Dead Dolls Dont Talk by Keene Day

Author:Keene, Day
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Pulp
Publisher: Stark House
Published: 1959-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

SEPTEMBER 3, 1958

1:28 A.M.

He was on or near the sea. There was a distant sound of rollers breaking on a beach and Hart could smell fish and salt air and the commingled sweet-sour smell of all boat basins and wharfs and piers; oakum and tar and new rope, wet wood and rusting metal, fresh paint and mildewed canvas and crude oil. For a moment his sleep-drugged mind refused to function. Then he remembered where he was.

It had been early evening by the time he and Gerta reached Newport, growing dark but still too light to prowl the Deering yacht unobserved. There’d been too many people around, returning fishermen from the day boats, other hopefuls signing up for bunks on the night boats leaving at 2 A.M. for San Clemente Island, the usual tourists always attracted by boats, still more fishermen of the commercial variety unloading their tuna and sardine catches at the fish packing plant on the far side of the narrow basin.

Checking into a motel until things quieted down had seemed a good idea. Now Hart wasn’t so certain. The vertebrae in his neck seemed to have separated. He had a crick in his back. His left foot was asleep. His mouth felt like it was full of burnt feathers which must be the anchovies in the pizza pie he and Gerta had eaten for supper. He sat up in the chair in which he’d fallen asleep and looked across the room at the bed.

Neither the ceiling nor the bed lamp were lighted. The only illumination in the small room came from the evenly timed flashes of the red neon motel sign in front of the building. At regular intervals a red glow shined through the venetian blinds. When the sign flashed off it was dark. As far as he could tell, Gerta was no longer lying on the bed.

There was no reason why she should be. The blonde teen-ager had built up to her big moment and he’d let her down. In her desire to get even with Cotton, Peggy had fixed him but good. For the time being, he’d lost all interest in sex. He was only interested in his neck at the present time.

Hart felt through the dark for his shoes and put them on. Then he walked to the window and looked out. The motel was directly across a wide street from the elliptical basin of water and combination bar and grill in which he and Gerta had eaten. Ringed as it was by overhead floodlights on tall poles, the boat basin was as light or even lighter than it had been five hours before. There were just as many people. Loose little groups of men and a sprinkling of women, most of them carrying their own deep sea fishing rods and reels and tackle boxes, were clustered on the stringers in front of the broad sterns of the boats on which they had booked passage. Others were already going aboard to secure good places at the rails or buying additional tackle at the bait houses on the pier.

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