"How about at night?"
"Well, we might do that."
"How about tomorrow night?"
"I tell you. Ring me home tomorrow night, around dinner time, some time around seven o'clock. I'll let you know then. If I can make it, I'll be glad to see you."
That would be why I went to that particular picture tonight, that I had to talk to this actor tomorrow night, and I wanted to see his picture, so I could talk about it and make him feel good.
About four o'clock I drove up through Griffith Park, and checked it over close, what I was going to do. I picked a spot for my car, and a spot for Sachetti's car. They weren't far apart, but the spot for my car was close to one end of the bridle path, where they ride horses in the daytime. It winds all over the hills there, but right above this place it comes out on the automobile road up above. I mean, up high in the hills. This park, they call it a park, but it's really a scenic drive, up high above Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, for people in cars, and a hilly ride for people on horses. People on foot don't go there much. What I was going to do was let her get in and then start up the hill. When I came to one of those platforms where the road is graded to a little flat place so people can park and look over the valley, I was going to pull in, and say something about parking there, so we could talk. Only I wasn't going to park. The car was accidentally on purpose, going to roll over the edge, and I was going to jump. As soon as I jumped I was going to dive into the bridle path, race on down to my car, and drive home. From where I was going to park Sachetti's car to where I was going to run her over the edge was about two miles, by road. But by bridle path it was only a hundred yards, on account of the road winding all through the hills for an easy grade, and the bridle path being almost straight up and down. Less than a minute after the crash, before even a crowd could get there, I would be away and gone.
I drove up the hill and picked the place. It was one of the little lookouts, with room for just one or two cars, not one of the big ones. The big ones have stone parapets around them. This one didn't have any. I got out and looked down. There was a drop of at least two hundred feet, straight, and probably another hundred feet after that where the car would roll after it struck. I practiced what I was going to do. I ran up to the edge, threw the gear in neutral, and pushed open the door. I made a note I would only half close my door when she got in, so I could open it quick. There was a chance she would grab the emergency as the car went over and save herself, and then have the drop on me. There was a chance I wouldn't jump clear, and that I would go over the edge with her. That was O.K. On this, you have to take a chance. I ate dinner alone, at a big downtown sea-food house. The waiter knew me. I made a gag with him, to fix it on his mind it was Friday. When I finished I went back to the office and told Joe Pete I had to work. I stayed till ten o'clock. He was down at his desk, reading a detective story magazine when I went out.
"You're working late, Mr. Huff."
"Yeah, and I'm not done yet."
"Working home?"
"No, I got to see a picture. There's a ham by the name of Jack Christolf I've got to talk to tomorrow night, and I've got to see his picture. He might not like it if I didn't. No time for it tomorrow. I've got to catch it tonight."
"They sure do love theirself, them actors."
I parked near the theatre, loafed around, and around eleven o'clock I went in. I bought a downstairs seat this time. I took a program and put it in my pocket. I checked, it had the date on it. I still had to talk with an usher, fix it on her mind what day it was, and pull something so she would remember me. I picked the one on the door, not the one in the aisle inside. I wanted enough light so that she could see me well. "Is the feature on?"
"No sir, it's just finished. It goes on again at 11:20."
I knew that. That was why I had gone in at eleven o'clock instead of sooner. "Holy smoke, that's a long time to wait ...Is Christolf in all of it?"
"I think only the last part, sir."
"You mean I've got to wait till one o'clock in the morning to see that ham?"
"It'll be on tomorrow night too, sir, if you don't care to wait so long tonight. They'll refund your money at the box office for you."
"Tomorrow night? Let's see, tomorrow's Saturday, isn't it?"
"Yes sir."
"Nope, can't make it. Got to see it tonight."
I had that much of it. Next I had to pull something so she would remember me. It was a hot night, and she had the top button of her uniform unbuttoned. I reached up there, and buttoned it, quick. I took her by surprise.
"You ought to be more careful."
"Listen, big boy, do I have to drip sweat off the end of my nose, just to please you?"
She unbuttoned it again. I figured she would remember it. I went in.
As soon as the aisle usher showed me a seat, I moved once, to the other side of the house. I sat there a minute, and then I slipped out, through the side exit. Later, I would say I stayed for the end of the show. I had my talk with Christolf, for a reason for being there late. I had my talk with Joe Pete, and his log would prove what day it was. I had the usher. I couldn't prove I was there clear to the end, but no alibi ought to be perfect. This was as good a one as most juries hear; and a whole lot better than most. As far as I could go with it, it certainly didn't sound like a man that was up to murder.
I got in the car and drove straight to Griffith Park. That time of night I could make time. When I got there I looked at my watch. It was 11:24. I parked, cut the motor, took the key and turned off the lights. I walked over to Los Feliz, and from there down to Hollywood Boulevard. It's about half a mile. I legged it right along, and got to the boulevard at 11:35. I boarded a street car and took a seat up front. When we got to La Brea it was five minutes to twelve. So far, my timing was perfect.
