Killer in the Street (3 page)

The rain stopped. Kyle looked upward and saw a few stars winking between the parting clouds, and they seemed a good omen. There was no one waiting in the street. Nobody cared about Bernie any more. Nobody would care about Bernie, today, tomorrow or ever….

Route 80 out of Phoenix turned south at Apache Junction, leaving the tall shadow of the Superstition Mountains behind, and proceeded in a southerly direction to Tucson. By seven-thirty on an April morning in 1967 the sun, which would be unbearable at its zenith, had risen above the purple rim of the Santa Catalinas to bathe the lower metropolis in benevolent warmth. The grass on the lawns of the well-kept estates still glistened with early dew; and the cloudless sky vaulting the city seemed to have been scrubbed of all impurities to produce an incredible shade of azure.

The highway approaching the city carried little traffic, but some five miles outside the Tuscon limits a light beige late-model sedan was parked on the shoulder. The driver and sole occupant—a neat, middle-aged man—had removed his well-tailored beige suit coat and folded it neatly over the salesman’s sample case on the front seat. Taking care not to dislodge his cocoa brown rough straw hat, he then left the sedan, walked back to the rear and unlocked the trunk. From it he took a screwdriver. He rolled back the French cuffs of his white shirt and was careful not to touch the knees of his trousers to the earth as he unscrewed the soiled New York license plates and replaced them with clean Arizona plates. Stepping back to survey the completed job, he scowled disapproval. He then took a white handkerchief from his hip pocket, rolled it in the dust and generously daubed the new plates until they had the well-traveled look of their predecessors. Now satisfied, he dumped the New York plates in the trunk and slammed down the lid. The task completed, he started walking back to the driver’s seat just as a passing truck stirred up a cloud of dust and sand. The man removed his glasses—steel-rimmed bifocals—and tried to clean them with an unsoiled corner of the handkerchief, but the glasses slipped from his hand. Without them the world instantly became a bright blur. He stooped and groped about in the dust—shifted footing and heard the sharp breaking of glass under his heel. He retrieved the twisted rims, fingered them until certain they were useless and then tossed them away. He then got back into the car and searched through the sample case on the front seat until he found a second pair of steel-rimmed bifocals. Fixing them in place, he settled back behind the steering wheel and drove on.

At the edge of the business district, the highway forked off past a row of luxury-type motels. The beige sedan nosed past three of them and then pulled in under the portico of a huge, rambling ranch-style affair that had grown in stages over several acres of otherwise nonproductive soil. The driver, placing the sample case under his arm, got out and walked into the air-conditioned and immaculate world beyond the glass entrance doors. Ignoring the expensive décor, he went directly to the desk and placed the sample case on the counter.

“I have a reservation,” he said. “R. R. Donaldson.”

The desk clerk was a husky undergrad from the University of Arizona. He had close-cropped blond hair, a sun-browned face and a broad smile too frank to be professional. The alert blue eyes behind Donaldson’s glasses measured and evaluated the boy instantly. He was too healthy to be anything but a harmless local.

The clerk checked his files and came up beaming. “Yes sir,” he responded brightly. “R. R. Donaldson—Phoenix.” He pushed the registration card and the pen across the desk. “Have a nice trip, Mr. Donaldson?”

R. R. Donaldson carefully lettered in his name, home address, license number and firm: Baemer Air Conditioning.

“I ran into rain outside Mesa,” he remarked. “Where can I find a car wash?”

The clerk was new on the job. He took an assortment of folders from the rack on the counter and read the titles aloud, “ ‘Points of Interest’ … ‘Theaters and Amusements’ … ‘Street Directory …’”

“Never mind,” Donaldson said. “I’ll find one myself. Do I get a key?”

The key was attached to a strip of red plastic. Before Donaldson could touch it, the key disappeared under the palm of an accommodating porter. Simultaneously, the porter reached for the sample case, but this time he lost the grab. Donaldson’s hand was faster, and the eyes behind the bifocals had a wary glint.

“I’ll keep this one,” he said. He forked into his pocket for the car keys and tossed them to the porter. “You can park my car. There’s a large bag in the trunk.”

The number lettered on the red plastic tab was 227. The room was on the second floor—inside and overlooking the swimming pool. R. R. Donaldson accompanied the porter upstairs, gave him a dollar tip and bolted the door when he left. It was a large room containing a double bed, a pair of lounge chairs covered in baby calfskin and a desk-top dresser. A wide plate-glass door faced poolside, and a thin stream of muted jazz was leaking through a wall speaker above the switch plate. Donaldson turned off the music and drew the drapes across the door. He then took the sample case to the bed, unlocked it and carefully examined the contents. On top were a few merchandising catalogs and an insulation sample; underneath was a gun. It was, to the appreciative eyes of R. R. Donaldson, a beautiful gun. Slim, blue-barreled with a stock of oiled black walnut that had been carved just enough to make a firm grip in the hand. There was a cylindrical silencer to slip over the end of the barrel. He fitted it in place, made certain the weapon was loaded and ready for instant use, and then returned it to the sample case and locked the lid.

Donaldson looked at his wristwatch. It was ten minutes past eight—still too early to go uptown. He removed his jacket, folded it carefully over the back of the chair and was at the point of unfastening the silver and ebony links in his French cuffs when a sound outside the glass door attracted his attention. He drew back the drapes, slid open the glass door and stepped out onto the narrow balcony shared in common with the other units in this wing of the building. Below, a trio of early risers were already at the pool; two preteen-age boys in white trunks and a girl of possibly seventeen whose brief yellow suit fitted tightly over a young body just beginning to bloom. Alone, she walked to the deep end of the pool, adjusted a swim cap made of an abundance of white rubber petals and plunged into the water.

