Kill Me Tomorrow

by Richard S. Prather

  “The sheriff still has jurisdiction, doesn’t he?”

  “Sure. Sheriff’s the chief law-enforcement officer in the county. You know that. But unless something unusual happens—like this—you don’t often see any deputies here at the Villas. I mean, if you’re planning on staying around, a man like Weeton can make it kind of hairy. Which I got a feeling you won’t mention to him I said.”

  I grinned. “Thanks, Sergeant. But I can take care of myself—I hope.”

  He smiled easily, glanced at the body still prone on the lawn, then let the sleepy-looking eyes rest on my face. “So far,” he said, “I got to believe you. Well, you want to talk about anything, let me know.”

  Then it was just standing around until the sheriff’s men came, a uniformed deputy followed by a team of detectives, then a sergeant from the sheriff’s ID Bureau. And finally the coroner, who said he thought the homicide was justifiable and that the coroner’s inquest would be held next Friday. I didn’t have nearly the trouble with all five of them that I’d had with Weeton.

  From whom I received a few final words of wisdom when I was allowed to leave. “You’re free as air, Scott,” he said. “Unless—” He stopped, gave me the kind of smile occasionally seen on corpses with rigor mortis. “Unless you get a little bit out of line. Probably it’d be better if you stayed away from Sunrise Villas for a while. Quite a while.”

  I smiled. “I figured I was free to leave as soon as the coroner and sheriff’s men told me so. But thanks for making it official.”

  He turned abruptly and walked off, and I climbed into my Cad—wondering if Lucky or somebody else had spotted it parked at the curb, or if my unofficial greeters had found me some other way—and got out of there.

  In my rooms at Mountain Shadows I showered and put on a fresh shirt and jacket. The ones I’d been wearing had holes in them. There was also a small burn on my left side where the slug had “pinched” me.

  I phoned the Tucson Police Department, identified myself to the desk sergeant and mentioned the Sunday morning murder of Joe Civano, then said, “I understand the victim was blown to hell—any chance it wasn’t Civano?”

  “It was Joe Civano, period. He was torn up, sure, but his face was still recognizable. We checked his prints anyhow, routine. It was him. Why all the static? You’re the second guy to ask me if Civano was still roaming around.”

  “The first guy, was that last night from Sunrise Villas?”

  “Yeah, call from a preacher or something. Just a minute … Reverend Archibald.”

  “No other calls about Civano? I mean last night or any other time.”

  “Hell, no. Two’s not enough?”

  “Any leads to whoever did the job?”

  “Nothing important yet. Probably some of his friends got tired of his company.”

  “That’s about the way I figured it. Thanks, Sergeant.”

  We hung up, and I made another call, this one to Dr. Paul Anson’s room in the hotel. But there wasn’t any answer, so I slid the reloaded Colt into its holster, ran both hands over my hair, which is just as effective as combing it, and went out. It was a few minutes after midnight, and as I walked past the huge swimming pool, admiring it and the tall thin palm trees bathed in colored lights, the jets of water arching through the now-cooler air at one end of the pool, I could hear music from the five-piece group in the main dining room.

  Still playing—but not for long. In Arizona the bars—and practically everything else—close up at one A.M. But there remained forty minutes before the cocktail lounge shut its doors, and that’s where I was headed. I was looking forward to a cool bourbon-and-water, but even more to seeing Paul Anson. If I knew Paul—and I did know Paul—he would be either in or at the bar, very likely with some young, fascinated, unsuspecting, or possibly even happily suspecting, lovely.

  Paul was a little older than I, like me a bachelor. He was a damned fine doctor, one of the best in his business but forever studying, trying to add to his already encyclopedic knowledge of medicine and psychology. But that was his profession; life was his hobby.

  There were times when I felt he confused “life” with “girls,” for he seemed to spend almost as much time operating on tomatoes as prescribing variously tinted and shaped pills for variously tinted and shaped patients. When I walked into the bar he was—I said I knew him—thus engaged. He was standing near the bar, looking down at a girl seated on one of the stools.

