Death House Doll (15 page)

She shook her head. “I’m not authorized to accept money. Besides, as I understand it, Johnny is a ward of the court and any and all arrangements will have to be made through legal channels.”

“Pacific or E.T.O.?” I asked her.

I’d been right about her being a former Army nurse. She smiled, “E.T.O. Now go on. Get out of here. Scram. If the head of the home knew I let in an alleged psychiatric veteran accused of rape and attempted murder,” she glanced at her watch, “at three o’clock in the morning, I’d probably have to dust off my reserve commission.”

“Anyway, thanks,” I told her.

I closed the downstairs door behind me and stood with my back against it for a long moment. I knew now why the girl I had heard in LaFanti’s apartment had been crying. I knew where Mona had stashed the Stein diamonds.

The hush of early morning had deepened. My footsteps sounded unnaturally loud as I walked across the porch and down the stairs. I had a feeling I was being watched but I couldn’t see anyone.

When I reached the Jaguar, Manny was still snoring. I tried to shake him awake and couldn’t. Without switching on the lights I eased the car away from the curb. I couldn’t be sure but it seemed to me that another car, also traveling without lights, moved out a block behind me.

Captain Corson? LaFanti?

I whipped the Jaguar around the block and came up from behind. If there had been another car, it was gone. There was nothing moving on the street. I switched on the lights of the Jaguar and drove south until I came to an all-night filling station.

A sleepy-eyed attendant came out and admired the white car through a yawn.

“How do I get to a place called Miller?” I asked.

He said, “Keep right on the way you’re going until you get past Gary, then stay on U.S. 12. You can’t miss it.” He wiped the windshield. “That’s quite a boat you’re driving.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “It is.” I glanced at the gas tank.

Manny was a typical punk. He’d taken five grand from LaFanti to lie about me. He’d spent four grand on a car, then put a dollar’s worth of gas in the tank. I was lucky I’d gotten as far as I had. “Fill it up,” I told the attendant.

He stuck the gas hose in the tank. “Your partner is passed out, huh?”

I looked at Manny. He had a silly grin on his face, like he was dreaming he was back in the booth at Stan’s playing big shot to the girls or, maybe climbing the stairs with one of them. “So it would seem,” I said.

The attendant returned his attention to me. “Say — know something, fellow?”

“What?”

My face bothered him. “I got a feeling I seen you before.” He was pleased with himself. “I make you now. I know why your face is familiar. You look sort of like that crazy red-haired guy in the paper who —” He looked at my hair and swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. “Geez. You ain’t him, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“The hell you ain’t.” He left the gas hose running on automatic and backed to the open door of the station. “Go on. Get out of here. Every cop in Chicago is looking for you. I just heard it again on the police band.”

He slammed and locked the door of the station and tried to dial a number with fingers that were shaking. He did it so badly that he had trouble and had to start all over again.

I got out of the car, hung the hose back on the hook and weighted a five-dollar bill with a can of oil.

I was suddenly tired. I’d never been so tired. My whole body felt numb. I didn’t want to go to Miller. I didn’t want to tangle with LaFanti or his boys again. I didn’t want to go anywhere. All I wanted to do was sit in the car until the police the attendant was calling arrived. I couldn’t go on. I just couldn’t.

I got back in the car and went on.

T
HE LAKE
wasn’t far away. Now and then I could hear the swish of water as a roller broke on the sand. It was the only sound except for the suck of the tires and the rush of air as a car or truck passed.

No one tried to stop me. I hadn’t run into any barricades or road blocks. I didn’t like it. It was an unnatural situation.

The frightened attendant had phoned the police. He’d told them the kind of car I was driving. He’d told them I’d asked the way to Miller and what he’d told me. It stood to reason that the Chicago police had contacted the police in Gary and the Indiana State Patrol. Among the other cars on the road, the white Jaguar stood out like a boil on a strip teaser’s fanny. Still, in twenty-five miles of driving, I hadn’t even seen a police car. It was as if all the cops in the world had died. For all the police seemed to care, I could be a Sunday driver en route to share a box lunch with the ants.

More, now that I was where I wanted to be, I hadn’t the least idea where Joe LaFanti’s place was.

