“I’ll manage, Pedro.”
He mixed a drink in one glass, set the bottle on the table.
The detectives stared at him in surprise. “In a way,” he said, “you are under my orders. Any payments to your agency must have my approval.”
O’Malley looked at him blankly. “What about our drinks?” he asked.
Crane said, “I don’t believe we want any liquor.”
“That’s better,” said the major. “You men are on a job, not a drinking bout.” Crane saw that his eyes, in addition to being flecked with blood, were very small. “I’ve heard stories of your alcoholic tendencies.” Crane thought the small eyes made him look like a pig.
“That’s the way we work,” O’Malley objected. “We always combine pleasure with business.”
“While you’re working for the Essex estate you’ll stick to business.”
“O.K.” Crane looked away from the whisky bottle. “No pleasure.”
The major’s eyes gleamed in triumph. “Now I’ll tell you about young Essex.…”
While the whisky diminished in his glass he recounted the more important episodes in Essex’ life—the Ruby Carstairs breach-of-promise suit (“Devilish fortunate to settle for ten thousand”); his deportation from Japan for booing the mikado; the Lido Club row in which a Broadway columnist was blinded by a thrown bottle; his arrest for doing one hundred and three miles an hour on the Boston Pike; his expulsions from Groton, St Paul’s, Phillips Exeter, Valley Ranch.
Deftly the servingman laid silver and linen on the table, took the ice-surrounded glasses of tomato juice from Crane and O’Malley, departed.
“There’s more … a wild lad if ever …” The major tossed the remainder of his drink down his throat. “But you’ve an idea. Only pertinent thing is his debts. Yes, his debts. Especially a bloody big one to Tortoni, the gambler.”
Crane’s eyebrows lifted. “So?”
“Don’t know how much it is,” confided the major. “Penn denies it altogether. But Tortoni tried to collect from me in New York. Cheeky beggar! Had him shown out of the office.”
“You think Tortoni’s behind the notes?”
The major attempted to quote from the second note. “‘The time has come to pay your debt.…’”
“‘The walrus said,’” Crane said.
“How’s that?”
“Skip it,” Crane said. “Would the estate pay if his life was actually in danger?”
“Absolutely.” The major’s face looked angry. “But not simply because some fellow has written a few notes.” He glared at Crane as though he was contemplating homicide. “Supposin’ I ask you a question. What do you propose to do?”
Crane said, “Keep our pants on.”
They sat in silence while the servingman put plates before them, ladled out eggs and bacon from a silver-covered platter, passed thin slices of dry toast, poured coffee, helped them to cream and sugar. The eggs were as Crane liked them, very soft, and the coffee was marvelous, at once bitter and sweet.
When the man had gone O’Malley asked the major: “You got any ideas for us?”
The major ignored him. “I understand your office’s keeping tab on that fake count of Camelia’s,” he said to Crane.
“Count Paul di Gregario? Yes, I guess they are.”
“Waste of time. They’re washed up.”
“Maybe,” said Crane.
The major glared at him.
Craig, the butler, entered the patio from a door in the left wing of the house, half circled the steel supports of the swimming pool’s diving board, walked up to Major Eastcomb. “Good morning, sir,” he said, ignoring Crane and O’Malley.
The major grunted, “Morning.”
Usually, Crane thought, butlers looked pompous, ponderous. Craig looked alert and nasty. Under heavy talcum his beard glistened, blue-black, and his eyebrows met over his nose. His eyes were beady. “I have the accounts ready for you, Major,” he said.
“I’ll be along in five minutes.”
“Very good, sir.” The butler turned from the table, his small eyes passing over Crane and O’Malley without a change in their expression. Crane said, “Craig.” The butler abruptly halted. “Will you have my car brought around? Mr O’Malley and I are going into Miami.”
The butler’s eyes gleamed. “Shall I pack your bags, sir?”
The major was absolutely motionless. Crane demanded, “What makes you think I want my bags packed?”
“I thought possibly you were leaving.”
“Craig”—Crane leaned across the table toward the butler—“when we decide to leave you shall be the first to know it.”
