Cargo for the Styx (6 page)

A
WOMAN
like Bonnie Minos wasn’t the type to get gowed up on three bottles of lightweight beer. I had the idea that she wanted me to think she was drunk so that I’d leave her alone on my boat. It wasn’t an idea I liked.

I got behind her and lifted her out of the chair. She was limp but not limp enough. I got her to her feet and started to take the support of my hands away. She straightened up fast.

“Whatsamatter?”

I said, “Let’s take a cold shower.”

She said, “You’re a louse, Zane.” She picked her bag off the floor, glared at me, and started out. I moved along behind. We reached her car. She worked herself into the passenger seat.

“Honest, Zane, I don’t think I can make it.” She hiccupped again to show me what she meant.

I slid behind the wheel. She put the key in the ignition, showed me the starter, and gave me a short lecture on the gear shift pattern. I backed the Ferrari around and eased onto Harbor Way. I started up the hill to The Point.

I whipped up into the driveway and braked to a stop in the garage. Aggie’s Cadillac wasn’t there.

Bonnie said, “I still don’t like you when you scowl, Zane.”

I said, “Look, I appreciate your cutting me loose. I don’t appreciate your making a sucker out of me. This is a great game to you. It’s my living and maybe my life to me.”

I left her in the car and headed on foot down the driveway.

She didn’t say a word. I half expected her to chase me in the Ferrari. But I walked the three blocks to The Point shopping center and there was no sign of her. I grabbed a cab and told the driver to run me to Pier 7. No one tagged me.

The loading of the
Temoc
was about wound up. Only a small pile of crates sat on the dock, and the loading boom was swinging out to grab them. I spotted Clift on the bridge.

I didn’t wait for an invitation. I went aboard and climbed up to him. The motor running the boom was making a lot of racket. I yelled, “I’m still looking for Irma Wilson.”

“I haven’t seen her,” he yelled back.

“A couple of hoods tried to grab her this morning,” I shouted.

He looked puzzled. He made a motion and started off the bridge. I followed him down to his cabin. It was quieter here. He said, “What was that you said?” I repeated it. He didn’t like something about my words. I could see the mean look settling around his mouth.

“Are you climbing my back, Zane?”

I said, “I’m wondering about your crew.”

“Prebble?”

I said, “Come off it, Clift. You’re supposed to have two men besides Prebble. Where are they?”

“On their way down here,” he said. He walked over to his desk and began fingering some papers on the top. I hadn’t asked for an explanation, but he gave me one anyway.

“The pair I originally hired couldn’t make it. I had trouble getting replacements. Non-union sailors with good records are hard to come by.”

I said, “And what did you draw?”

He stopped fussing with the papers and dug a bottle of bourbon out of his desk. He poured a drink for himself. “Ask me when they get here,” he said. “I called a friend in L.A. and he said he’d have a couple of men down here by this afternoon. That’s all I know about it.”

I said, “You’re itchy, Clift. For a week you aren’t itchy. All of a sudden you are.”

He started to swing around on me and stopped. He gulped down half of his drink. He said, “Hell yes, I’m nervous. This cargo is delicate. It’s my first job.”

I said, “I can think of some other ‘first jobs’ that might make a man nervous. Like the first time he tries to clip an insurance company.”

Clift set down his glass. He came toward me with those big shoulders swinging. His face was set and ugly. The thin line of his scar stood out hard on the tanned skin of his face.

“Get out of my hair, Zane. I didn’t ask you aboard. I don’t want you here.”

I said, “Tell your goons they did a lousy job of tying me up, Clift. Tell them to do better next time.”

I didn’t wait to watch him. I hiked out and back to Harbor Way. I picked up a cab and had him run me to the office. I wondered if I’d pushed Clift too far. I had myself out on a limb. If he wanted to saw me off short, he could call Ted Winters at Marine Mutual. If he was clean, he should call Ted Winters. But I didn’t have the time to wait around to find out.

