Miami Mayhem (Jerry eBooks) (2016)

by Anthony Rome

  “How’s the old shoulder, Tony?” he asked me mildly.

  My left shoulder, deep inside where the tiny slivers of lead were, began to ache on cue. Not sharply enough to require those little white pills I’d once needed for it, but enough to remind me. It was three years since they’d removed the slug and reset the smashed bone. But part of the bullet had shredded on the bone, and they hadn’t been able to get all the fragments out. They remained to jog my memory, from time to time, of a hood named Velie who’d downed me on the roof of that freight shed. He’d been taking careful aim to finish me off with his second shot when Turpin rose up out of the shadows behind him and broke his spine with a .45 slug.

  I drew a deep breath. “All right.” I looked at Welch. “About that two hundred.”

  Out of the comer of my eye I saw Turpin grin smugly behind his cloud of acrid cigar smoke. He figured I was a sucker. He was right.

  “One hundred right now,” Welch was saying, relieved. “For just taking her out of here and getting her home to her father up in Mayport. The other hundred’s for not mentioning where you found her. You get it after one week. If we ain’t had no trouble from this by then.”

  “Okay?” Turpin demanded of me.

  I nodded. “Okay.” I shoved my hands deep in my pockets and strolled around the bed, looking down at Diana Pines from different angles. It was none of my business, but I couldn’t help wondering what had driven her to this.

  Welch watched me, his forehead still corrugated with worry. “I only hope that Kosterman guy don’t get some of his local cops to sweat it out of you where you found her.”

  “Tony?” Turpin forced a laugh. “Somebody’ll sweat something out of Tony the day Georgia elects a colored Republican governor.”

  I looked at him. “You’re as subtle as always.”

  He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “That was your department. Being subtle. We made a good team.”

  I went to the window. It looked down into a dark courtyard. A wide service alley cut from the courtyard to one of the side streets flanking the block.

  “Bring her down the back way,” I said, turning back to them. “I’ll drive in and meet you at the fire-exit door.”

  I started across the room toward the hall door, hesitated briefly as I reached the silver-blue mink on the floor. I bent, picked it up, draped it at the foot of the bed. “Bring her gentle,” I told them, and went out.

  I’d left my Olds in front of the Moonlite Hotel. The red and blue of the neon hotel sign glinted dully against its dusty paint. I got in behind the wheel, started the motor, and let it idle in neutral. I got a Lucky out of the pack in my breast pocket, lit it, and took my time smoking it. People drifted past along the dimly lighted sidewalk, their voices reaching me with the odd contrast of accents you hear all over Miami City—Spanish accents from Cuba, backwoods accents from Georgia and South Carolina, Yankee accents from the Northeastern states. So different from just across Biscayne Bay in Miami Beach, where all the tourists fleeing winter make it sound as if some New York or New Jersey city had been picked up bodily and set down again on that strip of Southern sand.

  I continued to smoke for perhaps a minute. Then I tossed what was left of the cigarette out the open side window and drove the car around the comer.

  I switched off the headlights as I drove through the service alley into the courtyard. Braking the car beside the fire exit, I climbed out. The door opened, and Turpin and Welch came out, carrying Diana Pines between them. She was limp, her arms and head hanging. Except for her harsh breathing, she might have been newly dead.

  I opened the rear door of my sedan, picked the mink wrap off her shoulders as they put her on the rear seat. Turpin dropped her handbag on the floor beside her twisted feet. When he pulled his bulk out of the way, I leaned in and draped the mink carefully over her bare shoulders. It was a cool night and with all that liquor in her she’d be susceptible to infection.

  For a moment longer I gazed down at her slack, vulnerable young face. Then I pulled back out of the car, slammed the door, and turned to Welch.

  The little night manager of the Moonlite Hotel was breathing hard from helping Turpin carry the girl down. Sweat beaded his face. I continued to stare at him. Finally, he said, “Oh . . . yeah,” and dug some bills out of his pocket, counting them over to me.

