The Kissed Corpse (14 page)

Hardiman glanced aside at the girl's enigmatic features. “All this talk about Leslie Young is absurd,” he protested. “I don't even know the man.”

“I'm quite sure he was murdered to prevent him from keeping that appointment.”

It was dark, and the overhead globes lighted the faces of the trio clearly. It was like having the front seat at an absorbing play.

“There's some mystery here,” Hardiman exclaimed impatiently.

Jerry Burke laughed shortly and knocked out his pipe. “That makes two of us, Mr. Hardiman. You might clear up one angle by explaining how you were able to sit here unconcernedly while a woman was screaming bloody murder out an upstairs window.”

“We were assured by a servant that it was a family affair and there was nothing we could do,” Hardiman told him stiffly.

“It's a screwy household,” Burke muttered. “Perhaps after I've been around a few days I won't pay any attention to such minor matters either.”

Michaela smiled. She looked more like a naive child than an adventuress when she smiled. “It is nice that we will be protected by a policeman. But I am bored with too much talk and I think I will go inside where there is not so much protection.”

She got up and glanced at Pasqual. He followed her into the house as though she had ordered him to heel. Burke looked after them, shaking his head.

Hardiman leaned forward and asked: “How long is this farce going to continue?”

“Until I learn why Michaela O'Toole invited Leslie Young to meet with you and Dwight at the
Hacienda del Torro
. You could help by telling me why you and Dwight were there.”

“So far as I know the meeting was arranged simply to provide a place for us to meet Senor Rodriguez without causing public comment.”

“For what purpose?”

“I leave that to your imagination,” Hardiman countered urbanely.

There was the purr of a powerful motor climbing the concrete drive to the house. Burke stood up.

“That will be Dwight's limousine bringing Senor Rodriguez safely away from a patriotic Mexican mob. You're playing with fire when you connive at what they regard as treachery. Mexicans take their politics lots more seriously than you in Washington are accustomed to. The deal you and Rodriguez are cooking up contains enough dynamite to cause a dozen murders. Think that over while pulling your dollar diplomacy coups.” He got up and strolled toward the house.

Hardiman followed him after a moment of indecision.

Laura set her empty glass down. “Jerry Burke is going to have plenty of trouble digging any facts out of this gang.”

“You haven't been such a hell of a big help,” I reminded her. “You were the last person to see Young alive. Exactly what did he tell you about Michaela's letter … and about the telephoned threat?”

“Not very much.” She appeared to be honestly striving to remember. “He just laughed at the threat. You didn't know Leslie, did you? He was the perfect fictional soldier of fortune. He'd been shot at so often that one more threat against his life meant less than nothing to him. The only way he could explain the note was the possible connection between the writer and his old buddy, Mike O'Toole, of Mexico and points south.”

“Michaela's father, according to Burke's information.”

She nodded, frowning. “That's what doesn't add up at all. The Mike O'Toole Leslie used to know was an out and out Communist. His daughter is supposed to have followed along in his footsteps, yet here she is conniving with a couple of political scavengers to put one over on her own country. Her connection with this oil fix simply doesn't make sense.”

“There's enough money involved to make sense out of anything.”

“You don't believe that,” Laura told me quickly. “It's impossible for an idealist like you to be convincingly cynical.”

She was leaning against me looking up at the night. My arm went about her as though it belonged there. She relaxed against it with a little sigh, closing her eyes. Her parted lips were stained the same vivid red they had been the first time I saw her … the same vivid red that was on Leslie Young's mouth when he died.

I've never been an impressionable fool about women. I've always been able to take them or leave them alone.

I knew it couldn't be that way with me and Laura Yates. I either had to hate her, or … God help me … love her. Either way, I was lost.

I was bending closer over her and she lay quietly against me. Had her kiss betrayed Young to his death?

I got up suddenly and she slumped back against the seat, lifting her lashes and watching me with wary eyes.

