Built for Trouble (13 page)

I spent the next day in the hills as usual, a short jaunt on foot for my daily constitutional, then the newspapers and a magazine I’d picked up. When I got back to the hotel, Carol was in the pool and there were a couple of older people sitting along the side. I showered and got into my trunks and went in for a dip.

She was a little upset at seeing me and for a while we splashed around avoiding each other, but that wasn’t very natural either, and before long we started to chat. When dinner hour came and the spectators left, we had the whole patio to ourselves. We stood in water up to our necks on the far side and talked in low tones.

“Any news?’” I asked.

Carol nodded. “I talked to Joe on the phone. He’ll speed things up—he’s drawing a certified check for Nola. That way she can withdraw any amount right away. You should have your money tomorrow.”

“Great,” I said softly. “Are you going down for it?”

“I have to phone him in the morning. Are you going to the same place again?”

“Sure. So?”

“I’ll bring it out, if Joe has it and I get back in time. Will that be all right?”

“Fine,” I said. “Now how about tonight?”

“I’m playing solitaire.”

“Oh, come now, we could buzz down to Santa Paula for a steak and have a few—”

“No. I—Maybe it was the drinks and maybe it was the tension of a long day and maybe it was—but it isn’t going to make any difference. I was as easy as Nola; it won’t happen again real soon.”

“You sound like something out of the YWCA,” I said.

“And that’s the way I’m going to act. If I get the money from Joe, I’ll drive out and meet you tomorrow. But strictly for business.”

And she meant it. After dinner I went down the hall and tapped at her door but she ignored it. I went out to a drugstore, phoned the hotel, and asked for Miss Taylor in room 16, but as soon as she knew who was talking, she hung up. I knew she’d been determined to stay on the other side of the line with me and, having fallen off the wagon, she felt chagrined. I came back to the room, tried tapping on her door once more, got a low “Go away, please,” and settled down with a magazine for the evening.

Wednesday I drove out to my spot once more. The morning passed uneventfully. About four I heard a car winding up the road toward me. I slipped the automatic out of the car pocket, made it ready for business, and poked it into my belt inside the shirt. When the car rounded the last bend and came into sight, I saw that it was not the Pontiac but a Plymouth and that it looked like the one I’d seen her in at Echo Park when she followed my car. So she had been to L.A. today. And most likely she’d had to drive Joe’s car back. Maybe something had gone wrong with her hack, but she was alone in the car now and when she stopped a few feet away, I got out and went over.

“Hi, paymaster. Welcome aboard,” I said.

And then the back door opened and Joe Lamb knelt there, the business end of a short-barreled revolver leveled at me.

“Don’t move, Baker,” he said, getting out of the car. “Turn around.”

“Are you nuts!” I said. “What good will this do?”

“Move.”

The gun was in my back now, prodding me toward the side of the road. When I was five feet from a huge boulder, Joe called a halt.

“Lean forward, Baker.” I fell toward the rock, and wound up leaning against it at an angle, my head turned back over my shoulder to watch Joe Lamb.

“Go to his car, Carol,” Joe ordered. “Nola says he keeps the gun in the glove compartment. Get it.”

“But Joe,” Carol said, “you said you were only making sure Eddie didn’t hold
his
gun on
you.
You told me—”

“Get the gun!”

Carol looked at me, then moved toward the car.

“You’ve cracked wide open, Lamb,” I said. “This will get you no place but the gas chamber. They’ll grab you so quick you’ll think—”

“Not very likely. You’re registered as Edwards and it’s going to take some time to straighten that out and identify you as Baker. By then the trail will be as cold as wet snow. They’ll probably write you off as a poor boob that picked up a hitch-hiker and got bumped off for his kindness. For sure they won’t come knocking on my door. I’m due in Las Vegas tomorrow to catch an act at the Desert Inn. There’s a singer I’m adding to my list of talent. So I’m driving up tonight, got a reservation at the Inn, and this is just a detour. No one knows I’m within a hundred miles of Ojai.”

“No one except the redhead,” I said, glancing toward where she rummaged in my car pocket. “How do you figure to muzzle her on something this big?”

“If you force me to pull this trigger, Baker,” he said grimly, “she automatically becomes an accessory to murder. She’ll have to keep her mouth shut. So don’t get brave; just be a good little boy and follow instructions.”

