Killer in the Street

by Nielsen, Helen

  The lobby was empty. Remobilized, Kyle stepped into the hall and walked briskly toward the street. Fear heightened the senses. The commonplace became important. Kyle passed the lobby shops several times a day, but now he passed warily. The customer near the window in the bookstore was a young man: no glasses, no beige suit. The bank was too recently opened to have acquired a large clientele. None of them resembled the strangler. The florist shop was impenetrable with a dense display of tropical plants in the window. Kyle had almost reached the street.

  “Mr. Walker, wait—”

  Kyle stopped. It was a man’s voice. And it was his own blood pounding the obbligato in his ears. He turned slowly.

  Ephraim Taylor owned the florist shop. He was fifty, slightly bald, pink-faced above a light blue smock. He came forward holding a large bunch of talisman roses in his hands.

  “Mr. Walker, these are a little stale but not too stale. If you want to take them to your wife, I would be happy.”

  Kyle relaxed. “That’s very thoughtful of you, Mr. Taylor,” he said, “but my wife’s gone to the mountains for a few days.”

  Ephraim Taylor’s face broke into a smile of sheer bliss. The happiness of other people delighted him. He made every scrap of it his own. “Gone up to Mr. Stevens ranch, I’ll bet. I was up there once—for a whole week.”

  “That’s fine,” Kyle said.

  “After my operation for appendix. That’s what kind of man Sam Stevens is—generous. Thoughtful and generous. But I’m keeping you from something important. I’ll put these roses back in the refrigerator. Maybe they’ll keep until your wife gets back.”

  Kyle nodded absently and walked on. He left Ephraim Taylor’s not-too-stale roses behind and stepped out on the sidewalk of a street that had now become hostile territory. But it was daylight. Noonday. Downtown. A professional man wouldn’t shoot a man down in a peak traffic hour and endanger his own escape. Besides, the man who had killed Bernie Chapman was a strangler. He might be a one-method man. But he would be completely briefed on his contract. He would know about the penthouse office. He would know about the underground garage where Kyle now went for his station wagon. With so few tenants, the garage was almost empty. But again, it was daylight and Bernie Chapman had been strangled in an underground garage at night.

  He got into the station wagon and drove away from the area. He was beginning to be acutely aware of his rear-view mirror. In a country where the sun bleached out color, a beige sedan wasn’t a rarity. It might be following him now, because the driver would not only know where Kyle Walker lived and where he worked; he would know where he got his hair cut, where he had his dental work done, where his suits were made and where he played with his son on holidays. He would know to what clubs he belonged, and who his golfing partners were. The odds were all on the side of a professional killer—except for the streak of luck that had sent him walking across an intersection while Kyle waited for a traffic signal to change—because the man who had killed Bernie Chapman belonged to an organization that couldn’t afford to make mistakes.

  Kyle drove directly to the City Hall. He had legitimate business in the Department of Public Safety concerning the permits Sam had ordered; but that wasn’t the reason for the trip. The reason was one of those golfing partners about whom the strangler might or might not know. He was a man who kept shop in the Bureau of Detectives and was listed officially as Captain Jimmy Jameson on the city payroll. Jimmy was forty and hadn’t added an inch to his waistline since he had been mustered out of the Marines twelve years before. One reason for that might have been the habit Kyle now interrupted—solitary lunch in his office. One pint of milk and two vitamin pills.

  “I’m working on an ulcer,” Jameson said. “If I get a good one going, maybe I can qualify for the Booster Club.”

  “I’ll give you my membership for free,” Kyle said. “How’s business?”

  Jameson grinned. He had a white ring of milk on his upper lip like a prop moustache, and a faceful of freckles that had been holding their own since his grammar school days.

  “The Chief wants me to lecture the kids at the high school on juvenile delinquency. I told him they should lecture me. They know more about police methods than my own men. Too much TV. Then I’ve got trouble with what the Interracial Cultural Society likes to call our Spanish-speaking people. Too much speaking with cheap wine and switch blades. And I’ve just solved the problem of who has been stealing my desk erasers. We have pack-rats in the building.”

