Fourteen

THE APARTMENT was in a well-tended building bordering a small park in the eastern section of the city. The man who answered Travis’ knock was tall and fat, with a face in need of a shave. He wore red pajamas that were tight around his belly, his small eyes were red-rimmed, and his sparse reddish hair was in need of combing.

“What do you want?” the man said angrily, eying Travis. “I just got to sleep. If you’re another crummy salesman—”

“Harry Eaton?”

The man in the red pajamas nodded, still sore. “I don’t see anybody till later.”

Travis opened his wallet, showed Eaton his badge.

Eaton dropped his surliness immediately. He could think of a number of reasons why he might get a visit from the cops, none of them pleasurable. “Sorry. I yapped at you,” he said. “But I work nights and.… Want to come in?”

Travis entered a well-furnished living room that showed some evidence of having been used for a drinking party recently. A brassy blonde in a black net nightgown was looking out from the open bedroom door.

“Get the hell back in there!” Eaton growled at her as he shut the apartment door. “Ain’t you got no modesty at all?”

The blonde gave Eaton a disdainful look, backed up and shut the bedroom door.

Eaton shook his head, forcing a grin for Travis. “Dames! They all give me a pain. If they ain’t—”

“You own a bar over on Daley Street called The Door?”

“Yeah. Why? Somebody break in?”

“You employ B-girls there.”

Eaton’s eyes got careful. “Well, I don’t exactly employ ’em. They come around. If they cadge any drinks off a customer, I give ’em a percentage. But I don’t pay ’em any salary, or hire ’em steady. Nothing like that.”

“You had a B-girl working there for a few weeks named Peggy.”

Harry Eaton scratched his balding head. “Peggy? What’s the last name?”

“You tell me. Peggy is all I know. Had a West Coast gambler for a boyfriend. Hugh Rehm.”

Eaton’s sleepy eyes got less sleepy. “I read in the papers about poor old Hugh gettin’ himself killed by some cop.”

“I’m the cop that killed poor old Hugh,” Travis told him.

Eaton swallowed hard. “The paper said he was in on that bank job. Was he?”

“His girl friend Peggy,” Travis said. “What’s her last name?”

Eaton scratched his head again, not looking at Travis. “I got so many damn broads worked my place. They come and they go. I can’t remember all of ’em.”

The flesh under Travis’ narrowed eyes tightened. “Some of the girls that work your bar make most of their money as prostitutes.” It was a guess—but a reasonable one where any joint on Daley Street was concerned.

Eaton paled. “How’m I supposed to know what any of those dumb broads do outside my place?”

“You’re responsible for whatever happens in your bar,” Travis said. “A liquor license is hard to get in this town. But easy to lose. One of the things you can lose it for is letting whores make contact with their johns in your place.”

“For crissake,” Eaton said miserably, “you wouldn’t do that to me, would you? I lose the liquor license, I lose everything.”

“It could happen,” Travis said. “And if the vice squad leans on you, you’ll need a friend in the Department. I could be a good friend—especially if I owe you a favor.”

“Peggy Jennett,” Eaton said heavily. “What the hell’s it to me? Her name’s Peggy Jennett. Only worked my place a couple of weeks. I ain’t responsible for any jam she’s got herself into.”

“Where’ll I find her?”

“Search me.” Eaton shrugged. “Like I say, I don’t hire ’em regular. If they come in, okay. If they don’t, that’s okay, too. I don’t know where they live, or anything.”

“How about Hugh Rehm? Know where he lived?”

“Nope. He just came around sometimes. Drank beer from the tap. He was stony. I guess that’s why his girl had to work.”

“Any of the girls in your place that might know something about Peggy Jennett?”

“I wouldn’t know. Why don’t you drop around my bar tonight and ask ’em?” Eaton winked at Travis. “You can have anything you want on the house. Drinks, that is.”

“This Peggy Jennett work any other place that you know?”

Eaton shrugged. “If she did, I don’t know where.” Then he frowned, thinking of something. “There’s a photographer has his studio and apartment over my bar. He paid her for some pictures be took of her. To sell to the girlie magazines. But she didn’t work for him regular or anything. Just once that I know of. I figure he just wanted to get her up there in the raw so he could try his luck on her. I guess be didn’t make out, though, or he’d’ve been boastin’ about it.”

“What’s this photographer’s name?”

“Ira Taber. But I’d lay odds be won’t be able to tell you where to find her, either. Peg wasn’t one to gab about her private life, like some of ’em.”

