A part of Kyle’s mind was listening, a part was remembering. Five years ago in that little apartment at the Cecil Arms Van Bryson had come to him with help. He might do it again. It just might be possible that the lonely place into which he had plunged at the sight of a killer on the street might not be completely lonely after all.
“You’ve been like a son to me,” Sam was saying. “Sarah and I never had children. Guess I was too busy. Too ambitious. I took Sarah for granted—then, one day she was gone. I was a widower. A pile of money, a big house and nobody to share anything. Don’t you make the mistake I made, d’you hear?”
And so Kyle raised his glass and manufactured a smile to fit the occasion.
“Okay, you win,” he said. “The chicken fricassee isn’t for me, but here’s to the one-hundred-dollar plaque.” He drank quickly and put the glass down on the counter. “Sam—” he added. Then he stopped. He was about to say something ridiculous like: “Sam, if anything happens to me will you look after Dee and Mike?” But he couldn’t risk saying that. He couldn’t even risk thinking it, because everything now depended on how casually he could walk past the man in dark glasses. If he showed the slightest sign of recognition or fear, the advantage he had over the killer would be gone. “—Have fun,” he said.
Kyle walked the length of the bar and passed through the doorway into the entrance lobby. He smiled at the right people and patted the right shoulders, but not once did he glance in the direction of the man in dark glasses. Unhurriedly, he drifted through the crowd in the lobby and stepped outside. Last year the club directors had enlarged the parking lot to accommodate guests and friends of the membership. Kyle stood before the doorman for a few seconds until his eyes adjusted to the glare of the sun on the white gravel drive, and then he started walking toward the far end of the lot where he had parked the blue station wagon.
“Mr. Walker, wait. I’ll send the boy—”
Kyle silenced the doorman with a wave of his hand. He was conspicuous enough without having his name broadcast. There wasn’t a shadow for shelter or another human being for protection for the distance of the walk, and he hadn’t covered a hundred feet before his ears picked up the sound of footsteps behind him. He held his pace. The odds were against his being killed in an enclosed area. Professionals didn’t take such chances. He reached the station wagon and opened the door. As he slid in behind the steering wheel, he caught the reflection in the rear-view mirror. The man with dark glasses had stopped beside a beige Chrysler.
Kyle backed out slowly, completed the U turn at the far end of the lot and drove back to the street entrance. He waved casually at the gateman and turned into the highway just as the rear-view mirror caught the front grill of the Chrysler as it came around the turn at the end of the lot. Now he had two advantages over the strangler. He knew that he was being followed by a man who was unaware he had been recognized; and he knew the area better than any amount of briefing could familiarize a newcomer. He floored the accelerator and made the first boulevard stop before the Chrysler reached the highway. But the land was level here, and for several miles there was no place to turn or hide. At midafternoon there was little traffic. Nearing the second stop, the Chrysler was gaining ground. Deliberately, Kyle floored the accelerator and raced across the intersection. Moments later he heard the welcome whine of a police siren and slackened speed.
It was a motorcycle officer who forced him to the shoulder. Dismounting, he approached the wagon—book in hand.
“I’m gonna throw it at you, Mr. Walker!” he vowed. “You know that intersection’s a full stop. You’ve crossed it often enough.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Kyle said. “I had my head in the clouds.”
“You were doing eighty-five, Mr. Walker. Are you drunk?”
Kyle glanced in the rear-view mirror. The Chrysler sedan had made a full stop and was now approaching at a moderate rate of speed. Kyle relaxed.
“If one drink makes you drunk, I’m guilty,” he said. “Actually, I’m just tired.”
“Working around the clock again? Mr. Walker, when are you going to learn to slow down?”
The officer completed the ticket and handed it to Kyle as the Chrysler passed. It was doing no more than thirty miles an hour, and the driver in dark glasses kept his eyes on the road ahead. Kyle accepted the ticket and read it slowly. He gave the sedan time enough to reach the next intersection, stop, and then drive on slowly.
