Darling, It's Death

by Richard S. Prather

  Mace waved again and started walking around the pool toward me. I said to Gloria, "I'll finish what I started to say later."

  She looked puzzled. "What's this about pushing you into the pool?"

  I didn't answer her; I was looking at Mace. He was exactly six feet tall, but for some reason he looked as big as any two of the other guys. His shoulders were fantastic, and the only reason he didn't have more muscles was that there wasn't room for any more. He came around the corner of the pool and walked toward me, clump, clump, clump, like an outsized steel monster, and it seemed surprising that his feet didn't leave jagged holes behind him in the concrete.

  He stopped in front of me and his lips split in a big grin, moving a thick brown mustache riding his upper lip like two wire brushes. "I'll be damned," he rumbled in his deep bass. "Shell, the Boy Scott. How the hell are you?"

  He stuck out his big paw and I grabbed it, grinned, and said, "Hi, you crook. Please don't play Georgie's game; I need the arm."

  He let out a laugh that sounded like beer barrels rolling down an alley. "That was beautiful. I saw it all from the beginning. I should have told Georgie you're an ex-Marine." He glanced at Gloria. "Hi, doll."

  She said hello, and I told Mace, "Maybe I'm an ex-detective pretty quick. I didn't know who the guy was. Thought he was just another clown."

  Mace laughed. "Ex-detective. Clown." He rolled some more beer barrels. He actually thought it was hilarious that Georgie might shoot me. "What you doing down here, Scott?"

  "Just a vacation—up till now. Taking life easy."

  "That's what Georgie does, Scott: takes life easy." He roared so loud at his crack that every head around the pool turned toward us. That was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. That was, of course, only his opinion. He said, "You know how he makes his living, don't you, Scott?"

  "Yeah. Out of dying. Other people's dying. How about you, Mace? I mean, what you doing down here? And all those other characters?"

  He stopped laughing. "Take a tip, Scott. Don't even ask. Everybody's on vacation. It's not healthy to ask."

  "Yeah, I see." I let it ride, but I was getting very damned curious. We shot the breeze a little longer, then he shrugged his shoulders.

  "Well, I gotta get back, Scott," he said. "Because I like you, I'll do what I can." He shrugged again. "But I'm only a little wheel." He turned and clumped off.

  Little wheel, huh? As far as I was concerned, he was a big one. I sat down again by Gloria and said, "Honey, I've got a feeling I'm going to be no help to you at all, and you might as well know it. But I'm on your side. From here that looks like two against the world."

  I thought about how to phrase the next part. The way things were shaping up, it seemed likely that I could use a gal with Gloria's apparent connections. I said, "How come you've got trouble, and how'd you wind up with Madison in the first place?"

  She leaned back with her elbows behind her, raising merry hell with the little strip of bandanna, and started talking. She'd been working as a waitress in Beverly Hills when George spotted her and started rushing her a little over two months back, and she'd swallowed his story that he was in the olive-oil importing business. Right away he'd asked her to marry him, promising her a honeymoon in Acapulco in April and May, when he had to come here on an olive-oil deal, he'd said. She was now on that honeymoon, not liking it a bit. When she learned how George actually got his money, and that it had nothing to do with olives, that tied it. She'd been sick of him even before that, she said. And, drunk, he'd bragged and talked enough—after she found out the truth about him—so that he couldn't afford to let her walk out on him and maybe spill what she knew to the wrong people.

  She kept talking, giving me incidental stuff about George and her that wasn't especially important, and I thought back a little bit, wondering what, if anything, this might have to do with the case I was on. The guy I'd originally been after—the one I'd found two nights back with a bullet hole in his head—was, or rather had been, almost a living legend at the age of forty. He was one of the greatest con men who ever lived, and he'd pulled off some of the most spectacular and breathtaking capers of the century. His name was Wallace Parkinson, called Gunner, and being a criminal, he might have been meeting some criminal chums down here. Hardly the kind of torpedoes I'd seen so far, though, because Gunner was a true genius in his own line, and if he hadn't started on the fast buck, he'd undoubtedly have been a success in whatever else he tried. Gunner was the boy who took a Texas oil man for $350,000 on the wire, then took him for another $200,000 two months later on the rag. He was the guy audacious enough to blackmail my client. He was, to the confidence game, what Billy the Kid was to outlaws and Jack the Ripper to mass killers. I couldn't help feeling a little sorry that he'd been murdered.

