Long Live the Dead (23 page)

“I—ah, I am sorry about this,” Wardley said. He had come up soundlessly and his voice was so close to Kimm’s ear that it created a draft. An ordinary man would have jumped. Kimm merely turned his head, focused his gaze on the wide eyes behind the spectacles.

“How long has she been dead?”

“She died at exactly four-seventeen, Mr. Kimm. I—ah, have witnesses, of course. Mrs. Wardley, my wife, and some of our neighbors. Mr. Crahan was not here, unfortunately He had gone to meet you.”

Kimm glanced at heavy Henry Crahan. “You a cop?”

“Chief of Police,” Crahan said listlessly, “in Kelver City.” He inhaled wetly through his nose, swallowed. “I’m all the police we have in this town. She’s really dead, Doc?”

“I—ah, am afraid so. Yes.”

Kimm raised an end of the sheet and looked at the girl’s face. He did this without wanting to, but with the knowledge that he owed it to Julius Macomber, who was paying the bills. He stared hard. He stared a lot longer than was necessary.

The face he saw was young, reasonably attractive. It was nothing to set the male hearts of a nation to twittering, but it was above average. What troubled him was something else again.

He lowered the sheet, said, “Let’s go over this.” Trailed by Wardley and Crahan, he went down the hall to the living-room.

It was a big room full of sunlight and potted cacti. Crahan lifted a bottle of whiskey from what looked like an old Victrola cabinet, glanced at Kimm and poured three drinks. Kimm sipped his and felt warm for the first time in weeks. He shed his overcoat. He sat.

“The plane crashed,” Wardley said, “about six o’clock last evening. We heard it, you understand. We heard it in the air and knew by the sound of the motor that something was wrong. I was in Fred Meaton’s store at the time; Fred and I saw the plane come down and, of course, distinctly heard the crash. Others did, too. How many of us drove out there I’m sure I don’t know, but Fred and I were there, Henry was there,” he looked at Crahan, “and at least half a dozen others.”

“Just where did she crash?” Kimm asked.

“On the old Furgusson bean farm,” Henry Crahan said, “out on the edge of the ’Glades. If she’d landed in the ’Glades proper, we’d have been a week gettin’ to her. It was tough enough as it was.”

“You knew who she was when you saw the plane?”

“Her name’s on it. Spirit of 1940. Fern Macomber. Besides—hell, we get newspapers here, even if this is the end of the world.”

Kimm finished his drink. “I’ll have to know what killed her.”

“That—ah, is rather hard to say, Mr. Kimm. I did all that was possible, of course, and when I wired Mr. Macomber I believed the young lady had a fair chance for recovery. There were immediate complications, however. Internal injuries …”

Kimm nodded, reaching for his coat. “You’ll arrange to send her to New York, of course. Macomber will foot the bills.” He moved to the door. “I may want to see the plane, Crahan. Later, not now. Can I rent a car anywhere in this town?”

The big Chief of Police looked at Doc Wardley, shrugged, and said to the whiskey bottle in his fat fist, “I reckon Fred Meaton’d lend you his, if he ain’t usin’ it.”

Kimm hurried out.

O
n his way south to West Palm Beach in a jallopy rented from the Kelver City storekeeper, Kimm’s thoughts buzzed like blowflies around a mental picture of Julius Macomber. The Wall Street tycoon was not going to like this mess. For several important reasons, it was essential for Julius that his daughter Fern arrive in New York, alive and healthy, within a week.

Hearing the latest, Julius would probably tear out what few thin gray hairs remained on his head. His bellow would rock the Empire State Building.

Working for Julius was a lucrative pastime but hard, damned hard, on the nerves. Kimm parked in front of the George Washington Hotel, signed for a room and slid into the bar.

He drank rum and soda, changed a five-spot into smaller bills and silver. With a second rum and soda in his hand, he ensconced himself in a phone booth and called New York.

Abel Kimm would have been the last man on earth to admit that in every human being lurks something of the sadist. Yet after getting his party and establishing his identity, he said, “The girl is dead, Macomber.” And sipped his drink.

The answer came slowly, was so thin, so fragile, it almost didn’t come at all. “She’s—dead?”

“Yes. But she’s not your daughter! Who she is I don’t know, and I don’t believe the Kelver City people know, either, or they’d have made something of it. They think she is your daughter. I know she’s not. Now what?”

