Killer in the Street Read online

  “But you can’t be sure!” Drasco protested.

  “No, but we can be careful. And another murder in that apartment building right now or of a resident of it could raise a big stink with the press and the police. Chapman was a punk. Nobody cares about Chapman. This time tomorrow he won’t even get a mention in the obituary columns. But a young war vet with a pretty widow—that’s another story. So cool it, Drasco. The decision is unanimous and final. You don’t touch Walker. At least, not now. In the meantime, we’ve got a pair of airline tickets to Miami. You boys need a vacation.”

  Within twenty-four hours nobody in Manhattan remembered Bernie Chapman except Kyle. Chapman had no family—if he had friends they disappeared. Within forty-eight hours the management had hired another garage attendant, and there was no reminder that Bernie Chapman had ever existed until the VW van began to park under the street lamp across from the Cecil Arms. It came each evening after sundown and remained as long as Kyle was up to peer out of the sagging blind of the fourth-floor apartment. No one left the van; no one entered it. It parked, the headlights were switched off, and the vigil began. In the morning it was gone.

  After the third night, Dee noticed that Kyle’s nerves were fraying. He had stopped doing his night-school homework and brought home a listing of foreign jobs in engineering. On the fourth night he brought home application blanks for passports. He never mentioned the murder; neither did Dee. She was too busy trying to talk him out of the tsetse-fly circuit.

  “Home,” Dee insisted, “is where the faucets read ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ and work!”

  The week passed. Tuesday night came and with it the usual rain. Kyle made an excuse for not attending class and was trying to talk Dee into visiting her family in Buffalo when the doorbell rang. It was too late for bill collectors.

  Dee started toward the door.

  “I’ll get it,” Kyle said quickly. He crossed to the window and peered outside. The van was still parked across the street. Directly below, in front of the Cecil Arms, a cab was waiting. The bell rang again and Kyle scurried to answer before Dee called again. He remembered briefly that his service pistol was locked away in one of the desk drawers in the bedroom, and that was just as well because he was no match for professional killers. But it was a cab at the curb. He opened the door and dropped half a ton of tension from his shoulders.

  “I have a fifth of Scotch in this paper bag,” Van Bryson said. “We were wondering if you could share a couple of ice cubes.”

  Some people never changed. Van Bryson stood just under six feet in his field boots. He wore narrow cord trousers, a dark green velour shirt and a well-weathered trench coat. No hat. The small scar at the part of his sandy-red hair dated back to a mutually shared incident in Korea, and the mischievous glint in his blue eyes was the result of twenty-seven years of intense pursuit of happiness. But Van was no playboy. He was already one of the most brilliant scientists in the nation, and happiness was a fifteen-hour workday. His smile was infectious. He hadn’t shaved in several days. He carried a bottle in a paper bag in one hand and held the other on the arm of an overdressed young blonde who had spent too much money on hairdressers and not enough on dieticians. The blonde looked shy. Van looked as eager as an escaped monkey at a fruit stand.

  “I did come to the right place, didn’t I?” he asked.

  Kyle recovered from his surprise and opened the door wide. “Van!” he cried. “Am I glad to see you! Dee, Van’s here!”

  It had been six years since the last reunion, and that meant a celebration with Dee playing hostess with the bottle of Scotch while Van and Kyle sorted out the years since their post-Korean engineering venture that had perished from loss of blood in a cut-throat competition that had made the Yalu River basin seem like a company picnic in comparison. Finally, Van remembered his companion.

  “Forgive us, honey,” he said. “With all that Auld Lange Syne I forgot the introductions. Nice people, meet Miss Charlene Evans of Tucson, Arizona. You may call her Charley. She drinks her Scotch straight and on the rocks, Dee, and she’s an angel. A delivering angel. She’s just delivered me from a dull, no-future job in D.C. to a no-ceiling job with Samuel Zachary Stevens. Show the people the copy of Trend magazine, Charley.”

  Charlene Evans wore a long, hooded, Italian-style raincoat with deep pockets. From one pocket she withdrew a recent copy of the news magazine that carried Sam Stevens’ rugged likeness on the cover.