“Such as?”

“Holding still for a few minutes. The first order of business is a search of your car. The underside, behind the seats, the whole damn thing. We want that package and we know you haven’t—”

“Joe, I can’t find the gun,” Carol said.

Lamb passed his free hand quickly under my arms and then around in front. When his fingers touched the weapon he called Carol over.

“Damn it, be careful!” I said, as his hand slipped inside my shirt, “that trigger is—”

“Shut up, Baker,” Lamb barked. I was sweating now and beads of perspiration slid down my face. I sucked in my stomach so the gun would be free as he pulled it out; I didn’t want it to catch on anything. Not
that
gun! Out of the corner of my eye I could see Carol tugging at Joe’s elbow.

“Joe,” she yelled, “you’re insane. Let him—”

“Get hold of yourself, baby,” Joe said harshly. “All you got to do is hold his gun on him for a few minutes while I go over his car. We want that evidence. If it’s there I’ll find it and he’d better be praying that I do.”

“But, Joe,” she pleaded, “you aren’t going to kill anyone over a publicity stunt.”

Lamb held out my automatic to her. She was trembling now, her face white and her eyes big. Joe told her all she had to do was shut up and make sure I didn’t move. She extended a shaking hand toward the weapon, and the thought of that hair trigger flashed through my mind.

“Good God!” I yelled, “don’t let her—” I tried to push away from the rock, my eyes riveted to the automatic as her fingers closed over it, and as I moved, Joe whirled back toward me. He was holding my .45 by the barrel; her finger had already closed over the trigger. And in swinging back toward me, Joe must have pulled the gun a little, must have jarred it just enough.

The blast of the .45 was deafening, and Joe Lamb caught the slug somewhere in the ribs under his left arm. It knocked him three feet and spun him half around. The shot was still echoing, through the canyon when he fell face down in the brown dirt beside the road.

I moved fast. Carol still had the gun in her hand, and her fingers were white along the butt. If she relaxed and then squeezed again, we’d have another slug slamming out. I slapped the barrel aside, caught hold of it, and got my other hand on her finger. When I finally had the gun, Carol stood there trembling, her lips moving soundlessly, her hands reaching toward the fallen Joe Lamb.

“Get hold of yourself,” I said. She didn’t hear me. I swept one arm under her knees, caught her back in the other arm, carried her ten feet to a small boulder, and sat her down. “Don’t get off this rock,” I said hurriedly. “Just stay put for a minute and give a guy a chance to think.”

I went back to Lamb and took a close look, even though I knew it was useless. A .45 at arm’s length doesn’t leave any room for doubt. It looked like the bullet had smashed a rib on the way in. It had probably hit the backbone, because it hadn’t gone on through. His wasn’t a lingering death. I straightened up and then a shadow moved across in front of me. When I whirled around, Carol was there.

“Go back! I told you to—”

“I’ve killed a man,” she said, her small fists clenched. “I killed him, I—”

“Carol! Snap out of it!”

Her face turned toward me only for a second, then she looked toward Lamb again. “It was an accident. Surely they’ll realize it was an accident. I’ll go to the police and tell them exactly—”

“No. No, you can’t do that.”

“Of course I can. I must. They’ve got to believe me when I tell them how—”

I swung the door of Joe’s Plymouth open, picked him up, and dumped him on the floor of the back seat. We were in a hell of a bind, a lot worse than she knew, but I’d have to get through to her some way. I went to the place where Joe had lain and kicked dirt over the bloody earth. When I had the road cleaned up I took Carol’s arm and led her to my car, got her into the front seat.

“Now try to listen,” I said softly. “Sure it was an accident, and if there weren’t any other circumstances you could get by with no worry. Or at least I
think
they would believe you, but this one is bound to tie in with Hank Sawyer. That makes it different.”

“Hank Sawyer?”

“The fat lifeguard Nola worked with to frame me. You didn’t know him?”

“No. Not his name, I mean, but you—you mean he’s dead?”

“That’s right. It was only a small item in the paper, a routine case of poison from bad booze. To date, that is. But it won’t be routine if you open that pretty mouth of yours.”

