Lady, go die

CHAPTER ELEVEN

By the time I rolled into Sidon, it was damn near midnight. The long day was getting to me again and I’d almost nodded off a couple of times behind the wheel, thanks to the endless gray ribbon of highway cutting down the Island.

Best thing now was to sit down with Velda, compare notes and make a game plan for tomorrow. With what I’d learned in the city, and whatever she picked up at that roadhouse, we’d be ready to head down the home stretch.

But at the Sidon Arms, when I called her room from the house phone, I got no answer. That didn’t raise a red flag, since I’d dispatched her to gather intelligence at the hotel’s cocktail lounge and that jive-jumping roadhouse. So it would be no surprise if she got back well after midnight.

I was heading up the stairs with the intent of hitting the rack good and hard when a hoarse male voice called out: “Mike! Hold up there!”

I turned and saw Doc Moody, looking desperate and disheveled, stumbling out of the bar, trying to work up some speed. He was flushed and his hands were clawing at the air, like he was trying to climb an invisible ladder.

He met me at the bottom of the stairs, his white hair askew, his eyes wide and red behind the wire-rim glasses. Not surprisingly, he smelled like he’d fallen into a beer vat.

“Poochie’s gone, Mike! Gone! They grabbed him!”

Moody wasn’t slurring-in fact he was over-enunciating-and he was more upset than drunk. But he was drunk enough.

I could have slapped the old fool, but instead I kept my head and said, “Slow it down, Doc. Come on. Let’s sit over here and you tell me all about it.”

I walked him over to a threadbare couch and we sat. A droopy potted plant next to him seemed to eavesdrop.

His voice was breathy and rushed. “Mike, I just stepped out for a minute… just to… just to run an errand…”

His breath made evident just what kind of errand he had run.

“I’ve been keeping Poochie in my little spare room… nice little quiet room… and he’s hardly stuck his nose out. He’s been scared, Mike. So goddamn scared of Dekkert and his bunch. I told him he could listen to my radio, he could go fix himself food in the kitchen, any time he wanted, but no, he’d just stay in that little spare room. I’d take his meals in on trays and-”

“Doc, skip the crap. What happened?”

He was shaking his head, close to hysteria. “I’ve been waiting for you to get back. Waiting and watching.”

From the hotel bar.

“The point, Doc. Get to the point.”

“About…”

He looked at his wrist watch and did a comic routine, trying to make his eyes focus, that would have been a riot if this were goddamn burlesque.

“…about an hour ago. Little more. I come back from that… that errand? I come back, gone an hour, maybe two, and that little spare room, it was topsy-turvy. Everything turned upside down. And he was gone! Poochie was gone.”

Damn.

I asked, “Did the room look like it had been searched? Drawers sticking out, closet in disarray? Were they looking for something?”

“No! They were looking for Poochie! The mess was from a struggle. From them taking him. Mike, there was blood on the floor.”

“How much blood?”

“Drops. Just drops. They didn’t beat him or kill him at my place, I don’t think… they just, just took him…”

“Who took him?”

He shook his head, ashamed. “I don’t know. It has to be the police, doesn’t it? Dekkert and his thugs?”

I nodded glumly.

The red rheumy eyes were full of tears. “Mike, I’m sorry, Mike… I let you down. I didn’t mean to let you down…”

“It’s all right,” I said. “You just go on home. No more drinking, Doc, not tonight. Just go home, get some rest. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it came out. I’ll want you clear-eyed then, okay?”

“Yes, Mike… yes…”

He was sitting there when I left, just a dejected slumped shape in a rumpled suit, with his white hair ruffled, his glasses crooked on a blood-shot nose that was a sorry beacon in his grooved yet puffy face, while his red eyes stared into nothing.

If anybody was to blame here, though, it was me. Me for entrusting Poochie’s care to an old rummy like the Doc, and not keeping closer tabs on both jailer and his charge. Not that I’d had a lot of options in Sidon among people I could trust.

But another on that short list was Big Steve.

I flew out of the front door of the hotel into a night that had turned chilly with breeze enough to make me tug down my hat and turn up my collars. It was like winter was changing its mind about letting spring take over, and summer was out of the question.

