“We have a lot of admiration for her,” he said. “She did the right thing at great personal risk and without hope of reward. We’re going to do the right thing by her. She’s in this country on a student’s visa. We’re going to pave the way for her to become a citizen. We’re going to do everything else that’s in our power to do. That can be quite a lot.”
Toddy nodded. “I’m glad for her. She’s a nice girl.”
“Now we come to you,” said McKinley. “We’ve gone into your record pretty thoroughly. We find it remarkable. You’ve preyed on your fellow citizens with one kind of racket or another ever since you went into circulation. You get a chance in the Army to redeem yourself, and you throw it away. You sell out. You help to tear down the prestige of the flag you swore allegiance to. You’ve never been any good. You’ve never done a single unselfish, honest deed in your whole life.”
The soft, amiable voice ceased to speak. Toddy pushed himself up from his chair. “Thanks for the sermon,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll stay for the singing.”
“Sit down, Kent.”
“Huh-uh. You people can’t make a charge stick against me. You’ve had no right to hold me this long.”
“We can see that you’re held by other authorities.”
“Hop to it, then.”
“What’s the hurry?” said McKinley. “It always gets me to see a man throw himself away. Maybe I said a little too much. If I did, I’ll apologize.”
Toddy sat back down. He had intended to from the beginning. It had simply seemed bad, psychologically, to let McKinley crack the whip too hard.
“As a matter of fact,” McKinley continued, “I think my statement was a little sweeping. If you hadn’t tried to help Miss Chavez there in San Diego, you might have escaped. That’s something in your favor. Of course, you may have had some selfish motive for staying. But—”
“Try real hard,” said Toddy. “You’ll think of one.”
“Don’t coax me.” McKinley’s eyes glinted. “You want to get along with me or not, Kent? If you don’t, just say so. I’ve got something better to do with my time than argue with two-bit con men.”
Toddy swallowed harshly and got a grip on himself. He’d been kidding himself about that psychology business. A little, anyway. He was losing his temper. He was letting a cop get his goat.
“You’re trying to do a job,” he said, “but you’re going about it the wrong way. You’re not softening me up. You’re getting nowhere fast. Now why don’t you drop it and start all over again?”
“Who supplied the gold to this outfit, Kent?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve got a good idea.”
“Maybe.”
“Let’s have it, then. Come on. Spit it out.”
“No,” said Toddy.
“You want a deal, huh? All right. You play square with me, and I’ll do what I can for you.”
“That,” said Toddy, “isn’t my idea of a deal.”
“I’ll give you one more chance, Kent. I don’t believe you know anything, anyway, but I’m willing to give you a chance. Turn it down and you’ll be touring jails for the next three years.”
Toddy grinned derisively. Three years, hell! McKinley misunderstood the grin. He jabbed a button on his desk, and the deputy jailer came back in.
“Take him out of here,” said McKinley. “Lock him up and throw the key away. We won’t want him anymore.”
The jailer took Toddy’s elbow. Toddy got up and they started for the door. He was sick inside. He’d played his cards the only way he could, but they just hadn’t been good enough. Now it was all over.
“Kent.”
The jailer paused, gave Toddy a nudge. Toddy didn’t turn around. He didn’t say anything. He was afraid to.
“This is your last chance, Kent. You go through that door and you’ll never get another one.”
Toddy hesitated, shrugged. He took a step toward the door and his hand closed over the knob. He turned it. Behind him he heard McKinley’s amiable, unwilling chuckle.
“All right. Come on back. I’ll talk to Kent a little longer, Chief.”
The jailer went out the door. Toddy, the palms of his hands damp, went back to his chair.
“All right,” said McKinley calmly, as though the scene just past had never taken place. “You were saying I was going about my job the wrong way. Could be. I’ve been in this work for fifteen years, but I learn something new every day. Now tell me where you think I was wrong.”
“You want something definite from me,” said Toddy. “You haven’t offered anything definite in return.”
“We can’t actually promise anything. Except to use our influence.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
“Call it settled, then. We’ll try to wipe the slate clean.” McKinley smiled. “You haven’t committed any murders anywhere, have you? I don’t think we could square those.”
