‘One state’s repealed it here – Illinois,’ he told her. ‘That’s why the bar Woods worked in is called the Springfield – it’s named in honour of the state capital.’
‘Ah, I see . . . anyway, my point is that it’s very much an underground society, secretive and defensive and quite hostile to police and law enforcement generally. It’s what’s known as a group conditioned response.’
‘Wow. Quite the expert.’
She shook her head. ‘Not really. I did a first-year paper on sexual repression in society when I was at Cambridge. But Woods has manipulated this repression of homosexuals to his own benefit. He came up with a convincing story about being set up by police in Texas and won everyone’s sympathy and support because a lot of them will have experienced a similar injustice, or know someone who has. If the story had been true and the police had arrived with a warrant for his arrest, his new friends would have done everything they could to protect him – lie, obfuscate, get a warning to him if he wasn’t there at the time.’
She took a deep breath.
‘SO . . .’ she continued, ‘I think that just before he was unmasked – which he had advance warning of, we now know – he conned someone, almost certainly a customer because all the bar staff are accounted for, into letting him stay at their house or apartment. He’ll be there now, when he’s not prowling the streets murdering prostitutes.’
He nodded. ‘I’m with you there. But let’s not get on to the last killing just yet. Tell me more, if you can, about his hiding place.’
She pushed a stray strand of hair from her eyes and despite the subject under discussion, Lee’s heart lurched. God, she was lovely. The hell with being on call in this dump, tonight he’d hold her in his arms, even if he did have to park his two-way radio under the bed.
She was frowning, entirely unaware of his thoughts.
‘Well . . . as I said, whether it’s an apartment or a house, it’s got to be the home of one of the men who drink at the Springfield Tavern. I can’t see it being anyone else. Do the police here keep a record of known homosexuals and where they live? They do in a lot of places in America.’
He sighed. ‘They used to have one, but not any more. They dropped the practice around the mid to late 1940s, apparently. Someone’s gone down to records to see if they can find the last list that was put together. Don’t hold your breath, Stella – I’ve seen the records department here. To say it’s chaotic would be a compliment.’
‘OK.’ She rooted through her bag. ‘Damn. I left my cigarettes at the hotel. May I have one of yours, Lee?’
‘Sure.’ He lit two; one for her. ‘So, where were we?’
She inhaled deeply and the smoke exited from her mouth and nose as she replied.
‘I think you have to go back to the Springfield and ask the owner for any names and addresses he can give you of men who drink there. But you’ll have your work cut out. As I said, by necessity it’s pretty much a secret society.’
He smoked thoughtfully for a while before asking: ‘Assuming you’re right – about him talking his way into a customer’s home, and I think you are – what’ll have happened to that guy?’
‘Oh come on, Lee, it’s obvious. He’ll have killed him on the spot. He won’t have bothered to tie him up and keep him prisoner or anything like that. The trouble is it’s still only forty-eight hours since Woods’s cover was blown. That’s probably a bit too soon to ask if any regulars at the Springfield have stopped showing up.’
‘It’s worth a try,’ he said crisply. ‘This is all good stuff, Stella. You’re concentrating my mind here. Straight after the press conference I’m going to the Springfield to talk to the owner, this—’ he consulted the notes in front of him – ‘yeah, this Tom Bilson guy. Ben Moss said he was pretty co-operative, actually. More scared of Woods showing up there again than he is of us.’
‘Well, that’s a help,’ she said. ‘Shall I come with you? He might feel a bit less intimidated with a woman there.’
‘Good idea.’ Lee stood up. ‘Right, I’ve got some men to marshal and I need to see that the roadblock and boat checks are still working on the top line. What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll go back to the hotel, have an early lunch and freshen up for this blasted news conference.’
He winced. ‘Sorry.’
‘The Courier man is picking me up at two-thirty so I’ll probably be at the town hall a bit before you.’
He shook his head. ‘Oh no, I’m not leaving you unsupported for a second – as soon as those waiting pressmen see you they’ll all be pestering you for exclusives like bees swarming round a honeypot. I’ll be there prompt at half past two and I’ll wait on the steps for you so we can both go in together.’
‘Thank you,’ she said gratefully, moving forward to hug him. ‘Now, what kind of car did he say we’ll be in . . . a Ford something or other. Green and white, I think he said. A sort of station wagon, what we call estate cars at home.’
‘Sounds like a Country Sedan to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for it.’
He kissed her. ‘Gotta go. See you at two-thirty. Good luck with the interview.’
‘Do you know,’ she told him over her shoulder as she left for her hotel, ‘I think I’m actually beginning to look forward to that part of it.’
66
He lunched on tinned soup but ate it upstairs. The smell coming from the cellar was getting worse and was pretty noticeable in the kitchen now. It didn’t bother him that much, but when it came to eating he preferred to do it in untainted air.
The car looked good as new. He was right, it was a ’57 but had only been driven a couple of thousand miles since leaving the dealership forecourt. The thing was barely run in.
He’d wiped a damp cloth over the seats and the insides of the windows, which he’d then rolled down to air the cabin. It smelled pretty musty after all those months sealed up in the garage.
