Hard Case Crime: Kill Now Pay Later

by Terrall, Robert

  I missed the bracket with the phone, and left it dangling. I got back to the Buick while Shelley was reaching into the back seat for her suitcase.

  “Sorry that took so long,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said, “I was getting a little dehydrated. Don’t you think a fast drink would be nice?”

  I looked at my watch and pretended to consider. “Maybe we’d better get on in.”

  I waited till we were on the parkway before I brought up the fire. She swung toward me sharply.

  “Why do you want to know about that? There can’t be any connection with what happened last night.”

  “There’s a dim kind of connection,” I said. “Leo Moran was arrested once for sending obscene matter through the mails. That’s almost the only thing we know about him so far.”

  She made a low gargling sound. “Somebody’s been telling you about those movies, I see. Don’t call them obscene. That sounds too dignified.” She sat back. “Do you know what I thought you were going to say? That you’d found out that Dick started the fire.”

  I looked away from the road.

  “But don’t quote me, for God’s sake,” she said.

  “He set fire to the building to kill Pattberg?”

  “No! My God, no. That part was an accident. Dick may have his little quirks, but he wouldn’t deliberately— At least, I don’t think—”

  “Did Dick know Pattberg before?”

  “Neither of us did. It was all arranged by phone. He came out a couple of days earlier to look things over, and that was the first time we set eyes on him. And what a repulsive little man! I suppose you have to be repulsive, or it wouldn’t occur to you to go into that business. But he overdid it, I thought. It wasn’t a hot day but he was sweating, and for some reason even his sweat didn’t seem real. It looked like whatever it is actors use. That’s why nobody could get worked up about it when he was killed. He hadn’t seemed to be very alive in the first place. He was alive legally, I admit that. Dick gave him some money in advance, which was a mistake, because he was drunk and sleepy when he showed up the night of the party. He had trouble getting the reels on the projector, and somebody had to do the focusing for him. He ran one reel backward and upside down—quite an interesting effect, as a matter of fact.”

  She gave me a curiously shy look. “It’s probably an old story to you, but it was my first exposure to the art form, and I don’t care if it never happens again. I let it get under my skin. It was so damned crude! I don’t mean just what the actors were doing. Everything. And don’t grin at me, damn it. It wasn’t funny.”

  “But you stayed to the end?”

  “How did you know?” she said bitterly. “Yes, and so did everybody, but we all did some squirming. Even Dick was embarrassed, though naturally he wouldn’t admit it. He kept applauding and making dumb remarks, but he knew it was a mistake. That’s really why I think he set the fire. This is a little psychiatric, but I think he wanted to get rid of anything that would remind him of those gruesome movies.”

  “Where was everybody?”

  “In swimming. Most of this didn’t come out at the time, which is just as well. After that movie fiasco, the party never really got on its feet. It was just—I don’t know, blah. Maybe Dick was trying too hard. It was a big disappointment, because his parents hadn’t let him have any parties since he smashed up a car last year. People began going home. Then the moon came up and he insisted we all go for a swim. Au naturel, naturally. In the raw, to put it in English.”

  She was looking straight ahead. “It seemed a little childish, but Dick was determined. There’s no electricity in the bathhouse, so we got undressed in the recreation building, the girls in the lounge, the boys in the billiard room. All our clothes went up in the fire, which was probably part of the point. It made the party a huge success.”

  I glanced at her again and she said defensively, “As parties go.”

  “Dick went in too?”

  “Yes, but the lights were out. He could slip out of the pool and nobody would know the difference. So we wanted entertainment? He’d give us entertainment. What could be more diverting than a big fire at three in the morning? We got the volunteer firemen out of bed and they enjoyed it. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a fire in the country—it’s like a carnival. People come from all over. And this one had a novel touch. We were splashing around in the pool, shrieking like a lot of boy-girl campers when the counselors are off at a meeting. We scrambled out and grabbed towels, and after that there was the problem of getting something else on before the firemen got there. We rushed into the house and began going through closets. We ended up in some pretty peculiar outfits. The firemen must have known we’d been in swimming, but thank God there was no way of telling that we’d been in minus suits. It was all very exciting, and the people who went home early sulked for weeks. When we found out about Pattberg it was a little less gay. Not much, but a little. The State Police asked a lot of questions. But Pattberg had been Pattberg, and nobody really cared. The insurance man was tougher because money was involved. He didn’t want to pay unless he had to. He did, finally.

