Lorenzo Jones got his voice back. “Mister... look, I didn’t do nothing.... I...”
“Shut up.” I locked the door behind me, went over and pulled down the window, closed the shade and, very deliberately, turned the volume of the radio up.
Lorenzo Jones got the message loud and clear. His eyes in their heavy pads of flesh grew a little wild. They didn’t want to look at mine. They tried to appeal to Roberta, then he saw who she was. “Look, mister... if she paid you to do this, I’ll pay you more. That bitch...”
“She didn’t pay me, Lorenzo.”
“Then why...?”
“Shut up and listen to me, Lorenzo. Listen real good because I’m only going to say it once. I’m going to ask you questions and if you don’t answer them right you’re going to catch a slug someplace.” I motioned to Roberta. “Get me a pillow.”
She pulled one from the bed and tossed it to me. I wrapped it around the rod in my fist and walked over to Jones. He tried to swallow and couldn’t. I said, “Who paid you to use Virginia Howell’s room?”
“The ... the girl. She...”
“Not the girl.”
His nod was desperate. “It was, I’m telling you. She gimme the dough....” I leveled the .45 at his kneecap. “Cripes, don’t shoot me, will ya! I’m telling ya, the girl gimme the money. Ali said she’d pay me.... It wasn’t the first time. He wanted a room somewhere for himself or his friends, I’d clear Virginia out and let’im use it. Always whoever used the room would pay me. He ...” “Roberta?” I asked.
“He’s pulled that plenty of times, usually with Virginia. A lot of those bums don’t want to sign a register. A couple of times he stuck somebody up there who was hot.”
I looked back to Jones again. “How long was Greta supposed to stay there, Lorenzo?”
His shrug was more like a big shudder. “I ... dunno. Ali never told me. She got out on her own, then that stupid Virginia came back when I told her to stay away until I saw her. That’s why I smacked her. She was givin’ me a hard time. She didn’t like nobody using her place. That other one messed up her clothes, threw them in a suitcase, knocked them down....”
“That other one was putting on an act for me, Lorenzo. She wanted me to think she lived there.” I stopped a second, watched him and said, “Was she there before?”
“How do I know? I don’t ask Ali no questions. Maybe she was. I ain’t gonna complain when...”
I cut him off. “Who’s Ali?”
“Hell, that’s all I know. Just Ali. He’s a guy.”
“You’re getting close to hopping, Jones.” I grinned at him and my mouth was a tight line across my teeth. I could feel my fingers starting to squeeze the gun.
Lorenzo Jones knew it too. His breath sucked in so hard he almost choked and he tried to double up in a ball. “Who’s Ali?” I repeated.
His tongue ran over dry lips. “He’s ... on a ship. Some kind ... of a steward.”
“More.”
“He brings things in. You know, he ...”
“What does he smuggle, Jones?”
He couldn’t keep his hands still and the sweat was dripping off his nose. “I... I think it’s H. He don’t tell me. His customers are... special. He ain’t... in the rackets. He does it special.”
“That puts him in the money class,” I said.
Lorenzo jerked his head in a nod.
“How would he contact a slob like you?”
“I... got him some broads one time. He like to... well, he wasn’t right. He did some crazy things to ’em, but he paid good.”
“What things?”
Lorenzo Jones was almost babbling, but he said, “Cigarettes. He burned ’em, things like that. He’d ... bite them. Once he ...”
Roberta came up and stood beside me, looking at Jones with loathing. “I knew two of those kids. They never talked about it, but I saw the scars. One wound up in the mental ward at Bellevue and the other stepped in front of a subway train when she was dead drunk.”
“Describe him, Jones.”
His mind didn’t want to work. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the pillow that covered the gun in my hand. I grinned again and it was too much for him. His mouth began to contort into words. “He ... he’s kind of not too big like. He talks funny. I tried to get something on him so I could maybe score with him but he’s careful. I seen him in the Village sometimes. Him and a silly hat. He goes with them oddballs down there for kicks. Look, I don’t know him. He’s just some gook.”
