“Well ... sure.”
“If anybody answers the phone, pretend there's a long distance call coming in. By then it won't make any difference.”
He looked puzzled but said he'd do it and gave me my key. I went up to the second floor and down the hall to my apartment, feet silent on the carpet. I waited, key in hand, near the room. In a few seconds the hall lights went out and I stepped in front of the door.
Anybody inside might notice the sudden disappearance of illumination slipping under the door, but now at least they wouldn't notice any shadow from my big feet. I waited, listening. In a moment I heard a man with a high-pitched voice say softly, “What in hell was that?”
“What was what?” The second voice was deeper, slurred, the kind that usually comes from the side of a man's mouth.
I let out my breath easily, heart starting to pound. Well, now I knew for sure—at least two men were in there, waiting in darkness. And that didn't stack up like a welcoming party.
The one with the high-pitched voice was saying, “Didn't a light go out somewhere? Outside in the hall, huh?”
“Oh, shut up.” That was the voice with authority, the bigger voice, the tough one.
I put my left hand on the doorknob, placed the key gently against the lock but didn't insert it. In a few more seconds the phone rang stridently inside the apartment. While it rang, I turned the knob easily. The door was locked, and I used my key, turned it, cracked the door.
In sudden silence the guy with the high-pitched voice swore audibly, adding, “Geez, I liked to jumped out of my skin.”
“Shut up, I told you.”
I dropped the key into my pocket, reached under my coat, took out the Colt and held it tight in my right hand. Inside, the high-pitched voice said, almost whining, “But what if that bastard don't come home at all? This bugs me—”
The deep voice was angry this time. “Shut that damn mouth of yours or I'll carve it up with this chiv.”
Judging from the sounds, they were sitting on the long divan in my front room. It wasn't far from the entrance, only a few feet. Closer than I'd have liked, but I had to take a chance now anyway. The phone rang again, another long ring. I pushed the door open far enough so I could step inside and barely had the door shut when the ringing stopped. I froze, held my breath, pulse hammering in my ears.
There wasn't any sudden outcry or movement. At first I couldn't see a thing. And I thought I'd made it. I thought I'd managed, in the darkness and with my sounds covered by the ringing of the phone, to get inside unseen and unheard.
But as I turned to reach for the light switch in the wall, a flicker of movement caught my eye. And I heard a whispering sound, soft, as if someone were silently moving over the carpet. The movement had been on my left. The bedroom is farther back in the apartment, and dim illumination filtering in from outside fell through its window and faintly outlined the bedroom door. The movement I'd seen had been something, someone, moving between that door and me, momentarily blocking the light.
My fingers were on the light switch and I flipped it up. The sudden light was almost blinding for a moment. In that first flash I saw the room, one man half off the big divan on my right—but on my left a bigger man, a heavy, husky guy. He'd gotten to within four or five feet of me, and as light blazed he jumped toward me. A long knife—the “chiv” he'd mentioned to the other man—glittered in his fist. His hand was low, out from his body, and as he leaped forward he started to drive it up at me, slicing at my belly.
I swung my body to the left, keeping my feet planted, bending my left knee as I straightened the right one and shoving myself out of the path of the blade, turning slightly in toward the man. I know the technique, I long ago learned what a man is “supposed” to do when a knife is sliced up at his belly, and I just did it without thinking—forgetting the gun in my hand.
There probably wouldn't have been time to pull the trigger anyway; but even if there had been, the only thought in my mind was to stop the knife. I saw the knife, not the man, saw the thick wrist and burly arm behind the blade, and I reacted to it automatically.
As the steel arced up through the air where my middle had been I kept swinging in toward him and slammed the little-finger edge of my left arm down hard on his wrist. As his thick arm slowed, my right hand slapped the fist holding the knife, wrapped around it with my thumb on the back of his hand. My Colt landed on the carpet, skidded across the room. I put every bit of strength I had into twisting his hand and wrist to my left, sliding my other hand down to join the right one. I got my fingers into his palm, thumbs crossed on the back of his hand, and snapped his wrist over hard.
