“Including Kermit and Joanna?”
“They were leaving for school, so Patty didn’t have time to pin them down. The only thing she got from them was that it was doctor’s orders. But when she called Dr. Freeman from my place, he said Charlotte was fine last time he saw her a week ago, and it was her own idea to go away like that. Nerves, she said. All he did was tell her to go ahead if she felt it would do her good.”
Jake said with amusement: “So you and good old Patty put your heads together and decided Mrs. Thoren must have discovered I was on her trail and therefore took it on the lam.”
Nera said sweetly: “No, Mr. Dekker, I did the deciding. All by myself. In private. And that wasn’t until after Patty also told me that a couple of days ago Charlotte went to the Daystar membership committee and ordered them to get you off the island pronto. And when they said they couldn’t take any kind of legal action until someone was elected to fill Walter’s seat on the committee, she said they could appoint her to it then and there. Which, as it turned out, they couldn’t. Now you tell me why she was so wild to get rid of you, and then, when she couldn’t, she suddenly goes away herself. Especially when she’s having trouble collecting the insurance on Walter and must know just as well as Fons that there’s an investigator on the job around here.”
“Oh, no,” Jake said. “And to think I’m the one writing the books.”
“Uh-huh,” Nera said. “Writing books. That’ll be the day.”
He crooked a finger at her. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
“I’ve already seen what you have to show me, remember? And I don’t play matinees.” Her face was very pale now, her nostrils flaring. “You really are a contemptible son of a bitch, aren’t you? Climbing in bed with a woman to get information from her. Or is that your way of paying for the information?”
“That does it.” He took the glass from her hand and put it on the table. Then he caught hold of her wrist and brutally hauled her to her feet. “Fun is fun, but only up to a point. Now we’re going to set the record straight.”
“By twisting my arm off?”
“By showing you something I didn’t intend to show anybody for a long time to come. But if that’s the way it has to be—” When he pulled her down the hallway to the study she tried to hold back, then followed on skittering little steps. In the study he gestured at the display on the desk. The typewriter with the incomplete page of manuscript in it, the open box with the other pages of manuscript, the stack of typing paper. “What do you think that is?”
“I don’t care what it is. And let me go. You’re hurting me.”
He thrust her up against the desk. “Go on, read it,” he said in a hard voice.
She did, near-sightedly leaning over the typewriter. Jake pulled other sheets of manuscript from the box and spread them out on the desk. “Take a look at these too.”
She glanced over them. “I suppose it’s some kind of book,” she said sullenly.
He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a cardboard folder. He turned back its cover and held it out toward her. “And what does this little document look like?”
Her eyes went over it. “It says it’s a contract for a book.”
“From whom?”
“All right, it’s from the Donaldson and Friar Company. Publishers. In New York. Does that make you happy?”
“Not completely,” Jake said. “When was it made out?”
“Last year. And it’s for five thousand dollars. And you’re writing a book.” Her tone was now one of baffled apology. “Jake, will you please stop carrying on like this? Look, I don’t know what got into me. Or maybe I do. I have been thinking you made a fool of me, and I started off the day with a couple of drinks—”
“Another member of Milt Webb’s breakfast-out-of-the-bottle club?”
“You don’t have to be so stuffy about it. When you live my kind of life, maybe you’re entitled to join the club.”
“Not if it means turning paranoiac every time you raise your elbow.” Jake released her wrist, and she stood rubbing it, watching him grimly stack pages of manuscript together again. She finally said: “Please stop behaving like this. Please.”
“Why? The other night I thought you and I were on to something special. Something very good. But if it’s going to be one emotional fit after another over any lousy coincidence that comes along, who needs it?”
“Maybe I do.” Nera moved up close to him and placed her hand against his cheek. “And there won’t be any more fits.”
“Lady, with your hot Latin blood and your kind of imagination—”
“Listen to me, darling. I swear there won’t. Is that better?”
