The Postman Always Rings Twice

by James M. Cain

  Next thing I knew, the guys on the stretcher picked me up, and followed the young guy, White, out of the courtroom. Then they went with me on the double across a couple of halls into a room with three or four cops in it. White said something about Katz, and the cops cleared out. They set me down on the desk, and then the guys on the stretcher went out. White walked around a little, and then the door opened and a matron came in with Cora. Then White and the matron went out, and the door closed, and we were alone. I tried to think of something to say, and couldn’t. She walked around, and didn’t look at me. Her mouth was still twitching. I kept swallowing, and after a while I thought of something.

  “We’ve been flim-flammed, Cora.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just kept walking around.

  “That guy Katz, he’s nothing but a cop’s stool. A cop sent him to me. I thought he was on the up-and-up. But we’ve been flim-flammed.”

  “Oh no, we ain’t been flim-flammed.”

  “We been flim-flammed. I ought to have known, when the cop tried to sell him to me. But I didn’t. I thought he was on the level.”

  “I’ve been flim-flammed, but you haven’t.”

  “Yes I have. He fooled me too.”

  “I see it all now. I see why I had to drive the car. I see it, that other time, why it was me that had to do it, not you. Oh yes. I fell for you because you were smart. And now I find out you’re smart. Ain’t that funny? You fall for a guy because he’s smart and then you find out he’s smart.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Cora?”

  “Flim-flammed! I’ll say I was. You and that lawyer. You fixed it up all right. You fixed it up so I tried to kill you too. That was so it would look like you couldn’t have had anything to do with it. Then you have me plead guilty in court. So you’re not in it at all. All right. I guess I’m pretty dumb. But I’m not that dumb. Listen, Mr. Frank Chambers. When I get through, just see how smart you are. There’s just such a thing as being too smart.”

  I tried to talk to her, but it wasn’t any use. When she had got so that even her lips were white, under the lipstick, the door opened and Katz came in. I tried to jump for him, off the stretcher. I couldn’t move. They had me strapped so I couldn’t move.

  “Get out of here, you goddam stool. You were handling it. I’ll say you were. But now I know you for what you are. Do you hear that? Get out of here!”

  “Why, what’s the matter, Chambers?”

  You would have thought he was a Sunday school teacher, talking to some kid that was crying for his chewing gum that had been taken away. “Why, what’s the matter? I am handling it. I told you that.”

  “That’s right. Only God help you if I ever get you so I got my hands on you.”

  He looked at her, like it was something he just couldn’t understand, and maybe she could help him out. She came over to him.

  “This man here, this man and you, you ganged up on me so I would get it and he would go free. Well, he was in this as much as I was, and he’s not going to get away with it. I’m going to tell it. I’m going to tell it all, and I’m going to tell it right now.”

  He looked at her, and shook his head, and it was the phoniest look I ever saw on a man’s face. “Now my dear. I wouldn’t do that. If you’ll just let me handle this—”

  “You handled it. Now I’ll handle it.”

  He got up, shrugged his shoulders, and went out. He was hardly gone before a guy with big feet and a red neck came in with a little portable typewriter, set it on a chair with a couple of books under it, hitched up to it, and looked at her.

  “Mr. Katz said you wanted to make a statement?”

  He had a little squeaky voice, and a kind of a grin when he talked.

  “That’s right. A statement.”

  She began to speak jerky, two or three words at a time, and as fast as she said it, he rattled it off on the typewriter. She told it all. She went back to the beginning, and told how she met me, how we first began going together, how we tried to knock off the Greek once, but missed. A couple of times, a cop put his head in at the door, but the guy at the typewriter held up his hand.

  “Just a few minutes, sarge.”

  “O.K.”

  When she got to the end, she said she didn’t know anything about the insurance, we hadn’t done it for that at all, but just to get rid of him.

  “That’s all.”

  He gathered his sheets together, and she signed them. “Will you just initial these pages?” She initialed them. He got out a notary stamp, and made her hold up her right hand, and put the stamp on, and signed it. Then he put the papers in his pocket, closed his typewriter, and went out.

