The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

Chapter 12

No man is born to be naturally unlucky or lucky. It depends on the turn of mind. If a man finds solace in thinking of himself as cursed by continual bad luck, he can prove it to himself by thinking on and magnifying the strokes of tough luck he’s suffered. Subconscious forces will then determine action and choice favorable to ill luck. The contrary is equally true of the individual who cannot doubt his luck.

I’ve always figured that luck, good and bad, just about evens out.

Right then I was very lucky.

I found a cab, at the hack stand outside the tavern.

It was driven by a co-operative, dark young man of Latin extraction. When I flashed the photostat of my license and assured him I would take full responsibility, he welcomed the diversion from boredom so much his pencil-thin mustache twitched.

He took me out Florida Avenue with an absolute disregard of traffic laws, life, or property.

He drew rein in front of the old rooming house, the cab pitching as he locked the brakes. I left a five-dollar bill in the cab and went into the house.

Up from the gloomy, musty, cooler-than-outside lower hall.

I caught the first whiffs of the pungent smell when I reached her apartment door.

I opened the door and left it that way. I could hear the pet cocks of the gas stove and space heater hissing.

She’d closed the windows tightly. The sliding portion of the big bay window was stuck. I picked up a chair and smashed it.

Wheeling, I opened a second window, which overlooked the alley at the side of the house.

Another three or four seconds and I had the gas shut off.

Then I turned to Helen. She lay on the old brass bedstead in the small bedroom. One arm dangled from the edge of the bed. The other rested at her side. There was a creeping grayness in her face. Her breathing was shallow and rapid.

I took hold of the head of the bed and swung it so that her face was in the stream of fresh air coming through the smashed window.

There was a small bottle of spirits of ammonia in the bathroom. I used that, plus cold compresses, and chaffed her wrists.

A bubbly moan came from her. I gave her another strong whiff of the ammonia. Her eyes opened. The pupils were dilated, blank. Then they began to focus. She moaned again. A spasm started in her stomach and shook her body.

She murmured something I couldn’t understand. I went into the kitchen, covered the bottom of a glass with ammonia and water. I gave her that, a few drops at a time. She was unresisting, as if she didn’t realize what she was doing.

Then her faltering functions began to mesh, to operate. She turned on her side, held her head, and gasped, “What a terrific headache!”

“Lie still and gulp that fresh air,” I said. “I’ll get some coffee going.”

I made coffee and looked in the bathroom for aspirin. None was there. On a hunch, I searched the purse in the bedroom. Amid her lipstick, wallet, keys, compact, was a small tin of aspirin. I gave her three of them with steaming black coffee.

Later, she sat on the edge of her bed. Her elbows were on her knees. Her knuckles pressed her temples. The thick, silver-stranded auburn hair fell about her face. A faint touch of color was beginning to stain her cheeks, but she still looked plenty haggard.

“I’m sorry, Ed,” she whispered. “If you only knew how sorry I am.”

“Sure,” I said. “You’re okay now.”

“How could I have done such a thing? What happened to me in that moment I heard the newscast?”

“Helen...”

“No, no, don’t try to excuse me. What kind of a creature am I?”

“You’re a human being,” I said.

“Suddenly I just hated everything, Ed, including myself. The weight of all the years seemed to focus into that one moment and come crashing down on me. I wasn’t thinking very much of Nick, was I?”

“No, you weren’t.”

She sat thinking. She raised her head. “Nick confessed,” she cried suddenly. “It’s all over for him. How can I go on, Ed?”

“That’s the way you were thinking a little while ago,” I reminded her bluntly.

Her hand came to her mouth. She bit her knuckles. “That’s true! I’m scared, Ed. Scared of myself.”

“I don’t think you’ll try it again, then.”

“No, I’m too scared for that.” She stood shakily. My impulse was to help her, but I remained standing perfectly still.

“I’ll have some more coffee, I believe,” she said. She made it to the kitchenette under her own power. Then I helped her into a chair and poured a second cup of coffee for her.

“I’m feeling better now, Ed. You won’t call a doctor or anybody, will you?”

