Killer in the Street

by Nielsen, Helen

  “Mr. Stevens?” he said. “My name is Donaldson. By this time I think you know why I am here.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sam didn’t answer. He walked slowly into the room. Donaldson pressed the glass of brandy into his hand and took the other for himself. He raised it in the gesture of a toast.

  “To completion,” he said.

  Donaldson drank quickly. Sam ignored his glass.

  “Where’s Kyle?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Donaldson answered, “and I don’t like not knowing. What went wrong? How did Walker know I was looking for him?”

  Sam hadn’t taken his eyes from Donaldson’s face, and his eyes were remembering.

  “Now I know where I saw you before! This afternoon at the Country Club bar! You told the bartender you were my guest.”

  “And so I am, Mr. Stevens. More so than I expected. What did you tell Walker?”

  “Tell?” Sam echoed. “I don’t know what you mean. What could I tell him?”

  Sam’s hand was shaking. He was going to spill the brandy and so Donaldson took it from him and placed it back on the small table. His movements were slow and deliberate. He was trying to get something straight in his mind. Finally, he shook his head.

  “No, I don’t believe it,” he said. “You’re not old enough to be senile. You know who set you up again six years ago after your wife’s death knocked you flat. You know where the money came from. You know why the name Sam Stevens was so important. Don’t play games with me, old man. I’ve had a rough night and I don’t like to play games. Think back now. Who told you to hire Kyle Walker five years ago?”

  Sam wasn’t senile and it was too late for games. He wasn’t even drunk any more. But he was trying not to face what he had known he must face from the minute Jameson nailed him at the hotel bar and began to talk about a five-year-old murder in New York.

  “I never asked questions when I was told to hire Kyle,” he protested. “I didn’t know he was mixed up in murder!”

  “He wasn’t,” Donaldson said. “I was. Walker is the innocent bystander who saw too much.”

  “Then why didn’t you kill him too?”

  “I was too hot—so was Berendo. But Walker was so scared he applied for passports for himself and his wife, and there you were in Washington trying to hire Van Bryson, who was Walker’s buddy in Korea.”

  Sam was beginning to understand. “I got authority to double Bryson’s Washington salary. Was that a part of the deal, too?”

  “I don’t know anything about the finances,” Donaldson said. “That’s not my department. I can tell you that Walker was identified within four hours after he saw me strangle Bernie Chapman. Within eight hours his employment records had been examined and we knew he had served overseas with Bryson and was in business with him for two years after they left the service. You hired Bryson and came back here, but your secretary stayed on to help him terminate. When she was through working on him, Bryson thought taking Kyle into the organization with him was his own idea.”

  “Charlene?” Sam echoed. “Are you trying to tell me that Charlene Evans is mixed up in this?”

  “I don’t know the secretary’s name. That’s not my department either. Walker was hired and put on ice where we knew where to find him if he ever got talkative—but it was Berendo who talked. He’ll be taken care of, and his testimony is worthless without a corroborating witness. I guess that explains why I’m here.”

  “But Kyle wouldn’t testify!” Sam protested. “If he didn’t talk five years ago—”

  “He could change his mind. As soon as the story of Berendo’s confession breaks nationally, Kyle Walker will get nervous. He could even get noble and conscientious—now that he’s an image. I don’t take chances, Mr. Stevens. You never know when a man’s going to turn hero.”

  “But he won’t!” Sam said. “He’s got too much at stake. His family—”

  “That’s what I’m thinking of—his family,” Donaldson said. “The way I’m going to handle this, his family will never know what a lousy citizen he was. He’s got a nice house—insurance and money in the bank. They’ll be comfortable the rest of their lives. And so will you, Mr. Stevens. There won’t be any in-depth coverage of the story behind the story of why Kyle Walker became such a sudden success. Why, men twice as good as Walker sweat out half a lifetime for the break he got as a gift from the management. Well, you know what they say about gift horses. Christmas is over for Walker. That’s all.”

