Start Screaming Murder

by Talmage Powell

  For awhile I’d died. The rest of the world hadn’t. People like Kincaid and Smith had been out and doing. The beer tasted like poison at the thought of that pair.

  They’d told me more than is told to a man who is expected to live. They’d intended for me to die, after they got what they wanted.

  Score one. Score one where it will never be forgotten.

  They’d told me that an Item had been aboard the Sprite. Bucks Jordan had taken Tina La Flor out to the schooner. The Item had disappeared.

  Following this disappearance, Bucks had been hell-set on getting his hands on Tina. Instead, he had got himself killed.

  It seemed reasonable that the Sprite, once the Item was recovered, would go as she had come, into the vastness of the sea. With her would go my chance of proving to the Tampa police that I had not beat Bucks Jordan to death.

  I had no way of knowing how many hours were left to me. Kincaid and Smith were diligent, and Kincaid was smart.

  On my other flank was Lieutenant Steve Ivey. You don’t staff a cosmopolitan city with dumb country sheriffs who are wise only in the realm of dirty, crooked politics. You use scientists in the labs and put men in the unmarked cars who have FBI Academy training in their background. It was a simple question of time until that kind of organization linked me with Bucks Jordan.

  And maybe a shorter time before the Sprite started her auxiliaries to take her to deep water where she’d belly her sails.

  Thumbnail the next two hours: I dunked in cold water, braced with coffee, Cuban sausage and eggs. Wiped up an old gun, my spare. Made a mental note to go by the office for the duplicate set of keys and have that set duplicated.

  Killed a second pint of icy beer while I made with the telephone.

  I wanted a lead on Tina, and I wanted it bad. She could identify the Item—and it was the Item that was worth murder.

  I talked with personages white, tan and black. People who knew where the skeletons were closeted.

  I got a result, in a negative way. Tina had pulled it off. She was unbelievably well hidden. Or far away from Tampa.

  Or dead.

  When I got over to the ramshackle frame house and knocked on the door, little Miguel Cardezas told me that ma-ma was in the backyard.

  I went around the house. A flop-eared stray dog regarded me from the cool underside, scratched his ribs against one of the concrete block pillars on which the house stood, and tagged behind me.

  Mrs. Cardezas was anchored in a cane-bottomed chair in the middle of the small, bare yard. The sun shone on the jet coils of her hair. The chair creaked under the weight of her ample body as she bent forward to dip a chicken in a small tub of hot water on the ground before her. She withdrew the headless fowl, and feathers started vanishing from the carcass.

  “Good afternoon,” I said.

  She paused in her chicken-picking, brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead with the back of her hand, careful not to transfer any of the small feathers sticking to her hand.

  “Como esta?”

  “Not so good.”

  “You’ve been ill?” She looked up at me with concern. Her round, generous face was misty with fine perspiration.

  “I nearly got killed,” I said, “fighting Tina La Flor’s fight.”

  “Oh, Señor Rivers …”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “Think about Tina.”

  “Si.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  Her hand moved. I had the feeling that she was about to cross herself. “No, señor.”

  “Mrs. Cardezas …”

  She stood up, imploring with her hands before her, the dangling chicken detracting none from her expression. “Señor Rivers, I asked you to help Tina. Now I am sorry. I don’t want you harmed. Neither would she. Get out of it, señor. Forget that you know of it. It will work out, and she will be safe.”

  The happy hound whipped my leg with his wagging tail. “It isn’t that simple, Mrs. Cardezas.”

  “Don’t be unwise, señor! There are others …” She broke off.

  “Others? Who?”

  “I ask you …”

  “Who, Mrs. Cardezas?”

  “He was concerned for her also, the little fellow who called himself Gaspar.”

  “Little fellow?”

  “A dwarf, señor. A most sympathetic little man with bowed legs.”

  “When was he here?”

  “Señor … please …”

  “Today?”

