Poisons Unknown (14 page)

Liddell nodded. “Sure it’s okay?”

“You may as well. Until she talks to you she’ll be working herself into a state that will probably do her more harm than if you do talk to her.”

“You’re the doctor.”

“Just keep her as quiet as possible. Don’t let her get excited.”

Liddell turned the knob and walked into 105. Gabby Benton lay propped up on a huge pillow in a white bed. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head, her face was abnormally white, her lips bloodless. The blue shadows under her eyes were accentuated. She opened her eyes as Liddell walked up, worked on a smile.

“They didn’t want to let me talk to you, Johnny. At first, I was afraid you didn’t want to talk to me.” Her eyes were large, bright.

“You know better than that, baby. It’s just that they wanted you to rest so you can get out of here faster.”

Gabby closed her eyes, snorted. “Don’t kid me, Liddell. I’m a big girl. I know when I’ve had it.” She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “How about Mike Camden?”

“Dead.”

She opened her eyes, nodded. “The rest of them?”

“In the tank. Look, don’t worry about that. It’s—”

“I want to know. How about the girl? The little blond kid?” She stared at him fixedly.

Liddell touched his thumb and forefinger, made a circle. “In the clear. The pictures and films are ashes by now. She got out before Hennessy got there.”

Gabby took a long, sighing breath. “You destroyed all Mike’s records?”

Liddell shook his head. “No. The D.A. needed them as evidence. Don’t worry, he’ll go easy on the innocent ones involved. But he needs all the ammunition he can get to smash the vice ring.”

“The temple?”

“The Feds moved in on it last night, baby. The whole operation has been smashed.”

Gabby looked up at him. “I guess it couldn’t last forever, could it, Johnny? How about Marty and Wanda?”

“I don’t know. But my guess is they’ll have a tough time tying Marty to it. And Wanda’ll probably go underground.”

The blonde nodded. “You know I was in it, too, Johnny. Up to my neck.”

Liddell nodded, patted her shoulder. “That’s all in the past, baby. The important thing to worry about now is the future.”

“But I want to tell you.” She licked at her lips, pleaded with her eyes. “I want you to know.”

“All right, baby.”

“We checked the financial standing of prospects before we got them out to the temple. We knew how much they were good for, how easy they’d be to put the boots to.”

“Don’t talk about it, Gabby.”

“It was a foolproof setup. We had every angle covered. Marty said there wasn’t a chance of a squeal, and now look.” She closed her eyes, wagged her head. “Funny how things change. We were riding on top of the world, money was pouring in. Everything was running so smooth—”

Liddell pulled a chair close to the bed. “Then what happened?”

“Alfred disappeared. Marty Kirk started getting the shakes. He wanted me to find Alfred.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t geared for anything like that. I didn’t even know how to go about it.”

“So you suggested me.”

Gabby nodded. “I didn’t mean to drag you into all this mud, Johnny. I thought you’d find Alfred and everything would start running smoothly again.”

“Well, Alfred’s been found.”

A cough racked the girl’s shoulders. “But dead. Now the heat’s really on Marty.”

“Why not? The heat’s always on a killer. He should have thought of that before—”

The girl reached out and grabbed Liddell’s hand with hers. “Marty Kirk didn’t kill Alfred, Johnny. The only way he could bail himself out was to find Alfred alive.”

“Why?”

Gabby’s breathing became shallower. Liddell reached for the button to summon the nurse, but the girl caught his hand, shook her head. “Let me finish. Marty was handling something for the syndicate. Something big, important. The man he was supposed to contact never showed up, and Alfred disappeared at the same time. Marty thought they were together. With Alfred dead, he’ll never find Jorges.”

Liddell felt a little prickle between his shoulders. “Who?”

“Jorges. He was the guy Marty was supposed to contact.”

“What was the deal?”

Gabby shook her head. “That’s the rough part of it. Nobody knows. Not even Marty. He got word to contact this Jorges at a certain place and time. Jorges never showed, but the lady who rented the apartment described Alfred as one of his visitors.”

“And Marty still doesn’t know what the contract was?”

Gabby shook her head. She started coughing violently, turned her face to the wall. “With Alfred dead, Marty takes the full rap for blowing the contract.”

Liddell squeezed her hand, pushed the button for the nurse. “Don’t talk any more, baby. The nurse will be right here.”

