Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth (9 page)

“Well, Mr. Hassam?”

“What do you think of this thing he is going to pull off today, Doc? Offering to resign?”

Doctor Englaster was not as surprised at the news as Mr. Hassam had been. Mr. Hassam abruptly realized, rather sheepishly, that the speech must have been made, and the resignation threat was old news. Doctor Englaster shrugged. “Well, it will work, of course. The cheers were terrific. The
descamisada
have turned against the church officials.”

“Temporarily, don’t you mean?”

“Oh, yes, that is how it will work.”

“How temporarily?”

“Not for long. He can never take God’s place with them. He may think he can. He may be that colossal a fool. But he will not do it.”

Mr. Hassam decided not to touch his vermouth. “Here is what I really wanted to talk to you about...Brother says he has found exactly the man he has been seeking for these five years.”

Doctor Englaster looked about nervously, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “The hell you say! Is that right? I mean, where did you see Brother? The fool, is he here, with times as they are?”

“Oh, no. He is in a province called Missouri, in the U.S.A. I talked to him by telephone.” Mr. Hassam outlined what Brother had told him concerning Harsh.

Doctor Englaster recovered his composure and again assumed his superior air. “I believe we all should have a look at this fellow Brother has found.”

“I think so, too.” Mr. Hassam pushed the glass of vermouth aside. “Do you have a good excuse for taking a quick trip to Miami?”

Doctor Englaster shrugged. “I had announced a planned vacation in Panama. I can easily disappear on a jungle hunting trip from there for a few days.”

“How about Miss Muirz?”

“She comes and goes at will, doesn’t she?” Doctor Englaster looked at Mr. Hassam meaningfully and rubbed a thumb and forefinger together as if counting money. “How much are you taking out to add to Our Lady of Hope Memorial Fund this time?”

“In United States money, one million three hundred and ninety-four thousand dollars.”

Doctor Englaster’s eyes glistened. “The take is dropping off.”

“Yes.” Mr. Hassam shrugged. “Hardly worth getting hung for.”

“That is not a very good joke.” Doctor Englaster spoke soberly. “We must be careful. Brother is periodically a paranoiac, not a dependable sort. But he is no idiot. He may indeed have found a double for
El Presidente.
Shall we drink to the possibility?”

Mr. Hassam ignored the vermouth and picked up his glass of water for the toast.

Instead of airliner-style seats, the plane boasted four private staterooms and a lounge furnished with deep chairs, a cocktail bar, and an office equipped with desk and dictating machines and chairs for conferences in midair. The pilot and co-pilot/steward wore puce-colored twill uniforms with every crease an edge and every button fastened, each cap peak set at an acute angle. The two crewmen looked efficient and close-mouthed. The color motif inside the airplane was all in tans and puce. There was a strip of the brown along the outside of the airplane and the interior upholstery was out of the same pot, custom stuff. The puce and tan was touched here and there with gold, a gold edging around the television screen, a gold filigree on the door latches.

The two crewmen helped Walter Harsh up the steps into the plane. He was very weak, but he could walk. Moving about had made him feel better, or at least feel more like he was going to live. He noticed the wrist watch the pilot was wearing had a tan dial with puce hands and gold figures. Jesus, he thought. They lowered him into a comfortable chair and buckled the safety belt about his middle. From the windows he could see the wingtips and parts of the engines. The engines puzzled him, because he saw no propellers. Jet? he wondered. The airplane was some buggy.

Brother came in and sat in an upholstered seat near him and fastened the safety belt. He then waited for the plane to take off, sitting there with his mouth open slightly, tips of teeth showing, waiting almost visibly. Harsh decided the man was uneasy about flying.

A taxicab arrived outside. The co-pilot/steward left the plane and soon returned with a large tan canvas bag from the taxi. Harsh eyed the bag. “That’s mine. Is my camera and clothes and stuff in there?”

“Yes, Mr. Harsh.”

