Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth (6 page)

Just wait until he got up and around, he thought, and he would show her a couple of things.

Brother was a soft-looking man in an extremely neat brown suit. He had a straight slender nose with no flare at the nostrils, a nose like a hatchet blade. He had thick lips, oversize brown eyes. His skin was tanned a trifle lighter shade of brown than his suit, which was a ripe tobacco leaf. He carried a leather briefcase, the folder type without a handle that closes with a zipper. He kept the case under his right arm.

“Mr. Harsh?” He had a pronounced accent which Harsh identified at once as Spanish.

“That’s me.”

The man stepped to the bedside and took a close look at him. The effect on him was violent. His hands tightened convulsively on the briefcase. Harsh got the impression the man wanted to leap upon him and strike him, that the man hated him utterly and irrationally at first sight.

“Mister, the scar ain’t real, if that’s what startled you.”

“El hermano, por Dios!”
The man’s eyes protruded. They were shiny and brown like the eyes of a choked dog.

Presently the man stepped back and hauled out a tan silk handkerchief of unusual size. By the time he had blotted his hands, lips and forehead, he had regained some control. He turned to Vera Sue. “Will you step outside, Miss, in order that Mr. Harsh and I may be alone?”

Vera Sue looked so disappointed that Harsh wanted to laugh. She had been going around doing as she damn pleased, he thought, and missing out on this talk was going to brown her off good. Vera Sue finally went out, but left the door open.

Brother closed the door, came back to the bed, seized the sheet and gave it a jerk, exposing Harsh in the altogether. “Hey! What’s the idea, Mister?”

“Turn over.”

“Mister, just who do you think you are, coming in here and yanking the covers off me and ordering me ass up and belly down? Who the hell do you think you are?” When he got that much said, Harsh wished he had kept still. It was the look that came into the man’s eyes. It made the hair on the back of Harsh’s neck turn cold, as if a frosty-footed mouse had walked across his spine. Harsh turned over on the bed as directed. The way he was lying then, he could not see the man’s face, but the effect of the stare stayed with him. Jesus, was the guy nuts? “Mister, I got this bum arm and lying this way it don’t feel too hot. How about turning back the way I was?”

After an uncomfortable few moments longer, Harsh felt the sheet come back down over him. He rotated onto his back once more.

“The young lady indicated she would tell you who I am,” Mr. Brother said.

“She said a man named Mr. Brother was here to see me. She didn’t say anybody would come in here jerking the covers off me.”

“Who told you to put that mark on the side of your face?”

“Nobody. I just laid the wrong way, something under my face.”

“You are lying to me, Mr. Harsh.” There was a carefulness about the way he formed his words that indicated he did his thinking in another language—either that, or that he was straining to hold back a monumental temper.

“Fine. I saw a photograph of a face looked something like mine, only it had a scar. I wanted to see how such a scar would look on me, so I laid down on the spoon handle. And you happened to show up before the marks went away.”

The man didn’t respond—it was as if he hadn’t heard. Everything Harsh said or did seemed to be beneath contempt to him. He whipped out a sheet of blank paper, folded it precisely, uncapped a fountain pen.

“Mr. Harsh, how would you like to earn twenty-five dollars? I will pay you five dollars each for five names. The five names are to be of people who have known you within the last few years.”

“How is that? You mean you want references of some sort—but you want to
buy
them from me?”

The man looked at Harsh as if he was considering spitting on him. “I wouldn’t think a man like you does much without being bought.”

“Look, goddamn you, I can be run over just about so far.”

The man’s face became calm, but his eyes glittered. “Mr. Harsh, the only way I will deal with you is to buy you. I do not care to work with you on any other basis. I buy you or nothing. You are a cheap man, so buying you will not be expensive. Get it straight—I buy you, or I have nothing to do with you.”

Harsh lifted himself on his good elbow. “Look, I don’t know why you should be such a crock, but if you want references, I’ll give them to you for nothing. I won’t sell them, though. I got some pride too.”

Harsh was amazed when the man capped the fountain pen, put it away, tucked the blank paper in his pocket, and strode purposefully to the door. He was going to leave, the crazy fool, twenty-five dollars was going to walk out the door.

