I thought about it for a minute, wavering. “It still scares me. You know what we’re fooling with.”
“Yes. And you know how we’re going to do it. Nothing can go wrong.” She smiled faintly, and touched my lips with a finger. “You understand it’ll have to be a long time afterwards? Maybe a year. And that it’ll have to be somewhere a long way off, where there’s no chance that anybody who knew him will ever hear your voice.”
“Of course.”
“All right. I have a little money, too. We’ll have well over two hundred thousand. Somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, or the Aegean. Or if you want to fish, somewhere in the tropics. Ceylon, perhaps. Just the two of us. And no strings attached. When you get tired of me—“
I drew a finger along her check. “I’d never get tired of you.”
“You will, when you get old enough to need younger women.”
“But I wouldn’t have to wait a full year?” I asked. “I mean, before I can even see you again?”
”No. We can meet somewhere after I’m sure I’m not being watched, in a month or so. will you do it, Jerry?”
I thought of that dream I’d had when she was trying to jump off the bridge, and felt cold in the pit of my stomach. Maybe it was a warning that something could go wrong. But I knew I was whipped. By this time I was conditioned to taking her on any terms I could get her.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get started.”
Seven
I looked at my watch for the hundredth time, conscious of the increasing tightness of my nerves. The waiting was bad; there was too much time to think. It was forty-five minutes past midnight. I was in the rental car, parked on Collins Avenue across from the entrance to the Dauphine. This was another of those glorified motor hotels of the Gold Coast Strip, about two blocks from the Golden Horn. He had a reservation. She’d made it for him, along with his fishing reservations at Marathon, in the Keys.
I lit another cigarette, and went on watching the oncoming traffic, which was definitely thinning now. I’d already checked the area for phone booths, to be sure I could get to one when I wanted it. I nervously looked at the time again. I’d been here an hour and a half. Maybe he wouldn’t drive all the way through from Mobile in one day. His plans could have changed in the two weeks since their bitter fight and her resignation, and he might be going somewhere else. He could have been in a wreck—I came alert. It was another Cadillac.
Well, I’d seen at least a hundred so far; there was no shortage of them in Miami Beach. But this was one of the big ones, and it was a light gray hardtop. Out-of-state license plate. Then I could see the pelican on it. The car was turning into the driveway of the Dauphine. It was Chapman, all right. And he was alone. I exhaled softly. That was the thing we had to know for sure. If he was going to live it up this trip, he hadn’t picked up a girl so far.
The Cadillac stopped in the circular drive before the glass front wall of the lobby, partially screened from the street by the boxes of tropical vegetation bearing colored lights. I got out and crossed the street.
Chapman had already gone inside, and a porter with a luggage barrow was removing three large expensive-looking bags from the trunk of the car. I went into the lobby and turned towards the two telephone booths at the left rear, beside the archway that opened into the dining room. Nobody paid any attention to me. Chapman was standing at the desk. He was just as she had described him. We looked nothing alike except that we were the same height and—within the limits of the average description— the same build. He wore a lightweight gabardine suit and a cocoa straw hat, white shirt, and a conservatively striped tie. And the glasses, of course.
“Reservation for Harris Chapman,” he said brusquely. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement of fact.
I didn’t hear the clerk’s reply, but he turned away to check. I had reached the telephone now. I went through the motions of looking up a number, and just before I stepped inside I glanced toward the desk again. The clerk had returned. He was smiling as he pushed across the registry card. Then he handed Chapman an envelope. So far, so good. But I had to see what he did with it. If he shoved it in a pocket, he might forget it. He glanced at it curiously, and then set it on the desk while he registered. He’d recognized the handwriting by this time, I thought. It was from Marian. She had written it just before she left for Nassau. I closed the door of the booth and quickly dialed the apartment. She answered on the first ring.
“He’s here,” I said quietly. “And he got the letter.”
“What did he do with it?”
“Nothing, yet. “Wait.” I turned and glanced toward the desk again. “He’s opened it.”
”Good,” she said. “He’ll call when he gets up to the room.”
I wasn’t so sure. He’d just driven over seven hundred miles, and would be ready to fall in bed. But she knew him inside out, and should be able to guess bis reaction pretty well. The letter was an implied but very arrogantly worded blackmail threat. She had something to discuss with him relative to his 1955 income-tax return, and would be waiting for him to call, not later than tonight.
“He failed to report fifty-five thousand dollars,” she’d explained. “It’s pretty well covered, but he knows how they dig once they’re tipped off. And that informers are paid.”
I glanced around again. Chapman had shoved the letter in his coat pocket and was striding toward the booths. “Hang up,” I said quickly. “He’s going to call right now.”
The phone clicked and went dead. He stalked into the other booth and banged the door shut. I went on talking, ad libbing a conversation with an imaginary girl. He was dialing.
“Hello, Marian? Harris.” I could hear him perfectly. “I thought they said you were in New York. What the hell’s this let—? Yeah, I just checked in. Look, if this is some kind of gag to get me to come out to your apartment, I thought we’d agreed that was all over. It wouldn’t change anything, and I don’t see why we have to embarrass ourselves. . . . What? . . . What’s that?”
There was a longer pause.
“Oh, so that’s the way it is?” he said curtly. “By God, I didn’t think you’d stoop to a thing like this. I guess Coral was right. . . . You know damn well that return’s been checked and double-checked, and they’ve never found a thing wrong with it. . . . Never mind what you think . . . If you need money, why didn’t you take that six months’ pay I offered you? . . . No, I’m not coming out there. I’m tired. I’ve been driving all day. . . . What proof? . . . You haven’t got any proof, and you know it.”
I heard him hang up and slam out of the booth. I pulled down the hook, dropped in another dime, and dialed her again.
“What do you think?” I asked softly, when she answered.
“He’ll come, as soon as he thinks it over. Let me know.”
“Right,” I said.
When I came out of the booth, Chapman was entering the corridor at the other side of the lobby, followed by the porter with his bags. I went back to the car, and lit a cigarette. The Cadillac had been parked in the area off to the left of the main building. Ten minutes went by. Maybe she was wrong. Then an empty cab turned into the driveway. In a minute or two it came out the exit, crossed the traffic to this side of the street, and started south, the way it had come. There was a man in it, wearing a hat. It was Chapman.
I looked at my watch. It had taken me fifteen minutes to drive up, but the traffic had lessened considerably by now. Call it ten. I got out and crossed the street again, and walked down about half a block to the bar I’d noted before. It had a booth, and I didn’t want to go back to the lobby again unless I had to.