Kill Me Tomorrow

by Richard S. Prather

  He was a couple of inches shorter than my six-two, but the thick chest and stomach—the stomach not unusually protuberant, however—accounted for maybe an additional ten pounds more than my two hundred and six. His hair was brown, thick, slightly waving, flecked with strands of gray and definitely gray at the temples. He was deeply tanned, and his eyes were a startlingly light blue.

  Except for the fact that he was roughly the same height and weight as Civano, and that there was a very slight facial resemblance—sharp nose, wide chin, full lips—I wouldn’t have mistaken him for Crazy Joe at a distance of fifty feet, much less when he was standing only a yard from me as he was now. Civano’s eyes had been brown, there’d been a fine scar on his upper lip and a wide and deeply indented scar—the result of getting clobbered by a well-aimed crowbar—high on his forehead near the hairline.

  “Mr. Henry Yarrow?” I asked. He nodded and I said, “My name’s Shell Scott. I’d appreciate it if you could give me a few minutes of your time.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I was expecting you. Recognized you from Mary’s description.” He smiled. “You’re not difficult to recognize, are you?”

  I shook my head as he continued, “She told me—Mrs. Blessing told me, that is—you’re a private detective, and had just called on her. I understand it’s about Mr. Reyes.”

  “Right on all counts.”

  “Come in, Mr. Scott.”

  I stepped into a very attractive living room done in blues and soft grays, the basic coolness of the room warmed by splashes of orange from scattered pillows and two abstract oil paintings, and the red-orange shade of a six-foot-high floor lamp.

  We both sat on a thickly cushioned blue couch and I said bluntly, “Didn’t take Mrs. Blessing long to let you know I might be dropping in, did it?”

  He raised a neat eyebrow but said levelly, “No. Indeed, after this conversation, Mr. Scott, I shall phone Mary and tell her anything of importance which we may discuss.” He lit a cigarette. “Perhaps our interest and”—he smiled again—“reciprocal communication seem excessive to you. I doubt that it would if you were in my position. I have been in business here for several years, and now—in part due to the confidence placed in me by Mrs. Blessing and her late husband—am president of the Blessing Real Estate Agency. Should rumors begin, linking my name no matter in what way or how innocently with a known criminal and murderer … well, would you want to purchase land or a home from the alleged associate or intimate of a hoodlum? A member of the Cosa Nostra?”

  “I see what you mean, Mr. Yarrow. Apparently you know quite a bit about the late Joe Civano.”

  He nodded. “I do now. I’d never heard the man’s name until Tuesday, but I’ve made it my business to find out what I could about him since then.” He puffed on his cigarette and blew smoke out in a thin blue-gray stream. “You see, at first it was more of a joke than anything else. Then when Mary and I talked to Mr. Reyes for the second time—and realized he really had mistaken me for a hoodlum—it wasn’t so funny.”

  “Yeah. OK, I’ll buy that.”

  He looked straight at me, his gaze level and direct, not entirely friendly. “It is of very little importance to me whether you ‘buy it’ or not, Mr. Scott.”

  “Sorry, I’m sometimes more abrasive than I should be. Especially when investigating a murder.” I meant to go on, but Mr. Yarrow’s expression deteriorated.

  “Murder? Oh … I suppose you mean the killing of this Civano?”

  “No. I was speaking of Mr. Reyes.”

  “Reyes? He’s been killed?” He shook his head rapidly.

  “Maybe I’d better back up a little. I haven’t any evidence he’s dead—none except the fact that he hasn’t returned to his home since Tuesday night.”

  “My word,” he said blinking. “Didn’t he go home after we talked to him at the church?”

  “Maybe he started to. He didn’t get there. Did Mr. Reyes say anything to you indicating he might have been going someplace else from the church?”

  Mr. Yarrow shook his head rapidly again. “He didn’t say anything. Just thanked Mrs. Blessing and me—indeed, he apologized for the trouble he felt he’d put us to. That was all. Then he left, and Mary and I left a few minutes later.”

  He put out his cigarette, saying in a somewhat puzzled tone, “I’m surprised Mary didn’t mention that.”

