I put the bag back in order, snapped it shut, and closed the trunk lid. I wasn’t thinking anything adverse about Robin Ford. It just would have been a damn-fool play to pass up the chance to check out her bag.
I crossed the street and located Robin in the parking lot. The attendant was giving her a receipt. I opened the passenger-side door and picked up a slightly-larger-than-attaché-sized briefcase. Ever since the plastic surgery after the gas-tank explosion, I’ve needed a complete makeup kit for my face. I never go anywhere without it, and it’s never as far away from me as the locked trunk of a car or the baggage compartment of an airplane. Once I’d stood and watched helplessly as a quarter of a million dollars burned up in the trunk of a car to which I didn’t have the keys and to which I didn’t dare get too close; the little Pakistani plastic surgeon had warned me my once-burned face couldn’t be repaired again. After he said that, the briefcase never left my side.
In addition to the makeup kit, I always carry two extra wigs in the case. And the.22 was in it. I wasn’t worried that Robin might have opened it as I had her bag. Hazel had given me the briefcase, and she’d had it set up with a four-letter alphabetical combination lock. In her usual whimsical fashion she’d had the combination set to s-e-x-y.
Robin and I crossed the street to the Chevrolet. I set the briefcase down on the front seat beside me, got under the wheel, and we took off. I knew it was 270 miles from Little Rock to Jackson, Mississippi, because I’d driven it before. It should be about the same from Stuttgart, because we had to backtrack to Pine Bluff on Route 79 before we could head southeast on Route 65. “We’ll take two hours on and two hours off at the wheel,” I told Robin.
I could see the route in my mind’s eye. At Tallulah we’d turn east on 80, crossing the Big Muddy at Vicksburg. Across the river, Highway 80 becomes Interstate 20, and Jackson wasn’t far beyond that. It was mostly two-lane to Jackson. No speed driving.
“Are you planning on hammering it straight through?” Robin asked after an hour.
“I’d just as soon make it as soon as possible.”
“I don’t know if I can take it,” she said. “I’ve had two full days already, and I can’t sleep in a car. Can’t we stop?”
“We can get a few hours’ sleep in Jackson,” I said grudgingly. “But I want to make Mobile tomorrow afternoon.”
It was quiet then except for the rush of night air through the open windows. We kept running in and out of light rain showers which hardly dampened the highway and certainly didn’t cool the countryside. At Eudora I refilled the gas tank.
Robin took the wheel at that point. I felt tired, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept running through my mind the situation in Hudson as I’d known it, wondering what could have gone wrong. I was almost sure it wasn’t a police situation. There was almost no way it could be a police situation.
I was almost at the end of my second two-hour stretch when we arrived in Jackson. I turned off at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, and Robin stretched lengthily as the car drew to a halt. She sat silently while I went inside and registered as Mr. and Mrs. Earl Drake. I wondered about continuing to use the name. Nobody in Hudson should know Earl Drake, but nobody in Hudson should be making trouble for Hazel, either.
I drove to the assigned ground-floor unit and carried Robin’s bag and my briefcase into the room. “I’ll match you to see who uses the shower first,” I said.
“You go ahead,” she returned.
The steaming hot water was relaxing. I emerged from the bathroom swathed in a bath towel. I stripped the double bed and climbed into it. I’d halfway expected Robin to say something about the double bed, but it had been her idea to stop. She didn’t say anything, though. She eyed my body scars curiously, those created by skin transfers while I was acquiring a new face, but she made no comment about those, either. She went into the bathroom and closed the door.
I was almost asleep when she came out again.
Her hair was done up in a towel, and she was wearing the black-rimmed, harlequin glasses, and a smile. Period.
“Hazel thought you might like to have a surrogate piece of tail,” she said to me.
“She did, did she? She’s getting quite emancipated.”
“She also told me that you were an ass man,” Robin went on, turning to exhibit a real butterball type. She glanced at me over her bare shoulder.
“You can play that contract vulnerable and redoubled,” I agreed, scrutinizing the scenery. “Did she also tell you I bite?”
