by Anthony Rome
I put down some milk for him, poured myself a stiff brandy. Tangerine finished his breakfast and left. I downed my drink and went into the cabin, changed to pajamas, and stretched out on the bed. After five minutes, I sat up again, my eyes still wide open. This time reading sea-going history, usually my best relaxer, didn’t help. I finished the last chapter of Coxere’s Adventures still tense.
Finally, I got up and went back to the galley. I got the brandy bottle and carried it back to bed with me. After I’d had enough, I went to sleep. I dreamed that it was three years ago and I was back on the roof of the freight shed. I was down with that bullet in my smashed shoulder, waiting helplessly while that hood took his time aiming the gun at my face for the finishing shot . . .
CHAPTER
10
ANNE ARCHER’S spacious hotel suite was done in softly pleasing modern. The feeling of space was enhanced by the wide ceiling-high doorways and the way the living room flowed up two wide, low steps to the open dining level. The living room had dark-stained walnut walls and very pale pink carpeting and curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows. There were a few sharp color accents—the polished bronze of a lamp base, the dark rose of one chair, the deep green of a sofa pillow.
It was seven o’clock that Sunday evening, and I was wearing my best dark-blue wash-’n’-wear suit and a knitted maroon tie. Anne Archer wore a form-hugging green cashmere sweater and skin-tight dark-blue slacks that emphasized the slinkiness of her tall, slender figure. I’d phoned her an hour earlier, and I was pleased by the notion that she’d dressed this way for me.
I watched her as she carried our drinks back from the tiny bar beside the hi-fi set in one corner of the living room. Her loose-flowing red hair and her sure, graceful walk added up to the same delightful effect I remembered from two nights before. She set the glasses on a long, low coffee table with ebony legs and a white marble top and perched on the edge of the pale pink sofa. I sat in the rose chair, which gave me the best view of her long, exquisitely curved legs, and picked up my brandy.
“I stocked the bottle of brandy especially for you,” she said, tasting the Scotch and soda she’d made for herself.
“I had a hunch you’d be popping back into my life one of these days.”
Tm flattered.”
“You should be. And I shouldn’t be so obvious. I keep telling myself to play hard to get. I was going to, too. When you phoned I was hoping it was for a date tonight. So I could turn you down. I’ve got a date later. And I don’t enjoy being asked the last minute.”
“I tried getting in touch with you yesterday,” I lied. “But you didn’t answer your phone.”
“Oh? Well, now it’s my turn to feel flattered. When did you call?”
“Around five o’clock in the evening.” I sipped the brandy and watched her carefully without appearing to.
She frowned, remembering back, then shook her head at me. “You couldn’t have. I was here at five.”
“It might’ve been a little before or after five. I wasn’t keeping close tabs on the time.”
She shook her head again. “I was shopping yesterday afternoon, but I know I was back here by four. I had to take a shower and get dressed for a date. And I didn’t leave till six thirty, when my date showed up for me.” She eyed me suspiciously. “Are you sure you phoned me yesterday?”
“Maybe while you were in the shower,” I said. “It’s just as well I wasn’t able to reach you. You sound as though you’re booked solid. That man-woman ratio you were complaining about doesn’t seem to cramp you much.”
She turned her head and gazed solemnly out the huge window, past her small balcony at the surf pounding the beach. “I had the blues that night . . . What’s a woman supposed to do when she comes down here for a divorce? Sit by herself night after night for six straight months? I couldn’t stand that. I don’t like myself enough to do it. And I do like men . . . the ones who’re attractive and interesting.”
I drank down the rest of the brandy. “I guess Darrell Pines scores on both counts,” I said lightly. “Attractive and interesting.”
She was picking up her glass. She set it down again, stared at me. After a moment she asked quietly, “How do you know about that?”
