Women Crime Writers

by Sarah Weinman

  “Hey! Hey! Can you sit up? Look, are there any cops around here?”

  Tom listened dreamily to the voice.

  “Who shot you?”

  Tom said, in his mind, “The little bastard threw a handful of bullets at me—just threw them, mind you—and the damned things went all the way in, exactly as if he had used a gun. It was remarkable, very remarkable.” In his dream, then, he was telling this to a screw he had known in prison, and in reply the screw, who had always been short-tempered, raised an enormous leg and kicked him between the shoulder blades and a long quivering slice of pain ran through his body from back to front. That’ll teach me to pass the time of day with a goddamn screw, Tom said to himself in his mind. But then, anyway, he went on explaining: “And I didn’t even see him raise his arm. What I saw, it seemed he just had his finger pointed at me and . . . zzzzzz! Like bees!”

  “For God’s sake, are you laughing?” cried the whispering voice.

  Big Tom opened his eyes. Harry had the door open on the other side of the car, was leaning in, his face not more than six inches from Big Tom’s. “I’ll get you t’ Doc. You remember Doc. He won’t like it,” Harry whispered, “but he’ll do it.” He grunted, pushed Tom erect, got him propped into the other corner of the seat. “Where’s the key? Tom, Tom!” He was slapping Tom’s face.

  “Shirt . . . pocket.”

  Harry squeezed into the seat, poked into the pocket, got a closer look at the mess on Tom’s clothes. “Jeez! My God, it’s like a sieve. I’ve really got t’ get you t’ Doc!”

  “You . . . really . . . do,” Tom whispered in answer.

  The motor hummed into life. Harry let in the clutch. “You had a gun? How come you didn’t use it?”

  “Surprise . . .”

  “What about the dough?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they . . . got it. Old woman’s dead.”

  “What?” Harry’s voice was a yelp.

  “Dead . . . inna . . .” Too hard to say; he’d forgotten the other word. “Dead,” he repeated simply.

  “You plugged her?”

  “Already dead.”

  “Who did it then? Who plugged you, for God’s sake?”

  “The punk.” Big Tom fell over against Harry, and Harry had to fight to hold onto the wheel, to keep from crashing into a row of parked cars. “Hey, look, you’re getting blood all over me! You got t’ bleed like that? You got t’ bleed on my clothes?”

  Big Tom’s answer was a hoarse, dragging breath which died in a sudden strangle. Harry drew the car into a side street, slowed down, studied Big Tom’s bobbing face anxiously.

  “You okay?”

  Big Tom’s mouth opened; he lifted a hand aimlessly as if to locate his lips, to see why they no longer obeyed his commands, no longer formed words, just hung loosely and fluttered with his breath. As the hand lifted, his head bowed as if to meet it. His whole body staggered forward to crash against the front of the car.

  Blood began to drip heavily to the floor.

  “Hey!” Harry waited a moment, looking out anxiously—this was a quiet residential street, old houses set close together in a lot of shrubs and flowers. Harry licked his lips, swallowed several times. His face was greenish in the light from the dash. “Tom?” he said softly.

  The dripping was slowly decreasing and there was no answer from Big Tom, not even the sound of a breath.

  Harry took out his handkerchief, carefully wiped the steering wheel, the door rim, and then used the handkerchief, wrapped around his hand, as a sort of glove while he set the brakes and doused the lights and switched off the motor. He opened the car door and slipped out and laid the handkerchief on the door handle before closing the door. Then he backed from the car a few steps and paused. He could see Big Tom in there, lying forward on the dashboard; he thought Big Tom looked exactly like a passed-out drunk and wouldn’t be noticed seriously for hours, not before morning, perhaps, when it would be light enough to see the blood all over him.

  “I’m sorry t’ have t’ do this,” Harry muttered. “I just can’t afford t’ get messed up in it.” He started away, then glanced back and whispered, “If I could help, I would. But nothing’s going t’ help now.”

  He went back to the main cross-town street and looked around. He’d taken a cab all the way out here, answering Big Tom’s urgent summons, but that was before he had known what had happened. Now he wanted no one connecting him with the district, with Big Tom, or even with the city of Pasadena. He couldn’t risk a cab.