Travis turned to the door, looked back at Eaton.

“Ask the girls that come into your place about Peggy Jennett tonight. If you dig up anything about her, call me at Headquarters. They’ll know where to contact me if I’m not there.”

“Sure,” Eaton agreed, too easily. “If I dig up anything on her.”

“Hope you do,” Travis said pointedly. “Because then I’ll owe you that favor I mentioned.”

 

Captain Herlinger was alone in his office, talking on the phone, when Travis came in carrying a large manila envelope.

Herlinger hung up the phone, gazed angrily at Travis. “How come you aren’t home sleeping?” he demanded. “Everybody else is conking out on me. I’m the only one that’s supposed to be able to do without sleep around here.” His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks sagged, had stubble on them.

“Anything on Walt yet?” Travis asked.

“Not a damn thing. We’ve got men at the bus terminals, the train station, the airport, hitting all the rooming houses, hotels-the works. For what? Nothing. He’s disappeared.” He eyed Travis disgustedly. “Proud of yourself? The way I feel right now, Ferguson was right about you. What’d you come back here for? To cry on my shoulder?”

Travis took three eight-by-ten photographs out of the manila envelope, fanned them out on Herlinger’s desk.

“Her name’s Peggy Jennett,” Travis said. “I think she’s the girl Max Orr was trying to tell us about when he died.”

Captain Herlinger, suddenly looking less weary, examined the photographs. One was a full-face shot of Peggy Jennett gazing out of the picture with seductive invitation in the expression of her eyes, the curve of her ripe lips. The second picture showed her standing, spread-legged with her hands on her hips, wearing a minimal bikini. The third was a nude of Peg sprawled on her back across some dark pillows, gazing upward with her lips parted to show the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

Despite the hours he’d put in, and the pressure upon him, Captain Herlinger felt his pulse increase as he studied the pictures a bit longer than necessary. Finally he looked up at Travis. “Where’d you get these?”

“A cheesecake photographer. named Taber. He paid her fifteen bucks to shoot a series on her for possible sale to magazines.”

“How do you know this is the girl Orr was going to spill on?”

“She was Hugh Rehm’s girl,” Travis said. “And I think she was Walt’s, too.”

Eagerness brightened Captain Herlinger’s eyes. “The photographer know where we can locate her?”

“No. And nobody else seems to know where she is, either.”

The light in Herlinger’s eyes died. “Big help. That leaves us back where we were before.”

“Not quite,” Travis said. “If I’m right about this girl, she’s probably with Walt. And if he’s got her with him, he’s not likely to show himself. Not with his face like it is, making him so easy to spot. He’ll let this girl do anything that requires being seen by other people.”

Herlinger nodded slowly. “Maybe,” he murmured.

“Why not get a hundred fast copies made of that full-face picture,” Travis said, “and spread them around to all the men we’ve got looking for Walt. Let ’em watch for her, too.”

Herlinger picked up the photograph. “Worth trying,” he conceded. He looked up at Travis, a bit more kindly than before. “If this picture nets us Bonner, I’ll remember you were the one turned it up.”

“Yeah,” Travis said dryly. “If.”

 

With dusk, the sky became overcast again. The weather turned unseasonably humid.

Bonner waited till an hour after dark before leaving Rehm’s apartment with Peg. He wore the gray hat tugged well down on his forehead, and kept his head down so the brim shadowed his damaged face. Peg clung to his arm, an eager tautness in her look; they were going to the money. A whole suitcase full of money—one hundred and twelve thousand dollars’ worth of spending cash. She kept her mind on that, to lull her nervousness about Bonner.

She’d found she could still make him respond to her physically. Even when he didn’t want to, she knew how to make him. But that was all. Just that physical response—and when it was over, he was once again cold and uncommunicative. The rest of him was closed to her now.

She knew that he was taking her with him only because he needed her to get at the money and help him get away. She didn’t know what he would do once he had the money and felt safe alone. She admitted to herself that she was afraid of Bonner—the way he was now. But the fear of death itself wouldn’t keep her from making a try at getting her share of that money.

And maybe, she thought.…

Just maybe.…

All of it.

They found a car that was unlocked, a few blocks away. Waiting till the street was empty, Bonner connected the ignition and they got in. The muggy night air combined with Peg’s excitement to make her feel too hot. She took off her coat, tossed it in the back.

