15
The interior of Ted Corbin’s cottage was an improvement over the jerry-built look of the exterior. The front room bore no sign of a woman’s touch and the furniture had been selected with an eye to comfort rather than style. Photographs on the walls testified to the owner’s interest in the outdoor life—Corbin with a dead deer, Corbin and friends with a day’s bag of quail, Corbin posing proudly with a sizable tarpon—but the chairs, the couch, the television set were in good condition and the room had an over-all look of bachelor neatness.
Hayden had followed Corbin across the causeway in his rented car because, while Corbin had given the impression that he was ready to fly back and straighten out the situation he had created, Hayden wanted to stay with the big man until they were actually on the plane. Now, coming in from the kitchen with a bottle of bourbon and glasses and a pitcher of water, he sat down opposite Hayden and stretched his legs out, the ankles crossed.
“I told you I’d tell you what happened two years ago,” he said, “and try to explain the series of stupid incidents that kept me from getting on the plane that night in Capitol City. It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time,” Hayden said.
“And it’s in two parts. The first concerns me. The second has to do with Adler. It’ll show you what a conniving little bastard he was and how he got things ready to collect on what he knew.”
He waved a hand as an invitation to pour a drink but Hayden said he’d wait. Corbin nodded and took time to light a cigarette. When he had inhaled, his gaze moved to the opposite wall and a small frown began to work on the tanned, handsome face.
“I guess it starts with Marion and me,” he said. “I mean the fact that our marriage hadn’t worked out and was about to bust up. I don’t know how much she told you about me—where I was brought up and where I went to school and what I was doing when she met me.”
He paused while Hayden related the few things Marion had told him. He nodded absently.
“That’s about right,” he said. “I liked football and I played a couple of years of the pro game but I couldn’t quite cut it. I mean, I could see I’d never be a first-string regular, but I always liked to hunt and fish, and those were things Marion had no interest in whatsoever. Oh, I guess we were in love all right when we were married, but, after six months or so, everything seemed to start going downhill and it was probably a lot more my fault than it was hers.
“I mean, we just weren’t interested in the same things. It was hard to talk to each other. She liked to read; I didn’t. She liked to go to the theater, sometimes to a concert. She liked music—Dixie, the classics, anything that was good. I just couldn’t seem to get with that sort of stuff, but I think it was the friends we had that made things worse. A man and woman just can’t get along by themselves. They have to have friends and outside contacts and mutual interests, don’t they?
“My friends,” he added, expecting no answer, “were basically guys like me. I knew some guys on the Giants and the Eagles, a couple in baseball. In football season I’d look them up or they’d look me up. They’d come to the apartment or maybe we’d go out somewhere for dinner. Real good guys, some of them with nice wives, but Marion simply couldn’t tune in on that kind of talk. It was even worse for me. She had her friends and we’d be out with them at parties and I had a hard time finding anything to say that anybody would listen to.
“I don’t mean they were snooty. They liked Marion and they wanted to like me, but about half the conversation was chitchat that didn’t mean anything and was about people I didn’t even know. The rest of it, the men I mean, was talk about stocks and investments and taxes and politics and golf handicaps and trips they had made.” He stopped and looked at Hayden. “Does any of this make any sense?”
“It makes a lot of sense,” Hayden said.
“So the marriage wasn’t working out and we both knew it. We both tried too, I think. But somehow I started to drink a little more than I should and I’d get to brooding and wondering what I could do to fix things up. Instead of getting out and trying to sell, I’d duck into an afternoon movie and brood some more. So I lost a job and then another and another. I was about to lose again when I went out to Kansas City to see if I could swing one more deal.
“I was working for a paper box company at the time, and I thought maybe if I could get a big order I could hang on a while longer, not that it probably would have done any good because we were already talking about separation and divorce. Marion had started to look for a job and I guess we both understood there wasn’t any future in it for us the way things were.”
