The Brass Cupcake Page 11

  I backed the car in a tight spin and saw that Larry was standing transfixed, his face greenish under his tan. Beyond him and off to my left, Melody stood with her hands at her throat, Trumbull in the doorway behind her.

  “Don’t, Cliff!” I heard her scream over the roar of the motor as I started toward Larry. He broke out of his trance, spun around and ran for Melody’s coupe. He yanked the door open and clawed his way inside, yanking the door shut, sobbing aloud with fright.

  He stared bug-eyed at me as I eased the Cadillac up to the side of the coupe. I put the bumper against it and gunned the motor. The coupe slid and then rocked up. Larry’s face disappeared. The coupe balanced for a moment on two wheels and then went over onto its side with a crash.

  I opened the side door. “Get in here!” I yelled to Melody. She stared at me with the dull and uncomprehending look of someone who, for the first time, witnesses madness.

  I do not think that she would have come to the car if Trumbull had not stepped forward and put his arm around her. The reason why marriage was impossible for them was immediately evident. The corners of her mouth went up in the semismile that comes from an unpleasant taste. The shudder of distaste rippled up through her and she moved forward out of the bend of his arm.

  “Get in the car,” I said, fighting for a conversational tone. I could hear the excited voice of the woman manager. “Police! Quick, police!” she was yelling into the phone.

  Melody came to me then, half running, breathing through her parted lips while Trumbull scowled. She pulled the door shut and I backed around and headed out toward the street. I glanced in the rear-vision mirror and saw Larry standing inside the coupe, his head and shoulders protruding from the open window, blood on his forehead, his cheek, and the shoulder of the white shirt.

  I raced through the back streets to the causeway bridge. My luck was bad. The red lights were flashing and the siren was sounding and the floor of the bridge was lifting to let a charter boat through, the outriggers lashed high.

  I stopped behind the car ahead of me and another car boxed me in as the line formed. She was as far away from me as she could get, her right side pressing against the door. She wouldn’t look at me. My hands were shaking with reaction. The bandage she had applied was loose, folded back. I pressed it over into place.

  “Why did you say those terrible things to Furny? About us?”

  I wanted to laugh. Try to guess a woman’s reactions. She saw me use the car as a weapon to smash the Kreshak twins. But that wasn’t the thing on the top of her mind. The important item was my faking with Furny.

  “I wanted to give us time, damn it. I wanted to get him out of there. I wanted time to think. Nothing seems to be making sense any more. Nobody is giving me time to think.”

  Then she looked at me. She ran the tip of her tongue along her lower lip. “Did you kill that man?”

  “I don’t think so. I could see him through the hedge. He was trying to get up onto his hands and knees.”

  “Why did you insist I come with you?”

  “Later, later,” I said, as the line started. As we came off the bridge I could see the rambling dusty-pink establishment on the fill out into the bay. I turned left on Beach Road and swung in toward the gate. The gatekeeper, recognizing the Cadillac, swung the gate wide, then stood and stared blankly at me behind the wheel. He shouted weakly after I was by him. I parked it where Tony usually left it, at the point nearest to his office and apartment.

  She came hesitantly around the car and I took her by the wrist and pulled her along with me as I went in. Tony was coming out of his office. He stopped and stared.

  He smiled with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. “You’re an ungrateful guy, baby. The longer I know you, the more you bother me. Who’s your friend?”

  I had to get to him quick without the usual pleasantries. I didn’t have time to worry about hurting Melody’s feelings.

  “This is Miss Chance, Tony, and she is half a million bucks on the hoof, so watch your manners and invite us in.”

  Tony put on graciousness like a tailored jacket. “Please don’t let my crude friend disturb you, Miss Chance. My name is Lavery and they tell me I’m running this fun house, though sometimes I wonder. Won’t you please come in?”

  He held the door wide and closed it behind us. He ushered Melody to a deep chair by the windows with all the unctuous charm of a shoe salesman fitting a size 5AA to a 6B foot.

