Start Screaming Murder

by Talmage Powell

  I never like to get loose with the truth when talking with a cop. But I was prepared for Ivey’s next question.

  “What was on Gaspar’s mind, Ed?”

  “Tina La Flor,” I said. “He wanted to know if I’d turned up any trace of her.”

  “Why did he think you might have?”

  I shrugged. “I did a few steps of legwork after you came to my place.”

  “And did you turn up her whereabouts?”

  “No,” I said. “I’d have called you. I told Gaspar I wasn’t on the case, that my interest had been personal. I suggested that you’d be a better source.”

  “You asked him what his interest was, I’m sure.”

  I nodded. “He said Tina was an old friend. He didn’t give me any more than that.”

  “Then he hung up and that’s the last you heard from him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ed,” he said coldly. “You’re a liar.”

  “Have I ever lied to you before?”

  “No. I’ve always considered you a sort of unofficial adjunct to this department.”

  “Let’s keep that status very much quo,” I suggested.

  “I hope we can. I’ve a feeling that something big and dark is going on in your end of town, and you’re in it up to your neck.” His eyes pinched at the corners. “So deeply in it that you’ve lied to me about Gaspar and Tina as well. I don’t want to see you get hurt, Ed. I’d hate to be the one to hurt you.”

  “You’d do it thoroughly.”

  “As thoroughly as possible,” he said. “I’m no whiz of a detective, but as long as I’m in this office I intend to work at my trade. You’d better think more than twice, Ed, before you flounder into the undertow.”

  I was glad he didn’t know the grip the undertow had on me already.

  I stood up. “I’m free to go?”

  “You know you are,” he said, his face reddening with anger. “How long could I hold you with what I’ve got?”

  “Long enough for me to call a lawyer.”

  “Get out of here!”

  I got out, quickly and quietly.

  With Ivey a closed door away from me, I wandered into the squad room. There, I picked up additional details on the murder of the dwarf Gaspar.

  It appeared that the little fellow had been killed in his hotel room by a person he knew. Nothing in the room had been disturbed. A smudge of blood had been found on the window sill. His lifeless body had been pushed out the window into the alley below. The murderer had taken the fire escape out of the hotel. In the alley, the afterthought of an idea had struck him, and he’d shoved the lifeless, misshapen body into a nearby garbage can. The murder had taken place in the early hours of morning.

  Doing an unobtrusive fadeout from headquarters, I caught a cab to the lot where my car was parked. Motionless exposure to the Florida sun had heated the interior until the seat and steering wheel were blistering to the touch. Movement of turgid air through the open windows helped a little as I got the heap rolling and moved with traffic into Ybor City.

  My mind moved faster than the tires sucking at scorched pavement. I was certain of the linkage between the murders of Bucks Jordan and Gaspar the Great. Kincaid and Smith were the bond between the two. They’d been after Bucks, and after Gaspar’s tip to me about the location of the pair, the dwarf had been killed.

  It seemed reasonable to assume that both had been permanently put away because they were dangerous to a person, or persons. The delay in killing Gaspar simply meant that he hadn’t been regarded as a danger right away, not until my appearance had shook him up a lot worse than I’d known.

  I wondered if he’d sent me to the Aeron on the gamble that I’d get killed facing both Kincaid and Smith.

  With Bucks Jordan’s death ever-present in his mind and my survival of the shooting scrape, Gaspar had run out of nerve. And out of life.

  And he could have told me many things….

  I found a parking place on the narrow street and wedged the car in. The sidewalk ahead was massed with a gay crowd that gave bursts of applause for the guitar-laden trio in the window of a department store who played lively songs and told livelier stories in Spanish.

  I crossed the street and entered a narrow restaurant. A beautiful girl with olive skin and hair blacker than black was at the cash register.

  “Is Rafael in?”

  “To you, si. Señor Batione is in back.”

  I thanked her and soaked up the air conditioning as I moved past the tables to the door in the left rear of the place. The door opened on a short corridor which dead-ended in another door.

