Start Screaming Murder

Chapter Sixteen

I blistered my rump on the car seat and my feet on the pavements during the remainder of the afternoon trying to get a lead on Tina. It had begun with her. If not the sole key, she’d jangled plenty on the keyring. I didn’t want her ending up in the manner of Gaspar the Great. I had to have those points of information she’d held out on me. She owed me at least that much.

By late afternoon, I was still up the creek and I’d run out of paddles. If anyone had told me a little doll with such unique physical characteristics would vanish without trace in Ybor City, I wouldn’t have believed it.

With a tired pumping in my feet and a dismal ache in my head, I dragged up the stairs to my apartment.

I dunked in a cold tub while I cooled the mucuous membranes with beer. I was plagued with the feeling that I should know where she was. Something right under my nose should tell me.

Common sense told me she was probably at the bottom of Tampa Bay with a big chunk of metal tied to her. But when you gumshoe your way through enough years, cases and people, you develop a subconscious ability to add up things that have escaped conscious notice. The result now and then is an annoying mental dislocation that most cops call a hunch.

In a change to fresh clothes, I went in the kitchenette, put a Cuban sandwich together, and got cartons of slaw and potato salad out of the refrigerator.

I slid a plate onto the table and started to spoon slaw out of the carton. I stopped with the spoon halfway between carton and plate. I stood there looking at the plate while juice from the slaw dripped from the shredded mass on the spoon.

The subconscious worm crawled right out of the cocoon and spread its wings. A breath of relief jolted out of me.

The plate, plus a chance remark, told me where Tina La Flor was hiding. There was little chance of her leaving before I arrived.

I sat down and ate my dinner.

A breeze came and died, ushering in a night in which the dead heat was a vacuum, as if a squall were building up in the Gulf. The night needed a lashing by a swift rain to make it livable. I suspected the rain would fail to reach the mainland.

I parked the car half a block away from the Cardezas house. I crossed the street, walking quickly, and mounted the sagging front porch. Across the street a gang of kids were playing tag, shrilling Spanish annoyances at the little boy who was “It.”

I heard the muffled rise of mood music and sharp crackle of six-guns from the Cardezas TV set.

I knocked. Mrs. Cardezas answered, her comfortably ample body filling the doorway. In addition to the TV glow, a small lamp was lighted in the living room behind her.

She thrust her round, full face forward to look at me, the room light etching the coils of her shiny black hair.

“Well... Señor Rivers. Have you word of Tina?”

“Yes,” I said.

I brushed past her into the room. Her voice rose in an exclamation of surprise and irritation. “Señor Rivers, until you are invited...”

“Save it,” I said.

Little Miguel was belly down on the floor, watching the TV with his elbows propped on the floor, his chin propped on his hands.

He squirmed around to look at me. A little girl slid out of a chair and started for the doorway. I crossed the living room after her. She wore tattered sneakers and a faded print dress. Her hair was in pigtails.

The boom of my footsteps caused the speed of her exit to increase. She darted toward the rear of the house.

With four or five long steps, I was reaching for her. Mrs. Cardezas threw herself in front of me.

“Señor Rivers! What is the meaning of this? You cannot break into my house...”

“Please, lady,” I said.

She grabbed my arms. She was a big woman and a strong one. Little Miguel came up and started kicking my shins, darting in and out, giving vent to his enjoyment in excited Spanish.

Mrs. Cardezas’ weight banged me against the wall. Miguel got in an extra good one on my right shin. I howled softly in pain.

A little girl with black hair and olive skin — not the one I was after — came rushing into the room from the back part of the house.

“Mama!... Mama!...”

“Rosita,” Mrs. Cardezas gasped, sweating to hang on to me, “run next door. Get Señor Figuero and scream for many neighbors. Tell them a madman has broken into our house!”

I began to get sore, and fear jolted through me. I know how those Latin neighbors would react on such a hot night.

The little figure I was after — Tina La Flor, of course — had reached the kitchen.

Mrs. Cardezas was draped around my neck, her heavy strong arms locked together, her weight pulling me down. I reached back to break her grip without hurting her.

Little Miguel made like a billy-goat, lowered his head, and charged. I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Mrs. Cardezas’ shifting weight reeled me to one side. Miguel missed his target, cracked his head against the wall, sat on the floor, and started wailing.

Sweating in desperation, I firmed my grip on the heavy, smothering arms. Mrs. Cardezas cried out as I tore myself free of her.

I heard the kitchen door slam. I charged the sound, banged my way outside, and tripped off the low back steps.

I skidded to a stop on hands and knees, looking up in time to see the small, running shadow in the darkness. I scrambled after her. Just as she reached the corner of the house, I grabbed the collar of her dress.

“Lemme go, you big lummox!” She squirmed around fighting, kicking and scratching.

In the front yard Rosita was yelling frenzíedly for assistance for her ma-ma. A man’s voice answered her, and a second man’s voice answered him. A couple of women joined in.

Tina gave a good account of herself, but I smothered her attack without breaking any of her bones.

Holding both her hands behind her back with one of mine, I gave her a hard shake.

