Kill Now, Pay Later (Hard Case Crime (Mass Market Paperback))

by Robert Terrall

  He pulled me out of the fragments of burning lath, and did a highly unprofessional job of dragging me down the ladder, bumping my head from rung to rung. When we reached the bottom two other firemen rescued me from Al and carried me out on the lawn. They laid me down with care, although it was a little late to start being careful. When I opened my eyes Al was grinning at me.

  “As for the way you carry people down ladders—” I said.

  “Gee,” he said. “Nobody dropped a bag of chicken feed on you?”

  Davidson came up. “I never thought I’d see the day when you turned out to be a hero, Ben.”

  “I always hate to lose a client.”

  “How about Junior?”

  I didn’t answer. I looked up at the burning building. The façade was still intact, but flames were visible through most of the windows, as though there was nothing but fire on the other side of the one solid wall.

  I came to my feet. Davidson caught me. I saw an ambulance on the grass, with a little cluster of people near it.

  “Is Pope over there?”

  “They’ll take care of him, Ben. You’d better take care of yourself.”

  “Do you think anybody has a drink they could spare?”

  Al said, “Stop over at the engine. We carry a little medicinal whiskey.”

  I was badly in need of medicine. I started coughing again and had to sit down. By the time I got my breath Al was back with a pint of blended rye. I coughed the first mouthful back up but the next stayed down. I tipped the bottle and took several long medicinal gulps.

  “Well, don’t kill it,” Al said. “You might not be the only one.”

  I poured some more medicine down my throat and waited for the explosion. When it came it lifted me to my feet and started me toward the ambulance.

  “One thing you might want to know, Ben,” Davidson said. “If you’re still in business?”

  I nodded.

  “The boy’s white Mercury. Elmer saw a guy take something out of the glove compartment. He took it back to his own car, which by a happy coincidence—”

  “Was a Pontiac,” I said. “He was picking up twenty grand of keep-quiet money. I know about it.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Be kind to me, Irving,” I said. “I’m in shock.”

  Anna was the only one I knew in the group around Pope. He lay on a stretcher while a young man in a white uniform tried to find his pulse. Anna’s face was streaked and wet. Several strands of black hair had escaped, and her glasses were fogged. She gasped when she saw me, and threw herself against my chest. She said my name several times, as though to be sure she had the right man. I put my arms around her, as there is little else you can do with a girl in that position. I was surprised to see that she appeared to be crying real tears.

  “They think he took sleeping tablets,” she said. “He’s been drugged. Why would he—”

  At that moment Pope’s eyes opened and he sat up, alarmed and angry. The only other time I had seen him his eyes had been concealed behind tinted glasses and his hair had been carefully brushed. If it hadn’t been for the startled expression I still might have missed it, but as he pulled his wrist away from the intern, I realized that Pope was the man in bed beside Anna in Moran’s picture.

  Chapter 17

  Feeling the difference in my arms, Anna drew back. She must have gone on hoping to the last. Even this final bit, coming in against me to cry on my pistol holster, had been to distract me until the ambulance could take him away.

  My mind was racing, but because of recent events it was less of a sprint than a sack-race, a clumsy lurching from point to point. Moran hadn’t been threatening to show the photograph to Anna’s employer, who after all knew who was in it. He had threatened to show it to Dick, and it didn’t seem probable that the boy would be ready to marry Anna after seeing her in bed with his father. And that was why she had been willing to go to such lengths to destroy it—not because the girl had her face, but because the man had Pope’s. That was why Pope had been planning to leave after the funeral —they couldn’t allow me to see him again.

  Pope had covered his face with his hands. I had a chance now, but again I would have to be right the first time. The slug of raw whiskey on top of the smoke I had eaten was giving me a crazy exuberance.

  I was still holding Anna lightly by the shoulders. “He needs some coffee,” I told her. “The ladies are probably here by now. Get him some.”

  “Shouldn’t he go to the hospital?” she asked, her tone so flat and wooden that I looked at her sharply. She was rapidly coming unstuck.

