Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth (7 page)

Brother shut it off. His lips twitched with amusement. “The young lady made a fool of you.”

Harsh had decided he was not going to let the man get his goat. “Did she?”

“She showed you up.”

“Well, if you say so.”

“Harsh, I can tell you something that may make you feel better. She did not have any idea of asking five hundred dollars for those names. Or asking anything. I merely made her the offer and she grabbed it.”

Harsh gave this some thought. “Can you prove Vera Sue didn’t make a fool out of both of us?”

“How is that?”

“You paid her five hundred dollars for something worth nothing. What does that make you? I may have been a dope, but I didn’t pay out five hundred for the privilege.”

Brother shook his head. “You miss the point.”

“I guess I miss it, all right. What is the point?”

“Everything has to be done my way.”

“That is the point?”

“Exactly. Everything has to be done my way. Remember that. When I ordered you to give me five references in return for twenty-five dollars and you refused, I paid the young woman five hundred dollars for the same information. I was teaching you a lesson. I hope you got it.”

Harsh reached out a hand and his fingers felt on the table for cigarettes. Dumb bastard, Harsh thought. He pulled a cigarette out of the pack and put it between his lips. I’ll be goddamned if I ever heard the like of this.

“Mr. Brother, you gave me something to think about, I admit that.”

“When I give an order, it must be obeyed without question or haggling. That is what I am trying to establish. Do you understand?”

“I don’t know how you could say it any plainer, Mr. Brother.”

“But do you comprehend?”

“Sure.”

“I doubt it, Harsh.” Brother’s eyes were contemptuous. “I do not think you are very good at comprehension.”

“If you want to think so, okay. You could be wrong, though.”

“No, Harsh. I have had you investigated thoroughly.”

Harsh lifted his hand, removed the cigarette from his lips, and looked at it. He did not want the man to see his expression. “I heard there was a private detective from Kansas City snooping around. Was he your boy?”

“One of them. One of about twenty.”

“I don’t know what you thought that would get you.” Harsh rolled the cigarette slowly in his fingers.

Brother smiled with dislike. “It got
you
something, Harsh.”

“It did? How is that?”

“It enabled me to arrange to protect you from the police in the matter of D. C. Roebuck.” The man’s teeth were small white chisel edges under his lifted lip. “Providing you cooperate, of course.”

Harsh closed his eyes. For a moment he thought he was going to faint. His hand holding the cigarette lay limp on his chest.

“Harsh, I am going to talk steadily for several minutes. Making explanations. Do not interrupt.”

Harsh’s mouth was becoming very dry. He merely nodded his head.

“Harsh, I have been searching for a man to fit a certain exact description. The man must look exactly like the picture you have seen. He must have O-negative blood. The man must be of near criminal character, and he must be for sale. To find such a man I set up a so-called foundation and offered a reward, twenty-five dollars, for each O-negative blood donor, and I have expended many thousands of dollars fruitlessly on the device. Finally a local policeman notified me of someone who had needed such a donor here. It was you. I had a firm of private detectives from Kansas City investigate you at once, as I have had every possible candidate investigated in the past. The detectives found you had crowded D. C. Roebuck off the road and he was killed. They found a man in a service station in Carrollton, Missouri, who saw Mr. Roebuck drive away in pursuit of you. I have had them pay the service station man in Carrollton a sum of money to be silent. My detectives also found that locally the police wished to charge you with statutory rape, and I have stopped that by obtaining a birth certificate showing Miss Crosby is over twenty-one years of age. I have sold your car, and you will receive the price of a new one. I have paid your hospital bill here. The private detectives have checked your references, and I find you are a borderline crook. I have paid off the detectives, and they are gone. In other words, you are satisfactory, Harsh. I find you acceptable. Therefore only one thing remains to be settled.”

Harsh slowly put the cigarette between his lips. He felt for the book of matches on the bedside table, bent a match back to light it one-handed, and held the flame to the end of the cigarette. He noticed his hand was unsteady. He took one puff, and after that the cigarette hung on his lip with the tip smoldering.

