Ричард Деминг - She’ll Hate Me Tomorrow

“Police headquarters,” a gruff voice said in his ear. “Sergeant O’Brien.”

“This is Clancy Ross,” the gambler said. “I want to report my car stolen.”

“Oh, hello, Clancy. We already got something on that. Hold on. Lieutenant Redfern has been trying to reach you for a couple of hours.”

There was a wait, then Niles Redfern’s voice said, “Clancy? Where are you?”

“Home.”

“You haven’t been. I’ve been phoning there since before eight.”

“I pull the plug out of the jack when I take a nap,” the gambler said smoothly.

“Yeah? Well, I don’t think you’ve been napping. What’s been going on over there?”

“What do you mean?”

“A little after seven we got a report of heavy gunfire coming from the alley behind your place. When a squad car got there, there wasn’t a sign of anything. But in cruising the area they found a Lincoln all shot to hell parked on the next street. A check with DMV turned up that it’s yours.”

“Parked on what next street?” Ross asked.

“Elm. Just behind your club. What’s the story?”

“You know as much as I do, Lieutenant. I just called in to report the car stolen.”

There was silence for a moment. Then Redfern said, “That’s a pretty old gag, reporting a car stolen after it’s been in an accident.”

“Oh, was it in an accident? When you said it was all shot to hell, I thought you meant by bullets.”

“You know damn well what happened to it,” the lieutenant growled. “But I can see you aren’t going to confide in me. I can’t offhand think of any charges to bring against you. Want us to tow in the car?”

“I’ll phone a garage to come get it. But you can call off your stakeout.”

“How’d you know it was staked out?” Redfern inquired quickly.

“I know how you operate,” Ross said, and hung up.

After phoning a garage and making arrangements for the Lincoln to be picked up, he stripped and took a shower.

Ross prepared carefully for his date, but his preparations were a little odd. Before putting on his shirt, he buckled around his right arm, just below the elbow, the three-inch-wide leather strap the shoemaker had made for him. Threading the shoestring at the end of the elastic tape through the small metal ring at the base of the derringer’s butt, he tied it with a fisherman’s knot. When he held his hand to his side, the muzzle of the derringer hung about three inches above his wrist.

He chose a shirt with wide French cuffs and clasped the cuffs together with gold cufflinks. When he had slipped it on, buttoned it, and had slipped the tails into his trousers, he looked in the mirror. Even when he examined the reflection of his right arm closely, he could detect no evidence of the contrivance strapped under the sleeve.

For a moment he stood with his arms hanging loose at his sides. Then, suddenly, he snapped up his hand as though pointing a gun. He felt the elastic stretch and, as if by sleight of hand, the derringer was gripped in his palm.

Breaking the gun, he slipped a shell into each chamber and let it slide back up his sleeve again. He counted out four extra shells from the cartridge box and dropped them in the left side pocket of his trousers.

He unloaded his thirty-eight before slipping into his regular gun harness and dropped the shells into his right-hand trouser pocket. Then he pulled his suit coat over the harness and was ready for his date.

In the kitchen he found a paper bag, carried it into the front room, and loaded it with a fifth of Scotch, a quart of bourbon and a fifth of soda from the bar. He took the elevator downstairs and let himself out the back way.

The light over the back door was still out. Ross doubted that there would be any more moves by Bix Lawson that night, but his habit of anticipating possibilities made him decide he wanted the rear to be lighted when he returned later that night. Pulling a covered trash can over to the doorway, he stood on it and turned the bulb. As he suspected, it had merely been loosened. The light went on.

Jumping down off the trash can, he pushed it back to its former place.

He exercised another bit of caution before climbing into the Cadillac. Though he had been inside no more than a half-hour, and he really didn’t expect the car to have been tampered with, he lifted the hood and carefully examined the wiring system with a pencil flashlight. Finding no bombs connected to the starter, he slammed the hood and slipped behind the wheel.

Both acts were examples of what the gambler considered his habitual carefulness, but what was really no more than chronic alertness. His unloading of his thirty-eight before strapping it on had been another instinctive preparation for a rather remote possibility. Since he expected to be parted from the gun at some time during the evening, he saw no point in furnishing his enemies with an additional weapon which might be turned against him.

Nobody but the gambler himself would have considered any of these actions cautious, though. A truly cautious man wouldn’t have been heading into what he was certain could be nothing but a trap. He would have stayed home and gone to bed.

Ross took Lakeview Drive to Halfway Junction, just as he had the night he drove the woman who called herself Christine Franklin to the cottage, but when he turned off on the gravel road which circled the lake, he headed north instead of south. Muskie Lake was only about a half mile wide at its broadest point and about two miles long. He drove clear around it in order to approach Stowe Point from a direction opposite to the one by which he would be expected.

The gravel road hugged the shoreline of the lake at a distance varying from a dozen feet to not more than fifty. When he reached the tip of Stowe Point, he drove alongside a boarded-up cottage and cut his engine and lights. Christine Franklin-Vanita Bell’s cottage was only about a hundred yards beyond the tip of the point.

The overcast sky made it difficult even to see the road, but he could make out the cottage in the distance by the subdued light glowing from its front windows. He groped his way along the road, probing the darkness alongside each cottage he passed.

At the third cottage this side of Christine-Vanita’s he found what he was looking for. As the building’s windows were boarded up, it obviously was unoccupied, but a new Ford was parked next to it on the side away from her cottage.

He risked his pencil flashlight to examine the windshield. As he had expected, it bore the sticker of a car-rental service.

He had been reasonably certain that Bix Lawson knew nothing about this trap, but now he was sure. Local hoods would have used their own car. Only gunmen flying in from out of town would find it necessary to rent a car.

He moved on to check the remaining two cottages this side of Christine’s, but found no more concealed cars. Satisfied that whatever force he had to face couldn’t be larger than a single carload, he retraced his way to the parked Cadillac and drove back around the lake the way he had come.

When he approached the cottage from the other direction and pulled up alongside it to park, he saw, even before he got inside, that the woman had set the scene for romance. The only light was a subdued glow from the front windows, indicating that only the low-watt bulb she used as a night light was on.

Hearing the car drive up, Christine-Vanita opened the door as he was lifting the paper sack from the front seat.

“I’d almost given you up,” she called. “It’s a quarter to eleven.”

“I’m only fifteen minutes late,” he said as he neared the door. “I said ten or ten-thirty.”

She wore the same filmy blue negligée she had donned on his previous visit. She remained standing squarely in the doorway as he approached, so that the dimly lighted lamp behind her would silhouette her body and let him see that she wore nothing beneath it. At the last instant she stepped aside to let him enter.