Killer in the Street (14 page)

Jameson terminated the guessing game and turned his attention back to the room. He found the folded newspaper—unfolded it and looked at the masthead.

“New York City,” he read aloud.

“Captain,” Morrison said at his shoulder, “there’s a porter here who has some information I think you’ll be interested to hear.”

Jameson refolded the paper and studied the picture of Jake Berendo. He read the caption and the lead paragraph of the story, but it still didn’t ring any bells. New York gang wars weren’t in his jurisdiction. Times were changing and not all of the changes were good, but they hadn’t changed that much—yet.

“I sent Waverly down to see if Donaldson’s Chrysler was in the parking lot,” Morrison added. “It wasn’t but Waverly found this porter who saw him driving off the premises a few minutes ago.”

Jameson left off reading the Berendo story and turned to see what Waverly had found. He was a uniformed porter: a growing boy about six foot-four who was too long for his trousers and too skinny for his jacket. His name was Larch and his information was brief. Yes, he had seen Donaldson drive away in the Chrysler. The big car had almost run him down in the darkness.

“It’s those dark glasses,” the porter said. “He probably couldn’t see me. He’s been wearing them all day—in the sunlight at the pool and in the dark at the bar. I’ll bet he wears ‘em to bed at night—if he has time.”

The worldly innuendo in the porter’s last phrase reminded Jameson how messy his job could get. It was an opening to the question he had to answer next.

“Was Donaldson alone in the car?”

Larch grinned obscenely. “No, sir! There was a girl with him. The Moore girl from bungalow 12.”

“How can you be sure? You said it was dark?”

“Okay, I’m not sure. I figured it was the Moore girl because he’s been making a play for her all day. The whole staff’s been laughing about it. A guy old enough to be her father!”

“And she’s a pretty neat job, right?”

Jameson didn’t wait for an answer. He had no time for motel gossip. He walked to the bedside table and picked up the telephone. “Ring bungalow 12,” he told the operator. While she rang, his attention strayed to the classified directory on the table that was still open to the heading
Optometrists
.

There was an answering voice on the telephone after the third ring. A boy’s voice husky with sleep.

“Is Miss Moore in?” Jameson asked.

“Who?” the boy said.

“Miss Moore.”

“Oh, you mean my sister Veronica. Naw, she’s having dinner with that old guy, Mr. Donaldson. Can I give her a message?”

“No, thanks,” Jameson said. “It’s not important.”

He replaced the phone. “Did you say Donaldson always wore dark glasses?” he asked the porter.

“Every time I saw him he did.”

Jameson tore the page listing
Optometrists
from the classified directory and thanked the porter and Mr. Morrison for their cooperation. Then he went back downstairs to Morrison’s office and gathered up Dee Walker and Van Bryson and they all drove quietly back to police headquarters without any of the nice people at the chuck wagon, or the staff, or even Albert Morrison having the vaguest idea that somebody was about to die.

Twenty minutes later Jameson sat under the nude on the Dover Insurance Brokerage calendar and watched Dee Walker’s face while she read the news story about Jake Berendo and the five-year-old murder at the Cecil Arms. He watched Van Bryson’s face, too. Faces could be more telling than fingerprints.

“The Cecil Arms!” Dee exclaimed. “Van, we lived at the Cecil Arms when Bernie Chapman was killed. You remember. You were at the apartment the week after it happened!”

Faces. Jameson rocked back in his chair and concentrated on Bryson. Some men didn’t need handsome features; they had a magnetism and wit that made them seem to shine in the dark. But Bryson wasn’t shining. He was frowning.

“The week after Chapman was killed?” he challenged.

“Yes, don’t you remember? You stopped by to see Kyle before flying to Tucson. Charlene Evans was with you—that was the night we met. It was raining, and Kyle said it. always rained on the night of his extension course—but he’d quit the course because he had this bug about leaving New York. He even had those passport applications—”

“Passport applications?” Jameson echoed.

