with These Hands (Ss) (2002) (20 page)

The landlady was visiting somebody in Santa Monica.

Yes, she had a new roomer. A man. Nobody knew anything about him except that he was rarely in, and very quiet. Oh, yes! A neighbor remembered, Mrs. Brady had said he was leaving in a^ couple of days . . . this room would be vacant on the fifth. This was the third.

Frost walked back up to the room and stared around him. Was he wasting time, making a fool of himself? But why would a man leave a perfectly new clock radio behind him? And why leave the books?

There were six of them, all new. They represented a value of more than thirty dollars and given the condition of the spines three of them had not even been opened.

Two were on South America. On Bolivia. One was a book on conversational Spanish.

Frost picked up the telephone and rang the airlines. In a matter of minutes he had his information. Three men were scheduled for La Paz, Bolivia, on the fifth . . . another : check ... at that address. Thomas Sixte. Frost put the phone back on the cradle.

He was no closer to an answer but he did have more of a puzzle and some reason behind his hunch. Why would a L man, leaving within forty-eight hours, anyway, suddenly ?< leave a comfortable room? I

Where did he expect to spend the next forty-eight ' hours? Why did he leave his books and radio? He glanced at the dial on the radio. The man had his clock radio set to ; start blasting police calls within a matter of minutes after ] he had left his room.

Why? j Frost picked up the Madeira bottle .. . forty-eight years old. Good stuff, not too easily had ... he checked the telephone book and began ringing. Absently, he watched Joe going over the room. His helper was in the bathroom.

The liquor store he called replied after a minute. Just closing up. "Yes, I knew Mr. Sixte. Very excellent taste, Lieutenant. Knows wines as few men do. When he first talked to me about them, I believed him to be a champagne salesman.

"That brand of Madeira? Very few stores, Lieutenant. It would be easy to ... yes? All right."

He glanced at his watch. He had been in the vicinity so had gone to Redondo and San Vincente. That had been at 9:42 ... twenty minutes later he heard the blasting of the radio ... it was now 10:35.

"Only three sets of prints," Joe told him. "One of them a man's. Two are women. One of them is probably the maid or the landlady, judging by where I found 'em."

"The others?"

"Only a couple . . . some more, but smudged. Got a clear print off the wine bottle, one off the glass."

"Anything else?"

"Soap in the shower is still wet. He probably took a shower about seven or eight o'clock. Some cigarettes, all his ... and he'd been reading that book."

Joe rubbed his jaw. "What gives, Lieutenant? What you tryin' to prove?"

Mike Frost shrugged. He was not quite sure himself. "A man is killed and a girl is slugged by a woman. We know that much. Two blocks away a man suddenly leaves his room, with no reason that figures, and minutes later his clock radio starts blasting police calls.

"A woman has been in this room within the last hour.

My hunch is it was the woman who killed that guy on Redondo. I'm guessing that she got in here somehow to duck the police, and when she went away, she took him with her."

"And he turned on the radio to warn us? How does he know we're near?"

"Maybe the girl told him. Maybe he saw the murder.

Maybe she followed him. It's all maybe."

"Maybe he was in cahoots with her."

"Could be ... but why the radio?"

"Accident... twisted the wrong dial, maybe."

Frost nodded wearily. "All right. Check those prints. All three sets ... or whatever you got."

Had the girl taken the. Man away from here by herself?

They had a call out, the area blanketed. Any girl alone would have been stopped. But if she had been with him?

She might have been stopped, anyway. She was a blonde, about thirty, someone had said, slight figure ... in a suede coat.

When Joe was gone Mike Frost sat down in the empty room and began to fiddle with the radio. After twenty minutes he had learned one thing. You just didn't turn this : on to the police band. You had to hunt for it, adjust it care- I fully. :

Heavy steps on the stairs . . . "Got something for you, *

Lieutenant." It was an officer from a radio car. "A girl ) across the street. She was parked with her boyfriend ... high school kids ... they saw two men and a woman come out and go to a car. Dark sedan of some kind."

"Two men?"

"Yeah ... the car drove up while they were sittin' there.

The guy who went upstairs was tall. Big in the shoulders."

It was something, but not much. There was the phone.

Had the girl gotten in here she could have called her boyfriend, and he might have been waiting nearby. The murdered man had been drinking, that was obvious.

Probably quite drunk . . . and probably in a bar not a dozen blocks away. ,i If they could find that bar they might get a descrip- | tion . . . beat officers were looking but it might not be fast I enough ... a man's life might be at stake. '

Mike Frost stood quietly gnawing gently at his lower | lip. He was a big man, wide in the shoulders, with a rather | solemn, thick-boned face. His fingers dug at his reddish- "- brown hair and he tried to think.

This Tom Sixte ... he was no fool. In a tight spot he had thought of the clock radio and the police calls. It had been a chance, but he had thought of it and taken it. He might think of something else but they could not depend on that.

The bank. They might try to get some money out of Sixte. Suddenly, Frost was hoping Sixte would think of that. If he did, if he could play on their greed ...

The wine bottle ... he had liquor stores alerted for possible purchase of the Madeira. It was a wild chance, but the girl had tried a glass of it, and to get money they might humor Sixte. "Boy," Frost said, half aloud, "I hope you're thinking, and I hope you're thinking like I am."

Forty-eight hours. They would have the flight covered long before takeoff time.

Mike Frost went back to his office and sat down at the battered, scarred old desk. He ran his fingers through his rusty hair and tried to think ... to think....

Tom Sixte sat on the divan in a quaint, old-fashioned room. The sort of furnishings that were good middle-class in 1910. It gave him a queer feeling to be sitting there like that, the room was so much like his Aunt Eunice's.

Kurt was leafing through the paper and he was smoking.

Phyllis was irritable. She kept looking over at Sixte.

