by Keene, Day
“Do the muddlers light up when you lay them on the bar? Is there a white piano back of the bar? Played by a horse-faced blonde who sings dirty ditties?”
Lou bobbed her head. “That’s the place.”
“I saw you and Kendall together?”
Lou continued to play with her zipper. “No. You were sitting in a booth with some men. Talking at the top of your voice about what a raw deal someone had gotten.”
“You saw the men I was with?”
“No I didn’t pay any attention to them.” Lou explained, “I was pretty high myself by then. But I think Mr. Kendall knew them.”
“What makes you think that?”
“He swore something awful. And right after that he asked me what I thought of you. I said I liked you a lot. And then he said he was willing to bet fifty dollars I couldn’t get you to check into a hotel with me.”
I said, “What then?”
Lou zipped her housecoat again. “Well, I certainly didn’t want anything to do with him after the way he’d acted all evening. So I said it was a bet. And Mr. Kendall put two twenties and a ten-dollar bill in my purse.”
“Then?”
“Then, before I could attract your attention, you staggered out and told a cabdriver you wanted to go to the Plantation. So Mr. Kendall drove fast and got there before you did. And I sat down at a table and waited until you came in.”
“Then Nature took its course.”
Lou met my eyes. “Then Nature took its course. And it was very lovely until I sobered up a bit and realized what I’d done. Then I felt cheap as hell about it. But why all the questions, Jim?”
I told her. When I’d finished, Lou got up and paced the room. “The son-of-a-bitch.” She meant Kendall, of course. “I knew he was bad. But I didn’t think he was that foul.” She turned and faced me. “Then you’ve seen — that room?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Also a picture of you. But I ripped it off the wall before the cops got there. And tore it up and flushed it down the drain. And now Lieutenant David thinks it was a picture of May.”
“Thank you,” Lou said quietly. “I can’t explain what that room does to a woman. I won’t try. But it makes you want to be bad. That way. Worse than any other woman in the world has ever been. And you try to be. I guess there’s a little bit of whore in all of us. I know there is in me.”
“Think, Lou,” I pleaded. “Where could Kendall have taken May?”
“I’m trying to think,” Lou said.
“He never mentioned a hideout? A cabin in the woods or on some lake?”
Lou shook her head. “No.” She was smarter than I was. “But if Matt Kendall figured that some day he might be in serious trouble, he wouldn’t have a hideout in the woods or on some lake. It would be on deep water. At least on a deep-water channel.”
I was too sick about May to think clearly. “Why?” I asked her.
“So he could keep a cabin cruiser handy. One big enough to raise Cuba. Or maybe go straight across the Gulf to Yucatan.”
“Kendall has a boat?”
“It seems to me I’ve heard him mention one.”
“But you don’t know where he berths it?”
“No.”
I buried my face in my hands. So Kendall had a boat. I wasn’t any better off than I had been before. I still didn’t know where to look for him. There were at least two hundred deep-water slips and bays and estuaries in and around the city.
“Snap out of it,” Lou said. “All crying ever got anyone was wet.”
She unzipped her housecoat and stepped out of it.
“What’s the idea?” I asked her.
She took a clean slip from a drawer and pulled it over her head. Her smile was wry. “Don’t worry, Jim. I’m not going to seduce you again. But if the dumb cops don’t believe you, I do. And I’m going to help you find your May. It’s the least I can do to make up for my part in this affair.”
Lou sat on a chair and put on her stockings. She wasn’t modest about it. She wasn’t immodest. Lou wasn’t good. She wasn’t bad. She wasn’t moral. She wasn’t exactly immoral. She wasn’t even amoral. She was in a class by herself. She was Lou.
Lou twisted her stockings tight and settled her breasts in the built-in pockets of the slip. “What time was it when you and your wife drove out to Kendall’s?”
I said, “About eight-thirty.”
Lou glanced at her watch. “That means Matt has a two-hour start. Now let me get this straight. You say you found this Tony Mantin, or Meares, or whatever his name is, dead in Kendall’s living room?”
“That’s right.”
