Strictly For Cash (29 page)

As I reached the top of the ramp I spotted two prowl cars coasting along the boulevard, and heading in my direction. Across the way a cop stood on the edge of the sidewalk. On the corner, fifty yards farther on, was another cop.

I had to get under cover, and at once. There was no hope now of reaching liberty Inn.

Within ten yards of the cop opposite me was the imposing entrance of the Lincoln Hotel, a forty-storeyed skyscraper that dominated the promenade.

I crossed the street with a crowd of sun-worshippers as the traffic lights turned red. I kept in the middle of them, rubbing shoulders with a fat man in a beach wrap and on the other side a blonde in halter and shorts. She looked curiously at me. The bulk of the crowd were headed for the hotel. I went with them. As I was pushing through the revolving doors I looked back over my shoulder: a mistake. The cop on the sidewalk caught my eye. He stiffened, stared, then started towards me.

I kept pace across the lobby with the blonde in the halter and shorts. She and a couple of tanned lounge lizards got into the elevator. I got in with them.

The starter looked sharply at me.

"Tenth," I said curtly, before he could open his mouth.

The cop came through the revolving doors like a jet-propelled rocket. He was charging towards the elevator as the doors swished to. No one in the elevator had noticed him, except of course, me.

Not so good. In a few minutes the hotel would be teeming with police.

The car stopped on the fifth floor and the two lounge lizards got off: nobody got on. That left the starter, the girl and myself.

"Twenty-second, please," the girl said, and ran her thumb along the length of the halter, just inside.

The starter goggled at her, his eyes shifting to her suntanned legs.

"Yes, miss," he said. He looked at me as he closed the doors. "What's your room, mister?"

"I'm making a call."

"Sorry; against the rules. You have to check at the desk first."

"A little late for that, isn't it?"

The blonde was staring at me now. She dug her thumbs into the elastic top of her shorts, pulled it away from her waist and let it snap back again. She seemed full of cute tricks.

"I'll have to take you down, sir," the starter said, his mind more on the girl's shorts than on me.

"Please yourself," I said, shrugging.

The car stopped at the twenty-second floor and the doors swung open. The blonde got off.

I tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned my fist connected with his jaw. I hit him so hard I nearly tore his head off his shoulders. He folded down on hands and knees and stretched out. I picked up the suitcase, stepped out of the car and pressed the outside button, closing the doors. Then I set off down the corridor after the blonde.

I caught up with her as she was putting a key into the lock of a door marked 22/4454. She was opening the door when she became aware of me standing behind her. Her eyes popped open and she took a hasty step forward that took her inside the room. I had Benno's .38 in my hand and I touched her naked midriff with it.

"No screaming," I said pleasantly, and rode her into the room, closed the door with my heel and set down the suitcase.

"What do you want?" she asked, in a strangled voice.

"Sit down and take it easy," I said. "Nothing's going to happen to you. The cops are after me, and I am staying here until they go away."

She sat down. She seemed glad to.

I lugged the suitcase to the open window, and looked out. It was a long, long way down to the promenade. Already there was a big crowd gathering outside the hotel. As I looked three prowl cars with wailing sirens came rushing towards the hotel entrance.

"In ten minutes or so," I said, turning away from the window, "the cops are going to call on you. Please yourself what you do. I'm wanted for four murders: one more won't make any difference to me, but a lot to you. Tell them you haven't seen me. If you try any tricks you'll get the first bullet. Okay?"

She blanched.

I was sorry for her, but I was in such a jam I couldn't afford to pull any punches. I kept by the window. The crowd grew every second. More prowl cars arrived. The cops started to shove the crowd back, leaving a wide space before the hotel. There must have been three thousand people down there, and their numbers were growing every second.

I heard sounds in the corridor. No cop can walk quietly, and when there are a number of them, they sound like a herd of buffalo moving around. They were going from room to room as I guessed they would. Well, it was up to the blonde now. If she let me down I was sunk.

"They'll be here in a minute," I said, trying to make my voice tough. "You know what to do," and I waved the gun at her.

She sat as still as a waxwork; her eyes growing bigger, and her face the colour of old parchment. She didn't look pretty any more.

Then there came a rap on the door.

For a long moment of time nothing happened. I looked at the blonde and motioned to the door with my gun. She stared at me, horror mounting in her eyes.

The knock came again: louder this time.

"Go ahead," I whispered, sure now she wasn't going to do it. I was right. She suddenly gave a wailing scream and slid off the chair on to the floor.

"Open up!" a voice bawled, and a shoulder thudded against the door panel.

IV

There, was no future for me now. Once in their hands, with Hame in charge of the investigation, I was as good as dead. But that didn't worry me. All I could think of right at this moment was the money in the suitcase. If I couldn't have it, then I was determined Hame wasn't going to have it. Nothing else mattered to me now except how to keep that suitcase away from him.

The voice again bawled through the door panels. "Open up, Farrar! We know you're in there!"

Once again a shoulder crashed against the door which creaked, but held.

I went to the window and looked out. Running the whole length of the building below the window was a footwide ledge. Leaning out, I could see the ledge terminated about thirty yards away to my right by a bulging piece of floral carving, overlooking the corner of Roosevelt and Ocean. If I could reach that bulge I would have excellent cover from a shot in the back.

I looked down. Three hundred feet below me the promenade teemed with people, staring up at me. It made me feel a little sick as I looked at the narrowness of the ledge, but it was either that or to be shot down when they broke into the room.

Again the shoulder crashed against the door. I swung my leg over the window-sill and got out on to the ledge. I held on to the framework of the window, groped inside and hauled up the suitcase.

