Part 10 (1/2)

I turned and looked at him with my hands shoved in my pockets. He waited a minute, hoping I'd be stupid enough to swing at him, and then stepped off onto the gravel. ”Well, give her back the key, huh? Tell her I said you didn't mind a bit.” He climbed into the cruiser and drove off.

I stepped inside and closed the door, took a deep breath, and lit a cigarette. In a minute or two I simmered down. I went into the bathroom and washed my face with cold water. The b.l.o.o.d.y clothes were still lying in the tub. Nothing was badly torn up in the room; he'd merely been killing time hoping I'd get back before he left. I finished the cigarette and felt all right again when I went over to the office. I put the key on the desk. Josie heard me and came out, grinning. ”Miss Georgia's awake.”

”Good,” I said. ”How is she?”

”Jest fine. You know what was the first thing she asked for?”

”A three-pound T-bone?”

”No, suh. A comb and a lipstick.”

Well, I thought, a psychiatrist would probably score it the same way. ”That's great. Will you ask her if I can come in?”

”Yes, sir. She's been asking where you was.”

She went in back, and came out almost immediately and nodded. I went through. I still had the hat on and wondered if I could get by without removing it. Probably, I thought, remembering the slob way I'd acted when she came over to the room. She no doubt a.s.sumed I slept in it and ate with my feet. When I stepped into the bedroom, however, she solved the problem for me. She was propped up on two pillows with a filmy blue wrap about her shoulders, still too pale perhaps, but d.a.m.ned attractive, and smiling. She held out her hand. Well, I'd been answering questions all day.

”I'm so glad to see you,” she said warmly. ”I was afraid you'd gone on without even saying good-bye or giving me a chance to thank you.”

She was the only one in town, I thought, who didn't know by now that I was her lover, bodyguard, partner, hired goon, sweetheart, private detective, and the father of her three Mongol children. She'd been asleep.

”Josie kept saying that you were still around, that you'd just gone to town-Oh, good heavens, what happened to you?” She broke off, staring at the strips of bandage and tape and the haircut.

”Just a little accident,” I said, glad the other was covered by my s.h.i.+rt sleeve. ”Couple of st.i.tches, that's all. But never mind me. How do you feel? You look wonderful.”

”How did it happen?” she asked firmly.

Maybe a few details would do it. ”Your coloring's a lot better and there's more light and animation in the eyes-”

”My coat's s.h.i.+nier too,” she said. ”That's always a good sign.” She pointed to the armchair beside the bed. ”Drop the red herring, and sit down, Mr. Chatham. I want to know if you've been hurt and why-”

I remembered what the doctor had said about rest and no more emotional upheavals. Except for luck and a good const.i.tution, she could be lying there now picking at the coverlet or staring blankly at the wall. No shotguns.

”Clumsiness,” I said. ”And not having a flashlight. I got an anonymous tip that acid was part of the cargo of a hijacked truck and that the rest of it was hidden in an old barn out in the country. I went out there, and while I was poking around in the loft I raked my head on a nail. The acid wasn't there, either, though I think it might have been at one time.”

She appeared to believe me. ”I'm sorry,” she said simply. ”It's my fault.”

”Not at all,” I said. ”As a matter of fact, I'm partly to blame for their wrecking that room.”

”How could you think a thing like that?”

I told her. ”I think he caught onto what I was doing when I was checking those telephone booths. It's the same man. And probably the same one who sent those two kids out here last night trying to get you in trouble with the police. When I helped you get rid of them, he decided I was meddling too much. The acid was just a hint that I was going to do you more harm than good by hanging around. I don't know what his object is, but let's find out.”

”What do you mean?” she asked.

”Yesterday you wanted to hire me as a private detective to look into it. You still can't, because I have no license to do that kind of work; the minute the Sheriff's office could prove you were paying me I'd be in jail. But there's nothing on the statute books that says I can't take over the direction of this motel simply because you're a friend of mine and because I'm interested in buying a part of it-both of which are true-”

”You're going a little too fast for me,” she said.

”We'll go into the business angle later. Obviously you don't have to sell me a part interest in it unless you want to, but as of the moment that's what the status is. We're considering it. When they call you, tell them that. As a matter of fact, I've already taken over the operation of it, and to some extent, the operation of you. I've closed the motel because there's no way in G.o.d's world you can stop them from coming back and doing it to another room as long as you're open to the public and obviously can't search your guests' luggage for acid. And I've accepted the responsibility for seeing that the doctor's instructions were carried out, and those instructions were that you were to stay in bed and rest, with this whole thing off your back, until he said you could get out-”

”Ridiculous,” she said. ”I'm as healthy as a horse.”

”Sure you are. A horse that hasn't had a square meal in a month, or a full night's rest since last year. You're going to stay right where you are and let me handle it.”

”But-”

”No buts. Ever since I landed in this town I've been jockeyed around by some character who thinks I'm on your side. He's finally convinced me he's right.”

The telephone rang out in the office. Josie appeared in the doorway. ”It's for you,” she said. ”A long distance.”

8

I went out and took it at the desk. I told the operator we'd accept the charges, and Lane came on. ”Mr. Chatham?”

”Yes. How did you make out?”

