Double Indemnity (12 page)

It was Keyes.

It must have been an hour that I lay there after that, and never opened my eyes at all. I was there in the head by that time. I tried to think. I couldn't. Every time I tried to gag more ether out, there would come this stab of pain in my chest. That was from the bullet. I quit trying to gag out the ether then and the nurse began talking to me. She knew. Pretty soon I had to answer her. Keyes walked over.

"Well, that theatre program saved you."

"Yeah?"

"That double wad of paper wasn't much, but it was enough. You'll bleed a little bit for a while where that bullet grazed your lung, but you're lucky it wasn't your heart. Another eighth of an inch, and it would have been curtains for you."

"They get the bullet?"

"Yeah."

"They get the woman?"

"Yeah."

I didn't say anything. I thought it was curtains for me anyway, but I just lay there. "They got her, and I got plenty to tell you boy. This thing is a honey. But give me a half hour. I got to go out and get some breakfast. Maybe you'll be feeling better then yourself."

He went. He didn't act like I was in any trouble, or he was sore at me, or anything like that. I couldn't figure it out. In a couple of minutes an orderly came in "You got any papers in this hospital?"

"Yes sir, I think I can get you one."

He came back with a paper and found it for me. He knew what I wanted. It wasn't on Page 1. It was in the second section where they print the local news that's not quite hot enough to go on the front page. This was it:

MYSTERY SHROUDS GRIFFITH PARK SHOOTING

Wounded at Wheel of Car on Riverside

Drive After Midnight

Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Walter Huff, an insurance man living in the Los Feliz Hills, who was found unconscious at the wheel of his car in Griffith Park shortly after midnight last night, a bullet wound in his chest. Two persons were held pending a report on Huff's condition today. They are:

Lola Nirdlinger, 19.

Beniamino Sachetti, 26.

Miss Nirdlinger gave her address as the Lycee Arms Apartments, Yucca Street, and Sachetti as the Lilac Court Apartments, La Brea Avenue.

Huff apparently was shot as he was driving along Riverside Drive from the direction of Burbank. Police arriving at the scene shortly afterward found Miss Nirdlinger and Sachetti at the car trying to get him out. A short distance away was a pistol with one chamber discharged. Both denied responsibility for the shooting, but refused to make any further statement.

They brought me orange juice and I lay there trying to figure that out. You think I fell for it do you? That I thought Lola had shot me, or Sachetti maybe, out of jealousy, something like that? I did not. I knew who shot me. I knew who I had a date with, who knew I was going to be there, who wanted me out of the way. Nothing would change me on that. But what were these two doing there? I pounded on it a while, and I couldn't make any sense out of it, except a little piece of it. Of course 'Lola was following Sachetti again that night, or thought she was. That explained what she was doing there. But what was he doing there? None of it made sense. And all the while I kept having this numb feeling that I was sunk, and not only sunk for what I had done, but for what Lola was going to find out. That was the worst.

It was almost noon before Keyes came back. He saw the paper. He pulled up a chair near the bed. "I've been down to the office."

"Yeah?"

"It's been a wild morning. A wild morning on top of a wild night."

"What's going on?"

"Now I'll tell you something you don't know. This Sachetti, Huff, this same Sachetti that plugged you last night, is the same man we've been tailing for what he might know about that other thing. That Nirdlinger case."

"You don't mean it."

"I do mean it. I started to tell you, you remember, but Norton got these ideas about keeping all that stuff confidential from agents, so I didn't. That's it. The same man, Huff. Did I tell you? Did I tell Norton? Did I say there was something funny about that case?"

"What else?"

"Your finance company called up."

"Yeah?"

"They popped out with what we'd have known in the first place, I mean me and Norton, if we had taken you into our confidence completely from the beginning. If you had known about this Sachetti, you could have told us what we just found out today, and it's the key to the whole case."

"He got a loan."

