Killer in the Street (18 page)

“If you really don’t, ask some of your porters,” Jameson said. “Good night, Mr. Morrison.”

Morrison turned abruptly and stomped angrily down the hall.

“That was dirty of me,” Jameson admitted when he was gone, “but I have a dirty job. I just prefer to do my own shoveling. Mrs. Walker, is there any chance—no matter how far outside—that Kyle could have been spying on you?”

“When he’d already sent her out of the city?” Van challenged.

“I directed my question to Mrs. Walker,” Jameson said.

“I think Van answered it,” Dee said. “Kyle thought I was in Sam’s cabin when he checked into the Apache Inn. You were the one who told him Donaldson was registered there. If all of this had anything to do with Kyle being jealous of me, he would have gone up to the cabin with those binoculars.”

Jameson seemed convinced. He broke out a fresh package of cigarettes and offered one to Dee. She accepted, gratefully. He then offered the package to Van, who shook his head and dug a curved stemmed pipe out of his hip pocket. It was empty and he made no move to fill it as Jameson lighted Dee’s cigarette from a pack of matches he had picked up at the Apache Inn.

“I’m sorry I have to ask all these questions,” he said. “As I mentioned, I’ve got a dirty job. You should see the cell block about this time of night. The drunks and the domestic fight cases I don’t mind so much—except when it’s child beating. Even the weed isn’t so bad. It’s the junkies that give me the sick feeling. The victims of the strong stuff that aren’t ever going to make it back from dreamland. Prostitution is something I can’t eliminate this side of the millennium, but we try to keep it on an individual level so the organization can’t cut in. Once it gets in, it’s like cancer. You have to get rid of it fast or there isn’t a legitimate business in the city safe from a shakedown. That’s why I get upset when I see a New York paper in a motel room opened to a story like the one about Berendo, and that’s why I develop creases in my brain trying to understand what a nice guy like Kyle Walker is doing in a room across the patio with a pair of high-powered lenses held before his eyes. If he recognized a hood, why didn’t he tell me? That’s why I draw my pay—so citizens can tell me how to help them! Damn it, Dee, there has to be an answer. How long since you’ve been in touch with the cabin?”

“Several hours,” Dee admitted.

“Then maybe you better give it a call. Use my phone. Kyle may have cut up there after he left the motel. And, Dee, if he’s there, be a good citizen and pretend that you’re calling from the house and haven’t seen me at all. He may open up with you.”

Dee picked up the telephone on Jameson’s desk. There was no way of knowing how she would cooperate. He left her with Van Bryson and stepped outside to the reception desk, where there was still nobody on duty, but he could listen on the extension. She knew he was listening, of course.

And so Dee talked to Ramon and received the message Charlene Evans had called in. It was as concisely delivered as one of those recorded greetings on Van’s answering machine. She checked on the time Charlene had called, learned that Mike had just gone to sleep and finally hung up a few seconds before Jameson came back into the office.

“Who is Charlene Evans?” he asked.

“Kyle’s secretary,” Dee answered.

“Where does she live?”

“I’m not sure of the address. It’s in the book.”

“Fine. I’ll get somebody right over there. She’s lying, of course. We all know Kyle didn’t go to Casa Grande. Dr. Bryson, I want you to take Mrs. Walker home with you. Kyle’s made it obvious that he doesn’t want her in their house, and I’m going to go along with that even if I don’t know why. If you have the feeling during the night that you’re being watched, you’ll be right. I’ll have a man outside. Kyle may try to reach you. As for me, I’m going over to the hotel and see how Sam’s getting along with that benefit—”

Jameson was almost right. He would go, but not before Geary rushed in with the word that New York was calling and a certain editor was very much interested in why a cow-town cop had made a query on Jake Berendo and the Chapman murder.

“Cow town!” Geary fumed.

“Take a deep breath and forget it,” Jameson said. “In New York they think everything west of the Holland Tunnel is still Indian territory. What line is he on?”

