Start Screaming Murder

by Talmage Powell

  She looked at me over the empty glass. “We came here as tourists, pure and simple. Bucks worked for us briefly. Then he quit. We haven’t seen him since.”

  “All pure and simple,” I said.

  “That’s right—and you can get the hell off this boat, Ed, or should I say Mr. Rivers?”

  “Maybe I’ll stick around and talk to your father.”

  “Alex will tell you the same thing I have.”

  “I don’t doubt that, D. D. But I’d like to hear it from him. There might be a minor variation or two.”

  “Not tonight,” she said. “Over the side with you, or I’ll radio the authorities.”

  She set the glass beside the chair. She stood up. Maybe it was the liquor, or she was dredging deep into her reserves. The weakness in her was gone now.

  I went over the side and got in the flat-bottom. As I cast off, I looked up at her. She’d followed me to the rail.

  “Ed….”

  I sat holding the oars while the skiff drifted a few feet.

  “Ed, thanks anyhow for fishing me out of the drink.”

  “Any time,” I said.

  As I rowed in, I reflected on the fact that she could have phrased it differently, taken a completely opposite mental attitude and point of view. After all, if I hadn’t gone out to the Sprite, she never would have fallen overboard and endangered her life in the first place.

  I docked the flat-bottom, walked down the rickety wooden pier, and spotted a light under the pines thirty yards or so away.

  The light came from a weathered, frame cottage that was mostly screened-in porch. At a table on the porch the bait camp operator was wolfing fish and hush-puppies, washing the grub down with coffee from a thick mug. He was still clothed only in jeans and sneakers. I wondered if he’d ever had a shirt on.

  Swarms of mosquitoes welting my hands and face, I knocked on the screen door. The proprietor belched comfortably, got to his feet, and picked up a newspaper from a pile of magazines on an old rattan chair.

  He cracked the door, reached out with the newspaper, and scared the mosquitoes off. Then he told me to come in.

  He took in my rumpled condition. “You lost my boat?”

  “No, it’s snugged in the slip.”

  “That’s good.” He returned to the table and resumed eating, having a wonderful time with handfuls of greasy mullet.

  He stopped eating when I moved to the table and shoved my identification under his nose. “Ed Rivers, the private cop. I’ve heard of you. Regular Tampa landmark, ain’t you. Only I told you the first time you was here, I don’t know nothing about the Sprite or the people on her. The water’s for free. She can anchor where she likes.”

  “You’re not at all curious.”

  “Nope. Don’t pay.”

  “The Sprite came from Peru.”

  “Did she?”

  “Not by herself,” I said.

  “Don’t seem likely, does it?”

  “There had to be a crew. Must be a deckhand or two kicking around someplace.”

  He continued eating, digging chunks of white flesh of mullet with his fingers and shoving them into the fish oil smear of his mouth. “I figure they’re Americans on the boat, or foreign folks with the right papers. Ain’t heard of no law getting broke. Don’t believe in poking my nose, neither.”

  I creased a twenty dollar bill and laid it beside his plate. A brown lump of hush-puppy stopped halfway to his mouth.

  “Two fellows,” he said. “They were on the Sprite when she dropped anchor.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “Heard them talking. Kincaid and Smith.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Don’t know.” He slid the twenty off the table. “They came ashore the day after she anchored. Way they acted, I figured they’d been in ship’s quarters long enough. Wanted pavement under their feet and bright lights around them.”

  “When was that?”

  “Couple weeks ago. Maybe longer. I think it was on a Thursday. You know how it is. Same hot sun, same sky day after day. Time don’t mean much.”

  “Have they been back?”

  He nodded. “Now and then.”

  “Like on a schedule?”

  “How would I know?”

  “What do they look like?”

  “I dunno. Just a couple guys.” He thought for a moment. “Dressed okay, talked polite. But tough. Not in the mouth or walk where it don’t count. Tough.”

  “You know the Scanlons?”

  “I’ve seen them.” He pinched up the last flecks of mullet. “They go out to the Sprite regular.”

