One Minute Past Eight (14 page)

Now, studying the reporter and recalling the thumbnail sketch Carl Webb had given of his character, he passed on to the other thing that was in his mind.

“How long have you been collecting from Grayson?”

Spencer’s eyes opened and for an instant it looked as if he was going to deny the charge. Then, as though he no longer had the will to argue this matter which he knew to be true, he shrugged. He took up his pipe and blew through the stem.

“About a year.”

“You knew Grayson in Las Vegas.”

“Sure, but I didn’t know he’d been here awhile until I ran into him at a meeting I was covering at the Tucan.” He paused and what he said then verified Webb’s opinion. It also gave Jeff a clear-cut mental picture not only of Spencer himself but of the way his mind worked.

“I looked him up the following week,” he said. “Dropped in at his office. I’d already done some checking and from what I could learn he was doing O. K. He’d bought some property that was getting more valuable every day, built a nice house. He was representing some small Stateside outfits and—”

“What about Fiske?”

“Fiske?” Spencer grinned and one corner of his mouth dipped. “Dudley Fiske was a first-class errand boy. I think the only reason he stayed was Diana Grayson—you’ve seen her, haven’t you?—or maybe he was just too tired to quit.”

“All right,” Jeff said. “So you saw Grayson. Then what?”

“I took it easy.” Spencer inspected his drink, turning the glass one way and then the other. “Out in Vegas he had a reputation for being a mean bastard and I didn’t want to crowd him. I figured I’d better tiptoe around a bit, so after we’d talked about this and that I said I could use some extra dough and I had the time and maybe he could use a publicity man.

“I said it might help his business if I got the right things in the paper. If he had some clippings to send back to the outfits he represented it might help. I said I could get his name in the paper at society things.”

“And he bought it?”

“Not at first. He said no.” Spencer looked at Jeff with one eye which drooped a little in a sly sort of way. “So I said that that was too bad. I said I just thought I’d ask and it was nice to talk to him again. I said I still had some friends in Vegas and the next time I wrote I’d tell them I’d seen him. I said they’d probably be interested to know how he was doing.”

He hesitated again, unable now to resist a small secret grin. He gulped his highball and wiped his mouth.

“He got the message,” he said. “At first I thought he was going to get rough about it—but what the hell, he knew the score. He never was a dope about things like that. He said maybe he could use a publicity man after all. He also made it clear what would happen if I got forgetful and wrote back to Vegas.”

He chuckled as though a little proud of his cleverness. “I told him they weren’t very good friends and I wasn’t much at writing letters anyway.”

Jeff sighed softly, feeling a grudging admiration for the man’s technique and the native shrewdness that had prompted him to be modest in his demands.

“Three hundred B’s a week,” he said.

Spencer eyed him aslant. “How the hell did you know?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“Three hundred B’s for not writing anything,” Jeff said. “Ninety bucks a week.”

“And I banked every dime of it,” Spencer said, “because I’ve got this thing figured. I draw a pretty fair salary from the
Bulletin.
They have to pay it with living expenses like they are. And this is not a bad place. The climate’s wonderful—not most places where it’s hotter’n hell and sticky too—but here. Sun shines most of the time, not much rain, and the altitude keeps it nice at night.

“So you work it out one of two ways,” he said. “A guy comes down here on a fat salary and he can figure on staying here or else he figures he’ll only be here a few years and then go home. If he likes it and stays he can live it up—have a nice place, servants, join one of the clubs. Or he can live quietly and hang onto his dough and to hell with trying to keep up with the Joneses. He knows he’s going to get out and that when he does he can take his dough back without the income-tax people grabbing half of it.

“That’s me, brother.” He tapped his chest. “Income tax here is practically nothing. So I’m salting it away. When I step off the plane, in New York, or wherever, I’ll have a nice stake and I won’t have to worry about the tax people until I start drawing a salary again. Why else do you think I’d be living in a dump like this?” he demanded. “I could do better, a lot better, but when I went back—and I will some day—where would I be?”

