Murder Is My Dish Page 4

  She looked up. “Don’t be mad at me. Please.”

  “Shut up and drink the coffee.”

  “You’re mad at me.”

  I was mad, all right, but not at her. Old iron-willed Drum. Next thing you knew, I’d be posing as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was cheaper and easier than making a pass at a sober girl, wasn’t it?

  She finished the cup of coffee. She said that was all she wanted, but I made her drink another. Then I put my jacket around her shoulders. She looked at my shoulder holster. “So that’s what was pressing me so hard,” she said.

  “You all right now?”

  “I’m not completely sober, if that’s what you mean. But I’m getting there. I—I’m sorry.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  We smiled at each other ruefully. “It wasn’t your fault, Chet. If you ask me, a girl would have a right to be insulted if you didn’t react like that.” She blushed. I didn’t say anything. “At least thanks for calling it off,” she said.

  “Don’t thank me. Thank the coffee.”

  “I’m not making any excuses. I know I drink too much. And at the wrong time. I—listen. I said my father died in prison. That wasn’t quite how it was. They executed him. They made me watch. They stripped off his shirt and drew a black circle with charcoal around his left nipple. They stood about six yards away. There were eight of them. They couldn’t miss at that distance. Do you know what a bullet can do to a man, from six yards? I stood there. I was still in my teens. I loved my father. I wanted to shut my eyes. I wanted to scream. I wanted to faint. I didn’t make a sound.”

  I did the only thing you could do under the circumstances. I did exactly what they pay a psychiatrist thirty bucks an hour to do. I listened.

  “I dream about it, Chet. I guess I’ll dream about it for the rest of my life. It did something to me. I don’t know, I can’t explain. I know what an analyst would say. You’re afraid to face reality. Every time you have to make a decision or face something unpleasant, you go off on a roaring drunk. That’s what he’d say.”

  She wouldn’t look at me after that.

  “So you drink too much,” I said. “It doesn’t mean the end of the world. Balzac killed himself on too much strong black coffee—but look at the books he wrote. Coleridge took laudanum, didn’t he? At least you’re ready to do something to help Rafael Caballero if you can, that’s what I’m trying to say. Look at his wife.”

  “No one ever spoke to me like that before,” she said, looking at me wide-eyed. “All they ever did was give me reproachful glances and long lectures. What I said before— I wasn’t that drunk. I like you. I do like you.”

  Before I could think of something clever to say to end it before it got too heavy, the telephone rang.

  “Hello?” Eulalia said. “Yes,” she lied, “this is Mrs. Caballero. Yes. All right. Thirty-five minutes. Is he all right? You haven’t … Yes. All right.” She hung up and turned to me. Her face was white.

  “It was them,” she said unnecessarily. “They want me to drive up the Henry Hudson Parkway across the city line. I’m to take the first right turn after crossing the city line and go exactly half a mile, then turn left just before an Amoco station. It’s a narrow, two-lane road, they said. They’ll be parked off the road. They’ll blink their lights. I’ll blink mine back. Then I throw the money out and keep going. Chet, I’m so scared.”

  “Did he talk like a Latin American?”

  “Yes. He had a heavy accent.”

  “Where’s the money?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  She went into the bedroom and came out with a thick Manila envelope. “He fought so hard to raise this money,” she said. “It was to go toward Radio Free Parana, to beam the truth to the people of the Republic.”

  “How’s Mrs. Caballero?”

  “Sleeping. Moaning in her sleep.”

  “You got a car?”

  “Downstairs.”

  She went to the closet and took out her trench coat. We went to the door and down in the elevator and outside without a word. Two or three inches of snow already mantled the ground and it was still coming down. I wondered if they were already waiting for us in the cold, snow-shrouded hills north of the city.

  Chapter Five

  EULALIA’S late-model Ford hardtop was parked a block from the apartment building. I held Eulalia’s hand as we ran there through the snow. From the way she lurched I knew she still wasn’t sober enough to pass a drunkometer test.

  “I’ll drive to the city line,” I said.