  She was sitting with her back to the bar and her front to Paul—and it was a front to conjure with—gazing at Dr. Anson with what appeared to be hypnotic rapture.

  I walked up next to them. She was a doll, a gorgeous blond creature—which failed to surprise me—about twenty-five years young, blue miniskirt hiked more than halfway up peachy creamy thighs, swooping rounded blue neckline low enough to reveal much of a bosom as maxi as her skirt was mini.

  Neither of them noticed me.

  Paul, at six-three, was an inch taller than I am, and he bore a faint but noticeable resemblance to a younger and leaner John Wayne, a resemblance which he did all in his power to emphasize. He was bent slightly forward, eyes on the lovely’s moist, parted lips, murmuring, “… you’ll love Los Angeles, my dear. And of course Hollywood—I can’t believe you’ve never been to Hollywood. Why—”

  I leaned closer and said, “Miss, he’s not John Wayne. Not his brother, either. He isn’t even a cousin.”

  She got a sort of blank look on her lovely face, then swept her eyes and long-long lashes toward me.

  “His real name’s Homer,” I said. “Homer Kludd.”

  She looked up at Paul again. “What’s with him?”

  “I don’t know. Never saw him before, my dear.”

  “Of course he hasn’t seen me,” I said quickly. “I’m with the Watchdog Society. And we’ve had our eye on this bird for a long time. A long time—”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “You don’t … look like a—what? A Bird Dog?”

  “Watchbird. And we’ve had our eyes on this dog for twenty, maybe thirty years. This man Kludd is a notorious lecher with more than a hundred citations in our files, which are incomplete. I felt it my duty to warn you—”

  “Please mind—your own—business!” she said.

  “Well, can I leave you one of our tracts?”

  Paul laughed and socked me on the shoulder. “Damn, it’s good to see you again, Vivian. I already heard a few things about you and a very female movie star. None of which I believe, needless to say.” He glanced, grinning, at the girl and said, “Janelle, it’s OK. He’s a friend of mine.”

  It was disgusting what those few words—from him—did to her.

  “Oh!” she cried cutely. Then she grabbed my hand in both of hers and kind of kneaded it and hugged it and squeezed it, and cried “Oh!” again and then “I’m sorry, Mr.—what’s your name? Vivian? I’ll call you Viv—”

  “The hell you will. It’s Shell. Shell Scott.”

  “Mr.—Shell. I didn’t know you were a friend of his.”

  “What’s so great about him?”

  She was still kneading and doodling with my hand, and then she pulled it toward her and pressed it artlessly against the front of her dress, which of course was also the front of her, and said, “I’d never have talked like that to you if I’d known you were a friend of Paul’s. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “I probably could. Yeah, I think I could.”

  Paul glanced around, poked the air with a long index finger. “Couple leaving that table, Shell. Grab it and I’ll join you in a trice. Which is approximately four and a half hours.”

  I probably wouldn’t have left in time, except that Janelle let go of my hand. She even gave it a little push. I suppose by then she figured she’d have to push it a little if she wanted it to go away.

  I got to the table just as it was vacated by a very happy—very drunk—young couple. Harriette tripped over and, while smilingly evading her questions about Lucrezia Brizante, I ordered two bourbon-a
nd-waters. If Paul didn’t get here I could always force myself to drink both of them.

  He joined me in less than three minutes, however. I actually saw him whisper in Janelle’s delicate ear, then take a key from his pocket and slip it to her. She slid off the stool and bounced smiling out of the bar.

  Paul sat down, swallowed a third of his highball, and said, “Tell me everything. Was it Lucrezia Brizante?”

  I told him as little as possible about Lucrezia. But over our drinks I did tell him the rest of it—Lecci, Jimmy Ryan, coming within a hair of getting killed.

  “You mean you haven’t even kissed her yet?” he asked when I’d finished.

  “Paul, can’t you think of the finer things in life? Cleanliness, goodness, exercise, like that? This girl is a shining star, a girl who honors her father and mother and … well, honors a little too much, maybe.” I paused. “I shook hands with her.”

