Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer (17 page)

“Listen, darling,” I said. “This is going to be tough. This is going to be the hardest thing either of us ever did. I’m betting everything on you. I believe you when you say you didn’t do it, and I’m betting my life that you’re telling me the truth.”

“I love you,” Janis said. “You know I’m telling the truth.”

“Now you’ve got to tell me all of it. From the beginning. If I’m going to do this I have to know it all. There can’t be any slip-ups. Any details we’ve overlooked. I’m going to ask you questions and I want you to answer them. I believe you. So I know you have nothing to hide. I know you’ll tell me the truth.”

“Ask me anything.”

“The first thing I have to know is this: Why did Jean Dahl come to my office and offer me a book, if she had no book? That’s one thing that worries me. And I don’t think Anstruther would have sold a book he didn’t have. In other words, I think there
was
a genuine Anstruther book. I think I saw one page of it. And, I think there were three hundred forty-six more pages. And I think Jean Dahl had them. She offered them to me. And she said she had another customer. Do you know if she had them? Do you know if there was another customer?”

Janis Whitney extended her left arm.

On her wrist was a heavy gold bracelet and a thin gold bracelet and a charm bracelet. One of the charms was a small gold key.

It was so quiet in the room that I could hear us breathing. Janis Whitney’s breathing was soft and regular. I was breathing hard.

Janis opened the drawer of her dressing table and took out a leather jewel box.

She fitted the key into the lock and opened it.

The yellow pages were not clipped together.

There was just a loose stack of them. There were a lot of them. There could have been three hundred and forty-seven of them. She took the manuscript out of the box.

“Is that it?” I said.

Janis nodded. “It’s the only copy in the world,” she said. Her voice was barely a whisper. “There were two
copies. I had one and Jean Dahl had the other. I didn’t know there were two. I thought I had the only one. But Jean Dahl took the other copy with her when she left Anstruther’s apartment. She sold me this one for five thousand dollars. Now I have the only copy.”

I got out another cigarette, lighted it and put it in my mouth. My mouth was dry.

“I’m telling you everything. I love you, Dick.”

She put the manuscript on the dressing table.

“Go on.”

“Give me a cigarette.”

I tossed her a single cigarette. She caught it. I tossed her my lighter. She lighted the cigarette and inhaled deeply.

“Go on,” I said tensely. “Go on, darling.”

“Dick, I can’t.”

“You’ve got to, darling. What was in the book?” I asked softly. “What was there about it? Why did you think you had to hide it? Why did you pay five thousand dollars to get the second copy when you already had a copy?”

Then Janis began to laugh.

It was not a pretty thing to see.

The sickness hadn’t showed before. It hadn’t showed even during her imitation of Max. But it showed when she began to laugh. The laughter began to get out of control.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s so funny. I can’t stand it. It’s a great joke. It’s the biggest joke. It’s so terribly funny.”

“What is it?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“I have a book,” she said. “It’s a war story.”

She couldn’t control the laughing now. It was a terrible thing to hear.

“What I bought was a story with an all-male cast. There’s no part for a woman. There’s not a single woman in the whole book.”

She was laughing and sobbing now.

I could feel the sweat break out on my forehead as I watched her.

“The book Jimmie wrote has a wonderful part for a woman. I’ll be magnificent in that. But we have to get rid of this one first. I got rid of one copy. Now we have to get rid of the other.”

Before I was aware of what she meant, she was holding the cigarette lighter to the bottom of the pile of yellow pages.

“My God,” I shouted. “Stop that!”

She went on laughing.

“It’s my book,” she said. “I bought it. I can do whatever I want with it.”

I was shouting hysterically as I went after her. But she was too quick for me.

She threw the burning manuscript into the fireplace. I dove for it, and as I did so she tackled me.

She was a dancer with a beautifully conditioned body. She was wiry and strong. I couldn’t get away from her.

We wrestled on the floor near the fireplace.

I got my hand into the fireplace once. Enough to
burn my fingers. But she threw herself on top of me again and dragged me away. Then she hit me with something hard and scrambled to her feet.

I got up and she was holding the gun. The look in her eyes made me forget about the book.

“O.K.,” I said. “I was wrong. You fooled me. I believed you and I was wrong. I was wrong about everything except one thing. You’re a great actress. The greatest. You fooled me. I believed you. You killed Anstruther and Jean Dahl. And you tried to kill Max.”

She aimed the gun carefully at me.

“You almost did it,” I said. “You almost got me to take the rap. But you didn’t.”

“You son of a bitch,” she said.

“I killed Anstruther,” she said. Her voice was flat and hard. “I killed him because I wanted to kill him. It was no accident. He tried to double-cross me and I killed him.”

