The Devil To Pay (10 page)

Inspector Glücke was speechless. “There,” said Mr. Queen, waving adieu to the Jardins, “is something for that ossified organ you call your brain to wrestle with.” And he went away.

V
AL
could scarcely drag one foot after the other by the time they got back to the
La
Salle
. Even the yearning for sherry frappés had dissipated. It was agony just to think. “I’ll tuck pop in, flop onto my bed, and
sleep
” she thought. “Maybe when I wake up tomorrow morning I’ll find it never really happened at all.”

After that strange Mr. Queen’s departure Inspector Glücke had cleared the study and gone to work on Rhys with a grim enthusiasm that made Val vibrant with pure loathing. Pink became rebellious at the tone of the man’s questions and was ejected by two of the larger detectives. They found him later, sitting on the sidewalk near the gate in the midst of a large section of the Los Angeles press, chewing his fingernails and growling at their pleas like a bear. Even in the excitement of their own miraculous escape from that rapacious crew—Pink said they had the morals of a bulldog, and that they wouldn’t have escaped at all if not for the greater lure still within the Spaeth house—Val’s stomach lay six inches lower than its usual position merely recalling Glücke’s baffled pertinacity.

Through the ordeal Rhys had maintained a calm that served only to infuriate the policeman. He was monosyllabic about most things; and about the important things he would not talk at all. The Inspector went over and over the ground: The Ohippi partnership, the holding companies, the collapse of the securities, Rhys’s quarrels with Spaeth, his movements during the afternoon—oh, thought Val, to have been able to tell the truth!—his familiarity with the house, with swords. … Her father could have cleared himself at any moment of the interminable, ferocious, accusing inquisition by merely stating his alibi. But he did not; and Val, sick and exhausted, knew why he did not. It was because of Walter. Walter.… She hardly heard Glücke’s diatribe. Through the verbal storm leered Walter’s face with its incomprehensible expression. Rhys was deliberately allowing himself to be involved in a nasty crime because Walter meant something to her—Walter, who had always been so boyish and naïve and blunt and was now so frighteningly drawn into himself.

“I’ll fix some eats,” said Pink. “You must be starved.”

“I couldn’t eat now,” said Valerie faintly.

Rhys said. “Pink’s right,” but he was abstracted.

“I laid in a raft of stuff from the market this afternoon,” said Pink gruffly, “on my way back from the studio. If I left it to you capitalists—”

“Oh, Pink,” sighed Val, “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“You’d probably die of hunger,” said Pink.

Mibs Austin’s place at the switchboard was occupied by the night clerk, a fat old man in a high collar; so they went through the lobby without stopping and took the cranky elevator upstairs. Val stumbled along the red carpeting of the corridor behind the two men. She wondered dully why Rhys and Pink, who had unlocked the door of 3-C, stood so still in the foyer. But when she reached the apartment door and looked in she saw why. Walter was sitting in the living-room on the edge of the armchair. He was sitting in a strangely stiff attitude, his dirty hat crushed on the back of his bandaged head and his eyes like two steamy pieces of glass.

They looked at Walter, and Walter looked back at them, and his head wagged from side to side as if it were to heavy for his neck. “Stinko,” said Pink, wrinkling his nose, and he went to the windows and threw them wide open.

Rhys carefully closed the corridor door and Val advanced two steps into the living-room and faltered: “Well?”

Walter’s tongue licked at his lips and out of his mouth came a mumble of sounds that conveyed nothing.

“Walter. How did you get in?”

Walter placed his right forefinger to his lips. “Shh. Sh—snuck up. Sh—swiped housh-key. Deshk.” He glared up at her from the armchair in an indignant, almost a resentful, way.

“Well?” said Val again. “Haven’t you anything to say to me, Walter?”

“’Bout what? Tell me that. ’Bout what?”

“You know very well,” said Val in a low voice. “About—this afternoon.”

“What ’bout ’sh afternoon?” said Walter belligerently, trying to rise. “You lemme ’lone!”

Val closed her eyes. “Walter, I’m giving you your chance. You must tell me. What happened today? Where’s pop’s coat? Why did you—” she opened her eyes and cried— “why did you lie, Walter?”

Walter’s lower lip crept forward. “None o’ y’r bus’ness.”

Val ran over to him and slapped his cheek twice. The marks of her fingers surged up in red streaks through the pallor beneath the stubble. He gasped and tried to rise again, but collapsed in the armchair. “You drunken bum,” said Val passionately. “Coward. Weakling. I never want to see you again!” Val ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.

