Start Screaming Murder Page 2

  She was calmer now, in no hurry. She stretched, seeming to enjoy the feeling of security the apartment and my presence gave her.

  “To begin with,” she said, “Bucks Jordan used to be a minor annoyance in my carny days. It was nothing new. You’d be surprised how many guys have made gaga eyes at me.”

  Knowing something of people, I wasn’t very surprised.

  “Back then,” Tina went on, “Bucks didn’t dare cross the line. He had to content himself with colored remarks and a pat on my shoulder when he thought he could get away with it. There were always other people around. The roustabouts worshipped me and would have broken his neck at a snap of my fingers. I was the star of the show, and you know how class-ridden carny and circus society is. Bucks lived in one social stratum, I in another. I avoided him and managed to get through the season without trouble.”

  Thinking about it, she tensed up and sought relief in the cigarette. With a big cloud of billowing smoke adding to the misty quality of her face, she said, “I didn’t think I’d ever see Bucks again. And I didn’t, for a long time. Then the other day I bumped into him, in a Tampa restaurant. Since then …” She spread her arms. “Ed, I swear I don’t think the guy’s got all his marbles. He can’t get it through his head that I’m not really gone on him.”

  “Sounds like a creep of the first water.”

  “You can say that again! Calling me, following me, trying to make dates … ugh….” She made a face. “I told him I was going to sic the cops on him. That scared him off for a while. Then, as time passed and he realized I hadn’t hollered for the bulls, he got the big-headed idea it was because I was playing hard to get—but not too hard, not that hard. So the threat backfired on me.”

  “Are we up to tonight?”

  “I guess we are,” she said. “I’ve a cottage here, a home roost. My phone rang. It was Bucks, pretty cocky because I hadn’t yelled cop. He was coming out to see me. I knew, then, that I needed some help. I told him to lay off or a tough guy named Ed Rivers would tear his arm off and feed it to him for breakfast.”

  “You were taking a lot on yourself!”

  “Don’t get sore, Ed. I’ve got dough. I decided right then to hire you.”

  “It isn’t always that simple and easy, sweetheart. Sometimes I’m busy on another case. And there are jobs I just don’t go for.”

  She spread her arms. “I had to tell him something, didn’t I?”

  I growled, “Go on.”

  “Well, I came here. The creep followed me. I was waiting for you outside your door when I heard his voice downstairs. He was asking somebody which apartment was yours. I had to get away from him. That table was handy in the hall … Your transom was open … and there was Bucks, coming up the stairs.”

  She stopped speaking and sat looking at me with a helpless, bland innocence I’d never before run into.

  In the silence I heard water running. I got up, cut to the bathroom, and turned off the faucet just before the tub spilled over. I pulled the plug and went slowly back to Tina.

  She gave me a cherubic smile.

  I returned it, only on me the smile wasn’t so angelic. “We return to the groove in the broken record. Why?”

  “Ed …”

  “Cops,” I said. “Why me instead of cops?”

  “I’ve explained …”

  “No, you haven’t. You’ve said you didn’t want publicity.”

  “Isn’t that understandable?”

  “To an extent. But under the circumstances …”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll spell it out. I got a new manager. He’s in New York right now, and things are really looking great. A month from now I hope to be auditioning for the right people, the really big people. I’ve got a new routine. It’s great, Ed. I know it’ll sell me to top clubs, maybe even spots on network variety TV. But to sell I’ve got to be everything sweet, unsullied and wonderful, the way folks want a dainty little creature like me to be.

  “Now … I scream police and the reporters, even the ones with colds in their heads, smell a story. You get their angle? Little doll and big bohunk.

  “You’ve dealt with the press yourself, Ed. Most of the ink and paper boys are decent citizens. But there are plenty who’d force their crippled grandmothers to do a fan dance if it meant a story.

  “They’d dig up everything possible, make it look as if Bucks and I traveled the carny circuits together. And those magazines …” She rolled her eyes. “The ones half the people in show business are suing. Can’t you just see some of the lurid streamers across their covers? Such as, ‘Why Miniature Carny Delilah Gave Her Six-Foot Samson the Air.’ “

  Tina practically gagged on the cigarette. “Ed, things being as they are, don’t even mention cops to me. This has got to be handled quietly, efficiently, and you’re the only guy I’d trust with it.”

