Brett Halliday - Killers from the Keys

She drew in a deep breath and slowed to a walk, thrusting her breasts out and stepping mincingly so her buttocks did a slow roll with each step.

There was no one at her table when she returned to it, and she seated herself composedly and gathered up the change the waiter had left from Freddie’s twenty. As soon as the spotlight came on again for the next number, she was pretty sure the mean-looking younger man and the sad-looking older one in the black suit would be sitting down with her to ask questions.

Back-stage, Ralph Billiter looked down contemptuously at the frightened man clinging to him and demanded, “Whatsa matter, huh? What’re you running from?”

“Two men… looking for me… I guess,” panted Shephard. “Miss Piney was telling me about them being here the other night, and then… they showed up just now. If you can show me how to get out the back way and around to my car in the parking lot…”

“Sure.” Ralph tucked Shephard’s arm in his and led him back to a wooden door opening out into the night behind the squat building. “What they want with you, you reckon?” he asked interestedly.

“They want my money,” Shephard chattered. “That’s what they’re after. But it’s my money.” He took a deep breath of the night air and sought to draw his arm away from Ralph’s. “I’m all right now, and I thank you. I’ve watched you dance with Miss Piney, and I’ve wanted to tell you how good I think the two of you are together. Please thank her for me and tell her that I will try to contact her later tonight. Assure her, if you will be so kind, that I really meant what I said tonight.”

Ralph Billiter kept his grip on Shephard’s arm and tightened his fingers bruisingly on the Midwesterner’s flesh. “I’ll walk you around to your car… be sure you get away all right. The Pink Flamingo, huh? Ain’t that just a piece down the road?”

“Yes. It’s a motel.” Shephard did not protest further as Ralph guided him along a path beside the building leading to the brightly lighted parking area. The young man’s muscular strength was reassuring, and Shephard clung to him thankfully.

“You got the money there?”

“What’s that?”

“All the money you been talkin’ about. That you been tellin’ Essie you’d give to her was she to go off with you.” There was a sudden throbbing note of anger in Ralph’s voice that penetrated the alcoholic haze surrounding Shephard, and at the corner of the building, just before they reached the lighted area, he paused again, uncertainly.

“I have the utmost respect for Miss Piney,” he said in a high-pitched, quavering voice.

“I know,” said Ralph brutally. “You been sleepin’ with her an’ you like it.” His big hand slid up Shephard’s arm to his shoulder and he shook the slighter man vigorously. “Where’s yore parkin’ ticket?”

“Right here.” His teeth chattered and his hand trembled as he got the numbered ticket from his pocket.

Ralph took it out of his hand and marched him forward into the floodlighted area. The attendant was returning to the canopied entrance from parking a car, and Ralph intercepted him with the ticket. “We’re leavin’. What kinda car you got?” he demanded of his companion.

“It’s a dark tan Chevrolet.”

The attendant looked at the number on the ticket and went away. Ralph pulled Shephard back against the building and they waited until the dark tan Chevrolet came around from the lot and pulled up in front of them. Ralph gave him a little shove around in front of the car, and Shephard circled it to get in the driver’s seat. As he settled himself behind the wheel, Ralph opened the other door and slid in beside him. “Drive on to yore motel,” he ordered between clenched teeth. “I gotta hankerin’ to see all this here money you been promisin’ Essie. She’s my woman, Mister, and don’t you forget it.”

Shephard said, “I’ll ask you to get out right now. I have no intention…”

“Drive on outta here,” said Ralph. His big hand came out of his pants pocket with a conch shell in it that had been laboriously sharpened to a needle-like point. He slid it carelessly across his lap so the tip touched Shephard’s side. “This here’s what we call a persuader down on the Keys where I come from. You want it in yore guts, or you gonna drive on?”

Shephard looked down at the vicious shell in fascination. “That’s what you and Miss Piney use in your dance, isn’t it? They look terribly dangerous to me on stage.”

Ralph grinned and moved his hand slightly. The tip of the shell went through the fabric of Shephard’s coat and into his flesh just beneath the rib-cage. He gasped with pain and shrank back against his side of the car, and Ralph said again, “Drive on outta here.”

Shephard put the light sedan in gear and drove around in a circle to the exit. Ralph settled his hulking body more comfortably in the seat beside him and spoke in a voice that was chilling in its casual and irresponsible menace, “Killin’ a man ain’t nothing to me, Mister. I’d done it before this except Essie kept on sayin’, ‘Wait an’ lessee does he really have all that money he claims to have.’ You reckon she ever had any thought of goin’ off with an old goat like you?” Ralph laughed jeeringly. “Hell, ever’ time she come back from layin’ with you we laughed an’ laughed about how you was in bed.”

“I don’t wish to discuss Miss Piney with you.”

“We’ll discuss her, awright. She’s my woman, like I told you, an’ any money she gets outta you belongs rightly to me. These here men that’re chasin’ you, now. Just who might they be?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.” Shephard slowed the light sedan as they neared the intersection to the well-travelled Trail. “If you’ll get out here,” he said hopefully, “I’ll give you all the money I’ve got, and I promise you I won’t ever come back to see Miss Piney again.” He pulled off to the side and looked at Ralph hopefully. “I assure you I didn’t realize she was your… ah… woman.” He gulped sadly. “She was so young and I thought she liked me.”

“How much money you got?” demanded Ralph truculently.

Shephard squirmed in the car seat to remain as far removed from the needle-sharp conch shell as possible, and got a thick wallet from his hip pocket. He opened it and took out a sheaf of bills which he pressed into Ralph’s hand. “There’s several hundred there, I think. You can see it’s all I’ve got.” He displayed the empty wallet. “Will you please get out, now, and let me go on? I promise you I’ll leave Miami immediately and never see Miss Piney again.”

Ralph riffled the bills contemptuously. “A few hundred bucks? You gotta do better’n that, Mister. All this big talk you been givin’ Essie about going off to some island an’ livin’ the rest of yore lives.” He laughed harshly. “Drive on to that motel of yours an’ dig out the rest of it.”

“But I tell you that’s all I’ve got left. I’ve been spending a great deal…”

“Nuts to that.” Ralph moved the conch shell menacingly close again. “You think I’m a pure fool to swallow a story like that? How you gonna get outta town tonight if you got no money left? Drive on, goddamit, and we’ll take a look in yore cabin. I gotta get back for our dance act.”

Shephard trembled in an agony of fear and dispiritedly pulled onto the highway in the direction of the Pink Flamingo. Ralph Billiter was something completely outside the orbit of his experience. There was a cold and predatory sort of ruthlessness about him that shocked Steven Shephard to the very core of his civilized being.

Neither of them spoke again on the short drive down the Trail to the motel turn-off. Then he tried once more to divert the young man from his purpose.