“Where it shows?”
“Only if you’re a nudist.”
She came over and sat down on the bed. Her pelt was dazzling and its texture was like satin. She had two or three extra pounds attached to each curve, but that situation never gets any criticism from me. There was no particular expression on her face. I mean it wasn’t coy or lustful or even playful.
She reached and took a finger-and-thumbful of my flesh near my ribs and gave me a twisting pinch. Her hand strength was such it felt like a lanced boil. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, slapping her hand away.
“I like to hurt men,” she answered. She giggled, a high-pitched sound in contrast to her normal speaking voice.
“Yeah? Better be careful about those you pick to hurt or you’ll get that handsome ass fractured,” I told her.
She stretched out on the bed and pulled me down on top of her. I have to be careful with women. More turn me off than on, but this one had a way with her. When she saw my readiness, she stuffed a pillow under her butt. I removed her glasses and slid into the saddle. Her reactions were mechanical but expert. She had the type of firmly rounded belly that could have served as a launching pad for a moonshot.
All my life I’ve been hearing that muscle-broads are no good in bed.
It’s a crock of shellac.
What I got was better than what I gave, although the surrogate didn’t match up to the original.
• • •
I woke in early-morning darkness with Robin nibbling at my ear, so we got a late start. Even so, we reached Mobile by mid-afternoon. Beyond Jackson we’d turned southeast again on Route 49. Past Hattiesburg we joined the Old Spanish Trail at Gulfport. I left Robin at a motel cocktail lounge when we reached Mobile. “I’ll only be about an hour,” I told her.
“I can hardly wait,” she answered with a smile marred only by a full-grown tabby’s attempt to look kittenish.
I drove to the Golden Peacock, Rudy Hernandez’ place. I knew he worked the bar afternoons. Evenings he prowled the floor, keeping order. Sometimes he had a lot of it to keep. The police had never been known to compare the neon-encrusted bar to a convent.
I selected an isolated bar stool and ordered my usual Jim Beam on the rocks. The dark-faced, potbellied Rudy paused in his supervision of the barboy’s washing of glasses to serve it to me. We were alone at one end of the bar. “You’ve got a package in your safe for Earl Drake,” I said. “It’s marked ‘hold’.”
“Who said I had a safe?” he countered.
“I’ve been here before.”
He looked me over carefully. “I don’t know you,” he said.
He knew me.
He just didn’t know the name or the face.
“There’s a 9mm Smith & Wesson automatic with a notched sight in the package, Rudy.”
He studied me again. “C’mon into the office,” he said abruptly. He raised a wooden flap in the bar and I joined him behind it. He unlocked a door and we entered a dingy, cluttered back room. Rudy paused in front of a large, old-fashioned safe. “You say you’ve been here before?” he repeated my statement.
“Not often enough to know the combination.”
He stood with his head cocked to one side while he listened to the sound of my voice. “Okay, somethin’ about you rings a bell,” he decided. He opened the safe, his bulk hiding the dial while he spun it. He handed me the package, and I ripped it open and showed him the automatic. He nodded, and started to close the safe.
“How about a couple of extra clips and a box of 9mm Parabellum cartridges?” I asked. Rudy had no difficulty in producing the items. “Any interesting toys in that crackerbox?” I continued when he again started to swing shut the massive door.
“Crackerbox?” he echoed in an injured tone, but he reversed the direction of the door. Neatly arranged on shelves inside, each on its own individual chamois, were a Walther; two Colts, one long-barreled; a Webley; a Beretta; and a conventional-sized pistol I didn’t recognize. To one side was a tiny palm gun. I reached inside the safe and picked it up.
“I took that in on a bad debt,” Rudy said. “At anything more’n twenty yards it prob’ly wouldn’t do much more damage ‘n a kick in the ass. I only got about a dozen bullets for it. They’re.41 caliber, an’ they don’t make ‘em any more.”