  He waited for a bus, and when one came he sized it up; it was quite crowded, a bunch of noisy young people in the back and the others looking tired and indifferent, not paying any attention to each other. He got on. He crouched quickly into a seat near the door before anyone could notice the blood on the side of his suit.

  When he reached his flat the blond girl was in bed asleep, naked as usual, reeking with sexy cologne.

  Harry sponged the suit in the bathroom, put on his pajamas, took several aspirin and a couple of sleeping pills. When he sat on the side of the bed to yawn the girl roused and grunted at him, and he said, “Shaddap!” Finally he snapped off the bedside lamp and put his head on his pillow and lay there looking at the dark.

  “Just like that!” Harry whispered to himself. “What a hell of a way t’ go!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE LONG black car snaked into the drive, paused, then continued almost silently toward the house. The man behind the wheel, a huge black-haired man with a look of granite hardness about him, said, “Mr. Stolz, the front door’s open.”

  “Yes, I see that it is,” Stolz said quietly. His dark, narrow, handsome face held only a touch of dismay. He was smoking a cigarette in a gold and ivory holder; now he removed it, crushed it out in the dashboard tray, put the holder into his breast pocket. He looked closely at the house as they rolled nearer. “All dark, darker than she would have it. Someone’s been here. We’re late.”

  Marvitch nodded, guiding the car back into the shadowy area near the garage. When Marvitch had set the brakes, cut the motor and lights, Stolz got out and walked toward the back door. Marvitch caught up with him there. “This door isn’t locked,” Stolz said. “I know she was careful about keeping it latched after sundown.”

  They went in. Stolz knew the house, didn’t put on a light until they had reached the hall. He went at once into his own room. He and Marvitch surveyed the mess. “She had moved it,” Stolz said. “I kept it in there.” He indicated the wardrobe, walked over, opened the little door that Big Tom had closed. “They made a search.” Stolz looked at the upturned end of the mattress. He shook his head. “I hate to lose the little automatic. It was quite a toy. Besides that, it might turn up somewhere later to embarrass me.”

  Marvitch said, “We’d better look around for the old lady and the girl. Maybe they’re tied up somewhere.”

  “That’s likely.” Stolz led the way back into the hall. “Mrs. Havermann’s room is upstairs. Let’s look there first.”

  Stolz ran lightly up the carpeted steps. He kept himself lean and fit. He watched his diet, ate a lot of fruit and yogurt and bran crackers, and swam in the hotel pool. The desert sun kept him well tanned. Marvitch was slower, weighter. Marvitch lived on rare steaks and bourbon whiskey and eighteen-year-old brunettes. He, too, in his own way was in excellent shape. When Stolz saw what was in Mrs. Havermann’s bedroom he paled yellow, and when Marvitch saw it he made a sharp indignant sound like a squeezed duck.

  “Oh, my God, what a horrible thing to have happened to her,” Stolz said. He sounded as if he meant it. He looked at Mrs. Havermann and then glanced away, as if the dreadful sight sickened him. “They’ve killed her.”

  “They sure have.” Marvitch stared around at the room. “I wonder where the girl is?” He had never seen Karen, but Stolz’s description of her had interested him.

  Stolz looked quickly through the other rooms. “She doesn’t seem to be here.” He shook his head, as if dismissing the problem of K
aren from his mind. “We have to plan very carefully now.”

  “I don’t see how we can clean this up enough to keep it away from the bulls,” Marvitch said.

  “Oh, we’ll have to call the police. This is murder, Marvitch.” He looked Marvitch in the eyes and Marvitch understood: this was a special kind of killing, not the sort you did and dumped in an alley or left for the buzzards out the other side of Hoover Dam, in the desert. This old lady had to be all legally accounted for, examined, and investigated. “Yes, sir,” Marvitch answered. “But when, Mr. Stolz?”

  Stolz’s eyes were bitter. “We’ve got to find that damned money first.”

  “I should think so,” Marvitch agreed.

  Stolz appeared to think it over. He said, “I know the house better than you do. You don’t know your way around at all.”

  “Money’s money, Mr. Stolz. I’d recognize it anywhere.”

  Stolz smiled slightly.

  “Not only that,” Marvitch went on, “I’ve had things hidden from me before, and I never had much trouble finding them.”

