What's Better Than Money (19 page)

Rima walked quickly past the dressing-room and into her bedroom.

I stood against the wall so that if Vasari opened the door it would conceal me as it swung back. I was tense and scared, and my heart was pounding.

I heard Vasari come heavily into the hall. There was a pause, then I heard him walk into the lounge. After a few minutes Rima left her bedroom and joined him in the lounge.

“Look, baby,” he said in a complaining voice, “can’t you lay off the stuff? For the love of Mike? We no sooner go somewhere when you have to come rushing back for a shot.”

“Oh, shut up!” Rima’s voice sounded vicious and harsh. “I do what I like here and don’t you forget it!”

“Oh, sure, but why the hell don’t you carry the stuff around with you if you’ve got to have it? You’ve balled up the whole day now.”

“I told you to shut up, didn’t I?”

“I heard you. You’re always telling me to shut up. I’m getting sick of it.”

She laughed.

“That’s a joke! What are you going to do about it, then?”

There was a long pause, then he said, “Who’s this guy you’re getting money from? He worries me. What’s he to you?”

“He’s nothing to me. He owes me money and he pays me. Will you shut up about him?”

“How comes he owes you money, baby?”

“Look, if you don’t stop this you can get out. You hear me?”

“Now, wait a minute.” His voice hardened. “I’m in enough trouble as it is. I tell you this guy worries me. I think you’re blackmailing him, and that’s something I don’t go for.”

“Don’t you?” Her voice was sneering. “But you don’t mind stealing, do you? You don’t mind knocking some old guy on the head and taking his roll, do you?”

“Cut that out! If they caught me I’d go away for a year, but blackmail. . . hell! They give you ten years for that!”

“Who says anything about blackmail? I told you: he owes me money.”

“If I thought you were blackmailing him, baby, I’d leave you.”

“You? Leave me? That’s a laugh. You watch your step, Ed. Two can make threats. What’s to stop me telephoning the cops and telling them where you are? Oh, no, you won’t leave me.”

There was a long pause.

In the silence I could hear the clock ticking.

Then Vasari said uneasily, “You always talk crazy after a shot. Forget it. So long as you know what you are doing. You wouldn’t touch blackmail, baby, would you?”

“I’m not talking crazy!” she snapped. “If you don’t like the way I live, you can get out! I can get on without you, but I’m damn sure that you can’t get on without me!”

“This guy has me worried, Rima.” His voice was now hesitant. “He’s giving you plenty, isn’t he? How comes he owes you all this dough?”

“Shut up about him! You heard what I said: do you want to get out or do you want to stay?”

“I don’t want to get out, baby, I love you. Just so long as I know you’re not cooking trouble for us, I don’t mind.”

“There’s going to be no trouble. Come here and kiss me.”

“You’re sure about the trouble? This guy wouldn’t. . .”

“Come here and kiss me.”

I opened the door silently and stepped into the passage. I heard Rima moan softly as I moved down the passage and into the kitchen. I unlocked the door that led out onto the veranda, and then shutting it silently behind me, I ran back to the cover of the sand dunes.

I lay against the sand bank and watched the bungalow. It wasn’t until after four o’clock that they came out and got into the Pontiac. When they had driven away I got to my feet.

Well, at least I had the gun. I knew now that Vasari wasn’t in on Rima’s blackmail racket. It was a safe bet that no one else shared her information about me. I knew Wilbur was out of jail and hunting for her.

My problems were becoming simplified. If I could find Wilbur and tell him where Rima was he would wipe her out for me.

There were still difficulties. If she found the gun had vanished, would she get into a panic and leave the bungalow and go into hiding? I decided there was a reasonable chance that she wouldn’t discover that I had taken the gun. How long did she intend staying in the bungalow? That was something I had to find out. It might take me some time to find Wilbur. I had to be sure she would still be in the bungalow when I found him.

I returned to my hotel. I called the biggest real estate agent in town and told him I was interested in renting the bungalow on East Shore. Did he know when it would be vacant? He said it was let for the next six months. I thanked him, and said I would look in next time I was passing to see if he had anything else to offer. Then I hung up.