  “You didn’t tell him you thought Dick started the fire?”

  “No! Nobody did. Not everybody at the party was really wild about him, but nobody wanted to get him into that kind of trouble. And what could we say? We saw him dancing around with a wild light in his eyes. Maybe that was the pride of authorship and maybe it was plain animal spirits. But there’s one other thing that makes me think he did it. His father got an analyst for him afterward. Before that he was famous for not believing in it.”

  She lit a cigarette. “Ben, is it true that you’re working for him? Mr. Pope?”

  “I have his check in my pocket. But why not tell me what you wanted me to do? I might have some time.”

  “It, was just a daydream, Ben. I might as well make up my mind, Dick and I are kaput. And it’s not such a terrible tragedy.”

  I waited. If there was enough pressure behind it she would tell me without any prodding.

  “Oh, hell,” she said. “I’m not sure about anything any more. God knows he’s hard to get along with, and he hasn’t been getting any easier. That fight last night was typical. But we always managed to make up until Anna DeLong came on the scene. I keep telling myself that Dick’s of legal age, and if he can’t button his own clothes it’s none of my business. But I know one thing. This goddam analyst is steering him her way! And she’s wrong for him! I’m not just saying that because I’m a jealous bitch. She really is. She’s as cold as ice. She’s years older than he is. She must be twenty-seven, anyway. He’s always broke these days—he even owes me money—but he’s going to be on the check-cashing end of a perfectly lovely trust arrangement before too long, and that’s why her glittering eye is fixed on him. There’s something very, very fishy about that girl.”

  “In what way?”

  She turned eagerly. “I know you’re going to discount about ninety percent of this, but why did she take that job unless she was setting her sights on the son and heir? She worked in Mr. Pope’s office in the city. She must know his financial position. People are always going to get sick and need medicine, and those dividends are going to keep on coming in. Another thing she must have known from following Dick’s career in the papers—he’s a sitting duck. All she had to do was wear tailored suits and look efficient and he’d fall in her lap.”

  “Don’t tell me she doesn’t really need to wear glasses?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her! Well, I admit I was irked when they started having those long intimate conversations, but if she’d been right for him I would have bowed out gracefully. May the best girl win, and all that crap. But it’s terribly unhealthy, Ben. It really is. He needed a mother once, but not now, for God’s sake. And she’s such a phony phony. Don’t tell me anybody can be that unruffled in the bosom of the Pope family. She’s either beyond human feelings or she’s putting on an act. That’s what I wanted to hire you to find o
ut. What does anybody know about her? She has a biography, but it’s all in one dimension, and it doesn’t convince me. She says she went to the University of Michigan. Now I can’t take her off in a corner and ask her what class she was in and what did she take up and did she or didn’t she graduate. But I’ve run into three separate people who were at Michigan about when she would have been unless she was a child prodigy, and they never heard of her. Well, it’s a big place. But I thought if I could show her up for a fakearoo, maybe Dick could see for himself that she doesn’t really care about him, she’s going for the trust fund.”

  I saw a booth ahead, and slowed to pay the nagging little toll.

  “It’s easy to find out if she went to Michigan. Write them a letter.”

  “What good would it do? She could talk her way out of that. It would have to be something like serving a prison term for selling abortions. Nothing that woman could do would surprise me! But I’ve been saving something, Ben, that shows she may not be quite the Ladies’ Home Journal character she pretends to be. It may throw some light on your problem, too. Now listen.”

  She took two quick puffs at her cigarette. I was listening.

