All The Way (12 page)

“Well! You finally got here,” she said, as I sat down. “I was just about to go back.”

“Sorry I was late, cutie,” I said. “Couldn’t get away.”

The casual manner and the “cutie” didn’t improve her feelings any, but she was trying to get them under control. It would be poor policy to blast the goose just as it was about to produce the golden egg.

”It’s all right,” she said with an effort.

“Well, I wound up the deal.” I stuck a cigarette in the holder and lit it. “I guess our trip’s off, baby.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I can start home in the morning—”

“Well!
Of all the stupid—!” The black eyes were venomous. “After I spend a fortune in cab fare, and sit here like a mope for an hour and a half waitin’ for you to decide to show up—”

The bartender and several customers turned and stared.

“Hey,” I said soothingly, “take it easy, Marian.”

She slammed her drink down. “And will you, for Chrissakes, stop calling me Marian! I’m sick of it!”

“All right, all right, I’m sorry, honey—” I looked around uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean it. Let’s have a drink.”

I motioned for the bartender, who hadn’t missed a word of it, and ordered two Martinis. It took several minutes to cool her off. “We had another pair of drinks, and decided to go somewhere else. I could see her eye the car appraisingly, though she said nothing. We drove over to the beach to another bar. I was acting a little drunk now, and tried to paw her in the parking lot. She shoved me away.

“Le’s ginna back,” I said.

“Oh, shut up!”

We went inside and had two more drinks. I noticed she was leaving most of hers now.

“Why don’t we go on to the motel?” she asked. “We can have some drinks there.”

I bought a bottle of Scotch from the bartender. He didn’t want to sell it to me but I persuaded him with an extra five dollars. We drove to the motel. It was after midnight now, and most of the units were dark. I turned the car and backed it into the carport between the units. I was staggering a little, and as I was fumbling the door open I dropped her bag. It clattered on the step.

“Be careful!” she said angrily.

Inside, I switched on a light, put the Scotch and the bag on the dresser, and started to paw her again. “Wait a minute, can’t you?” she snapped. She slipped off the dress and put it on a hanger in the closet, and took off her shoes. They were blue, with very high heels. I broke the seal on the bottle, and poured two water tumblers half-f.

“Live it up, kid,” I said, handing her one.

“I’m goin’ to put a little water in mine,” she said, and went into the bathroom. She closed the door. I quietly unsnapped the overnight case and opened it. She had other shoes, all right. I grabbed out a pair of her nylons, and a pair of pants, shoved them under the mattress on the bed, and closed the bag. When she came out I could tell by the color of her drink she’d poured most of it out before she added the water.

“S down the ol’ hatch,” I said, weaving a little, and gulped part of mine. The shoes were lying on the carpet near the corner of the bed. “Howz bout a kiss?” I said, and stepped toward her. I landed on them, and heard one of the heels snap. So did she.

“Now look what you’ve done, you stupid idiot!” she lashed out. “Of all the clumsy, big-mouthed apes!”

I weaved, fixed her with a glassy stare, and contemptuously kicked the shoes under the bed. Hauling out the wallet, I fumbled a fifty out of it and threw it on the bed. “Go buy self ‘nother pair. But don’ heave your weight ‘round. I could buy you for cat food.”

I tried to stuff the wallet back into my pocket. It fell to the floor. I reached down for it, and fell over. She stared at me with contempt. I got up, tossed the wallet on the dresser, and went into the bathroom. Turning on the water in the basin, I made a retching sound, and washed my face. When I came out, she was smiling.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “It was my fault, for leavin’ ’em there. Here, let me pour you another little drink.”

“Sgood idea,” I replied. “Pologize. Din mean word of it.” I drank part of the whisky, dropped the glass on the rug, and collapsed on the bed. “Lie down few mince. Feel better.”

She stretched out beside me, and stroked my face with her hand. “There, there, honey. Ju-u-st relax. You just had a little too much.”

I closed my eyes. We lay perfectly still for about ten minutes, and then she said, “Honey?”

“Ummmff?” I muttered, and stirred a little.

She waited another twenty minutes before she tried again. I went on breathing heavily, and made no reply. After a few more minutes she moved cautiously away from me, and got up. I heard the rustle of the dress as she put it back on, and the careful unsnapping of the bag to get the other pair of shoes. I had to listen carefully to hear the door open, but there was a faint click as it closed.

I slid off the bed, parted the curtains at the front window just a fraction of an inch, and peered out. There was no one in sight except her. All the units across the way were dark, and the woman who ran the place had long since gone to bed. She reached the entrance, turned left, toward the center of town, and disappeared.

