The Wheel is Fixed

by James M. Fox

  “You want I should get the sheriff already, Meester Hitchcock?” he inquired, rather flatly and without a hint of scorn. He startled me almost as much as if he had offered to buy me a drink.

  The voice from the gravel pit cleared itself and said brusquely, “Not yet. Make him write it down first and sign it. We got to have proof.”

  Kovacs nodded and turned to the little walnut secrétaire behind the couch. He pulled out a drawer, produced some sheets of stationery and a pen. These he laid out ceremoniously on the blotter, turned to Vanni and bowed from the waist, his haggard, deeply grooved features suave like a night club maitre d’hôtel. The effect was something right out of a nightmare, the spoiled-lobster kind where you wake up yelling off your head.

  Fat little Figaro kept mopping up the sweat and studying the poker at his toes. He did not look the least bit romantic any more. “Whatsamatta you want me to write?” he protested. “Is big mistake you fellows make. I no kill ’im, I tell you. Wanna talk to Mees Ryan, door open, she not in. Find these fellow on floor, don’t know ’im, never see ’im before. Santa Maria, whatta you think, eh? You think Vanni go around alla time killing people, they never been introduced?”

  He got no laughs or anything; we were probably the toughest house he’d ever played. I was watching Lorna cling tensely to my arm and stare at him with wide, shocked, disbelieving eyes. Such gallantry, Sir Knight. Kovacs just sneered and asked him, “Why you run away?”

  “Sure, okay, so I run. Is bad business, eh, bad publicity, Vanni get caught on a spot, whatta you expect? Means reporters, photographers, people from studio, alla time jump up and down, break-a contract maybe, no damn good. These fellow on floor, he is dead, you understand; I no can ’elp. What you do in my place, eh, maybe you stick around and raise-a big fuss?”

  Mr. Walter Hitchcock cleared his throat again, not too successfully. “The confession, Steve,” he rasped. “Get him to write it down.”

  “I no write anything. Make-a confess, go to jail maybe, whatsamatta you fellows, I’m crazy?”

  The little Irish chauffeur swung one dangling foot and kicked him squarely in the tail. For just a kick it had plenty of judgment, style, and experience; it lifted a couple of hundred pounds clean off the rug and it sent it staggering across the room, into the chair that Kovacs held obligingly behind the secrétaire. Its sudden, coarse brutality brought the hackles away from my neck, as much as I’d seen it coming. Someone said loudly in a tight, urgent voice, “Go on, you chump, what are you waiting for? Don’t you know when you’re getting the breaks?” There was a second or two of silence before I realized the voice had been my own.

  He heard me all right; he picked up the pen and jerked himself around in the chair. It must have been the first time he recognized me; the surprise of it was almost low-comedy, a perfect, horrified double take that shook him to the core. He threw up his hands and saw Lorna beside me and shouted at her, raucously, in something pretty close to despair. “You know these man?”

  Her fingers bit into my arm; the red-carnation nails actually cut through the sleeve to my skin. “Yes, Alfred, I know him,” she told him steadily. “We’re going to be married,” she added, just as calmly as if this was just another cocktail party for her birthday.

  “But these man, he is a gambler, a dirty crook! He come to my ’ouse last night, you understand, makes like big-shot publicity man, ask many questions about you, act very strange. I check with studio, they never heard of him, call me back all excited, is very bad character these man! So I call you all day, I come myself at last, alla time you are out. Now you tell me you marry the guy!”

  “I love him,” she said, hardly moving her lips. “I’m sorry, Alfred.”

  He threw up his arms again in a gesture of helpless perplexity and swung his back on us. For a moment he hunched at the desk, pen in hand, then spoke to her again. “You want me to write-a confess?” He sounded puzzled and hurt, like a very small boy who was about to be sent to bed without supper for something he didn’t do.

  She glanced up at me and saw my hasty nod. “Perhaps you should,” she said coolly. “Do what you think best. The police will take care of things as soon as they get here.”

  He threw the pen away and swept blotter, ink, and letterheads off the desk in one vicious burst of defiance. “I no kill these fellow!” he screamed. “No make-a confess! Go ahead, call-a cops, is okay, I call myself!” His accent had relapsed into an almost inarticulate jabbering. He lurched for the bedroom archway and fell flat on his face when Steve Kovacs slid out a leg and neatly tripped him up.

