Ed McBain (18 page)

He snapped the suitcase shut, called the police to tell them he'd just subdued a burglar in his apartment, and then left to catch his Las Vegas plane.

He started with the biggest hotels first.

"Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Radner," he said. "Are they registered here?"

The clerks all looked the same.

"Radner, Radner. The name doesn't sound familiar, but I'll check, sir."

Then the shifting of the ledger, the turning of pages, the signature largely scrawled, and usually illegible.

"No, sir, I'm sorry. No Radner."

"Perhaps you'd recognize the woman, if I showed you her picture?"

"Well..The apologetic cough. "Well, we get an awful lot of guests, sir."

And the fair-haired girl emerging from the wallet. The black-and-white, stereotyped snapshot of Alice Trimble, and the explanation, "She's a newlywed with her husband."

"We get a lot of newlyweds, sir." The careful scrutiny of the head shot, the tilting of one eyebrow, the picture held at arm's length, then closer.

"No, I'm sorry. I don't recognize her. Why don't you try...?"

He tried them all, all the hotels, and then all the rooming houses and then all the motor courts. They were all very sorry. They had no Radners registered, and couldn't identify the photograph.

So he started making the rounds then.

He lingered at the machines, feeding quarters into the slots, watching the oranges and lemons and cherries whirl before his eyes, but never watching them too closely, always watching the place instead, looking for the elusive woman named Alice Trimble Radner.

Or he sat at the bars, nursing endless scotches, his eyes fastened to the mirrors that commanded the entrance doorways. He was bored, and he was tired, but he kept watching, and he began making the rounds again as dusk tinted the sky, and the lights of the city flicked their siren song on the air.

He picked up the local newspaper in the hotel lobby.

In his room, drinking a scotch from the minibar, he flipped through the paper idly, and almost missed the story.

The headline read:
FATAL ACCIDENT
. The subhead read:
FATE CHEATS BRIDE.

The article told of a Pontiac crashing through a highway guardrail, instantly killing its occupant. Initial inspection indicated defective brakes. The occupant's name was Anthony Radner. There was a picture of Alice Trimble Radner leaving the coroner's office. She was raising her hand to cover her face when the picture was taken. It was a good shot, close up, clear. The caption read:
Tearful Alice Trimble Radner, leaving the coroner's office after identifying the body of her husband, Anthony Radner.

Davis did not notice any tears on Alice's face.

Little Alice Trimble, he thought.

Shy, often awkward.

Honest.

A simple girl.

Well, murder is a simple thing, he thought. All it involves is killing another person or persons. You can be shy and awkward, and even honest—but that doesn't mean you can't be a murderer besides. So what is it that takes a simple girl like Alice Trimble and transforms her into a murderess?

Figure it this way. Figure a louse named Tony Radner who sees a way of striking back at the girl who jilted him and coming in to a goodly chunk of dough besides. Figure a lot of secret conversation, a pile of carefully planned moves. Figure a wedding, planned to coincide with the day of the plotted murder, so the murderers can be far away when the bomb they planted explodes.

Radner gets to see Janet Carruthers on some pretext, perhaps a farewell drink to show there are no hard feelings. This is his wedding day, and he introduces her to his bride, Alice Trimble. They share a drink, perhaps, but the drink is loaded and Janet suddenly feels very woozy. They help her to the airport, and they stow the bomb in her valise. None of the pilots know Radner. The only bad piece of luck is the fact that the fire-warning system is acting up, and a mechanic named Mangione recognizes him. But, hey, those are the breaks.

Radner helps her aboard and then goes back to his loving wife, Alice. They hop the next plane for Vegas, and when the bomb explodes they're far, far away. They get the news from the papers, file claim, and come into two hundred thousand bucks.

Just like falling off Pier 8.

Except that it begins to go sour about there. Except that maybe Alice Trimble likes the big time now. Two hundred G's is a nice little pile. Why share it?

So Tony Radner meets with an accident. If he's not insured, the two hundred grand is still Alice's. If he is insured, there's more for her.

The little girl has made her debut. The shy, awkward thing has emerged.

Portrait of a killer.