“You forget. I’m a detective. A dirty line of work, remember? But it keeps me professionally attuned to the meanings behind what people do and say. I saw the way Pines and his wife acted toward each other when I brought her home. And you told me you felt it was your fault that she’d gone off on a binge. Two and two still adds up to four.” Her eyes narrowed.
“I wish now,” she said fiercely, “I hadn’t bought that bottle of brandy. Serves me right. Thinking you were interested in me.”
“I am.
“No, you’re not. And you’re not so damn perceptive after all. I get it now. The light dawns. Diana told you. She hired you to find out how far it’s gone between Darrell and me. Didn’t she? Maybe even to make me stay away from Darrell from now on?”
I didn’t say anything. I could see that she’d been wanting to tell it to somebody anyway.
“Well, you tell Diana she can stop worrying about it. What happened the night of the party never happened before. It was the one and only time. And it didn’t mean a thing. Nothing.”
“What did happen?”
Anne Archer grimaced angrily at me. “Stop playing me for a fool. You know. Diana must have told you. But it didn’t mean what she thought it did.”
She glared down at her clenched fists for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, more controlled. “Diana knows how it’s been for me since I left my husband. I’ve been doing the all-too-usual desperate divorcee bit. Trying too hard to prove to myself that I’m still attractive to men. I know I’ve been doing it. I don’t like myself for it. But the night of that party I had a little too much to drink and did it again. Only this time with her husband. It never happened before.”
She looked up at me, her face taut. “Disappointed?”
“No.”
“I guess Diana will be. I know what she must think after catching Darrell and me in that clinch in the guest room. But that was the only time it ever happened. And it’s not all my fault either. Darrell has his own problem. And I’ll bet Diana is so wrapped up in herself she isn’t even aware of it. Darrell isn’t supposed to have any problems. After all, he’s got the fair Diana and he’s heir apparent to Rudy Kosterman’s company. But lately he’s gotten the feeling he’s just a piece of property owned by Diana and her father. I know it bothers him a lot. Maybe it’s time Diana knew it.”
“Maybe it is,” I agreed softly.
Anne Archer sighed and shook her head angrily. “No. I know it’s no excuse. Darrell and I both had too much to drink that night. That’s all. We started flirting with each other. Just kidding, really. But somehow we ended up in that real convincing-looking clinch. And Diana had to walk in on us at that exact moment . . . I couldn’t feel worse about it. Even though it didn’t mean anything really. I’ll never forget how shocked Diana looked before she ran out. She’s such a damn innocent kid. If it’ll make her feel better about anything, I feel rotten about hurting her like that. It’s made me realize what a bitch I’ve become. You can tell her that.”
“You’re mistaken,” I said. “Your friend Diana didn’t hire me to pump you for information.”
That it was the truth helped me make it sound convincing. Anne Archer stared at me, uncertainty replacing her anger.
We were interrupted by the ringing of the phone on the table. She jumped up off the sofa and went across the room toward it.
I stared down at my empty glass. I’d found out what I’d come to find out. I’d already guessed it pretty accurately because of the way Darrell Pines had been so anxious to keep Kosterman from knowing.
By the bar, Anne Archer was snatching up the phone. “Yes?” She listened for a short time, then said, “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen anything of Nimmo in over a month . . . No, I have no idea whe
re he’s living now . . . Well, that’s his problem . . . That’s all right.”
She hung up the phone and turned slowly, looking across the room at me. “Are you still here?” she demanded without heat. “I’ve got a date to get dressed for now.”
“I could use another drink,” I told her.
“I’d rather you left now,” she said flatly.
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“You came here for a reason. To get information out of me—”
“One of these evenings we’ll make it just for fun,” I said. “If your waiting list shrinks a little.”
I left her standing there with the unfinished drink in her hand, went to the door, and let myself out. I mulled over what she’d revealed as I rode down in the elevator and went out through the glass lobby door the uniformed doorman held open for me.
Anne Archer had told me what was troubling Diana Pines. And it fitted neatly enough.
