The Dead Don’t Care

by Jonathan Latimer

  Crane sat on the green chaise longue, propped one of the satin pillows behind his head, covered a yawn with the back of his hand. “The big show’ll continue in a minute, gentlemen,” he said.

  Wilson and Osborn stood in the middle of the room, their eyes admiring the gray silk drapes around the french windows, the huge rose, blue and gray Chinese rug, the hand-carved double bed with the emerald silk spread. Back of them, by the door, were Tony Lamphier, Miss Day, Major Eastcomb and the Bouchers. Essex, handcuffed to the Miami detective, had been left downstairs.

  Crane admired Miss Day and her flowered silk pajamas. Her hair was the color of honey. She was looking at the ceiling.

  Presently O’Malley’s voice came through the nearest of the steel ventilators to the bed. “This the one?”

  “Yeah,” said Crane.

  O’Malley’s fingers hooked themselves around a portion of the steel grille, lifted it out of its place. The foot-square hole in the ceiling looked black.

  Wilson said, “You can’t tell me anybody got through that.”

  “They didn’t.” Crane sat up on the chaise longue. “I’ll show you.” He looked from Miss Day to the major. “Where’s Celeste?”

  “Here, monsieur.” Celeste had evidently been standing in the hall. She was trim in her black and white maid’s uniform.

  “Did you not put Miss Paraguay’s sleeping tablets on the table by the bed each night, Celeste?”

  “Yes, monsieur.” Her face was pert. “It was at her orders.”

  “Thank you.” Crane’s eyes went to Wilson and Osborn. “Essex came in here after dinner and replaced her sleeping capsules with similar capsules filled with cyanide. Then at bedtime Imago took her usual capsules with water just before she turned off the light. The gelatinous material of which the outside of the capsules is made took some time to dissolve in her stomach—perhaps ten minutes—but when it did, bang!” Crane snapped his fingers. “The cyanide would take less than two minutes to do the job.”

  “Why didn’t she scream out?” asked Tony Lamphier.

  “My guess is that she was already asleep—that she died in her sleep.”

  “Very fine,” said Osborn. “But how do you account for the fact that the box found on the table was filled with harmless sleeping capsules?” His beard, growing in patches, was coal black and it had come out since morning. It made his long face look dirty.

  “That’s what I’m going to show you.” Crane got off the chaise longue, put an unopened package of cigarettes on the table beside the bed. “This is a box filled with cyanide capsules.” He bent his neck, eyed the ceiling. “Do your stuff, O’Malley.”

  The pruning pole which O’Malley had obtained from the gardener appeared through the hole in the ceiling, stretched to the table. Slowly the clawlike blades closed over the package of cigarettes, gently lifted it off the table, pulled it through the hole in the ceiling.

  “There!” said Crane.

  Osborn gaped at the hole. “Clever. Then all Essex had to do was to put the regular sleeping capsules in the box and lower it to the table.”

  “Exactly,” said Crane.

  “But what made you sure it was murder?” Osborn asked. “Why couldn’t it have been suicide?”

  “There were two small scars on the veronal box, as though somebody had tried to cut it with a pair of scissors. That’s how I got the pruning pole idea.”

  Mrs Boucher’s aristocratic face was pale. “I suppose that’s how Penn got the notes on your bed, Mr Crane?” She was a handsome woman.

  Crane nodded.

  “I get the idea.” Wilson’s shoulders twitched. “But why does it have to be Essex up there? Why couldn’t it be anybody in the house?”

  Crane began, “I’ll tell——”

  O’Malley’s voice came through the hole. “Do you want anything more? It’s hot as hell up here.”

  “Give me those cigarettes,” said Crane.

  “The Eye returns nothing,” said O’Malley’s voice in a graveyard basso. “Goom-by.”

  Crane went back to the chaise longue. “One reason I suspected Essex was something that happened to Miss Day.” Her blue eyes rounded in astonishment. “On the night Imago was killed she barked her shins on a chair in Essex’ drawing room.”

  “I’ll say I did,” Miss Day said.

  “Her door was locked, she had forgotten her key, so she went in through Essex’ rooms.”

  Wilson began, “But …”

  “The chair she fell over was under a trap door to the attic.”