  He drifted toward his little bar. “Miss Chance, I’m glad of this opportunity to tell you that this distressing crime is not at all typical of our community, and…”

  I took a cigarette off his desk. “Drop the propaganda, Tony. I brought her here to make a certain point. You had me released. Thanks. I couldn’t come running because she was in trouble. Very bad trouble. I didn’t have a chance to phone you. You got too impatient. Your boys came to cart me away when I was being useful. They wouldn’t listen when I talked nice. I think you’re going to get a phone call about them pretty soon.”

  He stood very still with his fingertips on the neck of a bottle. “I wondered where they could be. I was about to ask.”

  “One of them is probably on the way to the hospital, Tony.”

  He looked at me for long seconds. When he spoke his voice had the sound of a fingernail being pulled across silk. “That was a good trick. How did you do it?”

  “I took your car and ran them down.”

  It was the first time I had ever seen Tony rattled. He ran his thumb along the little crisp blond mustache. “My God, you didn’t horse around, did you?”

  “They wouldn’t listen to me.”

  He pulled himself together. “Believe me, Bartells. Please believe me. What you were trying to say to them must have been pretty important. It will have to be pretty important. Five years it took me to bring those boys along.”

  “If I didn’t figure you as smart enough to see my reason, I wouldn’t be here. If they took me with them, it would have left Miss Chance alone with Mr. Trumbull. Today Mr. Trumbull found out that Miss Chance gets the Stegman money. He found out that if Miss Chance should die all of a sudden, Mr. Trumbull gets the Stegman money. That wouldn’t be important except for one thing: Mr. Trumbull was putting on a funny act for the two of us. There are several ways you can make sense out of his act. One way would be to assume that he was setting the stage in such a way that if Miss Chance should do away with herself, he would have some good reasons to present to the authorities for her action.”

  Melody gasped. “But Cliff, I don’t think…”

  “You haven’t had time to think. Look how it fits. Yes, I found this ring in Melody’s room. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I knew it was Elizabeth’s ring. I faced her with it. She denied it. I told her that it was my duty to make a complete report to the authorities. Naturally, I never thought that as soon as I left her she would hang herself—or cut her own throat or whatever other way he happened to figure out. Use your head. In Rainey’s room you made it pretty clear that in spite of the codicil, you wouldn’t marry him. You went to lunch. Where did he go? I say he went to your room and planted the ring. I don’t know where he got it. I bet that a little pressure on that old hag landlady will bring out that he was there twice. It gave him a chance to pressure you, and if that didn’t work, it gave him a safe basis for killing you, provided he could make it look like suicide.”

  She began to look angry. “Now, see here! That sounds good, but even though I don’t really like him, I don’t think he’s a fool. He wouldn’t dare do anything…”

  Tony stepped in unexpectedly. “In my business, girl, I get a big chance to see how people react when faced with a large bundle. The smartest people do very surprising things. Besides, I’ve got an angle on Trumbull. That’s why I wanted to see Cliff. I didn’t want to give the angle to Powy because every week I fire help who are smarter than Powy is. Suppose you hear my angle and then tell me what you think of this Trumbull?”

  Just as Melody nodded, the phone rang
. Lavery picked it up. The voice on the other end of the line was loud and excited.

  “Hold on!” Tony said. “Wait a minute! Hold on!” He flushed and lost patience. “Shut up!” The voice on the other end of the line stopped. Tony took a deep breath. “Now let me tell you something, Larry. I know all that. He’s right here, with the girl. Yes, he came directly here. Now get this. Tell Powy there’s no charges.” The voice began yapping again. Tony smiled at me and shrugged. The voice faded away. “No charges, Larry. That’s an order. And don’t act so damn outraged. If you’d used your heads you wouldn’t have had trouble. How bad is he?”

  He listened for a moment, cupped his hand over the mouthpiece, and said, “Mild concussion and a broken shoulder. Larry’s just got a head laceration. They’ve stitched it already.”