“And you think Matt Kendall killed him?”
“I do.”
Lou ran a comb through her hair. “And this Tony is one of Cade Kiefer’s boys?”
“According to Tom Benner, he’s Kiefer’s right-hand man.”
“Then why can’t we go to Mr. Kiefer and get him to help us find Kendall?”
I’d thought of that angle and discarded it. I said, “Because I can’t even prove Tony’s dead. Kendall was smart enough to take the body with him. Probably in the turtle back of his car.”
“I should think his being missing would be enough for Mr. Kiefer.”
I thought a moment. “It might be, at that.” It wasn’t because I was scared. I was long past that. But if I was dead, I couldn’t help May! I added, “But what’s to keep Kiefer from figuring I killed Tony rather than give back the ten thousand dollars?”
Lou slipped into her dress. “The ten thousand dollars was in your wife’s purse when you drove out to Kendall’s?”
“Yeah. And now it’s gone with her.”
Lou put on a pair of low-heeled loafers. “But if you could prove to him that you didn’t double-cross Mantin, that you really meant to do the best you could for Pearl, he’d know you had no reason to kill Tony.”
Names. Words. Talk. And all the time, Kendall had May, taking her farther and farther away. I got up and paced the floor.
“That’s just it,” I said. “It wasn’t me, it was the whiskey talking. I can’t do a thing for Pearl.”
Lou stopped me and stood with her hands on my shoulders. “Are you positive, Jim? One thing you’re not is a blowhard. That’s why everyone in the County Building likes you. Drunk or not, you must have thought you could do something.” Lou kissed me. Without passion. Sweet. Like she liked me. Like a sister. “Think, you big cracker. Think.”
Funny. A man’s mind. The way it works. Worried to death about May, in the room of the girl with whom I’d two-timed her, it all came back to me. I mean, what I’d thought I could do about Pearl.
Two things had convicted Pearl. One had been her hysterical outburst in court and the fact that she’d been living with Joe Summers without being married to him. But even more important had been the testimony of the blonde drab who lived in the next apartment.
Pearl claimed Summers was dead when she walked into the apartment. But the dame next door, a hard-faced divorcee by the name of Mrs. Florence Landers, had put her hand on the Bible the clerk of the court had offered her and sworn:
“Summers was alive when Pearl entered the apartment. I know, because I heard them quarreling bitterly about some girl. Then I heard Summers say, ‘No. Put that gun down! Please don’t shoot me!’ A moment later I heard six shots. One right after the other. As fast as whoever was shooting could pull the trigger. I picked up my phone to call the police. Then Pearl opened the door of their apartment and walked out into the hall, screaming that someone had shot her Joe, that she’d gone into their apartment and found him dead on the floor.”
The jury had chosen to believe Mrs. Landers. It could be she was telling the truth, but one thing had stuck in my craw, and I’d told Mr. Kendall about it. It was that before I’d gone into the Army I’d worked for the construction firm that had remodeled the building in which Pearl had allegedly murdered her common-law husband. It had started out as a luxury hotel, back in the 1925 boom. It had been called the Rolyat Hote
l by the multimillionaire named Taylor who had built it as a plaything. As a hotel it had lost again as much money for Taylor as it had cost. In the early thirties he had sold it to a boys’ boarding school. When the school had gone bust in 1940, the creditors had sold it to the outfit for which I was working at the time. They had remodeled it into an apartment building, and it had been one hell of a job. Instead of the inner walls being normal studding plus button board plaster, they’d been almost a foot thick and masonry and steel. Taylor had meant it to last. And that had been the point I’d made to Mr. Kendall.
With both hall doors closed, I doubted if the Landers dame could have heard shots in the next apartment, let alone Joe and Pearl quarreling. I’d told Mr. Kendall that, in my opinion, someone had got to her. I’d wanted him to check the degree of permeation of sound. But he had pooh-poohed me. He’d told me to tend to my own knitting and that he would handle the legal matters in the office.