  “Not just yet,” I said. “I’m the big hero, so they’re going to let me talk to him first.”

  She turned obediently and walked off.

  I took Davidson aside. “Somebody said something about a two-way radio. The Prosper fire chief is named Joe Minturn. Tell him to be a good dog and maybe I’ll throw him a biscuit. There must be somebody around who can take shorthand. I want half the radio set-up over here, and at the other end I want the chief and his brother and somebody taking everything down. I also want that bottle of whiskey.”

  “I’d say you’ve had enough whiskey.”

  “I’ll switch to brandy if they’ve got that.”

  As he started off I called, “Tell Elmer to find a girl named Shelley Hardwick and keep her on tap.”

  I returned to the ambulance. “All right, everybody,” I snarled. “Move along, nothing to see here.”

  When I had everybody in motion but Pope and the intern I squatted beside the stretcher. Pope didn’t seem to know me, and when I saw myself in a mirror later I understood why. Among other interesting effects, my eyebrows were gone.

  “You know who I am, Mr. Pope,” I said. “I’m the man you hired to find out what happened to the seventy-five thousand dollars.”

  He winced. “I’m—sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “I’m still hoping to collect that fee. I also pulled you out of the fire. Maybe you’ll feel grateful enough to explain a few things.”

  The intern put in, “He shouldn’t be doing any talking.”

  “It won’t do him any harm,” I said. “It may do him some good.”

  Pope blinked. There was a fluttering at the corner of one eye, and he covered it with his hand. “Anna says you saw the picture.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t know it was you. I thought she was just embarrassed because she was naked.”

  Pope uncovered his eye and looked at the intern. “This is private.”

  The intern stood up. “You’re sure it’s all right?”

  “Quite sure,” Pope said heavily. The intern went to the front of the ambulance and Pope said, “I don’t expect you to understand why, after that, I made her my secretary. It was the only time she—”

  “She told me it happened twice.”

  “Once, twice, what does it matter? I made it clear to Moran that he could expect no easy money from me. And yet I didn’t want to send them to prison. I was fond of Anna. As a secretary she has always been first-rate. When she said she wanted to break with Moran, I created this job for her. Of course,” he added, “after the blackmail attempt our physical relationship didn’t continue.”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “I didn’t suppose you would believe me.”

  A station wagon made a wide turn on the grass and pulled up beside us. The girl at the wheel was Hilda Faltermeier, the part-time maid who had brought me the coffee and sandwiches the night of the wedding. She was wearing a sweater and the tight, paint-spattered blue jeans I had already seen, and for some reason I was relieved to observe that there was more than one layer of clothing between Hilda and the outside world. She had a large coffee urn in the back of the station wagon.

  “Are you in the ladies’ auxiliary?” I asked.

  She looked startled. “Sort of. You aren’t—yes, you are! What did they do to you? You look horrible.”

  “I’ve been meaning to te
ll you your bike is checked at the railroad station.”

  “I was wondering.” She studied me. “It’s a shame, too. I thought your eyebrows were kind of cute.”

  I laughed, feeling better. “They’ll grow back, if we have patience.”

  I turned down coffee and she drove off as Davidson drifted up on foot. He had a green metal box, about the size of a dispatch case, and he set it beside the rear wheel of the ambulance. He handed me the whiskey bottle.

  “Hold on,” the intern said. “He shouldn’t have anything to drink.”

  I uncapped the bottle. “This is for me.”

  Pope looked around at Davidson. “Is this one of your men?”

  “Mr. Davidson,” I said. “He knows about most of this.”

  “The hell I do,” Davidson said. “And I don’t want to find out, either.”

  One of his arms was resting on the radio. By listening for it, I could hear the faint frying sound that meant the circuit was open.

  “Guess what we’ve been talking about,” I said to Anna.

  “I know, I know. The picture.”

