Hard Case Crime: Baby Moll

by John Farris

  “I’m glad I’m gettin’ out of here,” Reavis said. He looked sideways at me. “Somebody had to wire that boat,” he said, as if he had received a sudden vision.

  “I know it.”

  “I don’t want to hang around where I could maybe get it by accident,” he said.

  When we reached the house Reavis walked on down to the gatehouse to pack. I saw Stan’s boys loading the trunk of his car with large boxes that might have held the files from the room in the garage. Maxine was dressed in a creamy-brown suit and his hair was combed neatly. He stood by the car with a snappy smile, supervising the loading process. When the trunk lid was closed he put out a hand to the door, glanced at the house. In another month he would probably have that, too. Gerry sat in the front seat and kept looking at him as if she were impatient to get rolling.

  I couldn’t let Stan go without saying goodbye. I walked toward the low black Lincoln and called to him. His boys had wedged themselves into the back seat and Stan had the door on his side open. He turned to me and the smile changed a little bit and became a confident smirk.

  “I guess you heard,” he said. “I’ve taken over now.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. Gerry was staring at me from inside the car and I waved casually to her. “How’s the Count?” I asked her. She averted her face carefully.

  I put out a hand to Maxine. He reached for it, but I slid the hand past his, tapped him in the stomach. He faded back against the car, bending a little, a warning of pain in his face. His poise cracked some.

  “Have you asked the doctor how much longer you’re going to last?” I asked him.

  He glared at me.

  “Or are you afraid to?” I said.

  “Get away from me,” he said venomously.

  I gave him a big fresh warm smile. “All right, Stan,” I said. “But you better watch yourself from now on. You’re in big business now. You know how it is. There’s always some little guy who thinks he might like the fit of your shoes.”

  He gulped and tomato-color brightened his cheeks. He took a step toward me, then turned and jumped into the car, slammed the door. It shut with the finality of a lowered coffin lid. I thought about Rudy and Stan. Stan would have something a little more fancy than a paint-spattered tarp. He would roll slowly on hushed black tires to a place of gently waved lawn. But at the end of the journey there would be just another hole, as Rudy got — as everybody got. No matter how far it was to the graveyard, everybody got the same once the trip was over.

  The wheels grabbed and screeched as Stan gave it too much gas. Then the Lincoln moved forward smoothly, away from the house.

  Behind me another motor started. I looked at the car as it went by. Charley Rinke drove slowly after Stan, slowly enough so that I could see the touch of smile at a corner of his mouth, the satisfied tilt of his head. I had an idea that Rinke had made an eleventh-hour connection and his life wouldn’t be altered too much because of Macy’s departure. His car followed Maxine’s obediently through the gate.

  Mrs. Rinke sat beside her husband. I wasn’t able to see her face. She had her hands over it, tightly, as if she planned to keep them there for a long time, as if she were afraid to peer out at the world and the nightmare shapes that had sprung up in it.

  The wind was stiffening now, coming around the north corner of the island and frothing the surface of the bay. There was nothing soft and gentle about the wind. It matched the color of the sky, and it was teething. I felt it harsh against my face.

  Reavis had come out of the gatehouse with a suitcase. There were two cars parked off the road just outside the gate and he walked toward one of them, after closing the gate from force of habit. No need to shut the gate any more. Nobody would want in now. Turn off the juice in the fence. In a week it would be overgrown with creeping things.

  I turned and walked toward the house. In my room I put together my few things and stored them in a suitcase one of the houseboys had dug out of a closet. They were getting ready to leave, too. Macy had paid them off. They seemed happy to be leaving, preparing for the long march to the highway where they would catch a bus.

  I was about to toss the shoulder holster and automatic into the suitcase too, then changed my mind and put it on. I couldn’t be sure, but I might not be through with it yet.

  Macy came in while I was checking all the drawers to see that I had everything. He looked as sloppy as he had the night I had arrived. He had dressed hurriedly, and missed a buttonhole in his haste. One side of the shirt was higher than the other. He lugged a big suitcase with him and parked it just inside the door.

