Страница:
Hemingway stared at me sadly. “I can’t even see your dust,” he said. “Who the hell is Moose Malloy?”
“A big hunk that killed a man over on Central Avenue a few days ago. He’s on your teletype, if you ever read it. And you probably have a reader of him by now.”
“So what?”
“So Sonderborg was hiding him. I saw him there, on a bed reading newspapers, the night I snuck out.”
“How’d you get out? Wasn’t you locked in?”
“I crocked the orderly with a bed spring. I was lucky.”
“This big guy see you?”
“No.”
Hemingway kicked the car away from the curb and a solid grin settled on his face. “Let’s go collect,” he said. “It figures. It figures swell. Sonderborg was hiding hot boys. If they had dough, that is. His set-up was perfect for it. Good money, too.”
He kicked the car into motion and whirled around a corner.
“Hell, I thought he sold reefers,” he said disgustedly. “With the right protection behind him. But hell, that’s a small time racket. A peanut grift.”
“Ever hear of the numbers racket? That’s a small time racket too — if you’re just looking at one piece of it.”
Hemingway turned another corner sharply and shook his heavy head. “Right. And pin ball games and bingo houses and horse parlors. But add them all up and give one guy control and it makes sense.”
“What guy?”
He went wooden on me again. His mouth shut hard and I could see his teeth were biting at each other inside it. We were on Descanso Street and going east. It was a quiet street even in late afternoon. As we got towards Twenty-third, it became in some vague manner less quiet. Two men were studying a palm tree as if figuring out how to move it. A car was parked near Dr. Sondeborg’s place, but nothing showed in it. Halfway down the block a man was reading water meters.
The house was a cheerful spot by daylight. Tea rose begonias made a solid pale mass under the front windows and pansies a blur of color around the base of a white acacia in bloom. A scarlet climbing rose was just opening its buds on a fan-shaped trellis. There was a bed of winter sweet peas and a bronze-green humming bird prodding in them delicately. The house looked like the home of a well-to-do elderly couple who like to garden. The late afternoon sun on it had a hushed and menacing stillness.
Hemingway slid slowly past the house and a tight little smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. His nose sniffed. He turned the next corner, and looked in his rear view mirror and stepped up the speed of the car.
After three blocks he braked at the side of the street again and turned to give me a hard level stare.
“L.A. law,” he said. “One of the guys by the palm tree is called Donnelly. I know him. They got the house covered. So you didn’t tell your pal downtown, huh?”
“I said I didn’t.”
“The Chief’ll love this,” Hemingway snarled. “They come down here and raid a joint and don’t even stop to say hello.”
I said nothing.
“They catch this Moose Malloy?”
I shook my head. “Not so far as I know.”
“How the hell far do you know, buddy?” he asked very softly.
“Not far enough. Is there any connection between Amthor and Sonderborg?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Who runs this town?” Silence.
“I heard a gambler named Laird Brunette put up thirty grand to elect the mayor. I heard he owns the Belvedere Club and both the gambling ships out on the water.”
“Might be,” Hemingway said politely.
“Where can Brunette be found?”
“Why ask me, baby?”
“Where would you make for if you lost your hideout in this town?”
“Mexico.”
I laughed. “Okey, will you do me a big favor?”
“Glad to.”
“Drive me back downtown.”
He started the car away from the curb and tooled it neatly along a shadowed street towards the ocean. The car reached the City Hall and slid around into the police parking zone and I got out.
“Come round and see me some time,” Hemingway said. “I’ll likely be cleaning spittoons.”
He put his big hand out. “No hard feelings?”
“M.R.A.” I said and shook the hand.
He grinned all over. He called me back when I started to walk away. He looked carefully in all directions and leaned his mouth close to my ear.
“Them gambling ships are supposed to be out beyond city and state jurisdiction,” he said. “Panama registry. If it was me that was — “ he stopped dead, and his bleak eyes began to worry.
“I get it,” I said. “I had the same sort of idea. I don’t know why I bothered so much to get you to have it with me. But it wouldn’t work — not for just one man.”
He nodded, and then he smiled. “M.R.A.” he said.
34
35
36
37
38
“A big hunk that killed a man over on Central Avenue a few days ago. He’s on your teletype, if you ever read it. And you probably have a reader of him by now.”
“So what?”
“So Sonderborg was hiding him. I saw him there, on a bed reading newspapers, the night I snuck out.”
“How’d you get out? Wasn’t you locked in?”
“I crocked the orderly with a bed spring. I was lucky.”
“This big guy see you?”
“No.”
Hemingway kicked the car away from the curb and a solid grin settled on his face. “Let’s go collect,” he said. “It figures. It figures swell. Sonderborg was hiding hot boys. If they had dough, that is. His set-up was perfect for it. Good money, too.”
He kicked the car into motion and whirled around a corner.
“Hell, I thought he sold reefers,” he said disgustedly. “With the right protection behind him. But hell, that’s a small time racket. A peanut grift.”
“Ever hear of the numbers racket? That’s a small time racket too — if you’re just looking at one piece of it.”
Hemingway turned another corner sharply and shook his heavy head. “Right. And pin ball games and bingo houses and horse parlors. But add them all up and give one guy control and it makes sense.”
“What guy?”
He went wooden on me again. His mouth shut hard and I could see his teeth were biting at each other inside it. We were on Descanso Street and going east. It was a quiet street even in late afternoon. As we got towards Twenty-third, it became in some vague manner less quiet. Two men were studying a palm tree as if figuring out how to move it. A car was parked near Dr. Sondeborg’s place, but nothing showed in it. Halfway down the block a man was reading water meters.
The house was a cheerful spot by daylight. Tea rose begonias made a solid pale mass under the front windows and pansies a blur of color around the base of a white acacia in bloom. A scarlet climbing rose was just opening its buds on a fan-shaped trellis. There was a bed of winter sweet peas and a bronze-green humming bird prodding in them delicately. The house looked like the home of a well-to-do elderly couple who like to garden. The late afternoon sun on it had a hushed and menacing stillness.
Hemingway slid slowly past the house and a tight little smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. His nose sniffed. He turned the next corner, and looked in his rear view mirror and stepped up the speed of the car.
After three blocks he braked at the side of the street again and turned to give me a hard level stare.
“L.A. law,” he said. “One of the guys by the palm tree is called Donnelly. I know him. They got the house covered. So you didn’t tell your pal downtown, huh?”
“I said I didn’t.”
“The Chief’ll love this,” Hemingway snarled. “They come down here and raid a joint and don’t even stop to say hello.”
I said nothing.
“They catch this Moose Malloy?”
I shook my head. “Not so far as I know.”
“How the hell far do you know, buddy?” he asked very softly.
“Not far enough. Is there any connection between Amthor and Sonderborg?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Who runs this town?” Silence.
“I heard a gambler named Laird Brunette put up thirty grand to elect the mayor. I heard he owns the Belvedere Club and both the gambling ships out on the water.”
“Might be,” Hemingway said politely.
“Where can Brunette be found?”
“Why ask me, baby?”
“Where would you make for if you lost your hideout in this town?”
“Mexico.”
I laughed. “Okey, will you do me a big favor?”
“Glad to.”
“Drive me back downtown.”
He started the car away from the curb and tooled it neatly along a shadowed street towards the ocean. The car reached the City Hall and slid around into the police parking zone and I got out.
“Come round and see me some time,” Hemingway said. “I’ll likely be cleaning spittoons.”
He put his big hand out. “No hard feelings?”
“M.R.A.” I said and shook the hand.
He grinned all over. He called me back when I started to walk away. He looked carefully in all directions and leaned his mouth close to my ear.
“Them gambling ships are supposed to be out beyond city and state jurisdiction,” he said. “Panama registry. If it was me that was — “ he stopped dead, and his bleak eyes began to worry.
“I get it,” I said. “I had the same sort of idea. I don’t know why I bothered so much to get you to have it with me. But it wouldn’t work — not for just one man.”
He nodded, and then he smiled. “M.R.A.” he said.
34
I lay on my back on a bed in a waterfront hotel and waited for it to get dark. It was a small front room with a hard bed and a mattress slightly thicker than the cotton blanket that covered it. A spring underneath me was broken and stuck into the left side of my back. I lay there and let it prod me.
