Killer in the Street

by Nielsen, Helen

  “He looks like an insurance salesman—a good one,” the editor answered, “or even the president of your local Chamber of Commerce. He looks like the kind of man you would trust to take your kids to the circus. I’ll send a wire photo if you’re interested. Better yet, I’ll grab a plane and bring the photo myself.”

  Jameson was interested. “Send the photo,” he said. “You’ll be the first to know if I’m right, but I have a deep psychic impulse, augmented by an eyewitness description, that makes me think Rick Drasco has gone into the air-conditioning business.”

  The call was over. It was useless to try to protect Dee now. She heard; she saw; she related. She didn’t need Albert Morrison to explain how people liked to use aliases incorporating their own initials. Rick Drasco. R. R. Donaldson. R.D. Every move Donaldson made spelled assassin and whether Kyle was the target or someone who was to be used to finger a target, he was running. He was running like a man afraid for his life.

  Chapter Fifteen

  No man in Tucson had been closer to Kyle Walker for the past five years than Sam Stevens. That was why Jameson took it upon himself to make a personal call at the grand ballroom of the Plainsman Hotel at an hour when the bored and sleepy-eyed waiters were impatiently waiting for the last guest to leave so they could get on with the clean-up job. A ballroom after a benefit was like an elite section of the city dump. Jameson gave the last remaining member of the pickpocket detail a nod in passing and found Sam secluded in a small private bar off the ballroom. Sam Stevens was a local institution. He was like something cast in bronze that had miraculously come to life and bridged an age spanning the romantic adventure of the pioneer west and the quietly dynamic drive of the new financial empire. Sam was the solid citizen. His name graced the letterheads of the finest service organizations; and when Sam Stevens talked the city listened.

  But when Jimmy Jameson walked into that small oasis off the ballroom he saw, with a sharp stab of shock and sadness, a tired, aging man whose once proud shoulders rolled forward in fatigue and whose strong right hand, faintly spotted with brownish age marks, trembled slightly as he raised his glass of whisky to his lips. Sam was all decked out in a new tuxedo—still with a string tie knotted under the turn-down collar—but the heels of his shiny black ankle-high boots were cut for a tapadera stirrup. Unobserved, Sam looked all of his sixty-four years even in his party finery, and of late, Jameson realized, Sam had been the man who always came to dinner. No occasion was too large or too small. It was the sign of a lonely man staring at the empty horizon of eventual retirement. Already everybody knew it was Kyle Walker who supplied the ideas and sparked the initiative.

  Jameson spoke his name softly and Sam’s shoulders squared as if jerked by invisible wires. His automatic smile was almost fast enough to conceal the weariness.

  “Jimmy, you old coyote!” he said. “Sit down and have a drink. I didn’t know you were interested in Do-Gooder spectaculars. A group of real pretty ladies put out about ten thousand dollars on a charity ball tonight that grossed about ten thousand and seventy-five—and that’s better than average for these affairs.”

  “Why aren’t you home in bed?” Jameson asked.

  “I’m celebrating. This afternoon the Boosters gave me a luncheon and presented me with a plaque. Tonight I was sponsor for the lovely ladies, and any day now the press is going to send someone over to take notes for my obituary.”

  “Sam!”

  Sam chuckled. “Hell, Jimmy, don’t you know when you’re bein’ teased? I’ll be around for another thirty years.”

  “At least,” Jimmy agreed.

  “Have a drink on the house. Let ‘em gross ten thousand and seventy-four dollars.”

  “Thanks,” Jameson said, “but I can’t. I’m on duty.”

  That was when all of the fun went out of the evening. Sam Stevens’ body was aging, but there was nothing wrong with his mind. He took a good look at Jimmy Jameson’s grave face and asked what troubled him. The bar was all but deserted and the bartender looked half asleep. Jimmy started at the beginning.

  “Sam,” he asked, “how much did you know about Kyle Walker when you hired him five years ago?”

  He expected some sort of reaction. He received a long, awkward silence. Sam slowly finished his drink.

  “Everything I needed to know,” he said at last.

  “I mean, did you hire him on Dr. Bryson’s recommendation or on the basis of your own research?”

