He stepped out to the sidewalk and finding the lights green, started across the street. Midway across, he had to stop as Willis Trent’s coupe turned the corner in front of him. Trent braked to a stop a few yards away and Tommy quickened his steps. Earl Faraday, coming up close behind him, snatched the Boston bag from his hand.
Trent, leaning across the seat, opened the car door and Tommy ducked his head and slid into the seat. Faraday crowded him in and was barely seated before Trent was shifting into second and gunning his motor.
“Okay?” Trent asked tautly.
“Here’s the bag,” said Faraday grimly. He ripped it open and stared down at the contents of the Manila envelope. “What the hell!” he ejaculated.
“That’s what I said inside the bank,” Tommy offered. “If there’s two hundred thousand in that...”
The car suddenly slewed sidewards as Trent jerked the wheel spasmodically. “Open it,” he cried hoarsely.
Faraday tore the end off the envelope and, reaching in, pulled out a sheaf of bills, all fives and tens.
“Chicken feed,” he said, with a sudden catch in his throat.
They were on Hollywood Boulevard, only a couple of blocks from the bank but Trent pulled the car to a sudden stop in front of a fire plug and, with his foot on the brake to hold the car, reached sidewards and grabbed Tommy’s coat with both hands.
“What’re you trying to pull, Tommy?” he shouted.
“Not a damn thing,” Tommy snarled. “That’s all there was in the box, that measly envelope.”
Faraday was riffling the bills. “Two, maybe three hundred,” he said, in a tone of awe.
“You lost your nerve,” raged Trent. “You grabbed the first thing in the box and ran.”
“I did not,” retorted Tommy. “I took everything there was in the box — and
“There wasn’t two hundred thousand this week,” put in Faraday, “but there was a hundred and sixty thousand.
“She told you wrong.”
“She?”
“Flo Randall!”
“Who told you I got my information from Flo Randall?” Faraday cried.
Willis Trent groaned and grabbed the wheel again. “Let’s not go into that here on the street. There’s something about this stinks to high heaven and I’m going to get to the bottom of it — but not here.”
He slammed the gear lever into second and the car leaped forward so suddenly that both Tommy and Faraday were hurled back against the cushions.
The car shot across La Brea and roared down Hollywood Boulevard. Faraday, beside Tommy, folded his arms across his chest and scowled at the windshield. Between the two men, Tommy Dancer relaxed.
Trent drove past Fairfax to Laurel Canyon and turned right. He sent the car shrieking around the sharp turns, forward and upward into the hills. He reached Mulholland Drive in record time and there made a left turn.
“Where are we going?” Faraday asked, then.
“You’ll see,” Trent replied grimly.
He drove a half mile or so, then suddenly made a sharp right turn on a graveled road that led from Mulholland Drive up a thirty-five degree slope to the summit of a hill. After a few hundred yards on this road, the drive suddenly petered out in a graveled yard, which had a flat-roofed stucco house at the end of it.
Although a comparatively short distance from a well-traveled road the spot was as isolated as if it had been a hundred miles out in the desert. There was no other habitation within sight.
Trent braked the car to a stop and shut off the motor. He climbed out and waited for Faraday and Tommy to step to the ground. Faraday surveyed the house and the grounds.
“Whose place is this?”
“It belongs to a friend.”
“Who?”
“What difference does it make?”
Faraday frowned but followed Trent toward the back door of the stuccoed house. Tommy Dancer walked between the two men. When they reached the door, Trent took out a key.
“A friend, eh?” Faraday said pointedly.
“He lets me use the place.”
They went into the house, through a kitchen that gleamed with white-enameled fixtures, through a butler’s pantry into a long, pine-beamed living room. Wide plate glass windows looked out over the mountainside to Hollywood far below. A man with a rifle could shoot down into the city from here... and nobody would know from where the bullet came.
The room was furnished with red mohair-covered furniture, but it was completely lacking in personal effects.
“Sit down,” Trent said curtly and went to a telephone at the far side of the room. He picked it up and dialed a number.
“Trent talking,” he said into the phone. “I want you to come up to the Mulholland Drive place. Right away, understand?” He hung up, waited a moment and dialed again. When he got an answer he repeated his order.
Finished, he put down the phone and faced Faraday and Tommy Dancer. “Give me that money,” he said to Faraday.
Faraday crossed and handed him the Manila envelope in which he had replaced the sheaf of bills. Trent slipped the money out into his hand and counted it, carefully.
“An even two hundred and fifty — in five and ten dollar bills.”
