Wake Up to Murder (6 page)

May’s eyes went round. “And you can’t?”

I said, “Don’t be silly. I haven’t got enough drag in Sun City to get a parking ticket fixed.”

May was breathing almost as hard as I was. “Then we’ll have to find him and give him back his money.”

I leaned against the bathroom wall. “I’ve been trying all day. Remember?”

May wet her lips. “You need a drink,” she said, finally. “We both need a drink.”

I followed her into the living room. She took a fifth of Ronrico out of the bottom of the china cabinet. May’s smile was wry. “I bought it for the party last night. I was going to make Planter’s Punch. Because it goes farther that way.”

So I was a complete heel. What could I do? Bawl about it? I watched her twist the stopper from the bottle and pour two drinks into the bottom of two old-fashioned glasses. As she did, the telephone rang. I picked it from its cradle.

“Jim Charters speaking.”

“This is Mantin, pal,” the voice on the other end said. “How you doing, Jim?”

Relief drenched my body with sweat. “Jeez, am I glad you called.”

Mantin chuckled and I could close my eyes and see his codfish smile. “Why? You got good news for me, fellow?”

My knees were so weak I had to sit on the arm of a chair. My hand was so wet with sweat the phone almost slipped out of it. “No. Bad news,” I managed to say. “Look, Mantin. I was drunk last night. I was handing you a line. I’m not a big shot. I can’t do anything for Pearl. I’m just a punk lawyer’s runner glad to get sixty-two-fifty a week. And Kendall fired me yesterday. That’s why I got drunk. So, if you’ll tell me where to meet you, I’ll give you back your ten grand.”

Mantin was silent for so long. I thought he had hung up. Then he said, coldly, “So the other side got to you, huh, Charters? How much they give you to spit in my face?”

I protested, “No. You got me all wrong, fellow. No one got to me. I’d do anything for Pearl that I could. I like the kid. I think she’s getting a lousy deal. But I can’t do anything for her. I’m just a punk.”

“That’s your story, huh?”

“It’s the truth.”

“You double-crossed me, huh? You talked it over with Kendall and he told you not to be a chump, to string along with the local boys.”

“No. That’s not it at all.”

“Don’t give me that,” Mantin said. “Well, okay. Keep the money for now, pal. But I don’t think you’re going to enjoy it very long.”

I got down on my knees. “For God’s sake, you’ve got to listen to me, Mantin. I haven’t changed sides. I didn’t talk to Kendall. I don’t want your money. Like I said. I
like
Pearl! I’d do anything for the kid that I could. But I was so drunk last night I don’t even remember where I met you or what I told you that I thought I could do. Please. Name some place I can meet you and we’ll talk this over.”

I waited for him to answer. I waited a long time.

“What is he saying?” May asked.

I looked from the dead receiver to her frightened face, then out at the black night pressing against the windows.

“Nothing,” I told her, finally. “He hung up.”

MAY handed me one of the drinks she’d poured. “Pull yourself together, Jim. Please. For my sake.”

I gulped the rum. It was so much water. I poured a larger drink and gulped it. It didn’t help. The lump of ice in my stomach continued to expand. “Now what do I do?” I asked May.

She smoothed the cloth over her bosom. Her eyes were still wide. “I don’t know. Are you sure you don’t remember what you told Mr. Mantin you thought you could do for Pearl?”

“I’m positive.”

“Just — who is he?”

I admitted, “I don’t know.”

“You’re not lying to me, Jim?”

“Why should I lie to you?”

May looked out the window, then back at me. Her eyes filled with tears. “Because I know you’ve lied about at least one thing.”

I shouted the word at her. “What?”

May met my eyes. “You were with some woman last night.”

I wasn’t so loud this time. “What makes you think that?”

May told me. “When you came home this morning there was lipstick all over the collar of your shirt. And when I went to hang up your suit, I found a halfdozen brown hairs on it. Long brown hairs. Whoever she was, she has very pretty hair.”

May sat on the sofa. With her hands folded in her lap. Crying softly to herself.

I tried to think of something to say and couldn’t.

May said, “Besides, someone called me last night. Some man. About twelve-thirty, I think it was. And he told me you had just checked into the Glades Hotel with a girl. He didn’t know her name.”

I poured another drink.

May looked at the glass in my hand. “Getting drunk again won’t settle anything.”

I put the glass back on the breakfast bar.

