Dig A Dead Doll Read online

  “Maybe.” The horizon was beginning to slip and slide in and out of focus. My nerves were so relaxed I couldn’t feel them any more. I blinked. “Hey, Link, you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I think I’m intoxicated.”

  “No kidding. You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I’m drunk.”

  “What—what are we going to do—if those bogey men show up?”

  Link grinned sheepishly. “We’ll go ‘Boo!’ and scare ’em away. Hey, Honey, I like you. You—you’re a real man’s woman.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A woman who’s got everything. Brains, body, personal-. n

  “I got a birthmark, too.”

  ‘Where?”

  “Right here on my—” I stopped for a second. “—Thigh.”

  Link rubbed his face drunkenly. “Why—why’d you pause like that?”

  “’Cause thigh is a—a sexy word.”

  “If it belongs to you it’s sexy. Hey, I see the birthmark.” He peered at my right leg. The mark is on the inside of my thigh. Rather high up and shaped like a crescent moon.

  “Say, that—that’s real nice,” he managed.

  I grinned. “You sound like you’re appraising a new car or something.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just—well, what can you say about a birthmark—except—well, it’s nice.”

  “You could have said cute.”

  “Yeah.” He slipped one of his thick arms around me and lifted me onto his lap. “You’re cute all over, Honey.”

  “Easy, Link. How about another drink?”

  “No more drinks for me, or I’ll be awash. Brother! Next time I wait with you for pirates to raid us, remind me to bring along a straw.”

  His lips brushed against mine and held there. My whole body went rigid. His hands moved up under my breasts.

  “Link!”

  “What?”

  “Easy.”

  “That’s my middle name.”

  He lowered one of the straps on my swim suit.

  “Link!”

  “What?”

  “Easy.”

  “You said that.”

  He lowered the other one and things began to give a little along the front side. I lifted my arms.

  “Hey!” I broke away from him.

  “Easy, Honey.”

  “Easy, hell!” I said.

  I broke away and made for the cabin, hiking up the front of the suit. Fun’s fun, but no free shows… .

  That’s when I heard it. Overhead. Bearing in our direction.

  I swung the straps up over my shoulders and started toward the deck.

  “Link!”

  I saw him reach for my revolver and straighten up.

  That’s all I saw.

  In the next instant, a hail of bullets struck the stem of the boat, puncturing the deck with their force.

  NINE

  When I reached the deck, Link Rafferty was lying face down, arms crumpled under him, a trail of blood zigzagging across the boards.

  I looked up. The airplane was circling for another attack. It was a single-engine Beechcraft with pale blue wings and a red stripe down the tail.

  “Link!”

  He didn’t answer. I felt his pulse. It was pounding. I dragged him across the deck and down the steps into the cabin.

  “Link!”

  He groaned, but didn’t open bis eyes.

  I rolled him on his back, examining two gaping boles in his right shoulder that had been cut by the bullets. He didn’t seem to have any other injuries. I found a first aid kit and dumped sulfa on the wounds.

  About that time the plane made its second pass. Bullets smashed into the wheelhouse above my head, shattering window glass. One slug passed through a bulkhead behind me, narrowly missing my right arm. The chatter of the machine gun subsided again as the plane swooped on by, engine groaning.

  I dashed up on deck and grabbed my revolver. The .22 seemed like a toy next to the airplane’s weapon, but I returned a shot anyway. From my vantage point on deck, I could see two figures inside the Beechcraft; one held a machine gun, its snout partially poked out a window.

  I returned to the cabin and taped gauze layers over Link’s wounds. He finally opened his eyes, blinked and closed them again.

  “What happened?” he asked, through his teeth.

  “An airplane,” I said. “Beechcraft. They have a machine gun aboard.”

  “Holy smokes, is that what hit me? It felt like a truck. Knocked the wind right out of me.”

  “You’re lucky,” I said. ‘With all the lead they’re throwing you might have wound up a sieve. They did hit you in the shoulder. Twice.”

