James Chase - Just Another Sucker

‘Yeah? Is that what you think?’ His thin lips moved into a grin, but there was no grin in his eyes.

‘Don’t kid yourself, sucker. Long after you have ceased to exist me and Rhea’ll be married.’

I managed a laugh.

‘That’s about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.’ I swung the car to the kerb outside my bank. The time was now three minutes to two. The bank doors were still shut. ‘You really imagine a woman like Rhea would marry an Irish roughneck like you? Well, maybe I’m a sucker, but I’m not the only one.’

‘You shut your trap unless you want me to shut it for you,’ he snarled, his fleshy face turning red.

‘Sure. I won’t say another word if you’re that sensitive,’ I said, paused, then went on, ‘But I know what I’d do if I was in the fix you’re in.’

He eyed me.

‘Yeah? So what would you do?’

I felt a quickening of excitement. I had got him going. I felt it.

‘I’d make damn sure Rhea couldn’t throw me out. I’d make sure I was the boss from now on…’

He sat motionless. I could almost hear his brain creak as he thought, then suddenly he smiled.

‘I’m sorry for you, punk,’ he said. ‘You’re so stupid it isn’t true.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘so I’m stupid.’ A clerk opened the bank doors.

‘But I’ll tell you something,’ I went on. ‘Don’t bet on anything from now on. I’ll fix you if I can.

Rhea will fix you for sure. You’ll be a bigger suck than I am, but I won’t be sorry for you.’

He got out of the car. ‘Come on, punk. Give your mouth a rest. I want those tapes.’

We went into the bank and I got the tapes. I gave them to him — there was nothing else I could do.

‘Don’t lose them,’ I said as he took the two packets. ‘They are now as important to you as they were to me.’

‘You don’t have to tell me a thing,’ he said and walked out of the bank, a worried, tense expression on his fleshy handsome face.

I got back to my office at ten minutes after two. There was a note on my desk, saying Renick wanted to see me as soon as I got back.

This could mean anything — more discoveries — anything. It could even mean he knew now I was the man in the brown sports suit. But I was beyond caring. I had taken my beating and I was now punch drunk. I knew once Renick caught up with me I was cooked. I had no recorded evidence to support my story. Odette’s murder could be pinned on me without the slightest trouble.

If I were going to save myself I had to prove somehow that O’Reilly had murdered Odette. I felt pretty sure I had planted the seed of doubt in his mind that Rhea wasn’t to be trusted. He wasn’t likely to destroy those two tapes: they represented his only hold on her. So long as they remained in existence, I still had a chance of beating this thing.

I knew Nina must be waiting anxiously for news so I telephoned her.

We were using a line that went through the switchboard so I was careful what I said.

‘He’s got them,’ I said. ‘There was no other way. Don’t say anything. Let me do the talking. It’s not as bad as it could be. We’ll talk about it when I come back. As soon as I can get away from here, I’ll be right back.’

‘All right, Harry.’

The shake in her voice made me feel bad.

‘Don’t worry, darling. I’ll fix it somehow,’ and I hung up.

It was twenty minutes after two when I pushed open Renick’s door and walked into his office.

He was reading a report, a frown of concentration on his lean face. He glanced up as I came in and waved me to a chair.

‘I won’t be a second,’ he said.

Maybe my imagination was playing me tricks, but I had the immediate impression from the tone of his voice that we weren’t on the same friendly footing as we had been not an hour and half ago.

I sat down and lit a cigarette. I had got beyond fear. I was now fatalistic. I was going to bluff this thing to the end, and if my bluff didn’t work I’d take what was coming to me.

Finally, he dropped the report on the desk and leaned back in his chair while he looked fixedly at me.

His face was expressionless but his eyes were probing. He was now looking at me the way a policeman looks at a suspect — or was I imagining it?

‘Harry, have you ever met and talked with Odette Malroux?’ he asked.

My heart skipped a beat.

‘No. The family came here when I was in jail. I never got the chance of interviewing her,’ I said, deliberately misunderstanding him. I thought: the first lie. I would have to go on lying from now on until Renick caught me out in one.

‘So you don’t know a thing about her?’

‘Not a thing.’ I flicked ash into the ash-tray. ‘Why do you ask, John?’

‘I just wondered. I’m hunting for every scrap of information.’

‘Maybe there is one thing that might help. Malroux is a French national. The hereditary system in France is so fixed that a child can’t be disinherited. Odette would have come into half Malroux’s fortune by right if she had survived him. Now she is dead, his wife gets the lot.’

‘That’s interesting.’

I had the impression that this wasn’t news to him. He had known this before I told him.

There was a pause, then he said, ‘You wouldn’t know if the girl had a lover. She wasn’t a virgin.’

‘I don’t know a thing about her, John,’ I said steadily. The door jerked open and Barty came in.

‘I’ve got something for you, John,’ he said, ignoring me. ‘The L.A. police have hit the jackpot.

Practically the first hotel they called on jelled. A girl, calling herself Ann Harcourt, booked in at the Regent Hotel: it’s a quiet, respectable hotel with no record for trouble. The clerk described her. She was wearing the blue and white dress. She arrived at the hotel at half past midnight by taxi. They have traced the taxi and the driver remembers picking her up at the airport. The only plane in at that time was from Palm City. The girl stayed in her room all Sunday and had her meals sent up. She said she wasn’t well.

She had a long distance telephone call from Palm City around nine o’clock in the evening. She remained in her room all Monday, then checked out at ten o’clock in the evening, taking a taxi from the rank. The driver says he drove her to the airport.’

‘Did she leave any fingerprints in the hotel room?’

‘She did better than that. She left a cheap plastic hairbrush which the maid saw her using. They have a beautiful set of prints from it and the prints are on the wire now. We’ll have them any minute.’

‘It’s my bet,’ Renick said, ‘Ann Harcourt was Odette Malroux.’ He picked up the report he was reading. ‘Just got the autopsy report. She was hit on the back of the head and stunned, then she was strangled. There was no struggle. She was taken by surprise. Here’s one thing that’s interesting, Barty.

Between her toes and in her shoes was sand — beach sand. It looks as if she had gone to the beach and walked along the sands to a rendezvous. The lab boys think they can place the beach where the sand came from.’

Barty grunted.

‘They are always thinking they can work miracles.’

It was uncanny and disturbing to sit there, listening to these two men talk and being sharply aware that both of them were ignoring me. I might just as well not have been in the office for all the notice they paid me.

‘Well, if you don’t want me, John,’ I said, getting up, ‘I’ll get back to my office. I’ve a whale of a lot of work to do.’

They both turned and stared at me.

‘That’s okay,’ Renick said, ‘but don’t leave the building. I’ll need you in a little while.’

‘I’ll be in my office.’