  Sam slammed the empty whisky glass down on the counter. “I hired him because he sounded like a damn good man and I needed a damn good man!” he said. “And that’s exactly what I got! Now, what is it you want to know about Kyle? What do you think you have on him?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “The hell you didn’t! I don’t like cute people, Jimmy. You know that. Is Kyle in a jam? What’s he done? How can I help?”

  “You think a lot of Kyle Walker, don’t you?” Jameson asked.

  “Yes, I do. I never had a son, Jimmy. You know that. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault. We just weren’t blessed. Well, I don’t mind admitting that Kyle and his wife—yes, and that little boy of theirs—are like family to me. I mean it. Why, do you know they’re up at my place in the mountains right now havin’ themselves a real vacation before Kyle starts the new job! I told Kyle months ago that he was to use it anytime just like it was his own.”

  “Mike is up at the cabin, Sam,” Jameson said quietly. “He’s still up there with your houseman. Dee is at Dr. Bryson’s apartment—at my request. She came back several hours ago looking for Kyle. He never showed up. I thought you might have seen him or heard from him.”

  Jameson played his face-watching game again, and Sam was speechless. He had to have the whole story told over again. Kyle was missing. Kyle was gone. Jameson took him back to the visit Kyle had made to his office early in the day. He explained about the beige Chrysler and the man from Prescott who didn’t exist. He took him along on the trip to the Apache Inn where he had found a folded newspaper and the manager found a pair of binoculars in the opposite room. Finally, he told him about a killer named Rick Drasco.

  Sam Stevens listened. At times he was as enigmatic as an Indian.

  “A few minutes ago Mrs. Walker telephoned the cabin and was given a message from Kyle’s secretary. She said he had gone to Casa Grande on business—”

  Sam leaped at the out. “Then that’s where he is!” he insisted. “Try Sanderson. He handles the gravel and cement contracts. Held us up three days on the last job and it would be just like Kyle to jump on him hard this time.”

  “But Kyle didn’t go to Casa Grande,” Jameson insisted. “He was in room 227 of the Apache Inn.”

  “How do you know that? Because of those binoculars? Anyone could have taken his binoculars and used them.”

  “Sam, stop kidding yourself! I know you like Kyle. So do I—that’s why I want to find him. Don’t you see, Kyle knew who the man in that Chrysler really was. That’s the only explanation that makes sense. He recognized Drasco. He sent Dee and Mike to your cabin. He gave his secretary the day off and canceled all appointments. He used me to locate Drasco’s lodging. It adds, Sam. That’s why I ask you how much you knew about Kyle when you hired him. Is there anything in his background that connects with any of this? Anything at all?”

  Sam didn’t respond. He sat absolutely silent until the bartender woke up and came down the bar.

  “Hit me again, Pancho,” Sam said. “The captain can’t have a drink. He’s on a crusade tonight.”

  “Sam, I’m trying to save Kyle’s life!”

  Sam Stevens turned about on his barstool until he faced Jameson directly. Then he slowly drank all of the whisky in his refilled glass without taking the drink from his lips. When the glass was empty he stood up and prepared to leave. But they were no longer alone. Detective Geary was walking toward them with a uniformed state policeman at his side.

  “Ah, the storm troopers are here,” Sam said.

  Geary touche
d the brim of his hat. “Captain Jameson,” he said, “excuse me for bothering you but I thought you might like to talk to Deputy Anderson. He saw Donaldson a couple of hours ago—just before we put out a bulletin.”

  It was the wrong time for an interruption. Jameson wanted to keep bearing down on Sam Stevens, but Anderson’s story was important and he had to listen. Sam listened too. He heard about the man in the beige Chrysler who had driven his daughter out to Pandora’s Box for dinner and then had to leave because she broke up at the sight of an airman in uniform.

  “It had to be the girl from the Apache Inn,” Geary remarked. “Veronica Moore. We’ve checked her out. She’s never been married—to an airman or anybody else. And she’s still missing.”

