The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

Chapter 14

I woke the next morning to the smell of perking coffee. The bed linens were sodden from my sweat, which was not unusual. I had a dull headache, which was. But it was not as bad as it might have been. Once I was up and going it would wear off. I’d have a sore scalp for a few days, but thinking of that fire I was glad to be able to feel the soreness.

I lay a little longer, thinking of Sime Younkers and the way he’d got himself killed. Sime had been asking for trouble a long time. He’d finally tangled with someone who was not hesitant in dishing it out in large and permanent doses. Someone like the person who could kill and mutilate three people. Someone calmly savage enough to kill without mercy every time danger showed its face.

Today I knew one more thing. A man had been in the shack last night. It had taken a man’s strength to drag me inside so the reception could be warmed up. He’d seen me on the street. He’d waited, laid for me as I came out of the shack. Which meant that he knew me. This, of course, took in a large portion of the population of Tampa and vicinity. But it helped to know that he was no wandering vagrant, no stranger. The face of the fiend belonged to someone I knew.

I reminded myself that a man’s presence in the shack did not rule out the possibility of the fiend wearing a female face. The man last night could have been acting under orders, out of attachment to a female or for pay. Contrariwise, the man might have been the person for whom I was looking.

It did no good to think that I’d lost a chance last night to wrap up the case. I’d done the best I could. I hadn’t underrated the person who, from the moment of Ichiro’s killing, had bought safety with further slaughter. I’d reached Sime Younkers as quickly as possible. If one seedy old man had not quit a desk job in a rattrap hotel, the lives of several people might have been different today.

I got out of bed and showered. When I got ready to dress I found that Helen had slipped my clothes out and brushed and pressed them.

When I came out of the bedroom, she heard me and came to the door of the kitchen. She looked pale and tired, but she had a steady grip on herself.

She asked if I’d had a good night’s rest and how was I feeling. She wasn’t very talkative after that until I was finishing a breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee.

She sat across the table from me, sipping a cup of coffee as I ate.

“You’ve made a new man of me, Helen,” I said as I polished off the breakfast.

“I’m afraid the new man is in for some bad news.” Her eyes were troubled. “Ed, you were on the newscast a little while ago.”

“Ivey’s connected me with the fire somehow?”

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that. He’s got a pickup out on you. The autopsy has been done on Sime, witnesses questioned. It’s been a busy night for the Tampa police.”

“Did the report say how Ivey tagged me?”

“It seems there is a storekeeper out on that West Tampa street. One of those poor little places that stocks sardines, crackers, canned goods, a few staples. The storekeeper saw you last night.”

“A haggard man standing in the doorway of his hole in the wall. I remember.”

“You attracted his attention,” Helen said. “You were looking for house numbers. He saw you cross the vacant lot toward Sime’s shack not long before the fire started. He finally identified you from a copy of the photo taken for your license.”

“I see,” I said. For a moment I was in Ivey’s shoes. I was thinking of the scene in his office late yesterday. I knew how this would look to him. I’d wanted very much to make Sime Younkers say he had forced Nick’s confession. Maybe I’d tried too hard with Sime, got too rough — then fired the shack to cover things up.

Helen was looking at me with worry and regret. “Ed, if Nick and I had known that the cost to you—”

“Forget that,” I said. “It isn’t your fault. When a triple killer used that samurai sword to put Nick on a spot, he involved me personally. The personal involvement, little as I might have wanted it, has progressed by stages until now it’s about as personal as an involvement can get.”

“Ivey will make this very serious for you, Ed?”

“I’m afraid so, with the storekeeper as a witness. That’s concrete evidence — against my tale of a phantom fiend I didn’t even see myself who skulked and slugged and tried to fry me.

“Ivey’s a good cop because he believes only in what he sees, what circumstances show him. That will solve a lot of cases, most cases.

“But now and then comes a case that makes a mask of circumstances. Reason will show you the truth — reasoning on unseen, though knowable factors, not deductive reasoning on circumstances.

