Start Screaming Murder

Chapter Two

I killed the beer and said bluntly, “Okay, so I made a booboo. Like you say, Tina, it wasn’t intentional. Blame it on my being human. Now, we going to think about it all night — or this problem of Bucks Jordan?”

She remained a long way off for another moment. Gradually, she came back, wiped her lower lids with a pink-nailed fingertip, and said, “Is that supposed to be an apology?”

“Yes.”

A hint of a smile touched her lips. “For a guy as tough as an old bull-elephant, you got a mushpot for a heart, Ed.”

“I’m interested in this guy with the free swinging blackjack,” I said, “and the reason you headed for me instead of the cops.”

“I want the police kept out of it.”

“I’ll repeat — why?”

“I don’t want any publicity. Not that kind.”

“Why?”

“Is that all you can say?”

“I’m fishing for your story. You’re not making it easy, but you’d better make it good.”

She scooted off the daybed and walked to the table where a pack of cigarettes lay on scattered magazines. The fags were beyond her reach. I got up, handed them to her, and struck a paper match for her. The smoke was regular size, no filter, but in her lips it looked like a kingsize.

“Thanks, Ed.” She treated herself to several deep, satisfying drags. “Come to think of it, the story may not be so good.”

“No?”

“Because it’s the truth. The truth does sound lame sometimes, you know.”

“I know.”

“Maybe I should have made something up,” she said, going toward the daybed. She gave me a twisted smile. “But you’d get to the bottom of anything that was made up.”

“Let’s let the lame truth limp a little,” I suggested.

She was calmer now, in no hurry. She stretched, seeming to enjoy the feeling of security the apartment and my presence gave her.

“To begin with,” she said, “Bucks Jordan used to be a minor annoyance in my carny days. It was nothing new. You’d be surprised how many guys have made gaga eyes at me.”

Knowing something of people, I wasn’t very surprised.

“Back then,” Tina went on, “Bucks didn’t dare cross the line. He had to content himself with colored remarks and a pat on my shoulder when he thought he could get away with it. There were always other people around. The roustabouts worshipped me and would have broken his neck at a snap of my fingers. I was the star of the show, and you know how class-ridden carny and circus society is. Bucks lived in one social stratum, I in another. I avoided him and managed to get through the season without trouble.”

Thinking about it, she tensed up and sought relief in the cigarette. With a big cloud of billowing smoke adding to the misty quality of her face, she said, “I didn’t think I’d ever see Bucks again. And I didn’t, for a long time. Then the other day I bumped into him, in a Tampa restaurant. Since then...” She spread her arms. “Ed, I swear I don’t think the guy’s got all his marbles. He can’t get it through his head that I’m not really gone on him.”

“Sounds like a creep of the first water.”

“You can say that again! Calling me, following me, trying to make dates... ugh...” She made a face. “I told him I was going to sic the cops on him. That scared him off for a while. Then, as time passed and he realized I hadn’t hollered for the bulls, he got the big-headed idea it was because I was playing hard to get — but not too hard, not that hard. So the threat backfired on me.”

“Are we up to tonight?”

“I guess we are,” she said. “I’ve a cottage here, a home roost. My phone rang. It was Bucks, pretty cocky because I hadn’t yelled cop. He was coming out to see me. I knew, then, that I needed some help. I told him to lay off or a tough guy named Ed Rivers would tear his arm off and feed it to him for breakfast.”

“You were taking a lot on yourself!”

“Don’t get sore, Ed. I’ve got dough. I decided right then to hire you.”

“It isn’t always that simple and easy, sweetheart. Sometimes I’m busy on another case. And there are jobs I just don’t go for.”

She spread her arms. “I had to tell him something, didn’t I?”

I growled, “Go on.”

“Well, I came here. The creep followed me. I was waiting for you outside your door when I heard his voice downstairs. He was asking somebody which apartment was yours. I had to get away from him. That table was handy in the hall... Your transom was open... and there was Bucks, coming up the stairs.”

She stopped speaking and sat looking at me with a helpless, bland innocence I’d never before run into.

In the silence I heard water running. I got up, cut to the bathroom, and turned off the faucet just before the tub spilled over. I pulled the plug and went slowly back to Tina.

She gave me a cherubic smile.

I returned it, only on me the smile wasn’t so angelic. “We return to the groove in the broken record. Why?”

“Ed...”

“Cops,” I said. “Why me instead of cops?”

“I’ve explained...”

“No, you haven’t. You’ve said you didn’t want publicity.”