I heard the bone crack. The knife fell through the air but he yelled in anguish before it hit the floor. There hadn't been a sound until now except for the scuffle and the big guy's yell, no words, no voices. But now the other guy, a small pinched-faced mug, shouted and lunged at me.
I jerked hard on the arm I was holding, pulled the big man even farther off balance and around toward me enough so the little guy bumped into him. As he stumbled, falling, I let go of the arm, stepped toward the second man and hooked a left into his face. He spun away and I grabbed him, jerked him around, set myself and brought a right up from below my knee. My fist landed on his chin like a lead hammer. I could hear his jaws slam together, hear his teeth breaking. He reeled backward, arms flailing, and fell to the carpet. He lay awkwardly, silently, unmoving.
The big man was on one knee. He started up, putting his weight on his right hand, gasped in agony as splintered bones ground together, and fell. Before he landed I stepped toward him, right foot swinging. My big shoe caught him at the back of his jaw. When he landed, he didn't try to get up. I started to step on his ear a time or two, but stopped myself.
For a few seconds I stood in the middle of the room, both hands still held before me, muscles tight. Then I let out my breath in a gust, dropped my arms, felt some of the tension drain out of me. I looked at the two men, starting to think again.
I was sure as hell deep in something that could soon be fatal. I began feeling a little weak, shaky, the reaction from sudden effort and danger, the overstimulation of glands and heart, all the body's defenses working overtime.
I got my Colt off the floor, put the gun back into its holster. Then I picked up the knife and looked the thing over. It was a lethal blade I'd seen before during my years as a Marine. It was a Sykes-Fairbairn Commando knife, with a shaped handle narrowing at its base and a long doubled-edged sharply pointed steel blade. Slim, graceful, deadly—yet an almost beautiful instrument for killing. It was not a hunting knife, unless you were hunting men. That's what it had been made for—killing men.
I put the knife on the long, low, cigarette-scarred coffee table before my chocolate brown divan, then searched the men, took everything from their pockets. When I got through, arrayed on the coffee table were two automatic pistols—a .45 caliber Colt Commander and a smaller Browning 380—two wallets, a ring of keys and the knife. I still had in my pocket the sap I'd earlier taken from Joe Navarro. I added it to the pile, then went into the kitchenette and grabbed a bottle of bourbon, poured an inch into the bottom of a water glass. I seldom drink bourbon straight. I drank it straight. In the living room again I sat on the divan and looked through the wallets. They didn't tell me much. The wallets contained a total of two hundred and twenty-three dollars. There was no identification at all, no driver's licenses, nothing to finger these boys. It told me they were probably pros, hoods hired to take care of me.
I lit a cigarette, almost back to normal. The bourbon flickered pleasantly in my stomach. The only thing that hurt was my right hand. The knuckles were skinned and raw, but not nearly so painful as the little guy's chin and the inside of his mouth were going to be when he came to.
I started to get to my feet when I heard something in the hallway outside my room. There was the sound of feet on the carpet, then a soft knock at the door.
I stood up, pulled out the Colt again. Ther
e'd been two men here waiting for me; but that didn't mean there wouldn't have been another down below somewhere, maybe in a car, or just waiting. I walked toward the door, thinking. There was another possibility, too—little Bunny might have seen the lights go on and wondered why I hadn't come back for her. Maybe she'd decided to check for herself.
But I didn't take any chances. I held the gun in my left hand and with my right grabbed the doorknob and yanked it open fast.
As it opened I moved to one side, gun thrust forward before me, finger tight on the trigger.
It wasn't a man. It wasn't even Bunny.
It was Elaine Emerson.
Chapter Six
Elaine's face was pale, those big eyes looking even larger in her face, enormous dark eyes seeming somehow smeared, even darker now.
She started to step forward, then saw the gun in my hand. Her mouth stretched wide, and her face got the color of clay. She let out a tight, strangled gasp and stood motionless, staring at the gun.
