the Hills Of Homicide (Ss) (1987) Read online

  He hurled me to the floor and jumped for me with bothfeet, but I jerked up my knees and kicked out hard with both feet. They caught him midway of his jump and put him off balance, and he fell beside me. I rolled over, grabbing at his throat, but he threw a right from where he lay that clipped me, and then I ground the side of his face into the floor by crushing my elbow against his cheek. We broke free and lunged to our feet, but he caught me with a looping right that staggered me. I backed up, working away from him, fighting to get my breath. My mouth hung open and I was breathing in great gasps, and he came around the wreck of the table, coming for me. The cut on his cheekbone was wider now and blood trickled from it, staining the whole side of his face and shoulder. His lips were puffed and bloody, and his nose looked out of line.

  He came into me then, but I had my wind and I was set. I jabbed with a left and moved away. He pushed on in, bobbing his head to make my left miss, so I shortened it to a hook and stepped in with both hands. They caught him solidly, and he stopped dead in his tracks. I pulled the trigger on my hard one, and his knees crumpled. But he didn't go down. He shook his head and started for me, his eyes glazed. My left hook came over with everything I had on it, and his cheek looked as if somebody had hit it with an axe.

  He came on in, and I let go with my Sunday punch. Sunday punch, hell. He took it coming in and scarcely blinked, hurt as he was. For the first time in my life I was scared. I had hit this guy with everything but the desk and he was still coming. He was slower, but he was coming, and his wide face looked as if somebody had worked on it with a meat axe and a curry comb.

  My knees were shaky and I knew that no matter how badly he was hurt, I was on my last legs. He came on in, and I threw a right into his stomach. He gasped and his face looked sick, but he came on. He struck at me, but the power was gone from his punches. I set myself and started to throw them. I threw them as if I was punching the heavy bag and the timekeeper had given me the ten-second signal. I must have thrown both hands into the air after he started to fall, but as he came down, with great presence of mind, I jerked my knee into his chin.

  Jerry Loftus came into the room as I staggered back, staring down at Caronna. "I could have stopped it," he said, "but I "

  "Why the hell didn't you?" I gasped.

  "What? Am I supposed to be off my trail?" He glared at me, but his eyes twinkled at the corners. "Best scrap I ever saw, an' you ask me why I didn't stop it!"

  "You'd better get cuffs on that guy," I said, disgusted. "If he gets up again I'm going right out that window!"

  We found Karen in another room, tied up in a neat bundle, which, incidentally, she is at any time. When I turned her loose, she kissed me, and while I'd been looking forward to that, for the first time in my life I failed to appreciate a kiss from a pretty woman. Both my lips were split and swollen. She looked at my face with a kind of horror that I could appreciate, having seen Caronna.

  Hours later, seated in the cafe over coffee, Johnny Holben and Loftus came in to join us. Holben stared at me. Even with my face washed and patched up, I looked like something found dead in the water.

  "All right," Loftus said doubtfully, "this is your show. We've got Caronna no matter how this goes, due to an old killing back east. That's what he was so worried about. Somebody started an investigation of an income-tax evasion and everybody started to talk, and before it was over, three old murders had been accounted for, and one of them was Caronna's.

  "However, while we don't know now whether Castro will live or not with that rib through his lung, you say he was the one who killed Bitner."

  "That's right," I said. "He did kill him."

  "He never came up that trail past my place," Holben said.

  "But there isn't any other way up, is there?" Karen asked.

  "No, not a one," Loftus said. "In the thirty years since I came west with a herd of cattle to settle in this country, I've been all over that mesa, every inch of it, and there's no trail but the one past Holben's cabin."

  "Your word is good enough for me," I said, "but the fact is, Castro did not come by any trail when he murdered Old Jack Bitner. How it was done I had no idea until I visited Castro's show. You must remember that he specializes in odd animals, in the strange and the unusual.

  "Crime and criminal practices have been a hobby with me for years. In all the reading and traveling I've done, I've collected lots of odd facts about the ways of criminals in our own and a lot of other countries. Usually, methods are very much in pattern. The average criminal, no matter how he may think of himself, is a first-class dope.

