16
John Hayden remained in his chair for several minutes after the door closed, his drink forgotten and his mind evaluating the story he had heard. Even in retrospect he could not quarrel with it. It held, somehow, a ring of truth, and he found he could accept the incredible twist of fate that had saved Corbin’s life on that January night more than two years ago. There was much he did not understand about what had happened since that time, but even now he found it difficult to blame Corbin for what he had done.
He had thought earlier that he understood Marion’s original attraction to the man. He was of the same opinion now. For while Corbin was obviously no mental giant, he had, in addition to his good looks, a charm that was forthright and basically friendly. The motives which influenced his disappearance were simple and uncomplicated. He was willing now to face the music without fuss and, on balance, Hayden could not help but like him. This thought helped to bolster his own confidence, and as his mind went on, he rose and started aimlessly about the room.
The light was still on in the adjoining bedroom and he stopped in the doorway to glance inside. That was how he happened to see the suitcase which stood at the foot of the double bed. There was nothing unusual about the case. It was a brown canvas-covered bag, man-sized, lightweight, and medium-priced by the look of it. If he had not so recently made a flight from New York he might not have wondered about the baggage tag which still hung from the handle.
He knew it was the passenger’s half of the baggage check that the attendant had not bothered to remove when the suitcase was reclaimed. He also recalled that Corbin had been away. The suspicious character in the filling station had said something about Corbin and a trip North. This knowledge prompted Hayden to move inside and step closer to the suitcase, but it was simple curiosity rather than suspicion that made him examine the tag.
Not understanding yet the implications of his discovery, he simply read the large block letters imprinted on the thin white cardboard. The abbreviations told him at once that this suitcase had been checked from New York to Mobile. The top numbers meant nothing but there was a flight number that did. This had been written in with a blue crayon, and as he repeated the number aloud he knew that this was the same flight he had taken that morning.
He straightened slowly, his angular face twisting absently and his dark gaze puzzled. He stood that way for long seconds, knowing that Corbin must have been in New York recently. Then, stooping again, he flipped the tag over and saw the date that had been stamped there. Only then did he realize that Corbin had taken the same flight South that he had, but exactly twenty-four hours earlier.
Why?
That is what he asked himself as he grappled with his new-found information. He let his breath out slowly, not knowing that he had been holding it. He considered the days of the week and a curious feeling of tension began to work on him as he realized that Corbin had probably been in New York the night Sam Adler was killed. The assumption was sound but it was still only an assumption. Corbin could have been in New York for any number of reasons. But when had he arrived? How long had he stayed and what—?
The sound of the car moving in from the street to park alongside the porch jerked his thoughts back to the moment, and his immediate reaction was swift and impulsive. Not really thinking, not even sure what prompted the move, he quickly loosened the cord that held the tag. When he had a loop he slipped the piece of cardboard through the opening and it came free in his hand. Even as he straightened again a new thought came to disturb him but he dismissed it arbitrarily. Maybe Corbin would miss that tag and maybe not, but it was too late now for doubts, and he was back in the living room, the tag safely in his pocket, when the door opened.
The big man’s grin seemed genuine as he entered the room, and there was no indecision in his manner as he started for the bedroom, stopping only long enough to pick up his glass and the whisky bottle.
“Bring your glass,” he said. “Water if you want it. I’d better start packing.”
Hayden followed him to the door, a nervousness assailing him as Corbin picked up the suitcase and tossed it on the bed. He watched the big man pour a small drink and toss it off, saw him put the glass aside and open the suitcase. When he turned to pull out a drawer in the chest, Hayden gave a small and silent sigh of relief, emptied his own glass, and started to relax.
“You were going to tell me about Adler,” he said. “And why you came to Mobile.”
“Yeah,” Corbin said, “and the last part is easy. Once I finally decided to make the break I thought of it right off and for three reasons: I didn’t know anybody here and that meant nobody would know me, I liked the country, and it was far, far away from New York.”
“You’d been here before?”
“One summer while I was in college I worked for a while on the docks. I liked to hunt and fish even then, and this country gives you both. Deer, quail, dove, turkey; even ducks if you want to go west a hundred miles.”
He stopped to consider the things he had already packed and when he continued there was a noticeable enthusiasm in his voice.
“As for fish, you name it, we’ve got it. I don’t mean you can just toss out a line and get the limit any time you want to, but if you like to fish this is the place. Fresh water, salt water. Lakes and rivers, the Bay, Mississippi Sound, the Gulf. I’ll never forget a trip I took that summer with four guys from the docks. We chartered a boat at Bayou La Batre. We were out three days and we had fishing that was fishing.
