Джеймс Чейз - You Never Know With Women

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantel as I came into the lounge. I was smothered in white plaster dust, my hair hung over my eyes, the sleeve of my coat was ripped, one knee showed through my trouser leg. If that wasn’t enough, blood ran down my face from a cut above my eye and the side of my neck where Ned had socked me was turning a nice shade of purple. With the elegant Parker draped over my shoulder it wasn’t hard to see we had run into trouble, and plenty of it.

Gorman sat motionless in an armchair, facing the door. His great arms rested on the arms of the chair, his thick fingers gripped the chair arms as if he wanted to squeeze the wood to pulp. His fat face was as stony as a cobbled sidewalk.

In another chair by the fireplace Veda Rux sat, stiff and upright, her lips pressed tightly together, her eyes carefully blank, but wide open. She was dressed in white: a strapless gown that held itself up by will-power or suction or something: the kind of gown you’d keep watching in case you missed anything.

I swung Parker off my shoulder and dumped him on the chesterfield. Neither Gorman nor Veda said anything. The tension in the room was terrific.

“He threw an ing-bing and I had to slug him,” I explained to nobody in particular and started to dust myself down.

“Did you get it?” Gorman asked. He didn’t look at Parker.

“No.”

I went over to the sideboard, poured myself a drink and sat down in a chair facing them. I knew I shouldn’t have come back to this house. I should have dumped Parker, picked up the compact when things had cooled off and had it all my own way. But playing it safe would have lost me Veda, and I didn’t reckon to lose her if I could help it.

Gorman didn’t move. The chair arms creaked as his grip tightened. I shot a quick look at Veda. She was relaxed now. A muscle in her cheek twitched. It kept pulling one side of her mouth out of shape.

I emptied the glass at a swallow. I wanted that drink. As I set down the glass, Parker stirred, groaned and tried to sit up. Nobody looked at him. He might have been at the bottom of the sea for all anyone cared, and that included me.

“I didn’t get it,” I said to Gorman, “and I’ll tell you why. Right from the start you’ve been too smart and too tricky. You and your pixey hadn’t the guts to get that compact for yourselves. So you put your smart minds together and you thought up an idea to get it so you’d be in the clear, and the sucker you picked on to do the job would be way out on a limb if he failed. It wasn’t a bad idea: a little elaborate, but still, not a bad idea. It might have worked, but it didn’t because you knew all the answers and you kept them to yourself. You picked on me because I was in a jam. You found out the cops were waiting for a chance to throw a hook into me. You found out I was broke, and there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for solid money.

Where you slipped up was you didn’t take the trouble to find out just how far I’d go for money. You knew I’d been mixed up in a couple of shady deals, but even at that you were scared to put your cards on the table and tell me you wanted me to steal something from Brett. You thought if it came to a proposition like that I’d buckle at the knees and squeal to the cops. But I wouldn’t have done that, Gorman. Cracking a safe wouldn’t have scared me away from a thousand bucks, but you weren’t smart enough to know it.”

Veda made a sudden little movement. It could have been a warning gesture or it might have been a nervous reflex. I didn’t know.

I went right on: “You don’t think I was sucked in by the sleep-walking act and the Cellini dagger, do you? I wasn’t. I knew the compact belonged to Brett, and for some reason or other you wanted it. I wouldn’t have given a damn one way or the other. I wanted your dough: that was all I cared about. But you weren’t smart enough to know it. If you’d told me the dagger case was a bomb I would have known what to do, but you didn’t. And when I found out it was a bomb I got rattled. Everything happened at once. I heard the ticking of the bomb and the guard coming all at the same time. I’d just opened the safe. All I could think of was to get rid of that bomb. I shoved it in the safe, locked the safe and went for the guard as he came in. I saw the compact in the safe, but I didn’t touch it. It was still there when I closed the door of the safe. I could have handled the guard, only the second guard showed up.

“It looked as if I was in a mess, and then your home-made bomb went off. The safe door was blown off its hinges and it went through those two guards the way a hot knife goes through butter. It wrecked the room too. It was a good bomb, Gorman. Whoever made it can be happy about that. I stayed long enough to see nothing but dust was left in the safe. The compact simply doesn’t exist any more. Then I came away.” I got up, walked to the sideboard, poured another drink.

Parker was sitting up now, his hand to his jaw. He stared at me fixedly, his face white and drawn, his eyes vicious. “He’s lying,” he said to Gorman. “I know he’s lying.” Gorman released a little puff of breath.

“I hope he is,” he said in his scratchy voice.

“Go and look for yourself,” I said. “Take a look at those two guards. That’s murder, Gorman.”

“Never mind the guards,” Gorman said. “It’s the compact I’m interested in. Why did you leave it in the safe when you heard the guard coming?”

“I’d be a sucker to let him find it on me, wouldn’t I?” I said evenly. “Look at it this way. If I was caught and they found nothing on me it’d make a difference to the sentence I’d get. I thought of that. I could have taken the compact after I’d settled the guard.”

“On the other hand,” Gorman said smoothly, “you might have put the compact in your pocket and chanced being caught.”

Did he think I’d come back here with the compact in my pocket? Did he think I was that much of a sucker? The way I was playing it put me in a sweet position. He might think until he was blue in the face that I had the compact but he couldn’t prove it.

“Go ahead and search me,” I said. “Look me over if it’ll set your mind at rest.”

Gorman nodded to Parker.

“Search him,” he said.

Parker went over me as if he’d like to tear me to pieces. I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck as his hands ran over my clothes. It was an uncomfortable feeling. I expected him to bite me.

“Nothing,” he said, his voice harsh with fury. “Is it likely the rat would have it on him?”

“Now look,” I said, stepping away from him, “you guys are sore. All right, I understand that. But don’t take it out on me. I did what I was paid to do. It’s not my funeral you had to act smart and mix a bomb up in this.”

Parker turned on Gorman. He was shaking with rage.

“I told you not to go to him. I warned you, didn’t I? I said over and over again we didn’t want a man with his record. You knew he was tricky. Now look where he’s landed us: we don’t know whether he’s lying or not. We don’t even know if the case was blown to bits as he says or whether he’s hidden it somewhere.”

“Don’t get excited, Dominic,” Gorman said and looked across at me. “He’s right, Mr. Jackson. We don’t know if you’re lying. But we can find out.” He lifted his hand out of his pocket. The blue-nosed automatic looked like a toy in his thick fingers. “And don’t think I wouldn’t shoot, my friend. No one knows you’re here. We could bury you in the garden and it might be years before you were found. You might never be found. So don’t try any tricks.”

“I told you what happened,” I said. “If you don’t believe it that’s your look out. Waving a gun at me won’t get you anywhere.”