18
I pushed it hard, but took no chances, remembering the cargo we had in the trunk and what would happen if we had a wreck. It was a little before one when we came into downtown Houston.
“I’ll drop you at the hotel,” I said. “Register, and then grab a cab for the bank. Draw out the money, come back to the hotel, and wait for me to call. I’ll register at the Magill Hotel. It’ll be sometime after midnight by the time I get back, and when I do the car’ll be empty and you won’t have anything to worry about. I’ll turn the tape over to you when I meet you, and you’ve got it made.”
“Simple, isn’t it?” she said coldly.
“Like shooting fish,” I said.
I pulled up in front of the hotel loading zone. Some uniformed types helped her out and took her luggage. I wheeled it on out and caught the Galveston highway. When I got down there I bought a shovel at a hardware store and put it in the car. There were several hours to kill. When it was dark I started out west beach. I drove for miles, until I was all alone along a vast stretch of empty dunes and scrub, salt cedars. Parking the car well off the road, I went back in the edge of the cedars, found a sandy spot, and started to dig. It took over an hour to scoop out a place long enough and a little over four feet deep. A few cars went past, down near the edge of the water, but they could only see the car.
When I had finished I lit a cigarette and waited until there were no headlights in sight anywhere before I opened the trunk and dragged him out. I dropped him in the hole, threw in the pillow, the bloodstained clothes, and the handcuffs, and began pushing the sand back in with the shovel. When it was pretty well smoothed off I threw loose sand across the whole area with a swinging motion of the shovel, and turned on the headlights for an instant to see how it looked. It was fine. It might be a year before anybody even happened to stop at this particular spot. Nobody would ever see Tallant again.
I drove back toward town. After two or three miles I stopped and threw the shovel back among some cedars. It was 12:30 a.m. When I came into the outskirts of Houston, hot, tired, and thirsty. I pulled into the white glare of light of a drive-in and ordered a lemonade. While I was drinking it in the car I saw the telephone booth inside. The urge to know, to hear her say she had it and was waiting for me, became overpowering. I could even go right to the Carson and get it, take a cab to the airport, and be on my way tonight if I could catch a no-show on some plane going west. I didn’t want to sleep; I wanted to be on a plane with that money under my arm at last. I went into the booth, looked up the number of the Carson, and dialed.
It was very hot inside the booth. The little fan whirred. When the girl at the switchboard answered, l” said, “Mrs. Cannon, please.”
“One moment, sir.”
I could hear her ringing the room. It went on. There was no answer.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the girl said. “She doesn’t answer, but perhaps she is asleep. I’ll keep trying.”
“If you would,” I said. “It’s very important.”
She rang some more. Nothing happened. I began to worry. What the hell was the matter with her, anyway? She surely couldn’t have gone out.
“She must not be in her room,” the girl said. “Just a moment and I’ll have her paged in the lobby and in the restaurant.”
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll call back.”
“Oh, it’ll be no trouble,” she interrupted. “It will take only a minute—”
“I’ll try later,” I said. I started to hang up.
“Is there any message?” she asked quickly. “Would you like to leave a number? Uh—I could try her room again, also, if you would like. It’s just possible she might have taken a sleeping pill and be a little slow waking—”
I put the receiver back on the hook and went back outside, thinking about sleeping pills. She was crazy—there was no telling. But I had thrown them away. That didn’t mean anything; she could have had a trunkful of the damned things. I paid for the lemonade and drove off.
The streets were almost deserted now. I heard a siren wailing somewhere in the distance behind me. When I was downtown I parked the car about a block away from the Carson, took my bag out, and walked around to the Magill. I was tight now with worry and uneasiness. Oh, hell, I thought; she just went out somewhere; I’ll call again after I register. But the picture persisted; suppose she had drawn out the money and it was lying there beside her in a locked hotel room while she drifted down and down into sleep with a bottle-full of those capsules inside her? I shook my head and walked on. No, I told myself. That was too whacky even for her.
The small lobby of the Magill was deserted except for the clerk half asleep behind his desk. I registered. He turned the card around and glanced at the name.
“Oh. Mr. Harlan,” he said. “Just a minute. Someone left a message.” He reached for a pad lying on a shelf beside the small switchboard, and studied it for a moment with his lips pursed.
Maybe it’s in Sanskrit, I thought, and he has to translate it. I wanted to strangle him. “Yes?” I asked.
“Hmmmm. It was a lady. She didn’t leave any name. She called twice. Said she would be out until late, but that she would call you again and try to catch you as soon as you checked in.”
I breathed softly. “Thanks,” I said.
