The Way You Look Tonight (32 page)

The pair of them had met up at Lee’s makeshift headquarters in the boarding house on Duval. It was within walking distance of Stella’s hotel. ‘I could have stayed with you last
night,’ he grumbled after kissing her thoroughly. ‘Zip happened here. You OK about the news conference later?’

‘I suppose so,’ she said, reluctantly pulling away from him and sitting down on the other side of his desk, which was strewn with notes and photocopies of Woods’s last known
disguise. ‘Henry Stewart was very kind – he’s offered me a sort of crash course from the reporter’s perspective on how to handle myself in front of the press
pack.’

Lee nodded. ‘Yeah, it was the right call to do that interview beforehand. It’ll warm you up. Now . . . you’ve had all of twenty-four hours to reflect on where the case stands
now’ – he smiled to show her he was being ironic – ‘so anything jumping out at you? I’m all ears!’

She frowned and shook her head slightly. ‘Not really, I’m afraid. Well, nothing that you haven’t already come up with.’

He spread his hands. ‘That’s OK. I’d still like to hear you go over it. As an old colleague of mine says, “nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another
person”.’

‘Oh, so you worked with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, did you, Lee? You’re older than you look.’

He laughed. ‘You’ve read Sherlock Holmes too?’

‘Every single story.
The Speckled Band
is my favourite. You?’

‘
The Devil’s Foot
. Creepiest damn tale I ever read.’

She sighed. ‘We could do with Holmes right now, couldn’t we? Anyway, back to our own mystery . . .’

Stella spoke carefully and lucidly for several minutes. Lee listened intently, making the occasional note on the pad in front of him. When she’d finished, he nodded slowly.

‘So you think wherever he is, it’s tied up somehow with this whole homosexual act of his.’

‘I do. These men, through no fault of their own, are in a completely criminalised society, Lee. I know the police down here in Key West turn a blind eye, but most of these chaps have spent
their whole lives ducking and diving from the law. It’s the same in England. Just before I left, two men seen kissing in a pub in London were arrested and ended up getting six months in
prison for outraging public decency, or some ridiculous charge like that. There was quite a fuss about it but no one expects the law to change for years.’

‘One state’s repealed it here – Illinois,’ he told her. ‘That’s why the bar Woods worked in is called the Springfield – it’s named in honour of
the state capital.’

‘Ah, I see . . . anyway, my point is that it’s very much an underground society, secretive and defensive and quite hostile to police and law enforcement generally. It’s
what’s known as a group conditioned response.’

‘Wow. Quite the expert.’

She shook her head. ‘Not really. I did a first-year paper on sexual repression in society when I was at Cambridge. But Woods has manipulated this repression of homosexuals to his own
benefit. He came up with a convincing story about being set up by police in Texas and won everyone’s sympathy and support because a lot of them will have experienced a similar injustice, or
know someone who has. If the story had been true and the police
had
arrived with a warrant for his arrest, his new friends would have done everything they could to protect him – lie,
obfuscate, get a warning to him if he wasn’t there at the time.’

She took a deep breath.

‘SO . . .’ she continued, ‘I think that just before he was unmasked – which he had advance warning of, we now know – he conned someone, almost certainly a customer
because all the bar staff are accounted for, into letting him stay at their house or apartment. He’ll be there now, when he’s not prowling the streets murdering prostitutes.’

He nodded. ‘I’m with you there. But let’s not get on to the last killing just yet. Tell me more, if you can, about his hiding place.’

She pushed a stray strand of hair from her eyes and despite the subject under discussion, Lee’s heart lurched. God, she was lovely. The hell with being on call in this dump, tonight
he’d hold her in his arms, even if he did have to park his two-way radio under the bed.

She was frowning, entirely unaware of his thoughts.

‘Well . . . as I said, whether it’s an apartment or a house, it’s got to be the home of one of the men who drink at the Springfield Tavern. I can’t see it being anyone
else. Do the police here keep a record of known homosexuals and where they live? They do in a lot of places in America.’

