Drawn to Evil

by Harry Whittington

  What would I do with myself? I who had to have excitement the way you have to have food and drink. Things pressed in on me. I had to have it, or I’d clobber up inside.

  Then it started. The truth. I knew that I had suspected Liza from the very first. From the moment she had wept that he had left her to face it alone.

  I had known. She wasn’t weeping for George Flynn. She had no tears for him. No time to shed tears for a dead man she had never loved. But this unknown man, this lover of hers. He had killed her husband for her, but he had left her to face the cops.

  Sure, I had known. I had lied to myself, to Hilligan, and even God. I had run around looking for Greek Alonzo. But I had been trying to save Liza Flynn. Why?

  Because I had known all along. She was a woman different than any I’d ever known. A woman so dangerous that to kiss her was to court death. God, what a thrill. The thrill I had never had. The thrill I wanted. With a zing like a skyrocket.

  My heart was racing so hard that the breath burned in my throat. There was nothing in the world as important to me as that woman. I knew there was nothing on God’s earth that I wouldn’t do to have her. Thirteen years a cop? A perfect record? What was that beside the thrill of possessing a woman whose kiss could contain the poison of an adder?

  I was still drunk. I knew I had to sober up. But I also knew I hadn’t much time. I put coffee on the stove in my kitchenette. I stumbled into the shower and turned on the water, full force. I stood under it until the coffee water boiled. I dried off and went into the kitchen. The room was spinning. I poured a cup of the scalding coffee and drank it black.

  Twenty minutes later I was on my way across the Lafayette Street bridge again. She was going to be mine now. Mine to handle in my own way. I was going to beat the name of her lover out of her if I had to. I was going to save her if I had to half-kill her to do it.

  The name of her lover. A name to fit him and I had what I wanted. If I could get him first, get him to take all the blame.

  What a prize I’d win!

  I stepped down on the gas. I went through a red light. I couldn’t wait to get started. I was going to save her. But I knew I was working against time.

  As a matter of fact, I was too late. As I skidded to a stop in the driveway, I saw the police cars. They had gotten there ahead of me.

  Chapter 11

  I PARKED near the street and walked up to the house. All the lights in the place were blazing. A uniformed cop recognized me and spoke. I nodded to him and went through the front door.

  I met Carl Dill in the foyer. His honest face was wreathed in smug smiles. Whatever it was, Carl had been behind it. I expected the worst. One thing I had learned. It’s these plodding characters who always strike pay dirt, I don’t care what kind of job they’re on.

  “Something big has come up,” Dill told me. He came closer. “Hilligan is upstairs with her now.”

  “What is it?”

  “We found a hackie who remembers taking Liza Flynn from Lyons’ party. But he didn’t bring her home. You know where he took her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He took her about three blocks. She got out on a street corner.”

  “And that proves she’s guilty?”

  “It proves something, Marty. Look. Why should she get out of a cab three blocks from a party but three miles from home?”

  “Maybe she felt bad. Maybe she wanted to be alone so she could think.”

  “That’s real white of you, Marty, believing the best of her like that. But it looks pretty bad for her. You know what Hilligan thinks? Hilligan says that she arranged to meet whoever the guy was who called her at that corner. George must have stopped somewhere for a drink and they waylaid him.”

  It made me ill thinking that I had the missing piece of that puzzle. They could be right. And they would be sure they were right if they had that bloody sap that I had hidden under my front seat.

  “Is Hilligan going to make the arrest?”

  “I don’t know. There is no murder weapon, and there’s still the missing guy. He may leave her here, but he’ll be sure to leave a detail to see that she doesn’t head out for the moon.”

  There was nowhere else to go. So I wandered out into the kitchen. Tina was there. I made sure she was alone. I closed the kitchen door and motioned for her to follow into the food pantry. “They’re closing in,” I told her.

  She nodded. “I know. I heard them talking.” She was one scared chick.