What was good about the temperature drop was how it woke me up, slapped me to alertness, not that the Doc’s news about Poochie hadn’t already done that. I crossed a street devoid of traffic and headed for the diner on the way to the police station. I got out the. 45, flicked off the safety and racked one into the chamber. The idea was to see if Big Steve wanted to back my play-I wasn’t sure how many cops would be on duty at the station, and I planned to go in there hard and heavy.

That Pollack hated the corruption in his town, and I would bet my back teeth he had a weapon handy to take to the party, whether a sawed-off or a baseball bat. And he had sons, sons as big as he was, who might wade in with me.

I would be checking every alleyway as I went, but my idea was that right now Poochie would be in a back room of the Sidon station, getting the classic Third Degree treatment, rubber hose and all. I would feed that rubber hose to Dekkert, and kick Chiefie’s ass to Kingdom Come…

But as I neared the diner, which blazed with lights indicating it was still open, despite the hour, I saw through the long wide windows two figures in blue uniforms seated at the counter, the only customers. I saw Big Steve, too, down the counter, minding his own business, wiping away with a rag.

And even turned away from me, those two blue backsides could only belong to Sidon’s top-ranking excuses for police-Chief Beales and Deputy Dekkert.

That stopped me so cold in my tracks I damn near fell on my face. It was highly unlikely these two exemplars of the law would have grabbed Poochie from the doc’s, then gone to the diner for a bite while letting somebody else handle the back-room interrogation.

What the hell?

Wind whispering in my ears but not making its message plain, I eased the. 45 back under my arm but left the coat unbuttoned as I went up the couple of steps into the box-car diner. I settled onto the stool next to the chief, with Dekkert next to him.

As if I didn’t notice who my counter mates were, I called out, “So this is a twenty-four-hour joint, huh, Steve?”

Big Steve gave me a grin that lifted his black handlebar mustache halfway to his eyes. As he turned to wring out his rag in the sink, he said, “Open till midnight, Mike. Not closing for another five minutes. Fix you up with a burger or a dog maybe?”

“I’ll have a slice of that apple pie and some coffee.”

“Comin’ right up, my friend.”

Both Chief Beales and Dekkert were giving me frozen sideways glances. Theirs were the kind of open-yapped expression the driver of a car wears when he sees the truck about to hit him head on.

“Gentlemen,” I said with a friendly nod. “Little late for the town’s top cops to be finishing up a shift, isn’t it?”

Neither said a word. They still just looked at me, Beales with popping eyes in that fat thick-lipped face of his, bullet-headed Dekkert staring out of eyes like small black buttons sewn on his face. Funny-seeing me made Beales turn red and Dekkert white, almost as white as the half-dozen bandages that seemed haphazardly applied to that once handsome face his blobby nose had ruined.

Those bandages were smaller than when last I’d seen Dekkert, but still a nice reminder of what I’d done to him in that alley. And later at the police station.

As genial as Fibber McGee, I said, “I was just on my way over to the station to report a crime.”

The chief licked the fat lips, but it was Dekkert who snapped, “ What crime?”

“That little beachcomber you boys took such a shine to-he’s been recovering at Doc Moody’s from a gunshot wound. He caught a bullet through the open window of his shack last Saturday night.”

The chief’s frown consisted of ridges of furrowed fat. “What are you saying, Hammer? Is that the crime you’re reporting?”

I shook my head.

Big Steve delivered my coffee and pie.

Stirring some sugar into the java, I said absently, “No, I didn’t bother reporting that. You see, I’m pretty sure it was your deputy here that shot Poochie, so calling it in struck me as redundant.”

Dekkert flushed around the white bandages and blurted, “I did not do no such thing! Watch your mouth, Hammer! Accusations like that can get your ass hauled in.”

“I didn’t say I was sure you did it,” I said, shoveling in a bite of pie. It would have been better warm, but it was still good. “Anyway, I was the intended target, not Poochie.”

The chief swallowed. He tried to fill his chest with indignation but it looked like so much more flab to me. “Maybe my deputy is right, Mr. Hammer. Maybe we should go over to the station, and take down your statement.”

“Here’s my statement. Poochie’s been lying low at Doc Moody’s, recuperating from that bullet wound, not to mention the beating you devoted servants of the law gave him. I figure keeping the little guy with Moody was kosher since he is, after all, your local coroner.”

