Kill Me Tomorrow (10 page)

It could have been a piece of cake; it should have been.

It bothered me a little. To tell the truth, it bothered me one hell of a lot.

I told my tale to the Sunrise Villas “Security Guards,” two men who arrived in a tan-colored “official” car. The dead man was found to have no identification whatsoever upon him—not to mention the presence of a heavy .357 Magnum revolver on the grass next to his body—and with Henry Yarrow's corroboration of my statement that should have been enough. Because Yarrow, still nervous and pale, backed up everything I said.

It would have been enough except for a guy named Weeton. In the hierarchy of what passed for law in Sunrise Villas, he was a lieutenant. After I'd made my statement to a Sergeant Striker and the patrolman with him, and they'd talked to Yarrow then joined me again out in front of the house, Lieutenant Dan Weeton drove up in another of the tan cars. I could hear the two-way radio as he stepped out, leaving the car door open. He was efficiently briefed by Sergeant Striker, whereupon Lieutenant Weeton, as though not a word had been said, took me through it all again twice, from the beginning.

Then he started over.

More, he had a peculiarly whining voice, which was marvelously irritating, but less so than his manner. His attitude, his entire bearing, told me clearly that he was lord of the land here, and I'd bloody well better hang my head and kick my toe in the dirt. Which I would do, of course, in a pig's eye.

But when I'd finished my third complete and careful recital for him, I'll be damned if he didn't say to me, “Well, that's not too bad. Only veered off in a couple spots, Scott. Now, you give it to me once more.”

I just looked at him.

He wasn't a tall man, maybe five feet, nine inches, but he was about as wide as a warehouse door. I tagged him at two-hundred-plus pounds, and solid. His shoulders were thick, sloping, and his arms and fists were so meaty and heavy they appeared misshapen, freakish.

Finally I said, “One more time, huh?”

“One more time.”

“I am not singing songs at the Safari Piano Bar, Lieutenant. I've done enough encores.”

“One more time.”

His voice was softer, still whiny, but more like a nasal whisper. The lids drooped slightly over his pale eyes, and he shifted his feet just a little.

Well, that was OK with me. Even under the most felicitous circumstances I am not noted for my jollity when getting goosed, so I said, “Lieutenant, I've told the goddamned story four times, three times to you. I've told it exactly the way it happened. I'm not going to tell it all again—not until you compare my statement with Mr. Yarrow's and check some of the neighbors around here. You'll get the same thing from them. There was one pop—if you want my guess, from a twelve-gauge smokepole—probably from directly across the street. The slugs are in Yarrow's living room wall, thus there is the possibility that you might care to dig them out and check them. You might personally desire to compare them with artillery shells, or dust them for fingerprints. A few seconds later there was one shot from a Magnum aimed at me—by that very dead sonofabitch over there. The Magnum, obviously, is a pro's gun. Finally, there were four shots from my revolver at said very dead sonofabitch.” I paused, smiling slightly, and added, out of sheer meanness, I suppose, “You'll find all four of the slugs in him, by the way.”

Weeton folded those ham-hock arms across his chest and looked me in the eye and said in the soft whine, “I'll check Yarrow and the rest of it. I'll check it good. You better keep in mind, Scott, you're maybe a hotshot private dick in L.A., but there's no such thing as a license to work in Arizona.”

“There's no such thing as a citizen's license, either, Lieutenant. And a citizen has the right—nay, the duty, as I see it—to defend himself against felonious attack.” I paused. “So I merely did my duty.”

Weeton turned and walked toward Yarrow's front door. He walked with an odd sway, shoulders swinging exaggeratedly. The hair on the back of his head was close-trimmed, a mere stubble. It was odd, but when he'd been facing me there was nothing familiar about the man. It was only when he walked away from me that I recognized him as the guy I'd seen talking to that creep on the council.

That creep, which is to say, DiGiorno, or Pete Lecci.

When I could find a nice quiet spot, without the kind of distractions which had lately been plaguing me and interfering with calm concentration, I was going to have to just sit a spell. And do a lot of thinking.

The patrolman had followed Weeton into the house, but Sergeant Striker was still standing on the lawn. He walked over to me.