The butler left them. The major grunted, said, “No one, except Penn and me, knows that you are detectives. I suggest an improvement in your manners.” He grunted again. “A trifle more dignity would aid the deception. You’re supposed to be gentlemen, y’know.”
O’Malley scowled, allowed a damp piece of toast to halt midway between the coffee cup and his mouth. Crane said, “And we thought our disguise was perfect!”
“Another thing.” Rising, the major grasped the bottle of whisky, tucked it under his arm. “I want to warn you again about drinking. I won’t tolerate it. Remember.” He went toward the same door the butler had used.
Crane lifted the silver cover on the platter, but there weren’t any more eggs. He sighed.
Making a circle of his thumb and forefinger, O’Malley held it to his left eye, monocle-fashion. “Pleasant beggar!” he observed.
“I know a better word to describe him,” Crane said. “It begins with b too.”
Chapter III
MIAMI’S sidewalks dazzlingly reflected sunlight on south and west sides of streets, bore crowds of deliberate, shirt-sleeved tourists on shady north and east sides. The convertible passed a yellow building with a sign, FIVE COURSE DINNER—25¢, and swung into a parking lot. “Back after lunch,” Crane told the Negro attendant.
They walked over to Flagler Street, elbowing their way through the crowds, and turned right toward the bay. Two blondes in halters and white shorts, sauntering arm in arm, smiled at O’Malley, but Crane said, “Hey! None of that.” He looked over his shoulder. “Besides, we can do better.”
They passed a stand selling orange juice, a stand selling pineapple juice, a drugstore, a clothing store bearing a banner marked, END OF SEASON SALE—FIFTY OFF, a stand selling a mixture of coconut milk and pineapple juice. A policeman warned them not to jaywalk. From a loud-speaker over a leather goods store came a sticky Wayne King waltz. They both began to sweat.
“The town’s lousy with dames,” observed O’Malley.
“Probably recruiting for Gertie, over on the Bay Front,” said Crane.
They turned into a bookstore and Crane asked the elderly lady clerk for a Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
Behind tortoise-shell glasses her eyes seemed about to shed tears. “The only one we have is secondhand.” Her face was thin.
“That’s all right. How much?”
He gave her two dollar bills and a fifty-cent piece, said, “You needn’t wrap it,” and handed the heavy book to O’Malley. “That’s for you.”
“What do I want with it?” asked O’Malley, surprised.
Crane was looking from one side of the street to the other, up and down side streets as they walked. “I’ll tell you soon as I find some beer.”
A block to the left they found the New York Bar. It was cool inside and there was a lovely odor of scotch whisky, limes, Cuban rum and beer in the air. They sank into leather chairs on opposite sides of a black composition table.
“Two Bass ale,” Crane told the waiter.
O’Malley pretended astonishment. “What’ll the major say?”
“Wait!” Crane called to the waiter. “Cancel the order. Two triple scotch and sodas instead.”
“Make ’em double triple scotches,” said O’Malley.
His expression dazed, the waiter hurried away to consult with the bartender.
Crane felt all right about disregarding the major’s orders. He belonged to the pleasure school of crime detection, anyway. He never found that a little relaxation hindered him in his work. His best ideas came while he was relaxed. However, it was hard to make a client see this. Clients were often stupid. That’s why they had to hire detectives.
“Give me a jit,” he said to O’Malley. “I’ll make that phone call we came in for.”
When he returned he was smiling. “Doc Williams and Eddie Burns are in town.”
O’Malley looked up from his half-finished drink. “So that phony plate of spaghetti did get here after all?”
“Yeah, the count’s over at the Roney Plaza. Burns is with him on the beach and Doc’s coming right over.” Crane raised his glass above his head. “Here’s to the major.”
They drank and ordered another, and O’Malley said, “What about this book?”
“Oh yeah,” said Crane. “That’s culture. That’s what you need, a little culture.”
“What is it, a book on etiquette?”
“No. Look. You look all right; you dress all right; most of the time you act all right.”