She turned back to him, her eyes glittering brightly, two round red spots in her cheeks. “I don’t need the nurse.” She tightened her grip on his hand. “Kiss me, Johnny.”

Liddell leaned over, pressed his lips to her half-parted ones. They grew slack, failed to respond.

T
HE RAIN HAD TURNED
into a full-fledged downpour by the time Johnny Liddell left the hospital. He ran down the steps, looked in either direction for a cab, saw none, pulled up the collar of his jacket, and started to slosh through the puddles toward Canal.

A man parked in a gray Chevrolet at the curb rolled down his window. “You Liddell?” he called.

Liddell squinted at him but failed to recognize him. “Why?”

The man in the car dipped into his pocket, came up with a leather case, and flipped it open. “My name’s Grayson. I’m with the Bureau.” He pushed open the door. “I tried to reach you at your hotel, and they told me you might be here. Give you a lift back to your hotel?”

Liddell nodded, slid into the front seat, and closed the door behind him. The F.B.I. man reached up, wiped the fog from the inside of his windshield, and stamped the motor into roaring life.

“How’s the girl?” he asked.

“Dead.”

Grayson shook his head. “Tough.” He slid the car into gear. “Use a drink?”

Liddell nodded. “As a starter.”

“Any special place?”

“Some place low down. To match the weather.”

Grayson headed the car toward the Quarter. “I know a place. Not very fancy. But they don’t bother you, either.” He respected Liddell’s disinclination to talk, concentrated on pushing the car through the narrow streets. After a few minutes, he pulled up in front of a reproduction of an old-time saloon, authentic down to the swinging doors.

The barroom had sawdust on the floor, little tables scattered in organized confusion. A man in his shirt sleeves behind the bar waved to Grayson as he came in. He left the two customers at the far end of the bar, walked down to greet the newcomers.

“Hi, pal.” He wiped his hands on his apron, pushed a red paw across the bar at the F.B.I. man. “You don’t get around much any more.”

“Meet Johnny Liddell from New York. Conch here’s a retired bootlegger, Johnny. Although from the taste of some of the stuff he pours off that back bar, I’m not too sure about the retired part.”

The man behind the bar grinned. “You know I never pour you nothing but the best, pal.” He extended the red hand again, gave Liddell a firm squeeze. “Glad to see you, pal. Come around any time you’re in the Quarter.” He looked to Grayson. “What’ll it be?”

“You’re not using the back room, are you, Conch?” asked Grayson.

The bartender shook his head. “Help yourself.”

“What do you drink, Liddell?” Grayson wanted to know.

“Bourbon.”

The bartender reached back to the back bar, selected a bottle, put it on a tray, added some ice and water. “Anything else, pal?”

Grayson shook his head, picked up the tray, led the way to a door next to a bank of phone booths in the rear. He pushed the door open with his foot, set the tray down on the table.

Liddell followed him in, kicked the door shut. He put down his jacket collar, wiped some rain off his shoulders. Grayson picked up the bottle, split the seal around the top with his thumb nail.

“You get a letter from Mel Marks in our home office this morning?” he asked.

Liddell nodded. “Just before I left.”

Grayson tilted the bottle over each of the glasses, poured in a stiff peg, and set the bottle down. “He sent me a copy of the stuff. Looks like you stumbled across someone the Bureau would like to talk to.”

Liddell picked up his glass, dropped some ice cubes into it, and swirled the liquor around over the ice. “It’d be a good trick if you could do it. He’s dead.”

Disappointment shadowed the F.B.I. man’s eyes. “Well, at least now we know where he is.” He turned a chair around, straddled it. “All I’ve got to do then is verify the make and we can close his file for good.” He picked up his glass, took a swallow. “Where is he?”

“San Vincente parish morgue. But you’re not going to be able to verify those prints there.”

“Why not?”

“He was burned to a crisp in a phony auto accident. At least, I’m convinced it was a phony, but I can’t prove it.”

Grayson scowled at him. “But you got his prints. Where’d you get the ones you sent to the Bureau for a check?”

“In his private bathroom over at the Eye Almighty Temple. Your boy called himself Brother Alfred.”

The F.B.I. man clapped his palm to his forehead. “Oh, not him. Some of our boys knocked over that phony temple of his last night.”

Liddell nodded. “That’s the guy.”

“Then we’ve really got trouble, Liddell.” He pulled a pipe from one pocket, a tobacco pouch from another. “Brother Alfred’s body was released for burial yesterday. He’s not in the morgue over there. He’s buried.”

