Make Mine Murder!

Chapter One Call Me Mister

To get around the rocky point he waded out to where the surf, smashing softly against his legs, dashed spray up onto his bare shoulders. The noon sun of the Mississippi Gulf Coast bit hard into his deeply tanned skin. Once around the point he moved back up to dry sand, hot against the toughened soles of his bare feet.

A hundred yards ahead he saw the long concrete pier of the Chez Shirley, standing tall above the reach of the storms, saw the tiny basin beside it, the brass fittings of the twin power launches glittering in the sun.

Except for the ceaseless wash of the sea, the day had a dead hot silence. On the pier he could see the glass enclosed area where they danced when the weather was bad, the open portion, green with plants, for the mild evenings when it was good to dance under the starlight over the sea.

The pier was arched where it crossed the beach and in the black shade it cast he saw the man sitting on a kitchen chair, tilted back against the heavy concrete column.

He walked slowly ahead, seeing the man stare at him, get up from the chair, come walking with heavy spread-legged stride toward him, sweat staining the blue shirt.

Archer walked steadily toward the pier. The man stopped directly in his path and said, “Turn around and go back, friend.”

Archer stopped, gave the guard a long cool look, weighing the man. The guard’s eyes, sunk in pads of flesh, were squinted against the sun glare. He carried, strangely, a riding crop, but as he swung it, Archer saw by the way it bent that it contained a lead weight, a leaf spring.

“Back the way you came, friend,” the guard said.

Archer made his voice apologetic. “I’m just going up the beach.”

“Not this way, junior. This belongs to Logun.”

“But these beaches have always been open.”

“This one isn’t any more. Not to ragged-pants bums.” As he spoke the man moved closer, prodded Archer’s bare hard diaphragm with the butt of the riding crop.

Archer had been carefully shifting his weight. He slapped down at the crop, tore it out of the man’s hand. The guard staggered in the soft sand, grunting with surprise. Then, grinning without mirth, he reached toward his hip pocket.

As Archer saw the deep surly glint of the blued steel he moved lightly to his left, slashed down with the weighted end of the crop, felt the lead strike bone.

The guard yelled then, a hoarse bellow. He dropped to his fat knees, clamping his right wrist with his left hand. The gun lay on the sand. He released his wrist, grabbed for the gun. Archer stepped on the man’s hand, raised his bone-hard knee flush into the man’s face. The guard went over, his face screwed up with pain, his hand clamped to his nose, a thread of scarlet running down his lip.

Archer leaned over with a lazy, effortless ease, picked up the automatic, glanced casually at it and tossed it off into the surf.

A tall man was walking down across the sand from the ledge on which the main building of the Chez Shirley was built. He was big, vaguely soft, with powerful shoulders, a tanned face, dark receding hair, hairline mustache. His long head was set squarely on the heavy shoulders, with but the slightest suggestion of a neck. The man wore a brilliant sports shirt, faultless sand-colored slacks and leather sandals.

The man did not speak until he was face to face with Archer. “What happened here?” he asked mildly.

“Who are you?” Archer asked, matching his tone.

“Logun. Gerry Logun. You are on my property.”

“So your man said. But I didn’t like the way he said it.”

The guard had gotten slowly to his feet. He held a white handkerchief to his nose. Over the handkerchief his eyes looked steadily at Archer, a hot glow in their depths.

Logun said, “Relli, I gave you a gun and a sap and told you to keep bums off this beach.”

Relli’s voice was muffled. “But he—”

“He jabbed me with his stick,” Archer said. “So I took it away from him. I threw it in the surf. Like this.” He threw the crop out. It spun in the air and landed forty feet out among the breakers.

Logun in the same amiable tone said, “You must be a very hard boy.”

“You put somebody here to tell me politely that I can’t walk down the beach and I won’t. I’m not unreasonable.”

“Your accent doesn’t match your pants,” Logun said.

“And your manner and your personnel match very nicely,” Archer said. “They both stink up the seashore.”

