The Postman Always Rings Twice (12 page)

      I went back with him, and she brought us some beer, and left us, and pretty soon I got down to cases.

      "You still with Katz?"

      "No, I left him. We had a little argument and I walked out."

      "What are you doing now?"

      "Not a thing. Fact of the matter, that's what I came out to see you about. I was out a couple of times before, but there was nobody home. This time, though, I heard you were back, so I stuck around."

      "Anything I can do, just say the word."

      "I was wondering if you could let me have a little money."

      "Anything you want. Of course, I don't keep much around, but if fifty or sixty dollars will help, I'll be glad to let you have it."

      "I was hoping you could make it more."

      He still had this grin on his face, and I figured it was time to quit the feinting and jabbing, and find out what he meant.

      "Come on, Kennedy. What is it?"

      "I tell you how it is. I left Katz. And that paper, the one I wrote up for Mrs. Papadakis, was still in the files, see? And on account of being a friend of yours and all that, I knew you wouldn't want nothing like that laying around. So I took it. I thought maybe you would like to get it back."

      "You mean that hop dream she called a confession?"

      "That's it. Of course, I know there wasn't anything to it, but I thought you might like to get it back."

      "How much do you want for it?"

      "Well, how much would you pay?"

      "Oh, I don't know. As you say, there's nothing to it, but I might give a hundred for it. Sure. I'd pay that."

      "I was thinking it was worth more."

      "Yeah?"

      "I figured on twenty-five grand."

      "Are you crazy?"

      "No, I ain't crazy. You got ten grand from Katz. The place has been making money, I figure about five grand. Then on the property, you could get ten grand from the bank. Papadakis gave fourteen for it, so it looked like you could get ten. Well, that makes twenty-five."

      "You would strip me clean, just for that?"

      "It's worth it."

      I didn't move, but I must have had a flicker in my eye, because he jerked an automatic out of his pocket and leveled it at me. "Don't start anything, Chambers. In the first place, I haven't got it with me. In the second place, if you start anything I let you have it."

      "I'm not starting anything."

      "Well, see you don't."

      He kept the gun pointed at me, and I kept looking at him. "I guess you got me."

      "I don't guess it. I know it."

      "But you're figuring too high."

      "Keep talking, Chambers."

      "We got ten from Katz, that's right. And we've still got it. We made five off the place, but we spent a grand in the last couple weeks. She took a trip to bury her mother, and I took one. That's why we been closed up."

      "Go on, keep talking."

      "And we can't get ten on the property. With things like they are now, we couldn't even get five. Maybe we could get four."

      "Keep talking."

      "All right, ten, four, and four. That makes eighteen."

      He grinned down the gun barrel a while, and then he got up. "All right. Eighteen. I'll phone you tomorrow, to see if you've got it. If you've got it, I'll tell you what to do. If you haven't got it, that thing goes to Sackett."

      "It's tough, but you got me."

      "Tomorrow at twelve, then, I phone you. That'll give you time to go to the bank and get back."

      "O.K."

      He backed to the door and still held the gun on me. It was late afternoon, just beginning to get dark. While he was backing away, I leaned up against the wall, like I was pretty down in the mouth. When he was half out the door I cut the juice in the sign, and it blazed down in his eyes. He wheeled, and I let him have it. He went down and I was on him. I twisted the gun out of his hand, threw it in the lunchroom, and socked him again. Then I dragged him inside and kicked the door shut. She was standing there. She had been at the door, listening, all the time.

      "Get the gun."

      She picked it up and stood there. I pulled him to his feet, threw him over one of the tables, and bent him back. Then I beat him up. When he passed out, I got a glass of water and poured it on him. Soon as he came to, I beat him up again. When his face looked like raw beef, and he was blubbering like a kid in the last quarter of a football game, I quit.

      "Snap out of it, Kennedy. You're talking to your friends over the telephone."

