Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth (25 page)

Mr. Hassam turned and crossed the pavement. “Come, Harsh.” He went down the embankment and hesitated at the bottom, frowning at the water in the ditch. “Footprints in the mud. We must be careful of them.” The ditch water was black in the moonlight.

Harsh jerked his head in the direction of the station wagon. “What’s her problem?”

“Shock.” Mr. Hassam prepared to jump the ditch. “El
Presidente
is dead. She was his mistress for twenty years.”

“Oh.” Harsh had not supposed Miss Muirz to be much more than thirty years of age now.

Mr. Hassam read his thought. “El
Presidente
always liked them young.” He sprang at the ditch, landing in the mud and water with a splash. He swore, kicked his feet to throw off the loose mud.

They climbed up a slope toward the wrecked limousine. The two patrolmen, intent on what the interior of the wreck held, did not notice their approach at first. One officer said something to his companion and both ran around to the other side of the wreck.

Mr. Hassam’s whisper was firm and unafraid. “I will tell the officers I am a doctor, and the body is alive, and must be rushed to a hospital. Using that excuse, we will make off with it.”

“I hope they fall for it. It’s a good idea.”

At least fifty feet away from the wreck the reek of raw gasoline was pronounced. Harsh stumbled over an object and looked down and saw the object was a wheel with the tire still in place on it, the wheel almost entirely embedded in the soft earth. At closer view, the limousine looked even less like an automobile than it had appeared from the road.

Nearby palm trees with tall silver trunks leaned forward like inquiring sentries.

“Dick, watch it!” One patrolman drew his revolver. “Oh, it’s the people from the station wagon.” He raised his voice irritably. “I thought I told you folks to stay on the road.”

Mr. Hassam strode forward. “I am a doctor. Someone here may need medical care.”

“Well, okay.” There was quite a lot of dark blood on the patrolman’s hands. “There’s three bodies in there, it looks like. But it’s a mess.”

Harsh tried to sound calm. “Doc and I will do what we can.” He peered into the tangle of steel, wishing he had a flashlight.

The reek of gasoline was overpowering. Harsh could hear it still trickling from a hole in the tank. He was appalled. He had not imagined an automobile could be reduced to such a shapeless thing—even D.C. Roebuck’s hadn’t been mangled quite this thoroughly. He thrust his right arm into what had been the rear seat section.

“If anybody’s alive, it’s in front.” The patrolman sounded impatient.

“I saw something move.” Harsh was lying. His groping fingers had encountered cold flesh that was firm to the touch. “Doc!”

Mr. Hassam got down beside him. “The body?” Mr. Hassam’s whisper was flat and without emotion.

“Yes.” Harsh decided he had hold of an arm. He pulled with all his strength. “Damn thing won’t budge.” He began to pant.

Mr. Hassam also seized the body’s arm, and they both tugged with all their might. The body would not move.

The patrolmen were working on the other side of the wreck. They were yanking and kicking at the twisted metal.

Mr. Hassam’s lips were against Harsh’s ear. “It’s wedged. A knife! Have you a knife?”

“No. Why?”

“I want to cut off the head and hands.”

“No, I ain’t got a knife.” Harsh’s stomach did not feel well.

Both the patrolmen abruptly stood erect. They were looking in the direction of the highway. One lifted his voice. “Hey, lady! Lady, you stay back. Don’t come down here.”

Miss Muirz was coming toward them from the station wagon. She had crossed the ditch and she walked jerkily as if propelled by clockwork. She was looking straight ahead as she came. Her trim legs wore their coating of mud nearly to the knees, like boots.

“Go back, lady! Stay away!” The patrolman waved both arms urgently. “This’ll just make you sick. Go back!”

Miss Muirz had both hands clasped together before her breasts, and Harsh suddenly realized she had a revolver in her hands. Mr. Hassam realized this also. The patrolman had not noticed the gun.

“Gotta stop her!” Harsh hurried forward, Mr. Hassam on his heels, and they put themselves between Miss Muirz and the officers before the latter could see the revolver.

Miss Muirz did not seem to have any awareness of Harsh and Mr. Hassam standing in her path. Her progress ended only when she collided with Mr. Hassam, and even then she continued to stare vacantly in the same direction she had been staring as she walked. Mr. Hassam gripped her shoulders and held them.

“Harsh, go back, use a piece of broken window glass, cut off the hands and head.” Mr. Hassam still seemed calm.

