Lady, Go Die! (2 page)

Just the same, Pat and I stayed friends, maybe because his scientific approach meshed well with my instinctive style—he was fingerprints and test tubes where I was motives and people. I could do things he couldn’t, and he had resources I didn’t. Usually private eyes and police are like oil and water, but what began as a convenient way for two different kinds of cops to feed each other information turned into a real and lasting friendship.

So when he showed up on the stool next to me, training his gray-blue eyes on me like benign gun barrels, I said, “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a joint like this?”

“Velda is getting worried.”

Velda was my secretary, and my right arm. She had been with me since I set up shop and I hadn’t made a pass at her yet. But there was something special between us that wasn’t just boss and employee.

“Tell her to lay off the mother-hen routine,” I said. I poured some whiskey in a glass and then down my throat.

“You need to let it go, Mike. It’s ancient history.”

“Not even a year, Pat.”

“Would you change it? Would you go back and not pull that trigger?”

“No.”

“Then it’s time to move on.”

I knew he was right. But I’d fallen into a goddamn self-pitying rut. Work five days a week, drink five nights a week. And on weekends, drink the whole damn time. Being numb was good. You didn’t think so much. But if I kept this up, I’d have a liver that even the medics couldn’t recognize as a human organ.

Still, I said, “Blow, Pat. I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

“No,” Velda said, “you can’t.”

I hadn’t even seen the big, beautiful dark-haired doll settle her lovely fanny onto the other stool beside me. I
must
have been far gone.

“And we’re not about to let you crawl in that bottle,” she said, “and drown yourself.”

I gave them a ragged laugh. Hell’s bells—they had me surrounded. I pushed the glass and the whiskey away.

“Okay,” I said. “Officially on the wagon. Now. What do you suggest?”

“First,” Pat said, “you go home and sleep till you’re sober.”

“Second,” Velda said, “we go off somewhere and rest. Someplace where there are no women and no bad guys.”

“That sounds dull as hell.”

Pat said, “It’ll be good for you. You and Velda take the weekend for some R and R. Someplace out on Long Island, maybe.”

Velda said, “What was that little town you and your folks used to go out to? Before the war?”

“Sidon,” I said. I’d been there a couple times after the war, too. But not for a year or two. “It’ll be dead out there. The season doesn’t start for a couple of weeks.”

“Right,” Velda said. “The weather’s beautiful just now, nice and sunny and warm but not hot. The beach, the ocean, it’ll be like a dream.”

“Instead of this nightmare,” Pat said, slapping at my glass, “that you been wrapping yourself up in.”

I turned to Velda. “You’re going along?”

“Sure,” she said easily. “Why not? I got a new two-piece bathing suit I want to try out.”

“One of those bikini deals?” I said, getting interested.

She nodded.

“Hey, I’m game, baby, but I’ll be recuperating, you know? From drink and debauchery and a general state of depression? You’ll need to stay right at my bedside.”

“Separate rooms, Mike,” she said crisply, but she was smiling. “I’ll play nursemaid and babysitter, only I require my own separate quarters.”

“Might as well take you along instead,” I said to Pat, “for all the fun I’ll have.”

He raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

Velda frowned. “No offense, Pat, but you’re staying home. I’m not equipped to handle all the trouble you two could get into.”

She looked equipped enough to handle anything from where I sat.

“Now,” she was saying, climbing off her stool, “can you stand up, or do we have to escort you?”

I made it onto my own two feet. I may have leaned on them a little. A little more on Velda. She was softer and smelled a lot better.

* * *

The little guy could walk, but just barely. Velda had found some old sandals near the mouth of the alley that were apparently Poochie’s, lost in the struggle. Anyway, they fit him. He wasn’t saying anything, but he could stumble along with me on one side and Velda on the other, each holding onto an arm.

We trooped him through the lobby of the Sidon Arms, the only one of the little town’s four lodging options open year-round. The building was wooden and old but clean. The lobby was large enough to accommodate a summer crowd but nothing fancy, strictly pre-war, though I wasn’t sure what war. I guessed this hotel stayed open all year largely because of the bar off the lobby, where a high-perched TV was showing wrestling and half a dozen locals were nursing beers, watching whoever was battling Gorgeous George this week pretend to lose.