If Rima didn’t discover the loss of the gun she would obviously remain in the bungalow for as long as was necessary. I now had to find Wilbur.

I called the sanatorium and asked after Sarita. The nurse said she was still making progress and there was no need for me to be anxious. I told her I had to go to San Francisco, and would let her know where to contact me, then I settled my account with the hotel, returned the Studebaker to the garage and took a train to San Francisco.

I hadn’t much to go on: a woman’s first name, her address and the knowledge that Wilbur had been seen in this city.

That was all, but if I had any luck it could be enough.

I told a taxi driver to take me to a hotel near Ashby Avenue.

He said there were three hotels on Ashby Avenue itself, and his choice, for what it was worth, would be the Roosevelt. I told him to take me there.

When I had booked in and had had my suitcase taken up to my room, I left the hotel and walked past the Castle Arms.

This turned out to be a big apartment block that had seen better days. Now its ornate brasswork was tarnished and its paintwork dilapidated.

I caught a glimpse of the janitor as he aired himself at the main entrance. He was a little man in a shabby uniform, and he had forgotten to shave this day. The kind of man who could use a dollar without asking questions.

I tramped the streets for the next half-hour until I came upon one of those printing-while-you-wait establishments. I asked the clerk in charge to print me some cards. I wrote down what I wanted:

H. Masters. Insurance and Credit Investigator.

City Agency, San Francisco.

He said he would have the cards ready within an hour. I went over to a nearby café and read the evening paper and drank two cups of coffee.

Then I collected the cards, and a little before nine o’clock I walked into the lobby of the Castle Arms.

There was no one behind the reception desk nor anyone to take care of the elevator. A small sign with an arrow pointing to the basement stairs told me where I could find the janitor.

I went down and knocked on a door at the foot of the stairs. The door opened and the shabby little man I had seen airing himself looked suspiciously at me.

I poked my card at him.

“Can I buy a few minutes of your time?” I said.

He took the card, stared at it, then gave it back to me.

“What was that?”

“I want some information. Can I buy it from you?”

I had a five dollar bill in my hand. I let him see it before returning it to my pocket.

He suddenly became friendly and eager.

“Sure, come on in, friend,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

I entered the tiny room that served as an office. He sat down on the only chair. After pushing aside a couple of brooms and lifting a pail on to the floor, I found a seat on an empty wooden crate.

“Information about a woman staying here,” I said. I took out the five dollar bill and folded it, keeping it before him. He stared hungrily at it. “She’s in apartment 234.”

“You mean Clare Sims?”

“That’s the one. Who is she? What does she do for a living?”

I gave him the bill which he hurriedly pushed into his hip pocket.

“She’s a stripper at the Gatsby Club on MacArthur Boulevard,” he told me. “We have plenty of trouble with her. It’s my guess she’s a junky. The way she behaves sometimes, you’d imagine she was crazy. The management has warned her if she doesn’t quit making trouble she’ll have to leave.”

“Not a good credit bet?”

“The worst I’d say,” he said shrugging. “If you’re thinking of talking to her, watch out. She’s a toughie.”

“I don’t want to talk to her,” I said, getting to my feet. “If she’s like that, I don’t want to have anything to do with her.”

I shook hands with him, thanked him for his help and left. I returned to my hotel, changed, then took a taxi to the Gatsby Club.

There was nothing special about it. You can find a club like the Gatsby in any big town. It is always in a cellar. It always has an ex-pug as a doorman-cum-bouncer. It always has dim lighting and a small bar just inside the lobby. There are always hard-faced, bosomy girls hanging around the bar waiting for an invitation to a drink and who will go to bed with you later for three dollars if they can’t get more.

I paid the five dollars’ entrance fee, signed the book in the name of Masters and went into the restaurant.

A slim girl, wearing a tight-fitting evening dress that hinted she hadn’t anything else on under it, her black hair falling to her shoulders and her grey-blue eyes full of silent and worldly invitation, came over to me and asked me if she could share my table.

