Killer in the Street (21 page)

The effect of Charley’s bourbon had worn off, but the idea it had stimulated remained. The idea was as simple as the urge for survival. Yesterday he was in the dark. He saw and recognized a killer several thousand miles from his natural habitat and was afraid. But last night he had learned why his death was so important to the man who called himself R. R. Donaldson. This was more than just another contract for murder; this was self-preservation for the killer himself and that made the hunt more personal. It was no longer a syndicate against a witness; it was one man against one man. This was a hunt Kyle understood. A jungle was a jungle anywhere: Korea, Vietnam, or the streets of a city. An enemy was an enemy anywhere, and for Kyle the odds were still in his favor if he had the courage to act.

He parked on a quiet street at the edge of a Mexican town and gave more thought to his plan of action. He didn’t know where or when Donaldson planned to strike, but logic told him it would be as soon as possible after he picked up his glasses from Madsen’s shop. The appearance of Dee, Van and Jameson at the Apache Inn had prompted immediate flight. It would be comforting to think Donaldson had abandoned his project, but Kyle wasn’t a wishful thinker. At the moment he trusted nothing but the gun in his pocket.

And so he would take the initiative Donaldson had lost. He would pick the time and the place, and nobody would corroborate Jake Berendo’s confession of complicity in the Bernie Chapman murder. The trial that was intended to air so much dirty linen would die for lack of evidence, and Donaldson’s death would be attributed to simple gangland insurance against another information leak. Moreover, there would be no reason for gangland retaliation. Crime was a business, and businessmen know there is a cutoff date for everything. Nothing could be gained by retaliation. Vendettas were carried out to maintain discipline within a group, and Kyle was merely a silent witness who—with Donaldson dead—would have nothing to talk about. Having the pressure eased in New York would be more important to Donaldson’s organization than creating a new pressure area out of revenge.

Kyle’s mind played back the logic that had started in a semialcoholic reverie on Charley’s sofa and heard the reassurance he wanted to hear. And if his logic was faulty, he had no alternative but to wait for the killer to complete the job he had come to do. That realization simplified the decision.

And decision was stimulating. There were details to be worked out, but more would be improvised than detailed. For that he needed to keep at the top of his wits and his strength. He scanned the rear-view mirror and saw a disheveled, unshaven man who would attract attention anywhere. In spite of the notorious unreliability of eyewitnesses, he wanted to look as ordinary as possible. He needed a shave and breakfast. The shave was easily obtained with a transistor shaver he kept in the glove compartment of the car. Breakfast meant driving back into the city, but now he would be coming from the general direction of Casa Grande, still avoiding patrolled streets, and with a definite plan of action.

The first objective was to pinpoint the optometrist where, sooner or later, Donaldson had to put in an appearance. He was lucky. It was located in one of the newer commercial buildings on East Broadway with a good visual approach and a large parking area. Located diagonally to the building was a drive-in café that catered to the early breakfast trade. Kyle parked the station wagon in an alleyway adjacent to the shop and walked to the café. He took a booth at a window that afforded a clear view of Madsen’s front door and ordered coffee. Later he would order breakfast and pretend to be engrossed in a paper purchased from an enterprising newsboy, because there was nothing more to be done until Madsen opened his shop …

At about the same time Kyle was stretching himself awake in the front seat of the station wagon, a small charter plane emerged from the pale Eastern sky and de-escalated to a gentle landing at the Tucson airport. From the passenger section stepped two men wearing almost identical brown worsted suits and tan gabardine topcoats. The shorter of the two also wore a narrow-brimmed felt hat and carried a featherweight portable typewriter. The taller, a rangy redhead, was hatless and carried a brown leather attaché case. They walked quickly to the terminal building where Jimmy Jameson towered over the meager personnel on duty at this early hour with his cream-colored stockman’s-style Stetson contributing the proper air of authority.

The man who carried the typewriter stretched out his right hand. “Captain Jameson,” he said (it was a statement of fact and not a question), “my name is Clifford. Your office put in a call to my paper in New York concerning a story I wrote on the Jake Berendo indictment.”

Jameson accepted the man’s hand briefly. It was soft and feminine. He could have crushed it with a little pressure.

“This,” Clifford added, turning to his companion, “is Mr. Baird of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He’s here for the same reason I am—to learn more about the man you think is Rick Drasco.”

