State Department Murders

by Edward S. Aarons

  Cornell said, “It will be risky, contacting anybody at the Inn.”

  “You’ll manage,” Kelly said confidently. He moved toward the door again, and his voice thickened. “You might as well know right now that what I’m askin’ for is just a start. It’s just chicken feed, compared to them rewards. You’re goin’ to do better than that, ain’t you, Mr. Smith?”

  “I’ll try,” Cornell said.

  “Try real hard, huh?”

  “Yes,” Cornell said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  KELLY went out. Cornell stood still for several moments in the hot silence of the empty cabin. He had felt safe for a short distance into the future, after Hannigan left him. But now the safety was gone for good. Kelly couldn’t be trusted. The man might wait as long as the next morning for him to produce a sizable amount of cash, and then he would probably turn him in to the police anyway, cashing in on both ends. He couldn’t stay here. As soon as he found Sally, they would have to pull out and go somewhere else, somehow. But Sally hadn’t come back, and he didn’t know where she was or why she was still absent, and his worry over Sally was greater than his worry for himself. He had to find her.

  Ten minutes later he crossed the first intersection at the outskirts of the village proper. Yesterday it had been a sleepy beach town, off the beaten track, but the publicity of Jason Stone’s death had radically transformed the scene. Main Street was jammed with cars. The sidewalks were crowded with curiosity seekers. There was a number of press stickers in evidence on the windshields. Hannigan had been pressed into traffic duty on Main Street, where the peaceful quiet of the village was churned by the new activity. The fat man had donned a fresh white jacket and a topee that shaded his red and perspiring face. Cornell mingled with the tourists on the sidewalk. Occasionally a police car went by, but he was safe among numbers, for the moment.

  The Inn looked crowded, enjoying a patronage unknown since colonial days. Every porch rocker was occupied. Cornell paused across the wide street, grateful for the shade of an awning in front of a curio shop. Kari and Paul Evarts were somewhere inside the rambling building. He hoped the police hadn’t been too hard on Kari. She’d had enough trouble with Jason Stone when the man was alive. It was ironical that she should be implicated in his death, through himself. He felt a momentary guilt, and then decided that Paul was shrewd and quick enough to counter any evidence or suspicions the police might have.

  He was about to go on when a procession of cars sirened into the driveway of the Inn. A crowd gathered under the awning with Cornell to watch. A small boy with red hair and an ice-cream cone squirmed past him and stood in front, watching the spectacle of importance at the Inn entrance.

  Someone who rated a police escort had arrived. There was an excited flurry among the porch rockers, and three bellhops hurried down the steps to open the doors of the sedan. A big man in a white linen suit stepped out. The big man had a smoothly bald head, tanned by deliberate exposure to the sun, and a wide, harsh face. His jaw was long and grim and hard. A diamond winked in his necktie as a smaller man scrambled out after him, loaded with a dispatch case and a portable typewriter.

  Sam Hand, Cornell thought.

  He had seen that bald head and massive figure with Jason Stone before. Even from here, he could catch the man’s peculiarly hoarse, commanding voice. Watching, Cornell wondered if the shadow now planned to become the substance. With Stone dead, maybe Hand had ambitions of taking over his employer’s empire. Hand was strong enough, in his own right, to do it.

  Someone piped up, “Big shot, huh?”

  It was the boy with the ice-cream cone. Cornell said, “It looks that way, son.” When he looked up again, the words died in his throat. Two troopers were moving purposefully down the sidewalk, twenty feet away. One of them stopped a man and asked something, and the man produced his wallet. The other trooper kept his eye on the spectators gathered with Cornell in front of the souvenir shop. Cornell looked the other way. Two more troopers were there, too, making the same sort of sweep up the street. He was boxed in. He was caught.

  He looked down at the red-haired boy. “Are your folks staying at the Inn?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said the youngster.

  “I’d better help you across the street, then.”

