Dead Low Tide (11 page)

I was one of the scrubs and they had us scrimmaging against the varsity offensive team. I was a linebacker. Their fullback kept barreling in on fast-breaking plays. I was getting intensely weary of the whole thing. He went all out, every time, and when he ran over me, I’d pick myself up from under him, and say stuff like, “How about an autograph?” and “Does this go in the record books?” Quaint, like. But he’d just look at me. Just look. And it was like talking to a fire hydrant. I began to think this was a real eerie guy, though hitherto he had showed signs of modest intelligence. There was something even a little spine-chilling in the way he looked at me.

Scrimmage ended, and what did he do but walk right into
the shower in full uniform. They led him out and fed him smelling salts and slapped his face and he just looked at them. Then they took him to the infirmary and diagnosed concussion, and later he couldn’t remember anything that had happened all afternoon after the second play when he apparently had shoved his head against somebody’s knee.

And that was the sudden and unpleasant impression I got from just a few seconds’ glance at that face outside the window. A mindless automaton, a sort of ritualistic thing, like a machine hiding behind a face. And he went away. Another set of bells was ringing in my mind, but I couldn’t catch the tune. There was something else I was on the very edge of knowing, or realizing, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Somebody walked over my grave, and with the shudder came a duck-bump collection. A tall man somewhere in his twenties, perhaps, giving an impression of pallor and vague shabbiness, and something less than human. You just didn’t want to be out in the night with one of those loose.

So I was almost happy to see George and Chief Wargler as they waddled through the doorway.

“What are you doing in here, McClintock?”

“I work here, Chief.”

“During the day you work here. What you doing in here at night time?”

“I work at night, too, sometimes.”

“Where have you been since you left Elly’s place?”

“Mrs. Long phoned and wanted me to come see her. So I went to see her.”

Wargler hovered close to me. “Been drinking, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pretty chummy with Mrs. Long, I figure.”

“You don’t figure very good, Chief.”

“I can figure a lot of things. You think you’ve been pretty damn shrewd, son.”

“Now just a minute. I—”

“We had us a busy afternoon. Talking to a lot of people. Finding out a lot of things, by God. And you’re coming along right now. We got a cell for you.”

“What kind of gag is this?”

“No gag, son. Come on. You lock up your car and it’ll be all right here.”

“I want to call a lawyer.”

“You got anybody in mind, special?”

“Well—Steve Marinak.”

Chief Wargler snickered in a singularly unpleasant way. “Phone him. He happens to be at his house now.”

I looked up the number and phoned. Steve answered.

“Steve, this is Andy. Our Chief of Police has some startling ideas and I need some legal talent before he gets carried away.”

His voice, in answer, was hard and tight. “I wouldn’t bring you a bucket of water if you were on fire, you son-of-a-bitch.” He made my ear ring, he hung up so fast.

“Didn’t want the case, did he?”

“Apparently not.” I tried to think of someone else I could call, and then I suddenly decided to skip the whole idea. Let Wargler lock me up and make a damn fool of himself. Steve’s reaction had distressed me more than I was willing to admit. He had been damn near a friend. “O.K., Chief. No lawyer, then. On second thought, I don’t need one.”

Wargler snickered again. They drove me in, and the two of them filled the front seat completely. We got back to his office, this time with the lights on, and he fiddled with his tape toy some more. This time I was a suspect. And he headed it off with a question about whether I was aware that anything I might say could be held against me. I took the mike and said that I was, and he said it might take some time, so I better move around next to him so it would make the routine with the mike simpler. He explained there was one on order which could pick up a voice from anywhere in the room, but it hadn’t come yet, though he expected it any time now.

We sat chummily side by side. “Now, McClintock, did you drive up to Tampa and stay there over the night of August twenty-third?”

I stared at him. “I guess the date is about right. Sure. I was chasing some electrical fixtures. Why?”

“Do you deny that you met Mrs. John Long there for—uh—immoral purposes?”

“I certainly do, for God’s sake! What are you—”

“Now settle down, son. I’m doing the asking. Do you deny that on last Wednesday night you went to a bar with Mrs. John Long and you left together?”

