James Chase: You Never Know With Women

I said I’d do it.

NOW THAT HE HAD ME ON THE dotted line, Gorman wasn’t giving me a chance to change my mind. He wanted me out at his place right away. It didn’t matter about going back to my rooms to pick up any overnight stuff. I could borrow anything I wanted. He had a car outside, and it wouldn’t take long to get to his place, where there were drinks and food and quiet in which to talk things over. I could see he wasn’t going to let me out of his sight now or use a telephone or check his story or tell anyone he and I had made a deal. The promise of a drink decided me. I agreed to go along with him.

But before we started we had a little argument over the money. He wanted to pay by results, but I didn’t see it that way. Finally I squeezed two of the Cs out of him and persuaded him to agree to part with two more before I did the actual job. I would receive the balance when I handed over the compact.

Just to show him I didn’t trust him further than I could throw him, I put the two bills in an envelope with a note to my bank manager, and on the way down to the street level I dropped the envelope into the mail chute. At least, if he tried to double-cross me, he wouldn’t get his paws again on those two bills.

An early-vintage Packard Straight Eight cluttered up the street outside the office. The only thing in its favor was its size. I had expected something black and glittering and streamlined to match the diamond, and this old jalopy came as a surprise.

I stood back while Gorman squeezed himself into the backseat. He didn’t get in the car: he put it on. I expected the four tires to burst as he settled himself in, but they held. After making sure there was no room in there with him, I got in beside the driver.

We roared out of town, along Ocean Boulevard, into and over the foothills that surrounded the city in the shape of a horseshoe.

I couldn’t see much of the driver. He sat low behind the steering wheel and had a chauffeur’s cap pulled down over his nose and he stared straight ahead. All the time we drove through the darkness he neither spoke nor looked at me.

We zigzagged through the foothills for a while, then turned off into a canyon and drove along a dirt road, bordered by thick scrub. I hadn’t been out this way before. Every so often we’d pass a house. There were no lights showing.

After a while I gave up trying to memorize the route and let my mind dwell on the two hundred bucks I’d mailed to the bank. At last I would have something to wave at the wolf when next he called at the office.

I wasn’t kidding myself what this job was about. I’d been hired to rob a safe. Never mind the elaborate buildup: the poor little stripper, scared of the big, bad millionaire, or the phoney dagger made by Mr. Cellini. I didn’t believe one word of that tall tale. Gorman wanted something that Brett had in the safe. Maybe it was a powder compact. I didn’t know, but whatever it was, he wanted it badly, and had come to me with this cooked-up yarn so as to have a back door to duck through in case I turned him down. He hadn’t the nerve to tell me he wanted me to rob Brett’s safe. But that’s what he was paying me to do. I had taken the money, but that didn’t mean I was going through with it. He said I was tricky and smooth. Maybe I am. I’d go along with him so far, but I wasn’t going to jump into anything without seeing where I was going to land. Anyway, that’s what I told myself, and at that time I believed it.

We were at the far end of the canyon now. It was damp down there and dark, and a thin white mist hung above the ground. The car headlights bounced off the mist and it wasn’t easy to see what was ahead. Somewhere in the mist and darkness I could hear the frogs croaking. Through the misty windshield the moon looked like a dead man’s face and the stars like paste diamonds.

The car suddenly swung through a narrow gateway, up a steep driveway, screened on either side by a high, thick hedge. A moment later we turned a bend and I saw lighted windows hanging in space. It was too dark even to see the outline of the house and everything around us was quiet and still and breathless—it was as lonely out there as the condemned cell at San Quentin.

A light in a wrought-iron coach lantern sprang up over the front door as the car pulled up with a crunch of tires on gravel. The light shone down on two stone lions crouching one on either side of the porch. The front door was studded with brass-headed nails and looked strong enough to withstand a battering ram.

The chauffeur ran around to the rear door and helped Gorman out. The light from the lantern fell on his face and I looked him over. There was something about his hooked nose and thick lips that struck a chord in my memory. I’d seen him somewhere before, but I couldn’t place him.

“Get the car away,” Gorman growled at him. “And let us have some sandwiches, and remember to wash your hands before you touch the bread.”

“Yes, sir,” the chauffeur said and gave Gorman a look that should have dropped him in his tracks. It wasn’t hard to see he hated Gorman. I was glad to know that. When you’re playing it the way I had it figured out, it’s a sound thing to know who is on whose side.

Gorman opened the front door, edged in his bulk and I followed. We entered a large hall; at the far end was a broad staircase leading to the upper rooms. On the left were double doors to a lounge.

No butler came to greet us. No one seemed interested in us now we had arrived. Gorman took off his hat and struggled out of his coat. He looked just as impressive without the hat, and as dangerous. He had a bald spot on the top of his head, but his hair was clipped so close it didn’t matter. His pink scalp glistened through the white bristles so you scarcely noticed where the hair left off.

I tossed my hat on a hall chair.

“Come in, Mr. Jackson,” he said. “I want you to feel at home.”

I went with him into the lounge. Walking at his side made me feel like a tug bringing in an ocean liner. It was a nice room with a couple of chesterfields in red leather and three or four lounging chairs drawn up before a fireplace big enough to sit in. On the polished boards were Persian rugs that made rich pools of color, and along the wall facing the French windows was a carved sideboard on which displayed a comprehensive collection of bottles and glasses.

A thin, elegantly dressed man pulled himself out of a lounging chair by the window.

“Dominic, this is Mr. Floyd Jackson,” Gorman said; and to me he went on, “Mr. Dominic Parker, my partner.”

My attention was riveted on the bottles, but I gave him a nod to be friendly. Mr. Parker didn’t even nod. He looked me over and his lips curled superciliously and he didn’t look friendly at all.

“Oh, the detective,” he said with a sneer, and glanced at his fingernails the way women do when they’re giving you the brush-off.

I hitched myself up against one of the chesterfields and looked him over. He was tall and slender, and his honey-colored hair was taken straight back and slicked down. He had a long, narrow face, washed-out blue eyes and a soft chin that would have looked a lot better on a woman. From the wrinkles under his eyes and a little sag of flesh at his throat, I guessed he wouldn’t see forty again.

He was a natty dresser, if you care for the effeminate touch. He had on a pearl-gray flannel suit, a pale green silk shirt, a bottle-green tie and reverse calf shoes of the same color. A white carnation decorated his buttonhole and a fat, oval, gold-tipped cigarette hung from his over-red lips.

Gorman had planted himself in front of the fireplace. He stared at me with empty eyes as if he were suddenly bored with me.

“You’d like a drink?” he said, then glanced at Parker. “A drink for Mr. Jackson, don’t you think?”