“If you really want to find Kincaid and Smith,” Lessard said, turning from the rail, “try Jacksonville.”
“On your say-so?”
“Don’t be such a bear, Ed,” D. D. said. “I’d go with you. You could keep your eye on me every minute.”
Sure, I thought, until Lessard had time to do whatever was necessary here.
The thought must have reflected on my face.
“My, my,” D. D. said, “aren’t we suspicious!”
“I’ll think it over,” I told her. “Thanks for the dinner, Lessard.”
I went forward, climbing over the side, and began manhandling the flat-bottom toward the lights on shore.
I heard the sound of her cleave the water. She came up a few feet from the flat-bottom, her face and hair a white sculptured image rising out of the dark water.
Playfully, she splashed water toward me. The shower of drops lived with a brief phosphorescent glow. A few of them reached me, falling warmly on my face and chest.
“Think quickly, Ed,” she called softly. “Jax would be a lot of fun.”
Then she treaded water as the flat-bottom moved away from her.
I went home, stripped to my waist, toweled the sweat off my chest, and opened a can of beer. It was so cold it hurt my teeth.
I called Western Union and sent a telegram to New Orleans. It requested the agency man there to find out if any New Orleans bank had a safety deposit box registered to Maria Blake, or Maria Blake Scanlon, or Maria Scanlon. If she had a box, I’d assume it wasn’t empty, but held the jewels, as she’d said.
I didn’t feel easy about the telegram, and wouldn’t have sent it if I could have avoided it. I wasn’t worried about difficulties the New Orleans office might encounter. I knew I’d get the information.
It was the thought of the Home Office that had me bugged. Routine reports from New Orleans were going to raise the question as to what I was doing in Tampa, what was going on here.
If I got out of this thing, I’d have an explanation the Home Office would understand and accept. If not, an explanation wouldn’t be very important.
Bogged in the morass of the moment, I already seemed to have more than I could handle. I didn’t know how close Ivey and the Tampa police were to me — and the murderer of Bucks Jordan was no doubt thinking of his own future, not knowing how close I was to him.
Pressure or action from the Home Office right now might easily mean the coup de grâce for me.
I carried the empty beer can to the kitchenette garbage pail. As if the clink of the can were a signal, the phone rang. I returned to the phone, picked it up.
I said hello, and was asked if this was Ed Rivers, and I said that it was.
“You asked me about a couple parties,” he said, his voice almost smothered by the sounds of juke box music and laughter in the background. Even so, I recognized the gravelly little voice. It belonged to Gaspar the Great.
“Where are you calling from, Gaspar?”
“Never mind that. A bar. It doesn’t matter which one.”
“You sound shook, pal.”
“No,” he denied. Too quickly. “I’m just trying to do you a favor, that’s all. If you want those two parties, why don’t you try room 212 at the Aeron Hotel?”
“Thanks, Gaspar.”
“Ed... I’m putting a lot of trust in you.”
“They’ll never know who told me,” I said. “You can depend on that.”
“I will. I have to now, don’t I?”
“Gaspar...” I said his name quickly, but the connection was already broken, leaving me with the question of how he’d known where Kincaid and Smith were located.
Chapter Thirteen
The Aeron was located on the edge of Ybor City, where the narrow streets of Spain yield to the broader thoroughfares of downtown America.
Years ago, before the widespread acceptance of the motel, the Aeron had been a first-class commercial establishment, the sort catering to traveling salesmen and civic club luncheons. Even now it retained a struggling respectability. Cheap, new paper was on the walls of the lobby. There were potted palms, and couches and chairs with slip covers to hide their age.
A few elderly people were clustered at one end of the lobby playing cards and chatting, retired folk for whom inflation had clobbered annuities and pensions that had once promised the inclusion of a few luxuries at the close of life.
I spotted the stairs in the far corner of the lobby next to the old-fashioned iron grille of the elevator. The desk clerk was a comfortably fat old man who took off his glasses now and then to polish them as he read a newspaper.
On the sidewalk outside one of the tall windows that gave on the lobby, I waited until the switchboard demanded the clerk’s attention. Then I entered, strolled across the lobby, and used the stairs.
The second floor corridor was long and narrow. A threadbare runner stretched the length of the floor to the red exit light at the further end.
A couple of ancient overhead fans creaked their wide blades sluggishly, stirring the dead, empty heat. I heard no sounds of life as I padded toward the door with the numerals 212.
Standing close to the door, I thought of the confines of the car trunk and the agony of smothering in air that no longer held life. The heat seemed to seep into my blood and brains.
I knocked softly with my knuckle. There was no response.
Kincaid and Smith were out.
But we could wait — the heat and I, and the gun snugged against my belly and the memory of being buried alive in a car trunk.
The door had a spring lock. I opened it with the steel on my keyring and stepped quickly inside the room.
From across the street, a neon sign spilled a rose haze into the room. I stood against the door, letting my eyes get accustomed to the gloom.
The room was run-of-the-mill. There were two three-quarters beds, a bureau, chest of drawers, writing table. One door opened on a small bath, another to a large closet.
I drew the old-fashioned roller blinds and turned on a small lamp that was on the writing table.
I searched the chest of drawers and bureau quickly. Several of the drawers were empty. Others held socks, handkerchiefs, underwear and shirts. Loose change, an empty cigarette package, and pocket comb with a few missing teeth lay on the bureau where one of them had carelessly emptied his pockets.
Nearly a dozen suits, all of good cut and quality, were in the closet, along with slacks, jackets, changes of shoes.
I went through the garments, coming up with a find composed of tobacco crumbs, book matches, broken toothpicks, and a sheaf of papers from an inner coat pocket.
I carried the papers to the writing table. There were a few blank counter checks from a local bank, a folded, dog-eared story that had been torn from a Spanish language newspaper. I put my foreign vocabulary to work and got the idea the story concerned the execution of a man named Carton. Many months old, the story stated that Cuban authorities had tried Carton for treason to the state and as an enemy of the people. His multimillions of dollars worth of holdings in Cuba had been expropriated by the state. His widow, with the connivance of traitors, had escaped Cuba to take refuge in her native. United States, where a few more million of Carton money was invested.
The story continued with the usual propaganda blather about the evils of everything Yanqui.
The remaining papers were an Aeron Hotel bill and a small city map of Tampa.
I went over the story again to see if I could improve my Spanish. I’d about got the gist of it. I impressed Carton’s name and initials on my mind. R. D. Carton.
I heard the muffled sound of voices in the corridor and turned off the lamp.