Love Me and Die (4 page)

Her voice was still amused. “If you must know, Turk recognized him and told me there was a detective working in our warehouse. When I got his call, I put two and two together.”

I said, “Turk was a busy boy. What’s his stake in all this?”

“In all what?” she said. She was mocking me.

I said, “Art came here looking for some kind of trouble. He told you over the phone he had information about your company. You immediately agreed to meet him. That means you have a problem.”

“You can add two and two also,” she said.

I said angrily, “I’m not here to play games, Mrs. Jessup. Art Ditmer is my partner. He’s also my friend. He came here on an undercover investigation. According to you, he was recognized by Turk Thorne. And he made a date with you for tomorrow night. I learned all this from his reports. He phoned his last one to Tucson on Sunday.”

I leaned forward and butted my cigarette. “Since then he hasn’t been heard from. In simple words, he’s disappeared.”

I leaned back. “What kind of an answer do you think I should get when I add all this up?”

She stopped smiling; the laughter went out of her eyes. She leaned forward, the cigarette curling smoke up between her fingers. Her eyes fixed themselves intently on my face.

She said, “Turk has disappeared too. What kind of answer should I get?”

I wondered briefly whether I should tell her about Turk Thorne. I dropped the idea. It wasn’t my business to tell anyone. Not yet. Not until I knew more about where Art Ditmer stood. And not until I could get myself clear of the possible frame ready to drop over me.

I said, “Let’s stop sparring, shall we? You sent Turk Thorne to Tucson to search Art’s office and mine for the Jessup file. Isn’t that right?”

She said, “Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t. For the sake of argument, let’s say I did.”

She was cool, completely self-possessed. Pinning her down might be a harder job than I could handle. But I had to have some answers. I had to know what Art had learned about Jessup Trucking. Or what someone thought he had learned. I had to find out for Art’s sake and for my own. And I didn’t think I had very much time left in which to work.

I said, “Let’s say you did. Thorne offered to tell me something about Art in exchange for the Jessup file. That was last night or early this morning, however you want to look at it. But Art hasn’t reported since Sunday.”

She was running even with me and ready to take the rail and go ahead. She said, “Are you trying to say that I caused Art Ditmer’s disappearance?”

I said, “That’s right.”

“Why would I?”

“Because you thought he had sent reports about you back to the office. And you were afraid of what might be in those reports.”

She smiled again, showing fine white teeth. She stubbed out the cigarette smoldering between her fingers. She took another cigarette from a box on her desk. She lit it with a book match.

She blew out the match with a thin puff of smoke. She said, “Why should I have anything to be afraid of, Mr. Coyle?”

She had a disconcerting way of putting everything in the form of a question, putting me on the defensive by forcing me to frame an answer.

I said, “If you haven’t anything to be afraid of, you’ll tell me what the trouble is here.”

She sat for a long moment. She took a deep, thoughtful drag on her cigarette. She shut her eyes and pressed fingertips lightly to the lids. In a lot of women, the whole act would have had a phony touch. But not the way Bonita Jessup did it. She was thinking, and thinking hard.

She opened her eyes. She said, “There is no trouble, no trouble at all.”

Anger pushed me to my feet. I yelled, “Art Ditmer was here, checking your company out. And now he’s disappeared. Turk Thorne comes to my office and tears the place apart and dopes me. If he didn’t, someone else did. Toby Jessup came to me for help. I add that together and get ‘trouble’ for an answer.”

She said, “Are you trying to let everyone know why you’re here?”

I took a deep breath. She made me feel a little like a fool. But not for long. I was still too burned up. I said, “If you won’t tell me, I’ll have to make a guess. And I’ll operate from that guess because it’s the only thing I have to go on.” I leaned toward her. “And you might not like the conclusions I come up with, Mrs. Jessup.”

She was still trying to defeat me with that cool, controlled surface she showed. She said, “I’d like to hear your guess.”

I said, “My guess is that someone is trying to force this company into a bad financial spot so they can buy it up cheap.”

She stood up. She said, “I think it’s time you talked to Mr. Healy. He’s our comptroller. He can show you exactly where the company is financially.”

She walked toward the door and opened it. She went on through, leaving me to follow. I realized that she had caught me off balance with her first remark and that she hadn’t let me get my footing again. I had handed out a lot of information, but I hadn’t gotten much in exchange. She wasn’t only beautiful; she was smart too.

