The Gorgeous Murderer

by Henry, Kane,

  THE GORGEOUS MURDERER

  by HENRY KANE

  Neither the girl nor the man spoke the young bank teller’s language. They were from another world—a world of stark criminal violence and sudden death. And their game was Russian roulette.

  WHEN OSCAR BLINNEY became acquainted with Evangeline Ashley, that delectable young lady was on the brink of losing one lover and murdering another, although, at the time, she had not the faintest premonition of the impending imminence of either catastrophe. And, of course, Oscar Blinney was totally unaware of the pertinent gentlemen involved or of the gradual gathering of the uneventful events which would culminate in such twofold tragedy. It was March in Miami, last scented breeze-swept month of the dying winter season of that warm, golden, riotous, luxuriant, ocean-lapped resort.

  Blinney had come down on the first day of March, and had met Evangeline Ashley that same afternoon. And they had had their first actual conversation—initiated, in point of fact, by Miss Ashley, since it was not the wont of Oscar Blinney to address himself to any strange young lady no matter how delectable.

  On the first of March, Oscar Blinney had descended as per reservation upon the Hotel Cascade in Miami Beach, ocean-front and fashionable, but not too expensive at end of season, although “descended,” usual as is such terminology, is woefully inaccurate as concerns Oscar Blinney, because, simply, Oscar Blinney never “descended” upon anything, anywhere. “Slithered” would be more descriptive but “slithered” also fails because Oscar Blinney was a muscular broad-shouldered six-feet-one and how can one apply “slithered” to a muscular broad-shouldered six-feet-one?

  Let us put it this way: Oscar Blinney was shy, cautious, soft-spoken, and apologetic; his approach to anything, anywhere, always, was careful and diffident; it was as though the great bulk of muscular broad-shouldered six-feet-one trod tip-toe upon its own private carpet of foam-rubber; and it was always as though he were saying “Excuse me” before he said anything else. Carrying a battered suitcase in the great paw of his right hand, he egg-shelled to the ornate desk and said to the desk-clerk: “Blinney.”

  “Pardon?” said the clerk.

  “Blinney,” said Blinney.

  “You have a reservation, sir?”

  “I have,” said Blinney.

  “Just one moment, sir,” said the clerk and rummaged amongst slips of paper and selected one and said, “Oh yes. Blinney, Oscar. Room 202. Please sign here.”

  He slid a large square card in front of Blinney, but it was more than signing; it was like filling out a questionnaire that would serve as foundation for a cumulative dossier. Blinney dropped his suitcase with a thud, inspected the card, read the questions, meticulously inscribed the answers, and returned the card to the clerk who smiled frozenly and thumped a bell.

  A wizened little bell-boy, who looked like a long-retired jockey, appeared, hoisted the bag, and accepted the key from the desk-clerk.

  “Mr. Blinney goes to 202,” said the desk-clerk.

  “What floor?” said Blinney.

  “Two,” said the desk-clerk and puckered a rosebud mouth.

  Blinney looked toward a wide marble staircase.

  “Walk or ride?” he inquired.

  “Whatever is your pleasure,” said the desk clerk and sniffed and turned to other matters.

  “We ride,” said the jockey. “Like it’s a heavy bag you got here, Mr. Blinney.”

  Blinney undressed, unpacked, showered and considered. Then decided to dress in his new sports clothes and see something of Miami Beach.

  He did not use the elevator. Instead, he walked to the end of the corridor and down the stairs. He noted, at the foot of the stairs, that the staircase led directly to one of the entrance doors, and that it was completely out of the range of vision of the desk and the elevators. He grinned as he contemplated that, wondering if the architect had so purposely constructed it. There was no door-man. It was perfect for the secret rendezvous of lovers. Was this staircase, so situated, one of the features of the Hotel Cascade, an undeclared, unadvertised, word-of-mouth inducement for the patronage of paying guests?

  He grinned. It was a charming, practical gambit, a definite advantage to such of the paying guests who required such advantage, whether or not it was so purposely designed. And he stepped out, unseen, into the street.

