Until You Are Dead (15 page)

"Why not let me in on your entire plan?" I said. "The whole thing would come off better."

"I didn't mean to take over or anything. I just want it to be safe for you, baby, for both of us. So we can enjoy afterward together."

I wondered then if afterward would be like before.

"I know this gun is safe," Lani went on. "No matter where you got another one the police might eventually trace it. But with this one they can't."

"Is it registered or anything?"

"No, Howard just gave it to me."

"But the people who saw him give it to you, couldn't they identify it?"

"Not if they never saw it again." She took a sip of the expensive blended whiskey she was drinking from the bottle
and looked up smiling at me with her head tilted back and kind of resting on one shoulder. "I think I've got an idea you'll like," she said. Her lips were parted wide, still glistening wet from the whiskey.

That's how three nights later I found myself dressed only in swimming trunks and deck shoes, seated uncomfortably in the hard, barnacle-clad wooden structure of the underside of the long pier that jutted out into the sea from Howard Sundale's private beach. To the right, beyond the rise of sand, I could see the lights of his sprawling hacienda style house as I kept shifting my weight and feeling the spray from the surf lick at my ankles. I'd always considered myself small time, maybe, not the toughest but smart, and here I was killing for a woman. There'd been plenty of passed up opportunities to kill for money. I knew it wasn't Lani's money at all; I'd have wanted her rich or poor.

I unconsciously glanced at my wrist for the engraved watch I'd been careful not to wear, and I cursed softly as the white foaming breakers surged out their rolling lives beneath me. It
had
to be ten o'clock!

Lani had guaranteed me that Belson, her husband's chauffeur and handyman, would bring Howard for his nightly stroll out onto the long pier at ten o'clock.

"Belson always wheels him there," she'd said. "It's habit with them. Only this time I'll call Belson back to the house for a moment and he'll leave Howard there alone — for you."

The idea then was simple and effective. I was to climb up from my hiding place, shoot Howard, strip him of ring, watch and wallet, then swim back along the shoreline to near where my car was hidden and drive for North Beach Bridge, where I'd throw the murder gun into deep water.

At first I'd been for just rolling Howard wheelchair and all into the ocean. But Lani had assured me it was better to make it look like murder and robbery for the very expensive ring he was known to wear. Less chance of a mistake that way, she'd argued, than if we tried to get tricky and outwit the police by faking an accident. And Howard's upper body was exceptionally strong. Even without the use of his legs he'd be able to stay afloat and make his way to shore.

So at last we'd agreed on the revolver.

I looked up from my place in the shadows. Something was passing between me and the house lights. Two forms were moving through the night toward the pier: Howard Sundale hunched in his wheelchair, and Belson, a tall, slender man leaning forward, propelling the chair with straight arms and short but smooth steps.

As they drew nearer I saw that the lower part of Howard's body was covered by a blanket, and Belson, an elderly man with unruly curly hair, was wearing a light windbreaker and a servant's look of polite blankness. They turned onto the pier and passed over me, and I crouched listening to the wheelchair's rubber tires' choppy rhythm over the rough planks.

A minute later I heard Lani's voice, clear, urgent. "Belson! Belson, will you come to the house for a minute? It's important!"

Belson said something to Howard I couldn't understand. Then I heard his hurried, measured footsteps pass over me and away. Then quiet. I drew the revolver from its waterproof plastic bag.

Howard Sundale was sitting motionless, staring seaward, and the sound of the rushing surf was enough to cover my noise as I climbed up onto the pier, checked to make sure Belson was gone, then walked softly in my canvas deck shoes toward the wheelchair.

"Mr. Sundale?"

He was startled as I moved around to stand in front of him. "Who are you?"

Howard Sundale was not what I'd expected. He was a lean faced, broad shouldered, virile looking man in his forties, keen blue eyes beneath wind-ruffled sandy hair. I understood now why Lani hadn't wanted me to risk pushing him into the sea. He appeared momentarily surprised, then wary when I brought the gun around from behind me and aimed it at him. His eyes darted for a moment in the direction of the distant house lights.

"For Lani, I suppose," he said. Fear made his voice too high.

I nodded. "You should try to understand."

He smiled a knowing, hopeless little frightened smile as I aimed for his heart and pulled the trigger twice.

Quickly I slipped off his diamond ring and wristwatch, amazed at the coolness of his still hands. Then I reached around for his wallet, couldn't find it, discovered it was in his side pocket. I put it all in the plastic bag with the revolver, sealed the bag shut, then slipped off the pier into the water. As I lowered myself I found I was laughing at the way Howard was sitting motionless and dead in the moonlight, still looking out to sea as if there was something there that had caught his attention. Then the cold water sobered me.

I followed the case in the papers. Murder and robbery, the police were saying. An expensive wristwatch, his wallet and a diamond ring valued at over five thousand dollars the victim was known always to wear were missing. At first Belson, the elderly chauffeur, was suspected. He claimed, of all things, that he'd been having an affair with his employer's wife and was with her at the time of the shooting.

That must have brought a laugh from the law, especially with the way Lani looked and the act she was putting on. Finally the old guy was cleared and released anyway.

The month Lani and I let pass after the funeral was the longest thirty days of my life. On the night we'd agreed to meet, I reached the beach house first, let myself in and waited before the struggling, growing fire that I'd built.

She was fifteen minutes late, smiling when she came in. We kissed and it was good to hold her again. I squeezed the nape of her neck, pulled her head back and kissed her hard.