  “My new boss,” Van said. “Since two nights ago when I signed a two-year contract. If you read Trend, you know Sam’s switching from oil to construction—on a big scale.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kyle protested. “What happened to that Nobel Prize you were going to win?”

  “Time,” Van said. “Give me a little time. Stevens needs a geologist for his massive plans—and anything Sam does is massive. I think he’s the inspiration for all those horrible old Western empire-builder films they used to turn out in Hollywood.”

  “How much does he pay?” Kyle asked.

  “You’re wrong about my motivations,” he said. “I do get a salary—a nice, comfortable salary. But what’s more important is that I’ll have a lot of free time. I’ll take my Ph.D. at Arizona and work with some vitally interesting people in advanced physics. Later, I’ll teach—”

  “I missed something,” Dee interposed. “Where is this paradise?”

  “Tucson,” Van said. “Ever been there?”

  “Years ago—between planes. It was hot.”

  “It’s all air-conditioned now. The world of the future, people. My shoulders ache in this part of the world. I keep wanting to pull back my arms and split out the seams.”

  “You sound like Kyle—but with him it’s Saudi Arabia or Thailand or some terrible place where I’ll have to keep house in a tent and live on quinine and boiled water.”

  “Oh, are you planning to leave the country, Mr. Walker?” Charlene asked.

  Charlene Evans wasn’t what she appeared to be. Underneath the overdone exterior and the baby fat was a well-balanced dynamo, and it was working. Kyle sensed that immediately.

  “I’m in a rut,” he said. “I want to get moving.”

  “Then I think we arrived at the right time, Van,” Charlene said. “Do you want to tell him or shall I?”

  “You’re doing fine, Charley,” Van said.

  “All right. You see, Mr. Walker, Van left out something in our introduction. I’m Sam Stevens’ personal secretary. For about a year Sam’s been trying to form a tight, fast-action corporation revolving about a few key men. Mr. Bryson was one. It’s been just a matter of weaning him away from his previous commitment. Mr. Bryson signed two nights ago and Sam flew back to Tucson, but he left me to look for a good production-control man. I twisted Van’s arm for a recommendation and he made a sharp cry that sounded like ‘Kyle Walker.’ What do you say?”

  Kyle looked at Dee. She didn’t know a thing about that van parked across the street, but she was smiling.

  “No tents,” she said.

  Charlene grinned. “I don’t guarantee there won’t be a jungle, of sorts, but who needs Utopia? Of course, if you’ve got something good set up overseas—”

  “But I haven’t,” Kyle said quickly. “I just started looking.”

  “Then you’re in!” Van said.

  “If Sam is satisfied with Mr. Walker’s references,” Charlene added.

  “Satisfaction guaranteed! Dee, fill up the glasses again. We have time for one more round before that cabby downstairs drives us to the airport. To a new life!”

  Ten minutes later Van and Charlene Evans left the apartment. Kyle watched from the upstairs window as the cab pulled away from the curb and disappeared in slackening rain, and for the first time in a week he began to feel free from fear. The van was no longer parked under the street lamp. Perhaps it dissolved at the witching hour; perhaps the watchers were no longer afraid he might communicate with the police. They needn’t have worried at all. Bernie Chapman was dead—nothing
could change that. Heroes were out of style, and a hero who fingered a syndicate killer could quickly inherit the slab Bernie had recently vacated without so much as a flag for his coffin.

  The rain stopped. Kyle looked upward and saw a few stars winking between the parting clouds, and they seemed a good omen. There was no one waiting in the street. Nobody cared about Bernie any more. Nobody would care about Bernie, today, tomorrow or ever….

  Chapter Two

  Route 80 out of Phoenix turned south at Apache Junction, leaving the tall shadow of the Superstition Mountains behind, and proceeded in a southerly direction to Tucson. By seven-thirty on an April morning in 1967 the sun, which would be unbearable at its zenith, had risen above the purple rim of the Santa Catalinas to bathe the lower metropolis in benevolent warmth. The grass on the lawns of the well-kept estates still glistened with early dew; and the cloudless sky vaulting the city seemed to have been scrubbed of all impurities to produce an incredible shade of azure.

