Stab in the Dark (14 page)

N
AT
T
INSLEY
watched Knox herd the pair back into the car. “What now, Paul?”

“Make a phone call,” he said wearily. “Can you watch this pair?”

She touched the twenty-five now lying in her lap and the thirty-eight Knox had placed on the seat beside her. “As long as you want.”

“If I don’t move now,” he said, “I don’t move at all. So hang on.” He strode away, feeling a thousand years old. It was a block and a half to a tavern where he found an enclosed pay telephone. He used three dimes before he located Beeker.

“Mel,” he said, “the damned boat’s gone.”

Beeker sounded indifferent. “I’ll send an alarm on it. But it will be morning before anyone starts looking.”

“Auffer was on that boat,” Knox said. He removed the receiver from the proximity of his ear until the explosion subsided. When it did, he explained succinctly, adding his information on the stag show.

“I’m Sorry,” he said when he finished giving directions. “That boat being gone puts me in one hell of a spot, but it puts you in a worse one. If the stuff is on it, they’ll be bound for the San Juan’s to make a transfer. Or maybe they’ll drop it on one of the Canadian islands. We’ve got to do something now, not in the morning.”

Beeker answered briefly and then hung up. Knox hurried back to where Nat waited. He would tell her to go, he decided; there was no use involving her in this further. He hadn’t found out a great deal, bringing her with him. In fact, he was somewhat bewildered by the turn the affair had taken. If Tinsley were in on this, Knox could not see his taking off without his daughter. Nor, on the other hand, could he see Tinsley letting the film go without himself. It was, Knox told himself, definitely a dilemma.

Knox saw the car and he saw Nat. She was still at the wheel. Only now she was facing forward and bent over as if napping. Knox broke into a run. He jerked open the door. “Nat?”

His hand touched her. She slid toward him. She was loose, boneless. He said, “Jesus,” in a sick voice and caught her as she half fell from the car. His hand found her breast, cupping it. Relief at the steady throbbing of her heart knocked everything else temporarily from his mind.

He kept her in his arms, rocking her gently back and forth, murmuring without realizing it, “Nat, honey. I’m sorry. I was a damned fool to leave you with a pair like that. Wake up, Nat honey, please.”

He stopped muttering. He was looking into a wide open pair of eyes. Lips curved up in a faint smile. “My head hurts.”

Knox swallowed and tried to remember what he had been saying. Her head might hurt but she was definitely fully conscious. Her arms were no longer limply hanging but around his neck. The eyes were very wide and very close, the smiling lips were a fraction from his.

Knox kissed her, gently, as he might kiss a hurt child, and then deposited her on the seat of the car. He said with a voice that required effort to be held steady, “Hold still and let me feel.”

“You did,” she remarked. “But go ahead. I like it.”

Knox ignored her and ran his fingers at the back of her head. He found the lump. It wasn’t large but it was definitely tender; she moaned softly.

“Paul,” she said in a contrite voice, “I let them get away …”

“To hell with them,” he said savagely. “What did they hit you with?”

She spoke slowly now as if trying to recall. He had the feeling that she was acting. Before, whatever he had murmured to her had caught her enough by surprise so that she forgot momentarily. Now she was acting. He could not help thinking it; he did not want to think it.

She said, “I was facing them, kneeling on the seat, and they started to offer me money to let them go. I told them how vicious and beastly they were for showing such filth as that movie, and the thin one started to laugh. Then he began to cough. He coughed so hard that he bent over. His friend began to pound him on the back. Suddenly he stopped and said, ‘Easy, it’s only a dame.’ I fell for it and started to turn and look. One of them hit me with something. The thin one must have had it in his pocket.”

Knox looked closely at her. “You’re little pale but I think you’re okay. Can you drive home?”

“I can but I’d rather you did.”

“I have to wait for the cops,” Knox said. “After I get rid of them, I’ll come to your place. You’ll be feeling better then and I’ll tell you all about it.”

She was pouting again. “Do I have to leave you?”

“I don’t want you in this mess.”

She did not answer except to lift her hands and touch his cheeks. After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

“Hardly. Losing that pair isn’t important. We’ll get them again.”

