The Long Wait (5 page)

She didn't argue about it. “That's your affair. I'm only doing it as a favor for Nick.”

I waited until she was stopped for a red light and grinned so she could see it. “Look, Wendy, you're a nice little mouse and all that, but you're strictly the kind of sex I can't afford to have around right now. I got things to do.”

Her eyebrows slid up disdainfully. “Don't worry, you won't get raped.”

“It's been known to happen,” I said.

“God, what an ego!” The light changed and the car shot forward with the gears mashing noisily.

“Don't fool yourself, baby. I'm as much man as you are woman and like Freud says, it's sex that motivates everything.”

“You're an educated bastard.”

“Yeah.”

A smile played around in the comer of her mouth. “Perhaps I should change that song routine of mine.”

“Do that. Either let 'em see it or keep it hidden altogether. I hate to be teased.”

She threw back her head, laughed and I laughed with her. Then we both shut up until we were a block from the hotel. I saw the sign up ahead and told her to stop. I got out, shut the door and leaned on the window. “If the invitation is still good, where do I find your place?”

Her face was a pale oval in the gloom of the car. “4014 Pontiel Road, Johnny. It's a white house on the crest of a hill. I'll leave a key in the big flowerpot on the porch.”

There was something in her voice that was all honey and butter like when she sang that song and I could see her in the green dress with all the light tan skin showing. I reached out and pulled her halfway across the seat until her mouth was there, full and ripe, and I tasted it hungrily, feeling the hot lance of her tongue before she stiffened and jerked away.

“Damn you. That was a nice line about not fighting for it!”

“Hell, that was just sparring around,” I said. Then I laughed and she let the clutch out so fast I almost went on my neck. I couldn't wipe the grin off my face because she was a hot little mouse who liked to tease and couldn't take any teasing back. She didn't know it, but she was due for some lessons in Freud at that Pontiel Road address.

Instead of going in the main entrance of the Hathaway House, I used the side door and saw the big cop before he saw me. He was slouched in a chair trying to read and watch the exit at the same time without doing a good job of either.

I tapped him on the shoulder and if he wasn't so big he wouldn't have gotten stuck in the chair trying to get up. I said, “Oh, sit there, junior. I've already been so I'm not going anyplace. If you should want me, just ring my room.”

He sat back and gave me a dirty look and made sure I got on the elevator. Then he picked up the paper again and started reading. I stepped out on my floor, walked down the corridor and poked the key in the lock.

Before I had my clothes off I knew somebody had been through the room. There was a smell that shouldn't have been there and it was a newly familiar smell I couldn't miss. It took awhile but I got it. The stuff was an antiseptic. Like hospitals. Like Tucker's beat-up face under a bandage.

Whatever he was looking for he didn't find because there wasn't anything there to find in the first place. I tossed my new jacket in the handbag with the other junk and took a shower. The shock of cold water started my head aching again, so I warmed it up until I turned pink in spots and the ache went away.

I was drying off when knuckles rapped the door. I yelled to come in and wrapped the towel around my middle. Jack, the bellhop, stood there in a listening attitude, one ear cocked toward the door. Apparently he was satisfied with what he heard. “You know there's a bull downstairs.”

“Uh-huh. He tried following me awhile.”

“Slip 'im, huh?”

“Ran away from him. He's not very fast.”

“That true stuff about you being the guy who knocked off the D. A.?”

“A lot of people seem to think so.”

“What do
you
think?”

I gave him a hurt look and climbed into my shorts. “Now what would I want to knock off a D.A. for?”

He grinned at me slyly as if I had spilled the whole thing. “You had a visitor before. A mummy.”

“Yeah, I know. I could smell him.”

“That was Tucker. He's a son of a bitch. You and him tangled, hah?”

“In a minor sort of a way I belted the crap out of him. Why you handing out all that nice information?”

The grin came back. “You give me a fin. He didn't. Besides, he's been on my neck a long time. The bastard wants his cut of everything that goes on and he gets it. Not from me though,” he added. “Anybody who takes him is a pal of mine.”

“Hi, pal. What's your racket? Everybody else in town seems to have one, so what's yours?”

“Women.”

“Good, send me two. A redhead and a brunette.”

“Okay, and you know what I said before. Anything you want, you holler. I like the way you messed up that bastard Tucker. Any more come busting in I'll give you a ring. There's an emergency exit and a service elevator down the hall. I'll leave the car on this floor so's you can use it if you hafta.”

He listened again and ducked out. I crawled into bed and shut my eyes. If was late as hell, but from the street noises you'd think it was the middle of the day.

If I did sleep it was only for about five minutes. The door opened again and the lights came on.

There was a redhead and a brunette standing there.

The redhead said, “Jack sent us.”

I let out a tired groan. “Tell Jack hello and to go to hell, will you.”

“But he said ...”

“I was only kidding. Honest, rm too tired.”

“Not
that
tired,” the brunette smiled. She walked over and whipped the cover off me. “I guess he is at that,” she told the redhead.

So they laughed and went out and I tried to get some sleep.

AT HALF PAST EIGHT I went downstairs and woke up the cop in the chair. I said, “I'm going out and eat. You want to come along or wait here?”

“Don't be a wise guy, Mac.” He squirmed out of the chair and shuffled off behind me.

I got on the street, looked over a place that seemed to suit my purpose, and went in and had breakfast. The cop took a table near the door and ordered coffee. I put some ham and eggs away, called for another round of toast and coffee and laid a buck on the table. The cop looked over, saw I was staying and ordered more coffee for himself.

