Hard Case Crime: Baby Moll

by John Farris

  “Shut your face,” I told him. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  I saw his shoulders heave, but he didn’t turn around.

  “Easy,” Rudy murmured. “Somewhere you want to go?”

  “Stan’s Restaurant,” I said. “I’ll pick up the car there. You take Diane home. Macy’s been worried about the company she keeps.”

  She squirmed in the seat with her arms folded across her breasts, stared out the window. A blank sullen silence closed around all of us.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The desk clerk at the Coral Gardens Hotel told me Owen Barr had left the hotel an hour ago. I walked through the sedate lobby to the basement steps and went downstairs, opened the door of Owen’s little retreat. I couldn’t find a light switch anywhere. Grayish light from the windows was pinned to the tarpaulin on one wall and a long bar of it slanted across the dirty floor and crept up one of the old sofas, affectionately grasped a girl’s small bare foot.

  I shut my eyes tightly and waited for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes again I could see more clearly. Gerry was lying on the sofa on her back, sound asleep. She was mother-naked, but not like mother ever was. Her nudity irritated me somehow. I had nearly got my head knocked off while she slept comfortably down here.

  I walked over to the sofa and smacked her with the flat of my hand on her bare thigh. She jerked awake and moved her legs. She put one hand on the assaulted leg.

  “Hey! Wha — ” She struggled to focus her sleepy eyes on me. “Who are you?”

  “Mallory.”

  “Oh.” She winced. “What did you do that for?”

  “Get up and get dressed,” I said. “People are looking for you.”

  She slid her knees beneath her, kneeled on the sofa, facing me, raised her head. “That really stings,” she complained. She yawned huskily, touching her hair with her fingers, then raised her arms full-length. Her breasts swelled high.

  I noticed her clothing on the table with Owen’s tubes of color. I turned around and picked up the red pants, underclothes, brief blouse. I tossed the clothing at her. “Put these on.”

  “What for?”

  “You’re going back to Stan.”

  She slid her legs over the edge of the sofa, sat up. “I don’t think I want to go back,” she said stubbornly.

  “You’re going back,” I promised her, “if I have to carry you out of here dressed the way you aren’t.”

  She laughed incredulously. “You wouldn’t—”

  I stepped toward her quickly, caught one of her wrists, brought her stiffly to her feet. She hesitated, then leaned against me, teasing me with a motion of her hips. Her eyelids drooped. “We don’t have to go back right now. We could—”

  I wasn’t enchanted. She was a brat. But even feeling that way I had to get the weight of the lusty body away from me. I shoved her roughly, letting go the wrist.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “Don’t you like women?”

  “You’re not a woman. You’re a shallow-brained little girl rattling around in a woman’s body. Get dressed, damn you.”

  The scornful edge of my voice stung worse than the slap I had given her. She shifted her weight uncertainly from one bare foot to the other, then sniffed, then sat down on the sofa, still looking at me. She picked up her brassiere, fitted it to her breasts, fastened it. She stood up, holding her panties. Without turning away she stepped into them, pulled them up slowly over her legs, her full thighs. She spread her legs slightly, patted the tight sheer panties into place. She never took her eyes off me. I walked away from her in irritation and waited until she was finished dressing.

  When she had everything in place, we went through the dimly lighted basement and out the back way. I held firmly to her wrist until she was safe in the front seat of the Buick.

  “Was Stan worried about me?” she said in a tiny voice.

  “Oh, boy,” I said. It was all the talking we did until we reached Stan’s house. Once there she got out of the car reluctantly, then straightened her shoulders resolutely and walked firmly up to the front door and inside. I followed her.

  Maxine was pouring a drink and when he saw Gerry the neck of the bottle chattered against the glass, whisky spilling.

  “Gerry!”

  “Hello, Stan,” she said calmly.

  A couple of the boys watching TV in one corner looked up briefly, then returned their attentions to the set. I hadn’t seen them before.

