Little Tramp (Prologue Crime)

by Gil Brewer

  “I’m lonely,”

  she whispered, arching her back lazily. “Why fight it, Gary? I can make you forget.”

  He sat down abruptly, his hands gripping her soft young arms.

  “Damn you,” he said.

  Her body twisted against him … her tongue was a darting flame. She whispered, “Yes… yes …”

  Then, above her strained whisper, Gary heard the sound of a footstep on the porch. He struggled to rise, but Arlene clung to him in frenzy.

  The screen crashed open. A man stepped in, his shoulders filling the door.

  “Having a little party?” he asked quietly.

  Gary felt Arlene’s body tremble, then she screamed, “Get out! Go away! Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “My name’s Kryder,” he said, “and I’m here to stay. You two go right ahead with what you were doing. Might as well, because you aren’t going anywhere.”

  LITTLE

  TRAMP

  by Gil Brewer

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Also Available

  Copyright

  ONE

  HE HAD just knocked off for the noon break when Bollins called to him from the office across the yard, the sound of his voice mildly sharp as a buzz saw ceased screaming.

  “Gary Dunn? Hey, Dunn—here a minute, will you?”

  He had planned to run across town and see Doll during lunch hour, so this burned him. Every time the shop super called him, it meant some fool errand.

  “Dunn?”

  “Don’t curdle,” he said quietly.

  He moved around the corner of Number 2 shed, and crossed the sunny lumber yard, walking through the odors of freshly slain wood and damp shavings. For a brief instant the old hot well of rebellion frothed, but he held it down. For some reason Bollins had him on his list. He had tried hard to go along with the man, but even ignoring him was no good. Bollins couldn’t let the harsh undercurrent of animosity lie where it belonged.

  Dunn moved with tall, lean litheness, sandy hair sweat-streaked in the white sunlight, his shoulders touched with a faintly jaunty swing. His T-shirt was soggy with sweat, powdered with sawdust, and the khaki pants felt at if he’d been swimming in them. The same old beef. The Florida Gulf coast could be hell when your wallet was flat. Then he remembered Doll again and stifled his temper.

  “Kind of wise today, aren’t you, Dunn?”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  He paused in front of the unpainted, pine-sided office, trying to catch the sparse shade from narrow eaves. Bollins obviously had good ears.

  “Real wise guy.” Bollins rapped the clipboard he held with blunt fingers. He was heavy and very sober, his eyes big in mock surprise. His face was round and red, with yellow teeth showing through sun-cracked lips.

  Gary waited. From across the noon silence, up at the main office, a telephone rang tiresomely.

  “You’re still new around here,” Bollins said. “Six months don’t make you no vet. Never did like wise guys.”

  “What was it you wanted?”

  Bollins was the type who had to keep sticking the knife in, twisting. “Hot shot,” Bollins said.

  “You’ll irritate that sore lip if you don’t stop yakking,” Gary said. “What’s up?”

  Bollins’s eyes narrowed and his tongue prowled tenderly across the sore lips.

  Gary waited, now, wishing he hadn’t spoken. It wasn’t easy—none of this was easy, especially taking orders from a nothing like Bollins. It wasn’t easy to forget what this job meant; the chance for promotion, the steady money, the bank account, with Doll—Dolores—at the end of it waiting to make him a good wife the minute they could be married. Wanting it this way again, after all the hell-for-leather-bottle-and-a-babe years, and after what that Jane Matthias had done to him up in Alexandria. That had been the one other time he’d ever gone along with the persuasion that a vine-covered cottage was the last sweet answer to content. Only Doll wasn’t Jane Matthias. And Bollins, here, was a monkey wrench.

  Bollins quit thinking about himself. “I don’t know why the hell she picked you,” he said. “But, anyway, you’re working out this afternoon.”

  “Who you talking about?”

  “The boss’s daughter.”

  “Lonnigan? I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

  “Not Lonnigan. Harper.”

