Wild (9 page)

“Carl Hendrix’s wife right what?”

“Your client. What got you on this.”

I grinned at him. It was a stiff and unlikely grin. “Come now,” I said. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Don’t try to snow me, Baron,” Vagas said. “All it takes is a little reasoning. You’ve avoided the wife as if she doesn’t exist, and all the time she’s as obvious as a fire would be under your chair.”

I just spoke without thinking, trying to think behind the speaking, “Maybe he hasn’t got a wife, ever consider that?”

Vagas started to say something and the phone rang. I came out of my chair like a shot, reaching. Steifer leaned and picked up the phone. He chatted for a moment, then began to look like a fish-stuffed cat, clamped the phone in its cradle, looked at Vagas. “All right,” Vagas said. “What is it?” Steifer gloated sickeningly. He turned to me and said, “How did you happen along to turn off the gas?”

Vagas’ voice was like ice in bed against your back. “What is it, Lew?”

The fish-stuffed cat had caught a big fat mouse. But the cat wasn’t hungry. He would play with the mouse, and nothing would distract him. “Name’s Vincent Gamba,” Steifer said. “A salesman of cookingware, religious periodicals, pamphlets on birth control that he authored himself, phony wedding and engagement rings. Also believed to have a sideline in rubber goods and etceteras, because the stock found would break a horse’s back if—”

“Get with it, Lew.”

“Dead,” Steifer said. “Of having his head in an oven with the gas turned on. Doc Salters claims the guy was so drunk that if he got his head stuck in the oven, he’d never be able to get it out.” He looked at me. “Witness saw Lee Baron present on spot around time of death. Witness took Baron’s license number as he sped off premises.”

He hadn’t mentioned seeing Ivor Hendrix. I said, “Will it do me any good to say I planned telling you about this?”

“I don’t think so,” Vagas said. “It might.”

“I just hadn’t got to it yet.”

Steifer said, “There’s more. A bit of mystery added. The witness claims he saw Gamba leave the motel a while before Baron came. Gamba was driving his new Chevrolet station wagon like a crazy man. The station wagon did not return.”

Vagas looked at me. I told them everything I knew about Vince Gamba from the moment he held me up with the shotgun in the trailer, accounting for the hole in the trailer roof. I said nothing of Ivor Hendrix or the Craffords. I knew Vagas was thinking. I said, “Gamba called me here. He was plastered. He said he had to see me, and he raved about buried money, but wouldn’t tell me anything till I came and talked with him. That’s when you birds were outside the door. Now you know why I didn’t want to hang around.”

“Okay,” Vagas said. He knocked his pipe out in an ash tray and stood up. “It could’ve been nice if you’d told us all this a few hours ago.” He blinked sleepily. “At least one life would have been saved.”

I said nothing.

“We would’ve picked this Gamba up. He would’ve been in a cell, sobering up, awaiting questioning.”

The phone rang. This time I nailed it and showed Steifer my teeth. I felt sick about the way things were going. It was Hoagy Stills, calling from the lab. Maybe he had something on the .32 automatic I’d given him.

“Minute I tell you what I’ve got,” he said, “I’m going to Garlik with it. He’ll see Haddock. I’m going to tell them I told you.”

“All right.”

Hoagy was mad. I looked at Vagas and Steifer. They watched me. I began to perspire.

“Slugs fired from the .32 automatic you gave me were found in the dead body of a teller killed in that Laketown bank robbery you’re interested in. The teller’s name was McCarthy.”

“How did you run that down?”

“Enlarged photostats of the slugs in McCarthy. They were sent to every department in the state of Florida for ballistics checks against .32's on hand. It socked me in the eye. You know what this means.”

“Yes.”

“All right. After I tell Haddock, they’ll have orders to pick you up. I’ll tell them where I spoke to you. They’ll flay my hide and rub it with salt. Jesus Christ. Can I say you gave me your word you wouldn’t leave town?”

I felt like absolute hell. Hoagy was out on a limb for me and I was going to saw the limb off. “Yes.”

“This is lousy, Lee, lousy. It’ll rip the whole state wide open. This area will be crawling. They’ll get you, and Christ knows what they’ll do to you. They’re rough here, Lee. Things have changed in the past ten years. They play it hard. They’ll smash you—they’ll run you out of town, if you survive. Goddamn it. Only reason I’ve called you first’s because we’ve been friends, and I know you don’t know what this town is any more. You better find some quick answers—either that, or you’re dead. What you going to do?”

“Sit down and cry,” I said. “No. I don’t know. But thanks, I mean that.” He should have gone to Garlik first. The damned fool.

“Does it help?” Hoagy said.

“Yes.”

