1968 - An Ear to the Ground (17 page)

‘Tania?’

From the bedroom, he heard her voice.

‘I am here.’

He closed the front door and walked through the living room, down the short corridor to the bedroom. He pushed the door open.

Tania was sitting before the mirror of the dressing table. She was wearing a white wrap and she was filing her fingernails.

As Harry entered, she looked up, her face expressionless.

‘Hello, Harry.’

Oh, God! he thought, she is still unhappy. He wanted her. He wanted to lie with her and feel her reactions to his lovemaking, but he could see from the expression in the black almond-shaped eyes this was not going to happen. A wave of frustrated impatience ran through him.

‘Anything wrong?’ he asked, closing the door.

She looked away.

‘Do you wish to make love?’ she asked in a quiet, flat voice.

‘Tania! Is there anything wrong?’

‘Do you wish to make love?’ she repeated. He was tempted to throw her across the bed and use her as he longed to use her, but he restrained himself.

‘Is that all you imagine I care about? Tania . . . I love you . . . what’s wrong?’

He sat on the foot of the bed, looking at her.

‘Love? You love me? She put down the nail file, stood up and walked to the door. ‘I want to talk to you, please.’ She went out and walked slowly, her hands hanging limply by her side, into the living room.

Now what? Harry thought angrily. He was sorry she had left the bedroom. Once he had her in his arms, lying on the bed, he was sure he could have melted her. Now, damn it! he had lost his chance.

He followed her into the living room. She was sitting in one of the big, comfortable chairs, holding her wrap closely to her.

‘Please . . .’ She waved to a chair away from her.

‘What is all this, Tania?’ Harry said, but he sat down. He just failed to keep the edge of impatience from his voice.

‘I want to talk about us, Harry. You said if you married me, you would lose all your wife’s money.’

So that was it, Harry thought. I imagined I had got over that goddamn hurdle.

‘Yes, darling,’ he said. ‘There’s no way out. . . I shall have a lot of money . . . we can be happy together. I can give you everything you want. . . you have only to ask.’ He forced a smile.

‘But you promised me that if you were free, you would marry me.’

He felt a sudden angry urge to shout at her: ‘Do you imagine you or any other woman is worth two hundred million dollars? Are you that stupid?’ But he restrained himself. He said nothing.

Tania sat looking at him. Two tears trickled down the perfect, satin-like skin.

‘She warned me . . . I wouldn’t believe her,’ she said, her voice unsteady.

Harry stiffened.

‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded, feeling a sudden cold chill run through him. ‘Her? Who do you mean?’

Tania touched her tears away with a finger.

‘Tania! What’s got into you?’ He jumped to his feet and stood over her. ‘Stop this! I love you. . . I need you. . . I want you. Why are you behaving like this?’

She looked up at him and he was stricken by the despair in her glistening black eyes.

‘You don’t know the meaning of love. She warned me.’

Harry made an exasperated gesture. He returned to his chair and sat down.

‘Have you gone out of your mind?’ His voice now was sharp and angry. ‘She? Her? Who the hell are you talking about?’

‘Your wife,’ Tania said softly.

Harry felt a rush of blood to his face.

‘Just what is this?’ he said, leaning forward, his hands on his knees, his face tight with anger.

‘She knew about us, Harry,’ Tania said, huddling back in her chair and staring down at her trembling hands. ‘She had you watched. Every time we met at the restaurant and here, some man was taking notes. The morning before you went to that meeting in Frisco, she came to see me.’

Harry sat back limply.

‘Lisa! Came to see you?’

‘Yes. Her Japanese chauffeur wheeled her into the restaurant and we met in the private room where we two meet. She told me she knew about our affair as she called it. She knew you left the house at night to meet me. There was nothing she didn’t know about us. I was so worried for you. I thought because of me she would divorce you and you would lose all her money. I didn’t know what to say to her, but I needn’t have worried. She said I would never hold you. She sat in the wheelchair, staring at me. ‘You don’t know my husband as I know him,’ she said. ‘He has never loved me. He is incapable of love . . . he only loves money.’

‘I don’t believe a word of this,’ Harry said, his face white. ‘I think you’re making this up!’

Tania touched her cheek with the back of her hand, wiping away a tear.

‘Please listen and please believe,’ she said. ‘Your wife was sitting there so pinched, so ugly with her angry eyes, facing me. Then she told me she planned to kill herself because she was burning . . . those were her words . . . burning. Now she could no longer have any sex with you she didn’t want to live. I could understand and I even felt sorry for her, but she didn’t want my sorrow. She was very hateful. ‘You will never marry him, you yellow whore,’ she said to me. ‘I am going to alter my will. He will have nothing if he marries you and knowing him as I know him, he won’t marry you as soon as he has read my will.’

Tania paused, looking down at her hands. ‘I didn’t know then that she was lying to me: it was only when you told me that I realised she had already altered her will. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it.’

Harry felt his mouth turn dry.

‘Done it? Done . . . what?’

Tania made a little movement of despair.

‘You see, Harry, I began to wonder if what she had said about you was true. When she left, I thought and thought. There was this chance that if you had to choose between me and all that money, you would choose the money. I didn’t want to believe it and I did so want to live with you as your wife.’

‘What are you trying to tell me?’ Harry said hoarsely.

‘It was really very easy,’ Tania went on. ‘I decided to safeguard our future. She had told me she was going to kill herself. She was suffering. I knew where the key to the patio door was . . .’

‘Good God!’ Harry pushed back his chair, his heart hammering. ‘Are you telling me it was you who killed her?’

She looked at him: her eyes were like dull glass.

‘Of course. She died quickly. She never woke up. It was while I was leaving the room I remembered the necklace. It seemed dreadful to me that such a beautiful necklace should go to a museum. I knew how to open the safe . . . so I opened it.’

