Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth (23 page)

He opened the door and scouted the hall. “Come on.” They walked along the hall and down the stairs. Vera Sue hugged the bundle tightly. The jewelry made rich faint scratching noises inside the sheet as it rubbed together.

Harsh led the way to the front door. When he opened it a current of air came from under the leaded marquee bearing the fragrance of azaleas.

Moonlight was cream-colored on the driveway and black shadows lurked in the shrubbery. Their feet whispered in the cropped grass. The toes of their shoes became shiny wet with dew.

“You are sure you can drive this thing, Vera Sue?” The sports car was a low shape in the moonlight, a pale powerhouse, sleek and opalescent like a pearl. He pushed Vera Sue down alongside the car and crouched himself. “You wait here. Don’t let anybody see you sitting in the car. It will take a few minutes for me to disable the limousine and get that gate open. The gate will be the signal. When you see it open, take off. Cut loose and just keep going to Miami. I’ll handle the rest.”

“What about the station wagon, Walter?”

“I’ll fix it now.” He went over to the station wagon and opened the door and leaned inside. He did nothing but lean inside for a while, then went back to Vera Sue. “I tore the wires loose.”

“Okay. I’ll watch for the gate to open.”

He leaned over her. “A kiss for luck?”

“Yes, Walter, you do deserve something for luck.” She made a small hard fist of her hand and brought it against his nose, making the cartilage squeak like a pup’s rubber mouse. “There, you bully. With my compliments.”

He fell back and cupped his hand over his nose. “Okay. That’s the one shot you get for free, baby. You try to steal this jewelry, I’ll fix you good, Vera Sue. Let me be plain. You pull anything, you’d better sleep in a locked room every night after that, because the day you don’t I’ll find you and you’ll never wake up.”

“You’re a nasty son of a bitch, Walter.”

“You are so right. You just keep that in mind, baby.”

Harsh returned to the house. Instead of going upstairs, he entered the first floor study where there was a telephone. He held the instrument to his ear until he heard the dial tone to make sure it was an outside line, then he dialed the operator and told her he wanted the police. “The Highway Patrol. Emergency. Hurry, please.” There was a pack of cigarettes on the table and he shook one out of the pack and put it in his mouth, but took it out quickly when he heard a female voice on the telephone. That a woman’s voice should answer for the police surprised him. He was briefly confused, but recovered. “Highway Patrol?...Yeah, yeah, well listen. This is a tip-off. Two guys in a limousine. They got a body of a murdered man in the back. Black limousine, traveling south on the beach road right now. It will go west across the causeway, then south on U.S. 1. License plate’s seven-zero-F-eight-zero-one. A murdered body in the back. Get on it.”

“Who has been murdered?”

“He’s dead as hell.”

“Hold it a second.” Harsh could hear the woman relaying the information. “What is your name, please?”

“Never mind my name. You think I’m crazy enough to get mixed up in this?” Harsh dropped the handset on the cradle.

He wondered if, when he hung up at his end, that broke the connection in the dialing apparatus so the call could not be traced. He wished he knew. At the same time he hoped he’d never find out. The time had come to get that money out of the wall safe and haul out of here.

He left the study after a glance from the window assured him that Mr. Hassam, Doctor Englaster, Miss Muirz, and Brother were still on the beach. They were crouching around the portable radio with an attentive air, like setters on point. Listening to another news broadcast, no doubt.

He went to his room and closed the door. He ripped open the box which contained the slacks he had been wearing when he shot the cop and dug his hand into the pocket. He found the wall safe keys. The bits of metal felt strange in his fingers. He stood there a moment with the keys in his hand. He did not feel any immediate reaction to holding them the way he had supposed he would.

He went to the wall safe and swung the oil painting aside and worked the combination the first try. Got it first crack, what do you know, he thought, and he made a little celebratory ceremony of getting the two keys in the locks in the inner door before turning either. The inner door had no handle and the way it opened was by pulling on the keys after they were turned, he imagined. He turned the keys and tugged, bringing the door open. It was exactly level with his eyes. The money was there.

He was looking right at fifty thousand dollars, he thought, but he did not feel any particular elation. He felt very calm, except that his ears seemed to have started ringing. He drew out the money and divided it in two halves and put each half in a pocket, one half in one hip pocket and the other half in the other hip pocket. It was funny how calm he felt, except that ringing in his ears.

