Poisons Unknown (9 page)

The sheriff eyed the two guns in Liddell’s hands, stepped in with alacrity. Standing behind him was a thin man with a gray fedora perched on the back of his head. He was lean, gray-haired. He had sharp, inquisitive features.

“I’m Ed Connolly, Larry Dunlop’s assistant.” He answered the unspoken question in Liddell’s eyes. “I got here as soon as I could.”

“What brought you out?”

Connolly grinned. “I got a call from a gal named Gabby Benton. She told me you were with Larry when the accident happened. The sheriff’s man said Larry was alone. I thought I better have a look.”

“You misunderstood my deputy,” the sheriff growled.

Connolly ignored the sheriff and looked around curiously. “What’s been going on down here?”

“The sheriff and his boys were betting I’d keep my mouth shut about being in the car with Dunlop. They lost.”

Lalonde waved it aside impatiently. “I knew nothing about it.” He glared down at Carroll, who was beginning to moan his way back to consciousness. “When they brought Liddell in, he was drunk and violent. They took him down here to quiet him down.”

“He must’ve gotten real quiet, sheriff,” Connolly growled. “Looks like your boys went to sleep on the job.”

The sheriff grunted, walked over to the sink, filled a metal bucket with cold water, walked back, spilled it over the unconscious deputies.

Carroll groaned, tried to make his feet, doubled up, and stretched out on his face. The other man barely stirred. The sheriff turned to Liddell, snapped at him. “You’re free to go now. If we want any testimony, we’ll get in touch with you.”

Liddell looked from the sheriff to Connolly quizzically. “What gives?”

“The sheriff tells me the accident was caused by a reckless driver who cut Larry off. The car got out of control, went off the road. Check?”

“That was no reckless driver. That guy deliberately forced us off the road.”

The sheriff snorted impatiently. “You can’t go around making these unfounded accusations around here. Can you describe the driver or give us a license number?”

Liddell shook his head. “It happened too fast.”

Lalonde nodded. “So fast you couldn’t be sure whether it was deliberate or not. If we find the driver, you can have a look at him. But I think it’ll be mighty hard to find a guy you can’t even describe.” He turned to the newspaperman. “Why should anyone want to kill Dunlop? We all liked him.”

“One reason might be because he was going to spill the story that Alfred was murdered and torched.”

The sheriff rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Listen to that one.” He shook his head at Liddell. “Maybe I ought to have Doc Lane take a look at you, Liddell. You’ve got murder on the brain. First poor Larry. Now Brother Alfred.”

“Dunlop called in a story. Said he had proof that Alfred was murdered,” Connolly put in.

“First I ever heard of it.” The sheriff shrugged. “If you can show me how you can tell he was murdered, I’ll have the coroner reopen the case.”

“I can show you, and you know it,” Liddell snarled.

“I’ll be glad to see it. And in front of our newspaper friend. So if you’re right, he’ll have a good story. Won’t he?”

Liddell scowled at the note of confidence in the sheriff’s voice. “Suppose we go over to the morgue and try?”

The sheriff held his hands out, palms up. “I’ll be glad to have you drop into my morgue any time.”

“You can say that again,” Liddell grunted.

Conversation was suspended as the three men crossed the road from the sheriff’s office to the parish morgue. The same thin man was sitting behind the same white desk making entries into the same ledger. He looked up as the sheriff stalked in, pasted an obsequious smile on his face.

“Some people here want to have a look at that auto accident case. The fellow they call Brother Alfred.”

The thin man bobbed his head. “Sure, sheriff.”

“Anything been done to that body since I was here?” Liddell wanted to know.

The bald-headed man behind the desk turned blank eyes on him. “When were you here, mister? I don’t remember ever seeing you.”

Liddell growled deep in his throat. “I was here with Larry Dunlop of the
Dispatch
. You showed us Alfred’s body.” He broke off, stared at the man. “You’re sure I was never here?”

The attendant mopped at his bald head with a dingy handkerchief, looked to the sheriff. “I don’t know what this is all about, sheriff. I never even saw this man before.”

Liddell leaned the flat of his hands on the corner of the desk, stuck his face within inches of the attendant’s. “Then how come I can lead you right to the drawer he’s in?”

The bald-headed attendant’s Adam’s apple bobbed fitfully. “I don’t know, mister. Maybe you’re psychic or something.” He looked to the sheriff again. “I never showed him.”

“Well, let’s go in and let Liddell take us to the body,” the sheriff nodded. He turned on his heel, led the way to the big door, waited until the attendant pushed it open, held it. “Which way, Liddell?”

“All the way in the back. The next to last tier, second drawer up.”

“That right?” The sheriff snapped at the attendant.