The reflection of a red neon light glared on the ceiling. When it made the whole room red it would be dark enough to go out. Outside cars honked along the alley they called the Speedway. Feet slithered on the sidewalks below my window. There was a murmur and mutter of coming and going in the air. The air that seeped in through the rusted screens smelled of stale frying fat. Far off a voice of the kind that could be heard far off was shouting: “Get hungry, foks. Get hungry. Nice hot doggies here. Get hungry.”
It got darker. I thought; and thought in my mind moved with a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes. I thought of dead eyes looking at a moonless sky, with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them. I thought of nasty old women beaten to death against the posts of their dirty beds. I thought of a man with bright blond hair who was afraid and didn’t quite know what he was afraid of, who was sensitive enough to know that something was wrong, and too vain or too dull to guess what it was that was wrong. I thought of beautiful rich women who could be had. I thought of nice slim curious girls who lived alone and could be had too, in a different way. I thought of cops, tough cops that could be greased and yet were not by any means all bad, like Hemingway. Fat prosperous cops with Chamber of Commerce voices, like Chief Wax. Slim, smart and deadly cops like Randall, who for all their smartness and deadliness were not free to do a clean job in a clean way. I thought of sour old goats like Nulty who had given up trying. I though of Indians and psychics and dope doctors.
I thought of lots of things. It got darker. The glare of the red neon sign spread farther and farther across the ceiling. I sat up on the bed and put my feet on the floor and rubbed the back of my neck.
I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.
There was no elevator. The hallways smelled and the stairs had grimed rails. I went down them, threw the key on the desk and said I was through. A clerk with a wart on his left eyelid nodded and a Mexican bellhop in a frayed uniform coat came forward from behind the dustiest rubber plant in California to take my bags. I didn’t have any bags, so being a Mexican, he opened the door for me and smiled politely just the same.
Outside the narrow street fumed, the sidewalks swarmed with fat stomachs. Across the street a bingo parlor was going full blast and beside it a couple of sailors with girls were coming out of a photographer’s shop where they had probably been having their photos taken riding on camels. The voice of the hot dog merchant split the dusk like an axe. A big blue bus blared down the street to the little circle where the street car used to turn on a turntable. I walked that way.
After a while there was a faint smell of ocean. Not very much, but as if they had kept this much just to remind people this had once been a clean open beach where the waves came in and creamed and the wind blew and you could smell something besides hot fat and cold sweat.
The little sidewalk car came trundling along the wide concrete walk. I got on it and rode to the end of the line and got off and sat on a bench where it was quiet and cold and there was a big brown heap of kelp almost at my feet. Out to sea they had turned the lights on in the gambling boats. I got back on the sidewalk car the next time it came and rode back almost to where I had left the hotel. If anybody was tailing me, he was doing it without moving. I didn’t think there was. In that clean little city there wouldn’t be enough crime for the dicks to be very good shadows.
The black piers glittered their length and then disappeared into the dark background of night and water. You could still smell hot fat, but you could smell the ocean too. The hot dog man droned on:
“Get hungry, folks, get hungry. Nice hot doggies. Get hungry.”
I spotted him in a white barbecue stand tickling wienies with a long fork. He was doing a good business even that early in the year. I had to wait some time to get him alone.
“What’s the name of the one farthest out?” I asked, pointing with my nose.
“_Montecito_.” He gave me the level steady look.
“Could a guy with reasonable dough have himself a time there?”
“What kind of a time?”
I laughed, sneeringly, very tough.
“Hot doggies,” he chanted. “Nice hot doggies, folks.” He dropped his voice. “Women?”
“Nix. I was figuring on a room with a nice sea breeze and good food and nobody to bother me. Kind of vacation.”
He moved away. “I can’t hear a word you say,” he said, and then went into his chant.
He did some more business. I didn’t know why I bothered with him. He just had that kind of face. A young couple in shorts came up and bought hot dogs and strolled away with the boy’s arm around the girl’s brassiere and each eating the other’s hot dog.
The man slid a yard towards me and eyed me over. “Right now I should be whistling Roses of Picardy,” he said, and paused. “That would cost you,” he said.
“How much?”
“Fifty. Not less. Unless they want you for something.”
“This used to be a good town,” I said. “A cool-off town.”
“Thought it still was,” he drawled. “But why ask me?”
“I haven’t an idea,” I said. I threw a dollar bill on his counter. “Put it in the baby’s bank,” I said. “Or whistle Roses of Picardy.”
He snapped the bill, folded it longways, folded it across and folded it again. He laid it on the counter and tucked his middle finger behind his thumb and snapped. The folded-bill hit me lightly in the chest and fell noiselessly to the ground. I bent and picked it up and turned quickly. But nobody was behind me that looked like a dick.
I leaned against the counter and laid the dollar bill on it again. “People don’t throw money at me,” I said. “They hand it to me. Do you mind?”
He took the bill, unfolded it, spread it out and wiped it off with his apron. He punched his cash-register and dropped the bill into the drawer.
“They say money don’t stink,” he said. “I sometimes wonder.”
I didn’t say anything. Some more customers did business with him and went away. The night was cooling fast.
“I wouldn’t try the Royal Crown,” the man said. “That’s for good little squirrels, that stick to their nuts. You look like dick to me, but that’s your angle. I hope you swim good.”
I left him, wondering why I had gone to him in the first place. Play the hunch. Play the hunch and get stung. In a little while you wake up with your mouth full of hunches. You can’t order a cup of coffee without shutting your eyes and stabbing the menu. Play the hunch.
I walked around and tried to see if anybody walked behind me in any particular way. Then I sought out a restaurant that didn’t smell of frying grease and found one with a purple neon sign and a cocktail bar behind a reed curtain. A male cutie with henna’d hair drooped at a bungalow grand piano and tickled the keys lasciviously and sang Stairway to the Stars in a voice with half the steps missing.
I gobbled a dry martini and hurried back through the reed curtain to the dining room.
The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.
The reflection of a red neon light glared on the ceiling. When it made the whole room red it would be dark enough to go out. Outside cars honked along the alley they called the Speedway. Feet slithered on the sidewalks below my window. There was a murmur and mutter of coming and going in the air. The air that seeped in through the rusted screens smelled of stale frying fat. Far off a voice of the kind that could be heard far off was shouting: “Get hungry, foks. Get hungry. Nice hot doggies here. Get hungry.”
It got darker. I thought; and thought in my mind moved with a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes. I thought of dead eyes looking at a moonless sky, with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them. I thought of nasty old women beaten to death against the posts of their dirty beds. I thought of a man with bright blond hair who was afraid and didn’t quite know what he was afraid of, who was sensitive enough to know that something was wrong, and too vain or too dull to guess what it was that was wrong. I thought of beautiful rich women who could be had. I thought of nice slim curious girls who lived alone and could be had too, in a different way. I thought of cops, tough cops that could be greased and yet were not by any means all bad, like Hemingway. Fat prosperous cops with Chamber of Commerce voices, like Chief Wax. Slim, smart and deadly cops like Randall, who for all their smartness and deadliness were not free to do a clean job in a clean way. I thought of sour old goats like Nulty who had given up trying. I though of Indians and psychics and dope doctors.
I thought of lots of things. It got darker. The glare of the red neon sign spread farther and farther across the ceiling. I sat up on the bed and put my feet on the floor and rubbed the back of my neck.
I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.
There was no elevator. The hallways smelled and the stairs had grimed rails. I went down them, threw the key on the desk and said I was through. A clerk with a wart on his left eyelid nodded and a Mexican bellhop in a frayed uniform coat came forward from behind the dustiest rubber plant in California to take my bags. I didn’t have any bags, so being a Mexican, he opened the door for me and smiled politely just the same.
Outside the narrow street fumed, the sidewalks swarmed with fat stomachs. Across the street a bingo parlor was going full blast and beside it a couple of sailors with girls were coming out of a photographer’s shop where they had probably been having their photos taken riding on camels. The voice of the hot dog merchant split the dusk like an axe. A big blue bus blared down the street to the little circle where the street car used to turn on a turntable. I walked that way.
After a while there was a faint smell of ocean. Not very much, but as if they had kept this much just to remind people this had once been a clean open beach where the waves came in and creamed and the wind blew and you could smell something besides hot fat and cold sweat.
The little sidewalk car came trundling along the wide concrete walk. I got on it and rode to the end of the line and got off and sat on a bench where it was quiet and cold and there was a big brown heap of kelp almost at my feet. Out to sea they had turned the lights on in the gambling boats. I got back on the sidewalk car the next time it came and rode back almost to where I had left the hotel. If anybody was tailing me, he was doing it without moving. I didn’t think there was. In that clean little city there wouldn’t be enough crime for the dicks to be very good shadows.
