Drop it he told himself. Drop it and forget it.
He knew he couldn’t forget it.
You’ve got your own problems, he thought. Don’t get anxious for any more. Then he looked back into the rear-vision mirror and saw a dark sedan behind him and something clicked in his mind and he knew that the sedan had been following him ever since he had pulled out of Matachogue.
The sedan followed him onto the Southern State Parkway and then into the Belt System and the Cross Island Parkway, past LaGuardia Field and onto the Triborough Bridge across Ward’s Island into Manhattan. It was behind him when he paid the toll on the bridge and when he turned south again on the F.D.R. Drive. At Ninety-Sixth he turned right, toward Central Park, then right again, and parked on Lexington going north, in the heart of East Harlem. The sedan double-parked half a block behind him and waited.
He took the envelope from the glove compartment and opened it and saw the thick wads of currency and the little typed slip with the names and addresses of half a dozen men he didn’t know, with the amounts neatly typed beside each name to indicate how much each man was to be paid. You could go a long way with this envelope, he thought. Mexico, South America, anywhere. Yes, and where will you be when you get there? Exactly nowhere, he told himself. He decided to ignore the car that had tailed him and went about the business of paying off Monte Bachore’s debts.
By two o’clock he had covered them all. They were all waiting for him, men who were strangers to him, men who looked at him without seeing him and who took the money without a word of thanks or acknowledgment and told him to blow. Wherever he went the sedan was close behind him, but he had no chance to see who was in it.
Carmody took the plum-colored Ford downtown and left it in a garage and walked to Forty-Second street and ate a light lunch in a cafeteria off Times Square. It was hot and humid and overcast in New York without any of the fresh wild wind that was blowing across the eastern tip of Long Island. While he ate he watched the big cafeteria windows and after a few minutes he saw the two blond brothers from Crescent Beach pause on the sidewalk and look in at him. Carmody looked at them and they stared at him in return and he went on eating his lunch and got up for an extra cup of coffee. When he had finished he went out of the cafeteria by another door, not in any hope of evading his followers but merely to put a little more distance between them and himself.
The library on Fifth Avenue a block away was cool and uncrowded. Carmody found his way to the reference room and exercised discipline in not turning his head every moment to see if he was still followed. The library guard told him where to go for the newspaper files he sought, and after a short wait Carmody settled down with a stack of microfilms dated three years back. It took five minutes to find the story on the murder of the square. The square’s name had been Albert V. Harkness, 41, from Des Moines, Iowa. Carmody read the name over and over again. It was the first time he had learned the name of Monte’s victim. The news stories were sketchy enough, otherwise. The man’s body had been found in the meadows beyond Flushing, by the side of the road, and foul play was suspected. The police planned an arrest soon. There were no other names in the news stories except those of the patrolman who had found the body and the assistant D.A. who had been interviewed by the reporters.
Carmody started to rewind the film when a hand came over his shoulder and closed on his wrist and he looked up and saw the two blond brothers behind him.
“Let’s go,” said the one who held him.
“Go where?” Carmody asked loudly.
“Back to the hotel, is all. Monte doesn’t want you to be wasting time in town.”
“To hell with Monte,” Carmody said, even more loudly. “I thought you took your pay from Paul Sloade.”
“Monte doubled it. Keep your voice down.”
There were angry looks and a few admonishing hisses from the others in the research room. Carmody saw the librarian put a finger to her lips in a gesture for silence. He pushed his chair back and made the legs scrape harshly on the floor with a screeching sound. The two blond men looked nervous and dismayed. They took positions flanking him, each holding an arm.
“Come on.”
“Suppose I like it here? Suppose I want to stay?”
The librarian came over and said: “Please, gentlemen.”
“These men aren’t gentlemen,” Carmody said. “They’re hoodlums.”
“Please!”
“All right,” Carmody said. “Let’s go.”
