Delta Factor, The (6 page)

I had seen a lot of hookers in my time. There were prostitutes in the trade because they didn't know any better, some because they were forced into it and others because they liked it. But the mark of it was always there. It showed in their eyes that reflected the tired worldliness of a sordid life or in the expression that was disgust at themselves or the ones who used them, and sometimes in the early age lines that stamped years instead of days on their faces and bodies. The strange thing about Bernice Case was the curious lack of any of these things. If there was anything there it was compassion. Her eyes had a happy smile in them and her mouth was a red bloom of pleasure. Her blond hair had a silk-shine to it and was a dark enough blond to be real. She still had a young-girl freshness in the tilt of her breasts and the naturally indolent way she made her body move.

“No. But thanks anyway, Bernice,” I said.

Her head tilted at the mention of her name. “Do I know you?”

“Not personally. We have some mutual friends.” I grinned at her and folded the paper shut.

Even white teeth bit into her lower lip and she let out a small chuckle and wrinkled her nose at me. “I wish my friends would observe my working schedule.” She reached out and touched my hand. “Look, I'm not trying to hurt your feelings or anything, but it's been a long evening and ...”

I shook my head. “You and me both, Bernice. Let's say I don't want to see you, ah, professionally.”

“That's a nice way to put it,” she laughed.

“And I don't need a handout,” I added.

“At least you're different.” She scratched one manicured fingernail along the back of my wrist and took her hand away. “These mutual friends ...” she began.

“Old Gussie, Ma Toppett.”

Her eyes squinted slightly, then she leaned back and looked at me with interest. “You're not from the neighborhood,” she stated.

“Since your time. I boarded with Old Gussie until the fuzz nailed me.”

The recognition came into her face slowly and she pursed her mouth and nodded sagely. “You're Morgan, aren't you?”

“That's right.”

“You're crazy coming around here, you know. I didn't spot you right off, but some of these characters will turn in their own mothers for drinking money. Maybe I don't have a memory for faces that looked at me from the front page, but they have.”

“I'll worry about that.”

Bernice gave me a gesture of mock astonishment and learned her chin on her hands. “Swell, big friend, but what about me? In come the bluecoats, you get nailed and I get tagged as an accomplice. I have a reputation to protect.”

“So we'll go somewhere else.”

“Like my place, maybe?”

“Suits me.”

Once again she studied my face, drawing on all the things she had learned from life and experience, then said quietly, “This is serious, isn't it?”

“Very serious, kid.”

“And I can help?”

“Maybe.”

“Then let's go to my place.”

The building was old, but remodeled, and her apartment was a three-room affair furnished with taste and simplicity. She had indulged herself in an oversized stereo set with a rack of at least a hundred classical records and three paintings by well-known contemporary artists. While she built us a drink she saw me staring at the pictures, and said, “I didn't buy them.” She grinned and added, “It wasn't an even trade, either.”

“They're worth a bundle, you know.”

“Now they are. At the time they were starving artists who needed rent and refrigerator money and I liked their work enough to grubstake them.”

I tapped the smallest of the three frames. “This guy's last effort just went for over a hundred G's.”

“Uh-huh.” She handed me a rye and ginger in a tall glass.

“Why don't you sell them?”

Very simply, she said, “I like them.” She walked to the record player, pushed a button, then sat down and crossed one lovely leg over the other. “You had something to ask me, Morgan.”

I took the chair opposite the strange little blonde and sipped at my drink. “How much do you know about me?”

“As much as the papers said.” Her eyes twinkled over the glass at me. “I know they didn't get the rest of that money you ... appropriated.”

“Why don't you say ‘stole'?”

“Because it was government money. Hell's bells, they take enough away in taxes and blow it on a bunch of nitheads in places you never heard of to make it easier for people to hate us, so I'm damn glad to see them get nicked for a change. Boy, I bet they were mad.”

“They were furious.”

“You going to give it back?”

“Should I?”

Bernice giggled like a childish conspirator and made a screwy face. “Not yet. If it's too hot to spend, make them hurt a little bit, then maybe send it back in an old beer carton or something. Can you imagine their faces? Maybe they'll think it's a bomb and dunk it in oil like they do and ruin the whole batch themselves.”

I took a long pull at the drink. “You're crazy.”

“It's a crazy world. At least you can have fun.”

“Are you?”

For a moment her eyes took on a soft expression. “Let's say I like people.”

“Then you're better than I am, kid. I can't be that generous.”

A little twitch of sympathy touched her mouth. “We were talking about something, Morgan.”

I eased back in the chair and spun the glass around in my hand. “You knew Gorman Yard, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Any opinions?”

Her face took on a straightforward expression then. “Since you don't want facts, you must know about him.”

I nodded.

“He was a pig,” she said. “I don't like pigs.”

“How?”

“If he had a choice to be nice or nasty, he'd be rotten.”

“This from personal experience?”

“He couldn't have enough money to buy me, Morgan. He tried, though. I told him once that I had a couple of friends ... real friends ... I could talk to them and he'd never be able to say anything again. He knew I wasn't fooling.”

“What did he pull?”

Her eyes widened blandly and she said, “Morgan, unless you've seen real filth, you can't imagine what kind of a person Gorman Yard could be. Oh, it wasn't only him. He had to associate with his own kind. They can only stand each other anyway ... no one else will have anything to do with them. I saw him with people I knew about. Some I didn't know, but they had to be like him. I was surprised Old Gussie even let him in her place, but lately, she isn't as particular as she was. If she ever knew about that creep he used to shack up with she'd flip.”

“What creep?”

“Ever see a lizard stare at you, Morgan?”

I shrugged.