I hadn’t been so thoroughly suckered since I had tried to move in on the redhead on our first date.

I watched Bonita’s back as she moved ahead of me down the hall. I wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t do it.

I thought of a number of cracks I might make to try to destroy her poise. I didn’t get the chance. She turned to a door with
Comptroller
on it and rapped.

A dry masculine voice said, “Come in.” She opened the door and went in. I stayed right at her heels.

I would have known Chester Healy even without the sign on the door. He was everything Art Ditmer had described him as being, and a little more. He sat behind a half-acre of desk. The top was covered with piles of invoices, bound ledgers, scraps of paper with a fine, crabbed scrawl on them. On one side of the desk was an electric calculating machine. It was whirring and jumping when we came in.

On the other side was a small tray. It held a glass and an ashtray. The ashtray had a dollar’s worth of cigar butt balanced on it. The glass was about half full of something that looked like very good whiskey.

Bonita Jessup said, “Chester, this is Mr. Brogan, the man Toby brought from West Coast Industrial Advisors. Mr. Brogan, our salvation, Mr. Healy.”

The calculating machine took that moment to stop snapping and jumping. Healy looked at it, scribbled a row of figures on a scrap of paper, and punched a button that set the damn thing grinding its gears again. He laid down his pen and stood up.

He held out his hand. “My pleasure, Mr. Brogan.” I shook the hand. It was thin-fingered and ink-stained. It was also sinewy. And strong.

He took the hand back and brushed it over a thin layer of pale brown hair. He had the same color gray eyes as Toby. But his looked too large for his thin, almost fleshless face.

Bonita Jessup said, “Will you give Mr. Brogan a minute and show him our balance sheet, Chester? He seems to feel we may be in financial trouble.”

She handed me a smile that had enough horsepower to drive one of her big semirigs. She turned and walked out. I watched her go and tried to hate her again. But I still couldn’t. She was just too much woman.

H
EALY WAITED
until Bonita shut the door behind her. He said, “So you’re an efficiency expert, Mr. Brogan. Sit down. You can be just as efficient on your tail as on your feet.”

He stopped, picked up the glass, and drained it. He smacked his lips with a sound of genuine satisfaction. He picked his cigar up from the ashtray and tried puffing on it. He located a trickle of smoke and worked until he had a full-fledged coal going.

He said, “Have a cigar? They’re good. I get them in Mexico for less than half of what they’d cost here.”

I took out my cigarette. “No thanks.” I lit a cigarette and tried to figure a way through the front he was putting up.

He opened a desk drawer and lifted out a bottle. The label said the contents were Scotch, twenty years old. “How about a drink? I get this in Mexico too. Save over fifty per cent on the bottle.”

I watched him pour three fingers of Scotch in his glass. I said, “No thanks again. It slows down your reflexes.”

He lifted the glass and looked at me over the rim. I couldn’t quite tell what the glint in his eyes meant. I had a feeling he was laughing at me the same way Bonita had. I wondered if Toby had filled him in on my real identity.

He said, “I’ve got perfect reflexes, Brogan.” He turned to his machine, jotted down a number, and set his pen aside.

“My books always balance,” he said. “And I haven’t been stone sober between noon and midnight for years.”

This was something Art Ditmer hadn’t mentioned in his report. I filed it for future consideration. I said, “Do you keep all the books? I should think you’d have a staff of subordinates and some bookkeeping machines.”

He glanced at the piles of paper on his desk. “Certainly I have a staff. And if you’d have looked on your way through the outer office, you’d have seen the bookkeeping machines. But it so happens, I like to keep a check. I don’t trust machines. I learned to make my entries by hand. I still do. Then I know where I stand.”

I said, “And where do you stand?”

He said without hesitating, “Jessup has assets of two million dollars. Our total outstanding indebtedness is—as of today—seventy-eight thousand, six hundred and forty-one dollars and eighteen cents. Our reserves are—”

I said, “I get the picture. I was apparently under a misapprehension concerning your financial standing.”

He gave me a scathing look that put me in mind of Toby Jessup. “A misapprehension concerning your financial standing,” he said with dry savagery. “Do you think those big words make you sound like a big, busy organization man, Brogan? Why don’t you say what you mean—that you’re fishing for information!”

If he’d sprung that line on me when I first sat down, he’d have had me on the ropes. But I was braced now for anything he might say.

