CRY UNCLE

by Judith Arnold

  “He was convicted of murder based on my testimony. But his conviction was set aside on a technicality. He’s free on bail pending a new trial. And...” She sighed again, shuddering the way she did every time she confronted the reality of her current existence. “He wants me dead.”

  ***

  “DEAD?” The word came out on a croak. How the hell could a fragile blond slip of a woman have wound up on the wrong side of a hit man?

  “It’s all right,” she said bravely. She seemed suddenly relaxed, or maybe resigned. “We haven’t signed any contracts here, Joe. I know you didn’t bargain for anything like this. If you want to retract the offer—”

  “Not so fast,” he silenced her. His brain told him he ought to run like hell from a woman who was on a murderer’s shit-list. But his gut told him he should sit tight and work it through.

  He wasn’t given to heroics. If a gun-toting mobster started buzzing the island in a fully armed Apache helicopter, his impulse would be to grab Lizard and split, and the hell with everyone else. Joe looked out for Numero Uno—which used to be himself until Lizard came along and knocked him out of the top slot. He would sacrifice his own life for the Liz-monster, and he’d do whatever was necessary to avoid that sacrifice. But he wasn’t about to play the white knight for some silver-eyed stranger from Seattle who’d been stupid enough to testify against a professional assassin.

  On the other hand... If he didn’t marry Pamela while he had the chance, he might not find anyone better. Superficially, at least, she was everything he needed: conservative, personable, reasonably attractive—certainly not the sort of woman he’d be ashamed to be seen in public with. Given her current predicament, she was probably as eager to grab a husband as he was to grab a wife. She didn’t have the luxury of quibbling over the fine points with him.

  And what were the odds that a liquidator from the Great Northwest would track her down to the Florida Keys?

  “Okay,” he said, leaning forward and staring straight into her troubled eyes. “This guy’s in Seattle, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he doesn’t know where you are?”

  “Nobody knows. Not even my parents. I told them I had to get away, and they agreed. I keep in touch with them, of course. And I’ve been in contact with my attorney, who in turn stays in contact with the police.”

  “How come the police didn’t offer you protection?”

  He watched the shifting of her shoulders as she shrugged, and decided that, if a woman wasn’t going to be overly endowed in the mammary region, sexy shoulders were a nice consolation prize. The thin straps of her dress revealed intriguing hollows and delicate ridges in the arrangement of her shoulder blades, collarbones and upper arms. He wondered if her skin would feel as creamy as it looked.

  The sound of her voice cut through his half-baked fantasies. “The police didn’t seem to think I was in any real danger. I told them I had received a couple of strange phone calls, and I’d been followed home from work a few times. I don’t know—maybe they were right. Maybe he was only trying to intimidate me. But when you look in your rear-view mirror and discover that the car behind you is being driven by the man you witnessed shooting someone in cold blood, you tend to get a little nervous.”

  “It sure wouldn’t sit well with me,” he agreed.

  “The police told me I was worrying about nothing. They said they had an officer assigned to keep a constant watch on the hit man, and I was perfectly safe.”

  “And that’s not good enough for you?”

  She sighed, then shook her head. “Maybe they’re right, maybe I am worrying about nothing. But...I don’t know. I tried hiring a private bodyguard, but frankly, I couldn’t stand having him lurking in my shadows all the time. It made me even more paranoid. It’s bad enough being followed around by one person. I couldn’t stand being followed around by two. So I decided to leave town until a new trial was scheduled and he was in custody.”

  If the police thought she was safe, how much danger could she possibly be in? Maybe she was a touch paranoid, but he could tolerate her minor neuroses as long as they didn’t interfere with the big picture—keeping Lizard.

  So Pamela Hayes was a little bit nutty. She would fit right in in Key West. “So,” he said, feeling a lot less concerned about her story. “Your parents have no idea where you are?”

  “For their safety as well as mine, we thought that would be best for the time being.”