The black piers glittered their length and then disappeared into the dark background of night and water. You could still smell hot fat, but you could smell the ocean too. The hot dog man droned on:
“Get hungry, folks, get hungry. Nice hot doggies. Get hungry.”
I spotted him in a white barbecue stand tickling wienies with a long fork. He was doing a good business even that early in the year. I had to wait some time to get him alone.
“What’s the name of the one farthest out?” I asked, pointing with my nose.
“_Montecito_.” He gave me the level steady look.
“Could a guy with reasonable dough have himself a time there?”
“What kind of a time?”
I laughed, sneeringly, very tough.
“Hot doggies,” he chanted. “Nice hot doggies, folks.” He dropped his voice. “Women?”
“Nix. I was figuring on a room with a nice sea breeze and good food and nobody to bother me. Kind of vacation.”
He moved away. “I can’t hear a word you say,” he said, and then went into his chant.
He did some more business. I didn’t know why I bothered with him. He just had that kind of face. A young couple in shorts came up and bought hot dogs and strolled away with the boy’s arm around the girl’s brassiere and each eating the other’s hot dog.
The man slid a yard towards me and eyed me over. “Right now I should be whistling Roses of Picardy,” he said, and paused. “That would cost you,” he said.
“How much?”
“Fifty. Not less. Unless they want you for something.”
“This used to be a good town,” I said. “A cool-off town.”
“Thought it still was,” he drawled. “But why ask me?”
“I haven’t an idea,” I said. I threw a dollar bill on his counter. “Put it in the baby’s bank,” I said. “Or whistle Roses of Picardy.”
He snapped the bill, folded it longways, folded it across and folded it again. He laid it on the counter and tucked his middle finger behind his thumb and snapped. The folded-bill hit me lightly in the chest and fell noiselessly to the ground. I bent and picked it up and turned quickly. But nobody was behind me that looked like a dick.
I leaned against the counter and laid the dollar bill on it again. “People don’t throw money at me,” I said. “They hand it to me. Do you mind?”
He took the bill, unfolded it, spread it out and wiped it off with his apron. He punched his cash-register and dropped the bill into the drawer.
“They say money don’t stink,” he said. “I sometimes wonder.”
I didn’t say anything. Some more customers did business with him and went away. The night was cooling fast.
“I wouldn’t try the Royal Crown,” the man said. “That’s for good little squirrels, that stick to their nuts. You look like dick to me, but that’s your angle. I hope you swim good.”
I left him, wondering why I had gone to him in the first place. Play the hunch. Play the hunch and get stung. In a little while you wake up with your mouth full of hunches. You can’t order a cup of coffee without shutting your eyes and stabbing the menu. Play the hunch.
I walked around and tried to see if anybody walked behind me in any particular way. Then I sought out a restaurant that didn’t smell of frying grease and found one with a purple neon sign and a cocktail bar behind a reed curtain. A male cutie with henna’d hair drooped at a bungalow grand piano and tickled the keys lasciviously and sang Stairway to the Stars in a voice with half the steps missing.
I gobbled a dry martini and hurried back through the reed curtain to the dining room.
The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.
35
It was a long ride for a quarter. The water taxi, an old launch painted up and glassed in for three-quarters of its length, slid through the anchored yachts and around the wide pile of stone which was the end of the breakwater. The swell hit us without warning and bounced the boat like a cork. But there was plenty of room to be sick that early in the evening. All the company I had was three couples and the man who drove the boat, a tough-looking citizen who sat a little on his left hip on account of having a black leather hip-holster inside his right hip pocket. The three couples began to chew each other’s faces as soon as we left the shore.
I stared back at the lights of Bay City and tried not to bear down too hard on my dinner. Scattered points of light drew together and became a jeweled bracelet laid out in the show window of the night. Then the brightness faded and they were a soft orange glow appearing and disappearing over the edge of the swell. It was a long smooth even swell with no whitecaps, and just the right amount of heave to make me glad I hadn’t pickled my dinner in bar whisky. The taxi slid up and down the swell now with a sinister smoothness, like a cobra dancing. There was cold in the air, the wet cold that sailors never get out of their joints. The red neon pencils that outlined the Royal Crown faded off to the left and dimmed in the gliding gray ghosts of the sea, then shone out again, as bright as new marbles.
We gave this one a wide berth. It looked nice from a long way off. A faint music came over the water and music over the water can never be anything but lovely. The Royal Crown seemed to ride as steady as a pier on its four hawsers. Its landing stage was lit up like a theater marquee. Then all this faded into remoteness and another, older, smaller boat began to sneak out of the night towards us. It was not much to look at. A converted seagoing freighter with scummed and rusted plates, the superstructure cut down to the boat deck level, and above that two stumpy masts just high enough for a radio antenna. There was light on the Montecito also and music floated across the wet dark sea. The spooning couples took their teeth out of each other’s necks and stared at the ship and giggled.
The taxi swept around in a wide curve, careened just enough to give the passengers a thrill, and eased up to the hemp fenders along the stage. The taxi’s motor idled and backfired in the fog. A lazy searchlight beam swept a circle about fifty yards out from the ship.
The taximan hooked to the stage and a sloe-eyed lad in a blue mess jacket with bright buttons, a bright smile and a gangster mouth, handed the girls up from the taxi. I was last. The casual neat way he looked me over told me something about him. The casual neat way he bumped my shoulder clip told me more.
“Nix,” he said softly. “Nix.”
He had a smoothly husky voice, a hard Harry straining himself through a silk handkerchief. He jerked his chin at the taximan. The taximan dropped a short loop over a bitt, turned his wheel a little, and climbed out on the stage. He stepped behind me.
“No gats on the boat, laddy. Sorry and all that rot,” Mess-jacket purred.
“I could check it. It’s just part of my clothes. I’m a fellow who wants to see Brunette, on business.”
He seemed mildly amused. “Never heard of him,” he smiled. “On your way, bo.”
The taximan hooked a wrist through my right arm.
“I want to see Brunette,” I said. My voice sounded weak and frail, like an old lady’s voice.
“Let’s not argue,” the sloe-eyed lad said. “We’re not in Bay City now, not even in California, and by some good opinions not even in the U.S.A. Beat it.”
“Back in the boat,” the taximan growled behind me. “I owe you a quarter. Let’s go.”
I got back into the boat. Mess-jacket looked at me with his silent sleek smile. I watched it until it was no longer a smile, no longer a face, no longer anything but a dark figure against the landing lights. I watched it and hungered. The way back seemed longer. I didn’t speak to the taximan and he didn’t speak to me. As I got off at the wharf he handed me a quarter.
“Some other night,” he said wearily, “when we got more room to bounce you.”
Half a dozen customers waiting to get in stared at me, hearing him. I went past them, past the door of the little waiting room on the float, towards the shallow steps at the landward end.
A big redheaded roughneck in dirty sneakers and tarry pants and what was left of a torn blue sailor’s jersey and a streak of black down the side of his face straightened from the railing and bumped into me casually.
I stopped. He looked too big. He had three inches on me and thirty pounds. But it was getting to be time for me to put my fist into somebody’s teeth even if all I got for it was a wooden arm.
The light was dim and mostly behind him. “What’s the I matter, pardner?” he drawled. “No soap on the hell ship?”
“Go darn your shirt,” I told him. “Your belly is sticking out.”
“Could be worse,” he said. “The gat’s kind of bulgy under the light suit at that.”
“What pulls your nose into it?”
“Jesus, nothing at all. Just curiosity. No offense, pal.”
“Well, get the hell out of my way then.”
“Sure. I’m just resting here.”
He smiled a slow tired smile. His voice was soft, dreamy, so delicate for a big man that it was startling. It made me think of another soft-voiced big man I had strangely liked.
“You got the wrong approach,” he said sadly. “Just call me Red.”
“Step aside, Red. The best people make mistakes. I feel one crawling up my back.”
He looked thoughtfully this way and that. He had me into a corner of the shelter on the float. We seemed more or less alone.
“You want on the Monty? Can be done. If you got a reason.”
People in gay clothes and gay faces went past us and got into the taxi. I waited for them to pass.
“How much is the reason?”
“Fifty bucks. Ten more if you bleed in my boat.”
I started around him.
“Twenty-five,” he said softly. “Fifteen if you come back with friends.”
“I don’t have any friends,” I said, and walked away. He didn’t try to stop me.