  Sam reached up and removed his Stetson. He let it slip loosely from his fingers to the floor. Hardwood floor. Sarah couldn’t abide those theatrical wall-to-wall carpets. Hardwood floors with nice, thick rugs where they were needed. It was still Sarah’s house. The furniture hadn’t been moved. The leather chair, creased with age, was her last birthday present to him. The long library table in the center of the room had been hand-crafted by one of his own ranch hands, and beyond it stood a mantelpiece that had been shipped out from Massachusetts because Sarah wanted a touch of elegance to soften the rudeness of a cruel land. Above the mantel was a hand-painted portrait—full length and including the Stetson, the cowhide vest and the inlaid boots—of Sam Stevens, empire builder. Some people said he looked like Old Zachary in that portrait, but they were wrong. Old Zach was tougher. He wouldn’t have stood here all this time thinking of Sarah. He would have placed one shot of lead neatly between Donaldson’s eyes and then toted him down to the sheriff.

  But Sam Stevens hadn’t worn a gun for thirty years.

  His hand was shaking again. He reached down and picked up the brandy and drank it quickly.

  Donaldson nodded approval. “That’s right, Mr. Stevens. That’s the sensible way to do business. We can’t any of us afford publicity, can we?”

  “I never bargained for this,” Sam said. “Not murder. Not killing. Do you think I had any idea what I was getting into when that New York lawyer approached me six years ago?”

  “Of course you had an idea,” Donaldson said. “You had an idea there was money to be made—lots of money in a little time. And you wanted to land on your feet, didn’t you? You wanted to be the biggest wheel around.”

  “I wanted something to do! To be active!”

  “And that’s what you are, Mr. Stevens. But not tonight. Tonight you’re going to be completely immobilized. I don’t know where Walker is. I don’t know what he knows. But there’s a good chance he may try to get in touch with you. If he does, you’re to tell him whatever you have to tell him to keep him away from this house tonight. I’ll be here and I’m not ready for him yet.”

  “He won’t call me,” Sam insisted. “If Kyle intended to tell me anything he would have done it this afternoon when he must have seen you at the bar. What were you doing, playing cat and mouse?”

  Donaldson smiled and Sam wished he hadn’t asked. Some men got their thrills in strange ways.

  “I had some time to kill,” he said, “due to a technical difficulty.” One hand reached up and adjusted the dark glasses. “By accident I learned that Walker sent his wife and son out of the city. I wanted to make sure he was still around. That’s why I went to the Booster Club luncheon. According to my information, he’s a member in good standing. Telling the bartender I was your guest was just my little joke.”

  “Then you left when Kyle left.”

  “That’s right. I don’t think he saw me. If he did, I didn’t think he would recognize me with these dark glasses. If he did, well, as you say, I have to have a little fun in life. I followed him back to the city and lost him when he got into trouble with a traffic cop.”

  “Why didn’t you kill him?”

  “I told you, I’m not ready. I pick the time, the place and the method. Now the schedule is messed up and I’m not sure why, but I’ll find out. I’ll just cool it overnight and tomorrow I’ll find out. And you may be right. Walker probably won’t come here. He’s got that nice fat career of his to worry about. He can’t yell for help. So you have no troubles,
Mr. Stevens. No troubles at all. All I’ll ask from you is a bed for the night.”

  “There’s a room behind the kitchen. It hasn’t been used for years. The housekeeper sleeps at home.”

  “I don’t like that room,” Donaldson said. “I had time to look through the house before you came. The beds upstairs are softer. But there’s something more important. My car is hot. I can’t use it in this city again. I parked it in your garage next to a white pickup that seems in fine condition. I’ll be driving that when I leave tomorrow.”

  “But if you’re seen in my truck—” Sam protested.

