The Complete Crime Stories (41 page)

“Dave, how can you ask such a thing?”

“Do you know where he is?”

“… Yes.”

“That's all I want to know.”

I said it mechanically, because to tell you the truth I'd about decided she was on the up-and-up all the way down the line, and when she said that it hit me between the eyes like a fist. I could feel my breath trembling as we drove along, and I could feel her looking at me too. Then she began to speak in a hard, strained voice, like she was forcing herself to talk, and measuring everything she said.

“I know where he is, and I've known a lot more about him than I ever told you. Before that morning, I didn't tell you because I didn't want to wash a lot of dirty linen, even before you. Since that morning I haven't told anybody because—
I want him to escape!”

“Oh, you do!”

“I pulled you into it, when I discovered that shortage, for the reason I told you. So my children wouldn't grow up knowing their father was in prison. I'm shielding Charles now, I'm holding out on you, as you put it, because if I don't, they're going to grow up knowing their father was executed for murder. I won't have it! I don't care if the bank loses ninety thousand dollars, or a million dollars, I don't care if your career is ruined—I might as well tell you the truth, Dave—
if there's any way I can prevent it, my children are not going to have their lives blighted by that horrible disgrace.”

That cleared it up at last. And then something came over me. I knew we were going through the same old thing again, that I'd be helping her cover up something, that I wasn't going to have any more of that. If she and I were to go on, it had to be a clean slate between us, and I felt myself tighten. “So far as I'm concerned I won't have that.”

“I'm not asking you to.”

“And not because of what you said about me. I'm not asking you to put me ahead of your children, or anything ahead of your children.”

“I couldn't, even if you did ask me.”

“It's because the game is up, and you may as well learn that your children aren't any better than anybody else.”

“I'm sorry. To me they are.”

“They'll learn, before they die, that they've got to play the cards God dealt them, and you'll learn it too, if I know anything about it. What you're doing, you're ruining other lives, to say nothing of your own life, and doing wrong, too—to save them. O.K., play it your own way. But that lets me out.”

“Then it's good-bye?”

“I guess it is.”

“It's what I've been trying to tell you.”

She was crying now, and she took my hand and gave it a little jerky shake. I loved her more than I'd ever loved her, and I wanted to stop, and put my arms around her, and start all over again, but I didn't. I knew it wouldn't get us anywhere at all, and I kept right on driving. We'd got to the beach by then, by way of Pico Boulevard, and I ran up through Santa Monica to Wilshire, then turned back to take her home. We were done, and I could feel it that she had called the turn. We'd never see each other again.

How far we'd got I don't know, but we were somewhere coming in toward Westwood. She had quieted down, and was leaning against the window with her eyes closed, when all of a sudden she sat up and turned up the radio. I had got so I kept it in shortwave all the time now, and it was turned low, so you could hardly hear it, but it was on. A cop's voice was just finishing an order, and then it was repeated: “Car number forty-two, Car number forty-two. … Proceed to number six eight two five Sanborn Avenue, Westwood, at once. … Two children missing from home of Dr. Henry W. Rollinson …”

I stepped on it hard, but she grabbed me.

“Stop!”

“I'm taking you there!”

“Stop! I said stop—will you please stop!”

I couldn't make any sense out of her, but I pulled over and we skidded to a stop. She jumped out. I jumped out, “Will you kindly tell me what we're stopping here for? They're your kids, don't you get it—?”

But she was on the curb, waving back the way we had come. Just then a pair of headlights snapped on. I hadn't seen any car, but it dawned on me this must be that car that had been following us. She kept on waving, then started to run toward it. At that, the car came up. A couple of detectives were inside. She didn't even wait till she stopped before she screamed: “Did you get that call?”

“What call?”

“The Westwood call, about the children?”

“Baby, that was for Car forty-two.”