I said not right now, but later I would buy her a drink.

She smiled sadly at me and went away, shaking her head at the other five unattached girls who were looking hungrily at me.

I had an indifferent dinner and watched a still more indifferent cabaret show.

Clare Sims did her strip act.

She was a big, generously built blonde with an over-developed bust and hip line that made the customers stare. There was nothing to her act except the revealing of a lot of flesh.

A little after midnight, just when I was thinking I had been wasting my time, there was a slight commotion at the door and a small dark-haired man came into the restaurant.

He was wearing a shabby tuxedo and heavy horn-rimmed spectacles.

He stood in the doorway, snapping his fingers and jerking his body in time with the music: a compact figure of evil.

He was gaunt and his hair was turning grey at the temples. His face was the colour of tallow. His lips were bloodless. The degeneracy in his face told its own story.

I didn’t have to look twice.

It was Wilbur.

Chapter SIX

I

The dark girl in the skin-tight dress who had spoken to me moved with a hip-swinging walk towards Wilbur, a professional smile on her red lips. She paused near him, her slim fingers touching her hair, her black pencil lined eyebrows lifted in invitation.

Wilbur continued to snap his fingers and weave his thin body in time with the music, but his owl-like eyes, glittering behind his glasses, shifted to the girl and his bloodless lips lifted off his teeth in a grimacing smile that meant nothing. Then, still snapping his fingers, he moved towards her and she too began to strut and stamp in time with the music.

They circled each other, waving their hands in the air, arching their bodies, postulating like two savages in a ritual dance.

The people in the restaurant paused in their eating and their dancing to stare at them.

Wilbur grabbed the girl’s hand and twirled her around, sending her skirts flying out, revealing her long slim legs up to her thighs. He jerked her against him, then he shot her away from him at arm’s length, jerked her back to him, twirled her again, then releasing her, he prowled around her, jiggling and stamping, until the band stopped playing.

Taking her arm in a possessive grip, he led her over to a table in a corner opposite mine and sat down with her.

I had been studying him. My first reaction at the sight of him when he had walked into the club was one of relief and triumph. But now, after watching him dancing, watching the cold, vicious face, my mind went back to that moment when he had come into Rusty’s bar, knife in hand, and I saw again Rima’s look of abject terror and heard again her screams.

This was my moment of hesitation. I had known when I had begun my hunt for her that my object was to kill her, but the full realisation, how it was to be done, was something I had avoided thinking about. I knew that although I had found her, I was sure if I had her alone in that bungalow I couldn’t have steeled myself to murder her in cold blood. Instead, I had come in search of this man, knowing he wanted to kill her. I knew he would do it if he was told where she was. I had no doubt about that. There was something terrifying and deadly about him.

If I set this man on her, I would be responsible for her death; it wouldn’t be an easy death; it would be a horrible one. Once I told him where he could find her, I would be signing her death warrant.

And yet if she didn’t die, I would be saddled with her blackmailing threats for the rest of my days or until she did die. I would never shake her off.

“What is better than money?” she had said.

That was her philosophy. She had no mercy for me nor for Sarita: why then should I have any mercy for her?

I steeled myself. I would have to go ahead with this.

But before I told Wilbur where to find her, I had to get Vasari out of the way. There was a chance that Wilbur would be too quick for this ox of a man and would kill him if he tried to protect Rima. I wasn’t going to be responsible for Vasari’s death. I had nothing against him.

My first move was to find out where I could contact Wilbur. I had no intention of letting him know who I was. When I gave him Rima’s address it would be over the telephone: an anonymous tip.

I then had to get Vasari out of the way. From the conversation I had overheard while he and Rima had been quarrelling, the police were looking for him. Again an anonymous telephone call, warning him the police were coming for him, should send him on the run, but would Rima go with him?

The plan was complicated, but it was the best I could do. And time was running out. I now only had nine more days before I had to pay out the thirty thousand.

I watched Wilbur and the girl talking. He seemed to be trying to persuade her to do something. He leaned on the table, talking in a soft undertone, while he picked at a red pimple on his chin.