Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 07 (15 page)

“Wear a prophylactic. Help keep vice statistics down.”

“Hell, Eliot—I’m wearing one right now. Ever since I saw those movies of yours, back at boot camp, I never take it off.”

The pebbled glass door at the top of the stairs said, “H. G. Christie, Ltd., Real Estate,” but the sounds coming from behind it said much more: it sounded like a rally at the Board of Trade. I went in to find a large outer office that was a packed waiting room, chairs lining the wall filled with every Bahamian type imaginable: prosperous white businessmen in their three-piece suits sat next to shoeless out-island natives; a proper-looking Englishwoman sat uncomfortably beside a native girl in a colorful tropical bandanna and sheath. The only difference seemed to be that the whites, American and English alike, were speaking to each other, the men sometimes rising to approach, loudly, animatedly, one of two female secretaries—a young pretty one at the desk at left, an older handsome one at right—while the Negroes of either sex sat timidly with hands in laps and eyes lowered. The secretaries were dealing frantically with phone calls (“Yes, Sir Frederick, Mr. Christie has the blueprints ready,” “Your roof is leaking? I’ll inform Mr. Christie,” “New York? I’ll see if he’s free…”) while male assistants would emerge from one of the two offices either side of the central pebbled-glass door labeled “H. G. Christie, Private,” to deal with the more impatient clientele.

None of them were as impatient as yours truly, however, because I didn’t bother to check in with either harried secretary. I walked right past them and went into Christie’s office.

The bald, homely, rumpled little toad who wielded such power in Nassau frowned at me from behind his desk where he was on the phone, not recognizing me at first; then his face went blank as he did remember me, before an even deeper frown returned.

“Mr. Christie…I’m sorry,” a voice behind me urgently said. “I’m afraid this gentleman just rushed right—”

“That’s all right, Mildred,” Christie said, waving her back.

The older of the secretaries glared at me and I smiled pleasantly at her and she closed the door behind me. Christie was saying into the phone, “Sir Frederick, I’ll have to call you back. My apologies.”

His inner office wasn’t large or fancy, plaster walls lined with wooden file cabinets, a few framed, hand-tinted photos of lush, lovely Bahamian properties he no doubt either owned or had sold someone; framed photos of himself with the Duke, Oakes and other Bahamian mucky-mucks; some local excellence-in-business certificates. The mahogany desk was large, however, almost massive, resting on an oriental rug. The ceiling fan’s blades whirled shakily, as nervous as the waiting room out there. Bay Street bustled through the open window behind him, horses clip-clopping, bells jangling, horns honking, a voice raised occasionally.

“Mr. Heller,” Christie said, raising his, “I understand the urgency of the work you’re engaged in. But I’m a busy man, and you’ll have to make an appointment.”

“I called for one this morning. I was told to call again tomorrow.”

“Well, you should have. You still should. There are many people ahead of you. But if you have something we can attend to quickly…”

“I just have a few questions I want to run past you. So we can get Sir Harry’s murder cleared up.”

His face tightened. “I was under the impression it had been cleared up.”

“Oh, you mean the arrest of Count de Marigny? I don’t think so. I think Freddie’s arrest raises more questions than it answers.”

“And why is that?”

“Well…the motive’s a little fuzzy, for instance. Surely you’re aware that Sir Harry had already changed his will, so that Nancy won’t come into big dough till she’s thirty?”

“I hadn’t heard that. I don’t believe Sir Harry’s will has been probated as yet.”

“Well, Nancy says she was informed of this by her father, months ago. So why should de Marigny kill Sir Harry now? What’s to gain?”

“Mr. Heller, even assuming you’re correct, the blood between Fred and Sir Harry was bad, to say the least.”

“But you and Freddie are friends yourselves, aren’t you? Didn’t he invite you to dinner at his place the night of the killing? And you declined so you could dine with Sir Harry?”

“Certainly not!”

“Freddie says he did.”

“He’s a liar.”

“What were you doing driving around downtown Nassau at midnight, that night? I thought you were supposed to be at Westbourne.”

He sat up huffily; beneath those shaggy eyebrows, he was blinking as if he had something in his eye—both eyes. “I
was
at Westbourne—
all night.
Anyone who claims to have seen me elsewhere is a damn liar. Who is making this claim?”

