The Best American Noir of the Century

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  I said, “You know me, Miss Kemper. You know who I am. What are you afraid of?”

  Her eyes wavered, dropped to the .38 in my hand. “The gun. I —”

  “Hunh-uh,” I said. “You were scared stiff before I brought it out. Recognizing me is what scared you. Why?”

  Her lips shook. Against the pallor of her skin they looked almost black. “I don’t know what... Don’t stand ... Please. Let me go.”

  She tried to squeeze past me. I reached out and grabbed her by one arm. She gasped and jerked away—and her open handbag fell to the floor, spilling the contents.

  She started after them, but I was there ahead of her. I had seen something— something that shook me like a solid right to the jaw.

  Three of them, close together on the carpet. I scooped them up and straightened and jerked Nora Kemper around to face me. I shoved my open hand in front of her eyes, letting her see what was in it.

  “Keys!” I said hoarsely. “Take a good look, lady! They came out of your purse. The keys to my apartment, my mailbox. My wife’s keys!”

  A small breeze would have knocked her down. I took a long look at her stricken expression, then I put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her ahead of me down the hall. I didn’t have to tell her what I wanted: she unlocked the door and we went in.

  When the lights were on, she sank down on the couch. I stood over her, still holding the gun. My face must have told her what was going on behind it, for she began to shake uncontrollably.

  I said, “I’m a man in the dark, Miss Kemper. I’m scared, and when I get scared I get mad. If you don’t want a mouth full of busted teeth, tell me one thing: where is my wife?”

  She had sense enough to believe me. She gasped and drew back. “He didn’t tell me,” she wailed. “I only did what he told me to do, Mr. Kane.”

  “What who told you?”

  “David. Mr. Wainhope.”

  I breathed in and out. “You wrote that letter?”

  “... Yes.”

  “Did you see my wife sign it?”

  She wet her lips. “She wasn’t there. David signed it. There are samples of her signature at the office. He copied from one of them.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “What’s behind all this?”

  “I — I don’t know.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the gun. “Really I don’t, Mr. Kane.”

  “You know a hell of a lot more than I do,” I growled. “Start at the beginning and give it to me. All of it.”

  She pushed a wick of black hair off her forehead. Some of the color was beginning to seep back into her cheeks, but her eyes were still clouded with fear.

  “When I got back to the office from lunch this afternoon,” she said, “David was out. He called me a little after three and told me to meet him at the corner of Fountain and Courtney. I was to take the Hollywood streetcar instead of a cab and wait for him there.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. He sounded nervous, upset. I was there within fifteen minutes, but he didn’t show up until almost a quarter to four.”

  “Go on,” I said when she hesitated.

  “Well, we went into an apartment building on Fountain. Dave took out some keys and used one of them to take mail out of a box with your name on it. Then he unlocked the inner door and we went up to your apartment. He had the key to it, too. He gave me the keys and we went into the bedroom. He told me to call you and what to say. Before that, though, he hunted up the vacuum cleaner and started it going. Then I talked to you on the phone.”

  I stared at her. “You did fine. The cleaner kept me from realizing it wasn’t Donna’s voice, and I suppose at one time or another Helen must’ve found out Donna called me ‘Poopsie’ and told Dave about it. Big laugh! What happened after that?”

  Her hands were clenched in her lap, whitening the knuckles. Her small breasts rose and fell under quick shallow breathing. Fear had taken most of the beauty out of her face.

  “Dave opened one of the letters he had brought upstairs,” she said tonelessly, “and left it next to the phone. We went back downstairs and drove back to the office. On the way Dave stopped off and bought some cheap stationery. I used some of it to write that letter. He told me to mail at at the post office right away, then he walked out. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Secretaries like you,” I said sourly, “must take some finding. Whatever the boss says goes. You don’t find ‘em like that around the broadcasting studios.”

  Her head swung up sharply. “I happen to love Dave…and he loves me. We’re going to be married — now that he’s free.”

  My face ached from keeping my expression unchanged. “How nice for both of you. Only he’s got a wife, remember?”

  She looked at me soberly. “Didn’t you know about that?”

  “About what?”

  “Helen Wainhope. She was killed in an automobile accident this afternoon.”

  “When did you hear that?”

  “David told me when he called in around three o’clock.”

  I let my eyes drift to the gun in my hand. There was no point in flashing it around any longer. I slid it into one of my coat pockets and fished a cigarette out and used a green and gold table lighter to get it going. I said, “And all this hocus-pocus about signing my wife’s name to a phony letter, calling me on the phone and pretending to be her — all this on the same day Dave Wainhope’s wife dies — and you don’t even work up a healthy curiosity? I find that hard to believe, Miss Kemper. You must have known he was into something way over his head.”

  “I love David,” she said simply.

  I blew out some smoke. “Love isn’t good for a girl like you. Leave it alone. It makes you stupid. Good night, Miss Kemper.”

