Any Woman He Wanted Read online

  Ernie frowned up at me. “What are you talking about? We got a robbery-assault case here—”

  I nodded, watching them push Climonte into the ambulance. “Robbery. Yes. But no corpse. This case is nothing to me without a corpse.”

  “Sometimes I don’t understand you, Mike.” Ernie shook his head.

  “Nothing for me here, either.” Yerrgsted snapped his ancient medical kit shut “Come on, Mike. I’ll let you buy me a drink.”

  “You make a hell of a lot more than I do.”

  “True. But I’ve many more bartenders to support than you do, my boy.”

  Ernie’s face was taut. He caught my arm. “Mike. I need you here.”

  I glanced around the store. “What for? This is a case for the vice squad. Robbery detail. I haven’t been on the vice squad in four years. I’m homicide now, Ernie. Remember?”

  His voice was hard. “We got a witness. We can get descriptions, break this thing.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What are you talking about, Mike?”

  I thought carefully. I didn’t want trouble with Ernie Gault. I didn’t want trouble with anybody. “Do I have to spell it out for you, Ernie?”

  “I think you’d better.”

  I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “Well, first, there’s your witness.”

  “What about her?”

  “Like I say, I been off the vice squad for four years. But I’d recognize her in a chorus.”

  “I’m listening, Mike.”

  “Boy, I do have to spell it out, don’t I? Well, she’s nineteen if she’s a day. She’s got her breasts tied down flat under that cheap sweater. She’s lying as fast as she can talk and, more than that, she’s hopped up on dope.”

  Ernie stared first at the girl across the store, and then at me, mouth sagging.

  Doc Yerrgsted grinned. He slapped my shoulder. “One hundred percent my diagnosis, Ballard. You’re becoming almost as observant as I am. Maybe I will buy you a drink, my boy—just one.”

  2

  I parked my middle-aged Olds on the brown pebbled drive outside Tom Flynn’s home on Country Club Road the next afternoon, just a little after three.

  I sat a moment gripping the steering wheel and staring around at all the elegance money could buy, but really delaying the moment when I would go inside. My stomach was drawn taut, but my tension had nothing to do with Tom Flynn’s call, inviting me out here. District Attorney Thomas Elliot Flynn. The hell with him.

  I saw several things at once, and was glad, because gawking was better than thinking, better than remembering. I could sit there, surrounded by this cool, expensive elegance and ponder on what drive, ability—and an inherited fortune—could buy a man. This story-and-half ranch-type with red tile roof sprawled tastefully on a couple of acres of landscaping and overlooked the seventh tee of the golf course. Vines, deep-banked shrubs and velvety grass gave the whole a look of proper aging and permanence. Nothing could look as unfortunate out here as newness, even in a house built yesterday. One thing the Flynn residence definitely looked—it looked like what Carolyn had wanted seven years ago.

  A chick glistening with sun-tan oil and wearing a beige bathing cap that had more material in it than her bikini, came running around the side of the house. She was smiling as she moved toward the MG’s, Thunderbirds and Fiats parked in the drive, but stopped when she saw my sedate Olds. Obviously she had been expecting somebody, but not me. She turned to go back around the house, but at the last minute must have decided I was one of those eccentrics who pretended to like old cars.

  “We’re all in the pool,” she called. “Come around this way.”

  I got out of the Olds, slammed the door. I knew damned well Tom Flynn had not invited me out to join the people splashing and yelling in the pool, but, perversely, I decided that was the way I would enter his house. The prospect of annoying Tom was pleasurable. Besides, a view of loveliness encased in a strip of bikini was a good preparation for an interview with the district attorney.

  I went around the side of the house and there was the forty-foot pool, the nylon deck chairs, the bright umbrellas, the glass-topped tables and the people.

  The sun-oiled chick had flopped on a blue rubber mattress beside the pool. She raised herself on her elbow, managing not to spill out of her halter while showing starkly white skin where the sun had not reached.

  She stared at me as if slightly nearsighted and I looked her over, wondering whether we had met before—an unlikely possibility. She lost interest before I did and lay back on the mattress, dipping her toe into the pool.

  “Well, for God’s sake!” Jerry Marlowe tossed the medicine ball at the other man and came striding around the pool toward me.

