James Chase - The Guilty Are Afraid

As I got to my feet, there came a knock on the door. It was delivered by a set of knuckles that would have no trouble in ramming your teeth down your throat: knuckles that didn’t belong to any member of any hotel staff: knuckles you’d expect to find on the hands of the law.

I stood still, my brain racing. Had I been spotted leaving the beach? Had I left any fingerprints in the cabin?

Knuckles banged on the door again and a voice growled, “Come on! Open up! We know you’re in there.”

I took my wallet from my pocket, took the match-folder out and slid it under the edge of the fitted carpet, then I put my wallet back, stepped to the door, turned the key and opened the door.

Candy stood there, chewing, his dark eyes hostile. Behind him were two big plainclothes men: their faces stony and their eyes alert.

“Come on,” Candy said in a flat, bored voice. “Captain Katchen wants you.”

“What for?” I said, not moving.

“He’ll tell you. Are you coming rough or smooth?”

I hesitated, then, seeing the odds were against me, I picked my hat off the bed and said I’d come smooth.

Chapter 6

I

The night clerk’s eyes bulged out of his head like organ stops when he saw me come out of the elevator, surrounded by Candy and his two hunks of beef. This was the second time I had been taken away from the hotel by the law, and I had an idea that if I survived this trip, the management would probably ask me to leave.

But I wasn’t any too sure that I would survive the trip. I remembered what Katchen had said at our last meeting and I had a depressing idea he wasn’t bluffing.

We went across the lobby, down the steps to the waiting police car. The two plainclothes men got in the front and Candy and I got in the back.

The car went off with the usual frantic rush and with the usual wailing siren, leaving the kerb so fast the jerk nearly dislocated my neck.

Candy sat beside me like a rock that has been baked in the sun. I could feel the heat of his body, and although I couldn’t see much of his face in the darkness of the car I could hear the steady movement of his jaws as he chewed.

“Okay if I smoke?” I said, more or less for something to say.

“Better not,” Candy said, his voice flat and cold. “I was told to bring you in rough.”

“What’s biting the Captain?”

“If you don’t know, how should I?” Candy said, and there the conversation ceased.

I stared out of the window. I wasn’t happy. There was a chance that someone had seen me on the beach and had phoned in my description. I had visions of being grilled. If Katchen conducted the grilling, I knew I was in for a bad time.

No one said anything until we pulled up outside the police headquarters, then Candy groped in his hip pocket and produced a pair of handcuffs.

“Got to put the nippers on,” he said, and I thought I detected an apologetic note in his voice. “The Captain likes everything ship-shape.”

“Are you arresting me?” I asked, offering my wrists.

The cold bite of the steel bracelets added to my depression.

“I’m not doing anything,” Candy said, getting out of the car. “The Captain wants to talk to you—that’s all there’s to it.”

He and I walked across the sidewalk and up the steps into the charge room, leaving the two plainclothes men in the car.

The desk sergeant, a big, fat-faced man, looked at me and then at Candy, who shook his head and kept on, through a doorway, up some stairs and along a passage to a door at the far end. I walked at his heels.

He paused outside the door, rapped once, then turned the handle and shoved the door wide open. He put his hand on my arm and moved me into a big room that contained a desk, six upright chairs, a couple of filing cabinets, Captain Katchen, Lieutenant Rankin and a tall, thin man around forty with straw-coloured hair, rimless glasses and a face of an eager ferret.

Candy said, “Brandon here, Captain,” then stepped back, giving me the stage.

I took a couple of steps forward and stopped. Katchen was standing by the window, his massive face dark with congested blood. He looked at me the way a caged tiger might look at a fat lamb that is being marched past its cage.

Rankin sat on one of the upright chairs, his hat tipped over his eyes, a cigarette burning between his fingers. He didn’t turn his head to look at me.

The straw-haired man eyed me with the interest and the professional detachment of a bacteriologist confronted with an obscure germ that might or might not be a potential killer.

“Why is this man handcuffed, Captain?” he asked in a soft, Ivy League voice.

Katchen suddenly appeared to have difficulty in breathing.

“If you don’t like the way I make my arrests, you’d better talk to the Commissioner,” he said in a voice that could have stripped rust off any lump of old iron.

“Is this man under arrest then?” the straw-haired man asked, his voice a polite inquiry.

Even if he had the face of a ferret and an Ivy League accent, he was rapidly becoming my favourite member of this oddly assorted trio.

Katchen bent his glaring stare on Candy.

“Take those goddam bracelets off,” he said, his voice muffled with rage.

Candy came over to me, slid a key into the lock, twisted and the cuffs dropped into his hand. With his back turned to Katchen he allowed himself a slow, deliberate wink at me. He moved away while I went through an elaborate pantomime of rubbing my wrists and looking injured.

“Sit down, Mr. Brandon,” the straw-haired man said. “I’m Curme Holding of the District Attorney’s office. I heard Captain Katchen wanted to see you so I thought I would see you too.”

I began to feel less depressed.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Holding. I feel in need of protection. The Captain has already talked to me once today. So I’m more than pleased to see you.”

Holding took off his glasses, inspected them and put them back on again.

“Captain Katchen wouldn’t do anything out of the line of duty,” he said, but he didn’t sound as if he meant it.

I smiled.

“Maybe the Captain has a sense of humour. I took his talk seriously, but maybe you could be right. You have only to look at the deep-seated kindness in his face to realize he could be a great little kidder.”

Katchen made a growling sound deep in his throat and moved from the window towards me. He looked like a gorilla disturbed at feeding time.

“Will you ask the questions, Captain, or shall I?” Holding said, sudden steel in his voice.

Katchen paused. His little red-flecked eyes moved from me to Holding, who stared at him with the bored expression of a man watching a very tough gangster movie and finding it phony.

“Now you’ve got your oar in, you can handle it yourself,” Katchen snarled, biting off each word. “I’m going to talk to the Commissioner. There’s too much goddam interference from your office. It’s time someone did something about it.”

He went past me, out through the doorway and slammed the door behind him. The room rocked a little under the percussion.

Sergeant Candy said, “You won’t need me, Mr. Holding?”

“That’s okay, Sergeant.”

I heard the door open, but I didn’t look around to see Candy leave. The door closed behind him gently in sharp contrast to the exit made by Katchen.

“Well, now, Mr. Brandon, would you take a seat?”

Holding said, and waved to a chair opposite the desk. He got up and took the desk chair.

As I sat down I met Rankin’s blank stare. I got no information from it: it was neither friendly nor hostile.

Holding moved a pencil from the blotter to the pen tray and gave me a hard look from behind the screen of his glittering glasses.