Kyle looked at the officer and grinned. “You may have saved my life with this,” he said.
“Now, that’s the way to look at it, Mr. Walker.” The officer beamed. “That’s exactly the way to look at it.”
The Chrysler was almost out of sight. Kyle waited until the law wheeled off and then made a sharp U turn on the highway and turned at the first corner. There were many roads home, and any road was the right road now.
Back at the Country Club, Sam Stevens drained his last preluncheon Scotch and walked the length of the bar to a place that had recently been occupied by a man wearing dark glasses. He picked up the man’s half-filled glass, sniffed the contents and grimaced.
“Oscar,” he said to the ever-hovering bartender, “who was the man who ordered this degenerate bourbon?”
“Why, Mr. Stevens,” Oscar answered, “I thought you knew.”
“Knew? How could I know. I never laid eyes on him before. Did you?”
“No, sir,” Oscar admitted. “I never did. That’s why I didn’t want to serve him, but he told me he was here as a guest. A guest of Sam Stevens.”
After leaving the beige Chrysler, with the assistance of the highway patrol, Kyle drove directly to the small stucco and redwood ranch house that had been home since the day he brought Dee and Mike home from the maternity hospital. It had seemed a very special house then—a house where a family was started and a career launched—but the career had soared and the house become a fixture, a depot, a second office and an oversized playpen combined. Somewhere on one of the drafting boards at the office were the plans of the house Kyle was going to build someday when he had the time: a structural image of every fantasy of luxury he had ever known. Meanwhile, the shoemaker’s children were quite comfortable in their modest tract-house ménage complete with walled patio and outdoor barbecue.
Kyle drove slowly scanning the street for any unwelcome observer. It was a lazy midafternoon, and, except for an undisciplined California expatriate risking sunstroke in an unshaded patio lounge next door, all of the residents were either busy at their normal occupations or taking air-conditioned siestas. There were no other signs of life. He turned the station wagon into the driveway and didn’t stop until he was opposite the kitchen door. As he left the car, he deliberately set the door on the driver’s side to stand open. A distance of four feet separated him from the house. The killer, although temporarily sidetracked, most certainly had his home address, and Kyle had no intention of being gunned down as he fumbled with a car latch. Everything he did from now on would be calculated for maximum security.
He unlocked the kitchen door and stepped into a house that had been hastily vacated. The scent of Dee was still in the atmosphere—her perfume, her hairspray, her aura of femininity that had become commonplace until the sharp thrust of danger brought back an intensity of feeling. One of the ridiculous little cocktail aprons she wore for even ordinary housework was draped over the kitchen stool. The dishes were washed and draining in the sink. One of the taps had developed a slight drip. The cookie jar was open—Mike’s work. A shopping list was still scrawled on the kitchen blackboard. Home. This was the place Kyle had almost forgotten.
And now there was no time for remembering. He went directly to his study and began to search his desk. He found a set of airline schedules and a road map of Mexico. He dug deeper and found his service pistol. He stood quietly while the clock on the mantel ticked out a strangely amplified time and came gradually to realize that airline schedules and road maps offered no solution. If the man in dark glasses had com
e to Tucson to kill Kyle Walker (and what else was there to think after the appearance at the Country Club?) flight was useless. An organization that could trace a man after five years could trace him anywhere on earth. And if he did escape, Dee and Mike couldn’t stay in the mountains forever. There was no place to run from the killer.
But Kyle could think. Buried deep in his subconscious was something once known and not quite forgotten: something that made the killer’s quest important. It wasn’t logical that anyone should be sought out and killed after so many years just for the sport of it. If I am to be killed, Kyle reasoned, it is because I am a threat to the man in dark glasses. He may have killed a hundred men since the night I saw him kill Bernie Chapman, but, for some reason, I am dangerous enough for him to come this far in search of me.