  Jameson felt sick. He had the state trooper repeat the details and pinpoint the hour—but too much time had elapsed. Even if he drove in second gear, Donaldson could have made it back to the Apache Inn in fifteen minutes. Obviously, he hadn’t taken the girl back to the motel. Obviously, he wasn’t going to take her back.

  “Is it a snatch job, do you think?” Geary asked. “The girl’s father is an army officer. He’s buying a home in the sixty-thousand class—”

  “Have you talked to him?” Jameson demanded.

  “No, not yet. I was leaving that to you. The mother is on the coast. We haven’t notified her, either. I talked to her brothers, but I didn’t tell them why we were so concerned. They’re just kids.”

  “All right,” Jameson said. “I’ll take over. But I don’t like it. It doesn’t fit Drasco’s pattern. He’s a specialist. Does a jewelry thief rob a bank?”

  “It might have been accidental,” Geary said.

  “Accidental? How?”

  “The brothers say their sister flipped over Donaldson. He treated her like a woman, she told them. She’s sixteen. At that age they have no fear.”

  “And at my age,” Jameson said bitterly, “I have nothing else. Okay, keep checking the motels and garages. At least we know he’s passing the girl off as his daughter. That might be of some help.”

  Geary and Anderson left. It was going to be a rougher night than Jameson had expected. He looked at Sam to see how he had reacted and found a strange look of incomprehension on his face.

  “A girl?” he said. “A man like that would take a sixteen-year-old girl—”

  “It may be all right,” Jameson said. “He may have gotten her drunk and took her someplace to sober up.”

  “But a sixteen-year-old girl!” Sam repeated. “In my day we played rough, but we played clean. We knew the difference between a woman and a child!”

  “Times change,” Jameson said.

  “Yes, times change.”

  Sam had started to move away from the bar before Geary arrived with the state trooper. Now he slumped back against it as if needing support.

  “Are you all right, Sam?” Jameson asked.

  Sam tried to smile and it came on sick. “I guess I’ve had too many celebrations in one day,” he said.

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “No—no! I can make it. But, Jimmy, about this trouble. Have you talked to Van?”

  “Dr. Bryson? Yes, a little. Why?”

  “He doesn’t like me,” Sam said.

  “Don’t be silly. Everybody likes you.”

  “The hell they do! I haven’t made and lost and then remade a fortune by being the kind of fellow everybody likes! I’m tough. Dr. Bryson thinks I’m an exploiter—an empire builder. But we need empire builders, Jimmy. People need heroes. My father—you remember my father. He was a hero. Ruthless and a slave driver, but he never drove anybody harder than himself. I’ve tried to be like that. Kyle Walker is of the same stock. If you have to dig up dirt, get after Bryson.”

  “If you don’t like Bryson, why do you have him as a partner?” Jameson asked.

  “Because he’s smart, damn it! He’s got a mind like a computer—and he knows his geology as well as physics. But he’s a cynic, Jimmy. To him this whole project—all of our projects—are just toys. Imagine! With a mind like his he could make a fortune, but he prefers to waste his time in a classroom!”

  “The world needs heroes,” Jameson said.

  Sam Stevens glared at him, and then he laughed. There was no humor in the laugh because it wasn’t a night for humor, but there was enough sparkle in it to get him away from the bar and on his way to the street again. Jameson went with him as far as the front door. When the attendant brought Sam’s big bronze air-conditioned Cadillac around the old man was ready to drive. He had picked up his white Stetson from the hat-check girl, perched it on his head at a rakish angle, and walked as straight as a soldier on dress parade. Jameson didn’t dare suggest again that he take him home. Times did change, he reflected, as Sam drove away. They didn’t come like Sam Stevens any more.