  "If he had imagination, he wouldn't be a criminal in the first place. When one does encounter the exception, it is usually in the field of murder. Castro was an exception.

  "He was a man who spent money and who liked to spend money, and he was getting old enough so that the jungles held no more lure. He wanted money, and he wanted it fast. There was some old family trouble, of no importance to us, that left a decided dislike between Castro and his uncle. He knew he could never inherit in any legitimate way.

  "He got his method from India, a place where he had traveled a good deal. When I saw his animals, something clicked into place in my mind, and then something else. I knew then he had scaled the wall under Bitner's window." "That's a sheer cliff," Loftus protested.

  "Sure, and nothing human could climb it without help, but Richard Henry Castro went up that cliff, and he had help."

  -You mean, there was somebody in it with him?" -Nothing human. When I saw his show, I tied it in with a track I saw on the ledge outside Bitner's window. The trouble was that while I knew how it was done, and that his show had been stopped on the highway opposite the mesa, I had no proof. If Castro sat tight, even though I knew how it was done, it was going to be hard to prove.

  One of the great advantages the law has over the criminal is the criminal's mind. He is always afraid of being caught. He can never be sure he hasn't slipped up; he never knows how much you know. My problem was to get Castro worried, and his method was one so foreign to this country that he never dreamed anyone would guess. I had to worry him, so in leaving I ,made a remark to him in Malayan, telling him that he had made a mistake.

  "Once he knew I had been in the Far East, he would be worried. Also, he knew that Caronna had seen him." "Caronna saw him?" Loftus demanded.

  "Yes, that had to be it. That was the wedge he was using to cut himself in on Castro's inheritance."

  "How could Castro inherit?"

  "There's a man in his show named Johnny Leader, a master penman with a half-dozen convictions for forgery on his record. He was traveling with that show writing visiting cards for people, scrolls, etc. He drew up a will for Castro, and it was substituted at the time of the killing." "Get to the point," Holben said irritably. "How did he get up that cliff?"

  "This will be hard to believe," I said, "but he had the rope taken up by a lizard!"

  "By a what?" Holben demanded.

  I grinned. "Look," I said, "over in India there are certain thieves and second-story workers who enter houses and high buildings in just that way.

  "Castro has two types of monitor lizards over there in his show. The dragon lizards from Komodo are too big and tough for anyone to handle, and nobody wants to. However, the smaller monitor lizards from India, running four to five feet in length, are another story. It is those lizards that the thieves use to gain access to locked houses. "A rope is tied around the lizard's body, and he climbs the wall, steered by jerks on the rope from below. When he gets over a parapet, in a crevice, or over a window sill, the thief jerks hard on the rope and the lizard braces himself to prevent being pulled over, and they are very strong in the legs. Then the thief goes up the wall, hand over hand, walking right up with his feet against the wall." "Well, I'll be damned!" Loftus said. "Who would ever think of that?"

  "The day you took me up there," I told him, "I noticed a track that reminded me of the track of a gila monster,but much bigger. The idea of what it meant did
not occur to me until I saw those monitor lizards of Castro's.

  "Now that we know what to look for, we'll probably find scratches on the cliff and tracks at the base."

  Karen was looking at me, wide-eyed with respect. "Why, I never realized you knew things like that!"

  "In my business," I said, "you have to know a little of everything."

  "I'll stick to bank robbers an' rustlers," Loftus said. "Or highgraders."

  "You old false alarm!" Holbe'n snorted. "You never arrested a highgrader in your life!"

  We were walking out of the door, and somehow we just naturally started up the hill. Dusk was drawing a blanket of darkness over the burnt red ridges, and the western horizon was blushing before the oncoming shadows.

  When we were on top of the hill again, looking back over the town, Karen looked up at me. "Are your lips still painful?"

  "Not that painful," I said.

