Murder for the Bride

by John D. MacDonald

  Chapter Eight

  I did not go back to the apartment. I took a cab out to an all-night drive-in on Gentilly Road. It was after three when I talked a frowsy, sleepy woman into renting me one of the glossy cubicles in her motor court, even if I didn’t have a car. She charged me Mardi Gras rates.

  It was a good shower and a good bed. One dream woke me up. That one about Laura being pulled into the boat on a hook and flopping naked on the floor boards. The guide still kept insisting that she was inedible. I lay sweating in the darkness and wondering about fish symbolism.

  When I walked out of the court on Saturday at eleven in the morning, the sky had a funny, brassy look. The sun was twice the size it should have been. It was an ominous day. The speeding chrome on Gentilly winked and twinkled in the heat waves. There wasn’t the slightest breath of wind. I hadn’t gone back to the apartment because I wanted to avoid the effort of shaking off my playmates come Saturday evening. I decided they must be pretty irritated with me.

  After a vast breakfast in an air-conditioned place, I walked back out into the simmer. It was one of those days when people speak in tired soft voices, and then explode into fits of violent and unreasonable anger. Even though it wasn’t a day for thinking, I tried to sort out some kind of reasonable pattern in my mind. Laura had been killed either by Haussmann, by Talya’s friends, or by an unknown party. So far, Talya’s friends looked like the best bet. Motive—acquisition of the important data acquired by Laura in the Eastern Zone of Germany. Opportunity—Jill’s description of the man across the street matched Talya’s description of her contact.

  The thing that clinched it in my mind was the attempt made on me, the one that fell through because of Talya’s softness. If Talya’s friends had killed Laura, then they would be the only ones to know that the search hadn’t been successful. Either Talya’s contact had done it, or he knew who had done it. The search had been unsuccessful, and I didn’t have the stuff they wanted. So where did it go? Had she memorized it? If so, it had died with her. If not, Haussmann was a good bet to have it. He was too conspicuous to do much running. So his safest bet was to hide out in the Quarter. After the fuss died down, he could make his own attempt to dicker with our government.

  The whole business of crucial data and foreign agents would have been a lot less real to me were it not that I had seen some and sensed a lot more of the sort of thing going on in Venezuela while I was there. And in Mexico. And in all the free nations of the world. The days of brave armies with pennons and bugles are over. Now the trick is to plant your own people in the right spots. Have them ready to hamstring the opposition when the shooting war starts. New Orleans was a fine place in which to spot agents. A busy port is pretty vulnerable. And, with all the ship traffic, it makes a good relay point for information. I suspected that our team probably had a good line on a lot of the cells operating in this country, and that a pretty massive roundup would take place on the eve of the shooting war. It is better to let them alone and hope that they will lead you to the top boys than to grab them off and drive the top boys into deeper hiding.

  Suddenly I wanted to see Talya again. Get a little more information. And a little more of Talya. There was a florist down the block. I went in with the idea of buying her something traditional. I came out with a hell of a big box of cornflowers. They seemed right for her somehow.

  I took a cab to within a block of the apartment, then walked to a store and picked up some food. With my three bundles I went back to the apartment. I had to set them down to get the key in the lock. I opened the door and picked up the stuff and shouldered my way in, yelling, “Anybody home? Any ice today, lady?”

  The lady didn’t want any ice.

  They lady was all through wanting anything.

  She was face down over the footboard of the bed. The footboard cut across her at the hips. I had forgotten about Paul Harrigan’s spare clothes. She had on a white shirt of his, the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of his khaki shorts, so big for her that the bottoms of them came below her knees. Her arms were stretched out ahead of her, and her still hands clutched the sheet. I found the tiny bloody spot at the nape of her neck. He had come behind her and had forced her over in that position and had held her there while he made the careful thrust.

  The round empty face of the fan turned back and forth, back and forth. It was a fatuous after-dinner speaker, surveying his audience.

