Who Has Wilma Lathrop? (11 page)

EXCEPT FOR
the work lights in the freightyards beyond the high woven-wire fence, Mercer Street was unlighted and sodden with slumber, the weathered houses huddled together against the cold of the morning wind.

The yards, it seemed, never slept. Noisy freight hogs belching smoke snorted up and down the tracks searching out empty boxcars like so many metallic cow ponies. There was a constant bump and crash of automatic couplings. Occasionally a puffing engine with a full train rumbling behind it whistled triumphantly as it passed 6019 Mercer Street, outbound for Des Moines or Omaha or St. Paul or Minneapolis and all way points in between.

Lathrop parked his car where he’d parked it the first time he’d called. The green shades in the front room of the Stanislawow house were drawn but enough light seeped out around the edges to frame the windows in yellow.

It was a physical effort for Lathrop to turn off the ignition and open the windows of his car. He attempted to analyse his feelings. It wasn’t physical fear. He wasn’t frightened for himself. He was afraid of what he might find behind the drawn shades.

He crossed the street, stiff-kneed, and examined the dark areaway between the Stanislawow house and the one next door. The areaway led to a small back yard enclosed by a high board fence, the yard littered with old tin cans and the accumulated debris of years.

Lathrop picked his way through the rubble to the alley and opened the wooden gate. He’d come to the right place. The late-model Oldsmobile that had followed him from Palmer Square to Attorney Ramsey’s residence was parked on the far side of the fence that separated the alley from the yard. Lathrop glanced at the car, then turned and looked at the rear elevation of the house. There was a light in the shade-drawn window of one of the second-floor rooms. As he watched, a shadow crossed the shade, moving from one side of the room to the other.

The house was square and larger than he remembered it, built in an era when both lumber and labour had been cheap. When he was satisfied there was no way to get in or out of the building except by the front and the back doors, Lathrop walked back the way he had come and got a tyre iron out of his car. The iron felt good in his bare hand. Tapping it against his leg as he walked, Lathrop recrossed the street, mounted the sagging wooden steps and pushed the bell under the faded sign reading Rooms.

He couldn’t hear either a bell or a buzzer. There was no sound or movement inside. He rapped on the door with the tyre iron. This time he heard movement. An inner door opened. Feet thudded down the hall. A moment later Vladimir, his blond hair touselled and mussed, barefooted, bare-chested, a pair of pants pulled on hastily, unlocked and opened the door.

“Yeah?” the blond youth asked. His eyes were rimmed with heavy shadows. His breath reeked of prune whisky. When he recognized Lathrop, he ran the back of his hand over his eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Lathrop told him. “I’m calling for my wife.”

Vladimir used the back of his hand again, to wipe his mouth this time. “You nuts or something? It’s five o’clock in the morning.”

“I know.”

Vladimir attempted to shut the door. “Go on. Beat it. Wilma isn’t here.”

Lathrop blocked the closing door with his foot. “Then you won’t mind my coming in for a moment.” He forced the door open and closed it behind him.

Obviously roused from a deep sleep, the blond youth shook his head as if to clear it. “How come the cops haven’t got you? You were on every channel before I went to sleep.”

Lathrop studied the blond youth’s face. However deeply he was enmeshed in this thing, Vladimir hadn’t been let in on the last act. Vladimir didn’t know he was supposed to be dead.

“Maybe I’ve been lucky,” Lathrop said.

“O.K. So you’re in. What do you want?”

“My wife.”

“I told you Wilma wasn’t here.’

“Then you won’t mind letting me go through the house.”

“And wake up the old man and Vilna?”

“I’m certain they won’t mind.”

Vladimir wet his lips with his tongue. “Look. Take it from me, Lathrop. The best thing you can do is walk right out that door again.”

“And let the police arrest me for two murders I didn’t commit?”

“That’s what you say.”

“I happen to know. I was there.”

Vladimir hesitated, shrugged. “O.K. Take a look.” He gestured towards the lighted front room. “But I’m warning you, as soon as you leave here, I’m calling the cops. You must be a psycho to do what you did to a nice kid like Wilma, just because she made a couple of slips before she married you.”

Lathrop glanced into the front room. The floor beside the chairs was littered with early editions of the morning paper. An empty jug of prune whisky was standing on top of the unlighted television set. There were three glasses on the end tables, none of them smeared with lipstick.

