Kill Me Tomorrow (9 page)

“When George—my husband for twelve wonderful years, rest his soul—was alive he owned a real estate agency, and Henry worked for him as a salesman. George liked him very much, was even thinking of taking him in as a partner when … well, George passed away. Henry knew all about the business—I don't understand any of it myself—so I asked him if he'd run it for me.”

I didn't say anything.

She broke the silence by volunteering, “It was just a coincidence that Henry was here so, ah, early in the morning. He dropped by to … have me sign some papers. Real estate things—it's all a mystery to me, I just sign the papers and somehow everything works out all right.”

And that was about it. I thanked her, and she showed me to the door. The door closed, shutting off the soft sound of that crazy music, and I walked to my Cad thinking about Henry Yarrow. It puzzled me even more than it did Mrs. Blessing that Gil Reyes could have mistaken a local businessman for a Tucson
mafioso
he must have been pretty certain was dead.

Besides, I'd have given a dollar to a nickel that Henry hadn't dropped by Mrs. Blessing's home so, ah, early in the morning to … have her sign some papers.

I found North Palma Drive about a mile down Claridge, followed it a couple of blocks till I hit the sixteen hundreds, parked near the next-to-last house, number 1694, at the far end of the block, and approached Yarrow's home with at least as much care as I'd used on my previous stop. And when I rang the bell my right hand was beneath my coat. Just in case.

Even though I was virtually certain Civano had been dead more than five days, it was a bit of a relief when the door opened and a tall, heavily built man looked out at me. Because he was certainly not Joe Civano.

He was a couple of inches shorter than my six-two, but the thick chest and stomach—the stomach not unusually protuberant, however—accounted for maybe an additional ten pounds more than my two hundred and six. His hair was brown, thick, slightly waving, flecked with strands of gray and definitely gray at the temples. He was deeply tanned, and his eyes were a startlingly light blue.

Except for the fact that he was roughly the same height and weight as Civano, and that there was a
very
slight facial resemblance—sharp nose, wide chin, full lips—I wouldn't have mistaken him for Crazy Joe at a distance of fifty feet, much less when he was standing only a yard from me as he was now. Civano's eyes had been brown, there'd been a fine scar on his upper lip and a wide and deeply indented scar—the result of getting clobbered by a well-aimed crowbar—high on his forehead near the hairline.

“Mr. Henry Yarrow?” I asked. He nodded and I said, “My name's Shell Scott. I'd appreciate it if you could give me a few minutes of your time.”

“Sure,” he said. “I was expecting you. Recognized you from Mary's description.” He smiled. “You're not difficult to recognize, are you?”

I shook my head as he continued, “She told me—Mrs. Blessing told me, that is—you're a private detective, and had just called on her. I understand it's about Mr. Reyes.”

“Right on all counts.”

“Come in, Mr. Scott.”

I stepped into a very attractive living room done in blues and soft grays, the basic coolness of the room warmed by splashes of orange from scattered pillows and two abstract oil paintings, and the red-orange shade of a six-foot-high floor lamp.

We both sat on a thickly cushioned blue couch and I said bluntly, “Didn't take Mrs. Blessing long to let you know I might be dropping in, did it?”

He raised a neat eyebrow but said levelly, “No. Indeed, after this conversation, Mr. Scott, I shall phone Mary and tell her anything of importance which we may discuss.” He lit a cigarette. “Perhaps our interest and”—he smiled again—“reciprocal communication seem excessive to you. I doubt that it would if you were in my position. I have been in business here for several years, and now—in part due to the confidence placed in me by Mrs. Blessing and her late husband—am president of the Blessing Real Estate Agency. Should rumors begin, linking my name no matter in what way or how innocently with a known criminal and murderer … well, would you want to purchase land or a home from the alleged associate or intimate of a hoodlum? A member of the Cosa Nostra?”

“I see what you mean, Mr. Yarrow. Apparently you know quite a bit about the late Joe Civano.”

He nodded. “I do now. I'd never heard the man's name until Tuesday, but I've made it my business to find out what I could about him since then.” He puffed on his cigarette and blew smoke out in a thin blue-gray stream. “You see, at first it was more of a joke than anything else. Then when Mary and I talked to Mr. Reyes for the second time—and realized he really had mistaken me for a hoodlum—it wasn't so funny.”

“Yeah. OK, I'll buy that.”

He looked straight at me, his gaze level and direct, not entirely friendly. “It is of very little importance to me whether you ‘buy it' or not, Mr. Scott.”

“Sorry, I'm sometimes more abrasive than I should be. Especially when investigating a murder.” I meant to go on, but Mr. Yarrow's expression deteriorated.

“Murder? Oh … I suppose you mean the killing of this Civano?”

“No. I was speaking of Mr. Reyes.”

“Reyes? He's been
killed?”
He shook his head rapidly.

“Maybe I'd better back up a little. I haven't any evidence he's dead—none except the fact that he hasn't returned to his home since Tuesday night.”

“My word,” he said blinking. “Didn't he go home after we talked to him at the church?”

“Maybe he started to. He didn't get there. Did Mr. Reyes say anything to you indicating he might have been going someplace else from the church?”

Mr. Yarrow shook his head rapidly again. “He didn't say anything. Just thanked Mrs. Blessing and me—indeed, he apologized for the trouble he felt he'd put us to. That was all. Then he left, and Mary and I left a few minutes later.”

He put out his cigarette, saying in a somewhat puzzled tone, “I'm surprised Mary didn't mention that.”

“I got the impression it didn't strike her as very important.”

“It strikes me as important. Suppose he
is
dead? I don't like being one of the last people to have seen a man who …”

“Look, I don't want to take too much of your time, Mr. Yarrow. If you don't mind, I'd appreciate your telling me just what did happen when Reyes talked to you Tuesday morning, and again that night.”

He nodded, and described the
A
.
M
. and
P
.
M
. meetings with Gil Reyes. Except for minor and unimportant variations it agreed with what I'd already been told. I said, “When you heard the name Joe Civano it didn't mean anything to you?”

“That's correct.”

“How about the name Lecci? Pete Lecci?”

He looked at me blankly, and shook his head.

“At one time he was called ‘The Letch.'”

“That's an odd name. Very odd—is he a criminal, too?”

Instead of answering, I said, “I guess that's about it. Thanks for putting up with my questions, Mr. Yarrow.”

“It's quite all right, Mr. Scott.”

I got to my feet. “By the way, I was a little curious to know how it happened you were talking to Mrs. Blessing at such an early hour of the morning. She explained you'd brought some papers by for her signature.”

“Yes. I … often do that. Thank God I'm running the agency for her—she signs anything I put in front of her.” I thought he was going to let the implied question pass. I wouldn't have blamed him. But he didn't. After a short pause he said, “I rather doubt that Mrs. Blessing mentioned this, Mr. Scott. But I have—twice—asked her to marry me.”

“I see,” I said.

After another brief pause he added, “It was a rather early hour. I presume you are possessed of discretion—”

“I am the very soul of it, Mr. Yarrow.”

He smiled, seeming relieved. So I added, “The only thing I'm interested in is what's happened to Reyes. And maybe a couple other things going on here at the Villas—but that's for sure not one of them.”

Thus we prepared to part almost friends, or at least with the tie that binds those who share a guilty secret. Of course, he knew a hell of a lot more about the secret than I did. But I knew a little of it. And for a guy with an imagination like mine, even a little is a lot. At the door, however, I resolutely blotted out such thoughts, and turned off the wild music in my ears, and put my hand on the doorknob.

Mr. Yarrow was standing right beside me, so I said, “I know this will sound silly to you. But would you move back a few feet? Over there?” I pointed.

He looked quite puzzled, but did as I'd asked. “And pay no attention to anything I do which may strike you as a bit peculiar.”

Then I pulled the door open, stood in it framed by the reddish-orange glow from the living room lamp, and stepped speedily aside.

I said, “It's merely—”

I was about to tell him that it is my habit, under certain circumstances, to take more-than-usual precautions. But I didn't tell him. I didn't have time.

