The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

Chapter 5

Cameron made a motion with his hand. I followed him out of the playroom.

We moved down a hallway for a short distance and turned into a study furnished with leather and walnut.

He closed the door, crossed to the walnut desk, and sat down in a leather chair.

“I can’t see what you possibly hope to gain by this, Rivers.”

“Information.”

“The police have information. I suggest you see them.”

“I have. I’ve read the papers, too.”

“Then why me?”

“Because you knew them, the Yamashitas, better than anyone else.”

“I’ve told the police everything I know.”

“You’ve answered their questions,” I agreed. “Questions based on the belief that Nick Martin is the guilty man. I don’t share the belief. Somewhere there is a man or woman who murdered three people and left an innocent man to pay for the crime. I don’t want to go after a person so violent and desperate. I’m afraid of such a person. I didn’t ask for the job, any more than Nick Martin chose his role. The job caved in on me and trapped me in the bloody debris. So you see, Cameron, this unknown person and I are linked by the common bond of desperation and fear. There’s just one way for me to cut the link. And when I find him or her, I’ll know the kind of person I’m dealing with.”

Light from the desk lamp caught in his eyes. It hardened their grayness and deepened the already deep sockets. “You’re crazy, you know.”

“If you mean I don’t share some of your values, you’re right.”

“What is Nick Martin to you?”

“He’s my friend.”

“And what is a friend? They come into your house, they drink your liquor, they go away again. Shadows.”

“I won’t argue. I just want information.”

“You spoke of there being only one way out for you,” he said. “There is another. Surely you’ve thought of it. I don’t know why you believe in Martin’s innocence. I don’t care. I know that a sensible man would see his proper course of conduct and leave police matters to the police.”

“That would be a very agreeable line of thought,” I said, “if I could string it through my head.”

“You’d forget Nick Martin. You’d know you were not to blame.”

“That’s a respectable way of looking at it,” I said.

“Of course it is. I know what I’m talking about.”

“Are you buying, Cameron?”

“You must have a price. Nick Martin bought,” Cameron said. “He couldn’t have paid much, a broken-down war vet living on pension checks.”

I put my knuckles on the edge of his desk and forced them to stay there. I leaned toward him and smiled. “Why do you want to buy me, Cameron?”

His eyes lost some of their age. “I don’t,” he said. “It was your suggestion.”

“You would have paid.”

“The guilty man is in jail,” he said. “I don’t know what your game is, but it’s obvious you’re up to something devious and dirty in the hopes of making some money. Certainly I’d have paid — and then promptly had you jailed for extortion.”

He got up, came around the desk, crossed the thick carpeting of the study, and opened the door.

“Good night, Rivers.”

I leaned against the edge of the desk. A drop of sweat seeped into the corner of my mouth.

“Did you go out to the Yamashita summerhouse the day of the killings?”

He stood silent for a moment deciding whether or not he would answer. “No,” he said. He added, “I can’t prove it. I didn’t know I’d ever need to prove it. The police find my word sufficient. I trust you will, also.”

“Did the senior Yamashita have a business appointment that afternoon?”

“He might have had a personal appointment, but it’s highly unlikely. He didn’t mix business and his home life.”

“Do you know why he and his wife canceled their restaurant reservation that day?”

“I suppose,” he said, acid eating deeper into his voice, “that it was because they changed their minds and decided to dine at home. People do such things very innocently on occasion, you know.”

“Who did Ichiro meet out there that afternoon?”

“I knew very little of Ichiro’s personal affairs. I haven’t heard that he met someone. How did you dream the question up, Rivers?”

“It just seeped in my mind out of the heat,” I said. “Someone was out there.”

“Of course. A real bad man who nobody saw went all the way out to Caloosa Point because there was a handy veteran who could be framed, killed three people for no reason whatever, framed said veteran, and vanished. I’m afraid it’s a delusion you’ll have to work out for yourself, Rivers. Now, do I have to call a police escort for you?”

“I won’t put you to the bother,” I said. “By the way, will you keep the business going?”

His knuckles showed white where he gripped the edge of the door. “I believe that’s my affair. You’ve goaded me far enough, Rivers. The truth is blunt and simple. Sadao was a refined, good, and successful man. He lived a simple, honest life. Our business prospered and was in excellent condition. I could talk to you a million years and not add anything more. But I don’t intend talking to you any longer.”

As I passed through the door, he said, “Don’t come back, Rivers.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s been an interesting evening.”

He followed me down the hallway and slammed the front door behind me.

I stood on the veranda for a moment catching the faint breeze that came off the bay. Then I got in the rented heap and drove it to the rental garage. I rode a city bus to Ybor City.

It had been a long day and the shadows were long over the narrow streets and rusty, iron-filigree balconies on the old buildings. Traffic was moderately heavy but seemed to move in a silent rush. Muffled Latin rhythm pulsed like a sensual, tropical heartbeat from behind the shutters of a private club. From one of the ancient brick buildings crowding and frowning over the sidewalk a girl came forth. She had a great mane of coal-black frizzled hair with a flower in it. She wore a red dress that sheened in the street-lamp glow like satin, and spike-heel shoes. Her body was lush, almost heavy. As I passed the light, she glanced at me. For only a moment. She was after slicker, better-heeled prey. Her face was childish, with skin like the light-tan, silken leaf Ybor City cigar-makers use for the outer wrappers on the expensive smokes. Her eyes were jet black, heavy with mascara and weariness. She was all of fifteen or sixteen. At twenty, she’d be a hag.