  I heard Gloria saying, "So I'm stuck," and I brought my mind back to George Madison, shuddering. She went on, "It was just one of those things. He's an awfully good-looking guy, and I didn't really know him when we got married. We went everywhere, night clubs, parties. He was always loaded with money, and we did a lot of drinking. Maybe if we hadn't it would have been different. God, he's so stupid when he's sober."

  "He's brilliant when he's drunk?"

  She smiled. "No, but I drank when he drank, and didn't notice so easily. Two more months of his conversation and I'll be a lush. He says, 'Yeah,' and his repartee is over."

  "Yeah," I said.

  "And that's about it. He turns my stomach, now, but he made me come down here with him. Says if I try to leave he'll kill me. But I'm going to try. So here I am, Shell. Not a very pretty story."

  "Not very much we can do, either. I can't shoot the guy for you." I thought a minute. It could very well be that Gloria's problem was exactly what she said it was, and I was the handiest and most logical choice for her to work on. But I was getting into something big here, and there was a chance she was giving me a line, trying to find out why I was in Acapulco. She had some very shady friends—but maybe that was all to the good.

  I said, "What's George doing down here, Gloria? And Mace, and all those other heavies?"

  She nibbled on her red lower lip for a moment. "I'm not sure, really. It's something about some union thing or other, I think, but I don't know for sure. Why?"

  "Just curious." Union thing. I had a hell of a time keeping my face blank. "Incidentally, where you staying?"

  "El Encantado. It's on the Calle de Tambuco, not far from here. I'm in Cottage Twenty-seven."

  "I know where it is. OK. How about this, honey? You make me look silly, then trot back to your loving husband. Play up to him. Tell him you told me who he is and I almost fainted. You'll be telling the truth. Then keep your ears open; find out what's in store for me. I can't help you or anybody else if I stop breathing. And I'll try to see you later today."

  She frowned a little, biting the inside of her lip, and said, "George might think it's funny if I suddenly get lovey."

  I grinned at her. "With your equipment you could make him believe anything. You could make him jump into La Quebrada Gorge."

  She smiled prettily at me, fanning her lashes over the green eyes. "Well, why do I want to make you look silly?"

  "It usually takes a little of the edge off a man's anger if the guy he's mad at is made to look silly. Any edge I can get, I want. You just slap me a time or two, then shove me into the pool. Make it look good, and George might get a little happier."

  "Sounds like fun. But what'll I tell George? Why did I do it?"

  I shrugged. "Tell him I pinched your—No, don't tell him that. Tell him anything. Tell him I said something nasty about him and you didn't like it. You stuck up for him. Anything. It can't make him any madder at me than he is right now. And I'd much rather have you toss me into the drink than have George and his friends do it."

  "All right. You asked for it."

  I stood up, my back to the pool, and she stepped over in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the beef trust milling around. "Go ahead," I s
aid to Gloria. "Clobber me."

  She hesitated. "It seems funny when I'm not mad at you." A trace of a smile twitched the corners of her mouth. "Say something to make me want to slap you."

  I grinned at her. "O.K. And you asked for this." I told her something, but she didn't seem to get madder. The corners of her mouth twitched violently, then she raised an eyebrow, drew back her right hand, and let me have it. Then, making it look good, I guess, she brought her hand whipping back across the other side of my face and slammed both hands against my chest.

  The crack of her palm across my cheek was still echoing, especially inside my head, as I flew backward and splashed into the water. When I came up the hoods were still laughing. I climbed out, flashed a look at the boys, and spotted Gloria standing by Georgie, her arm around his waist. Then I stalked away from the pool, scooped up my robe, and got out of there.

  I glanced back over my shoulder as I headed for my rooms. Nobody was following me. The vultures wheeled lazily, patiently, overhead.

