The Death of Lorenzo Jones (13 page)

Lockwood floored the accelerator.

“Hit the floor, baby,” he yelled, starting a wild weaving motion with the steering wheel.

The new tires screeched madly on the pavement. Shots, the staccato chop of a Tommy gun cut the air. They missed, but the flashes
of the machine gun were duplicated on the other side of the car.

The second chopper was more accurate. Despite Lock-wood’s distance from the Caddy, the bullets chipped at his trunk. It sounded
like they had hit the rear lights. Just in case they hadn’t, Lockwood flicked the switch that turned off the rear lights but
not the front headlamps, which made it harder for the Cord to be seen from behind.

Lockwood dug into his waistband and extracted his .38 Police Special.

“Here,” he said, handing the revolver to Amanda. “You won’t hit them. Don’t even stick your nose out to see if you are firing
in the right direction. Just roll down your window, stick the gun out, and fire to the rear.”

Amanda’s moxie took over; she did what he asked. She managed to hit a headlight on the Caddy. If only she could hit the other
one! Lockwood reached over to the glove compartment, popped the lock open, and took out a mean-looking German Luger.

Lockwood drove with one hand, his right, while he used his left to make sudden turns and fire at the car careening behind
them.

Lockwood was approaching his special little place for losing tails: a garage, long abandoned, just around a hairpin bend in
the road. It would be better if the Caddy lost another headlamp before they reached that spot. The choppers opened up again,
and part of the side-view mirror spun off into the darkness.

Lockwood was having no luck with the Luger, but Amanda’s sixth shot from the .38 hit something—or somebody. The Caddy weaved
wildly and went faster, almost catching up to their insane speed and snagging their rear bumper. Lockwood heard screaming
in the Caddy. The figures hanging out the window moved back inside the black vehicle.

“Shit, he’s dead. Get his fucking foot off the pedal, help me you—”

Lockwood didn’t hear the rest of the yelling because the Caddy suddenly blew a tire on a wild turn to the left. It rolled
over on its roof, not once but three times, and burst into flames behind them. Lockwood slowed immediately.

The flames behind them erupted into a towering orange ball of burning metal and flesh. The repercussions of the blast hit
the Cord and rocked it on its wheels, though it was at least fifty yards away. Small sputters of bullets went off from the
heat after that. The interior burned white hot, incinerating everything and everyone inside. Lockwood had stopped, but after
a few seconds, as other vehicles approached, he pulled away again.

Neither he nor Amanda spoke a word for the rest of the trip to her house. She sat there stunned, holding the smoking .38 in
her lap while he slowly drove.

Lockwood put the Luger down on the seat between them.

They had spent a sleepness night in bed together, Amanda’s body unresponsive to his tentative touches, and she only began
to unfreeze after a lot of coffee and a breakfast of scrambled eggs a la Lockwood. He was pretty good at eggs, actually an
omelette made out of the mushrooms, green peppers, and anchovies he found in her well-stocked icebox. She was impressed.

They began talking. She was upset because she was glad those goons had been cremated in the Caddy.

Dames. Who could figure them? Lockwood had thought she was upset because they had nearly been killed again.

“But it isn’t right,” she pleaded, “to be happy when someone dies.”

“I don’t know about you, Amanda,” he replied, hugging her from behind the chair she sat in. “But I’m sure as hell happy it
was them and not us. I don’t feel guilty for feeling that way.”

She stared at her half-eaten omelette. Then she turned her deep blues at him and gave him a wan smile.

“Thata girl,” he said.

They spent a quiet afternoon together, listening on the big Magnavox receiver to the dismal reports from Europe about the
gathering war clouds. They found a special program of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. What a riot! You wouldn’t think a
ventriloquist would go over on radio, but Bergen was the hottest thing on the airwaves. Charlie McCarthy’s snide remarks brought
howls from the studio audience and from Amanda, too. From their brittle sound it was as if she was learning how to laugh all
over again.

He let her relax, spend time just reading magazines. He went outside and winced when he saw the rows of neat holes six inches
apart decorating his automobile. By the time suppertime rolled around Amanda was totally herself again and famished.

“Let’s celebrate our good luck, Amanda. Let’s have a big meal at the Stork Club.”