  She went to the door and called the matron. “I’m ready now.” The matron came in and took her out. The guys on the stretcher came in and carried me out. They went on the double, but on the way they got jammed in with the crowd that was watching her, where she was standing in front of the elevators with the matron, waiting to go up to the jail. It’s on the top floor of the Hall of Justice. They pushed on through, and my blanket got pulled so it was trailing on the floor. She picked it up and tucked it around me, then turned away quick.

  CHAPTER

  11

  They took me back to the hospital, but instead of the state cop watching me, it was this guy that had taken the confession. He lay down on the other bed. I tried to sleep, and after a while I did. I dreamed she was looking at me, and I was trying to say something to her, but couldn’t. Then she would go down, and I would wake up, and that crack would be in my ears, that awful crack that the Greek’s head made when I hit it. Then I would sleep again, and dream I was falling. And I would wake up again, holding on to my neck, and that same crack would be in my ears. One time when I woke up I was yelling. He leaned up on his elbow.

  “Yay.”

  “Yay.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing’s the matter. Just had a dream.”

  “O.K.”

  He never left me for a minute. In the morning, he made them bring him a basin of water, and took out a razor from his pocket, and shaved. Then he washed himself. They brought in breakfast, and he ate his at the table. We didn’t say anything.

  They brought me a paper, then, and there it was, with a big picture of Cora on the front page, and a smaller picture of me on the stretcher underneath it. It called her the bottle killer. It told how she had pleaded guilty at the arraignment, and would come up for sentence today. On one of the inside pages, it had a story that it was believed the case would set a record for speed in its disposition, and another story about a preacher that said if all cases were railroaded through that quick, it would do more to prevent crime than passing a hundred laws. I looked all through the paper for something about the confession. It wasn’t in there.

  About twelve o’clock a young doctor came in and went to work on my back with alcohol, sopping off some of the adhesive tape. He was supposed to sop it off, but most of the time he just peeled it, and it hurt like hell. After he got part of it off, I found I could move. He left the rest on, and a nurse brought me my clothes. I put them on. The guys on the stretcher came in and helped me to the elevator and out of the hospital. There was a car waiting there, with a chauffeur. The guy that had spent the night with me put me in, and we drove about two blocks. Then he took me out, and we went in an office building, and up to an office. And there was Katz with his hand stuck out and a grin all over his face.

  “It’s all over.”

  “Swell. When do they hang her?”

  “They don’t hang her. She’s out, free. Free as a bird. She’ll be over in a little while, soon as they fix up some things in court. Come in. I’ll tell you about it.”

  He took me in a private office and closed the door. Soon as he rolled a cigarette, and half burned it up, and got it pasted on his mouth, he started to talk. I hardly knew him. It didn’t seem that a man that had looked so sleepy the day before could be as excited as he was.

  “
Chambers, this is the greatest case I ever had in my life. I’m in it, and out of it, in less than twenty-four hours, and yet I tell you I never had anything like it. Well, the Dempsey-Firpo fight lasted less than two rounds, didn’t it? It’s not how long it lasts. It’s what you do while you’re in there.

  “This wasn’t really a fight, though. It was a four-handed card game, where every player has been dealt a perfect hand. Beat that, if you can. You think it takes a card player to play a bum hand, don’t you. To hell with that. I get those bum hands every day. Give me one like this, where they’ve all got cards, where they’ve all got cards that’ll win if they play them right, and then watch me. Oh, Chambers, you did me a favor all right when you called me in on this. I’ll never get another one like it.”

  “You haven’t said anything yet.”

  “I’ll say it, don’t worry about that. But you won’t get it, and you won’t know how the hand was played, until I get the cards straightened out for you. Now first. There were you and the woman. You each held a perfect hand. Because that was a perfect murder, Chambers. Maybe you don’t even know how good it was. All that stuff Sackett tried to scare you with, about her not being in the car when it went over, and having her handbag with her, and all that, that didn’t amount to a goddam thing. A car can teeter before it goes over, can’t it? And a woman can grab her handbag before she jumps, can’t she? That don’t prove any crime. That just proves she’s a woman.”

  “How’d you find out about that stuff?”

