Operation Whiplash (7 page)

Nor would he be likely to forget, because of the circumstances.

I was still chewing myself out mentally for the lack of judgment when I again approached the traffic light in town. On the corner of the intersection was the somber brick front of the Suncoast Trust Company. The sight of it reminded me of Jed’s remark that he had a man there who furnished him under-the-table financial information when Jed requested it.

I’d had a brief association with the Suncoast Trust Company during my previous stay in Hudson. I’d met its president, Roger Craig. The association had been mutually profitable. Craig wouldn’t know me with my new face. That was all to the good considering the events leading up to its reconstruction. The point was that I could approach Craig now as an unknown, and who better than a bank president could supply financial information?

If he felt so inclined. But on what basis could he be approached? Not as I had done it before, certainly. Then I’d been an itinerant tree surgeon looking for work. Would Craig listen to a free-lance writer pursuing loose ends in the underworld saga of Lou Espada? Or an I.R.S. man running down cross references to gangster connections?

Both could present problems, but it might be worth a try. I turned east at the traffic light and drove for half a mile before I took a road leading away from the swamp. It led to higher ground where the better homes in town were located. I located the intersection of University Place and Golden Hill Lane and considered the white-pillared mansion nestled amidst ten acres of trees. I was familiar with the trees nearest the house; they had furnished my previous introduction to Roger Craig.

I steered the Ford into the elliptical graveled driveway and stopped in front of the house. It was still seventy-five yards away, at the end of a crushed-stone walk. I pressed a button and a set of chimes rang pleasantly. A black butler opened the door. “I’d like to see Mr. Craig for a few minutes if he isn’t busy,” I said. “He doesn’t know me.”

The man looked doubtful, but he motioned for me to step inside and wait. He disappeared through a doorway halfway along a vaulted passageway so high his footsteps echoed. There was the briefest of pauses, and then Roger Craig appeared in the hallway from the inner room, probably a library. He held a cup of coffee in one hand and a section of the Sunday paper in the other.

He appeared tired as he approached me. He still had the pasty-white complexion—the telltale residue of the heart attack that had taken him from his lumber business into the family bank. He still had pinched-looking pain lines around his mouth. His suit had been cut when his frame was larger. Roger Craig looked in poorer physical condition than when I had first met him.

“I know you wouldn’t have talked to me if I’d come to you at the bank, Mr. Craig, and I wouldn’t have blamed you,” I tried to disarm him before he could ask a question. “So I took a chance on coming to your home. My name is Tom Sanders, Mr. Craig, and I’m employed part-time by the Internal Revenue Service.” I hoped the part-time bit would keep him from asking for credentials. “I’ve been sent to Hudson by the Atlanta office to do a little backtracking on a man named Louis Espada. He’s been deceased for some time, but little oddities keep cropping up. I’ve verified that he had no accounts with the Suncoast Trust Company, Mr. Craig, so I’m hoping you’ll agree with me there would be no violation of banking confidence.”

“Lou Espada wasn’t a customer of any bank,” Roger Craig stated. “He operated strictly out of his pocket.” His voice still had the timbre of the robust man he once was. He stood for a moment, musing. “You’re quite correct, Mr—ah—Sanders. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t talk to you either at the bank or here, unless you came armed with a subpoena. But oddly enough I have a personal interest in whatever you might turn up, so I suppose the only way I can expect your confidence—” he emphasized the
your,
“—is to share mine.”

“A personal interest?” I repeated.

“Yes, that’s right. Shall we sit out on the lawn? Would you like coffee?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

The bank president led the way outside to a rustic bench under a huge magnolia tree. The butler promptly appeared with a tray holding a silver urn, creamer, and sugar bowl. I glanced around while the butler poured. “You certainly have beautiful trees on the grounds.” I made conversation.

“I had an ancestor who took an avid interest in them,” Craig replied. “I’m afraid I don’t possess it myself. A tramp tree surgeon passed this way three years ago and did a handsome job of trimming and sprucing them up. The man had police trouble before he left town, and I’m given to understand if I wanted to rehire him I’d have to contact him in hell.”

