Читать книгу Take a Step to Murder - Day Keene - Страница 6

AS RENNER WALKED out on the concrete apron of the station, Bill Prichard was using the gauge on one of the two air hoses to check the pressure in the right rear tire of the three-month-old black and white police car the Murietta County Commissioners had purchased to enable the sheriff’s department to handle the heavy traffic everyone had assumed would be crowding the new highway by now.

Renner squatted down beside him. “What’s up?”

Sheriff Prichard added more air to the tire. “A tow job, I think. If you want it.”

By custom if not by law the sheriff’s department was supposed to turn all tow jobs over to the Anders-owned garage in Mission Bay. Renner appreciated the tip.

“Thanks. Who cracked up, Bill?”

Prichard shook his head. “I haven’t any idea. But according to the paisano who phoned in, it’s a mess. You know where the south-bound lanes curve in toward the cliff, just this side of the county road leading down to old 101?”

“I do.”

“Well, that’s where they went over. The paisano said the car is down the slope about thirty feet, with some gray-haired old Joe and a blonde girl still pinned in the wreckage. And her with her clothes halfway up to her neck and blood all over everything.”

The arch of Renner’s mouth hurt him. It felt like invisible fingers were tying knots in his groin. Then he forced himself to be calm, to breath normally. True, Tamara was blonde, naturally blonde, but she couldn’t be the girl in the car. Tamara was coming on the local bus that made connections with the through bus from Los Angeles at the Greyhound bus stop in Cove Springs.

“Are they alive?” he asked.

Prichard hung up the air hose. “I can tell that better after I get there. You want the job or not? It could be a nice tow fee. Or the car can be a total wreck and you’ll have the trip for nothing.”

Before Renner could answer him, Kelcey came out of the lounge and staggered up to the police car. “What’s this about some drunk driving a girl over a cliff?”

“A blonde girl,” Manners said. “Just this side of the old beach road.”

“Good,” Kelcey said. “I’ll go see.”

He staggered back to his sports car, flopped down in the bucket seat and blasted across the cut-over strip in front of the station.

“Me and my big mouth,” Manners said.

Prichard dusted the knee of his uniform trousers. “I could have stopped him, but I didn’t. I guess I’m always kind of hopeful that some night he’ll go over a cliff.”

“There’s always that chance,” Renner said.

Prichard got into his car and turned on the ignition. “You want the job or not?”

Renner made an instant decision. With Kelcey gone there was no longer any need for him to wait for Angel’s bus. He would have to stage the meeting between Kelcey and Tamara a little differently than he’d planned. “You go on ahead,” he told Prichard. “I’ll back out the truck and be there almost as soon as you are. And thanks for thinking of me, Bill.”

The little things again. Being appreciative. Standing in well with the law.

It was the first time he’d used the tow truck. It was a big white job with a revolving red light and a siren and gold lettering on both of the doors.

As he backed it out of the wash shed where it had been parked to keep the salt in the air from pitting the chrome, two of the couples in the lounge came out and one of the girls asked, “What’s all the excitement, Mr. Renner?”

Renner told her.

“I know the spot,” the youth with the girl said. “They ought to put guard rails there.” He added, earnestly, “They’ll have to when they open the highway.”

When they open the highway. The five words haunted Renner.

The news of the accident spread. As he tried the winch on the truck to make certain it was working, the remaining customers in the lounge came out and clustered around him. One of them was the little brunette in the too-tight blue jeans.

“That’s a pretty truck, Mr. Renner,” she smiled.

She had a cute little figure. Renner started to ask her her name but before he could the youth with her took her arm and walked her over to his car. Renner didn’t blame him. The punk wasn’t dumb. He knew something good when he had it.

Satisfied with the performance of the winch he climbed into the cab of the truck. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told Manners. “If anyone should ask for me tell them to wait.”

“I’ll do that,” the old man said.

The drivers of four other cars parked in front of the lounge followed the truck across the cut-over to the northbound lanes but gradually fell behind as Renner increased his speed. The whip of the wind felt good. He turned on the revolving red light and then the siren for kicks, warning no one out of his way, doing seventy then seventy-five miles an hour.

