The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

Chapter 8

“Sorry, Ed,” Steve Ivey said, rocking back behind his desk. “What you ask would keep my whole division busy. My boys are each capable of doing the work of three men, but not a dozen.”

“The motive was in Ichiro’s background,” I said, for about the fifth time.

“Your supposition. What have you given me? Martin’s story about the house slippers. A professional wrestler entering Ichiro’s apartment. A smudge of lipstick on a Kleenex. Sime Younkers’ appearance in your office. Where’s your concrete evidence?”

The fluorescent lighting in his office gave Ivey’s face a pale look. “Don’t ride me, Ed. You’ve been a cop. You know what it’s like. You live in a dirty world apart, with death around the next corner or on the next call. We’re supposed to work an eight-hour day. We’re on call twenty-four. To be cops, we’ve had to turn our backs on the hope of ever making any real money. We, and every department in the country, stagger under a work load that would drive us nuts if we stopped to think about it. Joe Citizen likes to bawl us out and remind us we’re public servants if we catch him running a red light. The same Joe wants us to materialize, fearless and almighty and ready to spill our blood for his sake, if he hollers for help. It’s nearly fourteen hours since I started this tour of duty, and the murders, muggings, and rapes haven’t stopped. So don’t ride me.”

“Sorry.”

“Damn it, I can’t stop everything else and pick Ichiro’s life to pieces, moment by moment, because you’ve got an idea in your hard head.”

He rocked forward and slapped his desk with his palm. “Sit down and quit looking like you want to tear something up. That is, if you want to hear what I can do and am doing.”

For answer, I took the chair across the desk from him.

He eyed me for a moment. “I said I couldn’t do what you asked. I didn’t say I wouldn’t like to. My orders come from higher up. From people who are certain of Nick Martin’s guilt and eventual conviction. How long would I last if I ignored the orders, the pressure of the masses of other work, and kept this division on the Martin case?”

“About five minutes,” I said.

“Right. I’m keeping Figueroa’s time as free as possible from other work. I’m curious myself to know where Ichiro was a few hours before his death.”

“Why?”

“A human hair. A long, blond hair.” He lifted his hands and massaged his neck briefly. “Let’s take it from point of beginning. When Ichiro’s body was brought in, the pathologist noticed the hair. It was twined around Ichiro’s right arm, tangled with the short, dark body hair. The detail was odd enough to strike a spark of curiosity. The pathologist ‘scoped the hair. The cellular structure was strange enough to cause him to take a second look.”

“Strange in what way?”

“The hair,” Ivey said, “had every appearance of having come from the head of a long-dead person, a corpse.”

Ivey’s wry grin told me I had a dumb look on my face.

“I’m only telling you,” he said, “what the pathologist told me. He wouldn’t guarantee his finding. He said only that the hair had that appearance.”

The phone skirled on Ivey’s desk. He picked it up. I vaguely heard the two-way conversation. Ivey gave an order to bring somebody in and hung up.

“Punk kid broke,” he said. “We know where some of our present supply of marijuana is coming from.”

“Yeah?”

“Little white-haired woman growing it,” Ivey said. “In rows of boxes on the roof of a slum tenement in West Tampa.”

Ivey growled as the phone commanded attention again. He picked it up.

It seemed a bolita numbers runner had used a straight razor on his mistress. She was alive, in a hospital. She’d never be pretty again, unless by some miracle she could afford the best in plastic surgeons. A manhunt was on, with a thousand dark holes to shelter the numbers runner.

All in a day’s work for Ivey.

I decided to go home and sleep on the thought of a blond hair, courtesy of a corpse.

Slide over to early evening, the next day. The day wouldn’t have interested you. I cooled my feet waiting to see people; then blistered them again going to see other people — a probate judge I knew, a banking official, a secretary in the firm of Cameron and Yamashita, a customer of the same firm, a newsstand operator in the lobby of the building where the firm had its offices, the credit manager of the city’s ritziest men’s-wear store.

I learned that no blonde woman, alive or deceased, was or had been employed by Cameron and Yamashita. Ichiro had put in a short working day, but when he’d worked, he’d been good at it. His mind had been keen, his grasp of detail thorough; his business personality had sparkled. He’d been a real asset to the firm.

His financial affairs had been in reasonable order. He had made no sudden, large expenditures before his death, and he hadn’t borrowed any large sums. In his off-business hours he had rioted through a respectable income to the final penny, but he had kept his bills current.

I got back to the apartment with my shirt sweat-plastered to my back and my socks feeling like layers of hot grease. I soaked until the water in the tub felt tepid, dressed, and cooked a dinner of pork and beans and Cuban sausage on the gas burner. I was pushing out the inner wrinkles with the food and icy beer when somebody knocked on the door.

Crossing the bed-sitting room, I swung the door wide.

Rachie Cameron was standing in the gloomy hallway. She was wearing a skirt, and a blouse cut in straight lines like a short smock with a loose drawstring neck. The smoothness of her tanned cheeks was flushed. Her short, dark hair was a little disheveled.

“Hi, ugly man.”