“I believe you,” I said. “But the funny thing is, I believed you just now on the bed. You gave a very good performance, but then I guess you’ve had a lot of practice.”

“I’ve had plenty of practice,” she said. She raised the gun till it was pointing to my head.

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “They can get you off. No jury in the country will hang you. They don’t hang insane people. They just put them away.”

“Shut up,” she said.

My eyes were fixed on the finger on the trigger of the gun. I watched her knuckle tighten.

I screamed as the gun clicked. The small click was loud in the quiet room.

The safety was on.

She did not blink. With her thumb she snapped off the safety. Then behind me, from over my shoulder, I heard Walter say, “What a touching scene!”

The picture covering the broken mirror had slid noiselessly away and Walter stood in the opening framed by the jagged pieces of the broken mirror. He was holding a revolver very elegantly in his hand.

“All right, my dear,” Walter said from the other side of the opening. “Drop that gun or I shall shoot you. You know I would have no hesitation in doing so.”

She hesitated only an instant.

But it was long enough. I had her wrist and this time there was no trouble. I twisted the gun out of her hand.

“Keep an eye on her,” I said.

I knelt quickly by the fireplace.

There were a few of the pages that might possibly be salvaged. But she’d fanned them out and most of them had burned rapidly.

“The book,” I said. “She burned the book.”

The life had gone out of Janis Whitney’s face. Her hair was disheveled and her robe hung open.

Mechanically, half in a daze, she picked up her hairbrush and began to brush her hair.

My lighter was lying on the floor. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

Inside my pocket my hand touched something.

I pulled out Jean Dahl’s lipstick.

It seemed like I’d been carrying it in my pocket for days.

“Here,” I said. “Fix yourself up. Your picture’s going to be in the papers.”

I started to toss her the lipstick.

But I didn’t.

I stood holding Jean Dahl’s lipstick.

With my thumb I pushed the top up.

I looked at it. I looked at it for almost a minute. Then I began to laugh.

I stood there for a long time holding the lipstick in my hand and laughing. Then I put the lipstick back in my pocket.

“The hell with it,” I said. “I’m going to remember you for a long time, darling. And it’ll be better if I remember you looking like this. It’ll be easier.”

I turned to Walter. “Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll be running along. I’m sure you two will have a lot to talk over. I won’t bother calling the police. You can do that. Maybe you can even fix this whole thing up. I don’t know how, but you’re pretty good at fixing things. I’ll be interested to see how it all comes out, however.”

“Richard,” Walter said. “What about our deal?”

I laughed.

“May I take it then that you are not going to publish the book?”

“I’m not going to publish your book,” I said. “I’m going to publish Anstruther’s.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I haven’t got time to go into it now,” I said. “You can read all about it in the
New York Times Book Review.”

I turned, unlocked the door, and left quickly.

I sat in the bar on West Forty-eighth Street looking at the autographed picture of Martin and Lewis.

On the table in front of me were two things.

My fifth drink and Jean Dahl’s lipstick.

I looked across the room at the booth on the other side and I noticed something. A new picture.

I picked up my drink and the lipstick and moved to the booth across the way.

I had two more drinks. I drank them slowly and deliberately. Then I looked up at the picture and said, “Hey, baby, want to see something?”

I pulled the cap off Jean Dahl’s lipstick and turned it upside down. The roll of microfilm fell out in my hand. “There it is, baby,” I said to the picture. “Microfilm. No wonder Jean was willing to sell you her copy of the book so cheap. She had it all on microfilm, right here. I guess this is what Maxie’s boys were looking for in my apartment the other night. I guess a lot of things. I guess I’ll have another drink.”

I walked into Pat’s office two days later and (in reality, not in a daydream) casually tossed the manuscript, all three hundred and forty-seven photostated pages of it, on his desk.

“What’s this?” Pat asked.

“Oh,” I said. “A book.”

“What book?”

“The new Anstruther,” I said casually. “If we rush it into galleys we can have it for late spring.”

Pat was aghast.

“You’re drunk,” he said.

“You’re right,” I said. “But there’s the book.”

“Come back here,” he said. “Where are you going? You’re drunk. You look terrible.”

“You’re right,” I said. “And now I’m going to get drunker and look worse.”

I left the office and went for a long walk. Then I went to the movies. I spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening in the moldy theatre on Sixth Avenue, watching the movie over and over again.

Then I walked back up Sixth Avenue, stopping in each bar along the way.

The last place I went into was the one on Forty-eighth Street.

I wanted to take a last look at the new photograph.

But I was too late.

They’d already taken it down.

Hard Case Crime brings you gripping, award-winning crime fiction by best-selling authors and the hottest new writers in the field. Find out what you’ve been missing:

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