  The air was warm and scented sweet and there was a breeze from the ocean. He breathed deeply, filled his lungs, looked about. To his left, above an arched doorway, the glass tubes of unlighted neons spelled out in curlicued script: CASCADE TEA ROOM. It was a place to eat and he was hungry but he delayed it as though by presentiment.

  He decided to walk. He strolled about, looking in shop windows, enjoying the invigorating out-of-doors, and he returned in half an hour, famished. He entered directly into CASCADE TEA ROOM and he saw her at once and he stopped short as though hit.

  He had moved from bright sunshine into small-bulbed dimness and as she stood there before him she seemed almost unreal. She was facing the street and her features were clear to him as the light of the sun caught at her piled-high taffy-gold hair like a nimbus. Her eyes were enormous, sheer blue and clear beneath sweeping graceful eyebrows; her face, smooth-skinned and lightly tan, was heart-shaped, the cheekbones high, the cheeks slightly hollow, the chin coming to a delicate point; her nose was tiny and imperious with small flaring nostrils; her mouth was full, curved, sensuous, and glistening, insouciant and somehow cruel. She was tall, deep-chested, long-legged, and full-figured, and as she came toward him erect and carriage high, she smiled with gleaming, even, high, white teeth.

  “How many please?” There was the soft nuance of Southern accent. The voice was resonant, musical, and pitched low.

  “Beg pardon?” said Blinney.

  “How many please?”

  “Well, there’s just me…” He said it diffidently.

  The smile broadened and there was a quiver at the nostrils. “Well, sometimes a party may be expecting others…”

  “No, I’m not expecting anyone. Just me.”

  “This way, please.”

  She turned and he followed her, observing the movement of the rounded hips, looking at the full calves of her legs that narrowed to slender ankles. She wore a simple white short-skirted dress with a tight gold belt, sheer white stockings, and white high-heeled shoes. She led him to a booth, laid a menu in front of him, inquired, “Is this all right?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She waved to a waitress and went away.

  Oscar Blinney, for the first time in his life overwhelmingly affected at the sight of a woman, found, nonetheless, that his appetite was unimpaired. He ordered orange juice, ham and eggs, and coffee, and for dessert, a second order of ham and eggs and a second cup of coffee. Then he paid his bill, tipped the waitress, nodded to the hostess, and departed.

  He wandered through the streets of Miami Beach. He nibbled at drinks at various dim-lit bars and made no response to flirtatious eyes. He went to a movie. He came out of the movie and went to Club Columbo and watched the strippers. Some of them were quite beautiful, all of them salacious; he remained unmoved, unaffected, lonely, and alone.

  He went back to the hotel, took off his clothes, lay out on the bed. He could not shake the image of the tall golden-haired girl in the white gold-belted dress.

  He dozed.

  II

  EVANGELINE ASHLEY was going to her lover. She was going to her lover, William Grant, known as Bill, who lived on the second floor of a semi-fashionable apartment house on a semi-fashionable street, its curbs lined with parked cars, in a semi-fashionable neighborhood.

  She arrived there at twenty minutes after eleven, giving no heed to the parked cars one of which was a sleek black Cadillac wit
h a thick dark man seated at its wheel. She ran up one flight of wooden stairs and knocked upon a door marked 2A.

  “Who is it?” said Bill Grant.

  “Eve,” said Evangeline Ashley.

  “What the hell!” said Bill Grant and opened the door.

  “Surprised?” said Evangeline Ashley.

  “Knocked right on my fanny,” said Bill Grant. “Don’t you believe in calling?”

  “It’s your night off, isn’t it?”

  “So suppose I wasn’t home?”

  “Then I’d know you were out cheating, you ill-begotten son. Pour a drink for little Eve.” He went lithely, gracefully, to a liquor cabinet, poured bourbon and added soda, and brought it to her. “Do you cheat on me?” she said.

  “You bet I do,” he said.

  “Don’t ever let me catch you.”

  “Nobody catches me when I cheat.”