  She didn’t move. A tear began to trace a jagged curve along her left cheek. I left her sitting there and went over to the door and out, closing it softly behind me.

  ~ * ~

  VIII

  At eleven o’clock at night there’s not much traffic on Sunset, especially when you get out past the bright two-mile stretch of the Strip with its Technicolor neons, its plush nightclubs crowded with columnists and casting-couch starlets and vacationing Iowans, its modernistic stucco buildings with agents’ names in stylized lettering across the fronts. I drove by them and dropped on down into Beverly Hills, where most of the homes were dark at this hour, through Brentwood, where a lot of stars hide out in big estates behind hedges and burglar alarms, and finally all that was behind me and I turned off Sunset onto Beverly Glen Boulevard and followed the climbing curves up into the foothills to the north.

  The pattern was beginning to form. Dave Wainhope had known his wife was dead long before Sheriff Martell drove out to break the news to him. I saw that as meaning one thing: he must have had a hand in that “accident” on Stone Canyon Road. He could have driven out there with Helen, then let the car roll over the lip of the canyon with her in it. The motive was an old, old one: in love with another woman and his wife in the way.

  That left only Donnas disappearance to account for. In a loose way I had that figured out too. She might have arrived at Dave’s home at the wrong time. I saw her walking in and seeing too much and getting herself bound and gagged and tucked away somewhere while Dave finished the job. Why he had used Donna’s car to stage the accident was something I couldn’t fit in for sure, although Sheriff Martell had mentioned that Helen’s car hadn’t been working.

  It added up — and in the way it added up was the proof that Donna was still alive. Even with the certainty that Dave Wainhope had coldbloodedly sent his wife plunging to a horrible death, I was equally sure he had not harmed Donna. Otherwise the obvious move would have been to place her in the car with Helen and drop them both over the edge. A nice clean job, no witnesses, no complications. Two friends on their way into town, a second of carelessness in negotiating a dangerous curve — and the funeral will be held Tuesday!

  The more I thought of it, the more trouble I was having in fitting Dave Wai
nhope into the role of murderer at all. He was on the short side, thick in the waistline, balding, and with the round guileless face you find on some infants. As far as I knew he had never done anything more violent in his life than refuse to tip a waiter.

  None of that proved anything, of course. If murders were committed only by people who looked the part, there would be a lot more pinochle played in homicide bureaus.

  I turned off Beverly Glen at one of the narrow unpaved roads well up into the hills and began to zigzag across the countryside. The dank smell of the distant sea drifted in through the open windows, bringing with it the too-sweet odor of sage blossoms. The only sounds were the quiet purr of the motor and the rattle of loose stones against the underside of the fenders.

  ~ * ~

  Then suddenly I was out in the open, with Stone Canyon Reservoir below me behind a border of scrub oak and manzanita and the sheen of moonlight on water. On my left, higher up, bulked a dark sharp-angled building of wood and stone and glass among flowering shrubs and bushes and more of the scrub oak. I followed a graveled driveway around a sweeping half-circle and pulled up alongside the porch.

  I cut off the motor and sat there. Water gurgled in the radiator. With the headlights off, the night closed in on me. A bird said something in its sleep and there was a brief rustling among the bushes.

  The house stood big and silent. Not a light showed. I put my hand into my pocket next to the gun and got out onto the gravel. It crunched under my shoes on my way to the porch. I went up eight steps and across the flagstones and turned the big brass doorknob.

  Locked. I hadn’t expected it not to be. I shrugged and put a finger against the bell and heard a strident buzz inside that seemed to rock the building.

  No lights came on. I waited a minute or two, then tried again, holding the button down for what seemed a long time. All it did was use up some of the battery.

  Now what? I tried to imagine David Wainhope crouched among the portieres with his hands full of guns, but it wouldn’t come off. The more obvious answer would be the right one: he simply wasn’t home.

  I wondered if he would be coming home at all. By now he might be halfway to Mexico, with a bundle of his clients’ cash in the back seat and no intention of setting foot in the States ever again. He would have to get away before somebody found Donna Kane and turned her loose to tell what had actually happened. I had a sharp picture of her trussed up and shoved under one of the beds. It was all I needed.

  I walked over to one of the porch windows and tried it. It was fastened on the inside. I took out my gun and tapped the butt hard against the glass. It shattered with a sound like the breaking up of an ice jam. I reached through and turned the catch and slid the frame up far enough for me to step over the sill.

  Nobody else around. I moved through the blackness until I found an arched doorway and a light switch on the wall next to that.

  I was in a living room which ran the full length of the house. Modern furniture scattered tastefully about. Sponge-rubber easy chairs in pastel shades. An enormous wood-burning fireplace. Framed Greenwich Village smears grouped on one wall. A shiny black baby grand with a tasseled gold scarf across it and a picture in a leather frame of Helen Wainhope. Everything looked neat and orderly and recently dusted.