Lou’s fingers bit into my shoulders. “You’ve thought of something.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I have. The Landers dame was lying. She was paid to testify as she did. And I know now what I told Mantin. I told him the way I sized her up, she was greedy, a blonde bag who would do anything for money. And that if I offered her ten thousand dollars to name whoever had paid her to perjure herself in court, she would be glad to name the guy and reverse her testimony.”
Lou opened the door. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“Where?” I asked her.
She said, “To talk to this Mrs. Landers.”
I protested, “But meanwhile, Matt Kendall — ”
Lou cut me short. “Do you know where to look for him? Do you know where he’s taken your wife?”
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t.”
“Then first things first,” Lou said. “If we can go to him with proof of what you’ve just said, I imagine Mr. Cade Kiefer will be glad to help you find Matt Kendall.”
“Yeah,” I agreed with her. “Sure. There’s only one fly in that butter.”
“What?” Lou asked.
I said, “I told you. If I’m right about her, the Landers dame is money-hungry. And I no longer have the ten grand.”
Lou chewed her lower lip. “That does present a problem.” She closed the room door and locked it. “But let’s face that when we get there.”
I followed her down the hall toward the creaking elevator, trying not to look at her bobbling hips. Worried sick about May as I was, Lou had that certain something for me. A fire. A flame. A fever.
I was disgusted with myself.
Men.
12
THE potted palms in the lobby hadn’t grown. No new bulbs had been added to the crystal chandelier. The fat-faced clerk was still checking the dog track entries. The tourists were still writing postal cards. The traveling men were still slumped on their spines.
As we passed him, one of the traveling men looked up and smiled. “Hi, Lou.”
Lou had trouble remembering him. “Oh, hello,” she said, without stopping.
The onshore wind had risen to a point where it was whipping the green palm fronds into a lather and scattering the dry ones on the walks and streets and lawns.
As I helped Lou into the Ford, she said, “Looks like we might have a blow.”
I looked down the street. Automatically, from force of habit, not really giving a damn. Towards the main post office, to see if the small-craft warning flag was flying. I couldn’t tell. There wasn’t enough moonlight for me to see the flagstaff.
I walked around the back of the car to get at the wheel and Shep King stepped out from behind the smooth white bole of a royal palm.
“Hi, Jim,” he said, quietly.
I froze with my back to the door of the Ford. Shep was to Cass Hardy what Tony Mantin had been to Cade Kiefer. On a lower scale. A former commercial fisherman who’d gotten tired of netting mullet for a living, Shep was Hardy’s strong-arm boy. Beatings were his job. With a little knife work and an occasional warning to leave town thrown in.
I forced myself to be casual. “Hi. What’s with you, Shep?”
He took his cigar from his mouth. “Oh, this and that. What’s this we hear on the radio, Jim?”
I said, “You hear a lot of things on the radio. Which program are you talking about?”
Shep returned his cigar to his mouth. “Don’t try to pull that on me, Charters. On you, wiseness isn’t becoming. Is it true you killed your wife and Matt Kendall?”
I laughed. It came out sickly. “Don’t believe it,” I said. “Do you think I’d be free on Fourth Street if I had?”
“It could be,” Shep said. He knew Lieutenant David. “You never can tell which way that piney-woods cracker will jump. He looks at everything slanch-wise. A great hand, Bill David, for getting someone else to cut his bait for him.” Shep looked over his shoulder at the line of cars parked along the curb. “You got a police tail on you?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I knew what was coming. “Sure,” I told him. “Ever since I left the beach.”
Shep looked from the line of parked cars to me. “I don’t believe you,” he said, finally. “If Bill David had a tail on you, you wouldn’t know it. Anyway, I’m going to take a chance. Go on. Get in the car with your broad. I’ll get in back. Cass wants to talk to you.”
I shook my head at him. “No.”
Shep’s cigar glowed red as he sucked it. “And don’t give me any trouble.”
Lou slid over on the seat and looked out the window. “What’s going on here?”
“You keep out of this,” Shep told her.
I stalled for time. “What’s Cass want to talk to me about?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll let him tell you,” Shep said. He pushed me against the car door. “Go on. Get back of that wheel.”
