Hunt the killer, p.7
Hunt the Killer, page 7
To buy a chocolate soda? To phone her boyfriend? To open her goddamn pretty little mouth and scream:
“I saw him. I saw Charlie White. There he goes. There. That big red-haired man without a cap.”
I had no way of knowing. I suddenly didn’t care. My feet hurt. I was tired. My head began to ache again. It was an effort to think, to move one foot in front of the other. I’d run as far as I could. I couldn’t run any more. I’d run out of places to run to.
My hand shook as I lighted a cigarette. By this time, the detectives on foot were weaving through the crowd, looking at faces, asking questions. The bus station was plugged. So was Union Station and the airport. Every road out of town was blocked or would be. With one possible exception—the causeway to Palmetto City. The police would probably leave that open. Like an inverted fish trap. To tempt me to try to go to Beth.
That was all right with me. If I couldn’t make Fort Myers and Havana, I wanted to talk to Ken Gilly, tell him I hadn’t killed Zo, ask him to keep an open mind regardless of what happened to me. I wanted to talk to Beth. I wanted to tell her how sweet it had been of her to write, how sorry I was that I’d messed up both our lives. Before they took me back to Raiford and put me in the little white house. The one Swede was no longer using.
“Here. And I mean here,” he told me.
There was an empty taxi parked in the cab zone a few feet from the corner. I got in and leaned back against the cushion. The driver flipped his flag. “Where to, chum?”
I said, “Palmetto City.”
CHAPTER TEN
I’D BEEN RIGHT about the causeway being open. There was no block at either end of it. There was also no way out of Palmetto City except by water or back across the causeways. Three cause-ways. The man hunt was over. The law had me where it wanted me, now. All it had to do was draw in the net.
Passing the dog track, the cab driver asked, “Whereabouts in Palmetto City, fellow?”
I blew smoke at the ceiling of the cab. I wanted to talk to Ken. But friend or not, Ken would have to arrest me. Ken was the law. And I wanted to talk to Beth before I was locked up.
I said, “Just let me off at the mole.”
Palmetto City hadn’t changed. The green benches lining both sides of Center Street were crowded with northern tourists. A band was playing in the shell in Phillips Park. Dig Davis, a kid I’d soldiered with, was directing traffic at Fourth Avenue. For some reason he made me think of Matt Heely. Matt owed me a thousand dollars. Matt had a boat capable of raising Cuba. It could be that I could get Matt to sail me to Havana, if I could contact him before I was picked up. I began to hope a little, but not much. After I’d talked to Beth, I might see Matt. It would depend on what Beth advised me to do.
The mole was dark and crowded as usual, with northern tourists fishing for grunts and pig fish about the size of the ones I usually used as bait for snook. I paid off the cab driver with my last ten dollar bill and lighted my last cigarette, while I watched him pull away.
The cops seldom patrolled the mole. I was safe for the time being. I almost wished they had caught me before I’d gotten this far. I wanted to talk to Beth and dreaded to. She would be pleased to get the money. But telling her about Zo would hurt her.
I stalled for a few minutes watching the fishermen. The tide was coming in. The moon was right. You could have caught fish with a bent pin and a doughball. I watched the excited tourists for a moment, glad to have a chance to feel superior about something. Then I cut across Waterfront Park, under the royal palms, toward the return address that had been typed on Beth’s letter.
The street was shabby and run-down, on the edge of colored town, not far from Cliffton’s store. The address on the letter proved to be a white frame garage apartment on a bougainvillea-tangled alley, behind a square frame rooming house. It was a hell of a place for the wife of a man who’d made the money I had. Shame made me sweat even harder.
There was no police car in front of the rooming house nor, as far as I could tell, any stake-out in the alley. But neither was there any light in the apartment. Then I remembered it was Saturday night. Cliffton’s stayed open until midnight. Even working in the office, Beth probably wouldn’t be home until after ten o’clock.
