Murder Mistress Page 4

  “You don’t,” she said. “You had to take it.” She sighed. “Poor lamb, you look exhausted. Don’t you want to sleep? We can talk in the morning. Nothing seems so grim in sunlight.”

  “You’ll be rushing off to work,” he said. “Besides, it won’t keep.”

  “Then I’m going to build a pot of coffee. Be right back. Wait for me, darling.”

  He smiled. “I love you, baby,” he said.

  She blew him a kiss. Absently he watched the cute sway of her bottom beneath the trail of his pajama top as she departed for the kitchen.

  He looked around the bedroom with its shabby rented furniture. It would have been beter, he thought, if I had turned it down. But how do you say — no …?

  At the time the quiz show was offered him he didn’t need the extra income. Too quickly, he had traveled the climbing announcer’s road from small independent station to network staff, to free-lance, New York. The big-money terminus for television. He had accomplished this in four years when some took ten and most never made it at all. He was more surprised than anyone else at his success, calling it a matter of breaks and timing. He never felt quite seasoned or prepared, always a little afraid of sudden failure.

  He had a nice free-lance package going for him. Nothing too tricky or painfully demanding. He had contracts to announce the commercials on two coast-to-coast soap operas, a night-time national newscast and a half-hour suspense drama. In every case he sold different products for the same basic sponsor, an enormous company with many lines. He was answerable to the Freeman, Pellett and Weber Advertising Agency, who serviced the account. Occasionally he did voice tracks for the newsreels. Altogether, in round figures, it was good for a very cozy twelve hundred a week.

  Of course, you had to have a good voice and a pleasant selling personality. And, you had to understand timing and stage business, exhibiting the product with poise and naturalness. But in the main, it was a matter of reading someone else’s script from a teleprompter in such a deceptive way that it appeared to come right from the old heart. It was tense, but not overwhelming. And he would have been content to leave the status in quo indefinitely.

  But, no. The sponsor thought he was great and had sales figures to prove it. For all practical purposes, Leeland Dobbs, the executive vice president, was the sponsor. And like most sponsors, Dobbs didn’t understand the tremendous difference between reading from a teleprompter and conducting the intricate proceedings of a national quiz show. This required a skilled master of ceremonies who could gracefully ad lib his way through the snarl of contestants, juggle questions, make decisions, be passably amusing, buttress commercials with a few well chosen words of his own … and give the impression he was having one hell of a good time doing it.

  But Daniels knew the difference. And he was plain scared when Dobbs insisted he wouldn’t have anyone else for the new SEVEN COME ELEVEN quiz but Scott Daniels. At a small station he might stumble through, relaxed enough to come up smelling pretty. But with a nationwide show involving a mint of money, there were grave doubts.

  He wouldn’t forget that opening night. It was a masterpiece of confusion. In rehearsal, Burt Masters, the director, a sour-faced, cold-eyed bastard, had been riding him mercilessly. From the beginning, Masters had wanted in for his own boy, Dick Hurley. Rumor had it that Hurley kicked back part of his fees on the shows Masters got him. In any case, Masters seemed out to destroy his composure.

  At airtime he stood tense, uncomfortably rigid in the hot glare. The red lights winked on beneath the camera. The muscles of his face felt wooden, lips formed into a frozen smile. He looked into the lens and saw … not the millions of viewers, not the giant shadow of the audience beyond the lights, not from eye-corner the busyness of technicians and floormen, but the sullen contemptuous features of Burt Masters.

  Just for a second the image hung there. And then he heard his own voice, saying none of the things he had carefully planned — but strange, inverted sentences, awkwardly composed.

  From the lead-in forward, it was bedlam. Most of the contestants were dull and he had to carry them. Yet, one woman talked too much and he couldn’t silence her gracefully, though the show was running long. Meanwhile everything he said came back to him stilted, self-conscious. Who was it quipped, ‘The best ad-libs are written’? Where were the casual lines of the teleprompter?