  The hardtop wasn’t locked. We got in and she gave me the keys. I kicked the engine over and started the wipers, which cut ice-bordered pie wedges on the windshield. I looked at my watch. It was ten after seven. The rear tires whined in snow, then gained traction.

  “What are you going to do?” Eulalia asked me.

  I lit a cigarette. The smoke fogged over the windshield despite the defroster. I pawed at it with my hand and cleared a circle to see through. At the corner we turned left, heading west. The back of the car had fishtailed slightly on the turn.

  “Give them the money,” I said. Eulalia’s fingers clutched at the Manila envelope on her lap, as if she had other ideas. “It’s a chance you always have to take with kidnapers,” I went on. “If you don’t show up on schedule, they get scared. They think maybe you’ve rung the cops in on it. If they get scared they’re liable to do anything.”

  “But Rafael could identify them. They know that, surely. They can’t let him go.”

  It was a short drive to the Henry Hudson Parkway from Caballero’s uptown west side apartment. A few cars drifted by, the sound they made muffled by snow. Here and there a pedestrian hurried across the street, hunched over and fighting the wind. Snowflakes danced and flashed in front of the headlights.

  “Listen,” I said. “I didn’t want to say this before. It’s only a guess.”

  “What?”

  “If Rafael Caballero’s been kidnaped, it’s because of the book he’s writing and what he and the book can do to Indalecio Grande’s caudillismo down in the Parana Republic. Nobody kidnaped him for ransom money.”

  “But—”

  “But somebody’s trying to make a buck out of it. Hell, the idea didn’t start with them. Every time you read about a kidnaping in the newspaper, there are ghouls who try to cash in by asking for ransom. The guy who invents a lower crime than that will really have imagination.”

  I kept the Ford at a steady thirty on the Parkway. We drove over a maze of tire tracks on the snow, like rails in a freight marshalling yard. Far ahead, taillights winked redly. Behind us, headlights gleamed. We didn’t pass anyone.

  “But nobody knows Rafael’s been kidnaped,” Eulalia protested. “It wasn’t in the newspapers or anything. Even the police don’t know.”

  “You’re telling me. That’s why we’re here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Whoever’s trying to cash in knows about the kidnaping. If it was a kidnaping.”

  “If it was a kidnaping?” Eulalia’s hand reached up and touched my shoulder, as if she didn’t want me to say what she knew I was going to say.

  “Yeah, if. You want me to shut up? It’s only a guess.”

  “I’ve got to know sooner or later. Tell me, please.”

  “I think they killed him the night they beat Andy Dineen to death.”

  Her breath caught and held on a sob. A car passed us quickly, too quickly, moving silently through the snow, long and black, like a hearse in a dream about death. It skidded toward the right shoulder of the parkway and a young girl’s frightened scream, two parts terror and one part terrified delight, drifted over the face of the white-shrouded night. The car straightened out and kept going, still too fast, until its taillights were swallowed by the snow and the night.

  We reached the city line a few minutes later. I made Eulalia open her window despite the biting cold. I made her breathe deeply of the bitter cold air. When she said she w
as sober enough to drive, I pulled over to the shoulder and got out and walked around the car. When I got back in Eulalia started it with a whine of protest from the tires and a lurch that wouldn’t do the gears any good. A few hundred yards up the parkway we found the right turn and took it. The snow fell heavily, steadily, into a wind that swirled it and piled it into drifts. The road was unmarked by tire tracks.

  “Listen,” I said. “When they blink their headlights, blink yours. But keep going three, four hundred feet. Then stop. Let them see you stop. Then throw the money out. Then get going, as fast as you feel safe. Don’t stop again for anything. Don’t stop if you hear gunfire. Don’t stop if the sky caves in.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’m going out with the money,” I said. “Just keep driving. When you hit a crossroad, take it. There ought to be a road that will take you back to the parkway. Whatever you do, don’t turn around and come back this way. I don’t care if you have to drive all night. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was a faraway, lost sound. “There’s the Amoco station.”

  The station was dark and deserted. The pumps gleamed in our headlights as we turned left on a narrow lane just this side of the station. The lane was drifted over. I didn’t like that. We couldn’t make more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. Eulalia would be a long time getting away.