The cadaverous bald desk clerk in mortician’s black reacted with popping eyes and a, “Merciful heavens!” Could hardly blame him—Poochie was a tattered, blood-spattered, black-and-blue wreck.

We had not checked in yet but had a reservation. When I announced our names, the clerk pretended Poochie wasn’t between us hanging on like a very loose tooth to precarious gums. Everything was handled efficiently. We signed the book, and were told our rooms were adjacent but without an adjoining door. Everything aboveboard for a single man and woman traveling together.

Finally the clerk said, “What about your, uh, friend?”

“Recognize him?” I asked.

“Yes. That is, uh, Poochie. He’s Sidon’s resident beachcomber. He has a shack on the water, just outside town.”

Poochie showed no signs of any of this registering. He wasn’t unconscious, though, and had a goofy, puffy smile going. It widened whenever he looked up at Velda.

“He got hurt,” I said, which was all the explanation I was in the mood to give out.

“Oh, dear.
Did
he?”

Cripes, didn’t this jerk have eyes?

“Is Doc Moody still in town?” I asked. Moody had been a drinking buddy of my old man’s, on our visits to Sidon. And I’d tossed a few back with the doc on my last solo sojourn.

“Why, yes he is. Should I call him?”

“There’s an idea.” I dug out a five and tossed it to him, the way you would a fish to a seal. “Give the doc my name—he’ll remember it—and when he gets here, send him up to my room.”

Right now I was praying the good doc would be sober enough to see straight.

“Yes, Mr. Hammer,” the clerk said, and reached out a skinny, bony hand for the telephone.

The Sidon Arms had three floors and no elevator. We walked Poochie slowly up the wide lobby stairs and for the first time since we’d made the trek from the alley, the little guy moaned.

Velda said, “It’ll be all right, Poochie. It’ll be fine.”

My room was 2-A and Velda’s was 2-B. The rooms were identical—dresser, wardrobe, a couple chairs, double bed,
nightstand, no closet, no bath. That was at the end of the hall. Velda went down there to fill a pitcher with warm water and I set Poochie in the more comfortable of the chairs. It was upholstered and had some padding. While she cleaned him up, I went back down to the lobby. The clerk told me Doc Moody was on his way, and I made my way out to the parking lot behind the hotel and got our luggage and brought it up.

Poochie seemed to be coming into focus as I hauled our bags in.

“I think I better give Poochie my bed,” I said, standing next to her as she bent dabbing a washcloth gently onto our guest’s battered face. She was in a white blouse and a blue pleated skirt and was the kind of nurse you dreamed to get.

“You can sleep with me in my room, if you like.” She flashed me the sweetest smile.

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. You know me, Mike—I don’t stand on ceremony. And speaking of ceremonies, there’s a justice of the peace in this burg, isn’t there? Wonder if he makes house calls like your doctor friend?”

“You’re no fun at all,” I told her. I leaned in and got our charge’s attention. “What was that about, Poochie?”

He smiled. It was like Dopey smiling at Snow White.

“What did Dekkert want with you, Poochie? Why did those creeps give you the Third Degree and then some?”

He shook his head just a little. “Yellow-haired lady.”

“What yellow-haired lady?”

“They say she’s gone. I live down the beach.”

“Down the beach from the yellow-haired lady?”

A little nod, then a wince at the pain it caused.

I asked, “Who is she?”

“Not nice. Not very nice.”

“They think you saw something, because you live near where she lives?”

Another little nod. Another wince.

Velda said, “Better lay off with the twenty questions, Mike.”

I stood, put my hands on my hips.

“Some gal with yellow hair is missing, and Dekkert wants to know where she went. Judging by the beating he gave Poochie here, Dekkert wants to know bad.”

Velda frowned. “Apart from any official police interest, you think?”

“Not necessarily. Typical of these towns to perform their rubber-hose symphonies well away from the station house and out of uniform. That alley makes perfect sense. This town rolls up its sidewalks at sundown, this time of year, with no tourists around.”

“Almost no tourists,” Velda said.

There was a knock.

“There’s the doc now,” Velda said.

“Is it?” I asked softly.

I went to the bed where I had tossed my suitcase. I opened it, and slipped the .45 Colt automatic out of its sling where it slept like a baby on my clean underwear. But babies can wake up screaming...

