Last Seen Hitchhiking

Chapter 13

When Timothy Rourke, tall, gangling, unprogrammed, took over a moribund late-night talk show on a struggling FM station, few of his friends expected him to stick with it for more than a few weeks. He had been in charge now for six months, and the station was beginning to build an audience and draw advertisers. He still worked on the News as their Number One crime-and-corruption reporter, but he had been breaking some of his best stories on the air, to the disgruntlement of his editors. Rourke probably knew more people in Dade County than any other man, and he had no trouble filling the studio with guests, who were provided with all the booze they could drink and freedom to say absolutely anything they pleased.

He had a sure instinct for topics people wanted to hear about. Even by the freakish standards of nighttime radio it was an outrageous show. His high-water mark to date had been the occasion when a loanshark, describing the way he made his living, drew a pistol and shot and seriously wounded a police informer. After that Rourke made all his guests check their small arms in an outer office before going on the air.

When Shayne arrived, a carefully dressed homosexual in early middle age, with a tan so carefully acquired that it looked like stage make-up, was describing the qualities that attracted him to chickens. One such, a fourteen-year-old, the older man’s current companion, sat beside him with lowered eyes, working on his nails. Rourke teetered far back on two legs of a straight chair, a glass in one hand. When Shayne came in, he brought all four legs down.

“Excuse me, guys. As fascinating as this is, we’re going to change the subject. This is Mike Shayne, and at this time of night he often has some stories to tell. He’s been working on the hitchhiking murders, and he’s just back from West Palm, where the latest victim was found tonight on the municipal golf course. And the next sound you hear will be Shayne pouring himself a drink.”

He pushed a bottle of Shayne’s brand of cognac across to his friend. There were several half-emptied glasses. He dumped one onto the rug and gave it to Shayne.

Shayne said, “I’ve got to the point where I need some help, Tim. You keep telling me that the kookiest people in southern Florida listen to this show. Maybe we can mobilize a few.”

“Catch a thief to set a thief. No, it’s the other way around.”

“That’s the idea. But there’s a lot to explain, so if anybody wants to go out and get another beer, now’s the time.”

The older homosexual at the table was caressing the back of the boy’s neck lightly. “I take it this murderer is interested in girls?”

“So far, exclusively girls. A girl named Meri Gillespie started hitchhiking in Miami. We don’t know where she’s been for two days. But we already know quite a bit about her, who her friends were, who she’s been living with, where she was going, and why before she left Miami she stole a piece of a valuable Toltec mask.”

“Holloway’s,” Rourke said quickly.

“I didn’t know you knew about it.”

“I heard rumors about a big sale.”

“I want to tell you and your people everything I know and suspect about this mask. It’s going to feature some important names, including the well-known Miami U. professor Tim just mentioned, and the director of the New York Fine Arts Museum. This isn’t how we handle this kind of thing ordinarily. We move slowly and try not to scare anybody. We don’t throw charges around or make trouble for people who may turn out to be innocent. We can’t do it like that this time. We don’t know what applies and what doesn’t. We have to hurry. A colleague of mine, a private investigator named Frieda Field, has also been kidnapped. This was her case to begin with. She brought me in to provide protection while she did something that in my opinion was foolish and dangerous. I tried to argue her out of it, but she’s as stubborn as a goddamn mule. She’s trying to make it as a woman in a tough profession. She claims to be a good shot with a pistol. She’s competent, she’s tenacious, she works hard. And she’s very, very handsome. I’ll add here what I’ve already told several people. We were going to spend the night together. That’s happened three times in the last few years. We had one successful weekend in Jamaica while her husband was still alive. She won’t like the idea that I’m saying this on the air, but I don’t want any confusion. This is important to me. I’m willing to go to extreme lengths to see that nothing happens to her.”

“Mike,” Rourke said in a lowered voice, “you mean this same guy—”

“I think so. She went out as a decoy. We had a system worked out so that whenever she got a ride I’d follow her, but something went wrong. I bobbled it.”

“Man, this is heavy. That’s one hell of a woman. Now what can we do to help you?”