  “There’s no one to question, unfortunately.”

  “I don’t mean like that. I mean cold turkey, looking for it. I had me a girl in Chicago once; I gave her a diamond brooch, and then afterwards she decided she liked another dealer better than me and she gave me the gate. I wanted the pin back. I couldn’t touch her; her new friend had connections. So I hunted in her place and I——”

  Stolz held up his hand. “We haven’t much time.”

  Marvitch demanded, “You know where she had that diamond pin hidden?”

  Stolz sighed. “No. Where?”

  “In a box of very personal apparel, if you get what I mean.”

  Stolz nodded. “That was unfair, wasn’t it?”

  “Didn’t fool me a minute.”

  “Go downstairs,” Stolz said briskly, “and start looking. Not in my room. Everywhere else. Including the garage, the old car she kept jacked up out there.”

  Marvitch was glad that Mr. Stolz had allowed him to conclude his little yarn about the diamond pin. He rushed downstairs and began to turn over again the things Eddie and Skip had once tonight overturned.

  Nearly an hour’s work got them nothing. They concluded that the money had been taken by the thieves. Much disturbed now, uneasy and angry, Stolz called for the help of the police.

  They awaited the arrival of the cops in Mrs. Havermann’s parlor. The dog had been released from his prison upstairs and now lay at Stolz’s feet. After obvious cogitation Marvitch said, “You know, there are some funny things about the old lady’s death. She has all the marks of a strangling job. But then there’s all that blood—bloody prints on the closet door, blood all the way down the hall and the stairs. There’s even some over there.” He pointed to the large stain in the rug by the table holding the phone. He had found the phone off the hook and on the floor when he had come searching here for the money. Off the hook, and covered with bloody prints. “I think one of them got shot. We ought to go out and see if there’s a trail outdoors and where it leads.”

  “It’s obvious that one of them was shot,” Stolz said impatiently. “But we won’t hunt for him. That’s for the police. We don’t dare meddle with evidence. This isn’t Nevada.” He was looking hard at Marvitch. “We’ll be walking a tightrope here. Watch what you say, watch how you act. We just got here, and we’re stunned.”

  They practiced looking stunned, and the dog slept until the cops came with red lights, sirens, and bright gold badges.

  Skip slammed the lid of the suitcase, locked it. It was bigger than the zipper case and quite old and battered. “Well, that’s that.”

  Uncle Willy, pale and shaken and twitchy with nervousness, sat across the room on the other bed. “Can’t you tell me everything that happened? I don’t want to be left in the dark. After all, I got my friends into this. Important people.” Uncle Willy was thinking of Snope and of Snope’s methods when he became displeased.

  “You’re better off not knowing,” Skip said. “Just believe me, the job went sour. Big Tom goofed. Real bad. I knew when you dragged him in on it, it was a mistake.”

  Uncle Willy chewed a nail. “I can’t understand anything going wrong for Big Tom. He’s a real careful operator. Maybe you shouldn’t have gone anywhere near the house tonight. Maybe if you hadn’t been there, prying around——”

  “Just be glad I was,” Skip said. “Just be glad I was smart enough to do a little checking. If I hadn’t heard those shots and seen what I had, you might be a sitting duck right now.”

  “No, no, I’m in the clear. Perfectly in the clear. Skip, I don’t mind telling you this job washes me up. I’m all through. I’m never going to have anything more to do with anything crooked.”

  “Now you’re getting smart,” Skip commended.

  “I’m not going to ask you any more questions, either,” Uncle Willy went on with an air of withdrawing from something wicked. “I’ve got a whole new slant on life. It doesn’t have to be a rat race.” His coat hung over a chair, the pockets heavy with A.A. leaflets; Uncle Willy looked over that way, his face brightening. “Yessir, I’ve crossed a kind of bridge and I never intend to go back the way I came.”

  Skip nodded, looking around to see if he had missed anything. He paid little attention to Uncle Willy’s meanderings.

  Uncle Willy said, “I had my eyes opened tonight. I’m not going to kick any more about working for Mr. Chilworth. I’m not going to grouch to myself and think all the time about the chances I missed and the jobs I might have pulled off, and things like that. I’m going to concentrate on myself, my own shortcomings and failures. You know, the harm I’ve done others, and so on. I’m going to straighten myself out. It’s just a miracle, you might say, that I called A.A. and they sent me this Mr. Mitchell.”