  “I heard you had trouble with another kind of rat that deals in slot machines and happy pills.”

  Jimmy’s eyes narrowed. They were steel blue and hard as the barrel of the service pistol he wore on his hip. “Who told you that?” he asked.

  “Rumorsville.”

  Jimmy relaxed. “We run a clean city here, Walker. You know that. Some things don’t get into the newspapers because they don’t develop far enough.”

  “But suppose somebody big got in the way of somebody else’s concept of progress,” Kyle suggested, “and had to be removed?”

  “Like who?” Jimmy asked.

  Kyle couldn’t answer. There would have been no problem if he could have told Jimmy Jameson about the strangler and the killing he had witnessed five years ago in New York. But Jimmy was a plainsman. The city was only beginning to grow up around Jimmy, bringing with it both the creators and the parasites. It was still a place where people called one another by their first names—from the banker to the shoeshine boy. Jimmy simply wouldn’t have believed Kyle’s story. He would attribute the whole incident to overwork and a distorted memory. Worse, he would try to pacify a friend’s shattered nerves by making some clumsy inquiry that would get back to the strangler and destroy the one advantage Kyle had. No, it was too risky to tell Jimmy Jameson who was walking the streets of his bright, clean town.

  And so Kyle lied. “The question was theoretical,” he said. “That’s not why I dropped in. I have a favor to ask—if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “What is it?”

  Kyle dug into his pocket and brought out a scrap of memo paper. On it he had written a crytic message: “Beige Chrysler … 1964 sedan. License # Arizona SXO 617.” He handed the memo to Jimmy and waited for a reaction.

  Jimmy glanced at the paper and looked up questioningly. “Somebody hit you?”

  “No,” Kyle said. “That’s the description of a car I saw on the street in front of the Plainsman Hotel this morning. I recognized the driver. A friend I haven’t seen in years.”

  “So?”

  “He’s from Prescott. I checked at the Plainsman but he’s not registered there.”

  Jameson took a long pull on the bottle of milk—never once taking his eyes from Kyle’s face.

  “All right,” he said, “what is it you want me to do on the taxpayers’ time?”

  “I’m a taxpayer,” Kyle reminded him. “Don’t the police ever check hotel and motel registrations?”

  Jimmy grinned. “You’re thinking of the vice squad. Why don’t you just telephone—?”

  Charley had inadvertently prepared Kyle for that question.

  “The Booster Club luncheon,” he said. “I’ll be tied up all afternoon. Jimmy, when was the last time I asked a favor of you?”

  “The last time your wife ran a red light,” Jameson said, “and you didn’t get it. But if it’s so damned important you have to chase downtown in the noonday sun to tell me about it—” He paused and checked the watch on his wrist. “It’s been a dull morning; maybe I should get off my rump for a while. Okay, I’ll be your errand boy. What’s your friend’s name?”

  On the wall behind Detective Jameson’s head hung a large calendar featuring a curvacious nude by courtesy of Dover Insurance Brokerage.

  “Dover,” Kyle replied. “Charles Dover. If you do locate him, don’t make contact. I want to surprise him.”

  “What’s the matter? Does he owe you money?”

  Kyle didn’t like to let Jameson get too curious. F
riend or no friend, he was still a shrewd policeman.

  “No,” he answered, “I owe him.”

  He terminated the conversation then. The Booster luncheon was waiting and Jameson would get suspicious if the request seemed anything more than casual. He picked up the blue station wagon at the parking lot and headed east on Speedway. It was a perfectly clear day. By this hour, the sky had paled with heat and the Santa Catalinas now humped against the horizon like great yellow sleeping cats. Kyle switched on the air conditioning and thought of Dee and Mike somewhere on the highway in that hot little convertible. By this time they would have climbed above the worst of the heat—provided they had actually got away.

  Emotional shock did strange things. The fear in Kyle was close to panic when he thought of his family. Everything else fell away to its natural unimportance. He reached for the radiophone and put in a call to the house. There was no answer. He waited a full minute and then broke the connection. They were gone. He looked up at the mountains and smiled for the first time in hours. Whatever the rest of the day would bring, it was a duel between himself and the strangler. Dee and Mike were safe.

