The Day I Died

by Lawrence Lariar

  He shivered and got up and went inside …

  CHAPTER 18

  When the rumba died down and the place quieted, Barney Diaz said: “What makes you think she’s here?”

  Kepper said: “Because McCotter’s here.”

  “Where,” asked Barney, “is McCotter?”

  “In the corner there. You see him? He’s out like a lox, Barney.”

  Barney moved away from the bar and circled the room, taking his time as he passed beyond the band and crossed a part of the dance floor nimbly, not touching the dancers and gaining the far side of the room without appearing to be watching McCotter. It was true. McCotter had his head back against the tufted wall and was snoring quietly. Barney returned to Kepper.

  “Where is she now?” he asked.

  “In the john. She just went in.”

  “What about New York. Did you check on her?”

  “I couldn’t get much,” Kepper said. “But our boy in New York said she could be one of the steady pieces at Florian’s.”

  “She could be?” Barney made a face at the idea. “How soon can he check on it?”

  “It takes time, if she’s one of them at Florian’s, Barney. Their books aren’t exactly open to the public. You know that. Jesus, she sure is a good-looking broad, isn’t she? Who the hell knows where she came from?”

  Barney Diaz shook his head sadly, regretting his years, remembering the days when he had been able to make accurate judgments, like Kepper. He watched Sue Welch emerge from the john. She was positively beautiful.

  “What do you think of her, Kepper?”

  “Tail,” Kepper said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “It’s written all over her.”

  “Where do you see it?”

  “Ah, Jesus, you need glasses, boss.”

  Well, maybe he did. The fact that Coyle had thrown her away to an old man like McCotter certainly meant something. She had not lasted long with Coyle, and when the pay-off came Coyle didn’t seem too upset by her departure. Barney watched her at McCotter’s table now, her head turned his way and smiling it up for him. McCotter seemed half asleep, but she was waking him fast. There was a diamond ring on his left hand and when he lifted his glass, the light picked up the sparkle and flashed around the room. She was buttering him up. She was assuring him that he was in, the way she showed him her girlish laughter.

  “Where is she staying now?” Barney asked.

  “The Blackley,” Kepper said.

  “You’re sure McCotter’s paying her way?”

  “He’s with her every night.”

  “And then he comes here with her?” Barney laughed out loud. Men like McCotter were amateurs at subterfuge. McCotter would be protecting his Wall Street reputation by putting her up at the Blackley and paying her gentlemanly calls. Or so McCotter thought. Yet, beyond the simple mechanics of his deceit, McCotter was fool enough to bring the girl to a place like this, the Coral Club, where everybody who was anybody came to count the sinners. It was as crazy as living with her at the Carrillon. Crazier. McCotter was on his feet now, dancing with her again. She had revived him adequately and he minced around the floor with her. Barney bowed and smiled at McCotter as he danced past the bar. McCotter returned the smile and winked refreshingly to prove that the girl in his arms was hot and ripe. It was all very stupid.

  “You want me to talk to her?” Kepper asked.

  “I’ll handle it,” Barney said.

  Barney had another glass of milk and waited for the music to stop. He crossed the dance floor, saying a quick hello to some of his friends, pausing for a word or two, but holding his course steadily for McCotter’s table. Was she watching him approach?

  “Mr. McCotter,” Barney exploded, grabbing the man’s hand and shaking it hard. “So I caught you playing hookey from the Marine Bar, eh?”

  “Hello, Barney,” McCotter laughed. “Sit down, sit down. Good to see you here. Say hello to Miss Welch.”

  “We’re old friends,” Sue said. “Aren’t we, Barney?”

  “Of course. Of course.”

  “Sit down, Barney,” McCotter insisted.

  “Do you mind?”

  “I insist. What are you drinking? Don’t tell me it’s milk, even when you’re away from the Carrillon?”

  “It’s milk.” Barney smiled. “But I didn’t come over to drink, Mr. McCotter. I wanted to dance with Miss Welch, here.”