  The boy said resentfully, “I don’t need any—”

  But Cornell grabbed at his small, grimy hand and started across the walk with him. He didn’t glance at the troopers approaching from both directions. He stepped into the street, the boy’s hand firmly in his, and out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the cops swerve toward him. Cornell kept going. His impulse was to forget the boy and run. A car came along and he paused, holding the youngster beside him. The trooper stepped toward the people gathered under the awning. The car went by. Cornell reached the other side of the street where the lawn of the Inn began, and released the boy’s hand.

  The boy said, “I don’t need any help crossing streets, mister. What are you, a boy scout or something?”

  “The traffic is pretty heavy,” Cornell said.

  “Aw, it ain’t so much.”

  “So long, anyway,” Cornell said.

  “So long.”

  The boy went away. Nobody had followed them across the street. To the police, he must have seemed a careful parent who had left the Inn to buy his son an ice-cream cone. But he was exposed now, the open lawn ahead, the street to the rear. He couldn’t risk following the boy into the Inn. The troopers at the other end of the driveway were remounting their cycles, and an attendant was moving Sam Hand’s big sedan around to the garages in the rear. Cornell turned left along the walk that went diagonally across the lawn. The boy was already running up the porch steps. Cornell waved, although the boy paid no attention. The path seemed endless. Someone would stop him. Somebody would recognize him. The place swarmed with police. Any minute, now—

  The path circled the north wing of the Inn and proceeded down the sloping lawn toward the boat pier. A young couple played tennis on one of the courts nearby. He paused, as if interested in the game, and looked back. No one was behind him. He walked on, a little faster.

  Yvan Rulov’s studio was at the opposite end of Main Street, a big barn that had been converted by the artist into both his school and his living quarters. In the daylight, the place looked seedier than he remembered it. The paint was peeling off the batten siding, and one of the upper windows was broken. The little strip of lawn was bare and scorched; what grass survived needed mowing. The place had a deserted, empty look.

  The front doors were firmly closed. Cornell used the walk that led around the corner to the rear entrance. Through the big window he saw a shadowy dais and the outline of a studio easel with an unfinished canvas clamped upright. The light was too poor to make out further details. There was no movement inside. He turned into the narrow, weed-grown walk, noting two empty liquor bottles and a trash can filled with more bottles and several squeezed-out tubes of pigment. A huge Maltese sunned himself on the stone steps. The cat eyed him soberly and without alarm as he lifted the black iron knocker and let it fall.

  He knocked twice before he heard a woman’s impatient voice inside, and then the slap-slap of slippers. The cat got up and stretched, yawned, and showed his pink tongue and teeth, then rubbed himself against Cornell’s leg. The door opened and a woman said bitterly:

  “For God’s sake, do you have to come around first thing in the morning like this?”

  “It’s three o’clock.” Cornell smiled. “Afternoon.”

  The woman said, “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want it, can’t afford it, or we’ve already got it.”

  She was a tall, big-bosomed blonde in her middle twenties, clad in a loosely folded wrapper that left no doubt she wore nothing underneath. Her hair was untidy, and her generous mouth needed lipstick. Her face was pale. She looked as if she had a hangover.

  “I’m looking for Yvan,” Cornell said.

  “For an art lesson?”

&nbs
p; “Something like that.”

  The blonde laughed. The cat started to arch his back against her leg and she pulled the wrapper tighter when it started to slide with the cat’s fur. She said, “Cellini, you old rake,” and toed the Maltese aside with her scarlet ballet slippers. She looked at Cornell, at his sun glasses and the palm trees on his shirt. “You can’t see Yvan. He’s drunk.”

  “Since last night?”

  “Since every night. Come in. I’m Mrs. Rulov.”

  She held the door wider for him, but she didn’t move much aside to let him go by. He felt like Cellini, the cat, when his arm brushed her wrapper. The blonde didn’t say anything. Her wrapper clung to every lush and obvious curve of her body, and he wondered at the quick impulse inside him. Her eyes smiled when he passed her. Husband drunk upstairs, he thought, and this babe ready and willing. You and the tomcat, Cornell.