  Somehow, in the control room where the offender (probably Masters) was never visual, the sequence of the action became confused. They tossed him an early cue for the commercial, he gave the introduction, and then the girl who was to play housewife was offstage. The camera came back to him and he had to stall for an eon of time until she was ready. Then, for some unimaginable reason, the electronic score computer failed to totalize and for a span he had to do sums in his head when his brain was already crowded with a dozen other details.

  Everything went wrong.

  And, though most of it could be blamed on the kinks of a first night, he had failed to turn defeat into a personal victory by the casual remark, the apt and humorous phrase.

  After the show, ringing wet to his socks, he was cornered by Masters. “My God, Daniels, what hayseed windmill station did you blow in from? You want us to write the whole thing out on an idiot board six-feet high? You couldn’t talk your way out of a parking ticket if you owned the street. Jesus, you’re about as casual as rigor mortis on ice. That was the worst God-awful mess I’ve witnessed in years. But don’t worry about it, lover. I have a sneaking suspicion someone’s on the phone right now asking for a new boy.”

  Daniels almost hit him. Instead he said, “Why don’t you recommend Dick Hurley?” and walked away.

  The funny thing was that he met Hurley at Schraffts the next day. And Hurley said with a perfectly bland face, “Caught your show last night, Daniels.”

  “Well?”

  “Don’t take it too hard. All your luck was stacked the wrong way.”

  Hurley giving his sincere commercial while placing you off-guard for the kill. But he had a lot of experience as MC.

  “How would you have handled it, Dick?”

  “Just relax and kid hell out of it. Turn it into a comedy skit. Frankly, you were a little stiff. You had me sweating. You need a couple more shows behind you. Sometimes I belt two or three down before I go on. It helps. Try it. Loosen you up.”

  “Thanks. I might do that. If I’m not watching at home.”

  But Lundberg said that while Dobbs was disappointed, he had faith that next week Daniels would improve.

  An hour before show time he was falling apart. He had three straight shots and couldn’t feel anything but a flush, creeping like fever to his face. However, he did somewhat better. And at least there was variety. Different things went wrong.

  The third week he drank manhattans in te bar downstairs. A half dozen. His reactions were slow, his uninking a little vague. A few things got fouled up. But beautifully, he didn’t care. He was tempted to snicker right out loud. Once he did.

  Lundberg said, “You’re going to the other extreme, Scott. You’re not easy, you’re almost limp. Tighten up. Make it brighter!”

  Now the strain was showing in between. He had lost confidence and began to take a few shots before his less demanding shows. Sometimes he slurred his words. Once he lost a whole paragraph. Directorial eyes grew thoughful under creased brows. He was getting the silent treatment at F. P. & W. Lundberg came right out with it: “What’s wrong with you lately, buddy boy? Sick? Need a vacation?”

  The fourth week of SEVEN COME ELEVEN, he was drunk. Not falling down, but giddy-minded, body-floating drunk. He concealed it to airtime with a superhuman effort. He opened the show with a frenzied burlesque of an MC on fire with enthusiasm. He hurried everything along at a militant, comically fast pace. He was having a wonderful time. Then suddenly he ran out of gas and when his cue came to lead into the ad-lib close and sponsor plug, he stood loose-jawed and wordless before a live camera coast to coast. He had nearly two minutes to fill and all he c
ould do was stand there and wave, saying over and over, “G’night, g’night, g’night all.”

  They had to cover with reams of music, shots of the audience, and the word-stretching of the booth announcer. Meanwhile, he had stumbled off stage and collapsed cold in the wings.

  Except for a few professionals, the watching world never really caught on. But he was finished. Masters saw to that. Gone also were his other shows, for the same angry sponsor controlled them all.

  Within three days most everyone in that tight little unforgiving world knew. All the unseen doors of re-entry were closed. For awhile he did nothing but live up to his reputation. Once an insurance salesman who came to the apartment asked him conversationally what he did for a living.

  “I drink,” he said. “Now get out and let me go back to work.”

