Killer in the Street (7 page)

On the wall behind Detective Jameson’s head hung a large calendar featuring a curvacious nude by courtesy of Dover Insurance Brokerage.

“Dover,” Kyle replied. “Charles Dover. If you do locate him, don’t make contact. I want to surprise him.”

“What’s the matter? Does he owe you money?”

Kyle didn’t like to let Jameson get too curious. Friend or no friend, he was still a shrewd policeman.

“No,” he answered, “I owe him.”

He terminated the conversation then. The Booster luncheon was waiting and Jameson would get suspicious if the request seemed anything more than casual. He picked up the blue station wagon at the parking lot and headed east on Speedway. It was a perfectly clear day. By this hour, the sky had paled with heat and the Santa Catalinas now humped against the horizon like great yellow sleeping cats. Kyle switched on the air conditioning and thought of Dee and Mike somewhere on the highway in that hot little convertible. By this time they would have climbed above the worst of the heat—provided they had actually got away.

Emotional shock did strange things. The fear in Kyle was close to panic when he thought of his family. Everything else fell away to its natural unimportance. He reached for the radiophone and put in a call to the house. There was no answer. He waited a full minute and then broke the connection. They were gone. He looked up at the mountains and smiled for the first time in hours. Whatever the rest of the day would bring, it was a duel between himself and the strangler. Dee and Mike were safe.

In another area of the city, R. R. Donaldson had just completed buying a pair of swimming trunks and a beach towel in a fashionable sportswear shop in the lobby of the Apache Inn Motel. It had taken a full half-hour to make the purchase. He had finally selected a pair of white trunks with a red stripe on each side and a towel with three wide bands of red, white and blue. White trunks, he reasoned, wouldn’t make the Eastern pallor of his skin so conspicuous. He was a little jealous of the sun-tanned male bodies that rimmed the pool at noonday. Deep chests, narrow waists, invisible hips. The girl in the bright yellow suit had retired to her room for an hour and returned wearing a bright orange suit. She was now sitting alone on a lounge chair near the diving board carefully applying sun-tan lotion to her perfectly shaped legs and thighs—in full view, deliberately, of every male on the scene. Donaldson cherished the memory of that tableau all during his shopping expedition. Watching from the balcony wasn’t enough. He wanted closer contact.

He came out of the shop with the anticipation of an exciting afternoon, only to be faced by a porter setting up a directory of local activities for the day. The Booster Club luncheon was being held at the Country Club at 1:30
P.M
. Donaldson consulted the clock over the registration desk. It was almost one. He looked longingly toward the wide, plate-glass doors that led to the pool … but Donaldson was a perfectionist at his profession, and perfection doesn’t come without sacrifice.

He returned to his room and took a small leather-bound notebook from the attaché case. Without his bifocals reading was difficult, but the page headings in the book were done in caps. There was a page for Diedre (Dee) Walker. It contained a complete physical description as well as her hobbies and characteristics. The hobbies were dull: art classes, charities, golf. No extracurricular emotional entanglements. No indication of alcoholism or any other vice. There were pages for Michael Walker and Van Bryson. A page for Sam Stevens. Donaldson hesitated at this page. The boy he had encountered in Dee Walker’s little car (duly noted in her biographical notes) said they were going to “Uncle Sam’s” ranch. He held the book closer to the tinted spectacles. There was a ranch—location and directions for reaching same. So Sam Stevens was “Uncle Sam.” If Donaldson had been addicted to smiling, he would have smiled. It was all so cozy.

But the boy had said that “Daddy” had told them to go to the ranch. Nothing in his data indicated this was a customary practice, and the heightening of the senses that came with the excitement of executing a contract alerted Donaldson to a possible problem. He moved closer to the light of the wide glass door and studied the page further. Sam Stevens was a member and an officer of the Booster Club. Donaldson flicked the page. Kyle Walker. Impatiently, he ran his finger down the itemized information until he found a similar notation. Booster Club member. Donaldson was too scientific to be superstitious, but there were times when events did seem to balance, strangely. Breaking both pairs of eyeglasses had been a stroke of bad luck. Encountering Mrs. Walker and the boy in the driveway at their home had been good luck. And now there was to be a luncheon at the Country Club in half an hour at which he could learn just how big a party had gone to the ranch. It was good practice to know where key people could be found.