I got off the car and walked down to the Lilac Court Apartments, where Sachetti lived. It's one of those court places where they have a double row of bungalows off a center lane, one-room shacks mostly that rent for about $3 a week. I went in the front. I didn't want to come up to the park from outside where I would look like a snooper if anybody saw me. I walked right in the front, and down past his bungalow. I knew the number. It was No. 11. There was a light inside. That was O.K. That was just like I wanted it.
I marched straight through, back to the auto court in the rear, where the people that live there keep their cars. Anyway, those of them that have cars. There was a collection of second, third, fourth and ninth-hand wrecks out there, and sure enough right in the middle was his. I got in, shoved the key in the ignition and started it. I cut on the lights and started to back. A car pulled in from the outside. I turned my head so I couldn't be seen in the headlights, and backed on out. I drove up to Hollywood Boulevard. It was exactly twelve o'clock. I checked his gas. He had plenty.
I took it easy, but still it was only 12:18 when I got back to Griffith Park. I drove up into Glendale, because I didn't want to be more than two or three minutes ahead of time. I thought about Sachetti and how he was going to make out with his alibi. He didn't have one, because that's the worst alibi in the world to be home in bed, unless you've got some way to prove it, with phone calls or something. He didn't have any way to prove it. He didn't even have a phone.
Just past the railroad tracks I turned, came on back, went up Riverside a little way, turned facing Los Feliz, and parked. I cut the motor and the lights. It was exactly 12:27. I turned around and looked, and saw my own car, about a hundred yards back of me. I looked into the little glade. No car was parked there. She hadn't come.
I held my watch in my hand. The hand crept around to 12:30. Still she hadn't come. I put my watch back in my pocket. A twig cracked—off in the bushes. I jumped. Then I wound down the window on the right hand side of the car, and sat there looking off in the bushes to see what it was. I must have stared out there at least a minute. Another twig cracked, closer this time. Then there was a flash, and something hit me in the chest like Jack Dempsey had hauled off and
given me all he had. There was a shot. I knew then what had happened to me. I wasn't the only one that figured the world wasn't big enough for two people, when they knew that about each other. I had come there to kill her, but she had beaten me to it.
I fell back on the seat, and I heard footsteps running away. There I was, with a bullet through my chest, in a stolen car, and the owner of the car the very man that Keyes had been tailing for the last month and a half. I pulled myself up by the wheel. I reached up for the key, then remembered I had to leave it in there. I opened the door. I could feel the sweat start out on my head from what it took out of me to turn the handle. I got out, somehow. I began staggering up the road to my car. I couldn't walk straight. I wanted to sit down, to ease that awful weight on my chest, but I knew if I did that I'd never get there. I remembered I had to get the car key ready, and took it out of my pocket. I got there and climbed in. I shoved the key in and pulled the starter. That was the last I knew that night.
Chapter 12
I don't know if you've ever been under ether. You come out of it a little bit at a time. First a kind of a gray light shines on one part of your mind, just a dim gray light, and then it gets bigger, but slow. All the time it's getting bigger you're trying to gag the stuff out of your lungs. It sounds like an awful groan, like you were in pain or something, but that's not it. You try to gag it out of your lungs, and you make those sounds to try and force it out. But away inside somewhere your head is working all the time. You know where you're at, and even if all kind of cock-eyed ideas do swim through that gray light, the main part of you is there, and you can think, maybe not so good, but a little bit.
It seemed to me I had been thinking, even before I began to come to. I knew there must be somebody with me there, but I didn't know who it was. I could hear them talking, but it wouldn't quite reach me what they were saying. Then I could hear it. It was a woman, telling me to open my mouth for a little ice, that would make me feel better. I opened my mouth. I got the ice. I figured the woman must be a nurse. Still I didn't know who else was there. I thought a long time, then figured it out I would open my eyes just a little bit and close them quick, and see who was in the room. I did that. At first I couldn't see anything. It was a hospital room, and there was a table pushed up near the bed, with a lot of stuff on it. It was broad daylight. Over my chest the covers were piled high, so that meant a lot of bandages. I opened my eyes a little bit further and peeped around. The nurse was sitting beside the table watching me. But over back of her was somebody. I had to wait till she moved to see who it was, but I knew anyway even without seeing.
It was Keyes.
It must have been an hour that I lay there after that, and never opened my eyes at all. I was there in the head by that time. I tried to think. I couldn't. Every time I tried to gag more ether out, there would come this stab of pain in my chest. That was from the bullet. I quit trying to gag out the ether then and the nurse began talking to me. She knew. Pretty soon I had to answer her. Keyes walked over.
"Well, that theatre program saved you."
"Yeah?"
"That double wad of paper wasn't much, but it was enough. You'll bleed a little bit for a while where that bullet grazed your lung, but you're lucky it wasn't your heart. Another eighth of an inch, and it would have been curtains for you."
"They get the bullet?"
"Yeah."
"They get the woman?"
"Yeah."
I didn't say anything. I thought it was curtains for me anyway, but I just lay there. "They got her, and I got plenty to tell you boy. This thing is a honey. But give me a half hour. I got to go out and get some breakfast. Maybe you'll be feeling better then yourself."
He went. He didn't act like I was in any trouble, or he was sore at me, or anything like that. I couldn't figure it out. In a couple of minutes an orderly came in "You got any papers in this hospital?"