  I knocked on the dead-end and the door opened noiselessly. A second girl, sister to the one in front, glanced over her shoulder and spoke to the interior of the office. “It is Ed Rivers.”

  She must have received a nod, for she stood aside gracefully for me to enter.

  Both the girls were daughters of the massive, sleepy looking man reclining on a white leather couch that filled the far wall of the luxurious office.

  His smiled showed gold-filled teeth. He raised his short-fingered, fat hand in greeting.

  “Qué tal?”

  “Fair to middling,” I said.

  His daughter turned a deep leather chair slightly so that I could face her father.

  “Cigar, Señor Rivers, or a drink?”

  I shook my head and thanked her. With a graceful turn of her body, she crossed the office, seated herself at a desk, and resumed typing on a large, electric machine.

  I eased into the chair the girl had offered. Rafael Batione sighed. “The heat, it bothers you as it does me, Ed.” There was a lot of him to bother, about three hundred and fifty pounds. In cotton slacks and short-sleeved shirt, he lay as if he never intended to move from the air conditioning. “But it is not the heat of the climate that brings you here.”

  “An occurrence in Cuba,” I said.

  “I see.”

  I listened for a moment to the clatter of the typewriter a world away from Batione’s seeming indolence. Miami is the publicized window on Latin America. There are a few men in Ybor City who are more than content to keep it that way, who worked to keep attention on the window. Rafael Batione was one of those men.

  “You know the R. D. Carton case?” I asked.

  He began to sit up slowly, spilling his feet to the thick carpet, pushing with his hands. His eyes, buried in masses of soft flesh, centered on my face.

  “You know that his widow is here,” I went on. “And you must know also that there is in Tampa Bay a schooner called the Sprite with a Peruvian registry.”

  “Is there a connection, Ed?”

  “That’s what I want to find out. Something disappeared off that boat. It triggered the deaths of two men.”

  The mention of death failed to make the slightest break in the rhythm of the distant sounding typewriter.

  “I come to you,” I said, “because I’m beginning to wonder what scheme is being hatched.”

  “There is none, in Ybor City. If there is a scheme, it was not hatched here. What do you think was taken from the boat?”

  “I’m not at all sure, now. I’d thought it might be papers, a plan.”

  “This was not the destination for any such thing, Ed.” He stood up. In that position, he lost the soft, sloppy look. He took on the appearance of a wrestler capable of clubbing an opponent senseless with the heel of his hand. “You have my word,” he said quietly.

  “And I accept it. Gracias.”

  “We do not deal in murder, Ed. Our concern is for the homeless refugee, the helpless peon who chops cane or digs in the mines twelve hours a day for twenty cents, the child carrying a gun in a dictator’s state militia.”

  “Mistakes can be made,” I suggested.

  “Not in our business,” he said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I blistered my rump on the car seat and my feet on the pavements during the remainder of the afternoon trying to get a lead on Tina. It had begun with her
. If not the sole key, she’d jangled plenty on the keyring. I didn’t want her ending up in the manner of Gaspar the Great. I had to have those points of information she’d held out on me. She owed me at least that much.

  By late afternoon, I was still up the creek and I’d run out of paddles. If anyone had told me a little doll with such unique physical characteristics would vanish without trace in Ybor City, I wouldn’t have believed it.

  With a tired pumping in my feet and a dismal ache in my head, I dragged up the stairs to my apartment.

  I dunked in a cold tub while I cooled the mucuous membranes with beer. I was plagued with the feeling that I should know where she was. Something right under my nose should tell me.

  Common sense told me she was probably at the bottom of Tampa Bay with a big chunk of metal tied to her. But when you gumshoe your way through enough years, cases and people, you develop a subconscious ability to add up things that have escaped conscious notice. The result now and then is an annoying mental dislocation that most cops call a hunch.