The trouble was it didn’t really tell me anything I hadn’t already guessed. It didn’t tell me why the search jobs had been done on my boat and office and on Turpin’s hotel room—apparently for a decorative pin that wouldn’t bring enough to be worth the trouble. It didn’t tell me about the two men who’d chloroformed me or about the man I’d caught listening outside Turpin’s door.
And it certainly didn’t tell me why Turpin was dead.
I had a date of my own that evening in Key Largo. An old friend had sunk all his cash and credit into building a new motel down there and was throwing a party to celebrate its opening. The party lasted till the early hours, by which time I didn’t feel up to driving. So I got my sleep in one of the motel cabins and drove back up to Miami in the morning.
It was ten thirty Monday morning when I got to my office. There was mail waiting for me in my reception room—letters, bills, advertising circulars, the check from Kosterman. And a package. I took the mail with me into my inner office and sat down behind my desk. Pushing the small pile of envelopes to one side, I set the package on top of the desk in front of me.
It was a small, flat package, wrapped in the kind of white paper available in most five-and-tens, tied with brown string that you could buy almost anywhere. My name and address had been printed on it in crude block letters, with a ballpoint pen. There was no return address. According to the post-office mark, the package had been mailed to me Saturday afternoon.
I broke the string and unwrapped the paper. Then I opened the small white box inside. There was nothing on or in the box that told me who’d sent it. I took out what was inside and held it in the palm of my hand, gazing at it.
It was a pin in the shape of a daisy, with gold petals and a cluster of diamonds forming the round center.
CHAPTER
11
IT WAS ON ONE of those North Miami Avenue blocks with a portico shading the sidewalk. The narrow store front was cramped between a Cuban bar and an open- air pool hall. The sign over the window, which was crammed with the usual conglomeration of poor people’s treasures, read:
LOANS
FAST-CONFIDENTIAL
$5—$500
GUNS—DIAMONDS—CAMERAS
A cardboard sign over the door said: “Old-Rare COINS—Bought & Sold.” The inside of the glass in the door was covered with small yellowing cards to which coins were pasted, with a description of each scribbled on its card.
A cowbell clanked as I opened the door and went in.
There was barely room for five people to squeeze into the space between the counter and the wall. There was a glass case containing old coins, cameras, and jewelry on either end of the counter, and rifles and handguns displayed on wall racks flanking the curtained doorway behind the counter. As the door swung shut behind me, the cowbell stopped clanking. Sands, the owner of the store, came out through the doorway curtain behind the counter.
He was a very tall, very skinny, completely bald man in his forties. He wore a black-leather bow tie, and his pipestem arms hung abnormally long from the short sleeves of his gaudy sports shirt. When he saw me, he put both hands flat on the counter and licked his thin lips while he tried to hide the jolt of terror that hit him. Then he forced a big smile, showing gold teeth and some missing ones.
“Well, well, Mr. Rome,” he blurted with false cordiality. “Been a long time since I seen you last.”
Uh-huh, I said. “More than a year. Not since Turpin and I split up.”
The terror flickered in his eyes again. He blinked rapidly. Now I was sure I’d been right. Before it had just been guesswork. After I’d left Turpin’s room the day before, he’d gone out and hadn’t returned for about two hours. If he’d had the daisy pin in his room all along, it wouldn’t have taken that long to go to a store, buy string and wrapping paper, package the pin, and drop it in a mailbox. I’d put that together with the fact that I knew Sands did some side fencing of small items of hot jewelry. And that Turpin had used him a couple of times back in the days when I sometimes knew what Turpin was up to.
“I guess you know what happened to Turpin,” I said to Sands.
He started to reach up a hand to his bow tie and dropped it quickly back on the counter. But not quickly enough to hide its trembling. “Yeah,” he said sorrowfully. “In the papers this morning. Lousy break. Who could’ve done a thing like that to old Turpin?”
