Dead Low Tide, page 12
“How you doin’, lady killer?” the biggest one asked.
“Suicided anybody lately?” the other one asked.
The biggest one was leaning against the car door. He had his arms crossed in such a way that his fists bulged his big brown biceps. I wanted no part of a street brawl and that was what they had in mind. I could smell it.
“You boys want something?” I asked mildly.
“We want to know how come they let you out?”
“Yeah, you must have given old Wargler a lot of your smart talk. Old John Long was a right good friend of mine. And we don’t go for people playing around with other people’s women. Somebody ought to take a fish knife and fix you up so you stay out of trouble.”
You work in the town and so you are a part of the community, and then all of a sudden you’re just as much a stranger as when you first arrived, indistinguishable from any tourist.
“What you got there?” the big one asked, looking at the envelope. “Pardon from the governor? Let me see that.”
He held his hand out. I said, “No. You can’t see what I’ve got here, boys. It’s private business.”
The smaller one moved out a bit, casually, moving slowly, with the very obvious intention of coming around behind me. I moved back onto the sidewalk to keep them both in front of me. It had helped them to have something specific they wanted. It was better and easier than just the vague idea of embarrassing me, of needling me and hoping something would start up. I couldn’t see any U.S. Cavalry riding down the street with bugles and pennons. And either one of them could break my head.
I said adios to pride and male vanity. I spun around and ran like a rabbit. I ran better than a rabbit. I didn’t waste any time bounding. I received a lot of startled looks, but I ran right on down to Saddler’s Drugs and through the door and to the phones.
I remembered then what I had neglected to do, and the first person I called was Dr. Graman. His nurse got him on the line and when I recognized his precise, slightly girlish voice, I told him about Joy Kenney and gave him her address.
“Did you say McClintock?” he asked.
“Yes, I did.” From the booth I could look out the front door and see my two friends standing on the corner.
“I don’t understand your relationship to this girl.”
“We employed her last week. I went to see why she wasn’t working and found her like I told you I found her. If you don’t want to touch it, who should I call?”
“Could she have had some—great emotional shock?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Ah—you are—at liberty?”
“Released from jail? Yes.”
“Do you want to be advised about Miss Kenney? Where can I reach you?”
“I’ll get in touch with you. If she’s bad off, where will you take her?”
“To the hospital right here, temporarily. There are a few limited facilities. Do you know how to get in touch with her relatives?”
“No. From what she said there’s just one brother. And I don’t know where he might be.”
“I’ll go over right away, then.”
I hung up. It was nearly five-thirty. I wondered about calling for police protection. It seemed like yelling for Mamma. But my rough friends were still out there. As I glanced toward the door I saw Steve Marinak come striding in and stop at the cashier’s counter for cigarettes. He had changed shirts during the day, changed to a green and yellow and white checked job. The girl gave him his change just as I came up to him.
“Hey, Andy,” he said, his red face sober and concerned.
“Come here a minute.” I led him away from people over toward the magazine rack. “Those two characters out there—see them?—are waiting around to bust me on the nose. Any suggestions?”
“You aren’t popular enough to be roaming around town, Andy.”
“That isn’t the immediate problem. Those guys are.”
“Come on. I know ’em.”
I followed him out. He marched up to them. “Something on your mind, boys?”
“I guess you don’t care who you’re seen with, hey, Steve?” the big one said.
“Boys, you better simmer down. If you got to take a punch at Andy, go ahead. I’ll watch. Then when you’ve had your fun, I’ll fix it so you lose that boat of yours, Joe. And we’ll take that lot you own at Crescent Acres, Harry. First you stand still for a criminal charge of assault and battery, and then we clip you with a civil suit. If it’s worth that to you, go right ahead.”
They sneered. They called a few names. They swaggered off, but the tails were definitely tucked between the legs. It pleased me. Not the way I would care to win all personal combat, but a very pleasant way to do it at the moment.
Steve tore open one of the fresh packs he had bought and offered me a cigarette. As I lighted his and mine, he said, “Why don’t you go back to your place and sit tight?”
