Run to Death

by Patrick Quentin

  “American?”

  She turned to me, smiling sweetly. “You think all the ballerinas come from Russia? I am born from the Queens.”

  For a moment I looked at her blankly. The Cossack cap. The Scheherazade effect. The Lynn Fontanne accent. All that corny glamour. I should have known it was straight off the cob.

  Suddenly I loved her for it.

  She was still smiling. Then, in a murderous Russian imitation of a Brooklyn accent, she started to sing:

  “East side, west side,

  All around the town….”

  XVII

  I said: “Why did you import the accent? Dog?”

  “Import? Accent? The way I speak? Is true.”

  “Yes?”

  “My mother, she is dancer, too. When I am born, she is in New York. When I am four, we go to Buenos Aires.” She glanced at me dubiously. “You no like it, the accent? It bore you?”

  “It’s terrific.”

  “I try,” she said meekly. “All the time to be better I try. Is hard. When all the time I speak with Spanish.”

  We had reached the heart of the city. We passed a carnival ground festooned with coloured lights. I read a street sign. Calle Merida. We were almost home.

  My anger was more in control now. Lena Snood was still in my mind. She always would be. But the prospect of New Orleans had steadied me. Maybe, after all, there would be an end. At least I should learn something from Mr. Brand.

  But I wasn’t in New Orleans yet. There was still Mexico. I still had to settle the score with Halliday.

  There are telephone booths in the Hotel Reforma. Vera went in, put in her anonymous call to the police and hurried out. We drove to my apartment. I went into the kitchen to make drinks. We needed them. There was some cooked ham and goat-cheese and bread. I made sandwiches, for we hadn’t eaten all day.

  When I brought them to the living-room, Vera was combing her hair out at the mirror above the mantel. It was strange how many times my idea of her had changed in so few hours. First she’d been the bird-brained glamour girl out for a thrill. Then she’d been the devious, scheming siren. Now it was perfectly natural having her there in my apartment, frowning into a mirror with a bobby pin in her mouth. In less than a day she’d become an accepted part of my life, as if she’d always been in it.

  We sat together on the couch, eating the sandwiches and drinking our drinks. We hardly talked, but her presence relaxed me. I’d never known a girl who could look so exotic and be so comfortable.

  When I finished my drink I told her she’d better call up the airport and make her reservation for the morning plane. While she was trying to get through I left the room and slipped out of the apartment. I didn’t want her to know I was going to Halliday. She was stubborn enough to insist on coming with me, and this time I didn’t want a woman along.

  Calle Dinamarca was only a few blocks away. I walked to the Plaza Washington. All the stores had their iron shutters down for the night. I turned into Dinamarca, and soon I was outside the Halliday’s apartment building.

  I glanced up the façade to the windows of Apartment Three. A light was shining behind the half-drawn zebra drapes.

  He was there. Perhaps Junior was there, too. I didn’t care. I almost hoped he was.

  I wasn’t going to warn them of my arrival. I pressed the buzzer for Apartment Number One on the ground floor. When the door was released from the catch, I slipped through the modernistic hall and around the curve of the staircase before the occupant of the apartment had a chance to see me.

  I reached the landing. I moved down it to the door marked three. I took out the Colt and aimed it level with the keyhole. In most modern Mexican apartment buildings, the walls are thin as plyboard. I waited a moment, listening for the sound of voices inside. I heard nothing.

  I pressed the buzzer.

  Footsteps came shuffling towards the door. I watched the handle turn. I kept the gun pointed. The door opened. A Mexican I had never seen before stood on the threshold. He was middle-aged and plump. He was wearing bedroom slippers and a fancy blue silk bathrobe.

  “Yes?” he inquired in English. Then he saw the gun and his eyes popped.

  “Put up your hands and back in,” I said.

  His double chin started to wabble. He threw his hands over his head and backed gingerly into the apartment.

  “What I do?” he babbled. “Please. Is my right. I have the deeds. Please.”