  “Si. Yes,” she sighed. “This morning. But he saw the folly of increasing the danger to Tina.”

  I caught the implication in her tone, the accusation in the large, dark eyes. “You think that I’m increasing the danger to her?”

  “Now I do,” she stated. “If you are being watched, followed, and you should find her …"

  “I’m going to find her, Mrs. Cardezas.”

  I turned and started away. She followed me to the corner of the house, calling my name once. I glanced back when I reached the sidewalk. She was standing in the narrow driveway, the chicken in her hand. Both she and the chicken looked tired and wilted from the heat.

  Gaspar the Great was an Ybor City character. I didn’t think I’d have much trouble finding him.

  I started the rounds with a two-fold request, talking with bartenders, restaurant operators, hackies at their stands, characters in back rooms who had an aversion to daylight.

  First I said, Rivers wants two newcomers to the local scene named Kincaid and Smith.

  Second I said, where is Gaspar the Great?

  Two hours and thirty minutes later I walked into a neighborhood tavern. There were two male customers down the bar talking quietly. The bartender was a supple man of Spanish descent in his mid-forties. He had a patrician face, high forehead, thin nose and likewise a patrician bearing.

  “Hi, Ed.” His voice was much more democratic than his looks.

  I let him have the first question, adding the description of the pair that I was scattering all over Ybor City.

  He shook his head. “Don’t know them.”

  “Keep an eye out?”

  “Sure.”

  “Seen Gaspar the Great recently?”

  The bartender jerked a thumb toward the back of the place. “I believe he’s in the gentleman’s lounge.”

  I walked down the bar. The tavern’s rear area was a long ell adjacent to the bar. A television set, tuned to a regatta across the bay at St. Petersburg, was mounted on a high shelf facing the length of the room.

  On one of the round tables were a cluttered ashtray, a half-full glass of beer, and small, moisture-beaded pitcher with an inch of beer left at the bottom.

  I helped myself to a chair at the table and watched the televising of the roaring hydroplanes trying to tear themselves free of the water.

  I heard the scrape of small footsteps, and turned the chair.

  On his bowed legs, Gaspar rolled his way to the table. He was no midget. He was a dwarf, with arms, legs and lower torso that had failed to mature. His head, face and upper torso were of normal size. Misshapen as he was, he had the agility of a monkey, and something of the monkey in the appearance of his face, which was swarthy and deeply wrinkled. He had dark, bushy hair that grew low on his forehead.

  He reached up to grasp the back of the chair and edge of the table. He seemed to bounce from the floor to the chair. He sat on the edge of the table and smiled a greeting at me.

  “Long time no see, Ed.”

  “How’ve things been?”

  He shrugged, made a vague gesture toward his clothing. He was wearing a tropical weight that had cost him plenty, but he’d paid that bill a long time ago. Neatly pressed, the suit showed its age in its high shine and threadbare edges.

  I’d heard that in the old days Gaspar the Great had gone in for silk shirts, shoes by an English shoemaker. He’d headlined, with two other dwarfs, a trapeze act that had earned fabulous amounts. He’d carried a personal valet with him and had a penchant for walking
into a place and buying champagne for the house.

  But there was gray in his mop of wiry, unruly hair now, and the decline of the carny and circus circuits was old, bitter history.

  Chapter Ten

  He drained the contents of the beer pitcher into his glass. “Join me, Ed?”

  “If I can buy.”

  “Why not?” he said with a grim edge in his voice.

  I ordered the beer. He gestured a silent toast and said, “I got a feeling you came in here looking for me.”

  “That’s right. Did you find Tina La Flor?”

  “Who said I was looking for her? Oh—I know. Mrs. Cardezas.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I didn’t find her,” he said. “In fact, I quit looking. I can’t help her out of the kind of trouble she’s in now. The cops’ll find her soon enough, is my guess. What’s your angle, Ed?”

  “I have a client.”

