"I told you. I haven't even got that any more."
"What you would tell the police, if you told them anything, is already a matter of public record. Your mother's death, your father's death—you haven't anything to add to what they already know. Why tell them?"
"Yes, I know."
"If I were you, I would do nothing."
"You agree with me then? That I haven't anything to go on:
"I do."
That ended that. But—I had to find out about this Sachetti, and find out without her knowing I was trying to find out.
"Tell me something. What happened between you and Sachetti?"
"I told you. I don't want to talk about him."
"How did you come to meet him?"
"Through Phyllis."
"Through—?"
"His father was a doctor. I think I told you she used to be a nurse. He called on her, about joining some association that was being formed. But when he got interested in me, he wouldn't come to the house. And then, when Phyllis found out I was meeting him, she told my father the most awful stories about him. I was supposed not to meet him, but I did. There was something back of it, I knew that. But I never found out what it was, until—"
"Go on. Until what?"
"I don't want to go on. I told you I gave up any idea that there might be something—"
"Until what?"
"Until my father died. And then, quite suddenly, he didn't seem interested in me any more. He—"
"Yes?"
"He's going with Phyllis."
"And—?"
"Can't you see what I thought? Do you have to make me say it?...I thought maybe they did it. I thought his going with me was just a blind for—something, I didn't know what. Seeing her, maybe. In case they got caught."
"I thought he was with you—that night."
"He was supposed to be. There was a dance over at the university, and I went over. I was to meet him there. But he got sick, and sent word he couldn't come. I got on a bus and went to a picture show. I never told anybody that."
"What do you mean, sick?"
"He did have a cold, I know that. A dreadful cold. But—please don't make me talk any more about it. I've tried to put it out of my mind. I'm getting so I can believe it isn't true. If he wants to see Phyllis, it's none of my business. I mind. I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I didn't mind. But—it's his privilege. Just because he does that is no reason for me to—think this of him. That wouldn't be right."
"We won't talk about it any more."
I stared into the darkness some more that night. I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman. The woman was a killer, out-and-out, and she had made a fool of me. She had used me for a cat's paw so she could have another man, and she had enough on me to hang me higher than a kite. If the man was in on it, there were two of them that could hang me. I got to laughing, a hysterical cackle, there in the dark. I thought about Lola, how sweet she was, and the awful thing I had done to her. I began subtracting her age from my age. She was nineteen, I'm thirty-four. That made a difference of fifteen years. Then I got to thinking that if she was nearly twenty, that would make a difference of only fourteen years. All of a sudden I sat up and turned on the light. I knew what that meant.
I was in love with her.
Chapter 10
Right on top of that, Phyllis filed her claim. Keyes denied liability, on the ground that accident hadn't been proved. Then she filed suit, through the regular lawyer that had always handled her husband's business. She called me about half a dozen times, always from a drugstore, and I told her what to do. I had got so I felt sick the minute I heard her voice, but I couldn't take any chances. I told her to be ready, that they would try to prove something besides suicide. I didn't give her all of it, what they were thinking and what they were doing, but I let her know that murder was one of the things they would cover anyway, so she had better be ready for it when she went on the stand. It didn't faze her any. She seemed to have almost forgotten that there was a murder, and acted like the company was playing her some kind of a dirty trick in not paying her right away. That suited me fine. It was a funny sidelight on human nature, and especially on a woman's nature, but it was just exactly the frame of mind I would want her in to face a lot of corporation lawyers. If she stuck to her story, even with all Keyes might have been able to dig up on her, I still didn't see how she could miss.
That all took about a month, and the suit was to come up for trial in the early fall. All during that month, three or four nights a week, I was seeing Lola. I would call for her, at the little apartment house where she was living, and we would go to dinner, and then for a drive. She had got a little car, but we generally went in mine. I had gone completely nuts about her. Having it hanging over me all the time, what I had done to her, and how awful it would be if she ever found out, that had something to do with it, but it wasn't all. There was something so sweet about her, and we got along so nice, I mean we felt so happy when we were together. Anyway I did. She did too, I knew that. But then one night something happened. We were parked on the ocean road, about three miles above Santa Monica. They have places where you can park and sit and look. We were sitting there, watching the moon come up over the ocean. That sounds funny, don't it, that you can watch the moon come up over the Pacific Ocean? You can, just the same. The coast here runs almost due east and west, and when the moon comes up, off to your left, it's pretty as a picture. As soon as it lifted out of the sea, she slipped her hand into mine. It took it, but she took it away, quick.
"I mustn't do that."
"Why not?"
"Lots of reasons. It's not fair to you, for one."
"Did you hear me squawk?"
"You do like me, don't you?"
"I'm crazy about you."
"I'm pretty crazy about you too, Walter. I don't know what I'd have done without you these last few weeks. Only—"
"Only what?"
"Are you sure you want to hear? It may hurt you."
"Better hear it than guess at it."
"It's about Nino."
"Yes?"
"I guess he still means a lot to me."
"Have you seen him?"