Dekkert spat, “He won’t be for long!”

I chewed, swallowed, washed it down. “That’s your business. I don’t mess in local politics. The thing is, somebody has grabbed Poochie out of the doc’s place. Looks to have been a struggle.”

The chief demanded, “When was this?”

“An hour ago at least. Not more than a few hours ago at most.”

“Was Doc Moody there when Poochie was taken?”

“Nah. He was out drinking somewhere. Anyway, what I need to know is…” I wiped off my mouth delicately with a paper napkin and then gave them my worst goddamn grin. “…was it you?”

I watched their reactions. The chief seemed honestly confused, and frankly so did Dekkert.

With a half-spin on the stool, I turned to face them with the suit coat hanging open, revealing that big nasty gun under my arm.

“Well, Chiefie?”

But he was already shaking his head. “No, Hammer, I don’t know anything about this.” He looked back at his deputy. “If you know something about this, Deputy Dekkert-”

“I don’t,” Dekkert said insistently, but it was the movement in his eyes-the fast, even desperate thinking he was doing-that made me believe him.

The chief seemed genuinely astounded. “Why would anybody want to kidnap Poochie? Why him of all people?”

I grunted a laugh. “Well, you local cops were interested enough in him the other day.”

The chief slammed a fat fist on the counter and my pie jumped. “Hammer, that was before Sharron Wesley turned up dead! We wanted to know if he’d seen anything on that beach. We were looking for any lead we could find.”

I studied him some more. “The disappearance of Sharron Wesley was troubling to you, wasn’t it, Chiefie? A lot was at stake. Plenty of local income, particularly off-season, depended on that dizzy dame.”

The chief shrugged. “Why should I deny it?” He cleared his throat rather theatrically. “Hammer, I’m going over to the station and I’m calling everybody in. The entire department, back on duty.”

What, all six?

He hopped off the stool like a big toad off a medium toadstool. “We’ll put out an All Points Bulletin on Poochie, or I should say Stanley Cootz. That’s his name. Whatever you may think of us, Mr. Hammer, know this-we run a safe community, safe for the citizens and safe for the visitors who we depend upon during the season. The Sidon PD will not sit still for having a serious crime like kidnapping take place in our jurisdiction.”

And he tipped his cap to Big Steve, probably in lieu of payment, then waddled out.

Dekkert, on the other hand, did seem to “sit still” for a crime like kidnapping. At least he was still sitting there. He was apparently ignoring his chief’s clarion call.

I slid over next to him as Big Steve cleared away a pile of dishes-Chiefie had had an appetite.

“Can you think of any reason,” I said, not putting even an ounce of menace into it, “why anybody would kidnap that beachcomber?”

Dekkert shook his head. He seemed to be staring at the open window onto the kitchen, where one of Big Steve’s big sons was cleaning up. But I had a feeling Dekkert wasn’t seeing much of anything but his own private thoughts. Private thoughts I would like to shake out of him.

But I had a different idea about how to handle this son of a bitch.

“Listen,” I said. “Let’s let Big Steve close up the joint for the night. We can go over to the hotel bar, find a quiet booth, and have a friendly talk.”

His scowl made his bandages shift. “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

“Because you used to be a cop in New York City. You’re not just another one of these hicks. You know what’s really going on around Sidon, which interests me. And I think you might be interested in hearing about what I’ve turned up lately.”

He thought about that.

Finally, he nodded at me, and left his own dirty dishes behind but tossed a quarter on the counter next to the buck I’d left. Whether that was a tip or his idea of payment, I couldn’t hazard a guess. Big Steve didn’t look thrilled either way.

Outside, I stuffed a smoke in my face and fired it up. I offered him a Lucky and he accepted it. Unlike the chief, he wore no cap, and within that butch cut didn’t have enough hair for the breeze to riffle it. The wind would have taken my hat if I hadn’t really snugged it down, and it snatched the smoke away from both our cigarettes, making vapor trails as we walked down the middle of a street in a town that would bustle in a few weeks. Right now it was deader than Sharron Wesley.

I said, “I was over in Wilcox the other day.”

“Yeah?”

“You know a guy named Dave Miles?”

“Naw.”

“Head of security at the brick factory.”

“Don’t know him.”

“I also talked to Sheriff Jackson.”

