Love Me and Die

SILENT PARTNER IN SLAUGHTER

Three lovely ladies provided Joe Coyle with his ticket to perdition.

The first was a redhead: Ellie Lucas, who had a mind like a steel trap and had an insurance business that would require dirty work to save it.

The second was a blonde: Toby Jessup, partner in a trucking deal that was ready to transfer Joe from the sunny side of heaven to the frigid side of hell.

The third was a brunette: Bonita Jessup, who ran her corporation like a hard-shelled executive and her undercover business like a soft-bodied sharp-clawed panther.

One of the three was dealing in murder—and Joe was to be her next victim!

I
WAS BUSHED
after ten days of chasing an arson suspect through the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado. I turned him over to the State police in Santa Fe and took a hotel room. I put in a call to my partner, Art Ditmer, in Tucson to tell him I would arrive at the airport on the midnight flight.

It was only four in the afternoon but the telephone answering service cut in on the call. That meant Art was out, so I left a message for him. I thought about calling Ellie Lucas, my favorite redhead, to tell her that the firm of Ditmer and Coyle had cleaned up another job for the insurance company she represented.

I changed my mind. The redhead would want to meet me at the airport. She would want me to go to her apartment for a drink and some of her homemade sukiyaki. I was dirty and hot and tired after ten days in the brush. Not even the redhead would appeal to me tonight.

I showered and shaved before I caught the plane. I dozed the whole distance, but I was still hot and tired when I reached Tucson. I picked up my bag and headed outside to see if Art had gotten my message and was waiting for me.

I was thinking of a cold beer and a long sleep. I scarcely noticed the middle-aged Buick that swung to the curb beside me. But a rugged-featured character I had never seen before leaned out of it and called, “Coyle? Joseph Coyle?”

I said, “I’m Coyle.”

“Hop in. I’ll drive you to your office.” He was leaning toward me and his voice was pitched low as if he didn’t want the scattering of people around to hear.

I said, “I’m not going to my office, friend. I’m going home.”

He said, “If you want to know what happened to your partner, you’ll go to your office.”

That stopped me. I took a closer look at him. He appeared big and solid behind the wheel of the Buick. He didn’t look like a man who wasted time joking. My better judgment wasn’t working. I got into the front seat beside him.

He started for the city. I said, “All right, what happened to my partner?”

“We aren’t at your office yet,” he said. He kept his eyes on the road.

I said, “I’m not in the mood for fun and games, friend.”

He didn’t bother to answer that. I said, “Where is Art Ditmer?”

“Save your breath,” he said.

He had the Buick up over fifty. I decided this was no time to argue with him. I lit a cigarette and thought about Art. I wasn’t too worried. He could take care of himself. He was big and tough and as smart as any insurance detective in the business.

I wondered what had been going on while I was away. I had managed to call the office twice during the ten days I’d been gone. Both times I had gotten the answering service instead of Art. I had left messages; there hadn’t been any for me. If Art had gone out on a case, he would have left a message.

The Buick pulled to the curb by the building where Art and I had our office. The redhead had her office here too. She was on the second floor. We were on the third.

I picked up my suitcase and waited for the driver to lock up the Buick. We walked to the lobby doors. I used my key on them.

He stepped back. “You first, Coyle.”

I went first. I led the way into the automatic elevator too. I punched the button for the third floor. The door slid shut and we started up. I set down my suitcase and flexed my hands.

I said, “I’m tired, but I think I can take you, friend.”

He had a hard, flat mouth. It twisted up in something I took to be a mocking grin. He said, “What good will that do your partner?”

I reached out and pushed the stop button. We hung motionless between the second and third floors. I said, “Let’s hear about my partner.”

“Sure,” he said easily. “After I see the Jessup file.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He said, “A swap. You show me the Jessup file, I tell you about Ditmer.”

I had never heard of the Jessup file. I assumed Art must have picked up a client by that name while I was gone. And if he had, the file was his business.

I said, “If there is a Jessup file, it will be in Art’s office. I couldn’t show it to you if I wanted to. And I don’t think I want to.”