  Donaldson shook his head. “Don’t worry. When I’ve finished the job I came to do, I’ll dump it in a ravine and you can make a stolen-car report to the police.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll get back to my contact in Phoenix and disappear. Don’t worry, Mr. Stevens. The organization won’t let anything happen to hurt your image. You’re too important to us. Now, what do you say we both get some sleep.”

  Sam’s face was white with fury. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Donaldson—Drasco—whatever he called himself was so confident. And he was animal. Expensively dressed and immaculately groomed, but all animal. And in an animal instinct is strong. He knew exactly what Sam Stevens was thinking. He walked to the hall doorway and then paused and looked back into the study. The eyes behind those dark glasses seemed to be photographing everything they saw.

  “Before I came out here,” he said, “I was told that Sam Stevens was a legend, and that his father was a legend before him. That’s funny. My father was a fisherman and he died with the d.t.’s in a charity ward, and here I am giving you orders and sleeping in your bed.”

  “I’m surprised that a man like you knows who his father was,” Sam said.

  He expected it then. The fist, the knee, the pistol whipping—whatever it was that men like Rick Drasco did to people who talked back. Nothing happened. The eyes behind the dark glasses stared blankly for a few moments and then Donaldson walked quietly up the stairs.

  It was worse that way. Contempt was worse than violence. Sam stood alone by the old leather chair and listened to the footsteps going upstairs to his room. All of the effect of the liquor had worn off now. His head was clear of everything but anger. There was a telephone in the room—but who would he call? Jimmy Jameson? What would he tell him? The man who calls himself Donaldson is here. He’s a professional killer and his target is Kyle Walker? That wouldn’t save Kyle. It would expose him to whoever would take over and finish the job if Donaldson failed. Besides, if Kyle wanted Jameson to know the truth he would have told him hours ago.

  And then Sam remembered what Donaldson hadn’t explained. He listened. The house was quiet now. He walked through the hall and into the kitchen. The kitchen light was still on and Julia had left a glass of milk on the table with a note propped against it telling him that Mrs. Walker had called. Sam glanced at the note and continued on to the garage. There was a direct entrance from the service porch. He opened the door and switched on the lights. The beige Chrysler was parked where the Cadillac belonged, and the hood was still warm. He looked inside. The car was empty—front seat and rear seat. He had to look further.

  He walked around to the pickup and peered into the cab. It was empty, too. Then he went to the rear of the truck and pulled back one corner of a tarpaulin that was rolled up in a bundle near the tailgate, and that was where he found Veronica Moore’s body. He could see one side of her face. Her hair had fallen over her eyes but her lips were parted slightly as if she had tried to speak or gasp for air before she died. She still smelled faintly of rum and less faintly of some young, shy perfume.

  “All right, you’ve seen her,” Donaldson said. “Now put back the tarp and forget it!”

  Sam lowered the tarp.

  “Is this one of your jokes, too?” he asked.

  “That was an accident,” Donaldson said. “Forget it! I’ll dump her where she’ll never be found.”

  “An accident?” Sam echoed. “How much does the organization pay you for accidents? How much help will they give you if I go in the house and call the police and tell them I’ve got the killer of that girl who’s missing from the Apache Inn?”

  That hurt. A man in Donaldson’s profession wasn’t allowed even one mistake. This was a big one.

  “How many lawyers will they send out for your defense?” Sam said. “How many phony witnesses to prove you were on the beach in Miami when it happened?”

  “I told you,” Donaldson said tightly, “to forget it. If you talk, I talk. If I’m destroyed, you’re destroyed.”

  But the rage Sam was fighting back was too much. No power in the universe could have stopped him from call-ling Donaldson by his rightful name. He was still speaking when he saw the back of the killer’s hand coming toward his face, and he tasted the blood as it spurted from his lips. The follow-up blow was hard and low. Sam’s legs buckled. He sagged to his knees and the last thing he saw for a long time was a greasy yellow oil stain on the cement floor just beneath the crankcase of the Chrysler.