  “They didn’t come in on her?”

  “Nope. Showed up the day she got in, though.”

  “Sounds like,” I said, “they came from some place else, arriving here specifically to meet the Sprite.”

  He grunted. He’d had his quota of talking for a week.

  Chapter Seven

  Maria Scanlon was waiting beside my car, a dumpy, drab figure in the early evening.

  “I recognized your car, Mr. Rivers,” she explained with a motion of her hand. “I wanted to see you. I’ve been trying to call your office.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Why … Bucks Jordan—and you.” Her sturdiness of stance misfired. She looked lonely. On her face was an unhealthy eagerness.

  “I wanted to give you a chance to explain,” she said. She licked her lips. Her eyes glinted with a sensual willingness to partake of the troubles of a world gone wrong.

  “Lady, I don’t follow you.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” she coaxed.

  “But there’s no explanation to make.”

  She laid her hand on my arm. “You can trust me. You were looking for Bucks. A little later I heard on the newscasts that he was dead, beaten to death.” She leaned toward me and I automatically leaned back. “Were you forced to fight for your life?”

  “The last time I saw you, Mrs. Scanlon, you were defending Bucks.”

  “Alex was being unjust to him. But Bucks is dead now.”

  “Beyond help.”

  “Yes. He doesn’t have to be vicious any longer.” She let her hand slide down my arm and fall at her side. “Once he had the innocence of a child, like the rest of us. As you yourself had. Life has put some rough edges on you…. Oh, they’re very visible to me. But it isn’t too late. If you were defending yourself….”

  “Do you know why I wanted to see Bucks?”

  “I suspect the reason,” she said. “He must have had something you wanted.” Unconsciously, her gaze flicked toward the dark hulk of the Sprite riding silently in the bay.

  “You know what he took off the schooner?” I asked.

  “I’m not aware….”

  “Kincaid and Smith were after the same thing. Two of them looking for Bucks, weren’t they?”

  “Kincaid and Smith … You know them?”

  “Come on,” I said coldly. “Bucks made the heist and the panthers were set loose. Where are they now?”

  “I think you’re confused.”

  “Then you better clear me on a point or two,” I said.

  She wheeled and started away. I grabbed her arm harder than I intended and jerked her toward me. She grimaced and half-kneeled in sudden pain. “I understand,” she said softly. “It’s the mode of action that’s been instilled in you.”

  “Get off the pink cloud, Maria, and start talking.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “You’re acting very wrongly.”

  “Kincaid and Smith,” I said.

  “I wanted to help you, to understand. But I can’t reach you, can I?”

  “Yes, and you’re tiring me.”

  “I won’t hold this against you,” she said. She remained in that bent-over position, accepting the pressure on her arm, absorbing pain. Her face twisted up to me. Her eyes held a peculiar light of joy, as if in this moment she found a sense of sacrifice and satisfaction. Her passive resistance had the qualit
y of a cloying, enveloping fog, which cannot be driven back by throwing your fists into it.

  I shoved her away. “For your information, I didn’t kill Bucks. So don’t waste your sympathy on me.”

  “Pity is never wasted, Mr. Rivers.” She turned quickly and walked away.

  I hesitated; then I went around to the driver’s side of the car.

  As I opened the door, I heard footsteps approaching. A man said, “Hey, you.”

  I turned. He was a tall, rangy, rawboned man of about thirty. He had a lazy, lean face and jet-black hair that gleamed in the half light.

  He took a final hard pull on his cigarette, dropped it, and ground it in the sand.

  “Your name Rivers?” He had a deep-South accent.

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought I saw my wife over here.”

  “Mrs. Scanlon? You did.”

  He slipped his fingers under his belt and stood with his arms crooked. I’ve seen southern farmers and hillbillies in the identical position. His eyes were a lazy mask.

  “I’m Jack Scanlon,” he said.

  “Pleased to know you.”

  “Yeah,” he said flatly. “What was she talking about?”

