Dead South (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order) (3 page)

7

Day Four

August 6, 1952

Tuesday Afternoon

Chasing a longshot, Wilde went to the Kenmark, where Sudden Dance was still technically checked in. The man behind the desk was a mean-looking guy Wilde had never seen before. Whether he would hand over the room key for a couple of bucks and a lame story was problematic. If this were the Metropolitan, the fleabag to end all fleabags, the answer would be easy. Anyone there on either side of the desk would do anything for a buck. But the Kenmark wasn’t the Met. The Kenmark kept her legs together. Wilde gave the mean guy one last look, didn’t like what he saw, and then hoofed it around to the back alley where he silently climbed the fire escape and accessed the room—207—through a window.

There, he was in.

The bed was unmade.

She sheets were down and the pillow was crooked.

The bathroom door was open. On the sink were the usual suspects—a toothbrush, hairbrush, half-used soap and the like. The hairbrush had a few long, black strands in it. Water spots marked the counter and the mirror.

On the dresser, next to a pair of white sunglasses, was a suitcase. Inside were clothes, some fancy and some comfortable. A few longer garments hung in the closet.

The room looked like it belonged to a woman who had gotten all dolled up for a Saturday night on the town and then never came back.

Wilde opened the door and checked the outside knob.

As he expected, a
Do Not Disturb
sign hung on it.

He closed it tight and made sure it was locked.

The room had no secrets.

Whatever trouble Sudden Dance had been in, the room didn’t know.

Wilde lit a smoke, laid down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Usually he knew what his next play would be. This time he didn’t. He didn’t know where to look next, who to talk to next, what to think next or where to go next. Everywhere he looked, all he saw was dead end, dead end and more dead end.

Maybe Alabama was right.

Maybe he needed to cut the whole thing loose and get back to real clients who had real problems and showed their appreciation with real money.

He took a long drag and blew a ring.

On reflection, maybe he was wrong about the dead woman in the well. Maybe she wasn’t the witness. Maybe she was someone who was driving down the road and came across the killer when he was broken down out there in the middle of the night.

Maybe she stopped to help.

Footsteps and talking mouths came down the hallway. Wilde held his breath and listened. It could be Johnnie Fingers coming to take a look at the dead woman’s place, trying to find evidence to bring Wilde down.

The voices came right up to the door and then just as quickly swept past.

Wilde needed to get out of there.

He sat up and in the process detected something weird about the mattress, almost as if there was something hard in it. He checked under the blanket and found nothing. Then he set the half-gone smoke in an ashtray and pulled the mattress up. Under it, tied to the bottom of the bed frame, was a thin briefcase. What he’d felt were the knots of the rope pressing against the underside of the mattress. The briefcase was positioned so that if anyone looked under the bed they wouldn’t see it, at least not unless they got their head right on the floor and then tilted their eyes up diagonally.

He slid the case out of the rope and set it on the bed.

It was locked.

The key wasn’t on the dresser or anywhere else in sight. It was probably in Sudden Dance’s purse.

It had something to do with the trouble the woman was in. Whatever was inside might even be the reason she was killed.

Suddenly voices came down the hallway.

Wilde grabbed the briefcase and made his way out the window. A glance back showed the door opening and a man and a woman already entering.

Wilde ducked down before anyone turned their eyes.

There was no time to shut the window.

He knew the man.

He was a private investigator by the name of Nicholas Dent, not one of Wilde’s favorite people in the world; not just because the man was an asshole, which he was, but because he didn’t serve in the war, ostensibly because of some kind of medical condition, asthma or some such nonsense. As far as Wilde was concerned, there wasn’t enough time in the day to worry about the guys who didn’t step up when the stepping was needed.

The woman was his secretary, Janet.

Wilde stayed low, made his way down the fire escape and vanished up the alley with the briefcase in hand.