"Yes sir, I think I can get you one."
He came back with a paper and found it for me. He knew what I wanted. It wasn't on Page 1. It was in the second section where they print the local news that's not quite hot enough to go on the front page. This was it:
MYSTERY SHROUDS GRIFFITH PARK SHOOTING
Two Held After Walter Huff, Insurance Man, Is Found
Wounded at Wheel of Car on Riverside
Drive After Midnight
Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Walter Huff, an insurance man living in the Los Feliz Hills, who was found unconscious at the wheel of his car in Griffith Park shortly after midnight last night, a bullet wound in his chest. Two persons were held pending a report on Huff's condition today. They are:
Lola Nirdlinger, 19.
Beniamino Sachetti, 26.
Miss Nirdlinger gave her address as the Lycee Arms Apartments, Yucca Street, and Sachetti as the Lilac Court Apartments, La Brea Avenue.
Huff apparently was shot as he was driving along Riverside Drive from the direction of Burbank. Police arriving at the scene shortly afterward found Miss Nirdlinger and Sachetti at the car trying to get him out. A short distance away was a pistol with one chamber discharged. Both denied responsibility for the shooting, but refused to make any further statement.
They brought me orange juice and I lay there trying to figure that out. You think I fell for it do you? That I thought Lola had shot me, or Sachetti maybe, out of jealousy, something like that? I did not. I knew who shot me. I knew who I had a date with, who knew I was going to be there, who wanted me out of the way. Nothing would change me on that. But what were these two doing there? I pounded on it a while, and I couldn't make any sense out of it, except a little piece of it. Of course 'Lola was following Sachetti again that night, or thought she was. That explained what she was doing there. But what was he doing there? None of it made sense. And all the while I kept having this numb feeling that I was sunk, and not only sunk for what I had done, but for what Lola was going to find out. That was the worst.
It was almost noon before Keyes came back. He saw the paper. He pulled up a chair near the bed. "I've been down to the office."
"Yeah?"
"It's been a wild morning. A wild morning on top of a wild night."
"What's going on?"
"Now I'll tell you something you don't know. This Sachetti, Huff, this same Sachetti that plugged you last night, is the same man we've been tailing for what he might know about that other thing. That Nirdlinger case."
"You don't mean it."
"I do mean it. I started to tell you, you remember, but Norton got these ideas about keeping all that stuff confidential from agents, so I didn't. That's it. The same man, Huff. Did I tell you? Did I tell Norton? Did I say there was something funny about that case?"
"What else?"
"Your finance company called up."
"Yeah?"
"They popped out with what we'd have known in the first place, I mean me and Norton, if we had taken you into our confidence completely from the beginning. If you had known about this Sachetti, you could have told us what we just found out today, and it's the key to the whole case."
"He got a loan."
"That's right. He got a loan. But that's not it. That's not the important thing. He was in your office the day you delivered that policy to Nirdlinger."
"I couldn't be certain."
"We are. We checked it all up, with Nettie, with the finance company records, with the records in the policy department. He was in there, and the girl was in there, and that's what we've been waiting for. That gives it to us, the hook-up we never had before."
"What do you mean, hook-up?"
"Listen, we know Nirdlinger never told his family about this policy. We know that from a check we've made with the secretary. He never told anybody. Just the same the family knew about it, didn't they?"
"Well—I don't know."
"They knew. They didn't put him on the spot for nothing. They knew, and now we know how they knew. This ties it up."
"Any court
would assume they knew."
"I'm not a court. I'm talking about for my own satisfaction, for my own knowledge that I'm right. Because look, Huff, I might demand an investigation on the basis of what my instinct tells me. But I don't go into a courtroom and go to bat with it without knowing. And now I know. What's more, this ties the girl in."
"The—who?"
"The girl. The daughter. She was there, too. In your office, I mean. Oh yeah, you may think it funny, that a girl would pull something like that on her own father. But it's happened. It's happened plenty of times. For fifty thousand bucks it's going to happen plenty of times again."
"I—don't believe that."
"You will, before I get done. Now listen Huff. I'm still shy something. I'm shy one link. They put you on the spot for something you could testify to when this suit comes up, I can see that. But what?"
"What do you mean, what?"
"What is it you know about them they would knock you off for? Their being in your office, that's not enough. There must be something else. Now what is it?"
"I—don't know. I can't think of anything."
"There's something. Maybe it's something you've forgotten about, something that doesn't mean anything to you but is important to them. Now what is it?"
"There's nothing. There can't be."
"There's something. There must be."
He was walking around now. I could feel the bed shake from his weight. "Keep it on your mind, Huff. We've got a few days. Try to think what it is."
He lit a cigarette, and pounded around some more. "That's the beauty of this, we've got a few days. You can't appear at a hearing until next week at the earliest, and that gives us what we need. A little help from the cops, a few treatments with the rubber hose, something like that, and sooner or later this pair is going to spill it. Especially that girl. She'll crack before long...Believe me this is what we've been waiting for. It's tough on you, but now we've got them where we can really throw the works into them. Oh yeah, this is a real break. We'll clean this case up now. Before night, with luck."