Her hand still rested against his cheek. Jake drew her other hand over his shoulder so that they stood body to body. She was a foot shorter than he was. The elaborate spun-gold coiffure tickling his nose was brittle with hair spray and gave off a faintly acrid smell.
He said: “I’ll settle for it. But that imagination will have to be toned down, beautiful. Insurance investigators. Walter Thoren a suicide. Hell, if there was any chance of that—”
“I didn’t say he was a suicide.”
“That’s the impression you gave. And if he wasn’t, why should there be trouble about the insurance?”
“Because,” said Nera, “he might have been murdered.”
“Thoren? I thought he died in a car crash.”
“He did. But it wouldn’t have been very hard for someone to make the car crash, would it? Monkey around with the brakes or something like that?”
Jake laughed. “Of course. If you say so, dear.”
Nera pulled away from him, but not forcefully enough to make him release her. She said annoyedly: “Will you kindly not sound so condescending about it? I’m serious. It could have happened that way.”
“Meaning Charlotte Thoren arranged it so she could collect her husband’s insurance?”
“No. Somebody else did. And not for the insurance.”
Jake said dryly: “I see. A homicidal practical joker. Like I’m a secret agent.”
“I told you I was sorry about that, didn’t I? Anyhow, if you saw it from my point of view, you’d know it wasn’t such a wild idea really. Not with Charlotte trying so hard to get rid of you.” Nera knit her brow over this. “Why, Jake? What does she have against you?”
“Not me. Elinor.”
“Oh?”
“And ah. She was watching her son react to Elinor. And Elinor react back. Happily.”
“Knowing Kermit, I should have thought of that,” Nera admitted.
“Except it’s so much more fun dreaming up murderers and spies.” Jake patted her back. “But we’re all over that phase now, aren’t we? From now on, no more make-believe. Only the facts, ma’am. How about it?”
“How about it.” Nera repeated scathingly. “Do you have any idea how infuriating you are when you take that tone?”
“Better to infuriate you than have you sounding off like some kind of psycho. Not that you don’t make an exceptionally lovely psycho.”
This time she did push herself free of him. “What are you doing tonight?” she demanded. “Taking another of those midnight swims in the bay?”
“I might.”
“Well, don’t. That water really is polluted enough to give you some kind of horrible skin thing. My pool isn’t.”
Jake looked doubtful. “You mean we get all nice and cozy together in the moonlight so you can chew my ear off about why you think Walter Thoren was murdered?”
“You can humor me that much, chino. I just want you to tell me how psycho I am after you hear something very intriguing about Walter.”
“Some program. It sounds like a ball.”
“Oh, it can be,” Nera assured him, “once we get this business of Walter settled.”
“I’ll be there,” Jake said.
33
As soon as he closed the door behind her he went back to the study and activated the transmitter in he
r living-room phone. A couple of minutes later he heard the quick, sharp click of heels on tile, and then Nera’s voice. “Maria? Where the hell are you? Maria!”
“Señora?”
A machine-gun volley of Spanish followed, and Jake, after uncomprehendingly taking it in for a moment, cut off the connection and dialed the Thoren house. The deep, warm voice that answered was redolent of life on the old plantation. “The Thoren residence. Raymond speaking.”
“This is Mr. Dekker, Raymond. Is Mr. Thoren there?”
“No, Mr. Dekker, he’s out. But he said you might call. Can I take the message?”
“You can. Tell him thanks for the dinner invitation, and we’ll be there. What time should we make it?”
“By seven, Mr. Dekker.” The voice was considerably cooler now. “Is that all?”
“That is all,” Jake said.
