Dan Marlowe - Killer with a Key

“Exactly. The man carefully points out to you that while his service might be viewed as a bit unethical, the hook is set a little deeper in your mouth. You have a license to lose, and a backlog of people on your books any of whose reminiscences in the wrong place could have you up before the mast.”

“What happened to your friend that wanted out?”

“He's still taking the service. I went around to see Connor, and he read me a nice little lecture on minding my own business. My friend bought another Cadillac the other day. I figure he's earned it. He's my age, but I flatter myself he looks ten years older.”

Johnny rubbed his chin. “So now we have Ed Russo tied in somehow to a character like this Connor. Did you know Russo was dating this Perry girl who was killed?”

“He was? You mean Ed ties into that public relations office, too?”

“Spent a fair amount of time over there, according to Lorraine. Not under the name of Russo, either. The point is this, though. This Perry kid would have blackmailed the Pope if she had a thirty-seventy chance. I figure whoever killed her did it to keep her mouth shut because of something she knew. The day I was there she said-”

“There?” Mike interrupted. “Where?”

“I was with her in her place when she was killed.”

“You were what?” Mike's inflection was strangled. “The papers didn't-”

“That's right. Dameron must've muzzled 'em. The girl's landlady knew I was there; Joe must've put her on ice. The killer shot from the fire escape over a high-backed chair with its back to him. I was in the chair. 'Course I never got a look at him because by the time I got to the girl on the floor and back to the window and the fire escape he was gone.”

“Brother!” Awe reverberated in Mike's reverent tone. “What did Dameron have to say to that?”

“I was still gettin' the echoes last night. I fouled off a couple of Joe's questions, and he got up on his hind legs and told me one more move from me like that one and he'd personally have me starched an' ironed.”

“You'd better watch your step, then. Lieutenant Dameron draws a little water in his section of town. Let me catch up with this. Is Russo your candidate for the Perry girl?”

“Russo's my candidate, period, except that Jimmy Rogers told me he's ironclad on Sanders, and everything stems from Sanders. I'm hoping that Roberta Perry was Russo's alibi for the time Sanders was killed. I'd like to find out. If she was, and the alibi was a phony, he'd have to knock her over to make sure no talkee, or no blackmail.”

“Boy!” Mike wagged his head from side to side. “Quiet now while I go back and unscramble this omelet you just dropped on my chin. There's a couple-”

His voice died away meditatively, and Johnny stood up and stepped up from the cockpit and walked up to the bow. He knelt, removed sneakers and socks and rose again to slip out of slacks and shorts. He went over the side in a long, shallow dive and thrashed a headlong hundred yards in a clumsily effective six-beat racing crawl, then rolled over on his back and floated effortlessly, eyes half closed against the sun.

He floated high in the water; an oddity in his chemical metabolism and the concentration of weight in his upper body gave him an unusual natural bouyancy. He could, and often did, swim for hours, and while his inelegantly powerful crawl stroke developed no real speed, he could maintain it almost indefinitely.

He rolled over again and swam back to the boat, shoulders surging up out of the boiling water. Alongside, he surface-dived and swam down under the keel, his eyes open in the cool green underwater shadows. That far down there was a definite chill in depths unwarmed by surface sun. He could see the trailing kelp and the greener marine growth barnacling the squat underside of Ye Olde Beaste, and he kicked strongly and surfaced on the far side, blowing a fine spray. He looked up at Mike carrying pails and towels from the cockpit to the bow. “Her whiskers are trippin' her, Mike. The old lady needs a shave.”

Mike nodded. “She hasn't been out of the water in eighteen months. I ought to have it done.”

Johnny swam lazily along the water line, and Mike tossed him the bow painter. Johnny went up it hand over hand until he reached the brass guardrail; his hands gripping it until they whitened, he doubled up his body and muscled himself aloft in a handstand upon its polished surface. Upside-down-erect, in sheer exuberance he raised and lowered himself three times in elbow bends, corded muscle standing out in forearms and shoulders.

“Monkey boy,” Mike's voice drifted out to him. “Too bad I haven't any peanuts.”

Johnny hand-walked the rail further in from the bow, and lowered himself to the deck. He sluiced the salt from his body with two upturned buckets of fresh water and dried himself off roughly. He slid into shorts and slacks, spread the towel on the deck, and lay down on his back.

Mike's head poked up out of the cockpit. “You want to try it someplace else?”

“What time is it?”

“Few minutes to ten.”

“Maybe we better get back.”

He lay and soaked up the sun and considered his present inability to savor this carefree life. Ellen was dead; he had promised himself he would find her murderer, and his lack of progress gnawed at his nerves. He had accomplished little or nothing, and now there was Joe Dameron to contend with also Beneath him the deck planking sprang into an independent vibrating life of its own as Mike started up the engine. He throttled it back to a rumbling mutter and stepped up and over Johnny, straddling him as he pulled in the float. Johnny braced his elbows as Ye Olde Beaste swung broadside to the swell and began to roll. He opened his eyes at the abrupt sound of Mike's voice. “I want to talk to you.”

Johnny scrambled to hands and knees and followed Mike down into the cockpit. Mike advanced the throttle arm slightly, and the motor's mutter changed to a muted thunder; Ye Olde Beaste circled clumsily and started on her return trip. Mike's face wore a scowl; his tone was flat and heavy as he raised it above the sound of the engine. “I don't like the sound of what I'm going to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. After what you told me a few minutes ago I think you need this for your frame of reference. Lorraine Barnes-” He hesitated, and Johnny waited. Mike's voice pitched higher. “Did you know Lorraine killed her first husband? Shot him?”

Johnny stared. “The hell she did!”

“She did, all right. Fifteen, sixteen years ago. It was a tight fit for her; she bought the gun she used, and the smell of premeditation was all over it. There must have been extenuating circumstances, because it wound up as manslaughter, and she got seven years. Did about four and a half. Moved away; remarried after a couple of years. Divorced. Moved again, to New York. Married Vic.” Mike's eyes swept the Sound as if he were searching for something. “I doubt the police know it; all those years, and a couple of name changes. And she wouldn't tell them.”

“But she told you?”

“Me?” Mike looked embarrassed. “No. Vic told me. I guess he had to tell someone to convince himself it wasn't her fault.”

“You'd have to say he's convinced, the way he's goin' down the line for her.” He blew out his breath; if the police ever took Lorraine's prints It wasn't likely that they would, though; she wasn't charged with anything. No wonder Vic had clammed up completely; one or two wrong words from him and the whole apple cart would have been upside down. He probably hadn't trusted himself to cope with police questioning. The conversation died. Ye Okie Beaste plowed steadily shoreward, throbbing in every pore. After a time Johnny stirred himself; he disjointed the rods, rinsed the salt water off them and the rest of the gear and stowed it away. At the dock he helped Mike slide the metal cowling over the engine, and they lashed the canvas cover down over the cockpit. They washed up at the standpipe and walked through the weeds to the car.