“You can’t talk,” he said. He said it with care.

“No.”

“Oh, Jesus.” He hung up.

I hung up and stood there staring stupidly at Vagas and Steifer, feeling a stiff and insane grin on my face.

“Who was that?” Steifer said.

“Marilyn Monroe. She’s leaving her husband. She just wanted to make sure I’m still waiting.”

Vagas watched me. He heaved a long deep sigh. “All right.” He had a sly look about him. He was scheming something. He looked at Steifer, then at me again. “We’ll want to talk with you later.”

I said nothing. His nostrils turned pale and waxen.

“Come on, Ruby,” Steifer said, turning toward the door. “Let’s get out of here. It smells.”

“Know what you just did?” Vagas said. “You ruined your chances in this town. You’re done.”

“How?”

“You haven’t leveled with me.”

He turned and they went to the door, and on out. Vagas shut the door. He shut it softly.

They would be back. Vagas was setting something up, and I couldn’t figure what it was. I had missed something between him and Steifer, when I was talking with Hoagy.

How in hell could I level with them? If this thing was mine, I couldn’t. Only I had to find the answers, the right answers, and quickly. I thought of Ivor Hendrix and had an immediate feeling of danger lurking around her, aimed at her. I didn’t know exactly why.

I went into the bedroom. I was immediately conscious of the fact that Vagas and Steifer had searched the apartment before I survived. You put things a certain way. It takes a top cop to set them back the same, and they had muffed it. I checked the top drawer in the bureau for my 9mm Browning. It was gone. I gnawed the inside of my cheek, headed for the living room. The snapshots of Carl Hendrix were still on the table where I’d left them after talking with Ivor Hendrix. They would have seen them, but the photos wouldn’t have meant anything.

At this moment everybody in the Police Building knew about the .32 Savage automatic. One or two cruisers would be within blocks of this apartment. The prowl car boys would be receiving calls.

The telephone shrilled savagely.

I went. I didn’t bother to close the door.

The phone was still ringing as I started down in the elevator. I wondered if I would ever hear that same phone ring again.

• • •

Leaving the parking area, I spotted the police car on open ground, shadowed against the paler waters of Tampa Bay. I knew then what Vagas had planned. Tail me and let me do the leading.

It irritated me plenty. I turned the lights off, set the gas pedal on the floor, and lost the car in the tangle of residential streets on my way to the Crafford address.

Maybe Steifer was driving.

A
SA
C
RAFFORD’S EYES
were big and hot. She still wore the filmy black shorty nightgown with the big red bows, and she still didn’t look sleepy.

“How is she?” I said.

“She’s fine. She’s so fine she isn’t even here.”

I shoved her out of the way and walked through into the hall. “Where did you have her?”

“Down there—the room off the end of the hall. Wait, Lee. I tell you she’s not here.”

I kept walking fast down the length of the hall. This was one great big beautiful God-damned night, this was. I reached the end of the hall. She ran along behind me. I turned into an unlighted room, found the wall switch, flipped it.

Across the room was a broad couch where somebody had been lying. A red woolen blanket was snarled off across the floor. There was a dent in a large yellow pillow where her head must have lain.

“Where is she?”

Asa Crafford eyed me, smiling. I took hold of her shoulders and shook her. Her breasts swung bobbling and her body gave sensuously with the pressure of my hands.

“I like it when you’re rough,” she said.

“Where is she!”

“I tried to sober her up. I let her sleep a while. Then I dragged her into the shower and turned it on full blast. She came around. I fed her black coffee, then dosed her with a Dexedrine bomb. It worked, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. She just wanted to get away.”

“So you let her.”

“Elk took her. He was hanging around when I had her in the shower, the bastard. ‘Need a towel?’ he said. I left him with her. Next thing I heard was the car, and he’d taken her away. The hell with both of them, darling.”

“Where would he take her?”

“How should I know?”

“This is great,” I said.

“Care for a drink?”

“Yes.”

She turned and walked back down the hall. I went after-her. She turned into the big front room.

“I’m over here. In case you’re interested.”

I stood there. The room was lighted softly around the baseboards. Her legs were long and white and smooth, swelling to lush thigh and hip and the ruffle of black gown with the red bows, then the breasts, the lips, the eyes. Soft slow blue jazz flowed like warm milk through the room from a record player. I went over and flipped the record arm off, then looked at her.

She stood with her back to me at the bar, pouring things from bottles into glasses that were damned near a foot tall.

“I like that music,” she said. It had been Duke Ellington’s
Mood Indigo
. “It reminds me of me.”

The light was arranged so you could see through the gown; the swollen curves, the way she moved.

She came over to me with the glasses in her hands. She stood with her hips thrown forward.