  Gary took out a cigarette, lit it, inhaled damp smoke. This was the Lonnigan Lumber Company, but Arthur Lonnigan only ran the place. It was owned by Franklin Harper, a multimillionaire with his fingers in countless business pies. Gary had seen Harper twice when the man made inspection tours; a large man with a tanned face and clear, hard gray eyes—a man who walked as if no one could touch him. He was like a museum, stinking rich and walled in.

  “What about her?”

  “You’re to run out there and see what she wants. It’s something about a hi-fi system she wants installed.”

  “Oh, hell. Okay, I’ll go out after lunch.”

  “Now,” Bollins said.

  “Sorry, you’re talking on my time as it is.”

  “Those are Lonnigan’s orders,” Bollins said. “You’re to go out there immediately. You’ll eat lunch when you can get to it.”

  “How come me?”

  “She asked for you. For Mister Dunn. Sure you don’t know her?”

  “Live with her parents?”

  “Father. Her mother’s dead.”

  “I don’t know her. I’ll see her after lunch.”

  He turned sharply away and started walking toward the battered Ford parked in the employees’ area to the left of the yard office. Several workers were driving off as the noon whistle blasted over at the light and power company.

  “Dunn?”

  He kept walking.

  “Won’t tell you again, Dunn,” Bollins called. “You go over there now.”

  Gary stopped and turned. Bollins had re-entered the office and the door slammed.

  He stood there for a moment, debating. The hell with it. There was no point making things worse than they were already. He had to keep this job; keeping the job meant more than anything else in the world. Bollins and he hadn’t struck it off from the beginning, and rumor had it that if the super could find a good enough excuse, he’d fire any employee who displeased him. He had the weight.

  Gary started toward the phone box on Number 3 shed, to call Doll. Nearly there, reaching for a cigarette, his fingers touched the heavy silver-and-jewel bracelet behind the pack of cigarettes and his stomach tightened. He walked to the phone, stood there, ran one hand roughly across his face. Another silly damned fool thing. He took out the bracelet and stared at it, softly cursing. He didn’t know what to do with it. He wanted to tell Doll about it, only that would be making a big thing out of it, and it wasn’t a big thing, except for the implications—what he knew it could mean because of similar things dredged up out of his crazy past.

  That young, screwy, curvaceous, long-legged girl and her white convertible. He had seen her twice and she’d come damned close to being a problem. Once, for the first time, a week ago as he’d turned off at an intersection heading for his place on the far north side of town, she had popped around the fender of her car and flagged him down.

  Anyone would have stopped for a looker like that one, though she was damned young. Flat tire. “I don’t know what t
o do. I’m late now.” There were no gas stations near, so he put on her spare while she leaned against the side of the car, watching, the long tanned legs disturbingly near his arms. He had nicked his knuckles badly. Then, suddenly, he realized how she was watching him, and he smelled the gin.

  “Whatever can I do to repay you?” He couldn’t be sure whether she was laughing at him, or just plain cockeyed. “You’ve been wonderful—I don’t have any money—but here, take this.” She stripped the expensive jeweled silver bracelet from her round brown arm, slapped it into his hand. “Would you like something else? Name it.” And he’d said, “Take this back!” She smiled, jumped behind the wheel of the white convertible and drove off.

  Two days later, he saw her again, at the same intersection. “I’d awfully like to pay you somehow for fixing my tire. I thought you must come home from work this way. I can’t imagine what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come along.”

  “Here’s your bracelet. I don’t want …”

  “No. You must keep it. Sell it—I have no money, or I’d pay you.”

  Again she drove hurriedly off.

  There was a time when he would have played the opportunity for all it was worth, screwy as it was. He put the bracelet away and called Doll.

  Her grandmother answered, cackled about something, then Doll came on. She was just getting up, her voice heavy with sleep, and he closed his eyes, thinking with relief about the soft ivory skin, the thick black hair, the secrets they had—and some of the turbulence went out of him, chipping off like bad wood.