  “I got it from Sackett. I had dinner with him last night, and he was crowing over me. He was pitying me, the sap. Sackett and I are enemies. We’re the friendliest enemies that ever were. He’d sell his soul to the devil to put something over on me, and I’d do the same for him. We even put up a bet on it. We bet $100. He was giving me the razz, because he had a perfect case, where he could just play the cards and let the hangman do his stuff.”

  That was swell, two guys betting $100 on what the hangman would do to me and Cora, but I wanted to get it straight, just the same.

  “If we had a perfect hand, where did his hand come in?”

  “I’m getting to that. You had a perfect hand, but Sackett knows that no man and no woman that ever lived could play that hand, not if the prosecutor plays his hand right. He knows that all he’s got to do is get one of you working against the other, and it’s in the bag. That’s the first thing. Next thing, he doesn’t even have to work the case up. He’s got an insurance company to do that for him, so he doesn’t have to lift a finger. That’s what Sackett loved about it. All he had to do was play the cards, and the pot would fall right in his lap. So what does he do? He takes this stuff the insurance company dug up for him, and scares the hell out of you with it, and gets you to sign a complaint against her. He takes the best card you’ve got, which is how bad you were hurt yourself, and makes you trump your own ace with it. If you were hurt that bad, it had to be an accident, and yet Sackett uses that to make you sign a complaint against her. And you sign it, because you’re afraid if you don’t sign it he’ll know goddam well you did it.”

  “I turned yellow, that’s all.”

  “Yellow is a color you figure on in murder, and nobody figures on it better than Sackett. All right. He’s got you where he wants you. He’s going to make you testify against her, and he knows that once you do that, no power on earth can keep her from ratting on you. So that’s where he’s sitting when he has dinner with me. He razzes me. He pities me. He bets me $100. And all the time I’m sitting there with a hand that I know I can beat him with, if I only play the cards right. All right, Chambers. You’re looking in my hand. What do you see in it?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well, what?”

  “Nothing, to tell you the truth.”

  “Neither did Sackett. But now watch. After I left you yesterday, I went to see her, and got an authorization from her to open Papadakis’s safe deposit box. And I found what I expected.

  There were some other policies in that box, and I went to see the agent that wrote them, and this is what I found out:

  “That accident policy didn’t have anything to do with that accident that Papadakis had a few weeks ago. The agent had turned up on his calendar that Papadakis’s automobile insurance had pretty near run out, and he went out there to see him. She wasn’t there. They fixed it up pretty quick for the automobile insurance, fire, theft, collision, public liability, the regular line. Then the agent showed Papadakis where he was covered on everything but injury to himself, and asked him how about a personal accident policy. Papadakis got interested right away. Maybe that other accident was the reason for that, but if it was the agent didn’t know anything about it. He signed up for the whole works, and gave the agent his check, and next day the policies were mailed out to him. You understand, an agent works for a lot of companies, and not all these policies were written by the same company. That’s No. 1 point that Sackett forgot. But the main thing to remember is that Papadakis didn’t only have the new insurance. He had the old policies too, and they still had a week to run.

  “All right, now, get this set-up. The Pacific States Accident is on a $10,000 personal accident policy. The Guaranty of California is on a $10,000 new public liability bond, and the Rocky Mountain Fidelity is on an old $10,000 public liability bond. So that’s my first card. He had an insurance company working for him up to $10,000. I had two insurance companies working for me up to $20,000, whenever I wanted to call them in. Do you get it?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Look. Sackett stole your big card off you, didn’t he? Well, I stole the same card off him. You were hurt, weren’t you? You were hurt bad. Well, if Sackett convicts her of murder, and you bring suit against her for injuries sustained as a result of that murder, then a jury will give you whatever you ask for. And those two bonding companies are liable for every cent of their policies to satisfy that judgment.”

  “Now I get it.”

  “Pretty, Chambers, pretty. I found that card in my mitt, but you didn’t find it, and Sackett didn’t find it, and the Pacific States Accident didn’t find it, because they were so busy playing Sackett’s game for him, and so sure his game would win, that they didn’t even think of it.”