“I’ll handle him,” said Pink. Rhys quietly sat down on the sofa without removing his coat. He just sat there drumming on the cushion. Pink hauled Walter out of the chair by his collar, half strangling him. Walter sawed the air feebly, trying to fight. But Pink pushed his arm aside and dragged him into Rhys’s bathroom. Rhys heard the shower start hissing and a medley of gaspy human sounds.

After a while Walter lurched back into the living-room, the shoulders of his plaid jacket drenched, his bandaged head and face dripping. Pink tossed a towel at him and went into the kitchen while Walter dropped into the armchair and tried with ineffectual swipes of the towel to dry himself. Rhys drummed softly.

“Put this away, big shot,” said Pink, returning with a tall glass. “What a man!” Walter groped for the glass and gulped down the tomato juice and Tabasco, shuddering.

Pink lit a cigaret and went back to the kitchen. Rhys heard the clangor of clashing pans. “I think,” said Rhys politely, “I’ll go down to the drug store for a cigar. Excuse me, Walter.”

Walter said nothing. After a moment Rhys rose and left the apartment. Alone, Walter inhaled deeply and stared fog-eyed at the dusty tops of his suède sport shoes. Pink was slamming dish-closet doors in the kitchen, growling to himself. Walter got up and tottered to Val’s door. “Val,” he said thickly.

There was no answer. Walter turned the knob and went in, shutting the door behind him. Val lay, still in her hat and coat, on the bed, staring numbly at the Van Gogh on the opposite wall. Her hat, a toque, was pushed over one eye rakishly; but she did not look rakish. She looked cold and remote.

“Val.”

“Go away.”

Walter reached the bed by a heroic lunge and dropped. His eyes, bleared and shadowed, peered anxiously at her through a haze. He put his right hand clumsily on her slim thigh. “Know ’m drunk. Coul’n’ help it. Val. Val, don’t talk t’me ’at way. I love you, Val.”

“Take your hand off me,” said Val.

“I love you, Val.”

“You’ve a fine way of showing it,” said Val drearily.

Walter sat up with a jerk, fumbling to button his collar. “Aw right, Val. Aw right, I’ll get out. ’M drunk.” He rose with an effort and stumbled toward the door. Val lay still, watching his weaving progress across the room. … She jumped off the bed and flew past him to the door, setting her back against it. Walter stopped, blinking at her. “Not yet,” she said.

“’M drunk.”

“You’re going to answer me. Why did you lie to Inspector Glücke? You know you were in that house at 5.35 this afternoon!”

“Yes,” muttered Walter, trying to stand still.

“Walter,” Val’s heart sank. Her hands, spread against the door, gripped it harder. She could almost see past him through the rubbed aspen-crotch panel of her Hepplewhite bureau, where a certain automatic pistol lay hidden under a layer of chemises. She whispered: “Walter, I must know. Did you kill your father?”

Walter stopped rocking. His lower lip crept forward again in a curiously stubborn way. At the same time his bloodshot eyes shifted, almost with cunning. “Lemme go,” he muttered.

“Did you, Walter?” whispered Valerie.

“Goodbye,” said Walter in a surprisingly sharp tone. He put his arm out to push her aside.

“If you didn’t,” cried Val, running to the bureau and digging into the drawer, “why were you carrying this?” She held up the automatic.

Walter said contemptuously: “Going through m’ pockets, huh? Gimme!” Val let him take the pistol away from her. He looked at it, snorted, and dropped it into his pocket. “Threat—threat’ning letters. Dozen of ’m. Son of man who ruined thousan’s. So I bought a gun.” His shoulders hunched and he said painfully: “I love you, but min’ y’r own bus’ness.”

This wasn’t Walter. Not the Walter she had known for so many years. Or was it? Wasn’t it always a crisis like this that showed a man up in the true ugliness of his naked self? “You let that Inspector think my father went to
Sans
Souci
this afternoon,” she cried. “Why didn’t you tell him that you were the one Frank saw sneaking up the drive—that you were wearing pop’s coat?”

Walter blinked several times, as if he was trying to peer through a week’s collection of Hollywood’s evening mists. “Gotta trus’ me,” he mumbled. “Don’ ask questions, Val. No questions.”

“Trust you! Why?” flared Val. “After the way you’ve acted? Haven’t I the right to ask questions when your silence implicates my own father?” But then she grasped his sodden lapels and laid her head on his chest. “Oh, Walter,” she sobbed, “I don’t care what you’ve done, if you’ll only be honest about it. Trust you! Why don’t you trust me?”

