All The Way (11 page)

Hey, where you get this Marian routine? My name’s Justine. I already tolja that three times already. Sure, you called me Marian. Three times, for Crissakes. Whatta you carryin’ a torch, or something? Look, don’t call me Marian, or Sweetie, or Hey You. I got a name, just like anybody else. And you use it, buster. You think I’m some cheap tramp that you just grunt or point or something and hand me ten bucks and I fall over. . . .

In the morning she gave me her telephone number so we could eliminate the middleman. I gave her an extra fifty.

“You call me, honey,” she said, putting on lipstick and giving me an arch glance. I was a crude, repulsive, egocentric blow-hard who couldn’t even remember her name, and she detested me, but oddly enough I seemed to have nearly as much money as I boasted I had, and I threw it around.

The registered airmail from Webster & Adcock arrived at nine-thirty. I slit it open, and looked at the check for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Five minutes after the bank opened, I endorsed it, wrote out a deposit slip, and added it to the account.

Back at the hotel, I called Fitzpatrick. He’d already notified me, shortly after noon yesterday, that the owner had accepted the offer.

“Fitzpatrick,” I said now. “I just received the money from my broker, and deposited it. I’ll be able to give you a check for a hundred and seventy thousand dollars by Friday. Or Monday, at the latest.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Chapman. Just fine.”

“In the meantime I’m going to take a good look at the whole South Florida real-estate picture, and may get into it a little deeper. Keep me in mind.”

“Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, we have a number of other real good listings I’d like to show you-”

“Thanks. But I think I’ll run over to the Naples area for a day or so. I’d keep in touch. G’bye.”

I called Chris and told him the check had arrived and that I’d deposited it. He was cool, but polite. I was still a client, if a rather shrunken one. The public stenographer in the hotel addressed an envelope for me and I signed the receipts and mailed them back to him. Next I called Captain Wilder in Marathon. He was out in the Stream, but I left a message with his wife that I’d got tied up on a business deal and would have to cancel the other three days’ fishing.

Coral Blaine was next. She started to tell me of some trouble at the radio station. There’d been an FCC violation of some kind. I cut her off. I was in the saddle now.

“Tell Wingard to take care of it,” I said shortly. “Authorize him to order anything he needs. I’m up to my ears in this real-estate deal. In fact, I’ve canceled the rest of my fishing reservations, and I’m going to spend the balance of the trip looking over the situation down here.”

“Darling, I wish you wouldn’t work so hard.”

“I like to work. So aside from the FCC, everything’s serene there? No more dogs locked in safes?”

She laughed sheepishly. “I am sorry about that. Wasn’t it the silliest thing?”

“It could have been serious as hell. And I’m not so sure it was an accident, either.” The dog thing had been a break we hadn’t counted on, but it was too good to waste.

“Harris, what do you mean? Of course it was an accident.”

“Maybe. But, look-Suppose somebody was trying to cut my throat? Give me a bad name, and make me lose advertisers? A thing like that could ruin me—people going around saying Chapman’s a sonofabitch that’d leave an unlocked safe around where kids can play in it. Suppose she’d actually—I mean, suppose it
had
been one of the kids? Instead of just a dog—”

“Harris, what on earth are you talking about?”

“Oh, I guess it’s silly,” I said, abruptly changing tone. ”Well, angel, I’m off to Naples to look over some property. I’ll call you later.”

I arrived in Naples early in the afternoon, and checked in at a motel. After driving round a while I called a few real-estate people on the phone, introduced myself, and made some inquiries. I plugged in the tape recorder, and began erasing the tapes, running them through the machine on “Record” with the volume turned all the way down. It was a slow process, as each took nearly an hour. I finished three of them. Once, I put one of them on “Play Back” for a few minutes just to hear her voice. I sat on the floor with my eyes closed, and I could almost imagine she was there in the room.

Around ten that night I was sitting at the bar in a very dimly lighted cocktail lounge. Among the eight or ten customers at the tables behind me was a dark-haired girl in her late twenties. She was sitting at a table for two, with a man about my size. I watched them from time to tune in the mirror. After a while her escort excused himself and went to the men’s room. I stuck a cigarette in the holder, lit it, and got off the stool as if to go out. Then I saw her, and stopped. I walked over to her table.

“Look, Marian,” I said angrily, “what are you doing here? I know you’re up to something. Why don’t you leave me alone?”

She was too amazed even to speak. People nearby turned and stared.

“Spreading lies behind my back!” I went on, beginning to shout. “Well, you’re wasting your time, Marian. Everybody knows how fair I was. I was more than fair—”

She had recovered now. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked coldly. “I never saw you before in my life.”

