The Big Bite

6
When he had hung up he moved back to the rear of the store again and I couldn’t see him any more. I lowered the glasses, dropped the phone back on its cradle, and sat for a moment staring at it. Right into the end zone on the first play; this was better than I’d even dared hope for. I’d proved I was right, located him, and identified him—all in the first two or three hours. Improbable, was it? A dream? Hell, it was turning into reality faster than I could keep up with it.
All right, all right, I warned myself, don’t dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back. There was plenty to do yet, and the tricky and dangerous part was just beginning. Mrs. Cannon was next. I stood up and went into the bathroom to shave. Here I come, you brown-eyed Fort Knox.
Nine-thirty was a little early to go calling on a woman, especially unannounced, but that’s the way it had to be. If I waited until later she might not be home, and if I phoned first I never would see her. I was the last person in the world she wanted to meet face to face. I grinned at my reflection in the mirror, a little coldly. That was all right. So maybe she wouldn’t like me. I was going to be a hell of a lot more unpopular with her in about twenty-four hours if things went off as scheduled.
I dressed in a fresh pair of gray-slacks and a subdued sports shirt, combed my hair, and took a last gander at myself in the mirror. I’d do. I looked as scrubbed and wholesome as a freshly-laundered moose, and about half as subtle. She’d never suspect me of anything.
I looked up her address in the telephone book. Three-twenty-four Cherrywood Drive, it said. Putting the binoculars in the bag with the gun, I locked it, and then checked the recorder to be sure its case was locked too. I went downstairs, did the how-you-feeling-now-much-better-thanks routine with the solicitous type at the desk, and on out the rear door to the car. Coming out of the alley, I turned north, avoiding the square. At the first filling station I pulled in and gassed up. The attendant told me how to find Cherrywood Drive.
It was southwest of the square, near the crest of a sloping hill overlooking the town. Near the bottom the bungalows had a housing-development look about them, but further up they were bigger, on large, landscaped lots. Cherrywood Drive was only four blocks long and there were just three houses in the last block, two. of them on the left, or downhill side. I slowed, looking at the numbers. The Cannon place would be the second one on the left, the last house on the street. It was near the corner where Cherrywood terminated in an intersecting street going downhill. Beyond the intersecting street was a wooded area, still undeveloped. I liked the whole layout but I didn’t want to take too much time now in looking it over. If I goofed around out here until she got a look at me out the window she probably wouldn’t be “in” when I rang the buzzer.
The other two houses were white Colonial types with columns and wide lawns and driveways. Directly across from the Cannon house was a vacant lot, grown up with pines, however, rather than weeds. I pulled the old Chevy to the curb on that side and walked across the street. The Cannon house was newer, a long, low ranch style built of light-colored brick with a sweeping, low-angled white roof covered with broken quartz. It looked very western and a little out of place among all these pines. It sat back from the street in a large expanse of well-tended lawn, but there was no circular drive. A flagstone walk bordered with some kind of low shrubs led to the front door, and beyond it a wide concrete driveway went straight back to the two-car garage adjoining the house on the far end. Both doors of the garage were closed. That should mean she was home.
It was hot now and I could feel perspiration beginning to break out on my face. I went quickly up the walk. A colored man in a straw hat was digging in the flower bed under the big picture window in front. His shirt was plastered to his back with sweat. Drapes were drawn across the window and I couldn’t see in. Remember, I told myself, you’ve never seen her before in your life. Sell her on it.
I rang the bell. The gardener straightened and brushed his wet face with a hand, looking up at me. “You know if Mrs. Cannon’s home?” I asked.
“Yassuh, I think so,” he said. He went back to his work. I’d just started to reach for the bell again when the door opened. A young colored girl looked out at me indifferently. She was chewing gum and held a broom in her left hand.
“Is Mrs. Cannon in?” I asked.
“I’ll find out,” she said. “Who I say it is?”
“Mr. Warren,” I said, mumbling a little.
“Just a minute.”
She disappeared, leaving the door ajar. It opened into a small entry hall. There was a door at the left of that, going into the living-room apparently, but I couldn’t see much of it. I waited. Maybe I shouldn’t have said Warren, I thought. It might still sound too much like Harlan. O’Toole or Schutzbank or something would have done better. But still it had to be within shooting distance; I didn’t want her to get the idea I was aware I might have to pitch her a phony name to get in. That would ruin it all. Oh, hell, I thought; it’s been five months and she doesn’t know I’m within two thousand miles.
