Nothing to Lose But My Life (19 page)

He didn’t look at me. “You deal, Lowry, and they’d better be good cards.”

“I said that no one wanting to protect the Proctor name would have put the body that close to Enid’s. But at the time your wife didn’t know Enid had that flat. Consequently, when Enid found the body at her place, she was shocked—but not because Hoop was dead. She knew that. She was at Hoop’s shortly after he was killed. She knew he was dead and she knew who killed him. No, she was shocked because she couldn’t believe her sister would frame her and because she was afraid Sofia had found out her pitiful little secret hiding place.

“And,” I went on, “when she was having her ‘spell,’ she revealed that to me. She revealed a lot of other things, too—how much Sofia envied her attitude toward life, to the point where everything Enid had, she tried to take away from her. You, for instance. You were going with Enid before you married Sofia.”

He said, “Yes.”

“And Hoop. Sofia made her stop sleeping with Hoop, when she found it out. She did more than stop her—she took her place. Whether out of gratitude for his having saved the family estate, or desire to go Enid one better, or just the thrill of doing something and getting away with it while she still played the part of the so-respectable matron, I don’t know.”

He looked at his wife. For a moment all his blandness was gone; his face was as ugly as his eyes. Then there was nothing again. “You were Hoop’s mistress?”

“This is the most ridiculous statement he has made,” she said stiffly.

“No,” I said. “Remember, Enid told me. But there’s other evidence too. Hoop was naked when he was stabbed. Who but his mistress—or his wife—would be in a position to do something like that? And tonight, surely you heard the two cars leave here? Enid was in one, running to a rendezvous with me. Your wife was in the other, going after her. It didn’t take your wife long to figure out who had called and asked for Enid earlier, nor long to guess where Enid was going when she bolted out of here. And, of course, by now she’d learned where the flat was. I suspect she got out of Enid who paid for it, who furnished it, and who went up there now and then. She learned that Enid had won after all. She had got you back.”

There was no doubting the expression on Sofia’s face. It said clearly, “What right do you have to accuse me of being a man’s mistress?”

Conklin said in the same quiet tone, “You’ve explained a lot of things, Lowry, but you haven’t explained why my wife would kill Hoop in the first place.”

I dealt my last card. “She either found out what Hoop was planning to do with the data he had gathered on the Syndicate, or he told her—it doesn’t matter. She learned somehow, because as his mistress she was close enough to him to learn. And she saw the implications to you, to her position, to your future together. And after thinking it over with that cold machine she has for a brain, she came to the conclusion she brought out tonight—That you’re a fool or you wouldn’t have got yourself into a tight position in the first place. It was time that she took over the reins since obviously you were too far in to back out. Besides, the Syndicate brings in a fat sum. And she knew—despite her insistence on calling me Mr. Curtis—who I was and why I was here. Either you or Hoop told her. And she took advantage of my being here and, to make it not too obvious, rang Tanya in who—after all—was his fiancée. She had it all figured out.

“And,” I went on, “it might have worked except for Enid. Enid knew and Enid wasn’t to be trusted. When she got the chance, she shut Enid up here. But Enid got away and ran to me for protection.
So frightened,”
I said emphatically, “that she was willing to do something she could not bring herself to do before—expose her sister. And she got killed for it.”

Conklin took a shuddering breath. He had the kind of brain that would take evidence such as I had given him, add and subtract, and come up with an answer. And he got the same answer I had.

He said directly to his wife, “Why did you have to kill her?”

She ignored the thread of pleading in his voice, the seeking to find that this wasn’t true. She said, “I have a name and social position to maintain. And I told you—you played this whole affair since Lowry came like a fool. I had to do something to straighten matters out.”

To her that seemed to explain everything. The way he nodded, he apparently agreed with her. I began to get a queasy feeling in my stomach. I had one chance—to set them against one another. But from his expression, I had lost that chance.

