Killer in the Street (5 page)

But an assassin imported from New York! The intended victim must be important. Nature was reviving Kyle’s self-preserving instincts. When his imagination transferred the pressure to an unknown victim, he could think clearly. He could pull away and gain perspective. And then it occurred to him that he had had an extraordinary stroke of luck when he saw the strangler on the crosswalk, because he alone, of all the people in the city, knew a killer was on the street—and that was one thing the killer didn’t know that he knew.

There was a thing about working with Sam Stevens. A man learned to think quickly and to act immediately on every advantage: to strike while the iron was hot. Kyle started up the station wagon and headed back to Sixth Street. Traffic was heavier now as business became brisk, and it was almost ten-thirty when he reached the hotel for the third time that morning. He parked and went directly into the coffee shop. Once inside, he paused and scanned the patrons within view. The coffee-break crowd was in now, leaving only a few single-occupant booths. The strangler was nowhere in sight.

Kyle stepped up to the cashier.

“Mr. Walker,” she said brightly, “—back again? Did you forget something?”

She was a nice girl. Her name was Hazel Morgan. She had one brother at Arizona State and another in the Air Force, and she carried in her handbag a snapshot of a good-looking forestry major in his last year at Albuquerque. All of this nonessential information, gathered at random over a period of years, seemed terribly important at the moment. Hazel Morgan was a piece of a rational world Kyle didn’t want to lose.

“I’m looking for someone, Hazel,” he said. “A man came in here about half an hour ago. A man you probably never saw before. He was wearing a light suit and a straw hat—and dark glasses.”

He knew it was a pitifully inadequate description. Hazel Morgan said, “Mr. Walker, if you knew how many—” And then she paused, remembering. “The fifty-dollar bill!” she exclaimed. “You must mean the man who needed change for a fifty-dollar bill.” And then her smile vanished. “Gee, I hope it isn’t counterfeit!”

“It isn’t,” Kyle assured her. “That man is no fool.”

“Do you know him?”

“I know he’s not a fool. Why did he give you the fifty? Couldn’t he get change at the desk?”

“But he wasn’t a guest of the hotel, Mr. Walker. He needed the change for the car wash down in the next block.” And then, because Kyle looked puzzled, she added, “Guests have their cars washed in the hotel.”

It was an unexpected break. If Kyle was going to maintain his advantage over the strangler, it was necessary to learn where he was staying. He could now eliminate the hotel and resume the search at the car wash. At midmorning business was brisk at a downtown auto laundry. Kyle turned the station wagon over to the attendants and went to the cashier’s window.

“Fill out a coupon for the free drawing,” the cashier said brightly. “You may win a new car. Name … address … license number …”

“I’m not interested in a new car,” Kyle said. “I’m interested in a dirty one that went through here within the hour.”

“Make?” the cashier asked.

“I don’t know,” Kyle said.

“Body style? Color? License number?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Then I don’t know how we can be held responsible if anything is wrong,” the man protested. “Who owns the car?”

Kyle didn’t even know that. He had to fall back on the description he had given Hazel Morgan and hope for the best. It was mention of the dark glasses that drew a response.

“Sure, I remember the guy,” the cashier said. “Those glasses bothered him. He went out for coffee, and when he came back I reminded him that he hadn’t filled out a slip for the drawing. He took off the glasses to read. Then he said, ‘Skip it. I can’t see a thing without my bifocals.’ ”

Kyle had to keep thinking ahead of the attendant if he was going to get any more information.

“That’s him!” he said. “When we were in the army together, he was as blind as a bat without glasses. You see, this is my problem. I can’t remember my friend’s name. I saw him on the street this morning—first time in years—and then lost him. I want to find out where he’s staying. If I knew what kind of car to look for—”

The cashier nodded sympathetically. He stepped to the back of the office momentarily and came back holding a wire wastebasket in his hands. He scratched through the contents and finally produced one of the free drawing coupons, slightly crumpled.

