Kill Me, Darling Page 12

  “What?”

  “They think things are too hot in Miami after Kefauver to risk opening up Cuba as a major drug connection right now. In addition, they consider Quinn a general pain in the ass. But killing him gangster-style puts them in a bad light with the Chamber of Commerce. So what better way to get rid of the preening jackass than to have a kill-crazy private eye from New York take him out?”

  Her eyes were big, whites showing all around. “You didn’t… you aren’t going to…”

  “You know better than that, kitten. I don’t hire out my gun that way. I reserve it strictly for sport.”

  That got a smile out of her.

  Then I pointed at her again. “But if your goal is to gather evidence, well, fine—I’ll play that game for a few days, too. I’m going to investigate your shack-up pal, starting with those two girl friends he broke up with the hard way.”

  “You’re in the right place to do it,” she said.

  “How’s that?”

  “The suicide used to work here.”

  I was gaping at her when she slipped out of the booth and leaned in and kissed my forehead. “For a drunk, Mike, you’re slipping.”

  “Huh?”

  “You haven’t touched your beer.”

  And she was gone.

  * * *

  I followed up on Velda’s lead immediately, though with limited results.

  The bartender was new, and the first three strippers claimed not to remember Dotty Flynn. Since each dancer between sets was pursuing the time-honored B-girl role, this was turning into an expensive inquiry at $5 per brandy with Coke chaser. Funny how when the girls took a sip of brandy followed by one of Coke, the level of the Coke in the glass went up and not down.

  That’s how the suckers got drunk and the dolls stayed sober.

  But finally that taffy-haired number who’d been stripping when I came in settled down beside me at the bar and got cooperative right away. We had no trouble talking because the first show was over and during the break an Oriental kid was at the ivories singing “La Mer” in French, piano-bar style.

  “I remember Dotty,” she said.

  Under a trowel-worth of make-up, this brown-eyed kid with a perfect 36 chassis was about eighteen. She looked like the kind of prom date that made springing for a corsage a good investment.

  “Dotty left maybe a week after I started here. That tall-dark-and-handsome daddy with the nightclub came in one night and spotted her and I guess liked what he saw. Next thing I heard, he hired her away to work his hatcheck concession.”

  “I’d think working here at the Pigalle would pay off better than that.”

  “Not really. I’d snap up a hatcheck gig at a place like that in a heartbeat. You get to keep more clothes on and the tips are steady.” She nodded to her brandy and Coke on the bar next to where we sat. “Plus, you don’t have to go through this dumb routine.”

  “What kind of outlook on life did Dotty have?”

  She frowned and her forehead make-up cracked a little. “What do you mean, mister?”

  “I mean, was she blue all the time or cheerful or just in between?”

  “I didn’t know her well, but she was a chipper gal. She liked people. Liked attention. But it can get old having strange men drooling on you, and older still that it’s your job to do it. She was a good dancer. She’d done chorus line work in Vegas.”

  “So maybe she thought the hatcheck gig would lead to the chorus line at Nolly Q’s?”

  “Oh, yes. Matter of fact, that’s what I heard—that she was told she’d be a floor-show dancer next winter. Next I knew, she’s that Nolly guy’s main squeeze. Then she wasn’t, and… and later I saw the squib in the paper.”

  She shivered, and only a heel would notice what nice things that did for the pastie-tipped contents of her sheer bra.

  I asked, “Did Dotty strike you as the kind of girl who could bounce back from a letdown? Or could you buy her opening her wrists?”

  That made her go white around the throat where the make-up stopped. “I don’t know, mister. I really don’t. This isn’t an easy life, working a town like this. But she wasn’t who I would expect to take that way out.”

  I patted her arm and slipped her an extra fin.

  Very quietly she leaned forward and whispered, “I’m off at two.”

  I leaned in and whispered, “I don’t pay for it, sugar.”

  “Big guys like you never do. Maybe little girls like me like it that way.”

  “Maybe we’ll test that theory another time.”