May wiped her eyes with the hem of her skirt. All she had on, under it, was panties. Lou wasn’t in the same class with May. Lou was cute. May was beautiful. And good. More, she’d never denied me a thing. I felt like the lad in the Bible, who’d thrown away his birthright for a dish of lukewarm oatmeal.

May smoothed her skirt over her knees. “I’m sorry I cried. I wasn’t going to say anything about it.”

Being a male, in the wrong, I was nasty about it. “Why not?”

May told me. “Because I felt that it was partly my fault. After you walked away from the house last night, I realized how you must have felt. It was your birthday. Matt Kendall had fired you. You were worried. You came home to me. With a smile on your face. For my sake. And because I wanted you to be surprised, I didn’t even say ‘Happy Birthday’. I gave you tough liver and boiled potatoes for supper.” More tears rolled down her face. “Then when you tried to make love to me, I pushed you away. I wish I hadn’t, now.”

I drank the rum I’d put on the breakfast bar. I knew how low a man could feel. “How long have we been married, May?” I asked her.

May wiped her eyes again. “Ten years.”

I told her the truth. “Then believe me when I tell you that last night was the first time that it ever happened. Oh, I’m no angel. I’ve looked at a lot of girls in those ten years and thought, Oh boy. Would I like to go to bed with her.’ I guess men are that way. Whether we’re married or not. But it never went beyond thinking, until last night. Sure. I did. I woke up in bed with a little dame named Lou, who works in the sheriff’s office. And we did plenty. But even now, I don’t remember checking into the hotel with her or whether it was her idea or mine. And not excusing myself, because God knows I’m guilty as hell, I’d lay odds of five to two that someone paid Lou to get me to check into that hotel with her.”

May looked at me through a mist of tears. “What makes you think that?”

I told her. “The way Lou acted this morning. She’s been around. Plenty. But she doesn’t do it for money. And when I accused her of it to her face this morning, when I asked her, ‘Who paid you how much to check in here with me?’ she began to bawl and asked if I thought she
liked
to feel like a whore.”

May pleated the skirt of her house dress. “Is that true what you told me, Jim?”

“About what?”

“About it being the first time since we’ve been married?”

I dragged out something very sacred to us both. The memory of the little girl who’d stayed with us only a year. “I swear it. On Patricia’s grave.”

May began to cry hard. “Hold me. Tight. Please, Jim,” she whimpered.

I sat on the sofa beside her and took her in my arms. May buried her face on my chest and cried for a long time. Finally, she sat up and wiped her eyes on her skirt again. Then she swore for the first time since I’d known her. The words sounded strange coming out of her mouth. Like a rosebud emitting bile.

“The son-of-a-bitch,” May said. “The foul-minded son-of-a-bitch.”

“Who’s this?” I asked her.

May finished wiping her eyes with the back of one hand. “You have a right to know. But we won’t go into that right now. I’ll tell you sometime. Later. Right now the important thing is to clear you of this business with Mantin. You haven’t the least idea what his connections are?”

“Not the least idea.”

“Is he a local man?”

I shook my head. “I doubt that very much. I’d have heard of him if he was. Especially in my line. He’s a big shot in the rackets somewhere.”

“Do you know of anyone who might know him? I mean by his description.”

I thought a moment. “Tom Benner might.”

“Who is he?”

“Right now, he’s Judge White’s bailiff. But Tom has been in one form of law enforcement or another for over thirty years. In both Georgia and Florida.”

“Call him,” May insisted.

I looked up Benner in the phone book. He lived out in the Big Bayou section. His wife answered the phone. I asked if I could speak to Tom. She said, “Of course. Who is this, please?”

I said, “Jim Charters.”

I heard her call, “Tom,” then Benner came on the wire.

“Hi, there, fellow,” he opened the conversation. “What can I do for you, Jim?”

I described Mantin. “Do you happen to know such a man, Tom? Is he one of the Miami boys?”

“N-no,” Benner said. “I doubt that. You say he could be cracker?”

“That’s right.”

“Fancy dresser? Lines in his face you could lay a lead pencil in? Gives you goose pimples when he smiles? Rolls his own cigarettes?”

“That’s the man.”

“What about him?”

I hedged. “He made me a business proposition.”