The man in the white jacket shook his head. “He’s here in this first tier off the door. The bottom drawer.” He clip-clopped across the floor, pulled open the bottom drawer, pulled back the canvas. The charred body he had seen earlier stared up at Liddell.

“Well?” Lalonde made no attempt to hide his pleasure.

“Maybe I’ve been underestimating you, sheriff,” Liddell nodded. “I suppose you’ve also foreseen this.” Liddell dug into his pocket, brought out the vial of Rhodokrit.

“What’s that?” the sheriff asked with polite interest.

Liddell turned to Connolly. “Dunlop told you about the test we made with Rhodokrit?”

The newsman nodded. “I don’t know how it works, though.”

“You sprinkle it on a surface that’s been doused with an inflammable oil and it turns red.” He spilled some on his hand, powdered it over the body. There was no reaction.

“Check and checkmate.” Liddell nodded.

“It didn’t work?” The sheriff asked solicitously.

Liddell capped the vial, dropped it into his pocket. “The body’s probably been washed down with alcohol or some other compound that breaks down the reaction.”

“We’ve got to kill the story?” Connolly asked.

Liddell nodded. “For the time being.” He turned, stared at Lalonde impersonally. “This is your round, sheriff. But I’ll be back.”

“Do that,” the sheriff nodded. “Come back to our morgue any time. Sometime when you can stay.”

G
ABBY
B
ENTON
stretched out on the divan on her sun deck, watching Johnny Liddell making the drinks. He handed one to her, sat on the edge of the divan with her, and stared out over the small park beyond and the low roofs of the older section of the city.

“You look mighty romantic with that piece of adhesive over your eye, Johnny. Really swashbuckling.” She grinned.

“I guess if it hadn’t been for your calling Connolly to get out there and make like the Marines, I’d be covered with adhesive.”

Gabby snorted. “Not from what I heard. If I’d known they only sicked two men on you, I wouldn’t even have bothered. I thought you were really outnumbered.”

Liddell grinned, took a swallow from his glass.

“What are you thinking, Johnny?” the blonde wanted to know.

“About the city out there.”

Gabby got up on her elbow, looked out over the railing. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Liddell nodded. “Makes you wonder how anything so beautiful can contain so much that’s evil.” He got up from the divan, walked over to the ornamental grillwork railing, and looked down. “You know, this is the way I’ve felt ever since I got into this damn town.”

“What do you mean?”

“Up in the air.” He shook his head, took a drink from his glass. “It makes less and less sense all the time.”

“You don’t have to worry about it any more. You did what you came for. You found Alfred—”

“And set him up for the kill.”

Gabby shook her head. “But you’ve got no case. You’ve got to have a victim before you can have a murder. As it stands right now, Alfred died in an accident.”

“That doesn’t alter the fact that Marty Kirk murdered him.”

Gabby sighed. “I think you’re wrong, Johnny. Honestly, I know what goes on behind the scenes in this town a little better than you do. I believe Kirk when he says he had no reason to want Alfred dead. Alfred is no good to him dead.”

“Why?”

“Let me do a little guessing, a combination of rumors and facts.” She cupped her glass in her hands, stared down into it. “Marty represents the syndicate down here. Part of his job is to push a set quota of narcotics. Alfred runs the temple, one of the biggest dope drops along the Gulf. All of a sudden, Alfred takes off, disappears without warning. Maybe he disappears owing Marty a lot of money, hasn’t paid for his supplies.”

“Aren’t you building a case for a hit?”

Gabby looked up, shook her head. “If Alfred is killed, Marty never gets his money. If he stays alive, there’s always a chance.”

Liddell kicked it around, found no soft spot. “Okay, just for the sake of argument, Kirk didn’t kill Alfred. Who did?”

Gabby shook her head. “According to the coroner, nobody.”

“I tell you we had proof he was torched. I can’t prove it with Dunlop dead, but I know what I saw. Alfred was murdered whether the proof will stand up or not.”

Gabby patted the divan by her side. “Why get yourself all stewed up? There’s nothing you can do about it when the cards are stacked the way they are over the line there.”

Liddell took a deep breath, blew it out through pursed lips. “They certainly play rings around me in this league, Gabby. It’s beginning to get under my skin.” He dropped down alongside her, shook his head dolefully.

Gabby laid her hand on his knee. “You’re crazy to let it. You were hired to find a man. So he turns up dead—”

“And another guy who did nothing to anybody turns up the same way because he wanted to help me.”

“Another accident.”

“Another accident.” Liddell got up, stamped to the rail, swung around. “I’m crazy to let it get under my skin, you say? Do you know what’s happened to me since I got off that damn plane? I’ve been bawled out by a D.A., threatened by a sheriff, fired by a gangster, beaten up by goons. Not to mention the guy who climbed my balcony, and it wasn’t to wherefore art thou, Romeo, either. And what have I got to show for it? Bumps on my head!”