  “Well, now,” said McCotter. “That’s nice.”

  “Do you mind, Miss Welch?” Barney asked.

  “My pleasure,” said Sue Welch, and got up at once.

  It was all very casual and orderly. She had a soft, curved figure under his old hands. It was a rumba and a lot of the girls from New York thought they knew it but couldn’t temper their bodies to the rhythms of this dance. Sue had done it often before. She danced with a smooth grace. She breathed it and swayed it and adjusted her body to the subtleties of the music. She had a vapid, almost inane line of talk; Barney this and Barney that, and what a swell hotel the Carrillon was and wasn’t it a shame she had to leave it for the Blackley? The rumba beat was louder now and her eyes were almost closed and her mouth open so that her lips glistened under the lights. Her head was close to his so that he only had to whisper to be heard.

  “You down here for a long stay?” Barney asked.

  “Not long enough to suit me.”

  “How long would suit you?”

  “Forever,” Sue Welch said. “But the rates are too high, Barney.”

  “I guess you’re right.” Barney sighed. “I was talking about just that, this morning, with Tom Coyle. Nice boy, that Tom. The best. Tom was saying what a hell of a note it was, a place like Florida only for the big shots in the country. He’s crazy about it here, Tom is. Nuts about it.”

  “He sure is,” Sue said.

  She was humming the tune now, pulling away, reacting to Tom Coyle a little. Barney continued to talk about Coyle, laying it on the line for her, what a great boy Coyle was and how good-looking and all. The band was slowing now for a break, but Barney signaled the leader, a man he knew well. The leader picked up the beat after the number ended, skillfully continuing with another rumba. Barney nodded slyly at him. He needed time for this one. Plenty of time.

  “You knew Coyle in New York?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  “You and he have a bad fight?”

  “I never fight,” Sue said wearily. “Do I look like the fighting type, Barney?”

  “Maybe he was worried about business,” Barney suggested. “It could be that he was having trouble back in New York with Zadek at International. That Zadek can be a tough nut when he wants to be.”

  “He never mentioned Zadek,” Sue said.

  “Or International?”

  “We never discussed his business, Barney.” She was beginning to measure the purpose of his questioning. Barney Diaz was fishing for information about Coyle and from the way he aimed the questions it might have paid off well if she had learned to know Coyle better. The fact that she had overlooked this aspect of Tom Coyle’s background irritated her. She saw herself losing money because of her stupidity, and the awful truth annoyed her. “Listen,” she said petulantly, “why all the big deal about Coyle?”

  “Nothing at all,” Barney said easily. “I like to talk about people. It’s sort of a habit in the hotel business, Sue. I see so many different personalities in my place, all kinds of types, it makes interesting conversation. Everybody sort of gets a label when they stay in my hotel for a while. But with Coyle, well, he was kind of hard to place.”

  “I see,” said Sue, aware of his subterfuge. “And how about me? What kind of a label did you pin on me?”

  “A very pretty, very clever girl, with very pretty, very clever ideas.”

  “What can I tell you?”
Sue Welch added an almost confidential whisper to their conversation, and with the change of pace she came in closer to Barney. Several people on the beach had informed her of the stature of Barney Diaz. She was determined to establish a relationship that might prove profitable later on. He was certainly no better or no worse than McCotter, and he seemed to have much more warmth and a certain charm the Wall Street man could never achieve. Barney was slightly shorter than McCotter and this meant stooping a little to his level, but she managed it easily. “Why the big interest in Coyle, all of a sudden?”

  “Just curious,” Barney said. “The two of you looked sort of good together. Then, out of nowhere, you’re out of his shack. Why?”

  “Maybe we didn’t see eye to eye anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that we didn’t get along, that’s all.”

  “I can’t figure it,” Barney said. “I’ll bet he’s sorry he let you go.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Barney. Tommy won’t miss me at all. We’re still the best of friends. It was just that we found out it couldn’t work, that’s all. I’m not his type, you might say.”