It was a long time since I’d had to be careful about walking through dark alleys. But now some of that caution came back to me. I stood to one side and eased open the office door. Silence and warm air. Nothing else. I was almost disappointed.

I sat at my desk and reached for the telephone. I tried Irma’s office again. Her secretary hadn’t seen her. No one had called to ask about her. I was back where I’d started.

I dug a note pad from the desk drawer. I started making notes about Aggie Minos and Jaspar Clift. It was something to do. It wasn’t getting me anyplace. I threw the notes into the wastebasket.

The telephone rang. I said, “Martin Zane Company,” into the mouthpiece.

I got back Blimey’s voice without the British accent. He sounded excited or afraid or both.

He said, “Mr. Zane, there’s a lady here asking for you.” He made a gulping sound. “A Miss Wilson.”

Relief made the telephone wobble in my hand. I said, “Put her on—and thanks.”

“I can’t put her on,” he said. “She’s in the storeroom. She acts kind of funny. Sick like. She told me to call you.”

I said, “I’m on my way. Keep her there.”

I blessed the elevator because it hadn’t gone away. I let it rattle me down six flights. I trotted across the lobby and climbed into the first cab in line. I said, “Blimey’s Shack on the double.”

I could see Irma’s red convertible at the curb when we turned onto Harbor Way. A truck was making a U-turn and I told the driver to let me off behind the convertible. I started up the sidewalk past it. I glanced in and saw the keys hanging from the ignition. I stopped and reached over the door to pull them out before some smart punk borrowed it.

I was pulling the keys out of the lock when the blast let loose. I looked up just in time to see Blimey’s Shack lift itself from the pier. The whole affair seemed to hang in the air for the time it took me to draw a deep breath. Then it disintegrated.

Army service has its points. For one thing it teaches you to hit the dirt and hit it fast. I was flat on my face and half under the car when the concussion wave rolled over me. I felt it shake the convertible.

The rains came. A piece of two-by-four drove a jagged end through the windshield. Small chunks of wood drummed down on that part of me sticking out from under the car. Something heavy landed on the hood. I could hear metal cave in. Two tires blew. The sound of litter hitting the grille was like a midwestern hailstorm.

Sound stopped. Nothing moved, no traffic, no pedestrian. I gave it a count of ten and decided the silence meant the rains had left. I crawled to my feet. I saw the jagged end of a two-by-four that had gone through the windshield. It had buried itself in the front seat.

In the distance a siren howled. I glanced toward the shack. The freakishness of the explosion had played the usual tricks. The rear wall still stood. So did the grill. Three of the four counter stools were upright, but the counter itself lay on its side. I saw that much before an eddy of wind lifted smoke from somewhere and drifted it over the end of the pier. Then I saw the small tongues of fire.

I started to run. Loosened pier boards jarred under my feet. Behind me someone shouted. Ahead the flames were feeding themselves on aged wood and grease. All I could see was billowing, ugly smoke.

A puff of breeze sucked in by the heat cleared the smoke briefly. I was almost to where the doorway had stood. I stopped, squeezing my eyes to see.

I saw the edge of the tipped-over counter. I saw the stools still upright like crazy, long-stemmed mushrooms. I saw the smoke closing back in again.

And I saw the hand. It was a small hand, the size of a woman’s hand. It was motionless.

I
STOOD BESIDE
Lieutenant Nicolo, Homicide, and watched the firemen douse the last of the fire. He said, “You were lucky, Zane.”

I said, “Hell, it isn’t even safe to want a cup of coffee anymore.”

He gave me a sideways look. “Did anyone know you wanted that cup of coffee?”

I could have said “Yes,” and told him about Vann and Otho, about Clarence, about Prebble. I could have, but I didn’t.

I said, “Not unless someone was reading my mind, Lieutenant.”