“Him I know.”

“Talked to Chief Chasen.”

“Him I know, too.”

“There’s a theory we three kicked around that the Wesley murder might be the work of the same maniac who killed those two college girls in Wilcox. And also that other young gal found strangled on the beach between Sidon and there.”

We were outside the hotel now. Wind whipped at his dark-blue blouse and my suit coat, flapping them like flags.

“Those college girls,” he said. “They were killed with a knife. Not choked, right?”

“Right.”

“And that other one, the girl on the beach? Wasn’t she strangled with a nylon?”

“Right again.”

Dekkert shrugged his big shoulders. “Sharron was strangled with powerful hands, not a stocking. And I don’t see what those girls in that barn have to do with anything.”

“There are similarities. All three cases, including the Wesley dame, involved young women-good-looking ones-murdered and left naked, their clothes never found.”

The deputy seemed to be mulling that as he sucked up smoke, then exhaled and let the wind whip it away. “Sharron wasn’t that young, though.”

I grinned. “Yeah, but she wasn’t old. She was under forty and still a beauty. You knew her, right?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t know anything about those other cases, Hammer, if that’s why you brung it up. Out of our jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, each kill in a different jurisdiction. Confuses the issue, muddies the waters, don’t you think? Somebody’s smart. Or knows enough about how law enforcement works to think of spreading his hobby around.”

Dekkert was frowning. It made the half-dozen bandages crinkle and bulge. “Is that an accusation?”

I raised my hands in a peace-keeping fashion. “No, just an observation. Buy you a drink?”

He was still frowning.

I made myself smile at him. Not nasty at all. “Come on. Bury the hatchet. Two old ex-New York PD coppers having a nightcap. Couple other points we should discuss… about your friend Sharron.”

“What?”

“You don’t call her Mrs. Wesley or the Wesley woman or the Wesley dame, I notice. You call her Sharron. You said you knew her. Let’s talk about that.”

He sneered at me. His fists were bunched. He was getting tired of this. So was I, but I needed to keep this thing friendly. “Why the hell should I, Hammer?”

“Because,” I said, and pitched the butt sparking into the night, “I think you might like to know what I know.”

That he thought about, too, but not for long. He just nodded, and gestured for me to go inside first. I shook my head and gestured for him to do that. I might be playing nice with him but I wasn’t going to turn my back, not on this bastard.

“Give me a second,” I said, in the lobby.

He stood impatiently while I tried Velda on the house phone. Still no answer. I hung up and nodded toward the bar, and we walked over there.

Soon, in a back booth, with beers in front of both us, and fresh cigs going, we started our friendly chat.

“I was in New York this evening,” I said, “and ran into Johnny C. You know, Johnny Casanova?”

Dekkert couldn’t have cut it at that table in the Waldorf suite-his was anything but a poker face, eyes tightening and even twitching at the mention of the gambling chieftain.

“Seems he was Sharron Wesley’s silent partner,” I went on. “Actually more than silent partner-he owns the place. She was a front. Apparently he has something on her, and bled her out of her fortune and even her mansion. He was just letting her live there in a few meager rooms in return for playing hostess. Also, bag woman. But still just another employee.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

I figured he was lying, but I wouldn’t press it-not just yet.

“Dekkert, what was your role out there at the casino? I’ve heard it said you were a bouncer, but I can’t imagine a guy of your gifts would be satisfied with a crummy menial job like that.”

His eyes were hard and dark and barely blinking. “Well, Hammer, you’re wrong. That’s all I did out there-just some security. When I was off-duty. Like cops do.”

Then he drank about half his beer in one gulp.

“Okay,” I said, “but I’ve known you for a long time, Deputy Dekkert. You are nothing if not shrewd. Johnny C’s role out there, you’d pick up on that. Sharron Wesley’s unhappiness, her resentment against Casanova, you’d pick up on that, too.”

“So what?”

“So I think there’s a cache of money somewhere in that mansion or anyway on that property. It might be as little as the last weekend’s take, which would still be plenty. But it might be more.”

“More, huh?”

“A lot more. If Sharron was skimming, for example. Planning to take a powder to a better life, maybe down where the mambo is a local dance. But the thing is, sooner or later, Johnny C is gonna come out Sidon way, looking for that dough.”