This time Jameson was in luck. Sensing a story, the editor offered bait. Berendo was singing loud and long. He had already named a syndicate killer, Rick Drasco, as the actual assassin in the strangulation murder of Bernie Chapman. Behind the Chapman killing was a story of gangland corruption that would rock the underworld empire if Berendo ever came to trial.
If
because fatal accidents sometimes occurred to a state witness with colorful memoirs.
If
because the D.A. wanted full corroborating testimony to Berendo’s confessions before exposing his songbird to the expertise of the syndicate’s legal artillery.

Jameson was a country boy, but he understood the situation instantly. He requested a description of Drasco.

“He looks like an insurance salesman—a good one,” the editor answered, “or even the president of your local Chamber of Commerce. He looks like the kind of man you would trust to take your kids to the circus. I’ll send a wire photo if you’re interested. Better yet, I’ll grab a plane and bring the photo myself.”

Jameson was interested. “Send the photo,” he said. “You’ll be the first to know if I’m right, but I have a deep psychic impulse, augmented by an eyewitness description, that makes me think Rick Drasco has gone into the air-conditioning business.”

The call was over. It was useless to try to protect Dee now. She heard; she saw; she related. She didn’t need Albert Morrison to explain how people liked to use aliases incorporating their own initials. Rick Drasco. R. R. Donaldson. R.D. Every move Donaldson made spelled assassin and whether Kyle was the target or someone who was to be used to finger a target, he was running. He was running like a man afraid for his life.

No man in Tucson had been closer to Kyle Walker for the past five years than Sam Stevens. That was why Jameson took it upon himself to make a personal call at the grand ballroom of the Plainsman Hotel at an hour when the bored and sleepy-eyed waiters were impatiently waiting for the last guest to leave so they could get on with the clean-up job. A ballroom after a benefit was like an elite section of the city dump. Jameson gave the last remaining member of the pickpocket detail a nod in passing and found Sam secluded in a small private bar off the ballroom. Sam Stevens was a local institution. He was like something cast in bronze that had miraculously come to life and bridged an age spanning the romantic adventure of the pioneer west and the quietly dynamic drive of the new financial empire. Sam was the solid citizen. His name graced the letterheads of the finest service organizations; and when Sam Stevens talked the city listened.

But when Jimmy Jameson walked into that small oasis off the ballroom he saw, with a sharp stab of shock and sadness, a tired, aging man whose once proud shoulders rolled forward in fatigue and whose strong right hand, faintly spotted with brownish age marks, trembled slightly as he raised his glass of whisky to his lips. Sam was all decked out in a new tuxedo—still with a string tie knotted under the turn-down collar—but the heels of his shiny black ankle-high boots were cut for a tapadera stirrup. Unobserved, Sam looked all of his sixty-four years even in his party finery, and of late, Jameson realized, Sam had been the man who always came to dinner. No occasion was too large or too small. It was the sign of a lonely man staring at the empty horizon of eventual retirement. Already everybody knew it was Kyle Walker who supplied the ideas and sparked the initiative.

Jameson spoke his name softly and Sam’s shoulders squared as if jerked by invisible wires. His automatic smile was almost fast enough to conceal the weariness.

“Jimmy, you old coyote!” he said. “Sit down and have a drink. I didn’t know you were interested in Do-Gooder spectaculars. A group of real pretty ladies put out about ten thousand dollars on a charity ball tonight that grossed about ten thousand and seventy-five—and that’s better than average for these affairs.”

“Why aren’t you home in bed?” Jameson asked.

“I’m celebrating. This afternoon the Boosters gave me a luncheon and presented me with a plaque. Tonight I was sponsor for the lovely ladies, and any day now the press is going to send someone over to take notes for my obituary.”

“Sam!”

Sam chuckled. “Hell, Jimmy, don’t you know when you’re bein’ teased? I’ll be around for another thirty years.”

“At least,” Jimmy agreed.

“Have a drink on the house. Let ‘em gross ten thousand and seventy-four dollars.”

“Thanks,” Jameson said, “but I can’t. I’m on duty.”