  It was much later when Sam regained consciousness. He sparred for awareness—not really fighting because it didn’t seem important any more. But life is too stubborn to be so easily stopped, and awareness returned in spite of himself. Pain returned. The bitter taste of the blood that was dried on his lips. The agonizing pain in his groin. The horror and the shame and the humiliation—all of it returned with awareness. He tried to shift his position to relieve the pain and realized that he was no longer in the garage. He was more or less stuffed in the old leather chair in the study. The lights were still on, but he was alone. He looked across the room. The telephone was on the library table. He concentrated on the telephone and, gathering all of his strength, pushed his palms back against the arms of the chair and forced himself to his feet. He swayed but remained upright. He took the first step. The pain was like a knife cutting him in two. He stumbled and fell forward, but his body was long and his hands gripped the edge of the heavy table and gave him leverage to pull himself up again. He leaned toward the telephone and then saw that the wires had been cut. Donaldson was still having his little joke.

  Sam clung to the edge of the table with all his strength. When he raised his head the portrait over the mantel was directly in front of his eyes. Sam Stevens, the legend. And then Sam began to listen again, but not, this time, for the footsteps of the killer in the house. He listened to the sounds of the past. The boots he wore when the portrait was painted were much finer and more expensive than the ones he wore the day he met Sarah, but they could have made no smarter sound on the plank walk outside the old general store. And it wasn’t by chance that he was waiting there one day when Sarah came out laden with bundles and in need of a pair of strong arms to help her into her little Ford runabout. But it was chance that made the crank kick back and send him sprawling in the dust in front of her eyes. He listened and could still hear the sound of her laughter, and then he could hear the way it had stopped abruptly when their eyes met. People didn’t believe love happened that way any more. Today it was all noise and a kind of frantic fun that left nobody happy, because it still took a lifetime to live a life; it couldn’t be crowded into a few wild hours without losing something important. But once it had come with laughter and sudden silence and then a quiet knowing that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Sam continued to listen until he heard a deep roaring within the earth that suddenly erupted in a geyser of black crude oil and sent him running all the way home. When he found Sarah, he caught her up in a sticky embrace and shouted, “We’re rich, Sarah! It’s a gusher! We’re filthy rich!”

  He listened so hard he could hear the sound of her heartbeat against his body and her voice whispering, “But we always have been rich, Sam.”

  Sam Stevens clung to the library table and stared at the portrait over the mantel for a very long time.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was chilly in those
last hours before the sun rose above the Catalinas. Kyle awakened in a dew-curtained station wagon shivering, cramped and temporarily out of focus with his surroundings. He stretched out the arm that had supported his head most of the night and looked at his watch. It was almost six. By that time he was fully aware of his situation and knew he couldn’t risk staying on the lot much longer. Long before the office opened for business, a yardman would come on duty to polish the merchandise and warm up the motors so that no prospective buyer would encounter a dead battery and lose his enthusiasm. A used-car lot was no place to hide in daylight. He got out of the wagon and wiped the moisture from the windshield, and then got back inside and drove through a series of side streets until he was in the outskirts of the city. The business card of D. D. Madsen read: “… Hours 9 to 5.” Until the shop opened he had to keep clear of the main streets and highways. After all, he was supposed to be in Casa Grande.

  The effect of Charley’s bourbon had worn off, but the idea it had stimulated remained. The idea was as simple as the urge for survival. Yesterday he was in the dark. He saw and recognized a killer several thousand miles from his natural habitat and was afraid. But last night he had learned why his death was so important to the man who called himself R. R. Donaldson. This was more than just another contract for murder; this was self-preservation for the killer himself and that made the hunt more personal. It was no longer a syndicate against a witness; it was one man against one man. This was a hunt Kyle understood. A jungle was a jungle anywhere: Korea, Vietnam, or the streets of a city. An enemy was an enemy anywhere, and for Kyle the odds were still in his favor if he had the courage to act.