‘Chris, you’re so wrong. You are so absolutely, ruinously wrong. You’re playing loner because you think you’re a failure. But you’re not. You’ve got everything going for you. It’s not only that you seem so big, and strong, and capable, you really are that way. Look, for two weeks I’ve been watching you run Frenchy’s business at Cobia. All of it, right down to the paperwork. If you had a place of your own like that –’
‘I see. And you along with it?’
‘Why not?’ Elizabeth said gravely. ‘You might like it a lot more than you think. Anyhow, you don’t have to go very far to find out what it would be like.’
There was no mistaking the invitation. And, looking her over with almost insulting deliberation, he had to admit that she made an enticingly wanton picture, sitting there, offering herself like that, glasses and all. He had a feeling she knew the glasses added a piquant touch to the picture.
‘You talk a big game, don’t you?’ he said.
‘I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you mean. It was only one little affair, but it taught me some things about myself I was glad to know.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, for starters, I’m totally uninhibited and a lot of fun in bed.’
‘And?’
‘And the glasses come off if you prefer it that way.’
He had to marvel at how she had, temporarily at least, cut off his every escape route. And had to pity her for her bad judgement.
‘Better take the glasses off,’ he said.
13
When he left the bedroom late in the morning he closed the door quietly behind him so as not to wake her and took the scrapbook along with him. Standing at the stove, waiting for the coffee percolator to start clucking, he found he could flip through the book glancing at the yellowing Press clippings – tributes to him, pictures of him clutching trophies, shaking hands across the net with game losers – without a qualm. It had been a long, long time since he could do that.
The screen door to the porch squeaked open and slapped shut, and Dom ambled into the kitchen, a grocery bag in one hand and the bulky Sunday edition of the Miami Herald in the other. He placed the bag and newspaper on the table.
‘Rolls,’ he said, ‘and some Danish. Beth said she likes Danish for breakfast.’
‘Thanks.’
‘She still asleep?’
‘Yes.’
Dom stood there in awkward silence.
‘She tell you about the talk we had last night?’ he said at last.
‘Yes.’
‘You sore about it?’
‘Let’s say confused. I thought you were down on her.’
‘That was my mistake. Chris, she is one hell of a woman.’
‘When you change sides you really do it in a big way, don’t you?’
‘Don’t try to sound so hardboiled about it. She is one hell of a woman, and she’s strictly on the level, and she’s crazy about you. And she communicates. I mean, really communicates, not like a square at all. How many times in his life does a guy get a chance to play a parlay like that?’
‘Hardly ever. While you were outside, did you notice anyone hanging around who shouldn’t be?’
‘No. Chris, do you understand what I mean about you and Beth?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you agree?’
‘I’m not sure yet. You’ll be the first to know when I am. Meanwhile, you can put this back with your souvenirs.’ He handed Dom the scrapbook. ‘Isn’t it time for you to go on the job?’
Week-ends, Dom worked the lunch shift at the restaurant as well as the dinner shift.
‘Right away,’ he said angrily. ‘Hell, talking to you is like talking to papa all over again. The stone-wall department. But give me one good reason –’
‘You’ll be late for work, kid.’
After Dom had made an outraged departure, and he was alone at the table with coffee and a cigarette he was a little sorry he had put the kid down so hard. But it had to be done. It was bad enough when Dom got started on some subject like politics or books where, like any high-minded college boy, he was sure he knew all the answers. It seemed to be even more grating on the nerves when the subject was Elizabeth.
No, come to think of it, not Elizabeth. Beth.
She must have told the kid to call her that during their table-talk, as she had told it to him during their love-making. Yesterday, poor Elizabeth. Today, rich Beth. And how much had poor Elizabeth foreseen of the future when she first offered marriage to him? How much had she planned to shape it to her taste? And if she had told him right at the start that the deal included stud service, would he have gone along with it, even for the fifty thousand?
No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. That would have had too much of the beach boy stink to it.
So, putting it all together, it looked as if poor Elizabeth had an uncanny talent for having things work out the way she wanted them to. It had started even before Chris Monte came into her life. She had desperately needed money, and suddenly there was that dour, hardbitten New Englander, Joseph Prendergast, who all but adopted her. And who was laying out a thousand a month for that conveniently ailing mother she never talked about. But one look at Prendergast was enough to tell anybody that he wasn’t the man to go around adopting poverty-stricken waifs out of the goodness of his heart.
Then what was his motive?
Was it possible he had somehow sensed the splendidly wanton Beth hidden away in prim Elizabeth? Last night she had cheerfully admitted to an affair. Was that what Prendergast had bargained for in return for his investment?
Chris put down his coffee cup very carefully. With great deliberation, he stubbed out his cigarette in the saucer. The glowing butt scorched his fingertip, but he hardly felt it.
His wife and Prendergast? Impossible. The only trouble was it so beautifully explained their relationship. The man’s savage possessiveness, the girl’s meek acceptance of it.
The doorbell rang. It rang again, loudly and insistently, wrenching him away from this train of thought. It was a uniformed policeman, Chris saw, when he flung open the door, and outside the house was parked a police patrol car. It was like that time in January when he had been pulled in for questioning about Zucker’s death. It was even the same cop again, Frank House who had gone through high school with him.