A tremendous roar of excitement came from the crowd below, but I didn't look down. I stood for a second or so, staring straight ahead, my heart hammering and my knees weak. It would have been bad enough to take that walk without the suitcase, but with it, pulling me off balance all the time, it was going to be a nightmare.

Bracing myself, my shoulder rubbing the face of the building, I began to move forward.

I put one foot directly before the other, like a tight-rope walker, not attempting to move fast, and keeping my eyes fixed on the bulging corner stone ahead of me.

I crept past a window, moved on, aware of an urge to look down. I struggled against it, knowing if I did, I was done for.

Ahead of me was another window, then wall space, then the corner stone. When I was within six feet of the window a man's head appeared. I stopped short, my breath whistling through my clenched teeth.

He was a fair, tanned man in a fawn sports jacket and a bottle-green shirt. He gaped at me, his mouth falling open. Very slowly, so as not to disturb my balance, I slid my right hand into my hip pocket and pulled out Benno's gun.

"Mind you don't fall," the man said in a horrified strangled croak. "Hadn't you better come in here?"

"Get back and shut the window," I said, and pointed the gun at him.

He gave a gasp and jerked back from the window. Once again the crowd roared at me.

I started to move forward again. When I reached the window I peered in, the gun pushed forward. The room was empty. The door stood open.

I had twenty feet to go before I reached the shelter of the corner stone. I moved more quickly. Behind me I heard a shout, but I didn't look round. I kept on, expecting to hear a shot and feel a bullet smash into me, but nothing happened.

For a moment or so I stood there, trying to get my breath looking at the buildings opposite: the windows crammed with staring faces, not more than fifty yards from me.

"Get back you fool!" a man shouted at me. "What do you think you're doing?"

I put the suitcase down on the ledge behind me. Still holding on to the projection I began to climb around it. A woman screamed. The roar of the crowd surged up and submerged me in sound. Satisfied I had a good hand and foot-hold, I reached down and pulled the suitcase to me. Then, clinging on, I lifted it. For perhaps three or four seconds I remained pressed against the projecting corner, my foot wedged into one of the ornate carvings, the fingers of my left hand dug into a crevasse of stone, the suitcase dangling from my right hand in space. Its weight upset my balance, but I managed to hang on while the people at the windows opposite yelled and screamed at me.

I remained like that for some time. Then slowly, inch by inch, I began to edge into the hollow made by the two ornate projections either side of the corner stone. It took time, and once or twice I thought I wasn't going to do it. Without the suitcase it would have been easy, but having to work only with one hand and to counter-balance the drag of the suitcase made it terrifyingly difficult. I got into the hollow without quite knowing how I did it. I had quite a bit more room once I was inside, and no one could get at me either from the right or from the left.

I was so exhausted I could no longer stand upright, and still clinging to the suitcase I sat down, my back firm against the hollow in the stonework, my legs dangling into space.

For the first time since I had been out on the ledge I looked down.

Roosevelt Boulevard and what I could see of Ocean Boulevard were packed solid with gaping faces. From this height they looked like a white-checkered carpet spread out below me. I could make out the tiny figures of cops and patrolmen trying futilely to clear the street. In the distance a mile-long traffic block hooted and honked. I could see people leaving their cars and making their way on foot to the hotel.

At a guess I had only a few more minutes before the police started to try to rope me or send some courageous harness bull along the ledge to grab me. My time was running out. But I couldn't grumble. At my side I had a quarter of a million dollars. Below me I had some five or six thousand people who were concentrating on me, and me alone. The next move was obvious.

I opened the case and took out a packet of hundred-dollar bills. I broke the elastic band and tossed the packet high into the air. The notes broke loose and spun to the ground in a fluttering little cloud.

The crowd below me stared up, watching the bills as they floated down to them. The bills took some time to reach them. A man jumped high in the air to be the first to grab one. Then they realized what I was throwing down to them. A yell went up that seemed to split the air and shake the buildings.

A man leaning out of a window opposite yelled, "He's throwing money away!"

I was working fast now, splitting the packages open and tossing the bills out as fast as I could take them from the suitcase.

The windows opposite began to empty of faces. Those who at one time had the better view were now rushing to the elevators to get them to the street in time to horn in on this rain of money.

Well, I had promised myself if ever I got hold of real money I'd go on the biggest spending bender ever. I was keeping my promise, and I was getting a tremendous bang out of it. Right at this minute I was the most powerful and the most important man on earth.

The scene below defeated imagination. People fought, trampled on each other, screamed, yelled and clawed. Even the cops were flaying with their night-sticks to get their hands on the bills as they floated to the ground. The wind spread them far and wide. I could see people fighting on the beach. I watched a girl cramming crumpled bills down the front of her dress, only to have the dress torn from her by a yelling, greed-crazed old woman, old enough to be the girl's grandmother.

A man with a handful of bills was being pushed against the side of a car while four women beat him with their handbags. A policeman was trying to turn a woman who lay on the sidewalk while she screamed like a train whistle.

I tossed the last of the bills down to them, and then sat back to watch. My breath was coming in great heaving gasps, and I had sweated right through my clothes. I would have gone through all I had gone through to have had those ten-minutes of power all over again.

But the money was gone - a quarter of a million gone as Della had said it would go: like snow melting in the sun, and now I had nothing to show I had ever owned it. My one supreme moment was over, and it would never be repeated.

No one in the street below was paying any further attention to me. They had forgotten me in their mad, greed-crazed scramble for the money, and they were still fighting and yelling amongst themselves.

My time was running out. Before long the police would organize a means of reaching me. I had two alternatives: I could either give myself up or I could anticipate my destiny and slide off the ledge into space. I was sure there would be no out for me once Hame got his hands on me.