That was when all of the fun went out of the evening. Sam Stevens’ body was aging, but there was nothing wrong with his mind. He took a good look at Jimmy Jameson’s grave face and asked what troubled him. The bar was all but deserted and the bartender looked half asleep. Jimmy started at the beginning.

“Sam,” he asked, “how much did you know about Kyle Walker when you hired him five years ago?”

He expected some sort of reaction. He received a long, awkward silence. Sam slowly finished his drink.

“Everything I needed to know,” he said at last.

“I mean, did you hire him on Dr. Bryson’s recommendation or on the basis of your own research?”

Sam slammed the empty whisky glass down on the counter. “I hired him because he sounded like a damn good man and I needed a damn good man!” he said. “And that’s exactly what I got! Now, what is it you want to know about Kyle? What do you think you have on him?”

“I didn’t say—”

“The hell you didn’t! I don’t like cute people, Jimmy. You know that. Is Kyle in a jam? What’s he done? How can I help?”

“You think a lot of Kyle Walker, don’t you?” Jameson asked.

“Yes, I do. I never had a son, Jimmy. You know that. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault. We just weren’t blessed. Well, I don’t mind admitting that Kyle and his wife—yes, and that little boy of theirs—are like family to me. I mean it. Why, do you know they’re up at my place in the mountains right now havin’ themselves a real vacation before Kyle starts the new job! I told Kyle months ago that he was to use it anytime just like it was his own.”

“Mike is up at the cabin, Sam,” Jameson said quietly. “He’s still up there with your houseman. Dee is at Dr. Bryson’s apartment—at my request. She came back several hours ago looking for Kyle. He never showed up. I thought you might have seen him or heard from him.”

Jameson played his face-watching game again, and Sam was speechless. He had to have the whole story told over again. Kyle was missing. Kyle was gone. Jameson took him back to the visit Kyle had made to his office early in the day. He explained about the beige Chrysler and the man from Prescott who didn’t exist. He took him along on the trip to the Apache Inn where he had found a folded newspaper and the manager found a pair of binoculars in the opposite room. Finally, he told him about a killer named Rick Drasco.

Sam Stevens listened. At times he was as enigmatic as an Indian.

“A few minutes ago Mrs. Walker telephoned the cabin and was given a message from Kyle’s secretary. She said he had gone to Casa Grande on business—”

Sam leaped at the out. “Then that’s where he is!” he insisted. “Try Sanderson. He handles the gravel and cement contracts. Held us up three days on the last job and it would be just like Kyle to jump on him hard this time.”

“But Kyle didn’t go to Casa Grande,” Jameson insisted. “He was in room 227 of the Apache Inn.”

“How do you know that? Because of those binoculars? Anyone could have taken his binoculars and used them.”

“Sam, stop kidding yourself! I know you like Kyle. So do I—that’s why I want to find him. Don’t you see, Kyle
knew
who the man in that Chrysler really was. That’s the only explanation that makes sense. He recognized Drasco. He sent Dee and Mike to your cabin. He gave his secretary the day off and canceled all appointments. He used me to locate Drasco’s lodging. It adds, Sam. That’s why I ask you how much you knew about Kyle when you hired him. Is there anything in his background that connects with any of this? Anything at all?”

Sam didn’t respond. He sat absolutely silent until the bartender woke up and came down the bar.

“Hit me again, Pancho,” Sam said. “The captain can’t have a drink. He’s on a crusade tonight.”

“Sam, I’m trying to save Kyle’s life!”

Sam Stevens turned about on his barstool until he faced Jameson directly. Then he slowly drank all of the whisky in his refilled glass without taking the drink from his lips. When the glass was empty he stood up and prepared to leave. But they were no longer alone. Detective Geary was walking toward them with a uniformed state policeman at his side.

“Ah, the storm troopers are here,” Sam said.

Geary touched the brim of his hat. “Captain Jameson,” he said, “excuse me for bothering you but I thought you might like to talk to Deputy Anderson. He saw Donaldson a couple of hours ago—just before we put out a bulletin.”