I didn’t say anything. We drove on to where the T intersection was and the road went back to the lake. We kept on across this for about four miles.
“Better stop here, Andy. We’ll go the rest of the way on foot. You stay here.”
“Nope. I ain’t going to,” Andy said.
“You stay here,” Barron said in a voice suddenly harsh. “You got a lady to look after and you done your killin’ for tonight. All I ask is you keep that little dog quiet.”
The car stopped. Barron and I got out. The little dog whined and then was still. We went off the road and started across country through a grove of young pines and manzanita and ironwood. We walked silently, without speaking. The noise our shoes made couldn’t have been heard thirty feet away except by an Indian.
CHAPTER 12
We reached the far edge of the thicket in a few minutes. Beyond that the ground was level and open. There was a spidery something against the sky, a few low piles of waste dirt, a set of sluice boxes built one on top of the other like a miniature cooling tower, an endless belt going towards it from a cut. Barron put his mouth against my ear.
“Ain’t been worked for a couple of years,” he said. “Ain’t worth it. Day’s hard work for two men might get you a pennyweight of gold. This country was worked to death sixty years ago. That low hut over yonder’s a old refrigerator car. She’s thick and damn near bullet-proof. I don’t see no car, but maybe it’s behind. Or hidden. Most like hidden. You ready to go?”
I nodded. We started across the open space. The moon was almost as bright as daylight. I felt swell, like a clay pipe in a shooting gallery. Barron seemed quite at ease. He held the big Colt down at his side, with his thumb over the hammer.
Suddenly light showed in the side of the refrigerator car and we went down on the ground. The light came from a partly opened door, a yellow panel and a yellow spearhead on the ground. There was a movement in the moonlight and the noise of water striking the ground. We waited a little, then got up again and went on.
There wasn’t much use playing Indian. They would come out of the door or they wouldn’t. If they did, they would see us, walking, crawling or lying. The ground was that bare and the moon was that bright. Our shoes scuffed a little, but this was hard dirt, much walked on and tight packed. We reached a pile of sand and stopped beside it. I listened to myself breathing. I wasn’t panting, and Barron wasn’t panting either. But I took a lot of interest in my breathing. It was something I had taken for granted for a long time, but right now I was interested in it. I hoped it would go on for a long time, but I wasn’t sure.
I wasn’t scared. I was a full-sized man and I had a gun in my hand. But the blond man back in the other cabin had been a full-sized man with a gun in his hand, too. And he had a wall to hide behind. I wasn’t scared though. I was just thoughtful about little things. I thought Barron was breathing too loud, but I thought I would make more noise telling him he was breathing too loud than he was making breathing. That’s the way I was, very thoughtful about the little things.
Then the door opened again. This time there was no light behind it. A small man, very small, came out of the doorway carrying what looked like a heavy suitcase. He carried it along the side of the car, grunting hard. Barron held my arm in a vise. His breath hissed faintly.
The small man with the heavy suitcase, or whatever it was, reached the end of the car and went around the corner. Then I thought that although the pile of sand didn’t look very high it was probably high enough so that we didn’t show above it. And if the small man wasn’t expecting visitors, he might not see us. We waited for him to come back. We waited too long.
A clear voice behind us said: “I am holding a machine gun, Mr. Barron. Put your hands up, please. If you move to do anything else, I fire.”
I put my hands up fast. Barron hesitated a little longer. Then he put his hands up. We turned slowly. Frank Luders stood about four feet away from us, with a tommy gun held waist-high. Its muzzle looked as big as the Second Street tunnel in L.A.
Luders said quietly: “I prefer that you face the other way. When Charlie comes back from the car, he will light the lamps inside. Then we shall all go in.”
We faced the long, low car again. Luders whistled sharply. The small man came back around the corner of the car, stopped a moment, then went towards the door. Luders called out: “Light the lamps, Charlie. We have visitors.”
