The Body Lovers Page 13

  “Promise?”

  I grinned at her. She wasn’t kidding at all. “Promise,” I said.

  “Can I watch?”

  “My pleasure.”

  She picked the drink up, looked at it a moment, then put it down unfinished. The twenty was still there, but she didn’t touch it. “My treat,” she told me.

  The rain had slicked the pavement and was coming down in a fine drizzle, throwing a misty halo around the street lights. I wanted to call a cab, but Roberta said no and we walked two blocks without talking. Finally I said, “Where to?”

  “My place.” She didn’t look at me.

  “Lorenzo there?”

  “No, but I am.” She didn’t say anything after that, crossing the avenues in silence, then down another two blocks until we came to the doorway between a pair of stores and she took my arm and nodded. “Here.”

  She put a key In the lock and pushed the door open, stepped in and let me follow her. I went up the stairs behind her, waited at the first landing while she opened up again and switched the light on. I had been in a lot of cribs before and they were usually dingy affairs, but she had taken a lot of trouble with this one. It was a three-room apartment, clean, furnished simply, but in good taste.

  Roberta saw me take it in with a single sweep of my eyes and caught my initial reaction. “My early upbringing.” She walked to the closet, reached deep into the shelf and came out with a cheap pad stuffed with papers and held together with a rubber band. She handed it to me and said, “He dropped it one night. It’s a tally sheet on us, but you’ll find receipts in there from a few places. We knew he had a place he stayed when he wasn’t in with one of us, but nobody knew where. That is, until I found this one night. You’ll find him there, but let me go find me first.”

  I looked at her, wondering what the hell she was talking about, and when she left, sat down and opened the pad. The kids had made plenty for Lorenzo Jones, all right, but I wasn’t interested in his take. What I saw were paid bills from three different small hotels, each covering a period for about three months, and the last was dated only a month ago and if the pattern fit, he’d be there now. Only he wasn’t listed as Lorenzo Jones. His name on the bill head was an imaginative J. Lorenzo, room 614 of the Midway HoteL

  Roberta Slade came back then. She wasn’t the same one who had left and I saw what she meant about finding herself. She smelled of the shower and some subtle perfume; the makeup was gone and the outfit she wore was almost sedate. She pulled on a maroon raincoat, stuffed her hair under a silly little hat and smiled gently. “There are times,” she said, “when I hate myself and want to go back to what I think I could have been.”

  “I like you better this way.”

  She knew I meant it. There was an ironic tone in her voice. “It isn’t very profitable.”

  “You could give it a try, kid.”

  “That depends on you. And Lorenzo Jones. He’s got a long memory.”

  “Maybe we can shorten it up a little.”

  The Midway Hotel rented rooms by the hour or the day, and if you paid in advance no luggage was required. The going rate for accommodations was steeper than the place deserved because the management got its cut for providing its service of keeping its mouth shut and overlooking the preponderance of Smiths in the register.

  I signed in as Mr. and Mrs. Thompson from Toledo, Ohio, passed the money over and took the key marked 410. The clerk didn’t even bother to look at my signature or thank me for letting him keep the change of my bill.

  There was no bellhop, but this place had an early-model self-service elevator that took us to the fourth floor where we got out. We walked to the room and when I opened the door she gave me an odd look, a wry little smile, shrugged and walked in.

  I grinned at her, but there wasn’t any humor there. “No tricks, kid. I can’t go busting in his door up there and he damn well won’t open it for me.”

  “Nothing would surprise me any more. I’m sorry.”

  I went to the window, forced it up and looked out at the back of the building. Like most, it had an iron fire escape with landings that covered the windows of several rooms at each floor. I shucked my raincoat and threw it to Roberta. “Give me fifteen minutes to get up there, then come pay a visit.”

  “You won’t start without me, will you?”

  “No... I’ll wait.”

  Outside, thunder rumbled across the sky and for a second there was a dull glow over the city. I stepped out to the iron slats and closed the window behind me. The rain waited for that second and came at me like a basket of spitting cats, daring me to go any further.

