The Price of Murder

by John D. MacDonald

  He carefully prepared an ample breakfast and took it on a tray out into the sun on the terrace. He sat with his cigarettes and his pot of coffee and tried to make himself feel calm all the way through, tried to stop the fluttering that came and went. Verney would play. He had to play. He had no other choice. This was the big one. And it was going to go right, and he was going to go a long way away from here, away from a diligent little man named Keefler.

  This was the sort of deal he had dreamed about. And had never believed he would get close, this close. Before his release in May he had done a lot of thinking. It was painful thinking, because it showed him just how little he had done with his life. At thirty-two there wasn’t much to look forward to. He knew that Kennedy would put him on. There were always things Kennedy could use him for. There was always a call for a muscle. It would be a couple of bills a week. But inevitably, inexorably, there would be a fourth fall at the end of it. And the tag of an habitual. And a long long term. He wouldn’t be worth the best protective efforts of Kennedy’s legal talent. He would be discarded, with slight regret.

  He got out and went to work for Grunwalt and, very carefully and politely, he ignored the feelers that Kennedy’s people put out. But as the weeks went by he had the sick feeling that sooner or later he would rejoin the organization. There didn’t seem to be anything else he could do. He dreamed up and discarded dozens of ideas for a solo operation.

  Then, in the last week in June, he attended a party in a big apartment given by a city official whose ties to both Bouchard and Kennedy had been close and profitable. There were many familiar faces there. Kennedy’s people seemed to think it just a matter of time before he came back into the fold. It was at that party he met Drusilla Downey Catton. It was late in the evening. Her escort had passed out and been stowed in one of the bedrooms with the other casualties. By then Danny was tight enough to decide to take over where the previous one had left off. Drusilla was a big handsome vital woman of about thirty, dark-haired and colorful, with a strong face, an air of recklessness, an inexplicable air of importance, and a voice and way of speaking that made him think of Katherine Hepburn.

  They took their drinks out onto a terrace that over-looked the city and the lake, and she hoisted herself up to sit on the wide cement wall sixteen stories above Lake Drive. She talked and he listened, at first with mild interest and then a growing excitement. She had barely known the man who had brought her. Her husband was Burton Catton. Danny knew him as a much older man, a man of money and importance. She said Catton had had a severe heart attack and was so concerned with taking his own pulse that he had no time for her. She said she was perfectly fascinated by the party and by all the types she had met. These people seemed so very much more interesting than her circle of dull friends. Actually they made her friends seem quite bloodless. Was it really true that that one named Al Altamiro had his left arm shot off? Danny told her how it had been amputated by a twelve-gauge shotgun during a union jurisdictional dispute, and she was delighted to know the details, and she quivered deliciously. He sensed that she was bored, reckless, restless—that she lived for excitement and sensation. And he knew there was money behind her.

  Consequently, when she began to ask about him, he did not conceal the truth as he would have with a different sort of woman. He told the truth and embellished it. He gave himself a bloodier background than was reasonable. In actual fact he had committed but one murder, and that had been unintentional. He’d been ordered by Bouchard to discipline a runner who had been holding out on his numbers take. The dim light of the room where he had beaten the man had put his aim off, and a blow to the mouth had crushed the throat and the runner had strangled to death. After the embarrassing problem had been solved by slinging the body under a slow-moving freight, Bouchard had been annoyed with Danny until he became aware that the end result had been a remarkable increase in the efficiency of the other runners. And one time, because of his driving skill and his knowledge of the city, he had driven for two specialists who had been imported to take care of a gambler named Berman. Berman had learned he had an incurable cancer, and in addition to making his peace with his God, a move to which Nick could not object, Berman also wanted to cleanse himself with the Grand Jury, a procedure which could not be permitted. The more important of the two imported trigger men was a sulky, sleepy little man who, due to his fondness for and accuracy with a Colt .22 Woodsman fitted with a German silencer, was known as Peashooter. Danny, at the wheel, heard the husky sound, hardly louder than a snapping of the fingers, and learned an hour later, after he had garaged the car, that Berman, drinking coffee in his kitchen, had taken the slug directly in the orifice of the right ear—which, considering his condition, might be counted as a favor.

  But, with Drusilla Downey Catton, he dwelt on his three prison terms, hinted at the direness of his deeds, and dredged up convincing detail from the welter of shop talk he had been hearing all his life. And he was not unaware that the more dangerous he made himself, the more delight Dru took in her delicious shudderings, and the more insistent became the pressure of her round warm leg against his hip as they talked there on the terrace. This was a phenomenon he had heard about, but had never experienced, the fascination of the wellborn woman with a pronounced sexual drive for the fighter, the thug, the jockey.

  He took her for the first time that same night, on a woolly blanket spread beside her convertible, some fifteen miles from the city. He was as rough with her as he expected she desired him to be. And he learned she was a great deal of woman.