“Who claimed him?”

The F.B.I. man dug the bowl of his pipe into the pouch, started packing it with the tip of his index finger. “Nobody, far as I remember. It was a potter’s-field job.” He jammed the pipe between his teeth, chewed on the stem. “That complicates things. Now I’ve got to go through channels, get a writ, get him dug up, try to match the prints.”

Liddell emptied his glass, set it down. “Be a waste of time. There’s nothing left of his hands.”

Grayson scratched a wooden match, held it to the bowl of the pipe, sucked noisily. “You’d be surprised what they can do these days.” He dug into his pocket, brought out a copy of the B.I. card identical to the one that had been sent to Liddell. “That’s about our only hope for clinching the identification.”

Liddell nodded. “There wasn’t enough left of his face to recognize. His glasses were smashed, and—”

“Glasses?” Grayson studied the card, scowled. “He had twenty-twenty vision back in 1947 according to this. What makes you think he wore glasses?”

Liddell shrugged. “I saw them on him.” He caught the bourbon bottle by the neck, tilted it over his glass.

“Could have been part of his disguise. They were probably plain window glass.”

Liddell shook his head. “They were real thick. Showed a pretty strong correction.” He set the glass down, held his hand out for the B.I. card. “Can I take a look at that?”

Grayson passed it over, watched the private detective read it word for word. When he finished, he glowered at the card, flipped it at the table. “I’m beginning to get a funny feeling about this case, Grayson.” He fished in his pocket, brought up a cigarette.

The F.B.I. man watched him. “About what?”

“A lot of things that don’t fit. But you know what? They’d all begin to fit together if it turned out that that body in that car wasn’t Alfred’s at all.”

Grayson sucked on his pipe, blew a heavy fog of smoke toward the ceiling, considered it. Then he shook his head. “That’s pretty farfetched. It was his car. There were plenty of his personal belongings in it, the usual identifiable material. They even got a make from some girl that worked with him.”

“It could all have been staged.”

“If it didn’t belong to Alfred, whose body was that in the car?” The F.B.I. man blew a string of smoke rings at the ceiling, watched them spread and disintegrate.

Liddell shrugged. “I might make a guess, but it would be strictly a guess.” He set his cigarette on the corner of the table, leaned back. “It would explain a lot of things that don’t make sense otherwise.” He picked up his glass and took a deep swallow. “Where did they bury the body?”

“I don’t know. I could probably find out. Why?”

“I just want to satisfy my curiosity.”

Grayson scowled at him. “You wouldn’t be thinking of digging him up?”

Liddell shrugged. “It’s been done before. By digging him up maybe I can save someone else from being in the same spot he’s in. Namely me.”

The F.B.I. man rattled the stem of his pipe against his teeth. “What a blessing to be deaf. In that way I can’t hear illegal proposals.”

“Mel told me you’d co-operate. All I want to know is where they buried Alfred. You don’t have to know why.”

Grayson nodded. “Okay.” He walked to the door, stopped with his hand on the knob. “I suppose you know that if you’re caught you couldn’t get licensed as a dog catcher in any state of the Union?”

“You were going to get me some information, remember?”

The F.B.I. man nodded. “I know I’m going to hate myself for this in the morning, but a deal’s a deal.”

• • •

The sedan hummed over the road leading to San Vincente. The rain lashed furiously at the closed windows of the car, sending streams of water cascading down the windshield. Johnny Liddell squinted through his window at a road sign as it flashed past.

“The parish cemetery is five miles ahead,” he told Grayson. “How we going to do this? We can’t walk in the front gate with a couple of shovels on our shoulder and start digging. Besides, how do we go about finding his grave?”

“See, and you didn’t want me to come along!” Grayson grinned. “I’ve got it all figured out. Up about a mile or so, there’s a back road that runs behind the cemetery.” He peered out through the inverted V cut by the windshield wiper. “I don’t think we have to worry about any watchmen prowling around in this weather. If there is a watchman, he’ll probably stick close to his shanty up front.”

Liddell subsided and watched the scenery flit by his window. After a few miles, Grayson skidded the car off the macadam onto a dirt road. A few minutes later, Liddell could make out the shapes of tombstones and shafts.

“Here’s the cemetery,” he pointed out to Grayson.

The F.B.I. man shook his head. “That’s the private section. Potter’s field is farther down.” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket and passed it to Liddell. “The office says Alfred was buried in Section Seven. See if you can tell from that map where Section Seven is.”

