Ed McBain (35 page)

"What about it?"

"You were the last guy to talk to him. He was shot to death about an hour ago. They found him with eight bullets in his head and chest." The lieutenant paused long enough to see the shock spread across David's face. "You better pull into Madeira Beach," he said. "The cops sounded kind of impatient."

The room could have been a broom closet. There was a square, scarred desk with a chair behind it. There was a bulletin board and a battery of green metal filing cases. There was a shaded lightbulb hanging over the desk and there was a window with dust-covered Venetian blinds hiding it. There was a door with a frosted-glass panel, and on the other side of the frosted glass were lettered the words
DETECTIVE DIVISION.
A narrow wooden plaque on the desk read:
LIEUTENANT MAUROW.

Maurow was a big man with a thatch of red hair. His eyes were pale blue, as cold as a swimming pool in January. He had thick lips and a mole close to the deep cleft in his chin. He studied David and his eyes said nothing and his mouth said nothing. He picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desk.

"What do you do, Coe?" he asked.

"I own a boat."

"Why'd you call Sam Friedman this morning?"

"I just called him socially," David said. "Sam was one of my best friends."

"You know anybody named Leslie Grew?" Maurow asked.

David hesitated. "No," he said.

"Friedman's secretary tells us you called about eleven thirty or so."

"Yes. I guess it was about then."

"What'd you talk about?"

"The weather," David said.

"Don't get wise, Coe. I've got a jail full of wise guys downstairs. Did you discuss Leslie Grew with him?"

"I don't know any Leslie Grew."

"I hope you're leveling with me, Coe."

"Why should I lie?"

"Maybe you're just a natural liar. Maybe you'd lie if I asked you your own name."

"Maybe. Why don't you ask me?"

Maurow looked at him steadily, narrowly.

"You don't know Leslie Grew, huh?"

"No."

"A certain police department up north a ways is looking for him." Maurow smiled. "You still never heard of him?"

"No," David said.

"Grew and Meadows," Maurow said. "Meadows is the secretary. Funny, too." He shrugged massive shoulders. "I guess work is hard to find."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean Grew and Meadows are both wanted. They're wanted bad. That police department is in a small town, a very small town. That doesn't mean we don't cooperate with them, though. We got a teletype just a little while after Friedman's body turned up. Told us they might try to contact him. We got the teletype just a little too late."

"What are they wanted for?" David asked.

"Grand theft," Maurow said. "Your pals are heeled, too."

"Guns?"

"A gun. A souvenir Luger, missing from Grew's desk. You see any suspicious-looking Lugers lately?"

"I wouldn't know a Luger if I did see one," David lied.

"You're a pretty ignorant fellow for somebody who went through the Italian campaign, ain't you?"

"Sometimes," David said.

"Is it true Friedman pulled you away from a grenade once in Italy and maybe saved you from being a splash on the Italian countryside?"

"Yes."

"Then why are you protecting his murderers?"

"I'm not."

"You're protecting Grew and Meadows, aren't you? You called about Grew this morning, didn't you? That's what your conversation with Friedman was about. Isn't that right?"

"No." David paused. "I don't know anyone by those names."

"You couldn't miss this babe, Coe. She's a blonde, and she has it all in the right places. She's also wearing glasses. What do you say?"

"I don't know any blondes who wear glasses."

"I don't think very kindly of you for making things tough for us." Maurow paused. "Don't spit on the sidewalk, Coe. And don't speed, and don't do a lot of things you may not even know about. This city has a lot of ordinances, and we'll be waiting for you, Coe. Now get out of here."

David headed for the deserted dock alongside which he'd berthed the boat, thinking of Sam Friedman and allowing his murder to build a cold, festering rage inside him. He knew that neither Wanda nor Grew could have committed the murder. He'd spoken to Sam on the telephone and then gone directly to the dock to find Grew and the girl waiting for him. After that neither had been much out of his sight.

The boat bobbed gently on the waterline. The dock was very silent, the rain pressing drearily against the wooden planking. David jumped onto the deck, then headed below into the cabin.

