“Don’t you worry,” I assured him. “If Dekkert tries anything, I’ll knock his block off. Whatever you tell me is just between us pals, Poochie.”
The beachcomber was really jumpy now. He only knew that someone was dead, and that nobody around here liked him, and that he was liable to get throttled if he said too much.
Gently I said, “Now, just tell me when you saw him.”
The little guy was shaking his head, almost frantically. “He’s there all the time, Mike. At that place. When lots of people come, he always comes too. He caught me at the garbage cans one time, when I was looking for meat for my cats. He hit me, a bunch of times, and he woulda hit me more, only some lady yelled at him from a car and he just told me to get the heh... to get out of there.”
“At the yellow-haired lady’s place, Pooch... was he always outside?”
I figured Dekkert for doing security and helping cars get parked.
“Not just outside. I watched out for him, ’cause I didn’t wanna get hit, but I guess he was inside most of the time. I stayed in the bushes so he wouldn’t see me, but I always saw him, coming out the door where the garbage cans are. He came out sometimes and went down to the little place with some men.”
“Little place?”
“By the trees. That little house.”
The gazebo.
I asked, “Did you follow him? Did you ever hear what they spoke about?”
Poochie shook his head slowly. “No sir, not me. I never went near ’em.”
Well, that was that. The gist of it seemed to be that Dekkert was there strictly as a strong-arm. He’d be good at that. I wondered if those little sojourns to the gazebo were to put the squeeze on a welcher. Nice out-of-the-way place for it.
And it was no wonder that the cops had started beating the bushes for Sharron Wesley a week after her vanishing act—without her around, there’d be no regular weekend “party” out at that ocean-side casino. Maybe Dekkert was interested in Sharron’s sudden departure because, as his employer, she owed him some cash.
It was later than I thought. I slapped my hat back on and was about to say good night to Poochie, but I never got that far. His mouth was open and his tongue fell loosely over his bottom lip. But his eyes were as glassy as beads and focusing over my shoulder.
“Mike!” he blurted.
Poochie’s skinny frame hit me before I could move.
There was a smashing roar in the room and the acrid fumes of cordite blasted at me.
CHAPTER FIVE
We hit the floor together.
My head connected hard with the edge of a crate on the way down and I could feel my eyes film. For a few seconds tiny particles of fire burned my cheek, then the whole side of my face felt as if it were lying in a brazier of hot coals. I pushed Poochie’s limp form from me and fought my way to my feet.
The shot had come through the pane-less window. I yanked the .45 from under my shoulder, thumbed off the safety, kicked the slide back. I threw the shack’s crude door open and dashed outside.
The beach was deserted.
No overt sounds interrupted a silence that wasn’t really silence at all, wind whispering over sand, waves lapping, trees rustling, my watch ticking. A motorboat, not close enough to have carried away the assailant, put-putted along, no telling how far out, the way wind carried sound on the water.
The moon showed me footprints in the sand by the window, but they led to the line of trees up and back, behind the shack. Where the sand gave way to grassy land, I bent down and laid my ear to the ground. Somebody was running, running hard. Very faintly, I picked up the footsteps, but they grew steadily fainter and died out altogether.
He was gone.
The bastard.
Holstering the .45, I ran back to the shack. Poochie was prostrate on the floor, blood seeping through his shabby robe. I ripped away the t-shirt beneath and examined the wound. It was high up against his neck. The bullet had gone through cleanly, not touching the bone, missing the jugular vein by a hair.
I pulled a handkerchief from my hip pocket and tore it in half, then made a compress of each section and pressed it to the openings of the hole. I tore off the tail of my shirt and tied it around his neck to hold the compresses in place.
Poochie’s eyes flickered once. He smiled, and passed out again. The little dope had tried to take that bullet for me. He had deliberately thrown himself in front of me to save my life. By God, from now on he was going to stay under my wing.
And if he died somebody was going to leave this world screaming with a broken back.
He was light as a feather in my arms. I cradled him as gently as I could and half-ran to the Wesley house. By the time I reached the car, I was panting heavily. That trek through the sand had taken it out of me. I gently rested Poochie down in the passenger’s seat, then got behind the wheel and backed out of the driveway and took off for town like a bat out of hell.
That heap of mine was a pre-war number that looked like nothing but was really something, with good rubber and a souped-up engine. Trees blew by like a giant picket fence as I cut down the middle of a highway that was all mine, hitting one hundred by the time the modest twinkling of lights announced Sidon.
I went through the city with my hand on the horn. Parked cars glared at me with the reflection of my brights in their unlit headlamps as I swept by. A few lights were on and there was a small crowd stuffed in Big Steve’s place—probably reporters. In front of the grocery I braked to a stop. The two floors above the grocery were Dr. Moody’s office and living quarters. I hoped my old drinking buddy wasn’t on a Saturday night bender.
But Dr. Moody opened the door, looking crisp and alert in what was likely his one and only suit. As the coroner, he’d had to inspect Sharron Wesley’s corpse and he was still dressed for the occasion. His eyes flared at the sight of the little guy I had carried up two flights like Daddy conveying a slumbering child to a bedroom.