As he drove he, totaled what tangible assets he had left, cash in the bank and negotiable bonds. If he played his cards close to his belt, with what little money the lounge and the station brought in from local trade, he could meet his payroll and bank payments for two months. After that, unless he could put over the fast one he was planning, put a quick bite on the Anders money, the bank and suppliers and jobbers would have to split up the court between them.

Leaving him with nothing.

Back in the same old squirrel cage.

He mentally checked his original calculations. Few people realized just how profitable a combination tourist court and lounge and filling station could be. Figuring full capacity in the eighteen units, at fifteen dollars a night, totaled two hundred and seventy dollars a day. There were three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, for annual total of ninety-eight thousand five hundred and fifty dollars. So that was gross. Even figuring in interest and insurance and taxes and upkeep, half of the take on the units was clear profit. Say roughly fifty thousand dollars. Doing minimum normal business, using accepted small business surveys as a premise, the lounge and the restaurant and the station should net twenty thousand more. Fifty and twenty were seventy. Seventy thousand dollars net to him. A fortune. He could cut the rate on his units in half and only do half of capacity business and still pay off the court in ten years.

On an original investment of forty thousand dollars.

True, this wasn’t a nice thing he was asking Tamara to do. Still it would only be the one time. And heaven knew she wasn’t a virgin. Not after the nights she had spent in his arms.

Renner glanced in his rear-view mirror. Four of the cars that had been parked in front of the lounge were still trailing him. The headlights of the fifth car had turned off on one of the side roads and were climbing up into the hills. Getting closer to paradise. Off for the second coming. Nothing religious about it.

He shook his head at the thought. For all the moralists preached against it, it was sex that made the world go round. You couldn’t pick up a book or a magazine that wasn’t filled with it. It inspired most advertising, everything from yachts to mayonnaise. What every ad really said was, “Lady, are you a good lay? If not, why don’t you rub Old Romanoff behind your ears?” The same was true of advertising for men. If you wanted your girl, or all girls, to fight to crawl in bed with you, all you had to do was smear your hair with this or that or use Pink Sky after-shaving lotion.

The wreck wasn’t far now. He could see the revolving red light on the roof of Prichard’s car. And judging from the cluster of car headlights around it the usual crowd of the morbidly curious had gathered.

Renner slowed the truck to a crawl and eased it across the soft divider strip. He couldn’t see the wrecked car but judging from the greasy black skid marks angling across the southbound lanes, someone had hit their brakes hard and merely succeeded in burning off a lot of rubber.

There was reason for Angel to be late. The fat Mexican had driven the bus off to a clear spot on the shoulder of the road. One of the curious onlookers was leaning against a battered fender smoking a brown paper cigarette.

Renner parked the tow truck beside the bus. “A little late tonight, aren’t you, Angel?” he asked.

The fat Mexican shrugged. “Sí.” He puffed his brown paper cigarette. “Always something. I started out five minutes early, too.”

As far as Renner could tell there were no passengers in the bus. He wanted to ask Guitierrez if he had picked up a pretty blonde girl at the Greyhound bus stop in Cove Springs but didn’t think it would be wise. If there were any questions asked later on, if either Kelcey Anders or his lawyers attempted to prove he’d been conned, it was imperative no chance remark connect him to Tamara. For his plan to be successful, as far as the inhabitants of Mission Bay were concerned, he and Tamara had to be total strangers.

Renner studied the skid marks as he got out of the truck. “It’s a bad one, eh?”

Angel flicked his cigarette and it died in a little shower of sparks. “Very bad,” he agreed. “Right off the road and over the cliff.” He added, almost smugly, “But I could have told you the guy would crack up. When he whipped around me he must have been doing ninety.”

Five or six local cars had stopped. Three times that number of men, most of them Mexican farm hands, were standing on the far shoulder of the road looking out and down. There were a few women in the crowd but Renner couldn’t see Tamara.

He walked around the back of the bus to the police car. Kelcey Anders was clinging to one of the fenders. He looked like he’d just finished being sick. When he saw Renner he said, “It’s a mess. You never saw anything like it. So help me, I’ll never drive over forty again.”