  *

  Author's Note:

  UNGUARDED MOMENT

  The lead character of UNGUARDED MOMENT is neither a professional criminal nor detective. Arthur Fordyce is very much an "average" man who in an "unguarded moment" is confronted with some terrible acts of crime and violence.

  I have always been aware.. of the fact that all of us walk a very thin line. When you step out of a doorway whether you turn right or left may change the whole course of your life. We all have "unguarded moments," maybe not exactly like Fordyce in my story, but there are times when we do things that we hadn't planned on doing. Suddenly we make a move this way or that, or say something inadvertently that we hadn't even thought about saying, and it can change the whole course of events.

  It's very easy for a person to get himself in lots of unplanned trouble . For example, you have lots of time on your hands and you sit at a bar having a drink. A girl sits alongside you and is having one too, and all of a sudden her boyfriend or husband comes in and thinks you're trying to pick her up and he gets sore at you and you wind up in a fight when you were an entirely innocent bystander. Maybe you never even spoke to the girl, but the trouble can happen.

  *

  UNGUARDED MOMENT

  Arthur Fordyce had never done a criminal thing in his life, nor had the idea of doing anything unlawful ever seriously occurred to him.

  The wallet that lay beside his chair was not only full; it was literally stuffed. It lay on the floor near his feet where it had fallen.

  His action was as purely automatic as an action can be. He let his Racing Form slip from his lap and cover the billfold. Then he sat very still, his heart pounding. The fat man who had dropped the wallet was talking to a friend on the far side of the box. As far as Fordyce could see, his own action had gone unobserved.

  It had been a foolish thing to do. Fordyce did not need the money. He had been paid a week's salary only a short time before and had won forty dollars on the last race. With his heart pounding heavily, his mouth dry, he made every effort to be casual as he picked up his Form and the wallet beneath. Trying to appear as natural as possible, he opened the billfold under cover of the Form, extracted the money, and shifted the bills to his pocket. The horses were rounding into the home stretch, and when the crowd sprang to its feet, he got up, too. As he straightened, he shied the wallet, with an underhand flip, under the feet of the crowd off to his left.

  His heart was still pounding. Blindly he stared out at the track. He was a thief . . . he had stolen money . . . he had appropriated it . . . how much?

  Panic touched him suddenly. Suppose he had been seen? If someone had seen him, the person might wait to see if he returned the wallet. If he did not, the person might come down and accuse him. What if, even now, there was an officer waiting for him? Perhaps he should leave, get away from there as quickly as possible.

  Cool sanity pervaded him. No, that would never do. He must remain where he was, go through the motions of watching the races. If he were accused, he could say he had won the money on the races. He had won money forty dollars. The man at the window might remember his face but not the amount he had given him.

  Fordyce was in the box that belonged to his boss, Ed Charlton, and no friend of Charlton's would ever be thought a thief. He sat still, watching the races, relaxing as much as he could. Surprisingly, the fat man who had dropped the wallet did not miss it. He did not even put a hand to his pocket.

  After the sixth race, 'several people got up to leave, and Fordyce followed suit. It was not until he was unlocking his car that he realized there was a man at his elbow.

  He was a tall, dark-eyed handsome young man, too smoothly dressed, too slick. And there was something sharply feral about his eyes. He was smiling unpleasantly. "Nice workl" he said. "Very nice! Now, how about a split?"

  Arthur Fordyce kept his head. Inside, he seemed to feel all his bodily organs contract as if with chill. "I am afraid I don't understand you. What was it you wanted?"

  The brightly feral eyes hardened just a little, and although the smile remained, it was a little forced. "A split, that's what I want. I saw you get that billfold. Now let's bust it open and see what we've got."

  "Billfold?" Fordyce stared at him coldly, although he UNGUARDED MOMENT was quivering inside with fear. He had been seen! What if he should be arrested? What if Alice heard? Or Ed Charlton? Why, that fat man might be a friend of Ed's! "Don't give me that," the tall young man was saying. "I saw the whole thing. You dropped that Racing Form over the billfold and picked it up. I'm getting a split or I'll holler bull. I'll go to the cops. You aren't out of the grounds yet, and even if you were, I could soon find out who used Ed Charlton's box today."