  The whiskey was hurrying through my veins on its way to the centers of thought and speech. I felt pleasantly relaxed, and for the moment I didn’t dislike anybody. But there were several points in this father-son triangle still to be cleared up.

  “How did you feel when Dick began getting interested in Anna?” I asked Pope. “It seems to me they used to milk this situation quite a bit in Greek tragedy.”

  “There was nothing tragic about it,” Pope said. “Dick was in a very bad way. If we could have pulled it off it might have been the making of him.”

  I must have goggled at that. Pope insisted, “I mean it. Anna is a very competent person.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “And what made you change your mind about taking the plane this morning?”

  “Dick said he had something to give me. I thought it was the money. Minturn had orders not to let you in, so I decided it was safe to stop for a few minutes. I wanted Dick to get it off his chest. He insisted on making drinks. He must have put sleeping pills in mine.”

  His hand was trembling so badly that Anna took the coffee away from him and put it on the grass. She started to say something. I put my hand on her leg.

  “You can listen,” I said. “That’s all I want you to do.”

  Pope rubbed his temples. “He was talking excitedly about Anna. That’s all I remember. He couldn’t bring himself to give back the money—he was afraid of the beating he would get if he didn’t pay the gamblers.”

  My hand tightened as Anna tried to speak. I was intent on Pope, but at the same time I was pleasantly aware that there was a leg under the nylon.

  “Everybody thought we had gone to the airport,” Pope said. “He—put me on the floor and started the fire. This time there can’t be any question about it, I will have to send him away. I should have done it before.”

  “Did he know you were thinking of having him committed?”

  “I’m sure he guessed.”

  “What makes you think he took the money?”

  Pope blinked slowly. “Who else could have? He’s the only one who knew it was there.”

  “You told him?”

  “Yes, that night. I wanted him to realize that I could save him from the consequences of his folly, but I chose not to. He went in to say good night to his mother. She was dead, the safe was open. He had to find out if the money was gone. I understand that. It was just something he had to do.”

  “Tell Elmer we want that girl,” I said to Davidson.

  I was beginning to lose momentum, and I took another long drink. “I hope you made out a check for me this morning?”

  “Anna has it. It’s not payable. The agreement was that you would get it if and when.”

  Davidson came back with Shelley, who looked like a schoolgirl who has been told to report to the principal’s office.

  “Hello, everybody,” she said sullenly.

  “Hello, Shelley,” I said. “Tell these people who took Mr. Pope’s seventy-five thousand dollars.”

  “I did,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d let me keep it.”

  “I suppose it’s pretty well hidden?”

  “I did my best, but you can probably find it.”

  “That’s the wrong answer, Shelley. I’ll put it another way. Mr. Pope doesn’t want publicity because too many things would come out at a trial. So give us the money and I think he can be persuaded to forgive you.”

  “That’s sensible,” she said. “You realize, don’t you, that you won’t get the full amount?”

  “We’ll settle for fifty-five,” I said. “I know where I can put my hands on the other twenty. How did Dick pry it out of you?”

  “He cornered me on the phone this morning. He told me to choose. Either I gave him twenty thousand or he’d tell the police and I’d lose it all. So I chose.”

  “Hilda saw you in the corridor Saturday night in your kimono. What happened? You went to Dick’s room to find out if he was sorry for some of the things he’d said?”

  She nodded. “He wasn’t.”

  “And then on the way back, one of the young delinquents chased you into Mrs. Pope’s room?”

  She went on nodding. “I don’t know how it happened, Ben. I felt her. She was dead. I didn’t think— I reached in and touched some envelopes in the back of the safe, and then I heard the shots. They scared me. I didn’t know I’d taken the envelopes until I was back in my own room, and I didn’t look inside them until the next morning. Then I got drunk again fast, so I wouldn’t talk myself into turning it in. I needed that money. I’m in hock to more people.”

  “How did Dick know you had it?”

  “He figured it out, I guess. He remembered I left his room a minute or so before he heard the shots downstairs. And I’m an amateur. I suppose I acted guilty.”

