“I’ll try to remember the loss of that little old man when the time comes,” I said. I stood up. “Thanks for everything.”
“Be careful, Ed.”
“Don’t worry on that score. I’d rather be called cautious than corpse. I’ll be in touch by phone when necessary. If you don’t hear from me right away, don’t worry. Ivey’ll get around to a routine contact with you. Don’t get yourself in trouble. Tell him I came here looking bushed, was a guest for the night, and skipped out before you heard I was the object of a manhunt. Right about now Ivey will be checking my office, the apartment, usual haunts.”
If Helen’s story to Ivey were to hold, I’d have to get out of the rooming house without being noticed, without his being able to prove what time I’d left this morning.
I paused in the lower hall. About me, the house was very quiet. I guessed the tenants had all gone to work. Outside was the normal car and pedestrian traffic. The best way to get out of the house without being noticed was to do nothing that would cause notice.
Just another human being, I calmly walked outside, got in the car, and drove away.
I knew that Ivey’s organized effort to find me would be most intense during the next forty-eight hours or so. After that, society itself would cause the pressure to taper off. As Ivey had said, murders, muggings, and mayhem didn’t cease just because he wanted to track down one man.
I disliked the waste of time, but I knew it would be smart not to gamble a greater waste. Also, I needed a chance to get over the treatment my body had taken during the last five days. Couple the emotional strain with a beating, a slugging, and a scorching, and you find a little tremor under the soreness of the muscles, and tiny naked spots on the nerve ends.
Time, I decided, would be ticking out an efficient job for me. That other man, the handy man with the blackjack, would have to sweat out knowing that I hadn’t died in the fire. I was still loose, neither maimed nor detained by the police, looking for him.
I needed a temporary lair, a safe den. I drove crosstown toward Ybor City. I’ve never picked on the little people over there; on occasion I’ve done a thing or two for a few of them. I did it with no thought of charity, merely because I couldn’t duck the fact that I was able to do it. I did it without expecting return, and I’ve found gradually that they attach a peculiar importance to that.
I stopped the car in the heart of Ybor City, among the little people. I mentioned my need with the fewest necessary words.
Ivey was licked right then in his immediate hunt for me.
I vanished.
Chapter 15
By Monday afternoon, other news had crowded me right out of the papers. I shed no tears over that. They’d had their fun, rehashing events from a triple murder to the killing of an ex-private detective and the burning of his body almost beyond recognition, this latter event apparently being the work of a second private detective who was trying to spring a client charged with the triple slaying.
During the weekend I had to buy fresh clothes. I knew the apartment would be staked out. Feeling much better, at least in the physical sense, I thanked the family that had given me protection and a rest cure for the weekend, and came out on the teeming street just before sundown.
At a corner beanery I was eating garbanzo soup with cold beer on the side, when I learned that Prince Kuriacha had connections of his own in Ybor City. The affluent former heavyweight king of wrestlers had dropped the word that he wanted to see me.
His address reached me via the waiter who brought deep-fried grouper and a spicy Cuban slaw to follow the soup.
The Prince was staying at a plush hotel downtown. I called him from a drugstore phone booth.
His room phone rang about four times. It seemed he was out, probably at dinner. Then the phone clicked and the natty, hairless gorilla rasped a hello.
“I hear you want to see me,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“A fellow in Ybor City told me. You know who this is, of course.”
“Sure, I know.”
“What do you have? I assume it’s about the Yamashitas.”
“That’s right.”
A frown creased itself between my eyes. He sounded hesitant, cautious.
“Kuriacha, are you alone?”
He was silent a moment. Then, “Been a long time, all right. Glad you called.”
“Okay,” I said, “so you can’t spill it over the phone.”
“That’s right. Sure like to see you, talk over old times. Where are you stopping off?”
“No abode at the moment,” I said. “Are you in any danger from whoever is there?”
“Hah!” It was an indication that he could take care of himself. “Where are you?”
“I’ll call you later,” I said.
While I was in the phone booth, I got rid of my immediate calling by ringing Helen Martin and then Tillie Rollo. Nothing new at either spot. Helen was holding up. Tillie had uncovered no trace of Luisa Shaw.
“Relax,” I told Tillie. “You sound like you’ve built a brittle nervous edge.”
“And why not? After all, you’re a wanted man. I don’t want any more truck with this thing.”
“We made a bargain,” I reminded her.
“Before this thing kept ballooning to such proportions.”
“You find Luisa Shaw,” I said, “and we’ll prick that balloon. You’ll still be able to preside over that ultra-exclusive social set in some little town with its single country club.”
“Ed—”
“I wouldn’t hurry up plans about trying to find that town, if I were you, until matters are settled here.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“If you want to put it that way. Luisa Shaw is the key to this thing, Tillie, and I’ll take some pretty strong measures to find her.”
“I wish I’d never seen the slimy little slut!” Tillie decided as she broke the connection.
The street lights had been turned on when I came out of the drugstore. There was a soft, smothering quality in the early darkness. The air was dead. The bricks, wood, and paving of Ybor City emanated heat like the giant element of an old stove.
Now that I was outside, the best way to move would be quietly and not furtively. Deny the pressure inside. Steer away from the knowledge that Ivey’s organization would net me sooner or later. Crouch down behind my eyes and do whatever could be done in whatever time I had left.
The rented car was in a shacky garage behind an old stucco rooming house. Let the Tampa cops wear out their eyeballs looking for it. I didn’t go near it. Instead, I borrowed a heap from the owner of a small beer tavern. A rotund little man I’d known for years, he expressed concern about the police in his garbled Spanish-English.
“You don’t know the car is gone,” I said. “But don’t report it stolen right away quick.”
A Latin light came to his eyes, compounded of love of conspiracy and adventure.
“You un great — how-you-say-in-inglés — thinker, Ed. You do me mucho favors, past times. Keys on mesa. My back I turn to you.”
I picked up the keys from the cluttered table he used for a desk. Then I left the small back-room office.
I threaded through the lights and traffic in downtown Tampa, crossed the river, and took the link to Davis Islands.
I parked the buggy on the palm-lined street, and walked up the driveway to the Cameron house.
From the shadows of the shrubs, I watched the house for a while. The living-room windows framed light downstairs. The remainder of the house was dark. From time to time I saw Victor Cameron cross the window. Each time he had a glass in his hand. No sound came from the house. He wasn’t watching television, reading, or listening to a hi-fi or radio. He was prowling like a creature whose torment would not permit it to remain still. Drinking, but unable to get drunk.