Authors: John D. MacDonald
“No. But whether she admits it or denies it, I imagine she’d tell you the same thing she told Francisca, that she and Staniker had a quarrel before he took the job aboard the Muñeca, and she told him to stay away from her. And she’d tell you that since Staniker came back from the Bahamas last Friday he’s been bothering her by calling her up and asking to see her.”
“So,” Scheff said idly, “last night she went to see him to tell him to stop bugging her?”
Raoul explained that Crissy Harkinson hadn’t been off her property since Saturday afternoon, and explained about the car and the locked gate.
“But she didn’t know you were right here all the time with your girl, Kelly?”
“No. I’ve never stayed here before. But it seemed like a good idea to talk Francisca into it. That locked gate wouldn’t keep out anybody who wanted to get in. Staniker used to thump Crissy Harkinson around sometimes. I thought he might get loaded and come around and Francisca might try to keep him from bothering Mrs. Harkinson. And there was another unknown factor too, a kid Mrs. Harkinson just broke up with because he was acting strange. The locked gate was to keep both of them out.”
Scheff and Kindler both began to speak at once, then Scheff let Kindler take it. He said, “Was the kid getting any?”
“I
know
she would deny that. But he was. She hired him to teach her how to sail, and it went on from there.”
“Name?”
“Oliver something. Nineteen, twenty. A big, husky kid. Kept his sailboat in her boat basin. Flying Dutchman. I looked it over once when Mrs. Harkinson was out. You could probably trace him through the name of his boat. The Skatter, with a k.”
Raoul saw the two men glance at each other with identical expressions of bland satisfaction. “And,” said Scheff, “I guess the reason the kid began acting weird and getting on her nerves was because he knew she used to be Staniker’s piece, and he knew Staniker was back and he knew Staniker was bothering her.”
“She told Francisca the kid knew Staniker was bothering her.”
“So she gave Oliver the old heave? Like take your sailboat and go, Sonny.”
“He came and got the boat in the early evening last night. She’d taken a pill and gone to bed early. She asked Francisca to take a look later on and be sure the boat was gone and the kid wasn’t hanging around the area or bothering Mrs. Harkinson. I went with Francisca when she took a look.”
“What time was that?”
“A little after nine last night. Then Francisca went and looked into the bedroom and Mrs. Harkinson was there asleep.”
“Good-looking woman?” Kindler asked.
“I’ve seen her at a distance. Well built. I would guess about thirty, but Francisca is certain she is close to forty.”
“And fooling around with young kids,” Scheff said. “I got a boy nineteen. My old lady is thirty-eight. Look, why is your girl working for a bum like the Harkinson woman?”
“Until day after tomorrow.”
“How long has she been working for her?”
“A year. A little more than a year.”
“What’s the Harkinson woman’s background?”
“I wouldn’t know. Francisca wouldn’t know either.”
“Where’s she from?”
“She said something to Francisca once about living in Atlanta.”
“She’s in the house now?” Kindler asked. Raoul nodded.
“Look her over?” Scheff asked Kindler.
“She’ll keep, Barney. The kid might not.”
“Can I ask a question?” Raoul said.
“Sure, Kelly.”
“Why are you looking for Staniker?”
“Routine. Just routine,” Kindler said.
As they walked toward the car, Francisca came timidly out to the railing of the shallow porch and looked down. They all looked up at her. Her eyes were huge and her mouth was sucked into a small bloodless button.
Kindler called up, in wretched but understandable Spanish, “Señorita, you are a very beautiful lady. We do not take you away. This man of yours is a good man.”
She looked startled and then beamed down upon them happily. “Kaylee is beauty-ful fella!” she cried.
Raoul felt heat in his cheeks. Both officers laughed and ’Cisca waved busily to them as they drove off. “Sotch nice!” she said to Kelly.
Ten minutes north of the Harkinson turnoff, Scheff and Kindler stopped at a shopping center and phoned Lobwohl’s outside-line number.
“This is Bert,” Kindler said. “Did Harv get …”
“Better come on in,” Lobwohl said. “A flippy kid did it and then
shot himself. Had a note on him saying he was afraid he was going to do some crazy thing. Had a map and a floor plan of number ten. Even had the wrappings off the blade in his pocket. Coast Guard spotted him dead in a sailboat grounded off Eliott Key.”
