Say It with Murder

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Just a minute,” Carmody said. “Do you know where Lila is?”

  “Lay off me, will you?”

  “Well, I just asked.”

  “You and everybody else.” They began threading through the crowd toward Monte’s office in the back. “I don’t know where she is and I don’t care a damn where she is, and for all I know, the doll went home. I wouldn’t stop her and I don’t want to hear nothin’ more about her, you hep?”

  “Calm down, Robbie.”

  “I need a wire, that’s what I need.”

  There was something too jittery and explosive about the giant for Carmody to risk tampering with. From a corner of his eye he saw Sam Link working toward them from the cashier’s cages, wriggling through the crowds of formally dressed men and women at the gambling tables. They met at the outer door of Monte’s office. Sam Link was just as frightened and upset as Robbie Ravelle. The big freckles on his scalp stood out in bright orange against the pallor of his skin. His little eyes were malevolent as he came up to Carmody. “Decided to show, huh?”

  “I’ve been busy,” Carmody said.

  “We know all about it. You see the girl?”

  “I’ve been looking for her.”

  “Look here, look there. She blew away, that’s what she done. The bitch. The wire-happy doll’s got us all in a jackpot.”

  Robbie rumbled: “It ain’t my fault, Samsie. Don’t keep sayin’ it’s all my fault.”

  “You shouldn’t ever’ve brought her,” Sam snapped.

  Carmody opened the door and went into Monte’s office. Monte stood by the windows overlooking the yacht anchorage, slapping his thigh with his black walking stick.

  “So here you are.” Monte looked at Sam Link and Robbie. His black eyes snapped. “Where did you find him?”

  “He just walked in,” Robbie said.

  “With the girl?”

  “He ain’t seen Lila, he says.”

  “Sit down, Bill,” Monte said. “We’re in a peck of trouble. Hallowell was here and told me what you did to him at that girl’s cottage. How stupid can you get, boy? It was all arranged, and nothing drastic would have happened to you. Hallowell wouldn’t have held you for more than ten minutes. What were you doing there, anyway?”

  “I had a date with Martha,” Carmody said.

  “And you found Paul there?”

  “Very dead,” Carmody said. “You won’t get any more golden eggs out of him, Monte. You’re going to have to fold this place on opening night.”

  Monte looked at him malevolently. “Do you think so? I really think you’d like to see that happen. I don’t understand you, Bill. I’ve tried to help you. I’ve paid you well. I thought we were going to get along fine together, but all the time you’ve been pulling one way while the rest of us pulled the other. Why is that? What have you got against making a lot of money?”

  “I don’t like liars and murders,” Carmody said.

  “Liars?”

  “Who dropped Paul Sloade’s body on the girl’s bed?”

  Monte stared at him in astonishment and then suddenly began to laugh, his mouth a round pink hole over the dark spade of his beard. His laughter came in little round bursts of sound and he rapped his black stick on the desk and then leaned forward and peered at Carmody as if the lights had suddenly gone very dim. There were uncertain sycophantic smiles on the faces of Sam Link and Robbie Ravelle.

  “Oh, I see how it is,” Monte said. “I see it now. I guess I’ve been a little careless, myself. I should have understood what was the matter with you, Bill. I should have seen it right away. It’s that girl, Martha, isn’t it? You’re in love with her, eh? You have delusions of being pure in heart and you’re annoyed because I threw a hook in her.”

  “Yes. A little annoyed,” Carmody said.

  Monte’s voice became placating. “What could I do, Bill? Somebody killed the golden goose in my room. Didn’t you know that? My room!” He was outraged. “I walked in right after dinner and there he was. It didn’t help my digestion one bit to see our golden goose slaughtered like that. I thought the whole game was over, then and there. And then I had an idea. I always have ideas, after all; that’s why I’m where I am. Without Paul, our whole operation is finished before it gets started, eh? But then I asked myself why should it be? Martha Courtney is the one who gets the hotel now. I thought, why not hook her? That way everything is under control again. So Robbie took the body to her cottage. Everything would have been simple if you hadn’t shown up there. I’d have helped Martha out of it. Hallowell knew what he had to do. It was all very simple.”