I turned right along the cement walk down which the little electric cars come and go, trundling like baby carriages and blowing little horns that wouldn’t startle an expectant mother. At the foot of the first pier there was a flaring bingo parlor, jammed full of people already. I went into it and stood against the wall behind the players, where a lot of other people stood and waited for a place to sit down.
I watched a few numbers go up on the electric indicator, listened to the table men call them off, tried to spot the house players and couldn’t, and turned to leave.
A large blueness that smelled of tar took shape beside me. “No got the dough — or just tight with it?” the gentle voice asked in my ear.
I looked at him again. He had the eyes you never see, that you only read about. Violet eyes. Almost purple. Eyes like a girl, a lovely girl. His skin was as soft as silk. Lightly reddened, but it would never tan. It was too delicate. He was bigger than Hemingway and younger, by many years. He was not as big as Moose Malloy, but he looked very fast on his feet. His hair was that shade of red that glints with gold. But except for the eyes he had a plain farmer face, with no stagy kind of handsomeness.
“What’s your racket?” he asked. “Private eye?”
“Why do I have to tell you?” I snarled.
“I kind of thought that was it,” he said. “Twenty-five too high? No expense account?”
“No.”
He sighed. “It was a bum idea I had anyway,” he said. “They’ll tear you to pieces out there.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. What’s your racket?”
“A dollar here, a dollar there. I was on the cops once. They broke me.”
“Why tell me?”
He looked surprised. “It’s true.”
“You must have been leveling.”
He smiled faintly.
“Know a man named Brunette?”
The faint smile stayed on his face. Three bingoes were made in a row. They worked fast in there. A tall beak-faced man with sallow sunken cheeks and a wrinkled suit stepped close to us and leaned against the wall and didn’t look at us. Red leaned gently towards him and asked: “Is there something we could tell you, pardner?”
The tall beak-faced man grinned and moved away. Red grinned and shook the building leaning against the wall again.
“I’ve met a man who could take you,” I said.
“I wish there was more,” he said gravely. “A big guy costs money. Things ain’t scaled for him. He costs to feed, to put clothes on, and he can’t sleep with his feet in the bed. Here’s how it works. You might not think this is a good place to talk, but it is. Any finks drift along I’ll know them and the rest of the crowd is watching those numbers and nothing else. I got a boat with an under-water by-pass. That is, I can borrow one. There’s a pier down the line without lights. I know a loading port on the Monty I can open. I take a load out there once in a while. There ain’t many guys below decks.”
“They have a searchlight and lookouts,” I said.
“We can make it.”
I got my wallet out and slipped a twenty and a five against my stomach and folded them small. The purple eyes watched me without seeming to.
“One way?”
“Fifteen was the word.”
“The market took a spurt.”
A tarry hand swallowed the bills. He moved silently away. He faded into the hot darkness outside the doors. The beak-nosed man materialized at my left side and said quietly:
“I think I know that fellow in sailor clothes. Friend of yours? I think I seen him before.”
I straightened away from the wall and walked away from him without speaking, out of the doors, then left, watching a high head that moved along from electrolier to electrolier a hundred feet ahead of me. After a couple of minutes I turned into a space between two concession shacks. The beak-nosed man appeared, strolling with his eyes on the ground. I stepped out to his side.
“Good evening,” I said. “May I guess your weight for a quarter?” I leaned against him. There was a gun under the wrinkled coat.
His eyes looked at me without emotion. “Am I goin’ to have to pinch you, son? I’m posted along this stretch to maintain law and order.”
“Who’s dismaintaining it right now?”
“Your friend had a familiar look to me.”
“He ought to. He’s a cop.”
“Aw hell,” the beak-nosed man said patiently. “That’s where I seen him. Good night to you.”
He turned and strolled back the way he had come. The tall head was out of sight now. It didn’t worry me. Nothing about that lad would ever worry me.
I walked on slowly.
I stared back at the lights of Bay City and tried not to bear down too hard on my dinner. Scattered points of light drew together and became a jeweled bracelet laid out in the show window of the night. Then the brightness faded and they were a soft orange glow appearing and disappearing over the edge of the swell. It was a long smooth even swell with no whitecaps, and just the right amount of heave to make me glad I hadn’t pickled my dinner in bar whisky. The taxi slid up and down the swell now with a sinister smoothness, like a cobra dancing. There was cold in the air, the wet cold that sailors never get out of their joints. The red neon pencils that outlined the Royal Crown faded off to the left and dimmed in the gliding gray ghosts of the sea, then shone out again, as bright as new marbles.
We gave this one a wide berth. It looked nice from a long way off. A faint music came over the water and music over the water can never be anything but lovely. The Royal Crown seemed to ride as steady as a pier on its four hawsers. Its landing stage was lit up like a theater marquee. Then all this faded into remoteness and another, older, smaller boat began to sneak out of the night towards us. It was not much to look at. A converted seagoing freighter with scummed and rusted plates, the superstructure cut down to the boat deck level, and above that two stumpy masts just high enough for a radio antenna. There was light on the Montecito also and music floated across the wet dark sea. The spooning couples took their teeth out of each other’s necks and stared at the ship and giggled.
The taxi swept around in a wide curve, careened just enough to give the passengers a thrill, and eased up to the hemp fenders along the stage. The taxi’s motor idled and backfired in the fog. A lazy searchlight beam swept a circle about fifty yards out from the ship.
The taximan hooked to the stage and a sloe-eyed lad in a blue mess jacket with bright buttons, a bright smile and a gangster mouth, handed the girls up from the taxi. I was last. The casual neat way he looked me over told me something about him. The casual neat way he bumped my shoulder clip told me more.
“Nix,” he said softly. “Nix.”
He had a smoothly husky voice, a hard Harry straining himself through a silk handkerchief. He jerked his chin at the taximan. The taximan dropped a short loop over a bitt, turned his wheel a little, and climbed out on the stage. He stepped behind me.
“No gats on the boat, laddy. Sorry and all that rot,” Mess-jacket purred.
“I could check it. It’s just part of my clothes. I’m a fellow who wants to see Brunette, on business.”
He seemed mildly amused. “Never heard of him,” he smiled. “On your way, bo.”
The taximan hooked a wrist through my right arm.
“I want to see Brunette,” I said. My voice sounded weak and frail, like an old lady’s voice.
“Let’s not argue,” the sloe-eyed lad said. “We’re not in Bay City now, not even in California, and by some good opinions not even in the U.S.A. Beat it.”
“Back in the boat,” the taximan growled behind me. “I owe you a quarter. Let’s go.”
I got back into the boat. Mess-jacket looked at me with his silent sleek smile. I watched it until it was no longer a smile, no longer a face, no longer anything but a dark figure against the landing lights. I watched it and hungered. The way back seemed longer. I didn’t speak to the taximan and he didn’t speak to me. As I got off at the wharf he handed me a quarter.
“Some other night,” he said wearily, “when we got more room to bounce you.”
Half a dozen customers waiting to get in stared at me, hearing him. I went past them, past the door of the little waiting room on the float, towards the shallow steps at the landward end.
A big redheaded roughneck in dirty sneakers and tarry pants and what was left of a torn blue sailor’s jersey and a streak of black down the side of his face straightened from the railing and bumped into me casually.
I stopped. He looked too big. He had three inches on me and thirty pounds. But it was getting to be time for me to put my fist into somebody’s teeth even if all I got for it was a wooden arm.
The light was dim and mostly behind him. “What’s the I matter, pardner?” he drawled. “No soap on the hell ship?”
“Go darn your shirt,” I told him. “Your belly is sticking out.”
“Could be worse,” he said. “The gat’s kind of bulgy under the light suit at that.”
“What pulls your nose into it?”
“Jesus, nothing at all. Just curiosity. No offense, pal.”
“Well, get the hell out of my way then.”
“Sure. I’m just resting here.”
He smiled a slow tired smile. His voice was soft, dreamy, so delicate for a big man that it was startling. It made me think of another soft-voiced big man I had strangely liked.
“You got the wrong approach,” he said sadly. “Just call me Red.”
“Step aside, Red. The best people make mistakes. I feel one crawling up my back.”
He looked thoughtfully this way and that. He had me into a corner of the shelter on the float. We seemed more or less alone.
“You want on the Monty? Can be done. If you got a reason.”
People in gay clothes and gay faces went past us and got into the taxi. I waited for them to pass.
“How much is the reason?”
“Fifty bucks. Ten more if you bleed in my boat.”
I started around him.