A mile or so up the road I could see a glare of lights. I slowed the car to a crawl as I passed them. They came from a truck stop called SAM’S. The place was doing a good business. There were twelve or thirteen big semi-trailers and refrigerator trucks parked in front of the building. I dorve on a hundred feet and parked the Jaguar off the road in back of a clump of sumac.

Manny had stopped snoring but he was still asleep. I waited a minute to see if the cessation of movement would wake him. It didn’t. I switched off the lights and walked back, down the shoulder of the highway to the restaurant.

One of the front men was servicing a refrigerator truck. Another was pulling a wheel on one of the trailers. I stood a moment, debating which one to ask if he knew where LaFanti’s place was and I smelled steak and onions frying.

I hadn’t eaten since Evanston. I walked in and sat down at the counter. The stools were filled with men, the truck drivers and their helpers. From the juke box in the corner, a dame with a fair voice was inquiring the price of the doggie in the window. Several men looked up as I sat down but no one paid any particular attention to me.

The counter man was also the cook. He set a glass of water in front of me and asked me what I wanted to eat. I ordered a T-bone steak with fried onions and a double order of shoe string potatoes.

The food was as good as it smelled. When it came I ate everything and mopped up the gravy with my bread. It seemed to please the counter man.

“That’s what I like about you truckers,” he said. “You guys ain’t picky. You just sit down and eat. Now you take them son-of-a-bitching tourists. You can cook your ass off for them. You can get everything just so. And what do they do? First they wipe the silver on a napkin. Then they nibble.”

I laid a bill on the counter. “It was good. Now maybe you can tell me something.”

He gave me my change. “What do you want to know?”

“Does a man named Joe LaFanti have a place around here?”

The counter man stopped smiling. “Yeah. He’s got a big summer place just down the road. A big lodge he calls The Sands. Why? What about him? Are you a friend of his?”

It struck me funny. I laughed. “Hell, no.”

His grin came back. “That’s better. Because there is one first class son-of-a-bitch and I told him so to his face the last time he was in here. I told him —”

He stopped and swiveled his head as one of the truckers sitting at the counter called, “Hey, Sam. How about another piece of pie and some more coffee? I’ve got a schedule to meet.”

“Come back,” Sam told me and moved on down the counter.

I walked out, picking my teeth. When I reached the gas pumps I looked back. Sam was drawing a cup of coffee. No one was using the phone. The girl on the record in the juke box was still asking about the price of the dog in the window.

I asked the outside man changing a tire for more explicit directions on how to get to LaFanti’s place.

“You come to a bridge,” he said, “marked Burn’s Ditch. Drive another quarter of a mile, then turn left toward the lake.”

“What’s Sam got against LaFanti?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Something about one of the day waitresses, I believe. LaFanti throws some pretty wild parties.”

“He has an in with the local law, huh?”

The grease monkey grinned. “Who are you trying to kid? There isn’t a guy on the State Patrol who wouldn’t give his left you-know-what to nail LaFanti. They’ve tried half a dozen times to run him out of the Dunes but they don’t ever seem to get anything on him.”

I walked back the way I had come. The Jaguar was still back of the sumac bush but Manny wasn’t in the car.

“Manny,” I called, softly, “Manny.”

The only answer was the swish of traffic on the highway. There was no wind. It was hot. I began to sweat again. The punk could be staggering back to the truck stop to call the Law. He could have gone on ahead to warn LaFanti. I leaned against the car and lit a cigarette to quell the queasy feeling that was playing hob with the T-bone I’d just eaten. If Manny had staggered on to the lodge — I’d be expected. Still, having come this far, I couldn’t turn back.

I got into the car and eased down on the accelerator. At least, I wasn’t stranded in the sand. Manny hadn’t had sense enough to rip out a handful of wires. It was just that the Jaguar was idling so quietly I couldn’t hear the motor.

I rubbed the skirt of my gray gabardine coat for luck and drove back out on the road. Manny didn’t show in the headlights. He was either keeping to the deep sand or he had gone the other way. I came to the bridge marked Burn’s Ditch, then to an ornamental pole gateway with a varnished sign reading The Sands hanging from the cross piece. A private road led back toward the lake.

I got out of the car and examined the gateway. The gate was open. There didn’t seem to be an electric eye. I drove down the private road for what seemed a long way. When I saw lights I stopped.