  Mr. Walter Hitchcock stepped out of his way and frowned at all of us impartially. “Make him quit stalling,” he ordered. It was a growl that cut straight to the bone.

  The little Irishman got off the couch and came over, hitching up his breeches. He shot a doubtful glance over his shoulder at the window blinds.

  “There’s the customers, chief. They won’t like the noise,” he said, conversationally, and reached for Vanni’s collar.

  “Then get him out of here.”

  All at once everybody got busy, as if court had been adjourned and it was time to go to lunch. The big fellow himself turned on his heels and stalked out through the back door, without wasting another scowl on the body of his son. Kovacs grabbed up a handful of stationery and ran after him; the Irish chauffeur had yanked Vanni’s jacket halfway down his spine and was hustling him off in their wake as easily as if he were coaxing a child. Max Gonzalez unbuttoned his loose-fitting black raglan and produced from its inner recesses a long-barreled Luger. He came up with a carbine stock of vulcanized rubber and a forty-shot spiral magazine, clipped the whole piece together in two brisk movements that made a single click, and cradled it lightly across his left arm.

  “Let’s get on the ball, Mister Bailey,” he said, and winked.

  I looked at the gun without much curiosity. Guns had been shown to me before, in a lot of different sizes and shapes. I had cared for them, fed them, slept with them, for four long years. I’d been hit by them twice and missed by them so many times I couldn’t have kept track of it with an adding machine. This was kind of a nice-looking gun; it would need regular oiling and stripping and exercising, and Max was just the boy who would see to such things, the way a master mechanic takes pride in his tools. A long-barreled Luger on a stock is lighter, handier, more accurate and only a shade less in a hurry than your common or kitchen variety of tommy sprinkler. It is not just another hunk of hardware to start an argument with. I took my shoulders off the wall reluctantly and said, “Leave the lady out of this, huh, Max?”

  “Aw, now, you know me, Mister Bailey. I got nothing but respect for the girls. I always figure suppose they was my mother or my sister, see what I mean?” He grinned at me winningly and waved the Luger at the open door. “Let’s all of us tag along and watch the fun, whaddaya-say?”

  “No, Max, let’s not,” I said. “Miss Ryan stays right here.”

  He didn’t drop his grin, but the gun swung around and peered at my liver, as if it were interested in examining the color of same. Lorna sharply caught her breath and said, “Rick!” like a prayer, and tugged at my arm with all her weight. I shrugged and gave up; I knew if I crowded him the next voice we wouldn’t even hear would be the coroner’s.

  Outside, the evening breeze was already dying, and the moon was as big and bright as a brand-new silver dollar. The desert looked bleak and cold and incredibly lonely in spite of the vast and swelling chorus of the crickets, the cloying aroma of sagebrush and jasmine. The others were already halfway down the sandy lane that led into the massive darkness of the date-palm grove. Max Gonzalez motioned us along and strolled a few feet behind us, snapping a match to life on his free thumb to light a cigarette. “Me, I don’t go so much for that guy,” he observed companionably. “They tell me he sings pretty good, but he don’t have class. Look at it this way, Mister Bailey—say me and you was to push a guy, and we was to be caught with our pants down taking a powder, we would
n’t put up no stalls. We’d say gee whiz, why sure we done it, you guys wanna make something of it, go ahead. Now the wop, he ain’t even satisfied to get the breaks, like you said, on account of he don’t like the publicity; how about that!”

  “Why bother about a confession?” I asked. “It’ll never stand up in court.”

  “Aw, now, Mister Bailey, you kidding? He pushes Mister Stuart, don’t he, and we come in, and we arrest him, see, all nice and legal, and he confesses, and then while we’re calling the sheriff he gets away from us in his car. So we chase him in ours, and we throw a couple slugs at his tires, and he just happens to be fresh outta luck. Him being in the movies and all, you know how it is, we got to take a little trouble. Like for instance coming up with a real confession where he lays it on the line, in his own writing, the D.A.’s got experts, they can check it for themselves—”

  The girl, who was still clinging to my arm, made a faint little whimper and missed her step. I steadied her quickly and touched her hand, trying to pretend reassurance. They were going to work it all right; it would be a brazen stunt, but they’d get by with it. In California, any citizen can make an arrest on the scene of a crime, and the law allows him to use all reasonable force in preventing or halting the escape of his prisoner.