“Garfish do it too. They rise to the top like a small submarine and stare at you with those damn horrible eyes and if you haven't got a gun to shoot them with they just go back down again and it's like you had been eaten alive with those eyes.” She took a quick swallow of her drink and balanced the glass on the palm of one hand. “When I was a kid my uncle used to take me fishing. I remember the gars.”

“Who was this guy, Bernice?”

“Beats me. He didn't poke his head out very often. He was there for a while, then he was gone. I saw him across the airshaft from Lily Temple's room a couple of times. She was afraid of him too.” She paused, thinking, then said, “He gave you that itchy feeling that he was hooked on H. You know, that trapped-rat sort of thing? Only he wasn't. I've seen too many of them. He didn't take any trips into never-never land. It looked like he was already there.”

“Maybe they were in business together,” I suggested.

“Not Gorman Yard. He was a loner. I'd say this guy was on the run and Yard was taking advantage of it.”

“Yard was on the run too.”

“Not like this one was. What gets me is that his kind doesn't get scared easily. I wouldn't want to mess with him. If he and Yard were working a deal, I didn't get it. Anyway, he wasn't there long. Maybe a couple of weeks at the most.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know what Yard bought at the deli. I know when he quit bringing in all those goodies. He was buying for two; then all of a sudden he quit and it was pretty soon after that the cops picked him up and slapped him in the cooler.”

“You mentioned some others,” I said.

“More creeps,” she told me. “That guy was plain looking for trouble. You know, he starts hanging out with some of the shooters Whitey Tass keeps around, angling for an introduction to the big man himself, and he's damn lucky he got picked up by the fuzz before Whitey got sore. He runs too big an operation in the city to be bugged by a pig like Yard. One day Lou Steubal tried to get an inside track with Whitey, levering him on account of what Whitey did to his sister, and they found Lou in the drink. It looked like Lou got gassed up and fell in, but don't try to tell me that. Whitey had him tapped out.”

“Nice people.”

“And now you're asking around. Could I ask why?”

“Sure, you could.”

“But you're not about to tell me.”

“That's right.”

“Why?”

“Like the man said, Bernice, a little bit of information can be a bad thing.”

She gave me that twisted little grin again and nodded. “You're right, of course. I don't really want to know except out of curiosity. But can I guess?”

“If you like.”

Bernice studied her glass, drained half of it and set it on the floor beside the chair. “You lived in the house and Gorman Yard lived there too. He was there first, so I'll suppose that he left something there, came back to get it and spotted you. Maybe he turned on the heat and got you nailed.

I shook my head and finished my drink.

“Then I'll suppose this,” she said. “When those Treasury Agents shook Gussie's place down and found that sailor with a load of H on him, then uncovered your little nest egg in a general search and grabbed you, it was because Yard knew you were there, but blew the whistle on the sailor, hoping to get you running so he could pick up the loot you had hidden.”

“That's a good suppose if it were true,” I told her.

Her impish eyes twinkled at me. “I was born in that house, Morgan. That place you hid all that cash wasn't new to me. I used to keep things there when I was a kid. My old man built it to hide the booze from my mother. How did you find it?”

I shrugged and said nothing.

“Well, there weren't too many places to hide anything in that fleabag. You didn't have much choice. What gets me is where the rest of it is. Gussie ripped up everything but the foundations looking for it after they got you.”

“Maybe you have an idea.”

“Sure,” she grinned. “You're not one to keep all your eggs in one basket. The rest of it never was there or I would have found it. I went back and poked around in all my old hiding places too.”

“I hate to have been such a disappointment, kid.”

“You weren't. It was fun.” She paused, then said, “It's been an odd conversation, Morgan. Did I say anything important?”

“Possibly,” I told her. “How badly did you want that money?”

“Really, not at all. I do all right.”

“Care to earn a few bucks?”

“How?”

“Think you can find out why Gorman Yard wanted to get close to Whitey Tass?”

“That's a maybe, Morgan. Those people don't like to talk much, even to one of their own. I can give it a try, though. I've had ... dealings with one the last six months.” Then her eyes met mine and locked seriously. “But not for money, Morgan. I'll do it, but not for money.”

“I don't like being obligated, baby.”

“Can you like me a little? I've never really been liked before.”

“You've been loved at one time, sugar.”

“Not love, Morgan. I just want to be liked. I want one real friend who isn't afraid.”

“I'm scared all the time,” I said.

“But not afraid. That's why you're on the outside no matter what they tried to do to you.”

I felt the smile tug at my mouth and threw her a wink. “I like you, kitten. That I really do.”

“Then you know I'm going to keep you here tonight. I don't want any of the things I ... have to do with other people. I just want to be held and liked and to talk about little things, listen to some music, hold hands and maybe fall asleep on your shoulder until the sun comes up. Do you know what I mean, Morgan.”

I got up and walked over to her and ran my fingers through the silken clouds of her hair and looked into the funny, friendly eyes and nodded.

“I know,” I said.

I GOT OUT of the cab in front of my hotel and stared at the nearly empty streets of the city that hadn't struggled back to life yet. A wet mist slicked the streets, and the tops of the buildings were smothered by low-hanging clouds.

When I reached my room I slept until two in the afternoon, then got on the phone to Miami and laid out my program with Art Keefer to get me and Kim out of the country. He thought I was nuts picking the place I wanted to go when a few better ones were another day's flight further south where a guy could hide out all his life if he wasn't an Eichmann and had the money to grease a few palms. But I insisted and he went along with me like he always did and told me when and where we'd meet. The second call got me Little Joe Malone, who promised to deliver a few necessary items to a locker in the bus station with the key left downstairs at the desk for me.