Chatz and Joe dropped their hands from him and he walked out between them. Carmody had nothing to say to them. He walked back to the garage where he had left the Ford and they fell back a little, content merely to follow him, and when the attendant got his new car he saw the sedan waiting double-parked on the street behind him.
He made no effort to escape as he drove back across Brooklyn and took the parkways east. Near Freeport it began to rain, and by the time he was beyond Babylon the traffic had lessened appreciably and he slowly stepped up his rate of speed when he started his windshield wipers. The sedan clung to his tail. He did not slow down when the parkway ended and the normal highway began. The rain grew heavier and the wind strengthened as he passed Sayville. The highway was empty of other cars for long stretches now. Every now and then the other car dropped out of sight behind a curve in the road. The third time it happened Carmody suddenly swung off Route 27 into a graveled road that headed toward Great South Bay. The Ford slewed and groaned and bounced and then the rear tires caught and kicked up a great spray of loose gravel and he straightened the swaying car and stepped on the accelerator again. He grinned as he saw the dark sedan turn with a long, violent skid into the road, almost ending up in the drainage ditch beyond the narrow shoulders.
There were a few houses on either side of the road, and then none at all, the land stretching out in the drowned flatness of reed-grown marshes. Carmody stepped up the speed to seventy. Over the lash of the wind and rain and the drumming of the motor he thought he heard the wild blaring of the other’s horn, behind him. Carmody’s mouth stretched in a mirthless grin again and he fed the engine more gas. The Ford bounced on the high arc of a narrow bridge, hit another almost immediately, slewed, and straightened as Carmody fought back at the wheel. Through the slashing curtains of rain he saw another side road open onto a causeway across the salt-water flats. He touched the brakes gently, touched them again, and once more. The Ford took the turn with a great sweep of water spraying from under the wheels. There was a hissing racket of gravel hitting the fenders and for a moment the landscape went spinning away as the car skidded in a complete circle, rocked over on two wheels, and then kept going in the direction Carmody wanted it to go. Through the rear-vision mirror he watched what happened to the sedan behind him.
He had counted on the stubborn obstinacy of the two brothers in carrying out their orders not to lose sight of him. As he let the Ford slow down he saw their attempt to take the curve as he had done, and he knew at once they would never make it. The sedan began to tip as it swung into the curve, and kept on tipping, rising on two wheels, rising higher and higher, and the arc of its turn began to flatten out and then it was off the road, plunging in air for the briefest of moments before it landed on its side with a great shattering crash and went sliding and slashing through the tall reeds, sending scattered splinters of guard rail hurtling in all directions.
Carmody stopped the Ford as the last echoes of the crash went rolling away across the rain-curtained marshes. There was no place to turn around on the narrow causeway, and he backed all the way up, his head out through the partly open door, squinting against the cold bite of the rain. When he was parked beside the gap broken in the guard rail, he got out into the lash of the wet wind and climbed down the embankment to the overturned car.
The water came halfway to his knees. He saw that the left-hand door had burst open and one of the blond men—Joe or Chatz, he never knew which—lay on his back on a small hummock with a broken leg oddly bent under him. His eyes were glaze
d by pain and his face was a mask of torment under the steadily beating rain. Carmody left him and looked inside the car and saw that the second brother was twisted on the floor just to the right of the wheel. He reached in and got a grip on the man and hauled him out. There was a lot of blood on the other’s face. He dipped into the marsh water and washed some of the blood away and saw the wounds were only superficial gashes. The blond man was still breathing. His pulse seemed to be all right. Carmody dragged him next to his brother with the broken leg and straightened, breathing lightly, and dug into his coat for a cigarette and struggled against the rain to get it lit. The smoke tasted cool and fresh against his palate.
“Take it easy,” he said to the two men.
Neither heard him.
He returned to the Ford and drove back toward the main highway and stopped at the first house he came to that had telephone wires strung to it. To the woman who answered the door, he said: “There’s been an accident half a mile toward the beach. Would you call an ambulance, please?”
“An accident?”