I got that feeling again, a surging of little streams running together to churn into a more powerful feeder that would eventually build to a raging torrent. How many people had called other people a gook? It was old army slang for any native help, the baggy-pants bunch that toted your barracks bags and did your washing. The kind who’d beg with one hand and kill with the other, to whom petty theft was a pastime, robbery a way of life and to be caught was kismet and your head on a pole outside the city.
“Okay, Lorenzo, now one more for the big go and don’t muff it. You said you tried to get something so you could score on him. That means you tailed him. You know he comes off a ship.” I paused, then said, “Which ship?” and held the gun on his gut.
He didn’t hesitate at all. “The
Pinella.”
I nodded. “Why you holing up, Lorenzo?”
No words came out. His eyes seemed sunk in the back of his head.
I said, “Maybe you did find out something. Maybe you found out this man would kill you the first time you ever messed anything on him.”
Jones got his voice back at last. “Okay, so I seen those broads. I know guys like him. He even told me. He ...” His voice lost itself in the fear that was so alive it drenched him with sweat.
“Now, Roberta?” I asked.
“Now,” she said.
I took my time with him and any little sounds he was able to make were drowned in the noise of the radio. He came apart in small splashes of blood and livid bruises he was going to wear a long, long time. I talked to him quietly while I did it and before his eyes were closed all the way I made him look at Roberta and see what he had done to her and when he couldn’t see any more, made him remember what he had done to the others. I made sure he knew that this could only be the start of things for him because a lot of people were going to know who he was and what he did and wherever he went somebody else would be waiting for him and Lorenzo Jones knew I wasn’t lying, not even a little bit.
When it was over I took his wallet, emptied out the three grand it held and handed it to Roberta. She could split it up with the others and they could get the hell away from the mess they were in if they had the guts to. At least I knew she would.
I stuck the snub-nose gun in my pocket, put the .45 back and went downstairs with Roberta. I tossed the room key on the desk and the clerk put it back on the hook without looking at me. The rain had settled into a steady downpour and I called a cab and put her in it.
She looked out the window, took my hand and said, “Thanks.”
I winked at her.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“No, it really doesn’t, does it? But I won’t forget you, big feller.”
chapter 9
It wasn’t too difficult to get a rundown on the
Pinella.
She was a freighter under Panamanian registry that accommodated ten passengers in addition to cargo. She had been in port eleven days taking on a load of industrial machinery destined for Lisbon and would be here another five days before sailing. The crew was of mixed foreign extraction under a Spanish captain and at the moment, most of them were ashore.
But it was almost impossible to get anything on the steward. His name was Ali DuvaL He attended the passengers, generally engineers who traveled with the equipment, the crew and kept to himself on the ship. In port he left at the first possible moment and didn’t return until just before sailing time. Both the Treasury men and the customs officials gave the ship and crew a clean bill of health. No contraband had ever been found on board, none of the crew had ever been apprehended trying to take anything illicit ashore and no complaint had ever been lodged against the vessel or its personnel.
During the lunch hour I circulated among some of the dock workers trying to pick up any information, but no one had anything to offer. A check through a friend of mine got me the story that the
Pinella
was owned by several corporations, but it would take months to unravel the front organizations and the real owners who buried themselves in a maze of paperwork to beat taxes.
I grabbed a bite to eat in a little restaurant, watching the dark creep up on the waterfront. The rain had stopped earlier, but it still was up there, threatening. The night lights came on along the wharves making the ships in their berths seem unreal and whoever walked between the lights and the hulls would throw a monstrous shadow along the steel sides momentarily, then dissolve into the dark further on.
I was going to grab a cab and head back uptown when I saw the night watchman come on duty across the street and decided to make another stab at it. In five minutes I found out he was a retired cop from the New York force who had been at this job ten years and glad to have somebody to talk to. The nights were long and lonely and conversation was the only thing left he had to enjoy.