  Maxine put both hands around the glass. He looked past Gerry at me. “Well, where you been?” he said, still shaken. He wasn’t quite able to work himself into a rage. “Well, where’s she been?” he demanded of me. I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him.

  He rubbed his forehead. His eyes were on Gerry. “I looked for you,” he said. “You weren’t anywhere around.” His fists clenched. He glanced at me again. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said grimly to Gerry.

  “Okay,” Gerry said. She swallowed once, then turned precisely and walked toward the kitchen. “I’m going to get something to eat,” she said.

  Stan looked at her, his lips tight. “All right. There’s ham sandwiches in the icebox. I’ll be along in a second.”

  When she had pushed through the door Maxine looked at me. He put the overflowing glass down and walked toward me. He took a long breath, held it, released it little by little.

  “Well, where did you find her?”

  “She can tell you if she wants to. I won’t.”

  He glanced toward his boys. “You — ” the word whistled through the crack between his lips. “You knew where she was all the time.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What happened to Kostrakis and O’Toole?”

  “They had an accident.”

  There was disgust on his face. “Maybe one of these days I’ll get somebody I can depend on.” He whipped another look at the Home Guard. They dropped their eyes guiltily to the television screen.

  Stan lowered his voice. “I want to know where Gerry was. Did she go to see somebody? I got to know if she’s been playing around.”

  The dining-room door was pushed open. “I went to the library,” Gerry said. She had a sandwich and a glass of milk.

  “All afternoon?”

  Gerry nodded.

  “What were you doing?” Maxine said with a crazy smile.

  “Reading a book.”

  Maxine turned to me. He pointed to Gerry, speechless.

  “You heard what she said,” I told him.

  Stan chuckled, then went into a spasm of violent laughter that left him clutching his stomach, his face the color of greasy cream. He had to sit down. Gerry looked concerned.

  “Stan? Are you—”

  “Nah, I’m all right,” he said, the words riding on an indrawn breath. “What are you hanging around for?” he snapped at me.

  “I did you a favor. Now you do me one.”

  His lower lip crawled away from his teeth. “Like what?”

  “Diane was with you today, wasn’t she?”

  “For a little while this afternoon.”

  “You know her pretty well.”

  “Some. She used to work for me.”

  “Which doesn’t tell me anything.”

  He showed me his palms. “So what do you want? We’re kind of good friends. She comes in once in a while.”

  “You know anything about her?”

  “Like?”

  “Where she came from.”

  “Nah, I don’t — I never asked. Why would I?”

  “She ever do anything crazy around you?”

  “Crazy?” He had to think about it. “Nah, nothing crazy. She was — different. But she never did anything crazy.”

  “One thing more. You know Winkie Gilmer?”

  He was bored. He shook his head. “I never heard the name.” I was watching the boys at the TV set, too. Nobody twitched.

  Gerry sat down beside Stan on the sofa, nuzzled him. He stiffened, then let himself be petted. He took one of her
hands, held it with beautiful tenderness. I tried to keep from sneering as I walked out of the house and shut the door behind me with a light click.

  The Neptune Court occupied two blocks of beach land on a narrow peninsula known as Fontaine Beach. It was a mushrooming resort center. Ornate motels and hotels done in bold long lines sprawled along the strip of highway in a growing chain. Every day bulldozers scraped at the raw land while sun-reddened men with fat stacks of blueprints watched and planned. The street crumbled slowly under the impact of the ready-mix trucks.

  The motor court was a two-story Y-shaped building a block long, the two prongs of the Y set at an angle against the shoreline, which had been filled in here and there and otherwise contrived so that from every room in the court a bit of blue water could be seen. There was a large swimming pool in the juncture of the Y, then a hedge of Australian pine and beyond that a string of cabanas on the beach. Down one side of the court was a deep wide gash that served as a harbor for visiting yachts and small craft.

