“What did Dekkert want with you, Poochie? Why did those creeps give you the Third Degree and then some?”
He shook his head just a little. “Yellow-haired lady.”
“What yellow-haired lady?”
“They say she’s gone. I live down the beach.”
“Down the beach from the yellow-haired lady?”
A little nod, then a wince at the pain it caused.
I asked, “Who is she?”
“Not nice. Not very nice.”
“They think you saw something, because you live near where she lives?”
Another little nod. Another wince.
Velda said, “Better lay off with the twenty questions, Mike.”
I stood, put my hands on my hips.
“Some gal with yellow hair is missing, and Dekkert wants to know where she went. Judging by the beating he gave Poochie here, Dekkert wants to know bad.”
Velda frowned. “Apart from any official police interest, you think?”
“Not necessarily. Typical of these towns to perform their rubber-hose symphonies well away from the station house and out of uniform. That alley makes perfect sense. This town rolls up its sidewalks at sundown, this time of year, with no tourists around.”
“Almost no tourists,” Velda said.
There was a knock.
“There’s the doc now,” Velda said.
“Is it?” I asked softly.
I went to the bed where I had tossed my suitcase. I opened it, and slipped the. 45 Colt automatic out of its sling where it slept like a baby on my clean underwear. But babies can wake up screaming…
I thumbed off the safety and kicked the slide back and went to the door.
“Yeah?” I said, pointing the snout right where my visitor would be standing.
“It’s Moody!” a gruff, age-colored voice called. “This better be important, Mike. I was watching wrestling.”
Maybe he’d been down in the bar and I’d missed him.
I raised the snout of the. 45, undid the night latch on the door, and opened it. Moody stepped in wearing a wrinkled suit and no tie with his Gladstone bag in hand. He was heavy-set but not fat, white-haired, with a friendly face whose drink-reddened nose held up a pair of wire-rim bifocal glasses.
“So it’s our resident beachcomber, is it?” he said idly, giving me a nod to acknowledge my presence. Not much of a greeting, considering after our last evening together I had paid for his night of drinking and hauled his booze-sodden carcass home.
He did more than just nod at Velda. He gave her the kind of smiling, appreciative once-over old men can get away with, taking in a good-looking young gal. He shook his head, sighed, remembering times long past, and gave me a frown that said, You lucky bastard.
I clicked the safety on the. 45 and shoved it in my waistband.
The doc looked Poochie over for a good ten minutes. He didn’t ask him anything that couldn’t be answered with a nod or a shake of the head. He approved of Velda’s first-aid routine, but had Poochie stand for us to get him out of his ragged clothes and down to his skivvies. The doc went over the cuts and abrasions with alcohol-soaked cotton balls while the little guy squirmed.
Then he gave Poochie a shot and had us walk him over to the bed, where we got him under the covers. Within seconds, the little guy was snoring.
“I don’t mind saving his tail,” I said to the doc, “but I am not sleeping with that character. Should I get another room?”
“I’ll have Percy on the desk send up a rollaway for you, Mike. Somebody needs to be in the room with him tonight.”
“How bad is it?”
Moody shrugged. “Surprisingly, not near as bad I would expect. No teeth missing. No indication of internal bleeding. No broken ribs, at least apparently. We’ll see if we can get Poochie to come in for some X-rays, tomorrow or the next day. But I will say, it’s probably a good thing you came along.”
I grunted a laugh. “Dekkert is an old pro at delivering police beatings. He knows just how to mete out punishment and stop short of creating evidence of police brutality.”
“A bad apple, all right. He’s the deputy chief, but really, he runs things. Chief Beales is local and that helps him get elected. But Beales is soft, a figurehead.”
“Corrupt, though?”
“Oh, certainly. You haven’t been around in a while, Mike. Things have changed in Sidon.”
“Care to fill me in?”
“Maybe later. Over a drink, perhaps.”
“Sure, Doc. Listen, is Poochie here slow? You know, simple?”
“You mean retarded? No. But he is on the slow side. I suspect he suffered a trauma, perhaps physical, perhaps mental, when he was young. He’s something of an idiot savant.”
“Well, is he an idiot or not, Doc?”
He chuckled. “I mean to say, he has an artistic gift that may surprise you. Ask to see his shell collection, while you’re around.”
That sounded like a blast.
I asked, “You know of any yellow-haired women in town?”
“Why, certainly. We even have a redhead and a brunette or two. And at the moment, we have a particularly lovely black-haired beauty.”
He nodded to Velda, gathered his Gladstone bag, and took his leave.
“Nice old boy,” Velda said.
“I like him fine. I just wouldn’t want to live in a town where his sobriety stood between me and a scalpel.”
“That’s mean, Mike. Of course, there’s nothing worse than a reformed drunk.”
“Is that what I am? A reformed drunk?”
“Mike,” Velda smiled, her voice low so as not to disturb our slumbering guest, “you’re not a reformed anything.”
She gathered her overnight bag, and Poochie’s dirty, bloody clothes, saying, “I’ll wash these.” Then she blew me a kiss and was gone.
Almost immediately a knock at the door had me figuring she might have changed her mind. But I took my. 45 along, anyway.
It was the rollaway.
The clerk himself brought it-they were clearly short on help before the season started. He seemed to want a tip, but I reminded him about the fin I’d already slipped him.
I had the rollaway unfolded and ready when the phone on the nightstand rang and I got to it before it could disturb Poochie. Not that the sedative the doc gave him would be easily pierced.
“Hammer,” I said.
“Mr. Hammer,” a mid-range, unctuous voice intoned, “this is Chief of Police Bernard Beales.”
Well, whoop de do.
“Chief Beales,” I said. “A pleasure.”
“Is it, Mr. Hammer?”
“Yeah, and I’m glad you called. Are you aware your deputy chief and two of his pals were beating up a poor little local guy they call Poochie? Right out in public? I had to put a stop to it. Of course, I didn’t know they were cops. They were acting more like a goon squad.”
“I see. Is that how you’re going to play it?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Do I have to come over to the hotel and have you brought in, Mr. Hammer?”
“No. In fact, I wouldn’t advise that. But I’ll be glad to come by some time in the morning and straighten this matter out myself.”
“You would give yourself up?”
“Why, is there a charge leveled against me?”
“No. Not at this time.”
“Fine. Then let’s talk about it in the morning. I had kind of a busy evening.”
“First thing in the morning, then.”
“No, Chiefie. Some time in the morning. I’m on vacation. I want to have a nice breakfast and who knows? I might want to take a constitutional along your lovely beach. Surely you want to let me know, as a tourist and the backbone of local economy, that I can come to Sidon and be confident of having a nice getaway.”
“Some time tomorrow morning then,” he huffed, and hung up.
But I said, “Nighty night, Chiefie,” just the same.
Time to beat the sheets. I’d had enough vacation fun for one evening.
CHAPTER TWO
Poochie’s shack was a dilapidated affair, rudely constructed from boards drifted in off the tide, that probably never survived a winter without being blown down at least twice. Coming down from a dune, you could see its weathered tin roof displaying faded ads for hot dogs and soft drinks. Trailing after the little guy, Velda and I were pooped by the time we reached his place-we parked the car a good mile away and had to walk the remainder of the distance in ankle-deep sand.