Jameson shook hands with Baird, and this time the grip matched his own. The introductions over, he then led the way to the official sedan that was waiting in front of the building. They didn’t use the siren on the drive back to the city. The highways were almost devoid of traffic as the dawn shrugged free of night. It was going to be another cloudless day. Clifford and Baird were already shedding their topcoats.

When the small party reached Jameson’s office, Dee Walker and Van Bryson were waiting. Dee had benefited from a few hours of sleep and Van had showered and changed to a pair of gray cords and a brown suede jacket. Detective Geary put aside the book of crossword puzzles with which he had kept himself awake for the last few hours and listened while Jameson briefed everybody on the situation. With the exception of the state trooper’s report on the man who had registered at the Apache Inn as R. R. Donaldson, and the fact that no trace of either the beige Chrysler or its occupants had been located at any hotel or motel in the area, there was little change in the situation from the time Van first brought Dee to the police. Nor was there any trace of Kyle. Charlene Evans had been interviewed. She was loyal. She stuck by her story with such vehemence Geary was inclined to think she believed it herself. That was because he hadn’t seen the pillow and blanket she snatched off the divan and popped into the hall closet before his arrival. The glass Kyle had used for bourbon was in the dishwasher and his note on the telephone pad safely in the trash chute. Not that Charley wasn’t sentimental. She was smart enough to know the smell of real trouble.

“I can understand how Kyle could avoid us if he doesn’t want to be found,” Jameson said. “He knows the area. But Donaldson is a stranger in the city. Unless he has a local contact, he should be easy to find. How do you hide an eight-cylinder sedan?”

“In a garage,” Baird suggested.

“We’ve already checked all the commercial garages. Nothing. What did you bring in your briefcase, Mr. Baird?”

Baird set the case on Jameson’s desk and unlocked it. It contained the portfolio filled with information on both Berendo and Drasco. There were photographs of Drasco—all candid and unposed.

“He’s a clever operator,” Baird admitted. “He has no police record, no mug shots and no registered fingerprints. We know what he is, what he does and his usual method of procedure; but we have no legal charge against him.”

“If he’s holding Veronica Moore against her wishes, you have a charge now,” Jameson said. “She hasn’t returned to the motel. I’ve talked to her father by telephone. She hasn’t been in touch with him at the base. I located her mother in Los Angeles. The girl hasn’t been in touch with her either. Mrs. Moore, incidentally, is coming in by the next plane. You’ll have to meet it, Geary. I don’t want this thing to get sticky in a news way.” Jameson turned to Clifford. “That,” he added pointedly, “includes you, Mr. Clifford. I didn’t particularly want you to come here, either.”

“Thanks,” Clifford said. “I always get that kind of welcome. Now, can anybody positively identify Rick Drasco as the man in the missing sedan?”

“The room clerk at the Apache Inn should be able to do it,” Jameson suggested, and then Dee, who had left her chair and edged forward to peer anxiously at the array of photos fanned out on the desk, gave a startled cry.

“That’s the man!” she said.

“What man, Mrs. Walker?” Baird asked.

“The man who was looking for a house number yesterday when I started to pull out of the driveway to go to the ranch. I backed into him. I mean, our bumpers hit. I have trouble with the reverse gear on a stick shift.”

“You didn’t tell me anything about that!” Jameson said sharply.

“I didn’t think of it. I should have. The dark glasses—oh, yes. Put dark glasses on the man in these pictures and it’s the same man. Drasco. He was at our house, Jimmy. Why? He said he was looking for a house number, but it was
our house
number, wasn’t it?”

“Did you actually converse with this man, Mrs. Walker?” Baird asked.

“Yes. I apologized for hitting his car, and he told me he was looking for a house number. And then Mike told him we were going up to Uncle Sam’s cabin. Jimmy, I swear it was this same man!”

“Uncle Sam’s cabin?” Baird echoed.

“Sam Stevens—Kyle Walker’s employer. Partner, actually,” Jameson explained. “Sam has a house up in the mountains—calls it his cabin. Walker sent his wife and four-year-old son up there yesterday morning shortly after recognizing a nonexistent war buddy driving the Chrysler everybody’s trying to find. I’ve had a hunch for several hours that it was Drasco he recognized, but he didn’t want me to know that. He’s been running ever since. I don’t know why.”

“When somebody runs from Rick Drasco, there’s usually a very good reason,” Baird said bluntly.