He stopped again and, as though just becoming aware of the bottle of whisky, reached for it. He pulled his legs in and sat up; he made two drinks, not asking Hayden if he wanted one. He passed it over silently and Hayden accepted. Corbin took a big swallow, put the glass down, and again his gaze moved away and distance grew in it.
“This was right after New Year’s,” he said, “and on New Year’s they have all those college bowl games and I hit three out of four. I had six hundred dollars in my kick when I got the plane that day. I went out to Kansas City. I made my pitch. No dice. So I had one more chance, a job I’d heard about that was opening up for an outfit in Capitol City. So I went there. Same thing. I said what I had to say and they listened. They didn’t say no but I didn’t think I was going to get the job either.
“Well, this is late Friday afternoon and I’m feeling too sorry for myself to go home yet. But the next day, Saturday, they’re having the play-off of the two runner-up teams in the National Football League. The Bisons are five-to-nine underdogs but I like ’em. I have this six hundred bucks, so I lay five of it on the Bisons and they win by one point in the last forty seconds. So now I’ve got around fifteen hundred bucks—more than I’ve had since I can remember—and it’s late Saturday afternoon, so now we come to the trench coat.”
Hayden remembered the trench coat. That coat, and what had been in its pockets, had been all-important in establishing Corbin’s death, and now he put his glass aside and waited, his dark eyes somber and intent.
“I’d had that trench coat since before I married,” Corbin said, “and Marion hated it. Maybe not at first, but I always wore it when I could, and I guess it got to be looking pretty disreputable. Anyway she said it was. About once a week she’d make some crack about it. Why couldn’t I get a neat cloth coat like other men? She didn’t say I looked like a bum but that’s what she thought.”
He grunted softly and an absent smile was reflected in his eyes. “I guess it did get to be pretty crummy-looking, and for some reason I remembered how she felt about it that Saturday afternoon. So I walked into this store with all that fresh money in my pocket and bought a new one.
“I didn’t have too much time and the sleeves had to be lengthened about an inch but that salesman wanted the sale. I told him I couldn’t wait, that I had things to do. He said he could send it to the airport but I thought of something else. I said if he’d have it wrapped up and ready, I’d have my taxi come by that way and pick it up. I told him if it wasn’t ready for me by the front door there’d be no sale and he promised it would be there.... It was,” he said, and took another swallow of his drink.
“So I rode out to the airport and got a quick double bourbon and water. I was feeling pretty good then and I’d never taken any flight insurance before, but I got to thinking that now that I had some real money this would be the time the damn plane would crash, so I stopped and got this policy for Marion. I’d already wired her I’d be on that flight, so I went over to the counter, handed over my suitcase and ticket.”
He grunted softly again, an introspective sound. “The fellow stapled the baggage check to that part of the ticket they give you back—you know, the carbon part. The clerk handed me a landing pass and then I took off for the men’s room to try on my new coat. The room was empty except for two guys who were sitting on a bench and two sadder-looking characters you never saw. One was on the small side, with an old felt hat and a topcoat on. The other fellow was nearly as tall as I am but not as big around. He wore a wrinkled suit with a sweater on underneath it but no coat.
“What I didn’t know was that they were pals and were actually together. Because they weren’t sitting that way. I mean, the tall guy was hunched over reading a newspaper; the little guy was sitting by himself at the other side of the room, slumped back, his hat over his eyes like he was half asleep. I probably gave him a quick look when I walked in but I never really saw his face.
“I undid the package and chucked the paper into a trash can. I tried the coat on and liked it and was about to throw the old coat on top of the wrapping paper too when I thought about this guy who didn’t have a coat. I turned around and asked him if he could use it. I said it was pretty dirty but it might not be too bad once he got it cleaned and he was welcome to it if he wanted it. He did. He thanked me, and as I started out I could hear the flight being called over the loud-speaker.”
He paused again, the blue eyes full of thought as his mind went back.