  Zavelli’s restaurant and night club was set apart from the main building, connected to it by an arcade with small shops. There was dancing on the secluded roof of the club and pale tuneless music glittered in the air.

  They told me inside I could find Zavelli on the roof. I went up the outside stairway. There was iron grill-work around the parapet and some kind of hedge. The dance floor and the ring of tables were on different levels. A man in a dinner jacket stopped me under the entrance arch.

  “You don’t go in without a tie.”

  “Zavelli in there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You go and tell him Pete Mallory wants him.”

  He looked me over with a calm practiced eye. “What was the name?”

  I told him again.

  “It don’t mean nothing to me.”

  “It rhymes with Macy Barr.”

  His monotonous stare broke up. “Wait here,” he said. He went inside. I watched a tired tango on the dance floor below. He came back and took me to a table in one corner of the shelf above the dance floor. Zavelli sat there in a built-up chair. He had a normal-sized head, but his body was stunted, the arms grotesquely short, shoulders narrow and sloping.

  “Sit down,” he said in a yawning voice. There was an intermission below and a shuffle of feet past his isolated table, a crackle of female laughter. He watched the dancers go by with no change of expression. “How’s Macy these days?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve heard things.” He looked at me with a hint of expectancy. “What can I do you for?”

  “You got a boy named Winkie Gilmer?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “I use him downstairs. Keeps things orderly.”

  “Kind of a waste of his talents, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t know he had any.”

  “You know as well as I do that he’s a hired gun and anything he does around here is a blind. Don’t stall me, Zavelli. I want him. Right now. He’s up to his ears with me. You get him or you close down.”

  His thin chest quaked. “He ain’t been around in a couple of days.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He hire out much?”

  “I — don’t know. That’s his business.”

  “Who sent him here?”

  He tipped a glass to his lips, holding it with both miniature hands. “Groaner. From Cleveland.”

  “To do whose work?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t ask.”

  “Any more in town like him?”

  He turned the sorrowful eyes on me. “Couldn’t tell you, Mallory. I stick close to my place. I don’t hear everything that goes on.”

  “All right. Forget it. I want to see Gilmer’s room.”

  Zavelli raised one of his short arms high. Near the entrance, the man in the dinner jacket was leaning against one of the posts of the ivy-roofed arch. He came to the table.

  “Take him to Gilmer’s room,” Zavelli said. The man glanced at me curiously. We went downstairs and walked through the arcade and entered the lobby of the motel. He took a key from the desk and we went to Gilmer’s room. He stood by the door while I looked around.

  There was a single bed, night stand, three chairs, desk, dresser, all made of bleached wood. There was no suitcase in the closet. A beach robe and a wrinkled sport shirt were on hangers, and a pair of canvas shoes was stacked in a corner like nervous feet. A Polaroid camera with flash attachment in a leather carrying case hung from a hook on the closet door.

  In one of the desk drawers I found a folder of pictures. All of them had been taken with the Polaroid. There were all kinds of women in the pictures, most of them young, some trying hard to seem young, women in beds, bathtubs, automobiles. Some wore an occasional article of clothing, some were happily getting rid of it. Most wore nothing. Winkie was a souvenir hunter.

  I turned the wastebasket upside down but it was empty. So were the dresser drawers. A big Zenith portable radio and his little camera seemed to be Winkie’s chief amusements. I checked the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and found only suntan oil, dull razor blades.

  “You know Gilmer?” I said to the man in the dinner jacket. He nodded mechanically, his jaw grinding chewing gum.

  “What kind of car’s he drive?”

  “Buick Century. New.”

  “He got any girlfriends around this place?”

  The man laughed drily. “Mister, Winkie’s had ’em all.”

  I grinned a little. I took out the .38 automatic and let him get a good look at it. He couldn’t take his eyes away. He wasn’t that kind of tough guy—yet.

  I jacked a shell out of the chamber and the slide slammed forward. I bounced the cartridge in my hand, tossed it at him. He caught it and held it with two fingers.