A tiny sneer. “How does he even know there is any dough?”

“Oh, he knows. I don’t know how, but he told me tonight, so he knows. And when the heat dies down, and there’s no chance of running into coppers crawling around the Wesley grounds, Johnny C will come after what he considers rightly his.”

Dekkert slugged down the rest of the beer and pushed away the mug, then set his balled fists down like mallets. “Did he do it? Did Casanova kill her?”

There was rage in that once-handsome, bandage-spotted face. He cared about Sharron Wesley. Was that why he’d gone ape on Poochie when she was missing? Not the money, or anyway not just the money… but love? Had our boy Dekkert been just another love-sick calf?

“No, Johnny didn’t murder her,” I said. “And he didn’t have her bumped, either. Anyway, I don’t think so. That would be killing the golden goose before the egg got laid. He would have questioned her… you know what kind of questioning, Dekkert, old pal. The kind you subjected that little beachcomber to.”

“But she wasn’t beaten,” he said hollowly.

“No. She was strangled. And you don’t strangle somebody you’re trying to make talk.”

He nodded slowly. “So what are you after, Hammer?”

“I figure you know that property better than anybody. You worked out there. You knew Sharron. Maybe we could turn up that dough together.”

He grunted a laugh. “What, a midnight snipe hunt? Forget it. I did work out there, sure, and I knew her a little. She was a nice broad. We had some fun, time to time. But I never saw any sign she was tied up with Johnny C. And I don’t believe she was stealing money. It was her own place, not his, as far as I know. She took the cash into the city and banked it, is the way I understand it. That’s the beginning and end of it, Hammer. Okay?”

I shrugged. “Okay. It was worth a try.”

He slid out of the booth. “Word of advice, Hammer?”

“Always appreciated,” I said pleasantly.

“Get the hell out of Sidon.” His upper lip curled all the way back over big front teeth and feral incisors “There’s nothing here for you. Not answers. Not money. Not even a good time. Nothing. ”

He stalked out of there. Didn’t bother to offer to pay for the beers, but then cops didn’t seem to pay for anything around Sidon.

I sat there grinning. Well, he had taken the bait. I’d known damn well he wouldn’t go partners with me on the stashed cash, but he would want to beat Johnny C to the punch. So all I had to do was go out to Sharron Wesley’s and stake the place out and wait for Dekkert to lead me to the treasure.

Who had grabbed Poochie, I couldn’t say. But it really didn’t feel like the cops were responsible, and I talked myself into the chief meaning it when he said he’d round up his troops and put on a search for the little guy.

Right now the thread I was following was Dekkert, and it would lead to that cash. I wasn’t sure if finding Sharron Wesley’s getaway fund would lead me to her murderer, too, but I had a hunch it would.

Anyway, I didn’t mind the idea of taking a twenty-five percent finder’s fee from Johnny C. No, not at all. I had no other client in this case, and Velda would smile, seeing that kind of fee heading into our bank account.

Speaking of Velda, I tried her again on the house phone, got nothing, and decided to go up to my room to see if she’d left a note under my door or anything.

Nothing.

I was almost back out the door, to stake out the Wesley mansion, when the phone rang.

“Mike?”

It was Velda.

“Finally!” I said. “I’ve been back since midnight, and do I have plenty to report.”

“Tell me about it!” She sounded breathless; I could hear the rustle of wind in trees, so she must be calling from outside somewhere. “Mike, Mayor Rudy Holden has just been killed.”

“ What? ”

“You heard me. One shot behind the ear while he sat in his study. He-”

Her voice broke off with a muffled sound as though someone had slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Velda!.. Velda, what’s wrong? Where are you, honey? Answer me!”

The only response I got was the click of the receiver being slung back in its cradle.

I dialed the operator and barked an order at her. “I just had a call. I need to know where it came from. Hurry!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said with whiny high-pitched indifference. “We can’t give out that in-for- may — shun.” I was boiling. Velda in trouble, and some little snip wouldn’t get me the lead I needed.

“Damn it,” I yelled, “you’ll give that me right now, or I’ll come down where you work and slap the goddamn hell out of you. Get me that number and its location! This is detective Mike Hammer speaking, and I don’t want any crap out of you.”

It was a booth three blocks away.