Honey in His Mouth hcc-60

by Lester Dent

  The beach fire, down to coals, threw no more light than candles. Harsh wondered if it was enough light for Brother to notice any difference in the guns when he returned. He hoped not. But he could not relax, thinking of the risk.

  Presently Brother came swimming in strongly from the ocean and ran to the fire, scattering drops of water. He put on his clothes over his wet body, breathing with deep animal-like regularity while he did so. He tucked the gun inside his shirt without more than a glance. Then he sat down cross-legged by the fire and began to eat ravenously.

  Harsh looked at Mr. Hassam. “You said something about a talk.”

  “We have had it.” Mr. Hassam sounded tired. “I merely wished to be sure you had grown more comfortable than the last time we spoke about it with the fact that there was eventually to be a murder.”

  “Was that all?”

  “Yes.”

  Harsh stood up and stretched. “Then I’ll see you folks in the morning. Okay?”

  Mr. Hassam nodded. “I hope we have not said anything that will keep you from sleeping soundly.”

  “Don’t worry about that. You knock off whoever you want to knock off, just so long as I get mine.”

  TWENTY

  The whereabouts of the two automobiles was important. Harsh settled that point on his way to the house. The underslung sports car and the older station wagon were under the carport at the side of the house. He took a quick look at the driving controls of the sports car. They did not look complicated, he thought, but then Vera Sue wasn’t the experienced driver he was. He began to worry about it.

  The limousine was parked before the leaded glass marquee at the front door. He did not look inside, merely noted its position. As best he recalled, it was left there at night.

  If anyone had found Goldberg’s body, obviously something would have been mentioned.

  The upstairs hallways smelled faintly of flowers, furniture polish. At the end of the hall the windows spilled rectangles of moonlight on dove grey carpet. The sound of a sob arrested him and he stood motionless, listening. Surf whispered distantly on the beach, the coyote sound of distant bathers was audible. Birds quarreled briefly somewhere in the shrubbery.

  He opened Vera Sue Crosby’s bedroom door. “For Christ’s sake!” Vera Sue was lying on the bed with an arm over her face. She did not remove the arm when he sat on the edge of the bed. He leaned down, kissed her mouth, getting a slight taste of Benedictine off her lips. “What’s the matter?”

  She lifted the arm from her face, made a fist of her hand, and shook the fist angrily. “Stuck-up snobs, dirty bastards.” Her face was puffy and her eye enraged. “Telling me I couldn’t go down on the beach to eat with them.”

  “Say, did they do that? I didn’t know they did that.”

  “Why don’t you stick up for me, Walter?”

  “I have been honey, but I didn’t know about this.”

  She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “You stick up for me, Walter? Crap.”

  “Honey, I do. I’m always thinking about you, you know that.”

  She sniffled moistly. “The way it looks to me, you do plenty of thinking about that Miss Muirz.”

  “Vera Sue, you want to know something, I’m scared of that dame.” Harsh kissed her once more. This time she kissed back. “I’m getting scared of the whole bunch of them, if you want the facts.”

  “You follow them around like their puppy dog.”

  “I been playing them along. I thought I had them suckered into taking up my photographic emulsion idea and putting it over big.”

  Vera Sue sat up suddenly. “Walter! What the hell, are you trying to say your plans blew up?”

  “Worse than that. Jesus Christ, worse than that.” Harsh looked into the hall and closed the door before he came back to the bed. “You know what I found out tonight? These people are a bunch of crooks, that’s what I found out tonight. And not our sort of crooks either.”

  “I ain’t surprised.” She was not tipsy in spite of the Benedictine on her lips. “I ain’t surprised the least bit.”

  “Well, I was.”

  “Walter, the whole thing was too screwed up to be on the level. Couldn’t you see that?” She peered at him intently. “Walter! My God, Walter, you are scared! I can see it on your face.”

  He nodded.

  “Why? What have they done, Walter?”