Right after “merely,” or perhaps even in the middle of the word, the blast tore open the night's stillness. It wasn't from a handgun or rifle; that boom was from a heavy-gauge shotgun. The shot snapped through the open doorway and drilled holes into the far wall. It didn't hit anything on the way, there was no sound of smashing glass or shattering crockery. But it was quite dramatic enough for me. For me—and apparently for Henry Yarrow.

Half a second after the blast I was on my way to the floor. I kicked the door shut on my way down, hit the carpet with my rear end and rolled, slapping my right hand to the Colt's butt and yanking it out as I stretched my head around to get my eyes on Yarrow. But he wasn't behind me holding a gun, or a club. He wasn't doing anything. He stood precisely where he'd been moments before, and the expression on his face was one of almost total astonishment and bewilderment.

When he saw the gun in my hand—pointed at his gut—I got the impression he was preparing to pass out.

So I quit worrying about Yarrow.

“Douse that light!” I yelled, pointing past him.

For a moment he was frozen, then he whirled and leaped halfway to the tall lamp in one enormous bound, jumped forward and switched it off. It had been the only illumination, and when he turned it off the entire house was suddenly in darkness. By then I was squatted on my haunches next to the door, hand on the knob—but even before the light went out I heard the sudden roar of a car's engine, followed immediately by the high-pitched shriek of tires spinning on asphalt.

I yanked the door open and went through it low, bent over and running, gun raised in my right hand. I couldn't see the car at first. But I could hear it. The driver was roaring up Palma Drive, headlights off, already twenty yards or more to my left. My feet hit the lawn and I slid to a stop, shoes skidding on the grass. My eyes hadn't completely adjusted from the relative brightness inside the house, but as I aimed toward the sound of the speeding car I could dimly see the blur of its bulk racing up the street—too dimly. I held my fire.

Close on my left a bright amber light flared. It was the outside light above the front door of the house next to Yarrow's. It couldn't have been more than five seconds since I'd lunged through the door behind me—a few seconds more since that sharp crack in the night—but already startled citizens were moving, reacting. There's something about a gunshot. Especially when it's close.

As the reddish-yellow glow blossomed on my left and reached for the street, fell upon the grass beneath my feet—and upon me—it brushed something on my right, gave half-solid form to what a fraction of a second before had been only darkness. I turned toward it, and I turned fast, without thinking about what I was doing, not yet fully aware of why I was moving, bending my knees, dropping into a squat, straining my eyes toward whatever it was that moved on my right.

Because it was moving now. Moving suddenly, almost with a jerk, as if that movement were somehow allied to—or maybe caused by—my own. It moved, and stopped, and I caught the red-yellow ripple of light on metal, and I threw my hand and the gun in it toward that form, knowing it was a human form, and tightened my finger on the Colt's trigger as a gun cracked and red-yellow flame almost like a ten-times-brighter version of that amber light behind me lanced toward me from the man's fist.

Barely after his gun blasted, my .38 cracked and bucked easily in my hand. In the same moment I felt something flick at my coat, a pressure gentle as a girl flicking at a speck of lint and a tiny pain as if I'd been pinched, and heard the sound of my slug hitting the man.

It must have gone in and smacked bone. It rocked him, turned him. Turned him far enough so he took the next three slugs in the side of his chest and stomach. At least one of them hit his heart. The other three were in him.

By the time I reached him, he was dead. There was no breathing, no froth of bubbly blood at his lips, none of the ugly twitching which sometimes convulses a man as he dies.

He was just dead, that's all.

It was enough.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I grabbed the man's chin and pulled his head, loose as liver on his neck, around so I could get a good look at his face.

I'd expected it to be Lucky Ryan. But it wasn't. This was a man about five and a half feet tall, thin, with a pale thin face and big ears. Nobody I'd ever seen. Not while he was alive—except as a shadow that moved, and tried to kill me.

One man—or more—in a car across the street, ready to get me when I came out the door. That should have been enough. But just in case the first guy missed me, a second wiper, also ready and waiting, near the house. Easy: if that miserable flatheel, Scott, charges out and stands there gawking after the heap, mow him down, pally. Piece of cake.