I said, “Why should I fish for information? I assume that my being hired to do a job will give me access to what I need.”

He took the cigar out of his teeth. He stuck his thin brown neck out of his collar like a turtle. He said in a raspy voice, “You’re no efficiency expert. “You’re a damn spy for the outfit that’s trying to break us so it can buy us up cheap.”

Sometimes the gods must get tired of watching a man take a whole raft of kicks in the groin. Then they change sides. They did for me right then.

I was trying to get my mouth closed and look as if I thought Healy might be a little drunk when a telephone rang. The sound was muted, but loud enough to hear.

Healy took his eyes off my face. He opened a desk drawer and lifted out a telephone handset. He said, “Hate the damn things. Ugly, noisy, demanding—invented by an efficiency expert.”

He put the mouthpiece in the general direction of his face. “Yes? What is it?”

A voice made squawking sounds. He said, “Who would call me from San Francisco?” More squawks. He glowered. The tone of the squawking changed. His glower disappeared. His eyebrows went up.

He said, “He’s here.” He pushed the phone in my direction. “West Coast Industrial Advisors calling from San Francisco,” he said.

He looked almost hurt. As if my being what I claimed to be had destroyed one of his favorite illusions.

I took the phone. I said, “Brogan talking.”

The redhead said, “I thought you were going to call in for a briefing, Mr. Brogan. The boss is irritated. He’s missed a bridge date waiting for you.”

I could feel Healy’s eyes on me. There was a faint gleam of hope in them. It faded when I said, “I’m in conference, Miss Bascomb. Tell the boss I’ve already started work. I’ll report as usual.”

The redhead grunted. And hung up. I gave the phone back to Healy. He shoved it back in the drawer. He looked at me for a minute, shrugged, and got out his Scotch bottle. He poured himself four fingers this time.

He said, “Let’s say I’ve had a long day, Brogan. Or that I’ve been watching too many late shows on TV.”

I said, “Think nothing of it. I know what pressure is.”

He downed his drink. “Now if you’ll let me get back to my work …”

I took the hint. I couldn’t think of any way to handle Healy yet. I decided to postpone that until tomorrow—when he was less full of Scotch. If he would see me, I thought.

He surprised me. He said, “Have lunch with me tomorrow, Brogan. I’ll be more sociable.”

I took it for an apology. I said lunch would be fine. I left the office. I hiked down the hall past Toby Jessup’s door. It was closed. I kept on going. I wanted to talk to her again, but I had a feeling I should phone the redhead first.

I left the building and walked into the blast of heat. My watch read 9:00
P.M
. The air felt like high noon. I crossed the street and went into the coolness of the bar and grill.

It was a medium-sized place with a string of tables parallel to booths lining the wall. A bar with purple neon lights over the mirror was across from the booths. A telephone hung on the wall by a coat rack. The rack was empty. I wondered if anyone in Ramiera ever needed to wear anything heavier than a shirt.

I looked over the crowd. The bar was half filled. The tables were empty. I could make out a few couples in the nearer booths. The back booths were in shadow and anyone in them was out of my range of vision.

I fed a dime into the phone and dialed the City Center Motel.

A tired female voice told me I had called the right number. I said that I wanted to speak to Miss Lucas.”

I heard a sound as if the woman was consulting a list of cards. Then she said, “No one by that name registered here.”

I said, “I was told she registered about an hour ago.”

The woman’s voice was positive. “Nobody’s checked in but a Mrs. Brogan lately.”

I thanked her and hooked the receiver into place. A Mrs. Brogan. There couldn’t be a fake Mr. Brogan and a real Mrs. Brogan registering at the motel the same night. That was asking too much of coincidence.

I found another dime in my pocket. I dialed the same number. When the woman answered, I pitched my voice up a notch and talked with my teeth clamped shut. It’s surprising how much that simple trick can change a voice. I asked for Mr. Brogan.

I could hear the telephone ringing. The ringing stopped when the redhead said, “Hello?”

I said, “I called to tell you that I’m still busy but you can catch me at”—I paused and looked at the number of the pay phone—“Ramiera 4321, in a few minutes.” I hoped she would take the hint and go out to call me back.

She said in a cooing voice, “You’re so considerate, darling.”

I hung up. She hung up. I moved away from the phone to a magazine rack. I stood and spun it. I didn’t pay much attention to the titles of the magazines. I wasn’t in the mood for reading.