“Hey, Mister! If you insist, I’ll take your money.”

Again the man seemed not to hear, and walked out the door, leaving Harsh watching the door and waiting, hardly believing the fellow was gone. Harsh watched the door for some time. His arm, which had been giving only mild pain, now started hurting in earnest. It felt as if a cat was crouched on it, eating away. No one came through the door, not Brother, not Vera Sue, not the policeman, not even a doctor or a nurse.

What should he make of this Brother anyway, he wondered.

Several hours later when Vera Sue did appear, he saw she had been up to something. She was as warm and contented as a baby who had found a full breast, and she was wearing a new dress with the new hat. “Oh, Walter, he is just slightly terrific, isn’t he?”

Harsh scowled at her. He did not know who she was talking about, but he would bet it was somebody who wore pants with well-filled pockets. “Where have you been all day?”

“Don’t be sore. Someone had to show Mr. Brother around, after he came all the way out here to Missouri from the east just to look you over. And you should see what he came in. Walter, you should see it! He has a big private airplane all his very own.”

“Is Brother still around here?” Harsh lifted up on the bed. “The way he took out of here as if he’d been turpentined, I figured school was out. Did he leave for good?”

“And what an airplane, Walter. Instead of just seats for passengers, private cabins and a private office and a private television set. Inside, it’s all lined with velvet that’s a kind of bedroom purple and the two fellas flying the thing for him wear liveries the same purple color.”

Harsh was speechless with rage.

Vera Sue lifted on tiptoes and did a turn in front of him. “Walter, notice anything new has been added?”

“Goddamn it!” His voice shook with fury. “I asked you, is the guy still in town?”

“Yes. Didn’t you notice my new dress?”

“The hell with the new dress.”

“Walter, I wish you wouldn’t be nasty. I like to hear you say nice things about my clothes, and not growl at me like a bear.”

He wanted to grab hold of her, shake some sense into her—but he forced himself to grin weakly instead. “Sure, honey, I know. It’s just that I lie here not knowing what’s going on and it makes me blow my top.”

“Well, it isn’t very nice.”

Walter bit back a curse. “I’m nuts about you, honey, you know that.”

“You’re awfully sweet when you want to be, Walter. I wish you would want to be all the time.”

“Kiss me, honey.”

She kissed him and he discovered her mouth tasted of eight-dollar-a-bottle Benedictine. So she had gotten her hands on more than just what it took to buy the new dress and the new hat. The Benedictine was a giveaway, because on special occasions she would buy a bottle and carry it around in her purse and nip at it. He suspected that someone had once told her Benedictine was the
liqueur
of quality folks, but had neglected to tell her it was supposed to be sipped out of thimble-sized glasses after dinner. Anyway, she had gotten hold of some money, and he had a good idea where.

“Vera Sue, I hope you didn’t go making any deals with this Brother guy. We can’t until we know more than we know now.”

“How do you mean, Walter?”

“He gave you some dough, right?”

She stroked her hair with her hand, and the innocent expression on her face told him she was trying to think up a lie.

“Look, Vera Sue, it’s all right with me for you to latch on to his money. I got no kicks, I want you to have dough, only you should talk it over with me first.”

“I was almost broke, Walter, and you were acting snotty.”

He controlled his fury with difficulty. “Well, like I say, I got no kicks. But baby, the only thing is, you and me are in this together, and we got to keep our eyes open. I know how to handle guys like Brother, so you better let me handle him. I’ll give you a sample of how I would handle him. He wanted me to give him some references, see, but he’s not going to get any names from me for nothing. I’m going to make him pay me five dollars a name. If he wants five names, it will cost him twenty-five bucks.”

Vera Sue’s expression became odd. “How much for each name, Walter?”

“Five dollars. He pays five bucks, or he won’t get a single name.”

Vera Sue’s mouth started twitching, and suddenly a shriek of laughter escaped her. She laughed so hard that she had to lean on the bed for support.

Harsh glared. “What’s killing you now?”

“Walter, you sure are some whiz-bang businessman.”

“Huh?”

She picked up a corner of the bed sheet and wiped the tears of mirth out of her eyes. “So, you can get five dollars a name. Five dollars.” She blew her nose in the sheet.