  The narrow road crested a hill and we were looking down a long rolling stretch of country. The snow had slackened suddenly. On our right was a split-rail fence, the zigzag kind that doesn’t need any posts. There wasn’t any fence on the left. If they were waiting off the road, it would have to be on the left. That was a piece of luck. If I didn’t make any noise about it they wouldn’t know I got out the right side of the car.

  With cold, clumsy fingers I pawed at my shoulder holster and withdrew the Magnum. The metal was warm. I looked down at the Manila envelope on the seat between us. Eulalia was staring straight ahead. I looked up. A pair of lights winked on and off fifty yards ahead of us off the left side of the road. Eulalia’s breath caught. She gunned the engine and the rear tires whined. I hunkered down low and reached over and snapped our headlights off and then on again.

  “Keep going,” I hissed. I unlatched the door on my side of the car, holding the handle against the pull of the wind.

  “We passed them,” Eulalia whispered.

  “Keep going. If the road curves, stop on the curve. I want them to know we stop.”

  “It’s straight.”

  The seconds hung. The sound of the motor and the swirling snowflakes were everything.

  “Now,” I said.

  The car stopped. “Throw the money out your side,” I told her. “And get going.”

  I opened the door and slipped out into a driving wind and a snowdrift two feet deep. I pushed the door shut. It closed with almost no sound at all. The car lurched forward. I crouched there in the snow, smelling its exhaust. When the taillights were two red points barely seen against blackness, I ran crouching through the snow across the road. Beyond the shoulder on the other side there was a ditch. The snow was soft there, but not deep. I made my way quickly along the ditch back toward the other car, dragging my feet to make a continuous furrow instead of footprints. After a while I climbed out of the ditch and got down behind a tree. There was no sound except for my breathing and the gusts of wind and the noise of wet snow dropping from overladen tree branches.

  The Magnum was like ice in my hand; I didn’t know if I would be able to use it. I jammed it into my coat pocket and massaged my right hand with my left hand. I rubbed snow on my right hand and went on massaging it. It began to sting. It felt very coarse and hard. I flexed the fingers.

  Something moved, crunching over the snow.

  I took the Magnum from my pocket and waited. The wind moaned. A train whistle answered it far away across the hills, to show that the world was still there, waiting. The crunching sound came closer.

  The wind picked up, driving blinding billows of snow before it. I did not see him until he was very close. He stood tall in the wind and snow, his back to it, driven by it. He wore a hat and a coat with a turned-up collar. He was carrying either a gun or an unlit flashlight in his right hand. I let him pass my tree. I could have reached out and touched him.

  When he went by, I stood up. My calves were stiff. I took two silent steps through the snow behind him. I got my left arm around his neck from behind. His legs began to drum. He tried to turn around. One of his hands tore at my ear. He swung his-hip against me and shoved. He was trying to yell, but I was cutting off his air and the sounds he made were lost in the wind.

  I raised the Magnum over his head and hit him with it. His hat fell off. I hit him again. He went slack against me. We both fell down in the snow.

  I climbed to my knees. He was still holding the flashlight in his right hand. I took it and shone the beam in his face and raised his. eyelid. The eye had rolled upwards. The white of his eye gleamed. I went over his body with my hand and found the bulge I was looking for in his coat pocket. It was a heavy .45 automatic. I put it in my own coat pocket.

  Using the flashlight, I followed the furrow I had made in the ditch. When I reached the end of it I moved the beam in a slow, narrow circle around my feet. I widened the circle.

  On the fourth swing I found the Manila envelope where Eulalia had thrown it. I stuffed it in the inside pocket of my coat, wondering if I would have to use it. If my guess had been wrong I would still have twenty-five thousand dollars to bargain with for Rafael Caballero’s life.

  With the flashlight in one hand and the Magnum in the other I went back to the man I had slugged. He was groaning. He had rolled over on his side and was trying to sit up. I dropped the flashlight and rubbed a handful of snow in his face. He brushed at my hand feebly. I poked the cold metal of the gun barrel against his ear and said:

  “This is a gun. If you make a sound above a whisper, I’ll put a bullet in your ear. Are you alone?”