Toddy shook his head. “No murders.”
“Good,” said McKinley. “Now, let’s see what we’ve got. You were buying gold. You accidentally—accidentally on purpose, maybe—picked up a valuable watch—a chunk of bullion—at Alvarado’s house. He checked on you, found out you were hot, and offered you a job. If you turned it down, he threatened to—”
McKinley broke off and made a deprecating gesture. “Maybe,” he said, “Miss Chavez doesn’t have her facts straight. Maybe you’d better do the talking.”
“She has them straight,” said Toddy.
“Why did you go to Tijuana, Kent?”
“Alvarado told me to. I”—Toddy coughed—“I was to go there and wait for him. He didn’t say why.”
“Cough a little longer,” McKinley suggested. “Maybe you can think of a better one.”
“No,” said Toddy. “I think we’d better let that one stand. There’s something in the rules about impeaching your own witnesses. If I did take a little gold across the border, it’s just as well that you have no knowledge of it.”
“Mmmm,” drawled McKinley. “You don’t know why he wanted you to go there—you weren’t in any position to ask questions. So you went, and you got slugged. And if Alvarado hadn’t intervened you’d have been killed.”
“That’s right. It’s this way,” said Toddy. “After it was all over, Alvarado told me why he’d wanted me to go to Tijuana. He had it in for the gold-supplier. He was trying to wash him up. So Alvarado let him know I was going to this place in Tijuana, hoping that he’d try to kill me.”
He paused, conscious of the pitfall he was approaching. How to tell a plausible story without mentioning Elaine.
“Did you ever try telling the truth?” said McKinley. “The complete truth? You might enjoy it.”
“I am trying to.” Toddy frowned earnestly. “But it’s a pretty mixed-up deal. It’s hard to explain something when you don’t completely understand it yourself. You see, Alvarado wanted to get this guy but he got orders to leave him alone. So he had to back up. He wouldn’t tell me anything. I had to guess why I was slugged.”
“You knew who the gold-supplier was, in other words?”
“He thought I did—or could find out; it was the only reason he could have for wanting to kill me.”
McKinley ran a stubby hand through his thin red hair. He sighed, stood up, and turned to the window. He stared down into the street, hands thrust into his pants pockets, teetering back and forth on his heels.
“It doesn’t figure,” he said to the window. “It doesn’t because you’re holding out something. I don’t know why, but I’m reasonably sure of one thing. You know who the gold-supplier is.”
“I think I know.”
“You thought in the beginning. Then you found out. Something Alvarado did or said—something you saw there in the San Diego house—tipped you off.” McKinley sat down again and placed his elbows back on the desk.
“Knowing and proving are two different things. Suppose I gave you his name and address. You go there. You don’t find anythi
ng. He won’t talk.…”
“That’s our problem.”
“Is that a promise? Regardless of whether my tip works out, you’ll get me that clean slate?”
“Oh, well, now,”—McKinley spread his hands—“you can’t expect me to do that. You might give us any old name and address and—and—yeah,” said McKinley. “Mmm-hmmm.”
He squirmed in his chair, looking down at some papers on his desk. Fumbling with them absently. Abruptly he looked up. “It’s Milt Vonderheim! Don’t lie! I’ve got the proof!”
Toddy laughed. After a moment, McKinley grinned.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t tell me it was Vonderheim. I’d have known you were trying to throw a curve under me.”
“I’d pick a better goat than Milt,” Toddy said. “Everyone knows that—”
“We know. I don’t care about everyone. How would you go about landing this man, Kent?”
“Nothing’s been in the papers about Alvarado or—?”
“Nothing yet. I don’t know how long we can keep it quiet.”
“I’ll need a few things. A gun, some money, a car. I’ll need a few days. I’ve got to see some people.”
“Why?”
“To make sure,” said Toddy, evenly, “that you don’t have a tail on me. At the first sign of one, the whole deal’s off.”
“Why? If you’re on the square.”