“Yeah, at least that much.”

“I got one hundred dollars, Walter. That’s what I got apiece for five names. Five hundred dollars. You say you can get five a name, but I got one hundred. What do you say to that?”

Harsh tried to sit up but his arm shot pain through his body and he lay back gasping. “You got five hundred?” What was there for him to say? He could not remember when any news had made him feel so sick and defeated. He swallowed some of his own saliva, and it tasted like gall. “Hand over my share.”

“What?”

“Hand over my share of what you got, baby. My half.”

She withdrew a step. “Your share is half of twenty-five bucks, Walter, if you got any share coming.”

“Don’t start pulling stuff like that, Vera Sue.”

“Listen, lover boy, I talk to dumb clucks any way I want, and you’re a dumb cluck, and also a cheap cluck. You’re a five-dollar cluck, that’s what you are.”

He struggled to a sitting position on the bed, ignoring the pain from his arm. “You watch out, or I’ll bat you one.”

She laughed nastily and buttoned the new coat over her new dress. “If that’s the way you feel, you can go to hell.”

She left the hospital room, not bothering to close the door. He fell back on the bed, causing his arm to hurt violently, and looked silently at the ceiling. Presently, when the nurse put her head in the door and looked at him and saw the expression on his face, she gasped and came in and thrust the thermometer in his mouth and took his pulse. She carried the thermometer to the window to examine it and shook her head, murmuring that if visitors excited him so much, he would just have to stop having them. Harsh bellowed at her, “Jesus God, get out of here and leave me alone!” This made the nurse angry, and instead of leaving the room, she forced him to take a drink of water, jamming the glass against his teeth hard enough that it grated. He swallowed some water. She placed the glass on the table and snatched an object off a chair. “Who left this here?”

Harsh looked and saw that she had picked up Brother’s briefcase. He had not noticed Brother had left it behind.

“They left it here for me to look at.” He turned his face away from the nurse so she would not see he was lying. “Why don’t you get out of here?”

The nurse shrugged, put the briefcase back on the chair, and left.

Harsh did not move a muscle for a while, thinking she might come back. He was furious about the five hundred dollar thing. He had as much right to the money as anybody, but getting it away from the greedy bitch was another thing. He found it incomprehensible that Brother should pay five hundred dollars for five names which Harsh had offered to give the man for nothing. It proved one thing, he decided, it proved Brother was no insurance company detective. No insurance company would hire a man who threw their money around in such a crazy way.

He became convinced the nurse was not coming back, and he turned crosswise on the bed, stretching out his serviceable arm for Brother’s briefcase. He was able to reach it and drag it onto the bed. It was not locked. He gripped the zipper tab with his fingers and pulled it open. He looked inside.

What is this thing? he thought. He lifted out a device with a leatherette covering. It was about the size of a cigar box for twenty-five cigars. On the outside were two knobs and a red light. When he accidentally tapped the device while handling it, he noticed the light glow.

He got it. The device was a battery-driven wire recorder. Since the light was glowing, it obviously was operating. There was nothing else in the briefcase.

More frosting on the cake, he thought.

He considered smashing the recorder against the floor or at least pulling the wire off the uptake spool and ruining it, crumpling it into a little metal wad—but in the end he just put the device back and returned the briefcase to the chair.

Let the bastard hear what he wanted to hear. Maybe it would mean getting to the bottom of things that much faster.

If Harsh retained any doubts about Brother being an oddball, they were removed when Brother paid a second visit. Harsh was lying with his eyes closed trying to doze. Four or five hours had gone by and he had more or less calmed down. He knew he needed rest. When he heard the door open, he supposed the nurse was back, and he kept his eyes shut until he heard the newcomer pick up the briefcase and heard the zipper rasp as it opened. Harsh lifted his head.

Brother was removing the little wire recorder from the case, and looking at Harsh with an expression of contempt. Without speaking he placed the recorder on the bed and turned one of its knobs. The recorder whirred as it rewound. Brother adjusted the knobs again. The recorder began to talk, playing back what Brother and Harsh had said on their first meeting. Then came what Vera Sue and Harsh had said to each other. The device evidently had a triggering mechanism so that it only recorded when there was sound being made in range of the microphone.