  “They are going to get your lover boy and Liza down at the station. If you ever saw this guy that Liza was nuts about, tell me about him.”

  “I told you. I don’t know his name.”

  We were whispering at each other but our whispers were tense.

  “Did you ever see him?”

  “I’m not sure…. But there was one man who came here quite often to visit. He only came when George was here, but he certainly seemed more interested in Mrs. Flynn. There was a feeling. You know the kind of feeling you get when two people are very interested in each other — two people who oughtn’t to be at all?”

  “What did this boy look like?”

  “He was almost bald. I think you’d say he was prematurely bald. He seemed real young and kind of handsome. He looked like a movie star with his hat on.”

  As she talked, I began to get a prickling feeling along my spine. It figured. I knew one playboy type, rich enough to be friendly with the Flynns, fool enough to fall for Flynn’s wife and just bald enough to fit Tina’s description.

  I went back up front. Hilligan was just coming down the stairs. He called me over. “What have you found out, Marty?”

  “Nothing to add to what you know, Chief.” He frowned at my politeness. It had started now. I had lied to Hilligan. I had concealed the evidence I had uncovered in the Flynn garden.

  “We’re tightening on the case, Marty. I would take her in. But I’ve learned to be wary of these open and shut cases. She claims she walked home. Three miles. Dancing slippers. It don’t add up and her shoes didn’t show it. She’s on the verge of hysteria again. If we could find the man who plotted this thing with her, we’d have the case sewed up for the Solicitor.”

  “But she didn’t confess?”

  “She’s no nearer than before. But with the kind of circumstantial evidence we’re getting, we don’t need a confession. The things we’re finding out leave only one answer. She plotted Flynn’s death and she committed murder — ”

  “Not her, Chief. Maybe the other guy. Remember his face.”

  “All right. But she’s in on it. Right now I suppose is the time to be patient. This boy friend of hers is bound to get in touch with her.”

  “How about Marlowe?”

  “Didn’t Dill tell you? Marlowe owed a whopping gambling debt. Three hoods jumped him last night and nearly beat him to death. He’s in the hospital.”

  “You figure that rules him out?”

  “It strengthens his story that he was gambling — and losing at the time Flynn was killed.”

  “And what did you find out from Ricales?”

  “Ricales admitted that he hired Gonzales. But he says Gonzales was hired to frighten, not harm you.”

  “He did that all right. He scared hell out of me.”

  “So now we wait. We are planning to leave you and Carl Dill on the place. If her boy friend tries to get in touch with her, we’ll have him. Before I go, Marty, I want to warn you away from this dame. Dames are a weakness with you, Marty. And this one is a wrong number.”

  I looked offended. “Have I ever let women interfere with my work?”

  “No. You got a wonderful record. That’s why I’m leaving you here with Dill. Dill will be my watchdog. But it’s you I’m counting on, Marty.”

  Swell. I was laughing inside. This is wonderful. Just leave it to me. Just leave everything to me.

  She was sitting in that chair by the window again. Now she was wearing a black diaphanous wrap-around. This girl loved clothes. I locked the
door. I walked across the room. She didn’t turn away from the window. I stood behind her a moment. I had never seen anyone so lovely. I could smell her loveliness.

  I touched her head, moving my fingers in her rich hair. She didn’t move. I leaned over her. “I think I can get you out of this.”

  She still didn’t answer. She continued to stare through the window. I knew she wasn’t seeing anything out there. Her vision was fixed on something far inside her mind.

  I forced her to turn her head. I tried to stare into the black depths of her eyes. The black depths of hell or the blackest heights of high heaven? I had to know which.

  I really didn’t care. I had to have her anyhow.

  “I said I can get you out of it.”

  I heard the police cars driving out of the yard. But I knew plodding, meddlesome Carl Dill was somewhere in the house. Hell, he might be snooping outside her door right now.