Dee was too frightened to speak. She reached out and clutched Van’s arm for support, and clung to it until her knuckles turned white from the pressure. The whole situation was a kind of nightmare that happened only to other people she sometimes read about in newspapers. But it was daylight now and the nightmare should end. She listened to Jameson go over the whole ground they had been over and over before, and when Baird asked questions she merely nodded or shook her head. Nod yes. She and Kyle had been living in the Cecil Arms when Bernie Chapman was murdered. Nod yes. Kyle had been out that night and come home through the garage. Nod no. He hadn’t seen Bernie and he had never mentioned the murder to her since they left New York. But no matter how carefully she nodded, the evidence was still before her on the desk. Rick Drasco had been parked in front of the Walkers’ drive.

Baird scanned his file and frowned. “Drasco usually works with an accomplice, but not always,” he said. “With or without an accomplice, he always directs the job himself. Two things are out of line in this situation. The first is the girl. Drasco doesn’t mix business with pleasure.”

“Everybody gets overconfident sometimes,” Clifford suggested.

Baird ignored the interruption. “The second thing out of line is the dark glasses. Drasco wears steel-rimmed bifocals. I can even give you the prescription for the lenses. He’s been spotted in Miami, pre-Castro Havana, Puerto Rico and Southern California, but he’s never been spotted wearing dark glasses.”

And then Jameson slammed one fist down on the top of his desk and shook his head in disbelief at his own stupidity. “Ignorant!” he said. “How ignorant can a man get? Geary, you’re a college man. Tell me,
pronto
, why does a man wear dark glasses day and night, indoors and out?”

“Because he can’t see without them,” Geary said.

Jameson sighed and dug a slip of yellow paper from his shirt pocket. It was the page he had torn from the classified telephone directory in Donaldson’s room at the Apache Inn. He placed it on the desk beside the photos.

“Mr. Baird,” he said, “what would happen if Drasco broke his glasses?”

“He would be immobilized until he got new ones,” Baird said. “Where did you get this, Captain?”

“In the room at the Apache Inn occupied by R. R. Donaldson.”

“‘Optometrists,’ ” Baird read aloud. “Captain, have you checked out these shops?”

“We’re practically on our way,” Jameson said. “Geary—”

“I’m going too,” Clifford said.

“You may get your head shot off,” Jameson warned.

Clifford shrugged. “So who lives forever? Coming, Baird?”

Baird looked at his wristwatch. “It’s an hour before the morning flight to Mexico City,” he said. “I should have time—”

“Mexico City?” Jameson interrupted. “Are you leaving us?”

Baird smiled. “You sound hopeful, Captain. No. I have a tip that Walker will be on that flight ticketed as C. Evanson.”

“C. Evanson? That’s Charlene Evans!” Geary exclaimed. “I knew she was covering for Walker! I’ll get her back here—”

“No, don’t do that!” Baird ordered. “You’ll wreck the whole setup. I’ll be at the airport to learn who C. Evanson really is. Let’s check out those optometrists.”

The two men from New York followed Geary out of the office and Jameson relaxed. There should be time to locate the right shop before it opened for business, and then it would be just a matter of waiting until Drasco put in an appearance. Wearily, he sat down in the chair under the nude calendar. Wearily, he smiled at Dee Walker.

“It’s going to be all right, Dee,” he said. “I don’t know why Kyle thought he had to play a lone hand with this. I can guess, but I don’t know. But I do know that he was wrong. We’ll pick up Drasco’s trail when he goes to the optometrist. We won’t lose him, I promise.”

Dee looked at Van. He nodded his reassurance. It was all so clear now. They had nothing to do but wait. Dee wanted to accept that but she just couldn’t return those weary smiles. Something was wrong. She wanted to tell them, but they wouldn’t understand. Men wanted logical reasons for everything, and for some things there was no logic. There was only a kind of knowing.

At two minutes before nine o’clock, a white pickup truck pulled into the parking area in front of Madsen’s shop and stopped. Kyle, subconsciously aware that the pickup resembled one owned by Sam Stevens, lowered his fifth cup of coffee and watched Donaldson, who still wore the dark glasses and carried what appeared to be a salesman’s sample case, alight from the cab and walk to the door of the shop. He tried the knob but the door was locked. He rapped on the glass. Thirty seconds passed before the door opened and Donaldson disappeared from view inside the shop, and in that time Kyle put down his cup and took out his wallet. He couldn’t wait for a check. He dropped a pair of bills on the table and hurried to the door.