  “Look, babe, I can’t make it for lunch. My wares as a carpenter are so much in demand they’re making me work overtime. Won’t see you till before you go to work tonight. You think about quitting yet, as I asked you?”

  “I’m glad you phoned.”

  “Something the matter?”

  “I like to hear your voice.”

  He listened as she told him some more of the things he spoke out against, but that inwardly gorged himself on. He didn’t want to press the point of her quitting her job as a stripper at the Jungle Club, because the only reason she continued working her act was so they could have the extra loot. Sometimes it was difficult to talk to Dolores; she made him feel like a fumbling high-school kid. It was crazy.

  “Gotta go, babe. They’re on my tail.”

  It was on his mind to tell Doll where he was going, what he had to do, perhaps even kid her about being called by name by the boss’s daughter—but somehow he couldn’t bring it out.

  That same feeling stuck with him as he gnawed a cold pork sandwich from his lunch box, driving through the syrupy afternoon along the royal-palm bordered boulevard which led to the edge of town, where the Harper home was. He knew damned well why he hadn’t mentioned it to Doll. Guilt—guilt scraped from the raw edges of all the old years of leaping headfirst into anything like this; a rich witch calling up, asking for a certain guy to come out to the house and fix something. There was usually only one thing they wanted fixed. He was too suspicious, he knew that. He didn’t know any Miss Harper. Hadn’t even known she existed until now. Just the same, there was that old feeling.

  He forced his mind around to the plans for the set of dining-room furniture he figured on building for Doll. He wanted to do it in cypress, and the yard would never miss the small amount of wood he needed. He had permission to borrow tools, too. He might even be able to do the first rough cutting at the yard, then take the stuff back to the duplex where he lived, and work on it nights.

  Ten minutes later, his mind jerked back to the present and he slowed the Ford. The Harper place occupied the entire next block.

  Doll and he had driven by the place one early evening, just for kicks. Now, as he approached the waist-high, vine-covered wall that surrounded the house itself, he slowed the car to a crawl and drew in by the curb as he neared the driveway.

  It was a large house, set well back among cedar and native pine and oak, a three-storied, many-gabled affair of brick and stone and cypress and glass. The front entrance, revealed through the open gate, was set between wings, landscaped with slimly towering cane palms sprouting from green moss beds along the edge of a parking place floored with gleaming milk-white stone. Thick, mildly tinted pink and blue glass with brass fixtures walled the front entrance, and from where he sat he could see faint amber light inside the hall.

  He suddenly felt dirty, looked at his T-shirt, and brushed it with his hand. It was grimy. He stripped the shirt off and felt naked, but cleaner.

  He sat there for another moment, debating about turning into the drive, visioning the fine looks of the fender-dented car parked on the deep, steel-blue gravel.

  Muttering, he fished behind the seat, located his thin khaki jacket, slipped it on and zipped it halfway up. He sat staring through the windshield.

  Down the street at the corner of the next block, on the opposite side, a dark green sedan was parked, its blue-suited driver hunched over the open hood, fumbling at the engine. He straightened and stretched, looking up this way.

  This was crazy, sitting here. Gary threw the car into gear, turned into the drive, whipped beneath the shade and stopped at the entrance. He was out of the car, halfway to the door when he realized he should have used the rear entrance. It was too late now.

  He touched the pearl buzzer and heard a faraway muted melody of golden gongs.

  He saw her hurrying along the hall. He turned his back, staring down at his car. He heard the door swing open.

  “Hello? Are you Mr. Dunn?”

  He turned. Bare feet with neat crimson toenails. Silver shorts, high and snug around warm brown thighs. A thin white jersey, stretched over firmly contoured flesh. A round brown arm with a thick hammered-silver bracelet. A faintly sullen red mouth, with signs of hell in the lifted curve of the upper lip. Richly gleaming brown hair.