I lit a cigarette with trembling fingers and muttered something about getting home to Nip and Tuck.

She didn't say anything.

She was sitting there slumped back against the seat as I walked blindly down the driveway to the road where I might bum a ride as far as the street car line. I forgot about Burke and about the case and about the book I was going to write.

There was room for only one thought in my mind, and it drummed at me relentlessly.

I had to get away from her … before I couldn't get myself away from her.

14

My telephone was jangling when I let myself in the front door of my house almost an hour later. Nip and Tuck waggled a furious welcome but I took time for just one pat and to let them out for a run before hurrying to the telephone.

Chief Jelcoe's voice rasped over the wire: “Baker? Do you know where Burke is hiding out?”

I said, “Yes,” and waited.

“Where can I reach him?” Jelcoe sputtered. “I've been phoning all over the city. He might at least get in touch with his office every now and then.”

“I'll see that he gets any message you want to give him.” I didn't know whether Burke wanted Jelcoe to know where he was, so I played safe.

Jelcoe sputtered a few puny curses over the wire but I didn't help him any. He wound up by saying:

“There is an important confidential message for him from Washington. Evidently in reply to some query he sent out this morning, though it doesn't make much sense to me.”

“Send it out to my place by messenger,” I suggested. “I'll see that it reaches Burke at once.”

“I certainly would like to know what he's doing on the Young case … if anything.” Jelcoe sounded aggrieved.

“He's making progress,” I told him, and couldn't resist adding: “Have you arrested Mrs. Young yet?”

“Not yet. But I'm convinced she lied to us about the pistol being stolen by the party she named. I made a thorough search of her apartment this afternoon and found nothing. But I believe the Yates woman will bear watching.”

I mumbled something, then asked him: “What public effect did the
Free Press
story have?”

“There's hell to pay down here. Our switchboard is clogged with calls from citizens demanding to know what action Burke is taking. The Mexican quarter is seething with bands of Young Nationalists calling for a public demonstration against any secret settlement of oil claims. Is Burke doing
anything
, for Chrissake?”

“He was drinking a Tom Collins the last time I saw him,” I chuckled, and hung up before Jelcoe had a chance to get started again.

Then I looked up the number of the Dwight residence and called it. After a long wait, I got Burke on the wire and he sounded relieved to hear my voice:

“I've tried to call your house twice, Asa. Why the devil did you run out on me?”

“You forget I'm a family man. My dogs are well-trained, but I can't leave them locked up in the house indefinitely.”

“I forgot about the pups. Why didn't you take my car?”

I didn't want to admit the mood I was in when I left the Dwight estate so I lied to him: “I thought I'd drive my own car back … just in case something came up and we had to go in two directions in a hurry.”

“U-m-m.” He sounded a bit skeptical. “Laura Yates said you legged it away from here as though you had ants in your pants.”

I disregarded that, and repeated what Jelcoe had told me over the telephone.

“That message may be the break I've been waiting for, Asa. I should have kept in touch with the office and gotten it when it came. Rush it out as soon as you get hold of it.”

I told him I would, and asked if he still had everything under control.

“As far as I know … with the gang I've got cooped up here. I don't think there are any new corpses … yet.”

“What about Rodriguez?”

“He was as full of information as the others,” Burke grunted disgustedly. “That telegram from Washington may be the key to a lot of things, Asa. Don't delay getting it here. It's a confidential report on Rufus Hardiman, and may be the lever we need to start the ball rolling.”

I promised again that I'd bring it right out, hung up and stepped out on my front porch. Nip and Tuck came wagging up with reproachful faces and I squatted down to explain to them that I was on the trail of a story that would buy them lots of dog-biscuits and that they would have to be patient with me for a little longer.

They snuggled down beside me and seemed to understand. Or, not understanding, they trusted me and were perfectly satisfied to enjoy the moment.

Lucky they weren't detectives, I thought to myself, or they wouldn't even be able to trust me. With a hand on each coarsely-furred head I let my thoughts drift to the collection of suspects Burke had herded together at the Dwight mansion.