“Yes. Please call for an ambulance.”
Carmody looked down at his hands and tried to imagine how they would feel and look and play the piano if they were broken.
When the woman was telephoning for the ambulance, he left the house and got back into the new plum-colored convertible and drove on toward Crescent Beach.
9
THE morning of the day the ballroom was to open was still gray and blustery, with the southeast wind riding hard on the huge combers that crashed on the beach. Now and then the sun came out fitfully, but there was a chop to the water even in the protected yacht anchorage. Carmody watched the boats swing and bob at the ends of their mooring lines from his vantage point on Monte Bachore’s terrace at the hotel. Sam Link and Robbie Ravelle were having breakfast with Monte, getting their last instructions for the grand opening. Monte’s pink hole of a mouth smiled constantly with his gratification. He had been pleased with Carmody’s efficient discharge of his mission to New York the day before. He reflected it in his indifference when Carmody told him about the two blond brothers.
“I only put them on your tail to make sure you were a good boy, Bill,” Monte said. “No offense meant.”
“Didn’t you trust me?”
“I don’t trust anybody with all that money of mine.”
“Well, they’re in the hospital,” Carmody said.
Monte chuckled. “Their own fault But why did you do it?”
“I owed them something,” Carmody said.
Monte stroked his beard. “The maid tells me you went through my room yesterday before you left.”
“That’s right.”
“And did you find what you wanted?”
Carmody looked at the man’s bright black eyes. “No.”
“Don’t bother to look, again, Bill. You won’t find Lou Cannon’s letter that easily.”
“I realize that now.”
“I’m not sore about your looking, however.”
“That makes me very happy,” Carmody said.
“Is there something on your mind, Bill?”
“Yes,” Carmody said. “Irene Sloade.”
Sam Link stopped eating and looked at him with a shrewd, level stare. His mouth stayed open. Robbie Ravelle laughed, the sound rumbling in his big chest. Robbie looked fine and healthy today. Lila had been back at the house when Carmody returned last evening, but she was sullen and sulky because of Robbie’s fanatical jealousy. She had only gone for a long walk down the beach, she said. At the moment she was back at the Victorian monstrosity, sleeping late, as usual.
“Irene Sloade?” Monte asked softly.
Carmody stood looking at them all. “Don’t any of you wonder who killed her?”
“We don’t know she was killed,” Sam Link said mildly.
“Yes, we do.”
“And if so, does it bother you?” Monte asked.
“Quite a bit.”
Monte’s voice was cool and even, almost paternal. “Bill, it’s not a smart thing to let Irene Sloade bother you. Not smart at all.”
Sam Link stood up and went abound the table to Carmody. “How come you’re so sure she was killed?”
“One of us killed her,” Carmody said.
Sam Link tried to laugh and it came out as a twisted, uncertain whinny. “That’s something I always figured for a bum rap. Killing, I mean.”
“You wanted to kill Paul, didn’t you?”
“That was different.”
“And Robbie still wants to kill him, doesn’t he?”
“That’s Robbie’s business.”
“It’s my business, too,” Carmody said. “I think one of us framed Paul Sloade by killing his wife.”
“What difference does it make?” Sam insisted.
“I want to know.”
“Why?”
“I want to know,” Carmody said. “When did you first get to Crescent Beach, Sam?”
“You saw me arrive. You were on the beach with that Martha Courtney that morning. It was the morning you found Irene Sloade’s body.”
“You weren’t here before?”
“No.”
“Sam, you’re lying.”
“Now, look, music man—”
“You look, Sam,” Carmody said. He took the traffic ticket from his pocket and saw instantly by Sam Link’s face that Sam recognized it and knew he had forgotten about it and now saw the danger in it. “You were around here before Irene Sloade was killed. You and Robbie. You were tagged for speeding by Chief Hallowell.”
“There’s some mistake,” Sam Link said.
“You’re not thinking fast, Sam. You always were quick on your feet. All those years in Five, you were like a fat cat What’s the matter with you now? Where’s your answer?”