“That’s what the cops want to know. They want to know it real bad. They’re looking for everybody that had anything to do with Turpin recently. Sweating each one till there isn’t a single thing about any of them they don’t find out.” Sands licked his lips again, stared at me with horrid fascination.
I took the daisy pin out of my pocket and placed it on the counter between his hands.
He looked down at it, then slowly up at me. He didn’t say a word. His eyes looked close to tears.
“Turpin sold that to you,” I said.
Sands cleared his throat. He whispered, “No.”
“Yes. He did. Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon he came in again and bought it back from you. Same price. He gave you back your dough and took the pin and went out with it.”
Sands tried to say something, couldn’t, and shook his head instead.
“Open up,” I told him, “or I’ll feed you to the cops. This can bring you the worst trouble of your life. This rap isn’t just fencing a few hot jewels from time to time . . . though that alone’ll bring you more trouble than you can take. This is a murder, Sands. And this pin’s part of the murder setup.”
“I didn’t!” Sands croaked. “He didn’t sell this to me! I never bought it.”
“You can tell me the truth,” I said softly, “or I can bring the cops down on you. There’s no other way. I’m in too deep myself to spare you any pity. Murder changes everything.”
“I don’t know anything about Turpin’s murder,” he pleaded.
“When it’s a murder investigation,” I said, “the boys can get pretty rough on even ordinary, honest citizens. With someone like me, they get even rougher. But somebody like you, Sands . . .” I punched his bony chest with the tip of a stiff’ forefinger. “With somebody like you, they take you down to the basement and all rules are off. They’ll sweat blood out of you. You’ll sweat till there isn’t a drop in you they don’t know about.”
“I don’t know who killed Turpin!”
“You know about this pin though.”
“I didn’t buy it from him. I swear it.”
“Okay.” I scooped the pin off the counter and turned away. “You want it this way—
“Wait!”
I turned back to him.
“I told you the truth,” Sands said weakly. “But not all of it. I mean . . . he came in here Saturday morning like you said. But I was too busy right then to give him time, and he was in a hurry. So he left this pin here with me. For me to figure out later how much I’d pay him for it. He said he’d be back.”
“When’d he come back?”
Sands raised both trembling hands and shrugged. I do
n’t know exactly. I had to go out for a while Saturday afternoon. My wife’s sick. In bed. I had to go home, make her something to eat, see how she was. I got back here around four. Turpin was waiting for me outside.”
“He wanted the pin back?” I asked.
Sands nodded. “But first he wanted to know how much it was worth. When I told him it wasn’t worth anything, he took it back and went away, and that’s all I know. I swear it.” I opened my hand and gazed at the daisy pin, raised my eyes to his. “Come again. About its not being worth anything.” He blinked at me, not understanding the look on my face. “I appraised it later Saturday morning, a couple hours after Turpin brought it in. When I got a couple minutes free. It’s a phony. I told Turpin that when he came back.”
“These gold petals? The diamonds?”
“The gold’s real enough. The diamonds ain’t. And there ain’t enough gold on that thing to make it worth more’n twenty bucks, retail. Not worth a nickel, to me.”
“You’re sure of this.”
Sands was insulted. “Of course I’m sure.”
I nodded, dropped the phony pin in my pocket, and left. I stopped off at my bank and deposited Kosterman’s check. Even after drawing out enough money to maneuver on, it left enough to start thinking about the horses running at Hialeah. But there was no time for going out to the track, or even for doping one race and phoning a wager to my bookie. I headed back to my office. Margo, in Ben Silver’s office next door, had a message for me. Diana Pines had called from The Island and wanted me to phone her back.
In my office I sat behind my desk, placed the daisy pin on the desktop in front of me, and stared at it for a few minutes. It winked at me, reflecting the sunlight streaming in through the windows behind me.
Real, it wouldn’t have been worth enough to cause all that had been happening around me in the past few days. But if it was worthless . . .
Then it might.
I put through the call to Diana Pines.
“Have you got it yet?” was the first thing she said when she came on the phone. “My pin?”