  “What would his dish be?” Barney asked.

  “Somebody a lot smarter,” Sue said, after a moment’s thought, remembering the quiet times with Tom Coyle, the long and painful intervals when he seemed lost and alone and away from her, a thousand miles away and yet sitting in the next chair. “Me, I just didn’t understand him, I guess.”

  Barney pulled her in a bit closer and she didn’t seem to mind the pressure. “You perfectly happy now? You like McCotter?”

  “Shouldn’t I?” she asked archly.

  Barney laughed gently. “McCotter is all right, I guess. It’s just that I can’t really figure out a girl like you, Sue. Where did you come from, anyhow?”

  “I’m a Brooklyn girl. Does that make you happy?”

  “I mean, what did you do before you came down here?”

  “Do?” Sue Welch examined him carefully, preparing the right lie for him, wondering which one of a dozen falsehoods he would accept most easily. “I was a working gal, Barney. I still am a working gal.”

  “You didn’t happen to work at Florian’s?” Barney asked casually.

  “Let’s assume that I’m the hat check gal from Florian’s.”

  “That we can’t assume,” Barney said quietly. “Because you never were the hat check girl.”

  “All right, then. I wasn’t the hat check girl.”

  “Did you know a man named Masterson?”

  “Now who would that be?” She did not alter the rhythm of her step, nor bother to pause in her conversation. “It’s a familiar name, but I can’t say I know him.”

  “Let it go,” Barney said. “The point is, are you happy now? With McCotter, I mean?”

  “You’re not making a pass at me, are you, Barney?”

  “Suppose I am? Can you get away from McCotter?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I’m old,” Barney smiled, “but I’m not dead.”

  “No, you’re not dead. But you’ll have to wait.”

  “You’ll let me know?”

  “You don’t sound too anxious.”

  “When a man reaches my age,” Barney whispered, “waiting is part of the pleasure, maybe. You sit around and sometimes you get what you want by just waiting. Take Tom Coyle, for instance. To me, he looks too anxious sometimes. That’s youth, don’t you see? Youth doesn’t know how to control itself, really. Age is experience. So let’s leave it that way for a while. All you have to do is pick up the phone and let me know when you can see me. Let’s put it this way—I like you. How does that sound?”

  She laughed her rich, deep laugh, because they were close to McCotter’s table now. They swung back toward the band and her arm tightened and her nails bit into him, high on the shoulder. She continued to laugh, just as though she might be reacting to a dirty story.

  “You sure lay it on the line, Barney,” she said.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You didn’t ask me a thing.” Her eyes were on McCotter now and the Wall Street man seemed suddenly wide awake and a bit concerned about the length of her stay away from him. He waggled a hand at her, but there was a touch of impatience in the gesture, enough stifled petulance to make the motion an index of his impatience. Sue caught the full significance of McCotter’s display of controlled annoyance. She abruptly pulled her hands away from Barney and smiled him off the dance floor.

  “Nice of you to dance with me,” Barney said politely, bowing her to her seat. “She’s a hell of a good dancer, Mr. McCotter.”

  “She certainly is, isn’t she?” McCotter held her chair for her. “Care for a drink, Barney?”

  “I’ll take a rain check on it. I’ve got to get back to the hotel now.”

  But Barney didn’t leave at once for the Carrillon. Instead, he found Kepper at the bar and they walked through the parking lot to the beach, not saying anything at all while Barney led the way along the sand. There was a jetty out there and Barney didn’t begin to talk until he had reached the rocks and found a comfortable one to sit on. Kepper said nothing at all at moments like this. He waited for his boss to speak, knowing that the words would come after Barney had thought through the events of the evening and come to some logical conclusion about Sue Welch and McCotter and Coyle. But most of all, Coyle.

  “How do you see it?” Barney said at last.