  In another area of the city, R. R. Donaldson had just completed buying a pair of swimming trunks and a beach towel in a fashionable sportswear shop in the lobby of the Apache Inn Motel. It had taken a full half-hour to make the purchase. He had finally selected a pair of white trunks with a red stripe on each side and a towel with three wide bands of red, white and blue. White trunks, he reasoned, wouldn’t make the Eastern pallor of his skin so conspicuous. He was a little jealous of the sun-tanned male bodies that rimmed the pool at noonday. Deep chests, narrow waists, invisible hips. The girl in the bright yellow suit had retired to her room for an hour and returned wearing a bright orange suit. She was now sitting alone on a lounge chair near the diving board carefully applying sun-tan lotion to her perfectly shaped legs and thighs—in full view, deliberately, of every male on the scene. Donaldson cherished the memory of that tableau all during his shopping expedition. Watching from the balcony wasn’t enough. He wanted closer contact.

  He came out of the shop with the anticipation of an exciting afternoon, only to be faced by a porter setting up a directory of local activities for the day. The Booster Club luncheon was being held at the Country Club at 1:30 P.M. Donaldson consulted the clock over the registration desk. It was almost one. He looked longingly toward the wide, plate-glass doors that led to the pool … but Donaldson was a perfectionist at his profession, and perfection doesn’t come without sacrifice.

  He returned to his room and took a small leather-bound notebook from the attaché case. Without his bifocals reading was difficult, but the page headings in the book were done in caps. There was a page for Diedre (Dee) Walker. It contained a complete physical description as well as her hobbies and characteristics. The hobbies were dull: art classes, charities, golf. No extracurricular emotional entanglements. No indication of alcoholism or any other vice. There were pages for Michael Walker and Van Bryson. A page for Sam Stevens. Donaldson hesitated at this page. The boy he had encountered in Dee Walker’s little car (duly noted in her biographical notes) said they were going to “Uncle Sam’s” ranch. He held the book closer to the tinted spectacles. There was a ranch—location and directions for reaching same. So Sam Stevens was “Uncle Sam.” If Donaldson had been addicted to smiling, he would have smiled. It was all so cozy.

  But the boy had said that “Daddy” had told them to go to the ranch. Nothing in his data indicated this was a customary practice, and the heightening of the senses that came with the excitement of executing a contract alerted Donaldson to a possible problem. He moved closer to the light of the wide glass door and studied the page further. Sam Stevens was a member and an officer of the Booster Club. Donaldson flicked the page. Kyle Walker. Impatiently, he ran his finger down the itemized information until he found a similar notation. Booster Club member. Donaldson was too scientific to be superstitious, but there were times when events did seem to balance, strangely. Breaking both pairs of eyeglasses had been a stroke of bad luck. Encountering Mrs. Walker and the boy in the driveway at their home had been good luck. And now there was to be a luncheon at the Country Club in half an hour at which he could learn just how big a party had gone to the ranch. It was good practice to know where key people could be found.

  Donaldson put away the notebook and took the gun and silencer from the case. He tested the weight of it in his hand, and then slipped the gun into the holster under his coat. He stepped out onto the balcony and looked down. The girl in the orange suit was still performing for her silently appreciative audience. She would keep. Satisfied, he stepped back inside the room and closed the sliding glass door.

  Chapter Six

  The doors of the Country Club were closed on this particular day to all except Booster Club members and their guests. They opened wide for Kyle. He made his way through a dozen handshakes and backslaps, exchanged a dozen verbal greetings, laughed at a few unheard jokes, and, finally, located Sam Stevens sitting alone at the far end of the bar. Sam was drinking his own brand of twelve-dollar Scotch stocked for him by the bartender on special order. He called for a glass for Kyle, supervised the pouring, and then relaxed on the stool to study his young partner’s face.

  Sam was a shrewd man. He knew trouble when he saw it, and Kyle felt as if all his fears were painted like Indian war symbols on his face. He decided to drive them away with conversation.

  “I applied for the permits,” he said. “It’s just a matter of processing. We should break ground Monday.”

