April Evil

Book 62: Murder Room

by John D. MacDonald

Genres: Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Traditional Mysteries; Noir

Synopsis

The stage was set. Harry Mullin had hit town first. But he had just made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, and he was a little nervous about being seen. With him at the rented house where they planned to case the job was a girl named Sal.

Then the Ace turned up. He'd been good in his day but had lost something in the guts department. But the last one in town was Ronnie. Ronnie had killed 12 men and two women in seven years and had gotten to like his job - maybe a little too much ...

Release date: June 11, 2013

Publisher: Random House

Print pages: 192

Sample

The couple arrived in Ramingo, a town of twelve thousand population on Florida’s west coast, at about eleven-thirty on the morning of the eleventh of April. They arrived
in a gray Buick sedan with Illinois plates. The big car was dirty after the long trip. Racked clothing hung in the back.

The gray Buick cruised the main shopping section on Bay Avenue for a few minutes and then pulled into a drive-in restaurant on the west end of Bay Avenue near the approach to the causeway and
bridge that led to Flamingo Key.

It was a hot day, too hot to eat in the car. There was no one in the other cars. The other customers were all inside the restaurant. A waitress in a green cotton uniform stood in the angular
patch of shade made by the building itself, her back against the pink wall, and watched the couple as they got out of the gray car. She smoked a cigarette and watched them and wondered idly about
them.

The man was tall. He was about thirty years old. He had the look of someone still recovering from a serious illness. He slid carefully out from behind the wheel and stood by the car, his posture
bad, shoulders thrust forward. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open, gray pants that were baggy at the knees. The shirt and trousers looked as though they had been
made for a larger man. The trousers were gathered at the belt line and hung slack in the back.

He stood blinking in the bright sunshine, his shadow black against the blue-black of the asphalt. His color was not good and the glossy black of his hair seemed the most alive thing about him.
He stood and looked toward the causeway. He rubbed his left arm and elbow gingerly. It was pink from the sun, from resting on the sill of the car window as he drove.

The woman was still in the car, putting on lipstick. The man turned and looked up Bay Avenue toward the shopping section, and then turned farther and looked at the waitress. There were deep
lines in his cheeks. There were dark patches under hot dark eyes. His nose was long, thin at the bridge, wide at the nostrils. He looked at the waitress with a complete lack of expression. That is
not something often seen. The dead wear no expression. Neither do the victims of dementia praecox when in catatonic state. Something behind the face looked out of the dark eyes at her, and the face
told her nothing. The waitress felt oddly uncomfortable. She was a handsome husky girl, accustomed to stares, but not of that sort. She looked away.

The man spoke in a low impatient voice to the woman in the car. She got out quickly. She was a tall girl of about twenty-five, as tall as the man in her high heels. She wore a sheer white
blouse. Her tan linen skirt was badly wrinkled. She smoothed it across her hips with the back of her hand. Her blonde hair was cropped short, and the waitress decided it was not becoming to her. It
made the girl’s face look too large, too heavy. The girl had the wide cheekbones, the short upper lip, the wide-set blue eyes, the heaviness of mouth that have become a stereotype of sensual
beauty. Her tall figure was good, but slightly heavy. There was a look of softness about it. Her legs were very white. The girl’s face was passive, with a hint of almost bovine endurance. She
walked in an oddly constricted way. It was a walk in which there was body-consciousness and a flavor of humility. She walked as though she half expected a sudden blow, and yet would not mind too
much if it came.

The man locked the car quickly and passed the girl on the way to the door and held it open for her. The waitress snapped her cigarette out onto the asphalt. She thought that the couple had not
had a very good trip. It looked as though the girl had gotten the wrong man, and that was too bad. But a lot of us get the wrong ones. And it’s too late then and not much you can do about it.
There are more wrong ones than right ones.

The waitress went in the side door of the restaurant. The man had taken a paper from the rack by the door. They had taken a table for two. The man read the morning Flamingo Record. The
waitress was glad it was not her table. The girl sat quite still and looked beyond the man, out the big side window toward the blue water of the bay and the white houses on the key beyond the bay.
At intervals she lifted a cigarette slowly to her mouth, and as slowly returned it to hold it over the chipped glass ashtray on the formica table.

 

By two o’clock, using the name Mr. and Mrs. John Wheeler, the couple had rented the Mather house on the bay shore three miles south of the center of town. Hedges, the realtor, had tried to
interest them in a house on the key, but they had not wanted to be on the key. The Mather house was long, low—a three-bedroom two-bath cypress house with a terrace that faced the bay, a new
dock but no boat. The nearest house north of it was over two hundred feet away, and almost entirely screened by dense plantings. The vacant land south of the house was thickly overgrown with
palmetto and cabbage palm and weeds.

The Mather house had a curving shell drive, live oaks heavy with Spanish moss, some delicate punk trees, a few pepper trees, a clump of coconut palm. There was a phone in the house on temporary
disconnect, and Hedges promised to have it hooked up that same day. The man had paid in cash, seven hundred and seventy-two dollars and fifty cents. This included the three per cent state tax. It
covered the rental up to May fifteenth.