The girl came back. Mrs. Cannon was in. I could wait in the parlor. I followed her in through the entry hall and stood in the living-room. “She’ll be heah in a minute,” she said, and went on out through a door at the right rear, which seemed to lead into the dining-room. As soon as she was gone, I looked swiftly around, trying to get as good a picture of the layout as I could before Mrs. Cannon got here.
Apparently there was no dog. That had been worrying me, but I didn’t see any signs of one. Certainly there wasn’t one in the house, or he’d have been around to investigate by this time, and I couldn’t see any kennel in the patio behind the house. There was another plate glass window at the rear of the living-room, fitted with a gauzy drape which was closed now but was fairly transparent with the bright sunlight behind it, The patio was enclosed with a white-painted cinder block wall about four feet high. Below it down the hillside was another wooded vacant lot. Approaching the house from the rear would be a cinch. Getting in, however, was going to be another matter.
I’d noticed something when I first stepped into the entry hall, but it hadn’t actually registered until now. The house was air-conditioned. I could feel the coolness penetrating my sweaty shirt. It was fine after the sticky heat outside, but there was another angle to it I didn’t like at all. The doors and windows would be tightly closed all the time it was turned on, so it wasn’t going to be merely a matter of unlatching a screen. It wasn’t good. I glanced swiftly around, studying the room.
It was a long one. At the far end was a raised fireplace with a copper hood. To the left of it was an open doorway which apparently led into a study or library because I could see rows of books along the wall and the front end of a mounted sailfish. At the right was the hallway which went on through to the rest of the house. Some chairs and a small sectional sofa were scattered about that end, before the fireplace, but the focal point of the room was nearer the center where a long custom-built sofa was backed up against the drapes of the front window. A coffee table and three large chairs faced it in a rough semicircle, and it was probable this was the part of the room generally used when only a few people were present because it faced the large rear window overlooking the patio. It looked good to me. At each end of the sofa there was a table with a big, red-shaded lamp on it. The lamp cords disappeared behind the sofa. I made a mental note I’d probably need a three-way outlet plug. There was a whispering sound like that of slippers on carpet. I turned just as Mrs. Cannon came into the room from the hallway.
When she saw me, she stopped. Her eyes widened a little, and I knew she recognized me. I didn’t care now, because I was in, and I was too busy anyway trying to keep from staring at her to worry about it.
Striking, Purvis had said. She was, but he hadn’t scratched the surface.
The other time had been just a flashing glimpse at dusk, and that photograph hadn’t amounted to much more than an inventory. She was wearing bullfighter’s pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up; the blue-black hair was cut rather short and it swirled carelessly about a slender oval face the color of honey or good pale vermouth. She was a construction job from the ground up without being overdone about it anywhere—just medium height and rather slim and with only a touch of that overblown calendar-girl effect above the sucked-in waist—but if you had to look twice to be sure that wasn’t Manolete inside those pants you were in bad shape and ought to see an optometrist or psychiatrist before you got any worse. The pants themselves were black and very smooth, and what they did to her thighs—or vice versa—should happen more often. Below them her legs were bare and honey-colored and she wore bullfighter’s slippers. Break it up, I thought; in another two seconds you won’t know whether to say hello or charge.
It was her eyes, however, that could throw the match in the gasoline. They were large and very lovely, fringed with long dark lashes, and they were brown—not soft or fawn-like, but self-possessed and cool with a hint of the devil in them, a devil not too well tied up and only half asleep. You had an impression that if she ever really turned them on you with that sidelong come-hither out of the corners and from under the lashes she could roll your shirt up your back like a window-blind. Mrs. Cannon was a large order of girl; she may have killed her husband, but I was willing to bet he’d never been bored when he was alive.
She recognized me; she was off guard for just an instant and I saw the sudden wariness in her eyes. Then she recovered and murmured politely, “Good morning, Mr.—ah—”
“Harlan,” I said. “John Harlan.”