He said, “No file, no information.”

I shrugged. I reached for the control panel. I let my hand fall away. I pivoted in the small space and rammed my fist into the character’s stomach. It was like hitting a corrugated iron roof. I felt the jolt all the way to my shoulder. He barely grunted.

He swung a looping left. He was hard but he wasn’t much with his fists. I could have rolled a cigarette while I waited for his punch to land. I hunched a shoulder against it and bored under his guard.

I didn’t make the mistake of going for his stomach again. I feinted for his eye. He snapped his head to the side. He snapped it right against my other hand. I rapped him on the jaw. He blinked. I came up against him. I grabbed a fistful of his thick, dark hair. I pulled his head forward and slammed it back against the wall of the elevator.

He hit me twice, short futile jabs to the ribs, before he lost his steam and sagged to the floor. I clipped him for good measure on his way down.

I left him sitting on the floor and started the elevator moving again.

It stopped on three. The doors slid open. I set my suitcase in the hall. I reached down and got the character by the coat collar. I backed into the hall, pulling him after me. I picked up my suitcase and kept pulling him in the direction of my office.

I walked backwards around a bend in the corridor. I felt something soft ram my buttocks. A voice gave a surprised grunt. I dropped the character’s collar and straightened up. I turned around.

Mrs. Gomez, the broad-beamed night cleaning woman, looked at me and then at the boy on the floor.
“Que le pasa, Senor Coyle?”

I couldn’t tell her that nothing had happened. Not with the character showing a skinned jaw. I said,
“Es un amigo mío, Señora. Está borracho.”

She seemed to think my hauling a drunken friend to my office at twelve-thirty in the morning logical enough. She said,
“Abro la puerta,”
and bustled off to unlock my door.

I hauled my
amigo
around her scrub bucket and down the hall to the office. Mrs. Gomez had the door open. I went on in. I thanked her with a dollar bill. We said the usual flowery good nights that sound so good in Spanish but so silly in English. I shut the door and snapped on the light.

Art and I had three rooms. The front one was a cubbyhole with room for a reception desk and three chairs. We had the chairs but not the desk. We kept promising ourselves we would get one sometime and hire a blonde to put behind it. Somehow we never got that much cash ahead.

I left the character on the floor and opened the door to my office. I snapped on the light. I saw what I was hoping I wouldn’t see.

The room looked as if a Florida hurricane had detoured through it. My desk drawers were gutted. My filing cabinet was broken open and the files were scattered like fat snowflakes on the beige rug.

I crossed to Art’s door and opened it. The same hurricane had been at work in there. The character on the floor had done a thorough job of hunting before he decided to tackle me, I thought.

I pulled him into Art’s office. I made a try at heaving him up on the battered leather couch Art used for afternoon siestas. He was too heavy to bother with. I left him on the floor.

I went into the bathroom and drew a glass of water. I took an empty glass too. I set them on my desk and checked the bottom right-hand drawer to see if my fifth of rum was still there. I always kept rum around. It was the only liquor Art Ditmer wouldn’t touch. Besides, the redhead had a passion for it.

The bottle was about half full. I poured a shot in the empty glass, added half the water, and poured another shot into the other glass. I took my drink down at a gulp. It tasted as if the water was brackish. I sniffed the bottle. I couldn’t smell anything but 151 proof molasses. I corked the bottle. I took the other drink to the boy on the floor of Art’s office.

I slapped his face lightly. His eyelids fluttered. I slapped again. He opened his eyes wide. I looked down into them. They were dark brown, almost black. At first there were two of them. Then they started dividing, like sex-mad amoebae. Before long there were four, eight, sixteen.

I lost count. I heard his hard voice come from a long distance away. He said, “I don’t want that stinking stuff. Keep it away from me!”

I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. I decided I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was sleep.

I slept.

A
WOMAN’S VOICE
was saying, “Mr. Ditmer, for heaven’s sake, wake up.”

I wondered groggily when Art Ditmer had come to my apartment, and what he was doing there asleep. The voice said, “Mr. Ditmer, please wake up.” It wasn’t a voice I had ever heard before.

