The Killer is Mine

CHAPTER

1

SHE WAS the kind who’d make the whole trip for a man, right to hell’s front door.

Even a guy in his spot.

It took me a while to realize that. She’d called me twice. Each time I refused to see her.

As far as I was concerned the man in State’s Prison at Raiford would get what was coming to him. He’d been found guilty in a court of law and justice, and I don’t cotton to people who, without cause, kill other people. Especially children. Most especially little girls.

I thought I was through with Laura Tulman. She sounded like a nice person over the phone, and I admire loyalty. But twice-times-no should discourage anybody, and I dropped her and her doomed husband from my mind.

It had been a hot day, even for Tampa. The heat was a shimmering white wool shroud cloyed over the river, the shopping crowds on Franklin Street, the rancid tide flats along the Bayshore, the holes and hovels in Ybor City, the Latin Quarter. I have been down here going on sixteen years, but I never got used to the heat. I don’t know why I didn’t leave a long time ago. I just got here, got a job, and I stayed. That’s all there is to it. So don’t get critical. Why the hell don’t you go looking for paradise instead of plodding through something you may be stuck with?

On the way to my apartment on the edge of Ybor City I stopped at a fly-specked market. The usual dusky kids were playing in the street and shrilling at each other in Spanish. The usual sharp, slicked-up characters were lounging around the corners, and at the domino club where the old men played for hours and the young ones devised plans involving women, money and women.

The usual smell of spice and pepper slapped me across the face when I walked in the store. I bought some Cuban sausage, eggs, half a dozen cans of cold beer.

I went up to my apartment in a creaking, gloomy old house and cooked my dinner over the gas plate. I was finishing off the sausage and eggs and the third beer when somebody rapped on the door. I grunted and got up to answer it.

A beautiful young woman was standing in the twilight of the hallway. She had tanned, smooth skin, great dark eyes and jet-black hair. There was character in the bold bones of her face. Her body was slender and her figure fine. She wore a white linen suit and carried a matching purse.

She looked up into a sweating face that’s seen forty-three years of living. Mr. Ed Rivers?

Yes.

May I come in?

Sure.

She moved easily past my slope-shouldered, six-foot, hundred and ninety pounds.

I closed the door. She didn’t belong here. She belonged on plush Davis Island, the man-made development pumped out of the guts of Tampa Bay.

She didn’t turn up her nose when she glanced around. She simply looked the place over, at the day bed where I sweat like a hog when I sleep, at the second-hand TV set I watch sometimes, at the bookcase piled with old books and magazines and a few newspaper clippings that have come from being a cop of one kind or another nearly all my life. At the kitchenette where the remains of my dinner were still on the table.

She looked at me.

Slowly.

From my shoes. Up my baggy slacks. Across the sport shirt blackened and matted with sweat against my chest. To my face.

Her eyes rested there.

You’re not a very pretty man, Mr. Rivers, she said. But I believe you are capable.

Thanks.

I have a considerable knowledge of you to bolster my opinion, she said. You were once a city policeman in New Jersey. You came here about fifteen years ago, broken up by some kind of trouble up north. You just about went to the dogs for a while. Then you became a private agent for Nationwide Detective Agency. You’ve held down the job ever since. Your loyalty and basic honesty are legend.

Thanks again, I said. She’d left out a few of the details. Even now I didn’t like to remember the reason I’d drifted south. I’d had a girl up in Jersey City, where I was born and where I walked my first beat as a cop. I was in plain clothes when I met this girl. I thought she was mine, but she ran off with a punk I was trying to nail. Their car got in the way of a fast-moving freight train at a crossing.

I thumbnailed a drop of sweat off my face and said slowly, I don’t mind people checking on me, but you’ve wasted your time, Mrs. Tulman.

Laura Tulman didn’t seem surprised that I’d recognized her. She was getting used to it. Her husband’s hadn’t been the only picture smeared all over the newspapers.

Please give me a few moments, Mr. Rivers.

I told you on the phone. I don’t take this kind of case.

She tilted her head. In the dim light of the dying day, her eyes were touched with loneliness and black fear. You’re very adept at saying no, Mr. Rivers.

I only try to say what I mean.

I wished she’d leave. I also wished there was something I could do for her. Not her husband. Her. Seeing her, talking to her, I felt she had a quality rare among people. It was driving her. Causing her to fight a fight she couldn’t win. And it might break her heart.

I drew my gaze from her. Just leave, I thought. So I can take a cold bath, relax, get rid of the weight of the .38 and knife for a while, tools of my trade. I wear the knife in a sheath at the back of my neck. Insurance. In fifteen years I’ve used the knife twice, and if I hadn’t had it the first time I wouldn’t have been around to need it the second.

Were you at my husband’s trial? she asked.

I turned to face her again, shook my head.

I don’t fool around courts more than I have to.

Then you don’t know my husband.

I read the papers.

The papers crucified him.

I’ve learned to read between newspaper lines. But there was a case against him. Strong enough to buy him a ticket to the chair.

She went white around the lips. The papers and resultant public opinion ruled out any recommendation for mercy. The little girl’s grandmother had a lot to do with that.

The Wherry family is one of Tampa’s oldest and most respected.