8

Day Four

August 6, 1952

Tuesday Afternoon

Back at the office Wilde tossed his hat at the rack, got a ringer, and kept the shock off his face as walked to the desk and set the briefcase on top. Alabama ignored the hat and concentrated on the mystery item.

“What’s in there?”

“Probably my obituary. Do the honors and get it open, will you? You’ll have to force it, it’s locked.”

She got it open with a pair of scissors.

Inside was money, a lot of money, tens and twenties and fives and ones, all jammed in.

Alabama gave Wilde a look.

“What’d you do, rob a bank?”

Wilde set a book of matches on fire, lit a smoke, filled ’Bama in and said, “Count it. I want to know how much a life is worth.”

“You think this is why Sudden Dance got murdered?”

He nodded.

“I’m sure of it. Too bad for the asshole that he killed her for nothing.”

Alabama divided the bills into piles.

It was adding up fast but that’s not what interested Wilde. What interested him was that underneath it all was a photo of Sudden Dance with another woman, obviously friends, both happy and smiling for the camera. No inscription, date or writing was on the back. The other woman, a blond, was similar in age to Sudden Dance, in her early to mid-twenties, and equally attractive. Wilde showed the photo to Alabama and said, “She had a friend.”

“Or an enemy,” she said.

Wilde blew smoke.

“They look like friends to me.”

“Yeah, well, enemies are nothing more than friends that you apply time to,” she said. “Maybe the friend is the one who killed her.”

Wilde tried to picture it.

The picture wouldn’t come into focus.

“Either way, it’s something,” he said.

“Everything’s something,” Alabama said. “I can’t believe how much money this is. It’s already over three grand.”

“Keep counting.”

She set a five to the side and tapped her finger on it.

“That’s for a new dress,” she said. “Don’t even think about touching it.”

He smiled.

“Fair enough.”

The photograph was taken outside in early evening. The women were standing in front of a building, one they might have just come out of. They looked a little drunk and had their arms around each other’s waist. Wilde didn’t recognize the building but was pretty sure it wasn’t from Denver. The color was wrong for Denver. It could be a bar or a hotel.

He put the photo in his wallet, tossed the old butt out the window and lit a new one.

“I can’t figure out what that sleaze Dent was doing at the room,” he said.

“He was probably after the money.”

“Yeah but how would he know about it?”

Alabama gave him a look.

“You’re making me lose count, Bryson. Stop talking.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Outside Larimer Street scurried and buzzed and tangoed to its own twisted little beat. Suddenly Wilde remembered something, something bad, something that made his temples tighten; namely that when he lifted the mattress up back at the Kenmark, he set his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. He never went back for it after finding the briefcase. It would have still been there, still burning, when Dent came into the room.

Dent would have been smart enough to look out the window.

He knew Wilde.

True, Wilde never turned around, but Dent might have recognized him from behind. He would have seen Wilde making off with a briefcase.

“I think I messed up,” he said.

“Quiet. I’m counting.”

The final count came up to $5,231.

“That’s half a house,” Alabama said. “What are you going to do with your share?”

“My share?”

She ran a finger down his chest.

“What’d you think, that I was going to keep it all? You’re entitled to some of it; I’d say, oh, I don’t know, twenty-five percent or thereabouts.”

“You’re so generous.”

9

Day Four

August 6, 1952

Tuesday Afternoon

Wilde couldn’t get the body at the bottom of the well out of his head. Somewhere out there in the world people were aching, not knowing where she was. She deserved to be out of there, away from the spiders and the grime and the pathetic insult of it all. She wasn’t just trash to be thrown away. She deserved to be properly buried and mourned. She deserved justice, too. Wilde lit a smoke, turned on the radio and twisted the dial until he got a tolerable song,
T-99 Blues,
one of Jimmy Nelsen’s better efforts.

Then he pulled a map out of the bottom drawer, showed Alabama the location of the well and had her place a call to police headquarters. She ended up getting connected to Johnnie Fingers. She told him she was out exploring the country earlier today with a friend. They came across an old well. It looked like there was a woman’s dead body at the bottom.