“Anyway,” he added, as though aware that he was digressing, “I decided this was the place for me. I mean, after I finally decided to run and that took a while. I remember I went from the motel over to the air terminal and found out what I could about the crash. I was still sort of in shock and I bought myself a bottle in a liquor store there and I sucked on it from time to time. Maybe what I got out of that bottle gave me the courage I needed. I got a bus into town and I had this fifteen hundred bucks in my pocket and I knew that was all I was going to have until I got down here and got a job. I found out I could get a bus that afternoon that would take me here by way of New Orleans, so I got myself a seat. But, what the hell, you don’t want details.”
He again glanced about the room to see if he had forgotten anything.
“I picked the name Cannon—don’t ask me why—and I used it that afternoon. I’ve been using it ever since. I got a room in a small hotel and started looking for work. I couldn’t use my Social Security card or driver’s license or anything like that, so when I got a chance to go to work for this filling station at sixty bucks a week I told the guy I never had had a Social Security card. I told him I’d always worked on a farm, but he needed help and he wasn’t too fussy. I got a new card and eventually a new driver’s license.
“After I’d been around awhile,” he said, “I got to like Fairview and I finally got the job with Quinn. I hung onto my dough, and when the next fall came around I did pretty good betting on the football games again. I rented this place and got me a small boat, and before long I found out that Quinn had a very attractive kid sister.”
“Connie?” Hayden asked.
“Connie,” Corbin said, and the smile in his eyes told Hayden how the big man felt about the girl. “Quinn and I got along and I saved my dough and now I’ve got a third interest in that filling station. I thought I was all set. I had it made. The past was kicked and then that son-of-a-bitch Adler turned up.”
“He must have known all the time,” Hayden said, having only a vague idea of how such a thing could happen but understanding that this was so.
“Hell yes, he knew.” Corbin stopped his packing and the blue eyes were suddenly cold and resentful. “He started snooping and figuring that first day. He didn’t have any angle then, but he could tell from what I did that I had one. He wouldn’t let it go. He couldn’t figure out why I acted the way I did and it bothered him. He had to find out what I was after and if there was anything in it for him. He said it was curiosity at first.”
“You got the story out of him?”
“I got it. He’d have made a damn good detective,” he added bitterly, “especially a dishonest one.”
“He saw his pal get on the plane,” Hayden said.
“Sure. But what you have to understand, the thing that gave Adler a chance to follow up was that I didn’t know these two were together. How could I? I told you I was a little juiced when I walked into that men’s room. I’m interested in trying on a new coat and getting out of there. I notice a little guy slumped in the corner, his hat half over his eyes like he’s trying to sleep. I see this other guy at the opposite end of the room, reading a newspaper that looked like it had been picked out of a trash can. This is the guy I see. This is the fellow I gave the trench coat to.”
“When he found the ticket and your boarding pass in the pocket,” Hayden said, “he decided to take a chance on using them and see if he could get away with it.”
“Right.... They were horse players,” Corbin said, “and they were trying to get to Florida or New Orleans, but they had only enough dough between them to get one of them down there. They were hanging around trying to keep warm and waiting for something to happen. The minute they realized they had a chance to get my seat they pooled their cash and Adler took it, the other guy figuring if he can make New York he’s got friends who can give him a hand.
“And because I have to have a couple more drinks,” he added savagely, “and I’m stupid enough to think maybe the plane will wait for me, they pulled it off. Adler keeps an eye on me, at first to see if I’m going back to the airline counter to make a beef and after that just because he’s got that kind of curious, conniving mind. He follows me over to the motel and knows that I register and go to my room. He comes back to the terminal building and a few minutes later he gets word of the crash. He’s got nowhere to go and nothing to do so he hangs around. All he knows then is that his pal got a bad break and that I’m a very lucky guy.”
He took a breath and said: “He’s still there the next morning when I come in. He knows the score. He wonders what I’m going to do. He sees me get the pint from the liquor store, and he can’t figure out why I should be acting like that, so when I get a bus back to town, he’s on it. By the time I get to the bus terminal in town I know what I’m going to do. I buy a ticket to Mobile in the name of Ted Cannon, and since he’s going South anyway he decides to come along.”
“You didn’t recognize him?” Hayden asked.
“I didn’t know he was alive,” Corbin said. “To me he’s a little guy—he’s got dark glasses on now—I’ve never seen before. We even have a little conversation on that trip because by now he knows I’m doing a run-out and he’s beginning to smell a payoff somewhere. He goes to the same cheap hotel I do, and a couple days later when I get a job he finds out where I got it. After that I don’t see him again until a couple of months ago when he turns up at the filling station.”