  She drank of her drink, set it away, slipped out of her coat, took up the glass, and went to a divan. She drank again and placed the glass on an end-table. “Come here by me,” she said softly.

  “Take your time,” Grant said.

  “I’m burning,” she said.

  “It’ll keep,” he said.

  She took up her drink again. “What have you been doing?”

  “When?”

  “Now. Before I came.”

  “Watching TV.”

  “Very exciting.”

  “Baby, I get my excitement when I’m not home. Home, I take it easy. What about Senor?” he said.

  “The hell with Senor,” Evangeline said.

  “Baby, you’re just begging for trouble, aren’t you?”

  “What’s the matter? Are you afraid?”

  “I’m afraid of nothing, and you know it.”

  “Are you afraid of Senor?”

  “The hell with Senor.”

  “That’s what I said. So why are you bugging me with Senor?”

  He gulped bourbon again. “Because you got a good thing there. Why spoil it?”

  “For you I’d spoil anything.”

  “Sure. You spoil it with Senor and you spoil it for me too, you stupid fool. Suppose he decided to come visit you tonight?”

  “So what?” she flared. “What am I? A prisoner? A slave? So I went for a walk, so I went to a movie, so I went out for a drink, so I went to a girl friend.” She subsided. “Come over here to me, Billy-boy.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. “You’re gorgeous. But you’re an awful chump.”

  “Why? Because I go for you?”

  “That’s exactly why.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. You’re a disease.”

  “Diseases are curable.”

  “Not this disease.”

  “Cut it out,” he said. “If I told you once, I told you a million times. Bill Grant is temporary, a temporary guy. Bill Grant has got things to do, a big score to make. Two, three times in my life, I almost made it, but it slipped by. Okay. I’m not discouraged. I’m right in there, seeking, looking, angling all the time. I’m looking for a big score and I’ll make it.”

  “Sure you will, Billy-boy.”

  “This trick in Miami, it’s a stopover. Working here for Senor who thinks he’s a big shot, it’s a stopover. You? You’re a stopover. They want me back in Havana and I might go. I’m looking for the big score. Maybe I’ll even go back to London. I’ve got some friends who are doing pretty fair there. But I’m surely not a guy to have a chick hanging on to his coat-tails. Now why don’t you get that through your head?”

  “You’re not going anywhere yet, are you?”

  “No.”

  “And I haven’t been in your way, have I?”

  “No.”

  “And I’ve been helping out pretty fair, haven’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Grant.

  “Do you love me, Billy?”

  “No.”

  “Do you like me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then come over here by me. Now. Right now. Please.”

  “Beg.”

  “I’m begging.”

  “That’s the only way you like it —when you beg. And the only guy you go for—is a guy you’ve got to beg.”

  “Only you, Billy. I never begged before. The other way around. They begged me. They still beg. And I never felt anything for any one of them. Only you, Billy.”

  He turned the switch of a small table-lamp. A blue light flickered faintly. He snapped off all the other lights and in the blue dimness he went to her. “Hold me tight,” she whispered.

  THE DARK MAN in the black car sat motionless, his eyes on the windows of the second floor apartment. When the lights went out he flinched, grunted; then he sat motionless again, rigid. After fifteen minutes, he started the car. It pulled out with a lurch, roared forward, settled to normal speed. He drove smoothly, observing all the traffic regulations. He parked the car one block from the Hotel Cascade, and walked the rest of the way.

  He was a tall, powerful, thickset man with kinky black hair, grey at the temples. His name was Pedro Orgaz but all of Miami knew him as Senor. He entered Hotel Cascade through the door at the foot of the stairs, and walked up quickly and silently.

  He opened the door of 203 with his own key, locked the door behind him, and stood still in the dark, recovering his breath. Then he switched on all the lights. He searched the room, removing anything that might connect him to the premises, no matter how remotely. There was not much. He did not keep clothes there. He picked up two packets of matches and pocketed them. They carried the stamp of Club Columbo and he was the owner of Club Columbo.