  I swung my legs over the railing and got my feet set, hanging on to the metal bar behind me. The rain pelted my face and I couldn’t be sure of the distance to the other fire escape frame. Then the sky lit up with that dull gray incandescence and I could see it, and while the image was still there, jumped, my fingers clawing for the iron rail.

  My hands made it, but my feet slipped, smashing me into the uprights. I hung on, pulled myself up until I found a toehold, then climbed over and stood there to get my breath and see if anybody had heard the racket. There wasn’t any need to worry; the rain kept the windows closed and the thunder drowned out any noise I thought I made. Two flights up where room 614 was, the window was outlined in yellow behind the drawn shade.

  I took the .45 out of the sling, cocked it and started up the stairs.

  The window was open about four inches from the bottom with the shade pulled below the level of the sill. Inside a radio was playing some tinny music and the smell of cigar smoke seeped out the opening. There was a cough, the creak of bedsprings and somebody twisted the dial of the radio savagely until another station was on. I tried the window. The damn thing was stuck fast.

  Behind my back the wind came at me, driving the rain through my clothes, making the shade flop against the sill. I edged to one side, reached out with my fingers, got the shade, pulled it down on the roller and let it go. The thing snapped up under the tension of the spring and flapped wildly around its axis and the guy on the bed jumped up with a curse, startled, a snub-nosed gun in his hand. He took a look at the shade, let out another curse, stuck the gun in his waistband and came to the window, reaching up to pull down the blind.

  And saw me standing there with the .45 aimed at his middle through the glass.

  “Open it,” I said.

  For a moment I thought he was going to try it, but the odds were just too big and he knew it. His face was a pasty white, his hands shook going to the window, and when he forced it up he stood there with the sweat running down his forehead into a crease in his flattened nose and he couldn’t get a sound out of his throat.

  I stepped inside, yanked the gun out of his pants and smashed him across the jaw with it. His head snapped back and he stumbled against the bed just as a knock came on the door. I walked over, opened it and let Roberta in. She gave me a hurt look and said, “You promised.”

  “It was just a teaser, kid,” I told her. “The main course comes up later.”

  Lorenzo Jones got his voice back. “Mister... look, I didn’t do nothing.... I...”

  “Shut up.” I locked the door behind me, went over and pulled down the window, closed the shade and, very deliberately, turned the volume of the radio up.

  Lorenzo Jones got the message loud and clear. His eyes in their heavy pads of flesh grew a little wild. They didn’t want to look at mine. They tried to appeal to Roberta, then he saw who she was. “Look, mister... if she paid you to do this, I’ll pay you more. That bitch...”

  “She didn’t pay me, Lorenzo.”

  “Then why...?”

  “Shut up and listen to me, Lorenzo. Listen real good because I’m only going to say it once. I’m going to ask you questions and if you don’t answer them right you’re going to catch a slug someplace.” I motioned to Roberta. “Get me a pillow.”

  She pulled one from the bed and tossed it to me. I wrapped it around the rod in my fist and
walked over to Jones. He tried to swallow and couldn’t. I said, “Who paid you to use Virginia Howell’s room?”

  “The ... the girl. She...”

  “Not the girl.”

  His nod was desperate. “It was, I’m telling you. She gimme the dough....” I leveled the .45 at his kneecap. “Cripes, don’t shoot me, will ya! I’m telling ya, the girl gimme the money. Ali said she’d pay me.... It wasn’t the first time. He wanted a room somewhere for himself or his friends, I’d clear Virginia out and let’im use it. Always whoever used the room would pay me. He ...” “Roberta?” I asked.

  “He’s pulled that plenty of times, usually with Virginia. A lot of those bums don’t want to sign a register. A couple of times he stuck somebody up there who was hot.”

  I looked back to Jones again. “How long was Greta supposed to stay there, Lorenzo?”

  His shrug was more like a big shudder. “I ... dunno. Ali never told me. She got out on her own, then that stupid Virginia came back when I told her to stay away until I saw her. That’s why I smacked her. She was givin’ me a hard time. She didn’t like nobody using her place. That other one messed up her clothes, threw them in a suitcase, knocked them down....”