  I told her that it was all right. I told her that it didn’t hurt a bit. I kissed her temple. The tendrils of the dark blonde hair were still damp. Her knees were slightly bent and her bare feet had the soles upturned. They were dusty from the floor.

  I put the flowers on the bed, the food in the kitchen, the bundle of clothes on a chair. I walked out of there and pulled the door shut. The lock clicked.

  I think I wore a grin like you find on a skull. I was telling myself that the mortality rate among my women was too high.

  I found a phone booth. Sam Spencer was in, and who is calling please, and just a moment, please.

  “Dil? What’s up? What’s going on?”

  “Sam. Just listen. Carefully. Listen carefully and give me a careful answer.”

  “You sound funny, boy.”

  “Shut up, Sam. You knew I got the apartment keys. I knew it. One other person knew it. But who else, Sam? Who did you tell?”

  “Goddamnit, stop yelling in my ear. Captain Paris’ office called. They had to get hold of you. It was very urgent. They wondered if I knew where you were. So I told them about the keys.”

  “Nobody else, Sam?”

  “Not a soul. Not nobody. And I don’t like the tone you’re—”

  I hung up on him. I called the police. It took ten minutes to be connected with Barney Zeck. “Who is this speaking?” he asked.

  “Bryant. Look, Lieutenant, I—”

  “Jesus, Bryant! Where are you? There’s a general call out for you. You’re to be picked up on sight. We’re co-operating with a federal agency on that. Drag your tail on over here.”

  “No. I’m calling you back from another pay phone in ten minutes. Find out something. Find out if Captain Paris called Sam Spencer and asked where I was. Get me the answer and I’ll tell you something interesting.”

  “Now, wait and—”

  I hung up on him. I sat at the fountain and had a drink. Ten minutes later I called back on the same phone.

  “No, Bryant. No such call was made. Why?”

  “Somebody used Paris’ name to find out where I was. They went to the address Sam gave them. They didn’t find me, but they found somebody else. A girl. They killed her. That makes it your business, doesn’t it?” I gave him the address.

  “My God, Bryant! What kind of a—”

  “You’ll find my prints all over the place, but I didn’t do it.”

  I hung up and got out of there. I didn’t want to go near the Quarter. Not yet. And the city wasn’t safe. The boys had got annoyed at me for giving them the slip. They wanted me on ice. They didn’t want to use me as a stalking horse any more. The horse wouldn’t obey orders, so lock him in the barn.

  I found a phone booth in a corner cigar store. I had to use friends if I wanted to hide until dark. Movies would be no good. They’d watch the movies. I phoned Tram Widdmar’s office. He was out and they didn’t know when he’d be back. I tried his home. Same story.

  Jill was at the paper. As soon as I spoke, her crisp voice softened. “Dil, I’ve been so worried.”

  “I need help, Jill. I need a place to hide out until this evening. How about your apartment?”

  “Of course. And I want to talk to you. About a thing that just came in. A dead girl. In Paul’s apartment. Dil, what do you know about that?”

  “If I don’t tell you, will you still let me invite myself to your place?”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re not a lady-killer of that particular variety. I’m going to be busy on this new thing. I’ll have to send you the keys. I’ll send them by a copy boy with flaming red hair
and a bad case on me. Where will he meet you?”

  “Right across the street from the St. Charles Theatre. In fifteen minutes.”

  “He’ll be there, Dil. I’ll come back to the apartment after I turn in my copy on this. Something tells me I won’t have much copy. Someone is putting the lid on this whole affair.”

  Her apartment was deep in the Quarter, on Ursulines, in the heart of what was once upon a time the elite Creole section, and not far from the federal prison. An artist had lived in the apartment; had remodeled it, in fact. Jill took it over when he died. The location makes it inexpensive, As a ground-floor apartment it has its own tiny private court, with a bulbous bronze cupid leering and holding aloft the nozzle of a feeble little fountain. That cupid had always reminded me of Tram Widdmar. The street door is an ancient arched door of wide planks with a tiny view hole cut into it.