As Bonner drove away, Peg said, “Well, now you can tell me where we’re going without being afraid.”

“When we get there,” he said, tonelessly, “then I’ll tell you.”

“Walt,” she said softly, making a last stab at it, “you’ve got to trust me. I’m all you’ve got, now. And you’re the only one I’ve got. We have to trust each other, to have any chance of getting away with it.”

“I’ll trust you,” Bonner told her, “as much as I have to.”

She slumped back in the seat away from him and gnawed at the joint of her thumb, her thoughts dark and angry.

Bonner parked the car in a dark side street a block from the railroad station.

Peg sat up straight as he set the brake and turned off the headlights. “Is this where you—?”

“This is it,” he told her tightly. “It’s in the baggage-checking department downstairs in the station.” He looked at her for a moment. “You’ll have to get it. I can’t go in there. They’ll have plainclothesmen in there, watching to make” sure I don’t get away by train. With this face, they’d spot me the minute I walked into the station.”

“I’ll bring it out to you,” Peg said, careful to let nothing show in her face. “Don’t worry.”

“Why should I worry?” he demanded softly. “You wouldn’t double-cross me again. Would you?”

“No,” she said. “I swear I won’t.”

“You’d better not try,” he told her. “You know why? Because I’m giving you exactly five minutes to get that suitcase and be back here with it. Five minutes. If you’re not back here by then, I’ll go to that phone booth over there on that corner and call Headquarters. I’ll give them your name, your description, tell them you have the money. They’d have this whole area locked tight in minutes. And the cops they’ve got in the station would be after you. You wouldn’t get far.”

Bonner’s hand reached out, his fingers digging into her arm. “You understand that I mean it? I’d have nothing to lose by it. But you—you’d spend the next ten years in a prison cell. Do you understand?”

She whispered, “Yes.”

He ran his hand down her arm, turned her wrist so he could see the time on her watch. Then he let go of her. “Now we wait four minutes.”

“Why?”

“There’s a train pulling out in three minutes. I know the schedules. I did a stakeout on this station for a couple of days, a few months back. After that train, there isn’t another pulling out for twenty minutes.”

“I still don’t.…”

Bonner told her: “I just want to make sure you don’t grab that suitcase and hop a train out of town. You’ll be too late for this one. Try waiting around for the next one, and I’ll have phoned in and the cops’ll take you while you’re waiting.”

“Don’t keep talking like that,” she snapped. “I’m not going to double-cross you.”

Bonner smiled mirthlessly. “Of course not. Now that you know you can’t get away with it.”

They waited in silence for a few minutes. Then Bonner looked at her watch again. “Okay. It’s time.” Bonner got his wallet from his jacket, took from it the baggage check stub. He gave it to her. “Here. This gets you the suitcase.” He dug two dollar bills from his trousers pocket. “This’ll cover what I owe on it.”

Peg clutched the baggage check and the two bills in her fist, started to open the door on her side.

“Remember,” he told her. “You’ve got just five minutes.”

She got out onto the pavement and hurried toward the station. The feel of the baggage check clutched in her fingers excited her. But she remembered Bonner’s words. She couldn’t get far with that money. He’d rigged it so she couldn’t. If she could manage to dodge the cops—and even get out of the city—the cops would be after her, looking for her wherever she went.

No, there was only one way she could have all that money, and be safe from pursuit. But she didn’t want even to think of that, if she didn’t have to.

As a matter of fact, she didn’t want to run out on Bonner. She didn’t like being alone. She was used to having a man with her. If only Bonner would let her have a fair share of that money, or let her dip into it whenever she wanted. And treat her right.…

As Peg entered the station, she glanced at her watch, hurried her pace.…

Down in one of the track tunnels under the station, Plainclothes Detective Martin Klepowitz watched the train pull out and sighed. This was a boring, pointless duty he’d been assigned to. Bonner wouldn’t be dumb enough to try getting out on a train. Not with his face the way it was. Klepowitz hunched his broad shoulders under his coat, glanced at his watch. No more trains out for twenty minutes. He trudged to the stairway, climbed to the main waiting room.

At the top of the steps, Klepowitz looked across the brightly lighted waiting room toward the newsstand. O’Brien, a stocky plainclothesman whose face showed his two unsuccessful years in the ring before joining the force, was there leaning against a stanchion with a newspaper in his hands. Klepowitz shrugged his shoulders, once. O’Brien nodded and went back to pretending to read his newspaper—while actually watching the east entrance of the station. Klepowitz went to one of the benches near the baggage-checking counter and sat down facing the west entrance of the station.

