“What makes you think such a man is interested in my whereabouts, Mr. Rivers?”
“For now, I’ll just have to tell you that I have my reasons and let it go at that. If you know this man, it might be to your benefit to tell me.”
“The police will probably pick him up, if you’re thinking he might be dangerous to me.”
“Then again, they may not.” The closed hallway was sweltering. She didn’t seem to notice. I mopped sweat off my face with my handkerchief. “I have ways of finding out things about people, Mrs. Carton. Sometimes it takes time, but I always find out.”
Her laugh was the first sign of real animation in her. The idea of intrigue and possible danger seemed to enliven her.
“All right,” she said suddenly, “I did once know a man named Kincaid. He was, for a brief period, an overseer on my husband’s sugar plantation.”
“How brief a period?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A few weeks, months. He was a soldier of fortune sort of person. One of those sweaty Americans you find in odd corners of the world. He drifted on.”
“Before your husband... Before the...”
“Before my husband was murdered? You may state the fact in my presence, Mr. Rivers. Yes, it was before that.”
“Then Kincaid had no part in what happened to your husband?”
“Gracious, no.”
“Or in getting you out of Cuba?”
She shook her head. “No Americans were involved in that. Really, Mr. Rivers. This Kincaid of whom you’re speaking may not be the same man at all.”
“He’s here in Tampa.”
“I imagine there are Kincaids everywhere. It’s a fairly common name.”
“Not Kincaids in Tampa who have kicked around Latin America.”
“Why not? Ybor City is full of people who’ve sought refuge from tribulation in Latin America. You must have a specific reason for believing this particular man is interested in me. Has he said so?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Then...?”
“He was carrying a clipping, a news story in Spanish about your husband’s death.”
“It must have been months old.”
“It was.”
“Well!” she said in a sort of gasping sigh. “That’s really rather touching, if one is sentimental. Perhaps he is the same Kincaid after all. I didn’t know he was that fond of us.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“When he left the plantation. What happened is obvious, Mr. Rivers. Wherever he was at the time, he was shocked sufficiently by the news of R. D.’s death that he tore the clipping out.”
She was lost for a moment in memories. “Yes,” she said to herself, “it’s nice to know that he was that fond of us. I hope he’s in no real trouble, Mr. Rivers.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Well, he has no present connection with me. Isn’t that what you came to find out? If so, I’ll bid you buenos dias.”
With that, she went to the door where the horse-sized dog lurked. She opened the door and said, “Here, Nino.” She gave me a final nod and smile. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Rivers. If you see Mr. Kincaid, thank him also — for the emotional reaction he found in the clipping. I didn’t know he had it in him. I always thought of him as a dangerous kind of roughneck.”
I drove back across the Hillsborough River, which slices Tampa in half, and worried my way through the tangle of downtown traffic to the parking lot near the beatup old office building on Cass Street.
I went up and there was a notice from Western Union hanging on the office doorknob.
I keyed the door open. The outer office held a leather couch and couple of chairs. My desk was in the inner office, along with a steel filing cabinet. The place was stifling. I crossed the inner office and opened the windows. The bustle of Tampa drifted to me.
I sat down at the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed Western Union.
The telegram they’d tried to deliver was from New Orleans. It stated: “Deposit box here registered to Maria Blake. Source says box holder was in town at bank opening this morning. Hope this helps.”
I hung up the phone, toyed idly at the cover of the old Underwood, and rocked back in my chair.
Maria Blake Scanlon, it appeared, hadn’t been lying. She’d taken my advice and gone to New Orleans. It was my guess she was back by now. There were direct plane flights between Tampa and New Orleans, and a relatively short, quick hop over the Gulf. She’d bounced over, got her jewels, and bounced right back to buy a little more of the relationship that made a travesty of marriage.
I was beginning to pick up the mail that had fallen through the slot in the outer office door, when the wooden box that caught the mail was pulled right out of my hands.
Lieutenant Steve Ivey hadn’t come alone. Flanking Ivey as he stood in the now-open doorway was a big cop in uniform.
I said hello and pardon me, and fished the last piece of mail out of the box as if I had nothing else in the world to do.
“Busy, Ed?” Ivey asked, following me inside.
“Nope. Except for the mail.” I crossed to the inner office, checked through the half dozen envelopes, found nothing of importance, and dropped them on my desk.
“What’s on your mind, Steve?”
“I want to ask you a couple of questions.”
“What about?”
“A dwarf.”
“Come again?”
“Erstwhile trapeze artist. One time high-liver and freewheeling spender. Lately down on his luck. Namely — Gaspar the Great.”
“What’s with him?”
“He’s dead,” Ivey said. “Got his brains knocked out. Fellow working for the city sanitation department found him about three hours ago. Someone had hidden the undersized corpse for a few hours by dropping it in a thirty-gallon garbage can in an Ybor City alley.”
Chapter Fifteen
I went around the desk and sat down. I needed a few seconds.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Steve.”
“You knew him, of course?”
“Certainly.”
“He isn’t pretty now.”
“Poor little guy never was.”
“You want to come over to headquarters and talk about him?”
“No flies in this office,” I said.
“This is official, Ed.”
“Okay.” I stood up. “What are we waiting for?”
We went downstairs and got in a cruiser that was parked at the curb. We drew the usual curious glances from passersby.
The uniformed cop acted as chauffeur. Ivey got in the back seat with me, taking off his floppy panama hat and mopping his peeled-egg pate. He looked like somebody’s uncle, with or without the hat.
We rode the few blocks to headquarters, and I walked with Ivey to his office.
He got a drink at the water cooler in the corner of the office and hung the hat on a nearby hook.
“Have a chair,” he said, going behind his desk.
He waited until I’d seated myself in the heavy wooden chair at the end of the desk.
“Ed, what’s going on amongst the little people in this town, the midget and dwarf citizens who colonized here in the days of the carnies?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“I think you do. Tina La Flor tried to contact you. She disappeared. Gaspar the Great called you from a bar last night. It’s the last trace we have of him alive. He’s found dead several hours later. You get our point of view?”
“Sure. You want some answers, and I don’t blame you.”
He studied me for a moment. I met his gaze blandly. I was feeling differently inside. It had been no great trick, with Gaspar the Great dead, to trace his movements and find that he’d called me. I wondered if Ivey planned next to hit me with the connection between Gaspar’s tip to me and the Aeron shooting. A corpse named Smith and one named Gaspar were isolated items in the files, bearing no relationship — unless Ivey knew why Gaspar had called me. Then the implication would jump right out of the files and slap him in the face.