  “Who killed Paul?” Carmody asked.

  “You might be able to answer that one, yourself.”

  “I think I can,” Carmody said. “But not to you. I’ll tell it to the police. The state police, I mean, not your local stooges.”

  Monte sat down behind the desk. Carmody did not miss the quick exchange of glances between the bearded man and Sam and Robbie. He sensed a deeper fear in this room than the situation called for, and he wondered who was trying to bluff whom.

  “You know who killed Sloade?” Monte asked softly.

  “I think so.”

  “But you won’t tell us?”

  “I don’t think I have to.”

  “Robbie can make you sing like a bird, you know.”

  “Let him try.”

  “Where did you hide Martha Courtney?”

  “You won’t find her,” Carmody said. “Leave her out of it.”

  “She’s your weak spot, Bill. You know the sort of evening we could have with her, if you don’t cooperate with us. Frankly, I’m surprised at you. I don’t understand your attitude at all. We don’t mean to harm the girl. The hook won’t bother her, as long as we don’t yank on it.”

  “You had a hook in me, and it bothered me,” Carmody said. “At least, it did until I read that Lou Cannon died instantly and never had the slightest chance to write the confession you claim you have.”

  There was a silence in the office that was not disturbed or affected in the least way by the muted hum of voices and machines from the nearby ballroom. Monte sighed, and that was silent, too. Carmody wished he had a wall at his back instead of Robbie and Sam Link. He wanted to look around at them and see what they were doing, but he didn’t give in to the impulse, knowing they would think he was afraid. And while he felt the quick pulse of desperation, he suddenly knew he was not afraid of any of them. He knew he would never be afraid of them again. And this knowledge gave him a lightness and quickness that made him smile at Monte’s dark, careful face.

  Monte said: “So now you’re ready to go to the police with everything.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know I can’t let you do that.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “Does Martha Courtney know everything you know?”

  “Yes,” Carmody said.

  Monte picked up his stick. “You’d better take us to her.”

  Sam Link gave his whinnying laugh.

  Monte said: “Go with Robbie, Bill. Be sensible. I know how you feel about Martha, and we won’t harm her. She may even talk you into seeing the light of reason, too. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by staying in with us.”

  “You’re all through,” Carmody said. “Don’t you know that yet?”

  “I don’t know anything of the kind.”

  “Then where is Lila?” he asked quietly.

  “Lila?”

  “She knows all about Paul Sloade. She knows he’s dead. She may even know who killed him. She knows Robbie took the body to Martha’s cottage, because she was there, and I can prove she was there. Will you kill her to keep her quiet, too?”

  Robbie rumbled: “Nobody’s going to touch her.”

  “Shut up, Robbie,” Monte said.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up,” Robbie said. “Listen, if anything happens to Lila—”

  “You and that doll,” Monte said sharply. “Who is she? What is she u
p to? What were you both running from when you brought her here?”

  Robbie’s mouth hung open. “Running?”

  “You needed a cool pad and took a firecracker like that girl along with you. How stupid can you get? Do you know where she is? Have you read the newspapers since you’ve been up here? Do you know anything at all about what you’ve done by bringing her here?”

  As Monte Bachore talked his voice became louder, growing out of an anger he had apparently been suppressing for some time. His beard quivered. He picked up the walking stick and struck the desk with it to emphasize each word. Carmody said nothing. He didn’t move. He didn’t want to interrupt what was coming. It was suddenly apparent now that what was troubling Monte wasn’t Paul Sloade’s murder or his own rebellion or the difficulty of keeping the operation active with Sloade dead. It was something else, and without knowing it he had pushed the button by swinging the talk around to Lila and the problem of the girl’s disappearance. Everything about Paul Sloade and the operation here was something Monte Bachore felt he could control and keep. But there was something about Lila that made Monte afraid and because he was afraid his anger grew shrill and full of spleen.

