Start Screaming Murder

Chapter Fourteen

The Aeron shooting was front-page stuff the next morning — but down in the lower right-hand corner with a two-column head.

The story said simply that sudden gunfire had shattered the quiet of the hotel. A man identified as Henry Smith had been found dead in the alley, which he had reached via the fire escape. Kincaid had disappeared and was wanted for questioning. Police had not yet established a motive for the shooting.

The remainder of the story consisted of statements by the management and guests of the hotel. Kincaid and Smith had been quiet, respectable-looking tenants, assumed to be businessmen. Guests recounted their terrifying experiences in various ways. One old fellow claimed he’d charged to the second floor when the gun battle broke out, but had been too late to take a hand against the villains.

The scarcity of details in the padded-up story made me feel better. I folded the newspaper and left it for the next counter customer. I paid for my coffee and old-fashioned crullers in the downtown restaurant and went from there to the Journal building.

Ed Price, the city editor, was in conference with the managing editor. I sat down in the chair at the end of Ed’s desk.

He came across the city room, a sheaf of proofs in his hand, and we traded our usual “Hello, Ed.”

He sat down behind his desk. “Do I smell a story?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re bargaining today,” he said.

“Groping.”

“At what?”

“I’m not sure yet. If I touch something, you’ll get it.”

“We should be politicians, Rivers. Okay, we’re a couple of back scratchers. I’m willing to scratch first. What’s on your mind?”

“R. D. Carton.”

Price’s thin lips curled in a silent whistle. “You always manage to jolt big, don’t you? What’s with this Carton bit?”

“You’re scratching.”

He studied me intently. “You know who he was, what happened to him, don’t you?”

“He was rich. He was killed.”

“Like numerous others in Cuba’s seemingly endless history of such occurrences.”

“That was in the papers. I’m more interested in what wasn’t in the papers.”

“Most of it was there. That continually seething Cuban pot happened to boil over on him. He was found guilty of treason. Whether the charge was valid or not, probably only Carton knew for sure. After his death, his holdings in Cuba were confiscated.”

“Was he American?”

“Nope, as Cuban as Garcia or Ochoa. His grandfather was one of the leaders for Cuban independence before the outbreak of the Spanish-American war.”

“His widow got away, didn’t she?”

Price nodded. “Real story-book escape. Villagers hid her, sneaked her over the mountains at night, finally got her to the coast and aboard a small fishing boat.”

“Where’d she land in Florida?”

“Key West.”

“Then she came to Tampa?”

“Why, sure,” Price said. “Where else?”

“You mean — she’s American?”

“Yep.”

“And this is her home?”

“Are you kidding?” Price stared at me. “Twenty-five years ago, she was the most beautiful debutante this town has ever seen. When Emily Braddock married R. D. Carton, Cuban and American flags were flying all over the place. Yachts from the two countries remained at anchor in Tampa Bay and stretched the reception into a week-long party.”

“Braddock...” I said. “Florida cattle.”

“And Louisiana oil,” Price added. “And she’s the end of the string, the last Braddock, the final Carton.”

“She never had children?”

Price shook his head. “Considering what finally happened in Cuba, maybe she’s had moments of being glad. A teenage or grown son might have shared a grave with his father.”

I stood up. “Where is she living now, Price?”

“On an estate up the bayshore. Old family place. You going to see her?”

“I think so.”

“Don’t be disappointed.”

“Why not?”

“I heard she isn’t so pretty nowadays. An old, embittered woman of forty-five.” He lighted a cigarette and squinted at me through the cloud of smoke. “My back itches, Ed.”

“I won’t forget — if I’m able to whittle out a scratcher.” The old Braddock place lay like an immovable slumbering giant surrounded by newer estates in the mere fifty thousand dollar class.

About twenty acres of lawn and an ivy-grown iron fence separated the three story pile of colonial mansion from the boulevard that skirted the bay.

I turned in a sweepingly curved driveway that showed cracks in the concrete. The hedges needed shears like a beatnik needs a barber. There were brown spots in the vast lawn, and bare places where the chinch bugs had feasted unmolested.

The house added a note of gloom to the bright Florida day. Paint was beginning to curl in spots on the tall, white pillars. A loose flagstone rattled under my foot as I mounted the long veranda.

There were flyspecks of corrosion on the heavy brass door knocker.

