed before his eyes until he remembered Pascual Sanchez and the big-eared man called De Borja. He felt the gun in his pocket. It made a pleasing bulge there as he considered the possible course of future events, and gradually he became aware of his surroundings.

  He watched a cartella roll by and counted the passengers, wondering how so small a pony could pull so many. A barefooted man trudged by, bent sharply under the load of old boards he had salvaged from some rubble pile, and two women, in their long native dresses with the puffed shoulders of transparent piña cloth, moved gracefully past, one holding the hand of a small boy. Rankin sat there paying more attention now to the color and strangeness of the city street, but he did not see Charlie Love until the opposite door opened and Charlie was there.

  “Everything all right, Mr. Rankin?”

  “Everything is fine, Charlie,” Rankin said. “Everything is wonderfully Fubar—if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean. Any place you’d like to go?”

  “Just drive, Charlie. Anywhere. Away from here.”

  The afternoon was an interminable one for Spence Rankin. He had to eat lunch alone when Charlie Love politely but firmly refused his invitation, and at three o’clock he went to Howard Austin’s office in search of Marie Dizon only to learn that Austin had given her the afternoon off.

  “She said she had some things to do,” he said. “And we weren’t very busy.”

  So Rankin went on his way, hoping that Marie was using the afternoon to make an inspection—a careful one—of the Sanchez house. At the American Press Bureau, Jerry Walsh had no news of Ed Kelly, and Lynn Kane was out on an assignment so at five o’clock, and more in nervous boredom than in weariness, Rankin told Charlie Love to take a couple hours off and went up to his room for a nap.

  It was nearly dark when he awoke. This surprised him for he had not expected to sleep at all, and by the time he had washed and put on a clean shirt it was seven thirty. He did not see Charlie’s car when he came downstairs so he went into the café and ordered a gin and lime, hoping that the local gin was better than the whisky.

  He did not find it so, but the drink was cooling and he had another, surveying his surroundings disinterestedly until he noticed the man sitting over by the wall. At the rear of the room a Negro at the piano was fooling around with full chords and modulations, and three sailors and their Filipino girl friends were drinking beer at one of the larger tables. Other than these and the man by the wall, the only customers were at the bar.

  Rankin had not noticed the man come in but twice when he glanced about it seemed to him that the fellow made a quick movement with his glass as if he had nearly been caught in the act of doing something he did not want noticed. When it happened again Rankin began to wonder and moved a step along the bar so he could hold the other in the mirror.

  Sitting down the man looked squat and strongly built, the shoulders and upper arms of his tan suit bulging at the seams. He had a small round nose and very little hair and presently Rankin caught his eye in the mirror and knew for sure what he had heretofore suspected.

  The man was purposely watching him and Rankin did not bother to wonder why. It was, he realized, a good idea to be suspicious of everyone from now on and he did not hurry his drink now but made up his mind to keep an eye on the fellow, which he did until five soldiers came in and noisily demanded beer.

  Rankin moved along to make room for them at the bar, amused at their antics and forgetting for a little while the man at the wall table. When he remembered, he saw that a triangular display of bottles in front of the mirror spoiled his view. Turning then, he found the table empty.

  “So what?” he said softly and finished his drink. “There’ll be other guys watching you from now on.”

  He was, nevertheless, somewhat relieved to find Charlie Love’s sedan parked a short distance down the street, and seeing no one who resembled his late watcher in those who idled near the entrance, he walked along the curb until he came to the car.

  Charlie Love was sitting behind the wheel and Rankin stuck his head in the front window as he opened the rear door. He asked Charlie if he had eaten and Charlie said he had.

  “I haven’t,” Rankin said, “but that can wait. Right now I want to go to the American Press Bureau.”

  And then, as he backed away, he backed into something hard and round, with a diameter that had a sickeningly familiar pressure. At the same time a flat, thickly accented voice said in his ear:

  “Please to get in! Agad!”

