Operation Whiplash Page 9

  “I came to the motel to see you this afternoon,” I said innocently, “but some loudmouth was using your place as a dressing room.”

  “You were shaking down the motel room,” she said unpleasantly.

  “Sure,” I agreed. “It looked to me as though you needed protection from your wise-guy boyfriend.”

  “I’ll supply my own protection,” she informed me. “What did you think you were looking for?”

  “Gold, diamonds, opals, pearls,” I said airily. “Or whatever else you have there your boyfriend felt needed protecting.” I reached across the seat and slapped her lightly on a plump, firm thigh. “Smarten up, Robin. I went to the motel room to make contact with you just like I said I would. I just happened to run into the big, bad wolf.”

  “Do you always make contact by searching everything?”

  “You could have been hiding under the bed,” I said lightly. “Although I’ll admit your style is more on top of it.” She opened her mouth to retort, but I kept on talking. “Have you learned anything about Hazel?”

  The question seemed to confuse her. “Well, no, not really,” she began, then paused. “But—” She stopped again as though uncertain how to continue.

  “It’s lucky I know you do your best thinking in bed,” I said. “Let’s go find one, shall we?”

  “No!”

  It came out like a gunshot.

  “Aha!” I commented. “Last night I was the fair-haired boy, Robin. You didn’t want me to leave the Lazy Susan at all. What’s caused the change?”

  “There’s no change,” she insisted. “It’s just—” She hung up again, unable to formulate an excuse.

  “It’s just that Mario runs a bed check on you whenever he’s in the vicinity?” I inqured.

  “Stop needling me!” she flared. “He’s just a friend. What have you found out about Hazel?”

  “Not nearly as much as I’d like.”

  “I do have one string out that might produce something,” Robin said. “But I won’t know until tomorrow. So don’t fail to call me. Although it would be easier for me to call you if you’ll just tell me where you’re staying.”

  In contrast to her previous uncertainty, she delivered the little speech in glibly verbal fashion. I wondered if she had finally remembered the lines she had been supposed to use with me. “I don’t have a phone,” I answered the last part of her statement. “What kind of a string do you have?”

  “There’s no point in my saying anything until I’m sure.”

  Once again the response sounded coached. The truth of it was more likely to be that there was no point in her saying anything until someone made up a story for her to tell me.

  “Why are we just sitting here?” she interrupted my train of thought. “Let’s drive around somewhere.”

  “Afraid to be seen with me now, hmm?” I said, but I started the motor and pulled out into the traffic lane.

  I headed north because that was the direction I’d been going. Neither of us said anything for awhile. I was still trying to adjust my thinking about Robin Ford. When she’d first showed up in Arkansas and I’d thought Hazel had sent her, it had seemed like a joke to put her freely offered, handsomely muscular bare ass to work. It was almost as if Hazel had showed up herself.

  But if Jed was right and this girl was part of a scheme that meant trouble for Hazel, it changed the whole ball-game. Robin Ford had never been entirely lovable, even at moments that caused a block in thought-capability. Now she was beginning to appear downright dangerous.

  I glanced sideways at her brooding expression, set once again in the pout which seemed her most familiar aspect. Its little-girl symbolism clashed sharply with her meaty muscularity. And what was she thinking now? The shakedown of her motel room appeared to have disturbed her out of all proportion to its importance in the scheme of things. Or was she upset because Rubelli was upset?

  Right then I thought of something. If Robin had been assigned to babysit with Hazel, and had lost her, no matter how, the people she was associated with would be very unhappy with Robin. If she had then been instructed to babysit me, to produce me when desired, and I had so far proven unproduceable, their unhappiness would have increased. Her almost perfervid insistence that I keep in touch after she found her sex-bait incapable of maintaining the bed-relationship was suggestive of a special purpose.

  Of course she had just turned down a needling offer by me to find a bed. Did that alter the equation? Or was it simply that when Rubelli was in her neighborhood, his ego couldn’t stand his not being No. 1 in regard to her bed-favors? Had she exceeded Rubelli’s orders about the means she should use to get me to Hudson? Yet she still insisted that I keep in touch.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking about Nate Pepperman.” I tried to jar her off balance.

  She turned swiftly to look at me. “What about him?”

  “When you were in his office, you thought he seemed upset. Tell me about it.”

  “Well—” Her former uncertainty had returned. “When—after Hazel called me, I went uptown to Pepperman’s office.” She was gazing at the passing telephone poles as though seeking inspiration. “I walked across the sidewalk and looked in the window and saw Hazel sitting at his desk, and I went inside and she asked me if I had time to go and find you. That’s when—”

  But I had stopped listening.

  Nate Pepperman’s office was not at ground level but on the second floor, which this damn girl didn’t even know.

  She’d never been there.

  Hazel had never sent her after me.

  I’d been set up from the very beginning.

  “You’re not even paying attention,” she pouted.

  “What? Attention? Sure I am, Robin.”

  “You think you’re so damn clever!” she burst out. She reached across and took hold of my right wrist as my hand held the steering wheel. The next instant she applied some kind of pressure that sent a shooting pain all the way up my arm. The car swerved across the road as I snatched my wrist away.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded heatedly as I straightened out the Ford again.

  She giggled, the same high-pitched sound I remembered from the motel room. “I’m just kidding around,” she said with attempted lightness.

  “Baby, that kind of kidding is going to earn you a few loosened molars.”

  She shrugged it off. “Do you mind taking me back to town now?” she changed the subject. “And be sure you call me tomorrow. I’m almost sure I’ll have some word for you about Hazel.”

  I’ll bet, I thought.

  Word that would position my neck for the poised guillotine.

  I wondered if our riding around had been in the hope of encountering Rubelli in his car. More than likely it had, and friend Robin had been wishing for a showdown.

  I drove back to town, and she stopped me before we came to the stoplight in the square. “I’ll walk from here,” she said. She got out and then peered in the car window from the sidewalk. “Don’t forget to call me tomorrow.” She went down the street with her plump hips tick-tocking rhythmically under her skirt. Whatever else could be said about Robin Ford, her basic erotic animal magnetism couldn’t be denied.

  The only reason for continuing to play along with her now was that she might lead me to Hazel. I’d stay with the charade with that hope in mind, but only until I was ready to surprise the hell out of the grabby Robin Ford.

  Kaiser rejoined me in the front seat. I turned the car around and resumed my interrupted pilgrimage to the tavern Hazel used to own. I turned into the crushed-stone driveway leading to the rear of the Dixie Pig. As usual, no cars were parked in front despite the half-dozen marked-off parking places. The Dixie Pig’s customers still didn’t care to advertise their drinking habits openly by permitting passersby to identify their parked cars.

  I left Kaiser in the car and entered through the back door. A wave of nostalgia assailed me as my nostrils tested the familiar smoke-musty atmosphere i
n the familiar low-ceilinged room. In many ways, this was where it had all begun for me. Hazel had been the best thing in my life. And now a bunch of thugs had her under the gun, whether in person or not. I wished I’d been positive of Rubelli’s status in regard to Hazel when I confronted him in Robin’s motel room. I’d have made the sonofabitch sing like a one-man rock group.

  No one was sitting in the booths that framed three sides of the big room. Only three customers lounged at the bar. A curtain rustled in an opening at the center back-bar, and a bald-headed man poked his head through the opening, just as Hazel used to do when she heard a customer come in. She’d had a sitting room fixed up in the small space behind the curtain. That was where I’d punched her in the eye and taken her car keys to keep her from coming with me the night I left Hudson and ran into the roadblock.

  I ordered Jim Beam on the rocks, and the bald-headed man served me. He disappeared behind the curtain again before I could decide how to formulate my first question about Hazel. The trio of silent drinkers stared down into their glasses. The Dixie Pig had been a lively place when Hazel owned it, but there was nothing lively-looking about it now.