She should know enough not to take a cab all the way to Miami and at this time in the morning, so she’d probably head for the bus station. She knew I had her address, and the chances were she wouldn’t stop this side of California. With a married man she could tough it out and play the percentages, but she should be pretty sure by now that I was single. I’d cried enough about what the tax people did to me because of it.

I went over to the dresser. She’d left the wallet. Removing the identification had been superfluous, but it was a precaution I had to take. Chapman was going to be all over the front pages in a few hours, and having his identification turn up somewhere in a garbage can would have been disastrous.

I replaced all the identification and the cards in the wallet, and looked at my watch. It was one forty-five. Taking two water tumblers out in the bathroom, I rinsed them and rubbed them with a towel to remove prints. It didn’t really matter—the maid would replace them with two fresh ones, wrapped in waxed paper as these had been. I set to work on the three bags, one of which was open on the luggage stand. They were fiberglass, and would probably show prints. I wiped them all over very carefully with the towel to remove any already there, and then replaced them with numbers of deliberately smeared prints—touching them, particularly around the hardware and handles, with my fingers and hands, but always sliding just a little. I did the same thing with all the doorknobs, bathroom fixtures, and the glass top of the dresser. The bottle of whisky I’d take with me, and the one that had been in his luggage originally I’d already thrown away.

I pulled out the nylons and the pair of pants I’d shoved under the mattress, held them under the tap in the wash basin until they were thoroughly wet, squeezed out the excess water, and draped them on a coat hanger from the closet. I hung them from the shower head that projected from the wall above the tub, and then slid the shower curtain about halfway out on its rod so they were hidden from view.

I retrieved the shoes from under the bed. The broken heel was still attached, but dangling. Turning out the lights, I lay down on the bed with a cigarette. It was difficult to stay awake. I’d really had more to drink than I was accustomed to. After about an hour, I got up without turning on the lights, slipped out the side door into the carport, and unlocked the trunk of the Cadillac. Going back inside, I returned with the whisky bottle and the shoes. Stumbling, I fell heavily against the side of the car, bumped once against the wall of the carport, and dropped to the floor. I remained utterly silent for at least five minutes, and then got up with a great scraping of shoes against concrete, bumped against the car once more, put the shoes and bottle in the trunk, lowered the lid very gently, and pressed until the latch clicked. I tiptoed back inside, closed the door, and lay down again.

It was nine when I awoke. My clothes were badly rumpled. I had a slight hangover, but it wasn’t bad. I washed my face, but didn’t shave, and when I appraised myself in the mirror I looked like a man on the wrong end of a two-day binge. Shoving the empty wallet in my pocket, I put on the hat and glasses and took one last look around. Everything was all right. Except for the pants and the nylons drying in the bathroom, there was nothing to indicate a woman had ever been here.

I went out, being careful not to leave any prints on the knob as I closed the door, got in the car, and drove out. The woman who ran the place was in the doorway of the office; she smiled, and I solemnly tipped my hat. It was a few minutes past ten when I reached downtown Miami and finally found a parking place. The briefcase the tapes had been in was on the back seat. I got out with it and walked to the bank.

I wrote out the check for a hundred and seventy thousand dollars, and presented it at a window. The teller was a girl. She did a take, raised her eyebrows, looked at me again, and disappeared. I gathered it wasn’t every day she cashed checks in that amount for grimy and disheveled characters who’d obviously slept in their clothes and hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. Well, I’d expected a certain amount of consternation. I stuck a cigarette in the holder and lit it.

Dakin came out. As I’d suspected before, he never remembered what anybody looked like. He glanced uncertainly around at the people at other windows, and when the girl nodded towards me, he said, “Ah, yes. Mr. Chapman.” We shook hands.

“Do you really want this in cash?” he asked incredulously.

I stopped humming
The Music Goes Round and Round,
glanced at him as if I thought the question tiresome, and said, simply, “Yes.”

I knew then they’d already checked the signature against the card and knew it was genuine. They suspected a con game of some kind, or that I was in some kind of trouble at home and had worked out this deal for disappearing with a lot of ready cash, but in the end there was nothing they could do about it. I’d put the money in the bank, so who had a better right to take it out? He did ask, since it was made out to cash and the girl hadn’t actually seen me sign it, if I’d mind making out another?

“Not at all,” I said. I made out another, signed it, and said, “But I’m in rather a hurry, if you don’t mind.”

