The Price of Murder (10 page)

“Wouldn’t that be a little stupid of me? Once you market it, where am I? What can I prove?”

“During the interim, you will be in possession of a detailed confession signed both by Mr. Catton and myself. You will, of course, relinquish this when you receive your share. In addition, Mr. Bronson, may I point out that as far as you know, the money may be out of reach already. What would prevent me from burning it, for example? Wouldn’t that be preferable to a jail sentence?”

“I’ll tell you just why we’re going to play my way, Verney. And why there’s no other way I will play it. First, I’m wanted. I took a risk going into town. I’m not going in again. I’m wanted for violation of parole. I owe the state over seven years. Bronson is my right name. Danny Bronson. I’ll tell you that because there’s not a damn thing you can do with it. Second, I’ve got it all planned out. I’ve got a contact in Chicago. I can get a very nice passport and get it fast. And I know exactly where to go. I’ll fly and I’ll go to Turkey, and I’ll take the money with me. I won’t have to market it. I can use it there at face value. There’s no such a thing as extradition from Turkey.”

“I’m aware of that. Are you aware of the fact you’ve improved my bargaining position?”

Danny saw Verney smile for the first time. It was a broad smile. It was as cold as the underside of a frog. “What do you mean?”

“I won’t accept ruin. I refuse to accept that. I swear this. I swear it before all I hold sacred, Daniel Bronson. Either make your demand reasonable, or I shall destroy every trace of that money. Then you can serve your seven years, and Catton can die, and I can slowly but certainly work my way out of indebtedness. You can not and will not frighten me. I decided that the moment I hung up the phone after your call.”

Danny looked directly into the deepset eyes. “Burn it up, Verney. Get rid of it. You know exactly how hot that money is. It’s been the hottest money in the country for better than three years. All I have to do is let the word out to the F.B.I. They’ll bring in a flock of guys. They’ll backtrack you to wherever you got it. They’ll prove you got hold of it. Don’t think they won’t. And then it won’t matter a damn whether you burned it or not. Want to keep playing this game?”

Verney leaned back. His voice was slightly weak as he said, “You’re a very difficult man, Bronson.”

“We’ve both played a lot of poker. But I can see the hole you’re in, and I don’t want you doing anything damn foolish, and I don’t want Catton doing anything stupid. I can see that I’ve got to leave you some bait. I’ll go this far. I want two hundred thousand. A hundred and ninety-five can be the hot stuff, but I want five I can use anywhere, in small stuff. That will leave you … let me see … a hundred and thirty-two thousand of the hot stuff. You can get rid of it through your channels and still double your investment.”

“That isn’t going to be enough.”

“You’re going to have to get along with it. Hell, if you’re really in the bag, why not screw Catton, take all that’s left and do like I’m going to do? You can live good, they tell me.”

“It isn’t enough.”

“I’m giving you a break and you better take it.”

Verney raised one heavy eyebrow. “Or else?”

“Or else. That’s it. Or else you get smashed no matter what happens to me. I can do seven standing on my head. You bring it out here Wednesday. I can wait until then. Then bring it, and don’t be short. Don’t be a dime short. And you can’t afford to get any fancy ideas because, as I told you before, it’s all written down and in a safe place.”

Verney looked down at his big-knuckled hands for a long time. At last he nodded.

“All right.”

“Wednesday?”

“Wednesday afternoon.”

“I won’t stay around long after that.”

“Is Mrs. Catton going with you?”

“She thinks so.”

He stood up. “She is a stupid, shallow woman.”

Danny watched the Dodge drive away, down the gravel road and around the bend and out of sight behind the trees. He went into the house, put two ice cubes in a glass and covered them with bourbon. He walked into the bedroom, grinned into the largest mirror and silently toasted himself.

Though Verney knew that the trouble had started only a year ago, it seemed to him that things had been going wrong all of his life. Each cumulative disaster required a more desperate counter measure. In the past he had been able to depend on Burt Catton, on Burt’s extroverted optimism, his nimble unscrupulous mind.

But now Burt was gone and in his place there was a grave, withered, apprehensive little man, subject to tears of weakness and moods of dark depression. How could Burt have been such a fool as to tell Drusilla? Everything had been handled so carefully.

