Wake Up to Murder (3 page)

“Hiya, baby,” I yelled at her.

Then I was bellied up to the bar in the Bath Club. Of which I wasn’t a member. In which I didn’t belong. Along with a party of wealthy-looking tourists, one of whom was asking me if I thought Palmetto Country would ever legalize gambling.

I thought it over. “Absolutely not,” I told him. “The churches run Sun City. And they’d never stand for anything that might cut into their take.”

Most of the men in the group laughed.

An old goat with a paunch nodded sagely. “That’s an angle I hadn’t considered. You seem to know your local politics, Charters.”

I looked down my nose at him coldly. “Why shouldn’t I? What do you think I am? A sixty-two-dollar-and-fifty-cents-a-week lawyer’s runner?”

Then the terrazzo floor came up and smacked me in the face.

I WOKE up lying on my back, breathing through my mouth. I was still panting from running so hard. It was like every dream I’d dreamed for a year. Someone was chasing me, while I stood anchored to one spot until fear wrenched me loose and I ran.

It was dark in the room but enough light leaked under a fluttering shade to give me an outline to a bed, a dresser, and two chairs. I was, obviously, in a hotel room. Relief drenched my body. I looked at the luminous dial of my watch. The dial looked twice its normal size but I couldn’t distinguish the length of the hands. It was either twenty-five minutes after twelve or five o’clock. What morning?

The knocking on the door that had awakened me continued. Not loud, but insistent.
Thump — thump thump.
Like the beating of a heart.

My mouth was dry. My head ached. I wished I could remember more about it. I hoped I’d had a good time. I hoped I hadn’t spent too much of the severance pay that Kendall had given me. I was afraid to get up and look in my pants pocket.

I felt on the table beside the bed for cigarettes and matches. The cigarette tasted like a mixture of hot straw and chicken droppings. The name on the folder of matches was The Glades Hotel. Even my drunks were unspectacular. Other men got drunk and woke up in Miami or Tallahassee. Even in Atlanta, or as far away as Havana. But not me. I was still in Sun City. The same old treadmill was just outside the window.

Where did you work last? How long did you work for Mr. Kendall? How little will you work for? Where were you born? Why?

The thumping on the door continued. I wished whoever it was would drop dead. I snuffed the cigarette and turned on my side. And wished I hadn’t. I’d really torn it this time. I wasn’t alone in the bed. At some point during my drunk, I had bumped into Lou and done what I’d wanted to do for a long time. I’d been a complete heel.

Lou was lying on her back, her long pageboy bob forming a brown pillow for the white oval of her face. Her lips were parted in a smile, as if she were dreaming of something pleasant. The sheet was pushed to the foot of the bed. Only her feet were covered. She had a nice body. As nice as I’d imagined it would be. Almost as nice as May’s.

I covered Lou with the sheet. Then I swung my legs over the bed and took a step. Uncertainly at first. Like a baby learning to walk. My head too heavy for my neck. My heart pounding in time to the thumping.

I was still panting from running so hard in my dream. My voice was fuzzy and tickled my throat. “Who’s there? Who is it?” I panted.

The thumping on the door stopped. A man’s voice said, “It’s Mantin, pal. Open up. Let me in.”

I didn’t know anyone named Mantin. But at least it wasn’t May. I took another step toward the door and kicked a bottle. I picked it up. It was almost full of Bourbon. I uncorked it and took a big drink. It made me feel a little better, but not much. I carried the bottle across the room with me and unlocked the door.

The man in the hall was small. He had flat gray eyes well-spaced in a deeply tanned face. He was wearing a white silk suit. His hair was black. The panama perched on the back of his head had cost him a hundred dollars. His tanned face was heavily lined. He was, I judged, a man in his middle forties. He had a diamond on one hand as big as my thumb-nail. A hand-rolled cigarette dangled from his lips. He looked like a cracker who’d come into money. A lot of money.

I blocked the opening with my arm. “What’s the idea?”

Mantin ground his cigarette into the hall rug with his toe. Then, pushing my arm aside, he came into the room, closing the door behind him, softly. His voice was a drawled whisper. “Okay. So you’re sore. But like I told you last night, this means a lot to me. How you doing, Charters?”

