Murder for the Bride (2 page)

One of the labor gang chopped his leg instead of a vine. We got the bleeding stopped and built a fitter and sent him on back along the trail to Tancoco with instructions to Fernando, our base-camp man, to send him in the truck down to the doctor in Tuxpan. Later Harrigan made a check with the compass and advised the world at large in a profane bellow that the most recent trail wandered off in the wrong direction.

Sam Spencer was using the mails to ride us about the
time we were taking. He didn’t want us to finish any more badly than I wanted to be done with it and get back to Laura. I had begun to think at thirty-two that marriage was for the other boys, not for me. There had been girls aplenty, but it had reached the serious stages with no more than three—and even then there had been something missing. With Laura there was nothing missing. It was all there. And to hell with what other people thought of my Laura. We met right after I got back to New Orleans after six months in Venezuela. We were married that same week.

Harrigan was having a bad time with me. I did everything except walk into trees and talk to myself. Every time I shut my eyes I could see her silver-blonde hair, jet eyebrows, sooty smudge of lashes, sherry-brown eyes. I could remember so clearly the feel of her in my arms, the sting of those pouting, arrogant lips, every line of her tall, warm, wonderful figure. Laura Rentane—now Mrs. Dillon Bryant.

We were just getting back to work after the noon break when the boy came from the base camp with the mail. Two letters. One to Paul Harrigan from Spencer. One to me, on
New Orleans Star News
stationery, with Jill Townsend’s name typed in under the printing on the top left corner.

Whenever Sam Spencer used to call me back to New Orleans, I used to get in touch with Jill. We had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun. She’s a little girl—the top of her dark head reaches no higher than my lips—but her slimness and the way she carries herself make her look taller. Her eyes are gray and sharp with intelligence, and her face is out of kilter in a funny way, the small chin canted a bit to the left, the left side of her mouth and her left eye set just about a millimeter higher than the features on the right side. It gives her a wonderfully wry look. The paper had her on society stuff for a long time before, in her spare time, she unraveled a particularly unpleasant smuggling angle, got her life threatened, got some people sent to one of Uncle Sam’s jails, and got herself promoted.

When Laura and I were trying to cut the red tape to get married quickly, Jill helped us. Laura didn’t seem to
care much for Jill, and that annoyed me a little because Jill helped a lot with the papers and also with finding Laura a little apartment in the Quarter. Then I realized that Laura couldn’t be expected to take a shine to someone classified as an ex among her new husband’s old friends.

I tore the envelope open. The sticky heat of the swamp had dampened the paper so that you couldn’t even hear it tear. My fingers left dark smudges on the paper. I wondered what on earth Jill was writing me about. I’d told her to keep an eye on Laura, if she could, because Laura didn’t know anyone at all in town, and because, if you don’t watch it, you can get tangled up with some pretty funny people who live in the Quarter.

“Dear Dil,” it read. She had typed it. “I think you had better get on back here. Laura is in trouble. I can’t find out just how bad it is, but without trying to alarm you too much, I think I can say it is probably the worst kind of trouble. I guess she should have gone to Mexico with you, Dil.”

That’s all there was. I stood and read it three times. I couldn’t seem to get the meaning of it clear in my head.

I think I tried to laugh. All I did was make a sound as though somebody had just cut my throat.

Harrigan stopped growling at Sam Spencer’s letter and stared at me. “What’s with you?”

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I handed him the letter and walked away and stood with my back to him. I got out a cigarette and got it lighted on the second try.

He came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. I skittered away from it like a nervous horse. “Easy, boy,” he said.

“Oh, sure! Easy! What the hell, Paul!”

“You can take the jeep to Tuxpan and get an airplane ride to Mexico City. That will be the quickest.”

“Leaving you holding the bag here.”

“What good would you be? Dammit, Dil, why did you marry her without knowing anything about her?”

I turned on him. “Watch it, Paul!”

“Have I said a word so far? No. Now I’m talking, boy.
For your own good. Nobody could stop you. None of your friends. You had to go ahead and marry her. Women like that are always getting their hooks in the good guys.”

“Paul!”

