Sinful Woman (8 page)

Hanging up, he spoke with the baffled weariness of one who has puzzled over human nature all his life, but can still make no sense out of it: “Maybe you can figure this one out. Sheriff Parker Lucas. If there’s been any time in the last two years when you couldn’t see that longlegged jerk anywhere you went, with his hand out for a cigar, a drink, a phone number, or what have you, I don’t know when it could have been. But now, on a murder case, when I want him, when I’d like something for my vote, try and find him. It’s a great life if you like a great life. Personally, I’d rather see a picture.”

On the word
murder
, which was the only part of this elaborate harangue that mattered, he saw Dmitri’s eyes leave the map and stare glassily at the wall. He lifted the phone, rang Miss Jennifer again, asked airily if the sheriff had called. Then he went out, paid the operator for his calls. Then he went in the gentlemen’s room, combed his hair, whistled The Minstrel Boy. When he came out, Tony and Dmitri were in a corner of the casino, whispering. He went into the office, called the apartment where he lived, and where he knew there would be nobody. He was holding the receiver to his ear, frowning at getting no answer, when Dmitri came into the room and went to the map again. But he looked up pleasantly when Dmitri said: “You been to Goldfield?”

“Oh yeah, plenty of times.”

“They have a hotel there, yes?”

“The old brick hotel, it’s still there. Little more hotel than Goldfield needs right now, but they’ll take care of you.”

“Always wanted to see this place.
Doch
, it’s impossible to start now. I want to see the Sharf, too. What makes you think it’s a murder case?”

“Think? I know.”

“You talked to the police, yes?”

“Yeah, I talked to them, but I generally always haven’t got time to wait for the police to wake up. Insurance is my line. Southwest General of N. A., and when you’ve handled as many cases as I have, you know and you don’t even know how you know. You just smell it.”

“I don’t smell nothing, myself.”

“To me, it’s quite a stink.”

There was a long pause, while Mr. Layton set his heels on the desk and lit a cigar. When he could see through the wreathing smoke, he noted that Tony was in the room. Then, with the air of one who regretfully pronounces a final judgment on a matter long since closed, he said: “Her big mistake was making it accident. That gets an insurance company a little sore. Now if he was just dead, then O. K., he had to die sometime, and we were on the risk. But when she made it accident, that made the big accident-and-health bond operative, and that makes a difference of fifty thousand bucks. Well, that’s just too bad.”

“ ...
She?
Who are you talking about?”

“Shoreham. The widow.”

“You mean
she
made it accident?”

“She gets the dough, don’t she? As beneficiary?”

“How can you talk that way?”

“What have you got to do with it?”

Mr. Layton snapped this at Dmitri sharply, as though his discussing the case at all were a very suspicious circumstance. But Dmitri looked at Mr. Layton as though he were plain crazy. “You ask me that? What I have to do with? Me? Dmitri Spiro, president of Phoenix Pictures, that makes all Shoreham production? Me, the best friend of Baron Adlerkreutz? You ask me what
I
have to do with?”

“And what have
you
got to do with it?”

Tony was cold, hard, malevolent. Mr. Layton answered with a smile, a genial freckled smile, in the accents of Dmitri. “Me? You ask me what I got to do with? Me, agency chif for Southwest General of N. A.?” Then, speaking with a smile not so genial, he asked Tony:
“And what have you got to do with it?”

“You can go to prison in this state. For slander.”

“And you can hang, for murder.”

“Suppose you get out.”

“O. K., O. K.”

He got up, but Dmitri held up his hand, said there should be no hard feelings, that Tony didn’t really mean what he said. Mr. Layton, turning from the door in very friendly fashion, said: “Yes sir, yes sir, making it accident was bad. If it had been suicide, now, I wouldn’t have a word to say.”

Tony and Dmitri looked at each other, and Dmitri said: “Why?”

“We don’t pay off on suicide. Not for three years, we don’t. It used to be one year, but during the depression we raised it. Got to be too many fellows taking out a fifty-thousand-dollar life policy in favor of the little woman, then diving out a fifteenth-story window in some hotel downtown. Same way on the accident-and-health, all bets off on suicide. So, if she’d make it suicide, it wouldn’t have concerned the Southwest General of N. A. even a little bit. But when she made it accident, that concerns us a lot. That means exactly one hundred thousand bucks to us, so it’s what you might call, the hundred-thousand-dollar mistake. I’m going to miss her, too. I go to all her pictures. All of them.”