  Fordyce stood stock-still. This could not be happening to him. It it was preposterous! What ever had possessed him? Yet, what explanation could he give now? He had thrown away the wallet itself, a sure indication that he intended to keep the money.

  "Come on, Bud'' the smile was sneering now" you might as well hand it over. There was plenty there. I'd had my. eye on Linton all afternoon, just watching for a chance. He always carries plenty of dough."

  Linton George Linton. How many times had Ed Charlton spoken of him. They were golfing companions. They hunted and fished together. They had been friends at college. Even if the money were returned, Fordyce was sure he would lose his job, his friends Alice. He would be finished, completely finished.

  "I never intended to do it," he protested. "It it was an accident."

  "Yeah" the eyes were contemptuous-I could see that. I couldn't have done it more accidentally myself. Now, hand it over.

  There was fourteen hundred dollars in fifties and twenties. With fumbling fingers, Fordyce divided it. The young man took his bills and folded them with the hands of a lover. He grinned suddenly.

  "Nice work! With my brains and your in we'd make a team!" He pocketed the bills, anxious to be gone. "Be seeing youl" Arthur Fordyce did not reply. Cold and shaken, he stared after the fellow.

  Days fled swiftly past. Fordyce avoided the track, worked harder than ever. Once he took Alice to the theater and twice to dinner. Then at a party the Charltons gave, he came face to face with George Linton.

  The fat man was jovial. "How are you, Fordyce? Ed tells me you're his right hand at the office. Good to know you.

  "Thanks." He spoke without volition. "Didn't I see you at the track a couple of weeks ago? I was in Charlton's box."

  "Oh, yes! I remember you now. I thought your face seemed familiar." He shook his head wryly. "I'll not soon forget that day. My pocket was picked for nearly two thousand dollars."

  Seeing that Alice was waiting, Fordyce excused himself and joined her. Together they walked to the terrace and stood there in the moonlight. How lovely she was! And to think he had risked all this, risked it on the impulse of a moment, and for what? She was looking up at him, and he spoke suddenly, filled with the sudden panic born of the thought of losing her.

  "Alice!" He gripped her arms, "Alice! Will you marry me?"

  "Why, Arthur!" she protested, laughing in her astonishmen
t. "How rough you are! Do you always grab a girl so desperately when you ask her to marry you?"

  He released her arms, embarrassed. "I I guess I was violent," he said, "but I just well, I couldn't stand to lose you, Alice."

  Her eyes were wide and wonderfully soft. "You aren't going to, Arthur: she said quietly. "I'm going to stay with you."

  "Then you mean "

  "Yes, Arthur."

  Driving home that night his heart was bounding. She would marry him! How lovely she was! How beautiful her eyes had been as she looked up at him!

  He drove into the garage, snapped out the lights and got his keys. It was not until he came out to close the doors that he saw the glow of a suddenly inhaled cigarette in the shadow cast by the shrubbery almost beside him.

  "Hello, Fordyce. How's tricks?" It was the man from the track. "My name's Chafey, Bill Chafey.

  "What are you doing here? What do you want?" "That's a beautiful babe you've got. I've seen her picture on the society pages."

  "I'm sorry. I don't intend to discuss my fiancTe with you. It's very late and I must be getting to bed. Good night."

  "Abrupt, aren't you?" Chafey was adopting a George Raft manner. "Not going to invite an old friend inside for a drink? An old friend from out of town who wants to meet your friends?"

  Arthur Fordyce saw it clearly, then, saw it as clearly as he would ever see anything. He knew what this slick young man was thinking that he would use his hold over Fordyce for introductions and for better chances to steal. Probably he had other ideas, too. Girls and their money. "Look, Chafey," he said harshly, "whatever was between us is finished. Now beat it! And don't come back!" Chafey had seen a lot of movies. He knew what came next. He snapped his cigarette into the grass and took a quick step forward.