The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

Chapter 6

When he came out of the bedroom, I threw my right arm around his chin from behind. His neck was so short I couldn’t clamp the grip on his throat, but I snapped his head back, my knee in the small of his back.

His body went rigid for a second.

“Who are you?” I said. “What are you looking for here?”

There was fine sweat on the roll of thick, swarthy flesh at the base of his head, a moisture mingled with the roots of the black strands scattered on top of the pear.

He was held powerless. He seemed immobile from fright. I equaled him in weight, topped him three inches in height, had every advantage.

Then something happened.

My body was snapped so hard it felt as if all its vertebrae were hot slugs of metal crunching together. The room upended. I crashed into a cocktail table with my shoulder.

Before I could reassemble the smashed pieces of what had been me, he said, “Hah!” very gutturally in his throat. He leaped at me like a bowlegged chimpanzee.

His legs extended before him, he came down with his rump stopped by my rib cage. I heard grindings inside of myself and felt as if splinters had been jabbed into every nerve.

He bounced off me. I floundered a blow at him. He brushed it aside.

“Hah!”

He grabbed my collar, jerked me half upright. I felt the corded steel of his arms encircle my neck.

I tried to kick him, slug him, bite him. I wasn’t proud. I’d have fought in any manner to get out of that grip.

He turned on the pressure, his knees half bent, his body rocked back. It felt as if my head were being torn off by the roots.

“Hah!”

He shifted his hold faster than a flea can jump. I sensed the swivel of his hips, the snap of his body. I was weightless for a second. Then I hit a chair and carried it into the wall with me.

I was in a small boat on a very rough sea and I was seasick as hell. Somewhere off in the gray mists three indistinct pear-shaped heads floated. All were contorted with a savage, battle-hungry pleasure.

All three hazy faces swooped toward me.

Then they disappeared. I heard the dull, heavy sound of his body falling to the carpet.

I managed to turn my eyes, and there were three Helen Martins shimmering in the gray. The three had a modernistic metal statuette of a nude in their right hand. The nude had previously been on a table.

They dropped the chunk of metal and helped me to my feet. I stood with the wall supporting me and my eyes stopped playing tricks. The three Helens ran together and became one.

My gaze groped for the big bruiser. He was lying not five feet away. He’d remain there for several minutes. A lump was swelling on the crown of his head.

I fell into a chair. I thought for a moment I was going to be sick. I managed to hold onto the chair. Helen had gone somewhere. She reappeared holding a glass.

“Drink this, Ed.”

I took the glass, gulped, and let the heat flood down my throat, spread through my stomach.

I felt life begin to quiver tentatively inside of me once more.

“You’d better tap that brandy bottle yourself,” I said, handing Helen the glass.

“Are you all right now?”

“I’ll be sore in various spots for a week,” I said, “but I don’t think he broke as many parts as it felt.”

Helen took my advice, going to the bar and taking a jigger of brandy.

I was content for the moment to sprawl in the chair and pull air in as the ruptured feeling passed from my lungs.

“I’ve taken beatings,” I told Helen, “but never before from a man my own size who started at such a disadvantage. I must be slipping or getting old.”

“You should watch television more. Sure you’re all right?”

“I’m coming around. Why watch television?”

“You might have recognized him if you’d ever caught any of the big-time wrestling programs. He’s Prince Kuriacha. He was heavyweight wrestling champion of the world for a while.”

“They shouldn’t let him out without handcuffs and muzzle.”

Prince Kuriacha groaned. He rolled to his side, lifted his hand, touched the lump on his head. He groaned a second time, put his palms on the carpet, and pushed himself to a half-sitting position.

As he opened his eyes and raised his head, he found himself staring into the small end of the .38.

He was temporarily immobile, his eyes drops of black ink in yellow tallow.

“You can have that chair,” I said. “But don’t make any sudden motions.”

He went sliding across the carpet on his behind and pulled himself into the silken-covered club chair.

He took a linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his natty tropical suit. He gingerly made a compress, holding the handkerchief on his pump knot. He squinted at Helen. “A doll,” he said. “Flattened by a doll. How do you like that!”

He added in my direction, “I’d have turned you inside out, you know.” He spoke without particular rancor or fear. No trace of accent was in his voice. It wasn’t a beautiful voice. It had a sound like dry cereal being walked on by someone in heavy boots.

“You a cop?” he asked.

“In a way.” Given the chance to look him over in detail, I decided the Prince must be very well heeled from his years of big-time wrestling showmanship. Suits like that pale-gray tropical didn’t come cheap. His shoes looked like hand-sewn Italian loafers. The diamond on his little finger was like the beacon stolen from a lighthouse. The watch on the big, oaken wrist was made of platinum and diamonds.

“What kind of answer is that?” he said. “You’re either a cop or not a cop.”

“I’m cop enough for the moment. Cop enough to ask some questions,” I said.

“Such as?”

“What brought you here?”

“A camera.”

“You’d better explain.”

“It’s simple. Ichiro Yamashita borrowed a camera from me, a really good camera. Kind of a keepsake. A movie star gave it to me when I was appearing on the coast, just before she married her fourth husband. What with the court tying up the estate and all, I figured the only way I’d ever get the camera back was to sneak up here and take it.”

“A direct, blunt course of action.”