  “Then I guess we won’t invite them to the wedding,” Joe joked, although merely saying it made him realize that he’d pretty much made up his mind. He needed a wife, and Pamela more or less fit the bill. “Anything else I need to know?” he asked. “Any loan sharks holding your markers? Any pre-existing health conditions?”

  He watched her hands flutter. Like her shoulders, they were delicate, her fingers slim and graceful, her knuckles smooth enough to pose for hand-lotion ads. The gold bangle bobbed against her wrist, drawing his attention to yet another intriguingly protruding bone. He, always a breasts-and-butt man, had never before noticed how alluring a woman’s skeletal structure could be.

  “Look, Joe,” she said. “I didn’t know about your niece. Seriously—we can’t mix a little girl up in this. I don’t even know why I came here....”

  “You came to avoid a hit man,” he reminded her.

  “No—I mean, why I came to your bar to talk to you. Your waitress, Kitty—she seemed so friendly in the laundry room this morning. I don’t know anyone in Key West, and she was so nice, and she kept telling me what a great guy you were, how I really ought to meet you, how I was exactly what you were looking for....” A sad laugh escaped Pamela, and she shook her head.

  “I take it you didn’t mention to Kitty that you had a goon from Seattle on your tail.”

  “He’s not on my tail,” she insisted, though she didn’t look totally convinced. “I don’t think he has any idea where I am at the moment. And Kitty told me she thought you and I could help each other out, and...” Pamela sighed. “My mind just isn’t working the way it used to. I used to be so rational. Just yesterday, I would have found the idea of marrying a stranger preposterous.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Joe objected. For no good reason, he felt his ego was under attack. “Preposterous? You think marrying me is preposterous?”

  “No,” she hastened to assure him. “I think you’d make a fine husband. It’s me. I’d make a lousy wife.”

  He ought to accept her at her word. He had Lizard’s safety to think of, and marrying a woman with a contract on her head was asking for trouble. But Joe was used to asking for trouble—and acing the answer. And Pamela’s linking him, marriage, and preposterous together made him argumentative. “I’ll have you know, there are a lot of women who’d jump at the chance to marry me.”

  “And they don’t have contracts out on them,” she pointed out. “For your niece’s sake, you really ought to marry one of them.”

  Joe contemplated the women who’d jump—and for Lizard’s sake, none of them would do. They were flashy, or irresponsible, or pleasantly lax when it came to morality. They were too similar to what Joe had been like before he had Lizard.

  Pamela wasn’t flashy. She obviously wasn’t irresponsible. If she had the courage and integrity to testify against a murderer in a public court trial, her morals had to be damned near unimpeachable. She was exactly what he needed for his niece’s sake. “Why do you think you’d make a lousy wife?” he asked.

  “I’m completely ignorant when it comes to children.”

  “I didn’t know anything about children when Lizard fell into my lap,” he admitted. “There I was, busted up over my sister’s death, and suddenly I found myself taking care of an obnoxious little twit who had a vocabulary of a hundred words, most of them variations on the word ‘no.’ She thought toilet paper was for tearing into confetti. She refused to eat any food that wasn’t pink—we went through a lot of strawberry yogurt in those days. Plus she spent the first three months
howling for Mama and Dada, which was a real treat, let me tell you.” Aware that he might be coming across as unforgivably self-pitying, he brought his lament to a quick close. “The bottom line is, if I could do it, you can do it. And I mean, I’ll do most of the child care. You’ll be just a figurehead, as it were.”

  She smiled, a real smile, not just one of those anemic polite smiles she’d been running past him since they’d met. This smile had the effect of widening her face, launching her cheeks skyward and pleating little crinkles into the skin at the corners of her eyes. He wondered what laughter would sound like coming from her.

  He wondered about a lot of things—for instance, how she had happened to witness a professional hit in the first place. And what she did for a living, and how old she was, and what she looked like first thing in the morning, when she was all sleep-tousled and her guard was down.