  In a change to fresh clothes, I went in the kitchenette, put a Cuban sandwich together, and got cartons of slaw and potato salad out of the refrigerator.

  I slid a plate onto the table and started to spoon slaw out of the carton. I stopped with the spoon halfway between carton and plate. I stood there looking at the plate while juice from the slaw dripped from the shredded mass on the spoon.

  The subconscious worm crawled right out of the cocoon and spread its wings. A breath of relief jolted out of me.

  The plate, plus a chance remark, told me where Tina La Flor was hiding. There was little chance of her leaving before I arrived.

  I sat down and ate my dinner.

  A breeze came and died, ushering in a night in which the dead heat was a vacuum, as if a squall were building up in the Gulf. The night needed a lashing by a swift rain to make it livable. I suspected the rain would fail to reach the mainland.

  I parked the car half a block away from the Cardezas house. I crossed the street, walking quickly, and mounted the sagging front porch. Across the street a gang of kids were playing tag, shrilling Spanish annoyances at the little boy who was “It.”

  I heard the muffled rise of mood music and sharp crackle of six-guns from the Cardezas TV set.

  I knocked. Mrs. Cardezas answered, her comfortably ample body filling the doorway. In addition to the TV glow, a small lamp was lighted in the living room behind her.

  She thrust her round, full face forward to look at me, the room light etching the coils of her shiny black hair.

  “Well … Señor Rivers. Have you word of Tina?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I brushed past her into the room. Her voice rose in an exclamation of surprise and irritation. “Señor Rivers, until you are invited …"

  “Save it,” I said.

  Little Miguel was belly down on the floor, watching the TV with his elbows propped on the floor, his chin propped on his hands.

  He squirmed around to look at me. A little girl slid out of a chair and started for the doorway. I crossed the living room after her. She wore tattered sneakers and a faded print dress. Her hair was in pigtails.

  The boom of my footsteps caused the speed of her exit to increase. She darted toward the rear of the house.

  With four or five long steps, I was reaching for her. Mrs. Cardezas threw herself in front of me.

  “Señor Rivers! What is the meaning of this? You cannot break into my house …"

  “Please, lady,” I said.

  She grabbed my arms. She was a big woman and a strong one. Little Miguel came up and started kicking my shins, darting in and out, giving vent to his enjoyment in excited Spanish.

  Mrs. Cardezas’ weight banged me against the wall. Miguel got in an extra good one on my right shin. I howled softly in pain.

  A little girl with black hair and olive skin—not the one I was after—came rushing into the room from the back part of the house.

  “Mama! … Mama! …”

  “Rosita,” Mrs. Cardezas gasped, sweating to hang on to me, “run next door. Get Señor Figuero and scream for many neighbors. Tell them a madman has broken into our house!”

  I began to get sore, and fear jolted through me. I know how those Latin neighbors would react on such a hot night.

  The little figure I was after—Tina La Flor, of course—had reached the kitchen.

  Mrs. Cardezas was draped around my neck, her heavy strong arms locked together, her weight pulling me down. I reached back to break her grip without hurting her.

  Little Miguel made like a billy-goat, lowered his head, and charged. I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Mrs. Cardezas’ shifting weight reeled me to one side. Miguel missed his target, cracked his head against the wall, sat on the floor, and started wailing.

  Sweating in desperation, I firmed my grip on the heavy, smothering arms. Mrs. Cardezas cried out as I tore myself free of her.

  I heard the kitchen door slam. I charged the sound, banged my way outside, and tripped off the low back steps.

  I skidded to a stop on hands and knees, looking up in time to see the small, running shadow in the darkness. I scrambled after her. Just as she reached the corner of the house, I grabbed the collar of her dress.

  “Lemme go, you big lummox!” She squirmed around fighting, kicking and scratching.

  In the front yard Rosita was yelling frenzíedly for assistance for her ma-ma. A man’s voice answered her, and a second man’s voice answered him. A couple of women joined in.