“Hit him, Jim,” Lou said, tersely.
I did. Bringing my fist up from the hub cap. Aiming at the cigar. Burning my knuckles on the ash, but pushing the tobacco down Shep’s throat. He stepped back, coughing and gagging. I wrenched the car door open, but before I could slide in back of the wheel, Shep, still spitting tobacco, grabbed me by the shoulder.
“You bastard. You dumb bastard,” he rasped. “I’ll kill you for that.”
As he spoke, he foul-punched me. I twisted enough to take most of the blow on my hip bone, at the same time raking my shoe down his shin.
He gritted his teeth and took it. Then he swung me around against the bole of the palm tree so what little light there was would be in his favor, and began punching with both hands.
I’d already had one beating. I couldn’t take another. Every place he hit me I’d been hit before. I clinched to protect myself and wrestled him around the tree to the walk. Thinking any minute Hap Arnold and Bill David would walk up and tap us on the shoulders. Hoping that they would.
They didn’t.
Shep breathed stale beer in my face. He was thin but strong. The muscles in his arms were like the steel cables on an illegal donkey-netting outfit. He spread his elbows and broke free.
I followed him, punching as hard as I could, trying not to let him get set. Shep went down. And got up. A small crowd began to form on the walk, most of them elderly tourists on their way home from the square dance on the pier. One of them, a woman, said, “Disgusting. They’re probably both drunk. Someone ought to call the police.”
Lou got out of the car. “You mind your own business,” Lou told her. Then she screamed, deep in her throat. “Look out, Jim. He’s got a knife.”
I saw the knife as she called. At least the hilt of it. Shep was standing with his legs apart, drawing the knife from a scabbard slung just under the neck of his coat. In back. I’d heard of guys wearing them there, but it was the first time I’d ever seen it.
I stepped in before I lost my nerve, caught his elbow in my palm and heaved. Shep screamed as something snapped. Then I crossed a left to his jaw that swung him around and into
a lady tourist.
She “eeked” and stepped back. Shep stood a moment, swaying. Like he was drunk. Then he fell on his face on the walk.
All the women on the walk were screaming now. One of the men tried to take my arm. Lou brushed him aside, led me back to the car and pushed me in. “Slide over,” she said. “I’ll drive.”
She whipped the Ford out and away from the curb. I sat, gasping for breath, wiping the sweat away from my eyes. We were three blocks away, in front of the post office, when the first siren began to wail.
Lou slowed down to the logical speed limit. “Who was that?” she asked me. She was breathing almost as hard as I was.
I said, “His name is Shep King.”
“Why did he attack you?”
“Shep is Cass Hardy’s muscle man. And from where I sit, it begins to look as if Mr. Kendall isn’t the only man in Sun City with a guilty conscience.”
Lou asked me what I meant by that.
I said, “Somebody had to kill Joe Summers. If Pearl didn’t, and I’m positive she didn’t, that leaves Cass or possibly Shep as the best candidate. Cass had the most to gain. Joe was cutting into his racket, deep. And in another year or two, Joe would have been top dog, leaving Cass out in the cold.”
Lou took one hand off the wheel and touched my face with her fingertips, getting them wet with perspiration. “In Florida?”
“Then you think Cass Hardy killed Joe Summers?”
“Or paid Shep to kill him.”
“And this Mrs. Landers — ?”
“Was paid to testify as she did.”
It was all perfectly clear to me now. Cass Hardy had killed Joe Summers, or paid to have him killed. Pearl, coming home when she had, had been a break for him. Cass was a shrewd operator, almost as smart in a small way as Cade Kiefer was on a big scale. He’d immediately sensed a perfect cover. He’d slipped the Landers woman a bundle of currency to testify as she had. Then he’d given Kendall a substantial retainer not to upset her testimony. And that had been that. All would have gone as planned, with Pearl taking the rap, if I hadn’t gotten drunk and shot off my big mouth to, of all people, Tony Mantin. Why he hadn’t come to Pearl’s defense before he had was the one thing that I didn’t know.