  I followed him in and kicked the door shut behind me. The familiar yellow furniture gleamed opulently. The vase of carnations still stood on the coffee table. Suitcases were lying all over the place. Some of them were open. Clothes, pieces of bric-à-brac, screwed up pieces of newspaper were scattered on the carpet.

  Halliday wasn’t there.

  I jerked the gun at the man in the bathrobe. “In the bedroom.”

  Sweat streamed down his face. His mouth was still open, but he seemed to have lost the power of speech. Clumsily he started to back through the suitcases. He reached the bedroom door and pushed it inward. I came after him. From the room behind him rose a shrill female scream.

  I entered the bedroom. In the bed where I’d slept the night before a plump woman was propped against the pillows. She had been reading a magazine. It was slumped over her knee. She was peering at me around the man’s bulk, her face creased with terror.

  There were two trunks and more suitcases in here. Clothes were piled neatly on the other bed. The closets were open.

  “What you want?” Words suddenly flooded out of the man. “Is the money? I give the money. Please. All we have I give. But not to hurt the wife. Please not the wife….”

  Still aiming the gun at him, I moved to the bathroom, kicked the door in and glanced inside. It was empty.

  The woman was whimpering. She was wearing a sort of pink bedcap. It had fallen askew over one eye. She began jabbering in Spanish to the man. He answered her, presumably trying to comfort her.

  I began to feel stupid.

  “Okay.” I nodded to the living-room. “Get in there.”

  Still chattering to the woman, the man scurried back into the living-room. I followed. I looked into the kitchen. It was empty, too. I sat down on the arm of one of the chairs and said:

  “When will Halliday be back?”

  The man blinked. “Halliday?”

  “I want Halliday. I…”

  “Oh.” A smile of wild hope spread over his face. “It is the other tenant. The American who leaves this morning?”

  The suitcases, the woman in the bedroom… it was all becoming embarrassingly plain.

  “He leaves,” the man was saying. “I no know the name. But this man this morning he leave. For months we search for the furnished apartment, the wife and I. At last we got it. I pay hundred pesos to the portero. Right away this afternoon we move in. And now…”

  There wasn’t any point in going on with it. I knew when I was licked. I should have realized this place was no use to Halliday once I’d seen it. I didn’t even wonder whether the man in the blue bathrobe was lying. He wasn’t lying. Innocent householder was written all over the quivering chins.

  I put the revolver in my pocket. He couldn’t believe it. The hands were still up in the air.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Apologize to your wife.”

  He opened his mouth, but again no words came.

  “Guess you don’t know where he went?”

  He shook his head.

  I grinned. “Look at it this way. Now you’ve got something to talk to your friends about.”

  As I left, he was calling incredulously: “Mama, mama, esta bien. El loco Americano se fué.” I heard heavy footsteps thumping into the bedroom.

  I ran down the stairs. I didn’t think he would call the police, but I was taking no chances. I slipped out into the street. A bleak feeling of helplessness caught up with me. Somehow in this dark, sprawling city were Halliday and his pretty little henchman. Somewhere. Where? In eight more hours I’d be gone. Ther
e wasn’t a chance in a million I’d ever find Halliday now—unless he came after me again.

  Since last night the wheel had spun full circle. I walked home hoping I’d see the light-blue sedan parked outside my house.

  But it wasn’t there.

  Tormenting images of Lena Snood came again. Was she still lying out there in the darkness on that god-forsaken mound or had the police arrived? I’d abandoned her for a chance to get Halliday.

  And this had happened.

  I tried to raise my spirits by thinking of New Orleans. But in my gloomy mood even that hope seemed fairly futile. I could go to search for Deborah’s uncle. But what could I offer him? The only important thing—the book—was gone. All I had to bring was the news of his niece’s death.

  And to warn him of Halliday.

  As I started up the stairs, my thoughts shifted to Vera and I felt better. At least something had come out of the holocaust. There was Vera.