  “I got the impression it didn’t strike her as very important.”

  “It strikes me as important. Suppose he is dead? I don’t like being one of the last people to have seen a man who …”

  “Look, I don’t want to take too much of your time, Mr. Yarrow. If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate your telling me just what did happen when Reyes talked to you Tuesday morning, and again that night.”

  He nodded, and described the A.M. and P.M. meetings with Gil Reyes. Except for minor and unimportant variations it agreed with what I’d already been told. I said, “When you heard the name Joe Civano it didn’t mean anything to you?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “How about the name Lecci? Pete Lecci?”

  He looked at me blankly, and shook his head.

  “At one time he was called ‘The Letch.’”

  “That’s an odd name. Very odd—is he a criminal, too?”

  Instead of answering, I said, “I guess that’s about it. Thanks for putting up with my questions, Mr. Yarrow.”

  “It’s quite all right, Mr. Scott.”

  I got to my feet. “By the way, I was a little curious to know how it happened you were talking to Mrs. Blessing at such an early hour of the morning. She explained you’d brought some papers by for her signature.”

  “Yes. I … often do that. Thank God I’m running the agency for her—she signs anything I put in front of her.” I thought he was going to let the implied question pass. I wouldn’t have blamed him. But he didn’t. After a short pause he said, “I rather doubt that Mrs. Blessing mentioned this, Mr. Scott. But I have—twice—asked her to marry me.”

  “I see,” I said.

  After another brief pause he added, “It was a rather early hour. I presume you are possessed of discretion—”

  “I am the very soul of it, Mr. Yarrow.”

  He smiled, seeming relieved. So I added, “The only thing I’m interested in is what’s happened to Reyes. And maybe a couple other things going on here at the Villas—but that’s for sure not one of them.”

  Thus we prepared to part almost friends, or at least with the tie that binds those who share a guilty secret. Of course, he knew a hell of a lot more about the secret than I did. But I knew a little of it. And for a guy with an imagination like mine, even a little is a lot. At the door, however, I resolutely blotted out such thoughts, and turned off the wild music in my ears, and put my hand on the doorknob.

  Mr. Yarrow was standing right beside me, so I said, “I know this will sound silly to you. But would you move back a few feet? Over there?” I pointed.

  He looked quite puzzled, but did as I’d asked. “And pay no attention to anything I do which may strike you as a bit peculiar.”

  Then I pulled the door open, stood in it framed by the reddish-orange glow from the living room lamp, and stepped speedily aside.

  I said, “It’s merely—”

  I was about to tell him that it is my habit, under certain circumstances, to take more-than-usual precautions. But I didn’t tell him. I didn’t have time.

  Right after “merely,” or perhaps even in the middle of the word, the blast tore open the night’s stillness. It wasn’t from a handgun or rifle; that boom was from a heavy-gauge shotgun. The shot snapped through the open doorway and drilled holes into the far wall. It didn’t hit anything on the way, there was no sound of smashing glass or shattering crockery. But it was quite dramatic enough for me. For me—and apparently for Henry Yarrow.

  Half a second after the blast I was on my way to the floor. I kicked the door shut on my way down, hit the carpet with my rear end and rolled, slapping my righ
t hand to the Colt’s butt and yanking it out as I stretched my head around to get my eyes on Yarrow. But he wasn’t behind me holding a gun, or a club. He wasn’t doing anything. He stood precisely where he’d been moments before, and the expression on his face was one of almost total astonishment and bewilderment.

  When he saw the gun in my hand—pointed at his gut—I got the impression he was preparing to pass out.

  So I quit worrying about Yarrow.

  “Douse that light!” I yelled, pointing past him.

  For a moment he was frozen, then he whirled and leaped halfway to the tall lamp in one enormous bound, jumped forward and switched it off. It had been the only illumination, and when he turned it off the entire house was suddenly in darkness. By then I was squatted on my haunches next to the door, hand on the knob—but even before the light went out I heard the sudden roar of a car’s engine, followed immediately by the high-pitched shriek of tires spinning on asphalt.