He sat down again, in no hurry to go. Dmitri stared at Tony in abject misery, and Tony stared at Mr. Layton, a look in his eye that one sees in the eye of a Siberian tiger. After a long time, Dmitri looked over and said: “Look here, old man. It’s ridiculous. It’s quite ridiculous. It was an accident, we all know it was an accident. I was there. He died in my arms. Just the same, nobody wants any trouble. Can’t we make a deal? Can’t—”

“Hey, hey, hey!”
Mr. Layton jumped up as though he had been shot, and said: “Don’t you talk to
me
about any deal.
Not to me!
”

“Why not?” Tony’s tone was savage.

“Weren’t you talking about laws?”

“Laws? What do you care about laws? All you’re thinking about is money. O. K., so it’s dead open-and-shut. Why don’t you make a deal? It’s like Mr. Spiro says, you’re talking through your hat, there’s been no crime. But she’s a big picture actress and your measly hundred grand don’t mean half as much to her as not having any mess. Well, suppose they agree to tear up your policies? What do you care? Don’t that let you out?”

Mr. Layton had a wild, instinctive notion that Mr. Gans, if he had been present, would have made a deal. But he had got a great deal further than he had even dreamed was possible, and his only clear idea was that he had to get out of there, that he had no authority to make a deal and that he had to consult Mr. Gans. Then, probably a deal would still be possible. Blandly he asked Tony: “Where’s Ethel?”

“What’s Ethel got to do with it?”

“Ethel saw something today.”

“Such as, what?”

“I don’t exactly know. Mighty pretty girl, Ethel is. Part Indian.”

Tony’s pasty pallor, as well as Dmitri’s soft look of complete collapse, told him quite a lot. Mr. Layton added: “She’s not coming back to work, I guess. She’s a little worried, though I can’t imagine what for.” Then, to Spiro: “I’d talk to Ethel, if I were you. She’ll be in the lobby of Shoreham’s hotel at seven o’clock.”

He picked up his hat, and there was a tense, strained silence. A tall man and a thin man came in, pitched a package of telegrams and letters on the desk. The tall man said: “Fan stuff mostly, been coming in at the hotel ever since the story went on the air. I told Western Union to hold the rest of it and we’d pick it up. This stuff, I thought we better take charge of it, so nothing gets lost.”

“O. K., Bushy. Thanks.”

Benny sat nervously down. Mr. La Bouche suddenly said “Oh,” as though he had just remembered something, and found a letter in the stack of telegrams. Leaning close he mumbled: “It’s that special Vicki sent her, in case she wouldn’t answer his call. I took it along, because God knows how it’ll affect her. Better hang onto it a few days, hah? Before we give it to her to read?”

Dmitri fingered the letter, stared at the special delivery stamp, at the round clock with an arrow showing the time of receipt, that had been stamped by the hotel. Then, looking straight at Mr. Layton, he said: “Boys, I got an awful premonition creeping up my back that in this communication Victor Adlerkreutz announces his intention to take his own life.”

“What?”

Benny’s mouth hung open in amazement, but Mr. La Bouche grabbed him quickly and said: “Shut up! I would think you’d know by now that when Mr. Spiro has something creeping up his back, he’s practically never wrong.”

But Mr. Layton, so badly crossed up he didn’t quite know what he was doing, was already at the door. To Dmitri he said: “I’m going. If that’s a suicide note, I know you don’t want any strangers around when you read it.” Then, not sure that he shouldn’t make some show of encouragement, he turned a ghastly smile at Dmitri and said: “Yeah, I know you’re kind of unstrung about it.”

Promptly at 5:30, Mr. Gans came up the ramp, his jaw stuck out and his lower teeth visible against his lip. He listened to what Mr. Layton had to say, made no comment until they were almost in the centre of town. Then, with explosive vehemence, he said: “Great! You’ve done the right thing, Layton! You’ve used your head and you’ve used your guts and Southwest General of N. A. is proud of you! I always say, be aggressive! Move fast! But, if the other party listens to reason, be reasonable! After all what are we, Layton? Insurance men, not hangmen!”