  He found himself in a small studio with a skylight in the ceiling and a number of couches against the walls, which were muraled with old abstracts. There was no easel in this room, but judging by the litter, he guessed that this was where the party had centered last night. The cat jumped to one of the couches and curled up in the sunlight. The blonde went to the narrow stairs and screamed upward.

  “Yvan!”

  Her voice echoed. Wincing, she said, “God, even that hurt me.” She called again. “Yvan, somebody to see you!”

  There was a groan from up above. The blonde grinned.

  “Go on up, handsome. Better take off the cheaters, or you’ll break your neck. He likes it dark when he’s drunk.”

  Cornell took off the sun glasses. The blonde didn’t seem to recognize him. Probably she didn’t even know of the excitement in town. She was having trouble with her negligee again, and Cornell reluctantly decided he’d better go up.

  There was a short hallway above, with several doors on either side. He paused and heard the clink of glass downstairs. The cat came up the steps after him, studied him with interested green eyes, then trotted to the most shadowed of the three doorways. He followed and found Yvan Rulov.

  It took a moment to identify the shabby dresser, the old-fashioned brass bed, and the man sprawling on the rumpled sheets. His own reflection in the tall mirror closet startled him when he moved. The man on the bed had wispy gray hair, a seamed and disillusioned face, and a tormented mouth. The room reeked of liquor. He was clad only in shorts, and his flaccid, hairy chest rose and fell with his stertorous breathing. The rest of his clothes were scattered about the room.

  “Mr. Rulov,” Cornell said.

  The man on the bed groaned.

  “Wake up,” Cornell said.

  The man muttered something. The cat made an impatient noise and bounded to the bed and walked across the man’s chest. Rulov pushed it aside and opened his eyes to blink at Cornell. His look was fearful. His hand shook.

  “Go away,” he said. “I am sick.”

  “You’re drunk,” Cornell said. “Or faking.”

  “Whassat?”

  “Faking.”

  “Crazy.”

  “You’re not drunk,” Cornell said.

  “No?”

  “You’re scared,” Cornell said.

  “I am going to die.”

  “Maybe sooner than you think,” Cornell said.

  The man sat bolt upright and looked at him. Then he looked at the doorway. His voice was a frightened squeal.

  “Milly!”

  Cornell said, “She won’t help you.”

  “Milly, come up here!”

  From below came the blonde’s impatient mutter. The man on the bed leaned back on his elbows and breathed heavily. His pale white body shone in the heat of the room. The dark green blinds were drawn tightly over the single window, and in the dim light the man’s face looked ghastly.

  “What are you talking about?” he whispered.

  “Last night,” Cornell said. “I want to know what happened!”

  “Party,” said Rulov.

  “During the party,” Cornell nodded. “When you went to Jason Stone’s house.”

  “How do you…”

  The man’s voice trailed off. Cornell crossed the room and picked up the artist’s smock he had noted on the floor. The smock was stained with oil paint, old and new, until it could have passed for Joseph’s coat. He had spotted the yellow paint on it when he came through the doorway. He held up the smock, aware of the man’s fearful eyes on him, and touched the daub of bright yellow on its sleeve. It was still fresh. He wiped it off his finger and looked at Rulov.

  “You left a trail up at Overlook.”

  The man said hoarsely, “Are you a police—”

  “No,” said Cornell.

  “I am sick. I can tell you nothing. I remember nothing. There was a party here, and we celebrate. Nothing special. Just celebrate. We drink too much. I get sick and I remember nothing what happen. That is the truth.”

  “Is that what you’re going to tell the jury?”

  “I do not kill Stone!” the man screamed.

  His voice was abnormally loud. From downstairs came the sudden crash of broken glass. Cornell didn’t turn to look at the doorway. His stare pinned the man back on the bed again.

  “How did you know he was dead?”

  “But I—”

  “How did you know?” Cornell repeated.

  The blonde’s footsteps slapped on the stairs. The Maltese bounded off the bed and retreated to the security of a corner. His tail twitched. The blonde burst into the room primed for battle, her face red and unlovely. She gave the frightened man a quick, searching glance and glared at Cornell.