      "I got no friends, Chambers. I swear, I'm the only one that knows about--"

      I let him have it, and we did it all over again. He kept saying he didn't have any friends, so I threw an arm lock on him and shoved up on it. "All right, Kennedy. If you've got no friends, then I break it."

      He stood it longer than I thought he could. He stood it till I was straining on his arm with all I had, wondering if I really could break it. My left arm was still weak where it had been broke. If you ever tried to break the second joint of a tough turkey, maybe you know how hard it is to break a guy's arm with a hammerlock. But all of a sudden he said he would call. I let him loose and told him what he was to say. Then I put him at the kitchen phone, and pulled the lunchroom extension through the swing door, so I could watch him and hear what he said and they said. She came back there with us, with the gun.

      "If I give you the sign, he gets it."

      She leaned back and an awful smile flickered around the corner of her mouth. I think that smile scared Kennedy worse than anything I had done.

      "He gets it."

      He called, and a guy answered. "Is that you, Willie?"

      "Pat?"

      "This is me. Listen. It's all fixed. How soon can you get out here with it?"

      "Tomorrow, like we said."

      "Can't you make it tonight?"

      "How can I get in a safe deposit box when the bank is closed?"

      "All right, then do like I tell you. Get it, first thing in the morning, and come out here with it. I'm out to his place."

      "His place?"

      "Listen, get this, Willie. He knows we got him, see? But he's afraid if she finds out he's got to pay all that dough, she won't let him, you get it? If he leaves, she knows something is up, and maybe she takes a notion to go with him. So we do it all here. I'm just a guy that's spending the night in their auto camp, and she don't know nothing. Tomorrow, you're just a friend of mine, and we fix it all up."

      "How does he get the money if he don't leave?"

      "That's all fixed up."

      "And what in the hell are you spending the night there for?"

      "I got a reason for that, Willie. Because maybe it's a stall, what he says about her, and maybe it's not, see? But if I'm here, neither one of them can skip, you get it?"

      "Can he hear you, what you're saying?"

      He looked at me, and I nodded my head yes. "He's right here with me, in the phone booth. I want him to hear me, you get it, Willie? I want him to know we mean business."

      "It's a funny way to do, Pat."

      "Listen, Willie. You don't know, and I don't know, and none of us don't know if he's on the level with it or not. But maybe he is, and I'm giving him a chance. What the hell, if a guy's willing to pay, we got to go along with him, haven't we? That's it. You do like I tell you. You get it out here soon as you can in the morning. Soon as you can, you get it? Because I don't want her to get to wondering what the hell I'm doing hanging around here all day.

      "O.K."

      He hung up. I walked over and gave him a sock. "That's just so you talk right when he calls back. You got it, Kennedy?"

      "I got it."

      I waited a few minutes, and pretty soon here came the call back. I answered, and when Kennedy picked up the phone he gave Willie some more of the same. He said he was alone that time. Willie didn't like it much, but he had to take it. Then I took him back to the No. 1 shack. She came with us, and I took the gun. Soon as I had Kennedy inside, I stepped out the door with her and gave her a kiss.

      "That's for being able to step on it when the pinch comes. Now get this. I'm not leaving him for a minute. I'm staying out here the whole night. There'll be other calls, and we'll bring him in to talk. I think you better open the place up. The beer garden. Don't bring anybody inside. That's so if his friends do some spying, you're right on deck and it's business as usual."

      "All right. And Frank."

      "Yes?"

      "Next time I try to act smart, will you hang one on my jaw?"

      "What do you mean?"

      "We ought to have gone away. Now I know it."

      "Like hell we ought. Not till we get this."

      She gave me a kiss, then. "I guess I like you pretty well, Frank."

      "We'll get it. Don't worry."

      "I'm not."

      I stayed out there with him all night. I didn't give him any food, and I didn't give him any sleep. Three or four times he had to talk to Willie, and once Willie wanted to talk to me. Near as I could tell, we got away with it. In between, I would beat him up. It was hard work, but I meant he should want that paper to get there, bad. While he was wiping the blood off his face, on a towel, you could hear the radio going, out in the beer garden, and people laughing and talking.