  I reached the door of my apartment and felt for my key. As I brought it out I became conscious of a voice inside. My nerves alerted to danger. Had I been fooled again? Had Halliday or Junior seen me go out and slipped up to get Vera? I pulled the gun out of my pocket. I leaned closer to the door.

  It was Vera talking. I recognized the quality of her voice, but I could not hear the words.

  Cautiously I slid the key into the lock. I turned it. I inched the handle round and silently opened the door a crack.

  Vera’s voice sounded clearly. My first feeling was relief. She was talking on the phone. I don’t know how, but you can always tell when someone’s talking on the phone.

  But the relief vanished almost before it had come. A sort of stunned shock took its place. Because I heard her say:

  “He doesn’t tell, but I think he go to your apartment in Dinamarca.”

  She laughed a little gurgling laugh.

  “Oh, he is mad—mad with you for killing the Snood. But do not worry. All is okay. At last he trust me. He’s going to New Orleans, and he is taking me with him….”

  XVIII

  There was a pause. She was listening to what Halliday was saying at the other end of the wire. My pulses were thumping. It was all I could do to keep myself from rushing into the apartment and catching her red-handed.

  “Okay. Then is everything fixed. Good-bye—Mr. Halliday.”

  She employed the name with ironic gravity and giggled.

  The receiver clicked back on the stand.

  In a day of violent plot and counterplot this was the worst moment. To know that Vera had completely deceived me was to know that almost everything was gone. I had trusted her, liked her. Perhaps I had almost fallen for her. That mattered. But it mattered far more that she knew Mr. Brand’s address in New Orleans. Once I had lost the detective story, the address had been my only jump on Halliday.

  By telling Vera, I had told him.

  A great deal depended on how I handled the next few minutes. I stood in front of the quarter-opened door, thinking. There was one thing to do, of course. I realized that. The only advantage left to me lay in the fact that Vera didn’t know I had discovered she was Halliday’s associate. If I lost that advantage, I had nothing.

  It would be difficult to go on exactly as before when I could gladly have taken her by her smooth white neck and throttled her.

  But it had to be done.

  I tiptoed back from the door to the head of the stairs. There must be no chance of her suspecting I had overheard the call. I waited in the dimly lit passage until my watch told me three minutes had elapsed. Then I walked back to the apartment, scraped my key in the lock and went into the little hall.

  Her voice came from the living-room.

  “Peter, is you?”

  “Is me.”

  I entered the living-room. She was sitting on the couch, smoking a cigarette, cool as a rum collins. She got up when she saw me. Her face was anxious—pretending to be anxious.

  “Where you go? I am so afraid. Where you go without telling?”

  Anger was still boiling inside me, but I found I could seem perfectly calm. It was going to be easier than I thought.

  “I’ve been to see Halliday.”

  “Halliday? All that danger? You go—alone?”

  “He wasn’t there.”

  “Is out?”

  “Skipped. A new tenant’s moved in already.”

  Her mouth dropped in a smile of sympathetic understanding. “Poor Peter! You are so mad. You want to fight with him, to make avenge for Lena Snood? You feel bad, no?”

  “Sure I feel bad.”

  “Don’t worry. Is better to keep from the danger now that we go to New Orleans, no?”

  “I guess so. Got your plane reservations?”

  “I am off the phone one moment before you come. The first time I no get through. Was busy, busy. But everything is okay. I change for you, too. I tell them you make the stop in New Orleans.”

  She was that cagey. Because there had been a millionth chance I might have heard her talking on the phone, she was giving an explanation that would satisfy me.

  “Fine,” I said. “How about a drink?”

  She shook her head. “Better I go. Is late. So early in the morning we leave. All my things I have to pack.”

  She knew where Halliday was. Probably she had a date with him. That was why she was going. I thought of following her. But how? She had the station-wagon. At this hour taxis were scarce in a residential district like Calle Londres. By the time I’d let her out of sight and found a cab I wouldn’t have a prayer of catching up with her again.