It was a little after two o’clock and soon it would be time to leave for La Concha and what he’d begun thinking of as his ‘rendezvous with a rose’. He liked words, and playing with them. Sometimes he wondered what it would have been like to be a writer.
He went into the living room and gathered up an armful of books from the shelves – dog-eared paperbacks, hardbacks, a few big coffee-table books of coloured photos of the Florida Keys – and staggered with them to the car, where he piled them on to the front passenger seat. He didn’t want her sitting alongside him and maybe recognising him. From behind he would look anonymous enough, especially wearing the yachting cap he’d found in a drawer and the pair of tortoiseshell Ray-Bans he’d taken from the guy’s dressing table.
He was wearing a loose-fitting cream linen suit – about the only non-flamboyant item in the dead man’s entire wardrobe – and an open-necked cotton shirt. He checked himself in the full-length mirror in the hall, before which his victim had doubtless preened and twirled on countless occasions.
Actually, he now decided, he probably could have risked her using the passenger seat after all. The hat and sunglasses and emerging stubble after two days without shaving made a pretty big difference to his appearance. Never mind. Better safe than sorry.
He remembered to bring the carrier bag with the pad and chloroform in it, and checked that the coast was clear before leaving the house and going to the garage. The car started first time and he pulled out onto the street. He glanced at his watch as he headed towards the junction with the main road a couple of hundred yards up ahead.
Twenty past the hour. He’d be there in five minutes. If she was on time, they’d be back at the house in fifteen.
This was going to be the best thing he had ever done in his life, better than that day in Korea, better than the peaches up in Key Largo.
He shivered with excitement.
67
Lee checked his watch for the seventh time.
Almost three o’clock. Where the heck was she? There’d been no sign of the car she described to him. He to
ok one last look down Duval before going into the hall to announce to the assembled journalists (he’d been right earlier – there weren’t nearly as many as they’d expected) that the conference would have to be delayed by half an hour. They’d grumbled a bit but he knew they’d be fine when Stella got here. If she got here.
He’d been back out on the steps for a good ten minutes getting increasingly worried when a voice behind him said: ‘Any news, boss? The natives are gettin’ restless.’
It was his sergeant.
‘Hi, Ben. No, nothing. Maybe this Stewart guy’s abducted her so he can get the scoop and . . .’
Abducted. Why had he said that?
The uneasiness he had been feeling threatened to mushroom into something else entirely. The expression on his face must have given him away because Moss looked at him with concern. ‘You OK, sir? You look like you just saw a ghost.’
Lee stood stock-still for a few moments, thinking furiously and trying to keep his rising panic in check.
Finally he spoke.
‘You stay here, Ben, in case she shows up. I’m going to make a phone call.’
He ran into the town hall and headed for the administration office. When he got there he flashed his badge at the woman behind reception: ‘I need you to call the Courier’s Key Largo office right now, please, ma’am. When you get through ask for the news editor and then give me the phone. This is real urgent.’
‘Sure, hon,’ the woman said in a tone that implied she’d seen and heard it all before.
A minute later she was handing him the phone. ‘There you go.’
He tried not to snatch it from her hand.
‘This Agent Lee Foster, FBI down in Key West. Am I speaking with the news editor?’
‘Yup. What can I do you for, Mr Foster?’
‘Have you sent one of your reporters down here for the Keys Killer press conference today?’
‘No. I was going to, but this missile thing’s kinda messed up my schedule for the day, maybe everyone’s for all eternity. We’ll be taking the conference copy from the wire service.’
Lee’s world began to fold in on him.
‘I want to be absolutely clear on this. Have you sent one of your men, Henry Stewart, down to Key West for any other reason, maybe on a story? I believe he’s driving a cream and green Ford Country Sedan.’
The news editor laughed.
‘Sir, I can state with absolute certainty that Henry Stewart is nowhere near Key West today. In fact, he’s sitting right here behind this desk. I’m Henry Stewart. And furthermore, I drive a Dodge. I happen to think Fords are a pile of crap.’
With infinite slowness, Lee handed the receiver back to the receptionist.
‘Oh dear God,’ he asked her, in a voice so quiet she could barely hear him, ‘what have I done?’
68
Stella saw the car approaching the steps leading up to the hotel lobby and waved at its driver. He flashed his headlights in response and pulled up a few yards past her at the kerb.
The windows were down – the car didn’t look expensive enough to have air-conditioning – and as she walked towards it he twisted around in his seat, craning his head low in the gap between the front seats so he could see her. It was dark inside the car in contrast to the sunshine that drenched the street, and all she could really see of him was a peaked cap that made him look more like a taxi driver than a journalist.
‘You’ll have to ride in the back, Stella,’ he said loudly as she drew close. ‘I stopped by the second-hand bookstore this morning and as usual I got carried away. The seat next to me’s piled high with books that I’ll probably regret buying by this time tomorrow.’
‘That’s OK,’ she said, opening the back door and climbing in. ‘You sound like me – I have more books than I know what to do with. Even so, I’m arranging to have a trunk-load of them shipped over from England. Must be mad.’