  That kid would rate a corsage any day.

  * * *

  On the way to the motel, I was looking at the pieces in front of me like some retiree sitting in the sun with a big jigsaw puzzle spread out on his glass-topped beachfront umbrella table. Still at the nothing-but-pieces stage, no picture emerging yet. The trouble was there were a couple of puzzles to put together, that overlapped and merged, or maybe didn’t merge. The Manley kill. The dead ex-girl friends. The mobsters who wanted Nolly dead. The Cuban drug supply.

  And a low-life lover boy who was living with a lovely woman, my woman, but not sharing his bed with her. If Velda was to be believed.

  Plus things on the periphery that might or might not be missing puzzle pieces. I kept moving them around, trying to make things fit, hoping I wasn’t like some kid who got his scissors out and starting cutting off this bit and that corner to make the pieces shove together…

  Then as I approached the Sea Breeze, something jarred me from my thoughts.

  The NO VACANCY part of the rooftop neon was glowing red, like the exit sign in a theater. This was odd because, ever since I’d checked in anyway, Duff had never left the sign on at all after ten o’clock. It was odder still because if there was one thing the Sea Breeze had, it was vacancies.

  I slowed a little and went on by. The Sea Breeze did appear to have one new guest—parked down from Duff’s own vehicle was a recent-model two-tone Packard, white up top and blue below. Clashing with an orange Florida license plate.

  I cruised on to a gas station separated from the motel by an overgrown lot, and pulled in. The station was closed. I left the Ford there and walked back. The night was clear and a nearly full moon made an ivory searchlight. It was cool but humid.

  The room the Packard was parked near was dark. But no lights were on anywhere in the place, including the Duffys’ living quarters above the office.

  I listened at the door and windows of what might be the room belonging to the Packard, and heard nothing. Checking the vehicle, I came up with something interesting—it was unlocked. The keys were in it. Either somebody was careless, or somebody wanted it ready and waiting. To hop in and go.

  After doing what?

  The auto registration said Elmer Johnson and the address was Tampa. Did somebody from Florida think this was a good time of year to check into the Sea Breeze? Maybe. Price was right. But what could you do off-season in Miami that you couldn’t do just as well in Tampa?

  Salesman, maybe. Probably I was making something out of nothing. I got out my .45.

  When I entered the office, I reached up with my left to silence the bell over the door. No sign of disturbance, but a too-familiar coppery smell was in the air. I didn’t turn on the light but gently kicked the door wider to let in a broader shaft of moonlight, more of which was already streaking in the front windows.

  Then I caught it.

  Feet were sticking out from behind the registration desk. Four feet. In sandals. A male pair. A female pair.

  In a clumsy embrace where they had been dumped were Merle and Martha Duffy, casual in their summery attire. His friendly ugly mug was looking right at her, though of course he wasn’t seeing anything. Nor was his plump, pretty wife, her blue eyes glassy.

  Each had been shot in the head, probably with a .22 automatic. That’s what contract killers usually preferred.

  Of course, the Duffys weren’t the intended victims. They were just what the military calls no
n-combatant casualties.

  Sorry, Duffy, I said in my head. But I promise you they’ll go out worse.

  On the wall of keys above the corpses, the hook for my unit was empty. Somebody had my spare. Every other pair of keys hung in place, meaning the Packard party hadn’t checked in at all. Why should they? They were in another room, weren’t they? My room.

  Waiting.

  I thought for a few seconds about what to do. The Packard’s keys were in it. Maybe I should climb in and start ’er up and drive around back, picking up some nice speed and crash it on through into my unit. Anybody who didn’t get smashed by the vehicle I could shoot.

  But I didn’t know if the Duffys had any kids they’d be leaving the place to, or if they had insurance either, so that seemed a little on the reckless side.