  “Who wants you to find Tina?” His brows quirked haughtily. “You expect me to sell out the little doll? I am assuredly money hungry. I would put my mother’s navel on display for money. But to sell out …"

  “Take it easy,” I said. “I’m not necessarily against her.”

  “No?” His dark eyes, set in muddy yellow whites, were cautious. “Who is this client?”

  “Maybe a guy on a boat.”

  “Boat? What boat?”

  “Mean anything to you?”

  “Can’t say that it does.”

  “You have no idea where Tina is?”

  He shook his head. He seemed to have something on his mind. “What is this about a boat, Ed?”

  “If it means nothing …”

  “Damn it,” he said angrily, his normally guttural voice piping slightly, “it doesn’t, in itself. But Tina’s an old friend. We little people got to stick together. If somebody’s carried her off on a boat, I want something done about it.”

  “They haven’t, I don’t think,” I said.

  I let him simmer down. Then I said, “I’m also looking for a couple guys. Named Kincaid and Smith. Strangers. Bumped into them?”

  “Kincaid and Smith?” He measured his beer with his eyes. “No, haven’t heard of them.”

  “I want them,” I said. “Bad.”

  He shuddered faintly. “I’d hate to be in their shoes.”

  I left him morosely staring into his beer.

  The afternoon was nearly gone. From a drugstore phone booth, I checked the telephone answering service.

  A woman who gave her name as Mrs. Maria Scanlon had tried three times to reach me that afternoon.

  I hung up and stood thinking about that for a few seconds. I dropped a dime in the phone and dialed information. No phone was listed at the address of the Scanlons’ cottage, at least not in their name.

  I had to fight rush hour traffic crosstown. I saw no sign of life at the Scanlon cottage when I approached it.

  I parked the car, got out, and crossed the sandy yard. The cottage was typical of those jerry-built cracker boxes erected in Florida twenty to thirty years ago. There were five or six rooms enclosed in un-insulated pine siding, with the inevitable screened porch of that era strung along the front. It was graceless, unattractive.

  I rattled the screen door. The cottage showed no sign of life. As I was about to turn away, I heard someone inside.

  Maria Scanlon appeared on the porch. Her stocky, bovine figure was clothed in a wrinkled, soiled print dress. The drab brown hair bunned at the back of her flat-faced head spilled wisps about her ears and neck.

  “Rivers … I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “I got the message.” “Please come in.”

  I followed her into a cramped living room. She was one hell of a housekeeper. Ashtrays were full all over the place. Old papers and magazines were stacked in a corner. Propped over that junk was a tangle of cheap fishing gear, burma poles dripping carelessly loose line. On a small table the remains of sandwiches were drawing a swarm of gnats.

  I took the chair she indicated. She seated herself on the nearby couch, knees close together, back straight.

  Hands folded in her lap, she studied me closely. Her eyes held a hint of an avid, unnerving quality. “May I call you Ed?” “Sure.”

  “I—Would you like a drink?” “No, thanks.” “Do you mind if I …”

  “Go right ahead.”

  She jumped up, hurried through the plastered archway to the dining room. On the buffet were a couple of bottles and a dirty glass or two. She shook the dregs from one glass into another and poured herself a drink of a heavy-bodied brandy.

  She returned to the living room, sat down, and sipped the brandy. “I haven’t been sleeping well. I—A little brandy helps one to relax, don’t you think?” I waited.

  “Mr. Rivers … Ed … I’ve been upset about our last meeting. You seemed suspicious of me. You seemed to think that an object of some kind had disappeared from the Sprite and that I knew what it was. I don’t know anything about the Sprite, really. I had to explain that.” “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want you feeling suspicious of me. There is—I want you to do something for me.” She killed the brandy. “You’re a private detective, and I want to retain you for a job. I can’t do that if you think all manner of wrong things about me, can I?

  “So far as the schooner is concerned, I never saw the boat or the people who own her until Jack introduced us.”