He emptied the packet of Thoren’s notepaper scraps on the desk and went to work on them. It was slow going at the start, and it took over an hour to discover he was not trying to assemble a single large sheet of paper but three smaller ones. He went into the bedroom, pulled out the cardboard stiffeners from three shirts, and then tediously assembled and taped down the borders of pages, one to a cardboard. It took another hour just to finish this job, the amphetamine working both for and against him. It gave him a sense of sharp perception, and at the same time, had his nerves increasingly on edge. He was debating whether to risk a stiff drink on top of the pill when the phone at his elbow rang. He picked it up, and Magnes said instantly: “Don’t talk. First check for a bug, then call me back. It’ll probably be a QCD two-way if it’s there, not a harmonica.”
Jake disassembled the phone, reassembled it, and dialed Magnes’ number. “Nothing there. What’d you do, turn one up at your end?”
“A souvenir from some phony TV repairman. My luck, when I came in, a yenta on the top floor here told me she saw a stranger walking downstairs from the roof, so I checked right away. A beautiful job. Even the phone cord was twisted the way I left it.” Magnes sounded as if he warmly approved this kind of expertise. “Believe me, sonny, the trouble they’re taking, they are playing for that whole two-hundred-grand insurance in one lump. They ain’t looking for any handouts from it once a month.”
“And you still think it isn’t Frank Milan’s operation?”
“Positive. All right, let’s say ninety percent positive. His people, his facilities, yes. But not him personally. Meanwhile, we’re not doing so bad ourselves. I can now tell you definitely that that rubber at Bayside Spa—that one-day replacement there—was the guy who put the finger on Thoren and started the whole blackmail thing going.”
“You mean you got his name from their employment records?”
“No, but what does it show if the daily payroll record for that one day is all of a sudden missing? If it’s not with the rest of those records?”
Jake said impatiently: “Somebody in on the deal lifted it. But what’s the good of knowing—”
“Sha. Sha. There’s a copy of it with the accountant. He keeps copies of all Bayside’s stuff in his own office until the tax people give him the okay. I already made a cash deal with him for it. He’ll have it for me by tomorrow. How are you making out locating the woman?”
Jake said: “I’m taking my girl there for dinner tonight. If she handles it right, she might get sonny boy to unload where his mama is. How about you? Did the cops get around to questioning your boy in the hospital yet?”
“Naturally.”
“Did he mention Mrs. Thoren or the kind of car he was supposed to be tailing?”
“He didn’t mention her, and he told them he was supposed to be tailing a white Continental. So if somebody on Daystar drives a white Continental, I wish them luck when the cops drop in to ask them about it. They also put some pressure on me, but not too much. With me—as long as it ain’t a murder or a big heist—they don’t come down too hard. They know I got a bad heart condition, so if I get too much upset I could, God forbid, drop dead in front of them.”
“Nice of them,” Jake said. “All right, keep in touch with me. And keep checking for bugs.”
He was about to put down the phone when Magnes said: “Wait a second.” Then, after a silence which lasted considerably more than a second, he said abruptly: “About that girlie, Dekker. Tell me it’s none of my business, but this happens to be a very sweet kid.”
Jake said: “A living doll. What’s on your mind, marriage or adoption?”
“Very funny,” Magnes said mirthlessly. “So if you want to know what’s on my mind, I’ll tell you. If it was my daughter, she wouldn’t be here with you on any job like this.”
“She sure as hell wouldn’t,” Jake said. “After all, Magnes, if she was your daughter, she’d be at least fifty years old.”
34
All three messages pieced together from the shreds of notepaper turned out to be in Thoren’s minute, meticulously formed handwriting. Jake took his time comparing each with the envelope addressed to Mr. Walter Thoren, 18 S. Circuler Drive … As far as he could make out, there was no resemblance at all between the script used in the messages and the clumsy block lettering on the envelope.
Of the three messages, one was largely comprehensible. A list with each item followed by a lightly penciled check mark.
thermos
cigars
rations
chart and rev.
trans.
pen
twls
The other two were totally incomprehensible.