“I hate to admit it,” she said, putting down the
Saturday Evening Post
, “but I
do
want to celebrate. I want to scream to the whole world, ‘I’m alive, I’m alive.’ “

He grinned and held out his arms to her. She ran into them.

At the table that Sherm led them to, Lockwood found Walter Winchell waiting for him with a big smile. Winchell stood up and
shook hands with his old friend, Hook. The columnist looked great.

At the other side of the table sat the greatest baseball player who had ever lived—Babe Ruth.

After insisting that Lockwood and Amanda join them, Winchell introduced them. The Babe said, “Hi,” and handed Lockwood a big
cigar.

Winchell said, “I heard Half-Pint Gumps was after you. Pretty nasty bunch you’re playing with. Take my advice and lie low.”

He drew Lockwood over to the telephones on a pretext.

“Listen, Hook,” Winchell said. “I can’t say this in front of the Babe. He doesn’t want to hear anything bad about baseball
players. Loves the sport too much. But you gotta know—Lorenzo Jones’ wife, Cynthia, was screwing another guy the whole two
years she was married to Lorenzo. That hick Jones didn’t know it was going on, but half the town did.”

“Who was it?” Lockwood asked.

“I have a friend, a night clerk, at one of the hotels downtown. I won’t tell you which one. The man with Cynthia Jones signed
with name ‘Charlie Waters.’ Tall, thin man, about fifty. Older than Cynthia. Looked like big money. That dumb Lorenzo! Baseball
players are so naive.”

“Charles Waters? Tall, thin, rich—my God, that could be Cyrus Wade. Maybe he and Cynthia bumped Lorenzo off, after all. I
thought the motive had disappeared when a certain Dr. Dallas told me that Lorenzo’s arm was okay.”

“Keep your source for this under your hat, pal.”

“Sure, Walter. Listen, do you think if I gave you a photo of Wade, you could show it to this clerk?” He handed Winchell a
newspaper clipping with Wade’s face.

“Provided you assure anonymity. Even if this goes to court and you have to perjure yourself, Hook. I keep my sources confidential.
I have to in my racket.”

“Sure. I promise, Walter.”

“Okay, then. I’ll have the night clerk take a look.”

They went back to the table. Dinner was served. The Babe started talking to Amanda about baseball.

The Babe was saying that the Giants had won the pennant in 1936 and 1937, only to lose the Series to the superior Yankee team.
This year, of course, the Giants hadn’t gotten into the Series, and the redoubtable Yanks had slammed the Cubs into the ground.
Despite the fact that the Cubs had Dizzy Dean pitching for them.

According to the Babe, Dizzy was the greatest pitcher ever, until he hurt his toe in an All Star game. He was never the same
after that.

“His
toe
was that important?” Amanda said, looking amazed.

“Yes,” said the Babe. “It’s awful. A small injury and a great man’s pulled down.”

“You knew Lorenzo Jones?” Lockwood asked.

“No, but I know he had a lot of promise. Terrible, terrible,” the Babe said, looking at the floor. “One thing I do know.”

“What’s that?” Lockwood asked.

“If I injured my arm, I would see more than one doctor. I’d see at least two, and one would be a specialist.”

Lockwood grinned. If only he had talked to Babe Ruth the first day he was on the case.

Ruth looked at him. “Huh? Did I say something important?”

“No, no. I was just thinking about something else,” Lockwood lied.

Ruth went on, talking about his greatest love, baseball. “The Yanks are still the ones to beat,” he stated. “And it’s because
of their farm teams. They keep bringing up the best players.”

Lockwood asked if Babe had heard of Cyrus Wade.

“Not in any complimentary way. He’s a wheel, is what I heard—he bails out teams in trouble financially and then takes a chunk
of the action. I heard he had some deal with Lorenzo that boiled down to taking a good chunk of Jones’ earnings.”

“Yeah,” Lockwood said.

“Babe,” interjected Winchell. “You’re the greatest home-run hitter ever, when are you going back to it?”

“I never will, Walter. My eyes are getting bad, I’m 43, and I’m fatter and slower than ever. It’s time to forget about comebacks.”
He grinned. “I might stay on though, as coach to the Dodgers. Let someone else try to beat my record.”

“Never could,” said Lockwood. “714 home runs. Who could beat that?”

“My record will stand for a while, but its inevitable, someone will break it. Maybe this new kid, Joe DiMaggio.”

“Never,” Lockwood stated.