  One of the drinkers rapped the bottom of his empty beer glass on the top of the bar. The baldheaded man reappeared to give him a refill. “Didn’t a woman used to own this place?” I asked before he could pull his disappearing act again.

  He paused halfway through the curtain. “That’s right,” he said. “Hazel Andrews. She sold out.”

  “Seen her around lately?”

  “Not in a couple of years, but I only work here afternoons. You could come by tonight and ask the new owner. Name’s Jim Willis.”

  He went into the back room again, and I was left to study the color of my Jim Beam. I don’t really know why I thought Hazel might have stopped in at the Dixie Pig. Unless partly for the same sentimental reason I had.

  I finished my drink in two long swallows, then decided to call Jed on the chance he’d turned up something. I went to the wall phone and dialed his office number. He answered immediately. “This is Kaiser’s friend,” I said. There was no reason the barflies should be interested in me, but it never hurts to be careful. “Anything new?”

  “Just a little bit more of the same,” he answered. “I found a guy closed out by Lou Espada when the guy fell behind on his loan payments. The guy tried to tough it out an’ found himself in front of a load of iron one night that changed his mind. I’m beginnin’ to think this Espada was a split personality. Around town he seemed like a nice guy.”

  “I don’t think the redhead would have married any other kind,” I said. “It was the weight behind Espada that was the really bad news.”

  “I guess so,” Jed agreed. “Where are you now?”

  “At the Dixie Pig.”

  “Quite a difference, right?” he sympathized.

  “It’s surely not like it was when Hazel had it.”

  “They don’t even serve food there any more,” Jed said. “Speakin’ of which, why don’t you come on over to my place and I’ll throw a couple steaks on the grill?”

  “Can do. Will do. And thanks for the offer.”

  “Fine. I’ll be expectin’ you.”

  I hung up the phone, paid for my drink, and went out to the car.

  I appreciated Jed’s hospitality more than I might have ordinarily.

  With the emotions aroused by my visit to the Dixie Pig, I was in no mood to eat my next meal alone.

  • • •

  A half-hour later I sat in Jed’s back yard with Kaiser at my feet. I watched Jed salt the steaks before consigning them to the grill’s white-hot charcoal. The first pale stars were appearing in the darkening sky.

  Jed’s house was small but attractive, set at the dead end of a gravel lane. I had just asked him a question about it. “Built it myself after my mother died,” he confided. “I’m the product of a so-called broken home. Never knew my old man.”

  “According to the figures, you should be a liability to the community instead of an asset,” I said.

  He grinned. “Dependin’ on who you’re talkin’ to, maybe the percentages have it right,” he answered.

  He picked up his own drink and sat down in the lawn chair beside mine. He took a sip and leaned back in his chair. “Nicest time of the day,” he said in a muted voice that was almost a sigh, as he contemplated neighboring houses which encroaching twilight was reducing to dim blurs.

  “If you had a woman here with you,” I countered.

  He waved a negligent hand. “No shortage within a few minutes’ drive.”

  He left his chair to attend the steaks, and when he turned them over I noticed there were three. “Someone’s joining us?” I asked.

  “We’ve been joined,” Jed replied. He pointed to Kaiser at my feet. The shepherd’s ears were cocked alertly toward the sound of the sizzling steaks. “He likes his rare.” Jed came back and sat down in his chair. “Changed your mind yet about Robin Ford?” he asked.

  “Completely.” I thought of the slip that told me Robin didn’t know that Nate Pepperman’s office was on the second floor above the bank and therefore she had never been there with Hazel. “Although there’s still some angles I don’t follow.”

  Jed didn’t reply. He rose again and forked one steak onto a platter, then left it to cool. Three minutes later he repeated the performance with the two remaining steaks and added a large baked potato to each. He brought the two platters with the baked potatoes to the circular table alongside our chairs, then gave Kaiser his platter. The shepherd tested the steak with his nose, wagged his tail twice, and began to eat with a curious delicacy.

  Jed and I fell to with knife and fork while a wispy-looking half-moon rose slowly above the roof of the house. I leaned back finally with a repleted sigh. “Coffee?” Jed inquired.