“Named Oliver maybe?” Kindler said.
After a long silence Lobwohl said wearily, “All right. All right. Come on in and show off, you smart-ass.”
“Is it all going to break now? The ID on Staniker?”
“Yes. Why?”
“When it breaks wide open and the news people get a look at the motive, we’re going to get swarmed worse than anything since the Mossler thing. Look, the broad that Staniker and the kid got to is a Mrs. Cristen Harkinson, late thirties, blonde, a swinger. The late Senator Ferris Fontaine had her stashed in a very lush bay house down here a little southeast of Goulds, all very private. He probably built it for her and deeded it to her. And she had a cruiser …”
“And up to the time she sold it, Staniker worked for her, running the boat. I’ve been reading the clippings, Bert.”
“She broke off with Staniker. He gets the job running the Kayd boat. She lines up the kid to give her sailing lessons. So she takes one kind of lessons and gives another kind. Staniker comes back from the islands. He wants to start making it again with Harkinson. This bugs the kid. He gets so hairy about it she tosses him out too. What I’d guess, the kid thinks he gets cut loose because she’s going to pick up with Staniker again. A green kid would be way out of his league with a live one like that. So how did the kid know where Staniker was? You see what kind of can of worms that opens up?”
“They’d both become nuisances. She could aim one at the other and either way it came out, Bert, she’d be rid of both of them. Two rejected suitors taking it out on each other. But she would have to be pretty cold to set them up like that, wouldn’t she?”
“She was home in bed, and I think that will check out. And I
think that even if she conned the kid into killing Staniker, she’ll deny it up down and sideways, and nothing we can do. I am just saying that the hints in the papers are going to stop just short of actionable, and it is going to be dirty laundry week, and a mob scene at her house, guys in trees with telephoto lenses, the whole treatment.”
“So?”
“Protective custody? She’ll have to make a statement anyway. She’s the link between Staniker and the kid. We’ve got to go through the routine of the murder one indictment anyway and …”
“I try to keep from telling you your end of the business, Bert.”
“Sorry about that.”
“So you want to bring her in. And you happily married and all that. Or maybe you collect autographs.”
“Well, I like to see Barney have a little fun on the job too, but I was thinking that if we have her before she knows who did what to who, and make it a long slow ride, and fake her out a little, there might be something we could make stick later on, because there will be all kinds of pressure we should do something about her. The exposure is going to heat up every weird and rapo in the files, and with a full moon coming up, the cronkies are going to line up three deep, breathing through their mouths anyplace they think she might show.”
After a silence, Lobwohl said, “All right, but we don’t know how much clout she might have, so go very, very easy.”
“We have this little roll of red carpet we carry, and …”
“Somehow, Kindler, when you make those little funnies I keep thinking of all the kicks Mercer and Tuck are having bringing the Akards in to make a positive on the only son they’re ever going to have. The kid was born and raised here and there is no j.d. record on him at all, so the mother is going to keep telling Mercer and Tuck that he was always a good boy.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“No apology necessary. I shouldn’t chew you. And by now I’ve been around long enough so I should stop bleeding.”
“When you do, it’s time to get into another line of work.”
“Before you unroll your little red carpet, the lady will be apprised of her right to have an attorney present while her statement is being taken, and she will be permitted to phone and arrange to have said attorney either meet her here or meet her at her house and drive in with her while you follow along.”
“So what do I tell her about why we’re bringing her in?”
“Hey! There’s no next of kin on Staniker. Central records hasn’t sent back a match on the prints yet.”
“Oh I like that! Duty of a citizen. Ex-employer, et cetera. Voluntary all the way. And a good jolt for her that ought to knock loose something useful—if there is anything. Meanwhile, maybe somebody could start backtracking her, develop a line to somebody who knew Fontaine well enough. And there’s a chance she lived in Atlanta. While we’re in the place I can let light-fingered Scheff see if he can pick up anything with a chance of enough prints on it to get a principal registration.”
“Pretty remote.”
“Let me get Harv to tell you how it worked a couple times where we knew a single print registration wouldn’t do us any good at all.”
Halfway along the shell road to the Harkinson place they met Raoul Kelly trudging toward the highway.
When they stopped, Raoul came over to the car, wearing a troubled frown.
