Murder for the Bride (6 page)

“Bill, how did Laura act on the trip? Did she seem nervous or anything?”

“Not a bit. One thing, though. We made all the usual stops. Rio, Trinidad, Havana. She never got off the ship. She stayed right in her cabin. No, I wouldn’t say she seemed nervous. More like she was … disinterested.”

“How about when you docked here?”

“I don’t know about that. I’m pretty busy usually. We were rushing to get through for the celebration, you know. I told her when I’d pick her up at the Bayton.”

There was no more information he could give me. Some of the guests had left. Jill asked me if I was ready to go. I thanked Tram and said good-by and we went out to Jill’s car and rode back into town. I took her to dinner and put a steak down on top of the tepid gin.

“Are you getting anywhere, Dil?” she asked me, her gray eyes intent.

“Me? Not getting a thing, honey.”

“Dil, you’re an engineer. What happens when the governor breaks on a machine?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it revs up to where it shakes itself to pieces.”

“Don’t shake yourself to pieces, Dil. Let Captain Paris and his people handle it. Leave it to men like Barney Zeck. This is their affair.”

I looked at her. “And mine. And thanks, Jill, for talking about engineering. You know what we do? We dig a hole and stuff dynamite in it. Then we rig a bunch of geophones
at intervals. We run the leads from the geophones back to the electronic stuff in the shed. Then we blow the dynamite. The geophones pick up the echoes of the explosion bouncing off the substrata. We get a map of what’s underground. And that’s what I need to know about Laura. The substrata. I’ve got to plant some geophones around and then arrange an explosion.”

She reached out and caught the first two fingers of my right hand in her fist. “Dil, listen to me. Do you
want
to know what she was? Maybe she was something—unclean. Maybe it won’t be good to know.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” I said. She took her hand back quickly and I thought I saw the glint of tears standing in her eyes before she turned her head away quickly. Then she smiled and was casual and we said good night by her car and I watched her drive away, moving too fast for the traffic.

A
n hour after I said good night to Jill, I found myself on Royal Street standing in front of a place called the Rickrack. The Quarter comes alive at night. Walking down Bourbon or Burgundy or Royal is like standing on the curb while a parade goes by. As one band fades, the next one comes thumping along. As you pass each joint a wave of sound comes out of it with almost enough force to knock you down. The doormen in garish uniforms yelp at you to step right in, the show’s about to begin. B-girls with bad teeth give you the sloe eye. Strippers inside the joints work out routines using balloons, feathers, parrots, lovebirds, snakeskins. In the hot weather they sweat as they work, and it streaks their powder and makes their bodies glisten.

Sailors and whores, drunken brokers and glassy-eyed schoolmarms, B-girls and pimps and college kids and
ragged children and Air Force enlisted men drift up and down the sidewalks looking for something that is never there and never will be there. They are the forthright and honest ones. There are the others who infest the Quarter and come out into the lights after dark. Those with the dark and twisted minds, perpetually sneering at all evidences of a lusty normalcy.

I had pushed through the crowds, and slowly the feeling had come over me that I was being followed. I stopped from time to time and leaned against building walls and waited. I could not pick any specific person out of the crowd. Yet each time I turned and continued on my way there was a prickling feeling at the back of my neck. Once I spun around quickly. Some teen-age girls, arms linked together, laughed at me. I felt like a fool. But still the impression persisted. It was as though the person who followed me could anticipate my movements, could melt into a doorway the moment I began to turn around.

It was then that I saw the poster outside the Rickrack. Papa Joliet on the piano. Papa Joliet with the Uncle Tom fringe of white hair, the long, sad, unmoving face, the lean dancing black fingers. Old Papa from ’way, ’way back. There’s one phonograph record worth forty dollars a copy. I own one copy, in storage. It’s a little ditty called “Ride on Over.” A pickup group. Satch on the horn, the Kid on the tram, Baby on the drums, of course, and Papa Joliet playing that piano.

I went in and the place was dim. Conversation was a low rumble. The piano was on a small platform in the far corner, a small spot wired to the ceiling so that it slanted down on the keys. I went through to a table in the back, near the piano, and sat down with my back to the wall. Around me were other tables of people who had come in to hear Papa. They glared up toward the bar, toward the noisy ones. I remembered how I had brought Laura to hear Papa Joliet and how she had got nothing out of it, though she pretended to.