  “That other one was putting on an act for me, Lorenzo. She wanted me to think she lived there.” I stopped a second, watched him and said, “Was she there before?”

  “How do I know? I don’t ask Ali no questions. Maybe she was. I ain’t gonna complain when...”

  I cut him off. “Who’s Ali?”

  “Hell, that’s all I know. Just Ali. He’s a guy.”

  “You’re getting close to hopping, Jones.” I grinned at him and my mouth was a tight line across my teeth. I could feel my fingers starting to squeeze the gun.

  Lorenzo Jones knew it too. His breath sucked in so hard he almost choked and he tried to double up in a ball. “Who’s Ali?” I repeated.

  His tongue ran over dry lips. “He’s ... on a ship. Some kind ... of a steward.”

  “More.”

  “He brings things in. You know, he ...”

  “What does he smuggle, Jones?”

  He couldn’t keep his hands still and the sweat was dripping off his nose. “I... I think it’s H. He don’t tell me. His customers are... special. He ain’t... in the rackets. He does it special.”

  “That puts him in the money class,” I said.

  Lorenzo jerked his head in a nod.

  “How would he contact a slob like you?”

  “I... got him some broads one time. He like to... well, he wasn’t right. He did some crazy things to ’em, but he paid good.”

  “What things?”

  Lorenzo Jones was almost babbling, but he said, “Cigarettes. He burned ’em, things like that. He’d ... bite them. Once he ...”

  Roberta came up and stood beside me, looking at Jones with loathing. “I knew two of those kids. They never talked about it, but I saw the scars. One wound up in the mental ward at Bellevue and the other stepped in front of a subway train when she was dead drunk.”

  “Describe him, Jones.”

  His mind didn’t want to work. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the pillow that covered the gun in my hand. I grinned again and it was too much for him. His mouth began to contort into words. “He ... he’s kind of not too big like. He talks funny. I tried to get something on him so I could maybe score with him but he’s careful. I seen him in the Village sometimes. Him and a silly hat. He goes with them oddballs down there for kicks. Look, I don’t know him. He’s just some gook.”

  I got that feeling again, a surging of little streams running together to churn into a more powerful feeder that would eventually build to a raging torrent. How many people had called other people a gook? It was old army slang for any native help, the baggy-pants bunch that toted your barracks bags and did your washing. The kind who’d beg with one hand and kill with the other, to whom petty theft was a pastime, robbery a way of life and to be caught was kismet and your head on a pole outside the city.

  “Okay, Lorenzo, now one more for the big go and don’t muff it. You said you tried to get something so you could score on him. That means you tailed him. You know he comes off a ship.” I paused, then said, “Which ship?” and held the gun on his gut.

  He didn’t hesitate at all. “The Pinella.”

  I nodded. “Why you holing up, Lorenzo?”

  No words came out. His eyes seemed sunk in the back of his head.

  I said, “Maybe you did find out something. Maybe you found out this man would kill you the first time you ever messed anything on him.”

  Jones got his voice back at last. “Okay, so I seen those broads. I know guys like him. He even told me. He ...” His voice lost itself in the fear that was so alive it drenched him with sweat.

  “Now, Roberta?” I asked.

  “Now,” she said.

  I took my time with him and any little sounds he was able to make were drowned in the noise of the radio. He came apart in small splashes of blood and livid bruises he was going to wear a long, long time. I talked to him quietly while I did it and before his eyes were closed all the way I made him look at Roberta and see what he had done to her and when he couldn’t see any more, made him remember what he had done to the others. I made sure he knew that this could only be the start of things for him because a lot of people were going to know who he was and what he did and wherever he went somebody else would be waiting for him and Lorenzo Jones knew I wasn’t lying, not even a little bit.

  When it was over I took his wallet, emptied out the three grand it held and handed it to Roberta. She could split it up with the others and they could get the hell away from the mess they were in if they had the guts to. At least I knew she would.

  I stuck the snub-nose gun in my pocket, put the .45 back and went downstairs with Roberta. I tossed the room key on the desk and the clerk put it back on the hook without looking at me. The rain had settled into a steady downpour and I called a cab and put her in it.

