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

“How much is clear now, ugly man?”

“Everything.”

“Then you know I didn’t kill anyone.”

“You triggered five deaths by triggering the first, Ichiro’s. You were the indirect, but major, cause behind a suffering, innocent man’s going to jail.”

“Oh, that. I’m not responsible for what other people do.”

I gripped her wrists so hard she winced with pain. “You’re very strong, ugly man,” she said softly. “You’re hurting me.”

I looked at the avid sickness in her eyes and face, and shoved her away. “You’re a sick little chick, Rachie. I wish there was some way to touch you once with real hurt. You deserve it.”

Her lower lip dropped angrily. “I don’t want any lectures! I don’t want to hear about those stupid people!”

“Including the man unlucky enough to love you? Loving you, I guess, would be worse than being on heroin or taking poison. That’s what you’d make it, Rachie. Torment, misery, poison.”

“You shut up!”

“He went out there that afternoon, didn’t he? To the Yamashita summerhouse. He found you and Ichiro together...”

“You stinker! I don’t have to listen—”

The breath went out of her as I cut off her attempt at flight by grabbing her, throwing her on the bed, and holding her with my knee in her midriff and my hands clutching her arms.

“And he couldn’t stand it,” I went on. “He grabbed up the nearest thing at hand, a metal lamp or book end or statuette. He clobbered Ichiro.

“I can imagine the quick way you played on his poisonous love for you. You got out of there. He was leaving, too, but the parents came home, into the house. They saw him. Now he was in the state of a jungle animal. It was kill or be killed for this man. He flattened Ichiro’s father in the house, caught up with the fleeing little old lady on the front porch and let her have it there.

“Then, with every nerve screaming, every muscle crackling, every cell of him exploding, he thought of that other cottage, the Martins’. Had they seen? Must he silence them, too, in order to live? He ran there, found Nick asleep on the living-room couch. Perhaps he turned and started to go. Then it came to him. Here was safety. Here was a way out. There hung the samurai sword. Beside the couch was the whisky bottle. On the couch lay the sleeping man who sometimes went back in time when alcohol had blotted out his pain. Who went back and thought he had to kill Japanese again.

“So the man takes the sword and goes back to the Yamashita house and does what he thinks he has to do. He had not wanted to kill at all. Now he believed he was safe from the results of that blind, insane moment when he’d caught you and a man he’d believed a friend—”

“You’ll pay for this,” she gasped, her head rolling against the dirty linens. “I’ll find a way — I’ll make you pay.”

“We’ll collect a few other debts first,” I said. “From the man. Remember him? The man who thought it was all over, until Sime Younkers stepped into the picture.

“If Sime had worked, instead of always looking for an easy buck, he’d have made a decent living. He had cunning. He had brains, twisted as they were. Delving into Ichiro’s activities, Sime discovered your double life. As efficient as a weasel, learning the truth about you since you were so much a part of Ichiro’s activities, Sime sniffed possibilities, opportunities. Gleaning a knowledge of you and your acquaintances, he suspected the truth about what happened to the Yamashitas. For enough boodle, he would not only keep quiet, he would insure the murderer’s safety for good by forcing Nick Martin into a jailhouse confession.

“Except, instead of paying Sime off with cash, the murderer made payment with something a lot more permanent.

“Safety was the thing our man wanted with all his tarnished soul. With Sime’s death, he must have thought once again, the bloody path started in a wild moment of passion had ended.

“Then, all of a sudden, he was safe no longer. Tillie Rollo learned your whereabouts. You just couldn’t stay away from it, could you? You contacted her. Tillie got the new phone number.

“At the outset, our man hadn’t figured on me. But as time moved on, I got in his hair more and more. Suddenly I, if given the knowledge Tillie possessed, was very dangerous. He decided to set me up at Tillie’s and get me off his neck once and for all. He was living from moment to moment, in desperation, trying to stamp out the fuses as his firecrackers got ready to explode.

“He got Tillie instead of me. It wasn’t as good, for he knew now that as long as I lived, I’d be after him. But it gave him a chance for a breather, to try and think of something else.”

Rachie-Luisa lay with the blonde hair framing her face. She was quiet now, staring at me.

“Do you know the man?”

“Yes. Prince Kuriacha.”

“The big cluck fell like a ton of bricks for me.”

“I’m sure you’ve enjoyed knowing that.”

One of those lightning changes came into her eyes. “I really had him way out and gone. So much power over him.”

“And through him over all of them. You deserve to die in a gutter, Rachie.”

She breathed a laugh. “He told me that once himself. He had tears in his eyes. He said loving me was torture, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He’s been after me to go away with him.”

“To a place of safety.”

“That’s right — but not without me.”

Footsteps intruded into the muffled heartbeat of the walls. Footsteps on the bare flooring of the hallway.

They came to the door of 212.

They stopped. Someone knocked. Either her shattered father — or Kuriacha.

I eased away from Rachie.

“You make one move,” I whispered, “and I’ll make you wish he’d killed you.”

Kuriacha stood framed in the doorway, a dumb look on his heavy, swarthy face.

The love light left his muddy, yellow eyes as their ink-black centers looked down the muzzle of the .38.

“Come in, murderer,” I invited, “and join our little group.”

He didn’t move until he saw my knuckle go white on the trigger. He edged into the room, moving lightly on his strong bandy legs. I toed the door closed.

He began to recover from his jolt. He turned his head slowly on its thick, short column of neck and looked at Rachie. Their eyes held a moment. Neither of them said anything. The pulse beat of the gin mill undulated through the walls.

“How’d he get here?” Kuriacha asked her in a ragged whisper.

“He knows,” Rachie said. “He knows it all now.”

“How does he know?”

“Do you think I told him?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what to think any more.”

“He figured it out for himself,” Rachie said. “You must have been real dumb in spots.”

“He did pretty well,” I said. “He had a long lead on me to start with. He cut plenty of corners before I whittled the lead down and jumped ahead of him. He’s simple, blunt, direct. So long as he stayed that way he was a tough opponent. He made his slips when he paused and started thinking.”

Kuriacha’s face was old and tired. “You wouldn’t make a deal? I’ve got a lot of money. I made as much money in my time as some pretty fair movie stars.”

“You’re wasting your breath.”

“I guessed I was. What put you onto me?”

“Several things, though I had to get the whole picture before the details fell in place.

“When I ran into you in Ichiro’s private apartment, you were there to make sure nothing was around to connect him with Luisa Shaw. You warned me off the case, your only possible motive being to protect yourself and Rachie, or Luisa, whichever you prefer to call her. You tried to explain yourself by saying Sadao Yamashita’s brothers had been kind to you in your poverty-stricken days in California. But he had no relatives out there, none in this country at all. None to notify of his death, to take care of the funeral arrangements. Victor Cameron had to attend to all those details himself. Sadao’s relatives, except for his wife and son, were wiped out in Hiroshima.