Free Kill Me Tomorrow by Richard S. Prather Page B

As a guess, it was a combination of pounded drums, strummed strings, plucked chickens, and clacked clackers, as the rather disturbing background to the voices of Haitian voodooists calling on Agwé, Sogbo, and Badé simultaneously. Finally I realized that Mrs. Blessing had not been laying an egg in the doorway, but merely keeping time to the music. At the moment she was snapping her fingers in a sort of absentminded way. She had lots of rhythm.
    Lots of other things as well.
    So this was the woman Tony Brizante had barely noticed when Gil Reyes was talking to Henry Yarrow. Tony’s eyesight, and perhaps more than his eyesight, was failing if all he’d been able to recall was that she’d been wearing shorts and a white blouse and was barefoot.
    She was tall, a gal formed for negligees and peignoirs, for showers and baths and nudist camps, a lovely climbing—but not over—the hill; in a word, she was built. The face, especially the dark eyes and wide red lips, was sensual, with thick black brows over and long lashes curling from the huge eyes. A mass of waving black was her hair, her skin was dark, and she looked as if she might be Italian—or Mexican, Spanish, Portuguese. If Italian, it was a different Italy from Lucrezia’s, maybe the Rome of Gypsies or the Naples of new Borgias. Or wherever modern temples to bawdy Venuses were built.
    Mrs. Blessing was wearing a gray dress of some thin smooth shimmering fabric, plus nylons and high-heeled gray shoes, and very little else. The cloth slid against her skin as she walked across the room to a wide, soft, upholstered chair and indicated a similar chair for me, directly opposite and about four feet from hers. As I seated myself in it, she sort of slunk downward into hers and crossed her long legs in such a way that the gray cloth fell away from her thigh.
    It fell way away, revealing a vast and hypnotic expanse of smooth curving flesh indented by the black strap of what might have been a garter belt. What must have been a garter belt. What, at least, was not a chastity belt. Sure, there was a little doohickey clutching the top of her nylons—
    â€œMr. Reyes?” she said pleasantly.
    â€œYes, ma’am, Mr. Reyes. I wanted to talk to you about that—him. I … Mind if I smoke?”
    She shook her head.
    I got the smoke lit, took a puff. “I’m trying to find Mr. Reyes. He—”
    â€œHave you phoned his home?”
    â€œNot lately. He—”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWell, he—he may be someplace where they don’t have any phones. For all I know. He—”
    â€œSurely he has a phone in his home .”
    â€œWho says he’s home? He—”
    â€œDo you know he’s not home?”
    â€œWell, not positively. Not absolutely. But—”
    â€œWould you like to use mine?”
    â€œYour what?”
    â€œWould you like to use my phone?”
    â€œYour phone? What would I do with it?”
    â€œCall Mr. Reyes.”
    â€œI don’t want to call Mr. Reyes. Look, lady, I think he’s dead. Killed, deceased, a corpse. He—”
    â€œYou’re pulling my leg.”
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t say … May I use your phone, Mrs. Blessing?”
    â€œOf course.”
    I used her phone. I looked up Reyes’ number, dialed, listened to a ring, hung up, and went back to my chair.
    â€œHe’s not home,” I said.
    â€œWhy did you want to see him?”
    â€œIt’s not so much that I want to see him. I want to find him. He’s probably loaded with lupara anyhow—”
    â€œLu—what?”
    â€œNever mind. Make it bullets. Shotgun pellets. Anything. Look, I have reason to believe, at least seriously to suspect, that Mr. Reyes has been killed, that he is dead, d-e-a-d, dead.” I paused. “Probably I should have got around to telling you this before now. I’m an investigator, a private detective.”
    â€œHow fas