"That's right. He got a loan. But that's not it. That's not the important thing.
He was in your office the day you delivered that policy to Nirdlinger."

"I couldn't be certain."

"We are. We checked it all up, with Nettie, with the finance company records, with the records in the policy department. He was in there, and the girl was in there, and that's what we've been waiting for. That gives it to us, the hook-up we never had before."

"What do you mean, hook-up?"

"Listen, we know Nirdlinger never told his family about this policy. We know that from a check we've made with the secretary. He never told anybody. Just the same the family
knew
about it, didn't they?"

"Well—I don't know."

"They knew. They didn't put him on the spot for nothing. They knew, and now we know
how
they knew. This ties it up."

"Any court would assume they knew."

"I'm not a court. I'm talking about for my own satisfaction, for my own knowledge that I'm right. Because look, Huff, I might demand an investigation on the basis of what my instinct tells me. But I don't go into a courtroom and go to bat with it without knowing. And now I know. What's more, this ties the girl in."

"The—who?"

"The girl. The daughter. She was there, too. In your office, I mean. Oh yeah, you may think it funny, that a girl would pull something like that on her own father. But it's happened. It's happened plenty of times. For fifty thousand bucks it's going to happen plenty of times again."

"I—don't believe that."

"You will, before I get done. Now listen Huff. I'm still shy something. I'm shy one link. They put you on the spot for something you could testify to when this suit comes up, I can see that. But what?"

"What do you mean, what?"

"What is it you know about them they would knock you off for? Their being in your office, that's not enough. There must be something else. Now what is it?"

"I—don't know. I can't think of anything."

"There's something. Maybe it's something you've forgotten about, something that doesn't mean anything to you but is important to them. Now what is it?"

"There's nothing. There
can't
be."

"There's something. There must be."

He was walking around now. I could feel the bed shake from his weight. "Keep it on your mind, Huff. We've got a few days. Try to think what it is."

He lit a cigarette, and pounded around some more. "That's the beauty of this, we've got a few days. You can't appear at a hearing until next week at the earliest, and that gives us what we need. A little help from the cops, a few treatments with the rubber hose, something like that, and sooner or later this pair is going to spill it. Especially that girl. She'll crack before long...Believe me this is what we've been waiting for. It's tough on you, but now we've got them where we can really throw the works into them. Oh yeah, this is a real break. We'll clean this case up now. Before night, with luck."

I closed my eyes. I couldn't think of anything but Lola, a lot of cops around her, maybe beating her up, trying to make her spill something that she knew no more about than the man in the moon. Her face jumped in front of me and all of a sudden something hit it in the mouth, and it started to bleed.

"Keyes."

"Yeah?"

"There was something. Now you speak of it."

"I'm listening boy."

"I killed Nirdlinger."

He sat there staring at me. I had told him everything he needed to know, even about Lola. It seemed funny it had only taken about ten minutes. Then he got up. I grabbed him.

"Keyes."

"I've got to go, Huff."

"See that they don't beat her."

"I've got to go now. I'll be back after a while."

"Keyes, if you let them beat her, I'll—kill you. You've got it all now. I've told you, and I've told you for one reason and one reason only. It's so they won't beat her. You've got to promise me that. You owe me that much. Keyes—"

He shook my hand off and left.

While I was telling him I hoped for some kind of peace when I got done. It had been bottled up in me a long time. I had been sleeping with it, dreaming about it, breathing with it. I didn't get any peace. The only thing I could think of was Lola, and how she was going to find out about it at last, and knew me for what I was.

About three o'clock the orderly came in with the afternoon papers. They didn't have any of what I had told Keyes. But they had been digging into their files, after the morning story, and they had it about the first Mrs. Nirdlinger's death, and Nirdlinger's death, and now me being shot. A woman feature writer had got in out there and talked with Phyllis. It was she that called it the House of Death, and put in about those blood-red drapes. Once I saw that stuff I knew it wouldn't be long. That meant even a dumb cluck of a woman reporter could see there was something funny out there.