The small man went quietly into the cabin and a match scratched and there was light inside.
“Now, gentlemen, you may walk,” Luders said. “Observing, of course, that death walks close behind you and conducting yourselves accordingly.”
We walked.
CHAPTER 13
“Take their guns and see if they have any more of them, Charlie.”
We stood backed against a wall near a long wooden table. There were wooden benches on either side of the table. On it was a tray with a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses, a hurricane lamp and an old-fashioned farmhouse oil lamp of thick glass, both lit, a saucer full of matches and another full of ashes and stubs. In the end of the cabin, away from the table, there was a small stove and two cots, one tumbled, one made up as neat as a pin.
The little Japanese came towards us with the light shining on his glasses.
“Oh having guns,” he purred. “Oh too bad.”
He took the guns and pushed them backwards across the table to Luders. His small hands felt us over deftly. Barron winced and his face reddened, but he said nothing. Charlie said: “No more guns. Pleased to see, gentlemen. Very nice night, I think so. You having picnic in moonlight?”
Barron made an angry sound in his throat. Luders said: “Sit down, please, gentlemen, and tell me what I can do for you.”
We sat down. Luders sat down opposite. The two guns were on the table in front of him and the tommy gun rested on it, his left hand holding it steady, his eyes quiet and hard.
His was no longer a pleasant face, but it was still an intelligent face. Intelligent as they ever are.
Barron said: “Guess I’ll chew. I think better that way.” He got his plug out and bit into it and put it away. He chewed silently and then spit on the floor.
“Guess I might mess up your floor some,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
The Jap was sitting on the end of the neat bed, his shoes not touching the floor. “Not liking much,” he said hissingly, “very bad smell.”
Barron didn’t look at him. He said quietly: “You aim to shoot us and make your getaway, Mr. Luders?”
Luders shrugged and took his hand off the machine gun and leaned back against the wall.
Barron said: “You left a pretty broad trail here except for one thing. How we would know where to pick it up. You didn’t figure that out because you wouldn’t have acted the way you did. But you was all staked out for us when we got here. I don’t follow that.”
Luders said: “That is because we Germans are fatalists. When things go very easily, as they did tonight—except for that fool, Weber—we become suspicious. I said to myself, ‘I have left no trail, no way they could follow me across the lake quickly enough. They had no boat, and no boat followed me. It would be impossible for them to find me. Quite impossible.’ So I said, ‘They will find me just because to me it appears impossible. Therefore, I shall be waiting for them.’ ”
“While Charlie toted the suitcases full of money out to the car,” I said.
“What money?” Luders asked, and didn’t seem to look at either of us. He seemed to be looking inward, searching.
I said: “Those very fine new ten-dollar bills you have been bringing in from Mexico by plane.”
Luders looked at me then, but indifferently. “My dear friend, you could not possibly be serious?” he suggested.
“Phooey. Easiest thing in the world. The border patrol has no planes now. They had a few coast-guard planes a while back, but nothing came over, so they were taken off. A plane flying high over the border from Mexico lands o
n the field down by the Woodland Club golf course. It’s Mr. Luders’ plane and Mr. Luders owns an interest in the club and lives there. Why should anybody get curious about that? But Mr. Luders doesn’t want half a million dollars’ worth of queer money in his cabin at the club, so he finds himself an old mine over here and keeps the money in this refrigerator car. It’s almost as strong as a safe and it doesn’t look like a safe.”
“You interest me,” Luders said calmly. “Continue.”
I said: “The money is very good stuff. We’ve had a report on it. That means organization—to get the inks and the right paper and the plates. It means an organization much more complete than any gang of crooks could manage. A government organization. The organization of the Nazi government.”
The little Jap jumped up off the bed and hissed, but Luders didn’t change expression. “I’m still interested,” he said laconically.
“I ain’t,” Barron said. “Sounds to me like you’re tryin’ to talk yourself into a vestful of lead.”