He knew my name. His concern seemed genuine. I hated his guts. I wished he’d go away and let me think. “Fine. Just fine,” I assured him.

Mantin prowled the room. He lifted the shade and looked out. He looked into the bathroom. He even looked in the clothes closet. Then he came back to where I was standing.

“You sober enough to talk?”

“No,” I panted. “I’m not.”

“You’d better be,” he said coldly. “Like I said before, this means a lot to me.”

What meant a lot to him? I didn’t want to insult him by telling him I’d never seen him before. He seemed to know me, well. I tried to ease him out. “Look, Mantin. Why don’t you come back in the morning?”

He shook his head. “Uh uh. I can’t be known in this. That would really fix things.”

The spring on the bed squeaked faintly as Lou moved in her sleep. Mantin slipped a gun from a shoulder holster. Like I might have taken a fountain pen out of my pocket, the gesture purely automatic.

The sheet was hot. It bothered Lou. She pushed it down part way with her hands, then squirmed out from under it. I thought she was waking up. She wasn’t. She turned on her side and lay with her back to us, making little contented noises in her throat. Then her breathing became regular again.

The room was in the front of the hotel, a few windows from the sign. A wavering finger of light felt its way under the fluttering shade. It outlined the delicate curve of a bare hip and went away again.

I began to sweat even harder. All I knew about Lou was her name and that there’d been something electric between us, a contact demanding to be made, from the very first time we’d met. But how she had gotten into my bed was an entirely different matter. The last time I had seen Lou had been in the County Building. When Kendall had tucked her hand under his arm and towed her down the hall. To keep their date at Steve’s Rustic Lodge. Then her voice came back to me, vaguely. Remembered from somewhere out on the beach.

‘Jim.’ she had cried. ‘Jim Charters. Of all people.’

And I had yelled, ‘Hiya, baby.’

Then all went black again. Mantin was still holding the gun. I hoped he wasn’t a former or prospective husband. If he was and rumor was fact, he’d have to shoot a lot of guys.

Mantin didn’t act much like a husband. He slipped his gun back into its holster. With the same ease he had drawn it. As if he had done it often. Smiling.

I like him better sober-faced. I squeegeed the sweat from my forehead with the bottle.

Mantin’s voice had all the warmth of a knife slash. “I know how you feel, Charters. I’m always sore as hell when I’m giving a twist a play and some dope butts in on me.”

I took a chance. “Then scram. And come back again in the morning.”

He removed his expensive panama and wiped the leather sweatband with a perfumed silk handkerchief. “Uh uh. She’ll keep. Believe me, son. Besides, I just came from talking to the captain and I want to get this started.”

I didn’t know him. I didn’t know any captain. I didn’t want to know either of them. I snarled, “So?”

Mantin’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “So the captain agrees with me that you sound like a right Joe. And I want to give you all the time possible to work your angles.”

The whiskey formed a hard lump in my stomach. Work what angles?

Mantin returned his hat to his head and the perfumed handkerchief to his pocket. “Come on. We can talk in the bathroom. The little lady might wake up and be embarrassed to see a strange man in the room.”

Mantin lit the light. Then he closed the door and leaned against the basin. In the bright light reflecting off the tile, his face was vaguely familiar. A face seen briefly in a dream, against a background of music.

I remembered I was naked and wrapped a bath towel around me with one hand.

Mantin took a sack of Bull Durham from a pocket of the white silk suit, looking at the bottle in my hand. “You handle the stuff good, kid,” he said, gently. His voice was sad. “I wish I could. But I can’t. It makes a damn fool out of me. So I have to leave it alone.”

I tried to think of something to say. All I could think of was, “That’s too bad.” I said, “That’s too bad,” and took another drink.

The longer I looked at him the more familiar his face was. It was that sort of a face. If he was a cracker, he’d known money and power for a long time. In the bright light he looked more high class. His face could be kind of cruel, gentle or cold, depending on whether or not he was on your side.

The towel slipped while I was drinking. I set the bottle on the flush box and wrapped the towel around me again, tucking under the selvedge to secure it.

