Assignment Nuclear Nude

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Shut up, baby."

  "Harry !"

  Harry slapped her. The blow was hard and sharp. Durell did not interfere. He thought it time that this particular flower child awoke to reality. Linda staggered and almost fell from the tree platform. Her face was white with shock. She could not believe or accept this Harry she now saw.

  "I want the painting," Durell said.

  "Are you the fuzz?"

  "In a way."

  "Which painting are you talking about?"

  "No games, Harry. I don't love you."

  "Man, you're a vetch."

  "Yes."

  "A dirty fascist tool of imperialist warmongers."

  "Sure, Harry."

  "Rotten capitalist scum."

  "The painting, Harry," Durell said.

  Harry shrugged. "All right."

  Linda was remote, trailing behind them as the fat man led the way along the swaying catwalk to the house gallery. Inside the house, the old high-ceilinged rooms were cool and shadowed. Plaster had fallen from the walls. There was little furniture. A smell of garbage and sweat pervaded the rooms. Old newspapers, rags, canvas, and lumber littered the once-proud central stairwell. Harry walked on silent bare feet. His buttocks wriggled more than necessary. A narrower staircase led to a windowed cupola that gave views of Key West in all four directions. This was Harry's studio. There was a large couch, a battered electric grill, and a sink overflowing with food cartons, cans, wine bottles, and oily rags. Stacked against the walls under the windows were a number of finished and unfinished canvases—although Durell could not distinguish some from the others. The air stank. It was stiflingly hot. None of the windows were open. Durell coughed and took off his sunglasses.

  "Hey, Linda," Harry said. "I'm sorry, baby."

  Linda said nothing.

  Harry grinned at Durell. "You like my pad, murder man?"

  "The painting," Durell said quietly.

  He sounded dangerous. Harry looked at him and shrugged and went to an easel and waved a paw at it. "Go ahead. Take it. You know what I called it?"

  "The 'Nuclear Nude,' " Durell said.

  Harry laughed and laughed.

  The canvas was five by four, and it was different from the pop-art samples of Coke bottles, cartoon characters, and commercial slogans that littered the room. It was good. It was a work of art. It was done with muted colors, hinting at darkness in it, shadows of utter violence. The nude female form, whatever its cubistic shape, might have been Linda, and he wondered if she had posed for it. He glanced at her, but her face told him nothing. He would have to do something, he decided, about her state of shock over seeing Harry as he truly was. He returned to the painting. There were atomic symbols, a hint of mushroom cloud that merged secretly into the face of the seductive girl of death, as if annihilation and awesome power lived in the female form, lifting and bursting from the surrounding negative colors. It was morbid. It was beautiful. It was horrible and it was fascinating.

  "You did this?" Durell asked.

  "Yes, man."

  Durell touched a corner of the canvas. His fingertip came away with a bit of umber paint gleaming on it. The canvas was still wet. All at once, he picked up a dirty cloth and savagely dragged the rag across the painting. The pigments smeared and bled as if he had wounded a living thing. He rubbed it again and again, and then Harry touched his arm. It was a dangerous thing for Harry to do. Durell would have killed him in an instant. But Harry was smiUng, holding a can of turpentine solvent.

  "Go ahead, man. Do it the easy way."

  Durell sloshed the turpentine on the canvas and scrubbed some more. Whiteness showed. The floor under the easel was wet with dripping paint. The canvas was ruined. He was sweating when he finally finished. The cupola studio was hot and silent, and he stepped back.

  There was nothing under the oil colors.

  There never had been.

  He turned to Harry. But Harry wasn't there. The sound of fat bare feet slapped down the stairwell. Durell ignored Linda, who stared at the ruined painting, and jumped for the studio doorway and went down the steps three and four at a time. The bannister was rickety, wavering under his grip as he swung on the newel post. It was cooler on the lower floors. There was some furniture here, old Victorian settees, tables and chairs, covered with dust cloths. The stink of Harry's living habits was not as strong here, either. The front door was open. Harry was not in sight.