Logun stood without movement and without expression. Suddenly he grinned. “Okay, lad. Sorry this happened.” He turned to Relli and his voice snapped like a whip. “Go up and clean yourself up, Relli.”

“But, boss, I—”

Logun took one quick step and slapped Relli. It was like the movement of a big cat. The slap made a wet sharp sound in the stillness between waves.

Relli turned without a word and walked toward the path.

Archer shrugged and turned away.

“One minute, lad. What do you do? What’s your business?”

Archer turned around. “Do you have a good reason for asking?”

“I thought you might want to go to work for me. After I’ve checked on you, of course.”

“After you’ve checked on me?”

“Damn it! Take that chip off your shoulder.”

“It’s off. I’m not working. What kind of a job?”

“Relli is a good man. He isn’t handled often. I can use another one.”

“Doing what?”

“Drifting around during business hours. Handling drunks and trouble-makers. This place of mine is for drinking, dancing and gambling. I don’t advertise the last item on the sign out by the road. Business is getting better. I need another man.”

“What would it pay?”

“Room, meals and fifty a week. Why aren’t you working?”

“I’ve been in a hospital. For nearly five years.”

“For what?”

“Take a good look,” Archer said. He knew what Gerry Logun would see, the multiple network of hairline scars half hidden by the tan of his face, the scars running up into his crisp brown hair, the faintly distorted contour of the skull itself.

“War?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“Stephen Archer.”

“Report tomorrow. Around noon. One thing understood. No drinking and no gambling.”

Archer gave the expressionless face a long look. “During my working hours I’ll do like you say. After those hours my time is my own, Logun.”

“Mr. Logun.”

“If I come to work for you, I’ll call you Mr. Logun.”

He turned and walked away, under the arch of the pier, out along the beach, his stride long, loose and easy, the muscles of his shoulders and back long and fluid under the deeply tanned skin.

It had been easier than he had expected. Of course, the timing had been carefully worked out. A day when Logun would be there. He smiled tightly. Logun had covered up his real reason for needing a new man. One of the Kister twins was in the hospital and would remain there for a good two weeks more. The knuckles of his right hand were still sore from the encounter with Ben Kister in the heavy darkness of the alley in Biloxi.

A mile down the beach he turned to the right, went up through the brush to the highway. The countryside was exactly the way Johnny Jermane had described it so many times. Moist and hot, with narrow asphalt roads, lush vegetation, the sea booming softly against the curving beaches.

This time he walked on the shoulder of the road passing Chez Shirley, the white posts marking the entrance to the wide parking lot paved with crushed shells, the small bronze sign which at night would be discreet green neon, highlighting the polished metal of the parked cars.

The convertible, acid-green body, black top raised against the sunglare, roared up the road toward him and the tires moaned softly on the asphalt as the car swung over toward him. Too close. He jumped back.

Then he stepped angrily toward the car but the girl stopped him quickly by asking, “What do you want?”

She was a creamy blonde with a faint pattern of pale freckles across the bridge of her nose and level contemptuous green eyes.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“I saw you in Amira and you were watching me. I saw you twice in Biloxi. You’re a stranger here. I can tell by your accent. And now I find you here. What do you want of me?”

“It’s against the local laws to look at a blonde?”

Her eyes were stormy. “No. But why are you hanging around?”

“You’ll see more of me.”

“Indeed!”

“Indeed, yes. Your husband just hired me an hour ago.”

“You can be fired.”

“Your husband looks like a man who’d have to have a reason, Mrs. Logun.”

“Have I known you before? What’s your name?”

“Steve Archer.”

She tilted her head slightly, frowned. “That rings a faint bell somewhere. But I don’t place your face.”

“You wouldn’t. They built this one with a scalpel.”

“Gerry hired you as one of his trouble hounds? I thought so. For that work you need muscles, not sense.” She let her glance travel across his broad tanned chest.

“Logun buys different people for different things in different ways,” he said softly.

She paled then, and narrowed her eyes and leaned closer to him. “Did you ever hear of a man named John Jermane?” she asked.