  The only catch to it was easy to remove. It consisted of two people who were not in the movies, who would cause very little trouble and who had been fresh out of luck for quite some time. They were the only witnesses who’d be in a position to talk out of turn, and by a strange coincidence their names were Lorna Ryan and Richard Bailey.

  We were entering the date-palm grove behind the others; it wasn’t dark there after all, not nearly dark enough. Still, the trees made for cover—a sudden dash into the underbrush would have offered me a chance. To a tired, hysterical girl in boots and riding-clothes it offered none at all. Max Gonzalez did not seem to worry about it; his mood continued both affable and garrulous. “He’s got it coming to him,” he said, with much of the good-natured contempt of one Latin for another. “Wanna hear something funny, Mister Bailey? He asked for it himself!”

  “Oh, go on with you, Max,” I said absently. “I suppose he called the big fellow and told him to come on down, he’d just laid out his son with a poker!”

  “Well, gee whiz, how’d you know?” he demanded, playing surprised. “Yeah, he called us all right, bright ’n’ early this morning. Seems he got in a jam with a couple of shills from this poker store down to Formosa the chief’s been wiring for sound since they opened six weeks ago. They take the wop for eighty grand at gin last night, and he finally rumbles the play, so they cool him with the tear-up gag and clean out fast. Some pal of his tips their mitt when they’re gone, and the wop puts in a squawk to us, we should give him service on the deal, see what I mean?”

  I saw what he meant; I was the pal who’d said a fond good-by at 3 a.m. and mentioned in passing that one check looks just like another, you can’t always tell which is which when it comes to tearing them up. He’d laughed at me then, but now he wasn’t laughing any more. “What happened?” I asked Max, pretending to humor him.

  “Keep walking, Mister Bailey. The chief gives him service, the way he wants—we protect our clients, see, or we don’t stay in business. Me and Steve and Mike, we pick up these characters the minute they leave the bank this morning. We shake ’em up a bit, and run ’em over to Formosa, and Mike busts up the joint, but real elegant. Then the chief, he figures on how this wop he’s got connections, it’d be worth it to return the dough to him in person, so we hop into the limousine this afternoon and get on rolling to Palm Springs. We’re just outside Pomona when Mister Stuart goes by in that English buggy of his heading east like a bat outta hell, and right away the chief starts worrying and says he’ll lay us plenty nine to five that Mister Stuart’s come down with a case of big-ears, he must’ve overheard some crack Steve made to us about the wop and this young lady here—”

  We’d emerged from the grove and passed the tennis courts and arrived at the pool, where the rest of our party clustered on the cool blue tiles in front of the cabana. The pool lay quietly shimmering in the moonlight, its surface barely ruffled by the dying breeze still whispering in through the tangerine bower. The wind had tossed in a few drifting hibiscus blooms, and among them a handful of desert bugs were helplessly paddling around in circles. It made a charming spot for signing a confession, and it offered by all means sufficient privacy to prevent the customers from complaining about the noise.

  “So that’s what made you decide to pay us a visit,” I said to Max, not because I wanted confirmation, but simply for the sake of what little relief could be had from listening to myself.

  “Yeah, if Mike could’ve stepped on it, we might’ve made it in time to spoil the show,” he told me cheerfully. “But the chief don’t like to drive fast, and I guess he didn’t figure on this much of a score. Mister Stuart must of gained half an hour on us for the trip. We was just pulling in to park when the wop, he comes hotfooting it into the lot for his car, and of course we latch on to him quick, and he gives us this spiel about how he walks in and there’s a dead guy on the floor he never seen before. How corny can you get, huh, Mister Bailey?”