After the transaction was complete, Bud Hedges, not a very imaginative or sensitive man, wondered why he should have strange fancies about the couple. They had not responded to any of his eager
listing of the delights of a vacation in Flamingo. Even the dusty gray car had seemed blunt and sullen. He wondered why he had taken the precaution of jotting down the number from the Illinois
plates. He shrugged off his strange feelings. The money was in hand. Mrs. Mather would be pleased. He had made thirty-seven-fifty for an hour of work during the month when the tourist season was
ending. And the Wheelers had gotten what they wanted, a house with a maximum of privacy. He had not expected them to pay that much freight. The man’s shoes had been black, cheap, cracked
across the instep. Hedges always looked at their shoes. It was a better index than automobiles. You couldn’t buy shoes on time.

 

They looked the house over more carefully after Hedges had gone. They carried the luggage in. The man wandered around the grounds while the girl unpacked. He went down and stood on the dock.
Mullet jumped in the bay. A man in a yellow boat with a very quiet outboard motor trolled in a wide circle. A gray cabin cruiser went south by the channel markers. He could see the narrow pass
between Flamingo Key and Sand Key, see the deeper blue of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico beyond the pass.

The girl came out on the front terrace and called to him. “It’s all unpacked. We got to get some stuff.”

He walked up to the terrace. “Like what?”

“You know. Staples. Bread and butter and eggs and cans and stuff.”

“Can you cook?”

“I can cook some. You don’t want to go out much, do you?”

“No. I don’t want to go out much.”

“I fixed the trays and turned the ’frig on high. There ought to be ice pretty quick.”

“Little homemaker.”

“Well . . . hell.”

“Pick up a couple bottles too. Here.”

She took the money. He heard the car leave a few minutes later. He paced through the empty house. He turned on a radio in the big kitchen. He found soap operas, hill-billies and Havana stations.
He turned it off, drank a glass of water, frowned at the sulphur taste. He tried the phone but it wasn’t hooked up yet. He went in and tested the beds. They felt all right. He took a shower.
After the shower he dressed in the cotton slacks and aqua sports shirt he had picked up in that store in Georgia. He looked at himself in the full-length mirror as he combed his black glossy
hair.

“Tourist,” he whispered. And he grinned.

She drove in a few minutes later. He went out and carried half the stuff back in.

“Buy them out, baby?”

“It isn’t as much as it looks like. It won’t last long. Here’s the bottles.”

The ice was ready. He made himself a drink, and leaned against the sink and watched her putting the groceries away. She looked serious and intent and important.

“A new side to your character, baby,” he said.

She straightened up and looked around. “It’s a nice kitchen, Harry.”

“It ought to be a nice kitchen. It ought to have a gold stove yet. It ought to have a floor show. Make with a floor show.”

She gave him a sidelong look, and broke into a husky fragment of a chorus routine, ending with grind and bump. He put his glass down and clapped his hands solemnly three times.

“I’m out of practice,” she said. She looked at him and then at her arms and said, “We ought to get some tan.”

“You get some tan. This sunshine routine doesn’t grab me.”

“You’d look more like the other people around here.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to tell me my business.”

“Don’t get like that, Harry.”

“Stick to cooking, Sal.”

“Okay. Okay.”

He left the kitchen and went to the phone again. He dialed zero. When the operator answered he hung up. He went to the bedroom and got the slip of paper from the top of the bureau and went back
to the phone. He dialed the number.

“Sandwind Motel.”

“Have you got a Robert Watson registered?”

“Yes sir, we have.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“I think he’s on the beach right now.”

“Can’t you get him?”

“It might take some time. Why don’t you give me your name and number and I can have him call you back.”

“Okay. Tell him to call 9-3931.” He hung up. He went out to the kitchen and made a fresh drink. Sal wouldn’t look at him.

“For Christ sake don’t sulk.”

“Well, it’s just that . . .”

“When Ace gets here keep your mouth shut. Don’t talk. Get out of the way and leave us alone.”

“Sure, Harry.”

“You got the stuff put away?”

“Yes.”

He slapped the seat of her wrinkled skirt. “Go get the happy sunshine, kid. Go brown yourself.”

It was fifteen minutes before the phone rang.

The familiar voice said, “Hello?”

“Don’t talk. That must be a hell of a big beach, Ace. I got a place. You check out of there and come on over here. Make it after dark. It’s a house on a street called
Huntington Drive. Eight hundred and three. There’s posts by the driveway and a sign on the posts says Mather.”

“You know I haven’t got a car.”

He paused a moment and said, “Okay. I see what you mean. Where is that damn place?”

“On Flamingo Key. You get on the main road on the key and turn left. You’ll see it on the right.”

“When does it get dark here?”

“A little after seven.”

“Okay. I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty. Gray Buick. That’ll be better than some damn nosy cab driver.”