  “You,” he said. “Oh, hell.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s all a mistake,” he said. “I’m sorry, I might have known. Good-by.”

  Turning, he started rapidly across the smooth white stone of the entranceway.

  Her voice was sharp and without apology.

  “Mr. Dunn? It’s no mistake, I assure you. This has absolutely nothing to do with how you changed the tire on my car. Come back here—right now!”

  TWO

  HE TURNED and looked at her. She was leaning against the pale-paneled edge of the glass door, her hands behind her, palms flat on either side of the glass, hips thrust forward.

  “I mean it, Mr. Dunn.”

  “I’m sure of that.”

  “I found out who you were through Art Lonnigan.”

  “I see.”

  “You were so—well, competent, that day, you know? I knew you would do your work well.”

  “What work is that, Miss Harper?”

  “Then one time I saw you drive into the lumber yard. It was pure chance. I was just coming home from a date, around seven-thirty one morning.”

  “You had no idea where I worked.”

  “Of course not. I do admire your conceit, though.”

  She was perhaps eighteen. He stood there, working the zipper up and down on his khaki jacket, wanting to turn away and drive off—knowing he should—because the whole thing was beginning to annoy him. Her pale blue eyes lazily followed the movement of his hand, and he saw her upper lip lift again, very faintly, in that curiously disturbing way.

  “I inquired around. I need a carpenter.”

  “There’s a phone book full of them.”

  She held one hand out, palm up. “You know very well you never know what you’re getting.”

  “But you know what you’re getting—this way.”

  She nodded. “Yes, Mr. Dunn. I do.”

  “Your father ordered me out here?”

  “Father had nothing to do with it. He’s away.”

  The decision still wasn’t final. He made it anyway.

  “All right, Miss Harper. What is it you want done?”

&nb
sp; “This will be it,” she said. “There’s this old empty room, just sitting here. It’ll be my record room.”

  They had strolled through the long, quiet halls, through several thickly carpeted, richly furnished rooms such as he had never before seen, but always dreamed of, and finally around to the left wing of the house. He was conscious of the deep silence, of the sound of her bare feet, the lazily alert movements of her body. All sound was magnified.

  “Record room?”

  “Yes, you see—you can call me Arlene, we’ll probably see lots of each other—you see, I’d like you to build some kind of, oh—shelves. On—on that wall, I guess. Maybe two walls. And a place for the hi-fi, and TV, too.” She turned to him, beaming. “We’ll discuss the best way.”

  The room was empty, bare-walled, without curtains or drapes. The windows were narrow, two windows on two walls, floor-to-ceiling, with dimly tinted glass.

  “It’s terribly warm in here,” she said. “I’ll turn on the air conditioner, since you’ll be working.”

  She hurried across the room, reached high on the wall, lifting one foot and knee, and he saw the silver shorts bind tightly. She flipped a switch, vents opened around the ceiling, and cool air seeped down.

  “There!”

  “It would be a perfect record room,” he said.

  “Yes—wouldn’t it!”

  “You could have shelves right up to the ceiling.”

  “That would be swell!”

  “Bring in a couch, and heavy drapes. The drapes are good for sound. As much heavy furniture as you can get.”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Helps break the sound waves. Makes for purer fidelity. Say—we could even line the walls with cork. Wouldn’t that be terrific?”

  “I’m so glad you—” She ceased, her eyes sober.

  “Come off it,” he said flatly. “What the hell are you trying to give me? What do you really want—talking like something out of a weak-tea finishing school and wagging the other end like a flag. Let’s get this straight—I don’t know what you’re up to, honey, and as far as my building your dandy little shelves, you’re better get to work on the phone book, as I said before. Old, empty room, the hell. The dust patterns are still fresh on the floor. I’ll bet you worked up a sweat carting furniture out of this room before I got here.”