The Price of Murder

Chapter Five Paul Verney

Though Verney knew that the trouble had started only a year ago, it seemed to him that things had been going wrong all of his life. Each cumulative disaster required a more desperate counter measure. In the past he had been able to depend on Burt Catton, on Burt’s extroverted optimism, his nimble unscrupulous mind.

But now Burt was gone and in his place there was a grave, withered, apprehensive little man, subject to tears of weakness and moods of dark depression. How could Burt have been such a fool as to tell Drusilla? Everything had been handled so carefully.

He drove sedately back toward Hancock, and he remembered how proud he had been of the extreme care he had used. There was no one who could prove definitely that he had driven to Tulsa, and that he had returned with the money locked in the trunk of this same car. For three years and more the nation had wondered what had happened to the money in the Rovere case. He had followed the news reports at the time it had happened. He would have been both very frightened and most indignant if anyone had told him at that time he would ever have that money in his possession.

Calvin Rovere had been a wealthy resident of Houston, a man who had made many millions in oil, ranch land and trucking lines, a big hearty man who had married in his early forties, married a very pretty girl from Fort Worth. A little over a year after their marriage twin sons were born, and, two years later, a daughter. Rovere maintained a summer place in the hill country north of San Antonio, a large but otherwise unpretentious house on fifteen acres of land in a bend of the Guadalupe River near Bandera. He had a good airstrip put in, and during the hot months he commuted. On a Wednesday in August his wife flew down to Houston with him one morning and spent the day shopping, leaving the children at the summer place, along with a cook, a maid, a foreman and three hands. The twin boys were nine, the daughter seven.

Some time during the afternoon the twin boys disappeared. One man reported that he had seen a battered station wagon stop on one of the side roads bordering the place at about two o’clock. He could not tell the make. It was too far away to see how many people were in it. He forgot the incident and did not remember it until midnight when, under the stress of direct questioning by a captain of the Rangers, he recalled the incident. In the morning a piece of brown wrapping paper weighed down by a stone was found inside the fence line where the station wagon had stopped. On it was printed in pencil, If you want to see your kids alive get together a half million dollars in small unmarked bills and wait till you hear from us.

Rovere, with considerable difficulty, managed to collect the sum required without attracting the attention of the press. Police work on the case was discreet and good. After the necessary seven days were up, the F.B.I, was called in. No word had been received from the kidnapers. After staff conferences, it was decided to substitute money that could be identified. A half million in brand new tens, twenties and fifties was secured in exchange for the money Rovere had accumulated. The bills were mechanically and manually aged, shuffled so as to destroy the sequence, then repackaged. It was thought that with such a large amount, it was unlikely that the kidnapers would discover the serial sequence of the bills. The money filled two good-sized suitcases.

Ten days after the kidnaping a letter came to Rovere’s office. It had been mailed in Dallas. It was impossible to trace the paper or the envelope. It detailed a plan for transfer of the money that was so clever and so foolproof that it was never leaked to the press. It promised that, after the money was inspected, the boys would be released in a major city. The frustrated police had to permit the transfer of the money. It proceeded without incident, twelve days after the kidnaping. The three tables of serial sequence had been quietly distributed to all banks. Two weeks passed and the boys were not released.

The bodies of the two boys were found a mile from the town of Vanderpool, a little over twenty miles from Rovere’s summer place. Both children had been killed by a blow that broke the skull, and they had been placed in a shallow arroyo and carelessly covered with sand and rock. Wind had blown the sand and uncovered the feet of one of the children, and an Angora goat herder had discovered the cairn. It was then that the crime exploded in the papers, complete with all known details except the serial sequence of the money.

The money began to turn up in the banks of Youngstown, Ohio. It was traced to a young man who drove a pickup with Pennsylvania plates. He had rented a small farmhouse near Orangeville, just over the Pennsylvania line. The farmhouse was surrounded, and there was a gun battle during which one officer was seriously wounded and the three occupants of the farmhouse were slain: a young man, an older man, and a young woman. They all had police records. The young man and the young woman were known drug addicts. A single suitcase containing just over a hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars was brought back to headquarters in Youngstown.