  “Not for me. Jed, when Hazel sold the Dixie Pig do you know if she sold it outright for cash, or was it on an installment basis?”

  “Seems to me I did hear it was for cash,” he replied after a moment’s rumination. “Why?”

  “I was hoping it wasn’t. If it was on a contract, she’d have a tendency to go by there and make sure the property was being kept up until the final payment was made. I talked to the bartender this afternoon, but he told me to see the owner.”

  “Feller named Jim Willis bought it from Hazel,” Jed said. “I don’t b’lieve he’s doin’ nearly as well with it as she did.”

  “Do you feel there’s any point in my going to see him?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t really know what it could be.”

  “If Hazel stopped by to see Willis after she left the Lazy Susan, she might have let something drop about where she was going.”

  “If she felt it necessary to leave, you can bet me she’d do no broadcastin’ about her new roost,” Jed answered.

  “So I’m grabbing at straws. I still don’t—” I stopped. Jed had turned his head in a listening attitude. Then I heard it, too. A telephone was ringing inside the house. Jed hoisted himself to his feet reluctantly. “You should tell that girlfriend she’s lost her turn because she interrupted you during a meal,” I said.

  Jed smiled and went into the house. I lit a cigarette and smoked two-thirds of it before he returned. I could sense something had happened even before he spoke. His attitude was one of tensed apprehension. “That was a guy I called yesterday for information about the Deakin Trucking Company,” he said. He spoke as though he were trying to hold himself down from bursting forth with his news.

  “Yes?”

  “He wanted to know if I’d heard that Casey had been brought to the local hospital this afternoon.” Jed said it somberly. “Worked over an’ in bad shape. Real bad.”

  “Worked over? I don’t get it. Why?”

  “You went to see him,” Jed pointed out. “Maybe someone thought Casey did some talkin’ out of school.”

  “If the someone you’re thinking about is Colisimo, how did he even know I’d been there
?”

  Jed shrugged. “Who knows? Deakin is the only loose end Colisimo ever left around here. I used to wonder why until I realized Colisimo kept the Deakin name for the truckin’ company. Evidently too much paperwork would have been involved to change it in the light of Colisimo’s police record. There’s interstate licenses, bonds, and a bunch of other rigamarole. That’s prob’ly all that kept Deakin alive the first time.”

  “And you think that now—”

  “If Colisimo thought someone was backtrackin’ on him, he’d sure as hell close the door,” Jed interrupted me. He was silent for a moment. “After findin’ out from Casey who it was.”

  “I never identified myself to Deakin.” I paused. I had just realized the cause of Jed’s apprehension. “But I did use your name,” I said slowly. “If Deakin told them that, Colisimo’s people could be developing an unhealthy interest in you.”

  “I did think of that,” Jed admitted. His usual cheerful expression was missing, but then he tried to rally. “Prob’ly it didn’t make no impression on Casey when you told him, anyway.”

  I wasn’t nearly so sure of that. Deakin had said almost nothing to me until I used Jed’s name. “Play it safe, Jed,” I said. “Stay out of sight for awhile. I don’t think anything will happen, but then I didn’t think it would to Deakin, either.”

  “What do you think we should do?” Jed wanted to know.

  “I’ve already told you what I think you should do. Keep a low profile for awhile until I can find out more about this.”

  “How’re you gonna find out?”

  “I think I’ll go to the hospital and pose as an insurance investigator for a company holding a policy on Deakin.”

  “An investigator showin’ up so soon after Casey was brought in?” Jed said doubtfully.

  “If they question it, I’ll say someone on the hospital clerical staff is paid to tip us off.”

  “That’ll throw up a smoke screen,” Jed agreed. He appeared to be recovering his normal high spirits. “Let’s stop in at my office first. I save callin’ cards of the people who call on me there. Realtors, brokers, insurance men, mortgagors, an’ the like. Maybe I’ve got a card you can use. Somethin’s always better than nothin’.”