“Drop it,” he said through clenched teeth. “Drop it.”
He hit the wall with MacGregor’s hand again, and this time the fat man’s fingers opened and the gun clattered to the floor. Davis stepped back for just an instant, kicking the gun across the room, and then rushed forward and sank his clenched fist into the fat man’s middle.
MacGregor’s face went white. Clutching his belly, he lurched backward, slamming into the wall, knocking a picture to the floor. Davis hit him once more, on the point of the jaw, and MacGregor pitched forward onto his face. He wriggled once, and was still.
Davis stood over him, breathing hard. He waited until he caught his breath, and then he glanced at his watch. Quickly, he picked up the .38 from where it lay on the floor. He broke it open, checked the load, and then brought it to his suitcase and placed it on top of his shirts.
He snapped the suitcase shut, called the police to tell them he’d just subdued a burglar in his apartment, and then left to catch his Las Vegas plane.
He started with the biggest hotels first.
“Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Radner,” he said. “Are they registered here?”
The clerks all looked the same.
“Radner, Radner. The name doesn’t sound familiar, but I’ll check, sir.”
Then the shifting of the ledger, the turning of pages, the signature largely scrawled, and usually illegible.
“No, sir, I’m sorry. No Radner.”
“Perhaps you’d recognize the woman, if I showed you her picture?”
“Well...” The apologetic cough. “Well, we get an awful lot of guests, sir.”
And the fair-haired girl emerging from the wallet. The black-and-white, stereotyped snapshot of Alice Trimble, and the explanation, “She’s a newlywed with her husband.”
“We get a lot of newlyweds, sir.” The careful scrutiny of the head shot, the tilting of one eyebrow, the picture held at arm’s length, then closer.
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t recognize her. Why don’t you try...?”
He tried them all, all the hotels, and then all the rooming houses and then all the motor courts. They were all very sorry. They had no Radners registered, and couldn’t identify the photograph.
So he started making the rounds then.
He lingered at the machines, feeding quarters into the slots, watching the oranges and lemons and cherries whirl before his eyes, but never watching them too closely, always watching the place instead, looking for the elusive woman named Alice Trimble Radner.
Or he sat at the bars, nursing endless scotches, his eyes fastened to the mirrors that commanded the entrance doorways. He was bored, and he was tired, but he kept watching, and he began making the rounds again as dusk tinted the sky, and the lights of the city flicked their siren song on the air.
He picked up the local newspaper in the hotel lobby.
In his room, drinking a scotch from the minibar, he flipped through the paper idly, and almost missed the story.
The headline read: FATAL ACCIDENT. The subhead read: FATE CHEATS BRIDE.
The article told of a Pontiac crashing through a highway guardrail, instantly killing its occupant. Initial inspection indicated defective brakes. The occupant’s name was Anthony Radner. There was a picture of Alice Trimble Radner leaving the coroner’s office. She was raising her hand to cover her face when the picture was taken. It was a good shot, close up, clear. The caption read: Tearful Alice Trimble Radner, leaving the coroner’s office after identifying the body of her husband, Anthony Radner.
Davis did not notice any tears on Alice’s face.
Little Alice Trimble, he thought.
Shy, often awkward.
Honest.
A simple girl.
Well, murder is a simple thing, he thought. All it involves is killing another person or persons. You can be shy and awkward, and even honest — but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a murderer besides. So what is it that takes a simple girl like Alice Trimble and transforms her into a murderess?
Figure it this way. Figure a louse named Tony Radner who sees a way of striking back at the girl who jilted him and coming in to a goodly chunk of dough besides. Figure a lot of secret conversation, a pile of carefully planned moves. Figure a wedding, planned to coincide with the day of the plotted murder, so the murderers can be far away when the bomb they planted explodes.
Radner gets to see Janet Carruthers on some pretext, perhaps a farewell drink to show there are no hard feelings. This is his wedding day, and he introduces her to his bride, Alice Trimble. They share a drink, perhaps, but the drink is loaded and Janet suddenly feels very woozy. They help her to the airport, and they stow the bomb in her valise. None of the pilots know Radner. The only bad piece of luck is the fact that the fire-warning system is acting up, and a mechanic named Mangione recognizes him. But, hey, those are the breaks.
Radner helps her aboard and then goes back to his loving wife, Alice. They hop the next plane for Vegas, and when the bomb explodes they’re far, far away. They get the news from the papers, file claim, and come into two hundred thousand bucks.
Just like falling off Pier 8.
Except that it begins to go sour about there. Except that maybe Alice Trimble likes the big time now. Two hundred G’s is a nice little pile. Why share it?
So Tony Radner meets with an accident. If he’s not insured, the two hundred grand is still Alice’s. If he is insured, there’s more for her.
The little girl has made her debut. The shy, awkward thing has emerged.
Portrait of a killer.
The easy part was over, of course. The hard part was still ahead. He still had to tell Anne about it, and he’d give his right arm not to have that task ahead of him. Alice Trimble? The police would find her. She probably left Vegas the moment Radner piled up the Pontiac. She was an amateur, and it wouldn’t be too hard to find her. But telling Anne, that was the difficult thing.
He looked at the newspaper photograph again.
He sat erect all at once, and swallowed a long gulp of his scotch, and then he took the snapshot of Alice Trimble from his wallet and compared it with the newspaper photo of the woman named Alice Trimble Radner, and said aloud, “Oh no,” and went immediately to the phone.
He asked long distance for Anne’s number, and then let the phone ring for five minutes before he gave up. He remembered the alternate number she’d given him then, the one belonging to Freida, the girl next door. He fished the scrap of paper out of his wallet, studying the number in Anne’s handwriting, recalling their conversation in the restaurant. He got long distance to work again, and the phone was picked up on the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Freida?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Milt Davis. You don’t know me, but Anne said I could leave a message here if...”
“Oh, yes. Anne’s told me all about you, Mr. Davis.”
“Well, good, good. I just tried to phone her, and there was no answer. I wonder if you know where I can reach her?”
“Why, yes,” Freida said. “She’s in Las Vegas.”
“What!”
“Yes. Her brother-in-law was killed in a car crash there. She...”
“You mean she’s here in Vegas? Now?”
“Well, I suppose so. She caught a plane early this evening. Yes, I’m sure she’s there by now. Her sister called, you see. Alice. She called and asked me to tell Anne to come right away. Terrible thing, her husband getting killed like...”
“Oh, Christ!” Davis said. He thought for a moment and then asked, “Did she tell you where she’d be staying?”
“Yes, with her sister.”
“Yes, where?”
“Just outside of Las Vegas. A rooming house. Alice and Tony were lucky to find a nice...”