  I counted them again myself, and thrust them in my own pocket. “This is Friday. I’ll be expecting the other hundred in the mail next Friday morning.”

  “Sure . . . if you don’t tell anybody where you got her.” Turpin said hastily, “Thanks a million for this, Tony. I won’t forget it. Any time I can do you a favor . . .”

  “You can convince Welch here that it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to forget to send the other hundred.” I walked around the front of the Olds and slid in behind the steering wheel. Snapping on the headlights, I backed the car out through the alley into the side street, began driving east to Biscayne Boulevard.

  It seemed a routine enough little job that Turpin and Welch had asked me to handle for them—just return a rich little drunk to her worried papa.

  Of course, a couple of the worst messes I’ve ever gotten myself into started out as routine little jobs.

  But I couldn’t know that this was going to be another one of them.

  CHAPTER

  2

  MAYPORT was north of Dade County, along the coast. I drove up out of Miami along Route One, through all the little suburban communities of low-priced cottages, bungalows, haciendas, and trailer camps, each nestled cozily in a luxurious stand of palm trees and semitropical flower bushes. The communities began to thin out a bit as I got farther away from Miami and crossed the line into Broward County. I pulled off the highway into the drive of a roadside tavern, hurried inside.

  The phone booth was in the rear. I pulled up the Broward County phonebook, looked for the name Kosterman under the Mayport listings.

  There were four Kosterman numbers. There was a Kosterman Ready-Mix Cement Works and a Kosterman Construction Corporation, a listing for Rudolph Kosterman, president of the Sun-Sand Development Company, and a residence listing for the same man. I called the residence number.

  A man’s voice, quiet and polite, answered on the second ring. “Kosterman residence.”

  “I’d like to speak to Mr. Kosterman if he’s there,” I said into the mouthpiece.

  “Who may I say is calling, sir?”

  “Tell him it’s about his daughter.”

  “Oh . . . yes, sir,” the man said quickly, and went away. Three seconds later another man’s voice, heavy and frightened, came through the connection: “This is Rudolph Kosterman. What . . .”

  “I’m bringing your daughter home, Mr. Kosterman.”

  “My . . . is . . . is she . . .”

  “She’s all right,” I said soothingly. “Just fine, except she’s had a bit too much to drink. Otherwise there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll have her home inside the hour.”

  “She’s not hurt? Or . . .”

  “Not damaged in any way,” I assured him.

  “Thank God . . . Who are you?”

  “My name’s Anthony Rome,” I told him. Then I cut off further questions by asking exactly where I’d find him around Mayport. I could have guessed his answer. Most of Mayport sprawled along the west side of the Intracoastal Waterway, but there was a portion of it known as The Island that lay on the other side of the Waterway. The Island, formed by the waterway on one side, the ocean on the other, and a canal at either end, was inhabited exclusively by the big rich. Rudolph Kosterman lived on The Island.

  I hung up and left the tavern.

  Diana Pines was still huddled on the rear seat of my car, the way I’d left her. But she was beginning to stir and make vague sounds in her throat. I got in and drove north again, glancing back at the girl from time to time.

  I’d covered another ten miles when Diana Pines suddenly sat up on the back seat, a choked whimper coming through her clenched teeth. Swi
nging the car off the road, I got out and yanked open the rear door. I helped her stumble a few feet from the car to a clump of bushes, held her head while she threw up.

  When her last spasm passed, her legs became rubbery. I picked her up and carried her back to the car, eased her on the rear seat, got the Kleenex from the glove compartment and gave it to her. I waited while she used it. Her face was no longer slack. It was sharp with fear, her eyes wide and uncertain as she looked around her not understanding.

  “You’re on your way to your father’s place,” I informed her quietly. “Be there in a half hour or thereabouts.”

  She turned her head slowly and forced herself to look at me.

  “My name’s Anthony Rome,” I told her soothingly. “You had too much to drink, passed out in a hotel room in the city. I’m taking you to your father. He was worried about you.”

  She continued to stare at me. A different kind of sickness crept into her large, dark-brown eyes. “Did . . . did I . . .” Her whisper was ragged and she didn’t finish it.