“Uh uh,” Benner said. “Don’t take it, Jim. Sure, I know the guy. His first name is Tony. But this is the first time I’ve known him to use Mantin as a tag. Mostly he’s known as Tony Meares. There’s one story connected with his name, but I don’t recall it at the moment. Something about some cracker taking him in when he was a kid. And if the guy you’re talking about is Tony, stay away from him, Jim.”

“He’s bad, huh?”

“Worse than that. He’s Cade Kiefer’s right-hand man. You know. The big shot who runs the upper end of the Gulf. From Biloxi to Appallachicola. And I’ve heard some rumors that because of this new ten percent federal tax on gamblers, Cade and his boys have been looking over our west coast with an idea of boosting their gross to equalize the new tax.” Benner laughed. “No. So Kendall bounced you. Don’t get tied in with that outfit, Jim. Kiefer looks like a Sunday School superintendent. But he ain’t. And if Tony was to burn for every guy he’s killed, well Florida Power could declare an extra dividend. That tell you what you want to know?”

“Yeah. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Tom,” I told him.

I cradled the phone and looked at May. Her face was white and strained. “You heard?”

May bobbed her head. “Yes.”

I walked across the room and back. If Tony or Mantin or Meares, or whatever his name was, was all Tom Benner said, I didn’t have too much time. Pearl meant something to him. I’d promised him I could get her off the spot. He’d given me ten thousand dollars to bind the deal. Now I was backing out. It was only logical for him to assume that I’d sold out to a higher bidder. He’d used the word ‘double-cross’. And in the jungle in which he lived, there was only one cure for men who caught that disease.

My shirt was suddenly too tight. I loosened my tie and unbuttoned the top button. “Look, hon,” I asked May. “How do I act when I’m drinking?”

May thought a moment. “Well, it’s awfully hard for even me to tell when you’re drunk. You don’t stagger or get sloppy. You just sort of pass out on your feet and keep right on going. You’re very gay and certain of yourself and almost smugly quixotic.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked her.

May said, “You want to right all the wrongs in the world.” Her smile was wry. “And according to you, you know just how to do it.”

“I get cocky, eh?”

“In a very nice way. Until you’re just about ready to pass out. Then you get nasty.”

Like I had in the Bath Club. Just before I’d fallen flat on my face. And checked into the Glades Hotel with Lou.

I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. I wasn’t a physical coward. I’d proven that both to my own and the War Department’s satisfaction. I had an Infantry Combat badge and a few assorted citations to prove it. But this was different. This was more like the boys in the South Pacific had had it. With a sniper back of every tree in the jungle and all trees looking alike. I didn’t even know where Mantin had called from. He could be outside the window now. Standing on the lawn. Waiting for a clear shot at a guy he considered a bastard.

I went into the bedroom and dug the .38 I was licensed to carry as a special deputy from under a pile of shirts.

May followed me into the bedroom. “Where are you going?”

I said, “Out to talk to Mr. Kendall. So he fired me. So he’s a louse. He’s still a damn smart lawyer. And maybe if I give him the two hundred and forty dollars I’m to the good, he can figure a way to get me out of this.”

“No,” said May, sharply.

I looked at her. “Why not? Mantin assumed I’d talked to Kendall and Kendall had told me I was a chump not to string along with the local boys. That means Kendall is in this up to his hip pockets. And if he is, it’s to his own interest to see that I come clear. Otherwise, he’ll be next on the list.”

“That’s true,” May admitted. “But — ”

“But what?”

May took a deep breath. “Nothing. Except that — if you’re going to talk to Matt Kendall, I’m going with you.”

“Nix, baby,” I protested.

May walked past me into the bedroom and peeled her dress over her head. “Don’t argue with me, Jim. I’ll be ready in a minute. Just as soon as I put on another dress and freshen up my make-up.”

There was no use arguing with May. I knew, from past experience. Once she made up her mind, that was it. I dropped the gun in my side pocket and sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay. But for all we know, Mantin is waiting outside now.”

May tossed the cotton house dress she’d been wearing over the back of a chair. “Pooh. That for Mantin.” She switched on the incandescent light over the built-in dressing table and stood squeezing her honey-colored hair together at the nape of her neck as she looked at herself in the big mirror.

May seldom wore a bra. She didn’t need any uplift. Her breasts were as firm and peaked as they had been the night we were married. All she had on was a pair of cotton scanties. As I watched her reflection in the mirror she released her hair, stripped off the scanties and took some silk ones from a drawer. I wondered what I’d ever seen in Lou.