He clanged the bell on the desk and a colored boy appeared from somewhere in back. When I was up in the room and he had departed with his tip I took off my coat and stared at the telephone. Should I try the Carson again? No. She was probably still out, and she’d said she would call again. She already had, twice, so she apparently wasn’t trying to run out on me or anything. I unpacked my bag, and checked the envelope containing the eight thousand. Just for something to do, I counted it again. It was all there, to the last five-dollar bill. I forced myself to sit down, and lit a cigarette. I stared at the telephone, trying to force it to ring. Five minutes went by. Ten minutes.
It rang. I grabbed it.
“Mr. Harlan?” It was her voice, all right. I could hear music in the background. Where in the name of God was she? In some honkytonk?
“Yes,” I said. “Where are you? Have you got it?”
“I’m in a bar on Fannin,” she replied.
I took a slow breath and drew my left hand across my face. “Have—you—got—it?”
“Of course,” she replied coolly. “It’s right here in the booth with me.”
I could feel nerves uncoiling all over my body. “All right. Good. Do you want me to meet you at the Carson?”
“No. I’ll come there.”
“For God’s sake, hurry it up. You’re sober, aren’t you?”
“Of course.” She hung up.
They never made any sense, I thought. Wandering around in bars at one in the morning with $92,000 in cash. I got up and began pacing up and down the room. I’d have gone crazy trying to sit still. I thought of all I had gone through for that money. It seemed like a lifetime since that afternoon Purvis had walked up to me in the lobby of the hotel in Galveston. And now in a few minutes I’d get my hands on it at last. She had it. She was bringing it here. I lit a cigarette, took two puffs on it, and crushed it out. It suddenly occurred to me I hadn’t eaten anything in over two days. Who cared? I wanted to sing, or shout, or climb up the walls.
There was a light tap on the door. I sprang forward to open it.
She was very smooth looking in a light skirt and straw-colored blouse with a bunch of violets pinned to one shoulder. She was carrying the briefcase and her purse, and she had a folded newspaper under her arm.
“Come in,” I said. “Come in.”
I closed the door and started to reach for the briefcase. She tossed it carelessly on the bed and sat down in the armchair near the desk and telephone stand. I forgot her. I sat down on the bed and sliced open the zipper of the briefcase. My hands shook a little. God, it was wonderful. It was in bundles, tied with paper bands with the denomination stamped on them. I let them fall out on the bed. They fell in little stacks.
“Quite an interesting sight,” she said.
I turned. She wasn’t looking at the money. The brown eyes were on my face with a cool and faintly mocking expression in them.
“You’re satisfied now?” she asked.
“Sure, sure,” I said.
She reached out a hand and knocked cigarette ash into a tray. The sleeves of the straw-colored blouse were long and full, tapering in closely at her wrists. “Everything is all right? The roulette wheel has stopped at last, and you’ve won? You’re happy?”
“What do you think?” I said. “This is what I started out to get, and I got it.”
“You’re a success story. You are to be congratulated, Mr. Harlan. I assume you have carried out your end of the bargain?”
“Sure,” I said.
“You are a man of honor. Knowing you has been one of the high points of my life.”
“Write me about it,” I said. “Every other Christmas.”
“Sure, sure. Call me up. I’m in the book. So who has to like it? So write me about it. So what else is new? Learn the patter of the insulated and be a real tough guy. It’s easy.”
“Excuse me for living.”
“I’m sorry. I forgot that one.”
I said nothing. She was silent for a moment.
Then without looking at me, she asked, “I won’t ask any of the details, but—it was on Galveston Island?”
“Yes,” I said. “Does it matter?”
She shook her head slowly, still looking down at the end of her cigarette. “I guess not.”
“The tape’s there on the dresser,” I said.
“Thank you.” She looked toward it without interest, and made no move to pick it up.
“Don’t you want it?”
“Not particularly.”
I stared at her “I don’t get you.”
“It isn’t important, is it? I mean, it has no actual value except as a hockey puck or a ball has value as long as a game of some kind is in progress. The game is over, so it is no longer something to be pursued. And, obviously, you could have made twenty copies of it by this time.”
“You’re an odd-ball,” I said.
“No doubt. You make a great effort to understand people, don’t you?”
“Not often.”
“Couldn’t that be a little dangerous, in your profession?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But, listen. Why were you wandering around in bars with all that money on you? I thought you’d be at the hotel.”
“Oh. I haven’t been back to the hotel since the morning papers hit the street.”
I stared at her puzzled. “Why not?”
The paper she had brought in was lying folded in her lap. She tossed it to me. “Perhaps that will clear it up for you.”
I unfolded it. In the center of the front page a two-column picture of Julia Cannon hit me right in the eye. SOUGHT, the caption read.