  In brown, skin-tight trunks, Jerry looked like something off Mount Olympus, unless you looked too closely. As he strode toward me, I was startled to see he was going to lard. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-six. I had not seen him in six or seven years but the last time we had met he had looked like something hewn out of a stone wall.

  “Mike Ballard!” he shouted. “Old man Ballard.”

  He grabbed both my arms, then turned and yelled over his shoulder. “Hey, you characters, come here. Here’s your chance to meet a man of the people. And when I say man, I mean man.”

  The other three came toward us, no emotion showing in their faces. The second man rolled the medicine ball toward a table and came around the pool edge, yawning. The chick on the mattress rolled over on her side, pulled herself up.

  “This better be exciting, Marlowe,” she said. “Getting me up, sore as I am.”

  Jerry laughed. “Mike Ballard, you old son of a gun! This fat little girl is Jackie Palmer.”

  “Fat?” Jackie said. “Fat? Why, I’ll kill you.”

  Jerry grinned at her. His eyes looked tired and the muscles were slack around his mouth. “Tighten your halter, honey, and shake hands with the only man who ever Indian-wrestled Jerry Marlowe to the ground. I may add that this was years ago.”

  She came nearer, peering nearsightedly. She did not offer to shake hands. “Hello, Ballard.” She squinted. “Have I seen you somewhere before—or am I being wishful?”

  “You never saw this man,” Jerry told her. “He leads a clean, pure life among harlots and thieves.”

  “I thought it would have been too good,” the girl said and went back to the air mattress. “Forgive me, Ballard, unless you want to lie down with me. I’m dying.”

  I was watching her, more closely than was absolutely necessary, until Jerry pulled me around to meet the blonde youth who’d finally made it around the pool.

  “Mike Ballard, Morgan Carmichael.”

  I frowned slightly, looking Carmichael over. He seemed to be about Jerry’s age, almost as tall, but not as muscular nor as tired-looking. Carmichael had sharply cut features, a jutting chin but a mouth twisted in sullen fashion.

  “Morgan Carmichael,” I said. “Are you Fred Carmichael’s son?”

  He nodded, not smiling. “Mother says I am. Maybe it’s true. I’ve never proved yet she’s as big a liar as my sainted father. Do you know him?”

  “Not very well.”

  Jerry laughed. “What Mike means is, he’s never arrested your father in a poker raid. Mike’s a cop, Morgan.”

  “I see.”

  Morgan Carmichael went on staring at me, but now there was a faint interest in his eyes. The kind he might show at a caged puma in a zoo.

  By this time the other girl had gotten up from a deck chair. She took her time, pushing her feet into high-heeled green sandals that matched her swim suit. Her red-gold hair was brushed back from her forehead and almost touched her shoulders. Watching her slip her feet into those shoes, I remembered hearing that walking barefooted lessens the charm and curve of a woman’s legs. The most obvious thing about this doll was that with her, the thing of first importance was appearance. She came slowly toward us, placing one foot precisely ahead of the other as if she were
a professional model or was just learning to walk in high heels. Only neither of these things was true.

  She kept her head tilted back as she walked and just before she got to us, she peeled off the green-tinted sun glasses.

  I caught Jerry’s grin and smiled. “You’ve come a long way, Jerry.”

  He laughed. “Onward and upward. Kind of friends I’ve got now. They don’t like me. I don’t like them. They can’t stand themselves.”

  “Why, I love you, Jerry,” the redhead said, her voice low in her throat and paced very slowly.

  “Sure you do,” Jerry said. “Mike Ballard, this is Naomi Hyers. Nobody knows who’s got more money than her family. She’s the only girl I know that I can’t get in bed with. Morgan swears he’s never made it, either. He’s gone ape. He’s marrying her sometime next month. Admirable. But a sacrifice I couldn’t make.”

  “I do love you, Jerry,” Naomi Hyers said. She looked along her nose at me. She raised her sun glasses to replace them, then hesitated, still looking me over.

  “He’s a cop, Naomi,” Morgan Carmichael said.