  The highway approaching the city carried little traffic, but some five miles outside the Tuscon limits a light beige late-model sedan was parked on the shoulder. The driver and sole occupant—a neat, middle-aged man—had removed his well-tailored beige suit coat and folded it neatly over the salesman’s sample case on the front seat. Taking care not to dislodge his cocoa brown rough straw hat, he then left the sedan, walked back to the rear and unlocked the trunk. From it he took a screwdriver. He rolled back the French cuffs of his white shirt and was careful not to touch the knees of his trousers to the earth as he unscrewed the soiled New York license plates and replaced them with clean Arizona plates. Stepping back to survey the completed job, he scowled disapproval. He then took a white handkerchief from his hip pocket, rolled it in the dust and generously daubed the new plates until they had the well-traveled look of their predecessors. Now satisfied, he dumped the New York plates in the trunk and slammed down the lid. The task completed, he started walking back to the driver’s seat just as a passing truck stirred up a cloud of dust and sand. The man removed his glasses—steel-rimmed bifocals—and tried to clean them with an unsoiled corner of the handkerchief, but the glasses slipped from his hand. Without them the world instantly became a bright blur. He stooped and groped about in the dust—shifted footing and heard the sharp breaking of glass under his heel. He retrieved the twisted rims, fingered them until certain they were useless and then tossed them away. He then got back into the car and searched through the sample case on the front seat until he found a second pair of steel-rimmed bifocals. Fixing them in place, he settled back behind the steering wheel and drove on.

  At the edge of the business district, the highway forked off past a row of luxury-type motels. The beige sedan nosed past three of them and then pulled in under the portico of a huge, rambling ranch-style affair that had grown in stages over several acres of otherwise nonproductive soil. The driver, placing the sample case under his arm, got out and walked into the air-conditioned and immaculate world beyond the glass entrance doors. Ignoring the expensive décor, he went directly to the desk and placed the sample case on the counter.

  “I have a reservation,” he said. “R. R. Donaldson.”

  The desk clerk was a husky undergrad from the University of Arizona. He had close-cropped blond hair, a sun-browned face and a broad smile too frank to be professional. The alert blue eyes behind Donaldson’s glasses measured and evaluated the boy instantly. He was too healthy to be anything but a harmless local.

  The clerk checked his files and came up beaming. “Yes sir,” he responded brightly. “R. R. Donaldson—Phoenix.” He pushed the registration card and the pen across the desk. “Have a nice trip, Mr. Donaldson?”

  R. R. Donaldson carefully lettered in his name, home address, license number and firm: Baemer Air Conditioning.

  “I ran into rain outside Mesa,” he remarked. “Where can I find a car wash?”

  The clerk was new on the job. He took an assortment of folders from the rack on the counter and read the titles aloud, “ ‘Points of Interest’ … ‘Theaters and Amusements’ … ‘Street Directory …’”

  “Never mind,” Donaldson said. “I’ll find one myself. Do I get a key?”

  The key was attached to a strip of red plastic. Before Donaldson could touch it, the key disappeared under the palm of an accommodating porter. Simultaneously, the porter reached for the sample case, but this time he lost the grab. Donaldson’s hand was faster, and the eyes behind the bifocals had a wary glint.

  “I’ll keep this one,” he said. He forked into his pocket for the car keys and tossed them to the porter. “You can park my car. There’s a large bag in the trunk.”

  The number lettered on the red plastic tab was 227. The room was on the second floor—inside and overlooking the swimming pool. R. R. Donaldson accompanied the porter upstairs, gave him a dollar tip and bolted the door when he left. It was a large room containing a double bed, a pair of lounge chairs covered in baby calfskin and a desk-top dresser. A wide plate-glass door faced poolside, and a thin stream of muted jazz was leaking through a wall speaker above the switch plate. Donaldson turned off the music and drew the drapes across the door. He then took the sample case to the bed, unlocked it and carefully examined the contents. On top were a few merchandising catalogs and an insulation sample; underneath was a gun. It was, to the appreciative eyes of R. R. Donaldson, a beautiful gun. Slim, blue-barreled with a stock of oiled black walnut that had been carved just enough to make a firm grip in the hand. There was a cylindrical silencer to slip over the end of the barrel. He fitted it in place, made certain the weapon was loaded and ready for instant use, and then returned it to the sample case and locked the lid.

