But so what if anything got back to those sons of bitches? If I was stepping on toes, I didn’t give a damn. I’d just as soon smash every goddamn toe in that system Moody complained about. There was nothing that I had to lose, and if they felt like playing rough, they were walking right up my alley in the dark.
Where I’d be waiting for them.
Unexpectedly, Moody said, “Mrs. Wesley put that mansion of hers at the disposal of certain influences and operated it as an all year-round gambling house.”
“Certain influences? Such as?”
He smiled at me, the eyes behind the wire-rim glasses surprisingly bright. But then so was his drink-veined nose. “That I don’t know, Mike. I’m sure it wasn’t anyone here in town.”
“Hell, don’t tell me that Mayor Holden and the cops weren’t in on it! Those guys are chiselers from way back.”
“Oh, our glorious mayor and Chief Beales and his corrupt crew, they all have an interest all right… or had. Don’t underestimate Holden-he looks like a smalltime burgomaster, but he is one shrewd article. You can be sure that a nice slice of the profits line his pockets too.”
I grunted a laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. I’d be willing to bet that if the proceeds of Sharron Wesley’s indoor playground were matched against the town’s yearly take, it would make the legitimate stuff look like a drop in the bucket.”
The doctor said nothing. He snubbed the butt out in a tray built into the waiting-room chair. Then he closed his eyes. He sat that way for damn near a minute, and then finally opened his eyes and stared at me. They had a twinkly cast now.
“You’re a very impetuous person, Mike. Like everybody in Sidon, I read a New York City paper or two, and your… exploits, shall we call them… have made you a celebrity of sorts, and a notorious character. So naturally, what you’ve done so far on your Sidon ‘getaway’ is all over town. I won’t say I disapprove of your activities, either. In fact, I’d like to help you. I’m not that far gone as a dipso. What is your next step?”
“Ha.” I grinned at him. “That depends on a lot of things, Doc. Are you really serious about helping me?”
“Quite.”
“Swell. The first thing you can do is, forget about reporting this gunshot wound.”
Moody nodded.
“You have a nurse that comes in?”
He nodded again.
“Well, she and nobody is to know you have a temporary roommate in Poochie. Keep him in your private apartment, and don’t let him stick his head out a window, much less hike back to that shack of his. Tell him his cats’ll do fine for a couple days.”
“All right.”
“And when he comes to, let me know.”
Another nod.
“Now,” I said, “the other thing you can do is give me the inside dope on Sharron Wesley’s death. The coroner eye-view.”
He sighed. “Very well. Death by strangulation-I’d say about a week ago-with the body immediately thrown into the water. Somehow, she was taken from the ocean before being turned into that grotesque display in our city park.”
“How do you know it was the ocean?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Salt water on her body, sand particles peculiar to this region ground into her skin, seaweed in her hair…”
I grunted an okay and he went on.
“I would estimate her body was placed on the statue about two hours from the time it was found. That’s as close as I could place that-I checked the humidity with a wet bulb thermometer and computed the rate of evaporation.”
Yup, the doc still knew his stuff.
He continued: “Tomorrow will be the autopsy, and I will be able to place the time of her death more closely, if you think it necessary.”
“No, that’s good enough, Doc. It is damn funny, though, that the corpse was reclaimed from the ocean. That’s what we detectives call ‘suggestive.’”
“Suggestive of what, Mike?”
“That it didn’t have to be the murderer who placed Godiva’s waterlogged corpse on her stone horse. That one incident has all the makings of fouling this case up.”
The doc’s eyes were slitted behind the lenses of his wire-rims. “Why would the killer… or for that matter, someone else… make such a display out of the Wesley woman’s remains? A week later? There has to be a reason behind it, Mike. As a detective you must know that.”
“Sure, there’s a reason for every killing, and reasons for every aspect of any killing-only some of them are too damn complicated to figure on the spot. But it’ll come to me, Doc.”
He chuckled and nodded. “I’m sure it will, Mike. I’m sure it will.”
I got up to go and Moody walked me to the door.
Before I left I told him, “Doc, you may be on the square with me, but I don’t know that for sure. I mean no offense, but remember-if anything happens to Poochie, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
“I understand,” he said somberly. “You can have him back in a day or two. I can get in touch with you at the hotel?”
“Yes, but leave no messages. You talk to Velda or me, and not any hotel clerk. Actually, even if you get me or Velda, don’t mention anything. Nothing about Poochie. Just say we need to talk, and I’ll call you from a pay phone.”
“Loose lips sink ships.”
“Yeah,” I said. I opened my suit coat and showed him the. 45 in the speed rig, and winked. “But then so does heavy artillery.”
When I got downstairs, I wiped some of the blood off the car-seat cushions and drove back to the hotel.
Velda was waiting for me in the lobby, which was otherwise almost empty.
I said, “Thought I saw reporters in Big Steve’s diner.”
She nodded. “They swarmed in here like locusts, then swarmed out. When they get back, maybe we can camp out in the bar and see what they’ve learned.”
“Don’t bother,” I said, keeping my voice down. “I just talked to Doc Moody myself.”
She glanced around. The skeletal night clerk was on duty again. He was staring at us the way a sailor on a long overdue shore leave eyes a curvy dame.
“Let’s go up to my room,” she said.
Like that was an invitation I’d turn down.
She steered me up the stairs and down the hall. She worked the key in the lock and I opened the door for her and closed it behind us. That was when she noticed the red stains on my coat.
The big beautiful brown eyes showed white all round. “Mike… you’re hurt!”
She reached for me but I held her off.
“Not me. This is Poochie’s blood.”
“Poochie! Mike, what the hell happened?”
I told her while I cleaned the coat with water from a basin.
She listened intently. When I’d finished she said, “Then you have all the details on the Wesley woman. That’s exactly what I learned.”
“Where?”
“The hotel bar’s pretty busy on a Saturday, even before the reporters showed. For some reason, men just like to buy me drinks and talk to me.”
“Yeah, that’s a tough one to figure.”
“So what’s next on the docket?”
“We’re driving to New York tomorrow, Velda. Pat should have something for me and I want do some digging that can’t be done over the phone.”