The knocker made a booming echo inside, as if the house were vacant in its entirety. I got no immediate response.

Then, from a nearby ground floor window, a woman’s brittle voice asked, “What do you want?”

I turned my head. A yellowed lace curtain wafted out of the window, across her face. She brushed the curtain aside.

“I’m not buying anything today,” she said. “Didn’t you see the no soliciting sign beside the driveway?”

I’d seen a small wooden sign with the letters weathered away. “Are you Mrs. Carton?”

“Yes, but—”

“My name is Rivers. I’m not selling anything, and I don’t wish to impose. But it’s important that I talk to you. Very important.”

She was hesitant. Price had been right about one thing. She wasn’t pretty. Her face was fleshless as a mummy’s. The cheeks were drawn in. The eyesockets were huge. Her chin was a sharp cut of bone. Stretched over the bony structure was a glaze of skin like yellowed cellophane. Her hair was a dull gray, thinning and dry, pulled to the back of her head and held with pins.

Yet, as she tilted her head to study me, there was a brief hint for a second of a vanished beauty. There was still a certain liveness in her eyes, and the broad mouth hadn’t gone completely to bitterness.

“I can’t imagine what you wish to see me about, Mr. Rivers. I know of nothing so very important.”

“Does the name Kincaid mean anything to you?” I watched for a change in the socket-hidden eyes. If there was a change, I couldn’t detect it.

“No,” she said. “But if you... Just a moment.”

She withdrew her head. The silence of the house returned. Then a bolt snicked on the other side of the door.

The door opened slowly. She stood aside to let me enter.

I took two steps into a vaulted, gloomy hallway where the air smelled of tropical heat and mildew, and the high crystal chandelier gathered dust.

I wanted to walk right out again. Sitting on his haunches, red tongue lolling, was the largest, blackest German shepherd in the western hemisphere. His head was not much larger than a grizzly bear’s. He had jaws capable of snapping a bone in two. His tongue dripped as he panted against the heat.

Emily Carton had a grip on the dog’s spiked collar. She excused herself and led him to a doorway that opened left off the hallway.

“In, Nino,” she commanded.

Even on all fours, the massive dog was taller than her waist. Toenails snicking on the parquet flooring, he obeyed her order. She closed the door behind him.

She stood erectly before me, her body as resilient as bamboo, trimmed down until her dress hung on her in loose folds.

“I see few people these days, Mr. Rivers. When one has been away for a quarter of a century, one returns to few friends.”

Obliquely, she’d stated that she had nothing here and nothing remaining behind her. For an instant, her eyes held hatred, for her present status, for the way life had treated her.

“I hope I may be your friend, Mrs. Carton.”

“Why? Because I have money?”

“That’s a good reason.”

“At least you’re honest. Who are you, really? Aside from being a Mr. Rivers?”

“A private detective.”

“Whatever on earth...” A smile twisted her mouth. “Are you here to frighten me?”

“Not needlessly, I hope.”

“I’m not easily frightened,” she said quietly. I believed her. Her eyes glinted imperiously as she looked me up and down. I had the feeling that I didn’t impress her very much. I glimpsed the past, which was reduced to a ghost inside of her, of that bearing and attitude of a person accustomed to the lifelong privilege of ordering an army of servants around.

“You mentioned the name Kincaid,” she said finally.

“Do you know him?”

“Is there any reason I should give you an answer?”

I shrugged. “He’s here in Tampa. He seems to have an interest in you.”

“Really?”

“He came with another man, named Henry Smith. He was mixed up in a shooting at a local hotel last night. Smith was killed.”

“I see.” Hands clasped before her, she strolled back and forth a few steps. The vaulted hallway echoed the small sounds made by her flat-heeled sandals. The tomblike house swallowed the sounds as it had swallowed the gay bubbles of laughter and music in another era.

“What makes you think such a man is interested in my whereabouts, Mr. Rivers?”

“For now, I’ll just have to tell you that I have my reasons and let it go at that. If you know this man, it might be to your benefit to tell me.”

“The police will probably pick him up, if you’re thinking he might be dangerous to me.”

“Then again, they may not.” The closed hallway was sweltering. She didn’t seem to notice. I mopped sweat off my face with my handkerchief. “I have ways of finding out things about people, Mrs. Carton. Sometimes it takes time, but I always find out.”