  “I called the airport,” he said, almost panting. “Plane’s waiting for me. No time to do this right. We were going by boat first. We’ll fly down to the Caribbean now. There’s an airstrip that isn’t watched on an island I know. Stay with me until I’m on the plane, will you Pete?” There was a note of pleading in his voice. Fear was icing his bones. The .45 was stuck into a big hip pocket of the grape-blue slacks he wore.

  “I’ll drive you,” I said. “What have you got in the suitcase? You unload the safe?”

  He nodded nervously. “I took close to half a million. The rest can stay there for now.”

  “Who’s going with you?”

  “Diane and Aimee. They got passports and everything. They’re fixed up legal. I’m not. It don’t make any difference.” He looked back over one shoulder. “Everybody gone?”

  “Maxine and his crowd pulled out a little while ago. So did the Rinkes. I saw Reavis leave, too.”

  “Watch the suitcase for me, will you, Pete? I’m going upstairs, pack a few things. Diane and Aimee are getting ready to leave. We’ll lock the house up and get out of here.”

  He turned and hurried out before I could say anything to him. I glanced at the suitcase, then put my own beside it. A sudden gust of wind rattled the window. It was darkening outside. There would be a storm before long.

  I walked out into the hall, hearing the French doors banging. I shut them, secured the latch. Outside, the palm trees shuddered and dropped in the grasp of the wind like witches shouting incantations. From somewhere close by I thought I heard a thump that I couldn’t identify.

  The door to Owen Barr’s bedroom was open. I remembered that he had been lost in the sudden frightened shuffle after the speedboat explosion. The last time I had seen him he had been plodding toward the patio after offering me a drink I didn’t want.

  After...

  I walked into the bedroom quickly, remembering the cold steadiness of his voice as he had talked urgently to me. Something about being watched. Maybe he imagined it. But maybe there was a good reason for his anxiety.

  He wasn’t in the bedroom. Some of the paintings had been taken from the walls, stacked on the bed. It was the only sign that the occupant might have considered moving out.

  There was another thump. This time I got it. It came from the bathroom. It might have been a shoe hitting the side of the bathtub.

  I pushed the bathroom door open, stepped inside. Owen Barr was lying half in the tub, half out of it. I saw the curve of his back over the side of the tub, and the protruding ridged handle of a switchblade knife. His foot moved just a little against the side of the tub, and there was the thumping sound again. It was getting weaker every time. I leaned over the tub and put my hand on his shoulder. I could see half his face. Blood ran out of his mouth and into the drain, a tiny red river in a white wasteland. His eyes were half open and had the look of a chloroformed frog. I thought his lower lip was twitching just a little.

  “Who did it?” I said. “Who knifed you, Owen?” Maybe it was too late. Maybe the speech mechanism was rusted shut. But he tried to talk, and I could sense the great effort, though his face didn’t change much.

  It was a tiny gurgling whisper. “Didn’t see...” That wasn’t all. He had more to tell me. One of his fingers curled a little. I didn’t dare move him from the awkward position.

  “Carla... Kennedy. I saw her. Back was burned. W
atch out, Pete...”

  I put my face closer to his. “Who is Carla Kennedy, Owen?”

  I don’t know if he heard me. He was a few seconds away from dying and what was in his mind pressed hard to get into words.

  “She got... box from... car... threw it in... bay... I got it. Hid... hid in... bot...”

  The last word stuck and he never finished it. He died quietly, with one last tiny shiver of breath. The blood spilling from his mouth had a metallic gleam.

  I got up slowly, holding the few words that had come from him as if they were something light and delicate that would disintegrate and be gone forever if I wasn’t careful. There was a warning sound in my brain but I was too intent on something else to listen to it. Owen had hidden the contents of the box. I went into the bedroom, already beginning to suspect the answer I would find, but needing to know.

  The bedroom was no different from all the others. I took the closet first, searched hurriedly. No place of concealment there. I turned to the dresser. The top drawer was jammed full of expensive underwear, socks, various accessories. I scooped them out of the drawer, pitched them toward the bed. Underneath I found six wrapped quarts of whisky lying side by side like bombs in an arsenal.