M
R. LAYTON HAD BARELY
left the room when Tony leaped at Dmitri, caught him by the arm and began shaking him savagely. “Are you nuts? Listen, fellow, you can’t trifle with this thing! What’ll they think of us, cooking up a dilly like we told them already, and then saying it isn’t so? Spiro, you dealt these cards, and there’s no way now to make it a misdeal! You’ve got to play them!”

“Didn’t you hear what he said?”

“Couldn’t you make a deal?”

“Didn’t you hear me try? What happened?”

“Couldn’t you sock him in the jaw?”

“
Me?
He was a big guy.
You
sock him.”

“Taking it lying down—”

“Wait a minute, fellow—wait a minute. This wasn’t just a guy. He was from a big insurance company. What good would it do to sock him?”

“It would do plenty of good. A cheap jack of an agent comes out here, lights a cigar, and scares you so bad you turn around and pitch it all out, what’s been done. Don’t you get it?
I’m
in on it too! I’ve been your witness, I’ve stood for what had to be said to put across accident. Look where that puts me in this town if you go around and tell them it’s all just a lie you thought up.”

Mr. La Bouche spoke in a quiet, worried way. “We think we been getting away with it, but who says we have? Who says that mug is from an insurance company at all? Who says he’s not a cop’s stool pigeon?”

“But switching, that’ll fix it, hey?”

They all sat in gloom for a few minutes. Then Dmitri picked up the letter. “And besides this note can’t go to the Sheriff. It must be another note. Because who knows what this says? Maybe some fool thing. Maybe something about Hezzel. Maybe cracks it wide open.”

“Can’t you
burn
it?”

Mr. La Bouche explained patiently to Tony that if it had been merely an ordinary letter, burning was possible, but with the postoffice having a record of the delivery, to say nothing of the hotel, burning would be wholly risky. Substituting another letter, one that indicated Vicki intended to take his own life, was the best solution all around. And Dmitri added: “We don’t switch, nothing like that. We tell the same thing. Just like we told it before. Except we remember now, it was
Vicki
who say, ‘I must have a real one.’ Was
Vicki
who say, ‘I don’t get this thing till you make it plain.’ We know nothing about a note. The
Sharf
opens the note, says it must be suicide. Then all see it was suicide, the insurance goes
kaput
, company no have to pay.”

Tony stormed, pleaded, called Dmitri names. But Benny, the first forger of his time, went out, and when he returned he had the bar’s small electric coffee machine. Filling it with water from the cooler he plugged it in, and while he was waiting for it to steam he looked at the letter. “Green ink, pals. That’s the first thing. Where’s his pen? Anything you put inside has to match up with this envelope outside, if I’m doing it—if the idea is, we’re using this envelope. I guess that’s what you mean, use the envelope to show it come in to the hotel before he even got shot.”

Mr. Spiro unclipped a pen from his shirt pocket, handed it over. “He borrowed
my
pen to write it with. All full up, all full up with green ink.”

Benny turned the letter over. “Worse and more of it. Maybe the wop is right. Maybe we better leave it lay. Because the flap has a crown on it. It has that crown on it, and the inside paper will have to match.”

“That’s under control.”

Mr. La Bouche explained that he and Dmitri both knew where Vicki kept his paper, up at the shack, and that they would get some at once. This proved to be unduly optimistic, for their entrance into the shack was barred by officers at the door; but on their plea of checking what clothes would be needed for the funeral they were let in, and under the guise of making memoranda they helped themselves to paper, and were back at the Domino in less than an hour. By that time, Benny had steamed open the envelope, extracted the brief note that it contained and tabulated the words in it, in pencil, on another sheet of paper. He pointed the pencil at Mr. La Bouche and Dmitri, looking very solemn. “Now get this, lugs. This presents one of the most unusual problems I ever had challenge me professional skill. How this guy spelled the English language was something to write home about. He had his own system, but it was nothing like Webster’s system, or anybody’s system. But this is what it means: You got to say what you say with these specimen words, these words I got wrote out here, that he used in the original note. Because that’s all the words I can be sure of. Because if I go and spell a word one way, and they dig up a lot of his handwriting at the shack and compare, and he spelled it some other way, that cooks us, friends. You got it?”

Tony scowled, but whether Dmitri or Mr. La Bouche heard it, would be hard to say. They were walking abstractedly about, passing and repassing each other on the linoleum carpet, in the throes of literary composition. Presently Mr. La Bouche said: “There ought to be an affectionate note in it, Dimmy. That’s what I miss in all this. Nobody seems to
care
.”