  I shook my head. “No. Not with me anyway. Not with anybody, as far as I know. You were all alone when I got there.”

  Some of the stiffness went out of her face and figure. She slumped back, head lolling against the cushion, eyes closing slowly. I shut the rear door, got behind the wheel again. As I pulled the Olds back onto the highway, I glanced back at her. She was slumped down in the seat again, sleeping. Her breathing was not so harsh this time.

  A short drawbridge over the waterway connected the mainland part of Mayport with The Island. There was a uniformed cop in a tiny stucco guardhouse on the other side of the bridge. He stopped me and had a look at my driver’s license, then let me into The Island. Kosterman must have phoned him to let me in. He glanced at the girl asleep in the back seat, but whatever he thought didn’t show on his face.

  I drove along the darkness of Surf Road, which twisted around The Island. My headlights picked out only the road and the palm-and-pine forest on either side of it. Somewhere in that lush forest were the homes of The Island’s top-bracket, privacy-cherishing inhabitants. But except for an occasional driveway entrance, there was no sign of habitation from the road.

  The Kosterman driveway entrance was flanked by two tall stone-and-shell pillars, each topped by a big frosted light globe. Two men stood waiting beside one of the pillars. The globe atop it shone down on their heads. When I stopped between the pillars, they hurried to the side of my car.

  One of them was tall and broad-shouldered, somewhere in his late fifties, with a tough, lined face and thinning gray hair. The other man was shorter and slimmer and much younger—about thirty. He was blond, handsome, and worried.

  The young one reached the car first, glanced at me. Then his eyes slid to the rear seat where the girl, her eyes opening, was struggling to a sitting position.

  He blurted “Diana F” and opened the rear door, reaching in for her. I watched her flinch away from his touch. He saw her reaction too, and his face got stiff. He pushed in and sat on the seat beside her. But he did not try to touch her again.

  “Diana,” he said softly, pleading, his fists clenched tightly on his knees, “we’ve all been goddamn worried. Where’d you disappear to?”

  Diana Pines sank her teeth in her lower lip and looked away from him out the window, not answering. He looked at me. “I’m Darrell Pines. What’s your connection with my wife?”

  “I brought her home.” I looked at the bigger, older man. He stood beside the car, his powerful shoulders sagging a bit, watching his daughter and son-in-law with a puzzled frown. “Mr. Kosterman?” I asked him.

  He turned his head slowly, nodded. “You’re the man who phoned? Rome?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did you happen to—”

  I interrupted him. “Right now you’d better get your daughter to bed. Let her sleep it off.”

  “Of course,” Kosterman agreed at once. He got in the front seat beside me. “I’ve sent the servants to their building. I didn’t want them to see . . .” Kosterman let his words trail off, pointed up ahead. “Just follow the drive. Where it forks, turn left.”

  I let out the brake, followed the drive through a heavily wooded tropical park. At one point, on the right, we passed a large clearing containing four tennis courts flanked by two small stone buildings. Farther on, to the left, I spotted what looked like stables through the trees. I reached the fork and swung left.

  The park gave way to a vast, beautifully manicured lawn, studded with sculptured trees and bushes. In the center of the lawn, sprawling over a slight rise in the land, was a long, low, rambling modern building of irregular stone, redwood siding, and glass. It was a ranch-style house, but large enough to contain any six ordinary ranchhouses without bulging. The interior lighting showing through the glass- walled areas revealed a number of separate gardens, enclosing individual terraces. To the side of the house was a good-sized private channel dock at which was moored a beautiful ninety-foot schooner yacht.

  I swung past a six-car garage and pulled to a halt by a wide stone walk that led between rows of small palms to a heavy redwood entrance door studded with bronze nailheads.

  “Rome,” Kosterman said quietly, “would you mind coming in with us? For a few minutes.”

  “Sure.” We got out on opposite sides of the car.

  Darrell Pines was climbing out of the back on Kosterman’s side. He reached in to help his wife. Instead of taking the offered hand, Diana Pines opened the door at her side, stumbled out where I stood. She would have fallen immediately if I hadn’t grabbed her arms and steadied her.