  I yanked the door open and went through it low, bent over and running, gun raised in my right hand. I couldn’t see the car at first. But I could hear it. The driver was roaring up Palma Drive, headlights off, already twenty yards or more to my left. My feet hit the lawn and I slid to a stop, shoes skidding on the grass. My eyes hadn’t completely adjusted from the relative brightness inside the house, but as I aimed toward the sound of the speeding car I could dimly see the blur of its bulk racing up the street—too dimly. I held my fire.

  Close on my left a bright amber light flared. It was the outside light above the front door of the house next to Yarrow’s. It couldn’t have been more than five seconds since I’d lunged through the door behind me—a few seconds more since that sharp crack in the night—but already startled citizens were moving, reacting. There’s something about a gunshot. Especially when it’s close.

  As the reddish-yellow glow blossomed on my left and reached for the street, fell upon the grass beneath my feet—and upon me—it brushed something on my right, gave half-solid form to what a fraction of a second before had been only darkness. I turned toward it, and I turned fast, without thinking about what I was doing, not yet fully aware of why I was moving, bending my knees, dropping into a squat, straining my eyes toward whatever it was that moved on my right.

  Because it was moving now. Moving suddenly, almost with a jerk, as if that movement were somehow allied to—or maybe caused by—my own. It moved, and stopped, and I caught the red-yellow ripple of light on metal, and I threw my hand and the gun in it toward that form, knowing it was a human form, and tightened my finger on the Colt’s trigger as a gun cracked and red-yellow flame almost like a ten-times-brighter version of that amber light behind me lanced toward me from the man’s fist.

  Barely after his gun blasted, my .38 cracked and bucked easily in my hand. In the same moment I felt something flick at my coat, a pressure gentle as a girl flicking at a speck of lint and a tiny pain as if I’d been pinched, and heard the sound of my slug hitting the man.

  It must have gone in and smacked bone. It rocked him, turned him. Turned him far enough so he took the next three slugs in the side of his chest and stomach. At least one of them hit his heart. The other three were in him.

  By the time I reached him, he was dead. There was no breathing, no froth of bubbly blood at his lips, none of the ugly twitching which sometimes convulses a man as he dies.

  He was just dead, that’s all.

  It was enough.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I grabbed the man’s chin and pulled his head, loose as liver on his neck, around so I could get a good look at his face.

  I’d expected it to be Lucky Ryan. But it wasn’t. This was a man about five and a half feet tall, thin, with a pale thin face and big ears. Nobody I’d ever seen. Not while he was alive—except as a shadow that moved, and tried to kill me.

  One man—or more—in a car across the street, ready to get me when I came out the door. That should have been enough. But just in case the first guy missed me, a second wiper, also ready and waiting, near the house. Easy: if that miserable flatheel, Scott, charges out and stands there gawking after the heap, mow him down, pally. Piece of cake.

  It could have been a piece of cake; it should have been.

  It bothered me a little. To tell the truth, it bothered me one hell of a lot.

  I told my tale to the Sunrise Villas “Security Guards,” two men who arrived in a tan-colored “official” car. The dead man was found to have no identification whatsoever upon him—not to mention the presence of a heavy .357 Magnum revolver on the grass next to his body—and with Henry Yarrow’s corroboration of my statement that should have been enough. Because Yarrow, still nervous and pale, backed up everything I said.

  It would have been enough except for a guy named Weeton. In the hierarchy of what passed for law in Sunrise Villas, he was a lieutenant. After I’d made my statement to a Sergeant Striker and the patrolman with him, and they’d talked to Yarrow then joined me again out in front of the house, Lieutenant Dan Weeton drove up in another of the tan cars. I could hear the two-way radio as he stepped out, leaving the car door open. He was efficiently briefed by Sergeant Striker, whereupon Lieutenant Weeton, as though not a word had been said, took me through it all again twice, from the beginning.

  Then he started over.

  More, he had a peculiarly whining voice, which was marvelously irritating, but less so than his manner. His attitude, his entire bearing, told me clearly that he was lord of the land here, and I’d bloody well better hang my head and kick my toe in the dirt. Which I would do, of course, in a pig’s eye.

