Operation Whiplash (9 page)

Her mouth tightened, and then recognition dawned. “Well!” she said softly. “Mr. Wise Guy himself.” She eyed my makeup curiously.

I was facing the front entrance. Rubelli could see me, but he couldn’t see Robin because of the back of the booth. The flashily-dressed, dark-faced man glanced down my way casually. He knew that if a stranger sat down and tried to put the make on Robin, Robin was perfectly capable of running him off.

“What’s the word on Hazel, Robin?” I asked.

Her upper lip curled. It was plain all gloves were off. “Bolts thinks you know where she is. And if you do you’ll tell us before we’re through with you. If you don’t, we’ll see that there’s an item in the paper after your untimely demise, and that will bring her running.”

“My untimely demise? How unpleasant for me.”

“You don’t know the half of it, jokester.” She eyed me malevolently. “D’you know Mario belted my butt when I couldn’t produce you when we came to Hudson?”

“I hope he set a world record for butt-belting, Robin,” I said sincerely.

“I hope Bolts lets me work out on you,” she said viciously.

“Like you did on Deakin?”

“You do find out things, don’t you?” she countered. “Although I’ll make that past tense.” She glanced toward the rear of the room, the direction she was facing, to make sure the two goons near the exit were in place. She returned her attention to me. “I’ve got something special planned for that big bitch, Hazel, when we get our hands on her.”

I saw no point in prolonging it.

I’d learned what I came to find out.

The balance of the evening wasn’t going to be quite what Robin had anticipated.

I was going to spring the trap, all right, but Robin wouldn’t know about it. Essentially, she’d been dead since she told me they didn’t have Hazel. I’d purposely kept my arms off the table top. I knew the strength in her hands. She wasn’t going to grab me and hold me so that Rubelli and his goons could frogmarch me out the Barbarossa’s rear door. The only reason she hadn’t called Rubelli already was that she was enjoying herself taunting me.

“I suppose it was Hazel’s will that was the holdup,” I said conversationally. I leaned forward slightly, reached down, and pulled the derringer from its spectacles-case holster.

“You know it,” she answered. “But school’s out now, chump. Start sweating.”

With my left hand, I dumped my untouched beer into her lap, glass and all. She started to jump up, swiping at herself with her hands. I rose and leaned across the booth as though to help her. I put my left hand on her shoulder and held her down. At the same time I extended the hand-hidden derringer until it touched her left breast. I pulled the trigger, and the noise of the little gun blended with the crash of my beer glass on the floor.

“I’ll get a towel!” I said loudly, pocketing the derringer.

Robin’s bulging eyes didn’t believe it. She struggled to rise, but my hand on her shoulder pinioned her. Then she seemed to shrink. Her body started to sag sideways, and I had to prop her up. I picked up her cocktail glass and doused my chest with its contents. “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, the hell with you!” I exclaimed.

Only Robin’s lolling head indicated that anything was amiss. I slid from the booth. The couple in the next booth were looking at me. “Goddam wiseass female!” I muttered. I stamped furiously toward the front entrance in the manner of a drippingly rejected suitor. Rubelli favored me with a thin smile as I passed his table. He couldn’t see Robin. Eventually a muscle would cramp and she would fall from the booth—if Rubelli didn’t become impatient at my non-appearance and go to the booth first to give his paramour hell about it.

But before either of those eventualities took place, the Barbarossa Restaurant would be bereft of my presence.

I returned to the car, recrossed the Bay on Courtney Campbell Causeway again, and headed north on U.S. 19.

At point-blank range, instantaneous death is never certain with a weapon as small as the derringer, despite the.41 caliber cartridge. Even a vital place doesn’t guarantee it, but once I’d made myself the meat in Rubelli’s sandwich, it was a chance I had to take. If Robin had been able to scream once, Rubelli and his men would have to outshoot my automatic. There was no way at all I was going to surrender myself to their untender mercies.

The whine of the tires on the highway and the singing of the night wind through the open window blended into a minor-key melody as I drove steadily toward Hudson. I had so much on my mind, the trip seemed to take no time at all. There was a light on in Jed’s office, but I didn’t stop. Tomorrow would be time enough to bring him up to date on what I intended to tell him had taken place. Not all of it, of course. Just the part I wanted him to know.