I had been the tramp tree surgeon. It was the first I’d known that the police had given out the word they’d finished me off after the prison hospital escape. Hurt pride produces many such statements.

The president of the family-owned Suncoast Trust Company was looking at me expectantly. “The major thrust of my local investigation,” I began, “is the search for links between Louis Espada and a minor but rather well-known syndicate operator named Bolts Colisimo.”

I had expected this to be news to Craig, but he was nodding agreement. “I’ve had my own limited dealings with Mr. Colisimo,” he said dryly. “And the preliminary approach was made by Lou Espada.”

“Approach?” I ventured.

“Colisimo was interested in acquiring the Suncoast Trust Company.” A wintry smile appeared briefly at the corners of Craig’s pain-wracked mouth. “At terms extremely advantageous to Colisimo. Anything is for sale at the right price, including the bank, in view of my physical condition, but I considered his offer inappropriate.”

“And you told him so?”

“I told Espada so.”

“What was his reaction? Colisimo’s?”

“He made a rather grievous error. He threatened me.” The wintry smile reappeared. “But we bankers aren’t entirely helpless. I notified a friend in the governor’s office who then discovered there was a long-outstanding charge against Colisimo in a state court for second-degree murder. The case had been noticeable mostly for its inactivity until my inquiry. The wheels began to grind again, and Colisimo eventually pled to aggravated assault. He received a five-year sentence, of which he served three and a half.” Craig paused reflectively. “My name never appeared, of course.”

“You kept close track of this,” I observed.

“When a man threatens me, I keep an eye on him,” Craig said grimly. “Colisimo was released on parole a year ago. Lou Espada died while Colisimo was in jail, and Colisimo hasn’t reapproached me to date. If he does, he’s likely to find that he has somehow violated his parole.”

I was trying to fit it together in my mind. Colisimo goes to jail; Espada manages his affairs; Espada dies; Hazel inherits; Colisimo tries to recover from Hazel? Was that what all this was about? Just the way that Colisimo had not only recovered his money in Casey Deakin’s trucking business, but had taken over the whole business.

“You had an opportunity to form an opinion of Louis Espada,” I suggested.

“I liked Lou.” Craig said it firmly. “He had a lot of charm. He kept his own counsel very successfully. He used no local lawyers in his business affairs. Everything I know about him—or heard, I should probably say, since none of it was ever documented—came second-hand.”

“Is there any question in your mind that he was Colisimo’s front man?”

“None at all, although I must admit the realization was belated on my part. For quite a while I took Lou on his own terms, as a lone wolf operator with a passion for secrecy. Only when he came to me and represented himself as the buyer of the bank did I take a second look at him financially. I checked him out via the usual procedures and learned nothing. But a bank has numerous tried and true methods of obtaining answers where money is concerned. Meantime, Lou changed his story to me and admitted he had partners in the proposed purchase. By that time a reliable source had identified Colisimo as the instigator of Espada’s proposal. I wasn’t about to leave that sort of succession to haunt local depositors, much as I’d like to sell the bank.”

I waited, but he seemed to have concluded all he had to say on the subject. “Have you learned of any Colisimo activity in town since his release from prison?” I asked.

Roger Craig’s mouth set itself in a thin line. “Only in the case of the Deakin Trucking Company. Off the record, I tried to get Casey to go to the district attorney. I still feel something might have been done. But Casey refused, and there was nothing I could do. There was an object lesson for me in what happened to Casey, I might say. I’m continuing to keep an eye on Colisimo.”

Was it time to take a chance? “I wonder if you feel there could be any possible connection between Colisimo and the death two days ago of Nathan Pepperman?”

Craig’s gray eyes slitted. “It hadn’t occurred to me, but the way Nate died—” He didn’t finish it. “Still, I don’t know what the connection could have been. Nate was a business manager who worked for a fee. He had no money of his own of which I’m aware. From what I know of Colisimo, Nate could hardly have interested him. That sort of slimy—” Craig came to a full stop. “Wait.” He closed his eyes as if he were running a mental microfilm behind his lids. “Didn’t I hear—or read somewhere—that Pepperman was handling the interests of Lou Espada’s widow?”