There were conflicting stories about whether or not there had been another suitcase, and, if so, what had happened to it. The story of the serial numbers appeared in the newspapers and over radio and on television. State, county, and city police had co-operated with federal officers in the operation. There were intensive inquiries. The other suitcase, if indeed there had been one, was not traced. Some believed there had been at least one and maybe two other principals involved, and that the group had split up. Others thought a cop had grabbed the rest of the money. If others were involved, they would have learned they could not spend the money.

Paul Verney had not been thinking of that money when he was contacted by a man named Roger Dixon. He had known Dixon in law school, had known him quite well in fact, but had lost touch with him after graduation. Dixon had gone into criminal law in Detroit and had been very successful until, in 1949, he was tried and convicted of bribery of a city official, fined, given a suspended sentence and disbarred. Verney had read of the incident and was astonished at Dixon’s carelessness.

It was about two months after Catton’s heart attack that Paul Verney returned one evening from his office to the private club where he lived and found Roger Dixon waiting for him. Dixon looked prosperous, confident and sleek. He came up to Verney’s room to talk to him.

Verney’s room was sedate, old-fashioned and comfortable. Verney fixed him a Scotch. “Old Paul,” Dixon said. “You look just like I imagined you’d look. You’ve fulfilled your early promise. I used to think you must have been born looking like a self-satisfied bachelor. What ever happened to Melissa?”

“We were married. She had a breakdown six years ago. A very tragic and unexpected thing, Roger. She’s in an institution down-state. The boy is away at school. He’s fifteen.”

Verney had expected the usual expression of sympathy. Instead, Dixon grinned at him, a bright malicious grin. “And you love every minute of it, don’t you?”

“Exactly what are you trying to say?”

“Just that I know you pretty well. Skip it.”

“You’re looking very prosperous, Roger.”

“You know about my little difficulty. I can see you do. And you’re disappointed not to find me on a corner with a tin cup and pencils.”

“I’m glad you’re getting along.”

Dixon smiled in a mocking, unpleasant way. “I’ll bet you are. Good old Paul. Wants the best for everybody. Don’t try to kid me. You don’t care and never have cared what happened to anybody else in the world. I roomed with you, Paul. Maybe nobody else ever got behind that facade, but I did. I don’t know what it was that twisted you. It must have happened real early. Because by the time we met, you were solidified.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.”

“But you will, Paul. You will, because I know you’re in a hell of a jam and you just squeaked out from under an indictment for fraud, and you have the correct impression that I’ve come here with some kind of an offer where you can make money. So you just let me tell you what you wouldn’t listen to a lot of years ago.”

“You were always emotional.”

“But you weren’t, Paul. Emotions were left out of you. I watched you go after everything you wanted. Cold as a machine. No mercy, no scruples, and no ethics.”

“The disbarred attorney gives a lecture on ethics.”

“I mean ethics in human relationships. When anything or anybody got in your way, you bulldozed the obstacle aside. I’ve never seen such cold-hearted, cold-blooded, frightening ambition. You didn’t make one friend. I was the poor, warm, stupid slob who tried to be your friend. I even tried to understand you and find out what made you what you were and what you are.”

“Shouldn’t you be accompanied by violins?”

“I should have caught on quicker. Absolute greed plus perfect selfishness plus a ruthless and methodical intelligence. I should have caught on and stayed away from you. Then you wouldn’t have gotten the idea of marrying Melissa. The only reason you wanted her was because I wanted her.”

“She made the choice.”

“On insufficient data. I’ve kept track of you, Paul. You were getting money and power just as fast as I expected you to. Maybe a little faster. And then you got clobbered. You tripped up and you went down like a horse on ice. I got pleasantly drunk the night I heard about that, Paul. It was a celebration. I bought drinks for strangers, and I made them all drink to my toast. Here’s to the utter ruin of Paul Verney, the blackest-hearted bastard of them all.”

“You’re still emotional, Roger. You mentioned my methodical intelligence. It causes me to ask a question. You seem to... disapprove of me. And you hint of some offer that will bring me a profit. Thus the offer is suspect, isn’t it?”