  “Where’d he meet them?”

  “I think it was somewhere in Latin America, a long while before I met him. One day he told me that the Lessards were cruising here. We would meet them, have a vacation. So we left New Orleans and came here.” She studied the glass, then raised her eyes to me. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Kincaid and Smith?”

  “I met them. We had a talk.”

  She looked toward the brandy, but she didn’t get up. “Is Jack in trouble, Ed?”

  “I don’t know. Is he?”

  Her underlip curled over her teeth. She bit down slightly. After a little, she said, “Alex and D. D.—I understand them. Alex is a man of many frustrations. Nothing he has ever done turned out quite right. He’s one of those people who’re always off balance in the world, and he seethes with the continuous effort to get in the rhythm of living.” Her eyes drifted toward the empty window, the darkening sky beyond. “There are so many like him …"

  “And D. D.?”

  “She lives in a lonely world of icebergs.” Maria Scanlon’s brows quirked. Briefly, she was pleased with herself. It was my guess that she was telling herself that her remark had been dreadfully astute, one she must remember. “D. D.'s moral lapses are made consciously, Ed. The efforts of a person striking at the emptiness of her life.”

  “You seem to know a lot about the Lessards,” I said, “to have just met them.”

  “I don’t need to be around people forever to sum them up,” she said quietly.

  “Then the loose way the Lessards seem to live is not their fault?”

  “Oh, no. There’s a spark of brilliance in both Alex and his daughter. If society had provided the right conditions, their talents would have borne fruit.”

  She enjoyed clichés. I wondered how many textbooks she had read.

  I leaned toward her. “But you’re afraid of them.”

  “No….”

  “Not for yourself. For Jack, maybe.”

  She didn’t answer that.

  “Jack has been behaving quite well,” she said finally. “But if something has disappeared from the Sprite …"

  “You’re afraid they’ll think Jack took it.”

  “Not the Lessards.”

  “Kincaid and Smith?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” She folded her arms and hugged herself. Her heavy bosom squeezed up like overly heavy twin udders. She got up, obeying the call of the brandy bottle.

  I waited.

  She gave the brandy bottle a heavier tap. I wond
ered how much of that stuff she could take in without showing it. Probably more than most men.

  “Kincaid and Smith been around?” I asked.

  “Yes. Several times. I thought nothing of it. After all, they were Alex Lessard’s employees. But in the light of what you said when we last met … I really have worried about it.”

  “They’ve got Jack into something?”

  She looked at me levelly. “Not yet. I’m sure of it. But if they sneaked something aboard that boat and have lost it … Jack’s inclined toward what he calls deals. They attract him. Of course it’s because he knew such poverty in early life. He was ambitious. He wanted decent things, like everybody else. They were denied him, and he developed this … this urge to take shortcuts.”

  “You think Kincaid and Smith might ring your husband in?”

  “If they need help—and I can’t let that happen.”

  “What can you do?” I asked.

  “Keep circumstances in proper arrangement.”

  “That’s a pretty tall order, Mrs. Scanlon. Even some good statesmen have tried.”

  “But my area is smaller. One man. Not a state or a nation, I—I know what is needed.”

  “What is that?”

  “Money.”

  The word brought a short silence.

  I began to suspect the bait with which she’d hooked Scanlon. “How much did you have?”

  “I—my parents—they didn’t understand. They cut me off when I married Jack, the narrow-minded … I wish they were dead!” She wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. “I had a few thousand, my own. An inheritance from a grandparent, my maternal grandmother.”

  “It’s gone?”

  She eased to the edge of the couch. “Almost, but I can get more.”

  “That’s where I come in? The job you wanted done?”

  She nodded. “My grandmother’s jewelry is in a safety deposit box in a New Orleans bank. As a private detective you’re bonded, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Then it’s simple,” she said. “You’ll go to New Orleans and bring the jewels to me.”