  He walked around the room a few times, falling for himself every time he passed a little mirror that was in the corner, and then he went on.

  “All right, there it was, but the next thing was how to play it. I had to play it quick, because Sackett had already played his, and that confession was due any minute. It might even come at the arraignment, as soon as she heard you testify against her. I had to move fast. So what did I do? I waited till the Pacific States Accident man had testified, and then got him on record that he really believed a crime had been committed. That was just in case I had a false arrest action against him later on. And then, wham, I pleaded her guilty. That ended the arraignment, and for that night, blocked off Sackett. Then I rushed her in a counsel room, claimed a half hour before she was locked up for the night, and sent you in there with her. Five minutes with you was all she needed. When I got in there she was ready to spill it. Then I sent Kennedy in.”

  “The dick that was with me last night?”

  “He used to be a dick, but he’s not a dick any more. He’s my gum-shoe man now. She thought she was talking to a dick, but she was really talking to a dummy. But it did the work. After she got it off her chest, she kept quiet till today, and that was long enough. The next thing was you. What you would do was blow. There was no charge against you, so you weren’t under arrest any more, even if you thought you were. Soon as you tumbled to that, I knew no tape, or sore back, or hospital orderly, or anything else would hold you, so after he got done with her I sent Kennedy over to keep an eye on you. The next thing was the little midnight conference between the Pacific States Accident, the Guaranty of California, and the Rocky Mountain Fidelity. And when I laid it in front of them, they did business awful quick.”

  “What do y
ou mean, they did business?”

  “First, I read them the law. I read them the guest clause, Section 141¾, California Vehicle Act. That says if a guest in an automobile gets hurt, he has no right of recovery, provided, that if his injury resulted from intoxication or willful misconduct on the part of the driver, then he can recover. You see, you were a guest, and I had pleaded her guilty to murder and assault. Plenty of willful misconduct there, wasn’t there? And they couldn’t be sure, you know. Maybe she did do it alone. So those two companies on the liability policies, the ones that had their chin hanging out for a wallop from you, they chipped in $5,000 apiece to pay the Pacific States Accident policy, and the Pacific States Accident agreed to pay up and shut up, and the whole thing didn’t take over a half hour.”

  He stopped and grinned at himself some more.

  “What then?”

  “I’m still thinking about it. I can still see Sackett’s face just now when the Pacific States Accident fellow went on the stand today and said his investigation had convinced him that no crime had been committed, and his company was paying the accident claim in full. Chambers, do you know what that feels like? To feint a guy open and then let him have it, right on the chin? There’s no feeling like it in the world.”

  “I still don’t get it. What was this guy testifying again for?”

  “She was up for sentence. And after a plea of guilty, a court usually wants to hear some testimony to find out what the case is really about. To determine the sentence. And Sackett had started in howling for blood. He wanted the death penalty. Oh, he’s a blood-thirsty lad, Sackett is. That’s why it stimulates me to work against him. He really believes hanging them does some good. You’re playing for stakes when you’re playing against Sackett. So he put his insurance man on the stand again. But instead of it being his son of a bitch, after that little midnight session it was my son of a bitch, only Sackett didn’t know it. He roared plenty when he found it out. But it was too late. If an insurance company didn’t believe she was guilty, a jury would never believe it, would it? There wasn’t a chance in the world of convicting her after that. And that was when I burned Sackett. I got up and made a speech to the court. I took my time about it. I told how my client had protested her innocence from the beginning. I told how I didn’t believe it. I told how I knew there existed what I regarded as overwhelming evidence against her, enough to convict her in any court, and that I believed I was acting in her best interest when I decided to plead her guilty and throw her on the mercy of the court. But, Chambers, do you know how I rolled that but under my tongue? But, in the light of the testimony just given, there was no course open to me but to withdraw the pleas of guilty and allow the cases to proceed. Sackett couldn’t do a thing, because I was still within the limit of eight days for a plea. He knew he was sunk. He consented to a plea for manslaughter, the court examined the other witnesses itself, gave her six months, suspended sentence, and practically apologized even for that. We quashed the assault charge. That was the key to the whole thing, and we almost forgot it.”