“Suppose we try another room,” Lathrop suggested. “Go ahead. You walk in front of me down the hall.”

Vladimir had turned on the kitchen light but the blue-painted hallway was dark. He started to protest, looked at the tyre iron that Lathrop was gripping, then changed his mind and led the way down the hall.

The kitchen was even messier than it had been when Lathrop had seen it last. Both the plain deal table and the sink held dirty dishes. The egg stains on the two plates on the table looked fresh. Lathrop stuck a finger into the amber liquid left in one of the coffee cups. The dregs in the cup were lukewarm.

Lathrop looked at the door of the bedroom opening off the kitchen. The door was closed but a light that hadn’t been lit when he’d walked down the areaway showed under the bottom of the door. “Suppose we look in there next,” he suggested.

Vladimir shook his head. “No dice. Vilna is asleep.”

“Does she usually sleep with the light on?”

“You know how some folks are.”

“I’m beginning to learn,” Lathrop said. “Believe me, this affair has taught me a lot that I didn’t learn in college, or in the army for that matter. Funny, the light in that room wasn’t on when I walked down the areaway a minute ago.”

Colour flooded Vladimir’s sallow cheeks. “You son-of-a-bitch. Spying, huh? I thought I heard a noise.”

“Do you open the door or do I?”

Vladimir looked at the tyre iron in Lathrop’s hand. “O.K. So things are a little irregular between Vilna and me. It’s no one’s business but our own.”

“Open the door,” Lathrop said.

His sunken eyes sullen, Vladimir opened the bedroom door. The feeble-minded girl was awake and looking at the ceiling, a contented smile on her face. There were two pillows on the bed. Vilna’s head rested on one. As Lathrop watched her, Vilna looked at Vladimir and mewed contentedly.

The colour in Vladimir’s cheeks deepened.

“Get out. If you don’t, I’m going to call the cops.”

“You do that,” Lathrop said.

He turned at a sound in the kitchen. The larger of the two men who had left him in his car to die was standing in front of a narrow flight of stairs leading to the second floor.

“You son-of-a-bitch,” the man said. “You educated son-of-a-bitch. You’re a hard man to kill.”

Lathrop gripped the tyre iron so hard the metal bit into his hand. “So it would seem.”

From behind him, Vladimir said, “No rough stuff now, Charlie. You promised.”

The man he’d called Charlie motioned with the revolver he was holding. “Drop the iron, Lathrop.”

Lathrop dropped the tyre iron.

Vladimir picked it from the floor. “Has she told you where the stuff is?”

“Not yet,” Charlie said. “But she will.” He looked back at Lathrop. “I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard your voice down here. Pete and I thought you’d be knocking on the big gate by now.”

Lathrop shrugged. “It’s not your fault I’m not.”

“No,” Charlie admitted, “it isn’t. Now we have to do the whole thing over again. And that was such a perfect set-up. How did you get out of your car?”

Vladimir was puzzled. “What are you talking about?”

Lathrop answered for the man Vladimir had called Charlie. “I don’t think,” he said, “that you quite realize what tough company you’re in, Vladimir. This thug and his pal sapped me unconscious a few hours ago and left me in my car with the motor running and a garden hose attached to the exhaust.”

Vladimir wasn’t shocked. “That was smart. I get it. When you were found in the morning the cops would think you had knocked yourself off on account of you were sorry for what you did to Wilma.”

Lathrop said, dryly, “One hundred per cent correct. That puts you on the honour roll. Now suppose one of you take me upstairs and let me talk to Wilma.”

Charlie continued to be amazed. “I can’t get over it. Don’t tell me you were fool enough to come here alone?”

“Of course not,” Lathrop said. “I brought six squad and four riot cars with me. They’re standing out in front. And there are two dozen uniformed officers sealing off the alley.”

Charlie grinned. “Who do you think you’re kidding, teacher? You didn’t dare contact the cops. You’d be in a cell right now if you had. But just to make sure — ” He called up the stairs without turning his head. “Hey, Pete …”

The second man appeared at the head of the stairs. “Yeah?”

“I want you to take a look around outside.”

“And leave Wilma alone?”