  I let myself in and felt safe almost at once. The narrow stone hallway leads down to a second door, which is ironwork, open and lacy. Beyond that door is the huge living-room-studio, with a wall of glass that frames the court and the cupid. The bedroom and bath are to the left, the kitchen and dining area to the right. No other occupant has windows that front on the court. Only in the old New Orleans construction, or in the homes of Latin America, can you find that wonderful sense of seclusion. Latin America is mystified by our Yankee insistence on building homes in such a way that any passerby can gawk in, by our lawns that are public gardens.

  There was beer in the icebox. I opened a bottle and sat in the studio, staring out at the fountain. After a time I turned the valve and the cupid began to get sprinkled. The thick stucco walls and tile floors kept the apartment cool inside. I put a stack of records on the turntable and adjusted the volume low.

  The sudden interruption of the music woke me up with a start. I stared blankly at Jill Townsend. She wore a plastic apron over a two-piece sun suit of pale blue linen. She held the records in her hands and smiled at me. “When it repeated the third time I began to get nervous, Dil, and eight repeats was much too much.”

  “How’d you get in? How long you been here?”

  “Two keys and almost two hours. Answer your questions?”

  I stood up and stretched and yawned. Naps always give me a tar-paper mouth. I looked at my watch. Quarter to five. Drinking time.

  “You’ll probably get a jail term for this,” I said.

  “Scotch on the rocks? Or are you still on tepid gin and orange bitters?”

  I shuddered. “Please. The Scotch.”

  “I’m going to give you enough Scotch to make you babble like a brook, my good man.”

  It was shady in the little court, and had been shady long enough for the stones to have cooled from the sun’s heat. She came out with drinks, minus apron, and sat across the round wicker table from me.

  “Now about the wench who got it in the neck?” she said. She was watching my face. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly in a different tone. “Friend of yours, I judge.”

  “Friend of mine,” I said, and stared at the leer on the cupid.

  “It all smells, Dil. Here’s what we get. No more. A store clerk named Elizabeth Morin was found dead in the empty apartment of an oil-company engineer who is out of the country at this time. Report of her death was made to the police through an anonymous phone call. Her presence in the apartment has not yet been explained. And that’s all, Dil. Every bit of it. There were some nice neat bright young men around with that Washington file-cabinet look. Who was she, Dil?”

  “Here’s the only thing I can tell you, honey. I made a promise to some of those bright young men. They told me something in confidence. I can’t tell you anything about the girl without opening up a lot of other things. All I can tell you is that she was a good kid. A very mixed-up kid. And a kid who didn’t follow orders, and that is why she happens to be dead.”

  She set her glass down. “Now listen to me a minute. I’m no ball of fire, Dil, but I can add, a little. I know that all of this is big and bad and dangerous. I can smell that much. I have contacts. I know the local ropes. You, Dil, have got more muscles than caution. I don’t want you to get your head knocked in. Promise or no promise, I think you’d better tell me. It won’t get into the paper. This is just you and me. Jill and Dil. The kids that rhyme.”

  “Maybe I should have sought shelter with Tram. I couldn’t find him, though.” As soon as I said it, I was sorry that it had slipped out. For a moment there was a quick hurt look in her gray eyes. She recovered quickly.

  “O.K., my boy. I won’t use a can opener on you. If you want to talk, go ahead. If not, you’re still a guest.”

  I reached over and took her hand. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Not completely all right. Be truthful.”

  She looked at me and I saw the tears begin to form, hanging heavy on her lower lids, ready to break free. She stood up with a quick smile. “Who am I to think I should own you just because I can help you? Fresh drink?”

  I nodded. She walked off with quick steps. Her back was very straight. She carried her shining dark head high. I had never noticed before how sharply pronounced was the crease down her back, running between her shoulder blades. Only after it reappeared below the pale blue linen bra top were the tiny pebbles of the vertebrae visible. A small girl, but only in relation to others. Everything about her was in scale. Where Talya had been sturdy, Jill was patrician-slim, yet warmly ripe in her own subtle way.