“Did . . . did it go all right?”

“Silk and cream. No heat. We’ll talk later.”

Sally came out of the bedroom in the skimpy pale blue sunsuit she had bought in Georgia. She carried a blanket, a small brown bottle of sun lotion and a TV fan magazine.

“Okay?” she said.

“You’re not what I’d call bundled up, kid.”

He watched through the glass jalousies as she walked down to the dock, spread the blanket out, sat on it and began to carefully anoint her white legs and arms and shoulders and midriff. She
stretched out in the glare of the afternoon sun, quiet as a corpse. The fish jumped. Wind ruffled the bay water. Harry made another drink. He felt restless. He tried to take a nap. He gave up and
went down onto the dock. He took the aqua shirt off and sat near her in the sunshine. Maybe she was right about getting a tan. His skin was dead white. His ribs showed. There was a small mat of
black hair on his chest. He sat hugging his knees. His shoulder blades stuck out in an angular way. There were two deep dimples on the back of his left shoulder, the scars of bullet wounds.

She lay on her back with her eyes shut. Her legs had turned pink. He looked at her legs and remembered something from one summer during an almost forgotten childhood. He reached out and pressed
a finger against the top of her thigh. When he took it away the white spot faded slowly.

“You got enough. Get in the house.”

“But Harry, I . . .”

His voice became very soft. “You’re having a big day, kid. Homemaking and sulking and arguing. You want we should have a little trouble with you?”

She got up without another word and went up to the house. He stayed there another fifteen minutes. He folded the blanket and took it up to the house with him.

She had changed to a blouse and skirt. “I’m glad you told me when to quit,” she said humbly. “I feel kind of prickly all over.”

“I tell you everything you do.”

“Sure, Harry.”

“Then we don’t have any trouble at all. There isn’t going to be any room for any more trouble than the trouble I came for.”

She lowered her voice. “Is it going to be rough?”

“Silk and cream, if it’s done right. And it’s going to be done right. I’m going to see that it’s done right. The Ace and Ronnie are top talent. When it’s done
we split right away. Where they scatter is their problem. I know what direction we go in.”

“Where do we go?”

“You know how I feel about questions.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to be able to use you. I figured it all out. When it’s time I’ll tell you what you have to do. It will be easy to do.”

“Can I ask just one question? Just one?”

“All right. One.”

“Harry . . . is anybody going to get killed?”

He buttoned his aqua shirt slowly. “I hope not, honey. I hope nobody gets killed. I hope nobody gets that excited.”

 

Ben Piersall was late getting to the Flamingo Country Club and knew he would only have time for nine holes before dusk. He had phoned the club when he knew he would be late,
and left word for the other members of the regular Monday foursome to tee off without him. He changed in the locker room, unfolded the caddy cart and walked out to the first tee, his cleats noisy
on the duck boards, then silent on the grass.

He was a tall man, big in the shoulders, with a blunt, tanned, good-humored face, quiet gray eyes, brown hair that had begun to get a little bit thin on top. He had a successful law practice in
Flamingo and he worked hard at it. He was a son of one of the town founders, and estate work made up a large percentage of his practice.

He saw that once again he would have to play alone. It seemed to be happening too often lately. He was losing the edge of his game. He snapped on his glove, teed up the ball, and took a few
practice swings to loosen up. The club course was a flat course. The fairways were sunbaked. They would become increasingly hard and brown until the rains came in July. The first hole was three
hundred and thirty-five yards, a par four with a well-trapped green and a narrow fairway.

His drive started low and began to climb. As it began to fall it developed a little tail and took a long long roll on the hard fairway. It rolled a bit beyond the three hundred marker. He had
been the best man on the golf team when he had been in college. After school he had played in a few amateur tournaments, and had done well enough to toy with the idea of going on the regular
tournament circuit. When he was able to play regularly he could still give Barney, the club pro, a good match. In his hottest round he had come within one stroke of the course record.

He knew his own weakness, and was amused by it. A lot of the frustrations of the day could be cleared away by really lacing into one, really pounding one. He could lower his score by holding
back on the last few ounces of effort. But it was more satisfying to play it wide open. And there was a juvenile pride in knowing he could outdrive anyone in the club, including Barney, when he
really got hold of one. Like that June day when, with a tail wind, and a fairway like concrete, he had overdriven the four hundred and ten yard twelfth hole. Fritz, in mock awe, had proclaimed that
he intended to have a bronze marker placed where that incredible drive had come to rest.

Ben knew his big husky body needed regular exercise. He knew that he needed the complete relaxation that came after the shower and the drive home. It was more pleasure to play with the others,
but better to play alone than not to play at all.

He dropped the iron shot five feet from the pin and canned the putt for his birdie. Playing alone there was no need to mark a card. He was a minus one thus far, and anticipated finishing the
nine somewhere around par plus two or three.

When he walked onto the fourth tee, still one under, he saw a caddy cart about a hundred and seventy yards out, on the right side of th. . .