“Will you wipe that grin off your face and listen to me? Those are my children. They've been taken by my husband, and it means he's getting ready to skip, to wherever he's going—”

She never even finished. Those cops hopped out and she gave it to them as fast as she could. She said he'd be sure to stop at his hideout before he blew, that they were to follow us there, that we'd lead the way if they'd only stop talking and hurry. But the cops had a different idea. They knew by now it was a question of time, so they split the cars up. One of them went ahead in the police car, after she gave him the address, the other took the wheel of my car, and we jumped in on the back seat. Boy, if you think you can drive, you ought to try it once with a pair of cops. We went through Westwood with everything wide open, it wasn't five minutes before we were in Hollywood, and we just kept on going. We didn't stop for any kind of a light, and I don't think we were under eighty the whole trip.

All the time she kept holding on to my hand and praying: “Oh God, if we're only in time! If we're only in time!”

XII

We pulled up in front of a little white apartment house in Glendale. Sheila jumped out, and the cops and myself were right beside her. She whispered for us to keep quiet. Then she stepped on the grass, went around to the side of the house, and looked up. A light was on in one window. Then she went back to the garage. It was open, and she peeped in. Then she came back to the front and went inside, still motioning to us to keep quiet. We followed her, and she went up to the second floor. She tiptoed to the third door on the right, stood there a minute, and listened. She tiptoed back to where we were. The cops had their guns out by now. Then she marched right up to the door, her heels clicking on the floor, and rapped. It opened right away, and a woman was standing there. She had a cigarette in one hand and her hat and coat on, like she was getting ready to go out. I had to look twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things. It was Church.

“Where are my children?”

“Well, Sheila, how should I know—?”

Sheila grabbed her and jerked her out into the hall. “Where are my children, I said.”

“They're all right. He just wanted to see them a minute before he—”

She stopped when one of the cops walked up behind her, stepped through the open door with his gun ready, and went inside. The other cop stayed in the hall, right beside Sheila and Church, his gun in his hand, listening. After a minute or two the cop that went in came to the door and motioned us inside. Sheila and Church went in, then I went in, then the other cop stepped inside, but stood where he could cover the hall. It was a one-room furnished apartment, with a dining alcove to one side, and a bathroom. All doors were open; even the closet door, where the cop had opened them, ready to shoot if he had to. In the middle of the floor were a couple of suitcases strapped up tight. The cop that went in first walked over to Church.

“All right, Fats, spit it out.”

“I don't even know what you're talking about.”

“Where are those kids?”

“How should I know—?”

“You want that puss mashed in?”

“… He's bringing them here.”

“When?”

“Now. He ought to be here by now.”

“What for?”

“To take with us. We were going to blow.”

“He using a car?”

“He's using his car.”

“O.K.—open them suitcases.”

“I have no key. He—”

“I said open them.”

She stooped down and began to unstrap the suitcases. The cop poked her behind with the gun.

“Come on, step on it, step on it!”

When she had them unstrapped, she took keys from her handbag and unlocked them. The cop kicked them open. Then he whistled. From the larger of the two suitcases money began tumbling on the floor, some of it in bundles, with rubber bands around it, some of it with paper wrappers still on, showing the amounts. That was the new money we had had in the vault, stuff that had never even been touched. Church began to curse at Sheila.

“It's all there, and now you've got what you want, haven't you? You think I didn't know what you were doing? You think I didn't see you fixing those cards up so you could send him up when they found that shortage? All right, he beat you to it, and he took your old man for a ride too—that sanctimonious old fool! But you haven't got him yet, and you haven't got those brats! I'll—”

She made a dive for the door, but the cop was standing there and threw her back. Then he spoke to the other one, the one that was stooped down, fingering the money. “Jake!”

“Yeah?”

“He'll be here for that dough. You better put in a call. No use taking chances. We need more men.”

“God, I never seen that much dough.”

