by Keene, Day
Lou opened her mouth and closed it.
Woods pointed with his gun toward a long gray sedan. “I’m certain we can all fit into the one car. If we all sit quietly.”
Lou took a deep breath and moved away from the fender of the Ford. I looked back at the barn. The shouting had begun again. Another main was on.
I wished now that I hadn’t shaken Hap Arnold and Bill David. A wave of resentment swept me. Lieutenant David was a hell of a cop. If he’d been smart enough not to let me trick him, after we’d left the Casa Mañana Apartments, I wouldn’t be in this mess.
A drop of cold sweat trickled down my spine. It stopped half way, then trickled on again.
I’d never felt so sad. I felt that I’d failed May.
Now anything might happen.
16
THE house was big. On the Gulf. Twenty rooms or more. With a high white masonry wall around it and huge wrought-iron gates barring the drive. Over the top of the wall I could see the writhing tops of palms being tortured by the wind.
Gleason braked in front of the gates. Woods got out of the car and picked a phone from a niche in one of the masonry posts. A moment later, the gates swung in.
Gleason drove a few feet into the grounds and stopped again. The wind was stronger here, skittering sand and shell across the drive.
Lou looked at the big house with sullen eyes. “You got me into this,” she said. “If you’d done what I wanted you to, they wouldn’t have found us. At least, not tonight.”
I didn’t say anything.
Gleason looked over his shoulder. “What’s this you wanted to do, Miss?”
“Check into a motel,” Lou told him.
Gleason shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I think we’d have found you before morning. Jack and I stayed pretty close to you all evening. Up until you lost us just this side of the causeway.”
“You were driving this car?” I asked Gleason.
He shook his head. “No. We were using a small black two-door.”
The car purred on down the winding drive.
I gasped. “It was you fellows, then, who picked me up just outside Mr. Kendall’s place.”
“That’s right,” Woods smiled. “At the time we thought the police were foolish to let you go, so we sort of tagged along behind you, just to make sure you didn’t do anything rash. And we were just about to gather you in when you up and disappeared.”
“I told you,” Shep King said. “If Bill David had a tail on you, you wouldn’t ever have known it.”
“You,” Woods told Shep, “shut up.”
Cass protested, “But if you guys were watching Kendall’s place, you know we weren’t anywhere near it. And we didn’t have a thing to do with Charters shooting off his mouth to Tony. Or with the Mantinover affair.”
“So you say,” Woods said quietly. “We’ll come to you fellows later. Right now, Mr. Kiefer is interested in Mr. Charters.”
The car stopped under a porte cochere. I got out and looked back at the gate. How big a fool could a man be? All the time I’d been sore because I’d thought Hap Arnold and Bill David had been tailing me, in the back of my mind I’d felt secure. Because they were the law. Because whatever they did, they would do it legally and openly.
“All right,” Woods said. “Let’s go.”
I reached out a hand to help Lou from the car. She slapped my hand away. “Don’t even touch me,” she said.
Woods led the way into the house, with Gleason bringing up the rear. The place had a closed-up smell to it. A little white-haired man, with his hands clasped behind his back, was rocking heel and toe at the far end of a huge living room with a high-beamed cathedral ceiling.
I wondered if he was Cade Kiefer. He looked more like old Mr. Phillips, who passed the collection plate at the First Avenue Methodist Church, than he did a racketeer.
The white-haired man read my mind and stopped rocking. “That’s right,” he said quietly. “I’m Cade Kiefer, horns and tail and all.” He looked at Woods. “This is Charters?”
“Yes, sir,” Woods said.
Mr. Kiefer looked back at me. “The James Charters who sold Tony the idea you could spring his sister out of the death house for ten thousand dollars?”
I had nothing to gain by lying. “Yes, sir.”
Mr. Kiefer looked at Lou. “And the girl?”
Woods said, “She was with him when we picked him up out at the cock fights. In fact, he drove almost directly to her hotel after leaving Kendall’s place. So I thought we’d better bring her along.”
Mr. Kiefer nodded. “That probably was wise.” He looked at Shep King and Cass Hardy. “And who are these two men?”