“I didn’t know that,” I lied. “If true, it suggests a couple of interesting possibilities.”

Craig nodded vigorously. “It surely does. Suppose, after getting out of jail, Colisimo decided to recover the cash Espada had been manipulating for him?”

“Interesting,” I repeated. “It’s a matter of public record that Espada died intestate.”

“Then the widow was the sole heir!” Craig exclaimed. “And the courts have held repeatedly that there can be no separation of commingled money if good—”

“Commingled?” I said.

“The separation of good money and bad,” Craig said impatiently. “Assume Espada’s widow had money of her own, for instance.” Which she had; Hazel had inherited substantially from Blueshirt Charlie Andrews, the gambler who bet ‘em higher than a duck could fly. “When the widow inherited from Espada, she inherited everything he had to leave, which could have included money of Colisimo’s. But if she inherited in good faith, no court would force her to divest herself of Colisimo’s undoubtedly unprovable share.”

“Interesting,” I said for the third time. I rose from the bench. “You’ve been extremely helpful, Mr. Craig,” I went on earnestly. “I have some definite targets now.”

Roger Craig stood, also. “I’d be pleased to hear anything you felt you could tell me upon the conclusion of your investigation, Mr. Sanders,” he said.

I nodded assent. “Officially or unofficially, I’m sure something can be worked out,” I told him. “Thanks again.”

We shook hands, and I walked back along the crushed-stone path to the car. I exceeded the speed limit every foot of the way to Jed Raymond’s office. The door at the top of the outside landing was open, and I went inside. Jed had the telephone propped between ear and shoulder and was promising someone that anything that person breathed would be held in strictest confidence. Then he listened, but after a moment he shrugged at me to indicate disappointment in what he was hearing.

He concluded the conversation almost abruptly, then leaned back in his chair and considered me. “It’s like pullin’ teeth,” he reported. “Nothin’ concrete. A few hints that might be worth followin’ up on if—” His voice ran down. “I can’t tell much from that inflexible plastic face of yours,” he resumed, “but your attitude resembles a feline which has just ingested a vireo.”

I ran through for him what I’d learned from Roger Craig. “It spotlights Hazel as a pigeon,” I concluded.

But Jed was thinking of something else. “Man, you’ve got your nerve bracing Roger Craig,” he said. “He’s got the reputation of bein’ the most unapproachable man in this area.”

“How long since someone tried approaching him?”

Jed’s grin was wry. “You could be right. Once a man gets tagged like that, his reputation feeds on itself. It could have started after his heart attack when he had to take it easy and see as few people as possible.”

“Suppose we assume Craig is right, Jed.”

“Okay. What then?”

“Let’s go back. Colisimo had Hazel here. Then why did he need me, if our previous guess about Robin not having been sent by Hazel is correct?”

Jed wrinkled his nose. “Suppose Hazel smelled a rat and cleared out to get away from him?” he hazarded. “And Colisimo figured you were the best bet to lead him to her?”

“Not bad,” I admitted. “How could Colisimo be expected to know that Hazel would hide herself so well I couldn’t find her, either?” I thought about it for a moment. Jed started to say something, but I held up a hand to stop him. A murky idea deep in my subconscious was beginning to force itself to the surface. I had a mental image of the shattered front of Nate Pepperman’s office safe. “I think I know another reason, Jed,” I said slowly.

“Yes?” he said expectantly.

“Was Pepperman a lawyer?”

“No, although he knew as much about contracts as anyone in town. But he always had one of the local talent draw them up.”

“Do you know which one of the local talent?”

“I can sure as hell find out.” Jed reached for the phone again, then withdrew his hand. “Why is it so important?”

“Call it a hunch. I have a feeling—well, just call it a hunch,” I repeated. “Oh, by the way, I met Mario Rubelli.” I did a little more filling in. “He didn’t impress me.”

“There’s beaucoup people who shared that opinion walkin’ around with permanent lumps,” Jed said gloomily. “Plus a few no longer walkin’.”

“Find out Nate Pepperman’s lawyer,” I said.

Jed was reaching resignedly for the telephone again when I clattered down the outside stairs and rejoined Kaiser in the car.