"You're a fool, Kurt. Get rid of him."

"Take it easy." Kurt leaned back in his chair, lighting another cigarette with his left hand. With his coat off, his shoulders were not as wide and he was a little pigeon chested. "I've got a call out for Rubio. Let him do it."

Sixte's feet were tied, but his hands were free. There was no way he could move quickly, and nothing to use with his hands. He was trying to put himself in the position of the police and getting nowhere.

Suppose some neighbor had just turned off the radio?

Suppose the police had become curious, that would make them look around? How smart were they?

All right. Suppose they had come, and suppose they had examined his room. Suppose they decided he had been kidnapped, all of which was a lot of supposing. But, if they had? What would they do?

Closing his eyes to shut out the room he was in, he tried to picture the situation. He knew something of police work, something of the routine. But there would be little to go on ... the Madeira. It was the one thing that was different.

That might help.

What else?

As long as they sat still, he had time. Yet as long as they sat still they could not make mistakes. He had to get them into the open, to start them moving. Sooner or later the nagging of Phyllis might irk Kurt into killing him.

But Kurt didn't want to kill, if he didn't have to ... he wanted this Rubio to do it. Kurt didn't want to kill but Tom had no doubt that he would if pushed. Kurt might be the key, but what did he want?

He wanted money. Easy money, quick money.

Kurt hoped to sell the passport and tickets, for maybe a thousand dollars ... a thousand dollars . . . who, if he could, would not buy his life for that sum? Or twice or three times as much? Or more?

Rubio had not called, so there was a chance. A faint, slim chance.

"Look," he said quietly, "I'm a reasonable guy. What you do is none of my business. Anyway, I'm supposed to go to South America. I don't know who either of you are, and I don't want to know, but I figure you're pretty smart."

All criminals, psychologists say, are both egotists and optimists. A good point. Flatter them-but not too much.

"Suppose you knock me off, and suppose you sell my papers to Rubio ... will he pay a thousand bucks?"

Kurt smiled. "He does or he don't get them."

Sixte shrugged. "All right. You know him better than I do. But he knows you've got me on your hands. The only way you can make any dough is to sell those papers, otherwise you knock me off for nothing, am I right?"

"So what?"

"So he says, 'I'll give you five hundred, take it or leave it.' Then where are you?"

Kurt's smile was gone, he was studying Tom Sixte and he didn't like what he was thinking. Kurt was remembering Rubio, and he had a hunch that was just what Rubio would do-and where did that leave him?

"Now I want to live. I also want to go to South America.

Rubio will give you a thousand bucks for my papers. All right," Sixte put his palms on his knees. "I'll boost the ante. You put me on that plane to Bolivia with my own tickets and I'll give you five thousand!"

"Don't listen to him, Kurt." Phyllis was uneasy. "I don't like it."

"Shut up." Kurt was thinking. Five thousand was good money. Five G's right in his mitt.

He shook his head. "You'd have them radio from the plane. What do you think I am, a dope?"

Sixte shrugged. "I know better than that. You're a sharp operator and that's what I'm banking on. Any dope can kill a man. Only a dope would take the chance at that price. Especially, when he can get more."

He took his time. "See it from where I sit. I want to live.

If some drunk gets killed, that's no skin off my nose. I like women, good food, I like wine. I can't have any of them if I'm dead."

Tom Sixte lit a cigarette. "I haven't got a lot of money, but I could cash a check for five thousand dollars. If I tried to get more they'd make inquiries and you might get suspicious and shoot me. I'm going to play it smart.

"So I draw five thousand. You take it and put me on the plane. I don't know who you are ... what exactly am I going to tell them? You could be out of town, in Las Vegas or Portland before they started looking-but that's not all. I wouldn't squawk because I'd be called back as a witness.

If I wasn't here there'd be nothing to connect you with the job-and brother, I can make money in Bolivia. I've got a big deal down there."

There were plenty of fallacies in his argument, but Tom Sixte would point out nothing they could not see. He drew deep on his cigarette and ran his fingers through his dark hair. He was unshaved and felt dirty. If he got out of this, it would be by thinking his way out, and he was tired. He wanted a shower and sleep.

"I got to think about it." Kurt got up. "I don't like it much."

Sixte leaned back on the divan. "Think it over. If I was in your place, I would think a lot." Kurt leaned back and lit a cigarette. His face was expressionless but Sixte was remembering the padded shoulders in Kurt's jacket. "Your girl friend, for instance. She'd look mighty pretty in a new outfit, and you two would make a pair, all dressed to the nines."

Kurt ignored him, looking around and speaking past his cigarette. "Phyl, fix some sandwiches, will you?"

"As long as I'm paying for this," Sixte grinned at them, "why not some steaks? The condemned man ate a hearty meal. . . ." He met Kurt's cold eye and added, "Maybe you'll soon have five thousand dollars, so why not enjoy yourself?" Keeping his voice casual, he added, "And while you're at it, why not a bottle of wine? Some of that Madeira?"

Detective Lieutenant Mike Frost sat behind the scarred desk. It was 10:00 a. M. and he had just checked with the morgue . . . nobody that could be Sixte had been brought in yet. But if he was dead they might never find him.

Joe stuck his head in the door. "Nothing on the prints.

The man's were Sixte himself, a major in combat intelligence during the war. The woman was the landlady, who does her own cleaning up. And we drew a blank on the girl. Nothing on file."

There had been nothing on the bars, either. Nobody remembered any such couple. Frost was thinking . . . the other man had come at once, and it could not have taken him longer than ten minutes. It took time to get outside, get a car started and into the street ... at most he would not be more than twenty blocks away. More likely within half that distance. Frost picked up the phone and started a check on bars and possible loafing places. Looking for a tall dark young man who answered a phone and left hurriedly.