“One is the local big shot,” Gleason said. “I believe his name is Cass Hardy.”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Kiefer said. “I’ve heard of you, Hardy.”
Cass was as pleased as if he’d just guessed the mystery tune on a television quiz show. “Thank you, sir,” he beamed. “And we aren’t mixed up in this, believe me, Mr. Kiefer. Sure, I stood to gain the most by Joe Summers being knocked off, but — ”
Mr. Kiefer held up a well-cared-for-hand. “Please,” he said. “Spare me. I don’t give a damn about Joe Summers or the local situation. I doubt if I ever will. A one-day survey had convinced me I’d lose money moving in here.” He looked at Gleason. “Take Mr. Hardy and his friend into the other room and buy them a drink, will you, Phil?”
“This way, fellows,” Gleason said.
Cass looked back at me over his shoulder. Smug. I shifted my weight from one foot to another. No one needed to tell me. I knew. I was about to be judged. Just as certainly as if I were standing in front of the same judge who had pronounced sentence of Pearl.
Mr. Kiefer motioned Lou to a chair. “Sit down, my dear, please.”
Lou’s voice was low and throaty. “Thank you.” She sat in a low chair. With her legs crossed. So a patch of white showed.
I knew. I think I knew right then. More, I knew what was in Lou’s mind. So Mr. Kiefer was an old man. Maybe too old. He was male. He might still like to look.
“You’re very pretty, my dear,” he smiled.
Lou fluttered her eyes at him. “Thank you.”
Kiefer bit the end off a cigar and looked at me. He sounded tired. “All right, let’s get at it, Charters. You admit that you killed Tony?”
“No, sir.”
“Who did?”
“I think Kendall did.”
“With your gun?”
“No, sir. That was a plant to pin it on me.”
“How did he get your gun?”
“He took it out of my pocket after he’d knocked me unconscious.”
“When was this? I mean when Kendall knocked you unconscious?”
“Right after I found Tony’s body.”
“And why should Kendall kill Tony?”
I said, “I think in self-defense. Because he thought Tony was crazy.”
“Now, that is a new one,” Woods said.
Mr. Kiefer started over again. “You do admit you sold Tony a bill of goods last night?”
“You mean about his sister?”
“I do.”
I said, “It wasn’t exactly a bill of goods. At the time I thought I could do something for her. I was drunk, Bigmouth drunk.”
Kiefer sat on the arm of a chair. “That’s no excuse.”
“No,” I admitted. “It isn’t. And when I sobered up this morning I spent the entire day trying to get in touch with him.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to give him back his money.”
Woods chuckled softly. “Believe me, fellow, you’re good. You’ve almost got me believing you.” He stopped chuckling. “Almost.”
I said, “It’s the truth. And when Tony called me this evening around eight o’clock, I tried to tell him how things were. I asked him to name a spot where I could meet him and return his money. But he got sore and hung up before I could convince him I meant it. He thought I’d talked to Kenda
ll and that Kendall had advised me to give him the money back and string along with the local boys.”
Mr. Kiefer looked at Woods.
Woods said, “That would be the big moon-faced lad in the other room.”
Mr. Kiefer lighted his cigar. “In a way, this is my fault. When Tony met me at the plane last night, I should have refused to advance him the money. But you’d sold him such a bill of goods that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’d never seen him so enthused before. According to him, you were a sort of legal Sir Galahad. And all you needed was ten thousand dollars to pry his sister out of the death house.”
I asked him if I could ask a question.
“You can ask,” Mr. Kiefer said.
I asked the question that had been bothering me. “How come Tony was so long in coming to his sister’s defense?”
“That’s a good question,” Mr. Kiefer said. “It would seem their family was broken up when they were kids. And until I sent Tony down here to scout the situation in advance and he happened to see her picture in a Sun City paper, he didn’t realize she was his sister. I think Tony told me it had been ten or twelve years since he had seen her. That had been in Cuba. And she had been a little girl.”