The first time he stopped looking at me and glanced out the door I made my move. I got up, half ran for the kitchen door, shoved it open and stepped behind it. The chef looked at me coldly. “You want something?”

“Just wanted to say what a swell cook you are.”

He scowled and I went back where I came from.

The cop was gone.

I told the waiter the dough was on the table and went outside. Across the street was a drugstore with a grub counter and I hopped on the end stool. Thirty seconds later the cop came pounding back down the street with a police car screaming along behind. They all stopped in front of the restaurant and ran inside.

They came back right away, looked up and down the street and started arguing among themselves. Then Lindsey got out of the car and gave them hell.

He shouldn't have used such an old dodge. The fat cop was just a decoy I was supposed to duck and forget about, then the one they had planted behind the building waiting for me to come out would have picked me up as easy as eating pie.

Tucker found out right away that I wasn't such a goddamn sucker as he thought. With Lindsey it was going to take awhile. I ordered some more coffee and waited for them to scram.

When the counterman came back I asked him where the public library was and he drew me a diagram on the back of a menu. I paid him, stuck the menu in my pocket and took off down the street.

The library was a new building three stories high on the block backing up the main drag. It was set in the middle of a half-acre lot that had a playground on one side and a parking space on the other. Right next to the door a bronze plaque was inscribed “Lyncastle Public Library. Donated by the Lyncastle Business Group.” It made a nice chunk of bribery, a monument to the effectiveness of having a town wide open. That Servo lad knew what he was doing.

A girl in her early twenties was sitting at a desk inside the door trying to make like she wasn't chewing gum. I said, “I'd like to take a look at some newspapers. Where are they?”

“Current ones?”

“No. These go back six or seven years or so.”

“Oh, well, they'll be downstairs.” She pointed over her shoulder to an arch. “Take those stairs right there. Everything is arranged by the date and you won't have any trouble finding them. Please put them back the same way.”

I said I would, thanked her and went back through the arch.

It took about twenty minutes to get what I wanted. It was a copy of the
Lyncastle News
six years, two months and nine days old. There were banner headlines in big, black type that said, “District Attorney Killed.” I scanned the copy and picked out the facts. He had been shot in his office with a .38 revolver stolen a year before from a pawnshop. The police were making no comment on the shooting except to hint that the killer was known to them.

The rest of it was a flashback over the past year and I went back to where it seemed to have started and picked it up from there.

The beginning came not long after the cities on the perimeter of Lyncastle voted an option and kicked out liquor. A business survey noted that the gin mills in town were booming with new trade and Lyncastle was enjoying the mild prosperity that went with it. The original residents were the kind of people who believed in as few laws as possible, so nothing was ever done about gambling. The police were having some trouble with minor infractions of the law because of the wide-open situation, but since it was all confined to a small area it was a matter passed over lightly.

Someone introduced a resolution in the City Council to outlaw gambling, but it got beaten down because nobody wanted to give up the sudden influx of new dough. The argument was that the
status quo
would remain as it was and not increase and since the situation wasn't out of hand why worry about it?

That was real nice. It was perfect.

The
status quo
got un-statused in a hurry. Almost overnight the town blossomed out in some of the fanciest gambling houses ever seen and the good citizens were caught with their pants down. When a half-dozen people got themselves killed one way or another the D. A. launched a probe to get to the bottom of things.

The next paper to throw any light on the matter was a Sunday sheet. A nosy reporter had dug up some dope on one Lenny Servo who had established residence in town a year before. He was red hot out of the East with some nice charges against him, but had enough dough stashed away to reach the right people and had extradition proceedings squashed in court. Evidently he had spent so much he was flat broke, but Lenny was a real promoter and in no time at all he had himself a bank roll and was in the real-estate business. It later developed that the properties he picked up were strategically located for gambling purposes and he was having a rapid turnover in buildings and lots.

Robert Minnow had him in court twice without finding out where his money had come from and for a couple of months nothing more was said. Then the D. A. pulled out the stops and at an annual Town Hall dinner affair, gave out the news that Lyncastle was in the hands of a criminal element whose hands were in the city's pockets and around the necks of every citizen in town. He was after certain conclusive evidence that would lay several murders at the feet of the right people and promised to expose one of the biggest scandals of all time.

He never got around to doing it because a week later he was dead.

That's where John McBride came into it.

Me.

Upon complaint of the State Auditor, the District Attorney's office was conducting an investigation of the National Bank of Lyncastle's books. A check revealed that the bank was short two hundred thousand smackeroos and one John McBride, a teller on vacation, had juggled the books in a neat, but not neat enough manner. The D. A. had a warrant out for his arrest.

During that time somebody knocked off Minnow. He was found dead in his office at ten o'clock at night by a cleaning woman. The gun was on the floor, the corpse behind the desk and whoever had let him have it had stepped inside, pulled the trigger and blown without anybody being the wiser. The coroner stated that he had been killed about an hour before his body was found and a later police report said nobody had seen the killer enter or leave. For a week the police made vague hints, then Captain Lindsey came out with the statement that the killer was John McBride, the motive revenge, and before the month was out the guy would be standing trial.

It must have been a long month for Lindsey.

Well, there it was in a nice little package. Robert Minnow's rising star had been nipped just short of its peak by a dirty bank absconder. I even made some of the out-of-state papers.

I folded them up carefully and slid them back into the racks. Then I stood there looking at them. Inside, I had a vaguely unpleasant feeling, a gnawing doubt that told me I could be wrong and if I was I would hang for the mistake. The basement got cold and damp suddenly.

But it wasn't the basement. It was me. It was that damn doubt telling me it could have happened that way after all and my lovely crusade was nothing but a fool's errand.