Mantin moved from the basin to the edge of the tub and sat down. “In the usual run of things,” he confided, “I wouldn’t put no trust in a guy whose acquaintance I make in a barroom. Drunks are a pain in the ass. I know. I’ve dealt with them all my life. But a gentleman having himself a time is different. And I’ve taken a liking to you, Charters. You’re smart, but you’ve still got,” he tapped the breast of his white silk coat, “what they call the milk of human kindness. More, you’ve got what it takes on the ball.”

I looked in the mirror of the built-in medicine cabinet. I looked sober. I wasn’t. I was drunk. I’d never been so drunk. I hadn’t the least idea who Mantin was or what he was talking about. I suddenly didn’t care.

I wished he’d make his point and get it over. What with losing my job with Mr. Kendall, probably spending my three weeks’ pay on my binge, being checked into the Glades Hotel with Lou, and having to go home and try to explain to May, I had enough trouble.

I ran cold water in the basin and rinsed my face in it. It felt so good I dunked my head and rubbed some on my chest. Then I looked at my watch, pointedly. The hands were different lengths again. It had been five o’clock when I had looked at it the first time. Now it was five minutes after five.

Mantin took the hint. “I won’t be but a minute, pal.” He shaped his expensive hat to his head. “Like I told you last night I would, I talked it over with the captain just as soon as his plane landed. And we’ve decided to play ball with you.” He took a brown manila envelope from his pocket and laid it on the flange of the wash basin. “So there you are, Jim. What we agreed on. Just like it come from the bank.”

I stared at the envelope, fascinated, afraid to look inside it.

Mantin’s flat eyes went even flatter as he lifted the lid of the stool and drowned his cigarette. “And there’s more, if you need it, Jim. As much again.” He stood up and brushed an imaginary flake of ash from the lapel of his coat. His voice was as cold as his eyes. “Of course, you understand, I expect to get what I’m paying for.” His quick smile didn’t match his eyes. It was like having a dead codfish open its mouth at you. Still smiling, he punched me lightly in the ribs. “I’m a suspicious bastard, ain’t I?” He was trying to be friendly. “What the hell? I don’t need to tell you, Jim. You know your way around.” He slapped my shoulder. “Now go on. Go back to the babe. You can’t do anything else until morning anyway.”

He opened the bathroom door and started out.

I tried to say, ‘Wait,’ at his back. I couldn’t. The lump in my throat was too big.

Out in the other room the hall door opened and snicked shut. I ripped the envelope open. There were ten one-thousand-dollar bills in it.

The lump in my throat was choking me. I washed it down with whiskey. Then I staggered as swiftly as I could out into the other room and yanked the hall door open.

Mantin was standing in front of the elevator bank. He didn’t look hard or ominous now. All he looked was — lonely.

I raised my hand to call him back, just as one of the cages stopped at the floor and its steel door slid open.

Mantin mistook the gesture. His quick smile split his lined face. He raised his right hand, pleased. Then he stepped into the cage. The steel door closed behind him. And I was alone in the hall.

I CLOSED the door and walked back to the bathroom. The brown manila envelope was still on the fringe of the basin. I counted the bills in it again. I hadn’t made a mistake the first time. There were ten steel engravings of Grover Cleveland in the envelope. It was the first time I’d ever seen a thousand dollar bill. I rubbed one of them between my fingers. It was crisp and new. Like Mantin had said.

‘
Just like it came from the bank.
’

I realized I was breathing as hard as I had when the thumping on the door had first awakened me. Sometime during my drunk I’d promised to do something for Mantin. Something worth ten thousand dollars.

What? What could I do for anyone that was worth ten thousand dollars? Mantin had also said:

‘There’s more if you need it, Jim. As much again.’

He called me by my first name. He’d called me Jim. As if he knew me well. As if we were old pals. As if I traveled in the same financial brackets that he obviously did.

Sweat escaped from the hair on my chest and trickled across my belly to be absorbed by the towel. More, he had said in as many words:

‘Of course, you understand I expect to get what I pay for.’

He’d softened the words by saying I knew my way around. But the inference was plain. He expected me to deliver. I had better deliver. I didn’t like to think of the ‘or else.’

I washed my face with cold water again, then went out in the other room and got my pants and took them into the bathroom. My pockets were jammed with crumpled bills, fives, tens and twenties.

I tried to remember gambling. I couldn’t. Still, I had been plenty excited about something. I remembered yelling,
‘Come on, you red.’