“For tsetse flies,” Dee said. “That’s a private joke. Kyle said we were getting in a rut. He wanted to go somewhere else to work. Out of the States. He started talking that way the night Bernie Chapman was killed—but he didn’t know Bernie was killed. He couldn’t have known until hours later when the police detective came to the door. Could he, Van?”

Dee’s question was like a small cry for help. She stared at Van as if he might be a fragment of God who could solve a frightening enigma. Van didn’t answer.

“And then, one week later,” she recalled, “You helped him get out of New York—”

“And out of the rut,” Van said quickly.

“No. No, don’t you see? He was frightened. I knew it then, but everything happened so fast it just didn’t relate. Kyle heard you were going to Tucson to work for Sam, and he suddenly had to go too. Don’t you remember? And then Charlene said that was why you stopped by. Sam needed another good man and she’d asked you to recommend one—”

Van reached under the desk and gave Dee’s hand a sharp, warning squeeze. For a few moments she seemed to have forgotten all about Jimmy Jameson and his calculating eyes.

Jameson missed nothing.

“I think you should let Mrs. Walker speak her mind, Bryson,” he drawled. “It might do her good to get her troubles aired.”

“But she’s not in any condition to talk!” Van protested. “She’s emotionally upset and exhausted. She hasn’t even had any food.”

“Then I’ll send out for some. Geary—!”

There was nobody on duty to answer the intercom, but Jameson’s voice boomed through the empty corridors and Detective Geary answered the call. He had a report to make before taking new orders. There was a man named Charles Dover living in the environs of Prescott, but he didn’t know Kyle Walker, he didn’t drive a Chrysler and he had been mustered out of the only army he had served in in 1919.

“Then Kyle told me a big whopper,” Jameson reflected. “I wonder why. Call over to the Downtown Café, Geary, and have them send over some sandwiches and coffee, and then put in a long distance to New York City and see what else you can learn about this story.”

Jameson circled the Berendo piece with a marking crayon and passed it to Detective Geary’s open hand.

“And, Geary,” he added as the younger man moved toward the door, “be sure and keep me posted on that other matter.”

The faces across the desk were curious. Anxious, tired, and curious. Jameson felt a little guilty. No brainwashing inquisitor ever had a better setup.

“Now, Mrs. Walker,” he said softly, “why don’t you take your story from the beginning? You’ve got me real interested. Why do you think Kyle took such a fright the night a crime syndicate had one of its flunkeys murdered in the garage of the building where you lived?”

Kyle couldn’t follow Donaldson when he fled the Apache Inn. The blue station wagon was parked on the far side of the opposite wing. By the time he reached it and got it into motion, the beige Chrysler was blocks away. It was time for Kyle to get moving, too. He nosed the car out of the parking lot and got back onto the highway. Dee had come down from the mountain—that was his fault. He should have remembered to telephone her and make some excuse for delaying his arrival until morning. Unaware of Jimmy Jameson’s discovery of the stolen plates on Donaldson’s car, he assumed her anxiety was what had sparked the visit to the Apache Inn. She would have gone to Van first—frightened and angry. Van’s logic would have sent her to the police. Jameson’s off-the-record search for Charles Dover was the connecting link to the motel. That was the way Kyle’s mind reestablished order out of chaos, but the damage was done. He had lost his advantage over Donaldson. He no longer knew from what base the killer would strike.

But now he knew why the killer would strike. It was all written down somewhere in proper legal terminology—one of the things he knew because it had been important enough to look up five years ago and had then been forgotten because he wanted to block out one rainy night and everything that pertained thereto. It could be blocked out no longer. Kyle drove into the desert until his panic was gone and his mind clear, and then he took another road back into the city, keeping a wary eye open for anything that vaguely resembled any of Jimmy Jameson’s colleagues. The police could be very efficient husband-finders, and this was no time to discuss domestic relations.