I could feel hands shaking my shoulders. I could smell a faint, fresh scent. I kept my eyes closed and tried to force an idea through my thick, fuzzy brain.

The woman was talking to me, I decided finally. She had the mistaken idea that I was Art Ditmer. It wasn’t an easy mistake to make. I carried one eighty-five on a little over six feet of frame. I wore my black hair crewcut Mexican style. Sometimes when I was below the border, I was taken for a native. Not that it was just my haircut that did it—I had talked the language from birth, and I had a deep coppery tan.

Art Ditmer stood six feet four and weighed two hundred and sixty pounds stripped. He had a fringe of cinnamon-brown hair that he wore long and combed over his bald spot. He could say about three words in Spanish—none of them printable. And he hated the sun; he was the color of a fish’s underbelly.

I opened my eyes cautiously. Daylight stabbed into them, making me wince. My mouth tasted brackish, as if I’d been drinking stagnant water. I closed my eyes and opened them more slowly.

I was on the floor of Art Ditmer’s office. I could see the battered couch with the leather upholstery less than two feet away. And I could see a curve of hip and thigh stretching the cloth of a white summer suit. Below the skirt was a short but sleek leg wearing a nylon stocking.

I moved my eyes in the other direction. The hip was firm and full. The waist above it was almost incredibly tiny. Above the waist the white suit billowed out again. Whoever was shaking me had what is generally called an hourglass figure.

I moved my eyes on up. I passed a white throat, a small, set jaw, an interesting pair of very red lips, a stub of a nose, and finally two saucer-sized gray eyes. The whole ensemble looked about nineteen years old.

The lips moved. The girl said, “Thank God. I was afraid I’d have to call a doctor!”

Her head turned. I saw pale blond hair caught up in a short, rather ridiculous pony tail. But on her it looked good.

She said, “You are all right, Mr. Ditmer?”

She still thought I was Art Ditmer.

I wasn’t paying too much attention because I remembered the rough-featured character and I remembered the condition of my office and of Art’s. It occurred to me I might be smart to keep on being Art Ditmer, at least until I found out what this doll wanted with him.

So I did what Art would have done under the same circumstances. I moved a hand along the sleek nylon-covered leg and up under the tight white skirt.

An oversized purse that felt like it held a sixteen pound shot swung out of nowhere and clouted me alongside the jaw. The girl said, “Really!” and rolled out of my line of vision.

I sat up and propped my back against Art’s couch. The girl was standing a few feet away. Her gray eyes were shiny with shards of ice. Her mouth was clamped tight. She didn’t look quite so young now.

I said, “Sorry, I thought you were a friend of mine. I’m a little groggy.”

She gave me some of the ice from her eyes, found a chair and sat down. I pulled myself to my feet and dropped to the couch. I watched her tug her skirt nervously over her knees. I got tired of that and looked at her face again. Her cheeks were flushed a bright red.

I said, “I apologized. What more do you want?”

She still didn’t say anything. I wondered why she didn’t get up and go away if she was so outraged. I didn’t bother to ask her. I got up again and walked through my office to the washroom. I drank all the cold water I could hold. I ran the bowl full of water and buried my face in it. I felt more alive when I looked back into Art’s office.

The girl was still there. So was the mess I had walked in on earlier. I looked at my watch. It was after ten. Outside the July sun was beating down on the street. I realized that I had been out since a little after one in the morning.

I remembered the rum. It must have been slugged with a mickey. I hadn’t drunk anything else but that rum. And I had left the bottle on my desk. It wasn’t there now. I picked my way through the litter on the floor and tried the drawer where I kept the bottle. The drawer was empty.

The hard-faced character must have carefully taken the bottle with him when he left.

I went back to the girl. I said, “It looks like the maid forgot to clean up.”

She wasn’t amused. She gave her skirt another tug. She said, “I’m Toby Jessup, Mr. Ditmer. I realize you probably don’t feel like discussing business now, but I’m really in a hurry and—”

For a minute the name didn’t mean anything to me. Then it did.
Jessup
. The tough boy I had met at the airport had talked about a Jessup file. He had wanted to swap information about Art Ditmer for that file.

And now I had someone named Jessup in the office thinking I was Art Ditmer.

I said, “Someone slugged my rum bottle with a mickey. I’ve been out cold for hours. But I think I’ve recovered. I’m about to get hungry.”

Her expression said that my hunger was no concern of hers. She was still in a hurry. She stood up. She said, “I came here to warn you about Bonita, Mr. Ditmer. And to tell you I’ve thought of a way for you to make your investigation without anyone but me knowing you’re a detective.”

I turned away so she wouldn’t see my expression. I had the feeling that I looked as stupid as she was trying to make me feel. I busied myself lighting a cigarette.

I turned around. I said, “I guess I’m still a little groggy. Start back a few miles and bring me up to date.”

She said in a puzzled voice, “Didn’t you get my message? I called your telephone answering service this morning.”

I said, “Miss Jessup, I drank that rum before one o’clock this morning. I didn’t get anybody’s message.”

She looked irritated and a little petulant, as if the whole mix-up was my fault. The more I looked at her, the more I saw that she was given to a kind of spoiled petulance that detracted from her basic good looks. And that she was closer to twenty-five than to nineteen. I didn’t feel so bad about making a Ditmerish pass at her leg. I thought she could stand a little more of that sort of thing.

I said, “Let’s get back to this warning bit.”

She said, “I’m sure Bonita is planning to use you. That’s why she sent Turk after you. I wanted to let you know what you’re getting into so you can protect yourself.” She took a deep breath. “And I want you to help me stop her before she ruins the company.”

My head was really beginning to clear now. I could think again. And I didn’t much like what I was thinking. It sounded to me as if someone wasn’t just trying to make a patsy of Art Ditmer, but that they had already succeeded.

I finally began to worry about him. Art was a lot more than just a business partner. He was the guy who had saved my life when we were playing policemen in Korea. And he was the guy who put me back on my feet after that “police action” drained out of me all the ability to get back into the prewar groove. And through him I had met the redhead. She might not be the best influence a man could find, but she was one of the most interesting.

I said, “Just how can she ruin the company?” I was fishing; I hoped Toby Jessup’s frigid gray eyes couldn’t read my expression well enough to see that.

She didn’t get a chance to answer. The telephone in my office rang. I moved out of Art’s office and took the call. I said, “Ditmer and Coyle Agency.”

The redhead’s voice burst out of the receiver and nearly broke my eardrum. “Jojo! Thank God! Where in the sunburned hell have you been?”

I caught movement from the corner of my eye. Toby Jessup was wandering aimlessly about Art’s office, and in doing so she was coming very close to the open door.

I said, “Yes, of course, I can spare a few moments. Go ahead and talk.”

The redhead’s voice dropped a few decibels. “Are you drunk? No, not this early in the morning.” Her words began to tumble over one another. “You can’t talk, is that it? Someone’s there?”

“That’s right.”

She said, “Do you know where Art is?”

I said, “No, I’m sorry. I don’t think we could handle that type of work.”

She said, “Oh my God. Jojo, listen. I’m in Lozano. It’s in Mexico, right across the border from Ramiera. That’s about a hundred and fifty miles from Tucson.”

I said, “I’m familiar with that phase of the project.”

“You bastard, shut up and listen.” She was excited; she only swore when she was excited.

She said, “I’m in Cottage 7, Frontera Motel. Get down here right away. And bring your camper. Don’t go through Ramiera with it. Cross the border at Sonoyta and come to Lozano by Mexico Highway 2.”

The words were jerking out of her with some kind of frantic urgency. I didn’t answer. I was trying to make some logical connection between the rugged boy’s picking me up at the airport, Toby Jessup’s being here, and the redhead’s unusual behavior. She was usually in full control of any situation she might be in.

She said, “Don’t you understand? Art hasn’t reported for two days. I can’t find him anywhere. And he’s in trouble.”

I tried to keep my voice impersonal. I said, “Can you give me a few more details on that?”

She said in a despairing voice, “I think it’s murder.”