Renner wasn’t interested in how fast he drove. “Where’s Bill?”

Kelcey pointed to the edge of the shoulder. “About thirty feet down the slope. I tried to help him and got sick. He thinks the girl is still alive but he can’t get her out of the car.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll see.”

Renner walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. A late model cream-colored Cadillac Eldorado convertible was nosed into a clump of live oak saplings about thirty feet down a forty-five degree slope. The car was right side up but the whole front of it was pushed in and the hood was crumpled back against the shattered windshield.

“You need any help down there?” he called.

Prichard sounded worried. “Am I glad to hear your voice, Kurt. I think the girl is still alive but I can’t get her out of the car and I’m afraid the whole thing will go over any minute.”

The slope was mostly hardpan mixed with patches of crumbling shale. Digging his heels in as best he could, Renner inched his way down to the car and saw why Prichard was worried. Only the smashed trunk of a six-inch tree that had been snapped off by the impact and a small out-jutting of rock that had caught on the oil pan was keeping the big car from continuing on over the cliff to the rocks and surging white water two hundred feet below. He touched one of the crumpled fenders and the wrecked car quivered like a perfectly balanced seesaw.

“See what I mean?” Prichard said.

He shone his flashlight into the car. The man was white-haired and fifty, possibly older, and very obvious dead. Then Prichard shone his light on the girl and Renner felt his stomach turn over.

How or why she had got into the car he had no way of knowing. But the girl caught in the balanced car was Tamara. She hadn’t changed in the two days since he’d seen her, since he’d given her her instructions. She was still young and blonde and pretty, not pretty like a doll but striking in a slightly foreign sort of way. By some freak of dynamics the force of the impact had thrown her back instead of forward. She was lying with one arm dangling over the back of the seat, her left knee drawn up almost to her chin, her other foot on the floor boards. Her skirt was wadded around her middle leaving her completely exposed. In the yellow gleam of the flashlight her blood-smeared white thighs looked like they were carved of white marble.

“Know her?” Sheriff Prichard asked.

It was an effort for Renner to lie. “No. I never saw her before.”

“Me either,” Prichard said. “She’s probably a hitchhiker the old guy picked up.”

“What makes you think that?” Renner asked him.

Prichard told him. “That cheap skirt and sweater she’s wearing. They don’t belong in a Cadillac.” He added, “Besides, there’s a cheap hat box—you know, the kind that dancers and chorus girls carry—over there in the bushes. It was probably thrown out of the car when they went over.”

Renner studied Tamara’s face. Her eyes were closed but she seemed to be breathing regularly. He asked, “Why can’t we just lift her out?”

Prichard shook his head. “I tried that. You have to climb up on the car to get at her. And when you do it upsets the balance. I thought for a moment the whole thing was going to go, me with it.”

It wasn’t a matter of choice. It was something he had to do. Renner climbed the slope again, calling back over his shoulder as he climbed. “I’ll back the truck as close as I can to the edge. Then I’ll come down with the hook and cable and we’ll take a strain on the car before we try to get her out of there.”

Kelcey was still standing beside the police car. He walked along with Renner as he pushed his way through the growing crowd to the truck. “You saw her?”

“I saw her,” Renner said curtly.

Kelcey proved he was feeling better. “She’s a little honey, isn’t she? Boy, would I like to get my hands on her. You know how I mean.”

It was all Renner could do to keep from hitting him. With Tamara in danger, possibly dying, all Kelcey could thing of was enjoying her.

Angel was still leaning against the fender of the bus. As Renner climbed into the cab of the truck the fat Mexican pushed himself erect and asked if there was something he could do.

“Yes,” Renner said. “Tell all the paisanos with cars to park them so their headlights shine over the cliff. Then you can handle the winch while I go down and try to hook on a cable.”

Guitierrez spoke in spanish as he passed on the instructions.

Then, with Angel guiding him, Renner backed the truck to within three feet of the edge of the slope and stopped when Angel held up his hands.

“You go on down to the car,” Angel said. “I’ll play out the cable behind you.”

