you may not be right about Gold, you and your sources. They never made a mistake? Artie lives over here on the next block. He used to deliver papers on this street. Now don’t get any dirty ideas! Nothing happened. Really a great-looking kid, Mike. He would have gone out for football, but you know these chicken-shit high school coaches. I thought I’d encourage him, find out if he’s college material, kind of help him develop his potential. I invited him in one day last week when I had the house to myself.”
Her eyes glazed; she was beginning to daydream.
“Mrs. Robustelli, will you get back to your daughter?”
“She’s part of the story, and I wish she wasn’t. Call me Angela. I’m Angela, my husband’s Angelo. Cute?”
“Very.”
“I know, I know, you’ve got lots to do, places to go, and I have to hang around here doing the vacuuming. Did you ever think about marriage from a woman’s point of view?”
“All right, tell me about Artie.”
“Blond, you know? Very good pectorals and triceps. But wild, wild as they come. Ask anybody about Artie Constable at that high school. He threw his Social Studies teacher through a plate-glass door once. And I had him right there in the palm of my hand.” She swallowed part of a giggle. “And was it enormous, too. And wouldn’t you know? Helen walked in. Artie was extremely embarrassed, because he and Helen, I was astonished to learn, had been making it themselves. I felt like a pretty fool. So that put me on my guard. Mothers aren’t exactly helpless, you know. I sneaked into her room that night and did a little private investigating of my own. She was zonked out on reds. She was into that scene at school, never mind, I knew all about it.”
“But not as far as heroin.”
“Good Lord, no. Speed, LSD, mesk and the like. Angelo’s completely irrational on the whole thing, but to me it’s like booze with our generation. I went through her purse, I’m ashamed to say. There was too much money in it, for one thing. Ah-ha, I said to myself. Pushing? And a receipt for a hundred dollar deposit on a certain apartment in a certain beach community, and right now I want to get your solemn promise that my daughter’s name is not going to figure in any of the publicity.”
“I can’t promise that, Mrs. Robustelli. I’ll do what I can. How soon after that did she leave?”
“Call me Angela. Next day. I knew she was gone because when I went in to make her bed, Raggedy Ann was missing. She didn’t take her toothbrush, but she wouldn’t leave Raggedy. So I got to work and I did a little intriguing, and sure enough, Artie Constable didn’t go to school and he didn’t come home that night either. So there may be some holes in your Murray Gold story! I sat down at this very table and poured myself a strong bourbon and pondered. Tell Angelo? No. He’s about as much of an expert on female psychology as that fly on the lampshade. Send Angelo to bring her back, and she’d end up emotionally scarred for life. If they wanted to play grownup, she and Artie, why not let them alone for a few days? And I have a right to consider myself a teensy bit too, don’t I? They’ve had it with Helen at school. This time it wouldn’t be another ten-day suspension, it would be out on her ass. And then I’d have her around underfoot all day, and goodbye privacy. I’ve been trying to figure out something to tell Angelo when he notices she’s gone. He loves her madly, supposedly.”
“Is Constable still missing?”
“I haven’t checked up, I couldn’t be bothered.” She shook the ice cubes thoughtfully. “The night before the night I was telling you about. I didn’t think about it until this minute. The phone rang. When I picked it up nothing happened. A little later it rang again. Helen answered, and she got so excited. She hung up and took the rest of the call upstairs. I had my curiosity up by this time, but she was practically whispering. Could that have been Gold? Maybe so!”
When she didn’t go on, Shayne finished his cognac and stood up. “If you want to tell me that address now it may help, but I can’t spend any more time here.”
“Rush, rush. Homestead Beach, 37 Azalea Drive. Try not to make her feel guilty. We all make mistakes. Don’t worry, I won’t let her off scot-free, I’ll think of a good way to punish her.”
She came to the door with him, snapping her fingers as she walked, not to any music that Shayne could hear. After opening the door for him, she pulled him closer by his sling and whispered against his face, “Why don’t you come back later and fuck me?”
She pulled back and put her fingers to her lips. “Forget I said that.”
8
Murray Gold had always been a compulsive planner, overdoing it at times. He thought everything out in advance, and went back over it again and again, imagining the worst and working out countermoves. Today he called all the funeral directors listed in heavy type in the classified pages, and found three with no funerals scheduled. Gold gave a Gentile name and told them he was from New York. He was here in Miami with his sister. She had been stricken suddenly with chest-pains, and had died in the night. Each telephone voice was sorry to hear it, and hoped he could be of service.
Gold started in Miami Beach, with Everett and Wilkins, on Alton Road. There was ample parking space for the funeral vehicles. He saw a hearse and two limousines and no drivers. Gold himself was using a stolen Dodge, with New York plates. Helen’s loony friend, Artie Constable, was at the wheel. Gold had him drive past without stopping, and then come back slowly. If he had seen anything to put him off, they would have continued on and tried the next place on his list.
“Seems O.K.?”
Constable pulled into the driveway. He was wearing jeans and a smelly T-shirt, and he had been barefoot when they started out from Homestead Beach. Gold took him to a clothing store and bought him a dark lightweight raincoat and a pair of shoes, on the grounds that it would be considered funny to be calling on funeral directors barefooted. Artie was a tall boy, two inches or so over six feet, and his neck was a tremendous column, nearly as wide as his head. He looked as though he could tuck in that chin and bulldoze a hole in a brick wall. Gold had been testing him for intelligence, but if he had any, he didn’t see any point in displaying it. He looked angry most of the time, particularly so this morning because he and Helen had stayed up late drinking muscatel. He had a. 38 in each raincoat pocket, which was a joke in a way because he had never fired a gun of any kind in his life.
“Remember we don’t want to hurt this man unless we have to,” Gold said. “Just watch me and do what I do.”
Skinny enough before, Gold had wasted away in that miserable Israeli prison. He could take the flesh on his belly and fold it over like the flap on an envelope. He had been semi-bald for years, and had always shaved clean. Now, with a scraggly beard and a hairpiece, with sun glasses blotting out most of the space between, he was a totally different man, he hoped. Nevertheless, he hated to be out in the open in a town where so many people were dying to get their fingernails in his eyes. He entered the funeral parlor with his head down, clearly bereaved.
The funeral director, Mr. Everett, had been watching at the front window to see what kind of car he came in, as that would have an effect on the price. A plump man, Mr. Everett had the silkiness and perennial low spirits that went with his profession. He took Gold’s hand in both of his own, and gave it an extra squeeze before letting go, to show how much he sympathized in the loss of the dear one. There was only one girl in the front room; Gold had decided that the maximum number he and Artie could handle comfortably would be three. After introducing Artie as a young cousin who had been kind enough to drive him, he and the funeral director withdrew to discuss options and prices.
Embalming, he learned, was done on the premises, by Everett himself, with the help of an assistant who came in afternoons. Apologizing for being so picky, Gold asked to be shown the complete range of coffins. His sister had been a particular person, and he wanted everything exactly as she would have wished.
Alone with Everett and his coffins, Gold produced a pistol and showed it to the undertaker, who had been in business long enough to see almost everything. His jaw dropped into a nest of double chins.
Gold said mildly, “You’ve been helpful, but I’m sorry to say I don’t have a sister.”
“A robbery,” Everett breathed.
“That’s what it looks like. I don’t suppose you carry a gun.”
“Why, no.”