The bartender was on his way; and so was her escort, just emerging from the John. I straightened, and looked blankly around, and then at her. “Oh,” I said in confusion. “I—uh—I’m sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”

Her escort wanted to swing on me, but the bartender broke it up. He put his hand on my shoulder in friendly fashion and we walked to the door. “Easy does it, Jack.” Just as the door was closing, I heard him say to someone at the end of the bar. “Mother, dear. You never know. I’d have sworn he was cold sober.”

The next day I drove up to Fort Myers. I spent several hours driving round and talking real estate, mostly over the telephone, and finished erasing the tapes so I could dispose of them. Even if they were ever found, they’d be harmless.

I called Coral Blaine. I told her how much I missed her, and that I’d probably be home a little ahead of schedule. “The minute I clean up that real-estate deal on Monday, I’m going to start back.”

“That’s wonderful, darling.”

“I wonder if I ought to hire detectives to watch her?” I said.

“Watch who?” she asked, puzzled.

“Marian Forsyth!” I said angrily. “Good God, Coral, she can’t fool you that easily, can she? Don’t you know she’s up to something? She’s dreamed up some kind of grudge she thinks she has against me, and there’s no telling what she’ll do. You keep all my papers locked in the safe every minute. And especially my income-tax records—”

“Dear,” she broke in wearily, “I wish we could stop talking about Marian Forsyth. I’m sick of her. I don’t trust her any more than you do, but I don’t see what she could do to you.”

”All right, angel,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. I hope so.”

Late that night I threw the blank tapes and the recorder into the Caloosahatchee River. Thursday afternoon I was back in Miami, at the Clive. I called Justine Laray. She was glad to hear from me; she thought she’d lost me.

Chumps of my caliber didn’t come along every day, and she was beginning to get bigger ideas. She didn’t ask for the money in advance this time, and she did a better job of hiding her contempt and being professionally gay in the face of my crudities and oafish bragging about money, sexual prowess, and stomach muscles.

It now appeared that this crummy room-mate had stolen
all
her clothes.

“I could go back to work in night clubs tomorrow if I had the wardrobe,” she said, lying naked in bed with the highball glass and a cigarette. “But, God, you got no idea, honey, what those gowns cost—”

“Where’s the strain?” I asked. “Hell, at a hundred bucks a jump—”

She was very brave about it. She never told anybody, as a rule, but I was so understanding and, well, sort of nice— There was her little boy, see. Oh, yes, she’d been married. And this lousy bas— Her husband had died, that is, after a long and expensive illness. . . .

The Carthaginian B-girls had probably used more or less the same version during the Punic Wars. “Gee, that’s rough,” I said. “And he doesn’t even know? I mean, all the money you send him at that school, he thinks you’re a big-shot singer? Well, how about that?”

“So if I can just get back on my feet—”

“You just stick with me, Marian,” I said expansively. Maybe we’ll do something about this gown business. Maybe tomorrow, huh, if I can get free for a few minutes from this deal. Say, did I tell you I stood to clean up about eighty thousand? Not bad for a little over a week, huh, baby?”

In the morning I gave her three hundred dollars, slapped her on the rear, and winked. “We got to stab Uncle for a little business expense some way, don’t we, kid?”

Sure, I still had her phone number. And if I got a chance I’d pick her up and we’d go shopping.

As soon as she left, I checked out of the hotel, had the car brought around and the bags loaded, and drove over to Miami Beach. I left it in a parking lot six or eight blocks away, and walked to the apartment. It was hot and intensely still with the air-conditioner turned off. The minute I opened the front door and stepped into the room where we’d spent so many hours she was all around me, as if the slender elegance, and color, and grace of movement were physical things that could reverberate in an empty room like sound waves and keep on echoing long after the person who had set them in motion was gone.

I tried not to look at the water-stained spot on the rug.

I changed into flannels and a sports shirt, left off the glasses and the hat, put my own wallet in my pocket, walked back to Collins Avenue, and took a cab to Miami. At another car-rental agency I rented a pick-up truck, using my own name and driver’s license, and took off for the Keys. On the way out of town I watched closely for that roadside curio place where I’d stopped before so I’d have its exact location fixed in my mind.

I had a large-scale map, and a pretty good idea of where I’d find the type of place I was looking for, but it was a long way down the small Keys and interminable bridges of the Overseas Highway. On Sugarloaf Key, some hundred and thirty miles from Miami, there was a back-country road that took off through the mangroves and salt ponds and ran along an outer line of small keys parallel with the highway. It was a wild area with practically no houses and plenty of places a car could be hidden.