Kyle had lost track of time. He drove to the library and discovered that it was closed. There was still the campus library and, through Van, he had influence with the custodian. Midterm exams were pending, and another student intent on zero-hour research in the legal section would excite no attention whatsoever. It was the New York Criminal Code that he needed. It took only fifteen minutes to find it, and then he was but seconds away from the reason Bernie Chapman’s killer had come to town.

It was quite simple:

Jake Berendo was charged with the murder of Bernie Chapman; but Jake Berendo was the accomplice—not the killer. He would talk to save his own skin. He would name the man who had worn steel-rimmed glasses and now called himself R. R. Donaldson, but the testimony of an accomplice wouldn’t convict
unless he was corroborated by such other evidence …

Only Kyle Walker could convict the strangler of Bernie Chapman. “Other evidence” was just a legal term for a man in an elevator watching an act of murder. He replaced the volume and returned to his car. He sat in the darkness and smoked four consecutive cigarettes, and by that time he knew why he still couldn’t go to Jimmy Jameson and tell him the truth. It was obvious that Donaldson had known about Berendo’s arrest before he came to Tucson. It was obvious that he had known where to come. But Kyle had left no forwarding address when he moved out of the Cecil Arms. He had taken Dee to her family in Albany and his only correspondence until she joined him had been sent to her there. It was easy to guess Donaldson’s reactions after that instant in the garage when he looked up to see Kyle staring at him with the execution wire still in his hands and Bernie’s body at his feet. It was easy to imagine how he must have watched the building and identified Kyle Walker as the witness. It was even easy to understand why he took the course of no action when Kyle failed to report his experience to the police. But it wasn’t so easy to understand how he knew exactly where to find that witness when the pressure was on.

This morning, when the only pressure Kyle was aware of was on himself, he hadn’t considered Donaldson’s
modus operandi
. It was possible his every action had been watched from the night he left the Cecil Arms for the last time. It was possible he had been lost and painstakingly relocated. It was even possible that word of his recent success had spread beyond the local region and rekindled Donaldson’s interest. One thing was certain. The killer’s target had been definitely identified.

And so, if he told the truth to Jameson, there would be full police protection for himself and his family. But there would also be a return to New York City, a trial and publicity. There would be delay on the new job with a maximum investment at stake. And even if the district attorney had enough power to outweigh the kind of legal talent Donaldson’s employers could buy and get a conviction, there would be no safety. No family can live under police protection forever, and those who reign by vindictive terror can’t afford a crack in the image.

By the time he had snuffed out the fourth cigarette, Kyle’s decision was made. He would play the loner game all the way. But he didn’t want Dee getting in that way. He wanted her back at Sam’s cabin with Mike. He consulted his watch. It was half-past ten. He couldn’t call Van because Van was with Dee. He couldn’t call Sam. Sam had gone out to dinner and afterwards to a benefit ball for some orphanage. That left only one ally: Charley of the well-kept memo pad.

Charlene Evans lived in one of the newer apartment buildings in the Country Club Drive section where the carports were tucked under the rear overhand and nested the tenant’s vehicles like so many chicks under the wings of a mother hen. Charley didn’t own an automobile. A year ago she had dumped her last compact on the used-car market and started peddling her way to the office on a neat, collapsible Italian bicycle.

“If a secretary doesn’t start watching her hips at twenty-nine,” she informed him, “she can be sure nobody will be watching them at thirty-nine.”

Kyle was grateful for her foresight when he slid the station wagon in alongside the two-wheeler and made for the nearest stairway. The wagon was too conspicuous to leave parked on the street with Jimmy Jameson on his tail. He took the stairs two at a time and was relieved to see that Charley’s lights were still glowing. He glanced at the illuminated dial of his watch. It was ten-thirty. He rang the bell and waited while the patio light came on. Charley opened the door. She seemed neither surprised nor elated.