I turned from the highway into the lane leading to the cabin, then made the second turn into the brush-overgrown car-track I hadn’t yet done anything about clearing. A hundred yards from the cabin, Kaiser appeared suddenly in the headlights, facing the car. His appearance acted like a silent alarm. I shut off the motor instantly and flicked off the car lights.

Darkness closed in with a rush.

I could hear Kaiser’s tail thumping against the side of the car. I eased the door open as quietly as I could and stepped out into the brush. The shepherd was beside me at once, bumping against my leg, prancing up and down, whining softly. “What is it, boy?” I whispered to him, drawing my automatic.

He darted along the car-track toward the cabin, a darker shadow in the night, then bounded back toward me again, still whining. I moved a few cautious steps toward the cabin, careful where I placed my feet. Kaiser repeated his dash toward the cabin and his return. The dog’s antics puzzled me. It almost appeared that he was
eager
for me to go to the cabin. Then he bounded away again and disappeared into the blackness.

I had left no light burning in the cabin, but now through the trees I could see a light. I started to circle to my left, but then a familiar contralto voice floated across the soft night air. “It’s got to be you out there, Jed,” the contralto stated firmly. “This dog is trying to turn himself inside out to let me know you’re coming.”

I reholstered the automatic and strode through the brush. “Woman,” I growled, “have you been carrying on an affair with Jed Raymond behind my back?”

“Earl!”

I could hear her running through the thicket before I could see her. We met a few yards from the cabin. We held onto each other tightly, saying nothing. We had no need to say anything. Kaiser did a joyful little jog around us. I had never seen the shepherd so excited.

We broke it up after awhile and walked arm-in-arm to the cabin. Inside, Hazel turned to look at me with a beaming smile. The smile faded as she did a double-take. “What do you have
that
outfit on for?” she demanded.

I’d forgotten I changed wigs and makeup in Tampa. “Just confusing the public,” I answered.

“Sit down while I make coffee,” she ordered. “I just knew you’d be in Hudson after I read about Nate’s death. I just
knew
that awful woman would lure you here some-how and—”

“There’s beer in the fridge,” I interrupted her. “Open up a couple of bottles, and then take your story from the top.”

I sat down at the tiny table in the alcove that made up the kitchen, and Hazel came over and bent down to kiss me. She had on a smart-looking dress that her run through the brush had done no good, but her high-piled flaming red hair looked as though it had just come out from under the dryer. “You don’t look as though you’ve been roughing it, baby,” I observed.

“I’ve been sitting on my big A wondering what to do next,” she replied ruefully. She opened the refrigerator and handed me a beer. I uncapped it with the opener in the table drawer. She sat down beside me. “You look wonderful, even in that getup I hardly recognize,” she went on.

Hazel is a special doll.

Any guy with a burned-off face is never going to look wonderful, no matter how clever the plastic surgeon is. I’d had one of the best, but even a miracle-worker can only do so much. The fact that Hazel saw something in me other than my patched-up features was the basis for our relationship.

She reached across the table and took my hand. “I was afraid,” she said soberly. “I thought I might not see you again.”

“You know better than that,” I told her. I handed her the bottle and she took a swallow of my beer. “Where were you?”

“In Miami. When I decided to leave—”

“How about starting with when you arrived in Hudson?”

“All right. I knew
something
was wrong almost right away. Nate was so jittery he could hardly talk, and what he did say made no sense. The need for my presence in Hudson that he’d invented was so transparent I just had to wonder what was going on. All the time this—this female with the slant-eyed glasses was cozying up to me, being so friendly it made my teeth ache. God, the questions that woman asked! But I didn’t think too much—”

“What kind of questions?”

“Oh, if I had a boyfriend, and what was he like, and where was he—that sort of thing. I was being polite at first, and I didn’t realize until afterward how much I’d told her. When I finally began wondering about her, I thought she might be a lezzie. And then there was Nate. He was so shook up I actually thought he’d been fiddling with my account. Anyway, when I left his office Wednesday morning, I decided not to go back to the motel. I wanted to get away for a couple of days and
think.
I didn’t know how to leave a message for you that wouldn’t lead that woman to me, too. Then when I read about Nate in the paper yesterday I had to come back and see what was going on. I kept wondering if I’d talked too much and told that woman enough to locate you, although why she’d want to I couldn’t—”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s my turn now.”