“Isn’t that understandable?”

“To an extent. But under the circumstances...”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll spell it out. I got a new manager. He’s in New York right now, and things are really looking great. A month from now I hope to be auditioning for the right people, the really big people. I’ve got a new routine. It’s great, Ed. I know it’ll sell me to top clubs, maybe even spots on network variety TV. But to sell I’ve got to be everything sweet, unsullied and wonderful, the way folks want a dainty little creature like me to be.

“Now... I scream police and the reporters, even the ones with colds in their heads, smell a story. You get their angle? Little doll and big bohunk.

“You’ve dealt with the press yourself, Ed. Most of the ink and paper boys are decent citizens. But there are plenty who’d force their crippled grandmothers to do a fan dance if it meant a story.

“They’d dig up everything possible, make it look as if Bucks and I traveled the carny circuits together. And those magazines...” She rolled her eyes. “The ones half the people in show business are suing. Can’t you just see some of the lurid streamers across their covers? Such as, ‘Why Miniature Carny Delilah Gave Her Six-Foot Samson the Air.’ “

Tina practically gagged on the cigarette. “Ed, things being as they are, don’t even mention cops to me. This has got to be handled quietly, efficiently, and you’re the only guy I’d trust with it.”

I knuckled the stubble along my jaw. “Tina, coming from anybody else, I don’t know. I’d wonder if it was a lot of cock-and-bull, if you’d told me everything.”

“Well, I warned you that the truth...”

“It’s screwy enough to be true,” I admitted. “What, exactly, do you want me to do?”

“Do?” she yelled with a temperamental outsweeping of her arms. “Do what any red-blooded guy your size and weight would do. Look up Bucks and tell him you’ll break his stinking neck if he so much as lets my name slip into his foul mind.”

“You think it’ll work?”

“I know it will. He’s a rotten coward. I saw the way he kept his distance when those carny roustabouts were around. He laid off while he thought a big cop was warned and waiting, didn’t he? And I’ll bet he opened all jets to get away from you in the alley.”

“He was plenty mean and tough for a while.”

“Yeah? I know what I’m talking about. You put the fear of Ed Rivers in him and he’ll sulk about it and find some other doll to pester. I hope to hell she stands five-feet-eight and wrestled under the name of Madame Frankenstein.”

She gave me a child-like look of trust which began to glimmer out. “You... you’ll do it, Ed?”

“My instincts are cautious,” I said.

“What’s that mean? You’re not afraid of Bucks Jordan. That couldn’t be!”

“I got a healthy respect for his size,” I said.

“But he tried to break your head! You wouldn’t let him, or anybody else in this town, get away with that!”

“Not happily.”

“Then what’s the hurdle?”

“Sure you’ve included all the details?”

“Cross my heart.” She crossed her heart.

She waited — then she bounced angrily off the daybed and headed for another cigarette.

When I moved toward the table to help her, she snapped, “Never mind!” She stood on tiptoe, strained, and reached the smokes and matches. “I’m used to helping myself in this outsized world you big gorillas have created for yourselves. I guess I can keep right on.” She ignored the match I offered and struck one of her own.

Crossing the room swiftly, she posed martyr-like at the door. “I’ll try to feel no rancor, Ed. Please give me a little sorrow if you read in the papers that I’ve been criminally assaulted and...”

“Oh, shut up,” I said.

She came to center-stage with perfect timing, real tears of gratitude sparkling in her eyes. “Does this mean...”

“Where do I find Bucks Jordan?”

“Darling!” she screamed daintily. “I knew you would...”

“Pipe down and take it easy,” I said. “Like you say, Nationwide is in business for a purpose. We are for hire, and I’d like to feed Bucks the handle off his blackjack for personal reasons.”

“He’s been working on a boat, Ed. A private job. A big schooner, the kind capable of a South Seas trip. It’s called the Sprite.”

“Who owns it?”

“A fellow named Lessard, Alex Lessard, and his daughter. She’s called D. D.”

“I take it that the Sprite is at anchorage in this area?”

“Right in Tampa Bay.”

“This will cost you the going rate of seventy-five bucks a day and expenses.”

“Sounds like a bargain.”

“You’ll have to sign contracts. We’ll meet at my office early and...”

“Meet my eye! I’m staying right here, Ed, until you put some nails in Bucks Jordan’s hide. You just park the cushions off that old club chair in the kitchen — any corner will do — and give me a blanket. I won’t be any bother and very little expense. I have half an egg for breakfast.”