  “You stupid, overgrown fathead!” he screamed. He snatched a newspaper from a drawer in his desk and shook it at Robbie’s motionless, giant figure. Robbie’s mouth still hung open. “Do you know who your doll is? Her name is Lila Elizabeth Griswold and she’s the daughter of Federal Judge James Harrison Griswold and the police of half a dozen states and the F.B.I. are hunting for her on the theory that she’s been kidnapped. And you wanted to keep away from the cops!”

  14

  ROBBIE RAVELLE made an inarticulate sound in his throat and put up his hands as if to ward off the meaning of Monte Bachore’s strident words. Sam Link jumped up and started toward the newspaper on the desk and then saw the walking stick in Monte’s hand and sat down again. Carmody lit a cigarette. He was not too surprised. He told himself he had been expecting something like this, since he had already suspected something of Lila Griswold’s background from the few occasions he had talked alone with her. The delinquent daughter of careless parents, he told himself, had come here for kicks and aroused half the countryside by her vanishing act. He saw the irony in the situation, but he did not smile. It was too serious a thing to smile about, when he looked at Monte’s Satanic face and guessed what Monte was thinking.

  Robbie broke the silence with his voice rumbling like the surf on the beach. “Lila’s a good doll. She won’t talk. And there haven’t been any cops around here, anyway. At least, not lookin’ for her.”

  Carmody got up and went to the desk and looked at the newspaper headlines. There was a three-column cut of a photograph of Lila Elizabeth Griswold, and her identity was unmistakable. He read the story quickly, absorbing the details of the judge’s alarm, the fears for his daughter’s safety, the pressures of the search being carried on by federal and state agencies throughout the Eastern seaboard. He put the newspaper back and looked at Robbie’s flat, stunned face.

  “Somebody among the guests may have seen her that time she came to the hotel bar, Robbie.”

  Monte said: “I’m sure somebody did. And with this picture of her in the papers, their memory will add it up and we’ll have the state cops on our backs before midnight.” His dark jet eyes looked hot and furious. “We’ve got to find her before the police do.”

  “I’ll find her,” Robbie said. “Don’t you bother.”

  “We’re all going to look.”

  Sam Link said hopefully: “Well, maybe she decided she had enough of Robbie and went home by herself.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Monte said. “She must be found. She knows too much about all of us. If Robbie hadn’t been so stupid—”

  “Nobody’s gonna hurt that doll, hear?” Robbie shouted. “Shut your mouth!”

  Carmody stood quietly watching their several greedy, angry, fearful faces. He felt only disgust and dismay that he had ever been associated with them. The way ahead was quite apparent to him. He knew what he had to do, and he knew he couldn’t allow any of them to stop him. He had learned what he wanted to learn here, and he also knew that faced with this crisis, each of them was doubly dangerous. Each must be casting about in the back of his mind for a way out, a clean escape. He could hear the cool hum of conversation from behind the office door, an occasional burst of laughter, the quiet, polite calls of the croupiers. When he looked at Monte Bachore’s face he saw the anguish in the man at the threat of losing all this. He looked at Sam Link and saw ferret-like thoughts stamped on his features, his long nose white and shining, twitching a little. Robbie Ravelle looked as if he were going to come apart

  “What you need, Robbie, is a stick,” he said quietly.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got the jitters.”

  “Then get on the wire,” Carmody said. “You’ll feel better.” Monte Bachore stepped around the desk with short, stiff strides and stood between Carmody and Robbie, facing the big man. He rapped Robbie’s chest with the metal ferrule of his walking stick.

  “Get this through your head, Ravelle. We have to find that girl before the state police get to her. She knows too much. And we have no guarantee that she won’t tell the cops every single thing she knows. Is it too complicated for your thick head?”

  “Take the cane away from me,” Robbie rumbled.

  Sam Link said: “Wait a minute. We’re gettin’ a little away from the subject. Maybe we don’t know where Lila is, but Carmody seems to know a lot about her. How do we know he hasn’t called the cops on her already? He’s been cozy enough with her. He’s been worryin’ about her. Maybe some of this is the music man’s fault.”

