Kill Me Tomorrow

by Richard S. Prather

  Tony spoke again, his voice more gentle. “No, it’s all right to stay, Lu. Shell and I, we will go.”

  He got to his feet, features twisting slightly as pain hit him somewhere. He motioned to me, and I followed him into the den. We sat where we’d been on the previous afternoon, and he started right in talking a blue streak.

  “Glad Lu called you, Shell. If she hadn’t, I would have. Gil’s dead. Don’t have to guess any more. Fred phoned me”—he pulled out an old round pocket watch and looked at it—“only an hour and a quarter ago. At two-fifteen. Hard to believe it could all happen so quick. Fred was excited, sounded scared, said he’d got it on one of his tapes—talk about them killing Gil. Fred said they’d found out what he was doing, but he had what we were after and wanted me to meet him. I ran down, three blocks away got there on the corner of Mimosa and Yucca Drive—didn’t want to meet him too near the house here—right after Fred did. I saw him pull over and park. He jumped out holding the reel of tape and had time to tell me maybe three, four sentences, and then those ruffians come at us—”

  “Tony, let me catch up, OK?”

  He stopped, sighed. “Little excited myself,” he said.

  “Fred—that’s Fred Jenkins? The guy you told me was going to try bugging Henry Yarrow’s place?” He nodded. “You mean … Are you trying to tell me he actually did it? He taped some talk about Gil Reyes’ death? His murder?”

  “That’s what Fred told me. On the phone, it was. Didn’t have time after I met him. Only a few seconds—fifteen, twenty. I don’t know, I got the hell beat out of me. Those—” He started ripping off a bunch of impassioned Italian.

  “Wait a minute. You say some men jumped you. How many?”

  “Three.”

  “How’d they know where you were? How come they showed up just as Jenkins was meeting you?”

  “Damned if I know how. They just did. We were there on the corner and they come up in two cars, jumped out and ran at us. Knocked me cold for maybe ten minutes. When I come to, I waved at a car and a lady in it took me to the hospital.”

  “I’m trying to figure how they knew where you and Fred were. Think your phone could be tapped?”

  He opened his eyes wider—his right eye, at least. The left one hardly moved. “Hadn’t even thought of it.”

  “Well, just in case, don’t use it for any important calls from now on. Where did Jenkins phone from?”

  He shook his head.

  “These three guys, did you recognize any of them?”

  “No, it was too dark. But one guy, I know I busted a tooth for him.” He fingered a cut knuckle on his right hand. “But I wouldn’t recognize any of the three if I saw them again.”

  “Tony, you said Fred had a reel of tape. What happened to it?”

  “It was gone when I come to. So was Fred.” Tony looked at me solemnly for a while. “I don’t know what happened to him. Probably dead. Like Gil.” He muttered in Italian. “Just before those guys jumped us, Fred said there was another tape. He had two, but got rid of one.”

  I’d lit a cigarette, and stopped moving with it halfway to my mouth. “Another?”

  Tony nodded. “I’m giving this to you a little scrambled, everything happened so fast, then I was out cold for a while.” He stopped, scowled, reached up and pulled on one handle of his moustache. “Fred only had a few seconds to tell me about it. But he thought somebody was chasing him in a car. He had two reels of tape with him. One he’d recorded over the last couple days, and the one he took off the machine just before he phoned and came to meet me. Well, he was damned scared, but if anybody caught up with him, he didn’t want them to find that last reel, especially not on him … Must have been the one Fred was taping when he heard the talk about Gil’s being killed.”

  My arm was still motionless in the air. I dragged on my cigarette, then said, “Tony, what the hell happened to that tape?”

  “Fred threw it away.”

  “He … threw it … away.”

  Brizante yanked on his moustache again, as if trying to pull it clear off. I was beginning to realize he did that when concentrating. I hoped it helped.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe he had an idea he could go back and get it if he was wrong about those guys.”

  “Then why didn’t he toss both of them away?”