  I knuckled the stubble along my jaw. “Tina, coming from anybody else, I don’t know. I’d wonder if it was a lot of cock-and-bull, if you’d told me everything.”

  “Well, I warned you that the truth …”

  “It’s screwy enough to be true,” I admitted. “What, exactly, do you want me to do?”

  “Do?” she yelled with a temperamental outsweeping of her arms. “Do what any red-blooded guy your size and weight would do. Look up Bucks and tell him you’ll break his stinking neck if he so much as lets my name slip into his foul mind.”

  “You think it’ll work?”

  “I know it will. He’s a rotten coward. I saw the way he kept his distance when those carny roustabouts were around. He laid off while he thought a big cop was warned and waiting, didn’t he? And I’ll bet he opened all jets to get away from you in the alley.”

  “He was plenty mean and tough for a while.”

  “Yeah? I know what I’m talking about. You put the fear of Ed Rivers in him and he’ll sulk about it and find some other doll to pester. I hope to hell she stands five-feet-eight and wrestled under the name of Madame Frankenstein.”

  She gave me a child-like look of trust which began to glimmer out. “You—you’ll do it, Ed?”

  “My instincts are cautious,” I said.

  “What’s that mean? You’re not afraid of Bucks Jordan. That couldn’t be!”

  “I got a healthy respect for his size,” I said.

  “But he tried to break your head! You wouldn’t let him, or anybody else in this town, get away with that!”

  “Not happily.”

  “Then what’s the hurdle?”

  “Sure you’ve included all the details?”

  “Cross my heart.” She crossed her heart.

  She waited—then she bounced angrily off the daybed and headed for another cigarette.

  When I moved toward the table to help her, she snapped, “Never mind!” She stood on tiptoe, strained, and reached the smokes and matches. “I’m used to helping myself in this outsized world you big gorillas have created for yourselves. I guess I can keep right on.” She ignored the match I offered and struck one of her own.

  Crossing the room swiftly, she posed martyr-like at the door. “I’ll try to feel no rancor, Ed. Please give me a little sorrow if you read in the papers that I’ve been criminally assaulted and …"

  “Oh, shut up,” I said.

  She came to center-stage with perfect timing, real tears of gratitude sparkling in her eyes. “Does this mean …"

  “Where do I find Bucks Jordan?”

  “Darling!” she screamed daintily. “I knew you would …”

  “Pipe down and take it easy,” I said. “Like you say, Nationwide is in business for a purpose. We are for hire, and I’d like to feed Bucks the handle off his blackjack for personal reasons.”

  “He’s been working on a boat, Ed. A private job. A big schooner, the kind capable of a South Seas trip. It’s called the Sprite.”

  “Who owns it?”

  “A fellow named Lessard, Alex Lessard, and his daughter. She’s called D. D.”

  “I take it that the Spr
ite is at anchorage in this area?”

  “Right in Tampa Bay.”

  “This will cost you the going rate of seventy-five bucks a day and expenses.”

  “Sounds like a bargain.”

  “You’ll have to sign contracts. We’ll meet at my office early and …"

  “Meet my eye! I’m staying right here, Ed, until you put some nails in Bucks Jordan’s hide. You just park the cushions off that old club chair in the kitchen—any corner will do—and give me a blanket. I won’t be any bother and very little expense. I have half an egg for breakfast.”

  Chapter Three

  Tina’s inherent romanticism had visualized the Sprite with her bow cutting through a South Sea, the Pacific swishing past with a sound like rustling hula skirts.

  Which goes to show you.

  A couple hundred yards off-shore, the Sprite was a mean old tiger taken with a case of mange. There was nothing jaunty in the solid set of the schooner’s two masts against the brazen sky. Crouched in the oily, dead heat, she was dirty and needed paint. A rich man looking for a toy would have passed her over. A knowledgeable sailor looking for guts in a craft might have picked her up for a tenth of her actual worth.