Donaldson put away the notebook and took the gun and silencer from the case. He tested the weight of it in his hand, and then slipped the gun into the holster under his coat. He stepped out onto the balcony and looked down. The girl in the orange suit was still performing for her silently appreciative audience. She would keep. Satisfied, he stepped back inside the room and closed the sliding glass door.

The doors of the Country Club were closed on this particular day to all except Booster Club members and their guests. They opened wide for Kyle. He made his way through a dozen handshakes and backslaps, exchanged a dozen verbal greetings, laughed at a few unheard jokes, and, finally, located Sam Stevens sitting alone at the far end of the bar. Sam was drinking his own brand of twelve-dollar Scotch stocked for him by the bartender on special order. He called for a glass for Kyle, supervised the pouring, and then relaxed on the stool to study his young partner’s face.

Sam was a shrewd man. He knew trouble when he saw it, and Kyle felt as if all his fears were painted like Indian war symbols on his face. He decided to drive them away with conversation.

“I applied for the permits,” he said. “It’s just a matter of processing. We should break ground Monday.”

“That’s not why you’re in a sweat,” Sam observed.

Kyle didn’t realize that he was perspiring. He dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and patted the moisture from his face.

“I guess it’s hotter today than I realized,” he said. “I didn’t have the air conditioner on in the car.”

But Sam wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “How long since you’ve been home?” he demanded.

Kyle didn’t reply. He lingered over Sam’s twelve-dollar Scotch, which, for all he could appreciate it at the moment, could have been corn whisky straight from the still.

“Is something wrong between you and Dee?” Sam queried. “Because, if there is, I won’t stand for it, boy. That’s too fine a woman you have to be shunted off to pasture. Too fine a woman and too fine a boy.”

Sam was inclined to get sentimental with a few drinks under his hand-tooled belt. The years were creeping up on him. He was mellowing with time.

“You sound like Van,” Kyle said. “He lectured me on wife neglect this morning. Relax, Sam. There’s nothing wrong. In fact, I just sent Dee and Mike up to the cabin. You told me we could use it anytime.”

And then Sam was delighted. His leathery face creased softly in a generous grin and his blue eyes sparkled. “Now you make sense, boy!” he exclaimed. “When are you joining them?”

“When I get caught up with my work.”

“No! I know you. You never get caught up. You work until you drop or somebody drops you. Kyle, I’ll give you five minutes to get your behind off that stool and head for the mountains!”

“Five minutes? But what about luncheon?”

“Who needs luncheon? How much chicken fricassee does a man have to eat in a lifetime? Don’t you think I know what they’re going to do here today? I get to hear some nice speeches that should be saved for my funeral. I get a plague that cost the membership a few hundred bucks, and in a few weeks I’ll be tabbed by the finance committee for a thousand-dollar donation. Go on! Get out of here!”

Sam gave Kyle a friendly push, and Kyle started to get off the stool. He wasn’t ready to go up to the cabin, but he didn’t look forward to the ordeal of the luncheon Sam had so vividly described. And then, just as both feet hit the floor, he saw something that made him momentarily forget Sam, Dee and the cabin. Seated calmly at the far end of the bar was the strangler who wore dark glasses.

Kyle’s first reaction, after the shock of recognition, was to wonder how the killer had gained admission to the club. Perhaps the syndicate provided membership cards to all organizations with which a scheduled victim was affiliated. For some people no doors were closed. But the next reaction was more pertinent to the moment; a professional killer sat between him and the only exit from the room.

He stalled for time.

“I wanted to talk about some of those contracts, Sam,” he said. “I wasn’t too happy with the electrical work on the last project—”

“It can wait!” Sam said.

“But it’s a five-million-dollar job! Don’t you want to make it, Sam? Don’t you want to come in under the wire? Frankly, I’m not looking for a tax write-off that big!”

