by Basil Copper
She turned a flushed face to me. ‘Just simple living. They looking after you down at the Pinetop?’
‘Tolerable,’ I said. ‘But tonight I can see the drawbacks.’
Patti Morgan paused in stirring something in one of the pans. ‘Mother and Dad worked hard for all this,’ she said. ‘I enjoy it week-ends. But you ought to see the place I live in at L.A. Modest isn’t the word.’
‘It’s a date,’ I said.
I got up and went over and took my drink into the dining area. I sat down with my back to the wall where I could see her through the teak-slatted room divider. I lit a cigarette, sipped at my Scotch and listened to the faint tapping of rain. A snatch of Johnny Hodges came through on a hidden speaker as she flipped a radio switch. Patti came over with her drink and sat down across from me.
‘Can I help with anything?’ I asked.
She laughed. ‘I can’t imagine it.’
‘I fry a mean egg,’ I said.
She sipped at her Scotch. ‘How old would you be?’ she asked.
‘About twenty-one and engaged to Brigette Bardot if I had any sense,’ I said.
She laughed. ‘That’s put me in my place.’
‘I’m a good eight years older than you, if you really want to know,’ I said.
She pondered. ‘Just about the right age.’
I thought the conversation was getting a bit dangerous so I got up and wandered back into the kitchen. By the time we’d carried the stuff in, and I’d started on my second Scotch I’d forgotten the night, the rain and the mist.
*
The food was good, best I’d tasted in a long while. Though I’m no connoisseur, Patti Morgan knew how to cook. We started with iced melon, dusted with the finest sieved sugar. The steak had been cooked in wine and was just how I liked it. She’d dug up a good Beaujolais to go with the meat too. Somehow I’d been expecting a Californian-type riesling. It was so unlooked-for I almost choked.
After the green salad I gave up wondering and just concentrated on the cooking. She’d lit a couple of small red candles in the alcove where we sat and doused the lamps at this end of the room. The candlelight came and went so that the image of her face faded and grew and faded again in the fluttering light. It suited her. The only sound in the room was the occasional clink of china as she gathered up the plates, took them down to the work area and re-appeared with the next course.
The faint presence of the rain at the windows was unnoticed now. She served real coffee, hot, strong and black as jet, the way you almost never get it in this country. Europe’s about the only place you can get decent coffee, but she’d studied it. I wondered where. She was beginning to reveal unsuspected qualities. Her eyes were quiet, amused as she lit a cigarette at the candle flame. The cloying taste of the Chartreuse had no sooner been superseded by the coffee, than she poured the brandy into the big balloon glasses. We drank silently, appreciatively.
‘I won’t insult you by saying that was great,’ I said after a long silence. ‘But you know what I mean.’
She put her hand on my arm; it rested there just that bit longer than necessary. I knew that signal well.
‘We’ll leave the dishes till later,’ she said. ‘Come on over to the bar.’
I went over and sat down on one of the high stools. She put on a shaded lamp behind the bar which gave a pink rinse to all the bottles. Either it was that or the drinks had been stronger than I thought. Not that the tinting was bad. I had gotten into that sort of mood by now. Patti fiddled about behind the bar and came up with a bowl of ice from the big chest.
The radio was playing something by Ellington now; something blue, high and slightly offkey. Perhaps it wasn’t but it had that effect.
Patti came and sat on the stool next to me like we were at the bar of a downtown hotel. I sat and looked at the pink lighting of the bar and enjoyed the warmth of the brandy which was moving slowly up from my stomach to envelope the rest of my body as far as the ears and tried not to think of the way the situation was leading.
‘Nickel for them?’
I turned round to face Patti on the stool at my side. Which was a mistake. I should have stayed where I was, sipped my drink, looked at the pink lighting and minded my own business. But I didn’t. I turned round and there was her face, right up against mine. The pink light shone on the smooth contours of her hair, which fitted her face like a sculpted helmet. Her skirt was riding way up as she sat on the stool. She had a fantastic pair of stems on her. They were burning a hole in my eyeballs from where I was sitting. Hell, so I kissed her, not being made of asbestos. This is where things started to get tricky.