Then I told her about the entire caper and exactly where each of us stood in the deal, and I finished with the tie-in they were sure to make if she didn’t play this right. “It’s ironic,” I said. “This shooting was an accident. You weren’t even aware that Hank was murdered. Either of these two things alone you might prove, but together they make a pair and no jury in the world would believe you on the two of them.”

“But they’d
have
to believe me. I didn’t even
know
Hank Sawyer, and there couldn’t be any reason for me to kill a total stranger. How could they think—?”

“You were Joe Lamb’s partner, and you were at the beach the day this caper got under way. They’re going to hammer that point home. They’ll add up the big stack of chips Nola is sure to make on this picture and maybe dozens more and they’ll put you in the same boat with Joe Lamb—the motive is the money you stand to lose if Nola’s balloon collapses. How are you going to beat it?”

Carol buried her face in her hands. “It can’t be that bad.”

“The hell it can’t! It’ll be worse. A couple of experienced hands from the homicide squad will go over this ground and in one hour they’ll have the picture so clear you’ll think they were standing behind you with a camera. They’ll know exactly where Joe stood when you sh—when he caught that slug and how his hand was on the barrel of the gun and where you stood and were
your
hand was. It’ll take them about three minutes to come up with a guess that he saw you pointing a gun and grabbed for it too late. The D.A. will pace back and forth in front of that jury box and point out that with Joe Lamb gone you get the whole commission instead of half and it isn’t uncommon for thieves to fight over the loot and—oh, hell, why go on. If you talk, you’re dead!”

There were tears in her eyes now and she was biting her nails, but at least she was seeing the picture. I looked toward the Plymouth, then turned back to Carol.

“We have no time to plan; all we can do is give Joe the same gaff he planned for. me. Motorist picks up hitchhiker and is killed for the cash in his wallet.”

“But Joe was on his way to Las Vegas. When he’s found here won’t there be some questions? And I’m at the hotel here in town and we’re partners and—”

“You’re very right,” I said, “and there’s only one answer. He’ll have to be found on the road somewhere between Los Angeles and Vegas.”

“But we’re nowhere near that highway.”

“I know,” I said, and pulled a California road map out of the glove compartment of the Ford. “But that’s where he’s going to be by morning.”

WE TALKED ANOTHER FIVE MINUTES about what had to be done and how we would handle it, and then I got out of the Ford, slipped the advertising section of the paper off the back seat, and went over to the back seat of the Plymouth. Using my handkerchief as a glove, I took Joe’s wallet out, worked the diamond-set lodge ring off his finger, and removed the wristwatch. I carefully covered him with the newspapers and rolled up all of the windows except the one on the driver’s side in front. His possessions and both guns I dropped on the floormat by the front seat and put a section of paper over them. When I got back to my car, Carol was sitting at the wheel, her head resting in her hands.

“Now remember that you want to establish your alibi carefully,” I said through the open window. “And yet you can’t be too obvious about it. Spend most of the evening in the lobby. Don’t play bridge; you’ll goof it so bad they can’t help but know you’re higher than a kite. Just thumb through some magazines and keep to yourself—they’ll know you’re there.”

“All right, Eddie. I’ll try.”

“Trying won’t quite do,” I said, “The whole thing depends on us getting Joe to hell out of here and you putting on a convincing act. You’re just a tourist, a career girl from Hollywood who’s taken a few days off to rest in the sun at Ojai. Tomorrow or the next day you’ll be called back to L.A. in a hurry and everyone at the hotel will be saying ‘poor thing’ and ‘it’s too bad—her business partner murdered’ and all the rest. Believe me, Carol, it will be better all around if nobody comes up with a ‘Didn’t you think she acted mighty peculiar last night?’ This whole thing depends on us keeping you and Joe’s death separated. Once someone makes any kind of connection, you’re involved up to here in
two
killings.”

“I know. And you—why are you doing this, Eddie? Until now you aren’t in any deeper than a shakedown. That’s a lot different than being tangled up in a murder charge.”

“I play the cards the way they’re dealt,” I said.

“But you really haven’t any cards now. Nola can’t help but know that Joe came here. He isn’t the brains. Nola sent him. I thought it was to pay you off, but she crossed me. I’m beginning to see that they didn’t count me in very far any place along the line. So now you’re holding the bag. Your hold over Nola fades fast if you drive Joe’s—if you move him.”