Johnny C almost certainly had employees on staff, keeping an eye on Sharron, making sure she played it straight. I wouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t the one who came up with the scam, Dekkert.”
His eyes tightened, the tears ebbing. He was listening. He wanted to see if I really had it figured out.
“I saw a big box of poker chips in the trunk of Sharron’s Caddy,” I said. “She didn’t have to rig any books, or work any kind of accounting magic. She didn’t need to skim any money from the till, not with you playing the shill, cashing in chips at cashier windows and carrying off the cash… for storage later under your little love seat. Wow. How you planned and schemed and dreamed, you crazy kids, like any two lovebirds. And then what happened? What went finally wrong? Did Johnny get wise?”
Dekkert swallowed thickly. “No… no, he never did. But Sharron, after the last party, she… she just disappeared.”
“And you went bughouse, beating up that little beachcomber, right? Or did something else happen? Did she find another broad shoulder to lean on, another, better prospect to run off with, and you killed her in a jealous rage? Strangled the life out of her. And then what-did Poochie see it?… What did you do with him, Dekkert? Where is he? Is he dead, too?”
He shook his head. “No. No. No.”
I went over and shook him. “No what?”
“I… I didn’t kill her… I didn’t kill Sharron. You’re right, you lousy bastard. I loved her. End of the season, we would have been out of here. Gone. There’s a quarter of a million in that safe, Hammer. And by season’s end, we’d have had another hundred grand, easy. But she disappeared. She really just… disappeared.”
I grabbed him by his shirt front, police blue bunching through my fingers. “And Poochie?”
He shrugged and it took effort. “I really just wanted to know if he’d seen anything. He was always hanging around the beach, picking up junk, scrounging in the garbage. He might have seen something.”
“So you beat him half to death. Just in case he saw something?”
He swallowed again; his eyes were glazing-shock was setting in. “I… I… guess I went… went overboard.”
“So did your girl Sharron. She was taken out there…” I pointed to the ocean, “…and dumped. But she came back, didn’t she? She came back, maybe on a tide like tonight. What do you know about that, Dekkert?”
He squinted and tears squirted out. His face was flushed against the white of the bandages. “Nothing… it was awful… awful seeing her like that… draped over that goddamn statue… little holes eaten out of her, bloated and blue, and oh my God, what a nightmare. What a goddamn nightmare.”
I stuck the. 45 in his throat. “You’re saying you don’t have Poochie.”
“No!”
I cocked the. 45 and the click made a small sharp but very distinct sound against the surf-tossed night. “What about Velda?”
His red teary eyes were wild now. “Wh-who…?”
“My secretary!”
“The dame… the dame you’re with… at the hotel?”
I shook him like a disobedient child. “Yes! Yes! Where the hell is she? What have you done with her?”
“Nothing! Nothing! Everything was going to Hell in a handbasket, and with you stirring things up, I decided the best thing was to just… just come out here and grab my money and get the hell out. Cut my damn losses.”
I let loose of the slumped figure, and he rocked back against the latticework as I took a step back, straightened. I let down the hammer gently on the. 45, and lowered it, the weapon hanging at my side, a useless appendage.
My every instinct told me Dekkert was telling the truth. And if he was, I had just reached the worst kind of dead-end, with Velda gone and no other trail to follow.
But what if Dekkert was the maniac who had killed all those girls and he really did have Velda hidden away somewhere awaiting his sick pleasure, but like so many psychopaths was a dissembler of Satanic proportions? Had he just sold me a convincing bill of goods? Should I beat him half to death to find out, the way he had that dimwit in the alley? Was that how I could find out if he was a mad dog? To viciously tear him apart until I foamed at the mouth and he told me what I wanted to hear, whether it was true or not? Who was the mad dog now?
Then the point became moot because a crack of thunder split the night and I jumped, only it wasn’t thunder but a gunshot and a bullet splintered Dekkert’s skull, entering his forehead at an angle, between bandages, spraying blood and bone and brain matter on the latticework where it dripped like wet paint. He fell back almost lazily against the framework and one last breath gushed out of him before he went limp, as if sleep had overtaken him, and in a way it had.
“Pitch that rod over on the sand,” Johnny Casanova said, in his smooth baritone, “nice and gentle, Hammer.”
The. 45 was still hanging at my side. There were three of them-the boss plus the two I’d battered outside El Borracho, back on their feet already but with faces bulging with swollen patches, like they’d run into a hive of bees and had a bad allergic reaction. They could have Dekkert’s bandages if they liked-he was through with them. They wore sports shirts and slacks now with car coats. Sharp-looking boys out for some fun on the Island.
Three city boys come to the beach for a party, all with guns pointed at me.
Johnny C-still in his tuxedo but with a camel’s hair coat slung around his shoulders, in deference to the wind-pointed a long-barreled. 38 my way, probably the gun that had killed Mayor Holden. The other two had automatics, the tiny-eyed, hook-nosed one a nine millimeter, a Browning I thought, and the dimpled-chin character a. 38 automatic, probably a Colt. Actually, any one of those weapons could have killed the mayor.
I was damn good with that rod of mine-like I told the late Deputy Dekkert a few days ago, I practiced with it.
But I was facing three guns aimed right at me, and my. 45 was hanging in my hand pointing to the gazebo’s cement floor. They were maybe ten feet away. I could dive off this thing, and shoot as I did. That might do it. Lousy odds, but odds. Then another idea occurred to me.
So I pitched the gun down to the bottom of the stairs, where it landed soft as silk in the sand. Raised my hands for a moment, Mr. Cooperation, then put them down again and gave the gambling boss a friendly grin.
I said, “We don’t have any argument, do we, Johnny? I’m working for you, right? And I found your money, didn’t I? How’s that for service?”
“And I expected nothing less of you,” Johnny said, moving a little closer. The ivory moonlight caught the Roman curls and glittered off the moisture there. “I figured you’d lead us to it. And you have. My thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Mind if I go?”
He ignored that, saying, “But as far as you finding it and keeping twenty-five percent for the fee, I wasn’t so sure you were serious.”
“My reputation is good. I wouldn’t have stiffed you.”
“Your rep is too good. You might not want to work for a syndicate type like me. You are known to have an aversion to my kind of people.”
Did he mean gangsters or nancies?
“Still, you’re right, Hammer, I have nothing against you. But you do find yourself in an unfortunate, severely precarious position.”
I let my grin go sly. “You mean, you need somebody to pin the mayor’s murder on, and Dekkert’s. And I’m handy.”
A smile blossomed, moving his black beauty mark an inch farther from gleaming teeth. “That’s another aspect of your reputation, Hammer, that I must say is not undeserved. I have heard that you’re as smart as you are tough, and that would seem to be the case.”
Clouds moving over the moon threw weird shadows, then moments later would wash everything ivory. We were like pale statues oblivious to a world moving quickly around us.
“Why,” I said, “because I know you bumped the mayor and now Dekkert? They must have been the only two locals in the know about your connection to this casino. Or is Chief Beales next on the docket?”
“I never dealt with Beales. I’m told he’s a fool.”
“But you aren’t a fool, are you, Johnny? You dealt only with those two Sidon officials, the mayor and the former New York crooked copper who you probably already knew. And you had Sharron Wesley fronting for you. Like all good syndicate bosses, you make sure you are well-insulated from any legal responsibility.”
