“My mommy,” she said, “is not home.”
The girl came down the sagging steps toward me and wandered into the small rose garden which sported a few trellises and pink, yellow, and red roses. The girl went in among the thorny plants and began to sniff. Just then the front door of the house opened and a plump woman emerged, catalogued me without comment and said, “Laura-Jean, I told you about your rose fever.”
“Not in September, Ma,” Laura-Jean said peevishly.
“I thought you said your mother wasn’t home,” I said peevishly.
“Aw,” Laura-Jean said, and went on sniffing her roses.
“What do you want?” her mother asked me.
“Lasitter. He lives here?”
“He rents a room on the third floor.”
“Hey, Ma,” Laura-Jean called from the rose garden. “That’s how I like a rose to be.” She was studying a yellow rose halfway up the trellis.
“He in now?” I asked.
“I don’t keep tabs, mister. Why don’t you go upstairs and find out?”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
“Hey, Ma!” Laura-Jean called from the rose garden. “Look at this rose, with those tight swirls and all.”
“A rose is a rose is a rose,” her mother said.
I went inside the house. This Ma was too erudite for me.
Two flights of stairs brought me to the third floor. There was a small, uncarpeted hallway, three closed doors, and a long bookshelf with enough magazines to fill a Salvation Army pickup truck. It was very quiet up there. Then all at once behind the second door you could hear the sound of liquid trickling into a glass. I knocked on that door.
From the sound he made, he must have lunged at it. He got it open and leered at me. His face was sallow. He wore dark smudges under his eyes, like the charcoal rubbed there by football players on a sunny day. His nose belonged on a reindeer called Rudolph. His eyes took a long time focusing and when they finally did he grabbed my arm, yanked it and said, “Come on ina house.”
He shut the door behind me. It was a small room with a low ceiling, part of which slanted up under the eaves. There was a sink, a bed, a chest of drawers, a chair, a water color of a young girl peeling a banana, a white-topped table with two pint bottles of rye, one of them empty, and not much else. Lasitter eased over to the table and the bottles, pretending he was in no hurry but almost tripping in his haste. He found two glasses and poured an inch of rye into each one, gave me one and said, “Shoal.”
I watched Lasitter make his drink disappear. His eyes closed and his mouth opened and he said ah.
“Six letters and eight telephone calls,” I said. “I’m listening.”
“No hard feelings?”
“I said I would listen.”
“But Jesus, Drum,” he saw I still had my drink and sloshed another inch into his own glass, “I don’t want you should have any hard feelings. A guy gotta make a buck, doesn’t he?”
“Two hundred dollars, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. It was. It ain’t now. It don’t go so far these days.”
“Especially not if all of it goes to the same place. What happened?”
“Well, Lash give me the two C’s, all right. But he said he had a job for me. You think I’da been nuts enough to cross you otherwise? That Lash. He never hired an op to work for him in his life. That lying bastard.”
“So?”
“So I’m gonna fix his wagon.”
“You’re going to fix his wagon how?”
“It costs money,” Lasitter said. He held out his hand. I wanted to break it off. “Fifty bucks, it will cost you.”
“How do I know what you have? Spill it first.”
“Not me, pal. You’re too much like Lash. You think I’m crazy?”
I wrapped my fingers around his open hand. I squeezed it into a fist and went on squeezing. Lasitter hollered and shook himself but could not get loose. “Stop it,” he said. “You’ll break the hand.”
“I’m not even a little bit like Lash,” I said.
“Yeah. Yeah, whatever you want. Just leggo.”
I let go. His hands caressed each other. I said, “I’ll pay you if I like it,” but for the moment I wasn’t there. It was Lash. I hoped suddenly I would never see Lash again. If I saw him, I might lose my license.
Lasitter spilled three inches more into his glass. He made it, with both hands. He raised the glass to his mouth with both hands and drank it in a single big bob of his Adam’s apple. He said, “Lash was collecting double.”
“Who else was he collecting from?”
