“My name isn’t Jack,” he said defensively.
She openly laughed at him.
“Come on... property!” She pushed him off the small porch into the rain. Holding onto his arm in the manner of an ever-loving wife, she firmly guided his steps towards the near corner. The car was a new Buick coupe in two-toned blue. She put him in, closed the door, walked around the front of the car to climb behind the wheel. Where was that plainclothesman?
She drove with one hand, holding the other at her side. He noticed that and looked up to find her eyes on him.
“I’m ambidextrous. Don’t make me spoil the upholstery. And listen, you can ride with me sitting up, or you can ride asleep. It all depends upon your conduct. I prefer you awake. You might make interesting conversation.”
“Tough little baby, aren’t you?” he asked.
“You’re damned right I’m tough, Jack. And any time you think I’m not, try something.”
“Maybe I will... sometime. Where’d you get it?”
“Get what?”
“This toughness, real or fancied? This urge to go around blowing up people? This... this anti-social attitude?”
“I was in the army... a while.”
“Oh — how short a while?”
“Eight months, maybe ten. And then I got out.”
“How?”
“Over the hill. Became fed up with it. That war was a racket. Why should I work like a bitch for fifty dollars a month when big men were getting fifty a minute?”
“Well, I’m... damned, I guess. I didn’t know they were.”
She nodded grimly, eyes on the street. “They were. I got wise. I decided to cut myself a slice of it, and I did.”
“How?”
She snapped, “That’s my business.”
He changed tactics. “You’re a swell looking girl.”
“I know it.”
“Ah... oh, you do? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that a girl with your assets could climb to the top of almost any ladder you picked?”
She favored him with a brief, scornful glance. “Don’t be a sucker! I’m at the top of the ladder... almost.”
“But what a ladder! Death, destruction—”
“It gets me what I want.”
“Does it?”
“I’ve got you!” she snapped at him.
“I’ve been intending to get around to that. I’m no prize. Why did you want me? And what’s the meaning — the real meaning behind all these cracks you’ve been making? I was expensive, I’m property, you’ve got me. Hell, talk sense!”
She whipped the car around the corner onto Main Street and headed west for the city limits. He watched familiar spots flickering by.
“And,” he added as an afterthought, “why the kidnaping and where are we going in such a rush?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“I can ask a lot more.”
“A hell of a lot of good it would do you, Jack. Listen, there’s something you must get through your skull.”
She cut it short to steer the fast Buick around a slower car. The rain was slanting down in sheets, hanging like shower curtains around the coupe. Visibility was poor.
“I’m waiting,” he reminded her curtly.
“Keep your britches on. Well, this: I bought you, Jack. Paid out good, hard-earned cash for you. My own money, too! I bought your life for my amusement. I liked you. And before you get hotheaded about it, I saved your life. You were first on the X list. Now go ahead: blow steam.”
He was too stunned to answer, he could only glare.
She waited a moment and went on, her lips hard and biting, the words harsh. “You were in a position to know too much, you and your damned mania for prying. If you hadn’t worked in Boone it would have been all right; easy sailing. But you knew everybody, everything about Boone. You’d have smelled a rat when the claims started piling up against your company. So you had to go before we could start work.”
“Go on.”
“If you hadn’t been sitting in your office that day, hadn’t seen me plant that howler in Channy’s car, it might have been different, I don’t know. I might have waited a few days to pick you up.”
“You knew I was there?” he asked incredulously.
“I phoned you, stupid. Don’t you remember that? And you answered. You thought it was a wrong number. After I walked away from Channy’s automobile, I remembered you and realized you still might be in the office. You were. We both made a mistake there.”
“Yeah. I’m beginning to see it.”
She nodded. “I should have phoned you first to find out where you were. And you shouldn’t have answered the phone after seeing me. When I phoned and found out where you were, I started back after you and at that instant saw Channy walking towards the car. I realized I wouldn’t have time to reach you.”
“You were there? All the time? You didn’t leave on the streetcar?”
“Why should I? I wanted to see the fun. I stopped at the restaurant on the corner to wait. And call you. Well, when I saw that I couldn’t get to you in time, believe me, I was mad! There was a hundred thousand dollars going up in smoke, and ten thousand of it mine! I was so damned mad I couldn’t see straight. I wrote you off my book right there.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he retorted stiffly. “I was only knocked around.”
“So I heard. And I don’t mind telling you it cheered me up. My investment wasn’t lost after all. So — tonight I came after you to collect.”
“Collect?”
“Collect. I paid out ten thousand dollars of my own money for your life, big boy, and arranged for the folks to collect ninety thousand more. I hope you’re worth it!”
Horne said dazedly, “G-388,017.”
“What’s that?”
“That was fat boy — Channy — his policy number. Forty-five thousand payable at death; ninety thousand if it were an accidental death — and we both entertain doubts about that.”
“That was the deal; it cost me his ninety and my own ten thousand to buy you. Papa agreed.”
Horne struggled to understand that and only partly succeeded. He said as much. “I watch you blow a guy to hell,” he complained dispiritedly, “and you kidnap me and tell me you blew him up to save me because I saw you do it. I think you’re bats. And you won’t get that ninety thousand.”
“Oh, no!” She made an impatient gesture. “You’ve got it all wrong, silly. Look at it this way: first, there is Boone, and there are us, and finally, there you are. Now a small city like Boone is much too small for both you and my... us. A gumshoe like you can make things difficult, mostly because you handle the confidential insurance business. You are the fly in our soup, if you’ll excuse the expression.”
“And you don’t like flies in soup?”
“Of course not. What can we do? You couldn’t be bribed, you would eventually pry into our affairs, so there remained but one other alternative; to arrange an accident for you. And then we could go about our business.”
He grunted and said nothing, collecting his thoughts.
She continued on a statement he had made.
“What makes you so sure we won’t get that ninety thousand dollars? Papa’s method is foolproof.”
“Only a fool,” he replied cynically, “can wreck a foolproof device. Lady, that certainly was not an accidental death!”
“It... wasn’t?” The words were hesitant.
“That was premeditated murder, and no insurance company in the world will pay double the face value for premeditated murder.”