  But now wasn’t the time to indulge his curiosity. If he didn’t get back behind the Shipwreck’s bar soon, Brick’s grunts were going to take on blasphemous overtones.

  “Tell you what,” he said, standing and offering her his hand. “Why don’t you come over to my house tomorrow and get a feel for things. Before you agree to anything you ought to meet Princess Liz. We can talk some more...” And check each other out in broad daylight, he almost said, although he had the feeling Pamela Hayes wouldn’t look any worse in the midday sun than she looked in the white glow of the spotlight above the back door.

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “I live on Leon Street. A couple of blocks from the municipal beach. Do you know where that is?”

  She reached into the pocket tucked in a side seam of her dress, and pulled out a small coin purse. Opening it, she scowled. “I haven’t got anything to write your address down on.”

  “What do you think cocktail napkins are for? Come on inside, I’ll draw you a map.” He closed his hand completely around hers, not exactly sure why he felt the impulse to hold her. It wasn’t because she was on the verge of becoming his wife. It wasn’t simply an act of chivalry, the proper behavior of a gentleman escorting a lady through the rear door of a bar.

  Rather, it had something to do with wanting to reassure her, and himself. If he could touch her, he could trust her. And if she was in trouble, he wanted her to believe she could trust him.

  Even though, if push came to shove, he wasn’t so sure she could.

  Chapter Two

  EASY DOES IT, Mick Morrow thought. Don’t make a scene.

  He stepped into the small, clean office and bellied up to a counter decorated with house plants. On the other side of the counter, two plump, mild-faced middle-aged women sat across from each other at facing desks, sipping coffee and yammering about an upcoming sale at Nordstrom’s. On each desk stood an African violet in a clay pot.

  The women didn’t seem to notice his entrance, so he conspicuously nudged a plant out of his way. That got their attention. The woman on the left ended her monologue about the costs, both financial and emotional, of keeping her husband in up-to-date neckties, rose from her chair and crossed to the counter. “May I help you?”

  He gave her his sweetest Sunday-school smile. “You’re the manager here, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m looking for Pamela Hayes. She owns a unit on the upper floor.”

  The woman glanced over her shoulder at her companion, and they exchanged a meaningful fluctuation of eyebrows. Then she turned back to him. “Ms. Hayes does own a unit here, but we’re not a missing persons bureau, Mr....?”

  He didn’t supply his name. “Is she missing?”

  “This is the management office. We don’t keep tabs on the owners. If someone has a noise complaint or needs a plumbing repair, we take care of it. But if you’re looking for someone who happens to own a unit, we can’t really help you.” She peeked over her shoulder once more, and her buddy gave her an approving nod.

  Rage had always been a problem for him, and he engaged in a silent bout with it. The Sunday-school smile remained unaltered, though. He had learned to compensate for his bad temper by being a good actor, never showing his hand until it was time to collect his winnings. “I’ve been trying to reach Pamela for days,” he said smoothly. “I’m beginning to worry that maybe something’s wrong. You know, like, maybe she’s lying on the floor in a pool of blood or something.”

  The woman grew pale. Another beseeching glance toward her colleague, who stood and approached the counter. “Ms. Hayes is out of town,” the second woman said.

  Just what he’d expected. If the slut had been lying in a pool of blood on the floor, it would have been because he’d found her.

  “Can you tell me where she is? I mean... See, she and I were dating. We had a big fight. I admit I was rotten to her. I want to send her flowers, that’s all. I just want to make it up to her.”

  “Maybe you should contact her family. Really, we can’t help you with this.”

  “You know where she is, though, don’t you?”

  “No,” both women said together.

  The rage licked at him, small, hot flames searing the edges of his mind. “But you must be forwarding her mail.”

  “No,” the first woman said. “The post office stopped delivering her mail about a week ago. I assume they’re holding it for her.”

  “Or forwarding it directly,” the other woman added.