  “You said you were an artist.”

  “I didn’t say what I was.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “I’ve already told Yvan that I’m not.”

  “Then get out,” she snapped. “Get out now. Quick!”

  Cornell said, “I haven’t finished with Yvan yet.”

  “You’re finished,” she said.

  And suddenly there was a long, wickedly gleaming knife in her hand.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HE HAD no other warning. She came at him like an angry tigress, her wrapper undone, her eyes furious. Rulov screamed something, but he didn’t move off the bed. Cornell felt the sharp point of the knife burn a long scratch down his left arm, and then he grabbed for her hand and wrenched it upward and back. The girl was surprisingly strong. For an instant they strained together, and then she suddenly ducked her head and tried to sink her teeth into his neck. He pulled back and tripped over a rocker and lost his balance, crashing back against the wall. But he kept his grip on her hand with the knife. The blonde fell with him, landing with heavy softness across his body, and there came a long ripping sound as her flimsy negligee parted. She gave it no attention. Again she tried to bite him, and this time Cornell twisted quickly and savagely at her wrist. A whimper of pain escaped her as the knife clattered to the floor. He heaved upward, throwing her angry weight from him, and grabbed for the knife. Her long fingernails raked across the back of his hand as he lunged across her for the blade. And then his fingers closed around the hilt and he scrambled backward, breathing quickly, and stood up. The blonde remained on the floor, glaring at him.

  From the bed, Rulov made a soft whimpering sound.

  The cat made a spitting noise.

  “Behave,” Cornell breathed.

  He watched her bosom heave. She became aware of her nakedness and snatched at the remnants of her flimsy garment. It didn’t cover any part of her. She got her long legs straightened out and stood up.

  “Yvan, darling.”

  Rulov whimpered.

  “Yvan…”

  She went around Cornell and sat on the bed beside the flabby, gray-haired man. Cornell wrapped a handkerchief around the scratches on his hand and looked at the knife the girl had tried to use. It was long and sharp, and it could have been the one that had been used with such repeated savagery on Jason Stone last night.

&nbs
p; Rulov was sobbing, muttering incoherently, his head buried on the blonde’s bosom. Her hand stroked his wispy gray hair and she made soft cooing noises.

  “It’s all right. It’ll be all right, Yvan.”

  “I am not a man,” he whimpered.

  “You’re man enough for me, Yvan.”

  She looked at Cornell, who said nothing. She said, “I think we could all use a drink.”

  “Yes, yes,” Rulov sobbed.

  “Everything will be all right,” she said again.

  She stood up, holding the negligee around her, and went to a closet where she found a bottle. There were some glasses on the dresser Cornell leaned upon. She ignored him as if he were no longer there, as if she hadn’t just tried to kill him. She blew into the glasses to get rid of the dust, measured the rye in the bottle, and poured three equal drinks. She gave Rulov the first, left one on the dresser for Cornell, and took a quick, shuddering gulp of her own. By the time Cornell glanced at Rulov, the man’s glass was empty. He didn’t touch his own drink.

  The heat in the dusky room was stifling. He heard a thud beside him and saw that the Maltese had leaped to the top of the dresser and was sniffing delicately at his glass of liquor. Surprisingly, the blonde laughed.

  “Drink up, handsome, or Cellini will help himself.”

  “Let him have it,” Cornell said.

  The cat began to lap at the rye with relish. Milly sat on the edge of the bed with her arm protectively around Rulov. The gray-haired man had stopped sobbing. The liquor had helped. He looked at Cornell with eyes still bleary, but they held a glimmer of intelligence now.

  “I must apologize. Milly and I understand each other, but to a stranger—well, she should not have attacked you. Milly is like that.”

  The blonde said, “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Yvan.”

  “I know, my dear. But I am afraid this matter is a little beyond your capabilities.”

  “You didn’t kill anyone!” she said fiercely.

  “You cannot be sure.”

  “I know you,” she said. “I’m sure. And don’t talk like that, you hear? You didn’t kill Stone.”