It was good to be able to think and not panic. His mind scratched again at that buried knowledge—but he needed help. He still wasn’t ready to pick up the telephone on the desk and call Jimmy Jameson at City Hall to tell him the truth about Charles Dover. At most, it would mean a temporary guard and a mere postponement of the killer’s attack. He checked the cartridge clip of the gun and found it loaded. He put it into his attaché case and then picked up the telephone. He dialed Van’s apartment.
A recorded voice informed him that Mr. Bryson wasn’t in and requested that he leave his name and state the purpose of his call. Kyle dropped the telephone back into the cradle. It was Van himself who had once predicted the ultimate in recorded messages: “If I ever reach the Pearly Gates a voice will say—’Sorry, wrong number … This is a recorded message.’ “ Now Van had gone over to the technological enemy, and Kyle had no intention of leaving his problem where it might be heard by a stranger. He would play the loner game a little longer.
Kyle returned to the station wagon and backed slowly out of the drive. The street was still empty. The inexperienced neighbor had been educated and was ruefully raising a sun umbrella over the patio. The beige Chrysler was nowhere in sight. He drove back to the office and left the wagon in the underground garage. He took the elevator up to the penthouse suite and found that Charley was gone, but on the top sheet of her memo pad was scribbled a message:
“Dear Boss, You are to call Captain Jameson at Police Headquarters soonest. He said that you would know why.”
Kyle used Charley’s telephone. While waiting for Jameson, he toyed with the thought that his terror of the man in dark glasses might be self-inflicted. Conscience was a hard master. He had run from murder five years ago. He might still be running whenever his nerves were edgy and his body cried for rest. There were look-alikes …
And then Jimmy Jameson’s voice answered his last doubt.
“Kyle,” he announced, “you sent me on a wild-goose chase, but I won’t hold it against you. They have some very pretty girls poolside at the Apache Inn. I didn’t know what I’d been missing.”
“But you didn’t find Dover,” Kyle said.
“I found no Charles Dover registered at any hotel or motel in the city or its environs. But I did locate the driver of the car with that license number you gave me. He’s listed on the registration card as R. R. Donaldson, who checked into room 227 of the Apache Inn early this morning.”
“Donaldson,” Kyle repeated. “Did you talk to him?”
“I couldn’t. He was out. He’s a sales representative from Phoenix. Works for Baemer Air Conditioning. No Dover and no Prescott—and no old buddy. Your memory is playing tricks on you, Kyle.”
Kyle thanked Jimmy Jameson for his trouble and cut off the call. Jameson was wrong. His memory wasn’t playing tricks; it was ringing an alarm bell. Conscience, nerves, a touch of heat … None of the hopeful rationalizations would work any more. He consulted Charley’s memo pad again. A dutiful secretary, she had carefully entered every call since the office opened for the day, and when Kyle found what he was looking for there was no more room for doubt.
Entry: “Call from R. R. Donaldson, representing Baemer Air Conditioning. Told him K.W. is tied up for the day.”
Chapter Seven
At four o’clock in the afternoon it was quiet around the pool at the Apache Inn Motel. The late lunchers had gone to their rooms to nap; the precocktail swimmers had yet to arrive. Having completed his excursion to the Country Club and been assured that the object of his assignment was still in the vicinity, the man who called himself R. R. Donaldson now sprawled on a fully extended lounge chair and admired the fit of his new trunks. Forty-six years old and his stomach was still flat. The steam baths and the workouts in the gym had paid off. Nobody in the organization took better care of himself than Rick Drasco and, except for his eyes, he was still as good a man as the day he walked off the docks and traded his leather jacket and blue jeans for a tailormade suit and handsewn shoes. Even at twenty there had been nothing flashy about Rick Drasco. Expensive things he liked—but in good taste. Conservative. Controlled. This was the Drasco trademark. He had developed the efficiency of a public accountant and the coolness of a pit man at Vegas. Usually he liked the wire for an operation. The wire was neat, quiet and more difficult to trace than a gun. But the wire was a two-man job and this contract was strictly solo.