  “Bucks Jordan.”

  “Yeah,” he laughed. “Her latest missionary project.”

  “Late is the word.”

  “That’s right, isn’t it? She’s always got one. Once she dressed a tramp up and took him to the Court of The Two Sisters for dinner. But she’s a good kid in spite of it.”

  He looked in the direction she had taken. “Only don’t take anything she says serious.”

  “Thanks, I won’t.”

  “You’re the fellow looking for Bucks, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Only somebody beat you to him.”

  “It looks like it.”

  “So now what are you looking for?”

  I looked at him. He looked at me. We measured each other. He found amusement from some source and expressed it in a laugh. “Whatever it is, you won’t find it here.”

  “I’ve got plenty of time,” I said.

  “Well, now, a man never knows for sure about those things.”

  He gave me a mock salute as a good-by gesture and moved away without apparent hurry.

  I heard the echo of footsteps on the wooden pier, then the dip of oars as a small boat went sliding out to the Sprite.

  The schooner, I decided, wasn’t as sound as I’d thought at first. There were worms in the woodwork. I had a hunch they’d be quiescent for a short spell, waiting and watching, forming a decision. Then the worms would show some fangs.

  My discomfort right then wasn’t due wholly to the starchy stiffness of my salty, dried clothes. I yearned for some bosom buddies named Lieutenant Steve Ivey and the Tampa police department.

  The people of the Sprite had easy, simple explanations. The schooner was here legally, no real oddity in these waters. There was no law against the Scanlons coming to town to meet their friends, the Lessards. Bucks Jordan’s contact with the Sprite had been brief. He’d worked a little and quit, right in keeping with his known character.

  Even with anxiety adding wishfulness to my thinking, I had to admit that Ivey would find nothing in these people to offset the fact that I’d been the last to see Bucks alive, after clobbering him.

  It was just me and the worms. And I was tired and hungry and needed a beer.

  In fresh clothes, I ate sandwiches and sipped the beer while I talked on the phone in my apartment with Sergeant Gonzales at headquarters.

  We jawed the usual hellos and, how-goes-it, and then I said, “I got an out-of-town client who wants some information on a man who just turned up here. Can help?”

  “Can, Ed. What’s his name?”

  “Scanlon. Jack Scanlon.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “Fine. By the way, you turn up Tina La Flor yet?”

  “Still looking. It’s as bad as if she’d growed up, all of a sudden, and we didn’t recognize her no more.”

  My face moistened. “How about the Bucks Jordan thing?”

  “What’s your interest, Ed?”

  “Well, the kid—Tina—she’s a friend of mine. Steve was around here looking for her. I’m naturally curious.”

  “It’s all in the newspapers.”

  “Dead end?”

  “So far.”

  “I’ll stick to the phone for the Scanlon thing,” I said.

  Gonzales called back a few minutes later. “We got nothing on a Jack Scanlon, Ed.”

  I thanked him, sat staring at the phone. People usually say more than they know they’re saying—if you keep your ears open for details.

  After a minute, it began to come through in the case of Jack Scanlon. He’d mentioned the Court of the Two Sisters, a restaurant in New Orleans.

  I picked up the phone. I caught Nationwide’s New Orleans agent at home and told him what I wanted.

  In an hour, he had it. Jack Scanlon was all over the New Orleans police blotter. Trigger man. Strong-arm boy. Hoodlum deluxe.

  “He’s been in and out of trouble since he was fourteen,” my New Orleans sidekick told me. “You name it, he’s been suspected of it. At one time or another he has been, and I quote: Collector for a loan shark. Enforcer for a protection racket. Personal bodyguard for a crooked gambler.

  “ ‘Maturing, he worked his way up. Suspected of syndicate connections. Drifted to Central America. Deported from one of our Latin neighbors after an abortive revolt. He was lucky to escape a firing squad.

  “ ‘Not long after he first appeared in New Orleans he was picked up on suspicion of murder. Released for lack of evidence.’ “

  “Nice guy,” I said.

