Belden didn’t answer that, just pawed at the air and made a face like a kid about to cry.
“Get the hell out of here, Hammer! You’re free and clear, but if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t leave town till further notice, or we might come looking for you… and you could get dragged back punched full of holes. You know all about that, like you seem to know about a lot of other things, don’t you?”
I understood. Go, but stay. Keep handy, while the boys dig up somebody the blonde might have seen who wasn’t me at all. Be available so they could give me back my room with its trick electric lock that was reserved for very special customers. I took a real long haul on the butt and flipped it into the desk ashtray.
“I’m not going anywhere, Chief,” I said. “Anyway, I got things to do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I leaned both hands on his desk. “It means, you got played for a sucker and I got made a patsy. Maybe that’s fine with you, but I don’t like it. Me, I make a habit of evening scores, and I’ll be enjoying the friendly ways of Killington until I settle this one.”
The red in his face even overtook the purple now. He shook a thick finger at me and blurted, “You stay the hell out of police business, Hammer!”
“You’re forgetting one thing, Belden.”
“Yeah?”
I found one more grin—a really nasty one. “You’re the one who made me police business.”
He was thinking about that, the red not fading, as I went out.
* * *
It was still raining, so I waited for a minute on the police station stoop beneath an overhang, hoping for a cab. None came by, so I shrugged and stepped down to the sidewalk. My footsteps splashed a little. The rain was cooling and at least it didn’t smell like fish. Nobody bothered to tail me. Why should they? Hell, this town wasn’t big enough to hide in.
I got as far as the corner when I saw her. She was in a yellow two-door Ford Super De Luxe convertible, the top up, sitting on the passenger side with the window rolled down just far enough to let the smoke drift out. Nobody was in there with her.
Was she waiting for me?
I walked around to the driver’s side, found the door unlocked, climbed in behind the wheel and shut myself in.
“Hello, Miss Charles.”
She said nothing. Didn’t even look at me. With her cigarette regally in hand, smoke escaping lush dark-red lips, she was the picture of sophistication.
I said, “I’ll start working on ways to thank you.”
She didn’t respond so I started the engine.
I asked, “Where to?”
Now she looked at me. Just looked, the lovely face registering nothing at all. “To the courthouse.”
“Okay. I owe you chauffeur service, at least. But I don’t know my way around this town.”
She looked at the rain-streamed windshield and nodded. “It’s straight ahead.”
I made a face at her. “I’m not much on courthouses. They remind me of D.A.s and cops and things. Pick a better spot.”
Nodding back in the direction I came, she said, “I can pick the one you just left… unless you drive us to the courthouse.”
Those gray eyes were set off by matching eyeshadow. A fairly heavy, lightly plucked brown eyebrow hiked over her right eye.
I had a strange feeling that I might know what she was up to. But that seemed crazy. I did owe her some attention, considering. So I shoved the car in gear, started up the wipers, and pulled away from the curb.
My pretty blonde liked getting her own way. But what did she want with the likes of me? She didn’t have much of a memory, if she’d already forgotten I was just some bum off a freight car. Memory? Hell, I wouldn’t call it that at all. Imagination, maybe, but not memory.
She never saw me anywhere before, especially not in some hash house. If she had been there, I never would have been tossing a line at that streaky-blonde waitress. Maybe her story set the cops on their tails, but she wasn’t getting far with me.
“And why the courthouse?” I asked her politely.
The cigarette made a vague gesture, her eyes on the rain-flecked windshield again.
“We’re going to be married,” she said.
“Oh.”
We drove half a block, the wipers providing percussive rhythm.
“What,” I said, “and you figure this is your chance to try something new?”
Nothing from her.
I added, “Like find out what a sex killer is like in the sack maybe?”
Her slap caught me in the mouth and damn near smashed the rest of my lips to a pulp. I jerked my head back in time to miss the next one, a little fist this time, and I caught the crazy look of fear and hate that pulled her cheeks tight before my hand cupped her chin and shoved her back. It rocked her against her door and I finished the job with the brakes, bracing myself while she pitched toward the windshield, catching herself rudely on the dash.
I pulled over.
She was too stunned to talk for a good minute, and if I hadn’t seen the tears in her eyes, I would have shaken her like the spoiled child I guessed she was.
“Try smacking me just once more, sis,” I said, “and you’re going to get paddled but good.”
She glanced at me in alarm. Maybe she really didn’t have panties on under that green dress.
“Not even a blonde pulls that stunt more than once with me,” I said, working to keep the anger down, “even when they lie me out of a jam. I admit I owe you, but I’m nobody’s punching bag. Get that in your head and keep it there… Now, do you want to go back where you came from, or do you still want the courthouse?”
She wouldn’t look at me. She put one hand to her chin and kept it there, as if checking it were still intact. “The courthouse. Please.”
Please.
“Well, that’s better,” I said. Then I shrugged. “It’s your wedding, but you’re a sucker to do it, wealthy kid like you. If you’re really hankering for the experience, I could pay you off free, no trouble.”