  “You liked him, huh?” Skip picked up the zipper bag and went into the bathroom for his shaving stuff.

  “He’s the best man I ever met in my life,” Uncle Willy said fervently.

  “That’s fine; you stick with him,” Skip advised.

  Uncle Willy’s gaze followed Skip as he moved around the room. “There’s no money coming at all?” he ventured timidly.

  Skip glanced over at him. “You’d better forget you ever heard of any money.”

  “And you didn’t . . . uh . . . get a chance to——”

  “From outside?” Skip demanded scornfully. “With them plugging away at each other in there like a shooting gallery?”

  “I just can’t understand it.” Uncle Willy rubbed a hand around over his thin head of hair. “To think Big Tom and those men he knew would have a blowup like that.”

  “They did, and that’s why I have to clear out. If the girl talks I’m cooked. If they find her, that is.”

  “She’s not waiting somewhere for you?” Uncle Willy demanded, having forgotten his decision not to ask any more questions. “I thought she had your jalopp, maybe, was outside in the street, or maybe running an errand.”

  “Eddie has the jalopp,” Skip said. “If he brings it back here, push it in the garage, will you? If he doesn’t, it’s okay.” Privately Skip thought: He took the bitch off my hands, he’s welcome to the heap. He had the two bags stuffed with his clothes and belongings now, the zipper bag and the old battered case. Skip went over to the door. “Well, so long, Unc. I’ll be seeing you. Remember, if the bulls give any sign of thinking you were in on this thing tonight, you know from nothing.”

  “I was at the A.A. meeting,” Uncle Willy said, the new light beginning to shine again in his weary eyes.

  In Union Station, Skip went into the men’s room, entered a cubicle and shut the door, and then, standing spraddle-legged above the bags, he unbuttoned his shirt and took out the two packs of bills and counted them. One pack had twenty hundred-dollar bills and the other had twenty-five. He was the possessor of forty-five hundred dollars in crisp legitimate currency. He extracted two of the bills, put the rest back inside his shirt, unlatched t
he door, picked up the bags, and returned to the main lobby.

  His real desire was to get to Las Vegas and try to run the money into an important sum with luck; but Las Vegas was Stolz’s territory and it was just possible the money might be recognized over there in some manner. Not probable, Skip thought, but possible to the degree that he felt nervous over it. The next best, though much farther away, was Reno.

  He bought a ticket to Portland, Oregon. This would take him through Sacramento, where he would get off the train and buy another ticket east.

  In case anyone wished to trace him there would be a little difficulty. He wasn’t thinking now of the police, but of Stolz. He had no desire ever to meet again the big man with the granite face and the granite fists. People like that were, in Skip’s opinion, just plain undesirable citizens.

  Eddie parked the car in the alley, some two or three doors from home. Karen whispered, “Will you be long, Eddie? Will it take much time?”

  “I’ve got to pack a few things, not much.”

  Her face floated in the dark, pale as a flower, and Eddie could make out the endearing curve of lip and cheek, the fringe of lashes, the soft gleam of her eyes. Already Karen’s face had taken on the familiar aspect of the well-beloved. It seemed to Eddie that he had known her forever. He leaned into the car to kiss her once again. She put up her hands to frame his face, to pull his mouth to hers. When the kiss ended she whispered, “You’re just wonderful, Eddie. You really are!”

  Eddie felt wonderful. He had the sensation of having found a small, exclusive, and rather unbelievable treasure much more to be prized than the mundane one of money. Karen belonged to him. He belonged to her. It had happened on the front porch of a house being built in an unknown part of Altadena. No matter who eventually bought and owned that house, a little bit of it would always be his and Karen’s.

  He went quickly down the dark unlit alley to the slatternly back fence, found the gate, went in past the heaps of unboxed refuse and wine bottles, to the back door of the house. He let himself in. The smell left by his mother’s cooking, the chili, the masa and grease, the coffee, was rank in the kitchen. He stole through to the main room, crossed it softly in the dark, and tapped on the bedroom door.