“Here it is,” he said. “I started to fill out the coupon for your friend. After all, a free sedan is a free sedan. I got the car description off the rack.” He smoothed out the paper and read: “1965 Chrysler sedan … license num ber, Arizona SXO 617.” The cashier looked up, beaming “That’s it, mister. I got just this far filling out the coupon and noticed the customer was gone. He picked up his car at the end of the rack and left. I never got his name.”

“May I keep the coupon?” Kyle asked.

“Sure. It’s no good without a name and address. That Chrysler was beige color, if that’s any help to you … Hey, mister, don’t
you
want to try for the sedan either?”

Kyle didn’t hear. He had a small piece of luck in his hands, and luck wasn’t to be wasted.

One of the latest buildings Kyle had designed for Sam Stevens was a slender smoked-glass and concrete office complex with an abstract fountain in the forecourt and a breathtaking view of the Santa Catalinas from the penthouse. It was to this penthouse that Kyle moved his own offices, and to these offices that he proceeded after leaving the car wash. The remainder of the building was still in the process of being decorated and leased and, aside from the penthouse, no tenants were installed except a florist, a bookseller and a branch bank on the ground level. Kyle had an automatic elevator all to himself and encountered no one in the penthouse corridor except an electrician working on the music system.

Charlene was at her desk in the reception room. She had come to Kyle when Sam relinquished the bulk of the responsibility to his young executive and began to ease into the status of honorary president of the corporation. The pace of modern business was a bit too brisk for the old wildcatter, but Charlene was flexible. She had changed. Her hair was now worn in a simple pompadour she could handle at home, and she had discovered the restorative powers of the sauna, the masseuse and carrot-juice lunches. She was chic and poised and, through close association, had developed a sensitivity to Kyle’s moods second only to that of a wife. Perhaps not second at all. She did share more of his hectic life than any wife could. There was something of the chameleon in Charlene. She became whatever she must to survive.

And so, when Kyle strode into the reception room with the specs and blueprints under his arm, she knew at a glance that he was in trouble. She waited for an explanation. Kyle ducked his head and started on toward his own office.

“Mrs. Walker has been calling for the past half hour,” Charlene said. “She sounds worried. Shall I get her on your private wire?”

Kyle stopped in his tracks and tried to get reoriented. Charley hadn’t changed since the previous day. Her eyes were still gray and the glasses she had started wearing during working hours still had fashionable black frames. She was talking to him about his wife. Gradually, these facts penetrated the mental block created by the sight of a killer in the street.

“Dee—” He reflected. “My God, I left her dangling! Yes, Charley, get her on my private wire immediately, please!”

He stepped into his own office—a huge, air-conditioned room where a wide Danish desk was kept in a semblance of order for the purpose of conducting business, and a drafting table displayed the wild disorder of creativity. The panorama visible beyond the glass wall that backed the desk was to be appreciated on less urgent occasions. Kyle had time only to drop the prints and specs on the table before the telephone began to buzz. It was Dee.

“Kyle, what happened?” she demanded. “You hung up in the middle of a sentence!”

“I ran into heavy traffic,” Kyle lied.

“Were you in an accident?”

Kyle had to nail down his mind to keep it from exploding.

Dee is my wife
, he thought.
Five years ago I left New York to save her from the killer I saw this morning. Now she’s in danger again. Anyone I love is in danger if I’m the target the killer has come so far to find
. And then the tag of his consciousness caught the echo of Dee’s word: “… accident?”

“There was no accident,” he assured her. “Just one of those morning bottlenecks…. How’s Mike?”

“Growing,” Dee retorted. “If you came home once in a while, you could see for yourself how much our son is growing. He’s almost four, you know.”

She was teasing, but she was irritated. That gave Kyle the opening he needed.

“I’m going to do better than that,” he said. “I promised Mike a weekend in the mountains, remember?”

“I do and he does,” Dee answered. “We thought you had forgotten.”

“But I haven’t. I told you earlier, I closed the deal with Sam for the new shopping center. I still have a few loose ends to tie up before I can get the bulldozers running—then I’ll have a short breather. Here’s what I want you to do, Dee. Pack a few things—whatever you need for three or four days away from home—and get up to the cabin. I’ll join you as soon as I can get away.”

Dee hesitated. “Do you mean now? Today?”

