Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

“He should be started on it by now. I told him what you wanted. A complete job on the second time around, right? Every latent, every grain of dust, every thread, every hair. He said to tell you there’s one thing that makes it easier than usual.”

“Nothing ever makes anything any easier.”

“It was empty for two months before that midget rented it to him, and sitting empty and hot as a bakery, so Harv says the oils in all the old prints are dried out, and the way they take the powder, he can tell old from new right off. Anyway, his team should be working there now. He requisitioned one of the big lab trucks with everything on it.”

Lobwohl, nodding approval, continued his note taking. The other man, standing at the window, said, “I’m telling you. That damn Shaeffer. One forty-seven season average, and last night he rolls a six hundred series. Two twenty-eight the last game!”

“Shaeffer in Safe and Loft?” Lobwohl asked as he made a note.

“So they edge us out by five pins,” the man said with disgust.

“Okay, Bert, Barney, let’s get to it,” Lobwohl said. The man turned from the window and sat beside his partner, facing Lobwohl. “We have the make on him as Staniker. So his name was on the check in the bureau drawer and on his discharge from the hospital in Nassau. And the prints match, and he looks like Staniker’s daddy. So we are very clever people. But he is G. Stanley from Tampa as long as we can keep the lid on it.”

“Why should we?” Barney asked.

Bert said, “He likes the bright light they shine on you. He makes those faces. Any minute, CBS signs him.”

“We’ll move faster and better if it’s just another four lines on page forty, at least for now. I checked upstairs. If we start making the big effort, somebody wonders why. So it’s just us. Here’s what we’ve got from medical. Ten o’clock last night, plus or minus an hour. Pretty good load of barbiturates, but hard to tell how much exactly with all the blood gone out of it. But here is the clincher. No false tries on the wrists. One cut each, and as deep as you’ll ever see. The point is this. The cuts went so deep they destroyed the motor ability of the fingers. So he could cut one that way, but not both, unless he held the blade in his teeth, and that’s not very damn possible. Here’s what I go for. Somebody half cute. Wanted him dead. Didn’t figure the wrist business. Forgot to fix the catch so the door would lock itself. Let’s hope he was so sure it would go over he didn’t worry about prints. It’s about time we were due for one where prints would do us some good. How long has it been now?”

“Three years anyway,” Barney said.

“A hundred and fifty dollars in the same bureau drawer. We’ve got two directions to go for motive.”

“What’s with the G. Stanley bit?” Bert asked.

“That leads into one of the motives. The dwarf-lady said he was a one-night customer back in April. At that time he and his wife were living at that marina. The word is that he was stud. This time he signed for two weeks. The layout is fine for a sneak job, if you don’t mind a little squalor. The husband could have showed up instead of the lady and figured it that it would seem reasonable Staniker would be depressed by losing that yacht and those people and his wife and being the only one to get out of it alive.”

“And,” said Bert, “if you go the other way, it’s somebody doing it because he lost the boat.”

“You’re a better cop than a bowler,” Lobwohl said. “I remember a sob story about a girl on that boat. Her boyfriend and her brother came flying over from Texas to be in Nassau while the search was still going on. See if you can get me that clip without anybody smelling anything. Then we see if either or both are in the area, or maybe left the area this morning. I can have that checked out other ways once you get me that article. Meanwhile, you two dig into Staniker’s love life. He got to town Friday. He took that place Friday. I want to know exactly who he was banging before he went cruising. Move fast on it. And quietly.” He tapped one of his phones with his pencil. “And come back to me on this outside line, not through the radio net. Start at that marina and work out from there. Neighborhood. Bars. I don’t have to tell you your business.”

“We’ll call in just before noon anyway to see if Harv has anything juicy.”

Bert Kindler and Barney Scheff arrived at the Harkinson place a few minutes past eleven on Monday morning, drove through the open gate and got out of the department sedan slowly.

A maid in a blue and white uniform, and a man in dark pants and a blue shirt, suit coat over his arm, were coming down the open staircase from an apartment over the garages. Both were apparently Cuban. The maid hurried toward them with smiling greeting.

“No, not Mrs. Harkinson,” Scheff said after they had identified themselves. “We want to ask you some questions, honey. What’s your name?”

“Why question? Why?” the girl demanded.

“Your name,” Kindler said.

The girl looked very frightened. She backed away slowly. “Why?” she asked again.

“Honey,” Scheff said, “maybe you haven’t got papers, huh? Maybe we just put you in the car and take you down and...”

“No!” she said. “No! Oh please!”

“ ’Cisca!” the man said sharply in Spanish. “Go back up to the apartment and wait. They will not take you anywhere!”

As she went running up the stairs they stared blandly and curiously at the man. “Comprendemos un poquito, hombre,” Kindler said.

“My English is adequate. Her name is Miss Francisca Torcedo. What do you wish to know?”

“What’s your name?”

“Raoul Kelly.”

“You work for the Harkinson woman too?”

“No.”

“Kelly, what makes you think you can stop us from taking that little broad in for questioning if we want to? Man, I get a reaction like that from anybody, my ears grow points,” Scheff said.

“I think I can stop you if you will listen to why it would be a bad idea. If you won’t listen, I can’t. You look as if you’ve both been in your line of work long enough to want to listen.”

“Talk a little,” said Kindler.

“First, her papers, and mine, are in perfect order. She does not have much English. She is of a family which was very wealthy and important in Havana. When the Castro militia came into the city, her father was shot and killed in the confusion. She went into the street and wounded a militiaman. They took her to a military compound and kept her there. She was mistreated. There was serious emotional damage. Her brother and I were in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was killed. I was captured and exchanged later. He told me to look after her. I am going to marry her. She is getting better, little by little, day by day. Taking her in for questioning might push her way, way back, out of anybody’s reach, and she might not come out of it. I am close enough to her to be able to answer any question you might want to ask her. If you try to bother her, I will try to stop you, believe me.”

Both officers looked sleepy. “Kelly means it,” Scheff said.

“What we could do,” Kindler said, “we could stand in the shade.” They walked to the nearby shade. Kindler said, “If you are like we call unresponsive, then we take her in where we got somebody can speaka the spic.”

“And you take me too, I suppose. Horizontal, if I make a fuss. Cubans are tricky. You got to watch them.”

“He’s real sensitive, Bert,” Scheff said.

“You know what I think about Cubans?” Kindler said. “I wish there wasn’t any other kind of civilian in Dade County except Cubans. You know what that would do statistically, man? It would cut crime almost in half. I could spend more time with the wife and kids. So unpucker yourself, bud.”