“The direct mind at work. I’m an agent in this matter. When you hear the whole story, you’ll see why you’re the logical one to come to. You have larceny in your soul, but you’ve stayed relatively clean. You are desperate, and you’ve got guts. I’ll never deny you that. This is going to take careful planning on your part, and you’re capable of that. You can make a couple of hundred thousand tax-free dollars. I make a commission and please my boss. I’d foul you up if I could see a way to do it, but I can’t think of a way. You’re ideal for this proposition.”

Verney folded his pale, powerful hands. “I am listening.”

Dixon hitched his chair forward and lowered his voice. “Remember the Rovere case? The money? It’s never showed up. It’s still too hot. It will always be too hot. Want to know a little history? You can’t prove any of this no matter what you decide. There’s three hundred and twenty-seven thousand. All of the fifties and all of the twenties. A county cop grabbed it that night, drove three miles with it and pitched it into the brush and recovered it the next morning. He sat on it for nearly a year, scared to spend it, scared to unload it. He sold it for ten thousand he could spend. He sold it so he could sleep nights. A speculator in Cleveland bought it and, after a second thought, was happy to unload it in Detroit to a friend of mine a week later for fifteen. My friend figured to sit on it for a couple of years until the heat went off! and he could risk spreading it around. But the heat has never gone off. He needs some money. It’s on the market. He’ll let it go for eighty.”

“Why come to me?”

“It can’t be sold in the usual channels. Nobody will touch it. Get caught and it’s too hard for people like that to prove they weren’t in on the snatch. We had a talk about it a month or so ago. I had a few ideas. One of them was you.”

“What good would that money do me?”

“You’re clean. So is Catton. But you’re both larcenous types. You can get it out of the country. Hell, either of you can take all the trips you want. Take it out in small chunks. You two can even keep it in a safety deposit box. South America, Central America, Mexico. You can trade it there. Suppose you hit five or six banks in Rio. Convert it and then convert it back. Months later the stuff drifts back into the Federal Reserve System. By then it’s too late to identify where it came from.”

“So why don’t you do it?”

“Because there is some strange difficulty about getting a passport. And I have no legitimate business reason for a trip. You and Catton have stock in a Panamanian shipping line and in two small South American air lines.”

“How the hell would you know that?”

“Paul, I think that’s the first time I ever heard you say a naughty word. Never mind how I know.”

“The stock is practically worthless.”

“But you’ve got it.”

“Can’t any of your... associates get out of the country?”

“There is a kind of unreasoning, superstitious dread about this money, Paul. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s there. My friend, the guy who wants to sell it, was in France three months ago. He took fifty thousand of it along and lost his nerve and brought it all back and put the whole bundle in what he considers a safer place. I think you’re too hardheaded to be superstitious about it.”

“What do you get out of this?”

“Ten per cent.”

“Why doesn’t he take the whole bundle and leave for good, go some place where he can’t be sent back?”

“He’s a patriot. He likes milk shakes and air conditioning. And he’s got other irons in the fire. Is Luciano happy?”

“I’ll... I’ll have to think.”

“You can’t miss. Can you raise the money?”

“Not now. Not the way things are. Maybe the two of us can, if Catton will go for it.”

“He’ll go for it, if he’s as smart as you are, Paul. It’s what I told my friend a month ago. It’s got to be sold to somebody legitimate. It’s too risky to try to do anything with it here. You might pass three thousand bucks before some smart teller checks the list. Once that starts, you wouldn’t hear about it. They’d just close in on you, using every bill as a signpost, like a paper chase.”

“How do I get in touch with you?”

“I’m registered at the Hancock House. I’ll wait.”

“How can I be sure it’s the money? This would be a fine way to unload counterfeit.”

Dixon grinned merrily. “Why, if you have any doubts, take one of those fifties to the bank and ask about it, pal.”

“But...”

“It’s legitimate. I’ll give you a clipping with those three sets of serial numbers and you can check. It’s the money. You’ll be buying three dollars for... no, four dollars for every one.”

Catton, lying listless and wasted in bed, had been frightened by the idea. It had taken Paul two hours to convince him. By the time he left, Burt Catton was exhausted. And Paul knew just how far they could go. Forty from Burt and twenty-five from him would strip them almost completely. Sixty-five thousand.

