Double Indemnity - James M. Cain [13]
"You're not supposed to like it. But you'll find out."
That was how it turned out, but she worked on him a whole week and she couldn't change him on the car. "He says he'll have to have it, and there'll be a lot of things he'll want to go to, picnics and things like that, and if he doesn't have it he'll have to hire one. Besides, he hates trains. He gets trainsick."
"Can you put on an act?"
"I did. I put on all the act I dare put, and still he won't budge. I put on such an act that Lola is hardly speaking to me any more. She thinks it's selfish of me. I can try again, but—"
"Holy smoke no."
"I could do this. The day before he's to start, I could bang the car up. Mess up the ignition or something. So it had to go in the shop. Then he'd have to go by train."
"Nothing like it. Nothing even a little bit like it. In the first place, if you've already put on an act, they'll smell something, and believe me Lola will be hard to talk down, later. In the second place, we need the car."
"We need it?"
"It's essential."
"I still don't know—what we're going to do."
"You'll know. You'll know in plenty of time. But we've got to have the car. We've got to have two cars, yours and mine. Whatever you do, don't pull any monkey business with the car. That car's got to run. It's got to be in perfect shape."
"Hadn't we better give up the train idea?"
"Listen, it's the train or we don't do it."
"Well, my goodness, you don't have to snap at me."
"Just pulling off some piker job, that don't interest me. But this, hitting it for the limit, that's what I go for. It's all I go for."
"I was just wondering."
"Quit wondering."
Two or three days later was when we had our piece of luck. She called me at the office around four in the afternoon. "Walter?"
"Yes."
"Are you alone?"
"Is it important?"
"Yes, terribly. Something has happened."
"I'll go home. Call me there in a half hour."
I was alone, but I don't take chances on a phone that runs through a switchboard. I went home, and the phone rang a couple of minutes after I got there. "The Palo Alto trip is off. He's broken his leg."
"What!"
"I don't even know how he did it, yet. He was holding a dog or something, a neighbor's dog that was chasing a rabbit, and slipped and fell down. He's in the hospital now. Lola's with him. They'll be bringing him home in a few minutes."
"I guess that knocks it in the head."
"I'm afraid so."
I was at dinner before it came to me that instead of knocking it in the head, maybe this fixed it up perfect. I walked three miles, around the living room, wondering if she'd come that night, before I heard the bell ring.
"I've only got a few minutes. I'm supposed to be on the boulevard, buying him something to read. I could cry. Whoever heard of such a thing?"
"Listen, Phyllis, never mind that. What kind of break has he got? I mean, is it bad?"
"It's down near the ankle. No, it's not bad."
"Is it in pulleys?"
"No. There's a weight on it, that comes off in about a week. But he won't be able to walk. He'll have to wear a cast. A long time."
"He'll be able to walk."
"You think so?"
"If you get him up."
"What do you mean, Walter?"
"On crutches, he can get up, if you get him up. Because with his foot in a cast, he won't be able to drive. He'll have to go by train. Phyllis, this is what we've been hoping for."
"You think so?"
"And then another thing. I told you, he gets on that train but he don't get on it. All right, then. We've got a question of identification there, haven't we? Those crutches, that foot in a cast—there's the most perfect identification a man ever had. Oh yeah, I'm telling you. If you can get him off that bed, and make him think he ought to take the trip anyway, just as a vacation from all he's been through—we're in. I can feel it. We're in."
"It's dangerous, though."
"What's dangerous about it?"
"I mean, getting a broken leg case out of bed too soon. I used to be a nurse, and I know. It's almost certain to affect the length. Make one