“What have you got there, Mike?”
“Gunshot wound. Where’ll I put him?”
Moody led us back down a flight to his offices on the second floor, unlocking the door quickly as I carried the unconscious Poochie into a small waiting room, ancient but clean. The doc pointed to a door, which he opened for us, and I lugged Poochie in. The examining room was done up as well as any hospital’s, and just as completely. The old boy may have been a drunkard, but he still knew his stuff.
As gently as possible, I laid the unmoving form down on the examining table with its crisp white paper. Moody was washing his hands at a gleaming sink. When he finished, he came over and unfastened the crude bandages I had applied and inspected the wound.
I asked, “How does it look?”
“He’ll live.”
“I like the sound of that diagnosis.”
“Maybe so, but little Poochie here came really close to cashing in. We’ve graduated from a severe beating to a nearly fatal gunshot wound. What the hell happened this time?”
As I told him, Moody cleansed and dressed the wound. Together we got Poochie out of his rags down to his skivvies and slid him into a white gown. The doc cranked the examining table into a prone position and made sure his unconscious patient had his head comfortably positioned. The little guy was still out. I guess the shock of it was too much for him.
Moody crooked his finger for me to follow him, and I did, back out into the waiting room. We took a couple of chairs and I scooted mine to face him.
“Mike, you’ll have to leave him here with me for a few days.”
I gave him a quick look. “Why, Doc? It’s a clean wound—in and out.”
“Infection. That and shock are real possibilities. I know Poochie pretty well, and his habits, from eating to exercise, aren’t conducive to good health—his kind doesn’t have much resistance to this sort of thing. He’s little more than a hobo, Mike.”
“He makes his way in the world okay.”
“Yes he does, under normal conditions. But right now, no—he’ll be b
etter off where I can keep an eye on him.”
“Listen, Doc,” I said, “somebody took a shot at me and that little guy stepped in front of it—stepped into it—purposely. I owe him. He saved my life, and if anything happens to him, I’ll rip this lousy town wide open.”
Moody was raising his hands in surrender. “Nothing will happen.”
“You don’t get it yet, Doc. Some bastard tried to murder me... and Poochie was staring at the window at the time. He saw who did it... and I want him to be able to talk.”
Moody sighed, thought that over. Then he prescribed me a cigarette and I took him up on it.
We lit up.
“You know, Mike,” he began, “I am fully aware of the deplorable conditions in this town. As a doctor, I have the questionable distinction of being connected with the so-called local legal system as police coroner. However, that service is rendered by me purely as a protective measure.”
He pulled heavily on his cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling and continued.
“I was a good doctor once,” he said. “I had a fine practice and a family, over in Wilcox... but I lost that family at one blow. It happened when our car overturned while coming home from a trip. From then on I went to pieces. I began drinking, realizing the consequences that would follow, but not caring. Naturally, my practice dropped off. Before I went completely to pot, I moved to Sidon with all my equipment. The police coroners offered me the post and I took it so that, in any event, I would still have an income. As the only doctor, I do have a small practice here in town. I’ve been careful to limit my self-sedation to off-hours. I can honestly say I have never endangered any patient’s life with my... weakness.”
“So what do you think of the local law, and the angles they play?”
“They stink—the cops and their angles. You’ve been here enough times, Mike, to know that the town operates solely for the profits it derives from its summer visitors. As long as the political system assists the local populace in getting the almighty dollar, a populace that overlooks the methods practiced in doing so, they keep the system in place and intact. Of course, by now the system has its hooks so far into the people that they have to vote a certain way, to protect their own interests.”
“I figured that out in about fifteen seconds. What about Sharron Wesley? How does she figure? Or I should say, how did she?”
Moody squinted at me curiously. “How much do you know about her?”
“Just about everything,” I told him.
Maybe I was making a mistake, admitting that. Moody’s disapproval of the local “system” didn’t lessen his obligation to the dirty cops and corrupt public officials who provided him with a pay check.
But so what if anything got back to those sons of bitches? If I was stepping on toes, I didn’t give a damn. I’d just as soon smash every goddamn toe in that system Moody complained about. There was nothing that I had to lose, and if they felt like playing rough, they were walking right up my alley in the dark.
Where I’d be waiting for them.
Unexpectedly, Moody said, “Mrs. Wesley put that mansion of hers at the disposal of certain influences and operated it as an all year-round gambling house.”
“Certain influences? Such as?”
He smiled at me, the eyes behind the wire-rim glasses surprisingly bright. But then so was his drink-veined nose. “That I don’t know, Mike. I’m sure it wasn’t anyone here in town.”
“Hell, don’t tell me that Mayor Holden and the cops weren’t in on it! Those guys are chiselers from way back.”
“Oh, our glorious mayor and Chief Beales and his corrupt crew, they all have an interest all right... or had. Don’t underestimate Holden—he looks like a smalltime burgomaster, but he is one shrewd article. You can be sure that a nice slice of the profits line his pockets too.”
I grunted a laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. I’d be willing to bet that if the proceeds of Sharron Wesley’s indoor playground were matched against the town’s yearly take, it would make the legitimate stuff look like a drop in the bucket.”