  The flames drew closer, grew larger. He pounded his fist against the counter. The two women flinched simultaneously. “Damn it, someone must know where she is! I’ve got to find her!” Calm down! Don’t blow it! “I mean, if I can’t get a dozen red roses to her right away, she’ll never forgive me.”

  The first woman moved back to her desk and lifted the phone. “I’m calling Security,” she said. “Please leave now.”

  Ass. He shouldn’t have punched the counter. If he’d had to hit something, he should have hit one of the women, square in her pinchable double-chin. Then the other one might have opened up, spilled the beans, told him where the hell Pamela Hayes had run off to.

  Now it was too late. Things were going to get messy if the authorities showed up.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, it’s just my broken heart talking, okay? I’m upset, is all. I love that girl more than life itself.”

  “Well, then,” the second woman said. The first continued to punch buttons on the phone. “Why don’t you go home and write her a nice letter? I’m sure the post office will forward it to her.”

  “Okay, yeah, that’s what I’ll do,” he said, retreating to the door and out. He loped across the chilly chrome-and-marble lobby and out of the building, into the dense June fog. He was in his car, tearing out of the parking lot, before anyone in a uniform could reach the building.

  The flames of his anger still nipped at him, crackled and glared. No, he wasn’t going to write Pamela Hayes a letter.

  She hadn’t shown up at her office in a full week. Obviously she’d taken a powder. Mick was going to have to track her down.

  He had to, before the D.A. put together a new case against him. He had to find that big-eyed, big-mouthed bitch and shut her up before she caused him any more problems. It was her own fault, really. She shouldn’t have been where she was when she was, snooping, watching, witnessing things that weren’t supposed to have witnesses. If only she hadn’t been there, he’d be a free man today.

  But as long as he wasn’t free, neither was she. She’d seen him, she’d spoken against him, and now she was going to pay.

  All Mick had to do was find her.

  ***

  DEEPER AND DEEPER, Pamela thought as she studied the blurred diagram Joe had sketched on a textured napkin at the Shipwreck last night. The ink had bled in spots, and his handwriting left a great deal to be desired. She could find scarcely any resemblance between his drawing and the map she’d obtained from the Chamber of Commerce six days ago, when she’d cruised the last few weary miles of Route One onto the isl
and and comprehended that she had truly, literally gone as far as she could go.

  One part of her considered Jonas Brenner her salvation: marry him and she’d be under his wing. Surely the matron saints of feminism would forgive her for shucking her own last name and submerging her identity within a man’s. Once her arrangement with Joe had run her course and she divorced him, she could go back to being Pamela Hayes.

  But another part of her couldn’t shake the frightening notion that rather than saving herself, she was sinking deeper and deeper into trouble. Her mind conjured the image of a person in quicksand who, instead of stretching out and floating on the ooze, tried to fight her way out and wound up being sucked down to her death. The woman staring at her from the mirror above the scratched dresser looked an awful lot like someone trapped in quicksand.

  Sighing, she turned away from her wan reflection and gazed at the neat, stark efficiency apartment that had been her home for the past few days. She suspected the apartment building had once been a motel; her front door opened onto a second-floor balcony that ran the length of the building to a flight of stairs on either end. The exterior was ticky-tacky tropical—faded pink stucco, wrought-iron railings, rippling roof tiles that were just a bit too orange to be believable. The interior was just plain tacky—carpeting rough enough to file one’s nails on, ceilings textured to resemble cottage cheese, a kitchenette as small as a coat closet and furniture constructed of cardboard-thick wood held together with paste.

  She wondered what Joe’s house looked like, and his furniture. As an architect, she used to think such things mattered.

  Now all that mattered was saving her neck.

  She opened the front door, stepped out onto the balcony, and glanced toward Kitty’s windows. The curtains were drawn. It was nearly eleven o’clock; Joe had told Pamela to arrive at his house in time for lunch. If Kitty was still sleeping, Pamela didn’t want to disturb her.

  She reentered her own apartment, crossed to the dresser and studied her image in the mirror one last time. The word drab sprang to mind.