Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

“Sorry to break in,” I said, “but I didn’t want to risk your slamming the door and reaching a telephone.”

“What do you want?” He tried to get a little of his old-time bluster and command in his tone.

The lighting from a lamp behind him hollowed his face and heightened the gray, tired look of him.

I took Sime Younkers’ dirt-ringed calling card from my pocket and dropped it on the table beside the whisky decanter.

He refused to look at the card. He had still not voluntarily moved a muscle, but a tiny one was quivering in the side of his thick neck.

“Turn it over,” I said.

“Why should I?”

“Because something is written on the back.”

“I’m not at all interested, Rivers.”

“You’d better be,” I said.

“Indeed? Why?”

“Because I’m giving you a chance — to convince me that you had nothing to do with Sime Younkers’ death.”

“You’re presuming too much. I don’t care to take the trouble to talk to you.”

I slapped him across the side of his face with my open hand.

He stood rocking. Not from the force or physical pain of the blow. The quivering crawled from the small area on his neck to the corners of his mouth. The gray mists gathered in greater quantity in his eyes. He bit his lip and suddenly ducked his head, to hide from me, to hide from the knowledge that I was seeking. I thought of a small boy who’s been kicked out of the club after the most terrible discovery of his life has been made — that he’s all bravado.

“You had no reason to do that,” he said in a soft, husky voice. “A few years ago I’d have smashed you with my bare hands for such an insult.”

“Fears can overpower insults, can’t they?”

“I’m not really afraid of you, Rivers. Not physically.”

“I’ll give you every benefit of that doubt. You’re a snob whose snobbery has been undermined. It’s left you with nothing. Now if you won’t pick up that calling card, I’ll tell you about it. It came from the pocket of a dead man. His name was Sime Younkers.”

“The only thing I know about him is what I’ve read in the papers the last couple of days, Rivers.”

“The back of the card calls you a liar,” I said. “Your address is on it.”

“Perhaps you put it there.”

“Don’t be asinine! In my present spot, would I take a chance on coming out here if I wasn’t convinced there was a real connection between you and a man now dead, a man involved in the Yamashita business?”

“You’re trying to frame me.” He sought to bluster. He raised the glass and tossed off the drink. I sensed the fight inside of him, his seething frustration as he tried to fan new life in the top-heavy ego that had carried him through many years.

I put my hands on my hips and stood looking at him a moment. I had a cankerous frustration of my own.

“I wish you wouldn’t be so difficult, Cameron.”

“I really don’t care to see any more of you.” He poured himself another drink. “You’d better leave now.”

I took a step toward him. I knew that a man of his disposition would have a particular horror of cold steel. I didn’t want to do it. But I reached to the nape of my neck and slid the knife from its sheath.

Lamplight glittered on the blade and etched the edge with almost luminosity.

“You... you wouldn’t dare!” Cameron said.

He looked from the blade to my face. The glass slipped from his hand and liquor stained the carpet. The gray of his cheeks faded to dead white. His mouth opened to catch a quick breath.

“You savage!” he whispered.

“I do what has to be done, Cameron. I’m trying to save the life of a man, the future and sanity of his wife, as well as my own skin. If it means coming in your lovely home and scraping the whitewash off you, that’s just too damned bad. I’m not going to ask you again. What business did you have with Sime Younkers?”

Cameron backed from the knife until the table touched him below his hips. “I... retained him. On a matter that had nothing to do with the Yamashitas or Younkers’ death.”

“What was it?”

“A personal thing. I told you. Nothing came of it.”

“I like to know personal things,” I said.

Unconsciously, he beat the meaty edge of his palm against the edge of the table. “I thought Sadao’s son, Ichiro, was stealing from the firm.”

“You hired Sime Younkers to find out?”

“Yes.”

“What did he find?”

“I was wrong. Ichiro was innocent.”

“What caused you to suspect him in the first place?”

“The way he lived. The cost of it.”

“I checked Ichiro’s financial affairs myself, Cameron. You’d better think of something else. Everything was in order.”

A thing drew tight inside of him and snapped. He stopped striking the edge of the table. “I don’t care what you checked! Ichiro was living high. I had reasons for my suspicions. Sime Younkers had a license then, and my action was perfectly legitimate. Certainly you found Ichiro’s affairs in order. He’d spent beyond his means, but someone had let him have some money.”

I studied his face carefully. “Rachie?”

“If you must know, yes. Now all the skeletons are out in the open.”

“Rachie get the money from you?”

“Money doesn’t mean much to Rachie. Rachie’s mother was not exactly a pauper when she died.”

“Ichiro pay Rachie back?”

Cameron stared at me. “Smart as you think you are, Rivers,” he said bitterly, “you’re built on the bedrock of naïve puritanism.”

“So I’ve been told. Thanks. Now I dig you.”

“I wonder if you do really?” he said in a hollow voice. He blundered toward a chair and sat down, his hands dangling limp over the arms of the chair.

“She got a charge out of buying him,” Cameron said in that same voice, “the same way some pathologically cruel people enjoy buying an animal.”

He sat gazing haggardly at the carpet, perhaps seeing her face as it had been years ago, when the misty sweetness of childhood hid the thing waiting to grow inside of her.

“Did you go to the Yamashita summerhouse the day they were killed, Cameron?”

“No,” he said, without turning his head.

“Did Rachie?”

“I don’t know,” he said dully. A short, bitter laugh ripped out of him. “The whole truth, Rivers, that’s what I’m telling now. I honestly don’t know if she went out there. Even if she did, it would have been with Ichiro. She’d have no reason to kill the whole family.”

“There was another woman out there,” I said.

He looked up. His eyes came into focus. “Another woman?”

“Her name is — or was — Luisa Shaw. Pert, blonde, very good looking. Do you know her?”

“I... no.”

“Your hesitation is showing.”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“When?”

“About a week before the murders.”

“Where?”

“Here,” Cameron said bleakly, “in my own house. Ichiro and Rachie came in. They didn’t know I was home, could overhear. She was asking him about Luisa Shaw. She — made a comparison between herself and Luisa.”

“Do you know what Luisa is?”

Cameron peered at images hidden in the carpet again. “Yes.”

“Did Rachie sound jealous of Luisa Shaw in her talk with Ichiro that day?”

“No. She sounded as if she were getting a kick out of talking about herself and Luisa to the man who knew them both.”

“She might have developed a jealousy,” I said. “She might have been hiding it that day.”

“I don’t know.”

“She might have gone out to the Yamashita house when Luisa and Ichiro were there,” I said. “She might have flown into an insane rage.”

“And — killed them?”