Gabby struggled to keep a straight face and lost. “I don’t mean to laugh, Johnny. But it sounds so funny the way you say it. None of what’s happened’s been your fault. The breaks were just against you.”

“In the meantime, Kirk’s sitting back like an overfed spider, getting a big bang out of the runaround I’m getting.”

“I’m not too sure Marty’s getting any bang out of this whole deal. If Alfred did skip out with some of Marty’s money, it wasn’t pennies. And the big boys in the syndicate are going to expect to be paid their share either way.”

Liddell grunted. “Well, I would feel a little better if I could persuade myself he’s doing a little sweating, too.” He checked his watch. “Can I call my hotel?”

Gabby nodded. “They’ll be glad to hear from you. I tried to reach you, and the clerk sounded as if he were going to cry.”

Liddell grinned, drained his glass, set it down on the end table, walked in to the telephone. He dialed the number and held the instrument to his ear. The switchboard girl connected him with the front desk.

“I’m so glad you called in, Mr. Liddell. There is a lady been trying very hard to reach you. She called four times in two hours.”

Liddell nodded. “I know. I’m with Miss Benton now.”

“But it was not Miss Benton, Mr. Liddell. She called, too.” There was a slight embarrassed titter over the wire. “I made a mistake when she called. I thought it was Miss Martinez, and I told her I had her three messages. Miss Benton said she hadn’t left any.”

“Martinez?” Liddell pinched at his nostrils. “Did she say who she was or what it was about?”

“I have the message here. Shall I read it over the phone?”

Liddell nodded. “Yeah.”

“ ‘Most important I see you today. Please come to my apartment, Seventy Marseilles Road,’” the clerk read into the mouthpiece. “It is signed ‘Angie Martinez.’”

A light seemed to flick on in Liddell’s brain. Angie Martinez! The girl at the temple.

“Oh, I understand. I’ll take care of it. Incidentally, do you know where that address is?”

The clerk hesitated. “It is a very bad neighborhood. We call it Little San Juan. It is mostly Puerto Rican.”

Liddell nodded. “Okay, thanks. I’ll see you when I get back to the hotel. In the meantime, destroy that message.” He dropped the receiver back on its hook, walked back to the sun deck.

“Anything important?” Gabby drawled. She nodded at his refilled glass, patted the divan.

Liddell picked up the glass, swirled the liquor over the ice. “Nothing much. A few messages. One from you, for that matter.”

Gabby slid her arm around his neck, pulled his face down on her shoulder. “I don’t have to leave here until around nine. Why don’t we call down, have some dinner sent up, then you can rest here until I get back?”

“I’ll take a rain check on it, Gabby. I’ve got a couple of things I want to do, a couple of people I want to see. Then, if there’s no sign of a break, I may very well decide to pack the whole thing in.”

• • •

Marseilles Road was Little San Juan. A long row of uniformly dingy, soot-stained, three-story brick houses stretched the full length of the block. Short flights of unwashed stone steps ran from littered sidewalks to small, dark vestibules. Loudly hooting teen-agers of both sexes chased each other into alleys and darkened doorways, scuffling sounds replacing the hooting as they disappeared into the shadow. Men and women shuffled by on the sidewalks—the men zoot-suited, colorful peacocks; the women drab, prematurely aged, tired.

Johnny Liddell melted into the slowly moving tide of white, yellow, black, and brown that ebbed and flowed along Marseilles Road. He stopped in front of Number 70, staring up at its windows with their drawn shades. The blank windows seemed to stare back at him dumbly.

He climbed the three steps to a foul-smelling vestibule. As he stepped into the semigloom, two slim figures disentangled themselves from a close embrace in the inner hall, ran giggling toward the cellar entrance in the rear.

“Chico, he very precocious,” Liddell grunted. Three rusting tin mailboxes, badly battered, hung askew on the wall of the vestibule. The push buttons in the bells had disappeared long ago. He wrinkled his nose at the pungent odor compounded of equal parts of stale cooking and unwashed bodies that seemed to spill from the hallway door. He fumbled through his pockets for a cigarette, found himself out.

He stepped back out onto the stoop, stared around. On the far side of the street, he recognized the store front of a
bodega
. He crossed the street, shouldered his way through the slow-moving crowd.

The store was dim, dank-smelling. A dirty, faded curtain cut the living-quarters off from the front of the store. There was no one behind the counter. Liddell looked around at the dusty fixtures, the fly-specked showcases. A rack of magazines stood against the far wall. They were lurid, sexy, well thumbed. They were standard in one respect—every one featured a cover portrait of an unbelievably busty, blue-eyed blonde. Liddell picked one up, flipped through it, replaced it in the rack.