“No. I did that, all right, but—”

“Did Mrs. John Long come to your place of residence very late on Thursday night, day before yesterday?”

“Yes, but—”

“You plain stop putting those ‘but’s in there, son. In a town this size people get a pretty good idea of what’s going on when you start stuff like you been doing. Now I had a stakeout down the beach, and I got a report on you from tonight.

By God, the same damn day you killed John, I got a witness to you holding his wife in your arms, and if I couldn’t get in trouble for doing it, I’d purely beat the hell out of you, old and fat as I am.”

I think I tried to smile. I don’t think it looked so good. Maybe more like a leer. Those little pebble eyes looked at me with righteous disgust.

“If you’ll give me a chance, Chief, I’ll explain it. I know it looks bad—I can’t help that—but I can explain.”

He laid a paper on the desk. “Ever see this before?”

I picked it up. “Sure. It’s a contract. How did you get it?”

“Took it out of your place, son. All legal, with a warrant. And it’s evidence. Know what it shows? By God, it shows motive. And we got Steve’s statement that you asked John for it, and Steve told us it’s mighty unusual for John to have fooled around with contracts. He was all upset and he was scrapping with his woman, and he suspicioned somebody messing with her, but he didn’t know yet it was you, and you figured you had to fix him before he fixed you, you knowing what a temper he had.”

“Are you asking questions, Chief, or making up fairy tales?”

“You go on like that and I surely will slap the hell out of you. Where were you early this morning?”

“That’s on the other tape. You’ve got a complete schedule.”

“Want to change any of it?”

“Not a damn word of it.”

“When did you really get those two reds, son?”

“Early this morning. Just after first light.”

“Now I’m going to turn this off and let you listen to another
tape we made this afternoon and then we’ll get back to the questions again.”

The way they were both looking at me made me feel very uneasy. The gadget didn’t have a very good sound reproducer. It had a thin metallic quality. But Wargler leaned back and folded his fingers over his paunch and cocked his head on one side, and we heard the familiar voice say, “Christine Hallowell.”

“Now wait,” I said.

“Shut up and listen, damn it.”

“… did you come to see me, Miss Hallowell?”

“It’s about Andy—Andrew McClintock, Chief Wargler.”

“What about him?”

(Wargler muttered, “Too damn close to the mike.”)

“Well, you see, he told me about how Mr. Long was shot with his gun and spear, and I—Well, I thought it might look bad for him, and I thought he’d try to protect me or something.”

“Protect you from what, Miss?”

“This isn’t easy to say. We went out together Friday night. To Sarasota. We got back late—and then he heard that prowler. We’ve been pretty close and—The idea of a prowler sort of scared me, so I just stayed with him. I—I didn’t go home at all.”

I had my hands gripped so tightly my knuckles ached. A condescendingly lecherous note crept into the Chief’s voice. “You do that often.”

Her answer was barely audible. “Quite often.”

“Then you went fishing with him?”

“Oh, yes.”

“He catch anything?”

“Two reds. About five pounds each.”

“You like fishing, Miss?”

“Oh, yes. But I’m not very good at it.”

“You know tackle and all that?”

“Yes. We’ve fished quite a bit, Andy and I.” I could smell the trap coming. I wanted to reach out and put my hand over her mouth. Wargler was wearing a sleepy, satisfied smile. And my respect for him upped a notch.

“What did McClintock get those reds on?”

She knew what I usually used. I hoped she’d say she hadn’t noticed. “A small buck-tail dude.”

“Where were you while he was fishing?”

“Oh, right near him.”

“Did you see the fella in the boat out in the pass?”

“I—I might have. I can’t quite remember. I guess there was a boat.”

“Funny thing. That fella saw McClintock, but he didn’t see you.”

“I—I don’t know how that could happen.”

“You know the penalty for perjuring yourself, Miss?”

“I—What do you mean?”

“You didn’t go fishing with him, now, did you?”

There was quite a long pause. Her voice suddenly eager, said, “All right, I didn’t. I lied because I want to keep Andy out of trouble. But if that man in the boat saw him, that’s just as good as if I were there, isn’t it?”

“There wasn’t any man in any boat, Miss.”

“Oh—Oh, dear!”