Swiftly I reviewed recent events: Robin’s arrival in Arkansas, the trip to Hudson, getting together with Jed again, digging out Lou Espada’s background, connecting him to Colisimo, the fracas with Rubelli, the gradual realization that Colisimo intended to take over Hazel’s money. I didn’t mention Casey Deakin or the night’s happenings.

Hazel listened attentively. “Lou was a weak but delightful man at first,” she said quietly when I finished.

“Perhaps not as weak as Colisimo thought. Jed dug up a couple of instances which seemed to prove that, before he died, Espada tried to protect local people he’d tied into Colisimo’s cash.”

“Why do you think Nate was killed?” Hazel asked quietly.

I was sure he was killed because Rubelli thought he knew where Hazel had gone, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “Under pressure, Nate gave them the copy of your will in his safe,” I said. “If Colisimo got his hands on you and forced you to make him your heir, Bolts didn’t want Nate around as witness to the change. They blew the box in Nate’s office to make it look like an ordinary robbery.”

Hazel clapped a hand to her forehead. “My will! That’s why that woman kept pestering me about you! If they got rid of me, they had to get rid of you. Damn! What a favor I did you!”

“Why’d you change it in the first place?” I demanded.

She smiled, her warmly beautiful Hazel-smile. “I thought you were a more deserving charity case,” she said demurely.

“It probably worked out for the best,” I admitted. “If they hadn’t needed me on the scene, which put me where I had a chance to nose around, Colisimo might have blind-sided you.”

“How could he do it?” she asked indignantly.

“Your forced signature.” I didn’t say what Colisimo’s next move would inevitably have been after coercing Hazel into signing everything over to him. “There’s a couple of things that still bother me,” I went on. “After Espada died, Colisimo went to jail, but I don’t understand why the syndicate didn’t move in on you right away while you were still here in town to protect their money.”

The conversation died out. I had another beer, and then we got ready for bed. Hazel came into the bedroom where I was already starting to get out of my clothes. She hugged me once, then began undressing herself.

One of the great things about the girl is that she always seems to know instinctively whether I’ve got it or not.

We went to sleep naked in each other’s arms like sated honeymooners in an unheated mountain hunting lodge.

In the morning it was different.

I woke with a sense of well-being I couldn’t identify until my hand encountered the warm-fleshed female beside me in the bed. I threw back the sheet that was our only covering and hand-stroked curves and hollows. Hazel woke, smiled sleepily, then knelt up over me and bent down to rub her cheek against mine.

I played pat-a-cake with her large, strawberry-nippled breasts. She rubbed them against my chest until my tickling body-hair caused them to stiffen erotically. I had just reached for her purposefully when she straightened up. “Hold it!” she exclaimed.

I turned my head in the direction she was looking.

Kaiser was sitting on his haunches beside the bed, watching us expectantly.

Hazel slid from the bed in all her delightfully full-fleshed nudity and shooed the shepherd out of the bedroom. I heard her opening the outside door to let him out of the cabin. “Those brown eyes of his are just a bit too human,” she said when she returned and slithered into my arms.

“Chicken!” I needled her.

“I’m not the directress of a canine sexual training program,” she sniffed.

But in the next twenty minutes she demonstrated more than satisfactorily that having an aversion to dog-observance was the sum total of her inhibitions.

No one had to tell me just how lucky I was to be the beneficiary.

It was really like coming home.

An hour later we were in the kitchen-alcove again after a togetherness session in the shower. Hazel had lost none of her enthusiasm for frolicking under water. She was preparing ham and eggs while we both were already on our second cup of coffee. I don’t know why breakfast always smells so much better when someone else is making it. Kaiser, freshly readmitted to the cabin, was taking an eager interest in the activities near the stove.

Hazel brought the plates to the table. Kaiser had the first bite from her plate after she sat down. “Earl,” she said with the directness so characteristic of her, “why don’t we just leave town? We’re together, aren’t we? What can we win by staying?”