She got to her feet and moved across the room while Harry watched her, petrified. She opened a drawer and took out the Esmaldi necklace. She dropped it on the floor by his feet.

‘When I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see myself,’ she said. ‘I saw only her with that hooked nose and that pinched face, sneering at me. It was a mistake to have taken it. It was a mistake to have killed her because she was right about you, Harry. Now please leave me. Take the necklace and I hope you enjoy your money’

Without looking at him, she left the room and Harry heard her make her way to the bedroom, enter and close the door.

He had no idea how long he sat in the armchair, motionless, wondering what he should do. Should he inform the police?

He knew a man had been arrested for Lisa’s murder. Should he leave things as they were? Should he get on the yacht and go off into the blue and never come back to Paradise City? This seemed to him to be his best solution. He had all the money in the world. . . he could do what he liked . . . go where he liked. He thought of Tania creeping into Lisa’s bedroom, the bronze statuette in her hand and smashing it down on the sleeping woman’s unprotected face, and he shuddered. He could never touch Tania again, yet he could not bring himself to betray her to the police. No . . . the best thing was to act the part of the stricken husband, get on the yacht and sail away. Why should he worry about a thug with a record, who was known to be vicious?

As he was about to get to his feet, a band of sunlight came through the half-drawn curtains and fell directly on the Esmaldi diamonds. They came to life, like white hot stars, bursting with brilliance, dazzling him. He stared down at them. A museum would have them under glass for a gaping queue of morbid tourists to gloat over. The necklace would be a tremendous attraction once it was known it belonged to one of the richest women in the world who had been savagely murdered. The necklace was insured for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Harry hesitated. How stupid it would be to let the museum have this fabulous necklace. Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars! Tania would never dare say anything. The thing to do was to get rid of the necklace. Yes . . . he would be out of his mind not to claim for all, that money. He would drop the necklace into the sea and take the insurance money. He reached down and with an unsteady hand, he picked up the necklace. He didn’t pause to think that he was now worth two hundred million dollars and he could now buy any number of necklaces every bit as beautiful and as costly as the Esmaldi diamonds. All he could think of right then was that he had the chance to collect all that insurance money and he was going to do it.

He dropped the necklace in his pocket and stood up. As he made his way to the door, he heard a thud. . . the sound of something heavy dropping to the floor.

Instantly, he became alarmed. Had the police arrived? Was some stranger in the apartment? No, it was Tania, he assured himself. What was she doing? Then he heard a sound that made the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen: a low shuddering moan.

He ran blindly down the corridor and pushed open the bedroom door. He paused in the doorway as he saw Tania, lying face down on the floor by the bed.

‘Tania?’

She made a slight movement. Harry ran to her, caught hold of her and turned her over. She rolled limply on to her back.

The wooden handle of a kitchen knife grew out of her slim body.

‘Tania!’

Her eyelids lifted and she looked at him, then the eyes glazed and became fixed. He caught hold of the knife handle and pulled the knife from her body Immediately blood began to pour from her, over his shoes, making a sticky, horrifying mess on his hands. He reared back.

The glazed, sightless eyes told him she was dead. Shuddering, he dropped the knife, seeing blood now on the sleeve of his jacket.

All he could think of was to get out of this place . . . to get away. He paused long enough to wipe his hand free of blood on his handkerchief which he dropped, then he left the apartment.

Steve Harmas, who had been watching the apartment block, saw Harry as he came out and saw the bloodstains on his jacket. He slid out of his car and started towards Harry.

‘Hey! You!’

Harry stared at him, panicked, spun around and ran. He ran the wrong way. He darted across the busy highway. A speeding car had no chance of avoiding him. Moving at over seventy miles an hour, the car hit Harry and threw him high into the air. A following car, also driving at speed, again hit Harry as he thudded on to the road.

That was the end of Harry.

***

Al Barney finished his drink and set the glass down with a sigh of content.

‘Well, mister, I guess that’s it,’ he said. ‘You know something? It’s getting late. It’s time for my dinner.’

‘What happened to the gang?’ I asked.

Al shrugged his meaty shoulders.

‘They’re still inside. I hear Martha’s lost sixty pounds.’

‘And Johnny?’

‘They couldn’t hook him to the murder rap. When they found the Esmaldi necklace in Harry’s pocket, they decided Harry and Tania had fixed Lisa, and then had quarrelled over the necklace. They finally decided that Harry had murdered Tania and was taking off with the necklace when the car hit’ him. Maddox got most of the praise and he loved it. Johnny drew five years.’

‘And Gilda?’

‘She drew two. Could be out any time now.’

‘And the Esmaldi necklace?’

‘The Fine Arts Museum got it. It’s drawing big crowds.’

We eyed each other, then Al grinned.

‘I know what you’re thinking, mister, I can see it in your eyes. You’re thinking I’m telling you a pack of lies. The way you are reasoning is this: how can this fat slob know more than the cops know? How did he know Harry didn’t kill Tania?’ He belched gently, still grinning. ‘As I told you, I’m a guy with an ear to the ground. People tell me things that they didn’t tell the cops. Anna Woo is a pal of mine. She overheard everything that went on in Harry’s love nest and she told me. This is strictly between you and me. It is all water under the bridge now. No point in telling the cops.’ He looked across at Sam and made a special signal. Sam came over with the final check. I paid and tipped him.

Al got heavily to his feet.

‘I’m glad to have met you, mister. I guess we had better put on our separate feed bags. Anytime you want a little information about this City, you know where to find me.’

I slipped him fifty dollars which he snapped up the way a lizard snaps up a fly.

‘Sad little story, wasn’t it?’ he said.

I said it was and left him.