It was dark back against the wall. I shut my eyes and listened to the piano. It didn’t take long to understand what Papa was doing. He was amusing himself by imitating other pianists. The hard Chicago drive of Albert
Ammons. The bursting originality of Tatum. The dead-sure beat of Fatha Hines. The gutty strut of Fats. He did imitations with good humor, with subtle exaggeration.

I felt someone close beside me and I gave a grunt of surprise as I opened my eyes. There had been two empty chairs at my table. Now a girl was in one of them. She had her elbows on the table, her chin on her palms. Papa’s spotlight made a reflected luminescence against her face.

I decided that, for a B-girl, she was very, very nice. A special one. Heavy thrusting cheekbones, dark blonde hair, a Slavic tilt to her eyes, a wide, rather heavy mouth, and a look of utter repose. She wore a pale dress, strapless, and I could not tell the color because of the dimness. It was cut so low that the cleft between her large firm breasts was a dark pocketed shadow.

“You don’t mind?” she said in a startlingly deep voice. Almost a man’s voice, and yet intensely feminine.

“I don’t mind. But don’t be too greedy. I’ll pay brandy prices for iced tea if you don’t drink too much tea.”

The music lovers around us glared at us. Somebody shushed us. She moved her chair around until her bare shoulder brushed my sleeve. Her scent was jasmine and it was heavy. There was a big purse in her lap.

She laughed softly up at me, her breath warm against my face. “Oh, no! I buy my own drinks. It is just awkward to come here alone to hear the music. Men misunderstand. I just hoped you would not mind.” She whispered so softly that no one around us was annoyed.

“I don’t mind. Stick around,” I said. I leaned my head back against the wall and shut my eyes. I wanted to shut her out of my mind, but I could not. She was so close I could feel the warmth of her body, and the jasmine scent surrounded us.

Papa finished a number. “He is so good,” she said softly.

“The best,” I said.

Papa started a noisy one. “Glendale Glide.” I looked down into my new friend’s face. I took a healthy pull at my drink. She rubbed her cheek against my sleeve.

“You think I am crazy,” she said softly. “This is such a crazy thing to ask. But I have listened to this music
with someone I love who is now no longer here. If you would put your arm around me, I could pretend so much easier. It is dark here. No one will mind. And that is all I want. Just your arm.”

“Just my arm,” I said. I put my arm around her. She made a motion a kitten will make, snuggling against me. Her dark blonde hair tickled my cheek. She reached an arm across me. She was on my right. She reached an arm over to my left side and I started with the sudden pain as the sharp point dug into my flesh.

“Do not move. Do not cry out,” she said huskily. “I don’t want to kill you.”

“What goes on?”

“Don’t move, Mr. Bryant. Enjoy the music. Relax and enjoy the music. Pretend we are lovers.”

I started to tense to thrust her away and the point dug deeper. “No,” she said softly, “I can feel your muscles tighten. Make them loose again. Ah, better, Mr. Bryant.”

As she held the knife in her right hand, out of sight under the edge of the table, her left hand began to creep into my pockets. I looked cautiously over at the nearest table. The two couples there were absorbed in the music. No help there. I felt ridiculously helpless. Her left hand touched my right hip pocket.

“Now move forward just a little bit, Mr. Bryant.”

I did so. It took enough pressure off the pocket so that I felt her slip my wallet out. Anybody looking toward us would have seen only a man with his arm around a lush and obviously friendly girl.

I slowly pulled my feet back to get them under me. “Put your feet out where they were,” she ordered. “I am not playing a game, Mr. Bryant. This is a long knife. The point is just below your ribs, slanting upward. If I thrust, it will reach your heart.”

“Who taught you this?”

“Be still, please. Now reach very slowly into your left trouser pocket and take everything out and place it on the edge of the table.”

One thing I was absolutely certain of. She wasn’t joking. She knew my name. She was as serious as death
itself. And I had no way of defending myself. Any attempt to use my right arm, and she would feel the preliminary tensing of the muscles. I was filled with a helpless anger.