“Shut up. That Jill Townsend is tops. Everybody hoped it would be Jill. So did she, I think. I’m trying to prepare you, boy. I don’t know what you’re going to find up there. I do know it won’t be pretty, whatever it is. Laura is an international tramp, boy, and the sooner …”

I saw my fist going out as if it belonged to somebody standing behind me. A big hard brown fist, with a hundred and ninety pounds behind it. Big Paul Harrigan is my height, six-one, but he outweighs me by thirty pounds. My fist went out as though in slow motion and I saw him just shut his eyes and turn his face a little and take it. It made a sound like hitting a wall with a wet rag. He went back lifting his arms to catch his balance, not quite making it, falling on hip and elbow. He sat up and there was blood on his mouth.

“I had to, Paul,” I said, as if I were begging him for something. “I had to!”

“A woman like that,” he said heavily, contemptuously. “A hard-eyed, sullen, discontented little …”

“Shut up!” I yelled. “You keep on and I’ll hit you again, even if you are sitting down. She isn’t like that, I tell you. You got her wrong, Paul. All wrong.”

He got up. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked at the bright smear of blood. He sighed. “O.K., boy,” he said. “I was asking for trouble. Come on. I’ll drive you so I can bring the jeep back.”

“Fernando can …”

“I’ll drive you.”

We didn’t talk. Paul drove hard and fast. Dust boiled up in a long cloud behind the jeep. I was wondering what trouble Laura could be in. I had wanted Laura to come to Mexico. She said she’d been out of the States too long. I pleaded with her and she said no. Jill found the apartment for her. On Rampart. Three rooms and a little porch with lacy ironwork.

At the little Tuxpan strip I lifted my bag out. I set it
down and put my hand out. I said, “I’m sorry, Paul.”

He took my hand. His blue eyes crinkled as he grinned. “I’ve been slugged before and will be again. No harm done.” He sobered. “Do me one thing, boy. If Jill says so, Laura is in trouble. Try to keep your own nose clean. You get too excited. Just think before you jump. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try, Paul.”

“Let me know, hey?”

“I’ll let you know. I’ll see Spencer soon as I can. Maybe he can replace me if this trouble is going to take too long to clear up.”

The charter on the old AT was cheap. Maybe too cheap. Right after take-off the radio quit. The motor sounded on the verge of stuttering out all the way. It was not long before the Sierra Madre lifted up underneath us, and a good two hours before I saw Mexico City cradled in the hollow of the plateau, the volcanoes high and white beyond it, dwarfing the mountains south of the city.

I made my plane connections, got my papers stamped, checked with the American consul, and got to the airport with minutes to spare. My flight stopped at Monterrey and went on to San Antonio. The flight from San Antonio left at dawn. I hadn’t slept. I’d shaved in the men’s room and changed to a rumpled white suit. I kept wishing Jill had told me more. Trouble isn’t much of a word to go on. It can mean almost anything.

We came down out of the overcast over Lake Pontchartrain, passed the Air Force base, and let down into a still and breathless heat on a long strip at New Orleans Municipal. I grabbed a cab operated by a hairy little man and told him that I wanted speed. He made the turn onto Elysian Fields Avenue on two wheels and roared down through the morning traffic, hunched over the wheel, grinning like a fool. He gave the turn onto Rampart the same treatment and skidded to a shuddering halt right in front of the doorway. I gave him a five and waved away the change.

I gave one glance up at the little balcony and went up the stairs to the third floor, three at a time. I was calling
her name before I got my head above the floor level. I stopped calling when I saw the little man.

Three apartments opened off the top hallway. Pale light came from a dirty skylight over the stair well. The little man was standing leaning against the wall near Laura’s apartment. I took the key out of my pocket and dropped my bag. For six weeks whenever I’d reached in my pocket and felt the key I’d thought of putting it in the lock and of Laura running toward me across the room, into my arms. The little man had a dusty-looking face, a dingy gray suit, an open collar, a straw hat shoved back off his forehead. He had a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. Soaking wet he might have weighed 130, gray suit and all.

Just as I shoved the key toward the lock he said in a mild tired voice, “Hold it, son.”

“What’s your trouble?” I demanded.

“You Bryant?”

“Yes. If you don’t mind, I …”

“Can’t go in there, son. Sorry.”