So is mine, Mr. Rivers, but we tried to fight cleanly.

That was a mistake. When your life’s at stake there are no rules. Anything that cuts your chances is not clean. It’s so stupid it’s dirty.

I know that now, she said. But I thought our fight would be enough. He was convicted on circumstantial evidence, you know.

That hasn’t much to do with it. A lot of people don’t understand circumstantial evidence. It’s as good as any other kind if it determines that only one person could not have been innocent. If you’ve got any other evidence, take it to the cops. I haven’t got it. I want to get it. I want you to get it. Let the cops get it.

It’s all over as far as the police are concerned. Closed. Like a book they don’t want or intend to read any more.

That’s right, I said.

But you could use methods they can’t to get this evidence.

I’m no back-alley thug, Mrs. Tulman. I’m sure of that, but you get results. I’ve looked into the records of every private detective in the state. You’re the man I want. The man Wally needs.

Wally needs to say his prayers, I said. That’s all Wally needs.

You’re cruel, she said softly.

I’m trying to be kind. I’m trying to convince you that you might as well accept things as they are.

She looked at me for a long, steady minute. Thank you for your time, Mr. Rivers.

She walked out of the apartment. I stood in the front room a little longer looking at the closed door.

Then I shook my head, walked into the kitchenette and opened a fresh beer. It didn’t help much. The heat remained like a sticky veil of molasses.

I went to a movie that night because it was air-conditioned. Later, I went to a beanery and had a Cuban sandwich and iced coffee.

I walked home. It was late and the house was quiet. The vestibule was dark. The fifteen-watt bulb had burned out or the landlady had turned it off.

I heard the busy scraping of a rat against the baseboard. Then the rat dropped the roof on me. He hit me right on the bald spot. I grunted and went down. I didn’t know it when my face hit the threadbare, gritty stair runner.

I was out only a few minutes. I was still in the dark vestibule when I came to. The whole thing had happened so quickly and quietly it hadn’t disturbed the house.

A giant pain like a toothache filled my skull. It began pounding, with a rhythm so steady and dizzying that soured beer and sausage boiled in my throat.

I pulled myself around and sat on the bottom step with my head in my hands. If he’d still been here, he could have killed me. I was weak as a baby.

After a little time, I felt my pockets. He hadn’t taken a thing. I didn’t understand it. Ruling out robbery indicated revenge as a motive. There were characters who would have liked to see me pulped up good. But this boy hadn’t beat me up. Just that one blow to show me he meant business and knew how to do business. Then he’d left.

I held the stair railing and made it to my feet. I dragged myself to the second floor and got inside my apartment. I turned on the light. The reception was terrible. Everything kept wavering in and out of focus.

I barely got to the old-fashioned bathroom with its gargling plumbing before the beer and sausage let go. After that, I stumbled into the bed-sitting room and fell on the day bed. I lay gasping. Finally I started hearing bells and realized the phone was ringing.

I twisted around on the bed and picked up the phone.

A whisper reached me. Ed Rivers?

Yeah, I said.

You’re too smart to want trouble with the Mafia. So lay off the Tulman case. Tonight was just to show you we’re serious.

The line went dead. I sat on the edge of the day bed, lowering the phone slowly.

The Mafia was strong in Tampa.

But this wasn’t Mafia business.

The boy following up the vestibule job with a phone call had made one mistake.

I knew more about the Mafia than he did.

He’d known of Laura Tulman’s visit. He’d figured I was on the case.

But he’d made a mistake.

I looked up the Tulman number in the phone book and dialed it.

Laura Tulman was home.

This is Ed Rivers, Mrs. Tulman, I said. You be in my office at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.

Does this mean—

It means that a free-swinging crumb came around here a little while ago and reopened your husband’s case, I said.

CHAPTER

2

I SLEPT in spots and kept compresses on my head in the other spots the rest of the night.

Next morning I didn’t feel like doing anything but staying flat on my back.

I got up, touching my head with my fingers. He hadn’t broken the skin and most of the swelling was gone.

I went in the bathroom and ran the tub nearly to the brim with cold water. I soaked for half an hour, until the water felt as turgid as the rest of the climate. I dressed, boiled some eggs. I finished off the beer in the place and ate the eggs for breakfast.

At ten o’clock I was at the Herald Building going through stacks of clippings out of their morgue.

According to the paper, this is what the trial of Wally Tulman established:

Eleven-year-old Ruthie Collins had been molested and murdered early in the evening on April 15. Her knife-hacked body had been found in the patio of the home of Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Tulman, next-door neighbors of the Collins family in swank Brightwood Estates.

Ruthie’s parents, Milt and Stephanie Collins, had been at a dinner party that evening. Ruthie and her thirteen-year-old brother, Bryan, had been in their home with their maternal grandmother, Mrs. Madeleine Wherry. Having given the children their dinner, Mrs. Wherry left them in the rumpus room to watch television.

At eight-thirty, Mrs. Wherry went into the rumpus room to announce bedtime.

Bryan was alone.

Where is your sister, Mrs. Wherry asked.

She went over to see Mr. Tulman, Bryan said.

Mrs. Wherry thought nothing of it. Wally Tulman had shown a great