He offered Dixon sixty. Dixon was amused, indignant, enraged. Paul stood firm. Dixon left and made a phone call. He came back and said seventy was rock bottom. Paul offered sixty-five and said it was absolute top. Dixon was gone much longer the second time. He came back and said, “All right. It’s fine. It’s just dandy. I don’t get ten per cent. I get five per cent. Instead of eight grand I get a lousy three and a quarter, so he only nets one and a quarter less than if you took it at seven. The rest of the difference comes out of my hide. Write this down. Ready? Hogan 68681. That’s a Tulsa exchange. Phone any day next week in person, from Tulsa. Ask for Jerry. Have the sixty-five with you in cash. No thousands. When you get Jerry on the line ask him if he knows where you can buy a good used Cad. He’ll take it from there.”

“Tulsa!”

“It’s a city. Like in Oklahoma. You won’t like it. Few people do.”

And as they had parted then, the last time Verney had seen Dixon, Roger had looked at him intently and curiously and said, “It must have really been something.”

“What do you mean?”

“When your toy train went off the tracks. The first major setback in your whole life. It must have really rocked you, Paul. Did you chew up the carpets and run around the walls?”

“I was disappointed.”

“You were more than that, Paul. You were shocked. The whole world was turned upside down. They couldn’t do this to you. Not to the one and only, the unique Paul Verney. Actually. I’m surprised you didn’t kill yourself. Or lose your mind. I had high hopes. I figured you far too brittle to adjust to failure. You see, I can remember the times you got crossed up in little ways. Your reaction was murderous.”

“Your imagination has always been too vivid, Roger.”

Dixon sighed. “I should have known I’d guess bad again. You’ll handle this well. You’ll make a potful. You’ll screw Catton out of his end, and you’ll come out right on schedule or ahead, even. I just have one small hope. I hope I never have to look at you again.”

“You should be able to arrange that, Roger.”

He told no one where he was going. He told his office staff he was going on a fishing trip. Catton, with face like a skull, had managed to totter into the bank and sign for a safety deposit box and carry it into a booth and take out the cash Paul needed. There were no thousand-dollar bills in either reserve fund. It was nearly all in hundreds, with a very few fifties. Verney packed the money in the bottom of his grip, two packets fastened with rubber bands each nearly three inches thick. The night before he left he thought of the money and how all of this might very easily be an intricate confidence game. In the morning he put the money into two cigar boxes and mailed them separately to himself at the Tulsa hotel where he had made a reservation under the name of W. W. Ward, writing on the outside of each package, Hold for Arrival

He reached Tulsa in three days, phoned the hotel, found the packages had arrived and were being held, and he asked they be put in the hotel safe. When he checked in they gave him a receipt for the two packages. He mailed the receipt to himself care of General Delivery at Tulsa. Then, unable to think of any further way to protect himself, he went to a drugstore booth and phoned and asked for Jerry and spoke nonsense about a used car.

He was picked up that night on a dark corner ten blocks from the hotel. He sat in the back seat of a sedan between two men who had no desire to talk. The driver wore a baseball cap and his ears stuck out, silhouetted against oncoming lights as they left the city and drove very fast for a long time. They stopped and the driver got out and opened a cattle gate and drove in and closed the gate and drove another quarter mile to a house. They shut him in a small bare room with the money. It was tightly packed into a cheap dark blue suitcase with a single wide gray stripe. He checked the serial numbers against the clipping Dixon had given him. The money looked good, looked authentic. He made a halfhearted attempt to count it, and estimated it was all there. He knocked and they let him out and he talked in a dark hallway to a stocky man whose face he never saw.

“Satisfied?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your end?”

“I can’t get it until after nine tomorrow.”

“You stay here tonight and I’ll send you in and you get it and you’ll be brought back out.”

“No.”

There was an understanding silence. “How do you want to do it?”

“I’ll take this in with me. Your people can stay close to me. I’ll turn over my money.”

“I don’t like that.”

