Warrant for an Old Flame

Chapter Two No Time for Memories

We had another punch, tall and dark and cool and strong. I had missed lunch. The punch made my lips feel numb and gave the pool an unrealistic look. It made the marimba music sound better. And it made Beth look better to me.

I wanted to find out what she really thought. So, when the two punches melted a hole in my caution I leaned toward her and said:

“Why did you do it, Beth? I understood you were doing all right with your place. Why did you tie up with Schaegan?”

Her laugh was very short and very bitter. “Doing all right? I was going snow blind from looking at the empty tables. I was in hock to my ears. The syndicate was bleeding me. I went to see Schaegan. I thought he was top man in the syndicate. I told him that either the bite was reduced, or I would have to fold. Schaegan told me that it wasn’t his decision to make, but that he’d try to make the big boss see the light. I went back to see Schaegan several times. It turned out to be — one of those things. He couldn’t get the bite reduced, not even after we were married.”

That answered some of my questions, my personal questions. But not the business questions. Wally Schaegan could answer those — if I could convince him that I could keep him out of trouble after he gave me the information.

“Are you happy, Beth?” I asked.

“You’re getting drunk, Burnsie.”

“Maybe I am. And maybe it’s important to me to know if you’re happy.”

“You’re sweet,” she said softly. She reached across the small table, put her hand over my fist, squeezed hard.

“No, Burnsie. I’m not. I don’t like this. I want out. Mostly because Wally isn’t the kind of husband a girl dreams about. But what could I do? Go back to the fan act? Hit one of the circuits? This is a soft and easy life, Burnsie. Besides, a divorce is so messy.”

I saw Schaegan coming toward us and got my hand quickly out from under hers. He came up to the table.

I met Schaegan the year before I met Beth. He was a local scandal at the time. Disbarred attorney, neatly caught bribing a juror who was a plant from our office. He had been working on retainer for some of the town’s most sinister citizens. At that time he was a hard, chunky young man with cold eyes, a trim mustache and few social graces.

Changes were evident. The cold dark eyes were the same, and so was the heavy-shouldered build, the little mustache. But his hair was gray at the temples and he walked with more assurance and poise.

After disbarment he had gone to work for the syndicate. And he had made a very good thing out of it after he had been firmly placed on the wrong side of the fence.

He put his hand on Beth’s bare shoulder and said to me, with a small smile, “Greetings to the D.A.’s darling! Understand you’re with the Feds now, Burns.”

“You understand very nicely, Walter.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry you managed to follow us, Burns. But I suppose you want to talk business.”

“Correct.”

He looked at his watch. “I’m tired and dirty. I want to shower and change. Come to cottage eighteen in an hour. Come along, Beth.”

She got up meekly and went along with him. I noticed that she was a few inches taller than he. She walked several steps behind him. The proud way she had walked to meet me was completely gone, and only the awkwardness remained.

I had changed to sports shirt and slacks. Beth let me in. Their cottage was a bit larger than mine. Wally sat in a cane chair near the windows. They had a view of the harbor.

Beth poured me a Bacardi cocktail from the tall frosted shaker. It was tart and good.

I sat down at Wally’s invitation and said, “I won’t hedge and I won’t fence. I’m on loan to the Internal Revenue people. They have been working on the syndicate for nearly four years. They have a lot to go on. Rumor has it that you kicked the props out from under the syndicate by cleaning out a tremendous hunk of the bank roll and taking off with Beth. Due to the source of the money, no complaint was made. You stole stolen money.

“Now you can help us. You’re in their bad graces now, to put it very, very mildly. They can’t be any more anxious to kill you than they are right now.

“So I want an affidavit from you. I don’t want you to include in the affidavit that you took the dough. It would be silly to even ask you. I want an affidavit listing names of the top personnel of the syndicate, their sources of income, the way the income is split and your best estimates as to the annual take during the past five years.”

Wally turned the cocktail glass idly in his fingers. He said, “And with that piece of paper from a disbarred attorney you think you can collect taxes or jail some people for fraud?”

“Not with that alone. It’s just a piece in the entire puzzle.”

“But it’s the last piece?”

“It could be.”