  Then what? Try to keep her here all night? I considered calling her amorous bluff, but I knew it wouldn’t work. Obviously, since she was going to New Orleans, she had to pack. I hadn’t packed either. If I offered to go with her and spend the night at her house without having packed myself she would know I suspected her.

  I would have to let her leave. That was all there was to it. I wondered what she was going to cook up with Halliday. Would they try to prevent my going to New Orleans? I didn’t think so, because on the phone Vera had spoken as if, for some reason, it suited their plans for me to make the trip. She was presumably accompanying me as a jailer. Almost certainly Halliday would be in New Orleans, too. If there was a night plane that night he would probably take it.

  Going to New Orleans wasn’t escaping from danger, it was heading straight into it again.

  “Sure you won’t have a nightcap?” I asked.

  “No, really. I go.” The great eyes watched me solemnly. “To-night when I leave you miss me?”

  “You know I will.”

  “So good I have been to-day, no?”

  “Nonpareil.”

  She pursed up her lips. “What is it, this nonpareil?”

  That “What is it” gag had been the most charming thing about her. Now I realized it had just been part of the act too.

  “Perfect,” I explained, playing it straight.

  “Oh, Peter, I am so happy. Is fool to be happy because the married man miss me a little, I know. But is true.”

  She threw her arms around me and slid her lips on to mine. They were warm—convincing. The full panorama of her deceit stretched before me: the love-making, the clever gradual winning of confidence, the sly prodding questions tricking information out of me all the time. I wanted to swing her round and kick her in the pants. I kissed her again, letting my mouth move from her lips to her cheek and up towards her eye.

  She gave her warm little giggle—the giggle she had given over the phone to Halliday. She twisted out of my arms.

  “No, Peter. I must go.”

  She took my hand and drew me towards the door. When she reached it she said casually, as if it had just come to her.

  “Oh, the gun. I take it back, yes?”

  That was the first time she had been obvious.

  I smiled. “No, I’ll keep the gun.”

  She must have realized her mistake, because she agreed with me instantly. “Yes, yes
, is much better, of course. Well”—her hand came up to caress my ear—“good night, Peter. We meet at the airport at six-thirty to-morrow.”

  “Good night, Vera.”

  “And do not worry. Do not think morbid of Lena. You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  She left. I closed the door behind her. There was a safety-chain. I had never used it before. I slipped it into place.

  I hurried to the window. Soon she emerged from the front door, jumped into the station wagon and drove away.

  I went into the kitchen for a drink. Now that I was alone, anger flamed up again. My hand was shaking as I poured the rum. I took the glass into the living-room. I still had to pack. There wasn’t much—just what I had had in Yucatan and one large suitcase. I had sent most of the stuff with Iris.

  I dropped on to the couch and took stock of my predicament. Until this latest thing had happened, my planned visit to Mr. Brand had been nothing much more than a formality. It was excruciatingly important now. I would have to reach him and somehow warn him before Halliday showed up.

  Slowly, as the drink warmed me, I began to see that Vera might still be an asset. She was taking me to New Orleans as her prisoner. But I could use her, too, as a hostage. The whole thing had turned into a fantastic cat-and-mouse game.

  It was my job to make Vera the mouse.

  I packed my clothes and shaved, so that I would have more time in the morning. When I had finished I cleaned out the contents of the bathroom closet and dumped it all in my Yucatan gabardine bag. The house agent had a set of keys for the apartment. There was no need to take mine to the portero. I put them in an envelope and dropped them on the hall table.

  It wasn’t late—only eleven o’clock. But I had to be up early. It was better to get some rest. I undressed, set the clock for five-fifteen and climbed into bed. The other bed where my wife used to sleep looked bleak and cold. Iris and New York seemed very far away.

  Don’t think morbid of Lena.

  That’s what Vera had said. That was the last thing she had said before she went off to meet Lena’s murderer.