by Brewer, Gil
Three times in my life I’d been up against a similar situation. Guys with guns. Only they used them. One slug was still in my left side. They didn’t want to dig for it. It hurt sometimes. The doc said it would eventually work itself out. The guy that did that had died on his feet a moment after shooting me. I didn’t like thinking about that.
I leaned over and grabbed the front of his slicker, dragged him to his feet. He was sick-eyed. I shoved him around the table onto the bench.
“What are you to Ivor Hendrix?” I said.
The hound rampaged outside. The guy stared at me.
I reached out and slammed my fist against the side of his face. He tipped over. I sat him up again.
“What are you to Ivor Hendrix?” I said.
His eyes steadied. “A friend.”
“What were you doing, sneaking around here?”
“Kind of neighbor,” he said. “I was rabbit hunting. I saw your car and thought I ought to investigate.”
“You a watchdog?”
His eyes swam, then saw me again.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Gamba. Vince Gamba. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“Sure you do.”
Behind his eyes he wanted me to believe he was suddenly tired of all this.
He said, “She hasn’t been around. I haven’t seen her husband lately, either. I was kind of keeping an eye on the place.”
“You and your dog. You got him trained to kill?”
“Sometimes Buck gets excited.”
We watched each other for a moment, like a couple of Jap wrestlers getting set to kick low.
He said abruptly, “Why are you asking me all these things? Who are you? You a cop?”
I said, “You and Carl Hendrix friends?”
“I told you. We’re neighbors.”
I leaned down and put my face closer to his. “How do neighbors fit in?” I said.
“Damned if I’ll tell you anything else.”
“You’re damned, then.” I reached out and took a handful of his soaked hair and wrenched his head back, then rolled the knuckles of my right fist roughly against his jaw. I didn’t have the stomach to hit him again.
“He was giving her a raw deal,” he gasped. “She’s always trying to do right by him. Come on, let go.”
I let go. He waved an arm around, indicating the trailer, then said, “Look how he takes care of her.”
“Concerned about that, eh?”
He clamped his lips tightly together.
“You answer the telephone, too?” I said.
“I don’t get you.”
I let that ride. I wasn’t sure about his voice, whether he’d been the one who answered the phone here when I called.
“How’s he giving her a raw deal?”
Something came over his face. He spoke softly. “Do what you like, I’m not saying anything else till I know who the hell you are.”
I took out a card and held it in front of his eyes. He read it, reached for it. I put it away. It jarred him slightly.
“What’s happened to her?”
I said, “How’s he giving her a raw deal?”
“With that pig.”
“What pig?”
“His sister-in-law. Ivor doesn’t even know—wouldn’t believe it, anyway.”
I lit a cigarette and stared at him. The cigarette tasted rotten. I went over by the sink, turned on the faucet and let it extinguish the ember. I popped the garbage can lid with my toe, and dropped the butt inside. There was nothing in the can but a half dozen or so paper airplanes. Some were crumpled as if they’d been hurriedly picked up.
“What’s happened?” he said. “Can’t you tell me what’s happened? Something must’ve happened.”
“Where does Hendrix hang out?” I said.
“Mostly down on First Street, in town. He bums around with a guy named Lager—Joe Lager. They’re drinking buddies.”
“Who else does he know?”
“I don’t know.”
“His sister-in-law married?”
He nodded. “A lush. A nympho and a lush.”
Outside the dog whined mournfully.
“Get up and get out of here,” I said.
He looked at me, puzzled. I took his shotgun out of the sink, turned and tossed it at him. He was half up. He caught it, sat down, then came to his feet.
“Okay,” I said. “Out you go.”
He walked past me and out of the door. I went over and picked up my slicker, shook it, got it on, flipped the wall switch. I stepped outside, closed and locked the door. He stood there watching me in the fine rain. I pocketed the key.
The hound’s ears lifted and he sniffed at the air. His coat was plastered with mud and he was nervous. Abruptly, he turned and galloped for the cement block house.
In the gray light of early darkness, the dog leaped scratching at the closed door of the cement house.
“Come on, Buck—Buck!” Gamba called hoarsely.
The hound turned and looked at him, and for some reason my heart pulled into my throat. The hound had been taught to obey. Finally, it whined along the ground toward its master, keening with clenched teeth.
Vince Gamba turned and walked off toward the lake. He moved over a low knoll. The hound bellied after him. They vanished into the woods.
I could hear him talking to the hound in a low voice, then the world was a wet silence again.
I wondered if he knew about the body. I wondered if he could be the “person” Ivor had refused to name. I wondered what she would do when I told her Carl was dead. I wondered what Haddock was thinking. I wondered what Asa Crafford would tell me.
Did the four hundred thousand tie in? Would it be smart for me to try and crack this thing on my own? Were the gods laughing?
I went back inside the trailer and phoned Hoagy Stills, an old friend, a ballistics expert with the lab crew of the department. He might know some inside dope on the Laketown job. He might tell me. He was at his home, but sleeping. He worked nights and his wife wouldn’t wake him. I thanked her through my teeth.
Maybe it would be a good idea to drop the whole thing, go back to the office, and continue with cleaning up the mess my old man had left me. Maybe I should wait for something respectable to walk in my door.