One place I hadn’t checked for a trace of Hazel in Hudson was the Dixie Pig, the tavern she had formerly operated. Jed hadn’t mentioned the possibility, which probably meant there was no point to checking, but it was one more loose thread that would nag at me until I satisfied myself about it.

I headed north in the Ford, but just beyond the traffic light I had an interruption. Robin Ford emerged from a drugstore and started to walk down the street on my side.

I didn’t give myself time to think about it. “Into the back seat, boy,” I directed Kaiser. The dog was still slithering over the seat back when I pulled into the curb beside Robin. “Get in,” I said to her after I opened the door.

She looked disconcerted. She glanced up and down the street in the manner of a woman wondering whether she dared be seen getting into the automobile of a semi-dissolute character. Given her sexual background, it would have made a wooden Indian laugh. She finally started to get in, then stopped when she saw Kaiser in the back seat. “Say—” she blurted. “Mario said there was a—” She chopped it off in mid-sentence.

“Get into the car!” I snapped. “Your chubby ass is safe unless I tell the dog differently.”

She plunked herself down in the passenger’s seat with her body half-turned so she could keep an apprehensive eye on the back seat. “You said you’d call me every day and I haven’t heard a word from you,” she said with a pouting expression around her mouth.

“I came to the motel to see you this afternoon,” I said innocently, “but some loudmouth was using your place as a dressing room.”

“You were shaking down the motel room,” she said unpleasantly.

“Sure,” I agreed. “It looked to me as though you needed protection from your wise-guy boyfriend.”

“I’ll supply my own protection,” she informed me. “What did you think you were looking for?”

“Gold, diamonds, opals, pearls,” I said airily. “Or whatever else you have there your boyfriend felt needed protecting.” I reached across the seat and slapped her lightly on a plump, firm thigh. “Smarten up, Robin. I went to the motel room to make contact with you just like I said I would. I just happened to run into the big, bad wolf.”

“Do you always make contact by searching everything?”

“You could have been hiding under the bed,” I said lightly. “Although I’ll admit your style is more on top of it.” She opened her mouth to retort, but I kept on talking. “Have you learned anything about Hazel?”

The question seemed to confuse her. “Well, no, not really,” she began, then paused. “But—” She stopped again as though uncertain how to continue.

“It’s lucky I know you do your best thinking in bed,” I said. “Let’s go find one, shall we?”

“No!”

It came out like a gunshot.

“Aha!” I commented. “Last night I was the fair-haired boy, Robin. You didn’t want me to leave the Lazy Susan at all. What’s caused the change?”

“There’s no change,” she insisted. “It’s just—” She hung up again, unable to formulate an excuse.

“It’s just that Mario runs a bed check on you whenever he’s in the vicinity?” I inqured.

“Stop needling me!” she flared. “He’s just a friend. What have
you
found out about Hazel?”

“Not nearly as much as I’d like.”

“I do have one string out that might produce something,” Robin said. “But I won’t know until tomorrow. So don’t fail to call me. Although it would be easier for me to call you if you’ll just tell me where you’re staying.”

In contrast to her previous uncertainty, she delivered the little speech in glibly verbal fashion. I wondered if she had finally remembered the lines she had been supposed to use with me. “I don’t have a phone,” I answered the last part of her statement. “What kind of a string do you have?”

“There’s no point in my saying anything until I’m sure.”

Once again the response sounded coached. The truth of it was more likely to be that there was no point in her saying anything until someone made up a story for her to tell me.

“Why are we just sitting here?” she interrupted my train of thought. “Let’s drive around somewhere.”

“Afraid to be seen with me now, hmm?” I said, but I started the motor and pulled out into the traffic lane.

I headed north because that was the direction I’d been going. Neither of us said anything for awhile. I was still trying to adjust my thinking about Robin Ford. When she’d first showed up in Arkansas and I’d thought Hazel had sent her, it had seemed like a joke to put her freely offered, handsomely muscular bare ass to work. It was almost as if Hazel had showed up herself.

But if Jed was right and this girl was part of a scheme that meant trouble for Hazel, it changed the whole ball-game. Robin Ford had never been entirely lovable, even at moments that caused a block in thought-capability. Now she was beginning to appear downright dangerous.