He looked at the signature, and shrugged. There was a slight service charge for transferring the funds. They brought the money, packed it into the briefcase for me, I paid the service charge, tipped my hat politely to the girl, and walked out with the briefcase under my arm.

When I reached the car I placed it on the seat beside me, unzipped it, and removed ten fifties from one of the bundles. I placed them in the wallet and started out US 1. At the edge of Coral Gables there was a large sporting goods store I’d already located. I stopped and bought a six-foot aluminum car-top boat. While the men were installing the carrier atop the car and securing the boat and oars to it, I walked impatiently up and down, chainsmoking cigarettes and muttering about the delay. It came to a little over a hundred dollars. I gave the clerk three fifties, and when he brought my change, I asked, “How far is it to Lake Okeechobee?”

“You’re headed the wrong way,” he said. “It’s north. Go back—”

“Thanks,” I said, paying no attention. I was already walking out.

It was only a few miles from there to the roadside curio stand. I began watching for it, and when I saw it ahead I checked the mirror to be sure no one was too close behind me. I was clear. I kept booming right on at fifty until I was slightly past the place, and then hit the brakes in a crash stop. Rubber screamed, and the car yawed back and forth across the pavement, finally sliding to a stop on the gravel several hundred yards away. I put it into reverse, and shot backwards, and slid to a stop again right before the place.

The cold-eyed proprietor was waiting on a pair of tourists from Michigan. They were looking at seashells on a long table—or had been. They’d stopped everything now to stare at me. I leaped out of the car and ran over to the row of ornamental flamingos beside the fence. Grabbing one of them up, I lifted it, as if estimating its weight. It was one of the type normally set in paddling pools, with a circular concrete base at the bottom of the thin steel legs.

I turned towards him with an imperious gesture. “I’ll take one of these.”

He regarded me coldly. It was possible, of course, that he didn’t like anybody, but I felt sure he remembered me. “I’m waiting on these people, mister,” he said. “What’s the hurry?”

“Look,” I said, beginning to shout. “I didn’t stop here to tell you the story of my life. All I want to do is buy one of your goddamned flamingos—”

I grabbed it up in my arms as if to take it to the car, but lost my grip on it and let it drop. It fell over on the gravel. I lunged for it again. At that moment his wife hurried out of the shop and said anxiously, “I’ll take care of these customers, Henry.”

The Michigan couple was fascinated with the performance. Henry grabbed the flamingo away from me and stalked to the car. Nodding curtly to the trunk, he asked, “You got the keys?”

“The keys?”
I was aghast. “No, no, no! Put it in here!” I yanked the rear door open. “On the seat.”

He looked at the pale blue leather and then at me. “Mister, it ain’t none of my business what you do with your car, but you ort to put it in the trunk.

I removed the cigarette holder from my mouth and stared at him in sheer outrage.
“In the trunk?
Who the hell ever heard of putting a flamingo in a trunk?”

This broke the tourists up at last. They had to turn away, and I heard strangled sounds of laughter.

“I mean—damn it—” I went on, gesturing wildly. “There’s no room. My—my suitcases are in there.”

He dropped the flamingo on the seat. I shoved a fifty-dollar bill in his hand and got in and roared away. As soon as I was out of sight I slowed to forty; there was still a lot of time to put in, and only the remotest chance that Henry would call the police and report me as a menace to navigation. If I were picked up he might have to part with the change from the fifty. I stopped in Homestead and bought a roll of heavy white cord.

It was shortly after two p.m. when I turned off into the large parking area at the Theater of the Sea, located between Tavernier and Islamorada on the Overseas Highway. It was one of the well-known tourist attractions of the Keys, a large souvenir shop and a fenced area containing the aquarium ponds and tanks stocked with marine life. There were two performing porpoises, and a guide who conducted a tour. I went inside, bought a ticket, and waited for the next tour.

When the crowd was large enough, some fifteen or twenty tourists, we started around, staring at the fish and listening to the lecture. I paid scant attention and spoke to no one until the guide was squatted at the end of one of the ponds coaxing a jewfish to come up and gulp the mullet he had in his hand. In a moment it did, and then settled slowly back into the rather murky water.

The guide rose. I pushed my way through the crowd around him, and demanded, “Did you say that was a jewfish?”

“That’s right,” he replied. “They’re one of the grouper family—”

I stared at him suspiciously. “I thought they lived in salt water.”

Someone giggled at the rear of the crowd. “They do,” the guide explained with weary patience. “These are all salt-water fish.”

