It sprawled out around a sheltered bay: a white, glittering town of skyscrapers, beach huts, plushy looking hotels, gay sun umbrellas, tropical shrubs and trees. It looked as immaculate and as contented as a showgirl who has just been given a diamond bracelet.
A closer inspection, as I reached the long, busy main street, told me this was a rich man’s town. Rolls Royces, Bentleys, Cadillacs and Daimlers cluttered up the parking lots. Well-fed, well-dressed men sat in the cars, drumming impatiently on the steering wheel while they waited for their wives to have done with their shopping, or sat at cafes, staring insolently at the lightly clad lovelies who displayed their charms with equal insolence.
I told myself Bernie would like this town. I didn’t dislike my first look of it myself. I spotted an empty place in one of the parking lots and swung the Buick into it, cut the engine and got out.
The sun beat down on me as I walked across to a drug store to ask the way to Havelock Drive where Don Bradley lived.
The clerk told me as if he were doing me a favour. His sharp eyes appeared to have the facility of peeping into my wallet and counting my money. From his expression I gathered he didn’t think much of me, and it was obvious my arrival gave him no pleasure.
A tall girl in a backless blue swim-suit, doughnut sized sunglasses and a straw hat the size of a cart-wheel drifted into the store as I was leaving. She had a bracelet of diamonds around her left ankle that must have set some sucker back a small fortune.
The clerk went over to her with a deference that’s usually reserved for royalty. Money in Tampa City obviously talked.
I went back to the car.
A cop who from the rear could have been mistaken for Primo Camera, leaned against the car and stared at me as I approached with a stolid, impersonal expression and with cold, unfriendly eyes.
‘This yours?’ he asked nodding at the car as if it were beneath his dignity even to notice it.
‘That’s right,’ I said mildly.
I didn’t know what his grouse was going to be, but I didn’t have to be psychic to see he had a grouse.
‘You’re in Tampa City now,’ he said, biting off each word. ‘We like cars parked straight here. Your rear wheels are over the white line.’
I looked over at the glittering Rolls Royce parked next to my car. Its off-side wheels were over the white line by three feet, but after all it was a 1954 Rolls and not a 1940 Buick.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m a stranger in town.’
He held out a hand that could have been mistaken for a bunch of bananas in a poor light.
‘Licence.’
I gave him my licence. He brooded over it as if he wasn’t too sure of the longer words, then took out a leather case containing a pad of forms and began to write laboriously.
‘Staying long?’ he growled at me without looking up.
‘I don’t imagine so. I doubt if I’ll be able to afford to.’
He let that one drift, ripped out the sheet he had written on and poked it at me.
‘Five bucks.’
I gave him the five dollars without blinking an eyelash and accepted the receipt. I had been warned by Creed, and Fayette was paying, so why should I care?
The cop seemed surprised there was no fuss.
‘Be careful next time.’
‘I’ll buy myself a spirit level and a T-square,’ I said. ‘I’ll see she’s properly lined up next time I leave her.’
He licked the stub of pencil and wrote down my number. His eyes were no warmer than an iceberg. I could see he would look out for me in the future.
I got into the car.
‘Okay for me to move on?’
He gave me a long, hard stare and walked away. He looked from the back like a small mountain that had grown legs. A nudge from him would have shoved in my ribs.
I drove away, aware that I was sweating slightly and not because of the heat. If this kind of thing was going to happen often, I thought, my temper and nerves would almost certainly become frayed.
Lincoln Drive was in the poorer quarter of Tampa City: that is to say the houses were smaller, and didn’t stand in a couple of acres of screened estates as ninety-nine percent of the rest of the houses in Tampa City did. It was a tree-lined street tucked away as if ashamed of itself, but a street that I would have been glad to live in.
A big, fat, solid-looking man was fussing over a row of sweet peas a professional would have been proud to have grown in the garden of No. 24. I guessed he must be Bradley. He glanced up as I swung the Buick to the kerb.
He looked every inch a cop; but not a bad cop. His fat weather-beaten face had a half humorous expression that went well with a pair of alert blue eyes. A straggling moustache, a sun-burned, balding head and an aggressive chin gave him character plus toughness instead of just plain toughness.
I got out of the car and he wandered down the garden path to meet me.
‘Captain Bradley?’ I asked, resting my hands on the gate.
‘Sure, come in,’ he said.
‘Will the car be all right? I’ve already been pinched for parking out of line.’
He laughed.
‘The car’s fine. They don’t make pinches outside my house. Come on in.’
I followed him up the path.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen sweet peas like those before,’ I said, not to butter the old boy, but because I meant it.
‘They’re pretty good. You a gardener?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘Gardening’s for the middle-aged and the old. I’d be lost without a garden now.’
He led me into a neat, comfortably furnished sitting-room with casement windows opening out on to the lawn.
‘I didn’t get your name.’
‘Chet Sladen.’
He lifted a bushy eyebrow.
‘You the fella who writes in Crime Facts?’
‘That’s right.’
He beamed.
‘I’m glad to know you. I read all your stuff. Sit down. How about a drink?’
‘Thanks.’
While he was making drinks he said, ‘This is your first visit to Tampa City?’
‘Yes; pretty nice looking town. Looks as if it’s loaded with dough.’
‘It is. Some say there’s more loose money here than in Hollywood. We have thirteen millionaires living here right at this minute. Anyone with less than a five figure income is trash in Tampa City.’ He came over with the drinks and lowered his bulk into an armchair. ‘Well, here’s to you.’
We drank, then I handed him Greed’s letter.
‘This is an introduction, Captain,’ I said. ‘From Captain Creed.’
Bradley’s face lit up.
‘Well, well, I haven’t heard from Tom for years. How is he?’
‘He’s fine. He and I have been working on a case. A lead has turned up here. He thought it might be an idea if I investigated it.’
Bradley looked sharply at me, opened the letter, read it, then returned it to the envelope before saying, ‘Hmm, so you’re thinking of investigating a lead here, are you?’
‘That’s the idea. I understand Doonan doesn’t encourage that kind of thing.’
‘That’s an understatement. If you’ll take the advice of an old man, Mr. Sladen, you’ll get in your car and go back to Welden. The atmosphere in Welden, as far as I remember is a lot healthier than here.’
‘I know, but I have a job to do. I was hoping for a little help from you.’
‘I’m out of the running now. I haven’t been inside headquarters for over a year. There’s not much I can do. Care to tell me what it’s all about?’
I made myself comfortable and took him through the whole story.
He sat still, his eyes half closed, listening intently. I had an idea by the time I had finished, he hadn’t missed a word.