He drove sedately back toward Hancock, and he remembered how proud he had been of the extreme care he had used. There was no one who could prove definitely that he had driven to Tulsa, and that he had returned with the money locked in the trunk of this same car. For three years and more the nation had wondered what had happened to the money in the Rovere case. He had followed the news reports at the time it had happened. He would have been both very frightened and most indignant if anyone had told him at that time he would ever have that money in his possession.

Calvin Rovere had been a wealthy resident of Houston, a man who had made many millions in oil, ranch land and trucking lines, a big hearty man who had married in his early forties, married a very pretty girl from Fort Worth. A little over a year after their marriage twin sons were born, and, two years later, a daughter. Rovere maintained a summer place in the hill country north of San Antonio, a large but otherwise unpretentious house on
fifteen acres of land in a bend of the Guadalupe River near Bandera. He had a good airstrip put in, and during the hot months he commuted. On a Wednesday in August his wife flew down to Houston with him one morning and spent the day shopping, leaving the children at the summer place, along with a cook, a maid, a foreman and three hands. The twin boys were nine, the daughter seven.

Some time during the afternoon the twin boys disappeared. One man reported that he had seen a battered station wagon stop on one of the side roads bordering the place at about two o’clock. He could not tell the make. It was too far away to see how many people were in it. He forgot the incident and did not remember it until midnight when, under the stress of direct questioning by a captain of the Rangers, he recalled the incident. In the morning a piece of brown wrapping paper weighed down by a stone was found inside the fence line where the station wagon had stopped. On it was printed in pencil,
If you want to see your kids alive get together a half million dollars in small unmarked bills and wait till you hear from us.

Rovere, with considerable difficulty, managed to collect the sum required without attracting the attention of the press. Police work on the case was discreet and good. After the necessary seven days were up, the F.B.I, was called in. No word had been received from the kidnapers. After staff conferences, it was decided to substitute money that could be identified. A half million in brand new tens, twenties and fifties was secured in exchange for the money Rovere had accumulated. The bills were mechanically and manually aged, shuffled so as to destroy the sequence, then repackaged. It was thought that with such a large amount, it was unlikely that the kidnapers would discover the serial sequence of the bills. The money filled two good-sized suitcases.

Ten days after the kidnaping a letter came to Rovere’s office. It had been mailed in Dallas. It was impossible to trace the paper or the envelope. It detailed a plan for transfer of the money that was so clever and so foolproof that it was never leaked to the press. It promised that, after the money was inspected, the boys would be released in a major city. The frustrated police had to permit the
transfer of the money. It proceeded without incident, twelve days after the kidnaping. The three tables of serial sequence had been quietly distributed to all banks. Two weeks passed and the boys were not released.

The bodies of the two boys were found a mile from the town of Vanderpool, a little over twenty miles from Rovere’s summer place. Both children had been killed by a blow that broke the skull, and they had been placed in a shallow arroyo and carelessly covered with sand and rock. Wind had blown the sand and uncovered the feet of one of the children, and an Angora goat herder had discovered the cairn. It was then that the crime exploded in the papers, complete with all known details except the serial sequence of the money.

The money began to turn up in the banks of Youngstown, Ohio. It was traced to a young man who drove a pickup with Pennsylvania plates. He had rented a small farmhouse near Orangeville, just over the Pennsylvania line. The farmhouse was surrounded, and there was a gun battle during which one officer was seriously wounded and the three occupants of the farmhouse were slain: a young man, an older man, and a young woman. They all had police records. The young man and the young woman were known drug addicts. A single suitcase containing just over a hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars was brought back to headquarters in Youngstown.

There were conflicting stories about whether or not there had been another suitcase, and, if so, what had happened to it. The story of the serial numbers appeared in the newspapers and over radio and on television. State, county, and city police had co-operated with federal officers in the operation. There were intensive inquiries. The other suitcase, if indeed there had been one, was not traced. Some believed there had been at least one and maybe two other principals involved, and that the group had split up. Others thought a cop had grabbed the rest of the money. If others were involved, they would have learned they could not spend the money.

