Hard Case Crime: Baby Moll (18 page)

“I don’t know anything. I just knew Harry took her in. I don’t even know what she looks like.”

I remembered something in my coat pocket, took it out. The little soldier was busted to a fair-thee-well now inside the folds of handkerchief. I unwrapped the pieces, scattered them before her eyes. She touched them fondly. One of her children had come home.

“I found it in Harry Small’s room.”

“It’s one of mine.” She looked up at me. “I made two of them, though. Just alike.”

“Two? What happened to the other one?”

“Harry had both.” I thought back, trying to remember another little figure in the room. Unless it had been hidden for some reason, there wasn’t one.

“The girl must have the other one,” she said, reading my eyes. She groaned. “Please. Call me a doctor.”

“All right. Look. There’s going to be Law all over this neighborhood when they find Gilmer’s body. Questions asked. People will remember us running through their yards, through the alley. The cops will want to know about that busted window, how you got that cut on your cheek. It would be better if you don’t tell them anything. There’s another one like Gilmer around, only worse. He’s killed quite a few people. He’ll kill you just for associating with me, if you don’t keep quiet.”

The quick terror that flashed in her eyes gave me my answer. I went toward a phone on the wall near the curtains. My foot kicked something. I bent down and picked up a sky blue hat with a white band. I sailed it at the table.

“You better burn this in your kiln, too,” I said. I made two phone calls, the first to the police, to tell them about Harry Small. The second was to a doctor whose name she gave me.

Reavis was working the gatehouse when I drove back to the island. He came up to the car as soon as I was through the gate.

“We got company,” he said, putting a hand on the window frame. “Maxine and three of his outfit. Also that girl he shacks up with.”

I nodded, drove on up the hill. Maxine’s car, a gleaming black Lincoln, was in the way so I couldn’t get into the garage. I left the Buick in the drive, started to go inside.

“Mallory,” a voice said. I turned from the door and waited. Charley Rinke hurried across the front lawn to me.

“They’re here,” he whispered, when he thought he was close enough.

“I know it,” I said shortly.

He smoked nervously. “Mallory — Pete, this is our chance. The big chance for both of us. Macy is through. But the organization hasn’t completely deteriorated yet. All that’s necessary is for somebody to step in and take control. Two men could do it. You and I. I know the books. You’ve got the contacts. You could round up the men. In a few days we could smash any resistance. There wouldn’t be much, if Maxine was dead.”

I turned away from him. His hand caught my arm.
“Wait. Wait, Pete.” His voice was strained. “Listen to me. I’ve worked it all out. We can do it. Think about it, Pete. You saw the money in the safe. There’re millions more, just waiting for us to step in and take them.”

“Let go of me,” I said.

His hand dropped away. “What’s the matter? I — I thought—”

“I don’t know what you thought,” I told him. “I don’t know what kind of plans you made. But you better forget ’em, Rinke. You haven’t got any idea what you’d be starting. With Maxine dead and Macy out of control this territory would be wide open. Every out-of-work Syndicate hood from Seattle to Newark would be down here on the first train. I couldn’t hold this area with a battalion of Marines. It takes time to hire good men. You can’t use any two-bit leadslinger who has a gun and is willing to work. You got to have some smart heads under you to try a play like that. Meanwhile your life wouldn’t be safe from one second to the next. I don’t know why I’m standing here explaining this to you. I ought to let you go ahead and try to take Maxine on your own. If you have the guts. I don’t think you do. Your bright idea is for me to pick up the lead while you scratch around in the account books and sit back and enjoy the idea of being the local crime king. You wouldn’t live a week. And when you died you’d die messy and scared.”

He stared at me, his thin lips apart. There was an expression of childlike frustration on his face.

“I’ve got some advice for you,” I said. “As soon as Maxine takes over you pack your tail up and get out of here. Go as far away as you can. Maybe change your
name. You know too much to be hanging around town after Maxine is top man. He might get nervous about you after a while and tell somebody to chill you. Why don’t you get an honest job somewhere and give your wife a break for a change?” It exhausted me, saying so much to him.

He sneered at me. “I can handle Evelyn all right,” he said.

“I’ve noticed,” I said. “Get away from me, Rinke, before I just sort of lean over and pound the hell out of you. It would probably do you good.”