“A very good question,” I allowed. “If I knew anywhere we could skip to that syndicate tentacles couldn’t locate us, I’d second the motion. There’s another factor, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got Jed involved. Although he’d probably tell you he involved himself. I asked him to leave town, but he refused. I don’t know whether it’s bravado, or whether he just doesn’t think the situation’s that serious. I’m here to tell you that it is. If we pulled out, the load might fall on Jed, and it’s the kind of load that could result in a six-foot pine box. Even if he didn’t know where we were, how could he convince anyone who questioned him?”

Hazel nodded slowly. “That’s what really happened to Nate, wasn’t it, Earl?”

I didn’t answer her. “How did you get here yesterday?” I tried another subject. “I didn’t see another car.”

“I rode the bus and walked in from the highway. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it after dark.”

“It’s a little rugged even in the daylight,” I acknowledged. Kaiser rubbed against my knee to remind me I wasn’t doing right by him. I gave him a piece of ham. Hazel had fixed me too much food, as usual. When I was satisfied, I set the plate down on the floor and Kaiser polished it off vigorously. “Would you be nervous about staying here alone for an hour or so?” I continued.

“Hell, horseman, I stayed here alone before I ever knew you,” my redhead returned briskly.

I didn’t point out that the situation had been different then. “Horseman” is Hazel’s pet name for me. We both go back a long way in monitoring the activities of thoroughbred racehorses.

“I told Jed I’d keep him up to date on things,” I explained.

“Give him my love.”

“Sure,” I said. Mentally, I crossed my fingers. I doubted the wisdom of telling Jed that Hazel had showed up. What Jed didn’t know wouldn’t be a burden to him if Rubelli recovered more quickly than I expected from the problem in body-disposal with which I’d left him. But recover he would. I had to make another effort to convince Jed to stay out of sight for awhile.

I went into the bedroom and dressed. Hazel was doing the dishes when I came out. I trailed my fingers lightly across the nape of her neck, then watched the goosebumps jump up on her arms. “I’ll leave Kaiser with you,” I said. “Keep him outside and he’ll be better than a siren to let you know if anyone’s coming. D’you want a gun? I’ve got a small one you can have.”

“I’ve got a twelve-gauge in the back of the closet if the shells haven’t corroded,” Hazel replied. “It’ll sicken anyone who won’t listen to reason.”

I checked the twelve-gauge. It and the shells were all right. “I won’t be long,” I promised.

She snuggled up to me for a moment, and then I went to the door. Kaiser started to follow me, but I sent him back inside. I climbed into the car and drove out to the highway. I turned north there instead of south. If Colisimo had a lookout posted in town, I’d already been seen too many times with Jed for Jed’s good. I drove until I came to a scruffy-looking beer joint crowned with a dilapidated sign saying
frenchie’s.

I was the only customer when I went inside. Surprisingly, Frenchie’s had Andeker on draft. I ordered a glass, then went to the pay telephone. “Morning, tiger,” I greeted Jed when he answered his office phone. “Can you spare twenty minutes from the marts of commerce? I’m at a tavern north of town called Frenchie’s.”

“I know it,” he answered. “Let me make a couple of phone calls and I’ll be right with you. Any news?”

“Come and hear it,” I said noncommittally.

I picked up my Andeker and went over and sat down near a window overlooking the highway and Frenchie’s parking lot. If Jed was being followed, I wanted to know it. He showed up in twenty minutes, brisk as usual. None of the drivers going past looked as though they were taking an interest in Jed. At my signal, the bartender brought two more Andekers to our table and carried away my empty glass.

I thought Jed’s appraisal of me was more searching than usual. “So what happened last night?” he asked.

“I scared Robin into leaving the area. We won’t have to be concerned about her any longer.”

“You scared Robin into leaving the area?” he repeated. Then he shook his sandy head. “Sometimes I wonder about you, man.” He took a newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket and shoved it across the table for me. It was only a short paragraph. It said:
An unidentified brunette woman in her late twenties was found dead at the rear of the Barbarossa Restaurant after midnight last night. Police were still questioning nearby residents at an early hour this morning.

“Poor staff work,” I commented, pushing the clipping back to him. “They should have removed her from the premises altogether.”