  “Don’t ask me what I don’t know. Like I said, he was scared, damned scared. But I’d guess Fred figured if he wasn’t wrong about those guys and they caught up with him, if he didn’t have any tapes at all on him they’d know he got rid of it—or them. But if he had one and they took it, maybe they’d think they had what they were after and leave him alone. Looks like he was wrong about that part.”

  I nodded. “Where did he throw that other tape, Tony?”

  “Yeah … that’s goddamned important, isn’t it? Where he threw it. And Fred didn’t have time to tell me that part.”

  “Try to remember exactly what he did say.”

  “He said … he was on his way to meet me. And this car was after him—at least he was pretty sure it was. He stopped, was going to hide the reel, realized there wouldn’t be time—maybe got scared. So he just threw it out the window and got the hell away from there. Driving crazy, I’d guess. I heard his tires screeching before I even saw him pull up there at Yucca.”

  Something flickered in my mind then, but I wasn’t able to hold it.

  Tony continued, “I know he wanted to tell me more, only there wasn’t time. Those lousy—”

  The rest of it was in rippety-pop Italian. I wasn’t listening anyway. I was in a very peculiar state, almost of shock. I was still trying to accept the fact that Brizante and Fred Jenkins, futzing around like a couple of paranoid grandpas equipped with Junior Secret Agent kits, had apparently done precisely what they had—filled to the gills with wine—set out to do.

  But another thing was bothering me. Tony had told me Jenkins was bugging Henry Yarrow’s home. I had spent enough time with Yarrow in his home last night, however, to make me pretty sure he was not a hood, or even nonhood, knowingly involved in murder.

  Of course, I’ve been wrong before.…

  “Tony,” I said, “Fred was bugging Henry Yarrow, the man you talked to at the church Tuesday night. The guy who lives on Palma Drive?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Describe him again for me, will you?”

  Brizante gave his moustache three or four good yanks scowling, then described Henry Yarrow as succinctly and accurately as I could have myself. For a moment I’d let myself wonder if we were talking about the same guy, but obviously we were. Brizante had missed, or skipped, one thing, though.

  “What about the color of his eyes?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure. Blue. Should have mentioned it—very distinctive. Real bright blue. Almost pretty eyes.”

  “Well, that settles that. Here’s what I’m getting at, Tony. Unless Jenkins managed to sneak in and hide a damned fine wireless transmitter, say, in Yarrow’s house, he’d have been set up nearby. He never told you where he was staked out?”

  “No. Ah, something else you made me remember. When we met, and he was so excited, Fred said to me he was afraid they were after him, they’d seen the thing—he called it a transmitter. Little FM transmitter. Is that some help?”

  “Quite a lot. We’ve an idea of what he was using, and if Fred was right we know how they got onto him. Probably how they managed to show up right behind him at Yucca, too. They must have chased him from … Tony, do you have a map of the Villas?”

  He had one in the den, got it and gave it to me. Looking at the map I said, “Tony, I’d say if Jenkins was coming from anyplace close to Yarrow’s home and heading for the corner of Mimosa and Yucca, he’d probably have gone down Palma Drive to Claridge, right on Claridge to Palos Verde, then left to Willow—a straight half-mile or so there. Then another right on Willow for three or four blocks to Mimosa.”

  “Five blocks.”

  “OK, then left on Mimosa, heading for
Yucca, where you met him. How many blocks to there? It’s about ten from here to Willow Lane?”

  “Twelve. But Yucca’s three blocks from here, so it would be nine blocks from Yucca on up to Willow.” He looked at me curiously. “What’s all this, these blocks, about?”

  “We’ve got to find that tape, Tony. If Jenkins drove all over the damned country, we’re dead. But if he took the most direct route, which seems likely, he ditched it somewhere along the streets I’m talking about. Skip the little chunk of Palma between Yarrow’s house and Claridge. Too short a stretch, and the way you tell it I get the impression Fred ditched the tape after he’d been on his way for a while. Forget Claridge for now. Most of it’s pretty well lighted, isn’t it?”

  “One of the few streets besides Palos Verde that is.”