  Rankin tensed, feeling now the closeness of the other’s body as the first thrust of surprise and dismay swept over him. There was authority in that voice, in the hard compulsion of the gun in his back.

  He said, “All right,” to prove he understood and to gain time. Then, moving only his eyes, he felt his stomach tighten and a chill slide swiftly up his spine.

  For Charlie Love had turned in the seat. Charlie was watching, not moving, not getting out that big gun, but waiting calmly for him to obey.

  “You’d better get in, Mr. Rankin,” he said in his soft voice.

  Rankin knew what he said. He heard each syllable distinctly but in that second he could not believe it, and felt no real fear now but only incredulity and consternation that this could happen with Charlie Love’s consent.

  Then, with the sidewalks crowded with early evening traffic, with people passing two feet behind him without even knowing a gun was in his back, he lowered his head and entered the sedan. He pushed over in the far corner, recognizing now the man who had watched him in the café but no longer caring as the weight of his depression closed in upon him.

  Charlie started the motor. “He moves fast, José,” he said over his shoulder. “I’d watch him if I was you.”

  “Will do,” said José, who sat on the edge of the seat, his face obscured beneath the hatbrim but the gun visible in his hand and held close to his body, making it difficult to grab.

  “Also,” Charlie Love said, “he’s got a gun we’d better take.”

  Rankin watched them turn off Rizal at the second corner and start along a darkened side street, the anger and bitterness clearing his mind and giving him a chance to think. He saw now that he was not to blame for what had happened; a guy couldn’t argue much with a gun in his back. His mistake was simply in trusting anyone at all and finally it became necessary to speak of this.

  “So you sold out, Charlie,” he said. “Cold.”

  He said other things in the same contemptuous tone but Charlie Love did not answer him. He waited until he came to a block where nothing remained of the houses which had stood there but heaps of rubble, where there was no light nor anyone about, and stopped the car. When he turned, some reflection from the headlights danced darkly from the big revolver.

  “We have to take yo
u for a ride, Mr. Rankin,” he said. “But we don’t have to hurt you unless you act up. We’ll take that gun now. Just turn so’s José can get at it.”

  Rankin bristled inwardly, his rage directed not at the command so much as at the man who had given it. He wanted to say, “Nuts. Let’s see you take it,” and was saved from such foolhardiness by his recognition of the childish futility of the impulse. He turned, feeling a hand explore his clothes, and then the gun was gone.

  “We have to put a little blindfold on too, Mr. Rankin,” Charlie said. “Just hold still and let José fix a scarf over your eyes.”

  They took the scarf off about a half hour later, as near as Rankin could judge, and now they were in the country, the sky overcast here so there was no horizon nor any stars by which a man might judge the direction they were traveling.

  Trees remained vague shadows by the roadside until shaped briefly by the speeding lights. Occasionally they passed a car and now and then, across the country, a light winked momentarily and was gone. It was flat land here and low, and sometimes at a sharp curve the headlights would sweep across the rice paddies, but the barios they passed through were dark and there were no road signs.

  In spots the road was excellent, for its bed was wide, and there were streams to cross that had once been modernly bridged. Because the terrain was unfamiliar and the lights deceptive, Rankin did not at first realize they were climbing but when he began to pay attention he noticed more rice fields, not flat like the others, but neatly terraced on the hillsides. Presently even these were gone as the road wound through mountain passes and zigzagged up wooded slopes.

  It was colder here and Charlie Love put the windows up in front. He said it would get still colder and Rankin better put his window up too. It was like this for perhaps another hour and then the car stopped at the side of the road and Charlie said:

  “We’re going to cover up your eyes again, Mr. Rankin.”

  They let him tie the scarf and he sat back, grumbling inwardly at all this secrecy until he realized that it might, after all, be a good omen. He explored the thought further and found it comforting to speculate upon such possibilities. In the beginning he had expected the worst and now he saw that if his fears were soundly based there would be no need for this secrecy. A man going on a one-way ride would be unable to say where he had been, for who would care what he had seen?