  Carmody looked at Sam Link and saw in his eyes the glitter of hate. Carmody turned to the door.

  Monte breathed hard. “Do you know where Lila is?”

  “I’m going to find her.”

  “Not you, Billy. You’re not going anywhere. You counted yourself out of the operation.”

  “The operation is over and finished,” Carmody said.

  “If it’s finished, then so are you.”

  “So long,” Carmody said.

  He reached for the lever handle on the office door and Monte yelled something and Sam Link came sliding sidewise across the wine-colored rug. He had a gun in his hand. Carmody swung at it and knocked it aside, knowing that no matter how wild the situation might get they wouldn’t dare fire a gun so close to the crowded gambling room on the other side of the door.

  “Robbie,” Monte Bachore snapped. “Stop him.”

  Robbie caught at Carmody’s right hand and Carmody yanked it away and spun toward the door again, only to find Sam Link barring his escape. Robbie grabbed at Carmody’s other hand and twisted it down and then suddenly wound it backward so that his arm went around behind him and his hand was up behind his shoulder blades. Carmody tried to spin with the pressure of the pain tearing at the ligaments of his shoulder and bent forward against Robbie’s inexorable strength, but he wasn’t quick enough. He was pushed ahead suddenly and went down to his knees, biting on the yell of pain that burst inside him. Monte said something and Carmody suddenly found himself thrown into one of the deep leather office chairs. He looked up at Robbie’s heavy, stupid face at the blank eyes of silver, and from the blur beyond his huge bulk he saw Monte’s stick gently tap the giant aside and then Monte stood over him.

  “Listen to me, Bill. This need not be unpleasant for you. I intend to save this operation, and I’m not going to let two dolls stand in my way. I don’t care who killed Irene Sloade or who killed Paul tonight. I think maybe you did it, to frame me and get the hook out of you, but I’m not sore about it and in a way I admire your effort.”

  “I didn’t kill Paul.”

  Monte’s voice rode over his words. “I admire the effort but not the timing. Now I’m not worried about whether you’ll talk to the police, because once I get my hands on Martha Courtney, her safety and her health will depend on whether yo
u open or shut your mouth. Is that clear? Chief Hallowell will say and do anything I tell him to say or do. Evidence is easy to discover, at any time, of any kind. We can turn up evidence to prove that your girl-friend killed Paul Sloade. It will be simple. After that, you won’t do any talking, will you?”

  Carmody said: “You won’t get that far.”

  “I will, because you’re going to tell me where she is so I can talk cold turkey to her.”

  “No.”

  “You’ll tell me or Robbie will take you apart piece by piece, you understand?”

  “To hell with you.”

  Monte’s voice was gentle. “You still don’t understand, Bill. I’m pressed for time. Somebody around here is going to remember having seen Lila and call for the state police to collect the reward her papa is offering. And I want to get to Lila and I want the deal arranged with Martha Courtney before the state police come around. I think you know where both girls are hiding—perhaps you have them both together—and you’re going to tell me right now where they are.”

  “What will you do with Lila?”

  “That does not concern you.”

  “It concerns Robbie, though.”

  “Robbie?” Monte straightened and looked at the giant.

  “Yeah.”

  “You can start to work on Bill any time. Make it quick.”

  Carmody got his legs flexed and as Robbie lumbered forward he drove up out of the chair, slamming head and shoulders into the big man’s stomach. He might just as well have charged at an elephant. Something crashed down on the back of his neck and he fell forward to his hands and knees and felt the explosive impact of a shoe in his ribs. He fell over sidewise and clawed at the leg above him and he was kicked again and he tried to roll away across the floor, thinking to himself that this was Sam Link’s vicious spite, rushing in to kick him without mercy because of what he knew about Sam. He came up against the desk and grabbed for the top of it and nobody stopped him as he climbed a mountain to regain his feet. The sound of his breathing made a stormy gustiness in the otherwise silent room. Three faces watched him without expression.