She pulled him gently toward her. Her eyes were bright, her lips full and soft and no longer smiling when they touched his. Knox felt his own hands tighten on her shoulders, although he knew that there was no time for this. He wanted to back away, to tell her to go while she could. But this kiss was different from the other she had given him, from the one he had given her. This was a lot more kiss; there was a lot more of Natalie Tinsley in it.

The sound of a siren keened through the air. Knox thrust her back. “Drive, damn it.”

She smiled, flicked a hand, and then the powerful car was gone. Knox was standing in the same place when Beeker drove up. By the time Beeker was out of the car and beside him, Knox had his lipstick tinted handkerchief back in his pocket.

“I lost them,” Knox said. “But they should be back at the show.”

“Captain Fogarty of the Vice Squad is on that one,” Beeker said. “That isn’t our business—unless we can hook the stag shows into murder.”

“There really isn’t a damned thing that can be made public, is there?” Knox admitted.

“Just that dead dishwasher talking about the stags. That isn’t enough for me to horn in on—yet.”

Knox thought about it. He said, “Hell, what’s the difference now? Whoever is running this show has me tagged and Cora Deane tagged. They had Leo tagged—I don’t know how. Go ahead, Mel, and blow it open. Yell to the coastguard. Maybe we can get that boat stopped.”

“All right,” Beeker said. “And what else have you got for me?”

Knox told him about his trip to the tavern. He pointed to it not far away. “I saw Binks in there tonight,” he added casually.

Beeker swore at him. “Now you tell me!”

They went together, on the run, the driver of the police car swinging in behind them. By the time they arrived, closing time was being announced. The proprietor was hanging up his apron. The waiter was vaguely mopping at the counter. No one else was in sight.

“Police,” Beeker said.

The proprietor stopped looking as if he wanted his bungstarter from behind the counter. Knox said, “Where’s the little squirt who was parked in the back booth earlier?”

“How should I know?” the waiter said. “I don’t nurse every guy that comes in for a beer.”

Knox walked to the phone booth, grabbed the door, and pulled. The door came open. He barged in, lifted the receiver, and dropped in a dime. The line was dead. He slammed the receiver back and stood still, fighting the anger that was crawling up in him, the impatience that he knew was making him lose his head. He stood there, in the close box, taking deep breaths. He could hear Beeker’s questions but he made no sense out of them.

Beeker or the waiter or the proprietor sneezed. Knox stepped into the room.
“Gesundheit,”
he said viciously.

Beeker gaped at him. “What the hell you sore about, swearing at me?”

Knox suddenly felt silly for his own bad temper. “I just said
Gesundheit
when you sneezed.”

“Nobody sneezed,” Beeker said. He looked at Knox as if Knox might be a little off at this hour of the night.

Knox said, “The hell….” He stopped, went back into the booth, and glared at it. The wall with the seat attached was against the back of the tavern. Knox put a shoulder against it and pushed.

Someone shot a gun. Knox heard the bullet whine through the pebbled sheet iron of the booth wall and tear out the other side. He left the booth in one jump.

“You damned fool!” A muffled voice shouted.

Beeker was coming toward Knox, drawing his gun. The proprietor was moving behind his counter, followed by the waiter. Knox said, to the driver of the police car, “Those guys want to play.”

They stopped wanting at the sight of the police positive. Knox watched Beeker as he stopped and glared at the waiter. “Where is it, friend?”

“Try this,” Knox suggested, pointing to a door that opened at the end of the bar.

“That’s a storeroom,” the waiter said.

Knox tried the door. It was locked. Beeker pushed him aside and used his gun on the lock. The door swung open and Beeker went in carefully but without fear.

“Take it easy,” a familiar thin voice said. Knox, a half step behind Beeker, stopped. Binks stood there, his hands held high. There was no one else in sight.

“Where’s the marksman?” Beeker demanded.

Binks jerked his head vaguely. “He blew out the back. I told him he was a damned fool. I told him not to shoot.”

“This is Binks,” Knox said unnecessarily to Beeker.

“I’ll take him along with that pair in the other room,” Beeker said. “And put out an alarm when he tells me what his pal looked like.”

“Eddie Pillow most likely,” Knox offered.

“No,” Binks said. “He blew with Toll. He was a tall, skinny guy with a pasty face and the needle habit. I don’t even know his name.”