“I came here to case the pad, that’s all,” Sam said sullenly.
“With Robbie and Lila?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you sleep?”
“At a motel down the line.”
“And who killed Irene Sloade?”
“None of us,” said Sam. “I swear it.”
“I think you’re lying.”
Carmody felt Monte Bachore’s hand on his arm and heard Monte say, “Drop it. Drop it right now. Let it lay.”
He turned angrily. “I don’t want to drop it.”
“Suppose it was one of us?” Monte asked softly. “You’re in the same jackpot with the rest of us. Doesn’t that occur to you?”
Robbie Ravelle rumbled: “I think the music man needs a little warning, Mr. Bachore. So he won’t think and worry too much.”
“Keep your hands off me, Robbie,” Carmody said.
Ravelle started toward him, his silvery eyes blank, and with surprising speed Monte Bachore stepped between them. He looked like a small round doll standing in front of the giant and his hand was like a striking snake, slashing back and forth as he slapped Ravelle’s face. The sound of the blows was hard and crisp. Robbie’s head moved slightly but nothing changed in his flat coin eyes. Carmody expected Monte to be broken in two, but Robbie made no effort to defend himself.
Monte was shaking with anger.
“Wrap it up,” he said thickly. “Tie a string to it.”
“Let him come,” Carmody said.
Monte paid no attention to him. He spoke to Robbie. “You learn a little control, or you’ll be sorry, Robbie, you understand? I don’t want any of this nonsense, now or tomorrow or ever. No arguments, you hear? And you tell me about that speeding ticket.”
“It was like Sam said,” Robbie rumbled. “We cased the pad.”
“What about Irene?”
“We didn’t touch her.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I guess I’d remember, wouldn’t I?”
“I wonder,” Monte said “I just wonder.” He half turned to Carmody and held out his hand. “Give me that ticket.”
Carmody gave him the speed ticket and Monte looked at i
t and then tore it up and threw it on the breakfast table.
“That finishes it. Now take it easy today. We’re going to have a big night tonight, and I want all of you to be on your toes. When we open at ten this evening, I want all of you on hand, in dinner clothes, alert and smiling. Tonight we begin clipping the lambs.”
Carmody said nothing as he went out and down the stairs to the main lobby. Fragmentary sunshine splashed on the yacht basin outside, and a few of the more intrepid yachtsmen were readying their craft for a morning sail. Carmody saw Dunning in one of the deck chairs on the big veranda and went over to him. He had sent Dunning some of his scores.
“Good morning.”
Dunning kept his eyes closed in his lean hatchet face. “Ah. The young genius. Your music is in New York, Bill. I sent it all in to George Tighe with my enthusiastic blessings. I think you have a job with us this fall.”
“Thank you,” Carmody said. He wondered why he felt no great reaction. “Thanks a lot. I’m glad you liked it.”
“You show a tremendous lack of enthusiasm, young man. Are you worried about something?”
Carmody hesitated, then said: “Yes, I am. Martha Courtney.”
“I thought so. I imagined she would be on your mind. I’ve watched you looking at her when she was with Paul Sloade.”
Carmody smiled ruefully. “Does it show?”
“To me, perhaps. I think to Martha, too. Why don’t you do something to stop it?”
“Stop what?”
“End Paul’s attentions to her. Paul is a dangerously smooth and attractive man. He won Irene and he just possibly may win Martha now.”
“You’re not serious.” Carmody looked inquiringly.
“I’m sure that Paul is.”
“Martha wouldn’t—”
“I have known Martha for a long time. Ever since she was a small child. She was remarkable then and she is more remarkable now. A fine, lovely young woman, much too good for the likes of Paul Sloade, as one says.”
“She won’t talk to me,” Carmody said. “I’ve tried.”
“You haven’t tried hard enough. She’s on the Apollo now. Why not pay her a visit?”
Say It with Murder Page 8