  “They haven’t really started questioning you yet. But they will. They might even find the sap that I uncovered. Do you understand? They don’t have it yet. I can get rid of it. I can put it where it won’t ever hurt you. But if you lie to me again, baby, you’ll be a long time in stir. You won’t look good in those sacks, Liza. If you’re smart, you’ll come out of it and talk fast.”

  She swallowed. “Help me, Marty.”

  “I’m going to help you. But first you got to help me.”

  “What, Marty?”

  “Who is the guy?”

  “I didn’t plan — ”

  “Yeah. I know. You walked home. You’re wasting time, baby. Your last few free minutes on this earth. Somebody has got to take the rap, baby. That’s all they want. Somebody to take the rap. Are you going to take it? Or are you going to give me your boy friend’s name?”

  She looked ill. But she licked the tip of her tongue across her mouth.

  “Jerry?” I said. “Jerry Marlowe.”

  She licked her lips again. She moved her head from side to side. It was as though it took all her strength.

  “A bald young guy,” I whispered. She bolted straight up as if I’d struck her. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “I’ve found out, Liza. It won’t be long. The others will find out, too. Is that right? Is he the killer boy? What’s his name, Liza?”

  The blood thundered in my ears. I could hear Carl Dill plodding around in the hall. I knew he was wondering what in hell I was doing in here so long. I knew we didn’t have much time. But Liza seemed to think she had forever. Her head lowered and then she raised it a little.

  Her eyes were stark and she sobbed once. Finally she looked up at me. Lord! wasn’t she ever going to say anything? And then she did. “Larry Vinson.” That’s all. “Larry Vinson.”

  Chapter 12

  DILL wasn’t eavesdropping in the hallway after all. I met Tina when I got to the foot of the stairs. I warned her to keep Liza Flynn as quiet as possible and to let no one see her.

  “I’m going out,” I told her. “If you can, keep that other cop, Dill, from bothering her.”

  Dill walked in from the rear corridor. “Where are you going?”

  “Out. I’ve got a hot lead.”

  “I thought Hilligan said we were to stay here.”

  “Hilligan said you were to watch and I was to do what I could.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I guess that’s right. It was just that I understood we were to stick close.”

  “You are,” I told him. “And keep your eyes open.”

  He motioned me toward him. “Before you go, Marty, I got something to show you.”

  I was impatient to be out of the house, but I didn’t want Dill yelling to Hilligan about me. Not just yet. So I went with him along the rear corridor. He opened a door. There were dark stairs leading down. “What’s down there?”

  “The basement,” Dill said. “Not many houses have basements here in Tampa. I got to wondering what this one was like. I wondered if they had a central heating plant. They do. Come take a look.”

  I got that old feeling of wrong. That damned plodding Dill. If there was anything to turn up, Dill would do it.

  He snapped on a stairway light and closed the basement door. He locked it behind us. Very secretive and official. That was Dill.

  He led the way over to the huge heater. I saw that he had been poking around inside it. He had dug out some odds and ends. But what odds and ends! There was the charred remains of a pair of dancing slippers! There was the collar from a man’s white shirt. It was burned with crisp, toasted edges. There were a few pieces of sheer cloth that might be part of an evening gown. And other pieces that might have been expensive underthings.

  He looked at me as if he had just discovered radium in his back yard. “What do you think?” he said.

  He didn’t care what I thought. He was bursting with success. He couldn’t wait to get Hilligan out here to look at it. Maybe you think I made a mistake to pass that stuff up. But the kind of thing that I was planning at that moment was going to make the stuff Dill had unearthed look silly and immaterial.

  I could even afford to patronize Dill. I patted him on the back and told him he’d done a hell of a day’s good work.

  “They got scared,” Dill crowed. “They got blood all over their clothes and they got scared and brought them down here and tried to burn them.”

  “Looks like it all right.”

  “You think I ought to call Hilligan out here?”