“Twenty-five,” he said softly. “Fifteen if you come back with friends.”
“I don’t have any friends,” I said, and walked away. He didn’t try to stop me.
I turned right along the cement walk down which the little electric cars come and go, trundling like baby carriages and blowing little horns that wouldn’t startle an expectant mother. At the foot of the first pier there was a flaring bingo parlor, jammed full of people already. I went into it and stood against the wall behind the players, where a lot of other people stood and waited for a place to sit down.
I watched a few numbers go up on the electric indicator, listened to the table men call them off, tried to spot the house players and couldn’t, and turned to leave.
A large blueness that smelled of tar took shape beside me. “No got the dough — or just tight with it?” the gentle voice asked in my ear.
I looked at him again. He had the eyes you never see, that you only read about. Violet eyes. Almost purple. Eyes like a girl, a lovely girl. His skin was as soft as silk. Lightly reddened, but it would never tan. It was too delicate. He was bigger than Hemingway and younger, by many years. He was not as big as Moose Malloy, but he looked very fast on his feet. His hair was that shade of red that glints with gold. But except for the eyes he had a plain farmer face, with no stagy kind of handsomeness.
“What’s your racket?” he asked. “Private eye?”
“Why do I have to tell you?” I snarled.
“I kind of thought that was it,” he said. “Twenty-five too high? No expense account?”
“No.”
He sighed. “It was a bum idea I had anyway,” he said. “They’ll tear you to pieces out there.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. What’s your racket?”
“A dollar here, a dollar there. I was on the cops once. They broke me.”
“Why tell me?”
He looked surprised. “It’s true.”
“You must have been leveling.”
He smiled faintly.
“Know a man named Brunette?”
The faint smile stayed on his face. Three bingoes were made in a row. They worked fast in there. A tall beak-faced man with sallow sunken cheeks and a wrinkled suit stepped close to us and leaned against the wall and didn’t look at us. Red leaned gently towards him and asked: “Is there something we could tell you, pardner?”
The tall beak-faced man grinned and moved away. Red grinned and shook the building leaning against the wall again.
“I’ve met a man who could take you,” I said.
“I wish there was more,” he said gravely. “A big guy costs money. Things ain’t scaled for him. He costs to feed, to put clothes on, and he can’t sleep with his feet in the bed. Here’s how it works. You might not think this is a good place to talk, but it is. Any finks drift along I’ll know them and the rest of the crowd is watching those numbers and nothing else. I got a boat with an under-water by-pass. That is, I can borrow one. There’s a pier down the line without lights. I know a loading port on the Monty I can open. I take a load out there once in a while. There ain’t many guys below decks.”
“They have a searchlight and lookouts,” I said.
“We can make it.”
I got my wallet out and slipped a twenty and a five against my stomach and folded them small. The purple eyes watched me without seeming to.
“One way?”
“Fifteen was the word.”
“The market took a spurt.”
A tarry hand swallowed the bills. He moved silently away. He faded into the hot darkness outside the doors. The beak-nosed man materialized at my left side and said quietly:
“I think I know that fellow in sailor clothes. Friend of yours? I think I seen him before.”
I straightened away from the wall and walked away from him without speaking, out of the doors, then left, watching a high head that moved along from electrolier to electrolier a hundred feet ahead of me. After a couple of minutes I turned into a space between two concession shacks. The beak-nosed man appeared, strolling with his eyes on the ground. I stepped out to his side.
“Good evening,” I said. “May I guess your weight for a quarter?” I leaned against him. There was a gun under the wrinkled coat.
His eyes looked at me without emotion. “Am I goin’ to have to pinch you, son? I’m posted along this stretch to maintain law and order.”
“Who’s dismaintaining it right now?”
“Your friend had a familiar look to me.”
“He ought to. He’s a cop.”
“Aw hell,” the beak-nosed man said patiently. “That’s where I seen him. Good night to you.”
He turned and strolled back the way he had come. The tall head was out of sight now. It didn’t worry me. Nothing about that lad would ever worry me.
I walked on slowly.
36
Beyond the electroliers, beyond the beat and toot of the small sidewalk cars, beyond the smell of hot fat and popcorn and the shrill children and the barkers in the peep shows, beyond everything but the smell of the ocean and the suddenly clear line of the shore and the creaming fall of the waves into the pebbled spume. I walked almost alone now. The noises died behind me, the hot dishonest light became a fumbling glare. Then the lightless finger of a black pier jutted seaward into the dark. This would be the one. I turned to go out on it.
Red stood up from a box against the beginning of the piles and spoke upwards to me. “Right,” he said. “You go on out to the seasteps. I gotta go and get her and warm her up.”
“Waterfront cop followed me. That guy in the bingo parlor. I had to stop and speak to him.”
“Olson. Pickpocket detail. He’s good too. Except once in a while he will lift a leather and plant it, to keep up his arrest record. That’s being a shade too good, or isn’t it?”
“For Bay City I’d say just about right. Let’s get going. I’m getting the wind up. I don’t want to blow this fog away. It doesn’t look much but it would help a lot.”
“It’ll last enough to fool a searchlight,” Red said. “They got Tommy-guns on that boat deck. You go on out the pier. I’ll be along.”
He melted into the dark and I went out the dark boards, slipping on fish-slimed planking. There was a low dirty railing at the far end. A couple leaned in a corner. They went away, the man swearing.
For ten minutes I listened to the water slapping the piles. A night bird whirred in the dark, the faint grayness of a wing cut across my vision and disappeared. A plane droned high in the ceiling. Then far off a motor barked and roared and kept on roaring like half a dozen truck engines. After a while the sound eased and dropped, then suddenly there was no sound at all.
More minutes passed. I went back to the seasteps and moved down them as cautiously as a cat on a wet floor. A dark shape slid out of the night and something thudded. A voice said: “All set. Get in.”
I got into the boat and sat beside him under the screen. The boat slid out over the water. There was no sound from its exhaust now but an angry bubbling along both sides of the shell. Once more the lights of Bay City became something distantly luminous beyond the rise and fall of alien waves. Once more the garish lights of the Royal Crown slid off to one side, the ship seeming to preen itself like a fashion model on a revolving platform. And once again the ports of the good ship Montecito grew out of the black Pacific and the slow steady sweep of the searchlight turned around it like the beam of a lighthouse.
“I’m scared,” I said suddenly. “I’m scared stiff.”
Red throttled down the boat and let it slide up and down the swell as though the water moved underneath and the boat stayed in the same place. He turned his face and stared at me.
“I’m afraid of death and despair,” I said. “Of dark water and drowned men’s faces and skulls with empty eyesockets. i’m afraid of dying, of being nothing, of not finding a man named Brunette.”
He chuckled. “You had me going for a minute. You sure give yourself a pep talk. Brunette might be any place. On either of the boats, at the club he owns, back east, Reno, in his slippers at home. That all you want?”
“I want a man named Malloy, a huge brute who got out of the Oregon State pen a while back after an eight-year stretch for bank robbery. He was hiding out in Bay City.” I told him about it. I told him a great deal more than I intended to. It must have been his eyes.
At the end he thought and then spoke slowly and what he said had wisps of fog clinging to it, like the beads on a mustache. Maybe that made it seem wiser than it was, maybe not.
“Some of it makes sense,” he said. “Some not. Some I wouldn’t know about, some I would. If this Sonderborg was running a hideout and peddling reefers and sending boys out to heist jewels off rich ladies with a wild look in their eyes, it stands to reason that he had an in with the city government, but that don’t mean they knew everything he did or that every cop on the force knew he had an in. Could be Blane did and Hemingway, as you call him, didn’t. Blane’s bad, the other guy is just tough cop, neither bad nor good, neither crooked nor honest, full of guts and just dumb enough, like me, to think being on the cops is a sensible way to make a living. This psychic fellow doesn’t figure either way. He bought himself a line of protection in the best market, Bay City, and he used it when he had to. You never know what a guy like that is up to and so you never know what he has on his conscience or is afraid of. Could be he’s human and fell for a customer once in a while. Them rich dames are easier to make than paper dolls. So my hunch about your stay in Sonderborg’s place is simply that Blane knew Sonderborg would be scared when he found out who you were — and the story they told Sonderborg is probably what he told you, that they found you wandering with your head dizzy — and Sonderborg wouldn’t know what to do with you and he would be afraid either to let you go or to knock you off, and after long enough Blane would drop around and raise the ante on him. That’s all there was to that. It just happened they could use you and they did it. Blane might know about Malloy too. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
I listened and watched the slow sweep of the searchlight and the coming and going of the water taxi far over to the right.