“Oh,” she said. “I thought Geraldine said a Mr. Warren. I couldn’t imagine— Won’t you sit down, Mr. Harlan?”
She flowed forward like warm honey poured out of a jug and took one of the big chairs facing the sofa. I remained standing until she was seated and then sat down on the sofa. She leaned forward to take a cigarette from the box on the coffee table. I sprang up again to light it for her. She looked up at me over the flame of the match, smiling a little, and said, “Thank you.”
I lit one for myself and sat down again. “I want to apologize for coming so early in the morning,” I said, “but I’m on my way out to the lake to go fishing and didn’t want to miss you.”
“That’s quite all right,” she replied smoothly. “I’ve been up for hours.”
I had to hand it to her; she was as cool as they come. I knew she was raging inside at that maid for not getting my name straight and at the same time she was probably going crazy trying to figure out—now that I had got in—whether I recognized her as the-woman I’d seen out there at the lake, but none of it showed on her face.
“You know, I expected somebody much older,” I said. “I don’t know where I got the impression, but I thought you’d be thirty or thirty-five.” It was an old gag, of course, and she’d recognize it as such, but still it was the truth in a way. Purvis’d said she was thirty, but she didn’t look it.
She gave me a faint smile and nodded. “You’re very flattering, Mr. Harlan,” she murmured. “And so early in the morning, too.”
I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could see that amused devil looking out of her eyes for just a second. It was beginning to appear to her that I didn’t know I’d ever seen her before, and the tension was easing: Two-hundred-and-thirty pounds of ham-handed athlete trying to be a smoothie probably tickled her, too. She’d heard all the compliments, by experts; and with those eyes, she’d probably been using men for throw-rugs since she was three. Well, that was all right. I’d be something new for her; I’d be the first one that ever cost her a hundred thousand dollars. She’d probably sleep with a lock of my hair under her pillow.
I pitched my voice down a little and looked at my hands. “I—uh—” I said. Then I glanced up at her, ill at ease and awkward, but sincere as hell, “There isn’t anything, really, that I can say, is there?” I asked.
“I don’t think there’s anything that has to be said,” she replied quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Well—it isn’t a question of blame,” I said haltingly, “It’s just that—well, there was a wreck, and I was involved in it. I wanted to come and see you after I got out of the hospital, but didn’t know what there was I could say if I did come. I knew how badly you were torn up about it, too, and realized you didn’t want to see me and be reminded of it—”
That ought to get her off the hook, I thought, so she could relax. I was just a big simple muscle-head who didn’t have the faintest idea why she’d avoided me. There was nothing for her to be afraid of any more. All I had to do now was ease her mind as to why I’d come back here, and I’d be in.
It was as if we were working off the same script. “It’s quite all right,” she said. “I’m glad you came. And I’m very sorry I didn’t come to see you in the hospital, but it’s nice to know that you understood. However, I’ll admit I was a little surprised at seeing you now. I didn’t know you were back in this part of the country.”
“I came back to finish that fishing trip,” I explained. “Going to work on a new job in September. I won’t get a vacation for a year, so I thought I’d better do my fishing now while I could.”
The big eyes became very grave and sympathetic. This baby was good. “I was so very sorry to read that you had been—I mean, that you weren’t going to play any more. Do you think the accident had anything to do with it?”
I shrugged. No way to tell, actually. It was just one of those things.”
She ran the rheostats up a little and brushed my face with a lingering glance that would melt butter at fifteen-feet. “I hated to hear it,” she said simply.
Not half as much as you’re going to hate it this time tomorrow, baby, I thought. I took my eyes away from her face. Looking at her was too damned distracting, and I still had plenty to do. Part of what I’d come for had been accomplished but the big item still remained. How was I going to get in? The front door was out of the question; that was probably locked all the time. How about windows? They’d all be closed because of the air-conditioning. But maybe they wouldn’t be latched. There weren’t any windows in the living-room, however, except the big plate glass ones, and of course they didn’t open at all. I couldn’t think of any excuse to get into another part of the house to look for some. Maybe I’d been too optimistic.