“You have to reach out and believe in this kind of reasoning, even if it makes a lie of appearances. To me, what happened last night will mean one thing. The same appearances will make the case against Nick stronger than ever in Ivey’s mind.”

“Is there anything at all I can do, Ed?”

“Just sit tight. I wish you’d seen Luisa Shaw around the Yamashita summerhouse, knew something about her.”

“The blonde call girl.”

“That’s the one.”

“So far, she seems never to have existed.”

“She does — or did — exist. Rachie Cameron glimpsed a woman who might have been her a couple of times. Tillie Rollo saw her and talked to her. Ichiro was very well acquainted with her. This whole thing started when Ichiro kept a tryst with Luisa Shaw.”

“I knew so little about the Yamashitas, Ed.” The frustrated wish to help was a real pain in her eyes.

“I know,” I said.

“I’ve racked my brain, for details, for anything that might help. Only once did Sadao Yamashita, Ichiro’s father, speak of his background or the war.”

“Japan’s defeat leave the little old man with much bitterness?”

Helen shook her head. “He didn’t show it. There was a quiet kindness, a humility, an understanding in the old gentleman. He was born in Japan, the son of a well-to-do Japanese exporter. The family decided to expand the enterprise, and Sadao came to the United States shortly before World War II to set up an import end to the business. The export offices, in Japan, were located in Hiroshima, and the first A-bomb took care of that.

“Sadao weathered the loss of his people, the financial loss, and went ahead to the development of his successful business. Unless he was a very good actor or a hundred-per-cent sham, he carried no resentment against the United States for using the bomb. He knew the truth, that a few power-hungry leaders in Japan had started the war. The bomb was used to stop it. Those who died, died to stop it.

“Maybe the nature of his business raised his outlook above artificial national boundaries. He seemed to have a genuine regret for the loss of American boys, as well as Japanese. They were all losses, he said, of the one suffering family of humanity.”

“I’ll try to remember the loss of that little old man when the time comes,” I said. I stood up. “Thanks for everything.”

“Be careful, Ed.”

“Don’t worry on that score. I’d rather be called cautious than corpse. I’ll be in touch by phone when necessary. If you don’t hear from me right away, don’t worry. Ivey’ll get around to a routine contact with you. Don’t get yourself in trouble. Tell him I came here looking bushed, was a guest for the night, and skipped out before you heard I was the object of a manhunt. Right about now Ivey will be checking my office, the apartment, usual haunts.”

If Helen’s story to Ivey were to hold, I’d have to get out of the rooming house without being noticed, without his being able to prove what time I’d left this morning.

I paused in the lower hall. About me, the house was very quiet. I guessed the tenants had all gone to work. Outside was the normal car and pedestrian traffic. The best way to get out of the house without being noticed was to do nothing that would cause notice.

Just another human being, I calmly walked outside, got in the car, and drove away.

I knew that Ivey’s organized effort to find me would be most intense during the next forty-eight hours or so. After that, society itself would cause the pressure to taper off. As Ivey had said, murders, muggings, and mayhem didn’t cease just because he wanted to track down one man.

I disliked the waste of time, but I knew it would be smart not to gamble a greater waste. Also, I needed a chance to get over the treatment my body had taken during the last five days. Couple the emotional strain with a beating, a slugging, and a scorching, and you find a little tremor under the soreness of the muscles, and tiny naked spots on the nerve ends.

Time, I decided, would be ticking out an efficient job for me. That other man, the handy man with the blackjack, would have to sweat out knowing that I hadn’t died in the fire. I was still loose, neither maimed nor detained by the police, looking for him.

I needed a temporary lair, a safe den. I drove crosstown toward Ybor City. I’ve never picked on the little people over there; on occasion I’ve done a thing or two for a few of them. I did it with no thought of charity, merely because I couldn’t duck the fact that I was able to do it. I did it without expecting return, and I’ve found gradually that they attach a peculiar importance to that.

I stopped the car in the heart of Ybor City, among the little people. I mentioned my need with the fewest necessary words.

Ivey was licked right then in his immediate hunt for me.

I vanished.