  Or I could go around and smash a window and take pot luck. Too bad I didn’t have a shotgun handy because I could blow a hole in the wall from the next-door unit and make a good old-fashioned turkey shoot of it. Using my key in the door was no go, because they would hear it, and even coming in fast and blasting, I might catch some lead. And kicking the door down was risky, even with flimsy wood like that, because you never know how many kicks it’s going to take. Kicking down doors wasn’t as easy as in the movies.

  Then I remembered something I’d noticed when I was hanging my suits in my closet. I reached across the Duffys to the wall of keys and plucked one off: the key to the room on the highway side of the motel that shared a back wall with my unit on the ocean side.

  I went outside and down to that room and entered quietly, leaving the light off though I probably could have turned it on. Still, even the click of a light switch might warn them.

  And “them” was right: I could hear two muffled voices, talking casually, conversationally, not loud, but these were paper-thin walls. One was higher pitched, meaning it wasn’t just one talker droning on. That was good that they were chatting over there. Meant they were over-confident. Always a plus having the other side cocky.

  I snugged the .45 back under my arm. I took the change from my pockets and my car keys too and set them soundlessly down on the dresser.

  Very slowly and carefully, I opened the closet door, leaning in and glancing up to confirm I had remembered right.

  I had.

  Then I went over and got the chair from the little writing desk and set it in place within the closet, so quiet, so careful. I stepped up on the chair. It creaked just a tad. I froze. Above me was the hardboard panel to the crawl space. I pushed it up and to one side. It made only a whisper of a sound.

  The tricky part was to lift myself up and over without making a racket. The result wasn’t silent by any means, but the conversation, which you could hear better up here, didn’t stop, so they probably hadn’t heard anything.

  Now I was in the crawl space. Nothing much up here, not the ductwork you would find up north or the insulation, either. Just electrical access. Nothing stored up here, which was helpful. I had a good clear path to where the closet in my room was, but edging over without attracting attention meant taking it very slow and easy.

  On my belly like I was crawling across the jungle floor from one foxhole to another, I inched along until I came to the recessed panel in the floor above my closet. The panel was not designed to be lifted out from above. Maybe the pair waiting below in my room would think it was mice or rats up here, if they heard the tiny sounds. Couldn’t be helped. My fingernails worked to catch the lip of the hardboard panel from its wooden frame, but they just wouldn’t catch, they wouldn’t catch, goddamnit, they just wouldn’t…

  …then they did.

  I lifted the hardboard square carefully up and out and set it down to one side.

  I took a second to mentally refresh myself of the room’s layout. From where I was positioned, the closet was in the front-left corner next to the can. The bed was on the west wall, which would be at my right. The door was on the east wall, way over to my left, if one of my new friends was waiting there to catch me coming in.

  I got the .45 back out, which would make it tougher to ease myself down gracefully, but I wouldn’t want to have to take time to pull it, so somewhat awkwardly I lowered myself to the closet floor. They were still talking out there. Not loud. Something about bets they’d laid on a Tampa Smokers ball game, which struck me as just plain sad. Particularly for a last conversation.

  I turned the knob, shouldered the door open and the big guy in a hideous floral yellow-and-orange sport shirt sitting at the end of my bed with a .22 auto in his mitt swung a stupid thick-lipped face my way just in time to see the yellow-and-orange tongue of flame from the snout of the roaring rod try to lick him like a friendly hound. His head stayed in one piece but everything in it beat a hasty, splattery retreat onto the far wall. He slid off the floor with a thump as the guy positioned by the door, skinny and crew-cut with a sliver of a face, yelped in wide-eyed surprise and blasted one my way with a .22.

  I was already hitting the deck where his thick-lipped dead partner on the floor looked at me with an even stupider expression than in life. In the meantime, his tall skinny partner was out the door. I got up and across the room, pausing at one side of the opening, peeking out before making a clay pigeon of myself.

  What I saw was the back of him, as he disappeared into the stand of palm trees and tropical flowers and brush just beyond the rear of the motel. I went after him fast, but moments upon entering the mini-jungle the sound of him on the move, twigs snapping, fronds flapping, leaves scraping each other like sandpaper, suddenly ceased. Somewhere in here he was waiting for me, to pick me off.