Renner carried the hook over the edge of the shoulder and scrambled down the slope again with Angel playing out the cable behind him. With a dozen pair of car headlights spotlighting the scene it was much easier-going than it had been the first time.

Renner had to crawl under the back of the wrecked car to secure the hook and cable. When he finally managed to secure it, he crawled out again and called back up the slope.

“Take up the slack—easy.”

Angel reversed the winch, using Renner’s raised hand as a guide. When the heavy cable came so taut the big car nosed forward slightly, Renner gave him a cut-off sign.

“That should do it. Ease off a trifle and lock the winch.”

“Sí, senor.”

Prichard was still worried. “I don’t know if we’re going to pull this off or not, Kurt. When that cable came taut she almost nosed over right then.”

Renner wiped his greasy hands on the skirt of his coat and tested the balance of the car. It wasn’t good. He wished he could be in two places at the same time. Unfortunately, he couldn’t. It was going to be up to Angel to keep just the right strain on the cable while he lifted Tamara out of the car.

He called up the slope again. “Keep the cable as taut as you can without taking too much of a strain on it. And if the truck starts to slip back, slap it into low gear and gun her.”

Angel made a circle with his thumb and second finger to show he understood. “Bueno.”

Working as carefully as he could, Renner tried to open the door on Tamara’s side of the car and couldn’t. The door was jammed. Leaning over the door he tried to lift her out and wasn’t any more successful. The top part of her torso raised but her right foot seemed to be caught on something.

While he was straining to lift her she opened her eyes and spoke rapidly but without panic. “I’m sorry, Kurt,” she said in Hungarian. “But when I missed the bus in Cove Springs and the man offered me a ride, I accepted.” The blonde girl shuddered and tried, instinctively, to cover her exposed flesh. “I didn’t know what kind of man he was. Am I going to die?”

“No,” Kurt said crisply. “Just sit tight and leave everything to me.”

“What kind of language is that?” Prichard asked.

Renner told him. “Hungarian.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she missed the local bus in Cove Springs and the dead guy offered her a ride.”

“Ask her her name?”

“I’m Tamara,” Tamara said in English. “Tamara Daranyi.”

Renner took the light out of Prichard’s hand and walked around the car and pulled the dead man out of the shattered windshield to get rid of some of the weight forward.

“What are you going to do?” Prichard asked.

Renner told him. “Get her out of there.”

He crawled in past the broken wheel post and turned the beam of the flashlight on Tamara’s wedged foot. It was caught in a lethal boot formed by the expensive leather and heavy paperboard liner under the cowl. He tried to free it, but his hands were so slippery with blood and grease he couldn’t get a good grip on her ankle. He wiped his hands on her skirt and tried again. As he did, the car tilted forward precariously. There was an ominous scrape of metal on stone and the men up on the top of the cliff began to shout.

Above the excited babble of Spanish and broken English and the racing motor of the tow truck, Renner could hear Kelcey shouting, “For God’s sake get out of there, Renner. Your weight is upsetting the balance and the tow truck is slipping backwards. The ground is too soft for Angel to get traction.”

Still other voices were shouting for Angel to get out of the truck.

Then, as if to emphasize the danger, a small fall of rock broke loose and cascaded down the slope, banging against the back and the underside of the car.

Even Sheriff Prichard was shouting now. “It’s going. The whole thing is going. Let the girl go and get out while you still can, Kurt.”

Tamara’s eyes were open and agonized.

Renner stopped pulling at her leg and put his arms around her waist, heaving back as hard as he could. There was an audible “plop” as her wedged foot pulled free.

The car was in motion now. One headlight still intact and burning swept up and across the sky like a pointing finger as the strain on the cable pulled the rear end down momentarily. Then as the underside, with a shriek of tortured metal, scraped across the last of the shale and rocked forward, Renner, holding Tamara pressed tightly against his own body, hurled himself backward and out the open door on the far side of the car just as the wrecked Cadillac nosed over the cliff and fell, pulling the tow truck with it. The heavy truck bounced and whipped at the end of the cable like a white toy truck on the end of a string.

With Angel Guitierrez still clutching the wheel.