“He damn near went nuts,” Woods said. “Nothing would do but we drive right over to Raiford. Of course, she claimed she hadn’t killed this Summers, that, in her opinion, her attorney had thrown her to the wolves. Then she told Tony about you.”
I was puzzled. “About me?”
“That’s right,” Mr. Kiefer said. “About how nice you’d been to her, how you’d even brought her flowers.” He sucked at his cigar. “In fact, I think it was those goddamn sweet peas she kept talking about that completely convinced Tony you were on the level.” Mr. Kiefer mimicked Tony. “He said, ‘He’s not only smart, he’s got what they call the milk of human kindness’.”
The short hairs on the back of my neck tingled. It was like hearing Tony talk. “Then my bumping into him last night was not entirely coincidence?”
“Hell, no,” Woods said. “Tony combed Sun City for you and finally found you right where we picked you up tonight. You don’t remember me, do you?”
I shook my head at him. “No.”
Woods’ smile was dry. “We were bosom buddies last night. I tried to tell Tony that even if you were carrying it well, you were stinking. But he wouldn’t listen to me. He didn’t believe me. He didn’t want to believe me. You were a likeable guy. You told him a plausible story. And it was worth any amount to him to spring his kid sister. Just what did you think you could do for her, if anything?”
So what could I lose? I took a deep breath and told them. About how I’d worked on the Casa Mañana Apartments while they were being remodeled. About how I’d thought Mrs. Landers had been paid off by Cass Hardy and I could probably get her to change her testimony for ten thousand dollars.
Mr. Kiefer stopped me there. “Just a minute. If you intended to give this Landers woman the ten thousand, where did you come in? What were you going to get out of it?”
I admitted, “I guess I didn’t think of that.”
“See what I mean?” Woods said.
Mr. Kiefer returned his cigar to his mouth. “You talked to this Landers woman?”
I said, “I did.”
“What did she say?”
Lou answered before I could. “She wasn’t interested in the money. She has more than she can spend if she lives another fifty years.”
“She wouldn’t admit she’d lied, huh?”
Lou continued, slightly breathless. “She didn’t lie. Jim was right about the walls and doors. You can’t hear through them. But Mrs. Landers did hear the whole thing. Just as she testified in court.”
“How?”
Lou told him. “Through the vent in her bathroom. The nasty old thing even has an easy chair in there. And you can hear everything that goes on in the other bathrooms on both sides of the vent, just as plain as if you were in the room.”
Woods chuckled. “She should hear plenty.”
Lou’s cheeks turned pink. “She does. We heard plenty the few minutes we were in there.”
Mr. Kiefer looked back at me. “And the Landers woman sticks to her testimony, huh? She insists she heard Tony’s sister threaten this guy with whom she was living? She heard him beg for his life?”
Again Lou answered before I could. “That’s right. Mrs. Landers heard Mr. Summers say, ‘Hey, nix, that’s loaded.’” Her slight breathlessness returned. “Then she heard Joe say, ‘No. Put down that gun. Please, don’t shoot me.’” Lou swallowed a lump in her throat. “Then Mrs. Landers heard six shots.”
Mr. Kiefer sucked at his cigar. It was dead. “Where’s the ten grand now?” he asked me.
I said, “I think Kendall has it. Along with my wife, May.”
“How did he get it?”
“It was in my wife’s purse when we drove out to ask his advice about how to square me with Tony.”
“You don’t think she went with him willingly?”
“No.”
“You didn’t kill both of them and bury their bodies?”
“No.”
“You don’t think your wife has been having an affair with Kendall?”
“No.”
“Then what are you sweating about?”
I told him. “Because I’m worried sick about May. May is a good kid. And she doesn’t deserve to have a thing like this happen to her.”
Mr. Kiefer summed up for the prosecution. “Your story is that you discovered Tony’s body in Kendall’s living room. A few moments later, you were slugged unconscious by a man you believe to have been Kendall. When you came to, Kendall and your wife and the ten grand were gone. So was Tony’s body. And that’s all you know about it, except what you’ve heard on the radio?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’ve been trying to get a line on Kendall ever since?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lou said, “It’s ridiculous. I mean that he should worry about his wife. She went with Mr. Kendall of her own free will. I know she did. And they’re probably well on their way out of the state by now.”