Even the name he had picked was typical. R. R. Donaldson. It had a quiet, executive sound. If Drasco’s father had been a professor, or even a haberdasher, instead of an immigrant fisherman with a weakness for the bottle, Rick Drasco might now be making direct-wire calls to the brass in Washington and collecting presidential pens. Poolside at the Apache Inn, Drasco could dream … and watch.
What he watched was the girl in the orange bathing suit. She was sleeping on a pad across the pool—safe in the shadow of a huge sun umbrella. She lay on her stomach with her face turned away from him. She was small—like a child—and her skin glowed amber from the oil she had rubbed into it all morning. She was young and pretty, and knew it, and she was having a wonderful time letting everybody else know it too. That, Drasco admitted, was as it should be.
Farther down the poolside, an old man in floral print shorts dozed in his chair. At his side a gray-haired woman was devouring a paperback novel. The Joe College juvenile, who had romanced the girl in the orange bathing suit via the diving board and drawn only a yawn for his trouble, had retired to his room. Except for two boys floating lazily in the shallow end of the pool, there was no movement anywhere. Drasco got up from the chair and adjusted his dark glasses. Assuming the role of R. R. Donaldson again, he circled the pool until he stood over the sleeping girl. She didn’t open her eyes. He took a metal frame chair from a nearby refreshment table and pulled it noisily across the cement. When she looked up, startled and annoyed, he stopped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be so noisy.”
She might be irritated but never peevish at the attention of a male.
“Now that I’ve ruined your nap,” Donaldson added, “why don’t you let me buy you a drink? … Tom Collins? … Rum punch?”
She was impressed. She pulled herself up to a sitting position and studied her new admirer carefully. She was terribly young. Donaldson doubted that she drank anything stronger than Cola.
She smiled warmly. “All right,” she said.
“What’ll it be?” Donaldson asked.
She frowned over what seemed to be a great decision. “Tom Collins,” she said.
Donaldson called the bar from the poolside phone, and when he returned the girl was drawing a terry-cloth jacket over her bare shoulders.
“The wind gets chilly in the afternoon,” she said.
“Would you rather go inside?” Donaldson suggested.
She hesitated. He knew what her vixen mind was thinking. Does he mean inside to the bar, or inside to his room?
“No,” she said firmly. “This is fine.”
He learned that her name was Veronica Moore and that she lived at the motel with her younger brothers because their father, an army officer, was stationed at one of the missile sights.
He learned that
her mother was in Los Angeles on business, and when she returned they were going to buy a house in one of the new developments in the hills.
“It has a nice Spanish name,” she said. “I forget exactly, but it’s something like candlelight.”
She was sixteen and romantic. She was flattered at the attention of an older man, and the animal substitute for an emotion Rick Drasco had never been able to feel or express made his blood run hotter than anything that came from that bright, white sun overhead. When the waiter brought the drinks, he watched her sip slowly—feigning sophistication. He could judge her capacity by the exact moment the alcohol began to take effect.
“You must be a dancer,” he said.
She was pleased. “I can’t be—yet,” she explained. “I’m still in high school. I have to finish my senior year after we get settled.”
“You look more mature than that,” Donaldson said, “and you have feet like a dancer. I know. I see a lot of them. I own a club over in Vegas.”
He was only having fun with her. He couldn’t touch her. He could never do anything like that on a job; it was too dangerous. Five years ago he wouldn’t have allowed himself this much pleasure, but he had more confidence now. He was the best in his field and he knew it, and he had to do something to burn up the time while the eye doctor was fixing his glasses. When Veronica drained her drink, he suggested another round. She was a little starry-eyed by that time. Her cheeks were flushed. She affected an aloof coolness and said that she really must get back to her room in time to shower and dress for dinner.
“Then why don’t I ring you about seven and we’ll have our second before eating?” Donaldson said. “They put on a fancy chuck-wagon deal on the patio every night. I read about it on a display board in the lobby.”
Killer in the Street Page 6