The cabin reeked of cordite. The room was filled with smoke that hung in unshifting layers on the still air. He peered through the smoke. The typewriter rested on the dinette table, a sheet of paper in the roller. One suitcase lay on the deck, unopened. The Luger was nowhere in sight. Neither was the girl.

Leslie Grew was on the deck. There was a bullet hole between his eyes. David knelt down. Grew was dead.

"Wanda!" David called, standing up quickly. He walked to the galley side of the cabin and shoved open the door there.

"Wanda!"

He went forward and checked both transom berths. He went into the head and checked there. Wanda Meadows was not aboard. He went back into the cabin and looked down at Grew's body. The man's spectacles lay on the deck several feet from his outstretched hand. One of the lenses was smashed, as if someone had stepped on it.

He went to the suitcase that lay on the deck. He lifted it. This was not the heavy suitcase. The heavy suitcase was gone. He put the bag on the dinette table alongside the typewriter, and snapped it open. Quickly he went through it. Lingerie, mostly. Very lacy. Very feminine. He looked through the pocket of the bag. A pair of toothbrushes, toothpaste, shaving cream, a safety razor, a packet of bobby pins, lipstick. He closed the bag. He swung the typewriter around. There were two lines typed on the otherwise blank page. In the right-hand corner was the number "14." Beneath that, in heavy black type, were the words: "men like Harry Williston, who poses as the innocuous proprietor of a pool parlor. Men like the late and vociferously lamented Geo5"

Harry Williston again.

And somebody who was dead and apparently named George something-or-other. David looked at the keyboard. The "5" was directly above the "r." A simple typo, except for the fact that the typo and the end of the typewritten matter happened to coincide. Had something happened to cause Wanda Meadows to stop in the middle of the thought—and with an error?

He moved away from the typewriter and began scanning the deck. He found the shoe first. A blue calf, high-heeled pump. It matched the color of the dark blue raincoat she'd been wearing. He looked around the cabin again, wondering if the raincoat was gone, too. Then he saw it sprawled across the seat of the dinette. She had left without her raincoat, and she had left in enough haste to drop her shoe at the foot of the ladder leading above decks. He put the shoe alongside the typewriter, then studied the deck again.

Glistening metal lay several feet from Grew's body. He bent down and picked it up, recognizing it instantly as an ejected cartridge case. He turned it over in his fingers, seeing the indentation where the firing pin had struck. Lettered onto the back of the case in a semicircle were the letters
REM.UMC.

Beneath that, and coming up to form the lower half of the circle: 9
-MM LUGER.

Harry Williston had been carrying a snub-nosed .38, a gun that looked like a Banker's Special. But Banker's Special or not, it had been a revolver, and revolvers don't eject cartridges, and the cartridge David held was unmistakably stamped
LUGER.

He had seen only one Luger since all this started.

That Luger had been in the fist of Wanda Meadows. He looked down at the bullet hole in Grew's face, wondering if it had been made by Wanda's Luger.

When he heard the creak above him, and he looked up at once. Someone was onboard.

"Hello?" a voice called. "Anybody aboard?"

For an instant, David panicked. He looked at the body on the deck, then hurriedly went toward the ladder. Two men were waiting above. They both wore trench coats and gray fedoras. He closed the door to the cabin and walked toward them.

"What can I do for you?"

"Sun City Police," one of the men said. "I'm Detective-Sergeant Sloane. My partner, Detective Belgrave."

Belgrave nodded briefly. His eyes were on the closed cabin door.

"Maurow didn't waste any time, did he?" David said.

"Maurow can move fast when he has to," Sloane said.

"We've got a search warrant," Belgrave said. "Let's get to work." He was a big man with a pinched face and hooded brown eyes. "Anybody else aboard this tub?"

"No," David said.

"What's your name, anyway?" Belgrave asked.

"David Coe."

"He's the one spoke to Friedman last," Sloane said.

"Yeah," Belgrave said. "He a friend of yours, Coe?"

"Yes."

"Shame. Somebody must have sure hated that poor bastard."

"How do you mean?"

"Emptied a whole damn magazine into him. That don't betoken brotherly love, pal."

"A whole magazine?"