  I was still thinking of Jill in relation to Talya, and conjecturing about Jill in a way that I never had before, when she came back with the fresh drink for me. Some of what I was thinking must have shown on my face. She blushed faintly and sat down very quickly. It was odd that the death of Talya should start me thinking of Jill in this new, much more personal way. She had always been just … Jill. A good egg. A lot of laughs. I enjoyed her oblique outlook on life. But entirely a brother-sister pitch, and understood as that, even to the peck on the cheek at parting.

  “How old are you, Jill?”

  Her eyes widened. “Twenty-six. Why?”

  “I don’t know. It has occurred to me that you are a very handsome specimen.”

  “With this lopsided face?”

  “Lopsided, hell! Piquant. Pixy. Tart. But not lopsided. No, I was just wondering why you haven’t gone and got yourself married.”

  She gave me a mocking look. “Mine, sire, is a sad tale of unrequited love. I thrust my heart at yon yokel and he spurned it with jokes and laughter.”

  “A pretty stupid-type guy, eh?”

  She put her chin on her fist. “When I was a sprout, lad, I had a dog-eared old cat named Oliver. Other people fed him, but he loved me. Just me. Very flattering. Who else had a one-woman cat? Nobody. I thought it made Oliver very special, and, incidentally, me too. They sent me away to school. Oliver gave it a fictional finish. He just pined away. No old blunt head rubbing on my leg any more. No big purr like a busted sewing machine. No kneading with the feet. Now for the moral. If Oliver had been capable of spreading his affection around, he would have been a well-adjusted cat. But as cats go, Oliver was psychotic. And I think he influenced my early years. I cannot spread myself around. All I can do is work like hell and try to forget the guy.”

  “Ever put it up to him?”

  “Nope. Never will. And I’ve never even told anyone about him before, Dil. And I won’t tell you his name, because you’d try to go running after him and pound some sense into his thick head.”

  “I’d do exactly that,” I said.

  “You said you wanted to hide out until tonight. What goes on tonight?”

  “Call it a party.”

  “Can girls come?”

  “There’ll probably be some there, but I can’t take you. I may not even be able to find the party.”

  She stared at me. “You’ve got a line on Haussmann, haven’t you?”

  “Haussmann? Who’s Haussmann?”

  “When you li
e, your nose wrinkles up and your eyes go all bland and silly, Dil.”

  “I’d just like to know where you got that name.”

  She gave me an enigmatic smile. “Hell, son. Can’t a girl have contacts too? I’m going off to cook. When you need a fresh one, come out in the kitchen.” At the doorway she turned and said, “Barney confides in me sometimes.”

  Chapter Nine

  When dinner was almost ready, Jill went off and changed. I helped her move the table over to where we could look out on the little court as we ate. The deep shadows beyond the tarnished bronze of the cupid were blued and purpled by the approach of dusk. In the center of the table she put a slender white candle in a simple wrought-iron holder. The flame was motionless. She had changed to a simple white dress that left her shoulders bare. Her skin was like cream. I had to force myself to stop looking at her. This sort of thing wouldn’t do at all.

  The meal was simple. Two small steaks, a green vegetable, a tossed salad. It was much too hot to eat more.

  “Tell me more about Barney confiding in you, Jill.”

  “Is it fair for you to pump me? And not tell me anything?”

  “Now, listen. I want to be serious for a moment. You warned me that this was a big, rough situation, where I might get hurt. I don’t like your knowing that name Haussmann. I don’t like your digging around too much, Jill.”

  “It’s my business. I make my living at it.”

  “But you said yourself that the lid has gone on this thing. You can’t print what you find out anyway. So why not drop it?”

  “I am a very stubborn girl, Dil. Surprisingly stubborn. Maybe I can’t print it right away. Someday I’ll be able to. That’s good enough for me. And—well, it’s sort of a game to take the few facts you know, and try to make a picture. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where the rules permit you to manufacture a few pieces here and there. Can I talk about Laura without your getting all huffy with me?”