Julius Macomber, a smart man, took time out for thinking. When he came in again his voice had lost its quiver, was low and ugly. “She’s pulled a fast one on me, Kimm. She and that greasy louse of hers! Where are you?”

“West Palm.”

“Go down to that damned island of his, that Angel’s Acre. Find out where she is! She’s got to be in New York by Wednesday! Got to, do you hear?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Kimm sighed, and hung up.

Lovely, he thought. You work hard and go to night school and do your good deed daily, and in time you get to be decently successful. That is to say, you reach a station in life where it is no longer part of your job to cover social gatherings, report court proceedings and write obituaries. You become—ah, van-ity!—an astute and capable city editor, with a purely a vocational flair for solving crimes. At which time your esteemed newspaper has a minor argument with certain Chambers of Commerce, is blackballed by a moneyed group of advertisers, goes broke and is snatched up, butt and barrel, by Mr. Julius Macomber, who thinks it a sin and a shame for one of your remarkable talents to decompose at an editorial desk.

You therefore become the private trouble-shooter of a financial genius whose empire reaches to the far-flung corners of the civilized world. Lovely, Kimm thought, snorting. Where the hell was this private island of Miguel Reurto, anyway?

He had another rum and soda while trying, not too hard, to remember where Angel’s Acre was. He felt better then and decided to go by road. A plane would get him there faster, no doubt, but Reurto’s Island was somewhere in the Keys, closer to Key West than to the Florida mainland. In Key West a man could eat genuine
arroz con pollo
and wash it down with real rum… .

It was a long ride. There was a lot of swamp, a lot of sea, to look at. Kimm broke the monotony by reviewing his repertoire of music. He liked music, all kinds of music. His favorite compositions were the “Honkytonk Train Blues” and the Tschaikowsky Symphony No. 6 in B Minor.

Long before he reached Key West, darkness descended upon the earth and a fog rolled in.

He had his
arroz con pollo
in a place called Sadie’s, then drifted out and learned that no one owning a boat would even consider taking him to Miguel Reurto’s private island in such weather. The run to the island was dangerous, he was told, even in good weather. Kimm did not argue. He took his low spirits to a bar and proceeded to revive them.

It was a joint. A man could get rolling drunk on cold water, merely by staring at the murals on the walls. Kimm sought a remote table and thought darkly of Julius Macomber. He’d been doing this about half an hour when three men squeezed past him and took a corner table.

Kimm caught a fragment of conversation. “But in this weather, Mr. Reurto … if she hold out!” It was accompanied by a shrug of huge shoulders, a spread of unwashed hands. Kimm crinkled his nose to shut out a smell of sweat.

The three sat down and a bow-legged waiter took their orders. Their heads came together over low talk. Kimm’s excellent ears were not good enough; he had to depend on his eyes.

So this was Miguel Reurto, the six-footer wearing dampish tropical worsted, a brown shirt, livid yellow tie. A handsome mug, Kimm thought, if you were partial to flat black hair, sharp and angular features, a ghostly wisp of hirsute growth above a mouth much too small. This was the dashing South American with whom Macomber’s million-dollar daughter was oh so veddy much in love.

The other two were more his type. Their villainy was out in the open, where you could see it. They were dirty, they needed shaving, they stunk. Their nationality was anyone’s guess, but they were tough hombres, salty and barnacled.

They talked for an hour. When they got up to go, Kimm tailed along. Outside the joint they separated, Reurto and one roughneck to the right, the other one, short, stocky and not too sober now, to the left. It was raining.

Warm enough internally to be indifferent to the weather, Kimm scuffed along after Reurto and his pal, followed them to the waterfront. The two engaged in a final five minutes of talk there. The big South American took a wallet from his pocket, carefully counted and handed over some bills. He lit a cigarette, studied the burning match for a moment, then turned abruptly with no audible farewell and went aboard a cruiser made fast to the pier. A twenty-six footer, Kimm guessed. Built for speed.

Riding lights winked on. The craft’s engine sputtered, steadied to a purr. The big bruiser on the pier watched the receding lights for a mile, then shoved his money into his pants and walked away. Kimm eased after him.

It wasn’t far this time, and the hulk that took shape in the rain and darkness was a whole lot bigger than Miguel Reurto’s put-boat. It was a schooner, a fifty-footer, not too young or too trim, but rugged enough, from the looks of her, to ride a hurricane.