“Do want me to?”

“No. A doctor would have to report what happened. I wouldn’t want Nick to know.”

“Nick will never know,” I said.

Tears came to her eyes. She didn’t say anything. She reached out and touched my hand.

I stayed with her another two hours. We didn’t talk much, and then it was about inconsequential things. During the time, I called a repair shop.

A man came up to fix the broken window before I left. He was a big guy loaded with a lot of belly. Some of the gas smell must have lingered. He sniffed and said, “You got a leaky gas pipe.”

“No,” I said. “A pot boiled over and put out the flame. It’s an old-fashioned stove. Doesn’t have a pilot light.”

Carrying his tool kit, he followed his stomach into the bedroom. He measured the window and started chipping the old putty.

“How’d it happen?”

“I was swatting at a termite,” I told him, “and missed him.”

Steve Ivey knew how to be blunt in his refusal.

He stood behind his desk in the quiet of his office. “No,” he said, “you cannot see Nick Martin.”

“Are you afraid for me to see him?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

“No.”

“Your needle is stuck, Ivey.”

“It won’t be the only thing stuck if you don’t stop trying my patience. Find yourself another case. You’ve done what you can for your client.”

“Life would be simpler if I could think in those terms,” I said, facing Ivey across the desk. “But I can’t help feeling a greater responsibility toward Nick. The only thing I’ve done for him is make the eight ball considerably bigger. Before, at least the state’s attorney had the job of proving him guilty before a jury. Somebody is afraid, Ivey, feeling the pressure. And Nick is worse off than if I’d never entered the case.”

“Any ideas?”

“Plenty. I think Nick did what he did because of Sime Younkers’ visit here this morning. I think Sime put the squeeze on Nick, either with a threat against Helen’s life or a promise that Helen would be given financial assistance. Nick felt he had to take the offer. It was the only way he could protect Helen or provide for her future. After all, what did he have to lose? So far he’s seen no hope of beating this rap. He’d be trading merely the physical wreckage of himself.”

“Proof?”

“I can’t prove the sun will rise tomorrow, but my reason tells me so. I’ve had nothing but my reason to show me anything about this case. It was reasonable that an unknown party went to the Yamashita house the day of the murders — there had to be an unknown if Nick didn’t kill those people. It was reasonable that the unknown intended to kill only Ichiro, since the parents were expected to be out until after dinner. It was reasonable to believe that the parents had been killed with the motive being to shut them up.

“Now, I know Nick and Helen, Ivey. And I know Sime Younkers. Bearing these factors in mind, what I think about Nick’s statement is reasonable.”

“And I think,” Ivey said, “that Sime wheedled his way to Nick to offer his services and dry-clean, via retainers, the Martins of the little money they have.”

“Only one thing wrong with that. If Sime wanted to sell a bill of goods, wouldn’t he have chosen Helen Martin as the more likely prospect? She’d grasp at any straw. She’d be more receptive — and she has that little money you spoke of.”

“You still can’t see Martin,” Ivey said, “and that closes the interview. I’m a mole, Rivers, trying to gnaw through a ten-foot concrete wall of work. Martin’s statement is a matter of record. Proof. Black-and-white proof. Not the rationalization of a bullheaded man.” He picked up a sheaf of papers. “Good day.”

It took me until early evening to get a lead on Sime Younkers. I started with his last known address, a cheap hotel. He’d moved downgrade, into rattraps. On his second move, the lead petered out. The seedy old man at the desk of the flophouse was a new employee. He knew nothing about Sime Younkers. The previous desk man had drifted out of town, no one knew where.

I finally located a woman friend of Sime’s in an Ybor City beer joint. She had a beer-bloated stomach, pouches under her eyes, and hair like tinder-dry excelsior, showing the remains of three or four shades of old dye.

She knew me, and she knew that I wouldn’t be after Sime out of friendship.

She sat across the scarred table from me amid the sour smell of the place and kneaded her knuckles on the table top.

She sold Sime out for a five-dollar bill. She gave me a West Tampa address. When I left, she was building a new hangover on her old one.