“Hell, I act all right all the time.”
“O.K., you act all right all the time. But sometimes you don’t say the right thing.” Crane took a long drink. “That’s good. A good bar. But here’s how the book’ll help you.”
“How?”
“You’re a strong, silent guy at the Essex’ house, see? Most of the time you don’t say anything but yes and no and thank you. But every once in a while, to show you got culture, you spout one of the quotations in this book; whatever’ll fit the occasion.”
“You mean I gotta learn everything in this whole book?”
“No. Just a half-dozen or so quotations. Look up the ones on women and liquor and love; those’ll fit in easiest.”
O’Malley thumbed through the book. He halted somewhere in the center. “You mean like this?” He read:
“I’d be a butterfly born in a bower,
Where roses and lilies and violets meet.”
Crane said, “Why, Mister O’Malley!”
“Well, Goddam it,” said O’Malley. “That’s in here.”
“You have to use judgment,” said Crane. “Or some big strong man will elope with you.”
Ice clinked against the bottom of O’Malley’s glass as he set it down. “O.K. I’ll drip culture all over the place. Now what about another drink?”
“I think we ought to have a sandwich.”
“What! No drink? No toast to the major?”
“Oh sure. But I think we ought to have a sandwich. Waiter, two double triple scotches and two roast beef sandwiches.”
“Two triple roast beef sandwiches,” said O’Malley.
“That reminds me,” said Crane. “The word ‘trun.’ You do not use ‘trun.’”
“No.”
“No. You do not use ‘trun.’ We are not going to be ‘trun’ to the alligators.”
“You’re tellin’ me?”
“If you have to use ‘trun’, use it this way: he fell like a trun of bicks.”
“You mean a trun of bricks.”
“Or a one trun tuck.”
“You seem to be confused,” said O’Malley. “Perhaps a sip of this harmless beverage …?”
Doc Williams found them very gay. “I might have known it,” he said sadly; “I might have known it.” He was a dapper man with a waxed mustache and pouches under his eyes. His black eyes were bright; there was a streak of perfectly white hair over his left temple; he was wearing a green gabardine suit with a sport back, a tan silk shirt, a maroon necktie. Chorus girls always thought he looked “distinguished.”
Crane said, “Have a drink. Have one of our new drinks.”
“Well, I hardly …”
“Waiter, a double triple scotch.”
“Kay-riste!” Williams shuddered. “Where’d you get that drink?” He peered at the beverage list. “Scotch and soda, fifty cents. Doubled is a dollar. Tripled——” His voice went up the scale. “My God! That’s three dollars a drink.”
“It’s economy in the long run,” explained Crane. “You don’t drink as many as you do of the cheaper kind.”
Eyes raised to the cream-colored ceiling, Williams said, “Why can’t I work just once with sensible men?”
“We are sensible men,” said O’Malley. “And besides, we got culture.” He added: “‘Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.’”
Williams shoved back his chair, stood up. “I think I musta made a mistake,” he mumbled.
They prevailed upon him to sit down again, to try his drink. “Tell us about the count,” urged Crane. “How did he get down here?”
“On a plane.” Williams said he had picked up the count as soon as the Union Trust had given Colonel Black the Essex case. “The colonel’s got an idea Di Gregario’s back of those notes.” Crane nodded and he went on, “Last night he takes the Florida plane at Newark and Eddie and I go along. He goes right to the Roney from the plane, gets a room and meets with a lot of other dagos. They are plannin’ something, but Eddie and me can’t get near enough to hear. Now he and Eddie are sunning on the beach.”
“You don’t think the dagos are just friends of his?”
“They may be friends, but they’re up to something, y’bet. They’re like cats—that nervous. And most of ’em are packing rods.”
Crane shook his head sadly. “Do they know there’s a law against carrying weapons?”
“I’m not plannin’ on breaking the news to them.”
O’Malley said, “That gives us two guys to investigate: the count and Tortoni.”
Crane told Williams of their experiences, of The Eye and Major Eastcomb. “That’s why we’re drinking,” he explained. “We can’t let the major bluff us.”