“Why should I do you people any favors?”

“Because, by snitching, Schaegan, you can give us a club to beat on them with. We’ll keep them so damn busy they won’t have time to worry about you. We particularly want the name of the top man.”

“They won’t find me,” he said. “You can run real fast with a half million in cash stashed in the proper places where you can get your hands on it.”

“But maybe you could stop running?” I said. Beth had gone around behind his chair. I said, “Besides I think you ought to know that I’m not the only one who—” I stopped as Beth’s hand flashed up, finger pressed to her lips.

Schaegan leaned forward. “The wily one who what?” he asked harshly.

“Who wants information from you,” I said lamely. “You’ll be dogged by Federal people from now on.”

He leaned back, tension gone. “Let ’em find me, Burns.” Suddenly he sat forward again. “Anybody follow you? Anybody tail you, knowing you were coming to see me?”

“No,” I said bluntly.

He reached around, took Beth’s arm, pulled her so that she stood beside his chair. He slipped his arm around her waist and smiled largely. “We’re doing very nicely, Burns. Very nicely. And when the dice are being good to you, you’re silly to change them, verdad? So there’ll be no affidavits, no papers, no statements. Nothing.”

I pulled my bluff. It wasn’t a good one. I said, “Then the only thing we can do is build a case around you and set up extradition proceedings.”

He laughed until there were tears in his eyes. “You forget, Burns, that you’re talking to a lawyer. An ex-lawyer, perhaps, but I remember the precedents without too much trouble. What are you going to charge me with? Is traveling an offense? Beth and I have passports in good order. You better go back to your red tape.”

I grinned. “So it didn’t work, Schaegan. I’ll stick around a few days and see if I can get you to reconsider.”

His eyes were hard over the mustached smile. “Glad to have you aboard, lieutenant.”

“See you later,” I said. “Think it over.” I headed for the door.

Beth said, “I’ll walk with you down to the office. We need cigarettes.”

Schaegan didn’t object. She walked beside me in the heavy dusk. The flower scent was sweet and thick and warm. I was forced to slow my pace to hers. Dusk made the blouse look whiter, her firm skin look darker. I remembered what I had said about the silver coins.

As we passed a place where there was a break in the ranks of the small palms, she leaned heavily against me, forcing me off the path and into the palm shadows, into the velvety darkness that was more like night.

Six years since I had kissed her. Her lips were more practised. Then I held her upper arms clasped tightly in my hands, held her with her face close to mine.

“Why didn’t you want me to tell him about the trail I picked up? Do you want him shot?”

“Don’t ask me that, Burnsie,” she whispered. “Don’t even say it. I’m playing a sad and silly old game. They call it the game of what-might-have-been. I didn’t want you to tell him because then we would have left here tonight. And I want a little time to pretend that I’m here with you.”

“This is so sudden.”

“Don’t be nasty, Burnsie. How wrong can a girl be? How did I know that six years ago you were right and I was wrong?”

“You’d have looked dandy in a three-room apartment on the third floor of a brick house in Alexandria. The perfect suburban hostess, carrying twenty dollars worth of groceries back from the super market.”

She leaned her forehead against my shoulder. “Burnsie, it doesn’t sound bad to me now. Not bad at all, Burnsie.”

I pushed her away roughly. “Break it off, princess! I’m on a job here. If he won’t tell me, can you?”

“I’ll tell you anything I know, Burnsie,” she said. “Anything.”

“He’ll expect you back.”

“Where are you staying?” she asked. I told her. She said, “He’s afraid, you know. Way down inside he’s scared to death, but he doesn’t let it show. He drinks too much these days. I’ll get him really loaded tonight. Be at your place. I’ll be over when I can.”

I sat in my cottage with the door open, the lights off. The orchestra had stopped playing an hour and a half before. For a time a woman had sung in the distance, her voice florid and drunken. The grounds of the hotel were quiet. By listening hard I could hear the full-throated drum of distant surf on the packed sand. A distant banana boat passing the harbor hooted at the stars, a sound as mournful as the howling of a midnight cur.

Maybe I dozed. When I opened my eyes there was a figure in the doorway.