  “I think you’d be wrong not to. It sure is your duty to report everything you find. Hell, there’s no telling what the lab will be able to do with this stuff.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking, all right.” Then his honest face screwed up. “But do you think you ought to leave, Marty, with Hilligan coming out and all? He might raise hell.”

  “No, he won’t. Not as long as he knows you’re working. Besides, kid, he’s going to be so proud of you that he’ll never miss me.”

  Dill almost split his mouth grinning.

  “But if he does want to know where I am,” I said. “Tell him that I’m working on another angle of this case. Hell, nothing as important as this thing you’ve turned up, but it might sew it up.”

  Dill was nodding so hard he practically knocked himself out.

  “We can lock her up now,” Dill said.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Maybe I ought to keep this basement under tight lock. I don’t want anybody in here until Hilligan gets out here.”

  “I’d lock it up,” I told him. I started away.

  • • •

  I pressed hard on the doorbell at Larry Vinson’s penthouse apartment in the Island Towers. There was a bulge under my coat. It was the leaded sap that I had found in the Flynn garden. It was impossible to conceal it. I just had to hold it inside my coat and cover it as much as possible with my left arm.

  The butler answered the door. From behind him I could hear the muted tones of a Mozart symphony through the speaker of an expensive console. And in sharp contrast, the high-pitched silly laughter of a silly girl.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Vinson.”

  “If you wish, sir. I’m afraid however that just now he is busy.”

  I nodded. “I hear her. Still, this is kind of important.” I showed him my police department shield. “So I guess I’ll come in anyhow.”

  “Of course, sir. Whom shall I say is calling?”

  “Sergeant Marty Carter. Homicide. You just tell Mr. Vinson I’m here. Is there any place where we could talk-away from that?”

  The butler nodded and led me into a large smartly furnished bedroom-office. The double windows looked out on Tampa bay and the bayshore line beyond it. There was an oversized bed against the double windows. A short walk across the room was a wide desk. It was piled heavy with letters and legal documents. It didn’t seem to belong to a man like Larry Vinson. I had heard plenty about the playboy.

  Still, the sight of that work piled here in Vinson’s bedroom impressed me. I supposed the only time a man with
a reputation for playing as Vinson had could really work was when his drinking friends thought him finally asleep.

  The butler told me to sit down. He closed the door and went in search of Vinson.

  With the door closed it was better. I couldn’t hear Mozart any more and I couldn’t hear the giggling laughter, either. I didn’t waste the little time I had.

  I looked around the room. There was a closet with three panel doors. I slid one back. There were lines of suits on hangars and hat boxes on a shelf above them. I took the leaded sap from my pocket and dropped it in one of the hat boxes. Just giving him back something he’d forgotten one ugly night.

  I moved fast, but at that Vinson almost caught me. I had just closed the door and turned away when Vinson entered the room.

  A shapely blonde was clinging to him, following him into the room. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl who had had more to drink and could still stand up. She giggled and begged him to come back with her and then screamed with rage when he refused.

  “Helen, baby,” he said, “it’s business. I tell you it’s strictly business. With this nice gentleman right over there. Fifteen minutes, Helen. I won’t be any longer than that.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “I don’t want to wait fifteen minutes. Let him wait fifteen minutes.”

  Vinson was laughing at her. He unwound her fingers from his sleeves, his coat, his collar and closed the door in her face. It was taking all the butler’s efforts to restrain the blonde Helen.

  Vinson turned around to me. He was still laughing.

  He was extremely handsome, especially when he smiled. His pale eyes lighted up and gleamed at you. He had a classic profile and he was built like an athlete with yard-wide shoulders and slender hips. His blonde hair was gone across the crown except for a few strands.

  I introduced myself. “I suppose you’ve heard that George Flynn was killed three nights ago?”

  He stopped smiling. “I’ve been pretty tied up these past few days, Mr. Carter. But I did hear that George was dead. He was an old friend of mine.”

  “We suspect his wife pretty strongly.” I was watching him for effect.