Rinke backed away from me hastily. “I thought you were smart. I thought I could talk to you.”

“You can’t talk to me,” I said. “You don’t have any words that interest me. All I’m interested in right now is getting a thousand miles away from this place.”

I moved toward him and shoved him, hard. He almost fell. He backed away from me again. I didn’t have to do that. There was no reason for me to do that. I turned away and walked into the house, wearily. I held my hands a little out in front of me as if I had smeared them with something dirty. I was tired of myself, of trying to be tough. I wasn’t tough. I wasn’t one of the hired apes who could smash somebody’s face or put a bullet in somebody without feeling a twinge. I was conditioned to toughness, that’s all. I was used to sudden violence and I knew how to take care of myself. But once in a while the guard came down and I started shaking. The only really tough men are the hefty lads with the sixty-plus IQ’s who don’t have the reasoning abilities of a flea, who can’t see it happening to them someday. Who don’t give a damn anyway.

In the brightly lighted living room, Gerry sat all by herself at the small curved bar sipping some kind of pale blockbuster from a tall etched glass. She wore a gray skirt and full-sleeved blouse with wide red stripes. Her skin was fresh as poured cream. She looked very young and very charming.

“Hello,” she said, edging sideways on the bar stool, her lips pursed around a straw. “What happened to you?”

I glanced down at my clothes. I looked as though I had just been dug out of a cave-in. My hands were trembling. One palm was scraped. The arm that had been slugged with a pipe ached. I had trouble lifting it more than a few inches. I took out a handkerchief and put it to my face. It came away streaked with dirt. Mallory, home from the wars to count his medals.

“What are you drinking?” I said. “Ginger ale?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s some kind of rum thing. Stan showed me how to fix it. Do you want me to fix one for you?”

“Don’t bother. One swallow would lay me out like a mortician’s helper.” I sat down in a chair of curved tubed aluminum. “Where’s the gang?”

“They’re all somewhere else talking business,” Gerry said. “At least, Stan and Macy are.” She drank the rest of the rum thing and put the glass up. “You haven’t seen Owen around, have you?”

“Honey, I just got here.” I had a thought. The tired wheels notched together as they turned. “Maybe you shouldn’t see Owen while you’re here,” I said patiently. “You wouldn’t want trouble to start, would you?”

She giggled. She reached for a square bottle of rum nearby, sniffed at it, dropped some over the ice in her
glass. The giggle was a hint that she and the rum had been companions a bit too long.

“No, I wouldn’t start any trouble,” she said. “I used to live here. You didn’t know that, did you? Macy used to think a lot of me, before that kid came along.” For an instant there was a trace of bitterness in her eyes. “Good old Macy,” she said ironically. Gerry turned slightly on the stool. “Even if I went to see Owen,” she said, “Stan wouldn’t send me away. He’s always telling me that he can’t live without me.”

I sat there trying to work up enough energy to leave the chair.

She smacked her lips over the rum. “Not,” she said mysteriously, “that he’s going to live long anyway.”

“Huh?”

She giggled again. “Shouldn’t tell you.” A stray bit of hair swooped across her forehead, giving her a roguish look. She smiled, the glass at her lips. Her teeth clinked against it.

“What shouldn’t you tell me?”

She shrugged indifferently. “Oh. That Stan goes to the doctor all the time. Sometimes he goes three times a week. He should have an operation but I think he’s afraid to. He takes these pills. Phen — pheno—”

“Phenobarbital?”

“I guess that’s it. Some nights he lies awake in bed and groans.” She put her lips against the glass again, kissing it. The flesh of her underlip looked soft and hot. She was a potent piece. I could understand some of Stan’s attachment to her.

“It gets to be terrible,” she said moodily. “I can’t sleep.”
Her eyes were dreamily thoughtful. “I think,” she said, “that some night I’m not going to be there when he comes home.”

I looked at her. “You mean you’d walk out on him?”

“That’s right.” Her head bobbed enthusiastically. “Leave. Time for Gerry to move on. There’s this man I met. He’s a count or something like that. I met him once when Stan took me to Boca Raton. He’s very nice. He wanted me to come with him then. But I told him I’d have to think about it.”