Paul Verney had not been thinking of that money when he was contacted by a man named Roger Dixon. He had known Dixon in law school, had known him
quite well in fact, but had lost touch with him after graduation. Dixon had gone into criminal law in Detroit and had been very successful until, in 1949, he was tried and convicted of bribery of a city official, fined, given a suspended sentence and disbarred. Verney had read of the incident and was astonished at Dixon’s carelessness.

It was about two months after Catton’s heart attack that Paul Verney returned one evening from his office to the private club where he lived and found Roger Dixon waiting for him. Dixon looked prosperous, confident and sleek. He came up to Verney’s room to talk to him.

Verney’s room was sedate, old-fashioned and comfortable. Verney fixed him a Scotch. “Old Paul,” Dixon said. “You look just like I imagined you’d look. You’ve fulfilled your early promise. I used to think you must have been born looking like a self-satisfied bachelor. What ever happened to Melissa?”

“We were married. She had a breakdown six years ago. A very tragic and unexpected thing, Roger. She’s in an institution down-state. The boy is away at school. He’s fifteen.”

Verney had expected the usual expression of sympathy. Instead, Dixon grinned at him, a bright malicious grin. “And you love every minute of it, don’t you?”

“Exactly what are you trying to say?”

“Just that I know you pretty well. Skip it.”

“You’re looking very prosperous, Roger.”

“You know about my little difficulty. I can see you do. And you’re disappointed not to find me on a corner with a tin cup and pencils.”

“I’m glad you’re getting along.”

Dixon smiled in a mocking, unpleasant way. “I’ll bet you are. Good old Paul. Wants the best for everybody. Don’t try to kid me. You don’t care and never have cared what happened to anybody else in the world. I roomed with you, Paul. Maybe nobody else ever got behind that facade, but I did. I don’t know what it was that twisted you. It must have happened real early. Because by the time we met, you were solidified.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.”

“But you will, Paul. You will, because I know you’re in
a hell of a jam and you just squeaked out from under an indictment for fraud, and you have the correct impression that I’ve come here with some kind of an offer where you can make money. So you just let me tell you what you wouldn’t listen to a lot of years ago.”

“You were always emotional.”

“But you weren’t, Paul. Emotions were left out of you. I watched you go after everything you wanted. Cold as a machine. No mercy, no scruples, and no ethics.”

“The disbarred attorney gives a lecture on ethics.”

“I mean ethics in human relationships. When anything or anybody got in your way, you bulldozed the obstacle aside. I’ve never seen such cold-hearted, cold-blooded, frightening ambition. You didn’t make one friend. I was the poor, warm, stupid slob who tried to be your friend. I even tried to understand you and find out what made you what you were and what you are.”

“Shouldn’t you be accompanied by violins?”

“I should have caught on quicker. Absolute greed plus perfect selfishness plus a ruthless and methodical intelligence. I should have caught on and stayed away from you. Then you wouldn’t have gotten the idea of marrying Melissa. The only reason you wanted her was because I wanted her.”

“She made the choice.”

“On insufficient data. I’ve kept track of you, Paul. You were getting money and power just as fast as I expected you to. Maybe a little faster. And then you got clobbered. You tripped up and you went down like a horse on ice. I got pleasantly drunk the night I heard about that, Paul. It was a celebration. I bought drinks for strangers, and I made them all drink to my toast. Here’s to the utter ruin of Paul Verney, the blackest-hearted bastard of them all.”

“You’re still emotional, Roger. You mentioned my methodical intelligence. It causes me to ask a question. You seem to … disapprove of me. And you hint of some offer that will bring me a profit. Thus the offer is suspect, isn’t it?”

“The direct mind at work. I’m an agent in this matter. When you hear the whole story, you’ll see why you’re the logical one to come to. You have larceny in your soul,
but you’ve stayed relatively clean. You are desperate, and you’ve got guts. I’ll never deny you that. This is going to take careful planning on your part, and you’re capable of that. You can make a couple of hundred thousand tax-free dollars. I make a commission and please my boss. I’d foul you up if I could see a way to do it, but I can’t think of a way. You’re ideal for this proposition.”