I watched the smoke turning into steam. An hour ago I might have considered letting the police hold up the sailing of the
Temoc
. But not now. Now I had an idea. I would play a hunch and keep Marine Mutual from having to pay off on delay of shipment of cargo. And I’d keep them from having to pay off on the
Temoc
at all.

I couldn’t do any of this with the police hungry to help.

Nicolo said, “Are you on a case, Zane?”

I grinned at him. My face felt stiff, but he didn’t seem to notice. I said, “I just wound one up.”

Nicolo grunted. If he had anything else to say it was lost when Biddle, the city’s arson expert, came up. “Let’s go in and look for that hand you were howling about, Zane.”

The three of us walked down the pier. Biddle talked about dynamite and explosion patterns. He said, “It was planted under the pier and set off with a timing mechanism. We dug pieces of clockwork out of the pilings.”

I didn’t say anything. We were back where the front door had been. I kept on going, picking my way through debris. The remains of the floor were awash with water. The stench of wetdown wood and of burned grease clogged the air. But the smoke was gone; I could see what there was left to see.

The hand was still there. It stuck out from the end of the counter. Smoke and fire and water hadn’t made it unrecognizable. From ten feet away it kept looking like a woman’s hand. I clenched my teeth and sloshed toward it. My weight on the shaky floor threw up a small wave. It caught the hand, moving it gently. I took a deep breath.

I reached the counter. I went around the end and stopped. The cave made by the tipped counter was shadowy, but not so shadowy that I could miss the arm that belonged to the hand. The arm and hand were still together; they weren’t with the rest of the body.

Nicolo flashed a light into the gloom. The explosion had stripped the body and taken off one arm. It hadn’t done any more damage. The corpse was recognizable. It belonged to Albert Prebble.

I backed away. Nicolo said, “Not big enough for Blimey?”

“Some poor devil enjoying a cup of coffee,” I said.

“Where the hell is Blimey?” Nicolo demanded.

Biddle said, “It wasn’t the kind of explosion to blast anyone out of sight. If he’d been here, we would have found traces. And this guy is all there is; he must have been here alone.”

“Maybe he planted the stuff and didn’t get away fast enough,” I said.

Nicolo said he’d think about that. I decided I’d told enough lies. I turned and sloshed my way out. I stopped on the sidewalk. Harbor Way was quiet with traffic rerouted. I walked back to the office. I sat down and thought about Irma.

If Biddle was right, she hadn’t been in Blimey’s when the place blew. And neither had Blimey. That could only mean he had called me from somewhere else. That he’d used the story about Irma to sucker me down there. If I hadn’t stopped to take the keys out of her convertible, I’d have been stepping in the door as the dynamite went off.

I thought about Blimey some more. He was a friend of Bonnie Minos. I thought about her for a while. She knew I’d been hunting for Irma. She and Jaspar Clift knew. But she was Blimey’s friend.

I stood up. I said, “This time, lady, you’re going to make some sense when you talk.”

I hopped a cab and told the driver to go north by way of Alpine and Spruce Streets. That way we passed Irma’s office. I had him slow down. I tried to see in the window against the reflection of the sunlight.

I couldn’t see Irma, but I had a good look at something else. At Clarence Curdy across the street, behind the wheel of his sedan.

I said to the driver, “Keep it moving. Go up a block and around so we can come back on the other side of the street.”

He said, “Sure, Cap.”

When we were around the corner and drifting toward Clarence’s sedan, I told the driver what to do. He nodded and held out a hand. I put a bill in it. The hand disappeared. We rolled on.

The cab braked to a stop with my door next to Clarence. I hoped out. I climbed in the back seat of Clarence’s sedan. The cab moved away. I said, “Let’s you and me talk.”

Clarence didn’t think that was funny. He sat with his eyes straight ahead, his hands tight on the wheel.

He said, “Get out of here.”

I said, “When I go, it’ll be to call Homicide. They’re interested in people who were in Blimey’s today.”

The back of his neck turned so pale it looked almost clean. He said, “What’s that supposed to mean to me?”

