Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  He chuckled in spite of himself. “That’s not very good advertising, is it?”

  “It is to me. I want an investigator with ambition. I want a fresh viewpoint. I want someone who can devote all his time to the job.”

  “That’s my number you’re calling.” He gestured to a chair. “It looks like we might do business. Will you sit down?”

  She sat down and showed a lot of expensive hosiery and beautifully shaped legs. “My name is Mrs. Roger Whitson. I am a widow with one child, a boy.

  “Four years ago, in New Jersey, my husband, who was a payroll messenger, left the bank acting as a guard for a teller named Henry Willard and a fifty-thousand-dollar payroll.

  “They were headed for the plant of what was then called Adco Products. They never arrived. Several days later, hunters found the badly charred body of a man lying beside an overturned and burned car in a gully off a lonely road. The body was identified as that of Henry Willard.

  “The police decided my husband had murdered him and stolen the fifty thousand dollars. They never found him or any clue to his whereabouts.”

  “What do you need me for?” Kip asked. “It sounds like a police matter. If they can’t find him with all their angles, I doubt if I can.”

  “They can’t find him because they are looking for the wrong man,” Helen Whitson declared. “Mr. Morgan, you may not have much faith in women’s intuition. I haven’t much myself, but there’s one thing of which I am sure. That charred body they found was my husband!”

  “They can identify a body by fingerprints, by dental records.”

  “I know all that, but it so happened that the dead man’s fingertips were badly burned. Their argument was that he burned them trying to force open the car door. It looked to me like somebody deliberately burned those fingertips!

  “They found a capped tooth in the dead man’s mouth. Henry Willard had a capped tooth, but so did my husband. There were no dental records on either man, and the police disregarded my statement.

  “They discovered fragments of clothing, a key ring, pocket-knife, and such things that were positively identified as belonging to Henry Willard. The police were convinced. They would not listen to me because they thought I was covering for my husband.

  “Mr. Morgan, I have a son growing up. He will be asking about his father. I will not have him believing his father a criminal when I know he is not!

  “My husband was murdered by Henry Willard. The reason he has not been found is because his body lies in that grave. I know Henry Willard is alive today and is safe because they have never even looked for him.”

  “But,” he objected, “you apparently have money. Why should your husband steal, or why should they believe he stole, when you are well-off?”

  “When my husband was alive, we had nothing. We lived on his salary, and I kept house like any young wife. After he was killed, I went to New York and worked. I was doing well, and then my uncle died and left me a wealthy woman. I am prepared to retain you for a year, if it takes that long, or longer. I want to find that man!”

  The information she could give him was very little. Henry Willard would now be thirty-six years old. He played a saxophone with almost professional skill. He neither gambled nor drank. He seemed to have little association with women. He had been two inches over six feet and weighed one seventy.

  He had, in her presence, expressed an interest in California, but that had been over a year before the crime.

  They sat for hours, and Kip questioned her. He started her talking about her life with her husband, about the parties they had, the picnics. Several times, Henry Willard had been along. She had seen him many times at the bank. For over a year, he had, at the request of the company, carried the payroll of Adco Products.

  He had never played golf or tennis. He expressed a dislike for horses, and Helen recalled during that long session that he disliked dogs, also.

  “He must be a crook”—Kip Morgan smiled—“if he didn’t like dogs!”

  “I know he was!” Helen stated. She described his preferences for food, the way he walked, and suddenly she recalled, “There’s something! He read Variety! I’ve seen him with it several times!”

  Kip Morgan noted it and went on. The man had black hair. Birthmarks? Yes, seen when swimming at the club. A sort of mole, the size of a quarter, on his right shoulder blade.

  The question was—how to find a man thirty-six years old who played the saxophone, even if he did have a birthmark? The only real clue was the link between Va-riety and the saxophone. He played with “almost” professional skill. Who added that “almost,” and why not just professional skill?

  “How about a picture? There must have been one in the papers at the time?”