  I grinned, hefting the .45 even as I crouched. This was a game I’d played before. Jungle warfare? Fine by me. Dense as the greenery was, enough moonlight filtered in for me to see the most distinct, foliage-free route out, which was to my left. Staying low, each movement calculated, each step measured, I made my way through the patch of palms and flora.

  Before getting to the beach, I let go with four rapid-fire shots spaced a few feet apart, their thunder rolling through the trees and brush like the threat of a storm, stirring and shaking and shattering branches and leaves, and my adversary gave up his position as he moved noisily, heedlessly out of the underbrush toward the beach. My .45 followed him, booming off three more shots.

  I was slamming in a fresh clip when I emerged from the thicket but this time he’d outsmarted me, he was waiting on his belly down in the gently sloping sand with that .22 steadied by a second hand, as if on a firing range.

  But I pitched to one side before his shots snapped into the night, only I hit hard and off-balance and the .45 flew from my fingers. He kept firing, but I was less a target now, and then he was out of ammo and clambered up. I was on my feet, too, grinning at him, my hands clawed before me.

  He froze there in the moonlight for half a second, feet on sand, moon-tipped water to his back, deciding whether to reload or run. He was a gangly guy, in another of those floral shirts with chinos, and sandals like Duffy and his wife had worn. The killer’s face had angles including a sharp chin and he had an Ichabod Crane look to him.

  He chose flight, first tossing his gun at me and missing wide, then moving to where the sand was damp but not spongy, because it was faster under foot than the dry variety, and with those legs, those churning legs, he was making headway, arms pumping. Down the beach were the lights of civilization. But this was the jungle.

  He was fueled by fear and I was powered by rage, and rage trumps fear every time. I closed the distance and then closed it some more and threw a tackle at him and brought him down, his landing a hard, bone-crunching one that sent a chest worth of air whooshing out of him.

  He was gulping for breath as I dragged him by the ankles into the water and then he was squirming, trying to get away, like a flopping fish on a boat deck. I suppose I should have questioned him about who sent him, but my brain was filled with a burning blood-red image of the Duffys in their final embrace behind the desk of their
happy little business. I moved farther into the lazy lapping water, dragging him with me, and he was splashing and fighting all the way. He was so damn tall that I had to go in to my shoulders as I held him upside down, clutching him around the waist, my arms completely submerged, his arms too flailing under there, his legs and feet above me, kicking, kicking, kicking, for the longest time.

  Until they stopped.

  Then I hauled him out of there, first by the waist and then by the ankles again and made a concave snail trail in the sand as I dragged him back into the stand of palms, just to get him out of the way. The moonlight guided me as I looked for and found my .45, and I went over and collected his .22, too. Then I went back and with my feet covered up the gouge his towed body had made in the beach.

  I went into my room where the other gunman lay with his head still draining like a badly cracked egg. I gathered everything of mine, packing the duffel, putting the suits back in their clothing bag, all of that. Dragged a chair over to get up there and replace the hardwood panel in the crawlspace access. For what good it might do, I wiped off everything I’d touched. Or anyway that I remembered touching.

  I did the same in the room where I’d entered the crawlspace, putting everything back in place but not bothering climbing back up there, and collecting my change and car keys. I wiped down the office door knob and a place where I’d leaned against the counter. I tore the page from the guest register that had my name on it.

  Then I returned to the gas station, lugging both duffel and suit carrier, and drove till I found a phone booth. I used the slip of paper in my pocket to get a certain number. Surprisingly, Bonetti himself answered.

  “Mr. Bonetti, Mike Hammer. Think you could clean up a little mess I made?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I woke just before nine a.m. from a deep sleep that left me with no residue of dreams, though I knew damn well there had been some. Incidents like last night brought combat memories bubbling up out of the subconscious ooze and my bed sheets were twisted and damp with fever-dream sweat, even with the air-conditioning blasting.