The easy part was over, of course. The hard part was still ahead. He still had to tell Anne about it, and he'd give his right arm not to have that task ahead of him. Alice Trimble? The police would find her. She probably left Vegas the moment Radner piled up the Pontiac. She was an amateur, and it wouldn't be too hard to find her. But telling Anne, that was the difficult thing.

He looked at the newspaper photograph again.

He sat erect all at once, and swallowed a long gulp of his scotch, and then he took the snapshot of Alice Trimble from his wallet and compared it with the newspaper photo of the woman named Alice Trimble Radner, and said aloud, "Oh no," and went immediately to the phone.

He asked long distance for Anne's number, and then let the phone ring for five minutes before he gave up. He remembered the alternate number she'd given him then, the one belonging to Freida, the girl next door. He fished the scrap of paper out of his wallet, studying the number in Anne's handwriting, recalling their conversation in the restaurant. He got long distance to work again, and the phone was picked up on the fourth ring.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Freida?"

"Yes?"

"My name is Milt Davis. You don't know me, but Anne said I could leave a message here if..."

"Oh, yes. Anne's told me all about you, Mr. Davis."

"Well, good, good. I just tried to phone her, and there was no answer. I wonder if you know where I can reach her?"

"Why, yes," Freida said. "She's in Las Vegas."

"What!"

"Yes. Her brother-in-law was killed in a car crash there. She..."

"You mean she's here in Vegas? Now?"

"Well, I suppose so. She caught a plane early this evening. Yes, I'm sure she's there by now. Her sister called, you see. Alice. She called and asked me to tell Anne to come right away. Terrible thing, her husband getting killed like..."

"Oh, Christ!" Davis said. He thought for a moment and then asked, "Did she tell you where she'd be staying?"

"Yes, with her sister."

"Yes, where?"

"Just outside of Las Vegas. A rooming house. Alice and Tony were lucky to find a nice..."

"Please, the address!"

"Well, all
right,
" Freida said, a little miffed. She read off the address and Davis scribbled it quickly. He said good-bye, and hung up immediately. There was no time for checking plane schedules now. No time for finding out which plane Anne had caught out of Frisco, nor for finding out what time it had arrived in Vegas.

There was only time to tuck MacGregor's .38 into the waistband of his trousers and then run like hell down to the street. He caught a cab and reeled off the address, and then sat on the edge of his seat while the lights of Vegas dimmed behind him.

When the cabbie pulled up in front of the clapboard structure, he gave him ten dollars and then leaped out of the taxi. He ran up the front steps, rang the doorbell, and heard footsteps approaching inside. A white-haired woman opened the door.

"Alice Radner," Davis said. "Where?"

"Upstairs, but who...?'"

Davis brushed past the woman and started up the flight of steps, not looking back. There was a door at the top of the stairwell. He rapped on it loudly. When he received no answer, he shouted, "I know you're in there! Open the goddamn door!"

The door opened instantly.

"Come in," a woman's voice said.

She was tall, and redheaded, and beautiful, with a pale complexion and blue eyes set against the ivory of her skin. She stared at Davis solemnly. A .22 caliber pistol was steady in her hand.

"Where is she?" Davis asked, and stepped into the room. Anne was lying oh the bed, her hands tied behind her, a gag in her mouth. He made a move toward her just as a voice came from outside the closed door.

"Mrs. Radner?"

The landlady.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine, Mrs. Mulready. He's a friend of mine. Everything's all right, thanks."

He heard her footsteps retreating. He turned to the redhead again. The .22 was still steady in her hand.

"It all seemed out of whack," he said, "but I didn't know just where. It all pointed to Tony Radner and Alice Trimble, but I couldn't conceive of her as a murderess. Sure, I figured Tony led her into it. A woman in love can be talked into anything. But when I learned about Tony's accident here, a new Alice Trimble took shape. Not the woman who was talked into anything, and not the woman who'd do anything for love. This new Alice Trimble was a cold-blooded killer."

Davis saw Anne's eyes widen.

"Tell me," he said. "Was your sister a redhead?"

Anne nodded.

"I never thought to ask," he said. "About her hair. I had her picture and I thought that was all I needed."

There was a puzzled, apprehensive look of recognition in Anne's eyes now. All at once, Davis realized he'd said, "
Was
your sister a redhead?" Past tense. Was.

"I'm sorry," he said, and drew a deep breath. "Alice is dead."