“We dropped some stones on her and she didn’t move,” Alabama said. “I think she’s dead.”

Fingers grunted.

“That’s a long ways from Denver.”

“I know but she could be from here. Maybe someone from here is missing and that’s where she ended up.”

“What’d you say your name was again?”

“Jane,” she said.

“Jane what?”

“Jane Jones,” she said. “Someone should check that well out. That’s all I’m calling about.”

She hung up and looked at Wilde.

He blew smoke with approval.

“Good job.”

“Do you think he’ll follow up?”

Wilde nodded.

“Oh yeah, he’ll check it out,” he said. “He’s already thinking it’s Sudden Dance. Once he finds her he can nail me. That’s his ultimate goal.”

T-99 Blues
ended.

Call Operator 210
took its place.

Wilde let it play.

“If the woman in the well is the witness, Fingers will make a beeline straight for me,” Wilde said. “If he isn’t knocking on the door by tomorrow, that means the body isn’t the witness. That means that the witness is still alive; still alive and in serious danger, to be precise.”

Alabama punched him on the arm.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to go running off on a wild goose chase to save her,” she said.

He tapped ashes out the window and sat on the ledge.

“If someone tries to kill her it will be the same person who killed Sudden Dance,” Wilde said. “She’s our best connection to the guy. Our only connection, actually.”

“Wilde, let it go.”

“We need to find out her name,” he said.

“How?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that we need to. We also need to figure out what that sleaze-bucket Nicholas Dent has to do with all this. Why was he in Sudden Dance’s hotel room? That’s what I want to know—”

Alabama tilted her head.

“If you really want to know, we can pay a visit to his office tonight,” she said. “He should have a file, right?”

Wilde smiled.

Dent was dumb.

He always had to write everything down.

Whatever he was up to, it would be there on paper in good old No. 2.

“Good idea,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“We’re really going to do it?”

He nodded.

“We just need to be damn sure we don’t get caught. I’m actually wondering if Dent and Fingers are somehow in some kind of cahoots with each other.”

“Wow, now there’s a strange thought.”

“I’ve had stranger,” Wilde said.

“Maybe but they all involved sex. This one doesn’t involve sex, does it?”

He smiled.

“No, it doesn’t. Even Johnnie Fingers has his limits.”

“Okay, then. My point remains.”

Wilde turned his attention to the money, the money on the desk still piled in denominations, the beautiful and very tempting $5,231.

“You’re thinking what to buy me,” Alabama said. “Start with lingerie.” She grabbed his hand and put it on her heart. “Feel that, you’re already getting me excited.”

He pulled his hand away.

“’Bama, get serious. This isn’t ours.”

“Sure it is.”

Wilde struck a book of matches. The pungent odor of sulfur filled and air and gray smoke snaked towards the ceiling. He let it burn for a second, lit a cigarette and tossed the flames out the window.

“You’re going to burn down Denver,” Alabama said.

“Worst things have happened. My guess is that Sudden Dance stole the money. That’s what got her killed. The money is our second best connection to the killer, after the witness, assuming she’s still alive. The money is our bait.”

“Bait isn’t bait unless the rat knows about it,” Alabama said. “What we need to do is start flashing it around so he knows we have it. We’ll start with that lingerie I was talking about.”

Wilde took a deep drag.

“Actually, you might be onto something,” he said.

“Lingerie?” She ran a finger down his chest. “You’re picturing me in it, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, not that much.”

“But some—”

“Maybe a little but only because you’re making me,” he said. “The flashing is a good idea. We’ll flash the briefcase though, not the money. The briefcase is pretty unique.” That was true. It was unusually thin, with tanned leather faded by wear and scuffed at the corners, with oversized black latches. “For right now we’ll stash the money someplace safe and keep our hands off it. And when I say
our hands,
I’m talking about the things at the end of your arms.”

She held them up and wiggled her fingers.

“These,” she said.

He nodded.

“Precisely.”