  "Harry!'' he called.

  He heard Linda on the steps behind him. The heavy gold chain and medallion around her neck clinked slightly. He did not turn to look at her. He listened. Birds twittered in the courtyard behind the house. A jet rumbled in the sky. Harry had been wearing only his breechcloth. He didn't think the artist would run out into the street that way. But he didn't know what Harry might do. Harry was in danger and was aware of it. Harry was running for his life.

  Durell turned back from the door and went through the house with swift and efficient purpose. He looked dark and lean and dangerous, a hunting animal, senses alert. In each room he paused to listen. Harry wasn't in the house. He tried the courtyard. He climbed back into the tree, thinking Harry might have doubled back on his trail.

  "He's gone," Linda whispered.

  He turned to look at her. Her eyes met his and she shuddered. He said, "Where would he go?"

  "I don't know."

  "You do. Where?"

  "To other flower people."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know. But they'd hide him."

  "Do you know what he did?" Durell asked angrily.

  "I know what you did. You destroyed that beautiful painting. You destroyed it Uke—like killing."

  "Linda, Harry isn't a flower person. He's not one of you. He used you. He sold the original. The one I wiped out was just painted this morning, to stall for time, to keep off questions if they came. I got here just a bit too soon—^before the paint dried."

  "I don't understand," she whispered.

  Durell stood with his feet slightly spread for balance, his dark head cocked slightly. He breathed out through his nose, sighed, and put on his sunglasses. Linda looked slim and lovely in her tight slacks; her blond hair was tousled and this made her look young and vulnerable. There was a shattered look in her eyes.

  He made his voice gentle. "Did you love Harry?"

  "What he looked like—that was never important. What I thought he was inside—his soul—that was what mattered. Yes, I love him."

  He heard a sound at last.

  "You'd better forget him," he said quietly.

  "Why?"

  "I think Harry's dead."

  Durell left the house by the back door. Linda trod anxiously at his heels. He paid no attention to her now. The sound he had heard a moment ago was not repeated. There was an unkempt garden behind the old Victorian house, thick with weeds and cactus and wind-curved palms. The garden was surrounded by a high wall of coral block that effectively screened it from the surrounding lanes and alleys.

  He paused again.

  "What is it?" Linda asked. "Why did you say such a terrible thing?"

  He went forward, following a thin trail through the high weeds. Halting, he raised his head and looked at a thin scuff mark on the coral wall. It was new. Someone had climbed over it just recently. He didn't think it had been Harry. He looked back and saw the old cistern pipes leading down from the high roofs, running across the yard in the direction he was going. There had been a time, before the water pipeline from the mainland and the more recent desahnization plant, when drinking water for Key West came only from rams collected in individual household cisterns.

  He found the entrance to the underground tank a moment later. This house, being elaborate and big, had once had a betterthan average system for water storage. An old moss-grown concrete trapdoor lay on its side, exposing a three-foot square entrance and a flight of dark, worn steps going down into a black underground chamber.

  "Mr. Durell—Sam " Linda began again.

  "St
ay here," he said.

  "No. If you're going down, I'm going v^th you."

  "You might call this Harry's Hideaway," he said grimly.

  "How can you joke about it?"

  "I'm not."

  He went down the stairs into the earth under the ragged garden. The soil was marl, and reflected the fading sunlight that slanted down the steps after him. There was a small anteroom with an old pumping system, rusted and long out of use. Beyond was a doorway and the sound and smell of water. He struck a match and went in.

  It was like a subterranean swimming pool, dark and dank, and the large stone pool of water looked black under the decades of scum collected on it.

  Before the match burned out, he saw Harry. And someone else.

  "Go back, Linda."

  "N-no. I—there are two of them?"

  "Did you send one of your friends here?"

  "Yes, but "

  "It's not your fault," Durell said. "Harry thought he could hide from me here when he ran out of the cupola studio. He ducked down here. She was waiting for him, I don't know why. But she wasn't alone. Someone else was waiting with her."