Shortly after two p.m. I found just the spot I wanted, and checked the mileage back to the nearest bus stop on the highway. I started back. Just before three, I stopped at a roadside place on Big Pine Key and called the bank. Marian had said that on an amount that large they’d rush collection, but I had to be absolutely sure. I got hold of Dakin. He asked me to hold on, and checked.

“Yes, sir. Both your deposits have been collected. The second one came through this morning.”

“Thank you very much,” I said.

All I had to do was write a check Monday morning for a hundred and seventy thousand dollars. We were ready for the last act.

It was after dark when I got back to Miami Beach. I put the pick-up truck in the garage at the apartment, changed back into Chapman’s suit and the glasses and hat, and went over and picked up the Cadillac. I drove to Hollywood and checked in at the Antilles Motel. It was one of those I’d spotted before, an older type built when land was cheaper, with carport spaces between the units. It sat back off the street on US 1 not too far from the center of town.

The woman in the office was a spry and chatty type of about fifty. I signed the registry card, and told her I’d be there three or four days at least. I was working on a real-estate deal, with Fitzpatrick. Oh, yes, she knew the firm. They were quite nice. I paid her for three days, and said I’d like to have a unit as far back as possible, away from the highway noise. She took me back to the next to the last unit in the right-hand row. It would do nicely, I said. In addition to the front door, there was a side door opening into the car park. The bath was a combination tub-and-shower arrangement, with a curtain rod and plastic curtain. There was a telephone. I asked her what time she closed the switchboard in the office. “Eleven p.m.,” she said.

The next morning I stopped at the office on the way out. She was talking to the colored maid. When the maid left, I asked quietly, after a glance behind me at the door, “Is there a woman registered here who has real blue-black hair, worn in a chignon ? A slender woman, in her thirties?”

“Why, no,” she said, puzzled. “Why?”

“I just wanted to be sure,” I said. “If she checks in, don’t tell her I asked, but let me know right away.”

“Yes, of course,” she said uncertainly. “Could you give me her name?”

“Oh, she won’t be using her right name,” I said. “She’s too clever for that.”

I had some breakfast in town, and drove up to Palm Beach, mostly killing time. In a hardware store, I bought a two-foot steel wrecking bar. I put it in the trunk, and came back to Fort Lauderdale. I cashed several of the checks in a bank, and one in a bar. I sat in the bar for four hours, nursing three drinks, staring straight ahead at nothing and speaking to no one.

At last the bartender became concerned. “are you all right, mister?” he asked.

I turned my head slightly and stared at him. “What do you mean, am I all right?”

“I—I mean, I thought maybe you didn’t feel well, you’re so quiet.”

”Well, I’m all right,” I said. “And don’t you forget it.”

“I’m sorry I bothered you—”

“Maybe I have to have a basal metabolism and a blood count before I can drink in your goddamned bar, is that it? Or you want me to take a Rorschach?”

“Okay, okay, forget it.”

I went on muttering after he retreated, and got up and walked out.

Around eight p.m. I registered in a motel on the outskirts of town, lay on the bed with my clothes on until nearly ten, and then grabbed up the phone and called the office. “Will you, for Christ’s sake, stop that stupid phonograph?”

The manager was puzzled. “What phonograph? Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said angrily. “Somewhere back here. If only they’d stop playing that same goddamned record over and over and over— Never mind! I’ll go somewhere else.”

He was standing in the driveway shaking his head as I shot past him in the Cadillac.

I drove down to Miami and called Coral Blaine from a phone booth at two a.m. She was somewhat piqued—she’d been worried, and I’d got her out of bed.

“You haven’t called since Thursday night, and when I tried to reach you at the Clive Hotel they said you’d left.”

“I’ve been moving around,” I said.

“There’ve been several things at the office. The bank wants to know if you’d like to extend the loan on that Washburn property. And the tax people have questioned the depreciation figures on that new gin machinery.”

“Okay. Call Wellman and tell him we’ll renew the loan for another year at the same rate of interest. If he tries to raise us, we’ll pay it off now. I’ll take up the tax thing when I get back. But never mind all that. Do you still see Marian Forsyth around there?”

“Somewhere, practically every day. But, dear, do we have to start on
her
again?”

“Tell me something. Do you ever speak to her?”

“No. She never speaks to me. Why should I?”

“Clever,” I said, as if talking to myself. “Damned clever.”

“What did you say, darling?”

“Oh,” I said. “Nothing. But, look, angel, I’ll be able to wind up this real-estate deal Monday morning, and probably be home sometime Tuesday.”

I drove back to the motel in Hollywood and went to bed.