One read:
m ltd w b 2
m mc ltd b 3
ltd bl b 4 to
ev 6.0
1.0 2nd fl
The other:
f c dayb 15
225 y 007 deg
fr bb r 1
f lt 7 ft
Meloy cb Meloy cb 5
disc
Jake laid the cardboards to which they were taped side by side and compared them closely. The number 7, he saw, did not have the Continental stroke through it here as it had in Thoren’s insurance application, but the number 1, in each case here, had that small serif, that tiny fishhook at its head, that it had in the application.
He slipped a piece of paper into the typewriter and copied the three messages. Then he took out the Greater Miami phone directory. There were a couple of Meloys listed, both at addresses across the bay in Miami.
He dialed Magnes. “Does the name Meloy mean anything to you?” he said without preliminary. “Meloy with an e.” He spelled it out.
Magnes gave the question some thought. “Nothing,” he said at last. “What’s it about?”
“It meant something to Thoren. I put together that torn-up paper I found on his boat, and the name’s down there.”
Magnes said incredulously: “You mean the blackmailer signed his name to a payoff note?”
“Come on, Magnes, would he be that thick? There are three notes here, and none of them was written by the blackmailer. Thoren wrote all of them himself. But there’s an envelope too, and from the look of it I’m pretty sure it was from the blackmailer.”
“So now you know. The paper with instructions where to make the drop, Thoren got rid of for good. Naturally. I told you that’s how it would be.”
“Maybe. But two of these notes might be his copies of the instructions. They’re in some kind of code, and the only thing loud and clear on them is that name Meloy. It’s also in the phone book. Twice. Check out those names for me fast. If they don’t pay off, ask around and see if anyone by that name has some connection with the Mob.”
“I don’t think so,” Magnes said. “It’s not a name I ever heard anywhere. But I’ll find out.”
35
Swinging the Jaguar into North Bay Road toward the causeway at Fifth Street, Jake saw the familiar Chevy with the elongated aerial move away from the curb and fall into place a few car-lengths behind him. Despite the heavy Miami-bound traffic, it expertly held to this position across the
causeway as far as Watson Park Island, where the sunset was blindingly reflected from the silver skin of the sightseeing blimp moored there.
Now it started to move up on him. Whether he turned north or south when he hit Biscayne Boulevard on the Miami shoreline, the Chevy’s driver was ready to turn with him.
They crossed Watson Park and headed over the last stretch of water to the mainland. Jake bided his time, an eye on a station wagon moving up in the next lane. Then, as the station wagon came parallel with the Chevy on his tail, he suddenly pulled across in front of it, bringing it to a screeching, horn-honking stop. The Chevy’s driver realized what was happening a moment too late. The next instant he was past the Jaguar, and Jake came down hard on the gas and swung back across to his original lane, now directly behind the Chevy.
They were in the bottleneck entrance to Biscayne Boulevard, where the Chevy’s driver had no room to reverse their positions. At the green light on the boulevard he slowed briefly as if in a last desperate hope of luring the Jag after him, then made the logical decision to turn south toward Flagler Street and the shopping section. Jake promptly turned north. He cruised along the boulevard for a few blocks, then left it and worked his way in a southward arc to the library through a district of shabby wooden and stucco buildings that looked as if they had been weathering there unpainted since the year Miami was founded. A solidly Cuban section. A large sign in one store window along the way announced English Spoken Here.
The library stood in the middle of the bay-front park, and Elinor was waiting outside it. She covered the distance to the car in a panicky sprint, her knee occasionally banging the large package she was carrying. She scrambled in beside Jake headlong, heedless of the view she offered passers-by on the sidewalk. “Man, don’t ever do that to me again.”
Jake got the car moving. “Do what?”
“You said you’d pick me up at six, It’s quarter after now. Do you know all the wild things you can think of happened to somebody in fifteen minutes? I even called up the house a couple of minutes ago. I was all ready to hear some cop tell me they found you laying dead there.”
“Obviously they didn’t. How’d you make out with the newspaper files? How far back did you go?”
The Bind Page 18