Shark Infested Custard Part 13

"Yes, it would have. But if I let you go, you wouldn't leave Miami yourself and go back to Jacksonville?"

"It wouldn't do any good if I did. My contact here would get another man, and he'd have to make MissJannaire's money good. Even if I gave it back to him to give to someone else, it wouldn't help you any--or me neither."

"Suppose I gave you another fee-- say three thousand-- to hit Jannaire. Could you do that?"

"No. That wouldn't be ethical."

I put the cigarette out in one of the big sand-filled standing ashtrays.

Wright stiffened visibly, but that was the only movement he made. I shot him, and he tumbled forward out of the chair, curling his body slightly as he died silently on the white s.h.a.g carpet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

The things I had to do took me much longer than they should have because I would pause all of a sudden, struck by the enormity of what I had done, and stand for long moments paralyzed in thought, or not thinking, in a state of dazed bewilderment.

Mr. Wright, a fatalist, accustomed to swift and sudden death, had died with dignity, as a right, as a rite long rehea.r.s.ed in his mind. Or, to paraphrase the old cliche; "Dying well is the best revenge."

When my time came, as it must, there would be Wright's example to die up to, the measurement of a real man.

This murder of Wright, as necessary as it was, and I would always remind myself that it was necessary, and not a gratuitous act, had changed me forever. To kill a man, whether it is necessary or not, whether in anger or in cold blood, is the turning point in the life of the American male. It made me finally a member of the lousy, rotten club, a club I hadn't wanted to join, hadn't applied for, but had joined anyway, the way you accept an unsolicited credit card sent to you through the mail and place it in your wallet.

The report of the.38 had been loud, but here I wasn't concerned about whether the neighbors had heard the shot or not. In a $150,000 apartment, the walls are thick enough to deaden the sound of a.38.

The airconditioner condenser kicked in, and I felt a sudden whiff of cool air on my neck as I stood there, waiting, waiting to see whether Mr. Wright would move again. I couldn't see his upper body, but I could watch his white legs and the purplish snaky looking varicose veins climbing out of the tops of his black support socks.

I put the pistol down, staring at Wright's pale, almost feminine, legs, and willed them not to move. I had willed myself to shoot once because I had to, but I don't believe I could have shot him again, or put a round in the back of his head for a -coup de grace-. As I stood there, frozen, waiting, staring, I felt very close to Larry and Eddie. Larry had killed a thief, when he was still a cop, a legitimate shooting for which he was cleared. Eddie, as a fighter pilot, had killed a good many little brown men in Vietnam on strafing and bombing missions.

In every instance, the killing was justified, as I had so easily justified the killing of Mr. Wright. The thought bothered me, and it was difficult to brush aside. A killing can always be justified, or rationalized.

Perhaps I could have found an alternative, another option, but no other way out occurred to me. So I quit thinking about it. I also resolved not to think about it again, or at least to try not to think about it again.

The deed was done, and there would be no point to brood on the matter and come up with an alternative some five years from now, because I had had to do what I had done at the time.

I went through Mr. Wright's wallet. There was a Gulf credit card made out to L.C. Smith, a Florida driver's license, also in the name of L.C. Smith, and fifty-seven dollars in cash. There was no credit card for a rental car, so I a.s.sumed that he had driven his own car down to Miami from Jacksonville. If there is anything harder to do than rent a car without a credit card, I don't know what it is. But fifty-seven dollars was a very small sum of money.

I put the money into my wallet, and searched Wright's other pockets. I found a packet of Barclay's traveler's checks, all twenties, totaling $240.00. They were unsigned, neither on the tops nor the bottoms. I had no idea how a man could get traveler's checks from a bank without signing them first, unless they were stolen, and I didn't know what to do with them. But no one ever asks for I.D. when a traveler's check is cashed, and these unsigned checks could be used anywhere in the world. I decided to keep them. If I cashed them, one at a time, over a lengthy period, they would be impossible to trace to me.

I put Wright's key ring, with its peculiar collection of keys, in my pocket, too. One of those keys would fit Jannaire's duplex door, and I had a few things to talk about with that woman. There was a package of book matches from Wuv's, a folded length of copper wire, a theater ticket stub and a parking stub from the Double X Theater, and a plug of Brown Mule chewing tobacco with one small bite missing.

Other than that, Wright was clean. His other equipment, including the tools he had been using for his scary tricks, were probably locked in his car. His car was undoubtedly parked in the Double X Theater lot, but it could stay there. It would be just like him to b.o.o.by-trap his own car.