I shrugged. “Just something I heard. You know, even an out-of-towner like me hears things. By the way, do you know a man named Lansky? Meyer Lansky?”

He stopped blinking; his eyes were cold and hard, now. But also a little scared.

“No,” he said. “That name is unfamiliar to me. Mr. Heller, I’m a very busy man…”

“I just have a few more questions.”

“No,” he said, standing as he buzzed his intercom, “I’m afraid you don’t. And I don’t have any interest in speaking further to you, at this or any time. Sir Harry Oakes was my dearest friend, and I do not intend to aid the man who murdered him.”

“And who would that be?”

“Freddie de Marigny, of course! Mildred—show Mr. Heller out.”

Well, I’d rattled him, anyway. The danger, of course, was that I might be rattling Meyer Lansky, too. If the East Coast syndicate was involved, I might not be getting paid enough for this job, even at three hundred bucks per day. Funeral costs weren’t something I wanted my heirs to have to list on my posthumous expense account.

Down on Bay Street, I headed toward Dirty Dick’s, figuring a rum punch would hit the spot about now. But I’d barely started ambling down the sidewalk when I noticed I’d picked up a tail.

And an incredibly obvious tail, at that.

This guy was white, about thirty, with a leathery tan but otherwise ordinary-looking, wearing a colorful tropical shirt—tourist-style—and pressed tan pants and the well-polished black shoes of a cop. Which is what he was, pretending to be a tourist. They should have invested in sandals and sunglasses, as well.

So this was what Captain Sears meant when he advised me to watch my back….

I walked three blocks down and he stayed with me, half a block behind. If I paused to look in a store window, he did the same. He was as subtle as the mumps. I crossed the street, walked back three blocks, and so did my shadow.

Ducking into a pharmacy, I asked the pretty, freckled redheaded girl behind the counter if they had any chalk.

“Like kids use?”

“Right—it doesn’t have to be colored or anything.”

“I think we do.”

“And you wouldn’t happen to have a magnifying glass?”

“Like Sherlock Holmes?”

“Exactly.”

She smiled; nice dimples. “I think we have that, too.”

I bought both items, while the cop in the bright shirt pondered the varieties of aspirin on a nearby shelf.

Back outside, I found the nearest alleyway and ducked in. I stood before the brick wall that was the side of the pharmacy and studied it; out of the corner of my eye, I watched for the cop to peek around.

He did.

I studied that wall carefully, like I was an art critic and it was a would-be Picasso. Then I began examining portions of the wall with the magnifying glass. Touching the brick here and there…

“Hmmmm,” I’d say from time to time, rubbing my fingers together, as if examining a suspicious substance.

Finally I drew a large chalk circle on the brick wall, put my chalk and magnifying glass away and stood smiling at my artwork, rubbing my hands in satisfaction.

“Yes!” I said. “Yes.”

The shadow stayed behind as I walked back to the B.C., where I called Marjorie from the phone in my room.

“Nathan,” she said. “Before we go out doing things tonight, I was thinkin’ about makin’ some supper for you….”

I heard a click on the phone line.

“Marjorie, that’s great. I’ll be over in half an hour.”

“That’s a little early, but I don’t mind….”

“Good,” I said. “See you.”

And I hung up; it probably seemed a little sudden to her, but that click had made me wonder. I was being shadowed—was I being bugged, as well?

I picked up the phone, got an outside line, and dialed a random number.

“Hello, Watkins speaking,” a thickly British voice said.

“Don’t say another word,” I said. “I’m being watched. Meet me at Fort Charlotte in half an hour. Have the evidence with you.”

I hung up.

On my way to Marjorie’s in the Chevy sedan, I swung around by Bay Street; it wasn’t on the way, but I wanted to have a look. I almost started crying with laughter, at the sight of the half-dozen black coppers, in their fancy dress uniforms, and pudgy Captain Melchen, all standing there, baffled, gazing at that circle I’d drawn on the alley wall.

As I passed by Fort Charlotte, on my way to Westbourne, I thought about pulling in so I could watch the cops show up for my nonexistent rendezvous.

But I was more anxious to see Marjorie Bristol.