She closed the door with her left hand and stuck out her right. ‘Stella Arnold.’
He was checking his mirror before pulling out into traffic and put his own hand over his shoulder without turning around.
‘Henry Stewart. Pleased to meet you, and thanks for doing this.’
‘It’s a pleasure. I only hope I can give you something you can use.’
He suddenly coughed. When he’d recovered, he apologised. ‘It’s the grippe. Hope I don’t pass it on to you.’
‘Oh, I had my summer cold a month ago,’ she said. ‘What do you make of this Cuba thing?’
She saw him shake his head. ‘It’s just blind panic. Soon as I’ve done this with you my paper wants me to interview the mayor of Key West. People here are freaking out, lots of crazy talk about being invaded – Christ knows who by – or the air base here being nuked. Personally, I think it’ll all blow over just fine.’
‘Me too,’ Stella agreed. ‘Anyway, we haven’t much time. I suppose you’d better start asking me some questions. What do you want to know?’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ he told her. ‘This ain’t much of a way to do an interview. There’s a quiet street just up here. I’ll park up and get in the back with my reel-to-reel so we can talk face to face.’
‘Fine, but remember I only have a few minutes.’
‘Sure.’
He turned into the street. It was the same one in which he’d murdered the hooker. He drove to the same patch of deserted waste ground and stopped the car.
‘Hold on, Stella, I’ll just get my stuff.’
‘OK.’
He climbed out with his bag and looked around. There were a couple of people walking up the street about fifty yards from the car but they were headed away from him. With his back to Stella’s window, he removed the chloroform and cotton pad and drenched it in the chemical.
‘Sorry,’ he called to her. ‘Just threading up the tape. All done now.’
He walked around to the other side of the car and climbed in the back next to her.
‘So,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Let’s get started. Question one. Ever been chloroformed?’
He yanked her head back by the hair and crammed the soaking pad over the lower half of her face.
Stella’s eyes widened above it as she stared at him in shock and terror.
‘John Henry Woods at your service, Stella. Have a nice sleep. I’ll see you when you wake up.’
Her eyes rolled back to the whites.
69
Lee pelted back to the steps of the town hall as fast as he could run.
Ben was still there. The big man was staring up Duval Street and shielding his eyes against a sun that was beginning to drop noticeably lower in the sky as the afternoon wore on.
‘Ben! Ben! He’s taken her!’
The sergeant wheeled around. ‘What? Come again, sir?’
‘Woods has abducted Stella Arnold. He impersonated a newspaper reporter, set up a fake interview, and he’s got her. God knows where, but he’s got her. I’m certain of it. And I agreed the interview, Ben! This is all my fault!’
The sergeant stared at him for a moment. He was even taller than Lee, a reassuringly substantial figure, in his mid-forties and with a kindly face that nevertheless managed to communicate an inner toughness. He looked like the kind of cop who’d probably seen it all before. Now he placed large hands gently on the younger – and senior – man’s shoulders.
‘Right. Now calm down, Lee, and let’s take it from the top. You’re on the edge of panic and that’s not going to solve anything. When was this interview arranged and how do you know it was a set-up?’
With an almost superhuman effort, Lee managed to force back the waves of icy dread that were threatening to engulf him and freeze his mind.
‘Stella got a phone call at her hotel last night. I was with her – we were having dinner together. It was about eight o’clock, an hour or so after JFK’s TV address . . .’
By the time he’d finished, Ben had taken out his pad and was scribbling notes.
‘And you’re sure this He
nry Stewart you just spoke to was the real deal? No chance of a mix-up?’
‘None. I’m telling you, Ben – Woods has her.’
‘OK . . . assuming the pick-up took place at two-thirty, she’s only been with him for approximately forty-five minutes. I’m going to radio an immediate stop-on-sight for the car.’ He checked his notes. ‘A green and cream Ford Country Sedan, right?’
‘Right.’
Without wasting another second, Ben put out the call to all units. When he’d finished, he turned to his boss.
‘That’s done. Now, sir, I suggest you take five to just—’
‘It’s OK, Ben, I’m back on the horse – thanks to you. I know what I need to do. One of the last things Stella said to me this morning was that she thought the key to where Woods is hiding lies in his pretence at being homosexual. She and I were going to go to the Springfield Tavern after the press conference to re-interview the owner, see if he was holding anything back, or if he’s remembered something that he doesn’t think is all that important. Do you have a spare radio?’
Ben reached behind his back and unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt.
‘There you go.’
‘Thanks. If I get anything out of him, I’ll call you right away. If we find the car, radio me immediately. In the meantime get every man we’ve got out looking for that car or any sign of Stella.’
‘Yes, sir. And the news conference?’
‘Cancel it. All they really want to write about is Cuba anyway.’
Lee turned to leave for the Springfield, barely two hundred yards up the street. He intended to run every step of the way.
‘Sir?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m real sorry about this, sir.’
‘Not as sorry as that piece of shit’s going to be when I get my hands on him.’
The Way You Look Tonight Page 25