“Won’t work. The cops got their eyes on us.” Harsh’s teeth chattered together. “Listen, I got an idea. The whole wreck is soaked with gasoline. I’m gonna pretend to light a cigarette, drop the match. That’ll burn the bodies.”

Miss Muirz’s body was rigidly inclined against Mr. Hassam as if she were still trying to walk.

“All right, Harsh.”

Harsh ran back to the wreck. One of the patrolmen looked up from the wreck. “So you got the woman headed off? Good. This would be a bad thing for her to see.”

“Yeah. She’s okay.”

The beams from the flashlights the patrolmen held were glistening on gasoline wetness throughout the wreckage. Harsh thought the fuel tank must have split wide open when the limousine was somersaulting. “How are you guys making out?”

The patrolman shrugged. “Three of them. All dead, near as we can tell.”

“I’m gonna work on the other side, officer.” Harsh moved around the wreckage, feeling for a cigarette. Then he realized he had no cigarettes. However he had matches, and if the officers did not see him, he could claim he had dropped his cigarette in his excitement when the wreck caught fire. They might or might not believe that, but they’d have no way to prove it wasn’t so.

He found a match and struck it. The flame leaped with unexpected brightness in his face. The patrolmen were not looking. He dropped the burning match in the wreckage quickly.

A blast of flame enveloped him. His clothing was ablaze. He had, he realized with horror, underestimated the explosive violence of gasoline vapor. He stumbled back. He had also forgotten he had been squirming around in the gasoline-drenched wreckage trying to get the body out. Jesus, he thought, I’m burning like a torch.

Mr. Hassam turned his head when the wreckage mushroomed in flame, and he squinted into the enormous mass that was the wreck, then saw a smaller violently moving bundle of flames that he knew must be Harsh. The stupid fool, Mr. Hassam thought. He could see Harsh was clawing and slapping at the flames with his arms, both the arm in a cast and the one that was not. The cast itself was in flames, too, and so was the bandage on Harsh’s face, which fell off in cinders as he watched. Mr. Hassam suddenly felt tired. Everything had been working so perfectly; now it was in such a mess. Everything was black and white like that. With an impersonator to stand in for
El Presidente
they could have looted the hidden funds; without such an impersonator there would be no chance. A few hours ago Harsh had been in good condition and cooperating; now Harsh had stupidly thrown everything away. The stupid fool, the utterly stupid fool.

Also Mr. Hassam felt concern about Miss Muirz. He could tell she was in deep shock, her contact with reality badly disrupted. He was not really surprised; Miss Muirz’s emotional existence for some twenty years had been tied to the man she had suddenly learned was dead, his body now burning in the wrecked limousine. Mr. Hassam and Doctor Englaster had discussed Miss Muirz’s emotional ties with
El Presidente
previously; they had determined to insulate her as much as possible from the murder when it was done. But everything had gotten out of hand, thanks to the idiot Harsh. There was really nothing much he could do about it, was there?

It was then that Miss Muirz shot him exactly in the heart.

The two Highway Patrolmen had stumbled backward when the flame spurted and had turned and were running to get clear. They halted at the sound of the shot.

Harsh also heard the shot with which Miss Muirz killed Mr. Hassam. But he thought at first it was something exploding in the flaming wreck. Perhaps the bullets in the gun carried by Brother had started letting go in the heat. In a corner of his mind he wondered whether the heat would damage the gun barrel so the ballistics men could not verify that it had fired the bullet that had killed the body in the back seat.

He was rather proud of himself, being able to think out the matter of heat damage to Brother’s gun while flames were seething in his clothes. Didn’t they say a man always lost his head when he caught fire? Well, he wasn’t losing his.

The flames were not yet actually charring his clothing. They still fed on the gasoline vapor that came from the cloth, blue devils darting here and there. The heat, though, was almost unbearable. He kept beating at the flames, and he tried to brush off individual tongues of flame, but without much success.

He turned in the direction the sound of the gunshot had come from. He saw Miss Muirz, the revolver in her hand. She’d had a gun in that purse of hers, he remembered. She was coming toward him. She stumbled over something on the ground, but did not fall. She did not look down to see what had impeded her progress, although it was Mr. Hassam. In a moment flame and noise came Harsh’s direction from Miss Muirz’s gun. She had not aimed the gun, merely pulled the trigger. But the bullet barely missed him; he could feel it fan the side of his face. She held her gun out before her with both hands, still not aiming, but pointing more accurately. From the muzzle, flame, noise. Harsh stumbled back, not hit, dodging wildly. Half mad with pain he went for the automatic in his pocket. Miss Muirz came on. She measured her steps like a farmer pacing a field. He got the automatic out of his pocket. He shot her. Luck was with him. He got her almost exactly between the eyes, almost as precisely as a moment before she had placed her own bullet in Mr. Hassam’s heart.