  “OK. And skip that dead straight half-mile on Palos Verde Drive, too. So a good wild guess leaves us with the five blocks of Willow Lane between Palos Verde and Mimosa, plus those nine blocks of Mimosa between Willow and Yucca. In other words, the last fourteen blocks he traveled.”

  Brizante didn’t appear to be listening very closely.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked him.

  “Fred. I keep thinking about Fred. Especially now I know Gil …” He let it hang there.

  “Yeah. Well, Tony, that may be merely one of your new worries. Listen close.” I gave it to him: Pete Lecci, who he was and what he was, Giuseppe “Crazy Joe” Civano, Jimmy Ryan, the attempt on my life outside Henry Yarrow’s home, even what I thought of Lieutenant Dan Weeton.

  When I finished he stared at me silently for five or ten seconds, his mouth partly open. “The Black Hand,” he said.

  “One of the real old names, yeah. Cosa Nostra, Our Thing, Mafia, murderers, extortionists, muscle artists, sonsofbitches. Usually I just call them Mafia, or hoods, or sonsofbitches.”

  “But Mr. DiGiorno, he can’t be—”

  “He is. Get it through your head, dammit. You won’t find a more miserable or bloodthirsty monster in this hemisphere, much less in little Sunrise Villas.”

  “But I’ve known him three years, worked with him, talked—he’s so polite, very nice.”

  “Sure he’s polite, very nice. You don’t think he’s going to strangle newborn babes in broad daylight at the Town Hall, do you? They all give to the church, contribute to charities, smile and say ho-ho, jolly good fellow. So what? Maybe Bluebeard liked dogs—and fed them little pieces of people.” So dog lovers say, ‘Isn’t he a nice man, he likes dogs.’”

  Tony remained silent. I sat quietly, thinking.

  Accept it as fact that Jenkins using an FM transmitter had been bugging certain unknown men, at least three of whom after tumbling to what he was doing had chased him, caught him, and grabbed a tape from him. For a while they might think they were in the clear, but—if they were the kind of jolly good fellows I assumed them to be—they had also grabbed Jenkins, who soon would be telling them everything he knew and maybe several things he didn’t know. If he hadn’t already done it. Ignoring that, those men knew what they’d been discussing, just before Jenkins took off. They had one tape now, and would unquestionably play it without delay. When they did, it would become unmistakably clear that their most recent discussion was not on it. It would, therefore, inevitably dawn upon them, even if all three together possessed the total intelligence of one imbecile, that a second tape must exist. The important tape, the one upon which they could be heard discussing, among other things, the murder of Gilberto Reyes.

  Very damned soon then, if they were not already thus occupied, they—and possibly some of their friends—would be looking very busily for Tape Number Two.

  I, of course, would also be looking very busily for Tape Number Two.

  Which presented me with a problem: those hoods would soon either find that tape, or—if I didn’t get a wiggle on—find me looking for that tape.

  So I got a wiggle on.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I got to my feet and headed for the door, saying to Tony, “You’ll have to phone the local law—and the sheriff’s department, fill them in yourself. I haven’t time.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not going to get them guys asking what Fred and me were doing, or about the tapes. They’d probably put me in jail.”

  “You are so right.” I stopped. “All you have to tell them is that you and Jenkins got in a fight with three guys and they knocked you cold. You want to know what happened to them, and Jenkins. You don’t have to mention the bugging—those hoods won’t.” I opened the door and went out.

  He caught up with me in the living room. “Where are you going? Why such a hurry?”

  I groaned. “Listen close, because I’m going to talk fast. It’s damned important for us to get that tape if possible, and I’ve got an idea that may help me find it—”

  “You’re going out now to look for it? When that fellow was waiting at the church to shoot you? When two other times already you’ve been shot at? Are you crazy?”

  “There’s a chance I’ll have a few minutes jump on those guys, and it might be all I need.”