  I walked on down the room and through another archway into a dining room. Beyond it was a hall into the back of the house, with three bedrooms, one of them huge, the others ordinary in size with a connecting bath. I went through all of them. The closets had nothing in them but clothing. There was nothing under the beds, not even a little honest dirt. Everything had a place and everything was in its place.

  The kitchen was white and large, with all the latest gadgets. Off it was a service porch, with a refrigerator, a deep freeze big enough to hold a body (but without one in it), and a washing machine. The house was heated with gas, with a central unit under the house. No basement.

  Donna was still missing.

  I left the lights on and went outside and around the corner of the house to the three-car garage. The foldback doors were closed and locked, but a side entrance wasn’t. One car inside: a gray Pontiac convertible I recognized as Helen’s. Nobody in it and the trunk was locked. I gave the lid a halfhearted rap and said, “Donna? Are you in there?”

  No answer. No wild drumming of heels, no thrashing about. No sound at all except the blood rushing through my veins, and I probably imagined that.

  Right then I knew I was licked. He had hidden her somewhere else or he had taken her with him. That last made no sense at all, but then he probably wasn’t thinking sensibly.

  Nothing left but to call the sheriff and let him know how much I’d learned and how little I’d found. I should have done that long before this. I went back to the house to hunt up the telephone. I remembered seeing it on a nightstand in one of the bedrooms, and I walked slowly back along the hall to learn which one.

  Halfway down I spotted a narrow door I had missed the first time. I opened it and a light went on automatically. A utility closet, fairly deep, shelves loaded with luggage and blankets, a couple of electric heaters stored away for use on the long winter nights. And that was all.

  I was on the point of leaving when I noticed that a sizable portion of the flooring was actually a removable trapdoor. I bent down and tugged it loose and slid it to one side, revealing a cement-lined recess about five feet deep and a good eight feet square. Stone steps, four of them, very steep, went down into it. In there was the central gas furnace and a network of flat pipes extending in all directions. The only illumination came from the small naked bulb over my head, and at first I could see nothing beyond the unit itself.

  My eyes began to get used to the dimness. Something else was down there on the cement next to the furnace. Something dark and shapeless ... A pale oval seemed to swell and float up toward me.

  “Donna!” I croaked. “My good God, it’s Donna!”

  I half fell down the stone steps and lifted the lifeless body into my arms. Getting back up those steps and along the hall to the nearest bedroom is something I would never remember.

  And then she was on the bed and I was staring down at her. My heart seemed to leap once and shudder to a full stop, and a wordless cry tore at my throat.

  The girl on the bed was Helen Wainhope!

  ~ * ~

  IX

  I once heard it said that a man’s life is made up of many small deaths, the least of them being the final one. I stood there looking at the dead woman, remembering the charred ruins of another body beside a twisted heap of blackened metal, and in that moment a part of me stumbled and fell and whimpered and died.

  The telephone was there, waiting. I looked at it for a long time. Then I took a slow uneven breath and shook my head to clear it and picked up the receiver.

  “Put it down, Clay.”

  I turned slowly. He was standing in the doorway, holding a gun down low, his round face drawn and haggard.

  I said, “You killed her, you son of a bitch.”

  He wet his lips nervously. “Put it down, Clay. I can’t let you call the police.”

  It didn’t matter. Not really. Nothing mattered anymore except that he was standing where I could reach him. I let the receiver drop back into place. “Like something left in the oven too long,” I said. “That’s how I have to remember her.”

  I started toward him. Not fast. I was in no hurry. The longer it lasted, the more I would like it.

  He brought the gun up sharply. “Don’t make me shoot you. Stay right there. Please, Clay.”

  I stopped. It took more than I had to walk into the muzzle of a gun. You have to be crazy, I guess, and I wasn’t that crazy.

  He began to talk, his tongue racing, the words spilling out. “I didn’t kill Donna, Clay. It was an accident. You’ve got to believe that, Clay! I liked her; I always liked Donna. You know that.”

  I could feel my lips twisting into a crooked line. “Sure. You always liked Donna. You always liked me, too
. Put down the gun, Dave.”

  He wasn’t listening. A muscle twitched high up on his left cheek. “You’ve got to understand how it happened, Clay. It was quick like a nightmare. I want you to know about it, to understand that I didn’t intend ...”

  There was a gun in my pocket. I thought of it and I nodded. “I’m listening, Dave.”

  His eyes flicked to the body on the bed, then back to me. They were tired eyes, a little wild, the whites bloodshot. “Not in here,” he said. He moved to one side. “Go into the living room. Ahead of me. Don’t do anything... foolish.”

  I went past him and on along the hall. He was close behind me, but not close enough. In the silence I could hear him breathing.

  I sat down on a sponge-rubber chair without arms. I said, “I’d like a cigarette, Dave. You know, to steady my nerves. I’m very nervous right now. You know how it is. I’ll just put my hand in my pocket and take one out. Will that be all right with you?”