I glanced sideways at her brooding expression, set once again in the pout which seemed her most familiar aspect. Its little-girl symbolism clashed sharply with her meaty muscularity. And what was she thinking now? The shakedown of her motel room appeared to have disturbed her out of all proportion to its importance in the scheme of things. Or was she upset because Rubelli was upset?

Right then I thought of something. If Robin had been assigned to babysit with Hazel, and had lost her, no matter how, the people she was associated with would be very unhappy with Robin. If she had then been instructed to babysit me, to produce me when desired, and I had so far proven unproduceable, their unhappiness would have increased. Her almost perfervid insistence that I keep in touch after she found her sex-bait incapable of maintaining the bed-relationship was suggestive of a special purpose.

Of course she had just turned down a needling offer by me to find a bed. Did that alter the equation? Or was it simply that when Rubelli was in her neighborhood, his ego couldn’t stand his not being No. 1 in regard to her bed-favors? Had she exceeded Rubelli’s orders about the means she should use to get me to Hudson? Yet she still insisted that I keep in touch.

“I’ve been doing some thinking about Nate Pepperman.” I tried to jar her off balance.

She turned swiftly to look at me. “What about him?”

“When you were in his office, you thought he seemed upset. Tell me about it.”

“Well—” Her former uncertainty had returned. “When—after Hazel called me, I went uptown to Pepperman’s office.” She was gazing at the passing telephone poles as though seeking inspiration. “I walked across the sidewalk and looked in the window and saw Hazel sitting at his desk, and I went inside and she asked me if I had time to go and find you. That’s when—”

But I had stopped listening.

Nate Pepperman’s office was not at ground level but on the second floor, which this damn girl didn’t even know.

She’d never been there.

Hazel had never sent her after me.

I’d been set up from the very beginning.

“You’re not even paying attention,” she pouted.

“What? Attention? Sure I am, Robin.”

“You think you’re so damn clever!” she burst out. She reached across and took hold of my right wrist as my hand held the steering wheel. The next instant she applied some kind of pressure that sent a shooting pain all the way up my arm. The car swerved across the road as I snatched my wrist away.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded heatedly as I straightened out the Ford again.

She giggled, the same high-pitched sound I remembered from the motel room. “I’m just kidding around,” she said with attempted lightness.

“Baby, that kind of kidding is going to earn you a few loosened molars.”

She shrugged it off. “Do you mind taking me back to town now?” she changed the subject. “And be sure you call me tomorrow. I’m almost sure I’ll have some word for you about Hazel.”

I’ll bet, I thought.

Word that would position my neck for the poised guillotine.

I wondered if our riding around had been in the hope of encountering Rubelli in his car. More than likely it had, and friend Robin had been wishing for a showdown.

I drove back to town, and she stopped me before we came to the stoplight in the square. “I’ll walk from here,” she said. She got out and then peered in the car window from the sidewalk. “Don’t forget to call me tomorrow.” She went down the street with her plump hips tick-tocking rhythmically under her skirt. Whatever else could be said about Robin Ford, her basic erotic animal magnetism couldn’t be denied.

The only reason for continuing to play along with her now was that she might lead me to Hazel. I’d stay with the charade with that hope in mind, but only until I was ready to surprise the hell out of the grabby Robin Ford.

Kaiser rejoined me in the front seat. I turned the car around and resumed my interrupted pilgrimage to the tavern Hazel used to own. I turned into the crushed-stone driveway leading to the rear of the Dixie Pig. As usual, no cars were parked in front despite the half-dozen marked-off parking places. The Dixie Pig’s customers still didn’t care to advertise their drinking habits openly by permitting passersby to identify their parked cars.

I left Kaiser in the car and entered through the back door. A wave of nostalgia assailed me as my nostrils tested the familiar smoke-musty atmosphere in the familiar low-ceilinged room. In many ways, this was where it had all begun for me. Hazel had been the best thing in my life. And now a bunch of thugs had her under the gun, whether in person or not. I wished I’d been positive of Rubelli’s status in regard to Hazel when I confronted him in Robin’s motel room. I’d have made the sonofabitch sing like a one-man rock group.

