The Lime Pit (19 page)

I hesitated a minute before picking up the phone. But
I couldn't con myself this time with the pleasant fiction that she
might still be alive. It would have come to this anyway, I told
myself. Whether it had been Preston or the Jellicoes or anyone else.
Sooner of later, he'd have had to face the truth. And, sooner or
later, you would have had to tell him.

Hugo's son, Ralph, answered the phone.

"Hello!" he said buoyantly. "I guess
you want to talk to Dad."

"Look, Ralph," I said. "I've got some
very bad news for him."

"Oh," he said and the good spirits
vanished. "It's that girl, isn't it? The one he hired you to
look for?"
"Yeah," I said.
"She's dead, Ralph."

"Oh, my God." There was a moment of silence
and then he said, "I guess he'll have to know."

"He's sure to find out. They're keeping a lid on
it now, but my guess is that it'll make the papers in a day or so."

"How did she . . . how did it happen?"

"She was murdered. It's very ugly, Ralph."

He sighed heavily. "Should I tell him?"

"No," I said. "I think I should. But
not over the phone. I'll come up there tomorrow morning."

"All right," he said. "I'll make sure
he's around. There's nothing you want to say to him now, is there?"

"No. It'll be hard enough tomorrow."

I hung up the phone and leaned back in the chair. She
hadn't been much, Cindy Ann Evans. Venal, manipulative, sick in mind
and soul. But she'd had what Preston had called a"sweetness,"
which probably meant a simple and fatal pliability to LaForge, but
which to me suggested the beginnings of a heart--that decency that
Hugo had loved about her and that even hard-bitten Laurie Jellicoe
had granted her. Whoever she had been, she hadn't deserved to die in
the way she had. And she hadn't deserved to be served up to that
death by a pair of middle-class pimps and their silent partner, all
of whom were scrambling desperately, now that she was gone, to
disassociate themselves from her murder. That's why they wanted those
damn pictures back so badly. They didn't want any evidence floating
around that could connect them with the murdered girl and through her
with Preston LaForge. That's why they'd searched the apartment--to
get rid of anything that might lead the police to tlicill. Murder
investigations have a nasty way of proliferating. There're dangerous
and unpredictable things, especially dangerous if you happen to be
accessories before the fact.

Well, I was still working for Hugo Cratz. At least,
until the morning. And I thought it would do us both some good to see
the Jellicoes behind bars. That little man inside me was wide awake
and calculating like mad.

The thing to do was to make sure they stayed in town
long enough for the police to build a case against them. Because it
seemed certain that once they'd tied up the loose ends they would
make a discreet exit. Disconnect the answerphone in their Plum Street
office, blackmail a few selected customers into forgetting that
Escorts Unlimited had ever existed, change their names, dye their
hair, go underground for a few years and resurface in another place
to run the same seedy scam. And the truth was that they could easily
get away with it. As long as no one could connect them to LaForge or
Cindy Ann, the Jellicoes and their partner would escape scot-free.

So I had to freeze them by keeping them guessing
about the photographs. And, in the meantime, I had to turn up a
witness who'd be willing to testify to the kind of organization that
the Jellicoes ran. Tracy Leach would be perfect, if he'd cooperate.
And maybe he would, once he learned why Preston had killed himself.
That is, if' he didn't already know why Preston had blown his head
off, if he hadn't been a part of the whole ugly business to begin
with.
 
 

18

I'D HOPED to get to the Busy Bee early, just to check
things out. Not that I'd expected to be ambushed by the Jellicoes in
the restaurant. That would be preposterous madness, especially if I
was right and all they were interested in was getting out of town as
quickly and cleanly as possible. But there was always a chance that
they were as preposterously mad as Preston LaForge had turned out to
be. So I took a long, careful look around before getting out of the
Pinto.

I'd taken the precaution of bringing a gun along with
me--a .45 caliber Colt Commander with a nickle-plated barrel,
which is the only weapon I keep in the downtown office. I had it
strapped in a shoulder holster under my arm. And I had a
micro-cassette recorder with a built-in condenser mike in my coat
pocket. If Laurie proved as talkative as Lance had been on Sunday
night, I wanted to get what she had to say down on tape. Of course,
what I recorded would never hold up in open court, but it might be
enough to interest the D.A. and a grand jury.

When I was sure that no one was lurking around the
lot, I got out of the car and walked briskly up the alleyway to
Ludlow and turned left onto the sidewalk and left again into the Busy
Bee.

Jo was standing by the door as I walked in. She
looked pleased and flustered when she turned around, menu in hand,
and saw me smiling at her.

"You know I'm not off until ten tonight,"
she said.

"So? A man has a right to eat, doesn't he?"

She whirled demurely around. "Right this way,
sir."

I pinched her on her pretty butt and one of the
waitresses barked with laughter. "Harry, " she hissed.

Jo put me at a table in the rear of the room, beneath
the bar.

"I'll get you a drink," she said. She'd
started up the three steps to the bar level when I grabbed her hand.

"I'm going to be having some company, Jo,"
I said. "Laurie Jellicoe."

"In here? Tonight?"

I nodded. "Any second."

"There isn't going to be any trouble, is there,
Harry? I mean you're not in any danger, are you?"

"No."

"I don't believe you," she said under her
breath.

Jo walked up to the bar and came back down a minute
later with a Scotch, which she smacked down in front of me. "Just
watch it," she said.

"I'll do my best, lady."

Someone started calling my name from the front of the
restaurant. "Har-ee! Har-ee!"