“Now you listen to me, you little witch! You’ve caused me more trouble than half the hoods in Tampa. I’m fed up to here, see? You simmer down, but quick, or I’ll turn you over my knee and blister you good before I throw you to the cops.”

She became still. “Okay, Ed,” she said bleakly. “I know when I’m licked.”

To insure against her doing any more broken field running, I tucked her in the crook of my right arm, her legs and arms dangling.

I fore-armed sweat off my face while I considered what to do. I heard more neighbors gather from various points of the compass in the Cardezas front yard. The din rose in volume.

They shouted wild instructions to each other. I realized the steadier ones were fanning out, coming around each side of the house.

I ran across the backyard and took the low rear steps into the kitchen. I closed the door, threw the bolt latch, and propped a can-bottomed chair under the doorknob.

Mrs. Cardezas, charging toward the rear of the house, almost collided with me. She drew up, seeing that I had Tina and had re-entered the house.

“You go out there,” I told her, “and restore the peace of the evening. Tell them it’s all right.”

Mrs. Cardezas hesitated.

Tina gasped, “Do as he says, Mama Cardezas... Ed, I can’t get my breath in this position and all the blood is running to my head. Would you mind not killing me for the moment?”

Mrs. Cardezas went outside. I heard her voice rising over the babble of her neighbors.

I parked Tina on the edge of the kitchen table in a sitting position.

She felt her stomach gingerly where my arm had circled. “How’d you find me?”

“The other evening I called a Tampa cop, Gonzales by name, to ask about a man named Jack Scanlon. I also asked Gonzales about you. He said they had no lead on you, that it was as if you’d grown up beyond recognition.

“Later, in the light of the plates, it occurred to me that maybe you hadn’t grown up — but down. Into childhood, so to speak. Just another kid in a houseful of kids.”

“What’s this about plates?”

“The first time I came here Mrs. Cardezas was setting the table for dinner. Six plates. But only four kids and herself. Five people. It finally dawned on me to ask myself who was the sixth person, the fifth kid. There were no other grownups around.”

“I guess it doesn’t take much to tell you a whole lot, Ed,” she said rather dismally.

“Sometimes a wall has to practically fall on me. It wasn’t very nice of you to be hiding right here among Mrs. Cardezas’ brood while I’ve had my naked neck stuck away out.”

“Maybe not, but what else was I to do? For your sake I had to stay away from the cops.”

“Big hearted you,” I said.

“Don’t sound so bitter, Ed. You know it’s the truth. If I’d told them about me and Bucks, and you trying to help me, they’d have stuck you under the jail. You — you didn’t kill Bucks, did you?”

“Would it matter to you if I had?”

“Yes,” she said. “A million times I’ve regretted dragging you into it.”

“Well, with that much decency to start with, we’ll see how well you can level now,” I told her.

Mrs. Cardezas came into the kitchen. The furor in the yard had died down.

The big woman glanced from me to Tina. “It’s all right, Mama Cardezas,” Tina said.

Mrs. Cardezas continued to look at the tiny woman with tenderness. Then Mrs. Cardezas turned her head toward me. “Señor Rivers, we did what Tina asked... For you personally there is no ill feeling.”

“Now that’s downright kindly of you, m’am,” I said. The edge on my words caused her to redden.

“Ed’s pretty much put out,” Tina said, “and I think you had better just go quietly into the other room, Mama Cardezas.”

“If you need me...”

“She will send you a telegram,” I said.

With backward glances over her shoulder, Mrs. Cardezas started out of the kitchen. Little Miguel’s head showed, thrust past the door jamb. Tear streaks were still on his cheeks, but he was recovered well enough to eye my shins hungrily.

“And take him with you,” I suggested.

When they had gone to the front of the house, I turned to

Tina. She sat making pleats in the front of her dress, not raising her eyes to meet mine.

“Ed,” her whisper faltered, “I have some money... I’ll pay you for...”

“Money wouldn’t hire me to go through what I have, Tina. I’ve been slugged, shot at, stuffed in a car trunk and left to die.”

I realized she was crying. It was for real. She was trying hard not to. “What can I do now, Ed? Go to the police?”

“Are you kidding? I’m one-half of a lucky jump ahead of them right now. What you said about Bucks Jordan’s death in relation to me still goes, only more so. It was me involved in the Aeron Hotel shooting. I’m the nudge that caused Gaspar the Great to lose his nerve, suddenly become dangerous to somebody, and get himself killed. If the cops were briefed and moved on me right now, I’d be lucky merely to lose my license and spend the next twenty years or so in Florida state pen. There’s nothing I can do but see it to a finish.”

“I’ll help all I can, Ed.”

“While you’re helping, you bear in mind that if you tell me one more lie I’ll break your lovely little neck.”

“What do you want to know?”

“The obvious. When you came to me that night, Bucks Jordan wasn’t after you per se, was he?”

“No.”

“He was after an object, an item.”

“Yes.”

“It came off the schooner Sprite, didn’t it?”

“Yes, Ed,” she said meekly.

“What was it?”

“A half million dollars.”