  Tina gave a good account of herself, but I smothered her attack without breaking any of her bones.

  Holding both her hands behind her back with one of mine, I gave her a hard shake.

  “Now you listen to me, you little witch! You’ve caused me more trouble than half the hoods in Tampa. I’m fed up to here, see? You simmer down, but quick, or I’ll turn you over my knee and blister you good before I throw you to the cops.”

  She became still. “Okay, Ed,” she said bleakly. “I know when I’m licked.”

  To insure against her doing any more broken field running, I tucked her in the crook of my right arm, her legs and arms dangling.

  I fore-armed sweat off my face while I considered what to do. I heard more neighbors gather from various points of the compass in the Cardezas front yard. The din rose in volume.

  They shouted wild instructions to each other. I realized the steadier ones were fanning out, coming around each side of the house.

  I ran across the backyard and took the low rear steps into the kitchen. I closed the door, threw the bolt latch, and propped a can-bottomed chair under the doorknob.

  Mrs. Cardezas, charging toward the rear of the house, almost collided with me. She drew up, seeing that I had Tina and had re-entered the house.

  “You go out there,” I told her, “and restore the peace of the evening. Tell them it’s all right.”

  Mrs. Cardezas hesitated.

  Tina gasped, “Do as he says, Mama Cardezas … Ed, I can’t get my breath in this position and all the blood is running to my head. Would you mind not killing me for the moment?”

  Mrs. Cardezas went outside. I heard her voice rising over the babble of her neighbors.

  I parked Tina on the edge of the kitchen table in a sitting position.

  She felt her stomach gingerly where my arm had circled. “How’d you find me?”

  “The other evening I called a Tampa cop, Gonzales by name, to ask about a man named Jack Scanlon. I also asked Gonzales about you. He said they had no lead on you, that it was as if you’d grown up beyond recognition.

  “Later, in the light of the plates, it occurred to me that maybe you hadn’t grown up—but down. Into childhood, so to speak. Just another kid in a houseful of kids.”

  “What’s this about plates?”

  “The first time I came here Mrs. Cardezas was setting the table for dinner. Six plates. But only four kids and herself. Five people. It finally dawned on me to ask mysel
f who was the sixth person, the fifth kid. There were no other grownups around.”

  “I guess it doesn’t take much to tell you a whole lot, Ed,” she said rather dismally.

  “Sometimes a wall has to practically fall on me. It wasn’t very nice of you to be hiding right here among Mrs. Cardezas’ brood while I’ve had my naked neck stuck away out.”

  “Maybe not, but what else was I to do? For your sake I had to stay away from the cops.”

  “Big hearted you,” I said.

  “Don’t sound so bitter, Ed. You know it’s the truth. If I’d told them about me and Bucks, and you trying to help me, they’d have stuck you under the jail. You—you didn’t kill Bucks, did you?”

  “Would it matter to you if I had?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A million times I’ve regretted dragging you into it.”

  “Well, with that much decency to start with, we’ll see how well you can level now,” I told her.

  Mrs. Cardezas came into the kitchen. The furor in the yard had died down.

  The big woman glanced from me to Tina. “It’s all right, Mama Cardezas,” Tina said.

  Mrs. Cardezas continued to look at the tiny woman with tenderness. Then Mrs. Cardezas turned her head toward me. “Señor Rivers, we did what Tina asked…. For you personally there is no ill feeling.”

  “Now that’s downright kindly of you, m’am,” I said. The edge on my words caused her to redden.

  “Ed’s pretty much put out,” Tina said, “and I think you had better just go quietly into the other room, Mama Cardezas.”

  “If you need me …”

  “She will send you a telegram,” I said.

  With backward glances over her shoulder, Mrs. Cardezas started out of the kitchen. Little Miguel’s head showed, thrust past the door jamb. Tear streaks were still on his cheeks, but he was recovered well enough to eye my shins hungrily.

  “And take him with you,” I suggested.

  When they had gone to the front of the house, I turned to