I didn't even have to look up. If I'd heard that
voice over the phone, I would have asked to speak to her daddy. It
was that fulsome. By all rights, it should have gone with floppy hats
and big white beads and print dresses that spangled like oil spilled
on water. But, aside from her show girl's smile, Laurie Jellicoe just
didn't fit the part. Not that she wasn't dressed to kill. On that
night she'd left Cardin in the closet: tight lame blouse with a good
deal of pretty brown cleavage showing and black silk slacks that
barely made it over her rear. She'd dressed with cold professional
skill. And the impression I was supposed to take away from it and the
smile in her fruity voice was that we were way past the first name
basis now. We were pals. Instead of exciting me, Laurie Jellicoe made
me nervous and very suspicious.

"That's her?" Jo whispered. "That's
Laurie Jellicoe?"

"This is beginning to sound like Shane, " I
said with a laugh. "Go up to the door, darlin', and usher the
poor girl in."

Jo tugged at the bodice of her dress and stalked off
to the front of the restaurant. I reached into my coat pocket and
flipped on the recorder.

It didn't look as if Jo had exchanged any words with
the Jellicoe girl as she guided her to my table. But Laurie's smile
had become a pinched, joyless grimace by the time she sat down. Jo
flapped a menu in front of her, and Laurie kept smiling with effort,
as if that toothy grin were painted on her face for all time. As soon
as Jo walked off, Laurie turned to me, still smiling, and said, "I'd
like to get that cunt alone for ten minutes," in the sweetest
little girl voice imaginable.

"What did she say to you?" I said with real
curiosity.

Laurie only laughed-the belle-of-the-ball laugh. "It
doesn't matter."

She reached inside her purse for a pack of
cigarettes, but her hand was shaking violently. I held her hand to
steady it. She giggled mindlessly and ran a long-nailed finger down
my palm.

"You know, I like you," she said. She shook
her hair a hit for effect and breathed out a cloud of white smoke.
Behind that cloud her eyes were bright and devilish. "It's a
shame I didn't meet you before I tied up with Lance. We could have
made nice music together. I like to blow things."

"I'll bet you do."

"Um." She puckered her lips with lazy
sensuality and blew a smoke ring across the table. "Maybe we
should get out of here," she said, glancing jealously at the bar
where Jo was perched like a bird of prey.

"We have to talk first."

"We've got time for that. Let's go up to the
park and talk. It'll be dark in an hour. We can talk then. C'mon. I
swear it's not a set-up, if that's what you think. Let's take in a
little nature."

"I don't think your boy, Lance, would like
that."

She snorted. "God, Lance and I aren't even
talking anymore. Much less . . ."

"Why?" I said.

"Why what?"

"Why aren't you two talking anymore?"

"Preston," she said wearily. "He's
angry about Preston."

"What about him?"

She put a finger to her lips. "I'm not a fool,
Harry, honey. I didn't come here to tell secrets."

"What did you come here for?"

"The pictures. That's what Lance thinks, anyway.
But we can talk about them later. I need a lover right now."

"Why me?"

Laurie looked sulkily into my face. "Because!"
she said with mock-petulance. "I need you. Isn't that enough?"

I shook my head, and she gave me just the shadow of a
grin. "You're an odd man, Harry Stoner. A couple of days ago you
were undressing me with your eyes."

"I've grown up a lot in the last few days."

"All right," she said. "Say I'm
lonesome, then. Say this has been a very lonely and very bad week for
everybody. And I need someone to pretend I'm in love with. Is that
O.K.?"

"What do I get out of it?"

She looked at me with astonishment. "You put a
mighty high value on yourself, mister. What do you want out of it?"

"Cash," I said. "Say twenty thousand
dollars."

"Listen, Dillinger," she said. "I
don't have to pay anybody to make love to this." She looked down
at her body as if it were something detached and arrayed on a
pedestal. "You can go to hell with your lousy cracks."

"The money's not for you, Laurie. I wouldn't
know how to set a price on that."

She glared at me savagely. "For what, then?"

"For the pictures. You know, the ones with you
and Lance and poor Cindy Ann in them?"

"What do you mean poor Cindy Ann?"

"Didn't you know, Laurie? She's dead. Preston
killed her." Some of the anger left Laurie Jellicoe's face. "You
know about that?"

"Yep. I got friends at the D.A.'s office."

"I see," she said. "Twenty thousand
dollars is a lot of money."

"Yes, it is. But if you don't come up with it,
I'll have to go to the police."

"We wouldn't like that."

"I wouldn't like to do it myself." I patted
her hand. "I'd hate to see something as good as you end up in
the can."

She giggled nervously. "Would be kind of a
waste, wouldn't it?"

"So, I want the money, Laurie. And, because I
know how people can be, how antsy they can get at times, I want some
security, too. You see I have the feeling that if I was to turn those
pictures over to you, me and my twenty thousand dollars wouldn't be
around very long."

"What would it take to make you feel secure?"

"A few names. A few details about how you run
your business. The name of your partner ... yeah, I know about him,
too, Laurie. What I want is a deposition that I can file with my
lawyer. I mean, just in case. And I want to know exactly where Cindy
Ann Evans was dumped."

"We didn't have anything to do with that,"
she said stiffly. "Preston just went a little crazy. He was
always a little crazy, if you ask me."

"She was still one of your girls, Laurie. And I
mean your girls, baby. The kind you liked to undress and, what shall
we say, play with."

She didn't blush, not this one. "How do we know
you have the pictures?"

"I've got them and a lot more to go with them.
You'll just have to take my word for that."

"I don't know," she said. "I don't
know if that's good enough."

"It's going to have to be, honey. Either I get
that money in the next twenty-four hours along with the information I
want, or I'm going to the cops with what I know. And the way they're
worked up about Preston LaForge, it won't take them a minute to bust
your sweet ass. And, I'd hate to see that, Laurie." I stroked
her cheek. "Because it's such a sweet ass."