“But I was a little juiced by that time and feeling pretty good. I knew that the first call for a flight—and lots of times the second call—didn’t mean a thing, and since I was all cleared away I decided I had time for another drink. I heard the second call but I was just mulled enough to think I had plenty of time. Anyway I finished my drink, paid the check, and started for the gate.”
He took a breath and let it out slowly. He looked again at Hayden and that small smile was still there.
“I guess you know how it must have been and what happened after that.”
“I guess so,” Hayden said.
“It was a lot longer walk than I thought. This particular gate was way-the-hell-and-gone at the end of the corridor, and when I got there the attendant who had been checking off the passengers was just turning away. The gate was closed. I could see the passenger ramp being wheeled away from the plane and the door was shut. Two of the motors had already started. I knew I didn’t have a chance but I thought I’d try. I stuck my hand into my new coat pocket to get my boarding pass and the carbon to my ticket and my baggage check and—you guessed it—I’d forgotten to take them out of the old coat.”
“Ahh—” said Hayden as he visualized the picture. “By then it was too late—”
“Hell yes. I asked the attendant if everybody was checked aboard. He said yes, and by that time I was too disgusted with myself to put up a beef. I knew it wouldn’t do any good. It was my own damn fault, and I knew that skinny guy was sitting there in my seat, that he not only would get a free ride to New York but probably claim my suitcase.
“I was so damn mad I didn’t even go back to the counter and tell them what had happened. I wasn’t even sure I could make them believe it or prove what I said. I just stood there and watched the plane take off and then I went back to the bar, not thinking that I ought to call Marion and tell her I missed the flight. I tied on a pretty good one for the next hour or so and then I walked out of the terminal and across the road to this motel, paid for a room, and went to bed to sleep it off.”
He stood up, the tanned face grave as remembered thoughts came back to haunt him.
“If I’d hung around the airport a few more minutes I’d have known about the crash. But I didn’t. I got the word from a newspaper I bought when I went into the motel restaurant for breakfast the next morning, and I guess for a while after that I was in a state of shock. I still wake up scared some nights when I think of it. You can’t believe what a thing like that can do to you.”
He walked the length of the room and came back. “I should have been dead but I wasn’t. I kept thinking of that plane and how I’d seen it take off and the crazy twist of luck that kept me off it. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I read my name on the list of victims. I knew that Marion already had the word that she was a widow.”
He stopped pacing to look at Hayden. “The idea that there was my chance to make the break that was long overdue didn’t come all at once. It grew a thought at a time as that feeling of shock and unreality began to wear off. I didn’t have any plan then. I only knew that here was a chance I’d never get again to start a new life not only for myself but for Marion. There was no love for us any more, no future together. She wouldn’t grieve much. She’d already had the shock of knowing I was gone for good, and now she’d have seventy-five thousand bucks, more than I could ever have left her any other way.”
He paused again and said in slow accents: “Only one guy on earth besides myself knew that I hadn’t gone down with that plane. The little guy in the men’s room.”
“Adler.”
“Right. I thought about him before the day was out, but in my mind he was only some itinerant bum, and the odds that he could foul up my scheme were a million to one.” He stepped to an open doorway, reached in, and snapped on a light. “But that’s the second part of my story and it can wait.”
He disappeared inside the room and Hayden could see enough of the interior to know that this was a bedroom. Presently he heard a telephone being dialed and then Corbin’s voice.
“Connie? I’m coming over for a few minutes.... Yeah.... No, I can’t tonight but I have to see you. Yeah, right away.”
He came back to the living room and headed for the outside door.
“I told you I’d probably go back with you,” he said. “You can count on it. Not just for you and Marion either.”
“For Connie?” Hayden said, hazarding a guess.
“Yeah.” The grin came slowly, the teeth white against the tanned muscular face. “I guess I’ve been kidding myself too long.... I’ll be back in a half hour,” he added. “Stick around.”