”Fairly well. Here's what I've been able to round up since you called; so far it's mostly just the stuff anybody would know who followed the investigation last November. Strader's full name was Albert Gerald Strader, he was thirty-five years old at the time he was killed, and if you were looking around for a good one-word description of him, b.u.m would probably do as well as any. Or lady-killer, except I guess that's gone out of style.

”Not a crook or a hood, however. He had no previous criminal record as far as they could discover-apart from a few misdemeanors like an occasional a.s.sault and battery, and a drunk driving or two-and they went into it pretty thoroughly. The F.B.I, had nothing on him. I gather that what you're trying to find out-along with everybody else who ever had anything to do with the case-is what the h.e.l.l he was doing up there in that place, and I don't think there's much chance it was anything criminal unless being a compulsive tomcat is a crime. The consensus of opinion is almost a hundred per cent that it was a woman. Probably a married one.

”He was a pretty big guy with an athlete's build not too far gone to seed. Played football in the military school he went to. Good-looking sort of Joe, dark hair, olive skin, gray eyes, and he knew how to buy and wear clothes. Women-or at least, certain kinds of over-s.e.xed and bored and restless women-went for him in a big way. And let's face it; women like that usually know what they're after, so he must have had it.

”He was a salesman. He wasn't much good at it, oddly enough; you'd think he'd be a whiz with all that appearance and self-a.s.surance, but I guess it takes more than that, like maybe some interest in working at it. From last July up until the time he was killed he was selling real estate, or trying to. Worked for an outfit called Wells and Merritt in the north-east part of town, housing sales and rentals, and had a small bachelor apartment not too far away on North-East Sixty-first Street-”

”How long had he been around Miami?” I asked.

”Off and on since about 1945, when he got out of the Navy. Its spotty, and they don't have the whole record. During the same period he spent some time down in the Keys, at Marathon and Key West, and for a while I think he was in New Orleans. But he usually came back to Miami. Let's see, I've got some notes here-”

”Let me get something to write on,” I said. I located a sheet of stationery in the back of the desk and undipped my pen. ”All right, shoot.”

”Okay. He grew up in a small town in northern Louisiana. His father was a lawyer and later a District Judge. Both parents are dead now, and the only surviving relative at the time he was killed was a married sister three years older who still lives there in the same town. Whitesboro. She was the one who came down to Galicia to claim the body. Strader apparently wasn't a particularly wild kid, but just useless. Probably nothing on his mind but girls, even then. Managed to get through four years at a military school in Pennsylvania, but was dropped at Tulane before mid-term of his freshman year for poor grades. Went into the Navy in 1942, and after boot camp he got into an electronics school-Treasure Island in San Francisco, I think, and was a Radioman Second when he came out at the end of the war.”

”He wasn't in subs, by any chance?”

”No. Jeep carriers, it says here. Anyway, in 1946, according to his employment record, he was announcer at a small radio station here in Miami. Stayed there a year or maybe a little longer. Most of 1948 is blank, but I understand a good part of that winter he was shacked up with some racy old girl who owned a string of horses. Then about 1950 he was selling cars. Worked for three or four different agencies here in Miami for the next two years, and was also down in the Keys. In the fall of 1953 he latched onto a traveling job, selling sound-motion projectors to lodges, churches, and schools. He was working for a distributor in Jacksonville, with Florida and parts of southern Alabama and Georgia for a territory. As usual, he didn't set the course on fire, and apparently quit or was fired after about six months. Seems to be a gap there, and the next thing he was back in Miami in the fall of 'fifty-four, selling cars again. Then in 1955, and up until about June 1956, another traveling job working for an outfit called Electronic Enterprises with home offices in Orlando. I don't know what he was selling, but maybe sound systems again. When that fizzled out he managed to pa.s.s the examination for a real estate salesman's license and went to work for this firm I mentioned first, Wells and Merritt. Just a boomer and a drifter, you see. I think women were supporting him a good part of the time.

”There's no record he ever knew Langston?” I asked.

”None whatever, and they dug into it for weeks. They were in different worlds. Langston was a pretty big wheel, till he smashed up, and Strader was a poor type that couldn't have bought his way into that crowd.”

”How about the first Mrs. Langston?”

”Another big nothing. You'd think there might be a chance, since she was a pretty gay type, especially since the divorce, and she had a lot of money, but they've never found any connection at all. And believe me, they tried. Don't forget, Miami's a big place. And of course, where they really went to work was on the second Mrs. Langston, the widow. For obvious reasons. I mean, they had it made. Strader went up there to see a woman, presumably a married woman, and he winds up killing a husband, with a woman known to be with him while he was trying to get rid of the body, so where do you look? We'll crack this one in an hour, boys. That was seven months ago, and they still haven't come up with the first lead to indicate the two of them had ever met. She simply wasn't his cup of tea. The only thing they had in common was the fact they'd both lived a long time in Miami. She was a medical lab technician with no money except her salary, and she didn't run with any gay or big-money crowd at all. I think the way she met Langston was slipping those wires to him to take an electrocardiogram.”

”Okay,” I said. ”So far, so good. I suppose they gave up long ago on the angle that Strader was hired for the job?