Toddy explained. He was plausible, earnest, the soul of sincerity. If McKinley wouldn’t believe this, he thought, he wouldn’t believe anything.
“That’s the way I’ll handle it,” he concluded. “He’ll have a lot of dough. I’ll go through the motions of taking it, highjacking him. Then I’ll put him in the car and head for the country. Someplace, supposedly, where I can bump him off and hide his body.”
“That part I don’t get. Why would you want to bump him off?”
“Because that’s the way I’d have to feel about him. When a man’s killed”—Toddy caught himself—“when a man’s tried to kill you, you want to get back at him. He’ll talk. He’ll spill everything he knows in attempting to get off the hook.”
“Yeah. Maybe,” said McKinley.
“But I’ve got to be left alone. No tails. Nothing that might possibly lead him to think I was working with you.…You see that, don’t you? It’s got to look like I’m giving you the double-cross. Otherwise, he won’t talk and you’ll never find out how he manages to get pounds of gold every week—you won’t be able to prove that he has got it. And if you can’t prove that—”
“But suppose,” said McKinley. “Suppose you are giving us the double-cross?”
Toddy shrugged and leaned back in his chair. McKinley sat blinking, staring at him.
“I’d be crazy to do it,” he said, at last. “I give you a car and a gun and a clear field with a man that’s loaded with dough. I give a guy like you a setup like that. It doesn’t make sense any way you look at it.”
He pressed a button on his desk and stood up. Toddy stood up also. It was all over. There was no use arguing.
“Only fifteen years in this game and I’ve gone crazy,” said McKinley. “Chief, take this man back to jail and dress him out. I’ll send over an order for his release.”
He said one other thing as Toddy headed for the door. Something that made Toddy very glad his back was turned: “We’ll spring your wife, too, Kent, as soon as you pull this off.…”
23
After visiting a barber shop, Toddy went to a pawnshop—where he purchased a second-hand suitcase—a drugstore, a haberdashery, and a newsstand which sold back issues. Then he checked in at a hotel.
With deliberate slowness he unpacked the suitcase, the clean shirts, socks and underwear, the toilet articles, cigarettes and bottle of whiskey. He knew what the back-issue newspapers would tell him. He had seen an evening paper headline, BAIL RACKET PROBE LOOMS, but without that he would have known. Miracles didn’t happen. Elaine couldn’t be in jail.
Still, he didn’t really know, until he read the papers…He spread them out at last, a drink in his hand, and read. The foolishly unreasonable hope collapsed.
Only two of the papers carried the story; one gave it a paragraph, the other two. The latter paper also carried her picture, a small, blurred shot, taken several years ago. The former “character actress” had surrendered at a suburban jail. She’d worn sunglasses and was “apparently suffering from a severe cold.” Somebody was filling in for Elaine.
Toddy sighed and poured himself another drink. It was about as he’d figured it.
He ordered dinner and put in a call to Airedale. The bondsman arrived just as the waiter was departing.
His derby hat was pulled low over his eyes, and his doggish face was long with anxiety. His first act was to step to the window and draw the shade.
“Can’t you smell that stuff, man?” he rasped. “That’s gas. It’s driftin’ all the way down from that little room in Sacramento!”
Toddy poured a glass of milk, handed it to him, and gestured to the bed. Airedale sat down, heavily, fanning himself with the derby.
“Where’d you go,” he said. “And why ain’t you still goin’?”
“Save it,” said Toddy, taking a bite of steak. “Now tell me what happened.”
“Me? I tell you what happened?”
“They cracked down on your connections. You had to produce Elaine. Take it from there.”
“I go to your hotel and get ahold of lardass. We go up to your room. We can’t raise no one, so we break in. You ain’t there, Elaine ain’t there. Period.”
“Comma,” said Toddy. “How’d the room look? I mean was it torn up?”
“You ought to know.…No,” Airedale added hastily, “it wasn’t.”
“There weren’t any cops around? No detectives?”
“Just me and the house dick, but—”
“What time were you there?”
“Eleven-thirty, maybe twelve.”
“Oh,” said Toddy, “I get it. You were there when…”
“When,” Airedale nodded. “When Elaine was going up in smoke. Jesus, Toddy, did you have to draw a picture of it? Couldn’t you have done it outside somewheres? You’re up there raising hell—everyone in the joint hears her screamin’—and then—”
“That doesn’t mean anything. She was always doing that.”
“She won’t anymore,” said Airedale. “I honest to Gawd don’t get it, Toddy. Getting rid of the corpus delicti won’t make you nothing. Not with that incinerator stack running right through your room.”
Toddy abruptly pushed aside his steak and poured a cup of coffee. “I didn’t kill her, Airedale. Let’s get that straight. I didn’t kill her.”
“Am I a cop?” said Airedale. “I don’t care what you did. I ain’t even seen you. I ain’t even telling you to get away from here as far and as fast as you can before they put the arm on you.”
“There hasn’t been any rumble yet.”
“There will be,” Airedale assured him grimly. “It’s building up right now. That little hustler, the ringer that’s standing in for Elaine, don’t like jail.”
“So?” Toddy shrugged. “She’s in up to her ears. It would be easier for her if she liked it.”
“She don’t like it,” Airedale repeated, “because she’s on the dope. She’s a heroin mainliner.”
Toddy gulped. “But why in the hell did she—”
“Why do they do anything when they’re hitting the H?” growled Airedale. “She spent so much time in the hay she was starting to moo, but she still couldn’t pay for her habit. So she stands in for Elaine, and then she gives me the bad news. I’m over a barrel, see? I’ve got to take care of her. I got to put in a fix and see that she gets the stuff. Either that or I’m out of business. She’ll squawk that she ain’t Elaine.”
Airedale paused to light a cigar. He took a disconsolate puff or two, and sat staring at the glowing tip.
“Well…I’ve had a doctor in every day. Cold shots, y’know. Bu
t that can’t go on more’n a few more trips. Even if no one wised up and I was getting those shots for a buck instead of a hundred, I’d have to break it off. I wouldn’t play. I’ve got my own kind of crookedness. It don’t drive people crazy. It don’t kill ’em.”
He paused again, and gave Toddy an apologetic glance. “Not,” he said, “that some of ’em don’t need killin’. It’s just a manner of speaking.”
“Skip it,” said Toddy. “Will she keep quiet as long as she gets the stuff?”
“Why not? She ain’t a bad kid. She doesn’t want to cause any trouble. She’s beginning to see that I can’t keep her fixed, and she ain’t kickin’. She’ll just go out on her own again.”
“She won’t be able to do that. They’ll stick her on a conspiracy charge.”
“Huh-uh.” Airedale wagged his head. “She’ll get out. She’ll get all the stuff she wants. You’ve read them papers? Well, that little gal’s worth her weight in white stuff to certain parties.”
The bondsman stubbed out his cigar, sighed, and reached inside the pocket of his coat. He brought out a railroad timetable and proceeded to scan it. After a moment, he looked up.
“What do you think about Florida this time of year?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Toddy. “Not yet, anyway.”
“I am,” said Airedale. “I like my fireworks on the Fourth of July. Here’s hoping it’ll be safe to come back by then.”
He waited, as though expecting some comment, but Toddy only nodded. Naturally, Airedale would have to get out of town. The scandal would die down, eventually, be superseded by other and livelier scandals. Meanwhile, Los Angeles would be made extremely uncomfortable for the bondsman and his various political connections.
Airedale rose, looked into the crown of his derby, and emitted a bark of pleasure. “Well, look at that,” he said, pulling forth a roll of bills. “And just when you’d changed your mind about leaving!”
“Thanks.” Toddy pushed back the roll. “It isn’t that. I’ve got money.”
“So? What else do you need?”
“Nothing you can help me with.”
“I can help you a little,” said Airedale. “I can tell you to forget it if you’re figuring on copping a plea. Juries don’t like these cases where the body is disposed of. It shows bad faith, see what I mean? You try to cover the crime up and then, maybe, when you see you can’t get away with it, you ask for a break. They give you one. Up here.”