I went on: “A few years ago the Russians tried the same stunt. Planting a lot of queer money over here to raise funds for espionage work and, incidentally, they hoped, to damage our currency. The Nazis are too smart to gamble on that angle. All they want is good American dollars to work with in Central and South America. Nice mixed-up money that’s been used. You can’t go into a bank and deposit a hundred thousand dollars in brand-new ten-dollar bills. What’s bothering the sheriff is why you picked this particular place, a mountain resort full of rather poor people.”
“But that does not bother you with your superior brain, does it?” Luders sneered.
“It don’t bother me a whole lot either,” Barron said. “What bothers me is folks getting killed in my territory. I ain’t used to it.”
I said: “You picked the place primarily because it’s a swell place to bring the money into. It’s probably one of hundreds all over the country, places where there is very little law enforcement to dodge but places where in the summertime a lot of strange people come and go all the time. And places where planes set down and nobody checks them in or out. But that isn’t the only reason. It’s also a swell place to unload some of the money, quite a lot of it, if you’re lucky. But you weren’t lucky. Your man Weber pulled a dumb trick and made you unlucky. Should I tell you just why it’s a good place to spread queer money if you have enough people working for you?”
“Please do,” Luders said, and patted the side of the machine gun.
“Because for three months in the year this district has a floating population of anywhere from twenty to fifty thousand people, depending on the holidays and weekends. That means a lot of money brought in and a lot of business done. And there’s no bank here. The result of that is that the hotels and bars and merchants have to cash checks all the time. The result of that is that the deposits they send out during the season are almost all checks and the money stays in circulation. Until the end of the season, of course.”
“I think that is very interesting,” Luders said. “But if this operation were under my control, I would not think of passing very much money up here. I would pass a little here and there, but not much. I would test the money out, to see how well it was accepted. And for a reason that you have thought of. Because most of it would change hands rapidly and, if it was discovered to be queer money, as you say, it would be very difficult to trace the source of it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That would be smarter. You’re nice and frank about it.”
“To you,” Luders said, “it naturally does not matter how frank I am.”
Barron leaned forward suddenly. “Look here, Luders, killin’ us ain’t going to help you any. If you come right down to it, we don’t have a thing on you. Likely you killed this man Weber, but the way things are up here, it’s going to be mighty hard to prove it. If you been spreading bad money, they’ll get you for it, sure, but that ain’t a hangin’ matter. Now I’ve got a couple pair handcuffs in my belt, so happens, and my proposition is you walk out of here with them on, you and your Japanese pal.”
Charlie the Jap said: “Ha, ha. Very funny man. Some boob I guess yes.”
Luders smiled faintly. “You put all the stuff in the car, Charlie?”
“One more suitcase coming right up,” Charlie said.
“Better take it on out, and start the engine, Charlie.”
“Listen, it won’t work, Luders,” Barron said urgently. “I got a man back in the woods with a deer rifle. It’s bright moonlight. You got a fair weapon there, but you got no more chance against a deer rifle than Evans and me got against you. You’ll never get out of here unless we go with you. He seen us come in here and how we come. He’ll give us twenty minutes. Then he’ll send for some boys to dynamite you out. Them were my orders.”
Luders said quietly: “This work is very difficult. Even we Germans find it difficult. I am tired. I made a bad mistake. I used a man who was a fool, who did a foolish thing, and then he killed a man because he had done it and the man knew he had done it. But it was my mistake also. I shall not be forgiven. My life is no longer of great importance. Take the suitcase to the car, Charlie.”
Charlie moved swiftly towards him. “Not liking, no,” he said sharply. “That damn heavy suitcase. Man with rifle shooting. To hell.”
Luders smiled slowly. “That’s all a lot of nonsense, Charlie. If they had men with them, they would have been here long ago. That is why I let these men talk. To see if they were alone. They are alone. Go, Charlie.”