  “No, there wasn’t. They couldn’t find any pictures of him at the time. Not even in his belongings. But I do have a snapshot. He’s one of a group at the club. As I recall, he did not want to be in the picture, but one of the girls pulled him into it.”

  Kip studied the picture. The man was well muscled, very well muscled. He looked fit as could be, and that did not fit with a bank job or with a man who played neither tennis nor golf. One who apparently went in for no sports but occasional swimming.

  “How about his belongings? Were they called for?”

  She shook her head. “No, he had no relatives.”

  “Leave any money? In the bank, I mean?”

  “Only about a thousand dollars. When I think of it, that’s funny, too, because he was quite a good businessman and never spent very much. He lived very simply and rarely went out.”

  Through a friend in the musician’s union, Kip tried to trace him down and he came to a dead end. Kip haunted nightclubs and theaters, listened to gossip, worried at the problem like a dog over a bone.

  “You know what I think?” he told Helen Whitson the next time he saw her. “I’ve a hunch this Willard was a smart cookie. No relatives showed up, and that’s unusual. No pictures in his stuff. No clues to his past. Aside from an occasional reference to Los Angeles, he never mentioned any place he had been or where he came from.

  “I think he planned this from the start. I think he did a very smart thing. I think he stepped out of his own personality for the five years you knew him, or knew of him. I think he deliberately worked into that job at the bank, waited for the right moment, then killed your husband and returned to his former life with the fifty thousand dollars!”

  He turned that over in his mind in the bar on Sixth Street. The more he considered it, the better he liked it, but if such was the case, he was bucking a stacked deck. He would be well covered. He was not a drinking man, but he was almost finished with his second drink when the idea came to him. He went to the telephone and called Helen Whitson.

  A half hour later, they sat across the table from each other. “I’ve had a hunch. You have hunches, and so can I.

  “Listen to this.” He leaned across the table. “This guy Willard is covered, see? He’s covered like a blanket. He’s had four years and fifty thousand dollars to work with. He’s supposed to be dead. If my guess is right, all that personality at the bank was assumed. He stepped out of himself and his natural surroundings long enough to steal fifty grand; then he stepped right back into his old life. He will be harder to locate than a field mouse in five hundred acres of cornfield. We’ve got just one chance. His mind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s like this. He’s covered, see? The perfect crime. But no man who has committed a crime, a major crime, is ever sure he’s safe. There is always a little doubt, a little fear. He may have overlooked something; somebody might recognize him.

  “That’s where he’s vulnerable. In his mind. We can’t find him, so we’ll make him come to us!”

  She shook her head doubtfully. “How can we possibly do that?”

  “How?” He grinned and sat back in his chair. “We’ll advertise!”

  “Advertise? Are you insane?”

  Kip was smilin
g. “We’ll run ads in the Times and the Examiner. If he’s in Los Angeles, he’ll see them. Take my word for it, it’ll scare the blazes out of him. We’ll run an ad inviting him to come to a certain hotel to learn something of interest.

  “He will be shocked. He’s been thinking he is safe. Still, under that confidence is a little haunting fear. This ad will bring all that fear to the surface. With the fifty thousand he had to start with, he’s probably become an important man. He could be big stuff now.

  “All right, suppose he sees that ad? He will know somebody knows Willard is alive. Don’t you see? That was his biggest protection, the fact that everybody believed Henry Willard to be dead. He’ll be frightened; he will also be curious. Who can it be? What do they know? Are the police closing in? Or is this blackmail?”

  Helen was excited. “It’s crazy! Absolutely crazy! But I believe it will work!”

  “He won’t dare stay away. He will be shocked to the roots of his being. His own anxiety will be our biggest help. He’ll try, discreetly, to find out who ran that advertisement. He’ll try to find out who has that particular room in the hotel. Finally, he will send someone, on some pretext, to find out who or what awaits him. In any event, we’ll have jarred him loose. He’ll be scared, and he’ll be forced by his own worry to do something. Once he begins, we can locate him. He won’t have the iron will it would take to sit tight and sweat it out.”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, it may work.” She looked at him doubtfully. “But what if—what do you think he will do?”