I dropped my arm, put the gun away. “Elaine,” I said. “What the—what are you doing here?”
She swallowed, not answering, her face regaining a little of its composure, a lot of its beauty. I took her arm. “Come on in. Sorry about the gun—I thought you were somebody else.”
Finally she managed to speak, even mustered a faint smile. “I ... hope so.” She stepped inside and suddenly let out a wailing noise. Her face started going through those motions again. She raised a finger and pointed.
Then I remembered the two limp bodies on the floor. But I tried to play it light. If I played it heavy, it looked as if Elaine would fall down in a crumpled heap. “Sorry, Elaine,” I said. “Sorry. Excuse the looks of my apartment. It ... it's a mess.”
She dropped her arm and blinked at me. “What ... what...”
“Sit down.” I led her to the divan and placed her on it, facing away from the mugs on the floor. “Just a moment. I'll have to, ah, tidy up the place a bit.”
She didn't say a word. But I heard a groan.
I looked around and noticed the big guy on the floor wiggling feebly. The little one would be no trouble for quite a while, I knew; the knife man not only was tougher, but I hadn't kicked him as hard as I'd slugged the other one.
“Elaine,” I said gently. “Just keep looking at the wall or something. Look at Amelia.”
Amelia is the yard-square nude, garish, bawdy, the kind of oiled tomato you would find only in a bachelor's apartment. Amelia, who says “Come hither, honey,” not only with her eyes, but with a great deal of the rest of her. Amelia, whom the ladies always frown upon, lips curling and the men always examine closely, lips curling the other way.
Elaine looked at the wall and her lips began curling, and I picked up the spring-loaded sap, walked the few steps to the feebly wiggling man and clobbered him a good one above and behind his right ear. He became motionless again, like furniture.
When I straightened up Elaine was watching me, but her lips were still curling. She said, in a horrified tone, “You ... you hit him.”
“Yeah. I got him a dandy one.”
“But—that's terrible.”
“What's so terrible? I should let him—”
“But he was just lying there—”
“No, he wasn't. He was wiggling.”
“Wiggling! He was on the floor, not doing anything—”
I interrupted her again. “Honey, slow down. I know the rules, but I can't allow guys to get up and kill me. And that's what this poor unconscious man would bend every effort to do.”
“Don't be sarcast—” She stopped. “Kill you,” she said softly, her face getting blank. “Kill...”
I thought at first she was concerned about the heartrending possibility that I might have been there on the floor instead of the two thugs. I sat beside her on the divan and pointed to the two guns, picked up the knife and held it in my palm.
“These bums,” I said, “were waiting for me when I got home. The guy I just tapped tried to stick me with this.”
I didn't get it. She seemed hardly to be listening. Her face was twisted. “Shell,” she said, her voice a cry of pain, “Shell, they killed him. It was horrible. They murdered him.”
“Murdered? Murdered who?”
“Craig. They killed him. I was there. It was horrible. Horrible. Horrible!” Her voice rose, getting higher and louder.
I put my hands on her shoulders, suddenly serious. “Easy. Craig Belden? Your—your brother?”
“Yes. I—” She couldn't get the rest of it out at first. Then she pulled herself together with an effort. “You remember I was suppose to meet you on the Srinagar.”
“Yes. I went to Cabin Seven.”
“I'm sorry. But I was there, waiting, when Craig came in and said we had to leave.”
“He was on the yacht?”
“Yes. We went aboard together. He was insistent that we couldn't wait, had to leave right then. I knew I could explain to you. We went to Craig's home in Los Angeles. He said he wanted to give me some papers. Said he could trust me—but he didn't even get to tell me what they were. And he was extremely upset. There's a safe behind a painting in his living room. He got some things out of it and barely started telling me what to do with them when a car came into the drive.”
She paused, brushed at her eyes. And now I saw why they had looked darker, even bigger, as she'd stood in my doorway. Mascara was smeared around them, as if tears had moistened her lashes, and she had brushed the darkness onto her lids.