I drove past Westbourne and doubled back before pulling into the country club parking lot, just to make sure I’d shaken my tail. Apparently I had, but I got out of the Chevy and ducked behind a palm, anyway, and waited to see if anybody else pulled in. Nobody did.

As I watched, however, I had one of those stupid moments that I assume others must occasionally have, of which I have more than my share: I wondered why it had gotten so dark out so early, before remembering I was still wearing my sunglasses. I slipped them into my sport-shirt pocket—I wore no coat with my slacks, and was hatless, wearing sandals with no socks, looking more like a tourist than a detective, I supposed. Maybe
I
should have been doing the shadowing.

Only a few cars were in the graveled lot, and I walked toward the tennis courts and the subtle thunder of the ocean beyond, a cooler, less humid breeze ruffling the trees and the grass and my hair. At dusk, the palms positioned against a gray sky, the beds of colorful flowers muted now, had an otherworldly beauty; I felt alone, but it was a nice feeling, solitary not lonely.

Even in twilight, the beach looked ivory; the gun-metal sea looked peaceful, tide rolling lazily in. I stood staring for a moment, hands in my pockets, thinking about the invasion that was under way somewhere across these vast waters—the Allies were moving across Sicily, and in the paper today the Pope was bitching about us bombing Rome—but I couldn’t make it anything but abstract.

Then a land crab scuttled across my path, and I jumped back, and shivered. Closed my eyes. Breathed slowly.

The little bastard had made it real for me again.

Through Marjorie’s open windows the smells of cooking drew me toward her cottage like I was Hansel and she was a wickedly delicious witch and as for Gretel, well, to hell with Gretel.

I knocked once and waited, to give my hostess a chance to put lids on the steaming pots I pictured her tending. When the door opened, she looked a little harried, her brow pearled with sweat under a white bandanna; she grinned, though, and motioned me in. She wore a white blouse with an inadequately aproned wide blue-and-white-checked skirt that swirled over petticoats as she moved back to the stove.

“Smells wonderful,” I said, and it did, the spicy fragrances a virtual culinary aphrodisiac. I sat at the round table, where two woven sisal place mats waited, along with the usual bowl of cut flowers.

“I hope you like this,” she said. “I been workin’ on it all afternoon. The main course isn’t so hard, but dessert is gonna be real special.”

Watching her slim graceful form, as she moved from this pot to that, I could think of something that would make a real special dessert, myself.

That lecherous thought aside—and despite the lingering memory of last night’s sweet kiss—I was determined to be a gentleman this evening. Marjorie Bristol was as intelligent as she was lovely, and as vulnerable as she was ladylike; hurdling the racial barrier between us, not to mention the cultural one, was a peril I didn’t wish to subject her to.

Or me either, for that matter. Friendship, possibly mild flirtation, was the limit, here.

“You said you weren’t sick of conch,” she said, serving me a small bowl of chowder, “and I took you at your word.”

“Out of this world,” I said, savoring a spoonful. The spicy soup was thick and the chunks of conch mingled with diced potatoes, tomatoes and various other vegetables. I didn’t even dip into the oyster crackers she provided.

She seemed to spend more time watching me eat than eating herself, and her childlike smile at my enjoyment was infectious. Halfway through the soup, she added an appetizer to the table, crunch-battered, mild-tasting fish fingers.

“Grouper,” she said.

They didn’t serve this at Billy Ireland’s back in Chicago; but they should have.

The main course was a plate of well-spiced rice with onions and tomatoes and big white tender chunks of meat.

“Crab?” I said, and smiled a little.

“Your enemy,” she said. “I thought you might like to triumph over him.”

I had a bite and said, “He tastes a hell of a lot better than he looks.”

She ate a bite herself, then studied me, those huge long-lashed brown eyes turning soulful. “You don’t look like a man who’s much afraid of anythin’. Why does a little animal give a big man like you such a start?”

I shrugged; sipped my iced tea. “Not while we’re eating, Marjorie. I’ll tell you later.”

She nodded solemnly, looked down at her food; she had a chastised expression, and I didn’t want her to.

“Hey—Marjorie. It’s no big deal. It’s just not polite supper conversation…okay?”

She smiled again, a little. “Okay.”

I asked her about herself, her family. Both her mother and her father had for many years worked for various wealthy white households in domestic positions.

