Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth by Lester Dent

the tendons looked like chalk marks down the backs of his hands. The guy will never be a bird by choice, Harsh reflected.

    No one had told Harsh they were going to New York, but he had supposed they were because he recalled the O-Negative Blood Group Foundation having a New York address. However the plane flew three or four hours and when it came down Harsh saw palm trees, the sea in the distance edged with a white sand beach and what seemed to be large estates. The plane taxied directly into a large private hangar, where a brown limousine was parked. Brother got into the limousine holding a handkerchief to his mouth. He had bitten his lip badly during the mental strain of riding through the landing.
    The limousine carried them quietly for about half an hour with the afternoon sun mostly against its back windows. The uniformed pilot drove. The co-pilot had loaded the luggage in the trunk. Harsh decided the two served double duty as household staff.
    The limousine came to a stop before impressive iron gates, and the co-pilot got out and unlocked the gates with a key, waited for the limousine to pass through, then locked the gates, got back in the car, and gave Brother the gate key.
    Sunlight splintered like diamonds off immaculate marble and the sparkling glass windows of the mansion before them. The place should be a library in a small city park, Harsh thought. The limousine turned left and right between rows of neatly whitened palm trunks and came to a halt before a leaded glass marquee. Back of the marquee a stained glass door was surrounded by a filigree of ironwork.
    They unloaded from the limousine and Harsh found himself able to walk, although he was inclined to be dizzy. The downstairs hall had the faint odor of hyacinth, was floored with mother-of-pearl. The woodwork was Honduran mahogany.
    Brother gestured to the co-pilot up a stairway with Harsh’s bag. “Your room is that way, Harsh.”
    There was enough space in the bedroom to turn a small automobile. The bed was all of nine feet wide, one room wall was all glass with the ocean beyond it a crinkling aquamarine panorama to the horizon.
    Harsh grinned at Brother, who’d followed him up. “As the fellow says, this ain’t exactly what I’m used to.”
    Brother showed his teeth, which Harsh saw bore a brownish scum from the blood that had come into the man’s mouth from biting his lip during the plane’s landing. “Your taste does not interest me.” He turned to the copilot, who had put the bag down by the bed. “Get out.”
    The man bent his head in an almost imperceptible bow, his eyes lowered and expressionless, then turned and left them.
    Harsh glanced at the bed. The bed looked good to him. He was tired, and his broken arm was a bag of pain attached to his shoulder. He went over and gave the bed an experimental poke with his fist. A very good bed.
    “The money.”
    Harsh straightened. Brother had moved silently to his side, stood at his elbow. “Huh?”
    “Give the money to me.”
    Harsh moved his tongue over his lips. He could feel the fifty thousand resting against his solar plexus where he had attached it, along with the nineteen hundred he had received for his car, by the use of hospital adhesive tape. “I thought the money you paid me for my car was mine, and I was to keep it.”
    Brother tightened his lips over his stained teeth. “Is it necessary you be childish as well as stupid, Harsh?”
    “Say now, buddy. Let’s not be so free with insults.”
    “Give me the money.”
    “Well, now, that needs some talking about. The way I figure, the dough is mine if I do a job, and since I’m doing the job now, why don’t we compromise and me keep—”
    Brother’s neck arched so tensely that his head trembled and his eyes protruded.
    Harsh became alarmed. “Keep away from me, you son of a bitch.” He knew he did not have the physical strength to put up much of a fight.
    Brother leaned toward him. Hit him in the belly, Harsh thought, would be