  He spoke into the phone. “Get on over here. And stop trying to advise me. No, we’re not going to do anything.” He slammed the phone down.

  “They aren’t going to be very fond of you, Cliff.”

  “I think I can stand it.”

  “Now here’s the thing I wanted to tell you. This Trumbull went to one of the syndicate clubs in the North early in January. He had a bad night and he paid off with a very rubbery check. Then he left town and came down here. Things like that are routine. I got the information on him with my orders to go jack him up a little and make a collection if possible. I’ve been short-handed and I couldn’t get around to it. This morning I got word that I could drop it, that they’d received payment in full and a note of apology. Don’t things begin to hang together a little better?”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  He gave me a look of weary patience. “Sometimes you’re bright. Sometimes you sound like Powy. We had a little talk a few days ago, friend. At that time it looked like you were plunk in the middle. If you tried to buy back the stones, Powy and his boys would stomp you raggedy. If you crossed up a pro outfit, it would be the last recovery you’d ever make. Word gets around fast. Now I come up with a pretty hot indication that it may have been amateur talent all along, a fellow made nervous by giving a bad check to the wrong people. It gives you a nice out. You can make your recovery, double-cross the amateur, and everybody is happy.”

  “I can follow that, Tony. I’m not that stupid. What I mean is why not hand it right over to Guilfarr and Powy?”

  He gave a wary glance toward Melody. She seemed to be lost in her own thoughts. And she had an expression as though she were staring into a chamber of horrors.

  Tony lowered his voice. “I’m a businessman and I represent businessmen, Cliff. We take the long view. I told you how certain towns are known as being safe for the Big Rich. Creaming the guy who did it won’t be enough. We want a recovery of the stolen goods also. Guilfarr and Powy could have a shorter view of the whole thing. I’m afraid that they would figure on a conviction as being enough. I’m afraid that if they stepped in, they might develop sticky fingers if they should run across the items that came out of the old lady’s safe. They have enough contacts so that they could take it easy and fence the stuff over a period of years. We could stop that if we knew it was true, but we might never find out. And if Trumbull could crab their act by his testimony, Trumbull would be shot in an escape attempt, as you damn well know, and story would be that he died before revealing where he had hid the stones.”

  “What would I get out of it from you?” I asked.

  “If we like the way it’s worked out, we’ll be generous.” He turned to her. “Miss Chance, would you care for a drink? Martini? And how about you, Cliff?”

  I looked at his desk clock. Four-thirty-five. A long day. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “I’ll settle for a steak sandwich.”

  He phoned the order to the kitchen and the room was quiet while he busied himself with the gin, vermouth, and ice.

  “What happens to people?” Melody asked.

  We both looked at her. “How so?” Tony asked.

  “His boat had white sails and it was the most beautiful thing in the whole world. He was thin and brown and he had a nice grin. I suppose he was a kind of hero to me, a boy who went out of his way to be nice to a small girl. When she’d heel over and the sails would snap tight, I’d be scared and I’d hold tight to the edge of the cockpit, but he’d laugh and I remember how white his teeth were against the tan. I remember how blue the water was, and the sound of it against the bow.”

  Tony gave me a puzzled look. I said, “She knew Trumbull when she was a kid.”

  He brought her her drink. He stood by her chair and sipped his own and said, “Nobody knows what happens to people, Miss Chance. Take me. Know what I was going to be? An architect. Hell, I was going to build the biggest damn shining buildings you ever saw. The old man worked in the county treasurer’s office. Times were tough. They came one night and picked him up for embezzlement. I was a sophomore in high school then. He hung himself in the cell while he was waiting trial. We were on relief until the old lady started drinking so heavy they had to put her away. The night they took her away, I had a mad on at the world. I took a car off the street and wrapped it around an oak tree. They gave me three years in reform school. When I got out I became a runner for a big book in Detroit. Now I’ve got the sort of a setup every jerk in the world thinks he’d like. And you know what?” He laughed, a flat dead sound in the room. “I still want to be an architect!”