  When most of the small capital he had put away was gone and there was no income other than the rental of the lakeside cottage, he answered an ad in a trade publication:

  OPENING FOR HIGHLY EXPERIENCED ANNOUNCER IN TOP FLORIDA MARKET. FORTY HOUR WEEK. $90. EXCELLENT FUTURE. SEND TAPE, PHOTO AND BACKGROUND. REFERENCES REQUIRED.

  There was a box number, care of the publication.

  Lundberg gave him a reference with his usual condescension. He didn’t need it. He was well known. Fortunately, the reason for his disappearance from the monitor screens in their control room was a mystery to the Miami station. He supplied a reason of his own — temporary loss of health with the present need of a new climate. They were glad to get him. In time he got a ten dollar raise — a very big deal. Except for an occasional beer, he had lived in total abstinence.

  And through it all Myra reasoned, comforted, adjusted downward without complaint, and took a secretarial job. No wonder theirs had become an inviolate closeness.

  She entered now with coffee and cinnamon toast on a tray. “You look terribly thoughtful,” she said as he munched and sipped in silence.

  Again he glanced around the bleak, heat-soggy room. He was struck by a sickening wave of depression. “Myra, baby. What happened to it all? Gone. Gone.”

  She reached over and stroked his head. “It’s not so terribly important, darling. I don’t mind. I mean it. In a different way, haven’t we been just as happy? What’s gone? Pressures? The mad chase? Cocktail parties? Our fair-weather, politic friends? We’ve had time for each other. And there’s a certain crazy laughable unity in just making do. We talk for hours and we read books and go to movies and take walks. So don’t be sad, sweetheart. What’s gone that we can’t really do without?”

  “My face is gone from better than fifty million screens a week,” he said. “Money gone, the big car, furniture, clothes … and the feeling that I’m not a failure. That’s what’s gone.” He wanted to cry. “But, baby, you’re not gone. Stick around, will you? Like forever.”

  She kissed him. “Like forever.” She smiled. “But not if you can’t stay away from complicated brunettes. Was there really a brunette?”

  He reached for his trousers across a chair next to the bed. From a pocket he produced the five hundred dollars. “See this?” He held up the roll. “It was given to me by that complicated brunette for services rendered. Five hundred bucks.”

  “Five hundred!” she said. “That’s a lot of service. You’re not serious. Are you?”

  For the first time he inspected the money closely. “Old bills,” he said. “Disappointing.”

  “Old bills, new bills. What’s the difference? It spends.”

  “You can’t trace old bills,” he answered thoughtfully.

  “Can’t trace them? What on earth are you talking about now?”

  He gave her an exact accounting of the adventure.

  “So what does it all mean?” she said.

  “It means that if we can’t spend this five hundred now, we might be able to bank fifty thousand later. That would be the aggregate reward from various sources, namely a local newspaper, the bank and the city government. It amounts to about ten percent of the total theft.”

  “Please, honey, make sense.”

  He mashed his cigarette, removed the tray and sat up sharply. “While I was gone,” he said, “in fact, about the same day I hit the road, don’t you remember a very sensational story in the paper concerning an armed robbery with a take of a half million or so?”

  She looked at him blankly. Then her eyes widened, her mouth worked. “The Second National Bank!”

  “Of course.”

  “Two men wearing masks,” she said quickly. “They held up the chief teller seconds after an armored truck made a payroll transfer from the First National. Perfect timing. The biggest haul since the Brinks robbery.”

  “Right!” he said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Someone sounded the alarm,” she said excitedly. “There was a squad car just a few blocks away and headquarters flashed it. The police were there in a couple of minutes. Then the whole area was blocked off. They never could figure how the crooks got away. It seemed impossible. Not a trace of them. Not a single clue.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “And you think the money in that suitcase …”

  “The odds are good. But so far it’s just a hunch.”

  “And you have a plan?”

  “I’m figuring one. And I’ve got six days’ vacation left to work it out.”

  “Sounds dangerous, darling. Don’t take chances. Why don’t you talk to Bill Hoag, that detective? The one who took you out cruising around for that show you did — NIGHT PATROL.”

  “I will. I will. After I’ve done most of the groundwork. Bill’s a nice guy. But I don’t plan on sharing the spoils.”