  The airplane’s engine growled. So did the machine gun. The wheelhouse practically flew apart. Bullets whizzed past my head, ramming into a cabinet. I dropped flat beside Link.

  “They’re going to sink us,” he said softly.

  “Could they do that?” I demanded.

  “Sure, if they put enough holes below the waterline.”

  “They seem more anxious to put a few holes in us,” I said.

  The plane made two more passes. On both occasions bullets narrowly missed us in the cabin. It was a miracle that I escaped unscathed. When we heard no more sound, I ventured out on deck and examined the sky.

  “They’re gone,” I called down the steps to Link. “They must have figured they got us.”

  “Either that,” Link managed, “or they ran out of ammunition. They tossed an awful lot of lead. My boat’ll never be the same again.”

  “Neither will you,” I said, “if we don’t get you to a doctor.”

  I scanned the horizon with field glasses, hopefully searching for some smoke or a sail. There was nothing in sight. I didn’t tell Link. He was still bleeding pretty badly.

  An hour later a small craft noticed the distress flag that Link had run up and came to our rescue. They called the Coast Guard on their radio and inside of another forty minutes a white hull appeared on the horizon, smoke belching from a single stack. They took Link aboard on a stretcher and put a tow rope onto his boat. A doctor on the cutter examined Link’s wounds immediately and passed word on to me that they were not overly serious.

  We headed for Los Angeles harbor, arriving after dark. On the dock, waiting to greet me, was a familiar figure in a dark blue suit and battered felt hat. Lieutenant Mark Storm.

  “Hello, Lieutenant,” I said, as I came down off the gangplank.

  He grimaced, shook his head and walked toward me. “Honey, as soon as I received the report there was a blonde woman aboard this boat that was shot up, I somehow knew it was you.”

  1 nodded. “I get around, Lieutenant”

  He took a whiff of me and said, “Have you been drinking?”

  “Oso Negro,” I said.

  “Oso what?”

  “Oso Negro. Black Bear Gin. It’s made in Mexico. We had a few drinks while we were dodging bullets.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it a bit,” Mark said.

  They put Link Rafferty into an ambulance and took him to a nearby emergency hospital. At Lieutenant Storm’s insistence, I accompanied him to Sheriff’s headquarters. He didn’t waste words when he got me into his office. “Now then,” he began, “who was flying that airplane?”

  “Steve Canyon.”

  ‘Don’t be funny, Honey!”

  “How should I know who was flying it?”

  He paced around the room a couple of times, fuming silently, punching dents into his hat. Then, jabbing an index finger at me, he roared, “I get you out of a heroin rap one day and the next thing I know you’re up to your armpits in trouble again and getting your head shot off on the high seas. What goes with you?”

  “Mark, somebody’s after my little pink hide. I told you that. They want to nail me to the wall before I can find Pete Freckle.”

  “Well, is he dead or isn’t he?”

  I shrugged, adjusting the skirt and
blouse I’d changed into aboard the Coast Guard cutter. “That’s still the big question. I’ve been hired by Rafad, Mexico’s number one bullfighter, to come up with an answer. I’m liable to come up with a death certificate first—my own.”

  “What’d the airplane look like?”

  “It was a Beechcraft. Fairly new model. Blue wings with a red stripe on the tail.”

  “Did you get its identification number?”

  “Mark, I was lucky to stay alive with all the lead they were pushing. I had only one glimpse of her and by that time she was too far away to pick out any numbers.”

  “Do you think the plane was from Mexico?”

  “I have a hunch it was. Compliments of Zingo and Company.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “I’m crossing the border again. There’s an old torero instructor named Don Mano who may have the answer.” Mark groaned. “Next time they’ll probably, come at you with a tank.”

  “Or an H-bomb.”

  “Get out of this, Honey! You’re taking far too many chances. Down there in Mexico you haven’t a hit of protection. Once they get their hands on you, they can do anything—including—”

  “Including what?”

  ‘You know what. They could hang you by your heels and—”

  “They’ve already done that.”

  “What?”