He didn’t look at either of us but rose and went to the wall safe which was to one side and behind where Sofia sat. He had not held a gun on me during our conversation but there had been one by his hand, close enough to make me stay in my chair. Now he took it with him and kept it trained on me while he worked the dial. He pulled back the door, revealing another door inside.

He spoke now to Sofia. “I believe you’ll agree that the first thing we must do is get rid of all the records we have on Hoop as well as those he had on us.”

“Then you’re the one who took them from his safe, Charles. I wish you’d told me. I’ve been quite worried.”

God, they could have been discussing what to have for Sunday supper. I had the feeling they would discuss how to get rid of me in the same fashion.

He said, “I have them all in here.” He paused. The next thing, of course, is to rid ourselves of Lowry here.” He left the safe and reached for the telephone. He set the gun beside his hand while he dialed. “Get those Hoop records, will you, my dear. They’re all in one envelope somewhere in the safe.”

She watched him dial and then rose, the obedient wife—as long as she felt she held the reins and could draw on them when it was necessary. He had his number now and she frowned when he said, “Emmett? Is everything ready? Oh—well, when the boys come back, come on over. He’s waiting.”

Gently he lowered the telephone. He smiled at me. I looked back at him but I didn’t feel like returning the smile. I had just heard sentence of death passed. My bluff had fallen into little pieces.

Sofia Conklin turned from where she stood before the safe. “Really, Charles, you’re being a fool again. As long as Curtis has that statement …”

“I hope to take care of that contingency,” he said. “We can discuss it after we rid ourselves of the Hoop file.” He might have been at a business meeting. “Emmett and the boys will be a while. We have ample time.”

I was watching her, hoping for her support, that her determination would win over his. It was plain on her face that she was going to put up an argument. It was also plain that she was going to wait for the right moment. She said, with obvious false docility, “All right,” and opened the safe door.

Just as she did, I knew what was going to happen, and I came halfway out of my chair. This was the kind of thing Conklin would do. The kind of mind he had.

The booby trap went off. It was a thirty-two, wired and triggered so that it fired when the door was swung all the way back. There was a switch somewhere, of course, to shut it off. But this was Conklin’s safe. It, like Enid’s flat, was a secret he had managed to keep from his wife.

The bullet caught her squarely in the face, coming out the back of her head just about where her shot had struck Enid. She didn’t even have time to scream before it was all over.

So it wasn’t just my sentence of death that had been passed, it was Sofia Conklin’s too. He said, not looking at her, “Now we won’t have to worry about preserving the family name, will we?”

And that was my sentence of death restated. Because my bluff no longer had any meaning, whether he believed it or not. I looked into his eyes and saw that at this moment nothing mattered. He had loved his wife but in a peculiarly passionless way. Still, he could not stand the thought of the gross Hoop making love to that perfect body.

I said, “And now we won’t have to worry who runs the Syndicate, either, will we?”

He focused his eyes on me. “No, not any longer.”

“And there was Enid.”

“Yes, there was Enid.” There was genuine emotion in his voice.

I was still partially out of the seat, ready to leave the chair. I wasn’t going to wait for Emmett and the boys to play their little games with me. At the moment, Conklin looked dulled, slow. I would have no better chance. I braced myself to come up and over the desk at him.

I moved. His hand went for the gun. I couldn’t check myself now. I could only pray that he’d miss. I’ve seen men miss inside of six feet when their shots are hurried.

From behind Conklin the French doors burst open, bringing him to his feet as shards of glass rained into the room. Tanya came bursting in after them, the rock she had crashed in the doors with in her hands.

He could have shot her. It was the grace of God that he did not. One instant more and he would have squared around on her and fired purely from reflex; he was that keyed up. But that dive I had started and, an instant before, wished I hadn’t, carried me over the desk top on my belly and on top of him. The gunshot went into the ceiling and we fell together.

“Get out!” I shouted at Tanya. “Emmett and his goons are on their way. Get out!”

I had no time to say any more. For all that he looked pudgy and pink, Conklin wasn’t soft. He was wire and muscle underneath, and he was desperate. This night he had seen his whole world crash about him. He was hurt but not too hurt to fight for what was left.