He sighed. ‘They used to have one, but not any more. They dropped the practice around the mid to late 1940s, apparently. Someone’s gone down to records to see if they can find the
last list that was put together. Don’t hold your breath, Stella – I’ve seen the records department here. To say it’s chaotic would be a compliment.’

‘OK.’ She rooted through her bag. ‘Damn. I left my cigarettes at the hotel. May I have one of yours, Lee?’

‘Sure.’ He lit two; one for her. ‘So, where were we?’

She inhaled deeply and the smoke exited from her mouth and nose as she replied.

‘I think you have to go back to the Springfield and ask the owner for any names and addresses he can give you of men who drink there. But you’ll have your work cut out. As I said, by
necessity it’s pretty much a secret society.’

He smoked thoughtfully for a while before asking: ‘Assuming you’re right – about him talking his way into a customer’s home, and I think you are – what’ll
have happened to that guy?’

‘Oh come on, Lee, it’s obvious. He’ll have killed him on the spot. He won’t have bothered to tie him up and keep him prisoner or anything like that. The trouble is
it’s still only forty-eight hours since Woods’s cover was blown. That’s probably a bit too soon to ask if any regulars at the Springfield have stopped showing up.’

‘It’s worth a try,’ he said crisply. ‘This is all good stuff, Stella. You’re concentrating my mind here. Straight after the press conference I’m going to the
Springfield to talk to the owner, this—’ he consulted the notes in front of him – ‘yeah, this Tom Bilson guy. Ben Moss said he was pretty co-operative, actually. More scared
of Woods showing up there again than he is of us.’

‘Well, that’s a help,’ she said. ‘Shall I come with you? He might feel a bit less intimidated with a woman there.’

‘Good idea.’ Lee stood up. ‘Right, I’ve got some men to marshal and I need to see that the roadblock and boat checks are still working on the top line. What are you going
to do?’

‘I’ll go back to the hotel, have an early lunch and freshen up for this blasted news conference.’

He winced. ‘Sorry.’

‘The
Courier
man is picking me up at two-thirty so I’ll probably be at the town hall a bit before you.’

He shook his head. ‘Oh no, I’m not leaving you unsupported for a second – as soon as those waiting pressmen see you they’ll all be pestering you for exclusives like bees
swarming round a honeypot. I’ll be there prompt at half past two and I’ll wait on the steps for you so we can both go in together.’

‘Thank you,’ she said gratefully, moving forward to hug him. ‘Now, what kind of car did he say we’ll be in . . . a Ford something or other. Green and white, I think he
said. A sort of station wagon, what we call estate cars at home.’

‘Sounds like a Country Sedan to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for it.’

He kissed her. ‘Gotta go. See you at two-thirty. Good luck with the interview.’

‘Do you know,’ she told him over her shoulder as she left for her hotel, ‘I think I’m actually beginning to look forward to that part of it.’

He lunched on tinned soup but ate it upstairs. The smell coming from the cellar was getting worse and was pretty noticeable in the kitchen now. It didn’t bother him
that much, but when it came to eating he preferred to do it in untainted air.

The car looked good as new. He was right, it was a ’57 but had only been driven a couple of thousand miles since leaving the dealership forecourt. The thing was barely run in.

He’d wiped a damp cloth over the seats and the insides of the windows, which he’d then rolled down to air the cabin. It smelled pretty musty after all those months sealed up in
the garage.

It was a little after two o’clock and soon it would be time to leave for La Concha and what he’d begun thinking of as his ‘rendezvous with a rose’. He liked words,
and playing with them. Sometimes he wondered what it would have been like to be a writer.

He went into the living room and gathered up an armful of books from the shelves – dog-eared paperbacks, hardbacks, a few big coffee-table books of coloured photos of the Florida Keys
– and staggered with them to the car, where he piled them on to the front passenger seat. He didn’t want her sitting alongside him and maybe recognising him. From behind he would look
anonymous enough, especially wearing the yachting cap he’d found in a drawer and the pair of tortoiseshell Ray-Bans he’d taken from the guy’s dressing table.

He was wearing a loose-fitting cream linen suit – about the only non-flamboyant item in the dead man’s entire wardrobe – and an open-necked cotton shirt. He checked himself
in the full-length mirror in the hall, before which his victim had doubtless preened and twirled on countless occasions.