  I was driving a shiny new sedan, purchased with agency funds, a departure from our previous practice of annual leasing from an auto rental outfit.

  I drove the car down the short asphalt road to a scabby bait camp. A couple of lean guys in jeans were tinkering with an outboard motor on a bench set up beneath towering pines.

  One of them came toward me when I got out of the car. Wiping his hands on a piece of waste, he said howdy.

  “I’d like to get out to the Sprite,” I said. “That’s her, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. Rent you a flat-bottom.” He preceded me to the weathered wooden pier where water lapped against a dozen or more skiffs, each tied in its slip.

  In his thirties, burned leather-brown by the sun, the proprietor moved with the resilience of bamboo.

  “I’m looking for a fellow I know,” I said. “Works on the Sprite. His name is Bucks Jordan.”

  “Then row out and see him.”

  “I thought you might …”

  “Look, Mister. I don’t know anything about that boat or the people on her. You want the flat-bottom?”

  “I don’t feel like swimming.”

  “It’ll be two dollars.”

  Rowing out to the schooner, I was miserable in the heat. Sweat poured off me, plastering clothes and sodden flesh together in a stifling mess. The heat became a pulse beat in my head and solar plexus. I’ve been down here nearly twenty years, and I’ve never got used to the heat.

  Sometimes I almost ache for a frosty New Jersey morning. I’ve never gone back, not since I was a young beat cop up there. Maybe there are too many memories. Of a girl I knew once. She ran away with a punk I was trying to nail. Their fast moving car met an equally fast freight at a crossing.

  I blotted out the next few years with alcohol. One morning I woke in an alley, in the crummiest part of Ybor City. I knew it was dry out or die. I took a job on the docks and dried out. Later, Nationwide gave me a break, a job. As the years passed, Tampa became my home. At times I felt as if I’d been born here.

  The mangrove-tangled shoreline fell behind. Far off to my port stern, the buildings of downtown Tampa showed rectangular silhouettes in the shimmering pall of heat that was the sky.

  As I neared the schooner, a red-hot cruiser roared past fanning a wake that almost capsized the flat-bottom. I grabbed the ladder of the Sprite and held on until the flat-bottom relaxed.

  When I looked up, I saw a woman on the schooner’s deck. She was watching me silently. She was, I guessed, in her early twenties. You think of many females that age as “girls.” This one you didn’t. She was short, heavy-breasted, full-faced. Almost stocky. Her hair was a light, faded-looking brown, braided and coiled about her head. She was one of those who come from girlhood into womanhood, by-passing the adolescent phase. She would pass for a very competent secretary, a person capable of assuming responsibilities beyond the scope of a mere girl.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Who are you?”

  “The name is Ed Rivers.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Lessard. Are you his daughter, D. D.?”

  “No. I’m Maria Scanlon, a friend of the Lessards…. If you’re coming aboard, you’d better snub the line or you’ll lose the flat-bottom.”

  I snubbed the line and climbed on deck. “Is Mr. Lessard here?”

  “Below. He’ll be up in a minute.” She motioned with a square, graceless hand toward a decrepit deck chair. I went over and sat down. Like everything else about the Sprite the chair was a lot stronger, more sinewy than it appeared. I took out my handkerchief and started wiping some of the steam off my face.

  “You’re not a very good sailor, Mr. Rivers,” she said, with a laugh. The laugh did things for her, wiping away some of the seriousness and intensity that was almost middle-age-ish.

  “Afraid I’m not,” I admitted.

  “I watched the way you handled the flat-bottom.”

  “Do you sail much, Miss Scanlon?”

  “Mrs. Scanlon,” she corrected. The laugh wasn’t even a memory in her face now. “Mr. Rivers,” she said quietly, “I believe you are looking for something, listening for a sound. Do you mind my asking what it is?”

  I gave her a fresh appraisal. “Is a fellow named Bucks Jordan on board?”

  Her eyes held on my face for a second longer. Then she turned quickly, rounded the cabin, and called, “Alex, there’s a man here looking for Jordan.”