  “Aah!” said Wilson.

  Crane continued, “I think Essex was up in the attic at that time.”

  Major Eastcomb said, “He was asleep in the library. He’d taken a sleeping powder.”

  “So he said. But did anybody see him there?”

  “I saw his shoes,” said the major. “He was sleeping under a green blanket.”

  “That’s what I heard from Miss Day and O’Malley.” Crane scratched the back of his head. “And that’s what made me certain he wasn’t there. Can you imagine sleeping under a blanket in this weather?”

  “By Gad!” exclaimed the major. “Just his shoes, eh?”

  “Still another thing gave him away,” Crane continued. “He told me, when I first came, that Tortoni had his I O Us, but wasn’t trying to collect them. Then Essex showed me the I O Us, said Tortoni had given them to him two weeks ago. That meant he had lied, one way or the other.”

  “Those the I O Us we found on him?” asked Osborn.

  “Yeah. Twenty-four thousand worth. He got ’em from Imago.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  Crane leaned against the back of the chaise longue. “They weren’t found among Tortoni’s effects. Imago was Tortoni’s mistress and she had been put in the house to see Essex didn’t try any funny business. She’d be likely to have them.”

  Tony Lamphier looked very tall, very handsome beside Miss Day. His black hair, his black, arched eyebrows contrasted with the pallor of his skin. “You think Penn got the I O Us when he exchanged the tablets?” There was good strength in his jaw.

  “I think after she had taken the poison. She probably had her purse on the table beside her bed. All Essex had to do, after he had put back the harmless tablets, was to grab the purse with that pole of his.”

  Thinking of the trousers Essex had also taken made Crane grin.

  Wilson said, “It works out very well, but it’s all supposition.”

  “Not all.” Crane adjusted the pillow under his neck. “The purse was found in the patio, under my window. I think maybe Essex planned to incriminate me in some way. In this purse, along with the I O Us, had been the nine thousand dollars Imago had won at the Blue Castle. She and I were both paid in thousand-dollar bills.”

  “Ah!” Wilson’s thin face was pleased. “The extra nine thousand dollars we found on Essex. If we could only prove it was her money.”

  “Get out the thousand-dollar bills you found on Essex,” Crane said.

  Osborn undid the oilskin packet, sorted out the thousand-dollar bills. “There’re nine of them, all right.”

  “Smell them,” Crane said.

  Osborn held the bills to his nose. “Sandalwood!”

  “Imago’s sandalwood,” Miss Day exclaimed.

  “Sure.” Crane took out his money. “They picked up the smell of sandalwood in her purse.” He held the money toward Osborn. “Mine doesn’t smell and I won it at the same time.”

  Osborn sniffed the money, said, “No, it doesn’t.”

  Crane put his bills back in his inside coat pocket, fastened them with a safety pin. “Is that convincing enough?” He caught Miss Day’s eyes on him, grinned, patted the pocket.

  “Yes.” Osborn put the bills back with the ransom money. “But I don’t see Essex’ motive for murdering Miss Paraguay.”

  “There was plenty of motive. She was undoubtedly trying to force Essex, after Tortoni was killed, to cut her in on at least half the ransom money. She wa
s holding the I O Us over his head. And she was in a position to blackmail him the rest of his life.”

  Wilson agreed, “She had him, all right.”

  Crane was thinking Imago had made the date with him primarily to frighten Essex. She had probably threatened to reveal the plot. Essex, then, had pretended to grant whatever she wanted.

  Osborn asked, “Do you think Essex had a hand in the actual kidnaping?”

  “No. Tortoni hired the men. They probably don’t know Essex is involved in any way.”

  “It’s funny, now Tortoni’s dead, that the men don’t let Miss Essex go.”

  “I wonder if they know he’s dead.”

  “They must have heard of it.”

  “If they’re in a boat, or on some island, they may not have heard anything.”

  Wilson said, “We better take Essex to the county jail.”

  Osborn persisted, “But what will the men do if they don’t get word from Tortoni?”

  “God knows,” Crane said.

  Tony Lamphier said, “We’ve got to find her.”

  Osborn asked, “Do you think Essex knows where they are?”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t.”