"Wait . . . Wait!" she gasped. "Let's have a drink first." There was a fleck of blood on her trembling lower lip.

I watched her walk into the kitchen to mix our drinks. When she returned the smile returned with her. "I told you it would work, Dennis."

"You told me," I said, accepting my drink.

She saw the pearl handled revolver then, where I'd laid it on the coffee table. Quickly she walked to it, picked it up and examined it. There was surprise in her eyes, in the down-turned, pouting mouth. "What happened?"

"I forgot to throw it into the sea, took it home with me by mistake and didn't realize it until this afternoon."

She put the gun down. "You're kidding?"

"No, I was mixed up that night. Not thinking straight. Your husband was the first man I ever killed."

She stood for a moment, pondering what I'd said. After a while she took a sip of her drink, put it down and came to me.

"Did the police question you about the gun?" I asked her.

"Uh-hm. I told them it was lost."

"I'll get rid of it tonight on my way home."

"Tomorrow morning," Lani corrected me as her arms snaked around my shoulders. "And we'll meet here again tomorrow night . . . and the night after that and after that . . ."

Despite her words her enthusiasm seemed to be slipping. That didn't matter to me.

Lani was the first one at the beach house the next evening. It was a windy, moon-bright night, only a few dark clouds racing above the yellow dappled sea at right-angles to the surf, as she opened the door to my knock and let me in. Her first words were what I expected.

"Did you get rid of the gun?"

"No." I watched her eyes darken and narrow slightly.

"No?"

"I'm keeping it," I said, "for protection."

"What do you mean, Dennis?" The anger crackled in her voice.

I only smiled. "I mean I have the revolver, and I've left a letter to be opened in the event of my death telling a lawyer where it's hidden."

Lani turned, walked from me with her head bowed then wheeled to face me. "Explain it! It doesn't scare me and I know it should."

"It should," I said, crossing the room and seating myself on the sofa with my legs outstretched. "I wiped the gun
clean of prints when I brought it here, then lifted it by a pencil in the barrel when I left here after you last night. Your fingerprints are on it now, nice and clear."

She cocked her head at me, gave me a confused, crooked half-smile. "So what — it's my gun. My prints would naturally be on it."

"But yours are the
only
prints on it," I said. "No one could have shot Howard without erasing or overlapping them. Meaning that you had to have handled the weapon
after
the murder or during. If that gun ever happened to
find its way to the police . . ."

Her eyebrows raised.

"I could tell them I found it," she said with a try for spunk, "and then it was stolen from me."

"They wouldn't believe you. And it isn't likely that anyone would take the gun without smudging or overlapping your prints. What the law would do is run a ballistics test on it, determine it was the murder weapon then arrest you. What's your alibi?"

"
Belson
—
"

"You'd be contradicting your own story. And I doubt if Belson would come to your defense now. No one would believe either of you anyway. Then there's that past you mentioned."

I grinned, watching the fallen, trapped expression on her pouting face. A bitter, resigned look widened her dark eyes. When I rose, still grinning, and moved toward her she backed away.

"You're crazy!" Fear broke her voice and she raised her hands palms out before her. "Crazy!"

"It's been said," I told her as calmly as I could.

I made love to her then, while the moon-struck ocean roared its approval.

Afterward she lay beside me, completely meek.

"We were going to be together anyway, darling, always," she whispered, lightly trailing her long fingernails over me. Her fingernails were lacquered pale pink, and I saw that two of them were broken. "It doesn't matter about the revolver. I don't blame you. Not for anything."

She'd do anything to recover the gun, to recover her freedom.

"I'm glad," I said, holding her tight against me, feeling the blood-rush pounding in her heart.

"It doesn't matter," she repeated softly, "doesn't matter."

That's when I knew the really deadly game was just beginning.

R
oger Tabber sat quietly behind the wide desk in his private office, listening to the muted sounds of the traffic streaming below him on Seventh Avenue. He was visible really from three angles, for the plush office was furnished with several huge mirrors stretching from floor to ceiling, to give the impression of space. It was the nature of Tabber's business that he spent much time confined to his office, and he wanted to spend that time in an unstifled atmosphere conducive to decision-making. The three Roger Tabbers were men of about fifty, beginning to gray, with handsome, aggressive faces becoming slightly padded with the excess flesh of middle age. They lifted their right arms simultaneously and picked up the telephone receiver.

"Louis?" Tabber said into the telephone. "Give me a quote on Laytun Oil."

"I see," Tabber said after a pause. He drummed his fingers on the smooth desk top, letting the man on the other end of the line wait. "Buy me five hundred shares," he said then. "I'll talk to you later, Louis."

Tabber hung up the phone and gazed around him at the many handsomely framed charts hanging on the walls, at the wide table in the office corner covered with more charts and graphs, financial reports, figure sheets on great corporations and small alike. With his pencil, with his ascending and descending lines and sheet after sheet of figures, Roger Tabber was able to keep his finger on the pulse of the stock market. As an independent speculator and investor he had to in order to stay in business.

Tabber was intimately familiar with the countless graphs around him, and he believed in them. If all the pertinent facts were known, almost anything could be reduced to a graph, could be analyzed, plotted, and, more importantly, predicted, at least to the degree that Roger Tabber had made a profitable business out of it.

When he'd returned from Haiti last year he had started the business, working out of his apartment, but soon the reams of graphs and assorted information, the tools of his trade, became too numerous. He was making plenty of money, so he rented this office on Seventh Avenue, had it lavishly decorated and had two telephones installed. Here, alone in his office with his charts and telephones, he was building his fortune.