  Sam Stevens had never employed a chauffeur. Before he made his first fortune wild-catting (that was after he had lost the ranch inherited from his father in a poker game) he rode his own horse; and from the day he bought his first Cadillac he did the driving himself. The current model was his eighteenth. He always drove fast but carefully. He knew every street and boulevard—every turn in every road since the days when most of them had been wagon trails. The first thing he did after regaining his financial standing was to buy back the ranch that had been his childhood home. The old buildings were gone, but the “new” house, which was, Sam recalled with one of those sharp pangs of memory that momentarily freeze time, now more than thirty years old, stood on the same crest of the same hill where the original cabin had stood. Sam’s father, Old Zachary Stevens, was the kind of wild fool who would have to sire a renegade. Other ranchers built their houses in the valleys where they were sheltered from the wind and weather; but Old Zach liked to be on top of places where he could see the world at his feet. No matter how many times the wind took the roof shingles, the house stayed on the hill. That was where Sam built in the spring of 1929 just eighteen months after the first gusher came in. Yes, it was Sarah’s money that had bought him a partnership in the company where he worked as a roughneck when they met, but neither of them was either ashamed or afraid of that. Some people belonged together. Their relationship might have been made in heaven or forged in hell, but they belonged together and nothing in the world was right when they were apart. It was like that with Sam and Sarah from the beginning and straight through to the end.

  And so, when the money rolled in, he bought back the ranch and built the house on the hill: Sarah’s house—solid red brick with a tile roof and a wide overhang to protect the full front porch. Sarah was plains-born and to her a frame house was a sharecropper’s house even if it cost two hundred thousand dollars. It was Sarah’s elegant house with a wide, sweeping drive that wound its way through a fortune in transplanted verdure up to that porch where she used to wait, rocking serenely in her high-backed mahogany rocker, for the sound of his horn at the gate. Elegant was Sarah, but in her own quaint way. Her mother and her grandmother before her had sat in such a rocker on such a porch waiting for the sundown when their men came home. Sam had long since ceased to sound his horn at the entrance and the gate was no longer closed, but he never made the turn into the driveway without remembering.

  The money had continued to roll in all through the years the rest of the world called “depression.” The oil flowed, the deals were made and there were those who said Sam Stevens drove himself harder and took more risks than any other man in the West because he wanted to cast a longer shadow than Old Zach, and there were those who said he wanted to live down the gossip that he made his fortune on a woman’s stake. Like any man worthy of the gift of life, he had enemies—and thrived on them. But there was a great difference between Sam Stevens and his father. Old Zach had lost his wife—Sam’s mother—in childbirth. He never married again. He had no need for a woman’s companionship. But Sam needed all a woman could be: wife, mother, lover, friend; and when Sarah died after three terrible years of devastating pain something of
Sam died with her. And then there were those who said he had spent all of his fortune on doctors and hospitals and fruitless trips to Europe trying to find a cure. There were those who said his mind was gone for a time after Sarah’s death. There were those who always had to say something because they never knew anything. Some of it, by virtue of the law of averages, was true.

  After a year Sam got started again. The building boom was on, and Sam’s name on a project was still as good as gold. Time slowed him some, but he made up for that by working longer hours and attending more dinners and benefits, and none of the talking people asked why because even the most wretched of them understood how lonely it must be to drive up that winding lane each night.

  The rocker wasn’t kept on the porch any more. It had been stored away in the garage for nearly seven years. Sam only thought of that as he braked the Cadillac to a stop in the driveway because he was afraid and needed to reach out and touch something for strength.

  It seemed that he had left the garage doors open. Now they were closed. No matter. He was too tired to put the car away. He cut the motor and switched off the lights. Tonight the car would sit out in the drive. He got out and walked to the front door. He had to unlock it with his key—Julia, the housekeeper, always went home on the nights when he dined out. She left the light on in the hall, in the kitchen—where she always left a glass of milk he dumped into the sink—and in his bedroom upstairs.

  Sam let himself in and closed the door behind him. He felt unbearably weary and deeply disturbed. As much as he scorned drugs, this was one night he would take the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed. The only thing he longed for now was oblivion.

  But he never reached the stairway. Tonight an extra light was showing: it spilled out garishly from his study. Nobody ever invaded Sam Stevens’ study. He stopped at the doorway and looked inside the room. The first thing he noticed was a brandy decanter and two glasses placed on the small table beside his own leather chair. While he watched, a man seated casually in the chair leaned forward and carefully poured brandy into both of the glasses. Then the man stood up and faced the doorway. He was middle-aged, well built, and wore a dark blue suit and tie and dark glasses. He didn’t smile, but he did hold out one brandy glass in invitation.