He finished his drink but held onto the glass. He slouched down another few inches and his head sagged. His lips moved silently and he eyed the tips of his shoes glumly.

“Now there’ll be no more gravy,” he said and grunted softly. “No more publicity.”

“You would have lost it anyway,” Jeff reminded him.

“Hunh?”

“Grayson was paying off. He was going home.”

He waited, aware that Spencer was watching him again but because his head was still down his eyes were veiled.

“You knew Harry Baker and what he was doing,” he said. “I think you knew why he went to Barbados for Grayson and I think you knew Grayson had raised the equivalent of one hundred and twenty thousand in cash for the payoff so he could go home.”

“How would I know that?” Spencer asked sullenly.

“Because I think Grayson told you so. He was just the sort to rub it in when he could. He’d been trapped into paying out ninety bucks a week to you, and my guess is that when he knew he finally had you off his back, when he knew your little racket was about to collapse, he told you off. That sort of opportunity would give him a lot of pleasure and I doubt if he’d waste it”

When there was no reply, he said: “Furthermore I think you knew where the payoff was going to be. You were hanging around the Tucan that night—”

“Hanging, hell,” Spencer said with some spirit. “It was an assignment. You think I’d take a chance on that kind of caper? With that kind of dough? You’re crazy,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of nerve.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Spencer put his glass aside and pulled himself erect in the chair. He gave the question four seconds of thought and then he glanced up, cocking his head to one side, his failure-shadowed eyes serious.

“I’m going to keep snooping.”

“Doesn’t that take nerve?”

“Not the way I do it.” He tipped one hand. “I’m not greedy. I’m not kidding myself that I can find that cash, but I can try. A guy never knows when he might get a break. If I’ve got an angle I might go to Diana Grayson. She might pay—say, ten per cent—to get her hands on it. I’d settle for twelve G’s and don’t think I wouldn’t. That way it would be a legitimate deal.”

“And what about Carl Webb?”

Spencer opened his mouth and shut it, his expression indicating that this was something he would rather not think about.

“If you
did
locate that money,” Jeff said, “and Webb heard you’d handed it over to Diana Grayson”—he paused to give the thought time to register, and decided to understate the situation—“I don’t think he’d like it.”

He stood up, his drink unfinished. He put on his jacket, not sure just what he had accomplished, but having a far better understanding of this man and the factors which influenced his thinking. Spencer did not bother to get up. His head had sagged again. It did not move as his eyes followed Jeff to the door, and they were brooding, reproachful eyes now, his look suggesting that it was Jeff who was responsible for his present unhappy state of mind.

Once again on the street and not knowing where he was, Jeff turned downhill because it was easier. He had to walk three blocks before he came to a main thoroughfare and located a taxi, and because he had learned the asking price was always high he tried a few words of his limited Spanish.

“¿Cuánto?”

“Cinco B’s
. Five B’s,” the driver added to indicate he recognized an American accent in spite of the suit.

“Es mucho.”

The driver shrugged.
“Cuatro,”
he said resignedly.

Jeff climbed in and brought out the piece of paper Julio Cordovez had given him. About to read off the address, he hesitated, prompted by some cautionary impulse that warned him again of the reputed long arm of
Segurnal.
Because he did not want to involve the little detective in the event the driver ever remembered this trip, he merely read the name of the street.

Five minutes later, when the driver made a turn and repeated the name, Jeff gestured for him to keep going. A block or so farther along he recognized Cordovez’s apartment house, and he waited until they had gone another block before telling the driver to stop.

He tendered a silver five-bolivar piece and motioned the man to keep it. He waited until the cab started away before he started back downhill to the three-story building. The fact that the living-room light was on when he opened the apartment door did not concern him, because he expected to find Cordovez, and it was not until he stepped inside that he realized the corner chair was occupied by a woman.

She had sort of curled up there under a floor lamp, her legs tucked under her and her head back so the light fell on her face. She did not move in that first brief moment and Jeff stopped short, one hand still on the door as his glance focused. Only then was he sure that it was Karen Holmes who sat there watching him.

