Nothing More Than Murder

saw me. He got up, dimmed the lights and drew the shades. I was thinking, What the hell? when he opened the door and motioned.

I crossed the street. 'What's up, Hap?' I said.

'Pop in, laddie,' he said, 'I'll tell you in a sec.'

He closed the door and locked it, and we went back to his desk. He brought out the whisky and a couple of glasses, and we both had a drink. He poured a second for himself.

'Well, Hap?' I said.

'I've got some information for you, old man. I wouldn't care to have anyone know it came from me.'

'All right,' I said. 'Under the hat.'

'You recall our conversation of a few days ago?'

'Yes.'

'What did you make of it?'

'Why,' I said, 'I hadn't thought much about it. I supposed, maybe, you had a buyer for a house and you thought you might make a deal for mine.'

'Nothing else?'

'No.'

He frowned slightly, shaking his head. 'I suppose not. I didn't give you a great deal to go on. Still, there at the last, when you forgot to buy paper on 'Jep-''

'I don't claim a perfect memory. What's on your mind, Hap?'

'You're broke, laddie.'

'What?' I said.

'I say you're stony. I'd have told you the other night, but I wasn't too sure about my facts. At any rate, I don't know that there's anything you could have done about it.'

'You haven't told me anything yet,' I said. 'What do you mean I'm broke?'

'Sol Panzer's moving in on you.'

I laughed. 'Nuts, Hap.'

'All right, laddie.'

'The town's too small for Panz palace. It isn't a fourth big enough.'

'It's big enough,' said Hap. 'It's big enough if So! says it is. Think it over. In ten years you've built a fine house with a fine business out of nothing. Sol can point to that if he needs to justify himself, which he won't. Panzer owns control of Panz palace. He's always made money for the stockholders. Now-'

'I don't give a damn about that,' I said. 'Panz palace doesn't build anything less than a million-dollar house, and a million-dollar house just won't pay off there.'

'You mean you can't sell enough admissions?'

'Certainly that's what I mean. How else could you make it pay?'

'Oh, laddie'-Hap made a clicking noise with his tongue-'what hour yesterday were you born? You can make it pay by cutting your overhead, rather, by shifting the costs. You can't do it because you don't have any place to shift them to. But Sol has ninety-three other houses. He can make a house earn just as much or just as little as he wants it to.'

'Yeah, but-but why does he want to do it?'

'I dropped you a hint about that the other night. I asked you if there was a chance that your house would be worth a million- meaning, of course, would anyone be jailed for paying you that much for it. I thought we might peddle it to him.'

'Did you try?'

'No use. Merely wishful thinking on my part. There's a lot of loose change when you start breaking up a million dollars, but you have to break it to get it. Sol has to build. I saw that as soon as I'd taken time to study the matter.'

I began to tremble inside. I mopped my face.

'You're not lying to me, Hap?'

'Really, old man-But I can't blame you for being disturbed. If you're looking for confirmation, drop around to the exchanges and try to buy for next season. I think you'll find that they'll stall you.'

'Jesus!' I said.

'Or have they already?'

'I see it was a stall, now,' I said. 'I didn't think anything of it at the time. It's such a relief not to have them trying to load you that I- '

Hap clicked his tongue again, trying to look sympathetic. I saw his angle. Sol hadn't needed his stuff to shut me out. The other exchanges were enough. Now, since it wasn't costing him anything, Hap was palling up to me, hoping that it would hurt Panzer in some way.

'I can't tell you how sorry lam, old man. I was just wondering-'

'Yeah?' I said.

'Perhaps you could force Sol to drive a deal with you. You can probably pick up a dozen pix or so from the little fellows, and of course you can count on my line-up. Every last picture I've got. Why-'

'What the hell are you talking about?' I said. 'If there was any way I could run on your stuff it wouldn't be open. And you wouldn't be sitting there offering it to me.'

'Please, laddie. Not so loud.'

'Nuts,' I said. 'Panzer tried to play without you and you found out about it. You don't care whether he finds out you told me. You hope he will. It'll teach him to call you in the next time he cuts a pie.'

Hap sighed. 'We should have been partners. Great minds, et cetera. You know what I thought when I first saw you tonight?'

'I don't particularly give a damn.'

'Don't be rude, Joseph. I might slap the unholy God out of you.'

'All right,' I said. 'What did you think?'

'Well, I thought you had caught my hint after all; that that was why you were in town.'

'I don't get you,' I said. 'I had to come in to buy some photoelectric cells.'

'Perfect,' he beamed. 'But let's not be coy with one another. You know my attitude toward insurance companies. Feel it's more or less a civic duty to rook 'em.'

'Now, wait a minute,' I said. 'I-I-'

'I thought, here's old Joe, virtually on the point of losing his shirt, and here's this unwholesome insurance policy, just lying around and collecting dust and doing no one the slightest good. And I put myself in your place, laddie. I thought, now what would a keen chap like old Joseph do?'

'B-But-'

'You do have insurance on the show?'

'Certainly, I have. But, goddamit-'

'Don't be vehement, laddie. I'm on your side.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'Yeah, but-but-' My voice rose, and he frowned and started to call me down. And then his eyes narrowed, and he just sat there watching me. It wasn't necessary to tell me to shut up. I couldn't say anything. I couldn't move.

You see? He had the whole thing wrong, and yet he was in the right. He was right enough to pin my ears back and keep them pinned, if he wanted to. And he would want to. He'd play it for all it was worth.

But, bad as that was, it wasn't what really got me. What got me, what made me feel like I was going crazy, was the realization that the woman was going to die for nothing. Her death wasn't going to mean a thing. It was just murder, nothing more than murder, with none of us better off than if she had lived.

And now there wasn't any way I could stop it. I knew those bus schedules backward and forward; and I knew it was too late.

There's nothing quite so silent as film row on Saturday night. The Playgrand exchange was half a dozen doors up the street, but when their phones began ringing they sounded like they were in the next room.

They stopped ringing in Playgrand and began in Utopian. And then they rang in Colfax and Wolfe. And finally-