“Mister, you kind of took the wind out of my sails.”

“You have questions, Harsh?” A sneer curled his lip.

“Yeah, I got a bushel of questions, Mister. You say you bought the service station guy in Carrollton, but will he stay—”

“I will answer no questions whatever, Harsh. You have been told the essential facts. That is sufficient.”

Harsh frowned at the thin curl of blue smoke coming off the end of the cigarette. “You’re kind of a puzzle to me, Mister.”

“Are you for sale, Harsh?”

“Eh?”

“Are you for sale. You heard me.”

Harsh took the cigarette away to moisten his lips with his tongue. “I admit taking Roebuck off my neck is worth something. But will it stick? I got to know more about—”

“I am talking about selling yourself for dollars, Harsh.”

“Oh. Well, you hadn’t mentioned money, only Roebuck, and I thought you meant one favor in exchange for another.”

“I will never need a favor from a man of your caliber, Harsh.”

“Well, if you say so. But a man never knows.”

“I asked you if you were for sale, you fool.” The man looked at Harsh with eyes as cold and moist as those of a dead cow.

“I guess the answer is yes.”

“Good. It is settled.” Brother began buttoning his topcoat preparatory to leaving. “This is as far as our discussion need go.”

“Wait a minute.” Harsh stubbed out the cigarette. “Nobody said how much money we’re discussing.”

“I already know your price tag, Harsh.” Brother drew a package of money from his pocket and tossed it on the bed. “That is the full amount we are discussing. There will be no more. Count it. It is not yours until your job is done. I will be back later.”

The sheaf of currency was held by a rubber band. It had come to rest exactly in the middle of Harsh’s stomach. He could see it by looking down his nose. He did not touch it.

“Harsh.”

“Yes?”

“You are to be removed from this hospital and taken to another city. That will happen this afternoon.”

Brother swung and walked to the door, opened it and went out, closing the door behind him.

I’ll be damned, Harsh thought, wondering how much money was in the packet. His palms suddenly felt sweaty and he rubbed the right one on the sheet. He pulled the money to him and slipped off the rubber band and began to count. He counted off five or six bills and stopped. He took one of the greenbacks with his fingers and held it up to the light, turning it this way and that and speculating on whether it was counterfeit. He did not think it was phony. It was a one hundred dollar bill. His palm was still sweating and he rubbed it on the sheet again, then went on counting, moving his lips and concentrating. Halfway through the pile his hand shook so that he had to pause. Jesus, he thought. He had a coughing spell that wracked him and he wondered if he was out of his goddamn mind. He seized all the money and shoved it under the sheet and lay there breathing heavily. He began to have visions of the nurse coming in and jerking the sheet off him and finding the money and taking it away from him the way they had taken away his clothes. He must be dreaming. Oh hell if he was dreaming, he might as well get the full effect of the dream and finish counting the money. He began counting again and his lips felt very stiff when he tried to move them to frame the numbers. He began to hear the blood going through his ears like water in a faucet. Finally he finished counting the money and clutched it all together and put it under the sheet with him and rolled over on it so the money was under his belly. He lay there having difficulty breathing. He felt the money pushing against the outside of his belly. Then he got the impression the money was penetrating right into his gut and making a lump like a barrel. The lump became as hot as fire. Then it began to melt and as it melted the gold fluid ran through his veins, ran through his veins into his throat, making him sick, making him have to vomit. He did not want to vomit on his bed. He lurched up but he had to let go anyway when he put his weight on his broken arm without thinking and the arm exploded with pain. He had to scream. The scream sounded like a fire engine to his ears. The whole hospital would hear the squall, he thought, and come running to take the money away from him. Oh, Lord. His bed was a mess. So this was how it felt, he thought, to get your hands on fifty thousand dollars.

The cablegram was delivered at eight minutes past ten o‘clock that morning and it put real terror into Mr. Hassam. Some minutes passed before he controlled his breathing to the point where he no longer took air into his lungs in shaky gasps. He memorized the name of the town,
Kirksville, Missouri,
where the cablegram had originated, and the name of the hotel,
Colonial Motel,
where the sender wished to be contacted, then he burned the cablegram on his desk ashtray. He sat staring at the ash.