  She swayed heavily against me, looked blearily up at my face, and muttered loudly: “Hi, pal. Take good care’ve me, huh?”

  She was play-acting, for her husband’s benefit. I glanced at him. Pines, his mouth drawn thin, was white with anger. But he didn’t make another attempt to get near his wife.

  The big front door opened as I started Diana Pines around the car. Two women came out. One stopped just outside the doorway, staring in our direction. The other hurried along the walk toward us. She was a short, deliciously curved woman in her early thirties. Her lightweight tweed suit was tailored to show off her body, and her long honey-colored hair framed a strikingly pretty, rather sensuous face.

  She hesitated briefly as she reached us, studying Diana Pines, quickly judging her condition. Then she put her arms around the girl and took her from me. “Come on, honey,” she said gently. “Come inside with me.”

  Diana Pines turned to her immediately, leaning against her. Though Diana was less than average height, she was a good two or three inches taller than the woman. “Oh, Rita,” she moaned softly, “I feel so awful.”

  “Sure you do,. honey. Hangover. And I’m just the girl who knows what to do about it.”

  Kosterman came over and helped her guide his daughter up the stone walk.

  The other woman was still standing beside the open door, watching. She was tall and slender. The light from the doorway behind her shone against red hair. She wore a light blue cocktail dress, cut very low. She looked as if she were in her middle or late twenties.

  As Diana Pines reached the door with Rita and her father, the redhead forced a grin at her. “My God, Diana, you gave us a scare. What happened to you?”

  Diana Pines turned her head and looked at the redhead with naked hatred. Then she went on into the house with her father and Rita. I watched the redhead stare unhappily after them for a second, then turn and look at Darrell Pines. Pines kept his face blank, looked at me.

  I turned back toward my Olds.

  “Just a minute, fellow!” Pines snapped. “We’ll want to ask you some questions.”

  I looked at him. Pines was slim and smaller than me. But he acted quite sure of himself. I kept on walking to the open rear door of my car, reached in and got the mink and the handbag. Pines had hurried up behind me. I dropped the fur and handbag into his hands, strode past him up the stone walk between
the palms.

  The redhead was still standing beside the open door when I reached it. I stopped, looking at her. A spray of freckles crossed her cheekbones and the high bridge of her nose under her wide-set greenish eyes. Her face had a too taut look, and her features weren’t small enough to be called pretty. But she radiated a very distinct quality of tense sex appeal, and the way she held herself revealed that she was quite aware of it. She looked back at me, her gaze as directly appraising as my own.

  I motioned for her to go inside first. “I’ll follow you. I might get lost in there.”

  The redhead grinned. “It’s been known to happen.” She led the way through a wide entry hall with a marble-tile floor and pecky-cypress walls covered with huge abstract paintings. Her walk was graceful, with smooth, controlled strength to it.

  I followed her past a living room about the size of a luxury-hotel lobby, a gold-and-brown dining area almost the same size, a kitchen large and gleaming enough to accommodate twenty ice skaters. We passed another doorway that gave me a glimpse of a big, lung-shaped enclosed swimming pool, bordered by a wide lanai with its own barbecue, bar, dressing rooms, and dining area—the whole space walled and roofed with a rose-hued translucent plastic webbed by slim redwood beams.

  The room we finally entered was a large den, dominated by a stone fireplace wall. Lush indoor foliage grew out of the stone wall and in the corners of the room, softening the stark quality of its modem furniture.

  Darrell Pines followed us into the room, dropped the mink and handbag on the long, curved couch in front of the fireplace. The three of us stood there waiting and looking at each other appraisingly.

  “Well,” the redhead said finally, “could anybody use a drink? Besides me.”

  I shook my head. Pines didn’t do anything but go on looking at me.

  The redhead shrugged. I watched her breasts dance. When I looked up, I saw that she was watching my eyes. I grinned at her faintly. She didn’t grin back. But she didn’t look offended either.