He stepped over to the phone and lifted the receiver to dial. Just then, from outside, I heard a car horn give a kind of a rattle, like they give when they're tapped three or four times quick. Church heard it too, and opened her mouth to scream. That scream never came out. Sheila leaped at her, caught her throat with one hand, and covered her mouth with the other. She turned her head around to the cops.

“Go on, hurry up, he's out there.”

The cops dived out and piled down the stairs, and I was right after them. They no sooner reached the door than there was a shot, from a car parked out front, right behind my car. One cop ducked behind a big urn beside the door, the other ran behind a tree. The car was moving now, and I meant to get that guy if it was the last thing I did on earth. I ran off to the right, across the apartment house lawn and the lawn next to it and the lawn next to that, as hard as I could. There was no way he could turn. If he was going to get away, he had to pass me. I got to a car that was parked about fifty feet up the street, and crouched down in front of it, right on the front bumper, so that the car was between him and me. He was in second now, and giving her the gun, but I jumped and caught the door handle.

What happened in the next ten seconds I'm not sure I know myself. The speed of the car threw me back, so I lost my grip on the door handle, and I hit my head on the fender. I was still wearing a bandage, from the other cut, so that wasn't so good. But I caught the rear door handle, and hung on. All that happened quicker than I can tell it, but being thrown back that way, I guess that's what saved me. He must have thought I was still up front, because inside the car he began to shoot, and I saw holes appear in the front door, one by one. I had some crazy idea I had to count them, so I'd know when he'd shot his shells out. I saw three holes, one right after the other. But then I woke up that there were more shots than holes, that some of those shots were coming from behind. That meant the cops had got in it again. I was right in the line of fire, and I wanted to drop off and lay in the street, but I held on. Then these screams began coming from the back seat, and I remembered the kids. I yelled at the cops that the children were back there, but just then the car slacked and gave a yaw to the left, and we went crashing into the curb and stopped.

I got up, opened the front door, and jumped aside, quick. There was no need to jump. He was lying curled up on the front seat, with his head hanging down, and all over the upholstery was blood. But what I saw, when one of the cops ran up and opened the rear door, was just pitiful. The oldest of the kids, Anna, was down on the floor moaning, and her sister, the little three-year-old, Charlotte, was up on the seat, screaming at her father to look at Anna, that Anna was hurt.

Her father wasn't saying anything.

It seemed funny that the cop, the one that had treated Church so rough, could be so swell when it came to a couple of children. He kept calling them Sissy, and got the little one calmed down in just about a minute, and the other one too, the one that was shot. The other cop ran back to the apartment house, to phone for help, and to collar Church before she could run off with that dough, and he caught her just as she was beating it out the door. This one stayed right with the car, and he no sooner got the children quiet than he had Sheila on his hands, and about five hundred people that began collecting from every place there was.

Sheila was like a wild woman, but she didn't have a chance with that cop. He wouldn't let her touch Anna, and he wouldn't let Anna be moved till the doctors moved her. There on the floor of the car was where she was going to stay, he said, and nothing that Sheila said could change him. I figured he was right, and put my arms around her, and tried to get her quiet, and in a minute or two I felt her stiffen and knew she was going to do everything she could to keep herself under control.

The ambulances got there at last, and they put Brent in one, and the little girl in the other, and Sheila rode in with her. I took little Charlotte in my car. As she left me, Sheila touched my arm.

“More hospitals.”

“You've had a dose.”

“But this—Dave!”

It was one in the morning before they got through in the operating room, and long before that the nurses put little Charlotte to bed. From what she said to me on the way in, and what the cops and I were able to piece together, it wasn't one of the cop's shots that had hit Anna at all.

What happened was that the kids were asleep on the back seat, both of them, when Brent pulled up in front of the apartment house, and didn't know a thing till he started to shoot through the door at me. Then the oldest one jumped up and spoke to her father. When he didn't answer she stood up and tried to talk to him on his left side, back of where he was trying to shoot and drive at the same time. That must have been when he turned and let the cops have it over his shoulder. Except that instead of getting the cops, he got his own child.