  I scooted them out of the way one by one, stopped. One of the packaged bottles was far lighter, and there was no shift of liquid in it when I picked it up. I tore the sack away from the bottle. The top had been broken off once, then clumsily reglued. I took the neck and shoulder of the bottle and rebroke it with my hands. The contents of the bottle spilled into the drawer.

  I looked at the items. Two neat clippings about the fire that had burned to death the family of Carla Kennedy more than twenty years ago. A little model of a Napoleonic soldier, trim and erect, rifle on his shoulder, coat a bright splash of red. A child’s locket, engraved Carla from Pop. It was an old locket, blackened in places. My fingers searched through snapshots, some of them old and yellowed. A family portrait. Another picture of a girl about thirteen, standing beside a man in a wheelchair. The most recent picture showed the invalid man, older now, beside a sidewalk newsstand. He was smiling proudly. He was all by himself. The newsstand was hung with gay streamers. It was opening day. Carla was probably there. But that time she wouldn’t want to be photographed. She wouldn’t want anyone, except maybe Stan Maxine, to know of her connection with the crippled news dealer in the wheelchair.

  I had found Carla Kennedy. Like a lot of things you find in life, she had been found too late.

  “Turn around, Mallory,” I heard a hard slow voice say.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I felt the brush of a bony hand across the nape of my neck. It was too late to think about being careful now. I turned very slowly, holding the broken piece of bottle.

  Taggart was all dressed up and ready for town. He wore a new blue suit and a self-conscious little bow tie and there was a small revolver in one outsized hand. It pointed right at my stomach. His face had about as much expression as a beach pebble.

  “Where is she?” I asked him. I wondered how close he was to pulling the trigger. It might come without warning, with no spreading of lips or crinkling of lines around the eyes. But maybe he had just enough dislike for me to wait and let the fact that he was going to kill me soak in. It was a hope.

  His hard lips came apart an eighth of an inch in a sly smile.

  “Who do you want?”

  “You know who I want,” I said. “Diane. Carla Kennedy. Which name do you know her by?”

  He ignored that. His eyes caught the movement of broken glass in my hand. “Drop that,” he said. I let it slip to the rug.

  “She’s down by the gatehouse,” Taggart said. “With Aimee. Waiting for Macy to come looking for Aimee.”

  His big square feet moved a little uneasily, as if he realized he was taking too much time with me. “She’s going to kill him herself. I get to take care of you.”

  “Like you took care of the others?” My lips felt large and numb. It was an effort to talk. I began to feel the rise of fear, the kind that freezes you stiff. It was working up through my legs without haste. I was always conscious of the gun under my arm. But with Taggart’s little revolver steady on my stomach, it might as well have been hanging in the closet—unloaded.

  “That’s right,” Taggart said. He was getting a curious sort of enjoyment talking to me. It was even loosening up his face muscles some.

  “You were the traveling boy,” I said, trying to keep my voice smooth and level, with no sudden pauses to give away my panic. “You had the chance to run the old gang down one by one and cut their throats. Sooner or later you could make all the territory and nobody would get suspicious. Just old Taggart doing his job. You use the same knife that’s sticking out of Owen’s back?”

  He didn’t comment. He looked cool and efficient in the crisp blue suit. Some mother’s boy had grown into this. He couldn’t he quite sane.

  “What about Harry Small? How did Diane feel when you bladed him? Or was it her idea?” Just keep talking, Mallory. Just keep jamming that thumbnail brain so he can’t get down to work.

  “Diane said we had to,” he admitted. “She said you were going to find him and he’d talk about her. She didn’t want to do it.”

  “But I was hard to kill, so she didn’t have a choice. You tried twice. I suppose you were with Winkie when he pulled the shotgun ambush. It would be your idea. Did you doctor the Buick over on Monessen, too?”

  “Yeah.” He looked faintly puzzled. “How did you get out of that? Nobody saw me.”