‘Mike,’ she said, in a slow and vibrant voice that set me tingling all the way down to my arch supports. ‘Do you have to go back tonight?’
‘I can’t stay any later than six in the morning,’ I told her. ‘My grandmother always warned me to get in before the milkman. It doesn’t look good for a man’s public relations image.’
She laughed. ‘That’s fine, then,’ she said. ‘We can-take it nice and slow.’
‘Seems to me you didn’t entirely plan this as a casual operation,’ I said.
She put a warm hand on my lips. ‘Too true, chum,’ she said. ‘We have to move fast in this neck of the woods. Action, boy, not words.’
I tried to oblige.
*
The bedroom had white walls, a white bedspread, even a white telephone on the bedside table. So the black lace underpants and minute black brassiere which was about all she was wearing at the moment, made a vivid contrast in the dim light of the one lamp we’d got switched on. Her skin was dark brown; unlike most natural blondes it took the sun well. The tan didn’t come from sun-lamps either. You can always tell. I’d carried her in in rather a hurry as things turned out. She was already taking off her top clothes like she didn’t want to wait.
‘Don’t spoil it,’ I said. ‘I usually like to do that myself.’
‘Don’t grumble, darling,’ she said, biting my ear. ‘I’ll leave the rest for you.’
She kissed me again then. I got the point. Right now she was lying by my side, looking up at the ceiling. Her lips moved quietly like she was talking to herself, but maybe she was just counting the squares in the ceiling panels.
She had a fantastic figure; it’s a funny thing about women, but you can never tell with clothes on. Girls that look about average are stunning when they’re peeled and the terrific lookers are usually as flat-chested as the front of a filing cabinet. This evening was bonus night. I’d picked one who not only looked good in clothes but was terrific out of them. Or she’d picked me. Right now I didn’t care who’d done what.
Patti’s thighs rustled together as she shifted over on the bed toward me. There was the Sound of the Week if you like. It certainly sent my blood count up. She was still wearing shoes, stockings and her suspender belt. Patti Morgan must have sensed what I was thinking. She looked at me coolly, as though confident of her power.
‘Sadist,’ she said and nipped my ear again.
That was the detonator. She moaned once as we rolled over and our lips met. I shifted position and got to the lamp switch. The room went into darkness. Then I ripped the remainder of her clothes off and jumped on her.
She was whimpering. ‘You can do anything you like, darling. Anything you like …’
‘I intend to, baby,’ I said.
I did.
Chapter 11
Encore for Ice-Picks
When I awoke it was around half-past four according to the luminous dial of my watch. I ran a finger along Patti’s warm flank. She shivered and then nestled closer into my arms.
‘Time to be moving, honey,’ I said.
We kissed again. I put on the dim lamp and draped a handkerchief over the shade. It was always the worst part, scrabbling around for pants and pieces of gaily-discarded clothing on the morning after. Patti turned in the bed and watched with amusement. ‘There’s a shower through the far door,’ she said.
&n
bsp; I went into the bathroom, had a hot sluice and towelled myself. When I had dressed I went back into the bedroom. Patti wasn’t in the bed. I walked through the lounge and into the kitchen. Hot, strong coffee bubbled in a percolator. She had brushed her hair and looked great, even at that hour of the morning, in a white towelling dressing gown. She handed me a cup; we sat back at the table in the alcove. When I got up to leave she clung to me like she was never going to let go.
‘I leave town tomorrow night,’ she said.
‘I’ll ring,’ I said. ‘Thanks for everything, honey. You’re a great girl.’
I held her close and tight and warm to me the way a girl like her should be held. Then she pushed me away with a sigh.
‘See you,’ she said.
The night struck cold and wet and foggy as I got out the porch. The Buick was coated with globules of moisture and the windscreen streamed with water. The front door catch clicked ever so slightly behind me as I got up to the car. I found the usual pool of dampness on the driving seat. I sponged off the wet, cleared the windscreen and backed the car carefully down the drive.