  “But how will we find her?”

  Crane said, “I’m trying to think.”

  Wilson said, “Let’s be going.” He held out a hand to Crane. “You’re clever. We’ll let you know if anything develops.”

  “Thanks.”

  “If you ever come to Washington look me up.”

  “I never come to Washington,” Crane said.

  Everyone except Tony Lamphier left the room. Crane rested on the chaise longue, wished he had a drink. These one-man shows always tired him.

  Lamphier’s long face was worried. “What about Camelia?”

  “I’m a lousy detective,” Crane said. “I should have her back.”

  “You’re swell. But I wish you could get her.”

  “I wish I could too.”

  O’Malley came into the room. “They’ve lugged Essex off to the bastille,” he reported.

  “That’s good,” said Crane.

  O’Malley’s voice was brisk. “Now that the case’s washed up, when do we start spending the nine grand?”

  Crane closed his eyes. He felt drowsy. “Pretty quick.” He wished Miss Day would rub his head.

  In dismay Lamphier asked, “You’re not going to give up on Camelia?”

  “No,” said Crane. He cocked one eye at O’Malley. “What have you been doing, my man?”

  “Talking to Essex.” O’Malley walked over to the french window, leaned his weight against it. “I was asking him about his sister. I don’t feel so good about her myself.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He thinks she’s on a boat.”

  “Well, for God’s sake,” Crane said. “We know that.”

  “I’m just telling you what he said, wise guy.” O’Malley’s manner was aggrieved. “He said he was sure of that because Tortoni had him go to a sporting goods shop and get some stuff for the men.”

  “Rods and reels,” Crane said.

  “How did you know?”

  Crane sat up abruptly. “Come on.” He walked to the door. “I’ll show you.”

  Chapter XXI

  THEY CRUISED ACROSS a crème-de-menthe ocean under a sky so brilliantly blue it hurt their eyes. Far astern, spears on the horizon, were the palms of Key West, and ahead was a flat sea. Afternoon sunlight fell in a golden flood on the trembling deck of the fish boat, danced in silver flashes on foam flung from the boat’s bow. In their ears was the beat of the engine, the irregular cough of the exhaust.

  “It’s calm, isn’t it?” said Tony Lamphier.

  Crane was leaning over the stern. They were in shoal water and he could see alternate patches of weed and sand on the six-fathom bottom. “It’s a good thing,” he said. Two small jacks, moving like rays of light, fled from the thrashing propeller.

  “Are you a bad sailor?”

  “I’m not any kind of a sailor.”

  His face so rough, so crimson, it looked like raw hamburger, Captain Luther Binton stood by the wheel, kept his boat pointed toward Dry Tortugas. He was an old man, but his back was stiff, his blue eyes keen. He had on brown shoes, blue serge trousers and a white shirt, and on his right arm was tattooed a blue anchor.

  Crane asked him: “Do you think you can find it?”

  Captain Luther wasted few words. “I kin if anybody kin.” His hair was perfectly white.

  “You’ll certainly know the boat, won’t you?”

  “I said I seen ’em. I seen ’em shootin’ sailfish with a Tommy gun.”

  No breeze marred the smooth green surface of the ocean, brought them relief from heat hanging over the deck. Beside them the water mirrored the white side of the boat, the orange cabin. It was so utterly calm it seemed almost as if the boat and its shadow were standing still and the water was being rushed under them. There was no sensation of motion.

  Engine vibration made the metal water cooler by the cabin door rattle. Crane filled a glass, offered it to Lamphier.

  “Thanks.” Lamphier drained the glass. “It is hot, isn’t it?”

  “Hot as hell. Have some, Captain?”

  “No.”

  Crane had some.

  Lamphier asked, “What are we going to do if we spot them?” New lines at the corners of his eyes gave his long face maturity. He had a good jaw line, wide-apart eyes under arched brows, pleasant lops. Crane wondered why he had disliked him at first.

  He replied, “Just spot them. O’Malley and the other boys are getting a boat with a machine gun.”

  “Won’t seeing us alarm them?”

  “They’ll think we’re a fishing party on our way to Tortugas. After dark we can turn around and sneak back to Key West.”