I stared, feeling cold in the center of my back. There were two columns of the story. Headlines and subheads sprang up at me. WIDOW SOUGHT IN. “PERFECT-CRIME” SLAYING . . . REPORTED IN HOUSTON . . .TIE-UP WITH PURVIS SLAYING HINTED . . . NEW MYSTERY ADDED . . .
“A story of five months’ dogged but unpublicized police work was revealed today in the announcement by the Lucerne County Sheriff's office that it is believed to be almost certain now that Howard L. Cannon, Wayles automobile dealer, was murdered last March instead of meeting death in an automobile crash as was supposed. The dead man’s widow, Mrs. Julia Cannon, is being sought for questioning in connection with the crime, as is Daniel R. Tallant, Wayles sporting goods dealer. Both are missing. It is further suspected that Tallant himself may have met with foul play.
“Both new light and fresh mystery were added to the case in the past 24 hours with the announcement that Tallant is wanted for questioning in connection with the death of Wilton L. Purvis, former insurance investigator of Houston, who figured prominently in the investigation of the supposedly accidental death of Cannon last March, and by the announcement that Tallant has disappeared, following a mysterious gunshot heard in the vicinity of the Cannon home last night and that his car was later found parked near a wooded area some two blocks way.
“Following a search of the Cannon home by police yesterday, it was announced that definite traces of blood were found on the floor of the garage—”
That was where I had put him down.
“—and that an empty cartridge case was found in one of the bedrooms of the house—”
Oh, Jesus, I hadn’t even thought of that.
She was saying something.
“Shut up!” I said. I felt as if my head would fly off. “I’ve got to see what it says—”
She shook her head. “It’s not really necessary. I can tell you what it says. It says, quite simply and beautifully, that the roulette wheel has stopped at last. They have been working on it for five months, and since Purvis’s death they have been working with the Houston police. A picture of Dan has been identified by three people as the man they saw in the vicinity of Purvis’s apartment house that night. You see? They don’t stop the wheel; they just let you think it’s stopped. I tried to tell you that.
“They know I’m in Houston. The bank has reported I cashed that check for ninety-two thousand this afternoon. They think I’m trying to escape, using the money, and every exit has been blocked off. I shall be picked up in a matter of hours, if not minutes. If I had stayed in the hotel I would be in custody now—”
“Shut up!” I fought to keep my voice down. I wanted to scream at her. “Let me read—”
She shook her head. “You are so obvious. There is no mention of you anywhere in the story. Apparently nobody has any idea you have been connected with it at all.”
I sighed weakly. I was all right. I was still free. They’d been there at the Carson when I called, and all the time the girl had been stalling me so they could trace it. I shuddered, thinking of how it would have been if I’d called from here instead of that pay phone. I was in the clear. They couldn’t do anything to me because they didn’t even know about me. Nobody did. Except—
She smiled. “Nobody except me, Mr. Harlan.”
I stared at her.
She shook her head. “You can’t kill me. You are registered in this room, under your own name. And you might have some difficulty in getting my body out of. here.”
“Wh—what are you going to do? Why did you come here?”
She took a puff of the cigarette and slowly tapped the ash into a tray. “I’m not going to do anything. In another half hour I shall be dead. I told you I have no taste for Roman carnival.”
“Where-?”
“Not here. Obviously, that would be in very bad taste because it would embarrass you. I shall check in at some other hotel, under another name. By the time my description registers, I shall be beyond their reach. Naturally, I had the prescription refilled before I left town yesterday.”
I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t dig you.”
“Is that surprising? You never make any effort to understand anybody. You never even listen. And I’ve told you it could be dangerous in a profession such as yours.”
I leaned forward. “Look. You mean you’re going to walk out of here, and say nothing to anybody? And you’ll be dead when they find you?”
“Precisely.”
“How about the room clerk? Did you ask him the number of this room?”
She shook her head. “He gave it to me when I called you from the bar. I didn’t stop at the desk on the way up, and he barely glanced at me. He probably thinks I’m a call girl somebody ordered.”
I went on staring at her. “It throws me. What did you come here for?”
“Why, to say good-by. And to give you that money.”
She would never make sense to me. “Why? I—I mean, why the money?”
Her eyebrows raised. “I promised it to you, didn’t I?” And what else could I do with it? I had already cashed the check before I learned I was trapped with no further place to run,”
I shook my head. It was unbelievable. But there it was. I had the money, and as soon as she walked out of this hotel I was free to run and nobody would even be looking for me.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I offered part of it to an old friend of mine tonight, but she didn’t want it. She doesn’t expect to live much longer, and she said it was of no value to her. Another odd-ball, no doubt. So what remained but to bring it to you?”
I sighed, feeling weak all over. “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a million.”
“Not at all, Mr. Harlan.” She smiled, and stirred as if to get up. “You are entirely welcome. I thought you would appreciate it.”