Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth (13 page)

“Why, it’s simple as hell. I invented a new kind of film emulsion. Big money deal. Brother is the bankroll. He’s going to manufacture the film for me.”

Vera Sue moved from the chair to the bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her face with her hands, frowning. “I didn’t know you were an inventor, Walter.”

“Yeah, I ain’t a very hot one, but I’m an inventor. Took me one hell of a time to work it out. I been fooling with it since I was a kid, or anyway for years.” He wanted to stop lying and start laughing. He could hardly keep a straight face. She was taking it all in—he was a photographer and therefore he knew enough to invent a film emulsion, something that real scientists probably worked on for years, and mostly failed at besides. “Vera Sue, this film emulsion I invented, it is a kind of ultraviolet emulsion, which is a little more high-powered than the infrared. What it does, you take a picture of a person with it, it shows the type of blood they got. That was what all the stink about that O-negative blood was about. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know the film was that good when I invented it, and maybe I wouldn’t have known, only this Brother got the detective from Kansas City investigating me and that tipped me off I had something. I guess he would have stole my invention if I hadn’t got wise, but I did get wise, and I put it up to him cold gosling, and here we are.”

“Walter.”

“Yeah?”

“Is all that the truth?”

“Jesus Christ, you think I could think up a lie like that?”

“Well, then, I guess there is no need for me to be scared and feel like a prisoner, is there, Walter?”

“Not a bit. Here, how about a kiss?”

“Okay. Just one kiss, though.”

He pushed his mouth against hers and presently she dug her teeth into his lip. The Benedictine slopped out of her glass on her hand and she threw glass and all in the air. Benedictine showered down on them. “Bite me back, Walter. But not too hard.” He found out that having only one hand was quite a handicap. She finally took off the gown herself lying on the bed and writhing and squirming out of the garment, then throwing the gown up in the air the way she had tossed the liquor. The gown swirled around above them and fell back to the floor, skating from side to side in the air the way a leaf falls. The light fell across her body giving it a glow like cream. Her nipples were like acorns and hurt his chest through his shirt. “Goddamn you, Walter, you still got your shoes on.”

When he was sure she was asleep he got out of bed. He leaned down and gave her shoulder a gentle push and she rolled over on her back, her heavy breathing changing to snoring. He grinned. That was what he wanted her to do, snore. It was not hard to get her to snore. She was a snoring machine, this babe, he thought. Now, if she stopped snoring he would know she had awakened and be warned.

Her purse had seven dollars in bills and some change. He took it. He had seen her hide her money too many times when she was tight to need to waste time hunting. He went directly to her best pair of slippers in the closet. It was there, in the toes of the slippers, divided about half and half. He counted it.

“Jesus!”

There was twenty-two dollars. He knew she had gotten five hundred from Brother for selling him the names of the references. Could she have blown it all? She must have. She had frittered away all but twenty-nine dollars and forty-four cents. He counted it carefully. Stupid bitch. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could she blow every cent she got her paws on?

Harsh lurched to the bed, where Vera Sue lay sleeping loudly, a succession of resonant snores coming from her lips. He reared back and socked her across the jaw with his fist. Her arms jerked and threw the covers askew. The snores stopped. He looked at his hand angrily. Skinned the hell out of his knuckles. On his way out the door, he began to suck on his knuckles.

Doctor Englaster came into Harsh’s room about ten the next morning dressed for the operation as is customary for surgery, white gown and skullcap, surgeon’s mask, rubber gloves. His large flexible hands looked like bunches of bananas in the yellow gloves. Mr. Hassam rolled in an operating table improvised from a massage table, and Miss Muirz pushed in a smaller service table bearing instruments and medicants and a bright light for the operation. Harsh watched the preparations with the feeling of being paralyzed. Doctor Englaster seized his face and began to pinch the skin on the left side, and Harsh lost the paralysis. He knocked the rubber-covered hands away from his face and sat up.

“Get away from me, goddamn it. The operation is off.”

“Indeed?”

“I’ve changed my mind about going through with it.”

Harsh could tell nothing from their faces. The masks gave all of them the poker faces to end all poker faces.

“Will the rest of you step outside a moment?” Brother’s voice was gentle. “Mr. Harsh and I will discuss this.”