  But when I’d finished my third complete and careful recital for him, I’ll be damned if he didn’t say to me, “Well, that’s not too bad. Only veered off in a couple spots, Scott. Now, you give it to me once more.”

  I just looked at him.

  He wasn’t a tall man, maybe five feet, nine inches, but he was about as wide as a warehouse door. I tagged him at two-hundred-plus pounds, and solid. His shoulders were thick, sloping, and his arms and fists were so meaty and heavy they appeared misshapen, freakish.

  Finally I said, “One more time, huh?”

  “One more time.”

  “I am not singing songs at the Safari Piano Bar, Lieutenant. I’ve done enough encores.”

  “One more time.”

  His voice was softer, still whiny, but more like a nasal whisper. The lids drooped slightly over his pale eyes, and he shifted his feet just a little.

  Well, that was OK with me. Even under the most felicitous circumstances I am not noted for my jollity when getting goosed, so I said, “Lieutenant, I’ve told the goddamned story four times, three times to you. I’ve told it exactly the way it happened. I’m not going to tell it all again—not until you compare my statement with Mr. Yarrow’s and check some of the neighbors around here. You’ll get the same thing from them. There was one pop—if you want my guess, from a twelve-gauge smokepole—probably from directly across the street. The slugs are in Yarrow’s living room wall, thus there is the possibility that you might care to dig them out and check them. You might personally desire to compare them with artillery shells, or dust them for fingerprints. A few seconds later there was one shot from a Magnum aimed at me—by that very dead sonofabitch over there. The Magnum, obviously, is a pro’s gun. Finally, there were four shots from my revolver at said very dead sonofabitch.” I paused, smiling slightly, and added, out of sheer meanness, I suppose, “You’ll find all four of the slugs in him, by the way.”

  Weeton folded those ham-hock arms across his chest and looked me in the eye and said in the soft whine, “I’ll check Yarrow and the rest of it. I’ll check it good. You better keep in mind, Scott, you’re maybe a hotshot private dick in L.A., but there’s no such thing as a license to work in Arizona.”

  “There’s no such thing as a citizen’s license, either, Lieutenant. And a citizen has the right—nay, the duty, as I see it—to defend himself against felonious attack.” I paused. “So I merely
did my duty.”

  Weeton turned and walked toward Yarrow’s front door. He walked with an odd sway, shoulders swinging exaggeratedly. The hair on the back of his head was close-trimmed, a mere stubble. It was odd, but when he’d been facing me there was nothing familiar about the man. It was only when he walked away from me that I recognized him as the guy I’d seen talking to that creep on the council.

  That creep, which is to say, DiGiorno, or Pete Lecci.

  When I could find a nice quiet spot, without the kind of distractions which had lately been plaguing me and interfering with calm concentration, I was going to have to just sit a spell. And do a lot of thinking.

  The patrolman had followed Weeton into the house, but Sergeant Striker was still standing on the lawn. He walked over to me.

  Striker was about fifty-five years old, I guessed. Maybe older, but he looked as if he could still run up a pretty good score in the decathlon. He was five-ten or -eleven, not heavy but wiry. His hair was gray and thinning, and his eyes were soft gray under heavy drooping lids. Those eyes looked sleepy, but I had a hunch they didn’t miss much.

  “Don’t let Weeton get under your skin, Scott,” he said.

  “That’s like asking the wind not to blow, Sergeant. Is he always like that?”

  “Most of the time. But—well, this is a kind of Keystone Kops setup we got here at the Villas. You know, the private patrols go around in most of the cities, flash their spots, check doors and all?” I nodded, and he went on, “Same thing, only it’s fancied up here. If the city incorporates, like the council’s been talking about but some people don’t seem to want, we’ll have a chief marshal, and deputy marshals under him. But right now there’s just a dozen patrolmen and a communications officer, three sergeants, one lieutenant—that’s Weeton—and the captain. What I’m getting at, the captain’s a good joe, but there’s just him and Weeton at the top, and right now the captain’s asleep. The two of them kind of run the show.”