Charlie said hissingly: “I going, but I still not liking.”
He went over to the corner and hefted the suitcase that stood there. He could hardly carry it. He moved slowly to the door and put the suitcase down and sighed. He opened the door a crack and looked out. “Not see anybody,” he said. “Maybe all lies, too.”
Luders said musingly: “I should have killed the dog and the woman too. I was weak. The man Kurt, what of him?”
“Never heard of him,” I said. “Where was he?”
Luders stared at me. “Get up on your feet, both of you.”
I got up. An icicle was crawling around on my back. Barron got up. His face was gray. The whitening hair at the side of his head glistened with sweat. There was sweat all over his face, but his jaws went on chewing.
He said softly: “How much you get for this job, son?”
I said thickly: “A hundred bucks but I spent some of it.”
Barron said in the same soft tone: “I been married forty years. They pay me eighty dollars a month, house and firewood. It ain’t enough. By gum, I ought to get a hundred.” He grinned wryly and spit and looked at Luders. “To hell with you, you Nazi bastard,” he said.
Luders lifted the machine gun slowly and his lips drew back over his teeth. His breath made a hissing noise. Then very slowly he laid the gun down and reached inside his coat. He took out a Luger and moved the safety catch with his thumb. He shifted the gun to his left hand and stood looking at us quietly. Very slowly his face drained of all expression and became a dead gray mask. He lifted the gun, and at the same time he lifted his right arm stiffly above shoulder height. The arm was as rigid as a rod.
“Heil Hitler!” he said sharply.
He turned the gun quickly, put the muzzle in his mouth and fired.
CHAPTER 14
The Jap screamed and streaked out of the door. Barron and I lunged hard across the table. We got our guns. Blood fell on the back of my hand and then Luders crumpled slowly against the wall.
Barron was already out of the door. When I got out behind him, I saw that the little Jap was running hard down the hill towards a clump of brush.
Barron steadied himself, brought the Colt up, then lowered it again.
“He ain’t far enough,” he said. “I always give a man forty yards.”
He raised the big Colt again and turned his body a little and, as the gun reached firing position, it moved very slowly and Barron’s head went down a little until his arm and should
er and right eye were all in a line.
He stayed like that, perfectly rigid for a long moment, then the gun roared and jumped back in his hand and a lean thread of smoke showed faint in the moonlight and disappeared.
The Jap kept on running. Barron lowered his Colt and watched him plunge into a clump of brush.
“Hell,” he said. “I missed him.” He looked at me quickly and looked away again. “But he won’t get nowhere. Ain’t got nothing to get with. Them little legs of his ain’t hardly long enough to jump him over a pine cone.”
“He had a gun,” I said. “Under his left arm.”
Barron shook his head. “Nope. I noticed the holster was empty. I figure Luders got it away from him. I figure Luders meant to shoot him before he left.”
Car lights showed in the distance, coming dustily along the road.
“What made Luders go soft?”
“I figure his pride was hurt,” Barron said thoughtfully. “A big organizer like him gettin’ hisself all balled to hell by a couple of little fellows like us.”
We went around the end of the refrigerator car. A big new coupe was parked there. Barron marched over to it and opened the door. The car on the road was near now. It turned off and its headlights raked the big coupe. Barron stared into the car for a moment, then slammed the door viciously and spit on the ground.
“Caddy V-12,” he said. “Red leather cushions and suitcases in the back.” He reached in again and snapped on the dashlight. “What time is it?”
“Twelve minutes to two,” I said.
“This clock ain’t no twelve and a half minutes slow,” Barron said angrily. “You slipped on that.” He turned and faced me, pushing his hat back on his head. “Hell, you seen it parked in front of the Indian Head,” he said.
“Right.”
“I thought you was just a smart guy.”
“Right,” I said.
“Son, next time I got to get almost shot, could you plan to be around?”
The Collected Raymond Chandler Page 272