"No."
"You'll get over it. Let me be your doctor. I'll guarantee a cure. Just give me a little time, and I'll promise to have you all right."
"You're a nice doctor. Only—"
"Another 'only'?"
"I did see him."
"Oh."
"No, I was telling the truth just now. I haven't talked with him. He doesn't know I've seen him. Only—"
"You sure have a lot of 'only's'."
"Walter—"
She was getting more and more excited, and trying not to let me see it.
"—He didn't do it!"
"No?"
"This is going to hurt you terribly, Walter. I can't help it. You may as well know the truth. I followed them last night. Oh, I've followed them a lot of times, I've been insane. Last night, though, was the first time I ever got a chance to hear what they were saying. They went up to the Lookout and parked, and I parked down below, and crept up behind them. Oh, it was horrible enough. He told her he had been in love with her from the first, but felt it was hopeless—until this happened. But that wasn't all. They talked about money. He's spent all of that you let him have, and still he hasn't got his degree. He paid for his dissertation, but the rest he spent on her. And he was talking about where he'd get more. Listen, Walter—"
"Yes?"
"If they had done this together, she'd have to let him have money, wouldn't she?"
"Looks like it."
"They never even mentioned anything about her letting him have money. My heart began to beat when I realized what that meant. And then they talked some more. They were there about an hour. They talked about lots of things, and I could tell, from what they said, that he wasn't in on it, and didn't know anything about it. I could tell! Walter, do you r
ealize what that means? He didn't do it!"
She was so excited her fingers felt like steel, where they were clutched around my arm. I couldn't follow her. I could see that she meant something, something a whole lot more important than that Sachetti was innocent.
"I don't quite get it, Lola. I thought you had given up the idea that anybody was in on it."
"I'll never give it up...Yes, I did give it up, or try to. But that was only because I thought if there was something like that, he must have been in on it, and that would have been too terrible. If he had anything to do with it, I knew it couldn't be that. I had to know it, to believe it. But now—oh no, Walter, I haven't given it up. She did it, somehow. I know it. And now, I'll get her. I'll get her for it, if it's the last thing I do."
"How?"
"She's suing your company, isn't she? She even has the nerve to do that. All right. You tell your company not to worry. I'll come and sit right alongside of you, Walter. I'll tell them what to ask her. I'll tell them—"
"Wait a minute, Lola, wait a minute—"
"I'll tell them everything they need to know. I told you there was plenty more, besides what I told you. I'll tell them to ask her about the time I came in on her, in her bedroom, with some kind of foolish red silk thing on her, that looked like a shroud or something, with her face all smeared up with white powder and red lipstick, with a dagger in her hand, making faces at herself in front of a mirror—oh yes, I'll tell them to ask her about that. I'll tell them to ask her why she was down in a boulevard store, a week before my father died, pricing black dresses. That's something she doesn't know I know. I went in there about five minutes after she left. The saleslady was just putting the frocks away. She was telling me what lovely numbers they were, only she couldn't understand why Mrs. Nirdlinger would be considering them, because they were really mourning. That was one reason I wanted my father to take that trip, so I could get him out of the house and find out what she was up to. I'll tell them—"
"But wait a minute, Lola. You can't do that. Why—they can't ask her such things as that—"
"If they can't I can! I'll stand right up in court and yell them at her. I'll be heard! No judge, no policeman, or anybody—can stop me. I'll force it out of her if I have to go up there and choke it out of her. I'll make her tell! I'll not be stopped!"
Chapter 11
I don't know when I decided to kill Phyllis. It seemed to me that ever since that night, somewhere in the back of my head I had known I would have to kill her, for what she knew about me, and because the world isn't big enough for two people once they've got something like that on each other. But I know when I decided when to kill her, and where to kill her and how to kill her. It was right after that night when I was watching the moon come up over the ocean with Lola. Because the idea that Lola would put on an act like that in the courtroom, and that then Phyllis would lash out and tell her the truth, that was too horrible for me to think about. Maybe I haven't explained it right, yet, how I felt about this girl Lola. It wasn't anything like what I had felt for Phyllis. That was some kind of unhealthy excitement that came over me just at the sight of her. This wasn't anything like that. It was just a sweet peace that came over me as soon as I was with her, like when we would drive along for an hour without saying a word, and then she would look up at me and we still didn't have to say anything. I hated what I had done, and it kept sweeping over me that if there was any way I could make sure she would never find out, why then maybe I could marry her, and forget the whole thing, and be happy with her the rest of my life. There was only one way I could be sure, and that was to get rid of anybody that knew. What she told me about Sachetti showed there was only one I had to get rid of, and that was Phyllis. And the rest of what she told me, about what she was going to do, meant I had to move quick, before that suit came to trial.
I wasn't going to leave it so Sachetti could come back and take her away from me, though. I was going to do it so he would be put in a spot. Police are hard to fool, but Lola would never be quite sure he hadn't done it. And of course if he did one, so far as she was concerned he probably did the other.