Williams grinned. “Of course, you wouldn’t think of drinking otherwise?”
“Oh no,” said O’Malley. “Certainly not.”
“Who do you think’s dropping those notes around?” asked Williams.
“Must be somebody planted in the house,” said Crane.
“Any tough-looking mugs in the house?”
O’Malley said, “They’re all tough looking.”
“I know Tortoni,” said Williams. “He used to work for Luciano in the slave racket. Runs a joint called the Red Castle out on Long Island. Gambling and women.”
“A torpedo?”
“Naw. Yellow as a banana. He’s shifty, though.”
“Well, we’ll be seeing him for ourselves tonight,” said Crane. “We’re going to give his joint a little whirl.”
Williams said, “You better lay off these drinks or you’ll be in a whirl yourselves.”
Crane said, “Waiter, three more of the same.”
Crane shoved the convertible over the fifty-one miles to Key Largo in forty-seven minutes. There was no sign of the guards as they skidded up to the front door. Heat closed in on them; they were glad to get inside the house.
On the curving stairs they met the servingman who had brought them the beer on the previous night. “Mr Essex has been inquiring about you, sir,” he told Crane. “Everyone is having cocktails by the swimming pool.”
They climbed the stairs and Crane went to the balcony and looked down at the patio. In the boxlike swimming pool the water was the color of lime pop; in the ocean it was royal blue. Under a gay red-and-yellow-and-green sunshade, in the place where breakfast had been served, was a long table covered by bottles, glasses, ice, hors d’œuvres. A servant in white was flourishing a cocktail shaker.
Crane said, “O’Malley! Babes!”
One of the women by the pool didn’t count. She was past fifty and her figure had lost most of its shape. There were three others who did count, however. One of these Crane recognized as Camelia Essex. She was about to dive into the pool and her figure was supple under a French-blue brassière-and-trunks suit. Another woman, English looking, athle
tic, slightly horsey in the better sense of the word, stood talking to Tony Lamphier and another man. Her hair was brown; her face was aristocratic; her legs were long and slender; her breasts were firm, her hips narrow under a silver-gray swim suit.
But the third woman held their eyes. Even from the balcony they could see the golden sheen of her tanned arms and legs. She was an egg-yolk blonde and O’Malley described her by saying, “Look out—Mae West!” She was talking with the major and Penn Essex. Her breasts pushed so strongly against her white silk suit that the dip in the fabric into her flat stomach was entirely without wrinkles. Her shoulders were rounded gracefully and her hips had a curve neither soft nor muscular.
O’Malley spoke in Crane’s ear. “Am I glad I came! Where’re our suits?”
Essex, when they entered the patio, saw they were given planters punches and took them around to the others. The woman with Tony Lamphier had nice teeth and her name was Eve Boucher and she was about thirty years old. She said, “How d’you do.” The man with them was Gregory Boucher. Black hair grew in patches on his chest, on his arms, on the backs of his hands. His face, with a large curved nose, was French, almost Semitic; he looked cunning and unreliable. He was over forty and Crane wondered how Mrs Boucher had happened to marry him.
Sybil Langley was the name of the older woman. She was seated by herself in a cushioned deck chair and she held in her hand what looked to Crane like half a glass of straight whisky. Her face was white and tragic, long with huge violet eyes. “So glad,” she said in a deep, glowing voice. She was wrapped in a purple beach robe.
When they left her Essex said, “She’s a second cousin of ours—was a top-flight actress once.”
Crane asked, “Peter Langley, out in Hollywood, her brother?”
Essex said, “Yes.” He said, “Dawn, this is Mr Crane … and Mr O’Malley.” He turned to them. “Dawn Day.”
Miss Day was even more appealing at close range. Her eyes, baby blue, passed over Crane’s wiry body, lingeringly appraised O’Malley’s beautifully muscled shoulders, his prize fighter’s waist. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr O’Malley,” she said. “Real pleased.” She sounded as though she meant it. “And you, too, Mr Crane.”
The Dead Don’t Care Page 3