Suddenly he bent over so he could clamp the hand protruding from the cast to his left ear and his other hand to his right ear. That stopped the ringing, shut it out. The ringing was not in his ears. It was a bell somewhere in the house. A burglar alarm, he thought, and he looked in the safe and saw a little switch which closed a circuit when the safe’s inner door was opened. A goddamn burglar alarm.

He wheeled and ran out of his room, down the stairs, out of the house into the shrubbery. He tried to be silent in the shrubbery shadows. Back of him the house was huge and silent except for the alarm sounding. A breeze rustled the palm fronds and rubbed the leaves against the glass-crusted wall like insects running.

Harsh ran to the gate. Still unlocked, it swung open silently as he shoved at it.

Now another bell jangled. Louder, nearer. The bastards got everything wired with alarms, he thought, and he lunged into the shadows and began running toward the carport. Breathing hard made his nose hurt. The gate alarm was jangling, while the other had a muffled sound as though it was being swallowed. He brushed a palm tree, hurting his arm.

The sports car engine coughed and moaned and the gears made a noise like screen wire tearing. Its headlights thrust out white funnels of light, and these raced along the driveway pursued by the powerful snarl of the engine. The sports car shot past him and on through the gate. Gravel torn up by the tires and thrown in the air fell back on the driveway, grass, shrubbery.

Harsh reached the house. He saw Doctor Englaster, Brother, Miss Muirz, and Mr. Hassam all running toward him from the beach. Miss Muirz was well in the rear, although she ran easily with a long loping stride. Must’ve gotten a slower start.

Harsh cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hey, somebody! Vera Sue’s beat it!” He ran toward the four coming from the beach. “That was Vera Sue in the sports car. Who the hell told her she could clear out?”

Brother ran toward the limousine. “Come! We must catch her.”

Doctor Englaster piled into the limousine’s passenger seat, next to Brother, who’d pulled the pistol out of his shirt and was gripping it tightly it in one hand.

Harsh gripped Mr. Hassam’s arm. “Hold it!” He kept his voice low. “Don’t go with them, for Christ’s sake.”

For a moment, Mr. Hassam pulled against Harsh’s hand, turning to give Harsh a strange look. Suddenly he grunted in comprehension.

“You two go on!” Mr. Hassam waved at the pair in the limousine. “We’ll follow in the station wagon. We can search more roads with two cars.”

Miss Muirz arrived, and Harsh had the sudden feeling that she’d hung back on purpose, that she could have outrun any of them from the beach if she had wanted to but had held back out of caution. She was moving swiftly now toward the limousine’s rear door as it began pulling away. Moving even more swiftly, Mr. Hassam tripped her. She went down on the grass.

“Go on! Hurry!” Mr. Hassam’s bellow was directed at Brother and Doctor Englaster in the limousine.

The limousine had twin exhaust pipes. Blue smoke coughed out of both of these along with a powerful sound. The tires spun and shoveled gravel backward, and the limousine raced out of view through the gate.

Harsh watched the limousine vanish and inhaled with relief. Now if the Highway Patrol was on the job, the matter of the cop’s murder would be up to Brother and Doctor Englaster to explain. Brother was carrying the gun with which the cop had been killed and driving the man’s body down the highway at top speed. Even if Doctor Englaster was only mildly tipsy rather than out-and-out drunk, giving him better control of his faculties and his tongue, he wouldn’t have an easy time explaining the situation to the police, Harsh thought.

Miss Muirz, sitting on the grass, looked at Mr. Hassam, who was still eyeing Harsh curiously. “You tripped me.”

“Yes.” Mr. Hassam did not deny it. A thin line of blood was coming from his lower lip where a piece of driveway gravel must have hit it when the limousine was departing.

“Why?” Miss Muirz’s voice was bell clear.

Mr. Hassam started toward the carport. “If we are going to follow, we had better get going.”

Miss Muirz moved swiftly. She was the first one to the station wagon. “I’ll drive.” She started the engine. “Meanwhile, you can answer my question.”

She was a sharp one, Harsh thought, and a fast one when the chips began to fall. She knew something had gone wrong, and she was moving right to the front to find out what it was. Better stay close to this babe, he told himself, or she may manage to gum up the works.

He got into the station wagon and Mr. Hassam slid into the rear seat beside him, fell back with him against the cushion and struggled to get the door closed as the car got underway.

Miss Muirz was through all three forward gears before the station wagon reached the gate. “So. Why.” Her voice was even more calm, more bell-like. “Why did you stop me from going with Brother and Doctor Englaster?”