I walked back down the silent street toward the mole. Swede had been right about the bloody tide, too. I must have been out of my mind to treat Beth the way I had.
I tried to salve my conscience. Of course, she could be living in the big old house on the island across the deep-water channel from the mainland. But she couldn’t live there and work in town. At least, not with me in prison. The only way the old house could be reached was by boat. I’d had to run her across every morning when I’d been home. When I’d been away on trips or out fishing the banks, she’d always stayed with her folks.
I hoped she’d rented the old place to bring in a little extra income. But the chances were she hadn’t. It wasn’t flossy enough for tourists. It needed too many repairs. The odds were that nothing but snakes and raccoons and rabbits and field mice had lived on the island for four years.
I watched the fishermen for another hour and walked back. There was a light in the apartment now. As I watched, it winked out. I reconnoitered both the street and the alley more carefully this time. There didn’t seem to be a stake-out.
My heart pounding, I walked down the alley. No one stepped out of the shadows to stop me. No one said, “Just a minute, killer.”
The stairs leading up to the apartment were on the outside of the building, profusely covered with flame vine. I inched up, step by step, keeping my back to the wall. At the head of the stairs, I reached out and ran my knuckles across the wooden frame of the screen door.
On the other side of the screen, Beth gasped, “Who’s there?”
I said, “It’s Charlie. Please don’t scream. And please don’t turn on the light.”
Bare feet padded across the floor until only the screen door separated us. After four long years. There was a hole in the flame vine behind me. Moonlight flooded through it, spotlighting Beth’s face and slim young figure.
I began to breathe hard again. Not from fear. I’d lied to Zo. This is what I’d dreamed of. But I’d forgotten that Beth was so pretty. Even with her cheeks stained with tears and deep shadows under her eyes, she was beautiful. And at one time she had loved me.
Beth snatched a thin robe from a chair. Then she pressed her nose against the screen. She was almost as breathless as I was. “You shouldn’t have come here, Charlie. The police were at the store not half an hour ago. I promised Ken Gilly I’d call him if you tried to contact me.”
She slipped the robe over her shoulders but the front of it gaped open.
I said, stupidly, “Then you know?”
Beth brushed a lock of straw-colored hair away from her forehead, her right breast rising with her arm. “How could I help knowing? It was in both the morning and the evening paper.” Her mouth began to work. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Everybody at the store, except Mr. Cliffton, has been ‘sorry’ for me all day.”
I got it off my chest with a rush. “I didn’t do it, Beth.”
“You didn’t do what?”
“I didn’t kill Zo.”
“It says in the papers you did.”
“I don’t care what it says in the papers. I didn’t kill her. And I didn’t open your letter, I didn’t realize what it was, until it was too late. I thought you were through with me. I didn’t read your letter until after I’d reached the cabin. When I did read it, I told Zo I was through with her, for good. I told her I was coming back to Palmetto City and you. That’s when it happened.”
Beth stopped crying. “You mean you didn’t kill that girl?”
I panted. “No. Someone I didn’t see, some man, slugged me with a gaff hook and shot Zo. He meant to kill me, too.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know who he was. I didn’t see his face.”
She pressed her nose still more tightly to the screen. Her voice was a breathless whisper. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
Beth thought a moment. “No.” She shook her blonde curls against the other side of the screen. “No. That’s one thing you’ve never done, Charlie. You’ve never lied to me.” She stepped back and unhooked the door. “Come in,” she said softly, “Before the neighbors see you.”
Inside the room I tried to take her in my arms.
Beth pushed me away. “No, I want time to think. This may change things for both of us. You swear you didn’t kill that girl?” “I swear it.”
From what I could see in the moonlight, it was a one room efficiency apartment with a small kitchenette and bath. Beth sat on the edge of the bed. “Please light me a cigarette, Charlie.”
I said I didn’t have any. She said there were some on the table. I lighted one and gave it to her. Beth had changed in one respect. It was the first time I’d ever seen her smoke. I sat on the bed beside her. It squeaked slightly under my weight.