“How can you sit there so calmly—” Jed began excitedly.

“Jed,” I stopped him. “You sound as though you’re talking about human beings.”

“What about
you
!” he blurted.

“Fill out the tag. I’ll wear it.”

He swallowed hard. “Okay, okay,” he mumbled. “Just don’t tell me about it.” His face was pale. “What you did last night.”

“You may have noticed that I wasn’t.”

He was trying to rally. “What are you going to do now?”

“It depends. I keep coming back to the fact that when Colisimo was in the jug, everything stayed cool around here. It only heated up when he got out. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t make a try at getting him grassed again.”

“Grassed? You mean jailed again? How the hell would you do that?”

“There’s the Deakin warehouse in Tampa,” I pointed out. “Whatever honest business he has, Colisimo is bound to have something illegitimate going for him, too. If I can get a line on it, I can torpedo him with the Tampa police.”

“That’d be a switch, you working with the police,” Jed said. I sat and watched a tide of red rush up from under his collar and stain his pale cheeks crimson. “Hell, I didn’t mean that,” he said miserably. He swallowed again. “You mean you’re—you’re actually going to that Tampa warehouse?”

“Tonight,” I affirmed.

“I’ve driven past it and it looks like a fortress,” Jed warned.

“I’ll take a look, anyway. Where is it?”

“I’ve got a map in my car,” Jed sighed.

I watched through the window while he got the map from the glove compartment of his car. Jed was a nice clean-cut American boy who expected people to be as naïve and nice as he was. He couldn’t cope when they weren’t. A stint as deputy sheriff in the sleepy Southern county still hadn’t fully prepared him for the junglelike nature of the world. With Colisimo and his ilk, a reaction could be too late. Action was what was needed.

Jed returned to the table, map in hand. He shoved the beer glasses aside and spread out the map. He put a finger on the location of the Deakin Trucking Company warehouse. “It’s in the old part of town, right on the bay,” he explained.

I nodded. It wasn’t too far away from where I’d been the previous night. “That’s a good location for someone like Colisimo,” I said. “Truck delivery; water delivery; he could have almost anything going for him. Okay, Jed. Thanks for the help.”

“You’ll let me know how you make out?” he asked wistfully.

He thought he’d hurt my feelings. “Sure I will,” I tried to reassure him.

We went out to our cars. I had already started my engine when Jed snapped his fingers and came over and thrust his head in the open window. “Casey Deakin died this morning,” he said quietly.

I sat there considering the implications. “I doubt they intended that to happen,” I said. “It will mean a change in the warrant. I wonder if Rubelli isn’t a liability to Colisimo now? Well—” I punched Jed on the arm. “Don’t go anywhere alone at night. Better still, take a vacation.”

Jed gave me a jaunty wave intended to indicate his lack of concern, but I had seen his eyes. He was out of his league, and he knew it. He went back to his car. I waited and let him drive off first. I followed him for four miles until I was sure no one was tailing him. I drove to a spot at the edge of town where I’d seen a Goodwill Industries sign in the window.

I pawed through the racks on the sidewalk and inside and eventually selected a maroon-colored knit seaman’s cap, a dark-blue turtleneck sweater, and a pair of black slacks. The fit wasn’t perfect in any instance, but the clothing would do. One of the numerous boxes scattered about contained shoes. After rummaging through it, I found a pair of canvas deck shoes with thick, spongy soles. They were a size too large, but an extra pair of socks would help to make up the difference.

I bee-lined it for the cabin where Kaiser greeted me as enthusiastically as he had the night before, hind quarters wriggling ecstatically, tail thrashing the bushes. I was still thinking about Jed’s unpleasant news concerning Casey Deakin. The ex-trucker’s death had removed the ability of Rubelli and his cohorts to move freely around Hudson.

“You weren’t gone long,” Hazel said approvingly when I entered the cabin.

“I’ll be running down to Tampa tonight to look over a trucking warehouse that Colisimo operates,” I said.

“I’ll go with you,” she replied instantly.

I was of two minds about that. It was risky. I wasn’t keen about leaving her alone in the cabin, though. Without a car, it was impossible for her to get away from the place with any speed. If we became separated again, we’d lose everything we’d gained. And if I parked far enough away from the Deakin Trucking Company warehouse in Tampa, there would be little chance of her being discovered even if something happened to me.

