I got some coffee going. Cream of Wheat was in the cupboard and I boiled some water and got a couple servings of that going, too. She came out yawning, stretching, the white-blonde hair nicely askew, the curves wrapped up in a pink terry-cloth robe that couldn’t have looked better unless you were tearing it off of her.
She seemed amused seeing me at it in the kitchen. “Maybe you’ll make a good husband, after all.”
I gave her the lopsided grin. “Don’t push your luck. I hope you socialites like it black, ’cause there’s no cream.”
“Black is fine.”
“There’s sugar, of course.”
“No need.”
She sat at the little maple table and I served her up, then joined her.
“I may be away much of the day,” I said.
“Your friend’s wife need that much attention, does she?”
“I want to buy some things. Drive around and get to know your charming town a little better. Why don’t you do like you threatened and pick up some groceries. I’ll let you make supper.”
“This isn’t bad,” she said, sampling a spoonful of the hot cereal.
“It’ll be better with milk. Be sure to pick some up.”
She grinned. The first time, a nice grin with fine white teeth in it. “We’re like an old married couple.”
“Yeah. We don’t have sex, either.”
She tried to frown at that, but then she could only laugh. “You like steak? I’ll get you some steak. How about a nice big juicy T-bone?”
“Naw. Make it filet mignon. What’s the use of having a rich wife if you can’t go first class?”
She took the first shower, and I stayed out in the kitchen listening to the sound of it, imagining what she must look like in there, wishing I were the soap. When she came out in the pink terry-cloth wrap again, a towel turbaned over wet hair, I collected my shaving kit and a change of clothes from my battered excuse for a suitcase and had my own shower. A cold one.
When I emerged, Melba had keys for me—to the car in the garage and the cottage.
“Stay out of trouble, Mike,” she said.
Something like actual concern was in there. Of course, she had some special kind of need for me that I didn’t understand yet. I just knew it wasn’t the kind of need a man wants a woman like her to have for him.
Still, hearing her say, “Mike,” wasn’t bad at all.
Like the cottage, the garage was a shingled affair that didn’t look like much. But the “old Packard” turned out to be a silver-gray 1940 180 Club Sedan, as beautiful as the blonde who considered this a “second” car. I got in and started it up and that baby purred. The seats were pleated and plush—there was plush carpeting, too—and when I pulled out and guided the buggy around to the gravel road, I felt like I was sitting on a comfy couch and somehow driving at the same time.
Suddenly marrying a fish cannery owner’s daughter had yet another appeal.
The only bad thing about it was, I looked like somebody who would have stolen a car like this. I would have to do something about that.
* * *
As soon as I hit town, it started looking like rain again. The highway turned into the main drag, Broadway, at the dingy end of which I found a row of pawnshops. In the first one I tried, a friendly old guy with Coke-bottle glasses, a mangy sweater vest and a witch’s mole sold me a .45 Colt automatic with a well-worn shoulder sling and a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver with a new ankle holster. He giggled, thinking about the fun a youngster like me was clearly about to have.
That had swallowed a hundred bucks whole, but a bargain considering, and a sporting goods store in a more presentable section of Broadway was happy to sell me boxes of ammunition. I asked for an oversized sack and, back in the car, put the holstered guns in the sack, leaving the ammo behind.
I kept the sack with me when I dropped by a haberdashery in the most respectable stretch of the street. I had to try several suits on in the dressing room to find one with a fit that would accommodate the shoulder-holstered .45. All of the pants were fine for the ankle one. I bought an extra suit in the same size and cut, and also picked up a couple of neckties, a felt hat and a trench-style raincoat.
Back on the street, even the sodden gray clouds and the fragrance of fish couldn’t keep me from feeling—for the first time in this damn town—like myself again.
Maybe that was why next I tooled the Packard to the police station, feeling almost cocky. Not so cocky that I didn’t leave the weapons in the car, though. I didn’t have the paper along to prove it, but I was licensed to carry in this state, so if push came to shove, I could do the pushing. But why borrow trouble?
Chief Herman Belden had no outer office nor any female manning a desk outside his door. You just knocked on the wood and pebbled glass slab and took your chances you’d catch him. I did that, and his bellow bid me enter.
Belden glanced up at me from behind his big oak desk and frowned. Not a scowl, just a frown. He didn’t know me at first, not shaved and with the swelling gone down. But then came an expression of surprised recognition.
“Where did you get the money for those kinda threads, Hammer?”
I shut the door and helped myself to that comfy chair across from him, happy not to be cuffed to anybody’s wrist this time.
Crossed my legs, folded my arms. “Haven’t you heard? The Senator’s daughter took one look at me and had to have me.”
The chief tossed some reports aside and leaned back in the swivel chair, rocking a little. He was in his rolled-up shirtsleeves and that purple tie again, which went so well with his mottled complexion. His smile was nothing to write home about, just a thick-lipped thing, also purplish.
“Yeah,” he said, scratching his head with its less than bumper crop of hair, “I heard congratulations are in order.”
I grinned. “I figured that little jerk at City Hall wasn’t going to sit on something that juicy.”