  “Last Saturday night we went to a dance at the country club. Dick and I. We were still drinking martinis at midnight, which will give you the idea. Dick took it into his empty head to repeat a few things his father and mother had been telling him about me. They never liked me, for some nonrational reason. I knew this, but I didn’t enjoy hearing it from my fiancé, who’s no candidate for beatification himself. You know the kind of thing. I’ve got a reputation for not being too celibate, or whatever the word is.” She glanced at me. “And I couldn’t care less. What was I supposed to do, sit there like a perfect lady? I answered back. I’ve been known to disgrace myself at that country club, but this time I managed to keep it genteel. I didn’t throw anything. I made him mad, I’m happy to say. He walked out and climbed into his Mercury. I thought I’d better find out where he was going, so I swiped somebody’s car. Dick was weaving all over the road at seventy miles an hour, which they don’t recommend at driving school. How he made it to White Plains I don’t know, but he made it. He pulled up in front of a big apartment house. I was right behind him. If he’d been taking a higher proportion of vermouth in his martinis he couldn’t have missed me. He left the Merc double-parked and went in. I saw a phone booth, and just to make absolutely sure I looked up Anna DeLong’s address. That was who it was, all right.”

  I’d already made that entry in my chart of connections. I made a sound to show I was interested, and asked, “How long did you wait?”

  “Now be patient, Ben,” she said. “So far it’s not too surprising. Dick had his feelings hurt and ran off to Mother so she could kiss it and make it well. Meanwhile, what had Mother been up to? That’s something I’d been wondering about. It’s more convenient for a housekeeper to live in, and the Popes have plenty of extra rooms. Why commute to White Plains, of all places? I was trying to make up my mind what to do. Go back to the dance and forget about it? Ring the doorbell? Stamp my foot and scream? Then a man came out of the building.”

  “Moran?” I said quickly.

  “You spoiled it!” she cried. “Couldn’t you wait a minute? Yes, that’s who it was, but I didn’t know it till I saw his picture in the paper today. He looked as though he’d put his clothes on in a hurry. I don’t know if his shoes were untied or not. That’s the impression I got. He saw Dick’s Mercury. It’s a white convertible, and parked that way you couldn’t very well not see it. Dick had left the keys in the ignition, which was like him. Moran took the keys out, juggled them for a minute, and then threw them away, threw them as far away as he could. I had what I thought was a bright idea. He must know something about Anna’s private life, so why shouldn’t I go in for a little counterintelligence? I opened the door of the booth as he went past and said, ‘Don’t I know you?—Aren’t you a friend of Anna DeLong’s?’—something like that. He was big and black-haired and good-looking, and before I could count to three I knew I shouldn’t have spoken to him. I was wearing a party dress. Dick had on a white coat and black tie. That meant we’d come from the same place.”

  She threw her cigarette out the window. “He looked me over, and by that time I was sure of just one thing—I was going to have some trouble. It was a quiet neighborhood and a quiet time of night. His hands kept opening and shutting, and they were big hands. When he asked me who I was and who Dick was, I told him. He wanted to know how Dick had met Anna, and I told him that. Dick had routed him out of a nice comfortable bed, and I was pretty sure he was going to take justice into his own hands and get a little revenge with me. But not at all. He told me I was going back to the dance without disturbing the happy couple. And that’s all that happened. He got his car and followed me all the way. When I turned in at the country club he honked twice and drove on. If you can make any sense out of that, you’re welcome to it.”

  I was still trying to make sense of it when I stopped in front of her apartment house on Central Park West. A doorman in uniform hurried across the sidewalk, his money-hand itching.

  “Ben, you’ll have to eat somewhere,” Shelley said. “Why not come up? I’ll make you some nice nourishing spaghetti.”

  “Good evening, Miss Hardwick,” the doorman said with a sketchy salute.

  “Good evening, John,” she said, and went on, “And while the water’s coming to a boil we could have some nice nourishing bourbon. Come on, Ben. You’ll think of some more questions to ask me.”