R. R. Donaldson’s hands gripped the edge of the wrought-iron railing as he leaned forward to watch the slender figure glide through the water, and his virtually expressionless face took on a glow of suppressed excitement. He might have been watching the girl through a transom outside her bedroom. The water was clear and unnaturally blue. He could follow every twist and turn of her body as she swam. He could measure the length of her stroke and calculate the strength of the graceful brown arms. Once she looked up—not seeing him—but flashing a smile that came from the sheer joy of being alive. Drops of moisture appeared on Donaldson’s upper lip and his stomach flattened against the railing. But the replacement glasses he had taken from the sample case were a looser fit than the originals. He felt them sliding down his nose—grabbed at the frame and missed. The glasses fell straight down and clattered on the cement below just as the smaller of the boys poised to dive into the pool.

The boy saw the glasses and glanced upward.

“I’ll get ‘em for you, mister,” he yelled.

For Donaldson the pool was now a blue bowl of indistinct dimensions; the girl, a slender slip of yellow and the boy a pair of scrambling legs. He groped his way back through the bedroom and was standing in the open door when the boy, dripping and breathless, delivered the glasses. Donaldson groped in his pocket for a silver dollar, gave it to the panting, wet form standing before him and stepped back into the room.

“Thanks!” the boy said. “Say, mister, do you believe in gambling?”

“Gambling?” Donaldson echoed.

“Because I bet my brother that you’d give me a tip, and he bet me the tip that you keep your hat on because you’re bald. Are you bald, mister?”

Donaldson didn’t answer. He slammed the door shut and stepped over to the mirror in front of the desk. His fingers were trembling as he donned the glasses. The tall beige and white vapor reflected in the glass instantly acquired outline and depth. He removed the straw hat. He wasn’t bald. His hair was expertly and expensively cut—black with a silver brindle to add distinction. Distinction—not age. He raised one hand to straighten a lock dislodged by the removal of the hat and then stopped—hand in midair. One lens of the glasses was perfect; the other was laced with cracks. His extra glasses were embedded in the crusty shoulder of a highway some distance outside the city, and that could mean a dangerous change of plans. There was only one thing to do. He found the telephone directory on a shelf under the telephone on a bedside table and turned quickly to the classified section listing of optometrists.

Ollie Madsen unlocked the front door and opened his shop for business every morning at nine o’clock with no more than a two- or three-minute variance from schedule. But Sue Rae Madsen, who was almost seven months old, had cut her first tooth during the turbulent night and the clock above the display counter stood at nine-fifteen when he turned on the safety catch and admitted an impatient customer.

Ollie had never seen the man before, but he prided himself on his powers of observation. The stranger looked to be about forty or forty-five. He was a little taller than average—stocky but not overweight. His clean shaven face, distorted by a pair of bifocals with only one lens, was conspicuously pale for the region. Ollie glanced at the beige sedan parked at the curb and was surprised to see that it carried Arizona plates. Maybe, he reflected, as he led the customer back to the counter, the man had been sick.

R. R. Donaldson removed his glasses. “I broke this lens this morning,” he said. “Can you replace it?”

Ollie also prided himself on the power of hearing. The stranger’s accent wasn’t local. His voice was curt with an undertone of anxiety. The words came fast and slurred together—as if he hadn’t time to pronounce each one distinctly. Ollie took the glasses from his hand, silently noting the expensive links on the French cuffs and the way the coat sleeve broke at just the right place. He studied the unshattered lens carefully.

“I can replace it,” he said.

“How soon?”

“Three, maybe four days.”

Donaldson didn’t like that. He reached into his breast pocket for a wallet and took out a business card.

“I just came down from Phoenix on business,” he said. “I can’t talk to my customers without eyes and my company won’t stand for a four-day delay.”

Ollie glanced at the card with an air of aloof independence. “It’s not me,” he said. “It’s the lab—”

Donaldson opened the wallet. “I’ll pay,” he said. He took out two fifty-dollar bills and waited.

Ollie Madsen liked money as well as the next man, but something in Donaldson’s tone irritated him. An arrogance. A threat. But accommodating a customer wasn’t a matter for early morning grudges. Ignoring the bills he said, “I’ll put the job on a rush special, but it can’t be completed in less than two days no matter what I do. Sorry, Mr. Donaldson. Here, take my card so you can call and make sure they’re ready before you make another trip in.”

The edict didn’t please the customer but it was final. But he couldn’t drive back to the motel without glasses. He bought a pair of tinted lenses which magnified enough to give Ollie Madsen a clearly defined body and a recognizable face, and then returned to the sedan. He headed back toward the motel and drove three blocks before his new visual aids sighted a huge sign over an operating car-wash establishment. Donaldson was a meticulous man. He liked his suits pressed, his cuffs starched, his shoes shined and his car washed and polished. He drove into the car wash and got out of the sedan.

“Fill out the coupon for the free drawing,” the attendant said brightly. “You may win a new car. Just write your name … address … phone number …”

“How much for the wash?” Donaldson asked.

“A dollar seventy-five with spray wax—Hey, mister! Where are you going? Don’t you want to fill out a coupon?”

Donaldson’s new glasses were slipping down on his nose. He shoved them back into place and scrutinized the auto wash lineup. There were three cars ahead of the beige sedan, and the wash-and-wipe boys didn’t look like the type to take any prizes for speed and efficiency.

“I need a cup of coffee,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

On the corner of the next block he could see the hotel with a street-front restaurant, and it had been a long time since breakfast.