“Let’s go back a minute, pal. Lash comes out there and uses a gun on you. Would anybody use a gun the way he was if all he wanted to do was scare you or bluff you? I ask you.”
“I thought of that,” I said. “It’s interesting, but it’s not worth even fifty cents.”
Lasitter grinned. He was enjoying himself now. “Stay loose,” he advised me, “and we’ll get there. You see what I’m driving at? There was something big in it for Lash or he wouldn’t of used the rod. Right?”
“Maybe Tyler’s mother offered him a lot of money. She’s been known to throw her money around.”
“Funny part of it is, Tyler’s mother fits in somewhere. I’ll tell you about it. But I don’t mean that kind of big. Am I making sense, pal?”
“No.”
“I take it this Tyler bird went to Arabia. Have any idea what happened?”
“I was there,” I said.
“You’re kidding.”
“Just let’s have your story.”
“This is what I’m betting happened. The dame got killed and Tyler got blamed. Right?”
“No,” I said. I turned and got my hand on the doorknob.
“Wait a minute!” Lasitter bleated.
“Then get the hell to the point, will you?”
“Well, that’s what was supposed to happen.” He reached for the bottle again but I shoved it away from him. The bottle slid a few inches across the white tabletop, then overturned. It was almost empty anyway. Lasitter looked at it with the kind of look some men reserve for horses and some for dogs and some for women.
“Maybe I ought to ask you some questions,” I said. “Who else was paying Lash to prevent me from keeping Tyler and Miss Totah in the country?”
“An Ay-rab named Izzed-een Shafik.”
That didn’t surprise me. It matched my Department of the Army information. “How did you find that out?” I asked Lasitter.
“It was all in Lash’s office, in a file marked Tyler.”
“You have the file?”
“Why should I take it? I only had to read it. I read it.”
“No more questions. Just shoot.”
“Shafik got asked to knock off the dame. He figured he could get away with it, but there was nothing in it for him unless Tyler went along. Unless he could make it look like Tyler done it.”
“All this Lash put in writing?”
“I would of. Wouldn’t you?”
I’m not that methodical and the answer was no. I didn’t say anything, though.
“I couldn’t find out how this Shafik had Lash over a barrel. Lash only mentioned Iran during the war in his file. It didn’t mean nothing to me, but it must of meant plenty to Lash. It was important to him. So he got in touch with Tyler and said he heard a rumble about you and how you were gonna keep Tyler here in the U.S. Tyler thought he was nuts at the beginning, but must of thought of it again up on a mountain, because he told me to get in touch with Lash.”
“Yeah, but how did Lash find out about me?”
“From the old lady. Shafik calls and tells him the old lady wants to keep Tyler here, so he pays her a visit and says he’s a P.I. and for a price he’ll keep the kid here. It must of surprised the hell out of her, him knowing. But she tells him she already hired a shamus and he asks who. At first, according to what Lash has in his file, she won’t say. But he convinces her he may be able to give you some help and that�
�s all she has to hear.”
“Then Lash really wasn’t working for Tyler?”
“Not until he yanked Tyler off your mountain, he wasn’t.”
“But Lash knew Shafik wanted to kill Fawzia and frame Limerock for it? Lash knew if he helped get Fawzia and Limerock out of the country he might be aiding a murderer in advance?”
“I already told you. How would I know if Lash didn’t know?”
I nodded. “Is that all?” I said.
“You got everything I got. I hope to hell it helps you. I hope it makes Lash trip over his big flat feet. The lying bastard. Oh, yeah—there was no money in it.”
“No money in it for who?”
“For Lash.”
“You just said he was collecting double.”
“Well, he don’t collect from nobody but Tyler. It was just a way of talking. You know.”
“A way of talking,” I said. I got out my wallet and gave Lasitter two twenties and a ten.
He put them away. He didn’t walk me to the door.
“Squash the bastard,” he said. “Squash him like a roach.”