Just burning the cablegram might not be enough, he reflected. You never knew. He kneaded the ashes in his palm to be sure he had thoroughly disposed of them. The paper smoke still hung in the office and it smelled enough like what it was, paper smoke, that anybody chancing to come in might recognize it. The president of the bank, the vice president, a clerk, anyone who came in would know paper smoke when they smelled it, and remember. He supposed anyone at the bank would be afraid to say anything, the situation of the government being what it was. But again, you never knew. Everyone was being careful to keep eyes and ears disconnected from mouths as long as the
descamisada,
the shirtless ones, still thought God had come down to earth and was running the government for their benefit. But the time of crisis was coming.

Since it was only ten o’clock in the morning, Mr. Hassam thought, God was probably still in bed with one of his teenage friends.

The smoke from the cablegram stank like camel breath, Mr. Hassam reflected, and he got up and opened the window. He stood there looking into the
Avenida del Libertador General San Martin.
It surprised him to see several thousand persons gathered in the street. He could not think what the occasion might be. He could see that the crowd was made up largely of shirtless ones, but for the life of him he could not recall why thousands of the fools should be down there in the street at ten o’clock this morning. He recalled that somewhere in his desk there was a silly calendar made up by some favor-currying concern which showed all the holidays dedicated to
El Presidente
and his late wife. He found the calendar and looked at it. Today was
La Señora De La Esperanza
day, the Lady of Hope Day, which was what the shirtless ones worshipfully called the late wife. So that was it.

Mr. Hassam put away the calendar. He wondered how the project of making a Saint out of
La Señora De La Esperanza
was coming along.
El Presidente
had ordered the Catholics to make his late wife a Saint about a month ago. The Catholic faith was dominant in the country, and the church officials did not like the Saint project. You could not blame them, for she had been a real bitch. It was rumored that
El Presidente
had personally telephoned the Pope in Rome and told him the Saint thing had to go through right away. Mr. Hassam could imagine what a hit that made with the Pope. All those teenage girls he was getting must be giving the bastard a God complex for real, thought Mr. Hassam. If he stirred up all the Catholics, he was opening a hornet nest, and he should have enough sense left to know it.

The way the crowd was starting to gather, there would probably be fifty thousand of them under the lecher’s balcony by two o’clock, the hour he usually put in his appearance.

Where was
Kirksville, Missouri,
anyway? In the U.S.A. obviously, since that was where the cablegram had originated. Mr. Hassam was somewhat puzzled as to which was the town and which was the province, and the general location. He consulted an atlas.
Missouri,
he found, was a province in the central U.S.A., and
Kirksville
was a small city.

He still felt frightened. Fear was like having a drink of a strong liquor, vodka or slivovitz or bourbon whiskey, in the way it put a false feeling into a man, and the sensation did not leave the system immediately.

The telephone rang. Mr. Hassam swung about to face the instrument, his nerves tightening. He was reluctant to pick it up, but he felt he must do so.

“Who? Señorita Muirz? Put her on, of course.” It was bad business when a man grew frightened at a telephone call, he reflected. “Ah, Miss Muirz. A profound pleasure.”

“I plan to be in your office at two o’clock, Hassam.”

She sounds high-handed, he thought. He was irritated. High-handedness must be a disease they caught in bed with that bastard. Only last week when he was visiting
El Presidente’s
summer residence in Olivos, a teenage flip had ordered Mr. Hassam about as though he were a
peon,
and he had not forgotten.

His voice held its composure. “May I suggest, Miss Muirz, perhaps twelve-thirty would be best for you to come. It is Our Lady of Hope day. The street is already filling with the worshippers.”

She laughed. “Very well. Twelve-thirty. Be there. Goodbye.”

That was a very nasty little laugh she had given, and he wondered what the Our Lady of Hope worshippers would do if they heard her give it. Tear her limb from limb, he supposed, particularly if they knew she had been
El Presidente’s
mistress while his wife was living.