  “A two-bit whore,” Kepper said.

  “Never mind the girl. I was thinking of Coyle.”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “What bothers you?”

  Kepper shrugged and struggled for words. “Something smells about him. I just don’t see him down here. Not at all.”

  “A quiet boy,” Barney said. “You don’t like him personally?”

  “Not that, exactly. I keep thinking, what in hell is Bruck doing sucking around him so often, always near him, like I told you, sort of following him most of the time. Then, the time at the cottage, with the money. What did Bruck give him dough for? That’s what makes it stink. Who’s the louse in the deal, is what I mean. We know Bruck is Masterson’s boy.”

  “Oh, Bruck is Masterson’s boy, all right,” Barney agreed. It was ridiculous the way a casual mention of Masterson could stir him up inside the way it did. He shivered and the cold that swept over him was a physical thing, so strong that it frightened him. More than ever he was aware that Masterson was active now. It was like the smell of rain coming in over the water; you knew it was coming, it would be here soon, but what could you do about it? Especially when the storm would be a hurricane, ripping and tearing. And killing? Without knowing why, Barney looked long and hard over the sea, but the blackness only made his trouble more biting. “It’s just that I can’t get the angle between them,” he whispered, more to himself that Kepper. “Masterson is in it, somewhere, but where?”

  “Coyle doesn’t look like anything Masterson would use.”

  “That much I believe. But Masterson must be working on something. Why would he send Bruck down here?”

  “It could be that Bruck is down here on his own business.”

  “You think so?” There was a strong hope in the idea, something that Barney could use these days. If he could disconnect Bruck from the bastard Masterson, he might gain peace of mind. Yet, out of his intimate knowledge of Masterson’s operation, he could not convince himself that Bruck had left the fold. Bruck would always be Masterson’s man, and that was what frightened Barney. The fear would never end, not until the facts were in, all of them, complete to the last detail. “You think we might buy Bruck for a price?”

  “Forget that idea,” Kepper said firmly. The prospect of buying off Bruck was almost laughable. But there was no room for laughter in this scene. Barney was scared stiff. They were
daydreaming when they talked of buying off Bruck. “I’ve got an idea, Barney.”

  “Let’s hear about it.”

  “Why don’t you go away for a while?”

  “Are you completely nuts?” Barney laughed.

  “I’m serious as hell. Leave town for a month or so and let me try to work this thing out. If Masterson means business, he’s building up to something big with you. You know what I mean? You remember what he said in Chicago?”

  “The lousy bastard,” Barney spat the words.

  “What I mean is, he maybe is figuring to bump you off, Barney.”

  It was out now and in the breeze, the words that told the truth, the words that spelled out the fear and the sickness inside Barney Diaz. How long had Kepper guessed what was on his mind? He was not alone now. There were other faithfuls, perhaps more of the mercenary type that Kepper, but allies nevertheless. Men would do his bidding for a price, at least a small army of henchmen in his private domain. It would be like a war in the last analysis, a personal battle of strategy between Masterson and Diaz, but the fact that Barney controlled a protective guard gave him satisfaction now.

  “You figure right,” Barney said. “How did you know?”

  “I remembered about Chicago, I guess. Everybody in the South knows what Masterson wants. He wants what you got, Barney. Maybe he’d talk business with you. Did you ever think of that?”

  “What I’ve got is mine, Kepper.”

  “It could be you wouldn’t have to give him much.”

  “He can drop dead,” Barney said bitterly. “It took me a long time to build what I own down here. It took sweat and blood, Kepper, a big part of my life to work it up to what I own now. Maybe I got a lot of it the hard way. Or the wrong way. But those days are gone forever now, and when a man gets to be as old as I am, he thinks of what he owns like a goddamned stupid kid, maybe. He wants to hold on to it and go down with it. Masterson can go to hell, Kepper. I’m going to fight for what I own.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Kepper said. “What do you want me to do first? Contact the dame and talk to her?”