Kimm hung back and watched and he learned plenty in the next hour. The schooner was the
Milly Mae
, her home port Key West, her skipper the big bearded man who had taken money from Reurto. She had a crew of the hardest looking thugs Kimm had ever seen outside a waterfront flop house, and they spoke a language not English.

The big man not only gave orders, he pitched in and did two-thirds of the work. Most of the work, done under a flock of gasoline lanterns, appeared to be a general job of cleaning up. It was probably the first time in years, Kimm mused, that the
Milly Mae
had been so sissified.

For a woman, perhaps?

The conviction grew on him and he edged closer to seek an answer. It wasn’t that easy. Growing impatient, as usual, Kimm pushed himself out of hiding, strode forward with no further attempt at concealment. He got in the way of a man carrying a length of hose and a hand-pump. “Hey,” Kimm said. “You!”

The fellow stopped and glared.

“Mr. Reurto sent me over,” Kimm stabbed. “He wants to know if you got a full-length mirror on board for the lady.” Devils danced in Kimm’s eyes and a grin worked its way to his face.

The fellow dropped what he was toting and slapped his hands to his hips. He cursed fluently in bad Spanish, then said in explosive English, “So now it’s a mirror! What the hell else does the dame desire? A perfumed bathtub, maybe?”

“She’s a very special dame,” Kimm said. “You want to remember that.”

A shape came out of the rain and grabbed Kimm’s arm. Kimm resented the intrusion; it spoiled a beautiful string of invectives from the man with the hose. He turned, scowling, and the grip on his arm tightened. He was face to face with the
Milly Mae’s
skipper. In the big man’s other hand lay a length of two-by-four.

“Who sent you?”

Kimm measured him with a glance. “Reurto.”

The skipper looked squintingly at him and said, “You’re a liar. Reurto left for his island an hour ago What’s your game?”

“You only think he left,” Kimm said.

“What?”

“This whole business smells. All you’ll get out of it is trouble.”

The big man withdrew his hand, wiped it on his thigh and would have shifted the two-by-four into it. That was his mistake. With both arms free, Kimm thrust forward a foot and pushed him over it. Pushed him hard, with clenched fists, in the stomach.

The skipper wallowed back off balance and went down in a heap, cursing. The man with the hose and hand-pump took a step toward Kimm, with ominous intent, and caught a beautiful right to the chin, a blow that clipped his mouth shut and sent him sprawling, stern first, into the skipper’s flailing legs. Kimm wheeled and ran. He could run like an antelope. Being a smallish man and cautious, he often did.

He came out on the town’s main street, wet and winded and wondering if the
Milly Mae
’s crew would waste any time looking for him. They probably would. The thought was not comforting, nor was the realization that in order to upset Reurto’s plans and lay hands on Miss Fern Macomber, he would have to get to Angel’s Acre before the
Milly Mae’s
skipper, by phone or otherwise, got word to Reurto that something smelled in Denmark.

Cursing his job, Kimm ventured into a bar and asked questions, then visited two other bars and a hotel, asked more questions and finally got an answer. A man named Gleeson, it seemed, might brave the elements tonight, despite wind and weather, if shown enough money.

Kimm located the man’s home, a waterfront shack half a size larger than a phone booth. Standing ankle-deep in mud, he knocked, got no answer, pushed open the door. The darkness baffled him but it shivered with the wheeze of a man snoring. He struck a match.

The shack contained an iron bed, an oil stove and an upturned soap box. The thing on the box was a quart whiskey bottle, empty. The thing on the bed was a sprawled, vaguely human shape with a week’s growth of beard and a bad breath.

Kimm squeamishly entered, touched the match to a stump of candle. He grabbed the man’s shoulders and shook them. When that failed, he pulled aside a filthy rag of blanket, baring the man’s feet, picked up the candle and held it close to a leathery lump of heel.

The fellow groaned. Kimm shook him again and his eyes opened. They were small, swollen eyes, marvelously ornate with fine red whorls. He blinked them and sat up. “What the hell?” he bellowed.

“You Gleeson?” Kimm said.

The fellow rubbed his eyes, blew breath into his cupped hands and sniffed it and made a face. “The stuff they sell you for liquor in this man’s town!” He leaned far over and pulled a pair of mud-caked boots from under the bed, began to pull them on. “What d’you want? Who are you, anyway?”