The curtain pushed back, and a fat old woman shuffled in. Her face was old, wrinkled, the color of walnut. She had wispy gray hair that stuck out at right angles to her skull. Her eyes narrowed as they took in the unfamiliar white face, the thick shoulders of the man in the store. She reached up and tugged on the bunch of hairs that stuck out of her chin.

“A pack of cigarettes, Chiquita,” Liddell told her.

She shuffled to the showcase, pulled a pack of Chesterfields from under the counter, pushed them at him. He dropped a quarter into her palm.

“You know a girl named Martinez? Angie Martinez?”

The old woman shook her head, bared naked gums in a slack-lipped smile.
“Yo no se. No hable ingles.”
Her eyes were black, opaque buttons.

The curtain flipped again. A small dark girl came out. Her hair was thick, jet, kinky. Her mouth was smeared a bright red, her dark cheeks heavily rouged. She was high-hipped, high-breasted, wore a tight black sweater and skirt, a bright red sash.

“You looking for girl?” The heavily painted lips split, revealing a set of dingy, widely separated teeth.

Liddell nodded. “A girl named Angie Martinez.”

The little black-haired girl came up closer to him, looked up into his face. “Me, Rosa, much prettier than Martinez.” She swung her head to the old crone.
“Oye, es verdad, no?”

The old woman bared her naked gums again, rocked her head.

“I’m sure you’re much prettier, Rosa. But I’ve got to see Angie Martinez on business. Which apartment is hers?”

Rosa tossed her head angrily. “She horse face.” She stuck her front teeth over her lower lip to illustrate the criticism. “Why you want her? You come with me.
Que lindo tu eres.”
She rolled her eyes lasciviously.

Liddell grinned at her. “I have to talk to Martinez. If I came up here for a girl, I’d much rather have you,” he assured her.

The girl pouted at him, partially mollified. “She in front apartment. But you make mistake. Me, Rosa, I much fun,
chu-chi.”

Liddell pulled a bill from his pocket, folded it, slipped it to her. She looked at it, slipped it down the neck of her sweater into her flimsy brassière. She winked lewdly at Liddell. “You come back,” she prophesied.

Back at Number 70, Liddell ran up the short flight of steps, re-entered the dark vestibule. He walked through to a flight of stairs that ran to the upper story.

The second-floor hallway was even more malodorous than the lower hall had been. He walked softly to the door of the front apartment.

He pushed the bell, heard it ring inside the apartment. There was a soft rustle of sound from the other side of the door, then silence. He waited for a second, rang again. There was no response.

Liddell bent over, peered at the lock, and took a thin strip of celluloid from his jacket pocket. He slipped it into the crack of the door, manipulated it for a moment, and was rewarded by a soft click.

He caught the knob, turned it softly, and pushed the door open. For seconds, he stood outside the opened door. Then he slid his .45 from its holster, stepped in, and closed the door behind him with his heel.

He stood, fanning the room with the gun, straining his ears for some sound or indication of life. The apartment seemed to be empty.

The room showed signs of a hasty search—the drawers were hanging open, contents strewn all over the floor. The door to the bedroom beyond was ajar. Liddell crossed the living-room cautiously, nosed the door open with the muzzle of the .45.

It was a small, mean bedroom. An ugly dresser leaned drunkenly against an unpainted plaster wall. An unmade double bed dominated the room, its soiled linen dingy and yellow in the half-light. This room, too, had been searched. The drawers had been pulled out, emptied. Clothes from the closet had been dumped into an untidy pile in the center of the room.

A small lamp was lit on the dresser, throwing a yellow light over the bed. Angie Martinez lay on her back across the bed. One arm dangled to the floor; the other was thrown across her face as though to ward off a blow. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear, and a pool of blood had dripped to the floor beside the bed.

Liddell’s eyes flicked around the room, noted the closed window, the half-open door to the lavatory. Whoever had been in the apartment when he rang the bell was still in it. Softly he crossed the room, pushed open the lavatory door. It was empty.

“All right, you in the closet. You get a count of three, then I make a sieve out of that door. Come out, hands first. Make sure the hands are empty.”

There was no sound from the closet. Liddell could feel the butt of the .45 growing moist from his palm.

“One.”

There was no sign of life from the closet. The pulse in his trigger finger started to pound.

“Two!”

Liddell could feel the faint line of perspiration that beaded his forehead and upper lip. His finger grew white on the trigger.

“No, don’t!” The closet door sprang open. A small pair of hands stuck out. A blonde girl followed them. She had difficulty keeping them from trembling. “Don’t shoot!” she begged piteously.