  “It’s not what they’ve done, it’s what they’re planning to do. They’re fixing up to murder a guy, put me in his place, and embezzle the guy’s money. Damn right I’m scared. Wouldn’t you be?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “We got to be careful. They know I’m wise to their plans, and I got a feeling they won’t want me walking out of here alive.”

  “Well, by God, I’m getting out. They don’t think I know anything, do they?”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t put it past them to knock us both off. They’re desperate characters. They ain’t like Americans.” He held his head in his hands, pretending to think. She was falling right in with his plans. “We got two handicaps, Vera Sue. No money. No transportation.”

  “Couldn’t we take the limousine, then abandon it later, Walter?”

  “Huh-uh, honey. No good. That little sports car could catch up with the limousine in nothing flat.”

  “Well, then what’s wrong with taking the sports job?”

  “Can you drive it?”

  “I looked it over a few times, and once I sat in it. Yeah, I think I could handle it, Walter. But what the hell, you would be going along, and you could drive.”

  “What I was thinking, baby, you could take off by yourself, and I would stay behind and fix the other cars so they wouldn’t run, then take off myself on foot. We could meet later.”

  They were quiet. Harsh hoped the two servants were on the main floor in the rear where they usually were this time of the evening. He glanced out the bedroom window and saw Mr. Hassam, Doctor Englaster, and Miss Muirz still beside the beach fire with Brother.

  “Walter. About the no money... ?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to show you something.” Vera Sue got off the bed and moved to the door. “Walter, do you know anything about jewelry, whether it’s worth anything or not by looking at it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Vera Sue beckoned. “Come on. That Miss Muirz brought some stuff with her when she came the last time. I been doing a little snooping on my own, Walter. Come on, I want to show you.”

  She drew Harsh down the hall and opened the door of Miss Muirz’s bedroom. “In these two suitcases.” Her voiced was husky with excitement. “Goddamn, if they’re real, Walter, we could come out of this with a stake.”

  The first suitcase she opened was packed with small objects wrapped in tissue and cotton. She tore away the wrappings, uncovering a necklace, several brooches, a crown-like tiara. Diamonds, emeralds, platinum, the stones all very large. Like owl eyes, Harsh thought.

  “Jesus God, Vera Sue.”

  She fondled the jewel pieces. “You think they’re real, Walter? The other suitcase is full of the same stuff, too.” Excitement made the muscles ripple in her throat. “Is it costume jewelry, Walter, or the real McCoy?”

  “It’s real, baby.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It figures. It belongs to the guy they’re planning to kill. They already stole it from him, and he hasn’t missed it yet, and won’t ever miss it if they murder him. Yeah, it’s got to be real. Say, if we take it and return it to the owner, we would be in line for a big reward.”

  “Reward? Return it?” Vera Sue looked startled. “Oh, well, sure, I see what you mean. Yeah, sure, Walter.” She took a deep breath. “We don’t have to hand it back to the owner right away, though, Walter, do you think?”

  “No, of course not. We can keep it and negotiate with the owner, or his insurance company, so we don’t get screwed out of a reward.”

  “Walter, how much reward do you suppose
we would get?”

  “Hell, how do I know? Maybe fifty thousand dollars. I don’t know.”

  He saw her eyes turn all whites. He should not have mentioned a sum like that, he thought, remembering the effect fifty thousand dollars had had on him.

  “Walter, get a bed sheet.” Two spots of apple red grew on Vera Sue’s cheeks. “We won’t take the suitcases, they’d maybe be missed. We’ll dump the stuff in a sheet.”

  He went to the door, listened, went out into the hall and silently on to Vera Sue’s room, where he whipped the orchid sheet off the bed. He stowed it under his arm, ran back to join Vera Sue. She was on her knees beside the suitcase. “I just hope to Jesus this is not costume junk. My God, maybe it’s just a salesman’s sample case of cheap trash.”

  “It’s real, I’m betting on that.”

  She snatched the sheet from him and snapped it out shoulder height, guiding it to the floor with swaying motions of her upper body like a Bali dance. She dumped everything from both suitcases onto the sheet. Tissue paper, jewelry, cotton, everything. Her breath came and went in spurts past the tips of small white teeth. “I wish to hell we had something to stuff in the suitcases.”