I removed the green oilcloth cover from the snooker table, wrapped Mr. Wright's body in it, and carried him into the Weinstein's master bedroom. I placed the body on the bed, and turned on the bedside lamp. In another two months or within six weeks or less the Weinsteins would return. But within three or four days, even if I turned the airconditioning down to fifty degrees, the body would begin to stink In fact, he smelled bad already. The heavy mattress would prevent the odor from seeping out through the bottom, but I need something more to put on top of his body. I went through the apartment and gathered up all of the sheets covering the furniture, and spread them, one at a time, over his body. There were blankets in the linen closet, and I spread these, one at a time, over his body until there were more than two dozen thicknesses, counting the sheets, over him. As well as I could, I tucked in the edges all around the bed.

By this time I was perspiring heavily, and I sat in the high pool chair to smoke a calming cigarette.

I then took my handkerchief and ran it over everything I had touched, or remembered touching, and turned the airconditioning thermostat, which I found in the dining room, down to fifty degrees. I collected the two pistols, turned out the lights, and left the apartment. After wiping the outside doork.n.o.b, I took the stairway down to the tenth floor, and pushed the b.u.t.ton for the elevator.

No one, luckily, was in the parking garage, and I walked up the alley to my Galaxie.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

When I got to Coral Gables, and parked on Santana, two blocks away from Jannaire's duplex, it was ten minutes after one. I was tired and fuzzy-minded, and it took me a full minute to decide to leave the pistols locked in the glove compartment. Coral Gables, together with Hobe Sound and Palm Beach, is one of the best policed cities in Florida, and I didn't want to run the risk of being picked up with a concealed weapon on my person as I walked to Jannaire's house.

There was a light in the upstairs living room window, but that did not mean that she was still awake. It might have been a burglar light, but I had no intention of ringing her bell anyway. I found the correct key on Wright's keyring on the third try let myself in, and climbed the stairs. No one was in the living room.

The door to the guest bedroom was slightly ajar. I flipped the switch. The bed was made, and there was a packed, but open, suitcase on the bed. Wright's suit jacket was draped over the back of a chair. The bed was made in a hasty rumpled manner, and I a.s.sumed that Wright had made it, not Jannaire. I continued down the hall to Jannaire's bedroom. I flipped on the lights and she didn't waken. There was no overhead, or ceiling light, but both bedlamps came on, and so did a standing lamp, with a bamboo shade, beside a black leather lounge chair.

Jannaire, flat on her back, snored gently, almost daintily, but she slept hard. Her two brown fists, close to her head, were clenched tightly, and the muscles in her tanned forearms were tensed. She wore a pale blue nightgown, and was covered to her waist with a sheet and a bright blue blanket. The airconditioning in the apartment was about seventy if not lower, and I was comfortable in my jacket.

I sat down in the leather chair, and lit a cigarette. The odor in the room was unpleasant, and I needed the smell of cigarette smoke. In addition to Jannaire's unique odor, the air was stale, and there was an overlay, hard to define separately, of baby powder, cold cream, wet leather, and the general odor of sleep itself. I had noticed this phenomenon before; a woman smells differently when she's asleep. The first time I had noticed this phenomenon I wondered if the subconscious overcomes the defenses of the sleeping body. Jannaire looked older in her sleep, too, and I wondered why I had ever thought that she was attractive. In her nightgown, with her apple-hard b.r.e.a.s.t.s partly uncovered, and all of her inky black underarm hair exposed, she was about as s.e.xy as a squashed toad. Nor did I have to kiss her to determine how bad her breath undoubtedly was, either.

"Hey," I said lightly, from the chair, "wake up, Jannaire. There's a man in your bedroom."

"Wha'?" she said, stirring, but without opening her eyes.

"There's a man in your room, Jannaire, and he wants to talk to you."

She opened her eyes and blinked at me. She rubbed her bare arms with her hands, as she stared at me.

"Mr. Wright, your husband," I said, "sent me to pick up his suitcase. His son's sick, and he had to go home, so he asked me to mail him his suitcase, air freight. Incidentally, is Francis your son, or your husband's son by another marriage?"

"What?" She sat up in bed, and shook her head. "What do you want, Hank? I don't know what you're talking about. I took a sleeping pill, and it really knocked me out. What are you doing here?"