I looked back across the years, searching for something respectable that had occurred to me in this business.
That way lay madness.
FIVE
SHE SAT on the couch and looked stunned.
“Dead,” she said softly.
“Somebody had to tell you,” I said. “I didn’t want you to read it in the papers. As it is, the police will probably locate you before long. I’m sorry.”
She kept on staring at me. Her eyes were glazed, and she was pale. She wasn’t seeing me. She was looking at something inside her head. The thick auburn hair shone in dull lamplight. She wore a soft aqua robe, belted tightly at the waist with a broad white sash, and except for the stunned expression she was lovelier than ever.
She swallowed slowly. “How could he die?”
This was never easy. “He was murdered.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Somebody didn’t want him to go on living, Ivor.”
She stood up. The robe opened the full length of long white thigh. She closed it with an absent brush of palm. I had been seated on the chair in front of the couch. I got up and went over to her.
“It’s all right,” I said foolishly. “Easy, now.”
The robe was made of thin soft material that looked wet in places where it clung to her body. There was nothing underneath the robe.
“No,” she said. She looked at me with the tragic eyes. The mouth was red and damp and soft, the lips parted. “Don’t you see? They’ll think I killed him.”
I thought of him lying out there and what had been done to him. I had seen plenty dead bodies, enough to pin down how long they’d been dead quite closely, as closely as an
ybody. “Don’t worry about that,” I told her as kindly as I could. “You were in Orlando, at Carl’s aunt’s. He’s been dead well over a week. You don’t have to worry.”
She stepped back. “Over a week? It couldn’t be.”
“Is, though.” I didn’t want to detail it. “I’m positive it’s not less than eight days.”
She was suddenly eager. “It’s not Carl.”
I reached for her. “Steady.”
“I tell you, it’s not my husband. I spoke with him on the phone day before yesterday. It was a short conversation—but I did talk with him.”
I was holding her shoulders. I let go. Neither of us breathed for a moment.
I said, “You told me he wouldn’t answer the phone.”
“Not since then—day before yesterday. He was very angry—I told you how he acted.”
“You’re absolutely certain it was your husband?”
“Positive.”
She lifted one hand suddenly and touched her face. “It’s Vince,” she said softly. “He’s killed Vince.” She paled. “I’m scared. He’s killed Vince, and now he’ll kill me.” She looked at me. “You’ve got to stop him. It’s plain now—he’s trying to find me.”
“You mean Vince Gamba?”
She fixed me with quizzical eyes.
“It’s not Vince Gamba,” I said. “I talked with him, out there. He was—around.”
She sat on the couch again. I tried to put myself in her place. It was a bad place to be in. The world had gone cockeyed for her. Nothing added up. I sat beside her.
She said, “Where did you find the dead man?”
I told her.
“What made you think it was Carl?”
I explained about the note I’d found written by her, and told her Carl’s wallet was in a pants pocket. She broke in.
“There’s something I haven’t told you. It didn’t mean anything till now. A few days before I left, a man came to see Carl. I don’t know who he was, except Carl said he was an old friend. Said his name was Bill Black, but I doubted it then.”
“Why?”
“The way he said it, I think. I know Carl didn’t like seeing him, at first. The man was sick. He asked Carl to put him up for a while.”
“What makes you think Carl didn’t want to see him?”
“They argued a lot. Always out of my hearing. Carl wouldn’t tell me what about. He can be very close-mouthed. Next thing, they were friends. Carl fixed him a place to stay in the little house you mentioned. It was fine for a day or so, then they began arguing again. It got pretty bad.”
“Why didn’t you do something?”
“I asked Carl to tell the man to leave, but he said to forget it. It was real wild, the way they swore at each other.”
“This guy Black have any luggage?”
“Two suitcases, yes. He came in his own car.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Well—medium. Light hair, shortish. Most of the time he wore a gray suit without a tie. He looked tired and not well. He drove a Ford, kind of beat-up. A light gray two-door sedan, not a late model.”
I’d been thinking of the maroon Olds. “What year?”
“Maybe a forty-nine. I’m not good at those things, but I know a forty-nine because I used to drive one.”
“Anything distinctive about the car Maybe a dented fender, something like that?”
She shook her head, then hesitated. “The right front hubcap was missing.” She took a deep breath. The front of her robe moved abundantly outward, the open flare of throat separating to reveal the lush tops of large, smooth breasts.
I mentioned the note, wondering if the body could be this Bill Black and how the note and Carl’s wallet got into his pocket. “You asked Carl to hit Elk for some dough.”
“He owes it to us. Elk and Carl were starting a contracting business. Carl sank everything we had into it.” She shrugged. “Elk backed down at the last minute. The money was all gone. He’d spent it. Carl was plenty hot about that.”
“He never got any of it.”
“Elk put him off. He’s had practice.”
I checked my watch. “I’m going to have to beat it. Time will count, if I’m going to help you.”
“Don’t worry about money,” she said. “I sold the car after you left this afternoon. I want you to help me—I know you don’t work for nothing.”
I made no comment. I wanted to ask her a lot of things. There was no time now.