      About ten o'clock the next morning she came out there. "They're here, I think. There are three of them."

      "Bring them back."

      She picked up the gun, stuck it in her belt so you couldn't see it from in front, and went. In a minute, I heard something fall. It was one of his gorillas. She was marching them in front of her, making them walk backwards with their hands up, and one of them fell when his heel hit the concrete walk. I opened the door. "This way, gents."

      They came in, still holding their hands up, and she came in after them and handed me the gun. "They all had guns, but I took them off them in the lunchroom."

      "Better get them. Maybe they got friends."

      She went, and in a minute came back with the guns. She took out the clips, and laid them on the bed, beside me. Then she went through their pockets. Pretty soon she had it. And the funny part was that in another envelope were photostats of it, six positives and one negative. They had meant to keep on blackmailing us, and then hadn't had any more sense than to have the photostats on them when they showed up. I took them all, with the original, outside, crumpled them up on the ground, and touched a match to them. When they were burned I stamped the ashes into the dirt and went back.

      "All right, boys. I'll show you out. We'll keep the artillery here."

      After I had marched them out to their cars, and they left, and I went back inside, she wasn't there. I went out back, and she wasn't there. I went upstairs. She was in our room. "Well, we did it, didn't we? That's the last of it, photostats and all. It's been worrying me, too."

      She didn't say anything, and her eyes looked funny. "What's the matter, Cora?"

      "So that's the last of it, is it? Photostats and all. It isn't the last of me, though. I've got a million photostats of it, just as good as they were. Jimmy Durante. I've got a million of them. Am I mortified?"

      She burst out laughing, and flopped down on the bed.

      "All right. If you're sucker enough to put your neck in the noose, just to get me, you've got a million of them. You sure have. A million of them."

      "Oh, no, that's the beautiful part. I don't have to put my neck in the noose at all. Didn't Mr. Katz tell you? Once they just made it manslaughter, they can't do any more to me. It's in the Constitution or something. Oh no, Mr. Frank Chambers. It don't cost me a thing to make you dance on air. And that's what you're going to do. Dance, dance, dance."

      "What ails you, anyhow?"

      "Don't you know? Your friend was out last night. She didn't know about me, and she spent the night here."

      "What friend?"

      "The one you went to Mexico with. She told me all about it. We're good friends now. She thought we better be good friends. After she found out who I was she thought I might kill her."

      "I haven't been to Mexico for a year."

      "Oh yes you have."

      She went out, and I heard her go in my room. When she came back she had a kitten with her, but a kitten that was bigger than a cat. It was gray, with spots on it. She put it on the table in front of me and it began to meow. "The puma had little ones while you were gone, and she brought you one to remember her by."

      She leaned back against the wall and began to laugh again, a wild, crazy laugh. "And the cat came back! It stepped on the fuse box and got killed, but here it is back! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Ain't that funny, how unlucky cats are for you?"

CHAPTER 15

      She cracked up, then, and cried, and after she got quiet she went downstairs. I was down there, right after her. She was tearing the top flaps off a big carton.

      "Just making a nest for our little pet, dearie."

      "Nice of you."

      "What did you think I was doing?"

      "I didn't."

      "Don't worry. When the time comes to call up Mr. Sackett, I'll let you know. Just take it easy. You'll need all your strength"

      She lined it with excelsior, and on top of that put some woolen cloths. She took it upstairs and put the puma in it. It meowed a while and then went to sleep. I went downstairs to fix myself a coke. I hadn't any more than squirted the ammonia in it than she was at the door.

      "Just taking something to keep my strength up, dearie."

      "Nice of you."

      "What did you think I was doing?"

      "I didn't."

      "Don't worry. When I get ready to skip I'll let you know. Just take it easy. You may need all your strength."