Neither Mr. Kiefer nor Woods said anything. I took a package of Camels from my pocket. I tried to extract a cigarette, but my fingers were shaking so badly, the cigarette dropped on the floor. In trying to pick it up I stepped on it and squashed it into the rug. And that was all right with me. I didn’t really want a smoke. All I wanted was May.
When I could, I said. “Look, Lou. Why are you so anxious that I don’t contact Kendall?”
Lou refused to meet my eyes. “Anxious? I’m certain it doesn’t make any difference to me one way or another.”
“Then why did you talk about a boat? Why didn’t you tell me he had a hideout out on Lake Seminole? With a private landing field?”
Woods said, “You know this to be so?”
I nodded. “Yeah. That’s where I was headed when you picked me up.”
Woods looked at Mr. Kiefer.
Mr. Kiefer relighted his cigar and enjoyed it for a moment. “Not that I give a damn about the personal angles that obviously are involved. My interest is strictly in Tony. No one kills one of Cade Kiefer’s boys with impunity. It would be bad business on my part to allow such a precedent to be set.” Smoke curled up from his cigar, as he studied my face. “I’d like to believe you, son. I really would. If only for Tony’s sake. How far is this Lake Seminole from here?”
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath. I exhaled slowly. “About eighteen miles, sir.”
Mr. Kiefer looked back at Woods. “Get my hat, will you, Jack? And let’s hope, for Charter’s sake, that he isn’t lying.”
17
IT was as dark as if the frenzied wind had blown the moon out of the sky. From time to time, as the big gray car wound down the narrow back road, a piece of flying debris thudded against the windshield or the body of the car.
Woods drove. I sat on the back seat with Lou. Mr. Kie
fer sat sideways on the front seat, one arm dangling over the back of the seat, from time to time addressing a remark to me.
Lou rode with her hands in her lap. It was a physical effort for me to breathe. No one had pushed me around. No one had made any threats. But I knew. I’d better be right about it being Kendall who had killed Tony Mantin. Even though Mr. Kiefer looked like a kind old man, the white-haired racketeer lived in a world only a step removed from a modern jungle. A world in which a lost tooth, an eye or a life could only be paid for in kind. And one of his boys named Tony Meares, alias Tony Mantin, was dead.
“You’ve been here before?” Mr. Kiefer asked me.
“No,” I admitted, “I haven’t.”
“How about you?” he asked Lou.
Lou looked at him with smoldering eyes. “You had no right to force me to accompany you. I’ve nothing to do with all this. All I was trying to do was help Mr. Charters.”
Now it was Mr. Charters.
Mr. Kiefer’s voice had an edge to it. “I asked you a question.”
Lou chewed her lower lip. “Yes.”
“Fine,” Mr. Kiefer said. “You can watch the road and tell us where to turn.”
It wasn’t necessary. A tattered windsock marked the south end of the small landing field that had been hacked out of the saw palmetto. To the left of the road and in about two hundred feet, a light twinkled through the trees.
“This must be it,” Woods said.
“Must be,” Mr. Kiefer agreed. “Pull off the road and let’s look in the hangar first.”
Woods drove the big car off the road and switched off his lights. Then, instead of getting out, he sat looking into his non-glare rear vision mirror.
“See something?” Mr. Kiefer asked.
Woods said, “I thought I saw headlights. I did.”
He slipped his gun from its shoulder holster and sat with it in his lap. The car behind us labored up the road. One headlight wobbled from side to side. Like a drunk’s head. It passed without slackening speed. It was a battered ten-year-old farm pick-up with two men in the front seat and a stack of empty tomato crates in back.
“Tobacco Road,” Woods said. “What some people will drive.”
He waited until the tail light of the pick-up jostled across the bridge over the river and disappeared in the thicket of cabbage palms and moss-hung live oak on the other side. Then, looking at me, Woods said, “I’ll only be a minute. You and the girl friend stay put until I get back. And don’t give Mr. Kiefer any trouble.”