She flinched as if he's struck her.

"Believe me," he said, "I'm sorry. I..." He wiped his hand across his lips and then said, again, "I'm sorry, Anne."

Tears sprang into her eyes. He went to her in spite of the .22 that was still pointed at him, ripped the gag from her mouth, and said again, "I'm sorry."

She was shaking her head now. "I don't understand," she said.

"Alice left you on the sixth," he said, "to meet Tony Radner, allegedly to marry him. She didn't know about the trap that had been planned by Tony and Janet Carruthers, who wanted to be free of her husband more than anything else in the world. But not at the expense of cutting herself off without a cent." He turned to the redheaded woman holding the gun. "Am I right so far, Janet? Or should I call you Mrs. Radner now?"

"Be my guest," Janet said. "You're doing fine so far."

"Alice met Tony as scheduled on the day they were to be married. He probably suggested a drink in celebration, drugged her, and then took her directly to the airport. You met him there because she was being insured as Janet Carruthers, and your signature was necessary on the insurance policy. The beneficiaries were Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Radner. That's who you are now, am I right?"

"Ever since the afternoon of the crash," Janet said. "You've got it all right except for the drug, Mr. Davis. That would have been overdoing it a bit."

"What'd Tony do, just get her too damned drunk to know what was going on?"

"Exactly. Her wedding day, you know. It wasn't difficult."

A sob caught in Anne's throat. Davis glanced at her briefly and then said to Janet, "Did Tony know he was going to be driving into a pile of rocks?"

Janet smiled. "Poor Tony. No, I'm afraid he didn't know. That part was all my idea. Even down to stripping the brakes. Tony never knew what hit him."

"Neither did all the people on that DC-4. It was a long way to go for a lousy hunk of cash," Davis said. "Was Tony insured, too?"

"Yes," Janet said, "but not for much." She smiled. "Enough, though."

"I still don't know how you hoped to swing it. You obviously sent for Anne because you were afraid someone would recognize you in Frisco. Hell, someone would have recognized you sooner or later, anyway."

"In Mexico?" Janet asked. "Or South America? I doubt it. Two hundred thousand can buy a lot outside of this country, Mr. Davis. Plus what I'll get on Tony's death. I'll manage nicely, don't you worry," she said, and smiled pleasantly, and leveled the gun at his head.

Davis smiled back.

"Go ahead," he said. "Shoot. And then try to explain the shots to your landlady."

"Oh, is that what you think?" Janet said, and walked to the dresser. She opened a drawer and came out with a long, narrow cylinder. The cylinder had holes punched into its sides, and Davis knew a silencer when he saw one. He saw her fitting the silencer to the end of the .22 and he saw the dull gleam in her eyes and knew it was time to move. He threw back his coat and reached for the .38 in his waistband.

The .22 went off with a sharp
pouff
and he felt instant pain when the small bullet ripped into his shoulder. But he'd already squeezed the trigger of the .38 and Janet's arm jerked as his larger bullet tore into flesh and bone. Her fingers opened, and the silenced gun fell to the floor. He kicked it out of her reach.

Footsteps were rushing up the stairs. Outside the door, the landlady shouted, "What is it, Mrs. Radner? What
is
it?"

"Call the police!" Davis yelled through the closed door. "Now!"

"You don't know what you're doing," Janet said. "This will kill my father."

"Your father still has Nick," Davis said. "And his porcelain." He paused and looked directly into Janet's eyes. "That's all he ever had."

When you start writing parodies of private eye stories, it's time to stop writing them. By the time this story was published, in January of 1955, I had written the last of the Matt Cordell stories and was ready to give up on the subgenre. Not only was I finding it increasingly more difficult to justify a private citizen investigating murders, but Cordell presented the added problem of an investigator who wasn't even licensed!
Manhunt
published this story under the Hunt Collins byline. It was a kiss-off to private eyes in general and Matt Cordell in particular.

S
HE WAS CLEANING FISH BY THE KITCHEN SINK WHEN
I climbed through the window, my .45 in my hand. She wore a low-cut apron, shadowed near the frilly top. When she saw me, her eyes went wide, and her lips parted, moist and full. I walked to the sink, and I picked up the fish by the tail, and I batted her over the eye with it