“I saw her last at the MacArthur interchange, northbound. She was carrying a guitar case and a shoulder bag. Bright yellow scarf, jeans, a flower patch on one knee, purple sweater, no bra, sandals. Dark glasses, loose black hair to her shoulders. She’s twenty-six, about one thirty-five, five-six. Except for the clothes, she looks like a model for perfume or jewelry.”

“Marvelous,” Rourke agreed. “I don’t usually pick up hitchers, but I’d make an exception in her case. No bra?”

“She was trying to get the attention of a sex-nut. All right. How many people do you think are listening to us?”

“Hard to say. The station isn’t rich enough to commission surveys. Raise your hands, everybody. Thousands, anyway.”

“And you’ve persuaded me that they’re special people. You wouldn’t advertise a floor wax to this audience. They don’t believe in waxing their floors.”

“Right. Or deodorants. We don’t care how we smell, so long as it’s natural.”

“Which automatically makes you all a little crazy. You sleep less than ordinary people. You believe in ESP and astrology.”

“We’re open-minded, Mike. I’m open-minded against, they’re open-minded in favor.”

“The point is, we’re talking to a kind of underworld, with its own culture, its own rules. New attitudes, new combinations. It would be too much to expect this killer to be one of your regular listeners, but he may have friends who are, if he has friends. Maybe somebody out there was hitching this evening and passed the MacArthur interchange during the crucial half hour. If there’s anything you can tell us, anything at all, call in. We think Meri was still alive when she climbed over the fence around the golf course, or when somebody lifted her over. She was wearing a red rain cape, bright red. What happened to her clothes, to a knapsack she was carrying? What happened to the left eye of that mask? I’m making the whole thing a single package, and the right answers are worth two hundred thousand bucks.”

“Better say that again,” Rourke said. “I’ve had time to adjust, but there may be people who didn’t hear it the first time. A dollar sign, a two, then five zeroes.”

“For information leading to the apprehension of and the recovery of,” Shayne said. “You understand, this mask has already been bid on by a museum for six hundred thousand. Whether they’ll want to go through with the deal after I’m finished talking is another matter. I’m going to lay out everything I know about it, and that will include the recent activities of the following people: Professor Holloway; a new girl of his named Diane; his ex-wife, Maxine, who runs a gift shop in Seminole Beach; her live-in man, Andy Anastasia, who thinks of himself as a sculptor; Eliot Tree from the big city of New York; a few assorted hoods; and one more I haven’t met yet, an ex-boyfriend of Meri’s, true name Sid Koch, nickname Scotch. But first.”

He picked up the cheap carry-on vinyl suitcase he had brought into the studio and turned it upside down over the table. Packages of money cascaded out. Rourke and his two guests responded with quick movements and sounds. In an age of credit cards, that amount of cash in one container still carried a certain magic.

“I hope the engineer could pick up that sound effect,” Shayne said. “Those were gasps. I’ve just dumped one thousand and fifty — one five oh — one-hundred-dollar bills on the table. I also have a check made out for fifty thousand and signed by Eliot Tree. He swears he has enough in the bank to cover it. How many phones do you have open, Tim?”

“Two. Maybe Jim and Art will be willing to help, and we can open two more.”

The older man stirred the money with his finger. “Sure, if you give us scavenging rights. I’ve always thought hundred-dollar bills were the prettiest kind.”

“Who’s going to divide the money?” Rourke said.

“I am,” Shayne told him. “I have a fee coming, supposedly, but I’m throwing that in the pot. I want three things. Frieda Field, alive. Unraped, if possible, but that may be too much to ask. She doesn’t take the crime of rape as seriously as some people. I want Meri’s killer. And I want a fully assembled mask. I don’t think the same person can deliver all three. If so, he gets the bundle. Otherwise, we’ll work out percentages, and I’m the one who makes the decisions. Are we ready?”

“Ready,” Rourke said.

“A good place to start would be Professor Holloway’s expedition to Yucatan last winter.”

Bright light was beating strongly against her eyes. Was she in a hospital bed? Her arms and legs were weighted, as though inside multiple casts. Music was playing. It was cerebral jazz, one of the quintets that flourished in the 1950s.

Cold air played across her body. She was naked. She tried to sit up, and found that she was strapped to a doctor’s examining table.