Verney suddenly had a better idea. “Take me back to the city now. I’ll meet you, alone, tomorrow, at ten in the morning, at any busy public place you want to name. We will meet and decide where to make the exchange.”

They met in front of a large department store. Verney recognized the suitcase. The stocky man had a broad impassive face, a slightly Indian look. He said, “If you say where, you can have a setup working. Same with me. So where do we go?”

“Let’s get a cab.”

“No cab stands. The first cruiser. It better come quick. This is making me sweat.”

A taxi came by moments later. Verney hailed it and it swung in to the curb. Verney said to the driver, “Where did you take your last fare?”

“Way out on Fernandez. What’s the scoop?”

“What’s the last public place, big place, you took a fare to?”

“What kinda gag is this? Lessee... railroad station.”

Verney looked at the stocky man and he nodded. “Take us there, please.”

They went to the men’s room, rented dim stalls. Verney sat with the suitcase across his knees and opened it. He dug down to be certain it wasn’t a thin layer of money. He snapped it shut and walked out, and the voice from the neighboring stall said sharply, “Watch it! Stay right there where I can watch your feet.” Verney heard the rustle of paper. He waited a full five minutes, cold sweat trickling out of his armpits. The door opened and the stocky man came out, the two cigar boxes under his arm, clamped tightly against him. Verney expected some comment. The man gave a single abrupt nod and left. Verney followed him quickly, but stayed fifty feet behind. When he saw the man shut himself into a phone booth on the far side of the station, he walked quickly out and found a cab and directed him to take him to the hotel garage. He locked the suitcase in the back of the Dodge and drove the car around and parked it in the front. Ten minutes later he was on his way out of town. He was unable to take a really deep breath until he was through Bartlesville on Route 75 north. He felt as though he had handled himself very well indeed. There was three hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars in the trunk of the car. Catton, despite the fact he had put up forty of the sixty-five, had agreed to an even split.

They took the calculated risk of putting the money in safety deposit boxes. Once again Catton was driven down to the Hancock Bank and Trust. They shut themselves into one of the larger cubicles and made a careful count of the money. Catton wanted an even division, each man holding onto his share.

“You had better let me hold it all, Burt.”

“No thank you.”

“Use your head, will you? You are coming along fine. But you have had a coronary. It’s possible you could have another. Then the court opens your boxes. Where will that leave me?”

“If we do it your way and if I should... have bad luck, Paul, it will be your good luck, won’t it?”

“That is an unkind thing to say.”

“We’ll do it my way, Paul. That will give you a good reason to move as fast as you can on this matter.”

And Verney was not able to change his mind. It was agreed that Paul would take an extended trip in November and December, taking fifty thousand from each share and handling the conversion and reconversion of funds in five South American countries. The monies so obtained would be used as partial payments on the tax indebtedness in January. Paul would set up a dummy transfer of real estate holdings to account for the cash in hand. By that time Catton would be able to travel, and would convert an equal amount. The following summer Paul would convert the balance. By fall all tax claims would be satisfied and there would be a small but comfortable surplus for each of them. Too careful an investigation of the dummy real estate transfers would cause embarrassing questions about where the funds had come from, but it was a chance they felt worth taking. With Paul hitting South America, then Catton hitting Central America, then Paul disposing of the balance on the continent, it was likely that they would stay a long jump ahead of any investigation once the identity of the money was discovered. With both boldness and careful planning, it could be done.

Verney parked his car in the shed garage behind the Center Club, went in the back way, and took the front elevator up to the third floor to his room. All the way back from the camp he had been disturbed because he could not think with the clarity and purpose and method that was so much a part of his nature. He knew that apprehension had given an emotional coloring to his mental processes. Bronson’s tough, knowing face kept intruding.

He prepared himself for thought, for the cold evaluations he depended upon. He put on a worn flannel smoking jacket and sat in the deep leather chair half turned toward the double window. The sky over the city was overcast; the light that came into the room was gray.

The loose mouth of a sick man. The unfortunate choice the sick man’s wife had made in a partner in her sexual adventures. The career and reputation of Bronson. Catton’s precarious health. Seven years Bronson owed the state. The written report that was Bronson’s insurance. These were factors. He examined each one, holding each factor up in turn to examine its texture and its curious shape. There would be a way one would fit against another, and a way to slide a third in place. And in the end there would be a picture, one that he could accept.