It was plain that House didn’t mind putting down Chris Monte, the biggest thing around Miami Beach High those days, the kid who had been allowed time off right in the middle of the term to play in tournaments in New York or London or Paris, the fair-haired boy who used to show up on TV interviews and be written about in the papers.
‘It’s Lieutenant Greenberger, Chris,’ House said with relish. ‘He wants to have a little talk with you.’
‘Hell, Zucker’s been dead three months. Doesn’t Greenberger have anything else on his mind?’
‘I don’t know,’ House said grinning. ‘Why not ask him about it?’
Which meant, Chris thought sourly, that it was Zucker again, and that this business of needling him about his role in alibiing Marty McClure for Zucker’s murder was going to come up as regularly as a quarterly dividend.
He left a note for Beth on the kitchen table, Stay here. I’ll be back soon, and went along with House, almost welcoming the chance to have it out with Greenberger once and for all. This was the end of the rousting, he’d make plain. From now on, lay off.
Greenberger was grey-haired and stocky, a good detective who had handled more than his share of the big jewel heists epidemic on the Beach, and a polished diplomat when it came to dealing with the operators of de luxe hotels and high-rises who, in the democracy of the Beach, were admittedly a little more equal than anyone else there.
When it came to Chris Monte though, he took off the diplomatic gloves.
He slammed his office door shut, pointed to the chair before his desk.
‘Sit down,’ he said shortly, and seated himself on the edge of the desk. He was in shirtsleeves and look
ed angry and harassed. ‘Hear the news yet? House leak it to you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, let me be the one. Marty McClure was murdered last night. Run over by a car. He turned up dead in an alley off Espanola Way couple of hours ago.’ Greenberger stared hard at Chris. ‘I can see you didn’t know. Care for a shot?’
‘Yes,’ said Chris.
The shot was a cheap, evil-tasting brand of whisky, but he welcomed the jolt of it. It wasn’t offered in kindness, he knew. It was to help brace him for the business at hand. He would have liked another drink to back up the first, but Greenberger didn’t offer it. He carefully put the bottle away in its drawer and tossed the empty paper cup into the wastebasket.
‘Feel better?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ But it was still hard to realize McClure was dead. The man was too tough for anyone to put under. Too redheaded rugged and mean to picture lying dead in the gutter.
‘All right,’ Greenberger said, ‘let’s get down to cases. My money says you got a good idea who murdered him.’
‘Your money’s wrong. And what makes you so sure it was murder? A hit-and-run can happen to anybody.’
‘Mostly it don’t happen to people who are found with their hands and feet tied up with clothesline. It was murder, and it was meant to look like murder because it was the payoff for him killing Zucker. What I want to know from you is who he figured might try to pay him off for that. Since you were such a buddy to him –’
‘Buddy!’
‘Don’t crap me, Monte. I got a real hot tip that’s how it was between you two. McClure didn’t ask just anybody up to his room for private talks at four a.m. Or for some outsider to alibi him when he got Zucker. All right, we’ll forget all about the alibi. Just tell me who McClure figured was number one to go running for him, and that clears your account with me.’
‘Lieutenant, McClure went in for tennis the way some of the other mobsters around here go in for golf. That’s what we talked about, tennis. And he didn’t know much about it either.’
‘But he knew who to pay for favours, didn’t he? And pay plenty.’
‘Is that what you call the hundred bucks he gave me to play tennis with him that night?’
‘Only a hundred?’ Greenberger said sweetly. ‘What do you think of that? And on a lousy hundred bucks you’re figuring to get married and take the little woman to Europe. That’s what I call a real economy tour, Monte.’
So the cops at Naples had sent word back here about the airline tickets and Prendergast’s cheque. The trick now, Chris saw, was to keep any mention of the Valentine estate out of this discussion and yet not hang himself. There was a chance Greenberger could be trusted to keep the story about the estate to himself if he were let in on it, but there was a lot bigger chance he’d tell the whole world about it, if it suited his purpose. Which it would.
‘Quit stalling, Monte,’ Greenberger said. ‘This Prendergast who’s supposed to be paying your freight to Europe was McClure’s front, wasn’t he? That was McClure’s money he handed you, because McClure was too smart to sign the cheques himself. Isn’t that the truth?’
‘Lieutenant, if you knew Prendergast –’
‘All right, suppose you tell me about him.’
‘Sure. He’s a Boston-type stuffed-shirt if ever there was one. He’s staying at Cobia with his family.’
‘And what’s he to you? How come he’s laying out almost two grand for your good time?’
Chris started to open his mouth, then closed it.
‘Suppose I want to ask Prendergast himself about it?’ Greenberger said inexorably. ‘Where would I find him?’
‘You wouldn’t. He’s on a Bahama cruise.’
‘Yeah, that’s what they told me over at Cobia, only it turns out they were wrong. His wife and daughter are on that passenger list over at the steamship company, but he cancelled himself out at the last minute. A business emergency, he said. Right now, nobody knows where he is.’