Both of the patrolmen had by now circled the burning limousine and they rushed Harsh. One knocked Harsh down with a fist. The other kicked the little gun away. They tore off Harsh’s burning clothing in strips, cooling their scorched hands by slapping them against their thighs. They got the charred shirt off. Each officer seized a trouser leg. They pulled. Harsh was dragged a short distance, then the trousers came off. The moment the trousers were off, they blazed up furiously. The officer tossed them aside.

“Jesus Christ, save the pants!” Harsh struggled to reach the burning trousers. “My money’s in them pants, Jesus Christ!”

An officer kicked Harsh backwards and he fell to the ground. The officer put his foot on Harsh’s throat and leaned on it with most of his weight. He had his own gun drawn now and he aimed it down at Harsh. “You’re under arrest.”

After Harsh had been in the hospital nine days, he was removed from the hospital and placed in jail. The inquest had been held while he was in the hospital, and they had taken him somewhere on a litter for his share of that, but he did not remember much about it. Just some stuff about five people dead, an automobile crash and some shooting. Then some words he did not know, such as extradition. Harsh lay on the litter swathed in burn dressings. His mind was relaxed from the dope they had shot into him to ease the pain of the burns. He had not cared much what happened.

When he had been in jail three days, Vera Sue Crosby paid him a visit. With Vera Sue was a solidly built man with a heavy face and foxy eyes. He sat near Vera Sue back of the glass window in the interview room. There was no opening in the glass panel between Harsh and Vera Sue, only a mechanical diaphragm that passed their voices back and forth.

“Who’s this bird?” Harsh did not like the looks of the heavy-bodied man.

“This is Mr. Arnick, my attorney.” Vera Sue was wearing new clothes, a crisp grey tropical suit and she had a fresh permanent.

Harsh swallowed nervously. “Is he going to represent me, too?”

Lawyer Arnick shook his head. “I think not. Miss Crosby happens to be my client, and your interests and her interests are not exactly identical.”

“What does that mean, shyster?”

Vera Sue leaned toward the diaphragm in the glass panel which separated them. “You listen to me. I waited in that hotel in Miami. But you didn’t show up. Then I heard about Mr. Arnick being a good attorney from a fellow I had a few drinks with, and I went to see Mr. Arnick. We had a nice talk and I hired him.”

Harsh looked at her bitterly. “You split the jewelry with him to pay him for keeping you out of it. That right?”

Lawyer Arnick cleared his throat. “There was no jewelry.” His eyes glittered over a faint smile. “We never heard of any jewelry.”

Vera Sue nodded. “That’s right.”

“God almighty.” Harsh felt the life draining out of him. “You can’t do that, you got to help me, Vera Sue.”

She smoothed the new tropical suit with her hands. “From what I hear tell, nobody can help you. Not where you’re going.

“What do you mean?”

Arnick leaned forward. “Surely you must have heard. They’re going to extradite you to South America to stand trial in your own country.”

“My own—”

Arnick smiled smugly. “For crimes against the state and against your people.”

“My people! What are you talking about? Who do you think I am?” The answer dawned on him as he shouted the question. “No. No—I’m Walter Harsh. I’m Walter Harsh! Vera Sue, tell him. Tell him who I am!”

“Everyone knows who you are,” Vera Sue said. “It’s been on all the television stations the past two weeks. I don’t see how you could expect anyone to believe you’re someone else—your Excellency.” There was the faintest hint of a smile on her lips before she spoke the last two words, but she erased it as quickly as it had come.

“No, you can’t do this, Vera Sue.
El Presidente’s
body, it was in the car—”

Arnick cut him off. “Maybe you should ask them to bring you the newspapers for the last few days. Then you would know that all the bodies in the car were burned beyond recovery or recognition. Your own burns were quite serious, too, I understand—but not to a comparable degree, and they didn’t prevent your identity from being conclusively established. Your facial scar, fingerprint records, dental records, the passport you were carrying, the monogrammed gun. Even down to your blood type, O-negative—not exactly common, you know.”