James Cain: Double Indemnity

I took it easy, but still it was only 12:18 when I got back to Griffith Park. I drove up into Glendale, because I didn't want to be more than two or three minutes ahead of time. I thought about Sachetti and how he was going to make out with his alibi. He didn't have one, because that's the worst alibi in the world to be home in bed, unless you've got some way to prove it, with phone calls or something. He didn't have any way to prove it. He didn't even have a phone.

Just past the railroad tracks I turned, came on back, went up Riverside a little way, turned facing Los Feliz, and parked. I cut the motor and the lights. It was exactly 12:27. I turned around and looked, and saw my own car, about a hundred yards back of me. I looked into the little glade. No car was parked there. She hadn't come.

I held my watch in my hand. The hand crept around to 12:30. Still she hadn't come. I put my watch back in my pocket. A twig cracked-off in the bushes. I jumped. Then I wound down the window on the right hand side of the car, and sat there looking off in the bushes to see what it was. I must have stared out there at least a minute. Another twig cracked, closer this time. Then there was a flash, and something hit me in the chest like Jack Dempsey had hauled off and given me all he had. There was a shot. I knew then what had happened to me. I wasn't the only one that figured the world wasn't big enough for two people, when they knew that about each other. I had come there to kill her, but she had beaten me to it.

I fell back on the seat, and I heard footsteps running away. There I was, with a bullet through my chest, in a stolen car, and the owner of the car the very man that Keyes had been tailing for the last month and a half. I pulled myself up by the wheel. I reached up for the key, then remembered I had to leave it in there. I opened the door. I could feel the sweat start out on my head from what it took out of me to turn the handle. I got out, somehow. I began staggering up the road to my car. I couldn't walk straight. I wanted to sit down, to ease that awful weight on my chest, but I knew if I did that I'd never get there. I remembered I had to get the car key ready, and took it out of my pocket. I got there and climbed in. I shoved the key in and pulled the starter. That was the last I knew that night.

I don't know if you've ever been under ether. You come out of it a little bit at a time. First a kind of a gray light shines on one part of your mind, just a dim gray light, and then it gets bigger, but slow. All the time it's getting bigger you're trying to gag the stuff out of your lungs. It sounds like an awful groan, like you were in pain or something, but that's not it. You try to gag it out of your lungs, and you make those sounds to try and force it out. But away inside somewhere your head is working all the time. You know where you're at, and even if all kind of cock-eyed ideas do swim through that gray light, the main part of you is there, and you can think, maybe not so good, but a little bit.

It seemed to me I had been thinking, even before I began to come to. I knew there must be somebody with me there, but I didn't know who it was. I could hear them talking, but it wouldn't quite reach me what they were saying. Then I could hear it. It was a woman, telling me to open my mouth for a little ice, that would make me feel better. I opened my mouth. I got the ice. I figured the woman must be a nurse. Still I didn't know who else was there. I thought a long time, then figured it out I would open my eyes just a little bit and close them quick, and see who was in the room. I did that. At first I couldn't see anything. It was a hospital room, and there was a table pushed up near the bed, with a lot of stuff on it. It was broad daylight. Over my chest the covers were piled high, so that meant a lot of bandages. I opened my eyes a little bit further and peeped around. The nurse was sitting beside the table watching me. But over back of her was somebody. I had to wait till she moved to see who it was, but I knew anyway even without seeing.

It was Keyes.

It must have been an hour that I lay there after that, and never opened my eyes at all. I was there in the head by that time. I tried to think. I couldn't. Every time I tried to gag more ether out, there would come this stab of pain in my chest. That was from the bullet. I quit trying to gag out the ether then and the nurse began talking to me. She knew. Pretty soon I had to answer her. Keyes walked over.

"Well, that theatre program saved you."

"Yeah?"

"That double wad of paper wasn't much, but it was enough. You'll bleed a little bit for a while where that bullet grazed your lung, but you're lucky it wasn't your heart. Another eighth of an inch, and it would have been curtains for you."

"They get the bullet?"

"Yeah."

"They get the woman?"

"Yeah."

I didn't say anything. I thought it was curtains for me anyway, but I just lay there. "They got her, and I got plenty to tell you boy. This thing is a honey. But give me a half hour. I got to go out and get some breakfast. Maybe you'll be feeling better then yourself."

He went. He didn't act like I was in any trouble, or he was sore at me, or anything like that. I couldn't figure it out. In a couple of minutes an orderly came in "You got any papers in this hospital?"

"Yes sir, I think I can get you one."

He came back with a paper and found it for me. He knew what I wanted. It wasn't on Page 1. It was in the second section where they print the local news that's not quite hot enough to go on the front page. This was it:

MYSTERY SHROUDS GRIFFITH PARK SHOOTING

Two Held After Walter Huff, Insurance Man, Is Found

Wounded at Wheel of Car on Riverside

Drive After Midnight

Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Walter Huff, an insurance man living in the Los Feliz Hills, who was found unconscious at the wheel of his car in Griffith Park shortly after midnight last night, a bullet wound in his chest. Two persons were held pending a report on Huff's condition today. They are:

Lola Nirdlinger, 19.

Beniamino Sachetti, 26.

Miss Nirdlinger gave her address as the Lycee Arms Apartments, Yucca Street, and Sachetti as the Lilac Court Apartments, La Brea Avenue.

Huff apparently was shot as he was driving along Riverside Drive from the direction of Burbank. Police arriving at the scene shortly afterward found Miss Nirdlinger and Sachetti at the car trying to get him out. A short distance away was a pistol with one chamber discharged. Both denied responsibility for the shooting, but refused to make any further statement.

They brought me orange juice and I lay there trying to figure that out. You think I fell for it do you? That I thought Lola had shot me, or Sachetti maybe, out of jealousy, something like that? I did not. I knew who shot me. I knew who I had a date with, who knew I was going to be there, who wanted me out of the way. Nothing would change me on that. But what were these two doing there? I pounded on it a while, and I couldn't make any sense out of it, except a little piece of it. Of course 'Lola was following Sachetti again that night, or thought she was. That explained what she was doing there. But what was he doing there? None of it made sense. And all the while I kept having this numb feeling that I was sunk, and not only sunk for what I had done, but for what Lola was going to find out. That was the worst.

It was almost noon before Keyes came back. He saw the paper. He pulled up a chair near the bed. "I've been down to the office."

"Yeah?"

"It's been a wild morning. A wild morning on top of a wild night."

"What's going on?"

"Now I'll tell you something you don't know. This Sachetti, Huff, this same Sachetti that plugged you last night, is the same man we've been tailing for what he might know about that other thing. That Nirdlinger case."