"It's foolish to take sleeping pills, especially at your age, Jannaire. They're a d.a.m.ned poor subst.i.tute for natural sleep, and eventually they ruin your health. A cup of warm cocoa..."

"I've gotta go pee. Put some coffee on, Hank Until I'm awake I don't know what you're talking about." She got out of bed, walked primly--with her knees together--to the bathroom and closed the door.

In the kitchen I put on some water to boil for instant coffee, and discovered that I was ravenous. When jannaire joined me in the kitchen a few minutes later, I had fixed two pieces of toast, and I was scrambling four eggs. She wore a quilted blue robe, and she had combed her hair and put on some pinkish-white lipstick. Her full lips were poked out surlily as she got down cups and mixed coffee and boiling water.

"D'you want some eggs? Toast?" I asked her.

"No. All I want is for you to get out of my house," she said. "If my husband happens to walk in..."

"Cut the bulls.h.i.t, Jannaire. Apparently you weren't listening to me when I woke you up."

"How'd you get in?"

"I told you. I came for Mr. Wright's suitcase."

I showed her Wright's ring of keys. I took the scrambled eggs and the toast into the dining room, and she followed me with the two cups of coffee. I had to return to the kitchen to find a fork, and when I got back to the dining room she was sitting at the end of the long gla.s.s table, facing me, and staring with an expression that managed to convey fear, hatred, and loathing. I talked to her as I ate, and her expression didn't alter.

"Mr. Wright and I had a long talk, Jannaire, so you can forget about the marriage fabrication. He told me that you paid him to run me out of town. Fine, I am now on my way out, and I dropped by to tell you good-bye. Inasmuch as he asked me in such a nice way, I could hardly refuse, could I? But I want some answers from you before I go. First, you could have had me killed, but then you changed your mind. Why?"

She shrugged. "I didn't want your death on my conscience, although that didn't matter much to me at first. And then, after 1 got to know you, and realized how much Miami meant to you, it was a punishment of a sort-- a banishment, and that seemed like a fair subst.i.tute. In the abstract, Hank, having you killed seemed like a good idea--and it still does--in the abstract. But when the time came, I had some second thoughts. The possibility that I might have become involved, in case Mr. Wright happened to be caught, occurred to me, and your death didn't seem worth going to prison for..."

"Okay. You chickened out. But why did you think about killing me, or having me killed, in the first place? I admit that I l.u.s.ted after your smelly body, but that's no reason to kill a man!"

Jannaire got up, turned on the lamp in the living room beneath the black-and-white blow-up photo, and returned to her seat. She pointed to the picture.

"That's my sister."

"I know. You told me."

"But I didn't tell you her name. Her name is--was--Bernice Kaplan."

"So?"

"You don't even remember her name?"

"Should I? I don't remember any girl who looks remotely like that..."

"Bernice was twenty-two when she killed herself, and you're the reason she died."

"Bulls.h.i.t. I don't know any Bernice Kaplan."

"She was a stewardess, and you knew her all right, you sonofab.i.t.c.h!"

"What was her uniform like?"

"Mustard yellow, with red piping. And she wore a little yellow derby with a red satin hatband."

"I remember her."

"I thought you would. Men usually remember the women they knock up. I know that Bernice had some emotional problems. Most girls do nowadays, and she didn't have to kill herself just because she was pregnant. If she had come to me, I could've paid for an abortion. For that matter, she had enough money to pay for one herself. But she wouldn't have killed herself if she hadn't got pregnant, and because you were the one who did it, you shouldn't be allowed to get off scot-free."

There was a great deal that I could say in self-defense, but I was unable to say anything. I was faced with a dilemma, a moral decision, and there was no way out of it--not a single way that I could prove my innocence.

I had met Bernice Kaplan at a party. She had been in uniform, and she had to leave early to catch her plane. When she started to call for a cab, I had offered to drive her to the airport. It was an excuse to leave a dull party, and I had been talking to Bernice and thought she was rather cute. In their uniforms, stewardesses always look ten times better than they do in their civilian clothes. It was a hilarious and exciting drive to the airport--a drive that was filled with suspense.