  Quick footsteps. Lessard stood with his hand on the rail, looked me over; the rubber soles of his sneakers cried softly as he came toward the foredeck.

  He was a small man, sandy in coloring, maybe forty years old, maybe fifty, or sixty. He had a thin, brooding face, gray eyes like a bitter New England winter. He had lost his hair except for a horseshoe around the sides and back of his long, narrow skull.

  In addition to the sneakers, he wore old khaki bathing trunks. He had spindly legs and arms like broom handles. But I didn’t let it fool me. The broom handles were overlaid with layers of wires, and the legs had that slightly bowed, knotty quality that you see on a first-rate lightweight boxer. I had the feeling that this guy didn’t give much of a damn about anything. It was in his eyes and face. He could take care of himself in the toughest ports in the world—and very probably had—because he wouldn’t care whether he lived or died.

  Mrs. Maria Scanlon introduced us, and Alex Lessard said, “What you want with Jordan?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “Yeah? You a cop?”

  “In a way.”

  “What in hell does that mean? You are, or you aren’t.”

  “A private cop.”

  “Fancy that. I never saw one of you fellows before. Tell you what. When you locate Bucks Jordan, you let me know and I’ll add twenty bucks to whatever you’ve been paid.”

  “Then he isn’t here?”

  “He not only isn’t here, Rivers. He took some money with him.”

  “Wages, Alex,” Maria Scanlon said.

  “Advance wages,” he corrected. “And why don’t you stay out of it.” He fished cigarettes from the bellyband of the bathing trunks. There were matches pushed under the cellophane covering of the package. He lighted a cigarette and said, “Jordan came aboard to do some work, repairs on the rigging, general cleaning up, painting. He worked for several days. Then he gave me such a wild story about his cracker father being in jail charged with illegal alligator hunting that I handed over a sizable advance.”

  “You haven’t seen Jordan since?”

  “No.”

  “When was this?”

  “Couple days ago.” Lessard grunted. “The sonofabitch.”

  “Alex,” Maria said, “he’s no dog, really. He’s a human being, in great part the result of what society….”


  “Maria, honey, please. If it hadn’t been for your do-gooding talk, I might not have let Jordan….”

  “I think you’re blaming him prematurely, Alex. He may come back.”

  Jawing at each other, they’d about forgot I was there. Then Lessard remembered. “How about letting me know if you find him, Rivers?”

  “Any idea where he is?”

  His face flared with impatience. “If I had, would I be trying to spend twenty bucks with you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Damn right I wouldn’t.” He glanced toward the shore. “I wonder what’s keeping D. D.?”

  “Department store downtown,” Maria Scanlon said. “Tell her I had to get back.”

  “You’re going ashore?”

  “Yes, if Mr. Rivers will give me a lift.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We clambered into the flat-bottom. She was first, and she picked up the oars. There is only one way to handle the fanatical, smothering type of woman. I took the oars firmly from her, pushed her forward, and started grunting us landward.

  “Really, Mr. Rivers, wouldn’t it make more sense for the most efficient …"

  “I’ll row, lady,” I said.

  When we docked the boat, she thanked me and started walking away.

  “You live here at the camp?” I nodded toward the cottages drowsing fifty yards away under the tall pines.

  “No, down the secondary road a couple of miles.”

  “I’ll drop you off,” I said.

  “Really, I …”

  “It’s no bother. “I’m going that way.”

  We got in my sturdy new car and I drove out of the camp and picked up the cracked asphalt.

  She sneaked a glance at me. “Why do you want Bucks…. But you can’t discuss that, can you?”

  “Not very well.”

  “Whatever he’s done, are you sure he’s to blame?”

  I let it ride.

  “People are prone to animal-like reactions, you know,” she persisted. “Sufficiently goaded, they are liable to snarl back.”

  “People are also accountable,” I reminded her.

  “Really?” she said, a disdainful quirk in her heavy brow.

  I wondered what her background was. Her diction was good. Her clothes were cheap cotton, but she wore them casually, as if the cost of clothing as she was growing up had never been a major consideration.