“Burnsie!” she said softly.

I went to her. The night had cooled. She looked ridiculously young in the moonlight. And when she talked in that low tone her voice wasn’t harsh.

From my arms she said, “Does a lady get invited in, or do we stand out here all night?”

It seemed a time for memory. Silly memories. The years had not treated us delicately. But the clock had been turned back. The walks we used to take when she’d tell me how she was going to become a famous dancer and go to Hollywood. The amusement park. We bet kisses on our shooting gallery score. It was one game she won easily; she was good with those guns. But those years were dead. Snowed under. Way in the front of the book.

This glow of her cigarette was a slow arc which I could trace each time she lifted it to her lips. When she dragged the smoke into her lungs, the end glowed more brightly, and I could see the prominent cheekbones, the violent red of her lips.

She said, “I guess I can’t add much, Burnsie. The syndicate had a tie-up with the police in such a way that you paid off or had to follow a hundred ridiculous ordinances that no one ever heard of. If you still stayed stubborn, they’d send around a few muscle men to start a brawl at the bar, or break up the show. The syndicate wasn’t really strong until after I went into business.”

“Schaegan cleaned the syndicate?’”

“I guess he took most of the ready cash.”

“What did he do with it?”

“Don’t ask me, Burnsie. He keeps plenty with him. He isn’t exactly liberal with pocket money for me. I guess he’s afraid I’ll run out on him.”

“How did he get hold of it?”

“It was kept in a private time vault. There was enough to fill two big suitcases. Schaegan knew everybody’s habits. He sapped the guard and got out again in five minutes.”

We were silent for a little while. We sat facing each other in the deep cane chairs.

I said, “We have enough to go on to grab the head of the syndicate for fraud if we can lay our hands on him. If we could find out who he is. He’s a good administrator. A very hard and efficient apple. He put the syndicate into bigtime operations in 1945. Before that it was just a game for peanuts.”

“I don’t know who was at the head of it, Burnsie.”

“But Schaegan knows.”

“Yes, Schaegan knows. And I don’t think he’ll tell you, Burnsie.”

I sighed. “I’m going to proposition him, Beth. I’m going to ask him to write out the story and arrange it so that, should he die, it will be forwarded to me immediately. That can’t lose him anything, and it might appeal to him from a revenge angle. If I can’t get him to come out with it, I have hopes he’ll fall for the second alternative. What do you think?”

“He might do that. And you might have to wait a long time to get the information. Civil service might have retired you by the time you get it.”

I laughed without humor. “You wouldn’t let me warn him. He might be getting it right now, Beth. In the head.”

She said, “Did you ever think, Burnsie, that the head of the syndicate had to split the take up so many ways that he never made a big pile out of it?”

“Big or little, we can prove at least a thousand a month unreported income. And even if it were only fifty a month unreported, we could still make fraud stick.”

She came quickly over to me. She said huskily, “Burnsie, isn’t this kind of a crummy time to be working on a case? Do they pay you overtime? Don’t you think somebody ought to change the subject?”

Just outside the open door a stone rattled under a careless foot. She stiffened in my arms and stopped breathing. As she stood up, I went quickly for the door.

My eyes were used to the darkness. The moistness of the night made the gun steel sweat against my hand. I saw a bulging shadow under a small twisted palm.

I kept my eyes on the shadow, grabbed the slide of the automatic, yanked it back and let it slam forward. The metallic noises seemed as loud as a shot in the night stillness.

There was a crash of shrubbery, the slap of a shoe-sole against stone. The shadow moved quickly off into the night.

I turned to Beth and said, “The time grows short, princess. You’d better head back and see if there are any holes in your husband.”

I walked with her. Their cottage was dark. Her key clicked in the lock, grated slightly. The door swung open. The deep, stentorious sound of Schaegan’s snoring floated from the bedroom.

She turned into my arms, kissed me hard, whispered, “Good night, darling.” I stood outside the door until I heard the click of the lock. Then I walked slowly back to my place. I looked toward the east, saw the faint grayness of dawn beyond the mountains. I yawned and stretched.

Back in the cottage, I took a long shower and fell, drugged with weariness, into bed.