“I know how these boys figure,” Red said. “The trouble with cops is not that they’re dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something they didn’t have before. Maybe it did once, but not any more. They’re topped by too many smart minds. That brings us to Brunette. He don’t run the town. He couldn’t be bothered. He put up big money to elect a mayor so his water taxis wouldn’t be bothered. If there was anything in particular he wanted, they would give it to him. Like a while ago one of his friends, a lawyer, was pinched for a drunk driving felony and Brunette got the charge reduced to reckless driving. They changed the blotter to do it, and that’s a felony too. Which gives you an idea. His racket is gambling and all rackets tie together these days. So he might handle reefers, or touch a percentage from some one of his workers he gave the business to. He might know Sonderborg and he might not. But the jewel heist is out. Figure the work these boys done for eight grand. It’s a laugh to think Brunette would have anything to do with that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “There was a man murdered too — remember?”
“He didn’t do that either, nor have it done. If Brunette had that done, you wouldn’t have found any body. You never know what might be stitched into a guy’s clothes. Why chance it? Look what I’m doing for you for twenty-five bucks. What would Brunette get done with the money he has to spend?”
“Would he have a man killed?”
Red thought for a moment. “He might. He probably has. But he’s not a tough guy. These racketeers are a new type. We think about them the way we think about old time yeggs or needle-up punks. Big-mouthed police commissioners on the radio yell that they’re all yellow rats, that they’ll kill women and babies and howl for mercy if they see a police uniform. They ought to know better than to try to sell the public that stuff. There’s yellow cops and there’s yellow torpedoes — but damn few of either. And as for the top men, like Brunette — they didn’t get there by murdering people. They got there by guts and brains — and they don’t have the group courage the cops have either. But above all they’re business men. What they do is for money. Just like other business men. Sometimes a guy gets badly in the way. Okey. Out. But they think plenty before they do it. What the hell am I giving a lecture for?”
“A man like Brunette wouldn’t hide Malloy,” I said. “After he had killed two people.”
“No. Not unless there was some other reason than money. Want to go back?”
“No.”
Red moved his hands on the wheel. The boat picked up speed. “Don’t think I like these bastards,” he said. “I hate their guts.”
Red stood up from a box against the beginning of the piles and spoke upwards to me. “Right,” he said. “You go on out to the seasteps. I gotta go and get her and warm her up.”
“Waterfront cop followed me. That guy in the bingo parlor. I had to stop and speak to him.”
“Olson. Pickpocket detail. He’s good too. Except once in a while he will lift a leather and plant it, to keep up his arrest record. That’s being a shade too good, or isn’t it?”
“For Bay City I’d say just about right. Let’s get going. I’m getting the wind up. I don’t want to blow this fog away. It doesn’t look much but it would help a lot.”
“It’ll last enough to fool a searchlight,” Red said. “They got Tommy-guns on that boat deck. You go on out the pier. I’ll be along.”
He melted into the dark and I went out the dark boards, slipping on fish-slimed planking. There was a low dirty railing at the far end. A couple leaned in a corner. They went away, the man swearing.
For ten minutes I listened to the water slapping the piles. A night bird whirred in the dark, the faint grayness of a wing cut across my vision and disappeared. A plane droned high in the ceiling. Then far off a motor barked and roared and kept on roaring like half a dozen truck engines. After a while the sound eased and dropped, then suddenly there was no sound at all.
More minutes passed. I went back to the seasteps and moved down them as cautiously as a cat on a wet floor. A dark shape slid out of the night and something thudded. A voice said: “All set. Get in.”
I got into the boat and sat beside him under the screen. The boat slid out over the water. There was no sound from its exhaust now but an angry bubbling along both sides of the shell. Once more the lights of Bay City became something distantly luminous beyond the rise and fall of alien waves. Once more the garish lights of the Royal Crown slid off to one side, the ship seeming to preen itself like a fashion model on a revolving platform. And once again the ports of the good ship Montecito grew out of the black Pacific and the slow steady sweep of the searchlight turned around it like the beam of a lighthouse.
“I’m scared,” I said suddenly. “I’m scared stiff.”
Red throttled down the boat and let it slide up and down the swell as though the water moved underneath and the boat stayed in the same place. He turned his face and stared at me.
“I’m afraid of death and despair,” I said. “Of dark water and drowned men’s faces and skulls with empty eyesockets. i’m afraid of dying, of being nothing, of not finding a man named Brunette.”
He chuckled. “You had me going for a minute. You sure give yourself a pep talk. Brunette might be any place. On either of the boats, at the club he owns, back east, Reno, in his slippers at home. That all you want?”
“I want a man named Malloy, a huge brute who got out of the Oregon State pen a while back after an eight-year stretch for bank robbery. He was hiding out in Bay City.” I told him about it. I told him a great deal more than I intended to. It must have been his eyes.
At the end he thought and then spoke slowly and what he said had wisps of fog clinging to it, like the beads on a mustache. Maybe that made it seem wiser than it was, maybe not.
“Some of it makes sense,” he said. “Some not. Some I wouldn’t know about, some I would. If this Sonderborg was running a hideout and peddling reefers and sending boys out to heist jewels off rich ladies with a wild look in their eyes, it stands to reason that he had an in with the city government, but that don’t mean they knew everything he did or that every cop on the force knew he had an in. Could be Blane did and Hemingway, as you call him, didn’t. Blane’s bad, the other guy is just tough cop, neither bad nor good, neither crooked nor honest, full of guts and just dumb enough, like me, to think being on the cops is a sensible way to make a living. This psychic fellow doesn’t figure either way. He bought himself a line of protection in the best market, Bay City, and he used it when he had to. You never know what a guy like that is up to and so you never know what he has on his conscience or is afraid of. Could be he’s human and fell for a customer once in a while. Them rich dames are easier to make than paper dolls. So my hunch about your stay in Sonderborg’s place is simply that Blane knew Sonderborg would be scared when he found out who you were — and the story they told Sonderborg is probably what he told you, that they found you wandering with your head dizzy — and Sonderborg wouldn’t know what to do with you and he would be afraid either to let you go or to knock you off, and after long enough Blane would drop around and raise the ante on him. That’s all there was to that. It just happened they could use you and they did it. Blane might know about Malloy too. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
I listened and watched the slow sweep of the searchlight and the coming and going of the water taxi far over to the right.
“I know how these boys figure,” Red said. “The trouble with cops is not that they’re dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something they didn’t have before. Maybe it did once, but not any more. They’re topped by too many smart minds. That brings us to Brunette. He don’t run the town. He couldn’t be bothered. He put up big money to elect a mayor so his water taxis wouldn’t be bothered. If there was anything in particular he wanted, they would give it to him. Like a while ago one of his friends, a lawyer, was pinched for a drunk driving felony and Brunette got the charge reduced to reckless driving. They changed the blotter to do it, and that’s a felony too. Which gives you an idea. His racket is gambling and all rackets tie together these days. So he might handle reefers, or touch a percentage from some one of his workers he gave the business to. He might know Sonderborg and he might not. But the jewel heist is out. Figure the work these boys done for eight grand. It’s a laugh to think Brunette would have anything to do with that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “There was a man murdered too — remember?”
“He didn’t do that either, nor have it done. If Brunette had that done, you wouldn’t have found any body. You never know what might be stitched into a guy’s clothes. Why chance it? Look what I’m doing for you for twenty-five bucks. What would Brunette get done with the money he has to spend?”
“Would he have a man killed?”
Red thought for a moment. “He might. He probably has. But he’s not a tough guy. These racketeers are a new type. We think about them the way we think about old time yeggs or needle-up punks. Big-mouthed police commissioners on the radio yell that they’re all yellow rats, that they’ll kill women and babies and howl for mercy if they see a police uniform. They ought to know better than to try to sell the public that stuff. There’s yellow cops and there’s yellow torpedoes — but damn few of either. And as for the top men, like Brunette — they didn’t get there by murdering people. They got there by guts and brains — and they don’t have the group courage the cops have either. But above all they’re business men. What they do is for money. Just like other business men. Sometimes a guy gets badly in the way. Okey. Out. But they think plenty before they do it. What the hell am I giving a lecture for?”
“A man like Brunette wouldn’t hide Malloy,” I said. “After he had killed two people.”
“No. Not unless there was some other reason than money. Want to go back?”
“No.”