And he knew Ali DuvaL At least he knew who he was. On the ship he wore a uniform, but when he hit the beach he was wearing expensive clothes, which was pretty fancy for a low-paid steward, but he accounted for it by saying how guys like that saved their money and blew it in one big bust the minute they hit the shore. He used to wonder what it was he carried in the paper bag when he left the ship, then on two different occasions he had seen him drive up in a new black limousine wearing “one of them native hats like the Shriners wear.”
I said, “A fez?”
“Yeah, that’s it. With a tassel. He got out of the car, put it in the bag and went on board with his suitcase. Some of these foreigners are nuts.”
“Who was in the car?”
“Got me. They were friends though. They sat and talked a few minutes, before he got out. I couldn’t see the car. Sure was a dandy. Probably was a relative. Plenty of these guys got people over here, only usually they ain’t so well off.”
“Ever been on the ship?”
“Few times,” he said. “The chow’s pretty good.”
“They get any visitors up there?”
“Not when I’m on. Hell, who wants to see a freighter? This one’s better’n most, but she’s still a freighter.”
“Listen,” I said, “how can I recognize this Duval?”
“Well, if he ain’t got his hat on, you might say he’s medium, kinda foreign-looking and has an accent. If you can read faces, I’d say this one could get mean if he wanted to, or maybe that’s just the way some foreigners look. It’s just that he’s got... well, there’s something.”
“I know what you mean. Got any idea how I can find him?”
“Not a one. Couple of times the mate tried to dig him up, but that bird didn’t show. He goes someplace and gets himself lost. Dames, probably. All them sailors think of is dames. The last time the mate chewed him out and wanted to know where the hell he was and Duval just looked at him like he wasn’t even there and went up on deck. Guess he figures his shore time’s his own. I know he don’t go with none of the others. That bunch hardly ever gets more than six blocks away from here anyway. They’re back and forth for their clothes, picking up money they left stashed away so they wouldn’t get rolled for the whole wad the first night out and picking up chow on board when they go broke. This Duval, he just leaves and comes back as sharp as when he left. Sharper even. He’s always got new clothes on.”
I spent five more minutes with the old guy before I left but there wasn’t any more he had to offer, so I thanked him and crossed the street to a bar and went in the back to a pay phone. I finally reached Pat at his apartment, told him I was coming up and to put the coffee on.
We sat there at the kitchen table of his bachelor digs and he listened while I gave him the bit at the Midway Hotel and the follow-up at the
Pinella.
When I got done he glared at me across the table and tossed his spoon halfway across the room in disgust. “Damn, when are you going to learn, Mike?”
“Jones wouldn’t have told you any more.”
“You know we have ways to handle guys like that.”
“Balls. Those girls wouldn’t file a complaint anyway.”
“They don’t have to. You think we couldn’t get a witness to go against him?”
“So some judge would throw thirty days at him and let him go back into the business? Come on, Pat, you’re smarter than that. He won’t be operating in this town any more.”
“Neither will you if the D.A. hears about it.”
“Who’s to tell?” I grinned. “Anyway, how about checking with Interpol to see if they have anything on All Duval.”
“And then what?”
I finished my coffee and slid my chair back from the table. “Let’s put the pieces together, Pat. You have three dead women who might have had some mutual relationship. I had one live one who’s tied into the picture. We have a guy named Theodore Gates who knew at least three of them. I go looking for Greta Service and the lead took me to the Proctor Group. Dulcie said I caused a lot of talk up there... It was right after the big spread they had on me in the papers, so supposing this Gates gets the word?”
Pat nodded agreement and rubbed his eyes.
“Okay,” I said, “so he remembered the file he had on Greta listing her with the Howell dame. Who knows what kind of photography he was doing? Half the pornography made is done in those joints. He got up to his office but the damage had already been done. He lifted the card out of the rotary file too late. Greta didn’t want to be found, Gates didn’t want her found, and when I did, Greta cut out. She could have contacted Gates and he took off when he saw things coming apart.”
“I can punch holes in that,” Pat said.
“But at least it’s a place to start. And it gets us back to Mitch Temple. He was interested in the Delaney and Poston deaths too. He recognized somebody and followed him, somebody who was buying a white negligee.”