The Sands was a big lodge built between two dunes. I could hear music and laughter. From where I sat it looked like every room in the big building was lighted. I turned the Jaguar around. Then, on the chance that LaFanti had posted a guard on the road, I climbed one of the dunes and came at the lodge from the far side.

The sand was ankle deep. LaFanti had made no attempt at landscaping the grounds. There was just sand, a few trees, some cacti, and a lot of wild grape vines.

I came up on the house from the rear. A wide, unscreened porch surrounded the house on all four sides. I slipped my gun from my pocket and looked in through the lighted screen door. A husky lad I’d never seen before was mixing drinks, while a washed-out blonde was making sandwiches.

I walked around to the front of the house. The music was coming from an expensive-looking record changer. The living room was huge and two-storied. It was finished in knotty pine. There was a large natural stone fireplace at each end. Stairs led up to an open balcony with doors leading off it. All of the doors were closed.

There were five men and six girls in the room, all of them drunk. The brunette dancing with Norm had stripped down to her slip, perhaps because she was warm, perhaps for some other reason. Gloria was talking to two of the girls. A bandage showed under the bodice of her dress but from the way she was laughing and talking neither the ricocheting bullet nor the two attacks she’d said I’d made on her had done any serious damage. She had a glass in her hand. She could still hold gin.

Two of the men were new to me. They were big, smooth-shaven men. Gordon was sitting by himself, not mixing in the party. I’d done a good job on his face. Twice as much bandage showed as flesh.

I wondered if LaFanti was in the lodge. Hymie answered the question for me. “Why doesn’t Joe show?” he asked Norm. “Geez. He said he’d be here by two o’clock.”

Norm told him to keep his pants on. “So he’s late. If Joe said he would show, he’ll show. Maybe he’s had more trouble with that crazy soldier.”

“That son-of-a-bitch,” Gordon said.

“Could be,” Hymie said. He patted his face with a sodden handkerchief. “But I hope Joe gets here soon.”

Norm danced in one spot with the little brunette. “So he’s late. Take it easy.”

Hymie continued to pat at his face. “Sure. Take it easy. What if some snotty Indiana state cops should get nosey and come snooping around here,” he raised his eyes to the balcony, “before we —”

He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. That probably meant that none of the tarts at the party, except Gloria, knew the full set-up. It could mean Tommy’s body was still in the lodge. Maybe even the girl I’d heard crying …

I backed away from the porch and stood looking up at the second floor. It was dark. The rooms off the balcony were easily accessible from the roof of the porch. I waded, ankle deep in sand, back to the rear of the lodge.

The hood and the blonde in the kitchen had finished the drinks and the sandwiches they had been making. As I watched them they picked up the trays and carried them into the front room. I waited until the kitchen door had closed behind them. Then I climbed up one of the supports and muscled myself onto the roof.

A small breeze had blown up. The swish of the lake on the sand was more pronounced. Dawn wasn’t far away. Far out on the lake a faint red line was beginning to brighten the horizon. The laughter and the music of the record changer was barely audible. I tiptoed along the roof to the unlighted window of one of the bedrooms opening off the balcony.

All I could see through the rusted screen was the vague outline of a bed. I tried to raise the screen, and found I couldn’t. It was painted fast to the slot. I poked at the wire with the barrel of my gun. The lake air and winter storms had rusted it to a point where it gave like so much cobweb.

I brushed it out of my way and stepped into the room. As my foot struck the floor, the short hairs on the back of my neck began to tingle. I had the same feeling I’d had when I’d left the nursing home, that I was being watched. I lifted the barrel of my gun and lowered it. There was a girl on the bed. It was her eyes I’d felt.

I tiptoed across the room. “Don’t scream. Please don’t scream,” I whispered. “I’m Mike Duval, Johnny Duval’s brother, and I’ve come to get you out of here, if I can.”

The girl on the bed moved but made no sound.

I struck a match and looked down at her. She was completely nude except for adhesive tape sealing her lips and clothes line around her wrists and ankles. Her eyes were badly puffed with crying. She made a feeble attempt to cover herself with the sheet, then gave up and just lay looking up at the match flame, as if her nakedness didn’t matter, as if nothing mattered anymore.