“We’ll all go,” I said finally.

“All?”

“Kaiser, too.”

“Wonderful!” Hazel enthused. “What’s in the warehouse?”

“I’ll make you a riddle. I’m betting it’s something very small or quite large.”

“Very small would be dope,” Hazel guessed.

“Bullseye.”

“And very large would be—would be—”

“Elephants,” I supplied. “Correct the first time.”

I dodged her punch aimed at my ribs.

We lazed around the balance of the day. Hazel took a sunbath down near the creek. I sat with her, but remained fully dressed. I have to be careful of too much sun because of my extensive plastic surgery. Hazel, clad in her pelt, stretched out prone on a blanket and promptly fell asleep. I had to wake her once to get her to turn over. If the big girl gets sunburned, it’s a lot of sunburn.

We had sandwiches and beer after sundown. I never eat too heavily before nighttime activity. There was no tension; the atmosphere was relaxed. Hazel has the best nerves of any woman I’ve ever known. It’s just one of the things I admire about her.

I started to get ready around nine o’clock. I put on my “new” turtleneck sweater, black slacks, and canvas deck shoes. I removed my wig and covered my burn-and-stitches scarred pate with the maroon-colored knit seaman’s cap. “Put on your best threads,” I told Hazel. If she were questioned for any reason, the better she looked the less trouble she’d have.

She came out of the bedroom looking like a fashion model ready to take part in the Easter parade. “What’d that outfit set you back?” I queried her.

“You didn’t think I’d be in Miami and not do any shopping did you?” she smiled.

We went out to thé car, Kaiser trotting along beside us. I gave Hazel the keys, and she got under the wheel without comment. She’s a really good driver, but more reckless than I am. Kaiser sat in the middle, and I sat on the outside. I carried my attaché case with its wigs and facial makeup on my lap.

Hazel drove through a dark and quiet-looking Hudson. A few miles south she stopped at an all-night service station and topped off the Ford’s tank with premium gasoline. The young, gangly-framed attendant seemed hesitant about putting his hand into the car with the change so close to Kaiser’s sharp-toothed grin.

I had experimented with the turtleneck sweater, wearing its bottom-edge both inside and outside my belt. I’d finally decided on letting it hang outside because it better concealed the slight bulge at my waist which was my holster-held automatic. My right-hand pants pocket bulged, too. It was carrying two extra clips of 9mm. Parabellum cartridges. And the reloaded derringer in its spectacles-case holster was again riding my shinbone.

It was thirty minutes before midnight when we crossed the Courtney Campbell Causeway. This time I motioned for Hazel to turn south on Memorial Highway just before we reached the International Airport. I directed her south again on West Shore Boulevard. The warehouse was almost at Port Tampa, not too far from MacDill Air Force Base.

On West Shore Boulevard we kept running into shreds of salt-flavored fog tainted with the odor of rotting seaweed. Hazel turned on the windshield wipers to clear the glass of the droplets of mist and fog. Traffic was at a minimum. I estimated it at a car a mile.

Someone with a literary bent of mind had named the dockside streets near Port Tampa. The Deakin Trucking Company warehouse was on Melville St., around the corner from Coleridge St., which in turn led off from West Shore Boulevard. The old commercial area showed itself sadly run-down in the headlights.

I had Hazel make a right turn onto Coleridge and another onto Melville. There was no mistaking the Deakin warehouse. Jed’s description of it as fortresslike was accurate. The building was a three-story, all-brick affair covering a quarter of a block. It had an appearance of neglect.

A battered-looking sign on the face of the building cinched identification beyond doubt.

Hazel glanced at me as we rolled slowly past the massive building. I didn’t say anything, and she kept on going. A good many windows on the two lower floors had been boarded up. The ground-floor brickwork was faded and chipped. The unboarded windows had star-splashes in the wire-reinforced glass from vandals’ markmanship with pellet guns or well-aimed half-bricks ripped free from the building itself. At the far end of the building a rusted fire escape hung precariously above a passageway between the warehouse building and a fenced automobile wrecking yard next to it.