The next morning I drove down to Miami Beach, parked the Cadillac in the business area not too far from Dover Way, left the hat and glasses in it, and walked to the apartment. I changed to khaki fishing clothes and a cap, backed the pick-up out of the garage, and drove down to the Keys. It was one-thirty p.m. when I reached the turn-off on to the back road on Sugarloaf. Since it was Sunday, fishermen were rather numerous, pulling boats behind their cars or casting from the bridges. Three miles from the highway there was a dim trace of a road leading off to the left through heavy scrub where the water’s edge was a tangle of mangroves. The mangroves thinned out after about a mile, giving way to open areas where boats could be launched. Several cars with empty boat trailers were parked in the vicinity, but there were no people around at the moment. The nearest boat I could see was about a half-mile offshore. I parked the truck off to one side, locked it, and started walking back. There was only a remote chance anybody would bother it, and it would attract no attention, since everyone would merely assume it belonged to another fisherman.

I came back out on to the secondary road, and had gone less than a half-mile toward the highway when a man and his wife stopped and picked me up. They were from Marathon, and had spinning rods in the back seat. I told them the battery had gone dead in my car and I was going out to the highway to pick up a new one. They dropped me at the filling station and general store. I drank a can of beer and read the Sunday papers until the Key West-Miami bus came through. When I got off at the Greyhound terminal in Miami I ducked into a phone booth and called Justine Laray, a little anxiously because it was already after eight p.m. Call girls didn’t stay home all the time. But luck was with me. She was in.

“Where on earth have you been?” she asked. “I thought you were going to call me Friday.”

“I’ve been out of town,” I said. “But, look, do you want to take a little trip? I’ve got to go up to Palm Beach for a couple of days, and we just might get a chance to look into the gown situation around there.”

“I’d love to go, honey.”

“Pack an overnight bag, and I’ll pick you up as soon as I can get loose here. Where you live?”

She gave me her address.

“I’ll see you,” I said.

I took a cab over to Miami Beach to the apartment, and changed back into Chapman’s clothes. Next I removed all identification and the cards from his wallet, dropped them in the pocket of my jacket, and counted the money in it. Nearly all the checks were cashed now, and even with the way I’d been throwing it around it came to a little over three thousand, four hundred dollars, mostly in twenties and fifties with four or five hundreds scattered through it. It made an impressive-looking roll, and the wallet would scarcely bend any more. I shoved it in my pocket, and then made a bundle of the fishing clothes and the cap, making sure my own wallet was still in the trousers.

I called Justine again.

“Look, sex-pot, I’m still tied up in this deal, over in Miami Beach. But I’d tell you what. I thought we’d stay in Hollywood tonight at that motel where I’ve been, and go on up to Palm Beach tomorrow. So why don’t you run on up to Hollywood? I’d just go on out the beach and cut across.”

“But how am I going to get there? And where do I meet you?”

“Hell, take a cab. I’d pay for it. There’s a bar—the Cameo Lounge. Meet me there at, say, ten-fifteen.”

I locked the apartment and walked over to where I’d left the Cadillac that morning. I put the fishing clothes in the trunk, along with my canvas shoes and a flashlight. Going up to a drugstore in the next block, I got a handful of change, went to the phone booth, and put in a call to Robin Wingard’s home address in Thomaston. He was in.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Chapman,” he replied. “How are you? And did Miss Blaine tell you—”

“You mean the FCC citation?” I interrupted. “Yeah. I told her to authorize you to get anything you needed to take care of it. But I’m calling about something else.”

“Yes, sir?”

I lowered my voice a little. “Listen. This is strictly between the two of us; don’t even mention it to Miss Blaine. I don’t want to worry her. Is Mrs. Forsyth there in town?”

“Why, yes. I saw her on the street just this afternoon.”

”Has she been around the station, or the studio?”

“Why, no-o. She hasn’t been to either one.”

“But you are positive she’s in town?”

“Oh, yes. Unless she left tonight. But why?”

“I can’t go into it now,” I said. “But here’s what I want you to do. Under no circumstances, is she to get into the station, or the studio. If she tries to force her way in, or sneak in, call the police. If necessary, hire Pinkertons.”

“But—I don’t understand.”

“I can’t explain now. But I’ll be there by Tuesday afternoon, and in the meantime don’t let her get past you. G’bye.”

I drove to Hollywood, found a place to park near the Cameo shortly before ten-fifteen, and waited. Justine arrived in a taxi about ten minutes later, and went inside. I lit a cigarette and remained where I was for another forty minutes, watching the doorway to be sure she didn’t leave. She’d have had two or three drinks by now, and she’d be smoldering.

I went in. It was very dimly lighted, a small place with a precious aspect about it and a Hammond organ that fortunately wasn’t being played at the moment. There were six or eight customers. She was at a small table about halfway back, grimly watching the door. She had a new permanent, and was wearing a dark blue dress and white mesh gloves, and the overnight case was on the floor beside her.