James Chase - This Way for a Shroud

“Wad the hell are yuh playin’ at?” a voice snarled near him.

Pete stiffened and his heart skipped a beat. He looked quickly round.

Moe was sitting on his haunches, staring at Frances’s bobbing head as she swam farther out to sea. He looked an incongruous figure in his black suit, his hand-painted tie and his pointed white shoes with black explosions, among the half-naked sun-bathers sprawling around him.

“The man came to the door,” Pete said, speaking rapidly and trying to keep his voice steady. “Then the two girls came out. They mistook me for someone else. I hadn’t a chance to get going, so I went with them, and I’m waiting now to get her alone.”

“That’s wad happens when yuh don’t case the joint,” Moe said, his small eyes bright with suspicion. “I told that bum Louis.” He looked at his wrist-watch. “The cops will be at her place by now. Yuh got to hit her quick, Pete.”

“Amongst this lot?” Pete said sarcastically.

Moe turned his head and looked at the Big Wheel as it carried the little cars far into the sky.

“Get her on the Big Wheel,” he said. “Yuh can be nice an’ private in one of those cars. Hit her when yuh get to the top and shove her under the seat. They won’t spot her before yuh get away.”

Pete suddenly felt sick.

“Okay,” he said.

“Don’t slip up on this,” Moe said, his voice suddenly harsh. “Yuh don’t make more than one mistake in this outfit. She’s got to be hit. That’s orders, and if yuh can’t do it, I can.”

“I said okay,” Pete returned curtly.

“It’d better be okay.” Moe got to his feet. “I’ll be around, Pete. Yuh ain’t got much time; use it or I will.”

Pete looked back over his shoulder and watched the broad-shouldered, squat figure walk across the sand, picking his way over recumbent bodies, by-passing children building castles in the sand, stepping past fat matrons in one-piece swim-suits, and their fatter husbands, lolling in deck-chairs.

Pete watched him until, melting into the crowded background, he lost sight of him. But he knew he wouldn’t be far away, and he would be watching every move from now on.

Pete sat in the hot sun, sweat on his face and fear clutching at his heart. He faced up to the fact at last that he wasn’t going to kill Frances. He realized he had made up his mind about that when he had first seen her. He knew Moe would have struck her down as she came out on to the landing, and would have got away. He could have done the same thing, but that friendly smiling look in her eyes had saved her. He had to face up to the fact now, and he knew what it would mean. He was deliberately throwing his own life away. No one in the organization ever disobeyed an order and survived. Several of them had kicked against the organization’s discipline: three of them had actually got out of town before the organization had realized they had gone. One of them reached New York, another Miami, and the third one had got as far as Milan, Italy, before the long arm of the organization had struck.

But Pete wasn’t thinking of himself. This girl was too young, too lovely and too kind to the, he thought, digging his fingers into the sand as he tried to think how to save her. If he delayed much longer, Moe might strike himself. He had the nerve to walk up to Frances, stab her on this crowded beach and then shoot his way out. Moe might do it, unless he was satisfied he was going ahead with the job.

The only safe thing he could do was to warn Frances, and then tackle Moe himself. If he killed Moe, Frances would have an hour or so to get out of town and hide herself somewhere before the organization realized she had slipped through their fingers.

He would have to be very careful how he tackled Moe. Already Moe was suspicious. Moe was very fast with a gun: faster than he ever could hope to be. He would have to lull his suspicions somehow, and then go for him at the right moment.

But first he had to warn Frances, and before he could do that he had to get her away from the other two. If he told her when they were there, Buster would probably call a cop and stop him fixing Moe.

Everything depended on Moe’s death, Pete told himself. He looked towards the glittering sea. Frances’s blue bathing cap was bobbing towards him: she was coming in.

He took a grip on his fluttering nerves and waited for her.

The black-and-white checkered police car swung into Lennox Avenue, slowed to a crawl while Conrad leaned out of the window to catch a glimpse of the numbers of the houses.

“Across the road, about ten yards up,” he said to Bardin, who was driving.

Bardin pulled across the road and stopped the car outside the four-storey house. Both men got out of the car and stood for a moment surveying the house.

Conrad’s heart was beating unevenly. He was excited. When McCann had telephoned through to his office to tell him the girl, Frances Coleman, had been located at 35, Lennox Avenue, he could scarcely wait for Bardin to collect him in the police car.

“You’ll be soon out of your misery,” Bardin said, grinning. “What’s the betting she didn’t see anyone?”

“Come on, let’s ask her,” Conrad said, pushing open the garden gate. As he walked up the path to the front door, he spotted a movement in the ground floor window and caught sight of the shadow of a man, lurking behind the curtains. The shadow hurriedly ducked back out of sight as Conrad turned his head to look at the window.

Conrad paused to read the name-plates on the door, then dug his finger in the second bell, opened the front door and walked briskly across the hall and up the stairs, followed by Bardin.

They stopped outside the front door on the second-floor landing, and Conrad knocked. They waited a few moments, then as no one answered the door, Conrad knocked again.

“Looks as if no one’s at home,” he said, frowning, after another minute’s wait. “Damn it! Now what are we going to do?”

“Come back later,” Bardin said philosophically. “I would have been surprised if anyone was in on a morning like this.”

They walked down the stairs together.

“Maybe the guy at the window knows where she’s gone,” Conrad said as he reached the hall. “From the way he was peeping at us, he shouldn’t miss much.”

“What’s the excitement?” Bardin said. “We’ll come back this afternoon.”

Conrad was already knocking on the front door to the right of the main entrance. There was a longish delay, then the door opened and a tall, bent old man in a tight-fitting black suit regarded them with big, watery blue eyes.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I’m Paul Conrad of the District Attorney’s office, and this is Lieutenant Bardin, City Police,” Conrad said. “We have business with the people in the second-floor apartment. They seem to be out. You wouldn’t know when they will be back?”

The old man took out a big red silk handkerchief and polished his nose with it. Into his watery blue eyes came a look of intense excitement.

“You’d better come in, gentlemen,” he said, standing aside and opening the front door wide. “I’m afraid you will find my quarters a little untidy, but I live alone.”

“Thank you,” Conrad said, and as they followed the bent old figure into the front room, he and Bardin exchanged resigned glances.

The room looked as if it hadn’t been dusted or swept or tidied in months. On the old, well-polished sideboard stood an array of whisky bottles and about two dozen dirty glasses. Most of the bottles were empty, but the old man found an unopened one and began to pick off the tinfoil around the cap with unsteady fingers.

“Take a seat, gentlemen,” he said. “You musn’t think I’m used to living like this, but I lost my wife some years ago and I sadly miss her.” He managed to get the bottle open and looked vaguely at the dirty glasses. “I should introduce myself. I am Colonel Neumann. I hope you gentlemen will join me in a drink?”