I took two steps over to him and glared down at him. “And just why can’t I go in there?”

“It’s sealed. Police orders.”

“Where’s my wife?” Marriage was so new that the word “wife” felt strange on my lips.

He bobbled his toothpick over into the other corner of his mouth. I saw that his eyes were a funny color—like still water, like nail heads. I heard heavy steps coming up the stairs.

“Your wife is dead, son,” he said in a tired and gentle voice. The world stopped turning and the sun stood still in the sky. I turned away from him. A uniformed policeman with a long sharp-featured face came into sight. Funny how every sense becomes so sharp at a time like that. The look of a long crack in the plaster engraved itself in the back of my brain. A mosquito had been mashed beside the crack. Maybe Laura had killed it. I could smell dust, varnish, dampness. I heard horns blaring at some distant traffic tie-up, soap-opera organ music on a radio on one of the floors below. I could hear the slow thud of my heart, the roar of blood in my ears, a tiny creak
of belt leather as I breathed. Laura had ceased breathing. There was no more warmth to Laura. The long lovely legs were still.

I leaned my forehead against the rough plaster. I hit the plaster very, very gently with my fist in time to the thud of my heart. The knuckles were still a bit swollen from hitting Paul a thousand miles away.

“When? How?” I asked without turning. I whispered it, the way you tiptoe into a room where the dead wait for burial.

“Last night, son. Somewhere around midnight, as near we can judge. Somebody slugged her, wrapped a wire coat hanger around her neck, and twisted it tight with a pair of pliers. We don’t know who, yet. But I imagine we’ll find out. Heard you were on your way, Bryant. Figured you’d come right here. Been waiting.”

“Where is she?” I whispered.

“Police morgue. Been legally identified. You don’t want to see her.”

I turned then. “Yes, I do. There could be some mistake.”

“It’s not a good thing to remember, son.”

“I want to see her.”

We went down the stairs. I didn’t notice until we got to the police sedan that he had carried my bag down. He opened the door and tossed the bag in. As he got behind the wheel he said, “I’m Zeck, son. Lieutenant Barney Zeck. Captain Paris is right anxious for a chat with you.”

“Let’s go see her first, Lieutenant.”

The car was like an oven from sitting in the sun. But I didn’t feel warm. There was a coldness in me that no sun would reach. This was the one trouble I hadn’t thought of.

We went and looked at her. I made it out through the arch to the courtyard, where I was sick. Then we went to see Captain Paris. He was a big man, and he seemed to suffer badly in the heat. His white shirt stuck to his chest and there was heat rash all over his arms. His office had only one window. A fan on top of a file cabinet snarled as it turned from side to side, blowing stale hot air around the room.

We sat down and an old man with a bald head and a green eyeshade came in with a notebook and sharp pencils. He opened the book on the corner of the desk.

“I’ve been talking to Sam Spencer about you, Bryant. He thinks you’re a good man. Maybe too quick on the trigger, but sound in your field. How come that floozy got you on the hook, Bryant?”

I leaned across the desk at him, trying to get my hands on him. Barney Zeck got hold of my belt and yanked me back into the chair.

“That’s no way to act, son,” Zeck said in his weary voice.

“Then tell him to watch his mouth.”

Paris yawned and scrubbed at his prickly heat with his knuckles. “Let’s pick it up from the beginning. You met her seven weeks or so ago. Middle of May. What were the circumstances of your meeting this woman?”

“What’s that got to do with somebody murdering her?”

“Bryant, you just take that chip off your shoulder and be good. We want to find out who killed her, and we’ll do it our way.”

I slumped down in the chair and looked at my knuckles. “All right, Captain. I’d been back from Venezuela about four days. I was working at the Trans-Americas Oil offices in the Jefferson Building. Tram Widdmar, who owns the import-export business, was a friend of mine overseas during the war. Every time I’m in town we usually get together. The fifteenth of May was the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Sanderson Steamship Lines. They had a big party that night at the Bayton Hotel. Tram had a cocktail party for a big group out at his house ahead of time. I went with Jill Townsend. I met Laura Rentane there. She had come in that morning on the Sanderson
Mobile
from Buenos Aires. Bill French, first officer of the
Mobile
, brought her to the party. I saw her and fell hard.”