  “That’s the stuff,” he said, as Vera walked by. He caught her eye, and when he said, “Couple more bourbon highs, dear?” with his face lit up like a lighthouse lamp, she smiled and buzzed off and zipped back with two more highballs.

  By the time we finished them Paul had told me about his last few days in L.A., and much of his day here, including the first lectures of the convention. He’d been in the convention hall from eight P.M. till ten—but hadn’t wasted a lot of time after that, apparently.

  “Damndest thing,” he said. “The first medical papers and demonstrations won’t be presented till tomorrow, and that’s mainly what I came up here for. But I’m glad I didn’t miss the show tonight. Nearly the entire program was on applications of the laser.” He paused, swallowed some of his drink, and eyed me. “You know what lasers are?”

  “No,” I said stuffily. “Not lasers, or masers, or atoms, or molecules, or flashlights—”

  He raised an eyebrow, then the other one. “You may think you know what a laser is, but you do not, you simply do not, my ignorant friend. You may know that laser is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, which describes a concentrated source of coherent light all of the same wavelength, and you may realize that with lasers men can drill holes through little jewels and also bounce signals off the moon and make holograms, and you may be vaguely aware that men even now perform delicate retinoneural surgery—weld eyeballs, to you—and even more delicate microsurgery on single cells, and do other exciting things such as etching halftone plates and fixing decayed teeth. But you do not know what a laser is.”

  “I’ll bet I’m going to find out.”

  “It is your great good fortune. Soon lasers will be all over the place, coming out of your ears. They’ll be used for swift bloodless surgery, for invisible death rays that slice open the enemy, knock down satellites, carve legs of lamb. They’ll carry thousands of phone calls on one beam of light, zillions of television sets on one laser beam—”

  “Sets?”

  “—stations. Channels, signals. What do you care?”

  “I don’t.”

  “But I haven’t told you the greatest thing,” he said.

  “Can I stop you?”

  “During the demonstration earlier tonight, Dr. Fretsindler—that’s Fretsindler of M.I.T.—had a big hunk of granite on the stage. He banged it with a hammer, smacked it with a chisel, and naturally nothing happened.”

  “Then why are you telling me all this?”

  “Nothing was supposed to happen, Sheldon,” he said cheerfully. “That was the point. But then Fretsindler aimed some new kind of infrared laser—already had it on stage—at the damned boulder. Just aimed it and turned it on. Couldn’t see the light, of course, but it was on, the beam hitting that old rock.”

  Paul raised his glass. “Cheers.”

  “Yeah, cheers.”

  “Well,” he went on, “the doctor told us lasers would soon be used for drilling tunnels, slicing off parts of mountains, leveling rough terrain, because even now they can make solid granite rocks as weak and porous and crumbly as glued-together sand. Only talked a minute or so. Then he turned off the laser and walked over to that old rock and gave it a kick, and a big hunk of it simply flew off and hit the stage and crumbled into little pieces, would you believe it?”

  “No.”

  “Shell, the damn rock just crumbled apart, I saw it with my own eyes. Would I lie to you?”

  “Sure.”

  “It happened, all right,” Paul said. “Damndest thing I ever saw. There was old Dr. Fretsindler chopping away at what was left of that solid-granite boulder with a screwdriver, and giving it another kick, and in a minute the thing was all over the stage in a billion pieces.”

  “I don’t believe that, either. Not that many.”

  Paul looked quite sober. And I figured he was sober, as long as he was able to pronounce Fretsindler. But he stole a surreptitious peek at his watch. Then he commenced yawning. He yawned prodigiously. He put on a splendid act, even made real water come out of his eyes.

  “Been a long day.” He stifled another yawn. “Driving all the way here from L.A., and then—”

  “You fool me not.”

  “What? Shell, old friend—”

  “Don’t old friend me, old friend. You’re wide awake.”

  “Shell, I really do have to say good night. Up at the crack of dawn, you know. More lectures tomorrow, big day, got to hit that old sack, pound the old pillow—”

  “Hit the sack—hah. Pound the pillow—hah. Old—hah.” I leaned over the table toward him and pinned him with a glance. “Don’t try to key me, I saw you slip the kid to her.”