Striker was about fifty-five years old, I guessed. Maybe older, but he looked as if he could still run up a pretty good score in the decathlon. He was five-ten or -eleven, not heavy but wiry. His hair was gray and thinning, and his eyes were soft gray under heavy drooping lids. Those eyes looked sleepy, but I had a hunch they didn't miss much.

“Don't let Weeton get under your skin, Scott,” he said.

“That's like asking the wind not to blow, Sergeant. Is he always like that?”

“Most of the time. But—well, this is a kind of Keystone Kops setup we got here at the Villas. You know, the private patrols go around in most of the cities, flash their spots, check doors and all?” I nodded, and he went on, “Same thing, only it's fancied up here. If the city incorporates, like the council's been talking about but some people don't seem to want, we'll have a chief marshal, and deputy marshals under him. But right now there's just a dozen patrolmen and a communications officer, three sergeants, one lieutenant—that's Weeton—and the captain. What I'm getting at, the captain's a good joe, but there's just him and Weeton at the top, and right now the captain's asleep. The two of them kind of run the show.”

“The sheriff still has jurisdiction, doesn't he?”

“Sure. Sheriff's the chief law-enforcement officer in the county. You know that. But unless something unusual happens—like this—you don't often see any deputies here at the Villas. I mean, if you're planning on staying around, a man like Weeton can make it kind of hairy. Which I got a feeling you won't mention to him I said.”

I grinned. “Thanks, Sergeant. But I can take care of myself—I hope.”

He smiled easily, glanced at the body still prone on the lawn, then let the sleepy-looking eyes rest on my face. “So far,” he said, “I got to believe you. Well, you want to talk about anything, let me know.”

Then it was just standing around until the sheriff's men came, a uniformed deputy followed by a team of detectives, then a sergeant from the sheriff's ID Bureau. And finally the coroner, who said he thought the homicide was justifiable and that the coroner's inquest would be held next Friday. I didn't have nearly the trouble with all five of them that I'd had with Weeton.

From whom I received a few final words of wisdom when I was allowed to leave. “You're free as air, Scott,” he said. “Unless—” He stopped, gave me the kind of smile occasionally seen on corpses with rigor mortis. “Unless you get a little bit out of line. Probably it'd be better if you stayed away from Sunrise Villas for a while. Quite a while.”

I smiled. “I figured I was free to leave as soon as the coroner and sheriff's men told me so. But thanks for making it official.”

He turned abruptly and walked off, and I climbed into my Cad—wondering if Lucky or somebody else had spotted it parked at the curb, or if my unofficial greeters had found me some other way—and got out of there.

In my rooms at Mountain Shadows I showered and put on a fresh shirt and jacket. The ones I'd been wearing had holes in them. There was also a small burn on my left side where the slug had “pinched” me.

I phoned the Tucson Police Department, identified myself to the desk sergeant and mentioned the Sunday morning murder of Joe Civano, then said, “I understand the victim was blown to hell—any chance it wasn't Civano?”

“It was Joe Civano, period. He was torn up, sure, but his face was still recognizable. We checked his prints anyhow, routine. It was him. Why all the static? You're the second guy to ask me if Civano was still roaming around.”

“The first guy, was that last night from Sunrise Villas?”

“Yeah, call from a preacher or something. Just a minute … Reverend Archibald.”

“No other calls about Civano? I mean last night or any other time.”

“Hell, no. Two's not enough?”

“Any leads to whoever did the job?”

“Nothing important yet. Probably some of his friends got tired of his company.”

“That's about the way I figured it. Thanks, Sergeant.”

We hung up, and I made another call, this one to Dr. Paul Anson's room in the hotel. But there wasn't any answer, so I slid the reloaded Colt into its holster, ran both hands over my hair, which is just as effective as combing it, and went out. It was a few minutes after midnight, and as I walked past the huge swimming pool, admiring it and the tall thin palm trees bathed in colored lights, the jets of water arching through the now-cooler air at one end of the pool, I could hear music from the five-piece group in the main dining room.