  3

  THE HOTEL DE LAS AMERICAS is one of the most beautiful hotels in Acapulco, Mexico. It spreads all over the point of the Cerro de los Cañiones, or Mountain of the Canyons, that juts out into the blue waters of Acapulco Bay, and besides the rooms and suites in the main building of the hotel itself, there are dozens of little cottages and bungalows scattered over the grounds, bungalows with names like Pago Pago, Singapore, María Bonita, and Casa Redonda. Shaded walks wind around the hotel and by the bungalows, and vines and flowers and trees weave a variegated pattern of red and green and yellow and orange almost everywhere you look.

  You drive out from the town of Acapulco and turn left off broad Manuel Guzmán Boulevard just before you reach Caleta Beach, and climb up the Calle de Tambuco on Las Playas peninsula until you pass under the cement arch with "Hotel de las Américas" painted in faded letters, then up the curving drive and past the watchtower to the main building. Beyond it, down a vine-shaded walk, is the alberca, or swimming pool. You walk past the alberca and among small tables in the little area for dining and dancing, and into the bar, where you can sit either on a bar stool or at one of the seats before skin-topped tables that look like huge tom-toms. Beyond the bar is the dining room—all of this open to the warm air—and then you come to La Bocana, where there will be dining and dancing in the evening. La Bocana is at the very end of the point, overlooking the bay on all three curving sides, and at night there are red and yellow and white and green lights in the branches of the huge tree that is the only ceiling except the sky.

  From the pool I walked down the shaded path and to the colorful patio next to the open-air lobby. I was in one of the junior suites, number 103, right at the corner of the patio. My key was still at the desk, but I'd left my door unlocked when I went to the pool so I pushed it open and went inside. I sprawled on one of the twin beds and thought for a minute about the case I was on, wondering what all the activity in Acapulco might have to do with it. There was a good chance it was plenty. Gloria had said the boys were down here on "some union thing or other." Unions. And Joe, my client, was way up at the top of the union pyramid. If I got back what he wanted, there was a cool fifty thousand dollars in it for me.

  It was funny the way the case was shaping up. I'd never had a case remotely like it; every time I got a little deeper into the thing, it got bigger, and screwier. When I had gone out to see Joe four days back, it was big already, simply because my client was a damned important man, being blackmailed. Even when I learned the blackmailer was Wallace "Gunner" Parkinson, it was just a big honest man being blackmailed by a big dishonest man, though it seemed screwy that a top-notch con man like Gunner would resort to blackmail, which is a bit out of the con's line. It got screwier when I learned Joe wasn't at all honest, and I got confused when I found out it wasn't blackmail. Not, at least, in the usual sense of the word.

  I talked to Joe for over two hours, and if the guy who'd been working on Joe hadn't been Gunner, I might have thought Joe was pulling my leg about the mass of dirty information Gunner had picked up on my client. But, knowing a lot about Wallace Parkinson, I wasn't too surprised.

  Gunner had, in a compact blackmail file, a lot of stuff that Joe was understandably unhappy about; proof of misappropriation of union funds; photostats of union records that had belatedly been destroyed; incontrovertible evidence showing that Joe had once been a card-carrying member of the Communist party; even proof that Joe was paying an unmarried nightclub singer named Lila $500 a week for support of her and her baby, who by an odd coincidence was also Joe's baby. And Joe was happily married with three children of his own. Three other children.

  That sounded bad enough to me, but it was only the small stuff, some miscellany that I learned about in the first hour of conversation. I agreed to take the case, so now Joe let his hair down.

  We were sitting clear out in the middle of the enormous lawn, in straight-backed chairs set up by a card table. We had highballs, and fresh air, and a pleasant day, but that wasn't why we were on the lawn. Joe was, he explained, taking no chances that anybody would overhear our conversation—or, more important, get a recording of it. Joe looked haggard, almost ready to collapse. He said, frowning, "He came right out here with it, Mr. Scott. It was all in a fairly small brief case, just some papers and photographs—and a tape recording." He paused and shook his head, jowls swinging. "Why, the man must have been working on me for months. Night and day. I can't understand why he'd go to such trouble. And why me?"

