His grin widened. “Kinda pitched one, eh?”
I said, “That’s right. And am I going to get hell. You don’t know where I can borrow some clothes, do you, buddy, just long enough to sneak by the desk?”
That was right up his alley. He’d held up a few bars himself. “Why not cop a suit from the old ward-room?” he asked. He nodded at an open ground-floor door. “You know. In where the orderlies hang up their civies when they change into whites.”
I patted him on the back. “Thanks. That’s an idea, fellow.”
There was a clatter of dishes in the kitchen as the help brought up breakfast, but I was alone in the locker-room. I picked out a white sport shirt and a gray gabardine suit and a pair of two-toned sport shoes that didn’t fit too badly. A broad-brimmed panama hat that I could pull down over my eyes and so hide most of my face completed the ensemble. The name of the guy who owned the clothes was Phillips. His hospital pass was in a glassine case in the outer breast pocket of the coat. Making a mental note to reimburse him for the loan if I lived through the fireworks I intended to touch off, I walked down a long corridor and out the front door of the hospital.
A sleepy guard barely glanced at the pass.
“A long night, eh, fellow?” he yawned.
I agreed it had been a long night.
5. Señor Peso
Clifton’s was always crowded, from eight o’clock in the morning until midnight. It was around ten when I got there. According to the headlines of the paper on the news rack next to the cigarette counter, I was still driving the cops nuts.
I hadn’t attempted to crash the roadblocks set up on either side of Tampa. I hadn’t been seen in Palmetto City. The general public had been alerted to watch for me. I was known to be armed, and dangerous. I was described as pale, six feet tall, weighing in the neighborhood of two hundred pounds and wearing blue slacks, a checked sport coat, and white shoes. I was probably bareheaded as I was never known to wear a hat.
I turned the pages of the paper. Swede was on page four, in a one-column two-inch box. All it said about him was that Swen (Swede) Olson, former fishing guide and convicted murderer, had been executed at midnight for killing a prison guard during an abortive attempted break. Swede’s troubles were over. I though of what he’d told me in the death house.
A man hauls in the fish he baits for and at the level at which he fishes.
If that wasn’t good logic, I’d eat it.
The snip back of the cigarette counter asked if I wanted to buy the paper or rent it. I laid twenty-seven cents of Phillips’ change on the counter.
“Tut, tut. What if Mr Clifton should hear you? Remember the customer is always right. But just to show you my heart is in the right place I’ll take the paper and a deck of cigs.”
She slammed the cigarettes on the counter. My picture was on the front page of the paper next to a picture of Beth. She’d looked straight into my face but hadn’t recognized me.
I cracked the cellophane wrapper, then tapped the picture of Beth. “Now could I have some information. Where can I find this girl? I was told she worked at the cigarette counter.”
The snip snapped, “She did. But right now you’ll probably find her in Mr Clifton’s office.” She patted her blonde hair. “Not that I can see what he sees in her.”
I walked back through an aisle lined with tables cluttered with merchandise to the elevator and asked to be taken to the fourth floor. No one, including the elevator operator, gave me a second look.
The office was large and modern. Behind a half-glass partition I could hear a man, presumably Clifton, saying, “But, my dear girl, I’d like to help you. You know that. But I can’t see what good hiring a private detective would do. I’ve been talking to Lieutenant Gilly since you first mentioned the matter this morning and he says there isn’t a doubt but what White killed that girl in the cabin on Dead Man’s Bay.”
Beth stuck to her guns. “I don’t believe it.”
I opened the door and walked in.
A dapper little man, perhaps five feet four, with wide-spread intelligent eyes, a high forehead and hair so black it looked like it had been dyed, Clifton waved me out of the office. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “But whatever it is, I’m too busy to see you right now. Please come back later.”
I closed the door and leaned against it.
Beth recognized me and dug a fist into her mouth to keep from screaming. “Charlie,” she said finally. “What are you doing here?”
I drew a chair up to the desk and sat down. “Well, it got a little hot out on the island. In fact, quite a few things have happened since I saw you last night. And as you said maybe Mr Clifton would help us, I thought I’d come and see what he could do.”
The little guy looked at me like I was something obnoxious. “Nothing. I can do absolutely nothing,” he said. “As I was just telling Beth –” he corrected himself – “Mrs White, Lieutenant Gilly says there is no doubt about your guilt and I can’t afford to be involved in such a sordid matter.”
Beth said, “What do you mean, ‘things got a little hot out on the island’?”
I lighted a cigarette and told the story just as it had happened. When I had finished, Clifton said:
“But that’s preposterous. Who were these men in your attic?”
I said I imagined they were wetbacks that Señor Peso had paid Matt Heely or one of the other boys working for him to smuggle in from Cuba or Mexico.
“The old house,” I pointed out, “is ideally situated. A boat can bring them in. A boat can distribute them along the coast in the guise of tourists and the law never be the wiser unless one of them should be picked up accidentally. Even then, I imagine by the time they leave the house they’re well equipped with fake papers. As I see it, they’re just another item of profit with Señor Peso.”
Clifton made a gesture of distaste. “That name.” He lighted a cigarette and smoked it in short, quick puffs. “And you say at the end of the attack that this Matt Heely took you out into the gulf in his fishing cruiser, weighted your ankles and dropped you in?”
I said that was correct.
Now he was openly skeptical. “I don’t believe it. Even if you had managed to cut the cord you couldn’t have swam that far.”
Beth said, “That wasn’t far for Charlie. He was on a water demolition team during the war. You know. One of the boys with goggles and rubber flippers who swam in the night before the first assault wave hit a beach and blew up all the obstacles they could.”
Clifton eyed me with fresh respect. “I don’t know what to think or what to say,” he said finally. “Just what is it you want of me, White?”
I said, “You have a cruiser down at the yacht basin. I want you and Beth to come out to the island with me and check my story. In other words I want a friend in court before I turn myself in. A responsible businessman who can back at least a portion of my story.”
He thought a moment. “You think this Matt Heely could be Señor Peso?”
I said, “Matt could be. He’s smart enough.” I snuffed out my cigarette. “If I’m right it was Señor Peso who killed Zo and pinned her death onto me. It was Señor Peso who hired a knife man to wait outside Beth’s apartment last night. It was Señor Peso who ordered me dropped in the gulf.”
He protested, “But why?”
I said that would probably come out when we found out who he was. He sat silent a long moment drumming with his fingers on his desk. Then Beth turned her smile on him and said: