Lawrence Block - The Girl with the Long Green Heart

The rest was frosting. We unpacked Doug’s suitcase and put his clothes away in the dresser and in the closet. With the end of my cigar, I burned a pair of holes in Gunderman’s shirt right above the bullet holes. They did not look exactly like .38-caliber powder burns but they were close enough for the time being.

We planted the fake wallet in his pocket, tossed Doug’s hat on his dresser, dropped our cigar butts in the ashtrays. Then for a finale, we tucked Gunderman in the closet and closed the door on him.

If the bitch had only shot him once, we could have staged it as suicide. But nobody shoots himself twice in the chest. It was as well to make it a murder and let them figure out why and by whom. We left him in the closet and went back to Gunderman’s room.

“Don’t get noticed on the way out,” I said.

“Right.”

“I’ll catch you at the office.”

“Right.”

I gave him a few minutes. Then I hefted a bag with W.J.G. properly embossed upon it, lifted the phone, told the desk to get my bill ready. They said they would. I gave the room a last check, left it, went to the elevator and rode down to the lobby. I should have been nervous. I wasn’t, for some odd reason. Everything was crystal clear now. All I had to do was go by the book. I was Wallace J. Gunderman, and I was checking out of their hotel, and once I was gone they could put me out of their minds forever. They would never fasten my name onto the dead thing a floor away.

I gave the room key to the clerk. He looked up at me brightly. “You had a call about an hour ago, Mr. Gunderman—”

“I know, I was in the shower. Any message?”

“No, he didn’t leave his name.”

“Well, I think I know who it was. No problem.”

He had my bill ready. While I checked it over he asked me if I had enjoyed my stay. I said I had. With phone calls and room service the tab came to a little short of twenty bucks. I put Gunderman’s Diners Club card on the counter, then snatched it back just as the clerk was reaching for it. I wanted to flash it but I didn’t want to risk a phony signature on the hotel books.

“Let me pay cash,” I said. “I don’t want to mix them up with charges in Canadian funds.”

He couldn’t argue with logic like that. I gave him a twenty, and he gave me change and stamped my bill and handed it to me. I stuck it in Gunderman’s wallet and stuck the wallet in my pocket and picked up my suitcase and headed for the door.

Nobody stopped me.

Doug had a few things to do. He had to clear out his apartment, and he had to turn the Barnstable offices into a ghost town. We were on too many official records and we had scattered too much correspondence to strike our sets completely, but Doug could wipe out some of the more obvious traces. This is easy when you have all the time in the world. We had to move fast, and we had to do what we could.

But that was a minor headache. The important thing was something else again. We had two definite facts to contend with — there was a dead man in a closet in the Royal York, and there was a man named Wallace J. Gunderman who had disappeared. If anybody matched the name and the body, then we were in trouble. The longer it took them to put the two together, the better off we were. We had given the body a name and a logical way of dying. Now we had to take the Gunderman identity and find a way to let it trail off and dissolve like smoke.

He had return reservations to Olean for the late afternoon. I called the airport and changed his reservations, asking them for the first plane to Chicago. They had a flight at three-fifteen. I booked a seat on the plane in Gunderman’s name.

Doug was waiting for me at the office. He had called Helen Wyatt to tell her that things had gone sour, and that she should let the other hired hands know as much. They didn’t stand any chance of getting involved — Gunderman alone had seen them, and he wasn’t going to tell anyone — and by the same token they weren’t likely to involve us. It was a courtesy call. When the ship sinks, a good captain at least lets the crew know about it.

“I’m packed and ready,” he said. “Got any cash?”

“A couple of hundred. You?”

“A little more. And there’s a little over twelve thou in the bank, the Barnstable account. If we can get it.”

“No problem there. A day or two from now it might be tight, but nobody’s going to put a freeze on our account for the time being.”

He whistled soundlessly. “We can’t get rich this way. Anyway, it’s a stake. I’m out a few thou but not as much as I expected.”

“You’re forgetting something.”

“What?”

“Terry Moscato.”

His face fell. “That’s ten grand.”

“Plus interest. Eleven thousand. That leaves us with cab-fare.”

“We can’t pay him.”

“We damn well have to. You don’t cross the man who bankrolls you. That’s one thing you don’t do. You can lie to your partner—”

“I’m not the only one, Johnny.”

“All right. Put a lid on it. You don’t stiff Moscato, not because it’s a case of honor among thieves but because you’d wind up dead. I mean it. He’s the easiest man to work with as long as you’re good, but if you play him bad you’ve had it. He is hard.”

“Eleven thousand dollars.”

“We’ve got twelve or so in the bank. And I’m holding Gunderman’s check for forty more.”

He’d forgotten about it. This was easy to do. We’d been crossed and skinned and sliced up for bait, and it was hard to regard that cashier’s check as anything more than a prop she’d left for the police to play with. Besides, it was a dead man’s check. A dead man’s check is not negotiable. It’s evidence of a receivable asset, and you can hold it as a claim against the estate of the deceased, but you cannot scrawl your name across the back of it and pass it to a friendly neighborhood teller. It’s locked up tight. Our check was signed by Gunderman, and he was as dead as you can get.

“But nobody knows this,” I said. “It’s going to be a long time before they know he’s dead. We can get rid of the paper long before then.”

“Discount it and sell it?”

“I think it’s easier to cash it. Just shove it the hell through the Barnstable account.”

“And when that check works its way back to his bank?”

“That’s days from now. And who’s going to look at it, anyway?” I crushed a cigarette in the ashtray. “There’s a big unknown here. I’m not sure how she’s going to play it. Right now she’s sure we’re going to get picked up for this one by nightfall. She left a deep wide trail and it leads straight to us and she’ll be expecting a call sometime this evening telling her that her husband is dead.”

“That’s the part I can’t believe.”

“That he married her?”

“Yeah.”

I made him believe it. Then I carried it further. She’d be waiting for that call, and by early evening she’d be starting to sweat. Cool or not, the act of killing was going to get to her sooner or later. And when she had time to think about it, she couldn’t miss seeing that it would be tough for her to keep her fingers clean once they picked us up and we talked.

Because we would have to talk, and we would have to sing out her name loud and clear. We might not be able to prove it. If we did, we were still up to our ears in it; as parties to the con game felony we were legally parties to the murder, like it or not. So we were in trouble, but she was going to have some of it rub off on her. She might not do a bit for murder, might not serve any time at all, but she would have it much easier if we escaped free and clear, and she couldn’t help figuring that out in time.