“Goddamn it, don’t leave me in here with him!” Harsh was frightened.

No one offered to interfere. Miss Muirz, Doctor Englaster, and Mr. Hassam left the room. Brother came to the bed and looked down at Harsh. His voice was still placid. “Let me refresh your memory, Harsh.”

“I know I agreed to having my face scarred, anyway I think I did. But it’s off.”

“Harsh, do you recall I had you investigated? The detective agency from Kansas City? Do you also recall we learned a Mr. D. C. Roebuck, a photographic supply house drummer, met violent death while pursuing you to collect an unpaid account?”

“I didn’t kill the guy.”

“Don’t interrupt. A witness, a service station attendant, accepted a bribe to say you were not the man D. C. Roebuck pursued. I told you that. What I did not tell you is that the same witness, for the same bribe, if ordered to do so, will testify you
were
the man D. C. Roebuck pursued, and that he saw a large nickel-plated revolver in your hand. The same revolver, for your information, was found in D. C. Roebuck’s wrecked car. I need not tell you how it got there.”

Harsh eyed him, stunned. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“That I can have you tried and electrocuted for the murder of D. C. Roebuck just by going to a telephone.”

Harsh felt sick. “You think you’ve got me, don’t you?”

“I have got you, you idiot. You are right in my pocket where you belong, or you are right in the electric chair. That is your choice.” Brother went to the door and opened it and put his head out. “Harsh has chosen to go along with us.”

The time required for the operation was less than half an hour. Doctor Englaster used a local anesthetic and the most pain Harsh felt came when the needle pinked his cheek the first time. The left side of his face became numb, the knife did not hurt at all. Neither did the stuff that was sprinkled in the wound before the gauze was applied. Doctor Englaster, obviously pleased with his own work, indicated Harsh need not necessarily stay in bed, but he should keep the bandage in place. “You will like that scar, Harsh. It will be quite a distinguished scar.”

Harsh looked at him bitterly. “Distinguished my ass.” He pulled the liquor table to where he could reach it from his bed and poured bourbon into a glass.

Doctor Englaster watched him with satisfaction. “Harsh, you please me. We need a twenty-four-carat cur for this job, and you show every sign of qualifying.” He got his instruments together and pushed the instrument table to the door. “Miss Vera Sue Crosby has a badly bruised jaw this morning. I treated her.”

Harsh scowled at him. “I like you too, Doc.” The anesthetic in the side of his face made him lisp.

Mr. Hassam began language lessons that afternoon. He came into Harsh’s room carrying a book. Mr. Hassam’s sport shirt was purple with gold flowers and his slacks were pink linen, his sandals held to his feet by straps between his plump toes.

“Brother sort of got the best of you, didn’t he, Harsh?”

“Yeah, I guess. But my day will roll around.”

“Between you and I, Harsh, I hope I am on hand that day.”

“I’ll send you word.”

Mr. Hassam grinned and gave Harsh the book and asked him to read aloud from it. The book was not in Spanish, as Harsh expected, but in English. He began to read, but his efforts to pronounce the longer words caused Mr. Hassam’s expression to grow pained. Mr. Hassam took the book back.

“The truth is my cheeks are sore from that stuff this morning, and I can’t read real clear.”

“The truth is you are practically illiterate, Harsh. But no matter.”

“Well, I guess you might say I can’t read and write real good.” Harsh pointed at the book. “What’s your idea trying me out on an English book?”

“I was merely ascertaining how you put printed letters into sound. We had better stick to verbal instruction and forget the books.” Mr. Hassam pointed to the table.
“La mesa.”

“Huh?”

“The Spanish word for the table.
La mesa.
Repeat after me. We will commence with the names of objects and things, then we will make them into simple sentences and go over and over them until they are fixed in your mind.”

“Say, couldn’t we put it off? My face hurts from that needle gunk, like I said.”

“Time is of the essence.”

“If that means it stinks, you’re so right.” Harsh lay back. “Well, shoot.”

His face continued to hurt from the scar operation, and he kept thinking the last thing he felt like doing today was learn some gook language. If he didn’t sort of like Mr. Hassam, he thought, he wouldn’t be going along with it.
“El telefono en la mesa.”
The concentration made his head ache, and he really did not give a hoot if he never learned to say the telephone was on the table.

