At least that’s what we told ourselves. It’s not easy to work yourself up to the point where you can cart a corpse around a hotel without losing your air of nonchalance.
Doug checked the corridor. We waited until it was empty, at least on our floor. Then we hoisted him up and each of us draped one of his dead arms over our shoulders. He was supposed to look drunk, or sick, or something, and we were his good friends helping poor Clyde back to his room. This was the script. It wouldn’t win Oscars, but it had to do the job.
He was very damned heavy, even with the load shared between us. We got him out into the hallway. I kicked the door shut, and we headed for the stairs. As we got there I heard an elevator coming. We ducked into the stairwell just as the door opened on our floor. Whoever got off, we weren’t spotted.
The stairs were easy. We got down them in a hurry, and I stood at the landing with Gunderman draped all over me while Doug checked the traffic on the floor. There was a maid en route, her cart of clean linen blocking our way. We waited for her, and she took her time, until finally she busied herself in one of the bathrooms. She couldn’t see the hallway from there. Doug grabbed hold of Gunderman and we took him for another walk. We couldn’t rush, because the whole scene had to look natural if anyone happened to glance our way.
No one did. We made it to the room and closed the damned door and eased our plucked pigeon down onto the floor. I wanted a cigarette. Instead I lit one of Gunderman’s cigars, and so did Doug. We put another one in the pocket of Doug’s suit.
The rest was frosting. We unpacked Doug’s suitcase and put his clothes away in the dresser and in the closet. With the end of my cigar, I burned a pair of holes in Gunderman’s shirt right above the bullet holes. They did not look exactly like .38-caliber powder burns but they were close enough for the time being.
We planted the fake wallet in his pocket, tossed Doug’s hat on his dresser, dropped our cigar butts in the ashtrays. Then for a finale, we tucked Gunderman in the closet and closed the door on him.
If the bitch had only shot him once, we could have staged it as suicide. But nobody shoots himself twice in the chest. It was as well to make it a murder and let them figure out why and by whom. We left him in the closet and went back to Gunderman’s room.
“Don’t get noticed on the way out,” I said.
“Right.”
“I’ll catch you at the office.”
“Right.”
I gave him a few minutes. Then I hefted a bag with W.J.G. properly embossed upon it, lifted the phone, told the desk to get my bill ready. They said they would. I gave the room a last check, left it, went to the elevator and rode down to the lobby. I should have been nervous. I wasn’t, for some odd reason. Everything was crystal clear now. All I had to do was go by the book. I was Wallace J. Gunderman, and I was checking out of their hotel, and once I was gone they could put me out of their minds forever. They would never fasten my name onto the dead thing a floor away.
I gave the room key to the clerk. He looked up at me brightly. “You had a call about an hour ago, Mr. Gunderman—”
“I know, I was in the shower. Any message?”
“No, he didn’t leave his name.”
“Well, I think I know who it was. No problem.”
He had my bill ready. While I checked it over he asked me if I had enjoyed my stay. I said I had. With phone calls and room service the tab came to a little short of twenty bucks. I put Gunderman’s Diners Club card on the counter, then snatched it back just as the clerk was reaching for it. I wanted to flash it but I didn’t want to risk a phony signature on the hotel books.
“Let me pay cash,” I said. “I don’t want to mix them up with charges in Canadian funds.”
He couldn’t argue with logic like that. I gave him a twenty, and he gave me change and stamped my bill and handed it to me. I stuck it in Gunderman’s wallet and stuck the wallet in my pocket and picked up my suitcase and headed for the door.
Nobody stopped me.
Seventeen
Doug had a few things to do. He had to clear out his apartment, and he had to turn the Barnstable offices into a ghost town. We were on too many official records and we had scattered too much correspondence to strike our sets completely, but Doug could wipe out some of the more obvious traces. This is easy when you have all the time in the world. We had to move fast, and we had to do what we could.
But that was a minor headache. The important thing was something else again. We had two definite facts to contend with — there was a dead man in a closet in the Royal York, and there was a man named Wallace J. Gunderman who had disappeared. If anybody matched the name and the body, then we were in trouble. The longer it took them to put the two together, the better off we were. We had given the body a name and a logical way of dying. Now we had to take the Gunderman identity and find a way to let it trail off and dissolve like smoke.
He had return reservations to Olean for the late afternoon. I called the airport and changed his reservations, asking them for the first plane to Chicago. They had a flight at three-fifteen. I booked a seat on the plane in Gunderman’s name.
Doug was waiting for me at the office. He had called Helen Wyatt to tell her that things had gone sour, and that she should let the other hired hands know as much. They didn’t stand any chance of getting involved — Gunderman alone had seen them, and he wasn’t going to tell anyone — and by the same token they weren’t likely to involve us. It was a courtesy call. When the ship sinks, a good captain at least lets the crew know about it.
“I’m packed and ready,” he said. “Got any cash?”
“A couple of hundred. You?”
“A little more. And there’s a little over twelve thou in the bank, the Barnstable account. If we can get it.”
“No problem there. A day or two from now it might be tight, but nobody’s going to put a freeze on our account for the time being.”
He whistled soundlessly. “We can’t get rich this way. Anyway, it’s a stake. I’m out a few thou but not as much as I expected.”
“You’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
“Terry Moscato.”
His face fell. “That’s ten grand.”
“Plus interest. Eleven thousand. That leaves us with cab-fare.”
“We can’t pay him.”
“We damn well have to. You don’t cross the man who bankrolls you. That’s one thing you don’t do. You can lie to your partner—”
“I’m not the only one, Johnny.”
“All right. Put a lid on it. You don’t stiff Moscato, not because it’s a case of honor among thieves but because you’d wind up dead. I mean it. He’s the easiest man to work with as long as you’re good, but if you play him bad you’ve had it. He is hard.”
“Eleven thousand dollars.”
“We’ve got twelve or so in the bank. And I’m holding Gunderman’s check for forty more.”
He’d forgotten about it. This was easy to do. We’d been crossed and skinned and sliced up for bait, and it was hard to regard that cashier’s check as anything more than a prop she’d left for the police to play with. Besides, it was a dead man’s check. A dead man’s check is not negotiable. It’s evidence of a receivable asset, and you can hold it as a claim against the estate of the deceased, but you cannot scrawl your name across the back of it and pass it to a friendly neighborhood teller. It’s locked up tight. Our check was signed by Gunderman, and he was as dead as you can get.
“But nobody knows this,” I said. “It’s going to be a long time before they know he’s dead. We can get rid of the paper long before then.”