  Donaldson looked at his wristwatch. It was ten minutes past eight—still too early to go uptown. He removed his jacket, folded it carefully over the back of the chair and was at the point of unfastening the silver and ebony links in his French cuffs when a sound outside the glass door attracted his attention. He drew back the drapes, slid open the glass door and stepped out onto the narrow balcony shared in common with the other units in this wing of the building. Below, a trio of early risers were already at the pool; two preteen-age boys in white trunks and a girl of possibly seventeen whose brief yellow suit fitted tightly over a young body just beginning to bloom. Alone, she walked to the deep end of the pool, adjusted a swim cap made of an abundance of white rubber petals and plunged into the water.

  R. R. Donaldson’s hands gripped the edge of the wrought-iron railing as he leaned forward to watch the slender figure glide through the water, and his virtually expressionless face took on a glow of suppressed excitement. He might have been watching the girl through a transom outside her bedroom. The water was clear and unnaturally blue. He could follow every twist and turn of her body as she swam. He could measure the length of her stroke and calculate the strength of the graceful brown arms. Once she looked up—not seeing him—but flashing a smile that came from the sheer joy of being alive. Drops of moisture appeared on Donaldson’s upper lip and his stomach flattened against the railing. But the replacement glasses he had taken from the sample case were a looser fit than the originals. He felt them sliding down his nose—grabbed at the frame and missed. The glasses fell straight down and clattered on the cement below just as the smaller of the boys poised to dive into the pool.

  The boy saw the glasses and glanced upward.

  “I’ll get ‘em for you, mister,” he yelled.

  For Donaldson the pool was now a blue bowl of indistinct dimensions; the girl, a slender slip of yellow and the boy a pair of scrambling legs. He groped his way back through the bedroom and was standing in the open door when the boy, dripping and breathless, delivered the glasses. Donaldson groped in his pocket for a silver dollar, gave it to the panting, wet form standing before him and stepped back into the room.

  “Thanks!” the boy said. “Say, mister, do you believe in gambling?”

  “Gambling?” Donaldson echoed.

  “Becaus
e I bet my brother that you’d give me a tip, and he bet me the tip that you keep your hat on because you’re bald. Are you bald, mister?”

  Donaldson didn’t answer. He slammed the door shut and stepped over to the mirror in front of the desk. His fingers were trembling as he donned the glasses. The tall beige and white vapor reflected in the glass instantly acquired outline and depth. He removed the straw hat. He wasn’t bald. His hair was expertly and expensively cut—black with a silver brindle to add distinction. Distinction—not age. He raised one hand to straighten a lock dislodged by the removal of the hat and then stopped—hand in midair. One lens of the glasses was perfect; the other was laced with cracks. His extra glasses were embedded in the crusty shoulder of a highway some distance outside the city, and that could mean a dangerous change of plans. There was only one thing to do. He found the telephone directory on a shelf under the telephone on a bedside table and turned quickly to the classified section listing of optometrists.

  Ollie Madsen unlocked the front door and opened his shop for business every morning at nine o’clock with no more than a two- or three-minute variance from schedule. But Sue Rae Madsen, who was almost seven months old, had cut her first tooth during the turbulent night and the clock above the display counter stood at nine-fifteen when he turned on the safety catch and admitted an impatient customer.

  Ollie had never seen the man before, but he prided himself on his powers of observation. The stranger looked to be about forty or forty-five. He was a little taller than average—stocky but not overweight. His clean shaven face, distorted by a pair of bifocals with only one lens, was conspicuously pale for the region. Ollie glanced at the beige sedan parked at the curb and was surprised to see that it carried Arizona plates. Maybe, he reflected, as he led the customer back to the counter, the man had been sick.