I didn’t switch on the lights or the engine. There was nothing but darkness and fog and wet all around me. When I got to the road she just failed to move, so I got out, pushed at the windscreen upright and ghosted her slowly down the road. When I was about five blocks away I put her in gear and drove back to the Pinetop. I hung up my trench coat in the hall. There were two envelopes lying inside the front door.
One was the buff-coloured flimsy of Western Union. I tore open the flap; the telegram was from Dame Dora. The last bit said; GET THOSE RESPONSIBLE STOP MONEY NO OBJECT. The operator apparently had some trouble with the name. They probably thought it was a code. The telegram was signed; SHOT HIT.
The other envelope was addressed to me in thick crayon pencil. There was a sheet torn from a notebook inside. It just said; Ring me tomorrow morning. Clark.
It didn’t sound particularly urgent. I looked at the telegram form again. It had been phoned in at eleven-thirty p.m. the previous night. I put the two messages down on my bedside table. It was now around five and the sky was beginning to lose its shade of impenetrable black between the edges of the curtains. I undressed in the dark, dropping my clothes in a heap at the side of the bed. I was dead before I hit the sack.
*
Thunder was rumbling in the surrounding hills and the windscreen was silvered with the first drops of rain as I drove Clark up the driveway of The Palisades. The door was opened to us by Captain Rodriguez; his face looked pale and strange in the gloom. Clark led the way up to the big room on top. There was no-one else about the corridors. Rodriguez had left us at the foot of the stairs. Lightning was flickering on the horizon as we came out on to the big balcony and started the descent down to where the General was waiting.
Clark had decided to call what he described as an emergency session; the paper he carried had a screaming front page spread on the two killings, which the writers felt to be linked, and Clark figured that the Cubans might strike pretty soon now that the whole thing was out in the open. Macklehenny was already at The Palisades to augment the guard on the General; right now he was the only one in the big room apart from Diaz himself, looking frailer than ever in his wheelchair.
As we got down on to the same level the first real crash of thunder sounded and lightning flaring in the sky behind flung a criss-cross pattern of window bars across the carpet. The General sat silhouetted against the window, watching the growing storm. Then the motor on the wheel-chair whirred and he angled himself into position alongside the great sideboard.
‘A drink, gentlemen,’ he said.
‘All quiet,’ Macklehenny whispered to Clark as he went by.
Clark grunted and followed me down to where the General was waiting. The three of us stood in a semi-circle facing the window while the General was mixing the drinks; whiskies for us and a daiquiri for himself. He propelled the chair over to his desk. Lightning flared again as he lifted his glass.
‘To the confusion of our enemies,’ he said.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said.
General Diaz motioned us into chairs. We dragged them over into a horse-shoe facing him. The General sat with his back to the window drapes. We were gathered round him rather like a war-time military conference.
‘I gather you are all familiar with the story, gentlemen,’ he asked.
Clark cleared his throat. ‘I put Mr Faraday in the picture, General,’ he said.
‘Good, good,’ he answered. ‘Then I shall confine myself to a listening role for the moment. Perhaps you would be kind enough to explain the suggested course of action, Sheriff.’
‘Firstly, I’d like to speak about some fresh information which has just come to hand,’ said Clark.
The General nodded. His strong hands were clasped together on the blanket. The quiver of arrows was still strapped to the side of his chair and the bow itself was close to hand on the top of his desk.
‘Like I mentioned on the phone, General, I checked at the Fitzgeorge opposite yesterday,’ Clark said. ‘Mr Faraday’s theory about the Carmen Benson shooting is one hundred per cent correct, I’d say. One man was responsible for what could only have been an attempt on your life. The country club manageress gave me a good description. And he had a set of fishing rods with him, she says. That would have been the rifle and telescopic sight. The doc was right. It was a Mannlicher, the lab tests showed, and the description of the man tallies with that of Damascus.’
Clark turned to me and passed over some photographs. He tapped one of them with a horny thumb. ‘That’s the trigger specialist,’ he said.