“My pal from the stag show,” Knox said to Beeker. He looked at Binks. “Well, what do you do now? They’ve all gone off and left you, taken a boat ride.”

Binks nodded. He looked unhappy. “Don’t I know it. I’m glad they’ve gone. I was just waiting for the coast to clear so I could go home. I was hired to tail, not to mess in something like this. I don’t like guys that shoot guns through walls. I’m clean. I want to stay that way.”

“I’ve got a kidnapping charge against you,” Knox told him. “If you want me to press it, clam up. If you want to go home, talk.” He said in an aside to Beeker, “If he knows anything, he’ll talk. He’s not much force in this.”

“That’s the way it is,” Beeker agreed. “The way Knox just said it.”

“I don’t know anything,” Binks said. “All I want to do is get out of this and go home.”

Knox said, “Who’s Mitch? Who plays the fancy voice on the telephone?”

“I thought it was Toll,” Binks said. “But now I’m not sure.”

He pointed to where a telephone cord went into the wall that had the booth on the far side. There was a table and chair there and a telephone on the table. “Toll gimmicked the pay phone someway so that you can’t call out. But incoming calls can be taken in here.”

“And naturally it hasn’t been reported out of order,” Knox said. He looked at Beeker. “A cute gag that would work only until the company sent out a man to collect its nickels.”

“They figured on being done before that,” Binks said. He was neither sullen nor eager. “Anyway, Knox, calls came in here but they didn’t go out. Whoever this Mitch is, he talks from somewhere else.”

Beeker jerked a thumb at Binks. “Go along with the others. I’ll find out later how much you can remember.” He let the driver herd Binks out with the proprietor and the waiter and then turned to Knox. “What’s on for you now, Paul?”

Knox spread his hands. “I don’t feel like swimming after the boat. I’ll go back to the hotel and get some rest while you start whatever wheels are needed. The coastguard should be able to find it.”

“On a dark, foggy night—sure.” Beeker ran a hand wearily over his face. “Got any more information for me?”

Knox flushed at his tone of voice. It was in his mind to tell Beeker about Mrs. Renfrew but he decided against it. He couldn’t see where it would help at this point.

They parted, Knox taking a cab back to the hotel. He was tired; he wished he had a drink. But, he knew, in his present state that wouldn’t really relax him. And what he needed was some way to relax. He was keyed tight and the fact that he could do little but wait now didn’t help. Nor did his realization that a lot of this might have been avoided had he gone about it a different way. While he was busy spreading bait and pulling in minnows, the big fish had swum away. The coastguard might be lucky and find the boat before it crossed into foreign waters. Knox wasn’t feeling sanguine about the prospect.

Because there was really nothing else that he could think of to do, he turned to a prospect that, at the moment, he disliked. He called Nat.

She said, “I’ve been waiting.”

Knox sprinted for the elevator. Something in her tone of voice had lifted him, if only momentarily. Going up, he thought, I could be wrong about her. It was wishful thinking, perhaps, but he wanted to be wrong about her. Wrong as hell. He wanted Nat Tinsley to be what she made herself out to be—nothing more.

Nat had changed into a housecoat, floor length, tight-waisted, with a flaring skirt. She looked less boyish and somehow older, very feminine and sophisticated. She looked good to Knox. So did the drink she had mixed and put in his hand before he was out of his overcoat.

She led him to the couch, lit two cigarets, gave him one, and they settled back with a half cushion width between them.

“Where’s your father?” he asked.

She gave him a half smile. “I don’t play nursemaid to Dad, Paul.”

Knox made a grin out of the question that jumped to his lips. “The last I heard he was with Mrs. Renfrew. If I were you, I’d worry.”

Nat shrugged and drew deeply on her cigaret. “I’m more worried about you. I don’t understand much of what happened but it doesn’t seem—safe.”

The exhilaration was still with Knox. He temporarily ignored the opening her words gave him and said, “My job isn’t always safe, Nat. But right now it doesn’t look too dangerous.”

She was persistent. Almost, he thought, as if she wanted him to force the issue. “What did you do after I left, Paul?”

He told her about the abortive raid. Then he said, because he had to know sooner or later, “So we caught Binks. Toll got away on the boat.”

She looked blank. “Who are Binks and Toll? Am I supposed to know them?”