Still playing—but not for long. In Arizona the bars—and practically everything else—close up at one
A
.
M
. But there remained forty minutes before the cocktail lounge shut its doors, and that's where I was headed. I was looking forward to a cool bourbon-and-water, but even more to seeing Paul Anson. If I knew Paul—and I did know Paul—he would be either in or at the bar, very likely with some young, fascinated, unsuspecting, or possibly even happily suspecting, lovely.

Paul was a little older than I, like me a bachelor. He was a damned fine doctor, one of the best in his business but forever studying, trying to add to his already encyclopedic knowledge of medicine and psychology. But that was his profession; life was his hobby.

There were times when I felt he confused “life” with “girls,” for he seemed to spend almost as much time operating on tomatoes as prescribing variously tinted and shaped pills for variously tinted and shaped patients. When I walked into the bar he was—I said I knew him—thus engaged. He was standing near the bar, looking down at a girl seated on one of the stools.

She was sitting with her back to the bar and her front to Paul—and it was a front to conjure with—gazing at Dr. Anson with what appeared to be hypnotic rapture.

I walked up next to them. She was a doll, a gorgeous blond creature—which failed to surprise me—about twenty-five years young, blue miniskirt hiked more than halfway up peachy creamy thighs, swooping rounded blue neckline low enough to reveal much of a bosom as maxi as her skirt was mini.

Neither of them noticed me.

Paul, at six-three, was an inch taller than I am, and he bore a faint but noticeable resemblance to a younger and leaner John Wayne, a resemblance which he did all in his power to emphasize. He was bent slightly forward, eyes on the lovely's moist, parted lips, murmuring, “… you'll love Los Angeles, my dear. And of course Hollywood—I
can't
believe you've never been to Hollywood. Why—”

I leaned closer and said, “Miss, he's not John Wayne. Not his brother, either. He isn't even a cousin.”

She got a sort of blank look on her lovely face, then swept her eyes and long-long lashes toward me.

“His real name's Homer,” I said. “Homer Kludd.”

She looked up at Paul again. “What's with him?”

“I don't know. Never saw him before, my dear.”

“Of course he hasn't seen me,” I said quickly. “I'm with the Watchdog Society. And we've had our eye on this bird for a long time. A
long
time—”

She looked at me suspiciously. “You don't … look like a—what? A Bird Dog?”

“Watchbird. And we've had our eyes on this dog for twenty, maybe thirty years. This man Kludd is a notorious lecher with more than a hundred citations in our files, which are incomplete. I felt it my duty to warn you—”

“Please mind—your own—business!” she said.

“Well, can I leave you one of our tracts?”

Paul laughed and socked me on the shoulder. “Damn, it's good to see you again, Vivian. I already heard a few things about you and a
very
female movie star. None of which I believe, needless to say.” He glanced, grinning, at the girl and said, “Janelle, it's OK. He's a friend of mine.”

It was disgusting what those few words—from him—did to her.

“Oh!” she cried cutely. Then she grabbed my hand in both of hers and kind of kneaded it and hugged it and squeezed it, and cried “Oh!” again and then “I'm
sorry
, Mr.—what's your name? Vivian? I'll call you Viv—”

“The hell you will. It's Shell. Shell Scott.”

“Mr.—Shell. I didn't know you were a friend of
his
.”

“What's so great about him?”

She was still kneading and doodling with my hand, and then she pulled it toward her and pressed it artlessly against the front of her dress, which of course was also the front of her, and said, “I'd
never
have talked like that to you if I'd known you were a friend of Paul's. Can you ever forgive me?”

“I probably could. Yeah, I think I could.”

Paul glanced around, poked the air with a long index finger. “Couple leaving that table, Shell. Grab it and I'll join you in a trice. Which is approximately four and a half hours.”

I probably wouldn't have left in time, except that Janelle let go of my hand. She even gave it a little push. I suppose by then she figured she'd have to push it a little if she wanted it to go away.

I got to the table just as it was vacated by a very happy—very drunk—young couple. Harriette tripped over and, while smilingly evading her questions about Lucrezia Brizante, I ordered two bourbon-and-waters. If Paul didn't get here I could always force myself to drink both of them.