Chapter Twenty-five
I drove to Tyler Acres a couple of hours after Fawzia signed her deposition and returned to College Station with Terry. Nobody had taken away the big stone posts or the cluster of white buildings which in Saudi Arabia would have been called a city. I pulled up in the circular driveway and my De Soto got the usual leers from the Fleetwood and the Eldorado.
Moses trotted up carrying a book in his big hand. The dust jacket said it was Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy. Moses said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Drum.” Then he said, “Mr. Drum, I think you had better leave.”
I lit a cigarette and let a minute tick by. Then I dropped the cigarette and ground it into the gravel of the driveway. “Will you tell Mrs. Tyler that I’m here,” I said.
Moses sighed. Five minutes later, he ushered me into a small room at the front of the house. I liked the room. It was a very comfortable, masculine room. The furniture was big and covered with cordovan leather. There was a desk which looked like teakwood. There were floor lamps which would give a man light to read by. Two walls were lined with books. A fireplace with a marble slab for a hearth took up most of the third wall. The usual athletic trophies were missing from the mantlepiece. I liked that about the room too. The fourth wall was blue thermopane and had a door leading out to a porch. Through the thermopane there was a view of evergreens on the left and a copse of Grecian plane trees on the right. This room had been Limerock’s study, I thought, and it showed a side of Limerock the world had never seen.
Davisa Tyler entered from the porch. The change in her was startling. She looked her age now, which was probably sixty. She walked with a little stoop, so that it was hard to tell she stood six feet tall. Her purposeful, arrogant mouth had gone slack. Her eyes were deep in black sockets below the ridges of bone on her brow. When she spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper.
“Did you see him die?” she said.
“I was there.”
“Who did it?”
“An Arab. He’s dead too.”
“You can say what you want. It was Fawzia Totah.”
Moses came with drinks. Mine was a highball and Davisa’s looked straight. She drank it like tea and Moses went out and returned with the bottle. She filled her glass halfway and drank again. Moses hovered. He was there if Davisa needed him. Thunder rolled far away. Moses cocked an ear as if it were telling him something.
“It was Fawzia Totah,” Davisa said again. “It was that no-good whore.”
“If you already know,” I said, “why ask me?”
“Did he lay her, at least? God, how he wanted to get that little belly dancer.”
“I’ll tell you who it was,” I said. “It wasn’t Fawzia Totah. It was you.”
“Hit him, Moses,” Davisa said.
Moses let out a reluctant breath and hooked his left hand at my face. I parried it and he drove his right fist with all his strength into my belly. I didn’t have time to parry that. The only thing I felt was the bile in my throat, which made me gag. Everything else was numb. I fell, and didn’t feel that either. Moses dragged me over to the wall and propped me up there. Davisa said, “I don’t know why you told me a thing like that. I want you to tell me the truth.”
“Which truth?” I said when I could talk again.
“Better tell her, mister,” Moses said. “Whatever she wants to know.” He bent down and took the Magnum .357 from my shoulder rig. He stuck it in the waistband of his tuxedo trousers.
I stood up before I should have. The room spun like a roulette wheel. But I smiled at Davisa and smiled at Moses and gave him my right fist exactly where he had given me his. Moses clutched his stomach and leaned forward and I could have put him down with one to the jaw; but instead I let him clinch with me long enough for me to retrieve the Magnum and then I stepped back. He staggered across the room and fell down against one of the bookshelves.
“Now, then,” I said to Davisa. “Where were we?”
Moses stood up. He was holding a small .32 revolver with a pearl handle. It was so small in his enormous hand I wasn’t sure if he could get his finger through the trigger guard. He said, “I shall be holding this at all times, so please don’t be foolish and reach for yours.”
“I won’t be foolish,” I said.
“I boxed in the Army championships,” Moses said, “but no one ever hit me like that.”
I have been fighting all my life but no one had ever hit me like Moses had.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Davisa croaked. “No preaching. I don’t want you to preach to me. Just tell me what happened as you saw it.”