  “All right, Shelley,” I said. “Dismissed.”

  “He used the twenty thousand to pay his gambling debts?” Pope said as she walked away.

  “He didn’t have any gambling debts.”

  I held the whiskey to the light. Pope said suddenly, “I want a drink.”

  He put out his hand. When he did that he was used to having something put in it. I decided to make a small reform.

  “Sorry. You heard what the doctor said.” I finished the bottle and tossed it away. “Now we have to decide what to do about Anna.”

  “Do about her?”

  “She murdered two people. Two more died because of the things she started. It seems to me that something ought to happen.”

  Anna came slowly to her knees. We faced each other.

  “No one’s been murdered,” Pope said. “I’m all right.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about you. Well, murder—that’s a point the lawyers will have to argue. Let’s see. Part of her deal with Moran was that she’d take care of the guard by drugging his coffee. Moran didn’t know there was a second guard. Anna did.”

  “I did not,” she said.

  “Of course you did. That’s the big thing about you, you like to keep control. Why didn’t you drug Davidson, too? He’s a coffee drinker. You didn’t because you wanted him to kill your husband for you.”

  “That’s a despicable lie.”

  I looked at Pope. “How about it, Mr. Pope? Don’t you think it sounds like her?”

  When he didn’t answer I turned back to Anna. “You couldn’t marry Dick without getting divorced. Bigamy would give Moran another hold over you. Divorce would be risky—Dick might hear about it. Your real solution was to kill Davidson. Wait a minute. To kill Moran.”

  My tongue was getting fuzzy, but I couldn’t help it.

  “You arranged the details. You knew Mrs. Pope’s heart was likely to stop if somebody in a scary mask jumped out of the closet at her. And then if you didn’t make it with Dick, you could always fall back on his widowed father. Right? Right. For number three, we go back to Samuel Pattberg.”

  �
��Who?” Pope said.

  “The dirty movie man. He’d known Anna in the old days. She didn’t want Moran to know where she was, so a killing seemed to be indicated. It was easy. She was the one sober person at the party. She saw to it that Pattberg was well supplied with bottles. Then she worked on Dick. He was feeling depressed after the movies, and something or somebody gave him the idea that he’d feel better if he burned down the building. The local fire chief, a sad son of a bitch named Minturn, found something that pointed to arson, and put in a claim for twenty thousand bucks. I’ve been wondering about that. If the fire wasn’t Dick’s idea, maybe the blackmail wasn’t Minturn’s. Anna was all set to spend the night with me, for diplomatic reasons, but when she heard about the missing seventy-five thousand she thought Dick must have it. She borrowed my Buick and met Chief Minturn on the highway outside of Prosper.”

  “How much of this do you think you can prove?” Anna asked.

  “I can prove that much because you were being tailed at the time.” I turned to Davidson. “Find out how this is coming over.”

  Davidson leaned over to speak into the radio. “Chief? Are you hearing us O.K.?”

  He moved a switch, and the fire chief’s voice came booming out of the loudspeaker.

  “Just great!” he shouted. “But I don’t want you bastards to think you can load this all on me. Let go,” he said to somebody at his end of the transmission. “I can see when something’s gone sour. I found the stuff at the fire, sure. But she told me what to ask for and how to do it. We were going to split it at ten apiece. She’s the one who held onto the lighter, you’ll notice! And if you want to know who I’m talking about, I’m talking about Anna kiss-my-ass DeLong! You can have your goddam money back, but you’d better forget it ever happened, or she’s going right along with me, to the ladies’ jail.”

  I made a twisting sign, and Davidson put the switch back in sending position.

  “Do you believe any of this?” Anna said to Pope.

  He looked at her for what seemed to me, in my weakened state, a long time.

  “I think so,” he said finally. “As Gates said, it sounds like you.”

  “All right!” she cried. “You thought you talked me into leaving Leo, didn’t you? It wasn’t like that at all. He threw me out. I was getting old, and he had another girl lined up.”