He folded his arms across his broad chest and sighed. Sometimes he thought he wasn’t cut out to be a cop. He hated the long monotony of these stakeouts. And stakeouts were a major part of a police detective’s job. If only he could take it till he got promoted to more interesting jobs. It would hurry up that promotion if only he could spring a really big case.

But he never got a chance. They kept assigning him to these thankless nothing jobs, where—

His attention suddenly shifted from his inner gripes to the buttocks of a girl standing at the baggage-claims counter with her back to him.

Klepowitz was a rear-end man. There was no part of a female quite like a saucy rear end to start his palms tingling. And this was a particularly tasty rear end, tightly encased in dungarees, so there was no guesswork. He could even see where her buttocks dimpled, in just the right place.

Delighted, Klepowitz gave himself over to the contemplation of his favorite art work of nature—only dimly aware of the rest of her, of the fact that the baggage clerk was sliding a big black suitcase across the counter to her.

She took the handle of the suitcase and dragged it off the counter, turned and started away with it.

Reluctantly, Klepowitz let his gaze slide upward to check on whether the rest of her matched the rear end. It did. He looked higher. He had a good look at her face, and then she was past him, walking toward the west exit.

Her face had been more than satisfactory too, Klepowitz decided as he watched the way those marvelous buttocks moved as she walked away from him. A young, bold face.…

Klepowitz frowned.

A sort of familiar face.…

Suddenly, his hand dove into his coat pocket. Came out with the small copy of Peggy Jennett’s full-face photograph. He took one look at it, lunged to his feet and started to run after her.

He checked himself after two steps. It wasn’t the girl they wanted. It was Bonner. More slowly now, Klepowitz followed her, keeping the distance between them. He glanced back toward the newsstand. O’Brien was hurrying across the waiting room after him…

O’Brien caught up as Klepowitz followed Peggy Jennett through the west exit.

“It’s the girl,” Klepowitz whispered to him, nodding toward where she was hurrying off up the street with the suitcase. He turned his head and looked in the opposite direction. A prowl car was stationed on the corner at the other end of the long railroad-station block. “Go tell the boys in the car,” he whispered to O’Brien. “They’ll radio it in. Then follow me.”

O’Brien hesitated, then nodded and hurried off toward the prowl car. Klepowitz followed after the girl with the suitcase. In his excitement, he’d forgotten entirely about her fascinating rear end.

She turned the corner into a dark side street. Klepowitz followed around the corner, cautiously keeping to the shadows close to the wall. He saw a car parked halfway down the block. It’s headlights were off, but there was the vague darker shape of someone in the front seat. Klepowitz reached under the lapels of his coat and jacket, closed his hand around his revolver, thumbed off the safety. He moved more carefully.

Peggy Jennett reached the car, opened the front door. When she opened the door, the ceiling light inside the car automatically went on…Klepowitz saw the man behind the wheel-saw his badly gashed face, his gray hat and gray tweed coat. He took three long strides toward the side of the car, drawing his revolver and leveling it.

“All right, Bonner!” Klepowitz thundered. “You’re under—”

Bonner brought up the gun he’d been holding beside his thigh and fired instantly. The bullet whipped through the open door past Peg’s side, and drilled into Klepowitz’s hip.

Klepowitz felt a blazing agony explode through his hips, stomach and legs. He fell awkwardly, face down on the sidewalk, hearing the slam of the car door as Peg jumped in with the suitcase; the roar of the engine as Bonner gunned the car away from the curb.

Fighting stubbornly against the sick pain expanding inside him, Klepowitz forced himself up on his elbows, pointing the revolver he still clutched at the fleeing car. The night exploded as he fired one shot after another at the car’s retreating wheels.

Bonner felt the left rear tire go a split second before the car reacted to it. He tightened his grip on the wheel, fought to hold the car steady as it began a screeching swerve to one side. His foot left the accelerator, jammed on the brakes. The car swayed, skidded dangerously, jolted the front two wheels up over the curb onto the pavement—and came to a sudden stop.

Cursing wildly, Bonner threw open his door, snatched the suitcase off Peg’s lap, and jumped out.

Then he saw the police prowl car roaring up the cross street toward him.

Bonner turned and began to run. Peg leaped out of the car and raced after him—after the black suitcase.