  She looked out the window, took my hand and said, “Thanks.”

  I winked at her.

  “I don’t even know your name,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, it really doesn’t, does it? But I won’t forget you, big feller.”

  chapter 9

  It wasn’t too difficult to get a rundown on the Pinella. She was a freighter under Panamanian registry that accommodated ten passengers in addition to cargo. She had been in port eleven days taking on a load of industrial machinery destined for Lisbon and would be here another five days before sailing. The crew was of mixed foreign extraction under a Spanish captain and at the moment, most of them were ashore.

  But it was almost impossible to get anything on the steward. His name was Ali DuvaL He attended the passengers, generally engineers who traveled with the equipment, the crew and kept to himself on the ship. In port he left at the first possible moment and didn’t return until just before sailing time. Both the Treasury men and the customs officials gave the ship and crew a clean bill of health. No contraband had ever been found on board, none of the crew had ever been apprehended trying to take anything illicit ashore and no complaint had ever been lodged against the vessel or its personnel.

  During the lunch hour I circulated among some of the dock workers trying to pick up any information, but no one had anything to offer. A check through a friend of mine got me the story that the Pinella was owned by several corporations, but it would take months to unravel the front organizations and the real owners who buried themselves in a maze of paperwork to beat taxes.

  I grabbed a bite to eat in a little restaurant, watching the dark creep up on the waterfront. The rain had stopped earlier, but it still was up there, threatening. The night lights came on along the wharves making the ships in their berths seem unreal and whoever walked between the lights and the hulls would throw a monstrous shadow along the steel sides momentarily, then dissolve into the dark further on.

  I was goin
g to grab a cab and head back uptown when I saw the night watchman come on duty across the street and decided to make another stab at it. In five minutes I found out he was a retired cop from the New York force who had been at this job ten years and glad to have somebody to talk to. The nights were long and lonely and conversation was the only thing left he had to enjoy.

  And he knew Ali DuvaL At least he knew who he was. On the ship he wore a uniform, but when he hit the beach he was wearing expensive clothes, which was pretty fancy for a low-paid steward, but he accounted for it by saying how guys like that saved their money and blew it in one big bust the minute they hit the shore. He used to wonder what it was he carried in the paper bag when he left the ship, then on two different occasions he had seen him drive up in a new black limousine wearing “one of them native hats like the Shriners wear.”

  I said, “A fez?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. With a tassel. He got out of the car, put it in the bag and went on board with his suitcase. Some of these foreigners are nuts.”

  “Who was in the car?”

  “Got me. They were friends though. They sat and talked a few minutes, before he got out. I couldn’t see the car. Sure was a dandy. Probably was a relative. Plenty of these guys got people over here, only usually they ain’t so well off.”

  “Ever been on the ship?”

  “Few times,” he said. “The chow’s pretty good.”

  “They get any visitors up there?”

  “Not when I’m on. Hell, who wants to see a freighter? This one’s better’n most, but she’s still a freighter.”

  “Listen,” I said, “how can I recognize this Duval?”

  “Well, if he ain’t got his hat on, you might say he’s medium, kinda foreign-looking and has an accent. If you can read faces, I’d say this one could get mean if he wanted to, or maybe that’s just the way some foreigners look. It’s just that he’s got... well, there’s something.”

  “I know what you mean. Got any idea how I can find him?”

  “Not a one. Couple of times the mate tried to dig him up, but that bird didn’t show. He goes someplace and gets himself lost. Dames, probably. All them sailors think of is dames. The last time the mate chewed him out and wanted to know where the hell he was and Duval just looked at him like he wasn’t even there and went up on deck. Guess he figures his shore time’s his own. I know he don’t go with none of the others. That bunch hardly ever gets more than six blocks away from here anyway. They’re back and forth for their clothes, picking up money they left stashed away so they wouldn’t get rolled for the whole wad the first night out and picking up chow on board when they go broke. This Duval, he just leaves and comes back as sharp as when he left. Sharper even. He’s always got new clothes on.”