  “My first night in Tijuana. I went looking for Pete and wound up hanging from a tree a few miles from Rosarito Beach. To top it off they’d stripped me of my clothes. All except a brief pair of underpants.”

  Mark slammed his fist on the desk. “Damn you, Honey! I think you enjoy that sort of thing.”

  “Don’t be silly, Lieutenant!”

  “I’m not! You seem to be naked more times than you’re clothed. What kind of racket are you running?”

  “Sort of a lethal brand of strip poker.” I started for the door. “How about a lift to the Press-Telegram building. I want to talk to Fred Sims.”

  “What about?”

  “None of your business.”

  He cast a withering glance at me. Then, belligerently, his chin out, he followed me through the door.

  Fred was seated at his desk when I came into his office. He had a fistful of darts and was tossing them at a press photograph of a fat lady bent over tying a shoe lace. He flicked his steel-gray eyes at me and went on about his business of deflating the photograph.

  “Well, well,” Fred muttered through his teeth. “If it isn’t Madame Titanic, the unsinkable private eyeful.”

  “So, you got the news,” I said.

  “Madame,” Fred continued, planting a dart squarely on the stern of the fat lady, “we get the news first, right and always. And if we don’t get it, we make our own.”

  Fred was a self-styled humorist. The only time he really ever smiled was at a burial or disaster. He had become this way during the war along the front lines at Bastogne. Somebody shot a leg out from under him. He was so mad about it he hobbled six hundred yards through three German machine gun nests, wiping them all out. The word was he laughed every time he pulled the trigger. He’d never laughed since.

  “I want you to do me a favor, Fred.”

  “Anything for the madame, short of murder. And maybe even that if the price is right.”

  “Do you have any information on a bullfight syndicate operating in Tijuana?”

  “Dope, dames and devices, these I know about. The other.—this so-called syndicate—I never heard of.”

  “It could he there’s no such thing, but can you find out for me? Through your ingenious channels?”

  “Madame—” He tossed another dart squarely into the fat lady’s posterior. “I will make every effort to assist you.”

  “Also will you check out a character named Zingo, owner of a fabulous queer joint on the outskirts of Tijuana.”

  “Name?”

  “La Tita.”

  “Ah, yes, this joint I am familiar with. They do the scramble egg treatment on the floor to the delight of all onlookers. This kind of entertainment warms the cockles of my heart.”

  I nodded. “Also, Rafael, Mexico’s top matador.”

  “0161” Fred tossed his last dart and got up, bracing himself on his cane. “I am acquainted with this fellow, too. He has the nerve of steel. The heart of a lion. He looks like a boy and fights like a giant.”

  “That’s the man.”

  “There are stories he lives in a house with three swimming pools.”

  “One of those is an over-sized bath tub.”

  “Have you tried it for size, Honey?” He winked.

  “No, but I’m planning to. How about a lift out to my place?”

  He brushed at his straight brown hair and said, “Okay, but I’ll warn you right now. I expect to drink all your Scotch and sleep the night on your couch.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said. “I’ll appreciate the company.”

  It was nearly midnight by the time we arrived at my apartment near Alamitos Bay. Fred parked his car in the alley and we walked around to the front steps.

  Suddenly I got the feeling all was not well. I caught Fred’s arm and pushed him against a hedge along the side of the building.

  “Honey,” he quipped, “this is so sudden. I didn’t know you cared.”

  “I don’t, you dope. Somebody’s on my front balcony.”

  “How do you know? You can’t see up there from here.”

  “Just have a feeling.”

  “Where do you get these feelings?”

  “Don’t make jokes. These guys carry around machine guns like kids with lollipops. You want to be talking out of the other side of your face?”

  “Come to think of it, no. Let’s spend the night at my place.”

  I removed the .22 from my handbag and stepped out onto the sidewalk. From there I could catch a view of the balcony. Except for a few harmless shadows, cast by patio furniture, it seemed deserted. I glanced at Fred’s thin face.

  “I guess I was wrong. Come on.”

  Fred grunted, picking thorns from the hedge out of his suit. “You and your feelings.”