WHEN JEFF recovered from the first stunning impact of his surprise, he remembered that the door was still open and closed it behind him. He watched her support her weight on her elbows while she twisted her legs out from under her and got her feet on the floor. He saw her straighten her dress, and when she smiled excitement stirred in him and left his nerves atingle.

“Hello,” she said. “I thought you’d never come.”

Unable yet to voice his surprise, he could feel the grin stretching his face as this feeling of pride and pleasure expanded within him. Forgotten was the incident in Miami. For it seemed to him now that this was a girl he had known and liked for years. He did not yet understand how she had managed to get here; he only knew he was awfully glad to see her.

“For Pete’s sake,” he said finally. “How did you—”

“Julio brought me.”

“Julio?”

“He came to the hotel. He said you wanted me to know where you were staying and I said I had to see you. I said there were some things I had to tell you. I bullied him,” she said.

Jeff chuckled as he visualized the scene. “You must have.”

“He couldn’t cope with it. He wasn’t very happy after we got here—maybe he was afraid his wife might come—but I promised to be a good girl and sit here in the corner until you came back.” She paused and the smile went away. “Did you find out anything?”

He swung a chair over in front of her and sat down. “A little,” he said and reluctantly brought his mind back to his problems. He told her first about Dan Spencer, the things he knew, the things that had been said.

“Did the police accept your story?” he asked as his thoughts moved on.

“About finding Grayson? Why—yes, I think so.”

“What about Webb?”

“He told them he had a date, just like I did.”

“Did he say why? Did he tell Zumeta about the hundred and twenty thousand?”

“Yes, but he had to explain it twice before Zumeta understood what he meant.”

Jeff nodded, remembering that when he had last seen the
Segurnal
man, there had been no knowledge of either Webb or the money that Grayson had raised and was ready to deliver through Harry Baker.

“That’ll give Zumeta something else to think about,” he said. Then, his mind moving back, he again considered Diana Grayson and Dudley Fiske. He asked if either of them was questioned at headquarters.

“Both,” Karen said.

“What did you think of them?”

“In what way?” she said, her incipient frown telling him he had not made his point clear.

He spoke of his first call at the Grayson house and the thoughts that had come to him then.

“That’s an attractive woman,” he said. “She looks and talks as if she had been brought up to expect the good things in life. She looks as if she might have been a lot of fun when she was younger, but she got a bad deal—with an alcoholic for a first husband, and she practically took Grayson on the rebound. The way I get it, he played up to her until he got his hands on what money she had. Since then it’s been pretty grim for her.”

He tried to explain his first impression of Fiske. “Until recently he’d been living with a myth. As a kid, he got the idea Grayson was the greatest guy in the world, and because Fiske never was a heavyweight, the disillusionment was a long time coming. He didn’t want to let go of the idea he had created, because it was all he had left at the time. His one claim to importance was that he had been important to a man who had the importance he lacked. Or am I getting a little involved?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“He was selling printing—not too well, he says—and it was a great day when Grayson sent for him, a rejuvenation he was eager to have, a new start. Then, as time went on, the gloss wore off his idol. He saw what was happening to him and to Diana. Two unhappy people in the same house, bearing the same cross, understanding a mutual problem. I think, maybe without knowing it, they finally realized they were in love.

“Fiske was a different man this evening. I got the idea he had found some new strength and purpose, maybe through the woman. You could tell they were close to each other. She said they were going back to the States together, and I wondered—I mean, you’re a woman and if you watched them down at
Segurnal
maybe you’d have some idea about how they felt toward each other?”

“I think you’re right.” Karen moistened her lips and her eyes were a serious blue beneath the graceful brows. “He could hardly keep his eyes off her, and when she looked at him her glance seemed brighter. She seemed confident and assured and pleased with what she saw. It was the sort of look that women have when they are proud of a man and sure of his affection,” She paused, her voice suddenly hushed. “Do you think Fiske—”