Dead South (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order) (5 page)

12

Day Five

August 7, 1952

Wednesday Afternoon

Wilde’s veins were beginning to fill with more and more lightning. He’d always pictured the body from the well as belonging to someone who lived in the rural area. Now it turns out she was probably from Denver and that one simple fact turned everything on its head and shook it so hard that every ounce of spare change fell out of the pockets. If the woman wasn’t just an innocent driver who stopped at the MG after it broke down, then how did she end up out there?

Plus, she was
expensive.

She was somebody.

More importantly, she had to be somehow connected to Sudden Dance. It was too much of a coincidence that both women ended up in the same dark deadly corner of the universe at the same time without there being some type of connection between them.

Maybe their only connection was that the same man killed both of them.

But then again, maybe it was something deeper and more complex, something with a plan or a history to it.

Wilde knew the Daniels & Fisher Tower well.

It was the highest building between the Mississippi and San Francisco, situated smack in the center of the matter on the city’s main downtown drag, 16
^th
Street. At the top was a clock tower. Wilde had been up there on more than one occasion with a bottle of wine and a member of the softer persuasion. From there, the city lights stretched to infinity in all directions.

Right now Wilde and Alabama were at the foot of the building next to the revolving door.

Bodies went in, bodies came out.

In Wilde’s left hand was Sudden Dance’s briefcase, the bait, if anyone was interested enough to spot it.

He set it on the sidewalk, lit a smoke and tossed the match to the ground.

“The more I think about it, the more you shouldn’t be here,” he told Alabama. “This whole thing is getting too damned dicey.”

She wasn’t impressed.

“Be nice,” she said. “Remember, you’re going to need someone to bail you out of jail.”

He took a deep drag.

“Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared into the revolving doors and headed across the lobby to a reception desk. Behind it a woman with a babushka-covered bun gave him a hard look. Wilde set the briefcase on the counter, smiled and said, “I’m in a bit of a predicament.”

The woman relaxed her face.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

Wilde tapped his fingers on the briefcase.

“I was supposed to deliver this briefcase to someone this morning outside on the sidewalk,” he said. “I got here late. Here’s the bad part. The woman works in this building but I forgot her name.”

“Did you write it down?”

“I did but it’s at home,” he said. “Here’s what she looks like. She dresses real nice, very expensive, if you know what I mean. She’s in her mid-twenties and pretty, with blond hair.”

The woman retreated in thought.

Then her face brightened.

“Are you talking about Alley London?”

Wilde nodded.

“Right. That’s her.”

“I haven’t seen here come in yet,” the woman said. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her in a couple of days.”

“What floor is she on?”

“Eight.”

Wilde smiled his best smile and said, “You’re a peach.” Ten seconds later he was in the stairwell climbing up to eight with a beat in his chest.

The stairwell dumped him into a hallway that had a number of doors, the most interesting of which was the one on the prime side, where the offices had views of both the jags of the Rockies fifteen miles to the west and the bustle of 16
^th
Street down below. That half of the floor, the sweet half, belonged to Banders & Rock, Attorneys-At-Law.

Wilde opened the door and immediately got dumped into a receptionist who, by the expression on her face, didn’t mind the way he looked, not at all.

He smiled and said, “I’m here to see Alley London.”

The woman frowned.

“She’s out this week. Can someone else in the office help you?”

Wilde shook his head.

“No, I can wait. When will she be back in?”

“Monday.”

“That’s fine. I’ll come back Monday.”

At street level Alabama had a somber expression. “Fingers is on our tail,” she said. “He’s been ducking in and out of sight ever since we got here. I’ve been busy trying to not stare directly at him. It hasn’t been easy. Right now he’s over there on the sidewalk behind that red pickup.”

Wilde set the briefcase on the sidewalk, lit a cigarette and purposely pointed his face in the non-Fingers direction.

“We need to lose him,” he said. “The woman from the well is someone named Alley London. We need to find out where she lives and get into her house and figure out why she ended up dead in a well and, more importantly, how she’s connected to Sudden Dance.”

“If at all—”

“Right, if at all. She’s a lawyer with Banders & Rock, by the way. They’re some fancy law firm up on the 8
^th
floor. That’s why she looked expensive.”

“Unlike you and me who aren’t making any money. How’d you find that out all that without a picture of her?”

He blew smoke.

“I smiled,” he said.

“You know how to smile?”

“Yeah, I learned last week.” He took a drag and added, “The firm doesn’t know she’s dead yet.”

“That’s weird.”

He shrugged.

“She out this week so no one’s missing her when she doesn’t show up.”

“Out doing what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I have half a mind to turn around and wave at Fingers.” The smoke was down to Wilde’s fingers. He took one last draw, flicked it into the street and said, “Let’s go.”