Hayden was ready to accept this much. He also knew that Corbin knew a great deal about Sam Adler and somewhere in his mind a small seed of suspicion began to put out shoots.
“But how could he know about Marion?” he asked.
“How could he miss with a mind like his? He read the papers, just like I did. It was all there if you wanted it—names and addresses of victims, those that had been identified, those that weren’t. Because they didn’t know what caused the crash for a while, the insurance angle came out too. Adler not only knew my New York City address but he knew that Marion was going to collect seventy-five thousand dollars. That was all he needed to get the idea that maybe someday there’d be some dough in it for him.”
He closed the top of the suitcase and said: “I don’t mean he made a career out of this during the next two years, but he always had it in the back of his mind. And remember he was a horse player. New Orleans, Hollywood, Miami in the winter; Aqueduct, Belmont, Narragansett, Suffolk Downs in the summer. He may have had a little help in New York—he didn’t say—to keep a check on what Marion did. On one trip he found out she got married. He found out where you lived. He never forgot that she had collected seventy-five thousand dollars and he eventually found out that you had your own business and were doing pretty well in it. When he got ready he made his first move.”
“How?”
“He drove into the filling station one day,” Corbin said. “I knew I’d seen him somewhere but I didn’t remember him. I thought he was just another customer I’d seen before. He took that snapshot of me without me knowing it. While I was working on the car I must have put my hand on the hood because later he got somebody to lift those fingerprints and photograph them. I didn’t know anything about it until he showed up one evening and made his pitch.”
“Here?”
“Right in that other room. He showed me the two snapshots. He told me when he’d taken them and why. He told me the story and it didn’t make any difference whether I believed him or not; the point was he knew what had happened. He knew I was Ted Corbin. He knew about the insurance and he knew about Marion.”
He yanked the suitcase from the bed with a quick and angry movement. He set it on the floor and when he turned there were hard bright glints in the narrowed blue eyes.
“I told you he’d been snooping,” he said, “and not just about Marion and you. Somehow he knew I had an interest in the gas station. He knew about my car and my boat and Connie. He had to guess about one thing—that we planned to get married—but he was right.”
“How much did he want?”
“Five thousand. He said he’d take twenty-five hundred now and I could get the other twenty-five hundred up in six months or whenever I could.... I should have killed him then,” he said savagely. “I’d have been acquitted in this county. He was carrying a gun and I could have sworn that he threatened me.”
Hayden considered the statement in the brief silence that followed. He wondered about the phrasing of certain words but he did not dwell on them because he had to know the rest of it.
“What did you do?”
Corbin shrugged. He gestured emptily with one brown hand. His gaze seemed distant and withdrawn and when he spoke the savagery had gone from his tone.
“I guess I didn’t play it very smart,” he said. “I was too burned right then to realize that he could hit you and Marion without ever coming directly to me again. I started for him and knocked him down and threw him out. I threw the gun out after him. I told him if I ever saw him again or even heard from him he’d wind up in the Bay with an anchor around his neck.”
He took a slow breath and the look in his eyes suggested that he was seeing again the scene he had described. “I meant it,” he added with quiet emphasis, “and Adler knew I meant it—”
His head jerked around as the sound of the telephone punctuated his sentence. It was loud and startling, that sound, its unexpectedness holding both men immobile until it rang again. This time Corbin strode over and swept the instrument off its rack.
“Yeah?” He listened then and Hayden could see the quick frown and the growing uncertainty in the blue eyes. “You sure?... Yeah.... Right.... Thanks, pal, I’ll be in touch when I can.”
He hung up and reached for the suitcase in the same continuous movement. The frown was still there on the tanned good-looking face but the eyes were thoughtful now and there was a thin, mirthless smile on the mouth.
“My partner,” he said. “A Mobile cop, a sheriff’s deputy, and an insurance man are looking for me. Let’s go.”
Hayden had to move fast to get out of Corbin’s way and then they were crossing the living room and turning out lights and coming finally to the screened porch. As they went down the steps Hayden said:
“How much time have we got?”
“Enough. Quinn had to give them an address, so he told them I lived on North Oak Street. This is South. Follow me in your car,” he said.
Hayden did not argue. He tailed Corbin’s sedan until Corbin parked it out behind the filling station, approaching from the side street. Corbin transferred his suitcase to the back seat of Hayden’s rented car and climbed in beside him. He said if the word was out he might be picked up in his own car, but with a rented car there should be no trouble.