“I mean
right
now, today. Don’t you understand? Dee, if I can tell Sam that you and Mike are waiting for me, it’ll be easier to get away. He’s a softie for the boy—you know that. Do it, Dee. How much time do we have together?”

He hoped the urgency in his voice would come through as enthusiasm for the holiday. He hoped she wouldn’t catch the undercurrent of fear. He waited.

After a few minutes of silence, she said, “All right, Kyle. I can’t believe what I’m hearing, but I’m going to take a chance. But if you stand me up this time the way you have before—”

“I won’t stand you up,” Kyle promised. “I’ll be up there as soon as I’m free.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight,” Kyle promised. “Tonight for dinner. And, Dee, there’s something else.”

“What?” she asked.

“I love you,” Kyle said. “I love you and Mike very much.”

Kyle put the phone down. I
love you
. It was strange how words took on different meanings at different times in life. Love was so many things. Little things. Ordinary things. A touch. A look. The sound of a voice on the telephone. But now, above all else, love was taking steps to see that a killer on the street had no contact with Mike or Dee.

Because a professional killer never moved until he was ready. Until he knew where to find his victim. Until he knew his habits, his home, his loved ones …

The intercom buzzed Kyle back to the moment. Charley’s voice said, “There’s a man on the outside line for you, Mr. Walker. A sales representative—”

“I’m not taking any more calls today,” Kyle said.

“But he says it’s important, Mr. Walker. He represents an eastern company—Baemer Air Conditioning.”

“Never heard of them,” Kyle said, “—and I said no
calls
today, Charley. No
calls from anyone.”

Kyle gave Charley no chance for argument. He snapped the intercom button to “off” position. Love meant finding a killer before the killer found him.

The only thing about Dee Walker that had changed in five years was the color of her skin. It was berry-brown from the sun and showed warmly against the pale pink of her capris and halter top. She tossed a white knobby-knit sweater into the back of the convertible, where it landed on top of the fishing gear, a toy poodle and two overnight cases. She weighted the sweater with a novel she would never have time to read and caught Mike by the suspenders as he circled the car on his three-wheeler.

“That goes into the garage,” she ordered, “—right now!”

Mike was Kyle minus thirty years. His hair wouldn’t stay brushed and his legs couldn’t keep up with his imagination. He wore blue jeans and Western boots, and the suspenders were a necessary addition because he had no waistline at all.

“I want to take my bike!” he protested.

“To the mountains? Who ever heard of taking a bike to the mountains? Hurry, now. Daddy wants us all settled by the time he gets through for the day.”

It was almost one o’clock. The day’s heat was at its peak and a drowsy silence had settled over the wide residential street, where the houses were low, rambling, air-conditioned and monotonously similar. Dee didn’t mind that. She was getting to be quite philosophical about neighborhood gossips and bores. She could cope with the militantly shrieking clubwomen who saw a threat to their own version of constitutional freedom behind every lamppost, and was even learning to enjoy the backyard barbecues, although they would have been more fun if Kyle occasionally dropped by before midnight.

But a change of altitude was welcome, and Dee was learning not to question whatever small favors came her way. She watched Mike wheel his bike into the garage and come out on foot, and then hustled the boy into the convertible—a small English model Kyle had bought for her to shop in. She hated it. The stick shift was awkward and threw her backing out of line. She pulled slowly out of the driveway, hoping the blind spot wouldn’t cause a collision, and wasn’t at all surprised when the rear bumper struck metal. A horn blasted behind her. She grabbed the emergency brake.

“I’m sorry,” she called out. “I couldn’t see you.”

When she heard the thud of a heavy door slam, Dee shrank back in the seat and tried to look small and helpless. People could be ugly about trivial things. But the man who came to her window and peered inside the little car didn’t seem angry. He was a tall man with wide beige-clad shoulders, eyes hidden by dark glasses, and a face completely devoid of emotion. He stared at her for several seconds before speaking. She felt uncomfortable being scrutinized so closely by eyes she couldn’t see, and then he said, “Don’t apologize, lady. It was my fault. I was looking for a house number and pulled in front of your drive.”