“I might do that,” I said.
“It might save you some fuss. You’re lucky to be out. Wargler has this—Christy thing pegged as having no relationship to the other.”
“What do you think?”
He looked uneasy. “Well, you told me you sent her out to look into that—broken desk thing, and check with the Kenney girl. I’m not sure. Maybe it could be either way.”
“Wargler’s probably right,” I said.
“Maybe.” He looked at me and looked away. There was a little awkwardness between us.
“Did you tell him everything I told you, Steve?”
“No. You’re a client.” He glanced down and seemed to notice the envelope for the first time. His eyes narrowed as he glanced up into my face. “Is that the thing Mary Eleanor lost?”
“It might be.”
“What did I tell you about keeping nothing from me?”
“You told me to tell you everything, Steve.”
“Is that the envelope?”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Who took it? The Kenney girl?”
“I couldn’t say, Steve.”
“Goddamn it, Andy! What are you trying to pull?”
“I’ll let you know.”
“I can drop the case right here and now. I don’t have to take a case where the client holds out on me.”
“That’s right, you can drop out right now.”
“Don’t you care?”
“To tell the truth, I don’t care a hell of a lot. I haven’t cared since Wargler came into the cell this morning.”
“It won’t do you any good to be a damn fool. What’s in the envelope?”
“I’ll see you around, Steve.”
He bit his lip and stared across the street for a time. Then he said, “O.K. Try it this way, then. How about a trade?”
“A trade?”
“What I know against what’s in the envelope.”
“Do you know anything special, Steve?”
“I know something that doesn’t fit into the picture. At least I can’t make it fit. In fact, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to me.”
“Then why should it interest me?”
“Because maybe it throws a little more light on that conversation you had Thursday morning with John.”
“Suppose you tell me, Steve, and then if it is as important as what I’ve got right here, you can have a look.”
We had been walking slowly up the street and we came to my car. The car was now in shadow, so we sat in it.
“That isn’t such a hot deal,” he said. “You can listen and then not show me.”
“It’s the only deal I’ll make.”
He sighed. “You’re hard to get along with. O.K., here it is. Another lawyer in town has been a little upset ever since John was killed. This afternoon he came over and told me what was on his mind. Seems that John came to see him late last Thursday afternoon and asked for some information, with the agreement in advance that the lawyer would ask no question in return. The lawyer agreed. John asked some pointed questions: What’s the local deal on the unwritten law? What has happened in the past? Suppose the husband kills just the man involved? What usually happens when he kills them both? And so on. My lawyer friend said that if John were asking those questions because he had the intent to kill, then he was pretty calm about it. Like somebody who had thought it over a long time, made a tentative decision, and was just checking the legal aspects before going ahead with it. You see where that leaves me, Andy. It doesn’t help your case a damn bit. If the prosecution can convince a jury you were fadid-dling with Mary Eleanor, then it can be made to look as though you had to knock John off before he could jump first.”
“But we can show she spread it around thoroughly.”
“That’s tougher than you think. A man will half promise, but when it comes to actually swearing it in court, he’ll back out. I’ve seen it happen.”
I tapped the edge of the envelope against the steering wheel. This was the place where I had to make a decision. I didn’t want to get Steve so involved in it he’d get in my way. And yet I was afraid that if I didn’t show him what I had, he’d get in my way in his efforts to find out. Maybe it would be better to give him something to think about.
I tossed the envelope into his lap. I didn’t look at him. I heard the sound as he pulled the photographs out.
“Lord Almighty!” he said in a hushed voice.
I turned and watched him as he went through the batch. They really stunned him. He put them back in the envelope and his mouth had a twist of disgust. “My God, seeing and believing are two different things, aren’t they? My God, do you think John got hold of these?”
“I don’t know. From what you told me, it looks that way.”
“You are completely and finally off the hook. That guy is definitely not you. My God, they’d clear the court if these had to be introduced as evidence. But with these in our pocket, they’ll never try you. They wouldn’t dare. My God, can you imagine being married to that! I’d rather live in a septic tank. And imagine her posing for them! What the hell kind of a woman is that?”