The gun was an over-and-under derringer, a replica of the old-style gamblers’ vest-pocket weapon, but made in modern steel. Fired across an average-sized room there could be a ten-inch variation in bullet placement, depending upon which barrel was used, but a man doesn’t always want to shoot across a room. The last time I’d been in Hudson I had a midget weapon, and without it I wouldn’t have gotten out of town. “I’ll take it,” I said. “What about a lock-pick?”
Rudy opened a drawer. He had spring steel picks, very thin but of great tensile strength. The torque wrenches were both Z-shaped and L-shaped. I selected a Z-shaped wrench with its accompanying pick, buttoned my collar, and inserted both flexible strips of steel in place of collar stays. Placed there, a man can stand almost any kind of a frisk.
Rudy nodded approvingly, and an exorbitant amount of money changed hands. Rudy’s prices were outrageous, but he always had reliable merchandise. We parted without farewells. I put the automatic in my briefcase before I went back to collect Robin.
She had a half-finished beer in front of her. “Drink up,” I ordered. “The highway awaits.”
“I hoped we’d be staying here overnight,” she complained. “Didn’t you like the sample I gave you?”
“Almost thou persuadeth me, Robin. Almost.”
I loaded her into the car. Her attitude was sullen. “Hazel never mentioned what you did for a living,” she said after a while.
“I’m a pimp,” I replied. “We’re breaking you in for the South American trade.”
“You couldn’t break in a baby to a pacifier,” she informed me loftily, but she didn’t ask any more questions.
I drove to Tallahassee, and I really pushed it. It was almost full dark when we arrived. Robin looked at me inquiringly when I parked in front of the Greyhound terminal. “You’re finishing the trip on the bus,” I informed her. If I had to make a quick move in Hudson, I didn’t want to be burdened with a female.
She started to argue, then changed her mind. “You’ll come to see me in Hudson, won’t you? At the Lazy Susan?”
“Sure, Velvet-Ass. Since you’re under Hazel’s sponsorship, I can’t wait to get both your asses in the same bed.”
“I wonder about you,” she said slowly. “I really do.”
“I just talk a good game, Robin,” I said.
“You haven’t forgotten it’s a rental car?”
“I’ll get the papers from you in Hudson.”
I put her on the bus with a ticket and her bag. Then I took the Chevy to the Tallahassee rental agency and turned it in. I told the agency I’d lost the papers. I had them call Little Rock and get the charges. I paid up, took my briefcase, and hailed a cab.
I had the cabbie take me to the largest used-car lot in town. In twenty minutes I was the owner of a two-year-old Ford for which I paid cash. The dealer’s boy put on the temporary ten-day tags.
An hour after Robin’s departure I aimed the Ford toward Hudson.
Near midnight I pulled into a trucker’s terminal. I had a sandwich, then took my briefcase into the men’s room. I went into a cubicle and changed wigs and makeup. I took my Bianchi belt-holster from the briefcase and exchanged it for the belt I had on. I settled the Smith & Wesson in it after loading a clip. Its solid, familiar weight felt comforting.
I tested the trigger-pull of the derringer before carefully inserting two of the dozen cartridges acquired from Rudy Hernandez. Fortunately the trigger-pull wasn’t unduly sensitive. I made a temporary shin holster from two heavy elastic bands I bummed from the restaurant’s cashier. I put the derringer under the lower one, pulled my long sock up, covering the weapon, then fastened the sock under the upper elastic. I’d arrange something more permanent later. Right then I got back out on the highway.
Beyond Perry there was little traffic. I reached Hudson at two A.M. The last time I’d driven past its single traffic light it had been at 90 m.p.h. with a posse of police cruisers after me. I knew where my first stop was going to be. I was going to break into Nate Pepperman’s office. There might be a message from Hazel.
Nate’s office was upstairs over the bank. I parked a block away and walked back. The outside door at the foot of the stairs was ajar a fraction of an inch. I examined it for a full minute and the silent street for another before I widened the aperture cautiously. That door shouldn’t have been open.