  I said, "A man like Gunner always takes a lot of trouble, plans everything. That's why he's such a big man. Never heard of him blackmailing anybody before, though."

  Joe frowned again. "That's the odd thing, Mr. Scott. He didn't want money from me. He brought all that stuff out here, and then had the audacity to say his price for the material was a very important position in my union. Second only to my own. Not money at all. I didn't understand him at first."

  I was getting confused myself. I said, "You mean he wanted a job?"

  "That's the sense of it. But a position of such power that only I would have any control over him—and, with a man like that, well . . ."

  He didn't finish, but I knew what he meant. Joe would have had a difficult time controlling a man like Gunner.

  Joe continued, "Why, he'd have been able even to place other such scoundrels, friends of his, in positions of importance and trust beneath him."

  It sounded a bit funny to me, already, to hear Joe talking about scoundrels in positions of importance and trust. I said, "Could you have swung the deal? I mean got him the spot he wanted in the union?"

  He almost smiled. "Of course, Mr. Scott. There would have been nothing difficult about it." He took a swallow of his drink, then fixed his eyes on me, looking grave and tired, unutterably tired. "And I would have swung the deal, as you put it. I had no choice. I have no choice. I will." His voice got louder and more high-pitched; he spoke more rapidly. "Mr. Scott, I can't impress on you too much the value of those papers and the rest of it. Some of it, like the information about Lila and the boy, can be duplicated. And the Communist record, which is known to the FBI. I've made up for that mistake. But most of them can't be duplicated. I've taken care of that; some of the records are now destroyed. But the rest of it can ruin me. I told the man I wouldn't do business, but he knew, I'm sure, that I have no choice. I will do business with him to get back that blackmail material on me. I'll give him anything he wants, any position in the union, money, anything at all!"

  He paused and looked at me, then continued. "I realize I'm not making myself sound very admirable, but that isn't my purpose. My purpose is to convince you of the importance of that file on me. If that information is ever made public, my life is ruined. There'd be . . . no point in my living. And I assure you, public knowledge of that information about me would affect a good many others. Big men whose names are mentioned in those papers, important men in business and government, and many well-known men in the union movement. If that inform
ation becomes public, it will affect the stock market, it will definitely affect official attitude toward my union. And I dare say there would be an uproar in Congress."

  He sighed heavily. "You must get those papers, Mr. Scott. I'd prefer that you return them to me, but failing that, I'd want them destroyed. Once I know they no longer exist, I can breathe easily again."

  That had been quite a passionate speech for Joe. I let him calm down a little, then said, "You mentioned something about a recording. What was that?"

  He shook his head wearily, ran his tongue over dry lips. "There's that, and the documents. Some material from the War Department. I wasn't supposed even to let that document out of my sight. It was in my safe. My safe." He used the only profanity then that I ever heard him use. "That . . . that son-of-a-bitch stole my safe!"

  "Look," I said, "maybe you'd better tell me all you know about how Gunner managed this."

  He finished his drink and started in. Apparently Gunner had been after Joe for months. He'd actually had him tailed, had apparently known all Joe's movements for some time. Just two nights before Gunner confronted Joe with his blackmail file, somebody had entered Joe's house and removed the entire safe from the wall—a trick that some of Gunner's friends could accomplish without too much difficulty. Joe, during this explanation, also mentioned the tape recording again, but he skipped right by it. By now I understood that Gunner had pulled off this caper with even more than his usual thoroughness, but I still didn't understand it.

  I kept going back to that document, the War Department thing Joe had mentioned, but he was evasive. Getting specific information from Joe was about as difficult as getting blood from a fashion model. Finally I said, a bit impatiently, "Listen, Joe. For Pete's sake, I'm the boy who's going to glom onto this junk—if I'm lucky. I'll know then what it all is. You're acting like a sick man that dares his doctor to find out where it hurts. You want me to find this stuff, you'd better tell me what I'm supposed to find. Now, what the hell is this War Department document?"