“Why did you come here?” she asked me.
I told her the truth. “I didn’t intend to at first. I didn’t think you’d want anything to do with me. I was going to try to make Havana, but they blocked me off at Tampa.”
The bar in the screen door so divided the moonlight that all I could see of her were two small white feet. It was like looking at a surrealist painting. I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel the scorn in her eyes.
“In other words, if you could evade the law and get out of the country, you were going right back into the same vicious racket that wrecked our marriage. You were going to work for Señor Peso again.”
I cracked my knuckles. “That’s right.” I didn’t know how much time I’d have with her. I didn’t want to waste it trying to explain my involved reasoning. I made it as short as I could. “I made up my mind that if you were waiting for me when I was released, I’d go straight. If not, I’d identify and kill Señor Peso for not helping me during my trial.”
Beth turned toward me and her warm body brushed my arm. “Then you still don’t know who Señor Peso is?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“When I was released, you weren’t waiting for me, but Zo was. She told me Señor Peso hadn’t let me down and proved it by giving me my Havana bank book with a thousand dollars deposited to my account for every month I’d been in prison. She said a boat would put in at Dead Man’s Bay and take us to Havana. So, I thought ‘What the hell’ and went with Zo.”
Beth protested, “But I would have been there if I could have gotten away. I sent you train fare to come to me.” Sobs shook her shoulders. “I wrote you I was waiting. I said we’d start all over.”
There was a note of rising hysteria in her voice. I put my arm around her waist. “For Gosh sake, Beth, don’t blow your top. Please.”
She said, “I’m not going to blow my top.” She moved away from me. “But I did write you, Charlie, I did.”
I continued to crack my knuckles. “I know. And if I’d read your letter at the prison, none of this would have happened.”
“Why did you come to me now, Charlie?”
“To turn the money over to you.”
“I don’t want it. It’s dirty money.”
“To say good-bye then. To tell you I was sorry I’d been such a heel.”
“Is that the only reason?” Her hand was on my knee.
“To tell you I love you.”
“But you loved this other woman, too? This Zo?”
I looked at the small feet in the moonlight. I’d never lied to Beth. I continued to be truthful. “Yes. I did. I loved both of you, I guess.”
Beth’s fingers tightened on my knee. She began to cry softly. “What will they do to you when they catch you, Charlie?”
I took the cigarette from her fingers and sucked it to a small red torch. “What we’re doing to this cigarette.”
She sobbed, “I won’t let them. If you didn’t kill that girl, there must be some way we can prove it.”
I snuffed the cigarette. “How?”
Beth shook her head. She was sitting so close that her hair brushed my face. It smelled sweet and clean. The small apartment was hot and filled with the smell of her. I was acutely conscious of her body.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “There must be some way.” She clutched at a straw. “Perhaps Mr. Cliffton could help us.”
Cliffton was the merchant for whom she worked. She’d been his confidential secretary for years. Beth liked him. I never had. A cocky little cracker from the middle of the state, he had built an idea into the biggest business in town. He boasted that he would not be undersold. To my knowledge, he never had been. He was a shrewd merchandiser, a good showman. He wasn’t afraid to spend money on advertising. As a result, he’d built a hole in the wall drug store into a block square, four story high merchandise carnival, handling everything from apples to zithers. If you couldn’t buy it at Cliffton’s, it wasn’t for sale.
I asked, “Why should Mr. Cliffton help us?”
Beth took her hand off my knee and folded her hands in her lap. “Mr. Cliffton is in love with me. He’s asked me to marry him. He even offered to buy the old house on the island so I’d have money to live on and wouldn’t have to work while I made up my mind whether or not to divorce you.”
I said, “That’s a hell of a note.”
Beth said, hotly, “Your own hands are clean?”
The strain was beginning to get me. Too much had happened too fast. I buried my face in my hands. “No. I guess they aren’t. I’m sorry. I have no right to say anything. Not after the way I’ve messed up our lives.”