Harsh leaned back, trying to relax. This was one hell of a thing, he thought, the whole thing from beginning to end. They had sold his car for nineteen hundred dollars, which was a roast, because Harsh had paid four hundred for the iron a year ago and gotten a skinning at that. He was amazed when he signed the assignment form on the back of the certificate of title of the car, and Brother counted nineteen hundred dollars into his hand. He knew nobody had been fool enough to pay nineteen for the old iron, so they were just keeping him happy. He could feel a bulb of sweat move down his spinal column under his shirt, and he knew what was making him sweat. Money. The way money was coming at him, he thought, it would make an iceberg sweat. He looked down at his right arm, realizing he had suddenly formed the habit of keeping it across his chest, the hand pressed where the middle vest button would be, if he wore a vest. Like Napoleon. He tried to recall whether Napoleon kept his right or his left hand tucked in his waistcoat front. He wondered if Napoleon carried fifty thousand dollars taped to the skin of his belly under the hand.

What they were waiting on turned out to be Vera Sue Crosby. A taxicab arrived and Vera Sue got out wearing her new hat, a tight skirt, and a bushy fur stole which was also new and emphasized her round little bottom. The stole was mink-dyed muskrat, her skirt was yellow, her slippers gold-colored with very high heels. She looked like she was headed for the Yukon gold rush, Harsh thought.

He swung around in his chair. “Hey, I don’t want that dame around me. She double-crossed me and I don’t want any part of her.”

“Harsh, you take orders, not give them.”

Harsh saw the glazed expression in Brother’s eyes, and did not press the matter. The man was afraid of the airplane and was forcing himself to take the flight. The fact that Brother owned such an elaborate private plane and was so nervous about using it indicated what was probably a long-standing psychological battle between the man and the airplane. Let him sweat his own troubles out, Harsh decided.

He pointedly ignored the tentative smile Vera Sue flashed in his direction as she moved to a seat. He had a pretty good idea how she felt. The fancy puce uniforms and the plane had knocked her for a loop and she probably felt as out of place as a blowfly in a perfume bottle. He grinned at the thought, liking the comparison.

The plane now moved quietly out to the runway and took off. It made much less commotion than any plane Harsh had flown in. There was none of the roaring and shaking that characterized airplanes with propellers. The takeoff was smooth as grease.

Harsh watched Brother sit there and hate it. Brother gripped the armrests of his chair and the tendons looked like chalk marks down the backs of his hands. The guy will never be a bird by choice, Harsh reflected.

No one had told Harsh they were going to New York, but he had supposed they were because he recalled the O-Negative Blood Group Foundation having a New York address. However the plane flew three or four hours and when it came down Harsh saw palm trees, the sea in the distance edged with a white sand beach and what seemed to be large estates. The plane taxied directly into a large private hangar, where a brown limousine was parked. Brother got into the limousine holding a handkerchief to his mouth. He had bitten his lip badly during the mental strain of riding through the landing.

The limousine carried them quietly for about half an hour with the afternoon sun mostly against its back windows. The uniformed pilot drove. The co-pilot had loaded the luggage in the trunk. Harsh decided the two served double duty as household staff.

The limousine came to a stop before impressive iron gates, and the co-pilot got out and unlocked the gates with a key, waited for the limousine to pass through, then locked the gates, got back in the car, and gave Brother the gate key.

Sunlight splintered like diamonds off immaculate marble and the sparkling glass windows of the mansion before them. The place should be a library in a small city park, Harsh thought. The limousine turned left and right between rows of neatly whitened palm trunks and came to a halt before a leaded glass marquee. Back of the marquee a stained glass door was surrounded by a filigree of ironwork.

They unloaded from the limousine and Harsh found himself able to walk, although he was inclined to be dizzy. The downstairs hall had the faint odor of hyacinth, was floored with mother-of-pearl. The woodwork was Honduran mahogany.

Brother gestured to the co-pilot up a stairway with Harsh’s bag. “Your room is that way, Harsh.”