I pursed my lips and nodded. “Just as I suspected. All I can say is it’s a hell of a way to treat fish.”

He sighed, opened his mouth to explain that the ponds were filled with sea-water, but turned away with a well-you-run-into-all-kinds expression on his face. The crowd tittered. The tour went on. I remained on the outskirts, aloof and disapproving.

I arrived in Marathon at four-thirty p.m., after stopping several times along the way to get out and look at the water. One hour and twenty minutes to go. I checked my watch against a time announcement on the car radio to be sure it was still reasonably accurate, and hunted up a bar. It was quiet, with hardly anyone in it, and there was a telephone booth at the rear. There was also one out front on the sidewalk, in case the first happened to be occupied.

I ordered one Scotch and water and nursed it for an hour. The bartender tried once or twice to start a conversation, but I gave no indication I even heard him. At exactly five-fifty, I got up and started out, and then stopped abruptly. “Oh, my God, I’ve got to make a phone call—” Getting several dollars’ worth of change, I went back to the booth and called Coral Blaine.

“Where are you, dear?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to reach you—”

“I’m at Lake Okeechobee,” I replied.

“Then you’re on your way home?”

I paid no attention. “It’s funny, though. I keep thinking I’ve been here before. I’ve never been in Lake Okeechobee have I?”

“Heavens, dear, I don’t know. I’ve never heard you mention it. But I’m glad you’ve started back—”

“Tell Wingard it was too late,” I said. “But he can forget it now.”

“Oh,” she said, a little uncomfortably, I thought. I was listening carefully for clues. “That was what I wanted to get in touch with you about. He was in this morning—”

And he’d told her, of course. “It was too late before I figured it out,” I went on, ignoring her completely. “It wasn’t your fault. You kept telling me Marian was there—”

“Darling,” she interrupted, “couldn’t we stay off that subject, just once?”

I nodded. There it was. I was sure now.

“You kept telling me she was,” I continued, “but I didn’t believe you, because I kept seeing her down here. Everywhere I went. What she was doing, of course, was going back and forth. But I don’t know why I didn’t figure out about the radio station in time. I knew how clever she was—”

“Harris, is this some kind of joke?”

“All she had to do was walk in there and pick up the microphone and spread her lies to everybody in the country, and turn ’em all against me. Make ’em think I didn’t treat her fairly. The way they turned against Keith, and it wasn’t his fault at all. The girl walked right into his car—”

“Harris—!”

“People believed her, too. I can tell. I see ’em looking at me on the street— But I stopped her, even if it was too late. She’s here with me now.”

“Harris, will you please listen to me? You’re mistaken—”

“Oh, no,” I said triumphantly. “Maybe she’s got you believing those lies too. Don’t defend her. You know it was all lies. And she
is
with me. Right here. I’ve got her out in the car. She broke into my room last night, and when I woke up she was leaning over whispering lies to
me
. I tried to make her shut up—”

“You don’t know what you’re saying!” Her voice was growing shrill. “It’s utterly impossible.”

She had turned the knife that Monday morning, but in the field of really exquisite deadliness she was an amateur. While she was sitting there listening to me say I’d just killed Marian Forsyth, Marian was standing at the next desk, talking to Barbara Cullen.

I dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

”You’ll hear from me. I’ll be in a foreign country, angel, where they didn’t hear the things she told about me, and I’ll send for you.” I hung up.

I went back to the bar, ordered another drink, and sat for ten minutes or so staring moodily at the mounted sailfish above the backbar mirror.

“Beautiful fish,” I said to the bartender. “You know, they catch a lot of those down in the Keys.”

He was so happy at having somebody to talk to again he did a clown routine. He picked up the bottle from which he’d just poured my drink, stared at it unbelievingly, and shook his head. “Pal, you’re right square in the middle of the Keys.”

“Lovely country,” I said. “Next time you go, you ought to take the whole family; they’d love it.” I got up and went out.

I went on towards Sugarloaf Key, still driving under forty. There were several problematical factors now, but I was sure I had plenty of time and didn’t want to make that turn off the highway until it was dark. A lot depended on when she decided to call the Florida highway patrol—if she did at all. It would be the logical thing to do. There was still a good possibility I hadn’t really killed anybody, but not much doubt that I was foaming mad and might at any minute. But Marian had insisted her first concern would be getting off the ship herself before it went down, and that she’d chicken out at the prospect of having to call and have her insane fiance picked up and spread all over the front pages before she had a chance to start disowning him.