He kept his voice casual. “Should I have?”

Her eyes searched his face for long seconds. “Never mind,” she said, a hint of viciousness in her voice. He looked steadily into her green eyes until at last she looked away, glanced back and was suddenly flirtatious, husky-soft voice saying, “We’ll get better acquainted.”

“If Gerry approves.”

She slammed the convertible into gear, her mouth ugly. The rear tires screamed against the asphalt with the speed of the start.

He watched the car turn between the white posts. And she wasn’t as Johnny had described her. He had described another person, a softer, sweeter, more honest person. This one, this Shirley Logun, had fire and depth, but he guessed that at the core of her there was the hardness of gray, lava rock.

In another twenty minutes he came to his car. He put on his shirt, shoes, socks, got behind the wheel and drove slowly to Biloxi, eleven miles away from the Chez Shirley.

He had a room in a boarding house a block inland from the plush hotels along the beachfront. Walking down the hall by the entrance to the shabby livingroom, he reached the foot of the stairs when a man’s voice said, “Mr. Archer?”

He turned, saw a slight gray man in wrinkled rayon suit, a faintly soiled panama hat in his hand.

“If I could speak to you for a moment—”

“Start speaking then.”

“In your room.”

Archer shrugged. “Come on up.”

The room contained a sagging bed, a new maple bureau, frayed curtains that hung lifeless at the open window. Steve Archer gave the man a cigarette, lit his own and the stranger’s and lay back on the bed, long and relaxed and yet vigilant.

The man said, “My name is Taen. I am beginning to understand what you may be trying to do.”

“About what?”

“About Logun and the Chez Shirley. I know your reasons and I know that you have no real personal interest.”

“I don’t get it, Taen.”

“It is a very noble venture, young man. But the world isn’t like that. Certain organized groups will accomplish what you aim to accomplish, and do it with a good deal more efficiency.”

“Just who are you?”

Mr. Taen handed Archer a wallet. Archer flipped it open, glanced at it, handed it back. “What do you want to do? Slap Logun’s wrist for income tax evasion?”

“And other things. We’ve been concerned about him for a long time. We were working on that case eleven years ago when he ran a club in Jersey. He stepped on some of the wrong toes up there and had to leave. He brought the Kister twins and Relli with him when he came down here and bought into this place with the money he took out of his Jersey City safety deposit boxes.”

“You’re still talking over my head, Taen.”

“I doubt that,” Taen said quietly.

Archer snapped his cigarette out the open window. “Pop, all I know is that today a man named Logun offered me a job as a muscleman in a nightclub he runs west of here. And I’m taking the job.”

“Jermane had a bad deal, Archer. Lots of people hold a bad hand.”

Archer didn’t move but his lips tightened. Taen continued, “And, since I happen to know the status of your bank account, Archer, and know that you could go for the rest of your life without working, I can only assume that you are going into this because of childish boredom. I don’t want my plans upset. And so I’m warning you off.”

Archer faked a yawn. “Mrs. Logun said something today about a guy named Jermane. Never heard of him.”

“John Jermane? Ward eight, bed four? With a Stephen Archer in bed five?”

“Oh, you mean that Jermane! I guess he did come from around here at that.”

“Would you consider working with us?”

Archer glanced at his watch. “I have a shower to take, Taen. And then I have to do something about packing. You’ll excuse me, won’t you?”

Taen went to the door. He turned with his hand on the knob and said, “If you kill Logun it won’t be hard to show motive.”

Archer made a sad clucking sound. “Stay away from those movies, pop. They’re getting you.”

When Taen had silently closed the door behind him, Archer came off the bed in one quick motion. He paced back and forth between the window and the door, a fresh cigarette between his lips. Things were working out exactly as he had expected. Shirley was vaguely suspicious of him. And Taen had gone right to the heart of the matter.

No, no part of this was due to boredom. It was due to other things. The sound of a man’s voice in the dim night of the ward. Plans made and broken. Hopes built and broken again. A comradeship of pain.