Rocking gently, he said, “Sounds like you got it made, Hammer. All that money and respectability wrapped up in a dish like that. All you got to do is live till the three-day wait is over.”
“Funny you should say that,” I said, and dug my right hand into my suitcoat pocket. I found what I was looking for and flipped it onto his desk, where it tumbled to a clumsy stop on his blotter.
He frowned down at the mashed-up slug. “What’s this?”
“Somebody took a shot at me yesterday. That’s what’s left of the bullet.”
He picked it up and rolled it around between his thumb and middle finger, giving it the kind of attention a jeweler does a diamond. “Not much left for the ballistics boys.”
“No. I figure it’s a .38, but who knows? It scraped itself on the cement on its ride and hit the curb and got all bent out of shape. Sort of like you cops when you had to spring me.”
Belden smiled at that. “Little late reporting it, aren’t you, kid?”
“I’m not reporting it at all. It’s just something I’m sharing with a guy who’s the only cop in town I trust a little.”
No thick-lipped grin now. No frown, either. He was just studying me, the way you do a suspect that you’re starting to believe, much as you don’t want to.
“You really didn’t kill that girl, did you, Hammer?”
“I didn’t. Hell, I didn’t even rape her. I’m just that good a citizen.”
He kept studying me, little glittering slices of his eyes staring out of slits. “Just what kind of citizen are you?”
“What do you think? Solid.”
“I thought I saw something about you that was off, that first night. For a guy riding the rails. But I sloughed it off. Only there was something about you… something almost… cop.”
I shrugged a single shoulder. “Run my name past the NYC boys and see what you find.”
“Why don’t you save me the trouble.”
“Mind if I smoke? Now that you don’t want me to burn anymore.”
He answered by getting a cigar from somewhere
and lighting it up while I did the same with a Lucky. Our smoke drifted together.
“I was a cop, briefly, when I got out of service,” I said. “Did well in the academy, but I got in trouble on the street.”
“Take one too many free apples?”
“Pounded too many bad ones. They stuck me on a desk and I quit. About a month ago, I opened my own shop.”
His eyebrows went up; the eyes weren’t slitted now. “You’re licensed?”
“And bonded. Full private investigator’s ticket. Also licensed to carry in New York State, among others.”
He chewed on that, and the cigar. Then: “Want me to spread the word?”
“I do not.”
He chuckled as he savored a mouthful of corona smoke. It streamed out as he said, “I figured as much. Not considering the way you came to town. You were trying to slip in under the radar, only it didn’t work out. Why did you come to Killington, anyway?”
“I had a favor to do for an army buddy. That’s all I can tell you, other than it has nothing to do with the sex murder.”
“You really didn’t know the Warburton girl?”
“I did not.”
Telling him I’d seen her sleeper-window striptease was nothing I cared to explain. Cops hate coincidences, which they shouldn’t, because life is full of them.
“Well,” he said, sitting forward, looking genuinely confused, “if you don’t want me spreading the word that you’re a private eye in town on a job… and that if a gun is found on you, it’s state-approved… why are you talking to me at all?”
My turn to let out some smoke. “I need someone I can trust on the inside.”
His purple-lipped smile had a sneer in it. “You said before that you figured you could trust me. That’s a big leap of faith to take in a godless town like this, son.”
“I know it is. Only… when I was in custody, I watched you. You’re tough and even a little mean, but on a department where guys like Sykes are the standard, you’re a rare bird indeed. And without somebody I can ask a question to, now and then, I’m taking a tour of Killington in the goddamn dark.”
Belden nudged the spent slug with a finger. “Maybe you’re just distracted, wondering who might want you dead, besides most of the cops in this town.”
I sat forward. “I think I already know. The dead girl has two brothers who in the past didn’t like it when guys got frisky with their sister. Somebody who raped and killed her would really get the royal treatment.”
He was nodding. “That’s a fair assessment.”
“So what’s the story on this pair?”
He thought about whether to answer that or not, then gave a what-the-hell shrug and dove right in.
“Alf is the oldest at around forty,” he said. “Rex is the baby at thirty-eight or -nine. Alf missed out on the war, doing time—shot a guy.”
“Guy who messed with his sister.”
“Yes. A guy who messed with his sister. Rex didn’t serve, either. He flunked the physical, only the reason wasn’t physical—he’s what the medics call a psychopath. Three of his girl friends died under mysterious circumstances, only nobody around this building finds that mysterious.”
“Makes for a peculiar champion of womanhood, if you ask me.”
He folded his hands on his belly. “Well, Alf and Rex won’t ask you anything. They’re likely to send you another of these.” He nudged the bullet again. “And another and another, till you can ask those girl friends of Rex’s yourself what happened to ’em… assuming you go to the same place as those girls, which maybe’s not a safe assumption.”
“Maybe not,” I admitted. “So what do the bereaved brothers do for a living?”
He gestured vaguely at the window behind him. “They were at the cannery for a long time, but they got canned, so to speak, for running Sunday crap games—both the cannery and fish-glue factory are closed on Sundays, and the Warburton boys took advantage of that. Alf was a foreman and had keys to both.”
“When was this?”