A voice said cordially, “Frieda Field, detective. Tell me, have you ever actually used that gun I found in your bag? You see a black thief running out of a delicatessen. What do you do, shoot him dead?”

A man came into view. He, too, was naked, except for a surgeon’s cap into which he had stuffed his abundant hair. In a part of the world where a year-round tan is a mark of normality, his skin was soft, pale, covered with light fuzz. His genitals were all but hidden in folds of fat.

She was beginning to remember. She had taken the ride with him because in spite of his studious appearance, he had seemed a little rushed. The upper and lower halves of his face said different things. He had the look of someone who slept poorly. While he was freeing the seat-belt, the pads of his fingers slid along her neck, and she had known with absolute certainty that this was the one she wanted. Her hand went to her revolver. Then a flare, and after that darkness and heaviness, and nothing else until now.

“What did you ask me?”

He smiled down at her. One of his front teeth had been damaged and never fixed.

“Something about a gun, wasn’t it? Just making conversation. Try raising your gun-hand.”

“I’ve already tried. Do you know a girl named Meri Gillespie?”

“With the funny spelling. Yes, that was me. That was I.”

“I’ve been hoping we’d meet. I didn’t expect it to happen quite like this. Will you tell me your name?”

“Oh, it’s Bruno, damn it. Quickly, without thinking: react to the word rape.”

“It’s all right for some people,” she said immediately. “I’m against it.”

Her quick answer startled him into a laugh, ending in a moist chuckle. She studied him. To come through this experience alive, she knew she had to diagnose him correctly and find a way to make contact.

She turned her head, to investigate her surroundings. He had some expensive monitoring equipment. She recognized the drum and recording stylus of an electroencephalograph. Before she had time to wonder about it, she noticed a small bright object on top of a bookcase filled with medical texts. It was the missing piece from Holloway’s mask.

Bruno caught the change in focus. “Do you know what it is?”

“Didn’t you give her a chance to tell you?”

“We were too busy to discuss it.”

“It’s the left eye of a Toltec funerary mask. Probably representing some god, but who knows? The whole piece is considered so spectacular that museums have been bidding for it.”

He was silent for a moment. “Now I understand why they’re sending private detectives after me. A missing girl or two — who cares? But missing property.”

“As a matter of fact, there’s quite a bit of feeling about the girls.”

“Hysteria. The great American middle class always has to have something to be afraid of. Communists. Martians. Shortages.”

“Rapists.”

“Rapists, absolutely. But that eye — I knew there was something about it. I burned everything else. But that I couldn’t throw away. It kept giving me looks, as though it knew everything there was to know about me. Doesn’t it give you that feeling?”

“Very much so. Will you move it or cover it with something? I like privacy when I’m raped.”

Again he gave his sudden laugh. “You’re cool, you know? I’m beginning to think you’ve been raped before.”

“I’ve imagined it,” Frieda said.

“It’s part of the collective unconscious. Tell me about it.”

“I’m told it’s quite common among women who had satisfactory sex and then all of a sudden had to do without. I was married five years. All of a sudden, for some reason, my husband went up from four drinks a day to about a quart, and that interferes with sexual performance as well as so much else. I didn’t know why it happened, I still don’t. Some of it was probably my fault. And then he died.”

“Yes?”

“Months went by. After a while I stopped missing him so much. I have a few friends who take me to dinner, but they all liked Harry, and so a glancing goodnight kiss is a major event in my life. Sometimes they make a move, but the instant I hesitate they stop cold, as though they’ve been caught committing some social mistake.”

“Gee, too bad.”

“I’ve been talking to a doctor about it. He tells me not to worry about the rape fantasies. I want sex to happen, but I don’t want to play any part in bringing it about. So are they really rapes? To be properly raped, to get the full benefit, I think you have to be scared, don’t you? Both consciously and subconsciously, all over. You have to be rigid, fighting.”

She was talking fast, trying not to look at him too closely. At least he was listening.

“The truth is,” he said dogmatically, “that nobody knows a goddamn thing about the subject. And yet it’s punishable by long-term confinement in a maximum-security institution. Pretty severe, for an act that may take only half a minute. Define rape for me.”

“Forcible entry, without the woman’s consent.”