“Hassam, I got it figured you folks are doctoring me up to double for somebody. What I can’t figure, is who.”

“Good grief. Hasn’t Brother told you any facts?”

“Brother tells me nothing. He hates my insides.”

“Well, I’m sure you should know.”

“How about telling me?”

“Telling you what?”

“Who am I going to double for?”

“Why,
El Presidente.
The president of our nation in South America.”

Harsh did not say another word on the subject. He had not believed Mr. Hassam. Sons of bitches were a bunch of kidders, he decided.

The following two days were filled with a peace which puzzled Harsh. He knew that Miss Muirz, Doctor Englaster, and Mr. Hassam must have gone away, basing this conclusion on the fact that he did not see them about. No one told him whether they had departed permanently. He thought of asking Brother about it, but he decided he would not give Brother the satisfaction of saying a damn word to him. He was cultivating a murderous dislike of Brother, and along with thinking about methods of getting into the wall safe, he was letting his mind take an excursion into ways of shutting Brother up permanently.

In the meantime Mr. Hassam reached New York and made the bank deposit. He presented the card with Harsh’s fingerprints along with the signature of
El Presidente
as forged by Miss Muirz. Mr. Hassam told the banker the fingerprints were part of a new policy
El Presidente
thought advisable in view of his troubled internal affairs. The thing went off with no more formality than a five-dollar savings deposit. The banker knew Mr. Hassam had been
El Presidente’s
financial courier for a number of years; indeed it was Mr. Hassam who had arranged a reception with
El Presidente
and a pleasant evening when the banker was touring South America with his wife two years previously. Mr. Hassam left whistling. No more sweat than a snake swallowing eggs, he thought.

He took his customary succession of taxicabs in a zig-zagging route uptown to a small shop on Seventh Avenue, near Macy’s. The Seventh Avenue shop was operated by a near countryman of Mr. Hassam’s, a Jordanian named Ghaset, who carried on a small plastics manufacturing business. The man was actually a wizard with plastics. He could do something that, so far as Mr. Hassam knew, no one else could or would do. He could furnish a mastic to be applied to a human hand, peeled off when dry, and from this he could fashion a glove which anyone with a hand of similar size could wear to duplicate the fingerprints of the original hand. The price for this was five thousand dollars. He and Mr. Hassam did business without delay.

Brother came in and took Harsh’s temperature once each six hours, but otherwise the two did not see each other. During the first twenty-four hours following the scar operation Harsh did not leave his room. He tried several times to get into the wall safe, succeeding as usual in opening nothing but the outer door to which he had the combination. The only progress he was making as far as he could see, he was getting so he could work the combination lock in nothing flat. That was something. He wedged a match head behind the painting that covered the safe, placing the match head in such a position that it would drop unnoticed to the floor if the painting was disturbed. Then he felt he could take a walk for some much-needed exercise.

The house seemed to be more castle than had been his first impression, a wedding cake castle under whipped cream clouds, the lawn tailored green velvet, each shrub placed with landscaper’s perfection. Half the jerk towns in the country did not have a schoolhouse so large, Harsh thought. The grounds were some ten acres enclosed in a high pink coral wall on three sides. On the fourth side the wall ran into the sea and enclosed a lime-white beach where there were two thatched cabanas resembling South Sea island huts as Hollywood would conceive them.

Harsh took a stroll to the iron gate. It looked solid, but it could be unfastened from the inside with a whack from a heavy rock, if he was any judge of padlocks. But it would be noisy. On the wall, starting about as high as a man could reach by jumping and extending over the top and probably down the outside of the wall, jagged broken glass was embedded. A man might have trouble getting out of the place.

He moved on to the beach and sprawled on a deck chair in front of one of the cabanas. He wondered if he should worry about getting out of the place. The hell with being scared, he thought, let him get hold of the fifty thousand dollars and he could jump the wall flatfooted. He watched the sea. The sunlight was as warm and relaxing as soft honey poured from a pitcher. Boats moved past on a rifle blue sea. A helicopter flailed along a hundred feet overhead following the beach, and later so did a couple of light planes. The chick-like outcries of bathers came intermittently from the unseen beaches to the north and to the south, never near enough for him to distinguish what they were so happy about.