Beth pulled my hands away from my face. I couldn’t see her now. She was too close. But I could feel her. “Kiss me, Charlie,” she demanded.
I said, “I shouldn’t think you’d want me to. After the way I treated you.”
Her breath was sweet in my face. “Kiss me,” she repeated.
I took her face in my hands and kissed her. Not the way I had kissed Zo. Without passion. Like I had kissed Beth at the altar. After Reverend Paul had finished marrying us. When the world had still been our oyster. Beth was something sweet and beautiful and good. She was something that had been missing from my life for a long time.
When I lifted my head, the shaft of moonlight had risen so I could see her face. Her eyes were shining. Her lips brushed mine, again. “It’s going to be all right, Charlie. Believe me. I don’t know how we’re going to do it. But somehow, we’ll make it right.”
I sat, afraid to move, afraid to touch her. The next move was up to Beth. She sat a long time, just fondling my face with her fingers. Then she leaned back, with her hands cupped under her head. Her eyes were cat-green in the dark.
“Prove that you love me, Charlie.”
Prove that I loved her.
I kissed her throat, her lips, her lovely shoulders. Her flesh was hat and quivered under my lips. I touched her and she whimpered.
“It’s been so long. I’ve wanted you so badly.”
I rolled over and she kissed me fiercely. Her fingers tangled in my hair.
“Love me. Love me,” she panted.
Then a car drove up the alley and stopped. A revolving red police spotlight found the screen door and settled, replacing the moonlight with a bloody glow. Two pairs of heavy feet began to climb the stairs.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BETH TWISTED away from me and stood panting in the red glow of the spotlight, fighting for breath, as she felt frantically for her robe.
I started to get up.
She stopped me. “Stay there,” she whispered.
The climbing feet reached the landing. A man’s bulk cut off the red glow. Knuckles drummed on the wood of the screen.
Beth finished wrapping her robe around her. “Yes—?”
“It’s Ken again, Beth,” Gilly told her. “And Sergeant Strawn.”
“Yes—?” Beth repeated. “I’ve gone to bed.”
Gilly sounded tired. “We presumed that, Beth, and we’re sorry to disturb you. But we thought you ought to know.”
Beth was still having trouble with her breathing. “You thought I ought to know what?”
Bill Strawn said, “Charlie’s been spotted in Tampa, Mrs. White. He bought a ticket for Fort Myers, but some of the boys jumped him at the bus station and he ran.”
“Oh,” Beth said. “I see.”
I felt like a fool, crouched on the bed, while Beth fronted for me.
“That was two hours ago,” Sergeant Strawn added. “Tampa immediately blocked all roads except the causeways, figuring on funneling him here. And it seems to have worked. They’ve just picked up a cab driver who says he drove a man answering Charlie’s description down to the south mole.”
“Oh,” Beth said. “I see.” She found her mules and slipped her feet in them. Then, reaching behind her, she squeezed my hand and scuffed over to the door. “I’m sorry I can’t ask you in, but I’m not dressed.”
“That’s quite all right, Mrs. White,” Strawn said. “We just thought you ought to know.”
Ken said, “I wish Charlie hadn’t headed back this way. God knows I don’t want to make the pinch.”
Beth was in control of her breathing again. Her voice sounded cool, almost casual. “Maybe he didn’t do it, Ken. Maybe Charlie didn’t kill that girl.”
Ken said, “Don’t be silly, Beth. Of course, he killed her. You read the papers, didn’t you? They staged a drunken party to celebrate his release. Sometime during it, they quarreled. Maybe over your letter. She hit him with a gaff hook, and he shot her.”
Strawn said, “That’s the way the evidence stacks up. You want us to post a guard in the alley, Mrs. White?”
Beth’s shoulders raised as she took a deep breath. “Thank you, Sergeant. I don’t think that will be necessary. I doubt if Charlie would be fool enough to come here. Even if he should, I doubt if he’d hurt me.”
