The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

Chapter 20

Kuriacha stood framed in the doorway, a dumb look on his heavy, swarthy face.

The love light left his muddy, yellow eyes as their ink-black centers looked down the muzzle of the .38.

“Come in, murderer,” I invited, “and join our little group.”

He didn’t move until he saw my knuckle go white on the trigger. He edged into the room, moving lightly on his strong bandy legs. I toed the door closed.

He began to recover from his jolt. He turned his head slowly on its thick, short column of neck and looked at Rachie. Their eyes held a moment. Neither of them said anything. The pulse beat of the gin mill undulated through the walls.

“How’d he get here?” Kuriacha asked her in a ragged whisper.

“He knows,” Rachie said. “He knows it all now.”

“How does he know?”

“Do you think I told him?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what to think any more.”

“He figured it out for himself,” Rachie said. “You must have been real dumb in spots.”

“He did pretty well,” I said. “He had a long lead on me to start with. He cut plenty of corners before I whittled the lead down and jumped ahead of him. He’s simple, blunt, direct. So long as he stayed that way he was a tough opponent. He made his slips when he paused and started thinking.”

Kuriacha’s face was old and tired. “You wouldn’t make a deal? I’ve got a lot of money. I made as much money in my time as some pretty fair movie stars.”

“You’re wasting your breath.”

“I guessed I was. What put you onto me?”

“Several things, though I had to get the whole picture before the details fell in place.

“When I ran into you in Ichiro’s private apartment, you were there to make sure nothing was around to connect him with Luisa Shaw. You warned me off the case, your only possible motive being to protect yourself and Rachie, or Luisa, whichever you prefer to call her. You tried to explain yourself by saying Sadao Yamashita’s brothers had been kind to you in your poverty-stricken days in California. But he had no relatives out there, none in this country at all. None to notify of his death, to take care of the funeral arrangements. Victor Cameron had to attend to all those details himself. Sadao’s relatives, except for his wife and son, were wiped out in Hiroshima.

“When I got out of the fire you lit in Sime Younkers’ shack, you tried to trap me into revealing my location over the phone. Later, you tried to hunt me down in Ybor City. You were getting desperate. You had to nail me before I reached Rachie, through Tillie Rollo, and learned the whole truth. You made the final try at Tillie’s place.

“You tailored the thing to fit yourself, Kuriacha, down to having the stomach to mutilate the Yamashitas and kill twice again to protect yourself.

“Now you’re a dead duck, buster. I’ve got a slug — the one that killed Tillie — that I’m sure will match a gun belonging to you. I’ll have a blonde wig, plus Victor Cameron. When he knows the truth can’t be hidden any longer, he’ll talk. It won’t matter to him.

“Given a picture he can’t deny or ignore, Steve Ivey will wrap up the details. His lab boys will come up with bits of proof you don’t even suspect exist.”

Kuriacha stood with his arms dangling like those of a great ape. Sweat gathered in heavy drops and ran down the sides of his face.

“He’s failed to add one thing, Prince,” Rachie said softly. “What he says is true, but he’s the only one so far who knows. This is your last chance. They’ll put you in the electric chair.”

“Rivers has the gun,” I reminded them.

“You nearly broke Rivers in little pieces once,” she told him.

“That was the prelim,” I said. “This is the rubber match, the one that counts.”

“That’s right, Prince, this is the big one,” Rachie said.

He knuckled a drop of sweat from the end of his thick, flat nose. He looked at the gun.

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “Don’t let her talk you into the final mistake.”

“I don’t have to talk him into anything,” she said, turning toward me. “He doesn’t have any choice left.”

She’d lifted her hand to the side of her face. With a quick motion, she tore the wig off, slapped me hard across the eyes, and said, “Now!”

The blonde strands slashed my eyes stingingly. All his years of training went into the movement of the great ape.

I pulled the trigger and knew I’d missed. I tried to rock back, swing the gun around.

He hit me like a two-hundred-pound sack of bricks shot out of the end of a gun. We splintered a rickety end table and the wall slammed against my back.

His face had darkened, the lips and eyes pulled tight. He grabbed for my throat with one hand and reached for the gun with the other. My gun hand stayed out of his way for a second. To do so, it had to bear away from his.

I hit him twice in the side of the face with my free hand. He didn’t bother to shake off the punches. He simply took them, and kept trying for the gun.

He’d failed to grab my throat. Instead, he’d got his palm under my chin and was trying to grind the back of my head through the wall.

He took a chance by slipping the palm free and going after the gun with both hands.

He locked his fingers on my wrist. He was off balance with the effort. I peeled off the wall and we swung to the middle of the room. His feet tangled in the wreckage of the end table.

I added the final pressure and he went down, twisting the gun.

The gun went off. The bullet hit him in the chest. It knocked a gasp from him, and his eyes went wide. He reared up and the gun squirted out of my fingers and skidded across the grimy floor.

Kuriacha fell back and I pulled free of him. I grabbed the arm of a chair to help get my feet under me.

“That’s far enough, Ed,” Rachie said. She stood near the doorway, holding the gun.

I took a weaving step toward her. Her eyes glinted. “I wouldn’t be afraid. Not the least bit afraid.”

Kuriacha pulled himself around on the floor, his strength spent, and reached an imploring hand toward her. “Luisa...”

Without bothering to look at him, she backed through the door, closed it.

Kuriacha lay holding the red spot on his chest.

“She’s gone.”

“It looks that way,” I said.

His breathing was loud and hard in the dead heat of the room.

“She won’t come back.”

“Not if she can help it.”

His eyes were glazed with pain. “I don’t understand it, Rivers.”

“That’s tough.”

“I loved her.”

“That’s even tougher.”

“Where will she go? What will she do?”

“Find another Kuriacha, if she makes it out of Tampa.”

“And never remember... I should have killed her in the beginning, instead of the others.”

“You should never have killed anyone.”

“I didn’t want to. But after Ichiro...” Raw fear blotted out the pain glaze, fear of the picture that he suddenly had of himself. “What happened to me, Rivers?”

“I guess the head shrinkers could think of plenty of theories,” I said. “For my money, you had it in you all the time, the callousness, the brutality, the selfish viciousness. You drank her in like an alcoholic crazy for booze, with no thought of control. You had to kill a part of yourself before you could kill any of the others, because it was in the way of the debased part. It was your choice. So, in short, you’re an s.o.b. who deserves the electric chair.”

I turned to the phone, picked it up, dialed. While I waited for headquarters to answer, I noticed a new quality in the room.

The insidious pulse beat had gone out of the walls.