The motor court was a two-story Y-shaped building a block long, the two prongs of the Y set at an angle against the shoreline, which had been filled in here and there and otherwise contrived so that from every room in the court a bit of blue water could be seen. There was a large swimming pool in the juncture of the Y, then a hedge of Australian pine and beyond that a string of cabanas on the beach. Down one side of the court was a deep wide gash that served as a harbor for visiting yachts and small craft.
Zavelli’s restaurant and night club was set apart from the main building, connected to it by an arcade with small shops. There was dancing on the secluded roof of the club and pale tuneless music glittered in the air.
They told me inside I could find Zavelli on the roof. I went up the outside stairway. There was iron grill-work around the parapet and some kind of hedge. The dance floor and the ring of tables were on different levels. A man in a dinner jacket stopped me under the entrance arch.
“You don’t go in without a tie.”
“Zavelli in there?”
“Maybe.”
“You go and tell him Pete Mallory wants him.”
He looked me over with a calm practiced eye. “What was the name?”
I told him again.
“It don’t mean nothing to me.”
“It rhymes with Macy Barr.”
His monotonous stare broke up. “Wait here,” he said. He went inside. I watched a tired tango on the dance floor below. He came back and took me to a table in one corner of the shelf above the dance floor. Zavelli sat there in a built-up chair. He had a normal-sized head, but his body was stunted, the arms grotesquely short, shoulders narrow and sloping.
“Sit down,” he said in a yawning voice. There was an intermission below and a shuffle of feet past his isolated table, a crackle of female laughter. He watched the dancers go by with no change of expression. “How’s Macy these days?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve heard things.” He looked at me with a hint of expectancy. “What can I do you for?”
“You got a boy named Winkie Gilmer?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he do?”
“I use him downstairs. Keeps things orderly.”
“Kind of a waste of his talents, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know he had any.”
“You know as well as I do that he’s a hired gun and anything he does around here is a blind. Don’t stall me, Zavelli. I want him. Right now. He’s up to his ears with me. You get him or you close down.”
His thin chest quaked. “He ain’t been around in a couple of days.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“He hire out much?”
“I — don’t know. That’s his business.”
“Who sent him here?”
He tipped a glass to his lips, holding it with both miniature hands. “Groaner. From Cleveland.”
“To do whose work?”
“I don’t know. I don’t ask.”
“Any more in town like him?”
He turned the sorrowful eyes on me. “Couldn’t tell you, Mallory. I stick close to my place. I don’t hear everything that goes on.”
“All right. Forget it. I want to see Gilmer’s room.”
Zavelli raised one of his short arms high. Near the entrance, the man in the dinner jacket was leaning against one of the posts of the ivy-roofed arch. He came to the table.
“Take him to Gilmer’s room,” Zavelli said. The man glanced at me curiously. We went downstairs and walked through the arcade and entered the lobby of the motel. He took a key from the desk and we went to Gilmer’s room. He stood by the door while I looked around.
There was a single bed, night stand, three chairs, desk, dresser, all made of bleached wood. There was no suitcase in the closet. A beach robe and a wrinkled sport shirt were on hangers, and a pair of canvas shoes was stacked in a corner like nervous feet. A Polaroid camera with flash attachment in a leather carrying case hung from a hook on the closet door.
In one of the desk drawers I found a folder of pictures. All of them had been taken with the Polaroid. There were all kinds of women in the pictures, most of them young, some trying hard to seem young, women in beds, bathtubs, automobiles. Some wore an occasional article of clothing, some were happily getting rid of it. Most wore nothing. Winkie was a souvenir hunter.
I turned the wastebasket upside down but it was empty. So were the dresser drawers. A big Zenith portable radio and his little camera seemed to be Winkie’s chief amusements. I checked the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and found only suntan oil, dull razor blades.
“You know Gilmer?” I said to the man in the dinner jacket. He nodded mechanically, his jaw grinding chewing gum.
“What kind of car’s he drive?”
“Buick Century. New.”
“He got any girlfriends around this place?”
The man laughed drily. “Mister, Winkie’s had ’em all.”
I grinned a little. I took out the .38 automatic and let him get a good look at it. He couldn’t take his eyes away. He wasn’t that kind of tough guy—yet.
I jacked a shell out of the chamber and the slide slammed forward. I bounced the cartridge in my hand, tossed it at him. He caught it and held it with two fingers.
“You see Winkie around here any time soon,” I said, “give him that.” I put the .38 away and walked past him into the hall.
“And tell him I’ve got six more just like it I’m going to stick square in his gut the first time I see him.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was eleven o’clock when I drove down the causeway to the island and was let through the gate by a hobbling Rudy. The house was quiet.
Macy Barr wasn’t in his study. The door was open slightly and a lamp on the desk was lighted. I pushed the door out of the way and went inside, intending to wait for him there.
In one corner, near the desk, there was a small safe. The door hadn’t been shut tightly. Macy probably kept money for household expenses in the safe. A tightening excitement concentrated my attention on that safe. It would be a good place for keeping certain papers close at hand. Not his own papers, but a file of reports and notes about, and signed by, other men over whom it was necessary to exercise control.
I walked closer to the flimsy little safe, feeling almost giddy with anticipation. If I could find it, I thought. If I could find the letter—
The safe door opened readily, squeaking slightly. I ignored the packages of small bills, leafed through the contents of a clasp envelope, glancing at the first paragraphs of letters that were meaningless to me, looking for the address of a New York sanitarium on the fronts of the old envelopes stuck here and there in the collection of papers. I was too intent on my search to hear Macy when he came in.
“Pete. Pete!”
I shoved the bulky envelope back into the safe and jerked around. Macy watched me with a furious expression that slowly changed to one of mere tiredness.
“You know,” he said, “I’ve got a gun in this pocket. In the old days, or just a couple of years ago, I’d have shot you dead without even asking you what you thought you were doing.”
I stood up, unable to say anything, my mouth tight with apprehension. He never took his eyes off me. He pulled the .45 out of the pocket of his robe an inch at a time. He glanced down at it in exasperation, let it drop back.
“So you want the letter,” Macy said. “What were you going to do with it, Pete? Rip it up and burn it and go your way?”