  Jerry laughed. “I’m damned. Here I am. Six-three. Two hundred and ten pounds. All-Conference half at State U. And here’s Morgan Carmichael, good-looking, tall, lousy rich—and who is the first character Naomi Hyers stares upon impolitely?” He stopped smiling, and for a moment his face was cold, blue eyes hard. Then he forced himself to smile again. This time the smile did not reach his eyes. “You people want the real scoop? My sister Carolyn. She of the impeccable taste. She was in love with this mug, once. She almost threw away her chance for all this—” he swung his tanned arm in a gesture to include the house, the pool, even the very white sunlight. His voice chilled again, despite his best effort. “What are you doing around here, Mike?”

  “Hell, I was just looking for the service entrance,” I said.

  The chick on the mattress laughed. Naomi replaced her sun glasses.

  Jerry glanced around at his friends. “Come on, Mike,” he said. “Don’t try to make me sound snobbish. You knew little Jerry Marlowe when he didn’t have a rich brother-in-law to his name.” He straightened his wide shoulders, sucked in his stomach. His chilled gaze moved over me, that forced smile still pulling at his mouth. “Come to think of it, why should I be glad to see you?”

  “Beats me.”

  Jerry shook his head. “Funny. I always did like you, though. Even when you tried to push me around, keep me on the straight and narrow. Wasn’t that the low-class name you used to give to pushing me around?”

  “See you soon, Jerry,” I said. I turned, looking over the pool and the lawn. Carolyn was not anywhere.

  I had that to be thankful for, at least

  “Wait a minute.” Jerry caught my arm. “Where you going?”

  “To find your rich brother-in-law.” I shook off his grip.

  He smiled in a savage way. “Tom? What you want to see that stuffed shirt for? You can’t have any fun with him. The original square from Plymouth Rock, that boy. Stick around. I’ll show you how I’ve grown up.”

  “Show Jackie,” I said. “I don’t think you have.”

  “Still tough, huh? Still think you can handle me the way you did when I was a kid?”

  “See you, Jerry.”

  “Wait a minute. Have a swim with us. How about that, Morgan? Doesn’t Mike look hot? Think he ought to take a swim? Cool him off, huh?”

  “He looks kind of sweaty,” Morgan said and laughed.

  “Throw him in the pool, Jerry,” Jackie said from the air mattress. “We need some excitement around this place.”

  Naomi Hyers didn’t say anything, but she had paused, her lips parted slightly, her breasts moving with her sudden deep breathing.

  Jerry was staring at me, the grin hard and fixed on his face. “Want to take a swim, Mike? I think you ought to take a swim. How about that, Mike? In the pool. I’m going to throw you in that pool—and then we’ll be quits for all the times you pushed me around.”

  The redhead licked her lips. Jackie sat up on the air mattress, hugging her knees.

  Morgan said, “I’ve got a hundred bucks says you can’t do it, Jerry.”

  Jerry stared at him, his smile flint-hard. “You nuts?” Then he laughed. “You’re on. A hundred bucks if I can’t. But if I do, I’m taking Naomi down to Cypress Springs for a weekend.”

  “You bastard,” Morgan said.

  “It’s a deal,” Naomi Hyers said in that slow, throaty voice.

  Morgan heeled around. “Damn you. Don’t talk like that.”

  Naomi gave him a slow smile. “Why, darling, you don’t think he can really do it—if you did, you’d never have bet a hundred dollars. Not you.”

  Morgan’s face turned a bright red. Jerry and Jackie laughed at him. Morgan’s fists clenched. “It’s a bet,” he said. His voice was tight.

  Jerry stepped toward me. “You see how it is, Mike? So much to settle. A honeymoon with Morgan’s bride. Old scores. So let’s go swimming.”

  I stared at him. I did not bother looking at the others. I was remembering the times I had done exactly what he accused me of—pushed him around to keep him in line. He was a wild kid in those years before Carolyn married the Flynn money. Nobody in his family could handle him. Nobody but I could handle him. A long time ago.

  I kept my voice low. “Don’t try it, boy.”

  Jerry laughed, aloud. “Still trying to tell me what to do, old man?” He flexed his muscles, sucking in his belly. “Don’t you try it anymore.”

  “You won’t make it, Jerry.”

  He was circling me now “Gonna try to spank me again, old man?”