From Davis Islands to Ybor City wasn’t such a jump, after all. The nameless girl and Rachie Cameron had a lot in common. Both were lost. Their differences were minor. Rachie was considerably older. And Rachie had much more money.

I turned in at the all-night market on the corner, bought my usual twenty-five-pound block of ice, and carried it up to the apartment.

I put the ice in a pan, the pan on the table, and an electric fan behind the pan. I pointed the fan at the day bed, blowing over the ice.

Then I stripped to my shorts and turned in.

Strain was not so deeply etched on Helen Martin’s strongly beautiful face the next morning. She wore a crisp cotton dress and had her silver-threaded auburn hair pulled back and bunned neatly. She was still in there pitching.

She closed her apartment door after I entered and asked if I’d care for something cool to drink. I’d breakfasted on soft-fried eggs chased by a pint of icy beer.

“I have some orange juice,” Helen suggested.

I nodded and she stepped into the kitchenette to get it.

“Ed,” she said, as I accepted the glass, “I’m terribly ashamed of us. Neither Nick nor I thought of it yesterday.”

“Thought of what?”

“Your retainer.”

“My feelings are delicate,” I said. “Don’t stick pins in them.”

“Nick had a trusty call me this morning, to make sure I was all right — and to tell you we have a little money in savings.”

“I’m on vacation,” I said, “and taking a busman’s holiday.”

She looked at me gravely. “All right, Ed,” she said with the kind of self-respecting simplicity that I like, “and thank you very much.”

“Now that we’re over that hurdle, what are you doing for a while?”

“Anything I can to help Nick.”

“I’m going to case an apartment. I want you to go along. You might see and make sense of something I’d overlook.”

“Must be the residence of someone I know.”

“Ichiro Yamashita’s.”

“I didn’t know him very well, Ed. Even less than his parents. Have you found out something?”

“I’m still groping,” I said, “but I’m beginning to see the first edges of a pattern.”

Ichiro had lived on the top floor of a five-story apartment building on Bayshore Boulevard. The building was modern, with small balconies and terraces landscaped with baby potted palms for each level. At ground level there was a courtyard with a small pool. The pool was bedecked with lily pads and fed from a sparkling fountain.

Helen and I stepped from the self-service elevator on Ichiro’s floor. The air-conditioning brought a grateful response from my skin. The corridor was perfectly silent. I suspected the builder hadn’t neglected soundproofing.

We passed a pair of potted palms nestling on either side of a large hall mirror, and stopped before the smooth blond surface of a door.

I had the door open in something like three minutes, using the hair-thin sliver of steel on my key ring.

The apartment coaxed the senses. We stood on a small landing from which a short tier of stairs, railed with wrought iron, led to the spacious living room. The modern furnishings were set about with an air of carelessness. On one wall was hung a large painting, very eye catching, of a nude. The inner wall was paneled with wormy cypress, the outer was a bank of glass with sliding glass panels opening onto the terrace. The terrace gave a startling view of the divided boulevard below and the stretches of the sundappled bay beyond.

Near the entrance to the kitchen there was a small bar of wormy cypress. Back of the bar the glasses were neatly stacked. I went behind the bar and looked at the labels on the stock. Ichiro had had expensive tastes in liquor.

As I turned, I glanced beneath the bar. I picked up a bottle with a strange black label, opened it, smelled the contents, and amended my impression. He’d also had most erotic tastes.

“What is it?” Helen asked.

“Absinthe.” A liqueur made of wormwood and brandy. Outlawed stuff. It does strange things to the senses. If imbibed freely enough it eventually eats holes in the brain.

A circuit of the apartment revealed only further details of the den of a sensualist. Labels on the albums for the hi-fi outfit indicated Ichiro’s addiction to the erotic offshoots of the school of progressive jazz. Books were not in abundance; a small case held several copies of privately printed editions.

As Helen and I completed our tour in the small, gleaming kitchen, I heard a scratching on the living-room door.

I pushed her behind me and stood with the open kitchen door concealing us.

The lock was keyed open. The door swung back. A man entered the apartment.

He closed the door quickly and stood a moment on the landing.

He could have hired out to frighten little children — a hairless gorilla in imitation Brooks Brothers. His face was flat, swarthy, Oriental in cast — not the Orient of paper umbrellas or dainty painting on translucent china; the Orient that had spawned the hordes of Genghis Khan.

With his massive shoulders and short legs he looked top heavy. But he had the grace of a dancer as he stepped into the living room.

He stood for a second pause, his pear-shaped head with its sparse growth of coarse black hair tilted to one side.

Wheeling, he passed out of my range of vision. I heard him rummaging in the bedroom, opening drawers.

I felt that I should know him, but I couldn’t place him.

His search of the bedroom took two or three minutes. I eased out of the kitchen. The carpet deadened my footfalls as I slid to the bedroom door.