Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

A moment of silence passed.

“Lloyd, will you take me some place?”

“Where would you like to go?”

“Any place there’s some music, a glass of wine, something to eat.” She caught my arm. “Lloyd, they won’t send her to the electric chair, will they?”

“I don’t know.”

“But what if she didn’t do it?”

“It looks pretty much like she did. Murder is a funny thing. Sometimes cops flounder around a lot on a murder case, because they haven’t got direction. But once they get direction, once they know what they’re looking for and who it’s to be used against, they usually dig up evidence.”

I sensed a shudder rippling over her. “Let’s go have that glass of wine.”

We went down, got in the coupe, and drove over to Club Habana, a small, quiet place with Cuban music, fair rum and fairly good food.

I sipped a beer, danced with her, watched her eat her dinner. She ate the spicy Cuban food as if she’d been too nervous and distraught to eat before. Now that she’d let down, she’d discovered she was famished. But that other hunger, that longing in her eyes — it was still there when she’d reached her coffee. It had been there always, I guessed, lonely, without an anchor.

We danced a few more times. We talked for awhile. She told me about her home town, her girlhood. “I was walled off,” she laughed, “by high walls of greenbacks.” She reached over and clutched my hand. “I feel much better now, Lloyd. I think I’d better go back to St. Pete. But tomorrow — couldn’t we do something then?”

“I dunno, I—”

“Show me Florida, Lloyd! Not the Florida the tourist sees, but the back-ways, the way the swamp people live, the farms, and villages.”

“Sometime,” I said.

She didn’t take her hand off mine. She leaned toward me, her mouth parted a little, the soft, blue light of the Cabana glinting faintly on the tips of her teeth. I could see a pulse beating in her throat and the almost invisible sheen of perspiration on her forehead. Very softly the band was playing a tender Cuban love song.

I kissed her softly on the lips. She leaned back, said quietly, “Thank you, Lloyd.” Then she gathered her handbag, stood up, and we left the place.

She said she’d take a taxi to St. Pete, and I deposited her in one, and drove on back to my apartment.

The heat was still like a blanket, even though the night was a bit older. I had a cold beer in the kitchen. Cold beer was the only thing I’d ever found to help against the heat, but even that was a losing contest. The beer didn’t keep you cool long enough.

I wondered if I’d ever get used to Tampa heat. I went in the bedroom. The ice I’d put in the pan on the center table that afternoon had long since melted, but the fan was still running, sending a stream of sluggish hot air over my face. I didn’t lay down. I simply sat on the edge of the bed, trying to get my thoughts straight. I couldn’t go to sleep; so I got up and went back down to the coupe.

I started the motor, let it idle for a minute. Then I pointed the nose toward St. Pete and Coquina Key.

It was a little after 11:00 when I rolled down the boulevard on the island. A huge moon bathed Coquina Key in silver light. White surf broke against the beach, and out in the water, moon lays lay in a great elongated splash, a pool all their own. Stars were out by the millions in a sky that was pure black velvet.

I braked in the business section of the Key. It was pretty grubby, most of the buildings of frame wooden construction, a cluster of boat houses down at the inlet, along with some bait houses. Cabanas and cottages were stacked over the area, close together. Everything there was dark, except for a bar, a chicken-in-the basket place, and Baxter Osgood’s beer garden.

The beer garden was crowded with people in rumpled sport shirts and slacks and cool cotton dresses. It was hot, smoky, wet and rank with the odor of beer, turgidly alive with sluggish conversation and the rasping of a juke box. I bought a beer at the bar and asked if Baxter Osgood was around.

“I’m right here,” Osgood said, practically at my elbow.

I turned around to look at him. He moved up to the bar beside me, sat down on a stool.

“I saw you come in, Carter.”

“The beer isn’t cold,” I said.

“No? Why don’t you buy someplace else?”

“I couldn’t — not the product I’m in the market for.”

“No?” he said again. “What is it you’re wanting to buy?”

“Letters,” I told him.

He watched the dancing for a few seconds. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you don’t, Mr. Osgood.”

“How much are you paying for this product?”

“Enough — but not too much.”

He yawned against the back of his hand. “I’ve got to run over to the house for a minute. Like to come along — just for the ride?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll come along, just for the ride.”

We went outside. His car was angle parked at the curb, a blue convertible. We got in, and he drove down the boulevard, turned off on Sunshine Way, braked before his bungalow.

“Every time I look at the house next door,” he said as we got out of the car, “I think of Mr. Tomlinson.”

“Too bad about Mr. Tomlinson, but I understand they’ve got the woman who killed him.”

“I thought you might be interested in it — say in an academic way.”

“Not even in an academic way.”

“Just in letters, huh?”

“You said it.”

He keyed open the front door. The house was like an oven; he turned on lights, opened windows, threw the switch on an attic fan. Cooler night air began to rush through the place.

Osgood walked over to the knee hole desk, stuck a cigarette in his mouth, and picked up a box of matches that was on the desk. He turned halfway back toward the desk, dropped the matches on it, and opened the drawer and pulled the gun, all in one liquid motion.

He laughed faintly. The gun was leveled at my middle.

“Well,” I said, “every man is entitled to one mistake.”

“Yes — one.”

He came halfway across the room toward me. “Turn around, Carter.”

I stood still, and he jerked the gun up. His words didn’t bother me — the sudden message in his eyes did. I turned around.

He came up behind me as if to frisk me. He hit me on the crown, where I’m starting to bald. I don’t remember much after that.

I think I tried to get out of the house. Common sense tells me I tried to pull Henry Fayette’s .38 out of the waistband of my pants. Putting it together later as it must have been, I think I crawled as far as the kitchen. There I passed out for a moment, and he must have unlocked the kitchen door and dragged me outside. I tried to stir on the powdery sand of the back yard. He hit me again, on the back of the head.

The next thing I sensed was a slow melting of black nothingness into quivering curtain of heavy gray fire, if there ever was any such thing, against the walls of my eyeballs. As the black faded, feeling came in to take its place. My head was a pincushion of pain; my heart was laboring; and I was sucking in mouthfuls of cool, clean air. It was very early morning.

Ten or fifteen minutes later I sat up slowly. I was still in Baxter Osgood’s back yard. I stumbled to my feet, staggered to the kitchen door, opened it. The old man’s gun had still been in my waistband. Now it was in my hand. I intended to fix Osgood so he’d never beat another man again. In my state, I was no match for a fever-ridden midget, but that didn’t occur to me. I had a gun, I was on my feet, and Osgood deserved every damn thing I could dish out.