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been accused of being that kind of man. Now it’s my turn. Who the hell are you?”

I told him, adding an explanation about Helen.

He sat thinking about it. “You’re guilty of breaking and entering, you know.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah. That leaves us kind of even, don’t it?”

“Not exactly,” I pointed out. “I have a private operator’s license, and in this case I’m working under a certain amount of police sanction.”

“I tell you what,” he said affably. “Let’s just call it even and forget the whole thing.”

“I’ve got another question or two.”

“Maybe I’m tired of talking.”

I glanced at Helen. “Call the police.”

“Now wait a minute!” Kuriacha said. “I’m a respectable man. I’ve got my reputation to think about. Newspaper reporters are always after a guy in my position. They say it makes for colorful copy. You got no call to make trouble for me. It was you who started the scrap.”

“I’ll get over the scrap,” I said, “in time. No grudges. You’re making trouble for yourself. I just want some answers.”

Without shifting a muscle he seemed to assume a crouch. His eyes regarded me balefully, reading a possibility of mayhem in my future.

“The camera story is pretty thin,” I said.

“I don’t give a damn! It’s true. The truth is sometimes thin, ain’t it?”

“Why didn’t you pick up the camera before?”

“Geez,” he said in disgust, “and you cops are supposed to be smart. In the first place, the Yamashitas were killed just three days ago. I knew them. I was shocked. I didn’t think of the camera right away. When I did think about it and how I just had my word to prove it was mine, I came around here. The cops had the place staked out. I guess it was routine for them to keep an eye on the place until they picked up Nick Martin. Incidentally, lady,” he said to Helen, “your husband sounded like a right guy who just had a wrong minute. I’m sorry about it.”

Helen murmured a thanks.

Kuriacha lowered his compress and looked at his handkerchief. He seemed relieved that it showed no blood.

“When did you last see the Yamashitas?” I asked.

“Listen, you can’t tie me into—”

“Let’s not weary each other. Give me some more of that simple, direct action — a simple, direct answer.”

He studied the .38 for a moment. “Well, I haven’t seen Mrs. Yamashita in some time, maybe a month or more. She stayed home mostly. I saw Mr. Yamashita a week or ten days ago at his place of business. I stopped by there to go to lunch with Ichiro.”

“Your friendship with Ichiro was your real connection with the family?”

“Mainly, I guess you could say. I liked the old folks, though. I never had a family. I liked them a lot.”

“You counted Ichiro among your closest friends?”

“I don’t know whether you could say that. We palled around together. He seemed to like to have me around, said I was colorful. He was always out for something different. Once at a party he’d bought some small horseshoes, the kind they put on ponies. He got me to twist them out of shape with my bare hands and gave them to his guests for souvenirs of the shindig. He got a charge out of stuff like that.”

“I guess he had a string of women.”

Kuriacha’s face darkened. “Ichiro and his women is a long story, buster. I’m not acquainted with all the details. You’ll have to get them someplace else.”

“Jewels while he had a fancy to them, dirt when his fancy drifted?”

Kuriacha shrugged. “I told you, you’ll have to ask somebody else.”

“Any of them hate him enough to kill him?”

“Nick Martin killed him.”

“Nick Martin is said to have killed Ichiro and his parents as well. As a matter of fact, Nick Martin didn’t kill anybody.”

“No?”

“Someone else went to the Yamashita summerhouse that afternoon.”

“It ain’t the way the paper reads.”

“Newspapers revise from edition to edition. You watch later editions.”

“Yeah? If you know so damn much, why don’t you go to the cops and have Nick Martin released?”

“I’m still fishing.”

“For what?”

“The identity of the person who went to the Yamashita house.”

Kuriacha decided his recovery was well nigh complete. He got out of the chair, standing solidly on his bandy legs. “Well, I can’t be baited, buster. I sure as hell didn’t go out there and I don’t know who did. Now you better put the popgun away. I’m going out of here and if you use it you’ll find yourself in a lot of trouble.”

With a beautifully direct simplicity, he turned his back and walked out of the apartment.

Helen looked at the closed door a moment. “Did you mean what you said to him, Ed, about someone else going out to the Yamashita house that day?”

“Is Nick innocent?”

“Of course!”

“Then someone else had to go out there.”

“With a — desire to kill three people?”

“That’s the element creating the confusion,” I said. “Dispose of it for a moment and you see the outlines of a different pattern, a fresh possibility. Someone went out there with no desire to harm the parents. He, or she, was after Ichiro.”

“Yet the parents were killed.”

“Because it was their misfortune to arrive while the murderer was still there. They had to be silenced.”

“You can prove this, Ed?” she said, hope wild in her eyes.

“No. But the positions of the bodies, the way they were clothed when they were discovered, make me think I’m right.”

“Then instead of a motive for a triple killing, you’re looking for a motive for a single murder.”

“Right. Ichiro’s. Something he did sometime in his spotty past made someone want to kill him.”

“Lord, Ed, he knew so many people, got around so much. Whatever he did might have been done in secret, known only to Ichiro and the person he did it to.”

The brief flare of hope was gone from her eyes. I took her hand in both of mine and held her cold fingers for a moment.

“We’ll think of one thing at a time,” I said. “We’ll keep chipping away. The way Nick would do.”

She drew in a breath, held it for a moment. Then she said steadily, “Right.”