“You’re beginning to sound fairly intelligent. Did that late husband of yours, who knocked back a bottle a day, ever come home from the neighborhood gin-mill, whip out his thing, and push it inside you without getting you ready first or asking what you thought of the idea? Rape. What did you do, put him in prison for life? You forgot all about it by breakfast the next morning.”

“We were married.”

“Rape. Murder. Marriage doesn’t entitle a husband to murder his wife. It’s an anomaly. All right, when he forced his way in without your consent, did your heart race and your nipples erect? What about those supposedly involuntary muscle spasms?”

“I think I had an occasional spasm. I don’t remember.”

“Listen,” he said, “I’m going to break a pattern here. I usually don’t give my subjects anything to drink. It fuzzes the reactions. I’m going to handle you a different way. We have time. Four days and four nights. You still don’t really believe it. After you’ve been tied up for four days, you may lose some of that cool. Nobody’s coming to get you. Was that yellow scarf a signal? Nobody saw it.”

“If you’re pouring drinks, make mine a Scotch.”

He laughed again. “Sweet baby, I love you. I’m going to feed it to you in little sips, because I can’t run the risk of unbuckling you. I see you’re a dangerous woman. But I’m dangerous too!”

“You don’t look it.”

“Because of my non-erection? Some people get big only when the woman’s helpless and screaming. I don’t mean you have to scream, Frieda. Scream if you feel like it.”

He leaned down. She gave herself orders to lie still, but she flinched — unfortunately less than an inch. His mouth closed on her breast. From the bookcase the eye of the Toltec mask stared down impassively. After a time Bruno withdrew, leaving her nipple wet and standing.

“See? And that’s in spite of the fact that you’re scared of me, and I must be one of the most revolting specimens you’ve ever seen.”

“As a matter of fact, I think brains are more important. My husband was overweight. He was like you — he didn’t believe in wasting time out on the beach.”

Bruno looked at her threateningly. “Don’t try to be too clever! I can see the wheels going around. If you don’t mind it, it isn’t rape. Right? So if you can persuade me you don’t mind it, maybe I won’t do it. But I’m Bruno! Bruno has put three people to sleep.”

“Only three?”

“He’s been getting credit for more, but I can only personally remember three. You’re the fourth. And I can see you’re going to be a challenge. You’re the kind of subject that makes scientific investigation worthwhile.”

“How do you know you have four days?”

“That’s when the doctor gets back. This isn’t Bruno’s office. He borrowed it. There’s food in the house. Food for me. I don’t think we’re going to let you have any, to see what difference it makes.”

“I didn’t mean that. If somebody wrote down your license number and they’re tracing it now, you ought to rape me right away and get it over with.”

“Bruno’s not ready.” He added, “The car’s no problem. I stole it.”

“A friend of mine, Michael Shayne, was watching for the scarf. You fooled us. Mike doesn’t get fooled too often, and he doesn’t like it. Do you ever listen to the Tim Rourke show?”

“Now and again. That’s a son of a bitch who’s really crazy.”

“Mike was planning to be on it tonight. Turn it on. This is the big story of the day. They may be talking about you.”

“We don’t care what anybody says.”

“Don’t you want to find out how much time you really have?”

He went behind her, and she heard the rattle of ice. After a moment’s pause, he went to the radio and changed stations. Her heart jumped. Mike Shayne’s voice boomed into the room.

Bruno came into view, bringing two glasses. At the name Meri Gillespie he halted, tightening.

“Is that Shayne?”

“My dear Mike. Naturally I’m hoping to see him again.”

“You won’t,” he promised her. “He’s big and tough, no doubt, and he could beat me to a pulp using only one fist. But we’re safe here.”

Head cocked, he listened intently while Shayne described the condition of Meri’s body and where and how it had been found. His chin fell to his chest. For an instant he seemed on the edge of tears.

“She was so alive. God, how she fought. You see—” he said, turning. “You haven’t been taking this seriously, have you?”

“Good God, Bruno. I come to and find myself strapped to a table in a room with a naked man who is obviously somewhat insane. Believe me, I take it seriously.”

“Not enough.” He took a step toward the table, trembling, and said furiously, “Don’t talk in that calm way. There is absolutely no possibility. Stop hoping. Stop trying.”