  He struck another match, like a tiny bomb exploding in the darkness. In its glow, he saw Harry's fat, nearly-naked body like a lardy, life-sized doll, flung into a dark corner of the concrete water vault. His eyes were open and his half spectacles were askew on his blobby nose. There was a lot of blood. Under his Buffalo Bill goatee, his throat had been neatly slit from ear to ear.

  The girl sprawled beside him had been given the same treatment. She wore a pale green miniskirt and a striped singlet and her legs were sprawled awkwardly. Her dark hair flowed over Harry's thighs.

  She was Ryana Fazil, the Turkish girl.

  She was dead, too. Someone had taken the gold chain and its sunburst pendant from around her throat before cutting it.

  6

  Durell carefully closed the hatch to the cistern, scuffed the ground around it, and considered the wilderness of the back garden. Linda stood facing the hot sun that shone down through the fronds of a palm tree. She said nothing. Her eyes were closed. He was worried about her, but there was nothing he could do. He Ustened for any sound of alarm, but there was none. The place was peaceful—as peaceful as a tomb. Soon enough, the police would come; he knew the killer would try to involve and delay him. And this would be a cardinal sin in Durell's business. It was urgent to get away from here.

  "Come along," he said to Linda. "Are you all right?"

  She looked very young and defenseless. "Who—who did it, Sam?"

  "I'll find out. Take it easy."

  She shivered. "I think I loved Harry."

  "No, you didn't. Just walk quietly with me."

  She was docile and obedient. At the corner of Duval Street, which they reached without attracting attention, she halted again. Under her smooth tan there was a pallor of horror.

  "Sam, I'm going wiggy. I'm sweating pink ants. It's beginning to tip over on me."

  "You'd better tell me all about it now."

  Linda's eyes were blank. "But I don't want to freak * out. Ryana Fazil was such a love person "

  "Keep walking," he said. He didn't hear any police sirens converging on Harry's pad yet, but he felt a need to hurry the girl. He remained gentle with her. "Tell me about Harry and Denis Deakin's research notes, and how it all happened."

  She turned and looked up at his face. "Oh, you are a cold son of a bitch," she whispered. "Didn't it bother you to find them Hike that?"

  "Yes, it bothered me. It still does. But it bothers me more not to know why it all occurred. If it's big enough to cause two deaths, it's big enough to cause more. So tell me about it."

  "Y-you scare me," she said.

  He turned her into Simonton Street and they walked back toward the Poinsettia Motel. "We may not have much time to talk, Linda."

  She nodded, and after a few more steps, she began to tell him about it.

  The day was waning. A cool breeze blew from the north. There was a drugstore across from the motel's swimming pool, where children splashed and shouted. He made Linda stand and wait for him while he entered a phone booth and dialed a Miami number. He let it ring twice, then hung up, and dialed again.

  "This is Broker Two. I've been sold short."

  "Yes, sir. Just a moment, sir."

  He looked at his watch. It was two minutes past five. He took off his sunglasses and a voice said, "Juan Piedra here. How are you, Cajun?"

  "In trouble. It's gone. I don't know where; but I think Deakin's original papers are destroyed, after being transferred to a canvas."

  "Canvas, Sam?"

  "An oil painting. Then painted over. Then sold."

  "To whom?"

  Durell sighed. "To our nearest competitors. How close are you to the Navy and Coast Guard?"

  "Just minutes."

  "Then have all shrimp boats and sports fishermen checked—all those who went out in the last twenty-four hours. The commercials didn't leave port much today, I noticed, out of Stock Island. Best bets are the sportsmen."

  "Departures and returns, Sam?"

  "Especially those who haven't returned." Durell paused. "It's bad, Juan. I think the painting is on its way to Cuba for reshipment. Can you check if there are any Soviet or Chinese ships and planes there?"

  "Hard, but not impossible." Piedra sighed. Although he worked for K Section out of Miami, he was on the FBI District Office's suspect list. K Section had told the Bureau nothing about Juan's work for them. It kept Juan standing on the edge of a knife. "Sam, you need help, I could fly down again."