  The unfortunate subject of this instructive disquisition seemed to have regained a certain amount of his dignity. Mike the chauffeur had released his collar, and now he could use his arms again to talk; he was still visibly in nothing like a mood to oblige with a little scribbling job, such as for instance his own death sentence. They were still trying to jockey him into it; they didn’t like to mess him up too much for the autopsy people to get ideas. Mike was taking it easy, standing by and stoking up his pipe with one of those trick pocket lighters that will jet down the flame into the bowl like a miniature blowtorch. Steve Kovacs looked up at our little procession and jerked a thumb.

  “Inside,” he snapped, and added nastily, “Iss very nice, we got piahno player. Make pretty music for us yet, piahno player!”

  I could feel Lorna shivering against my arm, and the ice cubes forming in my stomach. “Now wait a minute—” I protested queasily before he cut me short with a venomous glare.

  “Make pretty music. Basta.”

  Max Gonzalez jabbed the muzzle of the Luger into me, persuasively enough to make me wince. “Just relax, Mister Bailey, will ya please?” he suggested, and herded us along into the bathhouse.

  There was plenty of light in there. The big rollaway picture window had been left wide open, and the Blüthner’s gaudy night-club coat of burnished nacre glittered eerily under the moon. Lorna sank into a chair and buried her face in the cushions; Max rested his shoulders on the casement frame and waved me to the bench. He looked all of ten feet tall; the crown of his hat touched the roof. “You heard,” he said crisply. “Start tickling them ivories, but good.”

  “What for?” I demanded. “Now listen, fun is fun, but this is plain screwy. You know I can’t play with a gun in my ribs, while you boys put that poor guy down there through the hoop. Nobody could.”

  “Sure you can, Mister Bailey. Wanna make like you got no class? Be something to do with your hands while I’m keeping an eye on things.”

  That was it—he wanted to see the feature and not be bothered about my getting out of line. I shrugged and sat down on the bench and ran through a couple of scales on two jittery fingers. From the bathhouse we had a ringside view all right, a few feet up and twenty yards away, too far to catch the sound track, but a lot too close to the screen for comfort, twenty miles too close. They were getting impatient with him, and they couldn’t afford to waste all night or allow him to feel he was holding any cards. I saw Mike knock out his pipe on the tiles and put it away, saw Kovacs drift out of the group and pick up the hose that lay coiled around a hydrant for cleaning the pool. It was just that simple. One instant little Figaro was still volubly arguing and gesticulating, with his back to the diving-board, and the next he lay struggling in the water, struggling with a sixty-pound pressure sq
uirt from the hose in his face.

  Max Gonzalez chuckled and spoke to me over his shoulder, tersely critical. “Let’s have a tune.”

  “You can hear this, can’t you?”

  “Yeah, I can hear this, and it stinks.”

  I grimaced and with a crash struck up Ravel’s “Bolero,” which would be about his speed by way of a tune. The effect was macabre enough to set the original Frankenstein monster on its ears, but Max just nodded and turned back to watch the big attraction. I set my teeth and measured the distance while my hands kept hammering the keys. It wasn’t any use; he could drill his initials through me before I could get up off the bench and halfway across the room. Down at the pool they were not fooling any more. They’d let Figaro bob up to get back his breath, and they’d yell at him and wave a sheet of paper, and he’d shake a fist at them and get the hose in his face again. The way it sounds is like a joke, or a spot of summer camp horseplay, but he must have realized by then why they wanted his signature so badly, and of course that could only result in making him hold out to the end. He didn’t even know enough to duck under the surface and try to swim for it; he probably had pools of his own in Malibu and in Beverly Hills besides the one at his place in Palm Springs, but all he could perform was to paddle in a circle with the bugs and fight to keep afloat.

  I didn’t even wonder for a moment why his stubbornness should fail to puzzle them, or make them doubt his guilt. It would never occur to them that Stu could have been killed in anything except a row about the girl, and one in which she’d probably not even been present at that. The telephone message supplied her with an alibi of sorts; it made them believe she’d only just come in, with the clothes she was wearing and all. In any case, they’d never have conceived a notion that she might herself have struck the blow. They were reasonable men, who wouldn’t think of killing even a fly without a good and sufficient motive. That let her out, and me as well; I was only a stooge, after all, and stooges don’t kill, they’re hired for laughs.