  She sipped her drink and looked over at me. Her eyes glowed. “Or take Cliff. He’s like a little boy who has broken all of his favorite toys in a fit of spite. Now he’s trying to show the world what a rough little kid he is.”

  “That’s not quite fair, Melody.”

  My steak sandwich came in. Just the sight of it made my jaws ache. It was huge and good. But putting food in my stomach was not the cure for the shakiness inside me. The beating Gilman and De Rider had laid on wasn’t something that would go away in a day. I thought of the fictional heroes of the hard-guy school, of the way they can bounce back from a pasting that should have put them in hospital beds. The human frame is a lot more delicate than such lead characters are permitted to show. I knew, testing my own weakness, that I would be less than right for at least four days, maybe a week.

  In the back of my mind was the mirage of a big feather bed into which I could crawl. The door opened abruptly behind me and I turned, putting the last bit of the sandwich in my mouth. Larry Kreshak came in, the bandage glaring white against his bronzed forehead.

  His anger was so great that it brought him ridiculously close to tears, giving his bright full lips a pouty look. He came toward me in slow gliding steps and he couldn’t look at my face. He looked at the second button on the front of my shirt.

  “Larry!” Tony said sharply.

  I wiped my hands on the napkin and tossed it over onto the tray. “Let him get it out of his system, Tony.” I said.

  Larry planted his feet and stood in front of me, swaying almost imperceptibly. Tony was coming around the side of the desk.

  “Go ahead, Larry,” I said. “You’re a rough boy. You and your brother. I think you can probably take me, but that’s all you’ll do. But I’m telling you this, and listen hard before you start anything. You touch me and sooner or later I’ll kill you. You can wait for it and wonder how I’ll do it.”

  It was pure bluff. But I knew that he’d seen the car plunging toward him and knew that he already had the taste of death on his mind. Tony saw what was happening and he stayed where he was, near the desk.

  You could almost hear the wheels turning in Larry’s mind. The big grille of the car, leaping toward him, had made a deep mark on his soul. The ripe lips still pouted and his fists were still clenched, but the ridged muscles of his arms softened and the cords in his size-eighteen throat became less evident.

  He came apart all at once, the tears spilling out of his eyes and the sick sounds coming from his throat. The swaying became more evident and he turned blindly back to the open door, his shoulder thudding against the side
of the doorframe as he blundered through.

  Tony went over and closed the door. “Damn you, Bartells! You’ve spoiled him for me. They’ll never be any damn good again, either of them. They’ll be trying so hard to prove that they’re still men that they’ll go around looking for trouble. I can’t have that here.”

  “You ought to be glad you found out he can be bluffed. It might have showed up when you really needed it, Tony. Now you can hire some real rough boys, instead of a couple of muscle-bound pansies.”

  Melody giggled thinly. We turned and stared at her. Tony cursed and went over to the shaker he had left on the table beside her chair. There was nothing in it but ice. She looked at us and giggled again. Her eyes weren’t tracking.

  “Should’ve ha san’wich,” she said thickly.

  “She was knocking them off as fast as she could fill the glass,” he said. “Wouldn’t you know.”

  “Give her a small break. Sometimes you’ll grab the first anesthetic you can reach, Tony.”

  “’Nesthetic,” she mumbled. “S’right, Cliffy, Cliffy. ’Mere. Help Melly up. Gah walk ’round, Cliffy. Walk Melly ’round. S’hot in here. Too hot.”

  She struggled up out of the chair, reaching for me. Her eyes went wide and she looked through me and beyond me. There was a greenish tinge to her complexion. She grunted softly and I caught her just as she went as limp as a rag doll. She fell across my arm, her head lolling forward, the silver-gold hair spilling, her contorted posture straining the seams along the back of the black dress.