  Morgan shrugged. He had thought about that a lot. “Who knows? He will try to find out who it is that knows something. He will want to know how many know. If he discovers it is just we two, he will probably try another murder.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  Kip shrugged. “Not yet, but I will be. Scared as a man can be, but that won’t stop me.”

  “And that goes for me, too!” she said.

  The ad appeared first in the morning paper. It was brief and to the point, and it appeared in the middle of the real estate ads. (Everybody reads real estate advertisements in Los Angeles.) The type was heavy. It read:

  HENRY WILLARD

  Who was in Newark in 1943? Come to Room 1340 Hayworthy Hotel and learn something of interest.

  Kip Morgan sat in the room and waited. Beside him were several paperback detective novels and a few magazines. His coat was off and lying on the table at his right. Under the coat was his shoulder holster and the butt of his gun, where he could drop a hand on it.

  Down the hall, in a room with its door open a crack, waited three newsboys. They were members of a club where Kip Morgan taught boxing. Outside, the newsboy on the corner was keeping his eyes open, and three other boys loitered together, talking.

  Noon slipped past, and it was almost three o’clock when the phone rang. It was the switchboard operator.

  “Mr. Morgan? This is the operator. You asked us to report if anyone inquired as to who was stopping in that room? We have just had a call, a man’s voice. We replied as suggested that it was John Smith but he was receiving no calls.”

  “Fine!” Kip hung up and walked to the window.

  It was working. The call might have come from some curious person or some crank, but he didn’t think so.

  He rang for a bottle of beer and was tipped back in a chair with a magazine half in front of his face when the door opened. It was a bellman.

  Alert, Kip noticed how the bellman stared at him, then around the room. The instant the door closed after him, Kip was on his feet. He went to the door and gave his signal. The bellman had scarcely reached the elevator before a nice-looking youngster of fourteen in a blue serge suit was at his elbow, also waiting.

  A few minutes later, the boy was at Kip’s door. His eyes were bright and eager.

  “Mr. Morgan! The bellman went to the street, looked up and down, then walked to a Chevrolet sedan and spoke to the man sitting in the car. The man gave him some money.

  “I talked to Tom, down on the corner, and he said the car had been there about a half hour. It just drove up and stopped. Nobody got out.” He reached in his pocket. “Here’s the license number.”

  “Thanks.” Kip picked up the phone and called, then sat down.

  A few minutes later, the call was returned. The car was a rental. And, he reflected, certainly rented under an assumed name.

  The day passed slowly. At dusk, he paid the boys off and started them home, to return the next day. Then he went down to the coffee shop and ate slowly and thoughtfully. After paying his check, he walked outside.

  He must not go anywhere near Helen Whitson. He would take a walk around the block and return to the hotel room. It had been stuffy, and his head ached. He turned left and started walking. He had gone less than half a block when he heard a quick step behind him.

  Startled by the quickening steps, he whirled. Dark shadows moved at him, and before he could get his hands up, he was slugged over the head. Even as he fell to the walk, he remembered there had been a flash from a green stone on his attacker’s hand, a stone that caught some vagrant light ray.

  He hit the walk hard and started to get up. The man struck again, and then again. Kip’s knees gave way, and he slipped into a widening pool of darkness, fighting to hold his consciousness. Darkness and pain, a sense of moving. Slowly, he fought his way to awareness.

  “Hey, Bill.” The tone was casual. “He’s comin’ out of it. Shall I slug him again?”

  “No, I want to talk to the guy.”

  Bill’s footsteps came nearer, and Kip Morgan opened his eyes and sat up.

  Bill was a big man with shoulders like a pro football player and a broken nose. His cheeks were lean, his eyes cold and unpleasant. The other man was shorter, softer, with a round, fat face and small eyes.