I said, “Didn’t you hear? Blimey’s was blown to hell a little while ago.”

He said, “I didn’t have anything to do with that. I wasn’t near the place.”

I said, “Maybe the police will want to know what you were near, Clarence.”

He took a deep breath. “What do you want?”

“A ride,” I said. “To my boat, Jeeves.”

He sat still for another minute. Then he started driving. He didn’t ask me where I lived; he drove straight there.

We strolled like a couple of tired businessmen heading for an after-work drink. If anyone saw us, they couldn’t have noticed how itchy Clarence was. He held in until we climbed aboard and down into the lounge. Then he turned on me.

“You can’t get away with this, Zane. You got nothing on me.”

I said, “There’s the phone. Help yourself. Call the police.”

He stood and glared. His breath made a lot of noise as he worked it through his beak of a nose. He said, “What do you want?”

I said, “A lot of answers. Straight ones.”

He sat down. He ran his tongue over his lips. “I need a drink.”

“Later. If you talk enough, you’ll work up a thirst. Then you can have some beer.”

His expression said that beer would be fine. It also said that he wasn’t about to tell me anything, beer or no beer. I pulled the phone over to my chair. I said, “It’s getting late, and I’m due for some supper. If I don’t hear everything I want to hear in ten minutes, I call Homicide.”

“You can’t make that threat stick, Zane.” He didn’t sound sure of himself.

I said, “Do you know Lieutenant Nicolo, Clarence? A great guy; a great cop. Dedicated, if you know what I mean. But a little nuts. He’s got a phobia. He can’t stand an unsolved case. Right now he’s got one at Blimey’s Shack.”

Clarence lifted his lip. He was trying a sneer but it didn’t come off. I said, “In Nicolo’s book, I’m clean. But he doesn’t like most private detectives.”

Clarence said, “Crap,” in a way that told me he’d met policemen like Nicolo before.

I said, “As I see it, you don’t want to meet Nicolo but you’ll take the chance. So you’ve got something big cooking. Something worth taking a pushing around for.”

Clarence borrowed a cigarette from one of the packs I keep scattered around. He used my matches, too. He blew smoke at me.

I got up. I brought the fish-gutting knife out of the cutlery drawer. I sat back down. I said, “I haven’t got any time to waste.”

He looked at the knife. “What’s the idea of that?”

I told him. He sneered at me. I said, “I’ve been pushed around, tied up, beaten. A friend of mine has been chased and maybe caught. I damn near got blown off the map today.”

“I bleed for you,” he said.

I said, “In about two minutes you’ll be doing just that.”

“You haven’t got it in you,” Clarence said.

I didn’t know whether I had or not. I got up from the chair. I walked over to him. I said, “Let’s find out if I have.”

I shoved the knife at his leg. He pushed back in the chair. I turned the knife and caught the hook in his trousers. I ripped upward. The cloth tore open.

I said, “I think I can, Clarence.”

His skin was a dirty white. He tried to puff on his cigarette but he slobbered on it so that it wouldn’t draw. He began to swear at me. He wasn’t very original. He repeated himself a lot.

He ran down. I said, “Now let’s talk about you.” He just looked at me, making a retching sound in his throat. I said, “I know I can, Clarence.”

He still wasn’t eager to talk, but words began to come out of him. The words painted a picture. Of Clarence.

He was a specialist. He hung around gambling dens and fancy houses. He was a patient man. Sometimes he took a month or more to find the right prospect—a man or woman gambling on the q.t. or whoring one way or another. Not big people, Clarence didn’t play them. But the medium-sized ones with a little money, a little position, a little prestige to maintain.

Once he found his mark, Clarence gathered his evidence. Then he moved in. There would be a chance meeting, a chance remark. Do that a half dozen times to the same person over a period of a week or two and then they’re ripe for plucking by Clarence’s kind. And Clarence plucked. But he was smart. He took just what the traffic would bear and he took it only once.