Red moved his hands on the wheel. The boat picked up speed. “Don’t think I like these bastards,” he said. “I hate their guts.”
37
The revolving searchlight was a pale mist-ridden finger that barely skimmed the waves a hundred feet or so beyond the ship. It was probably more for show than anything else. Especially at this time in the evening. Anyone who had plans for hijacking the take on one of these gambling boats would need plenty of help and would pull the job about four in the morning, when the crowd was thinned down to a few bitter gamblers, and the crew were all dull with fatigue. Even then it would be a poor way to make money. It had been tried once.
A taxi curved to the landing stage, unloaded, went back shorewards. Red held his speedboat idling just beyond the weep of the searchlight. If they lifted it a few feet, just for fun — but they didn’t. It passed languidly and the dull water glowed with it and the speedboat slid across the line and closed in fast under the overhang, past the two huge scummy stern hawsers. We sidled up to the greasy plates of the hull as coyly as a hotel dick getting set to ease a hustler out of his lobby.
Double iron doors loomed high above us, and they looked too high to reach and too heavy to open even if we could reach them. The speedboat scuffed the Montecito’s ancient sides and the swell slapped loosely at the shell under our feet. A big shadow rose in the gloom at my side and a coiled rope slipped upwards through the air, slapped, caught, and the end ran down and splashed in water. Red fished it out with a boathook, pulled it tight and fastened the end to something on the engine cowling. There was just enough fog to make everything seem unreal. The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.
Red leaned close to me and his breath tickled my ear. “She rides too high. Come a good blow and she’d wave her screws in the air. We got to climb those plates just the same.”
“I can hardly wait,” I said, shivering.
He put my hands on the wheel, turned it just as he wanted it, set the throttle, and told me to hold the boat just as she was. There was an iron ladder bolted close to the plates, curving with the hull, its rungs probably as slippery as a greased pole.
Going up it looked as tempting as climbing over the cornice of an office building. Red reached for it, after wiping his hands hard on his pants to get some tar on them. He hauled himself up noiselessly, without even a grunt, and his sneakers caught the metal rungs, and he braced his body out almost at right angles to get more traction.
The searchlight beam swept far outside us now. Light bounced off the water and seemed to make my face as obvious as a flare, but nothing happened. Then there was a dull creak of heavy hinges over my head. A faint ghost of yellowish light trickled out into the fog and died. The outline of one half of the loading port showed. It couldn’t have been bolted from inside. I wondered why.
The whisper was a mere sound, without meaning. I left the wheel and started up. It was the hardest journey I ever made. It landed me panting and wheezing in a sour hold littered with packing boxes and barrels and coils of rope and clumps of rusted chain. Rats screamed in dark corners. The yellow light came from a narrow door on the far side.
Red put his lips against my ear. “From here we take a straight walk to the boiler room catwalk. They’ll have steam in one auxiliary, because they don’t have no Diesels on this piece of cheese. There will be probably one guy below. The crew doubles in brass up on the play decks, table men and spotters and waiters and so on. They all got to sign on as something that sounds like ship. From the boiler room I’ll show you a ventilator with no grating in it. It goes to the boat deck and the boat deck is out of bounds. But it’s all yours — while you live.”
“You must have relatives on board,” I said.
“Funnier things have happened. Will you come back fast?”
“I ought to make a good splash from the boat deck,” I said, and got my wallet out. “I think this rates a little more money. Here. Handle the body as if it was your own.”
“You don’t owe me nothing more, pardner.”
“I’m buying the trip back — even if I don’t use it. Take the money before I bust out crying and wet your shirt.”
“Need a little help up there?”
“All I need is a silver tongue and the one I have is like lizard’s back.”
“Put your dough away,” Red said. “You paid me for the trip back. I think you’re scared.” He took hold of my hand. His was strong, hard, warm and slightly sticky. “I know you’re scared,” he whispered.
“I’ll get over it,” I said. “One way or another.”
He turned away from me with a curious look I couldn’t read in that light. I followed him among the cases and barrels, over the raised iron sill of the door, into a long dim passage with the ship smell. We came out of this on to a grilled steel platform, slick with oil, and went down a steel ladder that was hard to hold on to. The slow hiss of the oil burners filled the air now and blanketed all other sound. We turned towards the hiss through mountains of silent iron.
Around a corner we looked at a short dirty wop in a purple silk shirt who sat in a wired-together office chair, under a naked hanging light, and read the evening paper with the aid of a black forefinger and steel-rimmed spectacles that had probably belonged to his grandfather.
Red stepped behind him noiselessly. He said gently:
“Hi, Shorty. How’s all the bambinos?”
The Italian opened his mouth with a click and threw a hand at the opening of his purple shirt. Red hit him on the angle of the jaw and caught him. He put him down on the floor gently and began to tear the purple shirt into strips.
“This is going to hurt him more than the poke on the button,” Red said softly. “But the idea is a guy going up a ventilator ladder makes a lot of racket down below. Up above they won’t hear a thing.”
He bound and gagged the Italian neatly and folded his glasses and put them in a safe place and we went along to the ventilator that had no grating in it. I looked up and saw nothing but blackness.
“Good-by,” I said.
“Maybe you need a little help.”
I shook myself like a wet dog. “I need a company of marines. But either I do it alone or I don’t do it. So long.”
“How long will you be?” His voice still sounded worried.
“An hour or less.”
He stared at me and chewed his lip. Then he nodded. “Sometimes a guy has to,” he said. “Drop by that bingo parlor, if you get time.”
He walked away softly, took four steps, and came back. “That open loading port,” he said. “That might buy you something. Use it.” He went quickly.
A taxi curved to the landing stage, unloaded, went back shorewards. Red held his speedboat idling just beyond the weep of the searchlight. If they lifted it a few feet, just for fun — but they didn’t. It passed languidly and the dull water glowed with it and the speedboat slid across the line and closed in fast under the overhang, past the two huge scummy stern hawsers. We sidled up to the greasy plates of the hull as coyly as a hotel dick getting set to ease a hustler out of his lobby.
Double iron doors loomed high above us, and they looked too high to reach and too heavy to open even if we could reach them. The speedboat scuffed the Montecito’s ancient sides and the swell slapped loosely at the shell under our feet. A big shadow rose in the gloom at my side and a coiled rope slipped upwards through the air, slapped, caught, and the end ran down and splashed in water. Red fished it out with a boathook, pulled it tight and fastened the end to something on the engine cowling. There was just enough fog to make everything seem unreal. The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.
Red leaned close to me and his breath tickled my ear. “She rides too high. Come a good blow and she’d wave her screws in the air. We got to climb those plates just the same.”
“I can hardly wait,” I said, shivering.
He put my hands on the wheel, turned it just as he wanted it, set the throttle, and told me to hold the boat just as she was. There was an iron ladder bolted close to the plates, curving with the hull, its rungs probably as slippery as a greased pole.
Going up it looked as tempting as climbing over the cornice of an office building. Red reached for it, after wiping his hands hard on his pants to get some tar on them. He hauled himself up noiselessly, without even a grunt, and his sneakers caught the metal rungs, and he braced his body out almost at right angles to get more traction.
The searchlight beam swept far outside us now. Light bounced off the water and seemed to make my face as obvious as a flare, but nothing happened. Then there was a dull creak of heavy hinges over my head. A faint ghost of yellowish light trickled out into the fog and died. The outline of one half of the loading port showed. It couldn’t have been bolted from inside. I wondered why.
The whisper was a mere sound, without meaning. I left the wheel and started up. It was the hardest journey I ever made. It landed me panting and wheezing in a sour hold littered with packing boxes and barrels and coils of rope and clumps of rusted chain. Rats screamed in dark corners. The yellow light came from a narrow door on the far side.
Red put his lips against my ear. “From here we take a straight walk to the boiler room catwalk. They’ll have steam in one auxiliary, because they don’t have no Diesels on this piece of cheese. There will be probably one guy below. The crew doubles in brass up on the play decks, table men and spotters and waiters and so on. They all got to sign on as something that sounds like ship. From the boiler room I’ll show you a ventilator with no grating in it. It goes to the boat deck and the boat deck is out of bounds. But it’s all yours — while you live.”
“You must have relatives on board,” I said.
“Funnier things have happened. Will you come back fast?”
“I ought to make a good splash from the boat deck,” I said, and got my wallet out. “I think this rates a little more money. Here. Handle the body as if it was your own.”
“You don’t owe me nothing more, pardner.”
