Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) (4 page)

“Yeah,” I said. “Trouble.”

“I don’t mind admittin’,” Loftus said, “this case has got me stopped. Johnny Holben knows somethin’, but he won’t talk. That Caronna knows somethin’, too. He’s been buyin’ highgrade, most of it from the Bitner Mine. That was probably what their fuss was about, but that ain’t the end of it.”

“You’re right, it isn’t.” Briefly, I explained about being fired, and then added, “I don’t want to leave this case, Loftus. I think I can break it within forty-eight hours. I think I have all the answers figured out. Whether I do it or not is up to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes. I want you to make me a deputy sheriff for the duration of this job.”

“Workin’ right for me?”

“That’s right.”

He took his feet off the desk. “Hold up your right hand,” he said.

W
HEN I WAS leaving, I turned suddenly to Loftus. “Oh, yes. I’m going out of town for a while. Over to Ogden on the trail of the Greater American Shows.”

“There’s a car here you can use,” he said. “When are you leavin’?”

“About ten minutes after midnight,” I said.

Then I explained, and he nodded. “That’s Nick Ries, and he’s a bad number. You watch your step.”

At eleven-thirty I walked to the jail and picked up the keys to the car. Then I drove it out of the garage and parked it in front of the café. It was Saturday night, and the café was open until twelve.

Karen’s eyes brightened up when I walked into the café. Toni came over to wait on us. Giving her plenty of time to get close enough to hear, I said to Karen, “Got my walking papers today. Caronna fired me.”

“He did?” She looked surprised and puzzled. “Why?”

“He thinks I’ve been spending too much time with you. He also gave me until midnight to get out of town or that”—I pointed at Nick Ries at the counter—“gives me a going-over.”

She glanced at her watch, then at Ries. “Are—are you going?”

“No,” I said loud enough for Ries to hear. “Right now I’m waiting for one minute after twelve. I want to see what the bear-that-walks-like-a-man can do besides look tough.”

Ries glanced over at me and turned another page of his newspaper.

We talked softly then, and somehow the things we found to talk about had nothing to do with murder or crime or Caronna; they were the things we might have talked about had we met in Los Angeles or Peoria or Louisville.

She was getting under my skin, and somehow I did not mind in the least.

Suddenly, a shadow loomed over our table. Instinctively, my eyes dropped to my wristwatch. It was one minute past twelve.

Nick Ries was there beside the table, and all I had to do was make a move to get up and he would swing.

It was a four-chair table, and Karen sat across from me. Nick was standing by the chair on my right. I turned a little in my chair and looked up at Nick.

“Here’s where you get it,” he said.

My left foot had swung over when I turned a little toward him and I put it against the rung of the chair in front of Nick and shoved, hard.

It was just enough to throw him off balance. He staggered back a step, and then I was on my feet. He got set and lunged at me, but that was something I liked. My left forearm went up to catch his right, and then I lifted a right uppercut from my belt that clipped him on the chin. His head jerked back and both feet flew up and he hit the floor in a lump.

Shaking his head, he gave a grunt, then came up and toward me in a diving run. I slapped his head with an open left palm to set him off balance and to measure him, and then broke his nose with another right uppercut.

The punch straightened him up, and I walked in, throwing them with both hands. Left and right to the body, then left and right to the head. He hit the counter with a crash, and I followed him in with another right uppercut that lifted him over the counter. He dropped behind it and hit the floor hard.

Reaching over, I got a lemon pie with my right hand and plastered it in his face, rubbing it well in. Then I straightened up and wiped my hands on a napkin.

Toni stood there staring at me as if I had suddenly pulled a tiger out of my shirt, and when I turned, Jerry Loftus was standing in the door, chuckling.

TROUBLE STOP

F
INDING CASTRO’S SHOW was no trouble. It was the biggest thing on the midway at the fair, and when I got inside I had to admit the guy had something.

There were animals you didn’t see in any zoo, and rarely even in a circus. Of course, he had some of the usual creatures, but he specialized in the strange and unusual. Even before I started looking around for Castro himself, I looked over his show.