“What brings you to this neighborhood?”

For answer, she looked me up and down, little pinpoints of light sparking in her eyes.

Her grin was more a sullen pout. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

“Sure.”

She let her loose, careless walk carry her into the apartment. As she passed close, I inhaled a deep breath. If she’d been drinking, I couldn’t smell it.

I closed the door and watched her survey the apartment. “Just like I pictured it,” she said, as if something had pleased her.

She was carrying a large straw handbag. She took out a cigarette, lighted it, and dropped the handbag on the day bed.

Her passage to the kitchenette doorway was leisurely. “I’m starved,” she said.

“Sit down and help yourself.”

She got acquainted with the kitchenette quickly, filling a plate and sitting across the table from me.

“Beer?” I asked.

“Uh huh.”

I got her a can of beer, opened it, and handed it to her.

“I’m glad you didn’t put it in a glass,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“It would have been out of character. I’ll bet you don’t act out of character often.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t spend much time analyzing myself.”

“It’s because you’re not all mixed up. You know who you are.”

She ate quickly, hungrily. With a crust of bread she scooped bean sauce from her plate.

When she had gone through the rough grub, she lit another cigarette, propped her elbows on the table, and sat sipping her beer and smoking. “Can I fix you something else, Ed?”

“No, thanks. How about yourself?”

“Had plenty.”

I shoved the chair back and started to pick up the dishes.

“You’re not going to bother with those now, are you?” she asked.

“I’d thought about it.”

“Let them go. A few dirty dishes won’t hurt anything.”

She stood up, gathered the things, and made a piled-up mess of the sink. Then she went into the bed-sitting room and sat on the day bed with her feet tucked under her. She smoked and let the ashes dribble on the floor. With a contented stretch, she leaned the back of her head and shoulders against the wall.

She acted as if the apartment were a natural habitat where she had been a long time and which she had no intention of leaving.

“You’re a long way from Davis Islands,” I said.

“Those damned prisses!”

“Your father know where you are?”

“Why should he? I’m a quarter-century old, ugly man. I quit taking orders from that jerk a long time ago.”

“You’re a very good-looking girl.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say that most girls of your age and looks are married.”

“Ninnies,” she said.

I moved near the day bed, to the table that held the telephone. She uncoiled and stood up.

I picked up the phone, and she said, “What are you doing?”

“I think your father should know where you are.”

“I won’t have him coming here after me! I won’t!”

I had the phone half-raised to my ear. She grabbed the cord and jerked the phone out of my hand. It struck the floor. When I bent and reached for it, she tried to beat me to it.

I shoved her back a couple of feet and tried to hold her off with my free hand.

She uttered an unladylike word, freed herself, and made another try at the phone. She got her hands on it and tried to yank it from my ear.

Her hand slipped. Her nails left a stinging red furrow down the side of my face. As I put the phone down slowly, she backed off a step or two.

All the boredom was gone from her now. The vacant film had vanished from the surface of her dark eyes. Her breath quickened.

“You’re bleeding, Ed.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean to do it. Let me fix it up for you.”

She darted into the bathroom, clicked the light on. I heard her rummaging in the medicine cabinet. She sounded as if she were taking stuff out at random, making a mess, putting nothing back.

She came out carrying a bottle of after-shave lotion.

“The Merthiolate would leave your face all marked. This will do just as well.”

She stood close to me, pouring a few drops of the lotion in her hand. She patted the fingernail marks.

“Does it sting, Ed?”

“A little.”

“You wouldn’t mind a little hurt like that. It would take a real hurt to flatten a man like you, wouldn’t it?”

“I’ve been flattened,” I said.

The movement of her fingers slowed. They rested, lingering against my cheek.

She dropped the shave-lotion bottle on the table. Her other hand rose. The back of her knuckles brushed the hard, late-in-the-day stubble on my jowl.

“Don’t throw me out, Ed,” she pleaded softly. “I’ve thought of nothing but you since you came to the house. You don’t know what it’s like, the dullness, the monotony, the boredom that strangles you until you think you’ll scream.”

She was young and beautiful. I’m a man and therefore not immune. Then I saw the receding depths of her eyes and unpleasant, tiny spider feet slipped up and down my spine.

I gripped her wrists and pushed her away from me.

“You don’t need me,” I said. “What you need is a good spanking or something to interest you enough to cause you to put in a few hard days of work.”

“Go ahead and be mean to me,” she said, suddenly sullen.

“I think you’d enjoy it if I did,” I told her. “But get one thing straight, Rachie. You’re no dice with me.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“Good night, Rachie.”

“I won’t go home!” she threatened. “I’ll go out and do something desperate.”

“Maybe your father will pick up the pieces.”

“You wouldn’t care a bit, would you?”

“Well, you’re a quarter-century old.”

Her demeanor and voice underwent another of those quick changes. “Couldn’t I make you care just a little, Ed? You’re being mean and brutal, you know.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re treating me like this because you know I can’t strike back.”

“And you’re having fun, a break in that streak of boredom. But I haven’t any more time. I’ve got work to do.”