It was half past eight that night before Keyes came back. He shooed out the nurse as soon as he came in the room, and then went out a minute. When he came back he had Norton with him, and a man named Keswick that was a corporation lawyer they called in on big cases, and Shapiro, the regular head of the legal department. They all stood around, and it was Norton that started to speak. "Huff."

"Yes sir."

"Have you told anybody about this?"

"Nobody but Keyes."

"Nobody else?"

"Not a soul...God, no."

"There have been no policemen here?"

"They've been here. I saw them out in the hall. I guess it was me they were whispering about. The nurse wouldn't let them in."

They all looked at each other. "Then I guess we can begin. Keyes, perhaps you had better explain it to him."

Keyes opened his mouth to say something, but Keswick shut him up, and got Norton into a corner. Then they called Keyes over. Then they called Shapiro. I could catch a word, now and then. It was some kind of a proposition they were going to make me, and it was a question of whether they were all going to be witnesses. Keswick was for the proposition, but he didn't want anybody to be able to say he had been in on it. They finally settled it that Keyes would make it on his own personal responsibility, and the rest of them wouldn't be there. Then they all tip-toed out. They didn't even say good-bye. It was funny. They didn't act like I had played them or the company any particularly dirty trick. They acted like I was some kind of an animal that had an awful sore on his face, and they didn't even want to look at it.

After they left Keyes sat down. "This is an awful thing you've done, Huff."

"I know it."

"I guess there's no need my saying more about that part."

"No, no need."

"I'm sorry. I've—kind of liked you, Huff."

"I know. Same here."

"I don't often like somebody. At my trade, you can't afford to. The whole human race looks—a little bit crooked."

"I know. You trusted me, and I let you down."

"Well—we won't talk about it."

"There's nothing to say...Did you see her?"

"Yes. I saw them all. Him, her, and the wife."

"What did she say?"

"Nothing...I didn't tell her, you see. I let her do the talking. She thinks Sachetti shot you."

"For what?"

"Jealousy."

"Oh."

"She's upset about you. But when she found out you weren't badly hurt, she—. Well, she—"

"—Was glad of it."

"In a way. She tried not to be. But she felt that it proved Sachetti loved her. She couldn't help it."

"I see."

"She was worried about you, though. She likes you."

"Yeah, I know. She...likes me."

"She was following you. She thought you were him. That was all there was to that."

"I figured that out."

"I talked to
him."

"Oh yeah, you told me. What was he doing there?"

He did some more of his pounding around then. The night light over my head was the only light in the room. I could only half see him, but I could feel the bed shake when he marched.

"Huff, there's a story."

"Yeah? How do you mean?"

"You just got yourself tangled up with an Irrawaddy cobra, that's all. That woman—it makes my blood run cold just to think of her. She's a pathological case, that's all. The worst I ever heard of."

"A what?"

"They've got a name for it. You ought to read more of this modern psychology, Huff. I do. I wouldn't tell Norton. He'd think I was going high-brow or something. I find it helpful though. There's plenty of stuff in my field where it's the only thing that explains what they do. It's depressing, but it clears up things."

"I still don't get it."

"You will...Sachetti wasn't in love with her."

"No?"

"He's known her. Five or six years. His father was a doctor. He had a sanatorium up in the Verdugo Hills about a quarter mile from this place where she was head nurse."

"Oh yeah. I remember about that."

"Sachetti met her up there. Then one time the old man had some tough luck. Three children died on him."

The old creepy feeling began to go up my back. He went on. "They died of—"

"—Pneumonia."

"You heard about it?"

"No. Go on."

"Oh. You heard about the Arrowhead business."

"Yes."

"They died on him, and there was an awful time and the old man took the rap for it. Not with the police. They didn't find anything to concern them. But with the Department of Health and his clientele. It ruined him. He had to sell his place. Not long after that he died."