James Chase - Strictly For Cash

“Going after it now?”

“Right now.”

“Still going to take it out in your car?”

“Any better ideas?”

She leaned against me.

“You’re learning, handsome. There’s only one way to get that money out and be sure of it. Perhaps you don’t know this, but at six every evening the railroad truck calls for luggage or empty crates, or whatever’s going by rail. There’s always something. Pack the money in a suitcase, address it to yourself at any station to be called for. The man will give you a receipt. You’ll find him loading up at the luggage entrance. He handles the stuff himself. There’s seldom anyone there. It’s the only way, handsome. The guards don’t check his stuff, and when you go, you’ll go empty-handed.”

I patted her on the shoulder.

“You’re more than smart; you’re brilliant,” I said. “That’s a whale of an idea.”

She leaned more heavily against me.

“Show a little appreciation.”

It took me ten precious minutes to untangle myself from her clutches, a quarter of an hour to buy a black pigskin suitcase with good locks, five minutes to buy a coil of thin rope and a big meat hook, and ten minutes to get back to the casino.

As I drove in I asked the green-eyed guard if he had seen Mrs. Wertham.

“Not in yet,” he growled.

I drove fast around to the back of the casino. Twenty feet above me was my office window, overlooking a walled-in garden that was reserved for the management, and no one else. I set the suitcase down immediately below the window, ran back to the car and drove around to the front entrance.

I went up the steps to the terrace three at a time. People said hello, and tried to stop me, but I grinned at them and kept on.

When Della checked up on me she would learn I hadn’t come in with a suitcase, only a small brown-paper parcel that contained the rope and the hook.

I got to my office, locked the door, opened the window and dropped the hook, attached to the rope, down on to the suitcase. I snagged it the first throw. I hauled it up, then went over to the safe. With the combination in my hand I turned the tumblers. I was working against time. The desk clock showed five minutes to six.

I came to the last number, turned to it and felt the tumbler fall into position. Holding my breath, I tugged at the handle of the safe. The door swung open.

I sat back on my heels and feasted my eyes on the contents. On two shelves were neat packages of one-hundred dollar bills: stacks and stacks and stacks of them.

I pulled the suitcase closer, opened it and began to pack the bundles in. Two hundred and fifty of them filled the case: it was the most awe-inspiring sight I’d ever set eyes on. There were still another two hundred and fifty bundles left on the shelves. But they didn’t belong to me. I left them right where they were. Before I slammed the suitcase shut I took three one-hundred dollar bills out of one package, folded them small and wedged them down the side of my shoe. Then I snapped the locks, turned the keys and put them in my pocket. I shut the safe door and gave the knob of the lock a couple of turns. Then I dusted the safe with my handkerchief and stood up.

I was panting with excitement and my collar was a wet rag. The hands of the clock showed six.

I took the suitcase to the window, leaned out and dropped it. Then I hooked the hook to the windowsill and slid down the rope. When I reached the ground I jerked the hook free, coiled the rope and hid it under a shrub. I picked up the suitcase and bolted across the lawn.

The trucker was just through loading up by the time I got there. He had signed off and was getting into his cab. There was no one else around.

“Just in time, I guess,” I panted.

He looked me over, hesitated, then gave a resigned grin.

“Where to, mister?”

“Got a label?” He found one.

I printed my name on it.

John Farrar,

Seaboard Air-Line Railway, Grt. Miami.

To be called for.

He wrote out a receipt.

“Sorry to hold you up,” I said, and gave him ten bucks. “Keep the change.”

He nearly fell off the truck.

“I’ll take care of this for you, sir. It’ll be right there waiting for you.”

I hoped it would.

I stood back and watched the truck drive away. It made me sweat to think of all that money going on that journey without me to guard every yard of it.

But she was right. It was the smart thing to do. If those two guards spotted the suitcase they would want to know what was inside it: especially the green-eyed guard. He had it in for me.

I folded the receipt the trucker had given me into a narrow ribbon. Right now that scrap of paper was worth a quarter of a million dollars. I took off my slouch hat and tucked the ribbon of paper behind the sweat band.

Things were working out better than I had imagined. I had got the money out, now I had to get myself out.

I remembered the .45 Colt automatic I had left in my desk drawer. I might need that gun. I decided to get it.

It took me a couple of minutes to reach the office. I stopped short just inside the doorway.

Della and Ricca were sitting near my desk. Ricca had the Colt in his hand, and it was pointing at me.

“Come in, Johnny,” Della said.

I closed the door and walked across the expanse of fawn carpet, somehow keeping my face expressionless, and cursing myself for coming back.

As I made for the desk, Della said, “Don’t sit there. That’s no longer your place. I want you to meet my new partner,” and she waved to Ricca.

“So that’s how it is,” I said. “Did he talk you into it or did you talk him into it, and what’s the idea of the gun?”

“Neither,” Della said. “Miss Harris Brown talked you out of it.”

I took out a packet of cigarettes together with the keys of the suitcase. Without letting them see the keys I let them slide into the side of the chair. I lit a cigarette and blew smoke at her. I could tell by the way she was breathing that there was going to be an explosion before long. She was only keeping control of herself because she wanted to prolong what she imagined was my agony. She was pale, and her eyes were deadly, and her breasts were rising and falling under the thin stuff of her dress as if she were suffocating.

“I told you at the time,” I said, “that little mare was drunk.”

“I know what you told me, Johnny,” she said her voice going shrill. “But I haven’t been wasting my time this afternoon. I have been making enquiries. You may not know it, but the guards log all cars that come to the gates. It didn’t take long to find the number of the Lincoln that brought you back the night you killed Reisner. It didn’t take long for Hame to find out the owner of the car is Virginia Laverick who has a beach cabin not far from here. Nor did it take long for me to find out she works at Keston’s in Miami, and Raul under a little pressure told me you and she often go there for dinner.”

I wasn’t surprised. I knew she might dig out all this information as soon as she had left me after the scene on the terrace.

“Do we have to go into this with Ricca here?” I said. “It can’t be much fun for him.”

Ricca’s smile widened.

“I thought it might be safer for you if I stuck around,” he said. “Della’s temper is a little uncertain. She wanted to shoot you as you walked in. I had trouble persuading her to change her mind.”

“Maybe you’d better stay, then,” I said.

“Do you deny you have an apartment on Franklin Boulevard, and this girl visits you there?” Della cried, leaning forward and glaring at me.

“No, I don’t deny it,” I said. “What are you going to do about it?”