I didn't trust any of them. Not even Laura. Laura, perhaps, least of all. And that was the hell of it.

I
wanted
to trust her. And that made me distrust myself. I know I'm saying it very badly. I feel it's impossible to deal with a thing like this honestly in retrospect. I'm trying to define emotions that were intangible.

I tried not to think about Laura … but I couldn't think about anything else.

A motorcycle slid to a stop in front of my gate. A uniformed man came up the walk and asked me if I was Asa Baker. I told him I was and he gave me a thick yellow envelope which had been opened and resealed. I sat there with it in my hands while his motorcycle roared off.

Then I gave my brains a shake and called the Scotties inside. They mournfully followed me to the kitchen where I filled their bowl with fresh water and replenished their supply of dog biscuits.

Their eyes followed me accusingly as I went out the back door toward the garage.

An instinct warned me, too late, of danger as I passed the black shadow of the hedge.

I whirled in time to see a shadowy figure and an arm coming down in a chopping motion. I fell a hell of a distance and hit bottom with an awful thud. Then everything was blacked out for me.

15

Two Scottie tongues were frantically rasping over my face when I came up from the depths. Tuck whimpered and pawed at me when I sat up. Nip crouched down on the floor with her ears back and a deep worry-line creasing her forehead.

I was lying just inside the kitchen door and I didn't have the slightest idea how I'd gotten there. I sat on the floor with my head in my hands for a minute, trying to recall what had happened, but my only memory was of seeing an arm coming down. I didn't even know whether my assailant was a man or a woman.

Then I thought about Burke's important telegram. It was gone. My wallet with its few small bills was still in my pocket. Nothing was missing except the telegram.

Feeling like hell-before-breakfast, I got up and stumbled into the bathroom, where I doused my head in cold water. There was a nasty bump on the back of my head, but no other damage.

In the living room I damn near passed out again when I saw by the clock that it was eleven-thirty. I'd been unconscious for hours—instead of minutes, as I first thought.

I started for the telephone to call Burke; changed my mind and went into the bedroom, where I got my .38 and threw a cartridge under the hammer; picked up a flashlight in the kitchen and again went out the back way toward the garage.

There was a scuffed trail on the dirt walk showing where I had been dragged to the kitchen. I wasted thirty seconds at the spot where I had been attacked without finding anything, then went on in the garage and backed my car out.

With the wind-wing turned to throw night air in my face, I drove slowly out Piedras. I felt like a nitwit to have had such a thing happen to me, and I couldn't rationalize the setup at all.

Someone was after the telegram. Someone who
knew
I had it and was taking it to Burke. Someone who wanted it badly enough to take a chance on murder to gain possession of it. Yet, someone who was kind enough to drag me back into my kitchen after knocking me out cold.

It didn't make sense.

There was a hammer pounding inside my head and my thinking processes didn't jell any too well. I speeded up when I began wondering what had happened in McKelligon's Canyon during the hours I had lost. I had to step on the brake hard to make the turn into the Dwight estate, and I took the slope in second gear with the accelerator all the way down.

A man came running toward me from the front lawn when I pulled up and parked.

It was Jerry Burke, hatless and worried. “For God's sake, Asa, where have you been?”

I leaned on the steering wheel and told him what had happened. He drew in a long breath of relief when I finished.

“I couldn't figure it out. I called your house twice and no one answered … thought you must have started out here and run into an accident. Half the cops in El Paso are combing the city for you or your car. I'd better go in and phone Jelcoe to call them off.”

I put my hand on his arm as he started away. “Wait a minute, Jerry. Who socked me?”

“That's what we're going to find out.”

“Anyone …” My voice was weak, “… from here?”

“I don't know how anyone from here could have known about the telegram.” He paused, rubbing his jaw. “Laura Yates slipped away soon after you left. She must have shorted the ignition wires on her car to get it started without a key.”