“My father…really isn’t my father,” she said. “He is my father to me, and I love him, but…he married my mother when she was expectin’ me. Some rich man was my blood daddy. I don’t know who he is, and I never look into it. But that’s why I look like this. Mama’s kind of light-skinned, too. Papa, too, a little. That’s why we live on the other side of the wall.”

“Other side of the wall?”

“In Grant’s Town, a concrete wall separates us light brown ones from the darker.”

“And you folks are higher up the social ladder, I take it?”

She nodded. “We have a nice house. Two stories. No electricity, no indoor plumbin’…not as nice as livin’ here by Westbourne. But nice enough.”

“You mentioned you had a brother you want to put through college….”

“I have two sisters, one older, one younger. Mabel’s married and works at the straw market; Millie’s a maid at the B.C.”

“I’d like to meet them.”

She smiled and ate her food. Somehow, despite her openness, I knew that me meeting her kin wasn’t high on her list.

I was finished with my main course; my stomach glowed with it. I looked at her as she nibbled at her food, and thought about how she’d leveled with me about who she was; how personal she’d been with me.

“Last year about this time,” I told her, “I was on an island called Guadalcanal.”

Her head tilted. “I read about that place in the papers. You were a soldier?”

“A Marine. I was on a patrol that got cut off from the rest of our company. We fought back the Japanese for a day and a night, out of a hole in the sandy ground a shell made. Some of us died. Some of us lived. All the ones who lived were…wounded. Not necessarily physically. Do you understand?”

She nodded gravely. “It was a place like this, Guadalcanal. A tropical island.”

“Yes.”

She smiled ever so gently. “And the land crabs were there.”

I laughed, tapped my empty plate with a fork. “Skittering around like ugly baseball gloves with legs. Lots of legs.”

“Well, you ate you him, now. Your enemy.”

I touched her hand. “Thanks to you.”

Her hand was warm; so was her smile. “Now, dessert.”

She went to the oven and put on a kitchen mitt to pull out a cookie sheet on which were two steaming, oversize custard cups. Soon the cup with its orangeish-white, crusted-brown contents sat before me, its rising, swaying steam beckoning me like an Arab dancing girl.

When I broke the skin with my spoon, a rich orange-white liquid ran through the custard.

“Coconut soufflé,” she said, beaming, obviously proud of herself. “Be careful…it’s hot….”

It was, but
goddamn
it was good; I can taste that stuff this minute: sweet with shreds of coconut and hints of banana and orange and rum….

“I make it with Yellow Bird,” she said, taking a little taste herself.

“There’s a
bird
in this?”

She laughed musically. “No! Yellow Bird is a drink that mixes banana liqueur, orange juice, Triple Sec, and rum. I put the same things in my soufflé.”

“Are you
sure
you’re not the cook up at Westbourne?”

“I’m sure. She’s so much better than me—but not as good as my mama.”

After supper, we sat out on her front stoop and watched the tide roll in; both the look and sound were shimmering. We sat close, but didn’t touch. The moon in the dark clear blue sky looked unreal, like a poker chip you could reach out and pluck. There were very few stars to wink at us tonight. The horizon was endless, though I knew the countless islands of the Bahamas were scattered out there; that hundreds of beaches, just this lovely, were ivory under the moonlight, just like this one. But somehow this was the only one. Anywhere.

“You know, Nathan…there’s something that’s been botherin’ me….”

“Oh? Something I’ve done or said?”

“No! No. Something about Sir Harry.”

She looked into her lap; she must’ve slipped out of the petticoats when she went into the bathroom after supper, because the blue-and-white dress was spread out before her now, flat, like a tablecloth.

“Sir Harry seemed kinda…funny, a month or so before he died.”

“Funny? How?”

“He was always takin’ precautions. Like he was scared about somethin’.”

I laughed a little. “Some precautions: he left every door in the house unlocked and every window open.”

“I know, I know. But still…he was takin’ precautions like I never see him take before.”

“Such as?”

She sighed, shaking her head slowly, thinking about it. The beads of her wooden necklace made brittle music. “One night, he would sleep in one room. The next night, another room, next night, another. Always a different room.”

“Well…that’s a little odd, but I don’t know that it means he was necessarily taking precautions….”