“To think I wanted to go back to him,” she said. “I know why. It’s because I was afraid. I thought if I could talk to him everything would be all right again.”
“Yeah. But he threatened you.”
Her fingers clenched on the robe. “It was crazy. I know that now.” Her gaze was tight. “You’ve got to find him before he finds me. I know he means what he said, now.”
“You may be right, you may be wrong.”
“I don’t love him. I never want to see him.” She held my gaze. “I’m frightened—it won’t go away.”
I stood up. “Listen, I want you to go to another hotel, invent a different name, and sign in. Then keep phoning my office, and my home, till you reach me.” I gave her my apartment number. “There’s a lot more to this than I can explain right now.”
She stood up and came close to me.
I asked her about pictures of Carl. She got her purse and took out a jeweled wallet and handed me three snapshots. I put them in my pocket.
“I’m still frightened, Lee,” she said. “But you’ve made me feel an awful lot better. Better than I’ve felt in years.”
I couldn’t see why. I’d done nothing. But it was very hard to think of her as a client. I took her hand in both of mine.
“You do as I say,” I told her. “As fast as you can. We’re a long way into the woods, and we’re going deeper. We want to be sure of a way out. Okay?”
“Okay, Lee.”
We looked at each other. It was enough to make you lock the doors and pull down the shades. I got the faintest whiff of that perfume again. I let go of her hand, snagged my slicker off the chair, and got out of there fast.
SIX
I TURNED ON the light. The office waiting room hadn’t cleaned itself. I closed the door, checking for mail. Six days in the home town had brought nothing to this waiting room except unpaid bills, morning and evening papers, and stray notes of condolance. There was the same creaky rattan furniture I remembered as a kid, and thick dust. I was glad she hadn’t come here.
The inner office was worse. I turned on the desk light. I’d been sorting, filing, every day since pulling in from California. Stuffed manila folders were stacked on file cabinets, desk, chairs, everywhere. Loose papers and books littered the floor, along with old tobacco tins, gnawed and broken pipes, a couple of raddled fly swatters, and other aged and even nostalgic junk, like a sack of marbles—selected cat’s eyes and steelies I remembered having back in grammar school. My old man had left me a mess.
I sat behind the desk in the old swivel chair. The phone directory was on the floor. I heaved it up on the desk and lit a cigarette.
James Baron was still in this room. A human being doesn’t leave a place in which he’s lived and worked for over a quarter of a century just because he dies.
For years he’d been after me to throw in with him, help him make something of the agency. I’d been too much of a fool to know for certain that all I wanted to be was a good private cop. So when I finally made up my mind and figured to burst in on him and surprise the hell out of him, he was already three days dead.
I phoned Hoagy Stills’ home again. His wife said he was still sleeping. She would appreciate it if I’d cease calling. The ringing phone might wake him.
I checked the directory. There was an Elk Crafford listed at 7 Canawlside Drive, over on Grove Point. I wanted to see him, or his wife. I thought about his wife, remembering her as Ivor’s long-legged kid sister. She’d been a pretty wild kid, and I wondered how she’d be now. Thi
nking about her letters to Carl reminded me I needed a shower.
At my apartment in Bahama Shores, I shaved, took a fast shower, and finally quit thinking about what I’d heard of Asa Crafford. I got dressed. I wore my brown sharkskin and a pair of crepe-soled shoes. I felt wide awake; crisp, hard, hot and hungry.
In the living room, I stared at the phone. It didn’t ring. I decided to give it half a chance.
I went through the evening paper. Nothing new on the Laketown robbery. Out in the kitchen, I poured half a water glass full of bourbon, took a swallow, had a flash.
I remembered seeing a large carton of newspapers in a closet down the hall by the fire exit. I got that, hauled it back to the kitchen, and set it on the table.
There was a summing-up story on the Laketown job in a week-old Journal. I took my glass of whisky and the paper into the other room, sat in the one comfortable chair facing the big window overlooking Tampa Bay, and started checking.
Close to four hundred thousand dollars. A lolloping sack of jack. Sheriff’s Department theorized getaway car headed south, maybe Miami. Whoever pulled it had sure scraped the paint. His one bad slip was creaming a guy named McCarthy, a teller, with a .32. It was hard to figure anybody planning to rob a bank with a .32. Two men in the robbery, so far as was known. They had come up with a fresh witness, a Mrs. Cargy Johnson. Mrs. Johnson said: “I was scared to tell what I saw, but I’ve been thinking it over. It’s really not so much, but I thought it might help. I was in Union Trust Wednesday noon when it was held up and robbed. There were two men. The vault was open, just like the paper said. But what I saw was, they had a big suitcase and that’s what they put the money in. A big brown leather suitcase, with leather straps and brass buckles. On the top were small black initials. Just as plain. It looked as if somebody had tried to scrape them off with a knife. They were ‘K. S. L.,’ “ she told the deputies.
My hands were cold as I reread those words. And I was out by that trailer in the rain, kicking tin cans, not a care in the world, staring into the trash pit where they burned things at the large brown leather suitcase, three-quarters burned, with the initials “K.S.—.” There had been no “L.” That was burned off.