I told her about the tent in the Valley of Arafat. I gave her all of it and no one interrupted me. Then I said, “I could have saved his life for you, Mrs. Tyler, if you had let me. There would have been no need to send me after Fawzia and your son for five thousand dollars because they would still be here.” I took out the certified check and held it out to her. “You’re morally responsible.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I can’t take your money.”
She refused to take the check. I let it fall to the floor. Moses retrieved it and pocketed it.
“Why?” Davisa said. “Why? Five thousand dollars is a lot of money to you. We both know that.”
“Because there’s more to the story. Because I don’t feel I’ve earned the money until I tell you the whole story.”
“All right. Tell me.”
“But if I tell you the whole story, I can’t take any money from you. Do you want to hear the story, Mrs. Tyler?”
“I don’t know.”
“I could have saved his life,” I said. “That’s not what I came here to tell you and I don’t expect any medals. But it wouldn’t have been necessary if you hadn’t told Izzed-een Shafik to kill Fawzia.”
“Well, Shafik didn’t kill her. I’m not guilty of anything. Listen here, Chester, and get this straight. I don’t feel responsible for what happened. Fawzia was no good for Limerock; that’s why I wanted her killed. Limerock died because he went with Fawzia on the Hajj. It’s a hell of a way to prove my point, but I am obviously not responsible. Did I want Limerock to go on that Hajj? Did I?”
“I see,” I said. “Compartments. Like mother, like son. But you haven’t heard all of it. So far, you feel perfectly justified. You grieve for your son, but then, you did your best. Is that it?”
“That’s it. What else have you got?”
“A man named Lew Lash. Know the name?”
“Yes. He’s coming here today. Limerock owed him some money. I don’t know what it was for, but Limerock’s debts will be honored.”
“I can tell you what it’s for,” I said. “Lash is collecting on a debt Limerock owed him for helping Limerock get out of the country.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Why don’t you ask Lash when he gets here?”
“Maybe I wi
ll.”
“Maybe you’ll be afraid to, because you helped Lash. You told him about me, didn’t you?”
“He said he wanted to help you.”
“Oh, sure. To help me.”
“Anyway, that had nothing to do with Limerock’s death.”
“The hell it didn’t,” I lied. “How do you think Lash found us?” I went on. “How do you think he was able to get your boy away from me? Because you fingered me, Mrs. Tyler.” One lie, and one omission. It was Lasitter who had fingered me for Lash, not Davisa. Davisa had led him to me originally, but that had only meant a visit to my office and an attempted bribe. Lash found out about Massanutten Mountain only when Lasitter turned on me.
Davisa was silent now.
I said, “Thanks to you, Lash found us. Otherwise, I would have kept your boy in this country. He’d be alive today. But he’s dead because you told Lash about me.”
“But what else could I do?” Davisa whined. “I thought he would help you. He was just another private detective, like you. Why should he want to do what he did?”
“That threw me at first,” I said, “so I called someone I knew in the Department of the Army. During the war, Lash was in Iran. We had supply pipelines pouring lendlease aid into Russia across Iran. Izzed-een Shafik was in Iran too. The Army told me that Shafik was born in Brooklyn, which has a large Syrian population. The Army knows about him because he lived there until the war, then somehow got out of the country to escape the draft. They don’t know how. It doesn’t matter now. When he pops up again, he’s a Jordan national, British-trained, an expert in supply. There’s a war to be fought, so bygones are bygones. Izzed-een goes to work for Uncle Sam, not because he likes Uncle Sam but because he likes the U.S.S.R., which we supplied via Iran and also on the north by way of convoys to Murmansk. You get the picture?”
“Yes, but what has all that to do with Limerock?”
“Shafik met Lash in Iran,” I said. “They became friends. The Umma at that time was pro-Nazi, so getting lendlease supplies across Iran wasn’t exactly a tea party.”
“But wasn’t Shafik a member of the Umma? I thought you said he liked Russia.”
Mecca for Murder Page 17