A somewhat ungainly looking animal, blackish in color with a few spots of white on his chest and sides, took my interest first. It was a Tasmanian Devil, a carnivorous animal with powerful jaws noted for the destruction of small animals and young sheep. There was also a Malay Civet, an Arctic Fox, a short-tailed mongoose, a Clouded Leopard, a Pangolin or scaly anteater, a Linsang, a Tamarau, a couple of pygmy buffalo, a babirusa, a duckbilled platypus, a half-dozen bandicoots, a dragon lizard from Komodo, all of ten feet long and weighing three hundred pounds, and last, several monitor lizards, less than half the size of the giants from Komodo, India.

I glanced up when a man in a white silk shirt, white riding breeches, and black, highly polished boots came striding along the runway beside the pits in which the animals were kept. On a hunch I put out a hand. “Are you Dick Castro?”

He looked me up and down. “I am, yes. What can I do for you?”

“Have you been informed about your uncle, Jack Bitner?”

His handsome face seemed to tighten a little, and his eyes sharpened as he studied me. Something inside me warned: This man is dangerous. Even as I thought it, I realized that he was a big, perfectly trained man, who could handle himself in any situation. He was also utterly ruthless.

“Yes, I received a forwarded message yesterday. However, I had already had my attention called to it in the papers. What have you to do with it?”

“Deputy sheriff. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

He turned abruptly. “Bill! Take over here, will you? I’ll be back later.” He motioned to me. “Come along.”

With a snappy, military stride, he led me to the end of the runway and through a flap in a tent to a smaller tent adjoining. He waved me to a canvas chair, then looked over his shoulder. “Drink?”

“Sure. Bourbon if you’ve got it.”

He mixed a drink for each of us, then seated himself opposite me. “All right, you’ve got the ball. Start pitching.”

“Where were you last Sunday night?”

“On the road with the show.”

“Traveling where?”

“Coming here. We drove all night.”

“How often do you have rest stops on such a drive as that?”

“Once every hour for a ten-minute rest stop and to check tires, cages, and equipment.” He didn’t like the direction my questions were taking, but he was smart enough not to make it obvious. “I read in the papers that you had three likely suspects.”

“Yes, we have. Your cousin, Johnny Holben, and—” deliberately I hesitated a little—“Blacky Caronna.”

He looked at me over his glass, direct and hard. “I hope you catch the killer. Do you think you will?”

“There isn’t a doubt of it.” I threw that one right to him. “We’ll have him within a few hours.”

“You say
him?
”

“It’s a manner of speaking.” I smiled. “You didn’t think we suspected you, did you?”

He shrugged. “Everybody in a case like that can be a suspect. Although I’m in no position to gain by it. The old man hated me and wouldn’t leave me the dirtiest shirt he had. He hated my father before me. Although,” he added, “even if I could have gained by it, there wouldn’t have been any opportunity. I don’t dare leave the show and my animals. Some of them require special care.”

“That Komodo lizard interested me. They eat meat, don’t they?”

He looked up under his eyebrows. “Yes. On Flores and Komodo they are said to catch and kill horses for food. Men, too, I expect, if the man was helpless. They might even get him if he wasn’t. They are surprisingly quick, run like a streak for a short distance, and there are native stories of them killing men. Most such stories are considered fantastic and the stories of their ferocity exaggerated. But me, I think them one of the most dangerous of all living creatures.” He looked at me again. “I’d hate to fall into that pit with one of them when nobody was around to get me out.”

The way he looked at me when he said that sent gooseflesh up my spine.

“Any more questions?”

“Yes. When did you last hear from Blacky Caronna?”

He shifted his seat a little, and I could almost see his mind working behind that suave, handsome face. “What ever gave you the idea I might hear from him? I don’t know the man. Wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”

“Nor Toni, either?”

If his eyes had been cold before, they were ice now. Ice with a flicker of something else in them. “I don’t think I know anyone named Toni.”

“You should,” I said grimly. “She knows you. So does Caronna. And just for your future information, I’d be very, very careful of Caronna. He’s a big boy, and he plays mighty rough. Also, unless I’m much mistaken, he served his apprenticeship in a school worse than any of your jungles—the Chicago underworld of the late Capone era.”

That was news to him. I had a hunch he had heard from Caronna but that he imagined him to be some small-time, small-town crook.

