James Chase - I'll Get You for This

I handed him back the camera.

“You punk!” he exclaimed. “You can’t do this to me.” He set himself for a swing, but I gave him a quick push, sent him staggering, got into the Buick.

I shot out of the alley.

Clair wanted to know why I had said I was Jack Cain; why

I had smashed the photographer’s plate. She sounded very scared.

There was no point in keeping it from her any longer. I told her about Lois Spence telephoning me on the night before we left Paradise Palms. I gave her an idea what Lois had said.

“I’m not kidding myself,” I said, watching the road unreel beneath the head-lights. “Those two are dangerous, vicious. That’s why I ducked out of sight. Maybe I was a fool. I should have put you somewhere safe and gone after them. Now we’re stuck. This case is going to get a hell of a lot of publicity. We’ll be in the papers. As soon as Lois knows where we are, she and Bat will start something or my guess is all wrong. That’s why I gave a wrong name and smashed that plate. It’ll give us a little time to make up our minds what to do.”

“I know what I’m going to do,” she said in a steady voice, “I’m not giving up our home for them. I’m not scared as long as you’re with me.”

It was what I hoped she would say, but for all that, I had an uneasy feeling that our spell of peace was coming to an end.

We read in the morning’s newspaper that Clem Kuntz, the shrewdest criminal lawyer on the Pacific Coast, was handling Lydia Hamilton’s defence. I expected he’d call on us. He did.

He arrived as I was going off duty. I thought he was a customer when I saw the big Lincoln roll up the driveway, but I soon found out different.

“I want to talk to you,” he said, getting out of the car. “I’m Kuntz. Maybe you’ve heard of me.”

I had heard of him all right, even before he had taken charge of the Gray Howard Slaying, as the newspapers called it. Gray Howard was the name of the man in the white dinner-jacket. He turned out to be a big-shot movie director.

I eyed Kuntz over. He was a squat square man with a mulberry coloured face. He had the hardest eyes I’d ever seen in a man’s face, and he gave me the full benefit of them. I stared right back at him, said: “Go ahead. I can give you a couple of minutes, then I want my supper.”

He shook his head. “A couple of minutes won’t do,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere where we can talk. You’d better play with me, Cain. I could put you in a hell of a spot if I felt that way.”

I hesitated, decided that maybe he could put me in a spot, jerked my head to the house.

“Then you’d better come in.”

We went into the house, and I showed him into the front room. He looked round, grunted, took up a position by the window. I sat in the easy chair, yawned, pulled my nose, said, “Shoot.”

“You married?” he asked abruptly.

I nodded. “What of it?”

“I’d like to meet your wife.”

I shook my head. “Not before you tell me what’s on your mind,” I said. “I’m particular whom she meets.”

His eyes snapped. “Scared to let me see her?” he barked.

I laughed at him. “You’re wasting time,” I said; “come off your high horse.”

The door opened and Clair came in. She was wearing a cute frilly apron over a simple little frock in sky blue. She looked a kid, and a pretty one at that.

“Oh, I’m sorry…” she said, backing out.

“Come in,” I said. “This is Mr. Clem Kuntz. Th e Mr. Kuntz. ” I looked at the mulberry coloured face. “This is my wife. Satisfied?”

He was looking narrowly at Clair. There was an expression of startled dismay in his eyes.

I suddenly got what he was driving at. I grinned.

“Not what you expected?” I said. “I bet your client told you she was hard, brassy, and on the make.”

He drew in a deep breath, bowed to Clair.

“I merely wanted to know, Mrs. Cain, if you spoke to Gray Howard on the night of his death,” he said, clinging to the shreds of his dignity.

She looked at me, shook her head.

“Look, Mr. Kuntz,” I said, “I know what you hope to establish. It’s to your client’s advantage if you can prove that Clair was trying to make Howard. She wasn’t, and I don’t think, however hard you try, you’d ever convince a jury she was. Howard was propositioning her. I wanted to fix him, but Clair didn’t want a scene. We had been working hard for three months, and it was our first night out together. It was our hard luck that we should run into Howard. Clair didn’t encourage him. Your client was sore because Howard couldn’t keep his eyes to himself. But that didn’t cause the murder. It touched it off, but it had been coming to a head for some time. A guy doesn’t punch a woman in the lace unless he’s sick to death of her. It was the punch that killed Howard… not Clair.”

Kuntz cleared his throat, grunted.

“I wonder if you always look like that,” he said to Clair, speaking his thoughts out aloud.

“She’ll look like that at the trial, if you decide to call her,” I said. “And she’ll hurt your client’s case if you try to make out she’s a vamp.”

He passed his fat hand over his bald head, frowned. He knew when he was licked.

“I don’t think I’ll call her,” he said. “All right, Cain, I guess I’m wasting time. I thought your wife would be a different type.” He looked wistfully at Clair, shook his head, went.

We breathed again. Maybe it was going to work out all right. Maybe we weren’t going to get any publicity.

The District Attorney’s man was the next to call. He had a report from the State Highway cop who had arrested Lydia on the drunk while driving charge. As soon as he learned that Lydia had tried to wreck the Cadillac with me in it, he hotfooted over to see me. He said it was just the kind of evidence he wanted. It proved that Lydia was a dangerous drunk, and it’d carry a lot of weight with the jury. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was too burned up with the idea.

The next morning the press had the story.

They began arriving before we had breakfast, and they crawled all over us. The little guy who had tried to photograph us on the night of the murder was well in the forefront. He snarled at me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Hello, wise guy,” he said. “So you don’t like publicity? My editor will sure fix you for smashing that plate.”

Flash-lights exploded around us for the next hour. We tried to duck out of sight, but it was like a siege. When they had gone, I went upstairs, hunted out Bat’s .38. I sat on the bed, cleaned, oiled and loaded it. It seemed odd to have a gun banging against my side again. I didn’t like the feel of it any more. I was worried too that I was so much slower on the draw than I used to be. It was nearly four months since I pulled a gun, and I knew I’d have to get in some practice if I was going to match Bat.

Clair found me practising.

I pulled her down on the bed beside me.

“I think I’ll send you away,” I said. “If Bat’s going to start anything, he’ll get at me through you. We’ll have to think where you can go.”

She shook her head. “It’s no use running away, darling,” she said. “They may never come after us, and we’d be separated for months, waiting. Besides, they want me at the trial and things could happen then if they’re going to happen at all. Let’s stick together. I’d never have a moment’s peace without you.” She flung her arms around my neck. “I don’t care what you say. I’m not going to leave you.”

I thought for a moment, decided she was right.

“We’ll wait for them,” I said.

I was expecting something pretty bad from the newspapers, but nothing as bad as the front page of the Clarion, the paper my friend the photographer worked on. They had dug up the whole story of Paradise Palms and had smeared it all over the front page with photographs of myself, Clair, the service station, Killeano and even Clairbold, the boy wonder.