I got tired of listening to him. I said, “So now you’re in LaPlaya. Who are you going to pluck down here?”

“I just came down to see what there was down here,” he said.

I didn’t buy that. I said, “You wouldn’t be going after Aggie Minos or his wife, would you?”

“They don’t mean nothing to me.”

I said, “Then it’s someone else tied up to me. Or you wouldn’t have been on my tail. Jaspar Clift, maybe?”

He shrugged. I said, “Or Vann.” His expression gave him away. I said, “Tell me about Vann.”

He said, “Vann’s a gambler. He runs a string of small operations in the L.A. harbor area.”

“And Otho?”

“He bounces for Vann.”

I said, “You didn’t come down here to push Vann around. You haven’t got the guts for that.” I looked down at the knife in my hand. I dropped it to the floor.

I said, “But Vann might like to know you’re here. He might want to know why. He might even get the idea you’re trying to pluck him.”

My knife had frightened Clarence. Threatening him with Vann terrified him. “We’ll make a deal,” he screamed at me. “I’ll tell you what I know. You let me go. A deal, Zane.”

I said, “If I like what I hear, a deal.”

He swallowed. He said, “It’s the dame, Irma Wilson.”

I said, “Tell me about Irma.”

He said, “Vann uses people like her. Respectable people with a job to protect or a family that doesn’t know they’re horsing around, gambling. He lets some of them get into him for a big I.O.U., for more than they can pay. Then he lets them buy themselves off the hook by shilling for him.”

I said, “I’ve seen that kind of operation. Just tell me about Irma.”

“He got her on the hook,” Clarence said. “To get herself off, she had to work on Clift. You know how Clift started living it up when his old man died. He lived up two boats’ worth and then wanted to quit. Vann thought he had a good thing, so he put Irma Wilson to work on Clift. She did too good a job. Before Vann knew it, Clift was into him for eighty grand.”

I said, “He could have borrowed that much on the
Temoc
and paid off.”

“He did borrow, and he blew that. Vann rigged him.”

I said, “I’m beginning to smell it. Clift is into Vann. He has no assets, no way of getting quick money. So Vann sets up some kind of deal to collect insurance on the
Temoc
. Clift comes down here. Vann follows to protect his investment.”

“That’s how I see it,” Clarence said. “And everything was going fine until last night. Then you start getting nosy.”

I said, “What kind of a deal has Vann got cooking?”

“I’d like to know,” Clarence said seriously. “I hear there’s a lot of dough riding on that boat.”

“Enough,” I said. “What’s with you and Irma Wilson?”

He said, “If that company she works for knew she had played Vann’s tables, she wouldn’t last five seconds. And she’s moving up in the business. She’s got a reputation to protect.”

“So you thought you’d put the bite on her? For how much?”

Clarence said, “Not for dough. For information. If I can get enough on Vann, then I can handle him. But I got to have enough to make him pay big. Then I’ll blow the country.”

I said, “How far did you get?”

Clarence said, “Not far enough. You horned in.”

“What were you doing at Blimey’s? What’s he got to do with it?”

He said, “I was tagging Vann. I saw them run that big blond out. I figured I’d get that Blimey to tell me what was going on. I didn’t get a chance. I had him about half softened up and you blow in.”

“Tough,” I said. “All right, where is Irma? Did Vann take her?”

“Take her? Why in hell should he?” Clarence demanded. “She’s working for him.”

Working for him, I thought. That’s why she came to see me, to find out for Vann what I knew and what information I’d passed on. And here I was sweating about her.

I said, “Go get yourself a beer and then get the hell out of here. And out of town.”

Clarence got up. He made it to the refrigerator. “Here?”

“In the back. Behind the milk.”

Clarence gave the handle of the refrigerator a yank. He never did get his beer. The noise of the refrigerator door blasting out filled the boat. The sound of it hitting Clarence drowned out everything but his brief scream.

The scream stopped. There was no Clarence left to make a noise.