  “Hi!” Kip said. “Who you boys workin’ for?”

  Bill chuckled. “Wakes right up, doesn’t he? Starts askin’ questions right away.” He studied Morgan thoughtfully, searching his mind for recognition. “What we want to know is who you’re workin’ for. Talk and you can blow out of here.”

  “Yes? Don’t kid me, chum! The guy who hired you yeggs hasn’t any idea of lettin’ me get away. I’m not workin’ for anybody. I work for myself.”

  “You goin’ to talk or take a beatin’?”

  His attitude said plainly that he was highly indifferent to the reply. Sooner or later, this guy was going to crack, and if they had to give him a beating first, why, that was part of the day’s work.

  “We know there’s a babe in this. You was seen with her.”

  “Her?” Kip laughed. “You boys are way off the track. She’s just a babe I was on the make for, but I didn’t score. Private dicks are too poor.

  “This case was handed to me by an agency in Newark, an agency that does a lot of work for banks.”

  He glanced up at Bill. “Why let yourself in for trouble? Don’t you know what this is? It’s a murder rap.”

  “Not mine!” Bill said. The fat man glanced at him, worried.

  “Ever hear of an accessory? That’s where you guys come in.”

  “Who was the babe?” Bill insisted.

  Kip was getting irritated. “None of your damn business!” he snapped, and came off the cot with a lunge.

  Bill took a quick step back, but Kip was coming too fast, and he clipped the big man with a right that knocked him back into the wall.

  The fat man came off his chair, clawing at his hip, and Kip backhanded him across the nose with the edge of his hand. He felt the bone break and saw the gush of blood that followed. The fat man whimpered like a baby, and Kip ducked a left from Bill and slammed a fist into the big man’s midsection. Bill took it with a grunt and threw a left that Kip slipped, countering with a right cross that split Bill’s eye.

  “A boxer, huh?”

  He caught Kip with a glancing left, then closed. The big man’s arms went around him, and his chin dug into Kip’s shoulder as the larger man began
pressing him back.

  Morgan got one hand free and hooked to Bill’s ear, then chopped a blow to the man’s kidney with the edge of his hand. He jerked, trying to worm to one side, then kicked up his feet and fell.

  The move caught the bigger man by surprise and sent him sprawling, clawing air for support. Kip was on his feet and coming up when the fat man hit him. He felt blood stream into his eyes, but he caught the fat man by the belt, jerked him forward, then shot him back with all the force of his arm.

  The fat man hit the table and fell just as Kip turned to see Bill swinging a chair at him. He dropped to one knee, and the force of Bill’s rush carried him over Kip’s back to the floor.

  Kip got up then, pawing blood from his eyes. This was his dish. Several years on the waterfronts and working with circus roughneck gangs had prepared him for it. He got the blood out of his eyes, and as the fat man started to rise, he kicked him in the neck. If they wanted trouble, they could have it.

  Bill was on his feet, and when Kip looked around, he was looking into Bill’s gun. Kip never stopped moving. When the gun went off, he felt the sting of powder on his face, and the roar filled his ears; but the bullet missed, and then Kip swung a right, low down, for Bill’s stomach. He was coming in with the punch, and it sank to the wrist bone.

  The gun flew into the air, and Bill started to fall. Kip grabbed him, thrust him against the wall with his left, and hit him three times in the stomach with all the power he could muster. Then he stepped back and hit him in the face with both hands.

  Bill slumped to a sitting position, bloody and battered. Kip glanced quickly at the fat man. He was lying on the floor, groaning. Morgan grabbed Bill and hoisted him into a chair.

  “All right, talk!” Morgan’s breath was coming in gasps. “Talk or I start punching!”

  Bill’s head rolled back, but he lifted a hand. “Don’t! I’ll talk! The money…it was in an envelope. The bartender at the Casino gave it to me. There was a note. Said to get you, make you tell who you worked for, and we’d get another five hundred.”