Start Screaming Murder

Chapter Thirteen

The Aeron was located on the edge of Ybor City, where the narrow streets of Spain yield to the broader thoroughfares of downtown America.

Years ago, before the widespread acceptance of the motel, the Aeron had been a first-class commercial establishment, the sort catering to traveling salesmen and civic club luncheons. Even now it retained a struggling respectability. Cheap, new paper was on the walls of the lobby. There were potted palms, and couches and chairs with slip covers to hide their age.

A few elderly people were clustered at one end of the lobby playing cards and chatting, retired folk for whom inflation had clobbered annuities and pensions that had once promised the inclusion of a few luxuries at the close of life.

I spotted the stairs in the far corner of the lobby next to the old-fashioned iron grille of the elevator. The desk clerk was a comfortably fat old man who took off his glasses now and then to polish them as he read a newspaper.

On the sidewalk outside one of the tall windows that gave on the lobby, I waited until the switchboard demanded the clerk’s attention. Then I entered, strolled across the lobby, and used the stairs.

The second floor corridor was long and narrow. A threadbare runner stretched the length of the floor to the red exit light at the further end.

A couple of ancient overhead fans creaked their wide blades sluggishly, stirring the dead, empty heat. I heard no sounds of life as I padded toward the door with the numerals 212.

Standing close to the door, I thought of the confines of the car trunk and the agony of smothering in air that no longer held life. The heat seemed to seep into my blood and brains.

I knocked softly with my knuckle. There was no response.

Kincaid and Smith were out.

But we could wait — the heat and I, and the gun snugged against my belly and the memory of being buried alive in a car trunk.

The door had a spring lock. I opened it with the steel on my keyring and stepped quickly inside the room.

From across the street, a neon sign spilled a rose haze into the room. I stood against the door, letting my eyes get accustomed to the gloom.

The room was run-of-the-mill. There were two three-quarters beds, a bureau, chest of drawers, writing table. One door opened on a small bath, another to a large closet.

I drew the old-fashioned roller blinds and turned on a small lamp that was on the writing table.

I searched the chest of drawers and bureau quickly. Several of the drawers were empty. Others held socks, handkerchiefs, underwear and shirts. Loose change, an empty cigarette package, and pocket comb with a few missing teeth lay on the bureau where one of them had carelessly emptied his pockets.

Nearly a dozen suits, all of good cut and quality, were in the closet, along with slacks, jackets, changes of shoes.

I went through the garments, coming up with a find composed of tobacco crumbs, book matches, broken toothpicks, and a sheaf of papers from an inner coat pocket.

I carried the papers to the writing table. There were a few blank counter checks from a local bank, a folded, dog-eared story that had been torn from a Spanish language newspaper. I put my foreign vocabulary to work and got the idea the story concerned the execution of a man named Carton. Many months old, the story stated that Cuban authorities had tried Carton for treason to the state and as an enemy of the people. His multimillions of dollars worth of holdings in Cuba had been expropriated by the state. His widow, with the connivance of traitors, had escaped Cuba to take refuge in her native. United States, where a few more million of Carton money was invested.

The story continued with the usual propaganda blather about the evils of everything Yanqui.

The remaining papers were an Aeron Hotel bill and a small city map of Tampa.

I went over the story again to see if I could improve my Spanish. I’d about got the gist of it. I impressed Carton’s name and initials on my mind. R. D. Carton.

I heard the muffled sound of voices in the corridor and turned off the lamp.

The voices died away. I listened for the deadened fall of footsteps on the hall runner. Instead, I heard a key touch the door lock.

I slid the spare .38 from under the waistband of my pants. With my other hand, I touched the switch on the writing table lamp.

The door swung open. Kincaid and Smith stepped into the room, Smith saying he wished he’d stayed in Peru. I intended for him to wish it a lot more.

I clicked the lamp switch and said, “Welcome home, crumbs.”

Smith’s words broke in a dribble of terror as his jutting eyes spotted me behind the light. Kincaid gasped.

My idea was to disarm them and take them to a quiet spot for a private, unfriendly chat.

“Close the door,” I said.

Kincaid said, “He intends to kill you, Smith!”

With that, Kincaid, already partially protected by Smith’s bulk, shoved the bigger man at me.

I squeezed the trigger as Kincaid dropped behind Smith, throwing himself toward the doorway. The explosion of the gun was deafening and blinding in the closeness of the room.

The brain behind Smith’s big, pleasant face required time to react. Dumbly, his reflexes accepted Kincaid’s words.