“You see,” I added, “I know a few things. I know that you’re set to inherit that dough, and I know that Blacky Caronna knows something that gives him a finger in the pie.”

“You know plenty, don’t you?” His eyes were ugly and sneering. “This is too tough a game for any small-town copper, so stay out, get me?”

I laughed. “You wrong me, friend. I’m not a small-time cop. I’m a private dick from L.A. whom Caronna brought over to investigate this murder. I learned a good deal and he fired me, and then the sheriff swore me in as a deputy.”

He absorbed that and he didn’t like it. Actually, I was bluffing. I didn’t have one particle of evidence that there was a tie-up between Castro and Caronna, nor did I know that Castro was to inherit. It was all theory, even if fairly substantial theory. However, the hint of my previous connection with Caronna worried him, for it could mean that I knew much more about Caronna’s business than I should know.

This was the time to go, and I took it. My drive over had taken some time, and there had been delays. It was already growing late. I got up. “I’ll be running along now. I just wanted to see you and learn a few things.”

He got up, too. “Well,” he said, “I enjoyed the visit. You must come again sometime—when you have some evidence.”

“Why sure!” I smiled at him. “You can expect me in a few days.” I turned away from him, then glanced back. “You see, when you were in this alone, it looked good, but that Caronna angle is going to do you up. Caronna and Toni. They’d like to cut themselves in on this million or so you’ll inherit.”

He shrugged, and I turned away. It was not until I had taken two full steps into the deserted and darkened tent that I realized we were alone. While we were talking the last of the crowd had dwindled away, and the show was over.

My footsteps sounded loud on the runway under my feet, but there was a cold chill running up my spine. Castro was behind me, and I could hear the sound of his boots on the boards. Only a few steps further was the pit in which the huge dragon lizard lay.

The dank, fetid odor that arose from the pit was strong in the close air of the darkened tent with all the flaps down. With every sense in me keyed to the highest pitch, I walked on by the pit and turned down the runway to the exit. He drew alongside me then, and there was a queer look in his eyes. He must have been tempted, all right.

“You think I killed Bitner,” he said. He had his feet wide apart and he was staring at me.

Why I said it, I’ll never know, but I did. “Yes,” I said, “I think you killed him.”

There was a sneer in his eyes. “Why, you fool!” he said. “You damned fool! If I had, you couldn’t prove it. You’d only make a fool of yourself.”

That, of course, was the crux of the problem. I had to have evidence, and I had so little. I knew now how the crime had been done. This day had provided that information, but I needed proof, and my best bet was to push him into some foolish action, into taking some step that would give me further evidence. He was, as all criminals are, overly egotistical and overly optimistic, so with the right words I might light a fuse that would start something.

We had turned away from each other, but I could not resist the chance, for what it was worth.
“Ati, ati,”
I said,
“sobat bikin salah!”

His spine went rigid, and he stopped so suddenly that one foot was almost in the air. He started to turn, but I was walking on, and walking fast. I had told him, “Be careful, you have made a mistake!” in Malayan…for the solution to this crime lay in the Far East.

At the edge of the grounds I stopped to light a cigarette. He was nowhere in sight, but I noticed a canvasman I had seen nearby and the man walked up. “How’s for a light, mister?”

“Sure,” I said. “Wasn’t this show in Las Vegas a few days ago?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You from there?”

“Been around there a good bit. Have a hard drive over?”

“Not so bad. We stop ever’ so often for a rest.”

“Who starts you again—Castro? I mean, after a rest stop?”

“Yeah, an’ he usually gives us a break once in a while. I mean, sometimes when we’re movin’ at night he lets us rest a while. Got to, or we’d run off the road.”

“Stop many times out of Las Vegas? That desert country must have been quiet enough to sleep.”

“We stopped three, maybe four times. Got a good rest out in the desert. Twice he stopped quite a while. Maybe an hour once, maybe thirty minutes again. Boy, we needed it!”

Leaving him at a corner, I walked over to my car and got in. There were several cars parked along the street and in one of them I saw a cigarette glow. Lovers, I thought. And that took my mind back to Karen Bitner. A lot of my thinking had been centered around her these last few hours, and little of it had to do with crime.