According to the phone book, the body from the well, Alley London, lived just south of downtown, a block off Broadway. Wilde zigzagged Blondie through the city until he was sure no one was on his tail and then made his way to the woman’s street, parking three doors down under an Elm.

“Stay here,” he said.

Alabama got out and said, “Apparently this is one of those days when I’m not listening very well.”

Wilde lit a smoke and gauged whether he would lose if he argued.

He would.

“Apparently not,” he said.

The house was a small bungalow awash in a sea of the same. It was locked tight with no clean way in. Wilde broke the back door glass with an elbow, setting off a violent and non-stop bark from a dog behind a fence.

It didn’t matter.

They were already in.

Wilde half-expected the placed to be trashed by someone looking for something.

It wasn’t.

There were no signs of searching.

There were no signs of a struggle.

On the kitchen counter was a bowl of fruit, still fresh enough to eat. In the bathroom, several pairs of stockings hung over the shower rod, long since dried to perfection. An ashtray next to the couch in the living room was packed with butts. On closer inspection, lots had lipstick but lots didn’t, possibly the earmarks of a man. Wilde squashed his butt on top of it all and lit a new one.

“So what are we looking for exactly?”

“Anything that shows she knew Sudden Dance,” he said. “That’s the big one. Or who else did she know? Who had a motive to kill her? I also want to figure out if she had a car or not and if so whether it’s parked around here somewhere or whether it’s missing.”

“Whoa,” Alabama said. “Look at this.”

This
was a piece of paper.

Handwritten on it were the words,
Bryson Wilde.
Directly below those words was his office phone number, written in the same feminine script. Nothing else was on the paper, only his name and number.

“What’s this about?” Alabama said.

“I don’t know.”

“Did she call you?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Think.”

“I am. No, I never talked to her.” He focused on her. “How about you?”

Her eyes faded and then returned.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“Someone called last week when you were out. It was a woman but she never left her name.”

“What did she want?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Did she say she’d call back?”

“No, she asked for you, I said you weren’t in at the moment and she asked when you’d be back. I told her probably in an hour or two. She said thanks and hung up.”

“How’d she sound?”

“I don’t follow—”

“Did she sound like someone was out to kill her or whether she was looking for protection or something like that?”

Alabama wrinkled her forehead.

“Not that I remember,” she said. “Actually her voice was sort of soft, almost like she was whispering.”

“Like she didn’t want someone to overhear her?”

“Possibly.”

The paper was fancy, off-white and thicker than most, with a watermark. It had been folded. No others like it were visible. “This is from her work,” he said. “She wrote my name and number down while she was at work, folded it up and stuck it in her purse.” He shoved it in his wallet next to the photo of Sudden Dance and said, “Good thing we got here before Fingers did. This is a one-way ticket to jail. Keep looking around.”

They found a black-and-white photo of Alley sitting behind the wheel of parked car. Her arm hung out the window. A cigarette dangled from her hand. A mischievous smile graced her face. It was a summer day.

She was happy.

The sun caught the edge of her face.

Her hair was loose and windblown.

The vehicle was white.

A string of beads hung from the rearview mirror.

13

Day Five

August 7, 1952

Wednesday Afternoon

Outside at Blondie something was off but Wilde couldn’t put his finger on what it was. It wasn’t until they got back to Larimer Street and he reached into the backseat for Sudden Dance’s briefcase that it came to him.

The backseat was empty.

The briefcase was gone.

He said, “Someone ate the bait,” then stepped out, closed the door and lit a cigarette as he cast an eye up and down the street.

Alabama looked at him over Blondie’s top.

“Fingers?”

Wilde shook his head. “No, we lost Fingers. We lost him good. This isn’t the work of Fingers.”

“So, the killer then?”

Wilde’s face tightened.

Up the street on the opposite side was a man too stationary, a menacing man in a suit that Wilde had never seen before, now lighting a cigarette and leaning a muscular body against a building, his face turning in every direction except towards Wilde.

“Get into the office and lock the door,” he said. “The gun is in the drawer. Use it if you have to.”

“Wilde—”

“What.”

“I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“It’s my fault. I didn’t lock the car door.”

“If you did he would have just busted the window. So actually you did good.”

Then he turned and walked up the street with his head down and his eyes on the sidewalk, ostensibly just a guy in thought as he walked, not paying any attention to his surroundings, probably consumed with a dame.

When he got to where the man was, he looked across the street for the first time.

The figure was gone.

He wasn’t up.

He wasn’t down.

He wasn’t anywhere.

Up, that’s the way he probably went. That’s the way Wilde would have gone. He headed that way, now at a brisk walk and with his eyes high.

Come on.

Don’t be afraid.

You want the money.

Come and get it.

It’s all yours.

At the corner of 14
^th
he looked to the left.

Bingo!