  He started to laugh.

  “Missed it that time, didn’t I?”

  I shook my head. I’d only had two or three drinks, but my glands had been given quite a workout today and I was pretty well pooped. About time to hit the sack myself. It was just as well, because Paul, still chuckling, got up and—without even saying good-bye—left the bar.

  At which point, Vera stopped by the table and handed me the check. I looked at it. “What’s this?” I said.

  “That’s the check,” Vera said.

  “Oh, for—I know what it is. But … thirty-eight dollars and forty cents?”

  “Dr. Anson said you wanted to pay for all the drinks he ordered. He told me you said—”

  “Uh-huh. All the drinks, huh?”

  “He bought drinks for quite a lot of people.”

  “I can see that. Vera,” I said, “you know Dr. Anson is a doctor, don’t you?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Well … he usually drinks bourbon-and-water, but that’s not what he really likes. If you’ll let me whisper in your ear, I’ll tell you what he really likes. And you’ll make sure he gets it next time he comes in, won’t you?”

  She leaned over. She straightened up quite suddenly. “Well,” she said, “I guess … there’s no accounting for tastes.”

  I put my wallet into my jacket again, and watched Vera as she walked away with my money. The thing that hurt most was I’d just paid for Janelle’s drinks. And Paul, wide awake—

  But then I smiled. There was one thing I had done that Paul had not done. And, by God, if I had anything to do with it, he never would: I had shaken Lucrezia Brizante’s hand.

  Ten minutes later, that was the thought in my mind as I fell asleep.

  And two hours after that, it was Lucrezia’s voice—her frightened voice—that woke me up.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I fumbled for the phone, got it near my head.

  “Mbwaa,” I mumbled. “Waitaminute. Hello, just a minute.”

  “Shell? Shell, is that you?”

  “Yeah, what—”

  “Shell, this is Lucrezia. It’s Dad—he’s hurt. Can you come out here?”

  That jarred me awake. Her voice was tight, frightened, the words tumbling over each other.

  “Slow down,” I said. “He’s hurt? What happened?”

  “He’s in the hospital—he was beaten, somebody
beat him up! But I guess he’s … all right, the hospital’s releasing him. Please, Shell, will you come?”

  “I’m on my way. Who beat him up? When did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. Shell, I have to go to him.”

  “Hold it. There are strange things going on at the Villas. Wait till I—”

  She’d hung up.

  I skidded to a stop in front of the Brizantes’ home on Mimosa Lane. The door opened just before I reached it, and I simply ran inside, past Lucrezia, who had heard—and seen—me arrive.

  In the first few seconds of babble I figured out she’d picked up her father at the hospital and got back to the house less than a minute before. She seemed bewildered I’d been able to get here so fast. Which didn’t surprise me in the least.

  “How’s Tony?” I asked her.

  “I’m all right.”

  The voice came from the couch on my left. Brizante was sitting there, bent forward with his elbows on his knees, and he—even his handlebar moustache, for that matter—looked alert enough, but not exactly all right. A white patch was on the side of his head, there was a ruddy abrasion on his left cheek and the eye above it was puffed, discolored. That eye was going to be completely shut in a few more minutes if I was any judge. And I am practically the Supreme Court when it comes to that particular kind of judgment.

  I looked at him for a second or two and said, “Excuse the expression, but you should really excuse your expression. You sure don’t look like the winner. How’s he?”

  “I got two of them pretty damn good, busted out a tooth for somebody. But the other—”

  “Dad! How many were there? You’ve got to tell me what—”

  “Lucrezia!”

  Man, the word cracked in the room like a bundle of dry sticks breaking. Lucrezia stopped speaking in mid-sentence. She didn’t start again, either. Tony continued, “This I will not discuss. We will not even discuss … discussing it. This is not for women. Go to your room.”

  She turned and started to leave. Her lovely face was a picture of concern and frustration, but there wasn’t a peep out of her. The man had spoken. The man of the house. The guy who wore the pants. And she—the obedient woman—obeyed instantly. That was a bit of all right, I thought; wonder how he does it? Be worth learning, that was for sure.