  They spent the following evenings together, and at the end of the week he quit his job, gave up his room, and, on the first day of July, was installed out at the camp. The heart attack had made it most unlikely that Burt Catton would ever go near the camp again. In essence Danny knew that he was simply at stud. It was all that was expected of him, but in the case of Drusilla Downey Catton, that was a requirement almost heroic. On the first of July she had received the semiannual installment from her trust fund. After paying off her debts there was enough left for her to buy him an almost new car, more clothes than he had ever owned before, stock the camp with ample liquor and great boxes of food, provide him with pocket money. He had never lived better or been lonelier. This was not the deal he had planned for himself, but it was much more pleasant than working for Grunwalt.

  In order for the relationship to be palatable to both of them, it was necessary that certain fictions be devised. He told her that, due to the long memories of certain enemies, it was healthier for him to be in such an isolated place. Also it gave him a chance to plan some big operation. She was providing the place for him because it wasn’t being used anyway. She was a woman of frightful energies. She could slip out of the great bed at one in the morning and be back, fresh, eager, glowing with health, demanding his immediate attentions, at eight the next morning. Her eyes had the slight bulge, her throat the faint tell-tale fullness of the hyperthyroid. After a time Danny Bronson began to wonder how long he could last.

  And then he found the big chance had been right in his lap. She had questioned him about the big job he was supposed to be planning. She never tired of listening to his shop talk. Then she said, “It isn’t fair, really, you know. Because I mean they’ll look for someone like you, won’t they? But respectable men, like Burt and Paul Verney, they can get away with a dreadful thing without anybody knowing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, it’s something they’re doing. It depends on getting rid of some money. Quite a lot of money.”

  He had tried to question her, but she turned arch and mysterious. Lately she had been slowly achieving a position of dominance over him. She had begun to give orders and expect them to be obeyed. He had been the dominant one in the beginning. He had roughed her up from time to time. Not seriously. Never marking her. She seemed to enjoy it and expect it. But this was different.

  It did not take him very long. Nerve centers and pressure points are much the same for a wom
an as for a man. With the flood of genuine agonizing pain came a fear that oiled her face and turned it gray. He had her in a corner and he made the words tumble out of her, a gasping torrent. Then, holding her arm, he walked her gently to the big bed. She walked with the feeble fragility of a very old woman. When the pain had faded, he made her tell him again, and asked her questions until he was certain he knew all she knew. The harsh discipline had shocked her. It made her very meek and highly affectionate. It restored him to the place of dominance.

  His original plan had been to move slowly, and, using the startling information Dru had given him, milk Verney and Catton with restraint so as not to alarm them too much. He made his required phone calls to Richardson.

  But then Keefler came into the picture. And suddenly, unexpectedly, he became a parole violator, a wanted man, a man owing the state over seven years. He would be forty upon release. If there was a single truth in all the world, it was this: They would never take him back.

  And it changed his approach to Verney and Catton. He had to take big and take fast. He had to squeeze them, and protect himself in the process. The letter in the flour canister in Lucille’s kitchen was insurance. The thousand he had dropped off on Thursday was another kind of insurance. When he thought of Lucille it made him feel soiled. Silly bitch. Lee deserved the best, not a round-heeled bag like that. She looked right at him and asked for it, just as obviously as any woman can ever ask for it. And he’d been too damn weak to ignore it. He prayed Lee would never find out. But sooner or later Lee would find out about her. It would happen with somebody else and he’d find out, and then if the timing was wrong, Lee would kill her.

  Verney was due at two o’clock. Another hour to wait. Another hour to go over it carefully, so he would say the right things to Verney. The man had a lot of control. You had to give him that. Danny had taken the chance of driving into town on Thursday. He had phoned Paul Verney at his office at nine-fifteen and managed to brush off the insistent secretary and get through to Verney.

  “My name is Bronson. You don’t know me, Mr. Verney. But I want to see you just as soon as I can on a matter of importance.”

  Verney had a deep voice, careful articulation. “I’m afraid I have a very full schedule, Mr. Bronson. Perhaps you can give me some idea of what this is all about.”

  “I’ll mention two names and then maybe you can guess what it’s all about. Catton. Rovere.” There was no answer. “Mr. Verney?”

  “I am still on the line, Bronson.” The deep voice was calm and precise. “I can see you at ten.”

  Verney’s suite of offices was on the sixth floor of the Market Building at the corner of George and Castel Streets. On the opaque glass of the door was lettered Paul D. Verney, Attorney at Law. The offices were small, hushed, quietly and effectively furnished. The girl spoke almost in a whisper when she said, “Through that door, Mr. Bronson. He’s expecting you.”

  When Dru had described him, she had said, “He’s a big gaunt type, sort of funereal, I suppose. Great dignity and presence. Rusty clothes and hollow eyes. I’ll bet he collects Lincolniana. He and Burt have been mixed up on all kinds of deals for years and years. He got clipped in this same tax decision that hurt Burt. A huge bite plus penalties and interest for five years.”

  Verney was sitting behind his desk when Danny walked in. Dru had been right, up to a point; but Verney was much younger than Danny had guessed—perhaps in his early forties. And he had expected pallor and fragility. Though Verney was lean, he had tremendous hands and wrists, sloping powerful shoulders and a look of fitness.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Bronson. That was a very mysterious message. I must confess it intrigued me. Cigar?”