‘So?’
‘So just when McClure gets himself knocked off, this Prendergast disappears into nowhere, and you’re heading like a bat out of hell for Europe with airline tickets he bought you almost a week ago. That means both of you had a hunch McClure was going to get hit. What you’re here for is to tell me all about it.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Chris said wearily.
Greenberger got off the desk and walked to the office window. He stood looking out of it, and when he turned around, Chris saw his face was dark with honest hatred.
‘Monte, I’ll let you in on something. There are some high-priced hoodlums in this town and always have been. Hell, when I was a kid I used to see Al Capone fishing off his porch out in the bay there. But one thing they all go along with. There’s not to be any killings here, not this side of the bay. I mean on Miami Beach, you understand. Miami they can give back to the alligators if they want.
‘What’s happened now? Your buddy McClure got Zucker, somebody from Zucker’s mob got McClure, and that means a real vendetta in the making. And who’s next on the list? You, Monte, because you alibied McClure out of the murder rap coming to him. Everything would have been settled if I got McClure for homicide – Zucker’s mob would have let it go at that – but you double-crossed me and them both. You know what your life is worth now? You damn well do, or you wouldn’t be getting out of the country so fast.
‘But get this, Monte. Sooner or later, you’ll be coming back, and the mob’ll be waiting. That’s the point I’m making. You help me nail whoever killed McClure, and I’ll personally guarantee your safety. Otherwise, it’s open season on you as far as I’m concerned.’
Maybe he had this coming to him, Chris thought. An hour before, Dom had said that talking to him was like talking to a stone wall. Now, faced with Greenberger’s iron-hard disbelief, he was being shown what that could feel like.
He said impassively, ‘If you’re all done, Lieutenant, can I go now? I haven’t read the Sunday comics yet. Especially Dick Tracy.’
Greenberger glared at him.
‘All right, go home and read it, Monte. But take your time, because I want you to stay in town until I tell you otherwise. Meaning, for one thing, you can cash in those airline tickets. And watch out for yourself. Just remember that until you level with me you’re a walking target.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ said Chris.
When he had been hauled to headquarters back in January Frank House had been assigned to drive him home afterwards. This time, as if to demonstrate that his rating with the police had dipped even lower than its previous low, there was no car waiting, so he took a cab, wondering on the way home how he was going to board that plane to London if the police didn’t want him to. A word from them to the customs and immigration men at the airport was all it would take to keep him grounded.
Searching for the answer to that wasn’t made any easier by the way another question kept crowding into his mind. More than ever now, it seemed terribly important to know exactly what his brand-new wife had been to the suddenly missing Joseph Prendergast.
That one, he finally decided, she herself would have to answer in plain language.
He walked into the house and found he was too late with the question.
His wife was gone, and all her belongings with her.
14
He put in a couple of minutes of near panic as he slammed from room to room looking for her. There was no reassurance in finding her luggage gone as well. It was hardly proof that she hadn’t been taken by surprise and removed forcibly.
Then he saw the red-pencilled addition to the note he had left her on the kitchen table.
Darling, I’ll try to call by two. Hope you’ll be back by then. I love you.
Written in a hasty scrawl and unsigned. But it sounded like her.
The last remaining bottle of McClure’s Hine V.S.O.P. stood sealed on the pantry shelf. He took down the bottle, weighing it in his hand, fighting temptation. Then he angrily put the bottle back on the shelf. T
he way things were going, he couldn’t afford to retire into the familiar soothing fog and nest down there until his troubles had blown over. Not these troubles. It was bad enough knowing there was a deadline to meet if he wanted to collect his fifty thousand. What made it worse was being hooked into a real emotional involvement with the girl. In some weird way, her calm assumption that their marriage was more than just a business arrangement had started to infect him too. At least enough, he knew resentfully, so that his imagination was running wild now.
The wall clock in the kitchen showed a few minutes before one. He picked up the phone, called Cobia, and was told that no, Miss Jones had checked out during the night and hadn’t been back since. Then he dialled Picciolo’s Restaurant and after an interminable delay managed to get Dom on the line.
He didn’t waste words. ‘Get back here right away. I have to keep the phone open so I can’t talk about it now. Just make some excuse to them and get back here fast.’
The restaurant was on Collins and Second, five minutes away by fast walking. Dom made it back to the house in three minutes, badly winded.
He reacted heatedly to the news.
‘You should never have left her alone. Why’d you do anything like that?’
‘Because McClure just got his the same way Zucker did. Right after you went to work the police pulled me in for questioning about it.’
‘You mean he was killed by a car? Then that car outside here last night –’
‘Don’t worry about it. I can take care of myself. But I can’t do anything about Beth unless I know where she is. That’s why I need you here. I have to stay by the phone in case she calls. What you have to do is go over to Levy’s boarding-house across the street and ask those old-timers sitting around on the porch if any of them saw her leave the house.’
‘And then?’
‘Then if you find out she called a taxi here, phone both cab outfits and ask where she was taken. All they have to do is radio the cab they sent for her.’
The Valentine Estate Page 8