  “That’s not why you’re in a sweat,” Sam observed.

  Kyle didn’t realize that he was perspiring. He dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and patted the moisture from his face.

  “I guess it’s hotter today than I realized,” he said. “I didn’t have the air conditioner on in the car.”

  But Sam wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “How long since you’ve been home?” he demanded.

  Kyle didn’t reply. He lingered over Sam’s twelve-dollar Scotch, which, for all he could appreciate it at the moment, could have been corn whisky straight from the still.

  “Is something wrong between you and Dee?” Sam queried. “Because, if there is, I won’t stand for it, boy. That’s too fine a woman you have to be shunted off to pasture. Too fine a woman and too fine a boy.”

  Sam was inclined to get sentimental with a few drinks under his hand-tooled belt. The years were creeping up on him. He was mellowing with time.

  “You sound like Van,” Kyle said. “He lectured me on wife neglect this morning. Relax, Sam. There’s nothing wrong. In fact, I just sent Dee and Mike up to the cabin. You told me we could use it anytime.”

  And then Sam was delighted. His leathery face creased softly in a generous grin and his blue eyes sparkled. “Now you make sense, boy!” he exclaimed. “When are you joining them?”

  “When I get caught up with my work.”

  “No! I know you. You never get caught up. You work until you drop or somebody drops you. Kyle, I’ll give you five minutes to get your behind off that stool and head for the mountains!”

  “Five minutes? But what about luncheon?”

  “Who needs luncheon? How much chicken fricassee does a man have to eat in a lifetime? Don’t you think I know what they’re going to do here today? I get to hear some nice speeches that should be saved for my funeral. I get a plague that cost the membership a few hundred bucks, and in a few weeks I’ll be tabbed by the finance committee for a thousand-dollar donation. Go on! Get out of here!”

  Sam gave Kyle a friendly push, and Kyle started to get off the stool. He wasn’t ready to go up to the cabin, but he didn’t look forward to the ordeal of the luncheon Sam had so vividly described. And then, just as both feet hit the floor, he saw something that made him momentarily forget Sam, Dee and the cabin. Seated calmly at the far end of the bar was the strangler who wore dark glasses.

  Kyle’s first reaction, after the
shock of recognition, was to wonder how the killer had gained admission to the club. Perhaps the syndicate provided membership cards to all organizations with which a scheduled victim was affiliated. For some people no doors were closed. But the next reaction was more pertinent to the moment; a professional killer sat between him and the only exit from the room.

  He stalled for time.

  “I wanted to talk about some of those contracts, Sam,” he said. “I wasn’t too happy with the electrical work on the last project—”

  “It can wait!” Sam said.

  “But it’s a five-million-dollar job! Don’t you want to make it, Sam? Don’t you want to come in under the wire? Frankly, I’m not looking for a tax write-off that big!”

  The perspiration was dampening his face again, and he could feel Sam’s penetrating mind cutting through this small talk. The man in the dark glasses had ordered a whisky. He drank it slowly and with no sign of pleasure. Only one thing would pleasure him, Kyle felt. One swift, cruel thing …

  “Kyle, nobody’s going to lose on this contract,” Sam drawled at his shoulder. “You know that! Even Van knows that, and he’s the biggest worrier since they invented safety pins.”

  “Why isn’t Van here?” Kyle asked.

  “Van here?” Sam grimaced and swallowed the rest of his drink like well water. “Van doesn’t turn out to these low-caste affairs,” he scoffed. “He hates us backslappers, Kyle. Don’t you ever feel that? Don’t you sense his contempt cutting right through your skin? He’s a brain man. All brain.”

  “Van doesn’t hate you,” Kyle protested. “He works on a different plane, but he respects yours.”

  “Respect?” Sam echoed. “No, he doesn’t respect my plane! He’s too radical for that. We’ve got to cut him a bigger piece of pie, Kyle. He’s bitter, but he’s bright. I have to give him that. He told me five years ago that you were the man I needed in my operation, and he was dead right. I never made a better deal in my life, sight unseen. Kyle, are you listening to me?”