  “And slippery, my beer-chugging pal. Scanlon has a long record of arrests, some time in jail, but only one conviction on a felony. Several years ago he beat up an old lady, nearly killing her, after she squawked about the loan shark’s interest rates. This was in Illinois. A shyster got him off with the minimum.

  “The department psychologist here classes him as a constitutional psychopathic inferior—which means that he knows right from wrong but doesn’t give a damn. Good or evil evoke none of the usual reactions in him, although he can differentiate the two. He’d as soon kill you as look at you.”

  “Keep cheering me up,” I said bleakly.

  “Nearly a year ago, he married a drab named Maria Blake, an oddball who used to hang around the bistros in the Quarter, where she must have met him.

  “The headquarters boys here in New Orleans say that it was a real surprise. She was a frump in the sex department, but that wasn’t the point. The fact that he married was the point in itself. Scanlon, like a lot of his breed, seemed to have a real aversion to women. He was never in their company. Mostly, they felt something in his presence that caused them to shy away from him. It was almost as if he had a horror of the female anatomy.

  “She comes from an excellent old family. They’d shunted her from one private school to another summer camp all her life. She was the awkward, graceless ball of fat who never fitted. I’d guess she despised them, and the feeling was mutual. They disowned her promptly after she married Scanlon and she moved into a rat-hole with him living like a real bum.”

  “When did they leave New Orleans?”

  “No one here is sure. Recently, it just dawned on some of the boys here that they hadn’t seen Scanlon around for a while. What’s up over there, Ed?”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said, “when I find out.”

  After I hung up, I stood at the window, mulling over everything I’d learned so far. I thought of Scanlon’s experience in Central America, and of Lessard’s registry of a boat in Peru. The two had met here, where Ybor City provided a nerve end to Latin America.

  I locked the apartment and went down to the narrow, sweltering street. A man came from the direction of the all-night market down on the corner, a bag of groceries in his arm.


  I headed for the alley to go around and get my car. The man with the groceries smiled and nodded. He was about fifty, big and powerful, dressed neatly in an inexpensive tropical suit.

  He shifted to block my way, showed me the heavy revolver in his free hand, nestled close to the groceries. I saw that the gun was silenced.

  I stood on sharp tacks for a second. He had a big, broad, pleasantly dumb face, brush-cut, iron-gray hair. He looked like a hearty fellow all washed up after a day working in the oil fields or driving a bulldozer. He had made a calm, matter-of-fact decision. I saw it in his slate-gray eyes. The decision involved the gun.

  “What do you want?” I said, watching for a flicker of uncertainty in the decision.

  “You.”

  “Which are you?” I stalled.

  “Which?”

  “Kincaid or Smith?”

  He didn’t change expression. “Smith. You want to die this close to the gutter?”

  “No,” I said, “not tonight.”

  Chapter Eight

  Smith revealed his experience in such activities in the way he herded me in the alley. He stayed about three paces behind me. It gave him time and space to use the gun, even if I’d been the fastest fool on earth.

  I heard the groceries slide down his body, thunk on the crushed shell paving of the alley.

  “Keep moving,” he said.

  As I passed down the scabby brick profile of the building, there was a change in the sound of the footsteps behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. I guessed it was Kincaid who’d slithered out of the shadows to join Smith.

  “Stop,” Smith said. “Right there.”

  I stopped, in the exposed, most open part of the alley where it widened at the car shed.

  Kincaid circled cautiously, coming in behind me. He was as tall as Smith, not as heavy. He moved lithely, a man of perfect reflexes and coordination. The after-glow in the alley from the street didn’t give me much of a look at his face. I got an impression of hard bone and sharp angles, with the eyes set under a high forehead.

  “Put your hands on your head, Rivers,” Smith said.

  I caressed my thinning crown.

  Behind me, Kincaid’s hands started at my ankles. He passed up my wallet. Reaching in my side pocket, he appropriated my keys. Then he lifted the .38 from under my lightweight jacket.