  “They see you, Shell, they’ll kill you. Gil is dead. Fred, he is dead, too, I feel it. Now you will be dead, they will kill you—”

  “Will you quit saying that?” I don’t like people talking about death and dying—mine, that is. It has something to do with flinging words into the ether, and thoughts are things, and all that. “Man, haven’t you ever read Norman Vincent Peale? Or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm? Or—”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  “Dammit, get on the phone and make those calls. Besides, doesn’t it make more sense for you to stay here and take care of yourself and Mrs. Brizante?” I paused. “And Lucrezia.”

  He was silent for a while. Then he gave his moustache a terrible yank, using both hands and consequently flapping his lip out on both sides at once. It was a remarkable sight.

  “I will do it,” he said. “Shell … take much care.”

  “Yeah, sure. But, man, right now I’ve got to get going.”

  I could imagine slope-headed hoods roaming around out there in the darkness, peeking into mailboxes, trees, into bushes, shooting at every moving thing, even little birds.…

  Tony turned and walked toward the den. I hustled to the front door and was reaching for its knob when I heard the word, “Shell,” from behind me. It was so soft I almost missed it, hardly more than a whisper. Even so, I knew it was Lucrezia.

  I turned around.

  She stood just inside the room. After a few silent seconds she walked toward me, and that walk had everything in it I’d first seen in the Mountain Shadows Lounge, and maybe a little bit more. She stopped very close to me, head tilted back as she looked up at my face. Her expression was sober, and those burning-black-velvet eyes were wide.

  “I heard it all,” she said. “Everything, while you and Dad were talking here. I heard him say there are men who would kill you.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you all about it, Lu—Miss Brizante, when I get back. Right now, they’re shooting little birds out there—no, that’s just a joke. Don’t know why I keep thinking about birds, birds.… Actually, those bums may really be doing it. I wouldn’t put it past them. They’d blast the little things right in their nests—”

  “Please, Shell, be serious—”

  “You think I’m not? Why, these guys would pull the wing off a fly. Just one wing. That’s their way, so the fly would go crazy—”

  “Be serious with me! It is true? Someone has already tried to kill you? Shot with guns at you?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so. In fact, I know so. But there wasn’t any real damage done. Not to me, anyhow.”

  “But—shot at you? Why?”

  “Wanted to hit me, the way I figure it—”

  “Damn you, Shell Scott! You listen to me! Is it true you might get hurt when you leave here? Get … killed?”

  I sighed. “If I stand around here yakking much longer they may have tim
e to come in here and poison me. Put it this way. There are certain low and uncouth individuals who seem consumed by the desire to do me bodily harm. And—especially if I don’t get the hell out of here—they may discover ways of doing it. However, I can almost promise that it won’t happen, because only the good die young, so I’m practically guaranteed a couple hundred years—”

  “Dead …” she said softly. “I can’t imagine you dead … Dead!”

  “Will you quit—dead she says, kill he says, dead, die, kill, dead—you’re worse than your dad. Make that father, dad sounds too much like … dammit, now you’ve got me doing it.”

  “You idiot! You imbecile!”

  “Ah, you do care—”

  “Shell, you might walk out that door and get killed, but, you fool, you joke about it—”

  I reached up and put my hands on her shoulders. “Lucrezia, I insist that we be scrupulously logical about this. What do we have? Life—and death. Right? That’s all there is, right? Yes. Incontrovertible. And life is serious enough. That’s half of all there is. So if we get serious about the other half, too, then we’re in terrible trouble—”

  “All right. Fine,” she said with some heat. “Go ahead. Go get killed. I’ll laugh.”

  “See how much fun it is? Now, pay attention.”

  She nodded.

  “In one minute, less than a minute, I go to meet my fate. Shouldn’t I take some little, oh, little memory with me?”

  One corner of her mouth moved, very slightly. But she didn’t say anything.

  “Like in the days of King Arthur,” I went on. “When a knight went out to joust, his lady gave him her colors, a big handkerchief or something. So if he got a lance, or pike, or one of those joust things stuck through him he’d have something to cram in the hole, I suppose.” I paused. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “I—think I do,” she said.

  “And—well, like in movies. When the doomed man goes off laughing and scratching, he, ah, gets a little something from his lady, doesn’t he?”