Pete muttered something and there was a little silence. Then Ellsworth Grange’s voice pussy-footed over the wire. “Yes?”
“Barlow at this end.”
“Indeed? I wondered when you would condescend to communicate with us.”
I yawned into the mouthpiece. “I just got out of bed.”
“Ah. Recuperating from the tea date, I venture.”
“Something like that. You know how it is... one thing leads to another. I dragged the body home at daylight after putting in a strenuous night for the dear old Bugle.”
“I trust you have some definite results to show.”
“I’m not any Man-of-War,” I protested. “Give me time.”
“The man is known by the results he achieves,” Grange informed me sententiously.
“I’ve been working too hard and need a vacation. Believe I’ll run up to Jax for a couple of days.”
“I don’t believe I understand you, Barlow.”
I yawned into the telephone again. “I’m catching the seven o’clock train. Thought I’d tell you so you wouldn’t worry.”
“This has gone far enough,” Grange told me severely. “The Bugle cannot countenance such blatant disregard of duty. I’m quite sure your work will not permit you to afford any such preposterous...”
“Don’t worry about me affording it. It’ll all come to you on the swindle sheet.” I hung up on Grange’s gasp of astonished anger, and took another drink.
Then I dug a tiny .25 automatic out of my trunk, loaded it to the hilt and wiped off all the fingerprints. I had accumulated it from a floosie in Baltimore a couple of years ago. She was trying to get up nerve to use it on herself when I bought her a drink and convinced her that there was a silver lining.
It was pearl-handled and dainty, but deadly as hell at close range.
I had a pair of soft rubber gloves in my pocket when I drove away from the hotel just before dark. I had called Lucile’s hotel and been informed that she was not in.
I had a funny feeling in my stomach as I drove across the causeway. The deck lights of an outgoing liner were brilliant on my right. An orchestra was playing on the upper deck, and the rails were lined with passengers. Lucky fools — not to have anything more important to do. It was getting dark in a hurry, and I stepped on the gas to be not late to the rendezvous.
It was fully dark when I parked the coupe on a side street half a block from the ocean drive.
I pulled on the rubber gloves as I went down a walk toward the beach where long combers were rolling in. The park and beach was practically deserted at this hour. I skirted a crowd of picnickers and went toward a bulky figure standing alone near the water’s edge. He had a felt hat pulled low over his face, but I recognized Green’s stance.
My rubber-gloved right hand went into my pocket and brought out the .25, so small that it fitted snugly in the palm, perfectly concealed.
I strolled toward Green, feeling pretty good to see that there was no one within eyesight of us, and subconsciously realizing that the sound of the combers breaking on shore were enough to cover up any sound I might make.
I went up to him and pushed back my hat so he could see my face. He leaned close and loosed a “Goddamn.”
I said, “It’s me, Green,” softly. “Want to take a walk?”
He grabbed me by the left arm and swung me around. “Not so fast,” he grunted.
I said, “You want to beg my pardon?” and held out my hand.
He screwed up his face into a snarl and stepped closer. “I just want...”
I’ll always wonder what Harry Green “just wanted.” I jammed the muzzle of the baby automatic against his belly and pulled the trigger, kept on pulling the trigger until it was empty.
It was funny how little noise the automatic made. I don’t believe it could have been heard ten feet away. Funny, too, how slowly and easily Green slumped to the sand. Like a slow motion picture. His body just seemed to fold up on itself like an accordion, as though he didn’t have any bones or joints.
I dropped the automatic on top of him, slipped Lucile’s glove underneath his outflung arm, dropped her earring on the sand nearby, then went hell-for-leather to my car and up the beach road.
Chapter 9
A Jacksonville morning paper carried the story. I read it while I ate breakfast in a little joint near the station. I could read Pete’s work all the way through.
Green’s body hadn’t been found until almost eight o’clock. That was all to the good for me. There were at least three men that would swear I was on the train at that time — and no reason for anyone to think I hadn’t boarded it in Miami.
It hadn’t taken them long to get on Lucile’s trail — led by Pete, I suppose. The cops were waiting for her when she came back from the wild goose chase Pete’s phone message had sent her on.
The glove and earring matched with ones found in her room, and it hadn’t taken the sleuths long to turn up the beating she’d taken from Green that morning.
The news story had it all added up to a first degree murder charge. There wasn’t a word about me in the two column spread. Green was characterized as a small-time gunman, and the papers couldn’t be blamed for making Lucile his moll.
I looked up a friend in the insurance business after breakfast, told him I’d been having bad dreams lately, and wanted another policy on my lousy life. We spent the morning in his office figuring on different policies, had lunch together, and I left him that afternoon with my promise to let him know which one I wanted.
I killed time with a couple of lads on a local paper, picking up a copy of the Bugle just before it was time to catch a night train back to Miami.
Pete had more than done himself proud on the hints I’d dropped. He had the case all sewed up, ready to deliver to a jury. I took a sleeper going back, woke up in Miami at seven in the morning of what turned out to be a hectic day.
A flatfoot picked me up at the station. He wasn’t any too polite about escorting me to a patrol car and up to the courthouse where the State’s Attorney was waiting to ask me plenty of questions.
He was Jerome Lester, a nice guy. Lucile had spilled the dope before Blattscomb got to her to shut her up, and Lester had it all down in black and white.
At that, it didn’t do him much good. He was apologetic about it when he started, and kept getting more so as I raved just enough and denied everything.
They couldn’t pin a damned thing on me. Lester got friendly after asking all the questions in his book, admitted that Lucile’s story looked like a desperate effort to drag an innocent man in with her.
I admitted knowing Lucile, admitted spending the night with her and being in her room that afternoon. Just to make it sound good, I put in a few details about Lucile being upset and how I’d had a premonition that she was going to pull something.
It went over swell. Lester was apologizing when I left his office at nine o’clock. As far as I could see, I was all the way in the open. The coast was clear for me to follow up the leads I’d collected.
A fat man was waiting at the elevator when I came out of Lester’s office. His jowls were blue-black, his nose was flat, flared at the base. He was bald and had the keenest eyes I ever saw.
He followed me into the elevator and touched my arm as it started down. “If I could have a word with you, Mr. Barlow.”
“More monkey business? I thought the trip to Lester’s office cleared it.”
He coughed and took a card from a pigskin case. I looked at it as we got out at the main floor. Herman Blattscomb!
I said: “I just got in from Jax. Walk up to my hotel with me?”
He nodded and we swung along Flagler without saying anything. I bought a Bugle and we went up to my room. The flatfoot had sent my bag up after shooing me into Lester’s office.