“Kelly,” Barney Scheff said, “we’re taking the Harkinson woman in. With any luck we’ll keep her around awhile. And you maybe better clear your little gal out of there today instead of waiting until Wednesday. You got a car?”
“I left it parked down the highway, in a grove.”
“If nobody clouted the wheels and the engine, after we leave she
should lock the place up and pack and leave with you, because if we scared her that bad, she’s going to get a lot worse time from the spooks who’ll come swarming around the place.”
“What’s the matter? What are you talking about?”
“When we were here before, we knew somebody faked Staniker for a suicide. Stuck him in a bath tub and cut his wrists. From what we got from you, it looked like Oliver might fit, and they found him floating around in his sailboat. After he fixed Staniker, he killed himself. The woman is the motive. You have no idea how miserable the newspaper guys and the rest of them can get when they get a sniff of a story like this. Those bastards will really shake up that Francisca. What you do, Kelly, you stash her someplace where they can’t get at her. Then if we have to get a statement or anything, we’ll keep it as quiet as we can. What we’ll do, we’ll get in touch with you if we need her. Where do you work?”
“On the
Record
.”
Bert Kindler said, “I hope to God you work around the presses or peddle ads.”
“Reporter. But I do features. Latin American politics. Foreign affairs. Stop looking at me like that. Look, you did me two favors. Both large. So I am going to run to a phone and get the city desk and yell they should stop the presses. Scoop. Gimme rewrite. Here’s my card. Home address.”
“And,” said Scheff, “when they start beating the bushes looking for Francisca Whosis, everybody knows she’s Kelly’s girl. So you can make a very fine deal for an exclusive maybe?”
“I won’t have any idea where she is.”
After a long thoughtful stare, Scheff said, “Let’s buy it, Bert. But if he leaves us with any egg on the face, all we have to do is tell his boss what kind of a piece of news his boy sat on. Let’s go get Crissy-wissy and take her bye-bye.”
BARNEY SCHEFF HAD SPENT
four years of his professional life on the Miami Beach force. He had worked the big hotels along Collins, called in by the house detectives and protection agencies to work upon every form of bunco the guile of man and woman has been able to invent.
When Mrs. Harkinson met them at the door and let them in, he knew at once that he was in the presence of class merchandise. He had seen hundreds of them. The ones this good were usually celebrity imports, lined up for a full season by somebody with the scratch to pay the exclusive freight. Ten, twelve years ago that was the way she would be making it. Mink to the floor, glittering at ears, throat and wrist and fingers, swaying on the tall heels with the hair piled high, moving in the clubs and the show bars at the side of some little fat guy with his head tanned dark brown all over from playing poolside gin for high stakes. The small men wore the big young blondes
with the same pebble-eyed indifference with which an iron curtain diplomat might treat the aides who follow a pace behind him.
Such women were one of the necessary outward manifestations of that special kind of coarse and curious money which accumulates in the lock boxes of casino owners, union officials, dealers in casino properties, in the raw products of addiction, in oil tankers, night clubs, prize fighters, television properties—in all the more or less legal services and products which, if a man were greedy enough and ruthless enough, could provide a way of channeling off cash without leaving any trace in the official books and records.
So they kept the tall blonde for that season or that place in tow, at the Beach, or Vegas, or Palm Springs, or London, or Acapulco, or Puerto Rico. She sat in the box at the track, a stick of tickets in her fist, squealing the smart money horse home. She leaned forward at ringside, face avid, cawing for blood. And in the night in the hundred and fifty a day suite, under lights turned low, while the cigar end smouldered and stank in the bedstand ashtray, she earned her keep in effortful requested ways. She would not get too drunk, or get quarrelsome, or make demands, or steal through the darkness to thin the pad of bills in the platinum clip, or give any wolf anything but immediate frost, not the smart ones. She would be a fun kid, because it was a smallish world and everybody knew everybody sooner or later. If you got labeled trouble, if you got too cute, the easiest fate would be no phone call from the next friend of a friend, no more first-class jets, no more silk sheets, no more thirty-dollar Chateaubriand for two. Or it could be a cancellation with a little more to remember if the friend of a friend was in one of the tough trades. Barney Scheff remembered taking one in who’d had her teeth uncapped with a pair of pliers. Between faints she was hysterical, yet not crazy enough to tell who’d done it.