The print was blurred, probably from a police file, but it was a good enough likeness; it showed a sallow, narrow face of typical Spanish appearance. The eyes were hard, the lips thin and compressed; the thin mustache and the dark shadows under the eyes completing a picture of a man I shouldn’t have looked for at a Y.M.C.A concert.
‘Why Damascus?’ I said.
The General laughed a harsh, tearing laugh as thunder rumbled again in the gloom of the big room.
‘He used to live in Damascus, sir,’ he said, ‘and the name stuck. A hardened professional killer who should have been executed at the time of the coup.’
Clark passed me three other pictures; two were Cubanos, types one sees a million times without remembering anything special. Plump faces which would have had olive complexions in the flesh; bushy black hair in the old photographs, now probably turning grey; dark eyes; one clean-shaven, one with a black mustache. The latter was a face I felt I might know if I looked at it long enough.
‘Hernando,’ said Clark, tapping the last picture with his thumb. ‘Probably the ice-pick man. He looks the type.’
I had to agree with him. A long, jagged scar ripped his cheek from the corner of the mouth to his right eye-socket. His thin hair was powdered with grey. I spread out the pictures of the four men who had come to kill General Diaz on the desk and studied them again. A pale flicker of lightning died in a bluish flare beyond the window panes. The General sat stiff and proud in his chair; not even his hands moved on the blanket. They were about the only part of him visible in the twilight. Once again I admired his guts.
It was a tough quartet. But even without the General’s other guards it was four against four if they came; counting the General, of course. But then you had to count in the bowman. That was probably why he practised every day. I looked at the four faces. They would be sure to come all right. If not this week, then next.
‘Hernando would be rather difficult to hide,’ I told Clark, indicating the scar.
‘He keeps out of sight until he’s ready to make his play,’ said Clark. ‘Leastways, that was the drill in Cuba, according to the General.’
‘Correct, sir,’ said the General, raising his glass.
Macklehenny went over and stared moodily out of the window at the darkening tree-tops.
‘I’ve been doing some homew
ork,’ said Clark casually. ‘I got the finger-man.’
The words dropped into the sudden silence so that the next crash of thunder, miles nearer across the rolling hills, underlined the impact.
‘Go on,’ said General Diaz, leaning forward almost imperceptibly in the chair; he looked about as interested in the information as if Clark had said he preferred whisky sour to milk as a nightcap. Macklehenny came back and stood behind the General, between him and the window.
‘I went up to L.A. and did some research,’ said Clark. ‘Things been happening around here seemed a mite too pat. I tried the police files, then the Public Library. It was time well spent. Do you remember a man called Myers, General?’ Diaz frowned and lifted his tall glass to his lips; the next flash of lightning made a gaunt mask of his face. There was no accompanying clap of thunder this time.
‘From Cuba, you mean?’ He shook his head. ‘Should it convey anything?’
‘Trouble is, Myers knew you, General,’ said Clark. ‘And he put the finger on you. And Mr Holgren.’
Clark swilled the whisky around in his glass and squinted at it like it was below proof.
‘When he was a younger man he was in Cuba as a motor agent,’ he went on. ‘He had the Ford concession for Havana and half a dozen other contracts besides. Later, he had a hand in supplying motorized transport for the Cuban Army. That was where he met the Hernando brothers. They were kindred souls. Myers was as rotten as they come. He and the Cubanos were involved in every type of racket and fraud. When the lid blew off and you indicted the Hernandos and their chums, Myers went to ground. After the coup misfired he surfaced and got a bit too clever. He was in another big swindle over motor deals and was sentenced to five years.’
‘He did two and was then released. Inside, he had maintained contact with Hernando. In the meantime you had retired and gone to live in the States under an assumed name. Myers blew out of Cuba. He would have been deported in any case. He returned to the U.S. changed his name and started in the garage business once more. But I recognized his photograph in some old newspaper files and that put me on the right slant. His wife had left him while he was in Cuba but he had a son and that wasn’t very hard to check.’