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

“Where is he now?”

A shrug of the round, plump shoulders.

“Do you know what he wanted?”

“No. Ees serious?”

“Could be.”

“Nobody tell. Nobody see you.”

“Thanks.”

“He ver’ famous man. No come in my place bayfore. I see him in reeng two, thray time. Mucho time ago. He say he send beeg fotografía weeth his name sign. I hang eet over bar. Haylp bees-ness.”

“You’ll have to order beer by the tanker load.”

He grinned warmly, shyly. “My leg, eet’s being pulled.”

The sudden move on Kuriacha’s part made me want to see him as badly as he seemed to want to see me. I went out looking for him. If he was still in Ybor City that night, we kept missing each other, like people trying to catch up with each other in a revolving door.

Nobody could tell me very much about him that I didn’t already know. Kuriacha was not his real name, though he had used it so many years it had become real enough by adoption. He’d mentioned to me once that California was his background. He’d started wrestling out there and moved into the big time before he ever came East. The cross-breeding that has taken place in certain areas of the West Coast was what gave the Prince his decidedly Oriental appearance.

It was very late when I tried phoning Kuriacha’s hotel. His room did not answer.

I took my tired feet up the steps of a cheap hotel and got a room. While I could trust the desk clerk, it was not as safe as the home that had sheltered me for the weekend.

I locked the door and put the .38 handy on the rickety bedside table. While I was undressing, I sipped away at a pint can of cold beer I’d brought in with me.

Later, lying on the lumpy bed that creaked a protest every time I flickered a muscle, I watched the winking glow of a neon sign across the street. On and off. Off and on. Senseless, mindless. Like the slaughter of three people on Caloosa Point.

I was plenty long in thought right then. The dirty little room seemed to have a loneliness all its own.

I thought of Nick and Helen, of the poor devil on Davis Islands and his daughter, of what Sime Younkers might have told me if I’d reached him sooner.

I wondered what the home office was thinking about me and when they would send a man down.

I realized I was on the point of feeling sorry for myself, and I forced a little laugh at Ed Rivers. Pretty grim, but still a laugh.

I knew a lot more now than when I’d started. I’d recognized the how in the case when I’d eliminated the elder Yamashitas from the motive. I still lacked that stuff Steve Ivey called concrete evidence, but I was more certain than ever that Ichiro’s death had been the primary aim, everything else a murderously logical aftermath.

So much for the how and wherefore.

Off and on went the neon light, a silent measure of time as my thoughts clicked away. I balanced every word, action, fact.

And suddenly a prickling sensation flew all over me.

I could almost glimpse the who. I suspected, but I couldn’t be sure.

I wouldn’t be sure until I had found Luisa Shaw.

I found myself back in the newspapers the next morning.

Disheveled, delectable morsel in a torn dress, Rachie Cameron had fallen in the arms of the cops who’d found her, with the wild tale that I’d come out to Davis Islands and tried to assault her. Her father must have been much drunker much earlier than I’d thought, in one of those sober-appearing, straight-walking stages certain individuals can get in with a part of the brain literally paralyzed. He claimed he didn’t remember much of what happened.

The story had all the elements. The Cameron name. Sweet young thing innocently walking into her own home to find a big monster, already wanted by the police, lurking on the premises. Steve Ivey was quoted as saying that efforts to find me would be redoubled. Which meant he’d break another brain cell trying to figure where he could pull some men to put back on my trail.

It might have been a delightful break in boredom for Rachie, a thrill with both masochistic and sadistic elements mixed in, a source of satisfaction to know how much trouble she could cause me — but it was hell for me. Much more of this, and I wouldn’t have a friend anywhere, even in Ybor City.

Right then, I could have gladly jerked her bald, smashed her over my knee, and whipped her with the bloody scalp until nothing was left of it.

Instead, I wondered how safe the hotel room was going to remain.

I had no choice but to wait and find out. I knew the dangers of being on open streets in broad daylight right now. The hotel room was by far the best prospect.

Without breakfast, I prowled the room, people-watched from the window, read, down to the classified ads, the paper I’d bought on the corner that morning before I’d known my picture would look back at me from the front page and send me back to the room fast.

By early afternoon, I began to relax. If no longer clammed up tight, Ybor City had volunteered no information, or Ivey’s men had asked the wrong people.

From the hall phone I called a beanery and had some grub sent up. While I was waiting, I tried Kuriacha’s hotel. His room failed to respond.

I got my coin back and slugged the phone again with it, calling Helen Martin. I assured her I was still in one piece and trying.

The next call was to Tillie Rollo.

There was a lengthy silence at her end after we exchanged hellos.

“Where are you, Ed?” she asked tightly.

“Never mind that. You know why I’m calling.”

“Of course.”

The phone hummed through a silence of my own. “Is someone else there?”

“No!” she said quickly.

“You sound upset.”

“Naturally. I read the papers this morning. There’s nothing for you at this end.”

“No?”

“The person has left town.”

“What makes you so sure.”

“I... I’d have heard,” she said.

“Maybe not.”

“Yes, I would have. I’ve inquired and looked. It’s no good. Please leave me alone. I can’t help you.”

Click.

I put the phone on its hook and went back to the room to take care of the tray of food a dark-skinned boy brought up.

Hungry as I was, I didn’t think much about the food, eating without really tasting it. My mind was too much on Tillie Rollo.

As soon as I had eaten, I returned to the hall pay phone.

I got Helen Martin on the line.

“I want you to do me a favor,” I said.

“Anything I can, Ed.”

“Call the airports and train station. Tell them your name is Miss Rollo and say you want to ask about your reservation.”

“Will do.”

I gave her the number of the pay phone. “Then call me back.”

“Right away.”

A ten-minute wait. The phone jangled.

“Ed?” Helen asked.

“Yes.”

“I did as you asked. They didn’t know anything about a reservation.”

“It means she hasn’t got one,” I said, “and that’s what I wanted to know. You want to stick your neck out a little?”

“If it would help you and Nick I’d be grateful for the chance.”

“I’m pinned down for the moment, but I’ve got to make sure a pigeon doesn’t leave the nest.”

“Just tell me what to do.”

I gave her Tillie Rollo’s address. “Drive out there and park where you can see the house, but not too close. The madam is a very chic redhead. Never mind that too much. Just keep an eye on the place. She drives a foreign-built sport car. If a woman, or the car, leaves the house, call me immediately.”

“I’m on my way, Ed.”

“One more thing, and don’t you forget this. Pick your spot carefully. There’s a small, elite shopping center about a block or so away. It would be ideal. I want the house watched, but I don’t want the house to know it. If anyone approaches you, man or woman, leave and call me. Don’t dare take a single chance.”