The perspiration was dampening his face again, and he could feel Sam’s penetrating mind cutting through this small talk. The man in the dark glasses had ordered a whisky. He drank it slowly and with no sign of pleasure. Only one thing would pleasure him, Kyle felt. One swift, cruel thing …

“Kyle, nobody’s going to lose on this contract,” Sam drawled at his shoulder. “You know that! Even Van knows that, and he’s the biggest worrier since they invented safety pins.”

“Why isn’t Van here?” Kyle asked.

“Van
here?”
Sam grimaced and swallowed the rest of his drink like well water. “Van doesn’t turn out to these low-caste affairs,” he scoffed. “He hates us backslappers, Kyle. Don’t you ever feel that? Don’t you sense his contempt cutting right through your skin? He’s a brain man. All brain.”

“Van doesn’t hate you,” Kyle protested. “He works on a different plane, but he respects yours.”

“Respect?” Sam echoed. “No, he doesn’t respect my plane! He’s too radical for that. We’ve got to cut him a bigger piece of pie, Kyle. He’s bitter, but he’s bright. I have to give him that. He told me five years ago that you were the man I needed in my operation, and he was dead right. I never made a better deal in my life, sight unseen. Kyle, are you listening to me?”

A part of Kyle’s mind was listening, a part was remembering. Five years ago in that little apartment at the Cecil Arms Van Bryson had come to him with help. He might do it again. It just might be possible that the lonely place into which he had plunged at the sight of a killer on the street might not be completely lonely after all.

“You’ve been like a son to me,” Sam was saying. “Sarah and I never had children. Guess I was too busy. Too ambitious. I took Sarah for granted—then, one day she was gone. I was a widower. A pile of money, a big house and nobody to share anything. Don’t you make the mistake I made, d’you hear?”

And so Kyle raised his glass and manufactured a smile to fit the occasion.

“Okay, you win,” he said. “The chicken fricassee isn’t for me, but here’s to the one-hundred-dollar plaque.” He drank quickly and put the glass down on the counter. “Sam—” he added. Then he stopped. He was about to say something ridiculous like: “Sam, if anything happens to me will you look after Dee and Mike?” But he couldn’t risk saying that. He couldn’t even risk thinking it, because everything now depended on how casually he could walk past the man in dark glasses. If he showed the slightest sign of recognition or fear, the advantage he had over the killer would be gone. “—Have fun,” he said.

Kyle walked the length of the bar and passed through the doorway into the entrance lobby. He smiled at the right people and patted the right shoulders, but not once did he glance in the direction of the man in dark glasses. Unhurriedly, he drifted through the crowd in the lobby and stepped outside. Last year the club directors had enlarged the parking lot to accommodate guests and friends of the membership. Kyle stood before the doorman for a few seconds until his eyes adjusted to the glare of the sun on the white gravel drive, and then he started walking toward the far end of the lot where he had parked the blue station wagon.

“Mr. Walker, wait. I’ll send the boy—”

Kyle silenced the doorman with a wave of his hand. He was conspicuous enough without having his name broadcast. There wasn’t a shadow for shelter or another human being for protection for the distance of the walk, and he hadn’t covered a hundred feet before his ears picked up the sound of footsteps behind him. He held his pace. The odds were against his being killed in an enclosed area. Professionals didn’t take such chances. He reached the station wagon and opened the door. As he slid in behind the steering wheel, he caught the reflection in the rear-view mirror. The man with dark glasses had stopped beside a beige Chrysler.

Kyle backed out slowly, completed the U turn at the far end of the lot and drove back to the street entrance. He waved casually at the gateman and turned into the highway just as the rear-view mirror caught the front grill of the Chrysler as it came around the turn at the end of the lot. Now he had two advantages over the strangler. He knew that he was being followed by a man who was unaware he had been recognized; and he knew the area better than any amount of briefing could familiarize a newcomer. He floored the accelerator and made the first boulevard stop before the Chrysler reached the highway. But the land was level here, and for several miles there was no place to turn or hide. At midafternoon there was little traffic. Nearing the second stop, the Chrysler was gaining ground. Deliberately, Kyle floored the accelerator and raced across the intersection. Moments later he heard the welcome whine of a police siren and slackened speed.