My next day at the finance company, I put through a lot of routine stuff, sent the file clerk out on an errand, and took out the folder on Sachetti. I slipped it in my desk. In that folder was a key to his car. In our finance company, just to avoid trouble in case of a repossess, we make every borrower deposit the key to his car along with the other papers on his loan, and of course Sachetti had had to do the same. That was back in the winter when he took out the loan on his car. I slipped the key out of its envelope, and when I went out to lunch I had a duplicate made. When I got back I sent the file clerk on another errand, put the original key back in its envelope, and returned the folder to the file. That was what I wanted. I had the key to his car, and nobody there even knew I had the folder out of the file.
Next I had to get hold of Phyllis, but I didn't dare ring her. I had to wait till she called. I sat around the house three nights, and the fourth night the phone rang.
"Phyllis, I've got to see you."
"It's about time."
"You know the reason I haven't. Now get this. We've got to meet, to go over things in connection with this suit—and after that, I don't think we have anything to fear."
"Can we meet? I thought you said—"
"That's right. They've been watching you. But I found out something today. They've cut down the detail assigned to you to one shift, and he goes off at eleven."
"What's that?"
"They did have three men assigned to you, in shifts, but they weren't finding out very much, so they thought they'd cut down the expense, and now they've only got one. He goes on in the afternoon, and goes off at eleven o'clock, unless there's something to hold him. We'll have to meet after that."
"All right. Then come up to the house—"
"Oh no, we can't take a chance like that. But we can meet. Tomorrow night, around midnight, you sneak out. Take the car and sneak out. If anybody drops in in the evening, get rid of them well before eleven o'clock. Get rid of them, turn out all lights, have the place looking like you had gone to bed well before this man goes off. So he'll have no suspicions whatever."
The reason for that was that if Sachetti was going to be with her the next night, I wanted him to be well out of there and home in bed, long before I was to meet her. I had to have his car, and I didn't want the connections to be so close I had to wait. The rest of it was all hooey, about the one shift I mean. I wanted her to think she could meet me safely. As to whether they had one shift on her, or three, or six, I didn't know and I didn't care. If somebody followed her, so much the better, for what I had to do. They'd have to move fast to catch me, and if they saw her deliberately knocked off, why that would be just that much more Mr. Sachetti would have to explain when they caught up with him.
"Lights out by eleven."
"Lights out, the cat out, and the place locked up."
"All right, where do I meet you?"
"Meet me in Griffith Park, a couple of hundred yards up Riverside from Los Feliz. I'll be parked there, and we'll take a ride, and talk it over. Don't park on Los Feliz. Park in among the trees, in the little glade near the bridge. Park where I can see you, and walk over."
"In between the two streets?"
"That's it. Make it twelve-thirty sharp. I'll be a minute or two ahead of time, so you can hop right in and you won't have to wait."
"Twelve-thirty, two hundred yards up Riverside."
"That's right. Close your garage door when you come out, so anybody passing won't notice the car's out."
"I'll be there, Walter."
"Oh, and one other thing. I traded my car in since I saw you. I've got another one." I told her the make. "It's a small dark blue coupe. You can't miss it."
"A blue coupe?"
"Yes."
"That's funny."
I knew why it was funny. She'd been riding around in a blue coupe for the last month, the same one if sh
e only knew it, but I didn't tumble. "Yeah, I guess it's funny at that, me driving around in that oil can, but the big car was costing too much. I had a chance for a deal on this one, so I took it."
"It's the funniest thing I ever heard."
"Why?"
"Oh—nothing. Tomorrow night at twelve-thirty."
"Twelve-thirty."
"I'm just dying to see you."
"Same here."
"Well—I had something to talk to you about, but I'll let it wait till tomorrow. Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
When she hung up I got the paper and checked the shows in town. There was a downtown theatre that had a midnight show, and the bill was to hold over the whole week. That was what I wanted. I drove down there. It was about ten-thirty when I got in, and I sat in the balcony, so I wouldn't be seen by the downstairs ushers. I watched the show close, and paid attention to the gags, because it was to be part of my alibi next night that I had been there. In the last sequence of the feature I saw an actor I knew. He played the part of a waiter, and I had once sold him a hunk of life insurance, $7,000 for an endowment policy, all paid up when he bought it. His name was Jack Christolf. That helped me. I stayed till the show was out, and looked at my watch. It was 12:48.
Next day around lunch time I called up Jack Christolf. They said he was at the studio and I caught him there. "I hear you knocked them for a loop in this new one, 'Gun Play'."
"I didn't do bad. Did you see it?"
"No, I want to catch it. Where's it playing?"
He named five theatres. He knew them all. "I'm going to drop in on it the very first chance I get. Well say old man, how about another little piece of life insurance? Something to do with all this dough you're making."
"I don't know. I don't know. To tell you the truth, I might be interested. Yes, I might."
"When can I see you?"
"Well, I'm busy this week. I don't finish up here till Friday, and I thought I would go away for a rest over the week-end. But next week, any time."