“Maybe, but he took to always sleepin’ with his gun next to his bed—
that’s
a precaution, isn’t it?”

I sat up a little. “That’s a precaution, all right. That’s definitely a precaution. What became of that gun?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I see it on his nightstand, when I put his clothes out, night of the murder. That’s the last I saw of it.”

“Jesus. This could be important, Marjorie. What sort of gun was it?”

“Oh…I don’t know much about guns. I don’t know anything about guns….”

“Was it a revolver or an automatic?”

“What’s the difference?”

I explained, briefly.

“Revolver,” she said.

“How big?”

She thought about it, then held her hands apart about six inches.

“A .38, maybe. You’ll have to tell Colonel Lindop about this.”

“I already did.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks for telling me about it. The prosecution sure as hell isn’t likely to.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t mention it sooner….”

“That’s okay. There’s a lot to keep track of in this crazy case.” I checked my watch. “It’s almost ten. We’ll have to leave in forty-five minutes or so, to meet Arthur.”

“Okay. You want to take a swim?”

“Well…sure. You got any spare trunks in your place?”

She looked at me with what might be irritation. “Do I look like the sort of girl who keeps a man’s swimmin’ things in her house?”

“No—not at all, I just…”

She rose, and undid something, and the dress fell to the sand.

I was looking, dumbfounded, directly at a dark triangle between her legs when the white of her blouse fluttered past me. Then I looked up and her body rose like the perfect statue of a woman, modeled in milk chocolate by some lascivious confectioner. Her breasts were round and high, not large, not small, the sort of overflowing handfuls that would outsmart gravity for decades; the waist seemed impossibly small, legs muscular and endless, a dancer’s legs, spread apart boldly, unashamed; this modest girl had her hands on her hips and was laughing down at me.

“Why is your mouth open like that, Nathan?” She wore nothing but the wooden beaded necklace. “Are you still hungry?”

Then she ran into the surf, laughing, legs kicking, globes of her behind perhaps too large for some tastes, but not mine; I was scrambling out of my clothes and scampering into the surf like a horny land crab.

She splashed at me, giggling like a young girl, and I splashed her back; the moon was playing on the water, washing her with ivory, the water’s surface a ripply mosaic of white and blue and black and gray. She dove and splashed me and swam out a ways and I followed her. Treading water, I looked back at the shore. We weren’t incredibly far out but we could see the country club and her cottage and Westbourne and palm trees silhouetted against the sky.

“It doesn’t look real,” she said. “The world looks like a toy world.”

“It doesn’t seem real to me, either,” I said. “But you seem real.”

She smiled, arms and legs moving, keeping her afloat. But it was a bittersweet smile. “Oh, Nathan…we shouldn’t. We’re from different worlds.”

“There’s only one world,” I said. “Just different places and different people. Sometimes they make war on each other. Sometimes they think of something better to do….”

That took the bitter out of her smile, leaving the sweet, and she dove back in and swam to shore and sat half in the water, half on the wet sand, looking up at the moon, basking in it, as if sunning herself.

I sat next to her. I was a little out of breath. She was in better shape.

“You have scars,” she said, and touched one.

“I been shot a few times.”

“The war?”

“Some of it’s the war. Some isn’t.”

“Your life is dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s more dangerous than others….”

And I took her in my arms and kissed her, I kissed her hard, and she returned it, our tongues finding each other, my body on hers, the surf crashing over us, her skin wet and hot and cold and willing under me; I slid down, and was about to bury my face between her legs when I said, nastily, “If I can eat my enemy, the least I can do is…”

But then I was doing it, kissing her there, licking her, tasting the coarse hair, sucking the inside of the pink sweet bitter fruit and she cried out, as if in pain, but she wasn’t, and then the tip of me was in her mouth, and then more than the tip of me, and when I couldn’t endure the ecstasy any longer, I pulled her up on me, and rolled back on top of her, put my hands on her breasts, hard soft cold wet warm breasts, tips of them hard and sweet and salty when I suckled them, and then I was inside her, the mouth between her legs suckling me, and she moaned and I moaned and we moaned, and we churned gently together and then not so gently, and when I pulled out of her, whimpering with pleasure, her hand gripped me as I spilled into the sea….