The Lime Pit
Page 22
On the seventh day an officer with the highway patrol came to visit and, with him, Alvin Foster. They made an amusing pair. The one tall and military, shining with bright leather bandoliers and gold braid and sewn-on arm patches, with those ubiquitous aviator's glasses on his nose. And the other one, rumpled and shabby, reeking of tobacco, his flat ugly face morose and unsmiling.
“We just want to settle a few things, Mr. Stoner. For the record,” the military one said. His name was Lee, and he acted like it. “Those two men you killed—there isn't any way on God's earth to prove that it didn't happen exactly as you said it did. Hell, from what we're finding out, they would've ended up dead one way or another.” He straightened his glasses and seemed to squint at me as if he were looking at the sun through smoked glass. “Only it wasn't one way or another, was it? Lieutenant Foster, here, says you killed a man in Cincinnati. Self-defense, of course. That's the ruling, isn't it?”
Foster nodded.
“Sometimes a man's luck runs like that.” He fidgeted with his glasses again and squinted hard. “But not in Franklin County,” he said softly. “Not ever again. You understand?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Next time your business carries you across the river... well, just see that it doesn't. You understand?”
“I understand,” I told him.
“Good.” He seemed to relax a little, resting one hand on his gun butt and tucking the other in his belt. “We got Howie Bascomb under arrest. Of course, it's going to be tough to prosecute him for murder, unless the Jellicoes cooperate. But, I think they will. The husband is willing to plea-bargain if we drop the accessory to murder charge down to manslaughter. I think Calvin Young, our D.A., is willing to do that. Lord, I can't count the number of indictments that may eventually come out of this. Judge Stebbins over in Boone County. Alderman Russo in Newport.”
I named the state senator whom Tray Leach had mentioned to me.
“Him, too,” Lee said nervously. “You'll be called, of course, when trial dates are set.” He glanced at Foster and said, “I guess that's all from my end.”
Foster didn't say anything for a moment. Just stared at me speculatively, as if I was something new to his experience of men. “You've got guts, Stoner,” he said, after a time. “I'll hand you that much. But, my God, man, you haven't got a brain in your head.”
I laughed.
“It's not funny,” he said. “Three dead men is nothing to laugh about. Will you please tell me one thing . . . why in hell didn't you cooperate with us? What the hell was worth so much risk?”
I looked away from his face. “She was,” I said softly.
“Who?”
“The girl. Cindy Ann.”
“Oh,” he said with mild surprise. “The one in the lime pit.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The one everyone else wanted to hide.”
******
On Thursday I caught a ride with a patrolman back to Newport and picked up my car in front of the theater.
“You know they found the owner of this place dead last week?” the cop said. “He was sitting in a seat in his theater, watching a film along with the other stiffs.” He laughed at his own joke.
“Do they know why?”
“He had a lot of enemies,” the cop said. “You know towns like this one are funny. I used to work in Vegas, so I know. You'd think in Newport that anything goes. But it ain't true. Open towns got their own code of morality.”
“I guess that comes from looking out of one eye for too long.”
The cop looked at me quizzically.
“And keeping the other one closed,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That's it, all right. No perspective.”
He dropped me off by the marquee and I drove downtown to Charles Street and up to Porky Simlab's veranda. It was past noon and the gallery was full.
I walked up the front lawn and a burly young man I'd never seen before stopped me at the porch. He put a paw to my chest, like a Great Dane begging to be petted, and said, “Hold up, there, friend.” He was a slick-looking kid, with just a touch of malice in his shiny blue eyes. With Red gone, I wondered how long Porky would last. This one had no loyalty in his face, at all.
“Tell Porky, Harry Stoner.”
He looked at me a second and walked up to the veranda.
“You can come up,” he called down after a minute.
Porky was in his easy chair. He had a black arm-band around his leisure suit, but, aside from that, he looked the same as ever.
“Hello, son,” he said grimly.
“Porky.”
“What you want around heah, today?”
“About Red . . .” I said. “I didn't have a choice.”
“I figured.”