I had my hand in my left pocket when the man came out of the darkness and reached for her. I heard her gasp as he reached and beyond him somebody stood up and swung at the ceiling spot. It popped loudly and Papa’s piano faltered into silence. The girl twisted away, out of my arm. I grabbed for her, caught fabric, and felt it tear away. A chair fell over. A woman screamed twice and the room was full of panic. Everybody decided at the same moment to get out of there. I came around the table and somebody grabbed my wrists, strongly. I twisted away and struck at a figure silhouetted vaguely against the lights of the street. It was a good and satisfying blow, and it made that splatting sound that comes only when you strike flesh. Somebody grabbed me from behind. I kicked back hard and somebody grunted as my heel dug into a shin bone.

Then there was a misty movement in front of me. I tried to duck. Half my head fell in on itself like a dynamited chimney and I went down onto both knees, not quite out, but unable to lift my arms. Lights came on. A man yanked me to my feet and I staggered over against the wall, bracing myself. My vision cleared and I saw he was young and well dressed. He looked like a desk clerk in a good Manhattan hotel. The other one was a bit older and heavier. They both looked almost too angry to speak.

The bright ceiling lights were all on, destroying the atmosphere of the place. Papa Joliet sat looking sadly out at the nearly empty room. He shook his head.

“What is this?” I demanded thickly.

The heavier one picked my wallet off the floor and glanced casually into it. I saw the packet of money. He handed it back to me.

“Come on, Bryant. Let’s go.”

“Let’s go where? I’m not going to …”

The younger one gave me a look of complete disgust. “Then don’t come and don’t learn anything,” he said.
The flesh was split over his cheek. His eye was rapidly puffing shut.

I followed them out meekly. We walked two fast blocks. The heavier one was limping a bit. I guessed it was from the kick I had landed.

Their car was a black cheap sedan. The heavier one drove. I sat in the back alone. They turned right on Canal. The young one unhooked a hand mike from a dash bracket, cupped his hand around it, and murmured so low that I could not hear what he said. I realized that it didn’t surprise me. From the moment I had decided to accompany them it had been because I had assumed they were police. Something in their manner had been unmistakable.

They turned right on Broad Avenue and went on out to a drive-in on Route 11 and parked where there were no other cars. The trim little carhop came out.

“Better have coffee, Bryant,” the younger one said. I was beyond objecting. My head had started to ache from the force of the blow.

“What did you hit me with?” I asked.

“A sap.” The coffee came. They passed my cup back to me. It was almost too hot to sip.

The young one turned and looked back at me. “We’re sore, Bryant, because something blew up in our face. It was a chance we won’t get again.”

“Who are you?”

“Just call us the Jones boys. Your record has been checked, Bryant. Just lately it’s been triple-checked. Unless you’re a hell of a lot cleverer than we think you are, you’re clean.”

“Gosh, thanks,” I said.

“Don’t waste your time trying to be snotty with us, Bryant. You pulled a damn fool trick marrying that woman. You …”

“That’s a line I’m getting damn tired of,” I said. “Everybody seems to have decided Laura was a tramp. Where do you people get to know so much?”

“We haven’t called her a tramp. And I don’t think we will, Bryant. But we’ll call her something else. Do you want to know what she was?”

“She was my wife.”

“Before that, fella. ’Way before that. I’d like to tell you. I’ve got permission to tell you, but it has got to stay under your hat. I want your promise not to spill any of it to the Townsend girl. This isn’t something for the papers.”

I thought it over. I said, “If you tell me something I didn’t know, you’ve got my promise.”

“Now listen good, Bryant, because I’m going to give it to you fast, and I’m not going to repeat it or attempt to justify it. Just realize that I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been cross-checked and proved. It’s all in her dossier in Washington.”

“You make her sound pretty important.”

“She was. Her right name was Tilda Renner. During the war she was the mistress of Ernst Haussmann, one of the bully boys of the Gestapo.”

“Now, look here, I won’t …”

“Shut up, Bryant. Haussmann was picked up for the War Crimes Commission. He escaped, most probably with Tilda’s help. Warrants have been out for both of them since ’46. Finally we got them tagged as to location. Haussmann in Spain, where we couldn’t grab him, and the Renner woman in the Eastern Zone of Germany, where we couldn’t reach through the iron curtain and grab her. We put an agent on her and got back word she was living with a Red officer, a Colonel General V. Glinka, doing organization work for the East German police force, as they call it.