“McClintock sent you in, didn’t he?”

“No, he didn’t!” She was indignant.

“He could get you to do about anything he wanted you to, couldn’t he?”

“I guess he could, but this was my idea.”

“You sure he wasn’t coaching you when the two of you had your heads together in Saddler’s this morning?”

“No, and I don’t care what you say, he couldn’t do a thing like that.”

“But you got so worried you come in here and lie to us like this?”

“You got me all confused now.”

“How long you been sleeping with McClintock?”

“I haven’t got anything more to say.”

“We could lock you up right now for perjuring yourself.”

“Then go right ahead.”

“You know about his affair with Mrs. John Long?”

“He hasn’t had any affair with Mrs. Long.”

“That’ll be all, Miss. We’ll be calling you in again.”

Wargler turned off the machine. He removed the tape, handling it carefully. He winked at me. “That one didn’t work so good for you, son. Nice hunk of woman. What bill of goods you sell her? I wished I knew how you slick articles make out so good. Wouldn’t you like to know, too, George? Now empty out your pockets, son, and give me that belt and those shoelaces, and we’ll just put the stuff right here in this envelope and seal it.”

They took me out in the hall. There was quite a crowd. George and the Chief hustled me along, my toes barely touching the floor. A flashbulb went off. That was the picture they printed on the front page of the
Ledger
, me looking like a slack-jawed, guilt-crazed cretin. “
LUST KILLER TRAPPED
” the headline said. The picture hit newspapers all
over the country via wire service. My weapon, my motive, my opportunity. They don’t need much more. But they didn’t release it until the next morning when Mary Eleanor became the stained heroine by confessing how I had brutally blackmailed her into further dalliance through threat of exposure.

THE NOISE FROM THE DRUNK TANK
woke me Sunday morning. I wasn’t among the common people. I had a little hidey hole of my own, with bunk, sink, toilet, and one metal chair bolted to the floor. I had neatly arranged my pants and shirt on the chair, laceless shoes aligned underneath. Some people in the drunk tank were being wretchedly ill, and my stomach coiled sympathetically.

I washed, dried my hands and face on the corner of a sheet, and yearned for my toothbrush. My window was covered with heavy steel mesh in a diamond pattern. I was on the top floor and from the window I could look down the sleepy slant of the main drag. The morning sun was beginning to stream in, and I had the unhappy realization that by noon the cell would be like a Dutch oven.

I couldn’t shed the idea that it was all farce, a big fat monstrous joke, and they would let me out, everybody laughing.

About an hour later the jailer, a subdued little wooden-legged man, allowed as how he could go out and buy me a breakfast, and if I signed the slip, he could get the money from the Chief, the money that had come out of my pants.

He brought me breakfast and I sat on the bunk and ate it. I made up the bunk. I counted the diamonds in the window mesh. I made faces out of where the water paint had flaked off the walls. I counted the lace holes in my shoes. They’d left me my watch. I took my pulse. I stared out at the main street. I made hand shadows in the sunshine—cats and swans and a nobby face chewing. I remembered and relived my first date, redrove my first car, tried a mental game of chess and got stuck on the third move. I decided I was not the jail type, and it would take me about two full days to go crazy.

It was a little after ten and the cell was getting hotter and hotter when the jailer let Jack Ryer in. I found out that when you are in a cell there’s no good way to greet a visitor. If you sit and sulk you are melodramatic. If you leap up with a grin, you are full of false cheer.

“Relax, for God’s sake,” Jack said. He tossed the magazines and the carton of cigarettes on the bunk. I took the clothes off the chair and he sat down.

“How do I look?” I asked.

“Legally, you stink. You ought to hear them. They knew all the time there was something evil and creepy about you.”

“That’s nice.”

“I went through that phase, too.”

“I would dearly like to bust you right in the mouth, Jack.”

“You do, and I won’t leave the magazines. I said ‘through’ that stage. Remember?”

“Where are you now, then?”

He propped his ankle on his knee. “Wargler gave it to me, step by step, proud as hell. Played his tapes. By God, you come out an unsympathetic character on those tapes. Snotty. And Christy, the silly fool, she helped a lot.”