To him I must have stood for everything that had gone wrong.

He bucked and heaved and got out from under me. I reached and got his gun wrist. The gun went free as I jerked and it skittered across the room almost to the fireplace. Tanya was dancing about, trying to get in a lick with her rock. It was as big as my head.

He went after the gun and was nearly to it by the time I reached my feet. Tanya threw her rock, catching him on the first bounce at the back of the heel. He pitched forward, over the gun and past it. I followed and got fingers on it as he kicked, catching me in the throat with his heel.

For an instant I was paralyzed. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move my arms. The strength was running out of me like water out of a broken crock. And I needed strength at this moment more than I ever had before in my life.

Conklin was on his knees, coming at me, his hands reaching out for the gun that I still gripped in my fingers. I tried to lift it, to center it on him, to find the force within me to squeeze that trigger. Because if I couldn’t—if I failed—then he would get it. And that would be the end of things for both Tanya and me.

Why in hell hadn’t she got out? My mind screamed.

I opened my mouth and a trickle of breath went down my bruised throat. My arm lifted. I squeezed. Conklin’s chest was right there. It was a heavy gun and the slug sent him backwards, over the fireplace screen so that he lay in and half out of the firebox. He was thoroughly dead.

Tanya got her hands under my armpits and dragged me to my feet. I made it to Conklin’s desk and into his chair. I couldn’t talk; I could only wheeze. Grabbing a pen and paper, I used precious time writing what I had to say to Tanya.

She followed what I had written without a quibble. Going to the safe, she scooped out the records and brought them to me. Then, while I sorted out those on her and on Nikke, she picked up the telephone and dialed.

When she had the city police, she read off my paper into the phone: “This is the Conklin residence. Charles Conklin just shot his wife. He’s dead too. He ran the county Syndicate. There’s evidence in his study if you can beat his boy Emmett to it. Emmett is a hophead. He’ll crack if you work him over right.”

She hung up. I grinned through the pain that was threatening to make me light-headed. Maybe my little pal Emmett would help me after all. A few nights in a cell without his shots and he would tell anyone anything.

Tanya took the records I had set aside—those on herself and Nikke—got a hand under my arm, and pulled me up. I was willing to lean on her all the way to the woods. But there was the sound of a car driving up outside and stopping.

We ran for it. I don’t know what I used for strength but I found myself making it across the lawn. Tanya saw that I was all right and went ahead. By the time I fell into the car, the motor was running. We were on the gravel almost before I got my door shut.

We headed straight for Nikke’s. There was the sound of sirens, but this time they weren’t for us. Even so it was no time to linger; I just hoped Nikke had his escape hatch open when we got to his place.

• • •

Nikke and Tanya liked Mexico City the best. So did Travis and Kirsch, and I moved from where I had lived in Torreon. After about six months the inactivity got to Nikke and he decided to start a night club. It took us a while to get started. The American Consul bothered us when we first settled in but after a time, when Puerto Bello had all the facts accumulated, the government decided that we were better off being quiet in Mexico than raising hell in the States, and they stopped bothering us.

The affair in Puerto Bello was a six-day sensation. Emmett talked and that, plus all the documentary evidence the police got, took care of everything. The newspapers had their fun and then the whole affair died a natural death. We all went to the Ambassador’s Fourth of July cocktail party and no one snubbed us.

I think it was when the U.S. officials shook his hand that Nikke decided to open up a place. He bought a spot in Chapultepec Heights, got a Mexican partner for a front man, and opened for business. A lot of people muttered about it for a while but when they saw the tourist dollars rolling in, they quieted down. Besides, the Mexicans could afford to go there too, and there’s nothing a Mexican likes as much as a fair gamble. And Nikke gave it to them.

Tanya went back into dress designing. I told her I’d be damned if she could rope me in on that. Being in business with my father-in-law was one thing, being partners with my wife another. We argued about it. The day the argument reached a climax, she had been working and her hair was down, her blouse awry, and there was paint spattered on her nose. She looked terrific.