I thumbed off the safety and kicked the slide back and went to the door.

“Yeah?” I said, pointing the snout right where my visitor would be standing.

“It’s Moody!” a gruff, age-colored voice called. “This better be important, Mike. I was watching wrestling.”

Maybe he’d been down in the bar and I’d missed him.

I raised the snout of the .45, undid the night latch on the door, and opened it. Moody stepped in wearing a wrinkled suit and no tie with his Gladstone bag in hand. He was heavy-set but not fat, white-haired, with a friendly face whose drink-reddened nose held up a pair of wire-rim bifocal glasses.

“So it’s our resident beachcomber, is it?” he said idly, giving me a nod to acknowledge my presence. Not much of a greeting, considering after our last evening together I had paid for his night of drinking and hauled his booze-sodden carcass home.

He did more than just nod at Velda. He gave her the kind of smiling, appreciative once-over old men can get away with, taking in a good-looking young gal. He shook his head, sighed, remembering times long past, and gave me a frown that said,
You lucky bastard
.

I clicked the safety on the .45 and shoved it in my waistband.

The doc looked Poochie over for a good ten minutes. He didn’t ask him anything that couldn’t be answered with a nod or a shake of the head. He approved of Velda’s first-aid routine, but had Poochie stand for us to get him out of his ragged clothes and down to his skivvies. The doc went over the cuts and abrasions with alcohol-soaked cotton balls while the little guy squirmed.

Then he gave Poochie a shot and had us walk him over to the bed, where we got him under the covers. Within seconds, the little guy was snoring.

“I don’t mind saving his tail,” I said to the doc, “but I am
not
sleeping with that character. Should I get another room?”

“I’ll have Percy on the desk send up a rollaway for you, Mike. Somebody needs to be in the room with him tonight.”

“How bad is it?”

Moody shrugged. “Surprisingly, not near as bad I would expect. No teeth missing. No indication of internal bleeding. No broken ribs, at least apparently. We’ll see if we can get Poochie to come in for some X-rays, tomorrow or the next day. But I will say, it’s probably a good thing you came along.”

I grunted a laugh. “Dekkert is an old pro at delivering police beatings. He knows just how to mete out punishment and stop short of creating evidence of police brutality.”

“A bad apple, all right. He’s the deputy chief, but really, he runs things. Chief Beales is local and that helps him get elected. But Beales is soft, a figurehead.”

“Corrupt, though?”

“Oh, certainly. You haven’t been around in a while, Mike. Things have changed in Sidon.”

“Care to fill me in?”

“Maybe later. Over a drink, perhaps.”

“Sure, Doc. Listen, is Poochie here slow? You know, simple?”

“You mean retarded? No. But he is on the slow side. I suspect he suffered a trauma, perhaps physical, perhaps mental, when he was young. He’s something of an idiot savant.”

“Well, is he an idiot or not, Doc?”

He chuckled. “I mean to say, he has an artistic gift that may surprise you. Ask to see his shell collection, while you’re around.”

That sounded like a blast.

I asked, “You know of any yellow-haired women in town?”

“Why, certainly. We even have a redhead and a brunette or two. And at the moment, we have a particularly lovely black-haired beauty.”

He nodded to Velda, gathered his Gladstone bag, and took his leave.

“Nice old boy,” Velda said.

“I like him fine. I just wouldn’t want to live in a town where his sobriety stood between me and a scalpel.”

“That’s mean, Mike. Of course, there’s nothing worse than a reformed drunk.”

“Is that what I am? A reformed drunk?”

“Mike,” Velda smiled, her voice low so as not to disturb our slumbering guest, “you’re not a reformed anything.”

She gathered her overnight bag, and Poochie’s dirty, bloody clothes, saying, “I’ll wash these.” Then she blew me a kiss and was gone.

Almost immediately a knock at the door had me figuring she might have changed her mind. But I took my .45 along, anyway.

It was the rollaway.

The clerk himself brought it—they were clearly short on help before the season started. He seemed to want a tip, but I reminded him about the fin I’d already slipped him.

I had the rollaway unfolded and ready when the phone on the nightstand rang and I got to it before it could disturb Poochie. Not that the sedative the doc gave him would be easily pierced.