No one was sitting in the booths that framed three sides of the big room. Only three customers lounged at the bar. A curtain rustled in an opening at the center back-bar, and a bald-headed man poked his head through the opening, just as Hazel used to do when she heard a customer come in. She’d had a sitting room fixed up in the small space behind the curtain. That was where I’d punched her in the eye and taken her car keys to keep her from coming with me the night I left Hudson and ran into the roadblock.

I ordered Jim Beam on the rocks, and the bald-headed man served me. He disappeared behind the curtain again before I could decide how to formulate my first question about Hazel. The trio of silent drinkers stared down into their glasses. The Dixie Pig had been a lively place when Hazel owned it, but there was nothing lively-looking about it now.

One of the drinkers rapped the bottom of his empty beer glass on the top of the bar. The baldheaded man reappeared to give him a refill. “Didn’t a woman used to own this place?” I asked before he could pull his disappearing act again.

He paused halfway through the curtain. “That’s right,” he said. “Hazel Andrews. She sold out.”

“Seen her around lately?”

“Not in a couple of years, but I only work here afternoons. You could come by tonight and ask the new owner. Name’s Jim Willis.”

He went into the back room again, and I was left to study the color of my Jim Beam. I don’t really know why I thought Hazel might have stopped in at the Dixie Pig. Unless partly for the same sentimental reason I had.

I finished my drink in two long swallows, then decided to call Jed on the chance he’d turned up something. I went to the wall phone and dialed his office number. He answered immediately. “This is Kaiser’s friend,” I said. There was no reason the barflies should be interested in me, but it never hurts to be careful. “Anything new?”

“Just a little bit more of the same,” he answered. “I found a guy closed out by Lou Espada when the guy fell behind on his loan payments. The guy tried to tough it out an’ found himself in front of a load of iron one night that changed his mind. I’m beginnin’ to think this Espada was a split personality. Around town he seemed like a nice guy.”

“I don’t think the redhead would have married any other kind,” I said. “It was the weight behind Espada that was the really bad news.”

“I guess so,” Jed agreed. “Where are you now?”

“At the Dixie Pig.”

“Quite a difference, right?” he sympathized.

“It’s surely not like it was when Hazel had it.”

“They don’t even serve food there any more,” Jed said. “Speakin’ of which, why don’t you come on over to my place and I’ll throw a couple steaks on the grill?”

“Can do. Will do. And thanks for the offer.”

“Fine. I’ll be expectin’ you.”

I hung up the phone, paid for my drink, and went out to the car.

I appreciated Jed’s hospitality more than I might have ordinarily.

With the emotions aroused by my visit to the Dixie Pig, I was in no mood to eat my next meal alone.

• • •

A half-hour later I sat in Jed’s back yard with Kaiser at my feet. I watched Jed salt the steaks before consigning them to the grill’s white-hot charcoal. The first pale stars were appearing in the darkening sky.

Jed’s house was small but attractive, set at the dead end of a gravel lane. I had just asked him a question about it. “Built it myself after my mother died,” he confided. “I’m the product of a so-called broken home. Never knew my old man.”

“According to the figures, you should be a liability to the community instead of an asset,” I said.

He grinned. “Dependin’ on who you’re talkin’ to, maybe the percentages have it right,” he answered.

He picked up his own drink and sat down in the lawn chair beside mine. He took a sip and leaned back in his chair. “Nicest time of the day,” he said in a muted voice that was almost a sigh, as he contemplated neighboring houses which encroaching twilight was reducing to dim blurs.

“If you had a woman here with you,” I countered.

He waved a negligent hand. “No shortage within a few minutes’ drive.”

He left his chair to attend the steaks, and when he turned them over I noticed there were three. “Someone’s joining us?” I asked.

“We’ve been joined,” Jed replied. He pointed to Kaiser at my feet. The shepherd’s ears were cocked alertly toward the sound of the sizzling steaks. “He likes his rare.” Jed came back and sat down in his chair. “Changed your mind yet about Robin Ford?” he asked.