Primary assumption: The danger of the situation might very well kill Catton. Any logical development of the situation might kill him. First step: Get the money out of Catton’s safety deposit boxes. But Catton would have to be given a milder reason. Yet a logical one.

Tell Catton there was too much chance the boxes might be opened by court order. Explain constant worry about that eventuality. Say it would be far better to remove the money to a place not only safer but more accessible. Such as the office of Paul Verney.

He decided that could be done, and should be done tomorrow.

Then, with all funds accessible to him, he could pay Bronson the two hundred thousand. If there was no other answer.

If there was an answer, it would depend on an unknown third person, the one who held the written statement Bronson had prepared. What sort of person? Considering Bronson’s background and record, it was unlikely it was a bank or attorney. A close contact. A trusted individual. Bronson would have to be reasonably certain that the one he trusted would not open the envelope, would not learn the actual dimensions of blackmail. He would be unlikely to trust any criminal. And an honest man would not be likely to trust Bronson to the extent that, by holding the envelope, he might become involved in one of Bronson’s schemes. It was logical there would be some other hold. A relative? A woman?

A woman. Though it was pure assumption the idea had the proper ring. Bronson was a type to keep a woman cowed and obedient. That added to the danger. Should something happen to Bronson, she was likely to do exactly as he had directed.

Were there any possible ways of finding out who the person was? Following Bronson was impossible. Trying to backtrack him was unfeasible. Who would know his contacts? Bronson had labeled himself a parole violator. He was wanted. Someone would be making an active investigation, attempting to locate him. Could Bronson be made to talk? Not likely. Very little weakness in him. Get back to the parole officer.

It would be logical to assume that the parole officer would know Bronson’s contacts — would have them watched. Would it be possible to get information from such a man? Perhaps, with the proper lie, the logical and convincing story. He remembered that Marian would have Bronson’s name on the appointment book as of last Thursday morning.

Where is this heading? Suppose it is possible to find Bronson’s contact, and possible to retrieve the envelope.

The only way Bronson could be kept from protecting himself would be to kill him.

This was, then, the last fragment of the puzzle. He looked at it, at the shape of it, trying to see if it would fit. The camp was isolated. Bronson was strong and quick and sly. There was very little time. It might be possible to stall him, but not for long. He wanted the money Wednesday afternoon. Seventy-two hours.

The alternative was poverty and disgrace.

He tried to stand off to one side and look objectively at himself and determine whether he was capable of taking a life. It made his hands feel chilled. Yet there were certain rationalizations. Bronson was a criminal, a wanted man — of no benefit to society, only expense. Surely the investigation of such a death would be half hearted. It would be thought he had been slain by one of his own kind. If risk were the only consideration, Bronson was a feasible victim. The greatest risk would be in that he looked to be a man difficult to kill. Yet, depending on his insurance, Bronson would be off guard.

And it would only be possible if the insurance was no longer valid, and if Bronson was not aware of that.

He knew that this was a very involved and intricate situation. Yet there was one favorable aspect to it. The most dangerous and irrevocable step came at the very end. The other steps could be attempted. If there was no possibility of finding the envelope, of learning who held it for Bronson, then the only recourse would be to pay Bronson what he asked. But if the written statement could be found and destroyed, then Bronson could be destroyed.

He checked back over his reasoning. Would it be worth the chance to kill Bronson without finding the statement first? Only if it was a fair gamble that, upon learning of Bronson’s death, the holder of the statement would read it and try to use it for profit... and be handled in turn.

First things first. Move quickly, but carefully, and plan as you go. One step provides balance and footing for the next.

On Monday morning, after a long conversation with Burt Catton, the money was removed from the safety deposit boxes and transferred to Paul Verney’s office safe.

It was eleven-thirty before Paul Verney learned that Daniel Bronson was responsible to a parole officer named John Keefler. He left word for Keefler to phone him. Keefler called back a few minutes after noon, and said that he was free to stop by and see Mr. Verney at two.