“You son of a bitch,” she said, mouth trembling, eyes wetter than the windshield, little fists in her lap. “You damn dirty son of a bitch.”
“Say that again, baby, and I’ll kiss you. Girls who talk dirty drive me wild.”
Her eyes got wide. They sure were gray. The dress stretched tighter across the high rise of her breasts and her head shook briefly.
Roughhouse she could stand, but by all means don’t kiss her. What a hell of a game this was getting to be.
Lucky for her I didn’t believe in long engagements.
CHAPTER FIVE
In a way I was wrong about that long engagement.
This one was going to last a whole three days. The bald little man in the bow tie said so, shutting down any notion of Melba Charles and me just stepping up to a city hall counter and getting hitched. He took down our life history in brief, accepted the three bucks I passed through the window, handed us a medical form to have filled out, and said to come back on Friday, if we were both physically fit and still wanted a civil wedding.
All that without taking his eyes from the counter, then—still filling out the paperwork—he said, softly but pointedly, “Your father isn’t going to like this, Miss Charles.”
The look Melba gave the top of his head wasn’t exactly friendly. “I stated my age as twenty-nine. You needn’t advise me about anything.”
The pinched face with the little round wireframe glasses came up to confront her stern expression. “That may be the case, Miss Charles, but I feel it’s only prudent that I—”
“Can it, Mac,” I said.
His eyes seemed to retreat into his head, as he wondered whether to be afraid or offended, then seemed to settle for both as he returned to the form he was completing. You could bet, the minute we went out, he’d be on the phone to the powerful man who made everybody in this town jump.
I guess by now the rest of the story had got around. A killer had been shaken loose on the Se
nator’s daughter’s say-so. I was alibied out and the law had to let me go, but it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to the public. I was their boy, wrapped up and delivered in a blood-red ribbon by the local rags.
But the rags weren’t all. This was the kind of town, neither big nor small really—what, maybe fifty thousand fine citizens?— that had a grapevine consisting of party-line gossips, water-cooler know-it-alls and street-corner rumormongers. Twenty minutes since I got sprung, and the town already knew all about it. Another twenty and my impending nuptials would be everywhere. A great place, Killington. Really swell.
In the corridor, I took the blonde by the arm, friendly but firm. A snake might have bitten her the way she jerked away.
“I don’t like to be pawed,” she said coldly, though the gray eyes blazed.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Let’s go.”
“…where?”
“A doctor, kid. You tell me which one and where. We need blood samples, remember?”
Her mouth tightened just enough to give it a look of wry condescension. But nothing could ever make a mouth like hers anything but beautiful. No matter how she twisted them, those were the most kissable lips you ever saw. Full. Ripe. Damp and hungry-looking. A mouth that wanted to taste you, and that you wanted to taste back.
She could give me her society girl sass but I already knew a warm woman was under there, waiting. What I didn’t know was whether she was waiting for me. What exactly she had in mind for yours truly, besides my name on a marriage certificate, remained to be seen.
She knew where to go. She had every single detail mapped out. The doctor was waiting, went through the formalities and told us he’d send the report in at once. He seemed to have something to say but was afraid to let it out. The shaded distaste in his eyes was the same as the little four-eyed guy in the courthouse, though he was not inclined to put it into words.
I was starting to get just a little bit sick of this.
But what choice did I have? If she changed her story, withdrew her identification, I would be slammed back in a cell, with a ticket to the pen and a date with the hot squat. I would go along, for now anyway, till I found out what the hell this was about…
At twenty minutes to twelve, we left the doctor’s office. The sky was rumbling but the rain had slackened some, enough for us to trot across to where the car was parked. We were halfway across the street when thunder cracked and the puddle to my left parted in the middle, as if an invisible board had smacked it.
Only that hadn’t been thunder.
I pitched forward, rolled into Melba’s legs, taking her down, and was at her side to brace her when she hit the pavement. She started to claw at her dress, in some spasm of modesty, but I shoved her under the front bumper before she could get the hemline down and she lay there swearing into the rain while she called me every lousy thing she could think of.
I waited a minute, then took a look around the right front tire. This street with its facing row of office buildings was deserted, the gray wet world out there home only to very light traffic, mournful headlights poking through a midday made evening by weeping clouds. I stood up and, for just a second, made a nice target just to be sure.
All it did was rain.
Behind me came the sound of tearing cloth. Melba, trying to dislodge her dress from where it got caught on the bumper, was cursing. At me.
I said, “Will you shut the hell up?”
“Don’t you tell me—”
“Get in the car. Stay low!”
“…What?”
“Do it!”
I gave her a shove that ripped her dress loose from the bumper guard, then crawled around to the passenger door and opened it. She slipped inside, crept over and got behind the wheel and I pulled the door shut after me.
Wiping my wet palms off on a nearly-as-wet shirtfront, I said, “Gimme a cigarette.”
“They’re in the glove compartment.”
I reached in for the deck, shook one loose and stuck it in my mouth. When I held out the pack to her, she turned her head away and said something I didn’t catch. Maybe it was just as well, because it couldn’t have been nice.