“Someone will, sooner or later,” the Babe replied.

On that note, the conversation drifted to other subjects, and they ate their meal. Lockwood had veal cordon bleu; Amanda worked
over a spinach salad. Winchell mostly drank, hardly touching his capon, and the Babe had spaghetti and meatballs. The food
was topnotch, as one would expect from the bill than soon appeared on the table.

Winchell picked it up, emphatically refusing everyone’s money. They thanked the columnist, and Lockwood danced Amanda around
the floor to the orchestra’s early set. He had them play “Autumn Leaves.” As he glided her around the large dance floor, her
body pressed warmly against his.

Red and blue lights swirled across the dancers as they moved about among the small crowd of others enjoying the evening’s
entertainment. The music moved from “Autumn Leaves” to “Perfidia” to “Night and Day.”

Amanda was obviously lost in reverie. And in a way, so was Lockwood—except his reverie alternated between pleasant and dark
feelings.

Whenever the red spotlight hit the orchestra leader—an amiable gentleman who faced the audience as much as the band—Lockwood
would have a flash. Instead of the baton there would be a thermos, and instead of the smiling face there was the anguished
grimace of Lorenzo Jones.

Jones’ face was twisted in pain, his eyes spilling out like exploding soft-boiled eggs, his veins bursting on his forehead,
blood spurting from his ears.

The aviator was clutching at his chest, his heart speeding to a thousand, then two thousand beats a minute. His jaw slammed
shut and opened so fast and hard that his teeth smashed like plaster and fell to his feet.

He lifted and pointed one hand dripping with blood, pointed it at Lockwood as he whirled about the dance floor. A trembling
voice rose over the music, “Get him, get him for me, Hook.” That voice from the grave vibrated in Lockwood’s chest and made
his heart skip in empathy.

The orchestra leader—dead aviator then started burning in that hot spotlight of red and burned to a twisted cinder in flames
as Lockwood stopped in mid-step, frozen before the apparition.

“Why have we stopped dancing, darling?” asked Amanda. Evidently, she hadn’t seen anything unusual.

Lockwood composed himself, but his face was pale and his hands cold. “Nothing—I mean, no reason, Amanda,” he said and continued
to dance.

For the rest of the night, the orchestra leader stayed the orchestra leader and the red spotlight was just a red spotlight.

But Lockwood felt he had a new client in the case.

Lorenzo Jones.

Lockwood drove Amanda home. She kept raving about the food and the dancing. But Lockwood’s mind was on other things. Could
Charlie Waters be Cyrus Wade? That would wrap it up in a neat package of adultery, murder—and torture. Hook hated Wade, and
wanted more than just to save Transatlantic the money on the claim.

He wanted revenge. Revenge for Jones, for Doc—and for those beatings and for the tommy-gun fire.

Amanda looked at him. “Are you worried about something?” she asked plaintively.

“Just business. Sorry.” He dropped her off at her home in Larchmont.

He took the winding Route 1 back through the wilderness of the Bronx, which became the Boston Post Road’s slippery avenue
of cobblestones. Garages dotted the roadside.

A storm was brewing. He sped along the road, his brain racing a million miles an hour. Suddenly, there was that familiar police
siren behind him. He pulled over. Jimbo got out of his Plymouth and walked up.

“I heard you were seeing that aviatrix dame, so I knew you’d be coming back this way. Hook, I’ve got to talk to you about
Robin Mobley.”

“Jesus! She’s all right, isn’t she?”

“She disappeared. Right before we were to pick her up for the murder of Doc Carruthers,” replied the lieutenant.

“What? Are you crazy?”

“Hook, we traced that hair-curling iron we found near Doc’s feet, the one that was used to torture him. A peculiar brand.
Only five were sold at Macy’s in the past week. Guess who bought one of the five?” He didn’t give Hook a chance to answer.
“Robin Mobley. And she didn’t sign her real name.”

“Then how do you know
she
bought it?”

“Handwriting analysis. It was her, no doubt about it. The four other curling irons were bought by out-of-towners. Four ladies
from Ohio here on a vacation.”

“Come on, Jimbo, she couldn’t torture someone. Anyway, I have no idea where she is.”

“I thought you were bedding her.”

“No, we’re just friends.”

“Friends, is it? With a woman? Well, better be careful. She’s a little killer, Hook.”