  “Thanks.” Danny bit off the end, spat it onto the rug. lit it with the silver lighter Dru had given him. He leaned back and smiled at Verney and told Verney precisely what he was doing, what Verney and Catton were planning. He watched Verney closely and saw no change of expression, no tightening of the mouth.

  “And just where would you get this curious story?”

  “From Catton’s wife. He told her the whole thing.”

  Verney nodded. “I see. If this story was correct, what would be your next step?”

  Danny told him exactly what he wanted. Again Verney nodded quite casually. “If this story happened to be correct, you understand that I couldn’t give you an answer here and now.”

  “I realize that. Suppose you come out and see me.”

  “Where are you located?”

  “Catton’s camp. Out near Kemp.”

  For the first time he saw an unguarded flicker of surprise. It faded quickly. “Sunday? About two?”

  “That will be fine, Mr. Verney. But I want to make one thing clear. I’ve got my guard up. Way up. The whole thing has been written down. It’s in a safe place. It goes to the cops the minute I stop reporting in.”

  “That would seem to be a sensible provision, Mr. Bronson.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Until Sunday, then.”

  It disappointed Danny that he had made so little impression on the man. Verney’s iron control was distressing to him. So, on the spur of the moment, he said, “You people use retainers. I’d like a little retainer. Call it a sort of guarantee of good faith.”

  “How much, Mr. Bronson?”

  “A thousand.”

  Verney had nodded. They had walked together to the bank, a block away. He had waited while Verney cashed a check, came over to him and gave him the envelope containing twenty fifty-dollar bills.

  Danny said, “At least you admit I got the right dope.”

  “We shall have our discussion on Sunday, Mr. Bronson.”

  “Come all by yourself. Know the way?”

  “I have been there before. Good day, Mr. Bronson.”

  Verney arrived at the camp at ten after two, driving a black four-year-old Dodge. Danny heard the car and walked out and saw Verney park beside his car and get out. Verney wore a dark blue unpressed suit and a dark grey felt hat.

  There was, of course, no handshake. They sat at the blue metal table on the terrace. Danny said there was hot coffee and Verney said he would appreciate some, thank you, no cream or sugar. Danny went in and brought out the cups, saucers and pot on a tray. Verney acted as though he were handling a matter for a client, something in which he was not involved personally.

  Danny poured the coffee and sat down.

  “Mr. Bronson, I have given your proposition a great deal of thought. I have not, as yet, mentioned or discussed the matter with Mr. Catton. I felt that it would be more to the point if we could discuss this matter calmly and arrive at some more equitable solution.”

  “I’m not going to dicker.”

  “I am assuming you are a reasonable man. I am assuming that you have a certain amount of intelligence, and that you can be objective about this situation.”

  “I’ll listen to you.”

  “Both Mr. Catton’s and my personal financial affairs are in extremely bad shape. We are in certain ventures together, and we both have interests in other unshared ventures’. Our problem is largely one of timing. I have managed to explain this to the tax people in a manner that has satisfied them to the extent that they will delay taking liens on our property and holdings. We entered on this risky venture, the one you became advised of, as a means of acquiring a large amount of cash.”

  “Illegally.”

  “Yes, of course. But the risk, up until the moment you phoned me, seemed worth taking. We estimated that, after dividing the profit from this venture, we could more than satisfy our tax indebtedness, and thus hold onto other quite promising ventures until they in turn prove out. Now let us take a look at what will happen if we meet your demand. We will not be able to pay the tax indebtedness. All tangible and intangible holdings will be seized. Both Mr. Catton and myself will be penniless, and with future earnings highly obligated. And it is very difficult to frighten a penniless man, Mr. Bronson. Mr. Catton and I were able to scrape tog
ether sixty-five thousand dollars. Let us say we both had a cash reserve for contingencies. We could have paid it against the tax, but instead we decided to invest it in this venture you learned about. To accede to your demand would not only eliminate all chance of profit but would give us an additional net loss of sixty-five thousand. Frankly, one of the reasons I did not confer with Mr. Catton before coming here was because I am not at all sure it wouldn’t kill him.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re driving at, Verney.”

  “This is an appeal to reason. If you persist in being stupidly greedy, you will get nothing.”

  “And you and Catton will go to jail. I’ve been there. You won’t like it.”

  “Possibly. I don’t think Burt would live to be sentenced. And I can think of several ways I might avoid a sentence. It’s a chance I believe I’m willing to take.”

  Danny watched Paul Verney. It was impossible to tell whether the man was bluffing. “What’s the counter offer?”

  “Patience. Let us go ahead with the marketing the way we planned it. We will move slowly but safely. In that way we can hope to obtain full face value. That means a cash profit of two hundred and sixty-two thousand. You will be cut in for a full third, or a bit more than eighty-seven thousand. That is a good deal of money, Mr. Bronson. It may, in fact, be more than you will realize if you should take the entire amount and attempt a sale at a discount. You will remember that we purchased the entire amount for only sixty-five thousand. Frankly, I believe this is a generous offer, and I advise you to accept it.”