Actually, he now decided, he probably could have risked her using the passenger seat after all. The hat and sunglasses and emerging stubble after two days without shaving made a pretty big
difference to his appearance. Never mind. Better safe than sorry.

He remembered to bring the carrier bag with the pad and chloroform in it, and checked that the coast was clear before leaving the house and going to the garage. The car started first time
and he pulled out onto the street. He glanced at his watch as he headed towards the junction with the main road a couple of hundred yards up ahead.

Twenty past the hour. He’d be there in five minutes. If she was on time, they’d be back at the house in fifteen.

This was going to be the best thing he had ever done in his life, better than that day in Korea, better than the peaches up in Key Largo.

He shivered with excitement.

Lee checked his watch for the seventh time.

Almost three o’clock. Where the heck was she? There’d been no sign of the car she described to him. He took one last look down Duval before going into the hall to announce to the
assembled journalists (he’d been right earlier – there weren’t nearly as many as they’d expected) that the conference would have to be delayed by half an hour. They’d
grumbled a bit but he knew they’d be fine when Stella got here.
If
she got here.

He’d been back out on the steps for a good ten minutes getting increasingly worried when a voice behind him said: ‘Any news, boss? The natives are gettin’ restless.’

It was his sergeant.

‘Hi, Ben. No, nothing. Maybe this Stewart guy’s abducted her so he can get the scoop and . . .’

Abducted. Why had he said that?

The uneasiness he had been feeling threatened to mushroom into something else entirely. The expression on his face must have given him away because Moss looked at him with concern. ‘You
OK, sir? You look like you just saw a ghost.’

Lee stood stock-still for a few moments, thinking furiously and trying to keep his rising panic in check.

Finally he spoke.

‘You stay here, Ben, in case she shows up. I’m going to make a phone call.’

He ran into the town hall and headed for the administration office. When he got there he flashed his badge at the woman behind reception: ‘I need you to call the
Courier
’s
Key Largo office right now, please, ma’am. When you get through ask for the news editor and then give me the phone. This is
real
urgent.’

‘Sure, hon,’ the woman said in a tone that implied she’d seen and heard it all before.

A minute later she was handing him the phone. ‘There you go.’

He tried not to snatch it from her hand.

‘This Agent Lee Foster, FBI down in Key West. Am I speaking with the news editor?’

‘Yup. What can I do you for, Mr Foster?’

‘Have you sent one of your reporters down here for the Keys Killer press conference today?’

‘No. I was going to, but this missile thing’s kinda messed up my schedule for the day, maybe everyone’s for all eternity. We’ll be taking the conference copy from the
wire service.’

Lee’s world began to fold in on him.

‘I want to be absolutely clear on this. Have you sent one of your men, Henry Stewart, down to Key West for any other reason, maybe on a story? I believe he’s driving a cream and
green Ford Country Sedan.’

The news editor laughed.

‘Sir, I can state with absolute certainty that Henry Stewart is nowhere near Key West today. In fact, he’s sitting right here behind this desk. I’m Henry Stewart. And
furthermore, I drive a Dodge. I happen to think Fords are a pile of crap.’

With infinite slowness, Lee handed the receiver back to the receptionist.

‘Oh dear God,’ he asked her, in a voice so quiet she could barely hear him, ‘what have I done?’

Stella saw the car approaching the steps leading up to the hotel lobby and waved at its driver. He flashed his headlights in response and pulled up a few yards past her at the
kerb.

The windows were down – the car didn’t look expensive enough to have air-conditioning – and as she walked towards it he twisted around in his seat, craning his head low in the
gap between the front seats so he could see her. It was dark inside the car in contrast to the sunshine that drenched the street, and all she could really see of him was a peaked cap that made him
look more like a taxi driver than a journalist.

‘You’ll have to ride in the back, Stella,’ he said loudly as she drew close. ‘I stopped by the second-hand bookstore this morning and as usual I got carried away. The
seat next to me’s piled high with books that I’ll probably regret buying by this time tomorrow.’