First, I lit the butt. When I had all the smoke in me I wanted, I said, “You know, maybe now I don’t have to marry you after all.”
Her eyes asked the question.
I shrugged, smiled some. “Could be we’re even. Could be I just settled the score.”
Her eyes got a little wider. My lord, they were a pretty gray.
“You got me out of a murder rap,” I said. “So I’m obligated… or was. In case you missed it, that little tumble on your tummy I gave you probably saved your life.”
“What are you—”
“Somebody took a shot at us.”
I thought with that I might have gotten more expression out of those big gorgeous eyes. I didn’t. They did the same thing as when they first saw me; they just looked.
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“Am I?”
My hand found the door handle and opened it. I stepped out and walked to the puddle. I pointed and she opened the driver’s door to lean out and see.
The groove on the concrete under the water was like a white chalk mark about eight inches long, a skinny finger pointing right to the curbstone and the little blob of mashed lead I was looking for. I went over, picked up the irregular slug, walked back to the car and got in.
I opened my hand. “Pretty, isn’t it? Offhand, I’d say it was caliber .38 and damn good shooting, considering it was a handgun at some distance.”
This time I got something from the eyes—lovely gray eyes that were a little anxious and a little afraid at the same time. “We’re… we’re not even.”
“Aren’t we?”
She didn’t have to say it. I knew exactly what was coming and she could have saved herself the trouble. “You didn’t save my life, not if somebody was shooting at you.”
Then it was my turn to say the obvious. “Were they, Blondie?”
The raindrops in her hair sparkled. It matched the wetness of her mouth and the glints of anger in her eyes. She said, “I’m thinking that maybe it wasn’t you I saw in that diner the other night. I’m thinking I ought to tell the District Attorney so.”
I gave her a showy shrug. “I’m thinking you didn’t see me the other night either, kid. So I’ll call you on it. Take me back and we’ll tell the D.A. about it.”
I leaned back against the seat cushion, took a last drag on the butt, and dropped it out the window.
“You’re clever, aren’t you?” she asked softly.
I nodded. “Clever is a good word for it, sugar. Shrewd is even better. No beautiful babe is going to haul a bum out of a murder rap unless she wants him for something… and I’m betting you want me for something.”
The last grin I had in me met a frozen stare.
“Any time you want to go back to jail,” she said, “say the word.”
Who was calling whose bluff ?
“Un-uh,” I said. “No, I’ll stick around a while. I got me an awful curiosity. I’m waiting to hear the rest of the proposition. It must be a honey. Now take me someplace. You play pretty chauffeur—I don’t know the town well enough to do the job justice.”
Amusement almost registered on the lush lips. “Where to?”
“First to a fleabag where I left my baggage the other night.”
Very businesslike, she kicked the engine over, snatched the shift lever into low and jerked out into the street. A lot of leg was showing, thanks to her ripped dress, and she didn’t seem to care. I certainly didn’t mind.
I told her where I thought the place was and she turned off into a series of side streets, met an intersection and swung left. I spotted the bar where the trouble all started, picked out the sign over the doorway of the hotel, and nudged her to stop.
The bleary-eyed clerk looked at me, trying to place my face. His clip-on bow tie was hanging again, but on the other side, real loose, as
if that scab was finally ready to fall off. The cigarette he had going actually had tobacco in it this time.
I gave him my room number and said, “I never made it back. I got a bag up there.”
He gave me a look like I was nuts. “She ain’t there now, mister.”
“I mean a real bag.”
He checked the number again, muttered, “Oh,” under his breath, then went in back and returned with my overnight case.
“You’re lucky, pal,” the clerk said. “One more day and this woulda got sold. You owe me a buck for storage.”
He got a buck and I got the bag. I went back out to the street and tossed the case in the back seat and closed myself in. There was still something else to do—the important something.
I told Blondie to ease down the street and, when I came to the spot I was looking for, hopped out again and went down the cellar steps and poked around the cracks in the cement, trying not to let anxiety take over.
It’ll be here, I told myself. No reason for it not to be.
And it was, all right—thirty thousand bucks in brand-new thousand-dollar bills. Relief flooded through me like sunny warmth on this dismal damp day.
This one thing going right—the reason I’d come to this lousy burg in the first place—was what really counted.
I stuffed the packet in my shirt.
Melba looked at me curiously when I got back in the car. Maybe it was the relieved satisfaction on my face that got her thinking.
Her eyes became suspicious slits, the gray peeking out. “What was that about?”
“Not your business.”
“You are my business, Mr. Hammer.”
I grinned at her. “Once we’re hitched, Miss Charles, we may want to switch to first names.”
She was shaking her head slowly, the arcs of white hair swinging just a little. “I don’t know what you were up to over there, but I don’t like it.”
“And I don’t care. I wasn’t trying to please you.” I gestured toward the rain-spattered windshield. “Okay, it’s your show now, so let’s get on with it.”
* * *
The little shingled cottage was about five miles outside of town with a graveled drive leading in from a blacktop road. The impression I got, mostly from the overgrown grounds, was that nobody had used this place in some time. And also that it was nothing special.
Killing Town Page 6