Her laugh was the first sign of real animation in her. The idea of intrigue and possible danger seemed to enliven her.

“All right,” she said suddenly, “I did once know a man named Kincaid. He was, for a brief period, an overseer on my husband’s sugar plantation.”

“How brief a period?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A few weeks, months. He was a soldier of fortune sort of person. One of those sweaty Americans you find in odd corners of the world. He drifted on.”

“Before your husband... Before the...”

“Before my husband was murdered? You may state the fact in my presence, Mr. Rivers. Yes, it was before that.”

“Then Kincaid had no part in what happened to your husband?”

“Gracious, no.”

“Or in getting you out of Cuba?”

She shook her head. “No Americans were involved in that. Really, Mr. Rivers. This Kincaid of whom you’re speaking may not be the same man at all.”

“He’s here in Tampa.”

“I imagine there are Kincaids everywhere. It’s a fairly common name.”

“Not Kincaids in Tampa who have kicked around Latin America.”

“Why not? Ybor City is full of people who’ve sought refuge from tribulation in Latin America. You must have a specific reason for believing this particular man is interested in me. Has he said so?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Then...?”

“He was carrying a clipping, a news story in Spanish about your husband’s death.”

“It must have been months old.”

“It was.”

“Well!” she said in a sort of gasping sigh. “That’s really rather touching, if one is sentimental. Perhaps he is the same Kincaid after all. I didn’t know he was that fond of us.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“When he left the plantation. What happened is obvious, Mr. Rivers. Wherever he was at the time, he was shocked sufficiently by the news of R. D.’s death that he tore the clipping out.”

She was lost for a moment in memories. “Yes,” she said to herself, “it’s nice to know that he was that fond of us. I hope he’s in no real trouble, Mr. Rivers.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Well, he has no present connection with me. Isn’t that what you came to find out? If so, I’ll bid you buenos dias.”

With that, she went to the door where the horse-sized dog lurked. She opened the door and said, “Here, Nino.” She gave me a final nod and smile. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Rivers. If you see Mr. Kincaid, thank him also — for the emotional reaction he found in the clipping. I didn’t know he had it in him. I always thought of him as a dangerous kind of roughneck.”

I drove back across the Hillsborough River, which slices Tampa in half, and worried my way through the tangle of downtown traffic to the parking lot near the beatup old office building on Cass Street.

I went up and there was a notice from Western Union hanging on the office doorknob.

I keyed the door open. The outer office held a leather couch and couple of chairs. My desk was in the inner office, along with a steel filing cabinet. The place was stifling. I crossed the inner office and opened the windows. The bustle of Tampa drifted to me.

I sat down at the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed Western Union.

The telegram they’d tried to deliver was from New Orleans. It stated: “Deposit box here registered to Maria Blake. Source says box holder was in town at bank opening this morning. Hope this helps.”

I hung up the phone, toyed idly at the cover of the old Underwood, and rocked back in my chair.

Maria Blake Scanlon, it appeared, hadn’t been lying. She’d taken my advice and gone to New Orleans. It was my guess she was back by now. There were direct plane flights between Tampa and New Orleans, and a relatively short, quick hop over the Gulf. She’d bounced over, got her jewels, and bounced right back to buy a little more of the relationship that made a travesty of marriage.

I was beginning to pick up the mail that had fallen through the slot in the outer office door, when the wooden box that caught the mail was pulled right out of my hands.

Lieutenant Steve Ivey hadn’t come alone. Flanking Ivey as he stood in the now-open doorway was a big cop in uniform.

I said hello and pardon me, and fished the last piece of mail out of the box as if I had nothing else in the world to do.

“Busy, Ed?” Ivey asked, following me inside.

“Nope. Except for the mail.” I crossed to the inner office, checked through the half dozen envelopes, found nothing of importance, and dropped them on my desk.

“What’s on your mind, Steve?”

“I want to ask you a couple of questions.”

“What about?”

“A dwarf.”

“Come again?”

“Erstwhile trapeze artist. One time high-liver and freewheeling spender. Lately down on his luck. Namely — Gaspar the Great.”

“What’s with him?”

“He’s dead,” Ivey said. “Got his brains knocked out. Fellow working for the city sanitation department found him about three hours ago. Someone had hidden the undersized corpse for a few hours by dropping it in a thirty-gallon garbage can in an Ybor City alley.”