  “And pick up O’Malley?”

  “Yeah.”

  They were in deeper water now and the color of the sea had changed from cucumber green to a rich blue. It was no longer possible to see Key West. A school of flying fish skidded across the bow of the boat, made white dots of spray when it returned to the sea. It was hard to breathe in the heat.

  “I thought the ocean was supposed to be cool,” Crane said.

  “My God, I hope we find her,” said Lamphier.

  Navy-blue water glided by the boat.

  In the west, almost ahead of them, the sun looked like a red-hot coal. The water was blue-black. It was still hot. Captain Luther grunted, turned the boat slightly to the starboard.

  “See something?” asked Crane.

  “A vessel.”

  Crane squinted at the setting sun, but he could make out nothing on the viscous surface of the ocean. The water appeared oily. Beside him Tony Lamphier asked in a tense voice, “Where?”

  “You’ll see,” said Captain Luther.

  Presently, so close it surprised them, they saw a black-and-mahogany cruiser. It was a larger boat than theirs and it looked as though it were a part of the ocean. It was motionless in the water and two men, seated in wooden chairs, were fishing from the stern. KATE—MIAMI was painted on the stern.

  “That’s her,” said Captain Luther.

  They passed within forty feet of her. Crane could hear Tony Lamphier’s breath wheeze through his nostrils. One of the men was fat and he had on a white shirt with the collar tucked in, so that he appeared to be clad in his underwear. The other man was a blond with a face like granite. Both men looked hostile. Crane waved a hand, but neither replied.

  The pair watched them as the gap between the boats widened. Suddenly the fat man stood up, ducked into the cabin, reappeared an instant later with another man. This man cast a quick glance at Crane and Lamphier, spoke angrily to the two men, darted back into the cabin.

  “Can you get a little more speed out of her?” Crane asked the captain. “I’m afraid we’ve been recognized.”

  “She’ll burn out a valve if I give her any more.”

  “You better burn out a val
ve.”

  The Kate was getting under way. She had powerful engines and the spray mounted her bow. She swung in a quick circle, started after them. There were four men on her deck now.

  “They better not hurt my boat,” said Captain Luther.

  Ahead of them the entire sky was yellow. The engine, racing, shook the boat, made the metal water container clang. Beside the bright sky the sea was swarthy. Salt spray flecked their faces, rose in a henna mist over the bow. The Kate came up fast.

  Captain Luther shut off the engine, let the boat drift. “They got the legs,” he said. He reached up on a shelf back of the wheel, took down a three-foot piece of pipe.

  The roar of the Kate’s engines ceased; the Kate slid up beside them. The plump man with the turned-in shirt pointed at Crane. “That’s him, ain’t it, Frankie?” he said. He had a tiny red mouth, like a bloodsucker.

  Frankie had no lobe on his left ear. His bare chest was tanned nigger black under coarse hair. “Bring ’em on board,” he snarled. His face was pock-holed. He was a stocky man. There was a plaster bandage on his left shoulder.

  The boats rubbed sides, clung together. The plump man started to leave the Kate. Frankie had a submachine gun in his hands. Captain Luther moved toward the plump man, lifted the piece of pipe, said, “No, you don’t.” The boats, deck touching deck, made a creaking noise like a rusty door.

  The plump man suddenly had a pistol in his hand; he fired it once. An angry welt appeared on the side of Captain Luther’s forehead; the pipe, released, clanged to the deck. Captain Luther fell forward, hit the deck on his left side, rolled over on his back.

  The plump man stood over him. “You crummy old bastard,” he said.

  Blood came from the welt on the side of Captain Luther’s forehead.

  “Come on.” The plump man jerked the pistol at Crane and Lamphier. “Get in tha other boat.”

  They got in the other boat. There was anger in Frankie’s voice. “Wise guys, hey? Catchin’ up with us, hey?” Three bullet wounds had left white scars on the right side of his chest. “Watch ’em, Dopey.” He looked over at the plump man. “Anybody else on board?”

  “Naw,” said the plump man. He was standing over Captain Luther. “Nobuddy except this old bastard.” He put the pistol in his hip pocket. His skin had the pallor of a consumptive.