  She touched my sleeve, and I saw a distant glimmer of the same wildness I had seen in her eyes the night before. It made me think of the projection room at Dick Pope’s party, filled with explosive material waiting for a spark.

  “I could even say please,” she said.

  “You don’t have to go that far. Can I use your phone?”

  “They’ve been threatening to disconnect it, but I think it’s still working. John, can you find a parking space for Mr. Gates’s car?”

  “I’ll do my best, Miss Hardwick,” he said.

  That settled it. I surrendered the Buick, only half-expecting to see it again. In my experience in this part of town, the nearest parking space was somewhere in the upper Bronx.

  “He’s a magician,” Shelley said as we went into the lobby. “He controls the north side of Seventy-Third from here to Columbus, and on Christmas he’s one of the richest men in town.”

  An elderly elevator operator, even more servile than the doorman, took us up. The apartment, which we reached after a walk down a carpeted hall, had apparently been decorated by a Japanese with a strong yen for the old country.

  Shelley kicked off her shoes. “Weird, isn’t it? Everything’s Japanese but the air-conditioning. It isn’t mine. It’s easy to borrow apartments in the summer.” She pointed out the phone. “The phone book’s in English.”

  She waved and took her suitcase into a bedroom off a low balcony. I went down some steps to the living room. To use the phone I had to sit on the floor. I settled myself on a cushion and dialed my secretary’s number.

  Mrs. Rooney, a profane, motherly body who is all but disqualified for her profession by her fear of the typewriter, answered breathlessly. “You call at the damnedest times, Mr. Gates. I’ve got a soufflé in the oven.”

  “I just want to give you a phone number. Davidson’s going to be calling you.”

  I read her the number on the phone in my hand. After writing it down she said, “People have been trying to reach you. A detective named Joe Josephs. A couple of other cops. Reporters. One or two just people. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, the bastards. They wanted to know if they could help, as though the world had come to an end or something. What crime did you commit, after all? You took a couple of drinks. And that’s what I told them.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Rooney. The soufflé?”

  “Christ!”

  As soon as I could get the operator’s attention I put in a personal cal
l to Anna DeLong at the Popes’ number. A maid told the operator that Miss DeLong had left for the day. There was no answer at her White Plains number. That was all right with me; now I could relax.

  Shelley brought in two drinks. “Don’t get up,” she said. “If you get up you’ll just have to sit on the floor somewhere else. See if this is the way you like it.”

  It was plain bourbon, and the ice hadn’t been melting long enough to spoil the flavor. Shelley kicked over another cushion.

  “I bought a kimono to go with the décor,” she said. “I could put it on.”

  “You look fine,” I told her, which was true.

  She looked down at me. My head was on a level with her hips; considering everything, which I was doing with my usual attention to detail, it wasn’t a bad level to be on. She moved closer. The air between us was highly charged, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear thunder.

  “I’m going to make a short speech,” she said. “I know you’ve been careful not to promise anything, but I have a feeling that things may have changed for the better. I’ve been worried as hell. All that business with Dick—it’s been getting out of hand. I’m glad you’re here.”

  She came down to me slowly, her eyes closing as she passed the focal point. She touched me only with her lips. They moved against mine, and for an instant I felt the promise of her tongue.

  She put her drink on the floor. A moment later mine was beside it. Then she came all the way down and moved in against me.

  “Don’t you want to take off your coat?” she said. “And your tie? I’ll help you.”

  So I took off my coat and my tie. It didn’t stop there. And when a girl helps me unbutton my shirt I consider that the least I can do is return the favor. I still didn’t know why she was being so hospitable, but there was only one way to find out.

  “Or do you want to eat first?” she said after a moment.

  “I’m not that hungry.”

  When the phone rang, a while later, I kicked over my drink. That is one big disadvantage of having everything take place on the floor. Shelley said, “Hell!” and lay still, only her fingertips moving gently. The phone rang again.