As soon as I got onto the Palmetto Expressway, she had taken off her derby, unzipped my fly, and started to go down on me. It was so unexpected I had laughed, of course, and then I began to wonder about the time. To get her to the airport on time I had to maintain a speed of at least fifty-five miles per hour, I estimated, but at that speed I was covering the distance so quickly I wasn't sure that I would be able to have an o.r.g.a.s.m by the time we got to the terminal. The other traffic was distracting, too, and on the Palmetto you have to pay close attention to your driving. There are a lot of crazy people on the Palmetto, and that included, I decided, Bernice Kaplan and myself. As it worked out, however, my o.r.g.a.s.m and arrival at the terminal coincided. I rezipped my fly in the yellow loading zone in front of Concourse Nine. Bernice had fewer than three minutes to make her flight, so all I could do was give her my card, with hasty note scrawled on it, and ask her to call me when she got back into town. She took the card and fled. But I never saw her again, and she never called me.

The point is, I couldn't have made her pregnant, but I couldn't tell Jannaire the truth about our brief encounter. To do so would be too cruel.

Besides, Jannaire wouldn't believe me anyway.

"Jannaire," I said. "I didn't impregnate your sister. I only met her once, and that was at a party with a dozen or more people around. I drove her to the airport and dropped her off at the terminal. There was just enough time to get her there, and we didn't stop on the way. That's the truth of it."

Jannaire jumped up, and started toward her purse on the couch. It was a leather pouch-- a drawstring type bag-- and huge. I left my seat hurriedly and managed to beat her to the purse. The thought hit me that there might be a pistol in the leather bag. I opened it, looked inside, and then handed it to her.

Her upper lip curled. "Did you think I had a gun in my bag?"

"Of course not. I was merely getting it for you, that's all."

She sat on the couch, rummaged around in the bag, and took out a wallet. She opened the wallet, removed a card, and handed it to me. It was my business card. On the back I had written: "You're the greatest! -- Hank." I shrugged and returned the card to Jannaire.

"You admitted knowing Bernice, Hank," Jannaire said flatly, "and that isn't the kind of message a satyr like you would write to a young woman of twenty-two you only saw once, and on a short ride to the airport at that."

"It wasn't a short ride," I said defensively, "it was at least nine miles."

"I found this card in her purse when they sent me her effects from Atlanta. She didn't leave a suicide note, but she was four-- or almost five--months pregnant. It had to be you, Hank Iwasn't sure until I met you and saw how you acted--like some s.e.xstarved maniac-- and then I knew d.a.m.ned well it was you. If there was any doubt before--which there wasn't--the fact that you've admitted that you knew Bernice cinches it once and for all."

"If you were interested in meeting me all along, why did you date my friend, Larry Dolman?"

"Your name was on his application as a reference. And you both had the same apartment house address. I thought, and I was right, that through meeting Larry I would meet you. And I wanted a natural meeting, to study you, before I made my move."

"All right, that worked. I was taken in. I certainly wouldn't suspect a woman who was dating through a dating service of being married."

"I'm not married."

"I know that, too. Mr. Wright told me. That also bothers me. I've been around the city a long time, but I sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't know how to go about hiring a professional murderer. How did you go about it?"

Jannaire looked at me with surprise, arching her brows. "I asked my lawyer. How else?"

"And he told you? Just like that?"

"No. He said he would send me someone, and later on-- about two weeks later--he sent me Mr. Wright. Why wouldn't he? I pay him a d.a.m.ned good retainer, and if he can't give me the services I need, I can always take my business to another lawyer. Do you know how many lawyers there are in Miami?"

I nodded. "Yes, strangely enough, I do. There are about twenty thousand lawyers in Dade County."

"There you are."

"There -we- are. I'm innocent, and yet, nothing I've said has made you change your mind about me--has it?"

"No. I know, we both know, that you're the indirect cause of my sister's suicide. And I think I'm letting you off lightly by banishing you from Miami instead of having you killed. Besides, it's better this way. If you didn't know why you were killed, it wouldn't have been enough punishment. This way, every time you think about Miami--wherever you are or happen to be-- you'll be forced to think about that poor kid and what you did to her!"

Jannaire started to cry, and it made her angry because she cried in front of me. She tried to stop, but she couldn't, even though she kept throwing her head back and shaking it, and wiping the tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

"I'll get Mr. Wright's suitcase and go," I said. "I promised to mail it to him."

I went into the guest bedroom, put the suit jacket into the suitcase, and then got Wright's toilet articles from the small guest bathroom. I packed these, and closed the suitcase.

In the living room, before reaching the door, I put the suitcase down and turned toward Jannaire. She had regained control of herself, and she held a crumpled Kleenex in her hand.

"-Dark Pa.s.sage-," I said.

"What?"