  He didn’t say anything. I rubbed some more snow in his face. “Somebody back there in the car?”

  “Hijo de puta,” he said softly. At least that was something. He could have screamed.

  I laid the gun barrel along his jaw, hard enough to jar him. His teeth clicked. I got my hand over his mouth before he could yell, but that bullet in the ear must have been worrying him. He only groaned again.

  “Where’s Caballero?” I said.

  When he didn’t answer, I hit him with the gun again. His eyes rolled. I had hit him too hard. I had to start all over again with snow on his face.

  “It’s not going to work out like this,” I said, “is it?” He cursed in Spanish again. “Get up,” I told him. I stood up and backed away from him. He came groggily to his feet. I jerked the gun at him and thumbed the safety off.

  “Take your coat off,” I said.

  He looked at me. He took his coat off, then swung it in front of him and reached for the gun that wasn’t there.

  “Drop it,” I said.

  He dropped the coat.

  The wind howled. He began to shiver almost at once, probably because he knew what I had in mind. “Get undressed,” I told him. He glared at me but took his jacket off. He wasn’t wearing a tie.

  “The shirt,” I said.

  He unbuttoned the shirt and took it off. He was shaking all over. I was wearing a topcoat and a jacket, and I was cold.

  “All right,” I said. “The pants.”

  “Madre de Dios,” he whispered, stuttering with the cold.

  “Caballero,” I said.

  He shook his head violently from side to side.

  “Is he dead?”

  “… don’t know.”

  “Did you take him?”

  “No.”

  “Who did?”

  He was shivering so much he could barely talk. “… don’t know,” he said again.

  “The pants,” I said.

  He glared at me. I cocked the Magnum’s hammer. He heard it. He
would have heard it in the eye of a hurricane.

  “You from the Mistral?” I asked.

  “N-no. My fren.”

  “In the car?”

  “Sí. Madre de Dios, meester. I freeze.”

  I walked close to him. He brought his hands up in a stiff, awkward motion. I hit him over the ear with the Magnum. He went down without a sound.

  I rolled him over. He was covered with snow. I got his coat under him and his shirt and jacket on top of him for a blanket. I figured it gave him a fifty-fifty chance, which was more than he deserved.

  His hat was a few feet off in the snow. I put it on and pulled the brim down. I took the Manila envelope from my pocket and carried it in my hand. Then I walked back toward his car. The snow was coming down harder now. I couldn’t see very far. The car loomed suddenly.

  “You get it?” a voice called.

  I waved the Manila envelope over my head. The car’s engine ground and kicked over. The headlights went on. I opened the door on the side opposite the driver and climbed in.

  The driver sat huddled in an overcoat and a scarf behind the wheel. “Jesus,” he said. “Tengo mucho friío.”

  I jammed the Magnum against his ribs. “That isn’t all you’re going to tengo,” I said, “unless you start driving.”

  He yelled in surprise and his foot slipped off the clutch, making the car buck forward before it stalled. I brought the gun up higher, where he could see it.He leaned toward the ignition key. I watched his hand.

  I should have smelled her. She was wearing perfume, not very good perfume and a lot of it. She was sitting in the back of the car. All I saw at the time was a blur of movement as her arm whipped around my neck. She wasn’t very strong, but she was strong enough to make me reach up and drag her arm away so I could breathe.

  The guy in front with me grabbed for the gun. I lunged away from him. The woman’s arm went back around my neck. The man grunted something. The woman screamed. The Magnum jerked and roared, shooting a hole through the roof of the car. The sound of it bounced and echoed and clattered in my ears. I didn’t hear anything else. I got the woman’s arm away a second time, but she grabbed my arm and held on. The man hit me in the face. He didn’t have much room to swing, but it slammed my head back against the window. The woman still held my arm. I ducked my head and butted the man’s face. My hat fell off. He opened his bloody mouth and said something, but I heard only the roaring of the Magnum.