It was queer how humble he could be one moment and how hard, how frozen hard, the next. It was as if certain questions congealed him instantly, making him impervious to warmth or reason or appeal. He said, trying to control his lax tongue: “Mu’n’ fin’ out I was in father’s house. If you tell’m… Don’ you dare tell’m, Val, y’un’erstan’ me?”

Then it was true. Pop! goes the weasel. Val pushed away from him. Faith was all right in its place, which was usually in drippy novels. But a human being couldn’t accept certain things on faith. Appearances might be deceptive in some cases, but usually they were photographic images of the truth. Real life had a way of being harshly unsubtle. “Apparently,” she said in a remote voice, “the fact that Glücke suspects my father of murder, that one word from you would clear him, doesn’t mean a thing to you. Not when your own skin is in danger.”

Walter was quite steady now. He opened his mouth to say something, but then he closed it without having uttered any sound whatever. “So you’ll please me,” said Val, “by getting out.”

He did not know, could not know, that Rhys had an alibi for the time the crime was committed.

“Aw right,” said Walter in a low tone.

And now he would never know—not through her! If she told him, how easy it would be for him to crawl out, to say he had known about her father’s alibi all the time, that Rhys had never been in real danger and that it was necessary to him to protect himself. When he sobered up, he might even invent some plausible story to account for his damning actions. Walter was persuasive when he wanted to be. And in her heart Val knew she could not trust herself. So she said again, bitterly: “Your secret, whatever it is, is safe with me. Will you get out?”

Walter plucked violently at his collar, as if he found its grip intolerable. Then he wrenched the door open, stumbled across the living-room, and zigzagged out of the apartment, leaving his hat behind. Val picked the hat up from the living-room floor and threw it after him into the corridor.

That was that. “Pink, I’m starved,” she called out, going into the kitchen. “What’s on the menu?” But then her eyes narrowed and she said: “Pink, what is that?”

Pink was guiltily hiding something in his trouser pocket. “Nothing,” he said quickly. And he got up from the chair in the breakfast nook and made for the gas range, where several pots and pans were bubbling. “Is crackpot gone?”

“Pink, what are you hiding?” Val went over to him and pulled him around. “Show me that.”

“It’s nothing I tell you!” said Pink, but his tone carried no conviction.

Val thrust her hand into his pocket. He tried to dodge, but she was too quick for him. Her hand emerged with a flat, small, hard-covered pamphlet. “Why, it’s a bankbook,” she said. “Oh, Pink, I’m dreadfully sorry—” But then she stopped and little schools of goose-pimples rose to the surface of her flesh. The name on the bankbook was Rhys Jardin.

“Pop deposited Walter’s money,” she began, and stopped again. “But this is a different bank, Pink. The Pacific Coastal. Spaeth’s bank.”

“Don’t bother your head with it, squirt,” muttered Pink; he began to stir beans with a ladle as if his life depended on their not sticking to the pan. “Don’t look inside.”

Val looked inside. There was one deposit listed, no withdrawals. But the size of the deposit made her eyes widen. It was impossible. It must be a mistake. But there were the figures. $5,000,000.00.

She seized Pink’s arm. “Where did you get this? Pink, tell me the truth!”

“It was this morning,” said Pink, avoiding her eyes, “in the gym over at
San
Susie
. I was packing the golf-bags. I found it hidden under a box of tees in a pocket of that old morocco bag of Rhys’s.”

“Oh,” said Val, and she sat down in the breakfast nook and shaded her eyes with her hand. “Pink,” she went on in a muffled voice, “you mustn’t—well, don’t say anything about this. It will look as if… as if what those people said about pop not really being broke is true.”

Pink stirred with absorption. “I didn’t know what the hell to do, Val. There was a chance some nosey, thievin’ express-man might find it. I had to take that stuff Rhys gave away over to the Museum, so—well, I just put it in my pocket.”

“Thanks, Pink,” said Val from stiff lips. And neither said another word as the gas hissed and Pink stirred and Val sat at the table and looked at the bankbook.

The front door banged. Rhys called out: “Val?” Neither made a sound. Rhys came into the kitchen smoking a cigar and shaking his wet hat. “It’s raining again. Pink, that smells wonderful.” He stopped, struck by the silence. The yellow-covered bank book lay on the maple table in full view. He glanced at it, frowned, and then studied the two stony faces. “Is it Walter?” he asked in a puzzled way. “Wouldn’t he talk?”