  "Not yet."

  "I've got a cousin living in Love Alley—very pretty, very competent girl "

  "I've had four pretty girls," Durell said. "Now there are only three. You may have to take the heat off me." He told Juan guardedly about the murders. "If possible, I want a dossier on Harry. It's a big order, but fill it."

  Juan coughed. "I'll call you back in one hour. Stay out of your apartment until then. I'll fix it." "Do that, and I'll put you in for points." "Sam? Go get something to eat." "Yes." Durell hung up.

  He took Linda with him to the Sands Club on the beach at the foot of Simonton Street, and he ordered dinner on the terrace facing the little pier. The bourbon here was honest. Linda was silent, staring at the pelicans dive-bombing for mullet and pilchard. Durell sat with his back against a pillar so no one could approach him by surprise. He ordered red snapper, and it was delicious. Linda did not touch her food, but she looked calmer here. Durell had coffee with peppermint-flavored schnapps in it, and he, too, felt better. When the sun went down, he walked with the blond girl back to his apartment at the Poinsettia. No police were in sight.

  "You're a monster," Linda said as they walked.

  "I didn't kill Ryana or Harry."

  "If you had stayed out of all this "

  "They would still be dead," Durell informed her. "Did you ever hear of anyone named Madame Hung?" he asked abruptly. "From Pan, or Mr. Han?"

  "No." Linda looked at him. "You sound funny."

  "Funny?"

  "When you mention this Madame Hung."

  "That's right," Durell said.

  "Who is she?"

  "I hope you never find out." It seemed to Durell that although Madame Hung might be on the other side of the world in Singapore at this moment, he could feel her presence here as some dark, chilling entity in every shadow of the balmy evening. He said, "Forget I mentioned her, Linda."

  His corner apartment was on the second floor, with a balcony overlooking the pool. The pool was empty now. Some guests had gathered on the patio below for drinks— Virginians, he guessed, from their accents. He nodded politely to them and was aware of their interested eyes as he led Linda up the wrought iron stairs to his door. The place was heavily landscaped with varieties of tropical plants, coconut palms, hibiscus shrubs, oleander and ix-ora.

  Lights went on over the pool as he got out his key. They reflected on the frosted glass jalousies of his
door and windows. He let the key cUck against the lock before he inserted it and went in, a step ahead of Linda.

  "Stay outside a moment," he said.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Just do as I say."

  His voice was hard, almost angry. The sitting room was empty. The Cuban maids had washed the tiled floor while he was out. It should have been dry by now, but there were several damp imprints in irregular walking patterns leading to the kitchenette door. Durell put his back against the wall and looked toward the arch of the bedroom entrance.

  "Lim Sing?" he called softly.

  There was a creak of bedsprings beyond the opening. The apartment was deeply shadowed. The swimming pool lights cast a pattern of palm frond shadows on the ceiling.

  Durell took a step sideways. Linda had remained on the balcony, obedient to the tone of his voice. Durell wore only khaki slacks, sneakers, a white nylon shirt. In his pocket was a pick-lock, change, his wallet, keys, and a small heavy cylinder that could be held in his fist. He took out the cylinder and clenched it in his fingers. Properly handled, a blow could crush in a man's face, and it could be done silently.

  "Lim?" he called again.

  "No, it's me," someone said wearily.

  A thin young man appeared in the bedroom doorway. His straw hair "was tousled and his horn-rimmed glasses were askew on his nose. His damp shirt clung to his narrow shoulders. His faded dungarees were plastered to his long legs. He was barefoot. His hands, long and sensitive, were in plain sight and open.

  "Denis," Linda whispered, coming to the door. "You got out?"

  The young man nodded to her and looked at Durell. "I'm Denis Deakin. You were looking for me, sir, but Mr. Riddle and the others wouldn't let me talk to you. So I got here on my own."

  Durell did not ease his grip on the metal weight in his fist. "How did you know where to find me?" "I told him," Linda said coldly.

  "And how did you know?"

  "I got it from my father. He knows everything."