I took one glass and then took three long swallows, bringing the liquid down considerably. It was good. It hit bottom and began to grind. Something worked up my spine, and tiny feet pattered on the back of my skull. Then one of the feet expanded and booted me between the eyes.

“Vodka and cognac,” she said. “Good, isn’t it? Of course, you drink it much too fast. You’re crude, Lee. You always were. But, then, that’s all right, too.”

I didn’t say anything. Somebody had gone out there to that cement block house and jimmied the lock. They had carried the body away into the dark wet night.

Snatchers. Burke and Hare.

The day was done. The night was shot to hell. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I thought things.

“You must have a real bad impression of me,” she said.

“Depends what you mean by bad.”

“Things I’ve said. How I’ve acted.”

“Since when were you worried about impressions?”

She looked into her glass, then up at me. “I know how I sound,” she said. Suddenly her eyes narrowed. “I don’t give a damn,” she said. “What the hell of it?” She tipped her glass and drank fast, gulping it.

“That’ll solve everything,” I said.

“I have to sneak out,” she said. “Did you know that? And when I get back, you know what happens? He beats me. That’s what happens.” She laughed bitterly. “Isn’t that swell? I rebel, but it doesn’t do any good. He beats me, then he goes to the
Carol
and mopes.”

“The
Carol?”

“His boat. Oh, I hadn’t told you. Oh, yes. He’s a sailor, too. Named after his first wife. Know why he beats me? Because Carol would never have acted like I do.”

“Why don’t you leave him?”

“I’m afraid to. I’m afraid what he would do to me. He loves me, in his own insane way.” She turned, moved to the bar, set her glass down, then returned to me. “God,” she said. “All I need is money. You hear? Money.” She formed claws with her hands, then smiled over the claws, and relaxed them, put her hands behind her. “He’s spent every damned cent we had. He inherited a lot from his parents, and he’s into everybody he knows. I think he’s as desperate as I am. If I had the money, I’d go—oh, how I’d go, then.” She paused. “I like money almost as much as I like sex. It does crazy things to me—just feeling of it.” Her eyes got dreamy. “Once I kept at him till I got a thousand dollars from him. That was before he’d gone through everything. I went to the bank and cashed it all into single dollar bills. A thousand of them. It’s crazy, sometimes when I think of it—but I’d do it again. I brought it all home and spread it around in my bed and slept with it.” She put her hands in front of her and clenched them together. “It was wonderful.” She shivered again. She looked at me, the eyes narrow and slightly drunk. “I think real crazy things,” she said. “Then I sneak out—and when I come back, he beats me.” She swallowed.

The telephone in the hall rang gently. She said, “Excuse me,” and left the room. I started toward the hall door. I heard her speak in a rapid whisper. I went back to the bar as she hung up. She returned. I set my glass down and moved across the room.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

“Lee? Come on upstairs. I mean it.”

I walked fast out into the hall and down toward the front door. I looked back as I went through the door. She hadn’t left the living room.

I went on outside and got into the car and sat there. I was very tired. I needed sleep, and there was no place to go. I wanted to see what happened here, if anything. I started the car and inched it around the drive into the street, then came back in the other side of the drive and pulled the car up on the lawn. I parked under some bushes that were taller than the car, climbed over into the back seat, and lay down.

I thought of them, staked out at my apartment. Hotels and motels and rooming houses would be alerted. They would cool off a little by morning. The drink had been big and powerful, and I began to doze. I had to get some sleep.

At the sound of the opening door I opened my eyes and saw her. She was naked in the night light. I didn’t move.

“Lee?” she said.

She gave a kind of moan and lay down on me. I caught a glimpse of her face and it was wrung, and red-lipped, with the eyes shining. Her mouth pressed against mine. The lips were hot, the tongue probing. I rolled her over on the seat. She lay there on her back, looking at me, her lips and teeth and eyes shining. Her body was smooth and urgent against my hands. As I touched her, she breathed inward between her teeth. She spoke harshly, almost with anger. “Love me. Please, love me.”

It went on for a long time. Then we would nap. Then one of us would wake up and kiss the other, and it would start all over again. She didn’t seem to want to leave.

Sometime in the early morning a car stopped out front. A man went up to the door and rang the bell. I couldn’t see who it was. They did not see my car. I didn’t care who it was, right then.

Along about daylight, she left. She kissed me and slipped outside and closed the car door.

I watched her run naked. She held her breasts as if they were tender, and bounded off across the dew-wet lawn through the gray light of dawn. The house door closed. It was quiet again.

A car gunned fast past the front of the house. A rolled morning newspaper flew from the driver’s window, arcked high, and plopped halfway up the lawn.