I studied his fat farmboy's face. The pig-like eyes had gone dead when they saw me. Dead and old. “How about you, Porky? Did you have a choice?”
“Whachu mean, son?”
“You know what I mean, old man. There isn't much in this city that escapes your attention. You knew about Red. You just closed one eye and pretended you didn't see. For old time's sake, Porky? For an old friend?”
He didn't say anything for a second. Then he set his jaw and planted both stubby legs on the porch. “Don't come ‘round heah, Harry. Don't come back no more, son.”
The young tough ambled up behind me and Porky waved him back with his fat baby's hand and a wink of his mouth. “Won't be necessary, Lucius. The gen'lman's jus’ departing.”
“The joke is that he was afraid you'd find out. In a way, that's what got him killed.”
Porky's face reddened. “You got him killed,” he said flatly. “I won't forget it, neither.”
I nodded to the kid behind me. “Better look out, Porky. If Red thought he could pull a buck out of your pocket while your back was turned, just think what that one is capable of.”
He smiled like a baby jackal. “I'll keep it in mind.” And, maybe he would, I thought as I stepped off the porch. Anyone as affable as Porky Simlab has to be a predator at heart.
******
It was almost two when I parked the Pinto in the Jewish Hospital lot.
The receptionist in the lobby gave me his room number and asked me if I was a relative or a friend.
“A friend,” I told her.
“Then you ought to know that he's in critical condition. He's been semi-comatose for almost a week. There isn't much chance that he'll live out the week.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Has he got . . . everything he needs?”
“His son's been in earlier this week, and I believe he's arranged a nurse for him.”
I walked up to the second floor, where they keep the old ones with terminal illnesses. And down the hall, past the nurses station, where two pretty young nurses sat laughing behind the plexiglass window, to room two-ten.
He was sitting on the bed, staring blankly out the open window at the parking lot, where the cars were sparkling in the sun. He was wearing a thin hospital gown; his arms protruded from the sleeves like sticks. The blanket was folded neatly at his chest. There was no nurse in the room.
“Hello, Hugo.”
He turned his head and looked up at me. Blankly. Then he smiled.
I walked over to the bed and squeezed his hand. He looked down at my hand the way a child looks at a new rattle. Everything was new to him again. Every gesture and face. All new.
He looked up from my hand, cocked his wispy white head and tried to speak. He moved his mouth a couple of times. But the words that once filled it automatically wouldn't come, now. And he spent a second trying to figure out what had become of them, before he looked away with a trace of embarrassment in his juicy blue eyes.
I patted his hand again. “I found her, Hugo. She's fine.”
He looked at me uncertainly.
“Cindy Ann is fine,” I said. “She was in Denver. Like I thought. I found her and sent her home to Sioux Falls.”
Something connec
ted in Hugo's shattered mind. His eyes filled with tears and his thin lips trembled. He touched my hand,
“I gave her your love,” I said heavily.
My throat began to burn. “She told me she loved you, too.”
He tried to say something again. His mouth struggled with the thought, but no words came out.
******
There was a check from Meyer on my anteroom floor. And a note from Jo postmarked almost a week before. I tucked the note in my coat pocket and walked into the inner office.
The wasps were at it, again.
I put my feet up on the desk and stared at them and thought about Hugo Cratz.
I didn't think he'd believed me—about Cindy Ann.
But, then, Hugo was always a hard man to lie to. And she was all he'd had.
THE END
Enjoy all of Jonathan Valin’s HARRY STONER series, as both Ebooks and Audiobooks!
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The Lime Pit: Harry Stoner Series #1
Final Notice: Harry Stoner Series #2
Dead Letter: Harry Stoner Series #3
Day of Wrath: Harry Stoner Series #4
Natural Causes: Harry Stoner Series #5
Life's Work: Harry Stoner Series #6
Fire Lake: Harry Stoner Series #7
Extenuating Circumstances: Harry Stoner Series #8
Second Chance: Harry Stoner Series #9
The Music Lovers: Harry Stoner Series #10
Missing: Harry Stoner Series #11