“I don’t think she did. I asked Homer. He thinks they were taken with infrared lights. She’d think it was dark.”
“That would make it a blackmail pitch, Andy. Who cut the heads out, I wonder?”
“Maybe the photographer. Maybe it’s a double play. Maybe there’s another set with her head cut out. I don’t know.”
“I’m keeping these, Andy.”
“No, you’re not.”
“We can’t take the chance of you losing them, of somebody taking them away from you. They’re like bonds, for God’s sake.”
We compromised. He took seven and I took seven. He promised to go right back to his office and stow his seven in the office safe. I got the envelope along with my seven. Then I drove him to his office. He scuttled up the stairs with the photographs hugged against his shirt.
I drove on slowly. Mary Eleanor had the key to all of it. Right in her depraved little head. It wasn’t going to stay there, of that I was certain. It was going to come out, and she was going to release all the keys willingly or unwillingly and the choice would be hers as to how she did it.
There is a certain set of social and environmental rules about using violence on a woman. It is not done, old boy, I told myself.
But the pictures had released me from that. I could no longer think of her as a woman. The word implies a member of the human race. Mary Eleanor had forfeited membership. She hadn’t kept up her dues. Her name had been posted on the bulletin board, and they had ousted her from the club, and she wasn’t entitled to sign checks any longer. And thus she no longer had the immunity of a club member. If a dog locks its teeth on your ankle, you are privileged to kick it loose from its skull.
Mary Eleanor had, somehow, set the whole thing moving. Like pushing over the first one of a row of blocks. And the last block had fallen on my Christy. Mary Eleanor and I were going to have a chat—a heart to heart. A viewing of the real art photos. A real letting down of hair.
Twelve
THE SHADOWS WERE LONG and blue and the sun was gone when I drove into Mary Eleanor’s driveway. The black MG was there, looking sedate with its top up. When I turned off the motor I could hear the slow, thick sighing of the Gulf. My footsteps crackled on the shell drive. As I pressed the bell a mosquito whined by my ear and I blew smoke toward him.
The door was open. Nobody answered. I waited and then tried the latch on the screen. It was fastened. I rattled the door hard and waited. I could look through into the long low living room, out through the window wall at the slant of beach beyond the terrace.
In sudden exasperation I put my knee against the door frame, took the screen latch in both hands, and yanked hard. There was a brittle breaking sound and the screen came open and a bit of metal tinkled on the cement. I stepped into the house and let the screen close slowly behind me. I slapped the envelope of pictures against my leg.
I went through and into her bedroom. She lay facedown in a flimsy robe, and it was folded halfway up the backs of her thighs. I stood just inside the doorway. The room was dim and bluish and quite cool. I could not see her move and I could not hear her breathe.
I took three slow steps to the side of the bed and looked down at her. At that distance I could hear the soft purring sound of her breathing. I decided to shake her awake. I reached down toward her shoulder …
“Hold it!”
I froze for a moment and turned slowly. The bathroom door swung the rest of the way open and the husky young cop I had first seen blocking the driveway at Key Estates came toward me, his stub-barreled revolver aimed at my belt.
“Oh, McClintock. What’s on your mind?”
I got the impression that he was disappointed to see me. “I want to talk to her.”
“Some other time.”
“It won’t take long. Give me some time with her.”
“Even if I could, it wouldn’t do you a damn bit of good. I never see anything like it. She’s been drinking all day, ever since she come back from headquarters this morning. Damn near two full quarts of bonded bourbon. You couldn’t wake her up if you set her on fire.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m staked out here.”
“Waiting for somebody in particular?”
“You better get on your horse, Mr. McClintock.”
“When can I talk to her alone?”
“I couldn’t say. You’ll have to ask the Chief.”