Elaine sighed heavily, shakily, then went on, “Craig got white as a sheet, told me to get into the bedroom and keep quiet. I did, and two men came in—I guess it was two, I heard two voices but I didn't see anybody. One of them said, ‘We got a message for you, Belden.’ And then ... oh, I can't!”
She stopped, pressed both hands to her face and bent forward, choking sounds coming out of her mouth, muffled against her fingers. After a while she took her hands from her face, then without prompting from me she continued. “There were three gunshots then. I heard ... Craig fall. Not a sound after the shots, just—oh, as if he were clutching at the desk, scratching, then the sound of him falling. I was petrified. I didn't even realize what had happened, not really. A voice—a different one from the first said—‘Grab that stuff and check the safe. Make it snappy.’ There wasn't a word after that. Just the men moving around, and then the door slamming. I heard a car start.”
She was silent for a long time, then said, “I just stood there. Not more than a few seconds, but it seemed forever. When I went into the front room, Craig was lying on his back behind the desk. There was blood on his chest and his face ... his face—” She stopped, then went on, her voice dull and flat. “Well, he was dead. The safe was still open, empty, and the papers were gone from his desk. I touched him, once, and then ran. We'd driven to Balboa and back in my car. I ran to it, came straight here.”
It was quiet for a while. Then I said, “It's obvious the men thought he was alone. Do you have any idea who they were?”
She shook her head. “What am I going to do, Shell? You've got to help me. I don't know what to do, I'm all—all in pieces.”
“If you've any idea what caused this, what's going on, tell me now. You left a lot of things unsaid earlier.”
“But I don't know anything. I told you most of it on the yacht, the little there was to tell.”
I was concerned about two other things besides Belden's murder. One, the fact that Elaine had been in the house when her brother was murdered, and thus would be on the spot herself if the killers ever learned of that fact; and the other item, that two more croak-and-dagger boys had been waiting here for me. It seemed too much, on one night, to check off as coincidence.
I told her that, then said, “Start at the beginning. When you first got worried and why. Why you hired me, called me in the first place.”
She told me little more than I already knew. Her brother had in the last month or so become increasingly drawn and jitt
ery, worried, afraid of something. On more than one occasion he had told her that if he got killed suddenly—accidentally, he'd said to her—she was to take everything in his wall safe to the Los Angeles D.A. He had not explained further, merely asked her to promise she'd do that for him. Elaine had agreed. This afternoon—the previous afternoon now—he'd asked her to accompany him to a party on the Srinagar. She didn't know why. He'd acted so oddly, in such a despairing and frightened manner that Elaine had phoned me, asked me to meet her on the Srinagar.
I said, “Honey, that sure sounds like it was a pro job. And there's the business about those papers to the D.A. Could Craig have been mixed up in anything illegal?”
“I can't believe he'd have been involved in anything like that at all. But ... well, he's been a kind of promoter all his life. You know, always a big deal on the fire—but hardly any of them came to anything. Once in a while he'd make quite a lot, but spend it before he started anything else. He's been in real estate for the last few years. And...” She paused. “Well, I don't know how to put it. He just seemed to have a lot of money this last year or so. Bought a new car, expensive clothes, gambled in Las Vegas once in a while. But he never would tell me how he made the money. Just that he'd closed a couple of big deals.” She bit her lip. “And that's all, Shell.”
There were still several questions I wanted to ask Elaine, but she seemed about ready to keel over. In a moment she said, “Could I wash my face somewhere? I must look awful.”
“You look beautiful.” She did. The mascara was smeared, the thick chestnut hair was tangled, her face was drawn and pale. But she was lovely, compelling, a pleasure for eyes and warmth for hearts, more than beautiful, even at this moment.
I stood up. “Come on, I'll show you. Watch your step, though, Elaine. Don't step on any people.”
The smile was wan, but it was an improvement. She stood up, facing me. Then she bit her lip again. “I'm ... I'm asking a lot I suppose. We barely spoke earlier. Maybe you don't want to get mixed up in this now. After all, those men—”
Over Her Dear Body Page 5