Mr. Hassam winced as they grazed the gate. “I was afraid to ride with Brother. I thought you would be also, if you had time to stop and think. Do you blame me?”

“You lie at the wrong times, Achmed.” Some distance ahead on the blacktop beach road there was a fast-moving bloom of light with two red taillights embedded in the lower center. “That was not why you tripped me, Achmed.”

The blob of light ahead suddenly skated right and left as the road made an S curve. “That was not why you tripped me, Achmed. Right?”

The ribbon of blood from Mr. Hassam’s lip reached his chin, a drop fell on his hand, and he looked down at it in amazement.

“Well, I had some advice.” He reached for his handkerchief and applied it to his mouth. “It aroused a cooperative feeling toward you, Miss Muirz. I hope I did not act in error.”

“Advice? Indeed?”

“Yes.” Mr. Hassam’s handkerchief muffled his voice somewhat. “It came from Mr. Harsh here. I presume you’d want to know that.”

“What?” Miss Muirz had not understood.

“Mr. Harsh told me to stay out of the limousine, and I included you.” Mr. Hassam lowered the handkerchief.

The station wagon negotiated the S curve and they were thrown to one side and then the other. “What are you pulling on us, Harsh?” Miss Muirz’s voice rang loudly.

“Jesus, slow down, will you!” Harsh had been weighing the quality of Miss Muirz’s driving, and he was sure they would hold their own with the limousine, if not overtake it. “You don’t want to catch that limousine.” If they came up with the limousine as the police stopped it, there might be complications. He shouted over the roar of motor and wind, “Slow down! For Christ’s sake.”

“Why?” Miss Muirz did not turn her head.

“I got a damn good reason.”

Ahead of them the limousine lights suddenly disappeared around a turn. Miss Muirz did not slacken their headlong speed. Harsh held his breath. He felt Miss Muirz would go into the turn wide open. Mr. Hassam thought so too, and he grabbed onto the door handle. “A turn! Watch it!”

Miss Muirz’s voice was too high-pitched, too composed. “I will do the driving.” She braked and went into the turn with all tires shrieking; in a moment they were straightened out, headed for the causeway and bridge.

“Oh, God.” Mr. Hassam had clamped his handkerchief over his forehead.

Harsh saw there was no question they were gaining on the limousine. Desperation made his mouth dry. He took out Brother’s automatic pistol and brandished it over the back of Miss Muirz’s seat. “Slow down, goddamn it, I don’t want to have to shoot anybody.”

Miss Muirz ignored the gun. “At this speed, shoot the driver? You are a fool, but not that big a fool.” She apparently had no concern about the gun.

Mr. Hassam, however, had plenty. His eyes flew wide and he clutched the door handle again. “Harsh! That gun! Where did you get Brother’s gun?”

Miss Muirz was crowding the centerline of the road. “Relax, Achmed. At this speed, he will not shoot anyone.”

“That’s not the point.” Mr. Hassam did not take his eyes off the little automatic. “That can’t be Brother’s gun. He had his gun in his hand when he got in the limousine.” Mr. Hassam’s voice rose. “But it looks exactly like Brother’s gun. How in God’s name, Harsh? What’s going on?”

“I took a gun off a guy who got killed.” Harsh’s voice shook. He was frightened by the insane driving. “I got the guy’s gun out of his pocket, swapped it for Brother’s on the beach.”

They were well out on the dike-like causeway leading to the bridge, with the moon-bathed water of the Indian River rushing past on either side. The limousine lights were still well ahead and beyond the bridge. As yet there was no sign of Vera Sue in the pearl-colored sports car.

“What guy, Harsh?” Hassam’s voice was frantic. “What are you talking about?”

And still Miss Muirz had not slowed down at all.

“You want to know what I’m talking about? There’s a corpse in that limousine. Do you hear me?” Harsh pounded desperately on the back of the driver’s seat. “This guy I killed, his body’s in the back of the limousine. The Highway Patrol has been tipped off to stop the limousine. Now, goddamn it, will you slow down? You want us all in jail?”

The bridge rushed at them like a mouth of steel girders preparing to snap them up. It was an old-fashioned bridge with a tall black mesh of ironwork and a slight rise in the pavement at the entrance. The station wagon took off from this rise with a jerk downward at their bellies, then a long sensation of flying in space, and the shock of landing. The bridge passed them with a coughing sound, spat them out on the other side.