I spun toward Smith as his hand came up with a pistol. He was a heavy shadow blocking the doorway.

I pressed the .38 a second time and saw the slug take him in the right side. It jerked his body. A wild, crazy sound came from him. He fired twice in the space of a second.

I heard the slugs slam the wall behind me as I flopped on the floor, rolled behind the bed nearest me for cover.

His third slug gouged through the mattress and breathed close to the back of my head.

“This way!” I heard Kincaid say. “I’ll cover you.”

I scrambled for the doorway. I glimpsed them clambering out the window in the end of the corridor where the exit light shone, taking the fire escape.

A bullet knocked splinters from the door jamb into my face. I jerked back, breathing hard. Smith had smashed it for me. I wanted out of the room to pick up the pieces.

I wanted it so badly I chanced the open corridor. I ran in a crouch, ready to throw myself flat if Kincaid showed a gun over the window sill.

I knew there was plenty of excitement throughout the hotel. But nobody opened a door or came rushing into that corridor. The impulse of the citizen is to head the other way or dive under the bed when guns begin going off.

Smith and Kincaid were shadows dropping toward the dark alley when I rolled out the window onto the rusty steel fire escape.

There was a flash, a crash in the alley. A bullet scored the brick wall behind me. The darkness made conditions lousy for pistol work.

I held my fire, picking up speed as I took the right-angled turn in the slatted steel stairs.

I stopped for an instant, locating the sound of their running footsteps ahead of me.

A garbage can far down the alley hit the asphalt with a terrific clatter.

Smith screamed, “Kincaid, Kincaid! Wait... I can’t go on... I’m hurt... Don’t leave me... Damn you, I’ll tell if you leave...”

The words were smothered by a single blast of gunfire.

I fired in the direction of the flash, running forward. I glimpsed his shadow round the corner of the building. I was gaining on him. In a little, I’d have him.

Then a spongy mass folded over my feet and ankles. I tripped, pitching headlong. The skin burned off the heel of my left palm as I tried to break my fall.

Shaken and dazed for a second, I managed to roll free of the inert form that had managed in its dying moments to pull itself toward the center of the alley.

There was rancid spilled garbage all about us. I located his head with my hand. There was blood all over the side of Smith’s face. Kincaid had killed him rather than risk trying to save him or having him fall wounded into the wrong hands.

Yet in his dying, and quite unintentionally, Smith had continued to serve the brainier man, acting as a block in my path.

I pulled myself to my feet. The sound of Kincaid’s quick retreat was gone now. In its place was the rise and fall of sirens.

I ran down the adjacent alley, reached the street that intersected the one on which the Aeron stood. I crossed at the corner and reached my car.

As I pulled off, I saw the arrival of the first patrol car in the rear view mirror.

In my apartment, I felt reaction set in. The inner man twitched and shivered while the outer man with apparent calm shucked his coat, loosened his shirt, and had a long drink of cold water from the refrigerator bottle.

A part of me waited and listened for a knock on the door that would mean Steve Ivey and the Tampa police had connected me with the Aeron shooting.

I had no chance to backtrack and cover. My single choice was to sit tight and hope I hadn’t been seen by anyone with a genius for accurate description.

The knock didn’t come. But I knew it was a sound in my future. I’d cut too wide a swath this time, passing word in Ybor City that I was looking for Kincaid and Smith. Ivey was bound to get wind of it eventually.

I delegated future trouble to the future. As I managed to unwind a little, a bone-deep tiredness crawled through my nerves and muscles. I took consolation in knowing the pressure wasn’t on me alone. I figured I had the ability to crouch down inside my skull and last as long as any of them.

I tried to put myself in Kincaid’s skin, behind his eyes. His decision to kill Smith had been swift and absolutely brutal, an action with a very urgent purpose.

I believed I understood the purpose. Carrying my slug, Smith had been too badly wounded to escape. Kincaid had shot him because Kincaid had been afraid to stack Smith’s slow intelligence and nerve against the ruthless, efficiency of endless police questioning.

So Kincaid’s purpose was clear. His drastic measure meant one thing. He couldn’t afford to run, not yet. He hadn’t finished the job that had brought him to the mainland. He needed more time, right here in Tampa.

I wondered if Kincaid was at this second repeating my own process. Putting himself in my shoes. Trying to figure how I’d got his location. Anxiously guessing how much I knew. Thinking of ways of getting me off his back for good.

I slept that night with the .38 under my pillow.