There he was, half a block ahead and moving fast. Wilde flicked his butt to the gutter and picked up the pace. The gap closed step by step.

“Hey buddy, hold up a minute.”

The man turned his head and then stopped. He was bigger than Wilde expected, with a flat-nosed boxer’s face and a fancy gold watch on his left wrist.

“Yeah?”

“I know you from someone,” Wilde said. “What’s your name?”

The man hardened his face.

“No, you don’t know me,” the man said.

Wilde watched him turn and leave.

Then he lit a smoke and headed back to the office.

There the door wasn’t locked like he’d told Alabama to do. She was seated behind the desk with her legs propped up and her skirt pulled up above her knees. Her eyes lifted up from a magazine.

“That was fast,” she said.

“I told you—”

She brought something off her lap and set it on the desk. It was the gun.

“So the guy didn’t pan out I assume.”

Wilde sat on the window ledge.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I got a close-up look at him. If he shows up again I’ll know him. Did you check the money?”

She nodded.

“It’s all there except for a twenty that I put in my purse.”

Wilde pulled the photo out of his wallet, the one with the lawyer, Alley London, sitting behind the wheel of a white car. Not much of the vehicle was in view but from what was there it looked like a Packard. No white Packards, or white anythings, had been anywhere around the lawyer’s house, either in the side yard or on the street.

He tossed the photo on the desk.

“I have a dilemma,” he said. “I got this whole bait thing in motion without getting you out of the picture first. Now you’re at risk, at least until the guy gets his hands on the money.”

Alabama adjusted her body and in the process managed to hike her skirt up to the danger point.

“Don’t give up the money, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said. “Force him to come and get it and then take him down when he does. That was the plan. Keep it the plan.”

Wilde tapped ashes out the window.

Across the street was the man, replete with flat nose and the fancy gold wrist, leaning against a building with a smoke dangling from his lips. Wilde pretended not to notice and eased off the ledge.

He motioned over.

“Come here but stay out of sight.”

She peeked through the corner of the window.

“That’s the guy,” Wilde said.

“He looks mean.”

“Here’s what I want you to do. Sneak out the back way. Head over to the Down Towner and keep an eye on the witness.”

“You mean the waitress.”

“I mean both,” he said. “Jackie Fountain. Don’t come back to the office for any reason. I won’t be here and I don’t want you here alone under any circumstances. Meet me at four o’clock in front of the Daniels & Fisher Tower.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Do some shopping.”

She frowned.

“All I have is that twenty—”

He pulled bills from his wallet and forked them over. “Just keep yourself safe until four. Can you do that?”

She ran a finger down his nose.

“I’ll buy something sexy.”

“I’m serious, ’Bama.”

Five minutes later he was in Blondie heading south out of the guts of the city. The top was down. The sun was on his face. On the passenger seat was a shoebox. Inside that shoebox was $5,231, less whatever had stuck to Alabama’s fingers. Next to it, also on the seat, was the gun.

The traffic got less congested.

Still, it was too thick to tell if he was being followed.

With any luck he was.

He drove mile after mile after mile.

The buildings got smaller and farther apart and then dropped off altogether as the topography morphed into nature. Magpies took to the air and little yellow butterflies jagged this way and that around prairie bushes. Every once in a while a squashed rattlesnake appeared on the asphalt.

No vehicles were directly behind Wilde.

There was one car, a white one, way back, going the same direction, south, but otherwise not of much interest. It only came into sight on rare occasions when both cars crested.

Still, it could be following even from that far back.

The crossroads were few and were either gravel or dirt.

If Wilde turned down one a rooster-tail would kick up. A tracker would be able to follow.

His chest pounded.

The feeling didn’t go away as the miles clicked off. He made it all the way to the well without adventure; the well, the place where Alley London’s body got dumped.

He pulled to the side of the road, killed the engine and got out.

The sky was quiet.

The sun was hot.

The air had a soft scent of nature.

Wilde lit a cigarette.

Then he slipped the photo of Alley London under a wiper blade, grabbed the box of money, tucked the gun in his belt and headed up the almost-not-there road that led to the well and the dilapidated structures.

The well was empty now.

Fingers had pulled the body out thanks to Alabama’s anonymous report. Other than that the place was exactly as Wilde had left it.

He took a seat in the opening of the house where the front door should be and leaned against the frame.

The shade was an oasis.

Suddenly a horn honked.

He recognized it all too well.

It belonged to Blondie.

Someone was there.

Someone was announcing that he was coming.

He was coming for the money.

He was coming with a brain on fire and murder in his heart.

Wilde tapped a smoke out and lit it.

He had a few minutes.

He might as well use them.

In ten minutes someone would be dead. If it turned out to be the other guy, Wilde would dump his stupid body in the well. The man would take the spot of the woman he killed.

It would be poetic.