The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

Chapter 11

I phoned Helen Martin that evening. She answered the pay phone outside her apartment door quickly. Her hello was taut, too anxious. The years of mountainous misfortune hadn’t broken her. But this waiting alone near a telephone was severing her endurance a thread at a time.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said, “but I’m seeing Steve Ivey tomorrow morning.”

“You have something, Ed?”

“I know the identity of the person who went to the Yamashita cottage the day of the killings. A blonde call girl known as Luisa Shaw. She operated for a silky madam named Tillie Rollo. Either name mean anything to you?”

“No. Ed, does it mean that she, this Luisa Shaw...”

“There is nothing to indicate that she was anything other than innocent — of murder, at least. But I’m going to use it all I can as a lever on Ivey.”

“Ed, it must work. I don’t think I could stand another disappointment.”

“Cut out that kind of talk, Helen. I know it’s tough. Get out of the apartment for a little while.”

“No. I couldn’t stand crowds of free people, open space. Always before the loneliness had a grain of hope in it, that Nick would get out of the hospital again soon and feel better. It’s never been like this.”

“Want me to come over and yak at you awhile?”

“I’d rather be alone, Ed. Bright chatter would only be a pretense.”

“Get yourself a good dinner and a night’s sleep. I’m counting on you, Helen. So is Nick.”

“I will,” she said. “I have some sleeping pills. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Sure you will.”

“I’ll be right by the telephone, and I’m keeping a radio on the newscasts.”

“Just give me some time,” I said. “We haven’t had a setback yet.”

“Sure, Ed. Do you know how to get hold of this Luisa Shaw?”

“No,” I said. “She moved. Left no trace. Even the madam couldn’t find her, and the madam is pretty thorough in that sort of thing. This is favorable to us, this appearance her flight has created. Do you see?”

“Yes, Ed.”

“Ivey may have something on her. Tomorrow may tell a different story.”

Tomorrow...

I saw Sime Younkers coming out of headquarters when I approached the building. He saw me at the same moment, turned his head, and ducked quickly into the sidewalk crowd.

Wondering what the disbarred private eye had wanted here, I entered the building and went to Ivey’s office.

The lieutenant wasn’t in. I cooled my heels for ten minutes or so, and then he arrived.

He arrived with his heel kicking the door closed, with a steel-trap look about his mouth and a dark cloud swathing his face.

“Somebody steal your promotion, Ivey?”

“Oh, hello, Ed. No, a green man let Sime Younkers go up to talk to Nick Martin. I don’t like that crumb Younkers in the same county with me. I don’t like him fooling around my prisoners, trying to sell them any bills of goods. What’s on your mind, anyway?”

“I’ve got a piece of news for you.”

“Yeah?”

“I know who went out to the Yamashita summerhouse the day they were killed.”

He jerked his head toward me. His mind dropped everything else.

“Her name is Luisa Shaw,” I said. “Call girl.”

“Never heard of her. How do you know she went out there?”

“She had an appointment, with Ichiro Yamashita.”

“Who says so?”

“I made a halfway bargain with my source, Ivey.”

He thought it over, looking at me and fingering his lower lip. Then he moved to his desk and sat down. Sunlight from behind him sparkled on his bald head.

Flipping a button on his intercom, Ivey gave a couple of orders.

We waited.

A tall young man in the lightweight, dark shirt and trousers, summer uniform of the Tampa police, entered the office.

Ivey looked at the cop’s empty hands. “Nothing, Baxter?”

“Not a thing, sir. She’s never been picked up in Tampa.”

“File of known prostitutes?”

“Not there either, sir.”

“She could have changed her name,” I said.

“You want to look at pictures for a while?” Ivey asked.

I shook my head. “Mug views wouldn’t help. I don’t know what she looks like.”

“Where does she live?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know a hell of a lot, Rivers, to be so sure she went to the Yamashita house that day.”

The intercom rasped for Ivey’s attention. He pushed a button down. “Yes?”

The intercom gave the voice a hollow, tinny sound. “Lieutenant, Nick Martin has sent down word that he wants to see you.”

“What about?”

“He didn’t say. He requested that you see him immediately. Said it’s important.”

“I’ll go right up,” Ivey said, clicking off the intercom.

Without invitation, I dogged his heels out of the office.

Nick stood quietly in his cell. It seemed to me there were a few new lines etched in his face, tentacles of a weariness smothering the very soul of the man. The pale, fair skin had developed faint blue shadows under the eyes. His short-cut blond hair looked limp, lifeless. The slight remains of the boyishness of his features were a mockery.