  “Only a little boy who didn’t look old enough to talk. He should grow up and get J. Edgar’s job. He deserves it.”

  Something happened inside Taggart then. I could feel it happening. I could sense the ponderous slow thoughts swinging around to the problem at hand: my death.

  “How did Diane talk you into this?” I said. “Those passionate midnight meetings on the beach. Did she tell you she loved you?”

  He took a full step toward me, as if I had bitten a nerve. His mouth opened. “She does love me. I love her.” He made a sad calf noise in his throat. “Did you ever see her back? She’s beautiful. But her back — it’s ugly. Macy Barr did that to her.” The gun nosed up a little. “I love her. I’d do anything for her. Anything she asked me. We’re going to go away together. Nobody ever loved me before. I never got anything but kicked around, because I was a bastard. Everybody hated me. They looked at me with hateful eyes and wished I’d run away. Diane doesn’t hate me.”

  From outside the house, above the sound of the wind, there were two shots, sharp cracks spaced a second apart. And a child began to scream in terror, as if the shots had unlocked a hidden place inside her and old nightmares tumbled out, writhing in her mind.

  Taggart thumbed back the hammer. I was going for the gun anyway. It was no good — my fingers would never touch it — but it was no good just to stand there and die, either. A second before I shoved my hand toward the butt of the .38 there was another shot, different from the first two. Heavier. The faraway roar of a .45. I knew Macy had somehow got to the automatic in his back pocket. Taggart knew it, too. He was thrown off stride by the sound of it. The slow-focusing mental processes were off me for a full second.

  I had the gun out and shot him twice in the chest before he could do anything. The blows from the heavy .38 slugs would have knocked an ordinary man flat on his back, but he was not ordinary. Two more shots came together, blending in a hot stunning roar. One of them was his. I felt it hit like a pole thrust sharply, end first, into my stomach. I had tipped the barrel of the .38 up half an inch before the third shot. The first two set him up so that his head was turned slightly to one side. The third slug tore his throat out and went on into his head at an angle, along the jawline. He turned a little more, his eyes glazing, and then his legs failed and he pitched downward, spouting blood.

  I backed away from the wreckage, feeling sick. I had to lean against the dresser. The automatic was almost too heavy f
or my hand but I continued to hold it. I knew the wound was bad without looking. I felt blood trickling down the inside of one leg.

  I reached down and found the hole and put the heel of my hand against it. I walked with clown steps out of the room. I put my shoulder against the wall and slid along it, pushing grimly toward the living room. There wasn’t so much pain. It was more the idea that I was hurt that frightened me. I felt a swooping dizziness. It would be better to sit down, but I had to get outside. If she was still alive I had to stop her. I remembered Aimee’s shrill scream. There was no more sound now, except the treacherous howl of the wind.

  The front door was open. I put the fingers of my hand around the knob of the screen, but it was hard to turn because I was holding the gun, too. Finally I got it open, but I had leaned forward too much and fell outside with the swing of the door, rolling down the steps, feeling the blunt edges against my back and arms and shoulders. There was a pain in me, as though someone’s hands were tearing at my gut.

  I lifted my head, looked down the curved drive to the gatehouse. Thunder grumbled above. Swirling clouds pressed low upon the island.

  Aimee was lying motionless on her back near the drive, arms spread, one knee up. Diane walked past the child slowly, not looking at her. She had a gun. She was watching Macy, who lay on his belly a dozen steps from the gatehouse. Macy didn’t move. There was an object near him that might have been the .45.

  Diane aimed carefully at Macy. In that same moment, he seemed to stir, an arm moving slightly. He wasn’t dead yet. I raised my own gun, taking time only to see that I had the right direction. I had little hope of hitting her.

  I squeezed off the remaining shots in the magazine, the big automatic jerking in my hand, the noise deafening me. Then a sudden spasm left me weak. My face was cold, my eyes full of perspiration. I let go the gun and wiped at them. It was odd that she hadn’t returned the shots. I looked up again, hauling myself to my knees. For a long moment I could see with perfect clarity.