  “If that’s the way you want it”

  Jerry’s face was white, rigid. He glanced at his three friends watching him. His voice lashed at me. “It’ll never happen. Not any more.”

  He lunged toward me, moving like a halfback. He may have been All-Conference on the playing fields of State U, but I never learned on the football fields. I learned in the alleys. I never fought for sport. I fought to stay alive.

  I side-stepped Jerry, faster than he thought I could move, and when he snagged at me with both arms, his hands struck me just hard enough to give me a flare of anger. I forgot the redhead watching us down her nose, forgot the chick in the bikini holding her breath, and laid the side of my hand across Jerry’s shoulder just below the neck—a sharp, hacking blow.

  I heard Jerry gasp and when he turned, the pain was in his face, along with surprise and rage. I tried to step back toward the low patio wall, but he wasn’t going to stop.

  He held his head up this time, watching me. But I saw his left arm was hanging at his side. He was still trying to tackle me, though, bull me off my feet

  I set myself and let him hit me. At the instant of impact I twisted my hip so that when his shoulder struck it, the double shot of pain almost blacked him out.

  I stepped back, carrying him with me. I bent forward slightly, thrusting my arm under his loosely dangling left arm and struck upward into his armpit with my elbow. The breath burst across his mouth. The toughest guy he ever met on a gridiron never hit him like that.

  Still moving back and dragging him with me, keeping him off balance, I shoved my left hand across his broad, bare back and snagged his right arm when he tried to wrench free. I didn’t wait, or give him time to set himself. My fingers closed in on his wrist and jerked his right arm up between his shoulder blades. His knees sagged and he cried out.

  I struck hard against the patio wall. I threw my right leg across his sagging knees, pinning him down, raised my right arm high and brought the flat of my hand down across that skin-tight suit. I struck him three times as hard as I could bring my hand down. I had never hit anybody that hard with the flat of my hand before.

  I felt my arm ache to my elbow. Jerry struggled, kicking, writhing, trying to fight free. He was raging at the top of his voice. I tightened my grip on his wrist, pulled up on his arm until he stopped yelling.

  I swun
g him upward, shoving him away from me as we moved, but keeping that arm pinned between his shoulder blades. He was bent forward.

  I moved, marching him across the pool apron. He tried to fight free and kicked the air mattress as he passed it. The shapely chick screeched and scrambled out of the way. I shoved him, releasing his arm and thrusting him outward into the pool.

  I turned around, slowly, retrieved my hat, set it on my head. I waited, standing on the pool deck until Jerry burst, gasping, through the surface.

  His face was white and wild. But after a moment, he grinned, treading water.

  “Damn you, Ballard,” he said. “I still don’t believe it.”

  I exhaled, staring at him, remembering how he’d been when he was a kid, “You never would, Jerry,” I said sadly. “You just never would.”

  I turned and walked along the flagstones toward the house. Jerry stayed where he was. Morgan Carmichael stepped aside as I came near him, but he didn’t look at me. The babe in the bikini was crouched on her hands and knees on the air mattress, writhing slightly as if she were afire inside. I pulled my gaze across them. The redhead had not moved.

  When my gaze touched hers, she slowly pulled off those sunglasses and pushed her hair back from her face with the same gesture. She touched her tongue across her lips. Her lips were parted and she was staring. She forgot to stare along her nose.

  I winked as I passed her. When I pulled my gaze around, I saw Tom Flynn standing at the French doors across the patio. He was watching me, his face cold and set.

  3

  “Quite impressive,” Tom Flynn said. His voice was flat He had waited until I stood before him in the doorway.

  I shrugged. “I’m an impressive guy.”

  There might have been a flash of pain behind Flynn’s dark eyes. He closed the double glass doors behind us. His voice remained flat “Perhaps you could be.”

  He waited, but I didn’t answer him. I glanced around the large sun room, looking for Carolyn. Again I was struck by how exactly she had gotten what she wanted. The modern paintings on the walls were probably originals, and lost on me. Day of the Condemned. Small Girl Smiling. Third Avenue Sunset. Maybe somebody had switched the titles. The furniture was low, deep and wide; it looked comfortable—and unused. The only touch lacking was Carolyn herself.