  Harsh shook his head. “There’s no time for that. They’re right on the beach. We can’t get much of a start as it is.”

  Vera Sue nodded reluctantly. “The first thing this Miss Muirz is going to do when she gets back inside is open the suitcases to gloat over the jewels. I know bitches like her, and I know that’s what she’ll do. And when she does, she’s going to squall like a hill panther, and we had better be gone from here.”

  “All right. Let’s go back to my plan. You take the sports car, Vera Sue. I’ll put the other two cars out of commission and knock out the telephone, then take off north. That will split them up.”

  “The jewelry better go with me, Walter.”

  He stepped to her and without warning swung his fist. It landed on the side of her face. She slid to the floor with one leg folded under her and the other stretched out in front of her.

  Harsh leaned over her. “That’s to pay you for the goddamn greedy ideas I can see you’re getting. You listen to me, baby. You double-cross me, you just try it, and what you just got is not even a small sample of what you got coming.”

  No more than the tips of small teeth showed between her lips. “It may be you just made a mistake, Walter.”

  “Like hell I just made a mistake. You try to cut me out of this deal, and I’ll break your neck. Now listen. Go to a hotel in Miami. Register and wait for me. The way you pick a hotel, you look in the Yellow Pages. You look at the list of hotels and count down five from the first, and go to that one. If you can’t get a room there, you make sure you leave a note for me. Say in the note where you did get a room. Fifth hotel down in the phone book, register or leave me a note. Got it?”

  She drew in the leg that was straightened out and put the tips of her fingers on the floor. “You brutal son of a bitch. What do you think I am, stupid? I’m smarter than you, Walter. Least I can read and write better’n a ten-year-old.”

  “Okay. Okay, baby.” He seized the bundle made of the knotted sheet and jewelry. “You want to play that way, I can take this stuff myself.”

  She jumped to her feet and snatched the bundle. “No, I’ll do it. You just distract their attention while I get away.” Her eyes glowed like angry garnets. “And I’ll settle with you later for slugging me.”

  He opened the door and scouted the hall. “Come on.” They walked along the hall and down the stairs. Vera Sue hugged the bundle tightly. The jewelry made rich faint scratching noises inside the sheet as it rubbed together.

  Harsh led the way to the front door. When he opened it a current of air came from under the leaded marquee bearing the fragrance of azaleas.

  Moonlight was cream-colored on the driveway and black shadows lurked in the shrubbery. Their feet whispered in the cropped grass. The toes of their shoes became shiny wet with dew.

  “You are sure you can drive this thing, Vera Sue?” The sports car was a low shape in the moonlight, a pale powerhouse, sleek and opalescent like a pearl. He pushed Vera Sue down alongside the car and crouched himself. “You wait here. Don’t let anybody see you sitting in the car. It will take a few minutes for me to disable the limousine and get that gate open. The gate will be the signal. When you see it open, take off. Cut loose and just keep going to Miami. I’ll handle the rest.”

  “What about the station wagon, Walter?”

  “I’ll fix it now.” He went over to the station wagon and opened the door and leaned inside. He did nothing but lean inside for a while, then went back to Vera Sue. “I tore the wires loose.”

  “Okay. I’ll watch for the gate to open.”

  He leaned over her. “A kiss for luck?”

  “Yes, Walter, you do deserve something for luck.” She made a small hard fist of her hand and brought it against his nose, making the cartilage squeak like a pup’s rubber mouse. “There, you bully. With my compliments.”

  He fell back and cupped his hand over his nose. “Okay. That’s the one shot you get for free, baby. You try to steal this jewelry, I’ll fix you good, Vera Sue. Let me be plain. You pull anything, you’d better sleep in a locked room every night after that, because the day you don’t I’ll find you and you’ll never wake up.”

  “You’re a nasty son of a bitch, Walter.”

  “You are so right. You just keep that in mind, baby.”