The doctor said nothing. He snubbed the butt out in a tray built into the waiting-room chair. Then he closed his eyes. He sat that way for damn near a minute, and then finally opened his eyes and stared at me. They had a twinkly cast now.
“You’re a very impetuous person, Mike. Like everybody in Sidon, I read a New York City paper or two, and your... exploits, shall we call them... have made you a celebrity of sorts, and a notorious character. So naturally, what you’ve done so far on your Sidon ‘getaway’ is all over town. I won’t say I disapprove of your activities, either. In fact, I’d like to help you. I’m not that far gone as a dipso. What is your next step?”
“Ha.” I grinned at him. “That depends on a lot of things, Doc. Are you really serious about helping me?”
“Quite.”
“Swell. The first thing you can do is, forget about reporting this gunshot wound.”
Moody nodded.
“You have a nurse that comes in?”
He nodded again.
“Well, she and nobody is to know you have a temporary roommate in Poochie. Keep him in your private apartment, and don’t let him stick his head out a window, much less hike back to that shack of his. Tell him his cats’ll do fine for a couple days.”
“All right.”
“And when he comes to, let me know.”
Another nod.
“Now,” I said, “the other thing you can do is give me the inside dope on Sharron Wesley’s death. The coroner eye-view.”
He sighed. “Very well. Death by strangulation—I’d say about a week ago—with the body immediately thrown into the water. Somehow, she was taken from the ocean before being turned into that grotesque display in our city park.”
“How do you know it was the ocean?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Salt water on her body, sand particles peculiar to this region ground into her skin, seaweed in her hair...”
I grunted an okay and he went on.
“I would estimate her body was placed on the statue about two hours from the time it was found. That’s as close as I could place that—I checked the humidity with a wet bulb thermometer and computed the rate of evaporation.”
Yup, the doc still knew his stuff.
He continued: “Tomorrow will be the autopsy, and I will be able to place the time of her death more closely, if you think it necessary.”
“No, that’s good enough, Doc. It is damn funny, though, that the corpse was reclaimed from the ocean. That’s what we detectives call ‘suggestive.’”
“Suggestive of what, Mike?”
“That it didn’t have to be the murderer who placed Godiva’s waterlogged corpse on her stone horse. That one incident has all the makings of fouling this case up.”
The doc’s eyes were slitted behind the lenses of his wire-rims. “Why would the killer... or for that matter, someone else... make such a display out of the Wesley woman’s remains? A week later? There has to be a reason behind it, Mike. As a detective you must know that.”
“Sure, there’s a reason for every killing, and reasons for every aspect of any killing—only some of them are too damn complicated to figure on the spot. But it’ll come to me, Doc.”
He chuckled and nodded. “I’m sure it will, Mike. I’m sure it will.”
I got up to go and Moody walked me to the door.
Before I left I told him, “Doc, you may be on the square with me, but I don’t know that for sure. I mean no offense, but remember—if anything happens to Poochie, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
“I understand,” he said somberly. “You can have him back in a day or two. I can get in touch with you at the hotel?”
“Yes, but leave no messages. You talk to Velda or me, and not any hotel clerk. Actually, even if you get me or Velda, don’t mention anything. Nothing about Poochie. Just say we need to talk, and I’ll call you from a pay phone.”
“Loose l
ips sink ships.”
“Yeah,” I said. I opened my suit coat and showed him the .45 in the speed rig, and winked. “But then so does heavy artillery.”
When I got downstairs, I wiped some of the blood off the car-seat cushions and drove back to the hotel.
Velda was waiting for me in the lobby, which was otherwise almost empty.
I said, “Thought I saw reporters in Big Steve’s diner.”
She nodded. “They swarmed in here like locusts, then swarmed out. When they get back, maybe we can camp out in the bar and see what they’ve learned.”
“Don’t bother,” I said, keeping my voice down. “I just talked to Doc Moody myself.”
She glanced around. The skeletal night clerk was on duty again. He was staring at us the way a sailor on a long overdue shore leave eyes a curvy dame.
“Let’s go up to my room,” she said.
Like that was an invitation I’d turn down.
She steered me up the stairs and down the hall. She worked the key in the lock and I opened the door for her and closed it behind us. That was when she noticed the red stains on my coat.
The big beautiful brown eyes showed white all round. “Mike... you’re hurt!”
She reached for me but I held her off.
“Not me. This is Poochie’s blood.”
“Poochie! Mike, what the hell happened?”
I told her while I cleaned the coat with water from a basin.
She listened intently. When I’d finished she said, “Then you have all the details on the Wesley woman. That’s exactly what I learned.”
“Where?”
“The hotel bar’s pretty busy on a Saturday, even before the reporters showed. For some reason, men just like to buy me drinks and talk to me.”
“Yeah, that’s a tough one to figure.”
“So what’s next on the docket?”
“We’re driving to New York tomorrow, Velda. Pat should have something for me and I want do some digging that can’t be done over the phone.”
This time, surprisingly, she didn’t want to go with me. She was sitting on the edge of her bed. “Why not leave me here?”
Lady, Go Die! Page 7