Calmly, he said hello to Ivey and me. He looked at me with regret heavy in his eyes. “Ed, I appreciate everything you’ve tried to do.”

“I’m still swinging,” I said.

“Is Helen all right?”

“Sure,” I said.

The jailer locked the cell door behind us. Nick went over and eased himself onto the edge of the iron bunk. Ivey stood near the cell door.

“You wanted to see me?” Ivey asked.

“Yes,” Nick said.

“What’s on your mind?”

“I want to settle the issue.”

“I’m listening,” Ivey said.

Nick looked unseeingly at the big, squarish hands resting on his knees. Without raising his eyes, he said, “I killed them.”

Ivey glanced at me. “I see. You understand, Martin, that you asked for me to listen to you, that you are doing this voluntarily, that it will be used against you.”

“I understand,” Nick said.

“I’ll get it taken down,” Ivey said, “and you can sign it.”

Nick said nothing for a few seconds. When he raised his head, I, not Ivey, received his attention.

“Well, Ed?”

“Well, what?”

“You haven’t said anything. Just stood there.”

“He no longer has an interest in the case,” Ivey said. “How come you decided to confess, Martin?”

“I remember now,” Nick said, “It came back — like in a dream.”

“And the house slippers?”

“Weak alibi,” Nick said dully.

“Nick,” I said, “you’re a liar.”

Ivey said sharply, “Lay off him, Rivers.”

I paid no attention to Ivey. “Why, Nick?”

“The lieutenant has given you some good advice,” Nick said, and before I could say anything more, Ivey added, “I sure as hell have. Not another peep out of you. Outside, Rivers, and I don’t mean ninety seconds from now.”

He had signaled the hovering jailer. The cell door was opened. Ivey motioned me out and the jailer crowded me down the corridor between the cells.

I came out on the street under a full head of steam. Okay, fiend, I thought, chalk up another for yourself.

You created this job for me; I didn’t want it.

You’ve put me in deeper than ever. Before this, I needed only enough to build reasonable doubt in the minds of a jury, enough to free Nick. That was my job. That was more than plenty. The police could have had the rest of it, once I’d got enough to free Nick.

Now my job is different. You’ve made it a lot bigger, and I don’t like that. You’ve taken away what choice I had. You’ve burned all my bridges behind me and given me only one end result that I’ll have to reach, if I’m ever to live with myself in the future.

I’ll have to find you, fiend, to learn how and why you can reach out invisibly and make a man lie away the tattered remnants of the wreckage of his life.

In a busy downtown drugstore on Franklin Street, I pushed into a phone booth and called Tillie Rollo.

“Yes?” she said, in her softly modulated voice.

“Ed Rivers. Anything on our friend?”

“Not yet. Have you talked with the man downtown?”

“I just came from there,” I said. “They can’t identify our friend.”

“Did the man ask any questions about me?”

“No,” I said. “I’m keeping my end of our bargain.”

“And my appreciation,” she said. “I’ll do what I can for you.”

“You’d better do your best, or the man may be asking you a lot of questions.”

“I’m not accustomed to receiving threats...”

“And I don’t make a practice of handing them out,” I said. “I’m merely telling you the facts of life. My back is against a wall and I don’t like the feel of it.”

“I’ll keep you posted,” she said, and the line went dead.

I left the drugstore and went to a tavern just off Franklin to grab a bite of lunch.

I was finishing the Cuban sandwich and beer when a midday newscast from the radio behind the bar came cutting at me through the babble of talk and rattle of glasses.

The newscaster elaborated and drew out the gory details. The gist of it was that the police had wrapped up the triple murder which had rocked Tampa. Nick Martin had confessed.

The same voice was bleating from a similar plastic box in Helen Martin’s room.

I threw a bill on the bar, slid off the stool, and elbowed my way to the phone booth in front.

I closed the booth, dropped a coin in the slot, and dialed.

The phone at the far end rang.

The little fan inside the booth whirred.

Sweat began squeezing out of my forehead, like brain fluid, under the sudden pressure inside my head.

Again and again her phone was ringing.

Pay phone right outside her door.

House of working people. It was understandable that workdays might often empty the house.

But she’d said she would be there. She wasn’t out momentarily, to buy groceries or anything like that. Not at this moment. She’d mentioned that she was catching the newscasts, for what little hope one of them might offer. She wouldn’t have missed the important midday newscast.

Her phone kept screaming its fool head off, blindly, purposelessly.

Remembering her discouragement of last night, I had a sickening certainty — her number not only doesn’t answer; it’s not going to answer.