  I walked up the steps slowly, still not convinced everything was all right. Fred clanked after me, his cane rattling sharply on the stones. At the front door, I removed my key from its hiding place inside the porch light and inserted it in the lock. Fred poked me on the arm.

  “Hey, you have some nasty kids in this neighborhood,” he said, gesturing. “Look what they did.”

  I looked. Scrawled across the door, in white chalk, was the huge letter Z.

  “Z for Zorro,” Fred laughed.

  “That’s what you think,” I said.

  TEN

  Nightmares burst through like blisters on burned skin. They tore at my subconscious, creating hideous warped images out of reddish dark cloth. Trumpets blared. Half-smoked cigarettes lay in a windy tunnel. Curses rose. Noise. A gate cranked open and I strode into an arena, into a fierce blaze of late afternoon sunlight and shadow, into the teeth of screams and laughter. Trumpets howled. Another gate sprang open and out charged a bull, his head up as he snorted challengingly, tail whipping his flanks. He was a mammoth creature with molten red eyes. His black body gleamed with sweat and his ivory-colored horns glistened evilly. Hoofs pounded, jolted, jarred the earth under me. He hooked with a savage bellowing roar. I felt a horn piercing. Felt it driving deep into me. Deep. Deep. He lunged and hot blue sky flew up into my eyes, splashed with red. I came down on my back, legs kicking up, arms flailing. Then I saw for the first time that I was naked. The hull was goring me, ripping at my flesh, plunging his horns so deep I screamed… .

  I sat up in bed, perspiration streaming down my face and shoulders. Fred came into the doorway, hair tousled, lurching on his cane.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

  “I—I had a had dream,” I said, breathing deeply, brushing hair from my face. A strap on my nightie hung loosely. I lifted it back in place.

  “Is
that all?” Fred groaned. “I thought sure somebody was carving Z’s on your chest.” He slumped into a chair and yawned. “You sure about this Zingo bit?”

  “Positive,” I said, sliding my tongue along dry lips. “You saw the warning he left on the front door.”

  Fred pointed his cane at me and took a one-eye-narrowed sight down the hickory shaft. “Yeah, I saw it. The more I hear about this case the more I like it.”

  “You want to do a feature for your newspaper?”

  “Maybe. Anyway I’d like to go down to Mexico with you and see what gives.”

  I stretched sleepily. “You’d be taking a chance.”

  He lowered the cane and rapped it on the floor. “I’ve taken a few chances in my time. This Zingo character interests me. He owns a bullfight syndicate, a queer joint, a couple of machine guns and a piece of chalk. He spreads himself around good.”

  “I can’t promise any personal interviews,” I offered wryly.

  “Fair enough.”

  “Once we’re in Mexico,” I said, “you’ll have to operate pretty much on your own.”

  “Okay,” Fred agreed. “I’ll miss your charming company, but there are a couple of places I may frequent that don’t allow ladies—at least through the front door.”

  “Then we’re in business,” I said, offering my hand.

  He grasped it, then winced and drew away. “Wow, you’re hot! What in hell have you been dreaming about?” I rubbed the back of my neck, winked and slipped under the covers, wriggling. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know!”

  After eggs, bacon, toast, coffee and orange juice—not necessarily in that order, Fred and I drove into downtown Long Beach the next morning. Headlines on the Independent told about a weird ambush at sea, an injured skipper and a local female shamus who took potshots at an attacking airplane. Fred dropped me at the Wilks Building, promising to pick me up after lunch, and continued on to his niche at the Press-Telegram.

  H. WEST, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS is on the third floor of the Wilks. It’s a quaint little office with a view of an alley, a beer joint and the beach fun zone. I threw up the window and drank in some of that salt air, listening to the rattle of the roller coaster and the merry-go-round’s tinkle. My desk had belonged to my father. It was an old-fashioned rolltop steeped with clutter. I brushed a few papers aside and grasped the telephone. A pair of stockings dangled from an ornate screen in the comer. I dialed the Harbor Emergency Hospital and, after a few minutes wait, was allowed to talk to Link Rafferty.