  “You see Winkie around here any time soon,” I said, “give him that.” I put the .38 away and walked past him into the hall.

  “And tell him I’ve got six more just like it I’m going to stick square in his gut the first time I see him.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was eleven o’clock when I drove down the causeway to the island and was let through the gate by a hobbling Rudy. The house was quiet.

  Macy Barr wasn’t in his study. The door was open slightly and a lamp on the desk was lighted. I pushed the door out of the way and went inside, intending to wait for him there.

  In one corner, near the desk, there was a small safe. The door hadn’t been shut tightly. Macy probably kept money for household expenses in the safe. A tightening excitement concentrated my attention on that safe. It would be a good place for keeping certain papers close at hand. Not his own papers, but a file of reports and notes about, and signed by, other men over whom it was necessary to exercise control.

  I walked closer to the flimsy little safe, feeling almost giddy with anticipation. If I could find it, I thought. If I could find the letter—

  The safe door opened readily, squeaking slightly. I ignored the packages of small bills, leafed through the contents of a clasp envelope, glancing at the first paragraphs of letters that were meaningless to me, looking for the address of a New York sanitarium on the fronts of the old envelopes stuck here and there in the collection of papers. I was too intent on my search to hear Macy when he came in.

  “Pete. Pete!”

  I shoved the bulky envelope back into the safe and jerked around. Macy watched me with a furious expression that slowly changed to one of mere tiredness.

  “You know,” he said, “I’ve got a gun in this pocket. In the old days, or just a couple of years ago, I’d have shot you dead without even asking you what you thought you were doing.”

  I stood up, unable to say anything, my mouth tight with apprehension. He never took his eyes off me. He pulled the .45 out of the pocket of his robe an inch at a time. He glanced down at it in exasperation, let it drop back.

  “So you want the letter,” Macy said
. “What were you going to do with it, Pete? Rip it up and burn it and go your way?”

  I didn’t speak. “You answer me!” he shouted, losing control for a moment.

  “I don’t know,” I said thickly.

  Macy walked to his desk, his face rigid with a sort of pain. “Sit down, Pete, and listen to me. If you walk away now so help me I’ll kill you.”

  He took a key from a holder he carried and unlocked a drawer of the desk. He took out a cardboard box and untied a string around it with clumsy shaking fingers. He sorted through the stuff inside as if he couldn’t quite remember what was there. Then he stopped, shook a soiled folded envelope free, looked it over, put it on the edge of his desk.

  “Look at it,” he said gruffly.

  I did. It was the one. I opened the envelope to make sure.

  Macy grunted harshly, leaned out of the chair and grasped the wastebasket beside the desk. It banged against the desk as he upended it. The contents of the wastebasket were scattered on the floor. He heaved it to the desk, stood up, picked up a cigarette lighter. He held the letter with one hand and set fire to it. When it was burning good he dropped it into the wastebasket and sat down again. The burning left a sour brown smell in the room.

  “There it is, Pete,” he said. “You can go now, if that’s all that was keeping you here. I never would have used it. I never would have sent it to your girlfriend. It was a bluff. Just bluff. That’s all I am now, bluff.”

  He stood up and turned around and kicked the chair he had been sitting in. It flipped over and banged into the wall nearby. “Go on, get out of here. Go back to your girl, Pete. Hang on to her. Hang on to her as if you never had anything in your life before. Because you never did, till you had her.”

  “If I leave,” I said, “somebody’s going to kill you. He may do it anyway.”

  His head hung for a moment. “I know it,” he said as though he had just at that moment begun to realize it.

  “You’re a sad sight, Macy,” I said. I didn’t know why I was going to say the things that had been collecting in my mind. I knew it wouldn’t help now, but this man had been a second father to me once, in his own way. “Every two-bit racketeer in this area has his hand in your back pocket. The wolves are circling, and Maxine’s leading the pack. What the hell you been doing?” He just looked sullen and a little bit pitiful.