“Well, they got their walking papers around ’39. They bought a bar on the waterfront with some of the proceeds of their crap games. Crow’s Nest, it’s called.”
I frowned. “Alf shoots a guy and then gets a liquor license? That sounds strange even in this twisted town.”
“It’s Rex who has the license. Ran it alone while his ever lovin’ brother was in stir. Now they run the dive together. They can fix you up with a girl with a side of gonorrhea, or some rotgut that won’t strain your wallet, assuming you don’t mind risking goin’ blind.”
“Ever consider shutting them down?”
He shook his head, smirking sourly. “They’re on the list.”
“What list?”
“What list do you think? Anybody who goes into that hell hole knows what they’re risking. It’s not my job to protect people from their own stupidity. Anyway… they’re on the list.”
I didn’t press. I got up, gave him a nod of thanks, and headed out.
His voice caught me at the door. “Hammer! Where can I reach you?”
I thought about that for a moment, then said, “At Melba Charles’ cottage. I don’t know the number, but she’s got a phone there.”
“I didn’t know that kid had a cottage.”
“I bet a bloodhound like you can sniff it out.”
He chuckled at that, then said, “That bar those boys run, the Crow’s Nest? You can trust the beer, at least. You could stop by for a quick wet one, and explain to the brothers how you didn’t kill their sister. I’m sure they’ll listen to reason.”
Shutting the door behind me didn’t stop the sound of his laughter. In fact it rattled the pebbled glass.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A CLOSED sign was propped in the greasy window under some switched-off electric beer signs surrounding a slightly bigger one that apparently stayed on night and day—CROWS NEST in cursive neon glowing a muted red except the “NEST” had lost its gas and turned a sick milky white.
Between dirty smears I could make out a bar over to the right with a guy behind it who had a row of bottles of name-brand liquor lined up like a firing squad. He was pouring some brownish liquid into them from a tin gas can, using a funnel. It was taking all his concentration.
The place appeared otherwise empty. There were no stools at the bar, just a foot rail and a couple of spittoons. I could make out sawdust on the floor, a bunch of banged-up round tables with chairs piled on them, and some half-baked decorative touches like draped fishing net, a rotted-looking life preserver propped on pegs, and a terrible wall mural of a reclining redhead in nothing but a ragged red smile and what was apparently supposed to be a sailor hat. The cartoon crows Heckle and Jeckle had been painted by the same Michelangelo to one side of the naked redhead, eyeing her and dripping saliva from their beaks.
This was only one of at least half a dozen bars in an area of one- and two-story buildings, some brick, some frame, all ramshackle, dating back to the last century. The ragtag collection of union halls, secondhand stores, pawnshops, warehouses, diners, and saloons made the rougher parts of Killington I’d already visited seem like the Upper East Side. The Charles & Company Cannery and its fish-glue offspring were a few blocks from here, the smell of their industriousness thick enough to slice and stuff in a can and call it sardines.
The door, which had its own smaller CLOSED sign, was unlocked. So I went in—never could take a hint.
The guy behind the bar frowned at me. He was in a dirty blue work shirt and probably stood six foot two, his two-hundred and twenty pounds or so of gristle and sinew distributed around a wide-shouldered frame; his hair was dirty blond and unruly. His mouth had already been hanging open, but it managed to hang open further as the tiny close-set peepers crowding his nose opened with the wide-eyed innocence of a newborn suffering its first gas pain.
“Can’t you read?”
“Can’t you?”
He thought about that and spilled a little of whatever he was transf
erring into a liquor bottle from the gas can.
“You a cop?” he asked, taking in my suit. “We paid already this month.”
“Maybe I’m from the health department.”
“This ain’t gas! It’s just that kind of can.”
I crossed the sawdust to the bar and put a foot on the rail. “No, I figure it’s bourbon or maybe Scotch or just good old-fashioned rye.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s what you’re filling those bottles with. It’s all whiskey in the end, right? Anyway, I’m not health department.”
“You ain’t a cop, so what do you want?”
“I’m looking for the Warburton brothers. I understand this is their place.”
“Well, I’m one of them. I’m Rex. But I told you we ain’t open, so unless you got business, you need to come back at four.”
“I wanted to talk to you about your late sister.”
The little eyes got big. “Reporter, huh! We talked to a couple of you bastards, and Alf and me did not like what you wrote.”
“So then you can read.”
He thought about that, too. Then he frowned. “What the hell do you want, anyway? Funeral was two days ago. Leave her rest.”
I leaned in a little. “Not a reporter. But since you saw the papers, you should have seen my picture. Take a good look—I cleaned up some, and where I got worked over, the swelling has gone down. I’m the guy the cops collared for what happened to your sister, but I’ve been cleared. I think you guys may have the wrong idea, and I want to clear this thing up.”
He frowned again, deeper. The little eyes almost disappeared. It was like a nose was looking at me. “You’re that Hammer guy.”
“Yes. And—”
He hit me with the gas can.
Swung it hard and fast, landing with a metallic whang! and caught me on the side of the head, sending my hat flying, rotgut splashing, a damn good sucker punch for such an idiot, and I went down like a three-legged cardtable.
Killing Town Page 8