There was enough space in the bedroom to turn a small automobile. The bed was all of nine feet wide, one room wall was all glass with the ocean beyond it a crinkling aquamarine panorama to the horizon.

Harsh grinned at Brother, who’d followed him up. “As the fellow says, this ain’t exactly what I’m used to.”

Brother showed his teeth, which Harsh saw bore a brownish scum from the blood that had come into the man’s mouth from biting his lip during the plane’s landing. “Your taste does not interest me.” He turned to the copilot, who had put the bag down by the bed. “Get out.”

The man bent his head in an almost imperceptible bow, his eyes lowered and expressionless, then turned and left them.

Harsh glanced at the bed. The bed looked good to him. He was tired, and his broken arm was a bag of pain attached to his shoulder. He went over and gave the bed an experimental poke with his fist. A very good bed.

“The money.”

Harsh straightened. Brother had moved silently to his side, stood at his elbow. “Huh?”

“Give the money to me.”

Harsh moved his tongue over his lips. He could feel the fifty thousand resting against his solar plexus where he had attached it, along with the nineteen hundred he had received for his car, by the use of hospital adhesive tape. “I thought the money you paid me for my car was mine, and I was to keep it.”

Brother tightened his lips over his stained teeth. “Is it necessary you be childish as well as stupid, Harsh?”

“Say now, buddy. Let’s not be so free with insults.”

“Give me the money.”

“Well, now, that needs some talking about. The way I figure, the dough is mine if I do a job, and since I’m doing the job now, why don’t we compromise and me keep—”

Brother’s neck arched so tensely that his head trembled and his eyes protruded.

Harsh became alarmed. “Keep away from me, you son of a bitch.” He knew he did not have the physical strength to put up much of a fight.

Brother leaned toward him. Hit him in the belly, Harsh thought, would be the best move, but hand him a good one so it would settle things. He brought his right fist up toward Brother’s middle, but Brother pushed the fist aside easily. Brother lifted his cupped hands and clapped them together against Harsh’s ears. The effect on Harsh’s eardrums and brain was agonizing. He was sure he had been given a mild concussion. Brother seized Harsh’s right arm and turned with the arm so that his back was to Harsh, the thumb and wrist in a trap-hold which was the most painful thing Harsh had ever had anyone put on him. His wrist and thumb filled with splintering pain, until he thought fire would come out of his ears. He toppled backwards onto the bed when Brother released him. He felt Brother tear open his shirt and begin pulling the taped-on money loose from the skin. Brother’s eyes shone insanely and he drew the tape loose slowly and agonizingly, panting with pleasure as the tape brought the coarse belly hair out by the roots. When Brother arose, the packet of money was in his hands, all of it, Harsh’s nineteen hundred as well as the fifty thousand.

“Mr. Harsh, I give an order only once. I state only fact. I do not threaten, bicker, chisel, or bargain. If any time you hear me make a statement which you wish to construe as a threat, stop. Stop. If I have said it, it is fact, not a threat. A fact beyond recall, unalterable, unassailable, unchangeable, a fact.”

“You got my nineteen hundred there!” Harsh was half blinded with pain.

“Get up.”

“Damn you!”

“Get to your feet.”

Harsh’s ears felt as if steam was escaping through them and he wondered if the eardrums were ruptured. When he saw Brother take a step toward him, he hastily rolled off the bed and stood shakily erect. This crazy fool would kill him, like as not.

“Come. I wish to show you something.” Brother turned and walked to a framed painting on the east wall of the bedroom. The painting was an oil copy of Titian’s
Woman on a Couch,
a very bold and sexy-looking piece. Brother swung the painting outward like a small door. It was hinged to the wall. This disclosed a wall safe with a combination dial.

“Watch, Harsh. Watch closely. Memorize the combination.” Brother turned the safe dial slowly to four different numbers, reciting each number aloud. He did this again. “Have you got it, Harsh?”