There wasn’t anything I could do. I wasn’t going to get any morsels of information out of her. I went back out to my car. I sat there with the motor running for a few minutes. Joy seemed to know John Long—he seemed to know her. She had the pictures. She had suffered an emotional shock. A lot of people had been coming and going, in and out of her room. One of them could have been the man whose head was deleted from the pictures. Or the man who had taken the pictures. Steve had talked about blackmail. John had talked to another lawyer about the unwritten law. He had spoken of killing both of them. So he knew whose head had been cut out. He knew the face. Had he cut them out himself to use in order to find the guy? Had he found him? In finding him, had he run into Joy?
A lot of threads tied a lot of things together, but I couldn’t detect which threads were real, and which ones were the result of too much imagination on my part.
I drove to Taylor Street. The woman trotted into the hall again, dabbing at her lips with a napkin. “Oh, it’s you, young man. You won’t find her this time. They took her away.” She seemed to be finding considerable satisfaction in that, and in being able to tell me that.
“I wonder if you could give me some information.”
“I am eating supper, young man.”
“Could I wait?”
“The other man was very rude with all his questions.”
“What other man?”
“The one who was here about forty minutes ago, after they took her away in the doctor’s car. He was a very ignorant-looking man, and he kept writing things down and kept licking the pencil. He was a policeman. Sergeant George something. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything that girl did. She was a queer one, believe me. And what am I supposed to do with her things?”
“Maybe she’ll be back.”
“Not to stay in my house, she won’t be back. My supper is getting cold, young man.”
“Can I wait in there?”
“Yes, you can, but please don’t smoke as I can’t get the smell out of the drapes.”
I sat and waited. I could see into the empty dining room. I could hear the thin sound of her voice in the kitchen, and the deeper rumble of a man’s voice, the clink of silverware on pottery. The room had an airless musty smell. The rug had a faded pattern of dragons and roses. The shade of the single lighted lamp was pink, ornate, and covered with cellophane.
She trotted in and plumped herself on the couch and bounced a few times, and said, “I suppose you’ll ask all the same questions over again. Who are you, anyway?”
It was a problem. I didn’t want her to run away screaming. But I couldn’t delay too long. “Andrew McClintock.”
“Oh, goodness! I read and heard all about you. It was extremely stupid of them to put you in jail, Mr. McClintock. I’m a good judge of character. I can tell from the shape of your head that you could never kill anybody.”
“Thank you.”
“If I’d known your name, I could have saved that police person some trouble. I described you in great detail and finally he grunted and scribbled in his silly little notebook. I always say if anybody wants me to know their name, they’ll tell me. Of course, I knew Miss Hallowell by sight. Why in the world Wilburt can’t get some new books in that loan library I’ll never know.”
“When was Miss Hallowell here?”
“Understand now, Mr. McClintock, I don’t keep tabs on people coming and going. She was here yesterday. Sunday, it was, and I guess she was here about four in the afternoon, or maybe later. Then she went away, and that man came and he was here longer than I care to have men here in a room with a single girl. I’m not old fashioned, but I say there’s a limit, and decency is decency wherever you find it. Once I get my mind made up to ask a girl to go, I do it, and that is what I was thinking on yesterday when that man was here. He left along about dark, and Miss Hallowell was back here again but she didn’t stay long, and that was very late. I’d say. I went to bed and then, about an hour later, I heard Miss Kenney go down the stairs and unlock the door and I heard a man’s voice down there with her, and I guess he must have gone around the side of the house and chunked a pebble on her window or something. She came back up the stairs with him, both of them walking quiet. Right then and there I made up my mind to talk to her, and tell her to get out. I lay there so mad I couldn’t get to sleep and he stayed maybe ten minutes and then went real quiet back down the stairs and let himself out. I got up and went to make sure the door was latched and it was locked like it should be. I heard her in her room, making a mewly little noise like she was crying, and any normal time I’d ask a body what the trouble is, but, as I said, I’d just about give up on that girl. I was real pleased for her when she gave up that waiting table work and got a decent job in Mr. Long’s office, but I tell you, that kind of girl brings trouble wherever she works. Oh, I’m not saying she isn’t nice enough to speak to. So polite and nice butter wouldn’t melt. But I always say these tropics can do something to nice girls to make them forget their upbringing, and forget plain decency.”