  Harsh returned to the house. Instead of going upstairs, he entered the first floor study where there was a telephone. He held the instrument to his ear until he heard the dial tone to make sure it was an outside line, then he dialed the operator and told her he wanted the police. “The Highway Patrol. Emergency. Hurry, please.” There was a pack of cigarettes on the table and he shook one out of the pack and put it in his mouth, but took it out quickly when he heard a female voice on the telephone. That a woman’s voice should answer for the police surprised him. He was briefly confused, but recovered. “Highway Patrol?...Yeah, yeah, well listen. This is a tip-off. Two guys in a limousine. They got a body of a murdered man in the back. Black limousine, traveling south on the beach road right now. It will go west across the causeway, then south on U.S. 1. License plate’s seven-zero-F-eight-zero-one. A murdered body in the back. Get on it.”

  “Who has been murdered?”

  “He’s dead as hell.”

  “Hold it a second.” Harsh could hear the woman relaying the information. “What is your name, please?”

  “Never mind my name. You think I’m crazy enough to get mixed up in this?” Harsh dropped the handset on the cradle.

  He wondered if, when he hung up at his end, that broke the connection in the dialing apparatus so the call could not be traced. He wished he knew. At the same time he hoped he’d never find out. The time had come to get that money out of the wall safe and haul out of here.

  He left the study after a glance from the window assured him that Mr. Hassam, Doctor Englaster, Miss Muirz, and Brother were still on the beach. They were crouching around the portable radio with an attentive air, like setters on point. Listening to another news broadcast, no doubt.

  He went to his room and closed the door. He ripped open the box which contained the slacks he had been wearing when he shot the cop and dug his hand into the pocket. He found the wall safe keys. The bits of metal felt strange in his fingers. He stood there a moment with the keys in his hand. He did not feel any immediate reaction to holding them the way he had supposed he would.

  He went to the wall safe and swung the oil painting aside and worked the combination the first try. Got it first crack, what do you know, he thought, and he made a little celebratory ceremony of getting the two keys in the locks in the inner door before turning either. The inner door had no handle and the way it opened was by pulling on the keys after they were turned, he imagined. He turned the keys and tugged, bringing the door open. It was exactly level with his eyes. The money was t
here.

  He was looking right at fifty thousand dollars, he thought, but he did not feel any particular elation. He felt very calm, except that his ears seemed to have started ringing. He drew out the money and divided it in two halves and put each half in a pocket, one half in one hip pocket and the other half in the other hip pocket. It was funny how calm he felt, except that ringing in his ears.

  Suddenly he bent over so he could clamp the hand protruding from the cast to his left ear and his other hand to his right ear. That stopped the ringing, shut it out. The ringing was not in his ears. It was a bell somewhere in the house. A burglar alarm, he thought, and he looked in the safe and saw a little switch which closed a circuit when the safe’s inner door was opened. A goddamn burglar alarm.

  He wheeled and ran out of his room, down the stairs, out of the house into the shrubbery. He tried to be silent in the shrubbery shadows. Back of him the house was huge and silent except for the alarm sounding. A breeze rustled the palm fronds and rubbed the leaves against the glass-crusted wall like insects running.

  Harsh ran to the gate. Still unlocked, it swung open silently as he shoved at it.

  Now another bell jangled. Louder, nearer. The bastards got everything wired with alarms, he thought, and he lunged into the shadows and began running toward the carport. Breathing hard made his nose hurt. The gate alarm was jangling, while the other had a muffled sound as though it was being swallowed. He brushed a palm tree, hurting his arm.

  The sports car engine coughed and moaned and the gears made a noise like screen wire tearing. Its headlights thrust out white funnels of light, and these raced along the driveway pursued by the powerful snarl of the engine. The sports car shot past him and on through the gate. Gravel torn up by the tires and thrown in the air fell back on the driveway, grass, shrubbery.

  Harsh reached the house. He saw Doctor Englaster, Brother, Miss Muirz, and Mr. Hassam all running toward him from the beach. Miss Muirz was well in the rear, although she ran easily with a long loping stride. Must’ve gotten a slower start.