Liddell flattened the map out on his lap, studied it, and stabbed with a stubby forefinger. “There it is. Not too far back off the road.” He traced back to the black line representing the macadam road. “It’s about a mile in from the beginning of the cemetery on this road.”

The car swayed along for another half mile, then Grayson pulled the car off the road under a big tree, cut the motor.

“We’re about opposite Section Seven,” Grayson guessed. “Alfred’s grave can’t be much more than a hundred and fifty feet or so from here.” He got out of the car, walked around to the trunk. Liddell could hear the clatter of shovels.

“Look, we won’t have to do any digging. Down here they bury them above the ground,” Liddell told him.

Grayson grunted. “Not in potter’s field. That’s for the elite.” He shouldered a shovel and held one out to Liddell. Then he crossed the road and led the way through the high weeds to the low wall that enclosed the rear of the cemetery. They tossed the shovels over one at a time.

Liddell laced his fingers, made a stirrup, boosted Grayson over. In a matter of seconds he, too, straddled the wall, dropped to the other side.

“This way,” Grayson muttered. “Alfred was probably the last one in, so we’ll hit for the freshest grave.”

They walked past low mounds to the end of the plot where fresh earth marked a newly turned grave. “This must be it.” He dropped his shovel. “We’d better tackle it in relays.”

“How far is the watchman’s shanty from here?” Liddell wiped the rain from his face, looked around.

“At the entrance to the private section. That’s a couple of miles from here. You start the digging, I’ll keep my eye peeled.”

Liddell picked up his shovel. “I sure hope to hell this is worth the trouble.” He stepped on the new grave, his shoes sinking in the soft loam. The shovel bit into the dirt.

He was knee-deep in a six-foot hole when Grayson spelled him. The F.B.I. man worked steadily for ten minutes and was breathing heavily when Liddell took over again.

They had been at work about forty minutes when Johnny Liddell’s shovel scraped on wood. He stopped, tapped with his shovel. “Hit it.”

Grayson jumped down into the hole with him. “We’ll have to clear enough room to pull the whole box out. We can’t work down here. You take a rest topside. I’ll get in a few licks. When I yell, drop me the hooks, and I’ll get it set to pull out.”

It took another ten minutes to clear enough space around the pine casket to attach hooks to the sides. Grayson tossed the ropes up to Liddell, then clambered out. “Okay, let’s pull her up to the level and slide her out,” he panted.

But it took fifteen minutes of grunting, swearing, and sweating before the plain box finally slid out onto the ground. Johnny Liddell wiped the beaded moisture from his face, leaned weakly against the coffin, and panted.

“And I’m the guy that was going to come out here and tackle this alone. What’s next, boss?”

Grayson pulled a nearly full bottle of bourbon from his jacket pocket, passed it over to Liddell. “I lifted this from Conch in case of an emergency, and there’ll never be a greater one.”

They each took a deep swallow from the bottle, recapped it, laid it down on the ground. Grayson took his shovel, inserted the tip of it under the lid of the coffin, used it as a lever. The lid creaked complainingly as it was forced open. A hot, dry odor of decay rose from the interior.

“That does it,” Liddell said huskily. He was glad of the warm glow that the liquor had left in his stomach.

Grayson pushed the cover of the casket aside, looked in, whistled soundlessly. “You’re right about one thing. There’s not much of him left to work on. Now what’s this hunch of yours?”

Liddell stepped beside him, bent over the box. “Let’s see that B.I. card again, will you, Grayson?”

Grayson handed him the card, watched curiously while Liddell took a pencil from his pocket, pushed down on the front teeth of the thing in the box. “That’s not Frederici in there any more than it’s me,” he growled.

“How do you know?”

Liddell jabbed the card at him. “Frederici had his two front teeth on a removable bridge. This guy still has his own. Your pal Frederici is still among the living, and I’ve got a client I owe an apology to.”

Grayson examined the teeth of the corpse, then straightened up. “You stay here until I can get to a phone and get an exhumation order, Liddell. I don’t know who this is, but he’s certainly not Al Frederici.”

“You want me to stay here alone in this rain?” Liddell growled.

“Stop moaning, will you?” The rain dripped off Grayson’s nose and chin, made mud of the patches of clay that stuck to his suit. He pointed to the bourbon bottle. “You’ve got Old Granddad there to keep you company.”