Charlie was amused. “She won’t run out on us now. She won’t even try. She won’t even open the window and yip. She knows what will happen to her man if she does. And this time we won’t give him an easy out like that set-up in the Forest Preserve.”

Pete, fully dressed except for his suit coat, clomped down the stairs to the kitchen and repeated what his partner had said. “I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard your voice.”

Lathrop’s grin was tight. “You fellows seem to be in a rut.”

Pete cuffed him lightly. “You’re the guy who is in a rut. And this time we’ll make certain.” He glanced at his partner. “What’s with outside?”

“Look around,” Charlie said. “Make sure he came alone. I don’t think he dared call the cops, but I also thought he was dead.”

Pete eased the gun in his shoulder holster and picked his suit coat from a nail in the kitchen wall. “Always something. I was sure Wilma would talk by now and we could take off for the Coast in the morning. Now we got him in our hair again.”

“We’ll comb him out,” Charlie promised.

Pete closed the kitchen door behind him and disappeared into the night.

“Hot, aren’t you?” Lathrop asked.

“Plenty hot,” Charlie admitted. “But that’s our business, not yours.” He indicated a chair with his gun. “Now sit down until Pete comes back and we can figure what to do with you.”

Lathrop took a step towards the stairwell. “Why don’t we go up and talk to Wilma while we’re waiting?”

“I said sit down.”

“No.”

“I’ll put one right through you if you don’t.”

Lathrop shook his head. “I doubt that. I doubt it very much. A heavy-calibred gun like that makes an awful lot of noise when it goes off. I know. I carried one for four years. And even in a crummy neighbourhood like this, one of the neighbours is certain to hear the shot and phone the police he heard gunfire at six-oh-one-nine Mercer Street.”

“You’re a smart s. o. b., aren’t you?”

Lathrop took another step towards the stairwell.

Charlie reversed his revolver and held it as a club. “I took you twice. I can take you again.”

Lathrop took still another step. “Aren’t you forgetting that both times you had a partner to help you?”

“Pete will be back.”

“Perhaps. But not in time.”

Charlie sidestepped away from the stairwell. “Hit him with that tyre iron, Val. Take this monkey off my back.”

Lathrop spoke without turning his head. “If I were you, I would stay out of this, Vladimir. That is, unless you helped kill Nielsen. This way, if something should go wrong, the most the police can charge you with is being an accessory after the fact.”

Still watching Charlie, Lathrop listened for movement behind him. There was none. His estimation of Vladimir had been correct. The blond youth was an evil-minded, petty poolroom punk. As greedy for money as he was, he was afraid of the big time.

Charlie continued to back away from Lathrop. He was having trouble with his taped-up broken nose. “Keep away from me. I’m warning you. I’ll beat in your head if you don’t.”

Lathrop continued to advance. “Like you did to my janitor.”

The backing man swung his gun and Lathrop sidestepped the blow easily. His head felt clearer than it had at any time since he had awakened to find Wilma gone. She was alive. She was here in this house. She loved him.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he said. He stepped in under a second swing of the gun and smashed a series of hard blows to the other man’s face that ripped the adhesive tape off his nose.

Blood dribbled down Charlie’s face and got into his mouth. “You schoolteaching son-of-a-bitch. When Pete comes back, well kill you.”

“You tried that once,” Lathrop said. He followed up his advantage with a second series of hard blows to the face and heart. A particularly hard blow to the jaw glazed Charlie’s eyes. The revolver fell from his numbed fingers and thudded to the floor.

Vladimir took a step towards it and Lathrop warned him, “Leave it alone.”

Vladimir left it alone.

Lathrop picked the gun from the worn linoleum and climbed the stairs to the second floor. There was a light in the rear room. The room door was partially open. Lathrop opened it all the way with his foot. Wilma, wearing a cheap cotton dress of the type he had seen on her feeble-minded sister, was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking dull-eyed at the floor.

“Hello, honey,” Lathrop said.

The girl lifted her head and looked at him. “You were a fool to come here.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you?”

“For two reasons. One, the police think I killed you. The other is more personal.”

Tears filled Wilma’s eyes and trickled down her puffed cheeks. Both of her cheeks were swollen. She asked, “After what you’ve heard about me?”

“I haven’t heard anything so bad.”