He thought back to what the lieutenant j.g. had said.
They found him with eight bullet holes in his head and chest.
A whole magazine. A .45 carried seven or nine cartridges. A .22 usually carried ten cartridges. A .38 carried nine. A .32 carried eight.

"He was killed with a .32?" David asked.

Belgrave snorted. "Hell no. A Luger. Come on, let's take a look belowdecks."

He moved toward the cabin door, and David stepped around him quickly.

"What do you expect to find down there?" he asked.

"Happens we're looking for a dame," Belgrave said, and he shoved past David and was reaching for the latch on the door when David clawed at his shoulder and spun him around and hit him. Belgrave slammed back against the cabin door, and was reaching under his coat when David hit him again, and he crumpled to the deck. Behind him, David heard Sloane shout, "Hey!
Hey!
" He whirled and shot his fist at Sloane's stomach.

"Hey!" Sloane shouted again, and then there was a surprised look on his face and David hit the surprised look, and Sloane hit the deck and was still. David looked off up the dock. There was no one in sight. Quickly, he went to the seat aft near the fishing boxes. He opened the locker under the seat, reached in, and took out the .45 in its Army holster. He removed the gun from the holster, and put the holster back into the locker. He closed the locker and slid the gun's magazine onto the palm of his hand. It was a full clip. He slapped the clip home and then worked a cartridge into the firing chamber. He tucked the gun into his waistband, took a last look at the quiet detectives, and left the boat.

Maurow's going to love this, he thought. This will absolutely delight Maurow. But the alternative had been to let the cops go belowdecks and find Grew's body, after which they'd have put the arm on David for sure. The important thing now was to find a young lady running around somewhere in the rain, a secretary with a very heavy suitcase and a Luger—but without a typewriter.

There were nine typewriter-rental places listed in the Gulf Beaches telephone directory. The fourth one he called told him a woman in Madeira Beach had phoned to rent a typewriter that afternoon.

"What's her name?" he asked.

"Name? Just a second." The man paused, obviously checking some papers. "Rebecca Jones," he said. "At the Sunbright Motel. You know where that is?"

"I'll find it," David said.

"Who is this, anyway?" the man asked, but David had already hung up.

The Sunbright Motel was a plush, luxurious, wood-and-glass structure that hugged the beach. Doggedly, David pushed through the rain and into the lobby. The front desk was set along a solid wooden wall that faced the glass entrance wall. There were a good many people in the lobby, seated in the comfortable, modern easy chairs, staring glumly through the rain. David was starting for the desk when he saw Williston. The big man saw him at the same instant. His eyes sparked angrily, then flicked over the crowded lobby. The anger fled. He smiled genially, extended his hand, and walked over toward David.

"Hello," he said, almost cheerfully.

David didn't answer. Williston pulled back his hand, the smile still on his face. "We were looking for you," he said.

"What do you want, Williston?"

"Put it this way," Williston said. "We ain't stopping till we get it, so there's no use playing cute."

"How's your pool parlor coming along?" David asked.

The smile dropped from Williston's mouth. "How do you know about that?"

"I get around," David said.

Williston scowled. "Where's Leslie Grew?"

"Leslie Grew is dead."

"Since when?"

"You don't know anything about it, huh?" David said.

"Nothing at all."

"You're as innocent as—"

"Cut it!" Williston whispered sharply. "I know Grew's alive, so just cut it! Just tell me
where.
"

"Try looking on my boat," David said.

"We already tried, pal. Don't worry, we'll get what we want."

"What is it you—?"

He stopped suddenly.

Wanda had just entered the lobby through a door to the left of the desk.

Williston hadn't seen her because his back was to her, but she had seen him and she had seen David, and she hesitated now, watching them. She had managed to pick up a pair of flats somewhere, but she was still coatless. She carried the heavy valise.

"If you told me what you're looking for," David went on softly, "I might be able to help you."

"You're a card," Williston said. "Put it this way. You're such a card I'd like to break your nose."

Wanda turned and moved toward the writing desk along one of the glass walls.

Til tell you what, Williston," David said, stalling. "You've been talking about 'it' and about how badly you want 'it,' but talk is talk, and talk is cheap." He saw Wanda pick up a pen and hastily scribble something on a sheet of motel stationery.