The phone rang in just under five minutes. I crossed to it. “Brogan here.”

“This is Miss Bascomb, you
cabrón
,” the redhead said.

I said, “Watch your language. It might not be me at this end—
Mrs. Brogan.”

The redhead said, “What’s wrong with my registering as Mrs. Brogan? The room has twin beds, for heaven’s sake. Remember, I’m paying the expense account, and one room is cheaper than two.”

Her voice was a little thick with laughter. And with rum, I suspected.

I said, “Where are you calling from?”

“A drugstore,” she said. “The same one I made the other call from. You don’t think I’d give the old battle-axe in the office the fun of listening in, do you?” She added, “It was all right to make that other call, wasn’t it?”

I said, “Your timing was perfect. Old man Healy was busy accusing me of not being from West Coast Industrial Advisors. You really hit him where it hurts.”

She didn’t laugh at that. She said in a worried voice, “Did he act as if he knew who you really were?”

I said, “He thought I was a spy for some outfit he claims is trying to buy Jessup cheap. But Bonita knows who I am.”

The redhead said softly, “Damn!”

I said, “She knows about Art too. Turk Thorne recognized him and tipped her off.”

The redhead said, “What do we do now?”

“We keep working,” I said, “until I find a way to crack Bonita’s shell. She’s tough.”

The redhead said, “God, what a mess!” and hung up.

I hooked the receiver back, wondering what she had meant by her last remark. I stopped thinking about it in a hurry. I turned away from the phone just in time to see Rod Gorman slide out from a booth at the back of the room. I made a hurried move to the magazine rack so I could keep my back to him.

If he recognized me, he gave no sign. He walked past me and out the door without any hesitation. I glanced toward the booth at the rear. I wondered if he had been alone in there or if his taking time off the job in the middle of the evening rush had any meaning.

I decided it did have meaning. Toby Jessup came sliding out of the booth. She took a few steps my way, saw me, and went back into the booth like a crab running for cover.

I walked back to her. She was sitting motionless, both hands gripping an empty coffee cup. She stared at me in silence. A look of strain showed around her gray eyes and at the corners of her primly set lips.

I said, “Imagine meeting you here.”

She said stiffly, “I’m not in the mood for humor, please.”

I sat down. “What are you in the mood for? You said you had to see me when you were through tonight.”

“I’m not through,” she said. “I still have a good deal of work to do. And I don’t think it will be necessary to see you.”

I said, “Earlier, you were insistent about it. What changed your mind? Gorman?”

She said coldly, “Rod and I were having a cup of coffee while we discussed business.”

I said, “You had something on your mind—about me or my investigation. I want to know what it was.”

She started to slide out of the booth. I said casually, “Of course, I could ask Bonita if she knows what’s bugging you.”

Toby stopped sliding. She said, “I resent being bullied.”

I said flatly, “I resent being kept in the dark. You asked me to help you. But when I want information, you’re quick to duck out. Today, you were in a hurry to get back here. Tonight, in your office, you were afraid of being overheard. Now there’s another reason.”

She was silent a moment. Then she said, “All right, meet me after I’m through tonight. About ten o’clock,” she added.

I said, “I’ll be waiting.”

“Not here,” she said quickly. “We shouldn’t be seen together too much. And I prefer more privacy.”

I said, “How about your place?”

She said frigidly, “I’m not accustomed to entertaining men in my apartment at that hour of the night.”

I wanted to ask her at what hour she was accustomed to entertaining them, but I didn’t think there was much humor in Miss Toby Jessup. In a way, I thought, it was a shame. She had so much to offer a man on her small frame.

I thought a moment. I said carefully, “How about over in Lozano. The Frontera Motel.”

If I startled her, she kept it well hidden. I had deliberately tried to jolt her, but I had missed my target. She said, “It is secluded.” She sounded as if she might be arguing with herself. “Is that where you’re staying?”

I said, “You could say that.” She made a move to leave the booth. “Come to Unit 7,” I added.

She nodded slowly. She said, “It will be a little after ten before I can get there.”

She got to her feet. I said, “Do you have any little pearls for me to think about while I’m waiting? Like what you started to tell me earlier when Gorman interrupted.”

She said in a low voice, “I was going to tell you that someone shot at me when I was coming home from Tucson today. They hit my front tire. I was nearly killed.”