  He got up and began to pace slowly.

  “You ought to get some sleep, dear.”

  “I know, I know.” He went over to the window and, parting the curtain, peered out.

  “It’s exciting,” she said. “And yet … frightening, too. Do you have any idea where you’re going to start?”

  He looked out upon the low buildings of the littered street, then east to the vast dim radiance of greater Miami.

  “I’m going to start,” he said, “by looking for a girl somewhere out there, named Valerie.”

  SIX

  On Tuesday, late the following day, after traveling some one hundred sixty miles, Roy Whalen stormed in from Haines City, Florida, and parked his Plymouth sedan beside the Glades Garage on Highway 27. He climbed out and leaned against the door, puffing a cigarette, glancing around the building with a look of squinting speculation.

  He was a medium-sized man of thirty-six, a chunky blond with pale freckled skin and blunt features. There was nothing in the least remarkable about him — unless you noticed his eyes. They were azure, flawless as fine gems — and just as hard.

  After a moment he gave the cigarette a high flip and made his way around the building to the lot which adjoined it, an area of tall grass and broken rows of wrecked automobiles. He spotted the cream and red Olds almost immediately. With a furtive gaze towards the garage, and with much indirection, pausing to examine other wrecks, he made his way to it.

  Pursing his lips, he inspected the crushed right side, the interior with its bent wheel, blood-stained seat, cracked windshield. Then, casually, he circled to the rear.

  The trunk lid looked closed, but on closer observation appeared to be slightly ajar. He squatted down, his head beneath the bumper, making a fake study of the undercarriage. If anyone came along he would say he was a body repair man, searching for a late model Olds he could buy for a song and hammer together in his spare time.

  But as he brought his head up, his eyes came level with the opening and he was able to see clearly that the trunk was empty. Thus an entirely different story would be needed.

  He went now directly to the garage and located the small cluttered office, inside to the left. Here a grimy, unshaven butterball of a man in his undershirt penciled what looked like someone’s bill for services.

  He looked up, said, “What�
�s yours, friend?”

  “Insurance adjuster. You got that Olds ‘57 sedan, belonged to Martin Bates?”

  “You were looking right at it a minute ago, friend.”

  Whelan’s face didn’t alter. “That right? Thought so. But I wasn’t sure.”

  “That’s the heap. You got here fast enough. Poor bastard ain’t even cold yet. They tell me he kicked off without never comin’ to.”

  “I know. We got it from one of his relatives. That’s the way it goes.”

  “Come up from Miami, friend?”

  “Yup. You have the damage estimate?”

  With a grunt the man opened a drawer, brought out a sheaf of papers, selected one, handed it over.

  “My God,” said Whalen, “this is a beaut! I’ll take it along if you’ve got a copy.”

  “Got two.”

  “Now,” said Whalen, “the brother, Matthew Bates, said there were some personal effects. Should be a couple of suitcases. Authorized me to pick ‘em up.”

  “Just one suitcase, friend.” He pointed. “That’s it up there — black one on the shelf. Nothing in it but a few shirts, underwear, stuff like that. I was here when the highway boys had a look at it.”

  “That’s all? No other suitcase? A big tan one?”

  “Nope. Cop come in behind the wreck opened the trunk hisself. Just the black one.”

  “They couldn’t have taken the case out at the scene of the accident?”

  “Nope. Not hardly. Never do it that way. Bring the heap in first — always.”

  For the first time, Whalen was hard put to keep his face empty and his voice under control. “Well, Jesus,” he said, “that’s mighty strange. The brother says the case was there, big tan job. Some clothes in it belonged to him, other stuff worth a few hundred. It couldn’t just walk away without a little help. Now if he puts in a claim, we’ll have to have a pretty thorough investigation. Tell you what. Just for the hell of it, give the highway patrol a call and see if they know anything about it.”

  The garage man gave him a look to indicate the insanity of such a proposal, then reached for the phone. After placing the call he was obviously shuffled around until the informed party was reached. He posed the question, listened, made a few grunts into the mouthpiece and hung up.