Then I saw two windows, and knew I was worse off than ever. Looking out through that filmy drape, I could see a little of the two wings of the house that formed the sides of the U plan. On both sides there were windows, smaller ones, looking out over the patio. They were the casement type. I’d never tried it, but I knew they couldn’t be opened from outside except by stripping and wrecking the gear and crank mechanism that operated them. It was a worm type gear, which can be driven from only one end. They’d all be the same. Windows were out; it had to be a door.
Suddenly I was conscious she was saying something. I “Oh?” I asked. “I beg your pardon?”
She smiled. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Sure,” I said. “Uh-thanks.”
“Geraldine!” she called.
There was no answer. She looked at me and lifted her shoulders with a graceful shrugging motion, spreading her hands. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”
“Surely,” I said. I stood up. She went out toward the dining-room. I watched the rear of those bullfighter pants out of sight, and then turned, and while I was still turning and saying, “Holy hell!” very softly under my breath I saw the answer to the thing I was looking for. It was a glass door opening onto the patio. I’d been looking at it all the time but hadn’t noticed because it was behind that semi-transparent drape. I was just to the left of the end of the big picture window and I’d thought it was a part of it. The drape had been made wide enough to cover the door in addition to the window when it was closed, apparently so as to give an unbroken line clear across that side of the room.
I could hear her talking to Esmerelda or whatever her name was out in the kitchen. I stepped swiftly across to the door and pulled back the end of the drape. Opening it, I tried the knob from the outside. It didn’t turn; the night latch was on. Looking quickly around to be sure I was still alone, I reversed the push-button plungers in the edge of the door to unlatch it, closed it softly, and let the drape fall back in position. The door apparently wasn’t used much, so the chances were she didn’t bother to check it every night.
I walked back and sat down. In a moment she came in from the dining-room with two cups of coffee and some cream and sugar on a tray. I did some more of the earnest young man about how sorry I was for the accident, even if it wasn’t my fault, and while I talked I tried to keep my eyes off her long enough to get the exact layout of that patio. She regretted some more that I was washed up in football. I shoved the silken weight of her off the edge of my mind and told her how brave she was. She told me I was nice and that it was considerate of me to call this way, and I knew she was just waiting for me to get the hell out of here so she could call Tallant. They were going to have one hot conference about this, but I thought I had her fooled. l was just a goof who’d come back to go fishing. I wondered if the maid slept in, and decided she probably didn’t. They’d had to stay under cover all this time, so Tallant was probably coming here late at night. They were too cagey to be seen together for probably another six months, even with Purvis out of the way. So that’s the way it was. She’d be waiting for him—waiting— Damn it, I thought. Cut it out, and attend to business. Get that look off your pan; don’t think she won’t recognize it—she’s been seeing it since she was twelve. Be sorry about something.
About what?
Hell, anything.
”Are you going to be here very long, Mr. Harlan?” ‘she asked. “Two weeks,” I replied. “Maybe a little less.”
“And you’re out at that same cabin where you were before?”
“I will be,” I said. “Right now I’m at the Enders Hotel. The friend of mine that owns the shack is mailing me a key. It’ll probably be here today.”
“Well, I do hope I’ll see you again while you’re here,” she said.
I stood up on cue. “It’s been nice meeting you,” I said earnestly. “I probably won’t come to town much, but if you’re out that way drop in and go fishing with me. Heh, heh.”
She smiled, the way you would at a meat-head who wasn’t too bright, and came to the door with me. She held out her hand very graciously. I took it. The brown eyes looked up at me from about the level of my shoulder. Brother! I thought. I simpered like a clown and said good-by three times, standing on one foot; then the other, gave her another poor-but-honest pitch about how nice it was of her to let me call, and finally backed out the door like a high school kid escaping from the stage after winning a scholarship in the essay contest. She’d call Tallant all right the minute the door was closed, but they’d just have a good laugh. was utterly harmless.
I drove on around the corner and down the hill, casing the terrain, and went back to the hotel. I parked car behind it and went shopping. I bought a small pencil flashlight in a drugstore, and in Woolworth’s picked up a three-way outlet plug for a wall receptacle, some typewriter paper, a pad of yellow second sheets and a few sheets of carbon paper. What else? I already had the cardboard box. Oh, yes. Wrapping paper twine, and some address stickers.
I walked back to the hotel, avoiding the south side of the square and keeping a lookout for Tallant. I didn’t see him anywhere.