  He searched through all the drawers of a dresser and a table. He found a picture of himself and Evangeline Ashley taken one afternoon when they were out on a fishing trip. He slipped the picture into his jacket pocket. He found an envelope from Club Columbo, one envelope. He was giving Evangeline Ashley a thousand dollars a month. On the first day of each month he brought her a thousand dollars in cash. He was a married man and dared not write checks to a woman he was keeping.

  On the first day of each month he brought a thousand dollars in cash in an envelope. Sometimes he would leave the cash and take the envelope, sometimes he left the cash with the envelope. Each envelope bore the imprint of Club Columbo. There was no risk involved. Anybody could have an envelope from Club Columbo. But for what he was now planning, he wanted no vestige of any connection with himself in that room. There was but one envelope. He slipped that into his pocket beside the picture.

  He searched the room again, very carefully. There was nothing in it that pertained to Pedro Orgaz. He went to a small table on which there were many bottles of whiskey. He selected a bottle of Canadian Club, uncorked the bottle, and drank the raw whiskey directly from its mouth. He corked the bottle and replaced it.

  Then he drew a large silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his face. Then, painstakingly, he wiped every item and every area of the room where his fingerprints may have been impressed. Then, handkerchief in hand, he switched off the lights, wiped the doorknob and turned it, wiped the outside doorknob, and locked the door.

  He had left the room exactly as he had found it. An expert would not have known anyone had been there, let alone Evangeline Ashley. He went down the stairs quietly and out into the street and walked quickly to his car. He drove to his club and assumed his normal duties as owner and host; normal, except that he was morose, preoccupied, and he was drinking.

  Usually, Senor Pedro Orgaz did not drink when at work. This night he drank and he did not stop drinking.

  III

  ON THAT THIRD DAY of March, at ten o’clock in the evening, Pedro Orgaz sat in his office at the Upstairs Room, drumming his fingers upon the desk-top. A half-empty bottle of Canadian Club stood on the desk near the drumming fingers, as did a sizable shot-glass. Senor was waiting for Bill Grant. He poured whiskey into the shot-glass, gulped, and made his third phone call within the past half hour.

  “Everything okay?”
he said into the phone.

  “Sure, for Chrissake. What’s with the phone calls? What’s with so nervous?”

  “I just want to be sure.”

  “You can be sure, big brother.”

  “Do it slow. Make it last. A long, slow job. You know?”

  “Leave it to Little Dee. Little Dee is going to enjoy.”

  There was a knock on the door. Senor hung up.

  “Who?” he called.

  “Bill Grant.”

  “Come in. Come in.”

  Grant entered, smiled. “Check me in, Senor.”

  “Billy.”

  Grant continued to smile as he crossed the office to the desk. “Yes.”

  “You got a job to do for me, Billy.”

  “Yes, Senor?”

  “Little Dee is sick. Caught up with one of them little bugs or something. Just called up. He was supposed to bring the loot for the till for tonight. We got a little but we need plenty more. He’s over by his cottage. You know where Little Dee’s cottage is.”

  “Of course I do. We’ve had some pretty good parties there, haven’t we? Little Dee’s a bachelor who knows how to live.”

  “Would you like a drink, Billyboy?” Senor asked.

  “Too early for me.”

  Senor had a drink. He wiped his hand across his mouth. “Okay. You go over to Little Dee. He’s got fifty thou over there for the bank here. Go over and pick it up. He’s waiting for you. Bring it back here and we break it up for the tables. And don’t get lost with my fifty thou.”

  “That crazy I’m not, Senor.

  “I know, Billy-boy. You’re too smart to be stupid. Now come on. Get moving.”

  “Twenty minutes, pal,” Grant said. He went out, closing the door quietly.

  Senor had another drink, sat drumming the desk-top. In an hour, and it would be done. In an hour, it would be finished. In an hour, Little Dee would have had his fun, and would be out to sea, and he, Senor, could quit this office and have the pleasure of finishing the job. He looked at his watch. One hour. One hour…

  Pedro Orgaz was fifty-three years of age. He was a Spanish-American, born in Montreal, who had married a woman of wealth, and transferred his criminal activities to the United States.