She put the glass down with a flourish, slid off the stool. She stretched, rising to her toes. The skirt fitted the curve of her legs. “Now I’ve thought about it,” she said lazily, giving me a sidelong look. She kicked her shoes off. “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”

“You’re a darling,” I said. “Queen of the junior prom. All the beanie-wearers are mad for you.”

“That’s not funny,” she said.

I turned my head. “No, it isn’t, is it? I’ll have to go work up new gags. I think I’ll take a hot bath while I’m at it. I think I’ll run the water to the top of my upper lip and then make little waves. It should take me a long time to drown like that, shouldn’t it?”

She looked at me solemnly, then her lower lip dropped and she laughed. “You’re crazy,” she said.

I got out of the chair. “Around here,” I said, “that’s a virtue.” I walked out of the living room toward my room in the back wing. On the way I saw three of Maxine’s boys playing poker in the television room. The Irish boy was one of them. He looked as if he were wearing an eggplant under his nose.

I stuck my head in the door. “Well,” I said, “if it isn’t Bushy, Bagot, and Green. And how is the king tonight?” Three jaws dropped. The one who was dealing threw a card wild and it fluttered to the floor.

“Gi da hell ow uh here,” Irish said through stiff lips. His jaw looked sore. I went down the hall to my room, dragging my feet as if I had a tombstone tied to my back.

I had taken a long bath and worked on my sore arm with some kind of rubbing compound and was about to get into bed when the door was nudged open behind me. I looked over one shoulder. There was a face in the doorway, about four feet from the floor. Serious brown eyes studied me.

“Hello, Aimee,” I said.

The door inched open a little more. She was wearing blue pajamas and slippers with fur tops. Her straight black hair was brushed until it gleamed.

“I was lookin’ for Diane,” she said timorously.

“What makes you think she’d be here?” I asked her.

Aimee shrugged and crept into the room, her eyes peering around. Maybe she was lonely. She stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at me.

“Diane’s not upstairs, is that it?”

She shook her head. “No. She went out when she thought I was ’sleep.”

“But you weren’t.”

“No.” She turned around and lifted her bottom to the edge of the bed, sat there, her hands folded. “She went to the garage.”

“How would you know?”

She looked at me secretively. “ž’Cause I followed her.”

“What did she want in the garage?”

Aimee shook her head again. “She didn’t go in.” She scratched at her nose, thinking about it. “She went to one of those cars. A black one. She took a package out of it.”

“A package? What kind of package?”

She held her hands about a foot apart, showing me. “Like this. I didn’t pay much attention. I went back upstairs and went to bed before Diane came back.”

“Then she went to bed, too,” I said encouragingly.

“No. She got her swimmin’ suit and put it on. She went downstairs in her swimmin’ suit with the package. I think it was a box or somethin’.”

“How long ago was that?”

Aimee shook her head. “I don’t know.” She sat very quietly then, hands folded, not looking at me. I glanced at my watch. It was twenty after twelve.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Aimee said suddenly.

“Yes.”

Aimee sighed. “If you didn’t have a girlfriend, you could marry Diane, couldn’t you?”

I frowned inconspicuously. “Well — not quite—”

“Diane should marry somebody,” Aimee said worriedly. “Don’t you like her?”

“In a way,” I said.

“I guess Diane could marry Daddy,” Aimee said. “But she don’t — doesn’t want to. Sometimes I think she doesn’t like Daddy.” She put her legs up on the bed and crossed them. “Diane’s pretty,” she said coaxingly. “I know she likes you, too. She said so. And she’s not really as bad as she acts. I don’t think so, anyway.”

“You mean when she acts funny sometimes.”

“No. Diane doesn’t act funny. I mean not crazy. I’m talkin’ about — ” Her eyes seemed to become flat, suddenly blank. “But she said I couldn’t ever say anything about that.”

“About what?”

But Aimee wasn’t talking. Her lips pressed tightly together. “Not ever,” she said resolutely.

“Okay,” I said. “Don’t you think you ought to go back to your own room?”

“I don’t want to if Diane isn’t there.”

“If she just went for a swim she’ll be in before long. You could get into bed and leave the light on for her.”

Aimee’s eyes shied about the room. “Could I stay here a little while?”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea. I was just going to bed myself.”