I went up the stairway, staying close to the wall to avoid squeaky stair treads. The upper hallway was dimly illuminated by a streetlight shining through a window. The door to Nate’s office was wide open. I think I knew what I was going to see before I saw it.
Even in the poor light I could see Nate Pepperman sitting at his desk, slumped to one side.
The top of the desk was covered with blood.
Pepperman’s throat had been cut viciously.
Hazel’s financial consultant was dead, and it was plain that he had been for some time.
two
I moved inside the office, careful where I put my feet. Blood had dripped onto the floor. I didn’t want to leave footprints in the crust. At closer range I could see that the dead man bore cruel face-cuts as well as the gruesome throat-slash. Nobody sits quietly in a swivel chair for that kind of treatment. Nate Pepperman had been held from behind while the knife-wielder performed from one side.
There was an underlying odor in the office. I connected it with the body at first, but then I recognized it. It was the smell of cordite. I stood beside the brutally slashed body of Hazel’s financial consultant while I scanned the deeper shadows in the room.
Again I knew what I was going to see before I saw it. The door of the office safe dangled drunkenly from one twisted hinge. Papers were scattered on the floor. The knife-wielders had blown the box and cleaned it out, discarding items of no value.
Not for a minute did I believe that Nate Pepperman had unluckily walked in upon a safecracking. That wouldn’t account for the condition of his face. I touched his shirt-sleeved arm. There was no give to it. Rigor mortis was well advanced. How had he remained undiscovered in his office for so long?
Robin had said that Hazel was in the office with Nate on Wednesday morning. She had found me on Friday evening. We had driven part of that night and most of Saturday. Today. Yesterday, rather. It was now two A.M. Sunday. If Nate had been murdered Friday night, it was possible no one would miss him on Saturday.
A dozen thoughts flickered through my mind as I stood in the murky, foul-smelling office, but one stood up and begged for attention: Where was Hazel? Where had she been since she checked out of the Lazy Susan? Where was she now? Did she know anything about this slaughterhouse of an office?
I had no answers.
I hadn’t really pressed Robin before about the circumstances of Hazel’s asking her to find me. Perhaps something had been said in Pepperman’s office when they were all together that would give me a starting place to look for Hazel.
I needed a starting place.
I backed out of the office, doubly careful to touch nothing. A visit to Robin at the Lazy Susan might get me started. I crept down the stairway and reconnoitered the street. A lone pedestrian was crossing the square. There were no moving vehicl
es in sight. I eased onto the sidewalk and walked unhurriedly to the Ford.
The Lazy Susan Motel was south of town. In the middle of the next block I hit the brake and sat there with the motor running. Above the dime-to-a-dollar variety store across the street there was a light on in another second-floor office. It was a real estate agency run by a young fellow named Jed Raymond, a self-declared country boy with a quick wit and a keen mind.
Jed had been my best male friend in Hudson, but I’d almost killed him before I left. Ordinary common sense dictated that I couldn’t approach Jed Raymond. He was a part-time deputy sheriff, for one thing. That was why he almost got killed.
But he’d also been Hazel’s friend.
He’d been the one who introduced me to her.
He had seemed pleased when we paired off.
More importantly, if anyone knew Hazel’s present whereabouts in Hudson, it was likely to be Jed Raymond.
I pulled over to the curb and parked again. I slid out of the Ford, crossed the street, and climbed the stairs. This time I made no effort to move quietly. When I reached the landing, I tapped lightly on the black-lettered, frosted window in the door.
A minute went by and nothing happened.
Could Jed have a girl in the office?
I tapped again.
I heard the shuffle of feet finally, and the door opened a crack. “Yes?” Jed’s familiar drawl inquired.
“Not married yet, I see,” I said. “No wife would put up with this kind of hours.”
Jed opened the door wider to peer out at me. “You seem to have the advantage of me, friend, if you’re sayin’ you know me,” he said at last.
“Where’s all that famous Southern hospitality?” I said. “Don’t I get invited inside?”
Operation Whiplash Page 2