“I’m buying the trip back — even if I don’t use it. Take the money before I bust out crying and wet your shirt.”
“Need a little help up there?”
“All I need is a silver tongue and the one I have is like lizard’s back.”
“Put your dough away,” Red said. “You paid me for the trip back. I think you’re scared.” He took hold of my hand. His was strong, hard, warm and slightly sticky. “I know you’re scared,” he whispered.
“I’ll get over it,” I said. “One way or another.”
He turned away from me with a curious look I couldn’t read in that light. I followed him among the cases and barrels, over the raised iron sill of the door, into a long dim passage with the ship smell. We came out of this on to a grilled steel platform, slick with oil, and went down a steel ladder that was hard to hold on to. The slow hiss of the oil burners filled the air now and blanketed all other sound. We turned towards the hiss through mountains of silent iron.
Around a corner we looked at a short dirty wop in a purple silk shirt who sat in a wired-together office chair, under a naked hanging light, and read the evening paper with the aid of a black forefinger and steel-rimmed spectacles that had probably belonged to his grandfather.
Red stepped behind him noiselessly. He said gently:
“Hi, Shorty. How’s all the bambinos?”
The Italian opened his mouth with a click and threw a hand at the opening of his purple shirt. Red hit him on the angle of the jaw and caught him. He put him down on the floor gently and began to tear the purple shirt into strips.
“This is going to hurt him more than the poke on the button,” Red said softly. “But the idea is a guy going up a ventilator ladder makes a lot of racket down below. Up above they won’t hear a thing.”
He bound and gagged the Italian neatly and folded his glasses and put them in a safe place and we went along to the ventilator that had no grating in it. I looked up and saw nothing but blackness.
“Good-by,” I said.
“Maybe you need a little help.”
I shook myself like a wet dog. “I need a company of marines. But either I do it alone or I don’t do it. So long.”
“How long will you be?” His voice still sounded worried.
“An hour or less.”
He stared at me and chewed his lip. Then he nodded. “Sometimes a guy has to,” he said. “Drop by that bingo parlor, if you get time.”
He walked away softly, took four steps, and came back. “That open loading port,” he said. “That might buy you something. Use it.” He went quickly.
38
Cold air rushed down the ventilator. It seemed a long way to the top. After three minutes that felt like an hour I poked my head out cautiously from the hornlike opening. Canvas-sheeted boats were gray blurs near by. Low voices muttered in the dark. The beam of the searchlight circled slowly. It came from a point still higher, probably a railed platform at the top of one of the stumpy masts. There would be a lad up there with a Tommygun too, perhaps even a light Browning. Cold job, cold comfort when somebody left the loading port unbolted so nicely.
Distantly music throbbed like the phony bass of a cheap radio. Overhead a masthead light and through the higher layers of fog a few bitter stars stared down.
I climbed out of the ventilator, slipped my .38 from my shoulder clip and held it curled against my ribs, hiding it with my sleeve. I walked three silent steps and listened. Nothing happened. The muttering talk had stopped, but not on my account. I placed it now, between two lifeboats. And out of the night and the fog, as it mysteriously does, enough light gathered into one focus to shine on the dark hardness of a machine gun mounted on a high tripod and swung down over the rail. Two men stood near it, motionless, not smoking, and their voices began to mutter again, a quiet whisper that never became words.
I listened to the muttering too long. Another voice spoke clearly behind me.
“Sorry, guests are not allowed on the boat deck.”
I turned, not too quickly, and looked at his hands. They were light blurs and empty.
I stepped sideways nodding and the end of a boat hid us. The man followed me gently, his shoes soundless on the damp deck.
“I guess I’m lost,” I said.
“I guess you are.” He had a youngish voice, not chewed out of marble. “But there’s a door at the bottom of the companionway. It has a spring lock on it. It’s a good lock. There used to be an open stairway with a chain and a brass sign. We found the livelier element would step over that.”
He was talking a long time, either to be nice, or to be waiting. I didn’t know which. I said: “Somebody must have left the door open.”
The shadowed head nodded. It was lower than mine.
“You can see the spot that puts us in, though. If somebody did leave it open, the boss won’t like it a nickel. If somebody didn’t, we’d like to know how you got up here. I’m sure you get the idea.”
“It seems a simple idea. Let’s go down and talk to him about it.”
“You come with a party?”
“A very nice party.”
“You ought to have stayed with them.”
“You know how it is — you turn your head and some other guy is buying her a drink.”
He chuckled. Then he moved his chin slightly up and down.
I dropped and did a frogleap sideways and the swish of the blackjack was a long spent sigh in the quiet air. It was getting to be that every blackjack in the neighborhood swung at me automatically. The tall one swore.
I said: “Go ahead and be heroes.”
I clicked the safety catch loudly.
Sometimes even a bad scene will rock the house. The tall one stood rooted, and I could see the blackjack swinging at his wrist. The one I had been talking to thought it over without any hurry.
“This won’t buy you a thing,” he said gravely. “You’ll never get off the boat.”
“I thought of that. Then I thought how little you’d care.”
It was still a bum scene.
“You want what?” he said quietly.
“I have a loud gun,” I said. “But it doesn’t have to go off. I want to talk to Brunette.”
“He went to San Diego on business.”
“I’ll talk to his stand-in.”
“You’re quite a lad,” the nice one said. “We’ll go down. You’ll put the heater up before we go through the door.”
“I’ll put the heater up when I’m sure I’m going through door.”
He laughed lightly. “Go back to your post, Slim. I’ll look into this.”
He moved lazily in front of me and the tall one appeared to fade into the dark.
“Follow me, then.”
We moved Indian file across the deck. We went down brassbound slippery steps. At the bottom was a thick door. He opened it and looked at the lock. He smiled, nodded, held the door for me and I stepped through, pocketing the gun.
The door closed and clicked behind us. He said:
“Quiet evening, so far.”
There was a gilded arch in front of us and beyond it a gaming room, not very crowded. It looked much like any other gaming room. At the far end there was a short glass bar and some stools. In the middle a stairway going down and up this the music swelled and faded. I heard roulette wheels. A man was dealing faro to a single customer. There were not more than sixty people in the room. At the faro table there was a pile of yellowbacks that would start a bank. The player was an elderly white-haired man who looked politely attentive to the dealer, but no more.
Distantly music throbbed like the phony bass of a cheap radio. Overhead a masthead light and through the higher layers of fog a few bitter stars stared down.
I climbed out of the ventilator, slipped my .38 from my shoulder clip and held it curled against my ribs, hiding it with my sleeve. I walked three silent steps and listened. Nothing happened. The muttering talk had stopped, but not on my account. I placed it now, between two lifeboats. And out of the night and the fog, as it mysteriously does, enough light gathered into one focus to shine on the dark hardness of a machine gun mounted on a high tripod and swung down over the rail. Two men stood near it, motionless, not smoking, and their voices began to mutter again, a quiet whisper that never became words.
I listened to the muttering too long. Another voice spoke clearly behind me.
“Sorry, guests are not allowed on the boat deck.”
I turned, not too quickly, and looked at his hands. They were light blurs and empty.
I stepped sideways nodding and the end of a boat hid us. The man followed me gently, his shoes soundless on the damp deck.
“I guess I’m lost,” I said.
“I guess you are.” He had a youngish voice, not chewed out of marble. “But there’s a door at the bottom of the companionway. It has a spring lock on it. It’s a good lock. There used to be an open stairway with a chain and a brass sign. We found the livelier element would step over that.”
He was talking a long time, either to be nice, or to be waiting. I didn’t know which. I said: “Somebody must have left the door open.”
The shadowed head nodded. It was lower than mine.
“You can see the spot that puts us in, though. If somebody did leave it open, the boss won’t like it a nickel. If somebody didn’t, we’d like to know how you got up here. I’m sure you get the idea.”
“It seems a simple idea. Let’s go down and talk to him about it.”
“You come with a party?”
“A very nice party.”
“You ought to have stayed with them.”
“You know how it is — you turn your head and some other guy is buying her a drink.”
He chuckled. Then he moved his chin slightly up and down.
I dropped and did a frogleap sideways and the swish of the blackjack was a long spent sigh in the quiet air. It was getting to be that every blackjack in the neighborhood swung at me automatically. The tall one swore.
I said: “Go ahead and be heroes.”
I clicked the safety catch loudly.
Sometimes even a bad scene will rock the house. The tall one stood rooted, and I could see the blackjack swinging at his wrist. The one I had been talking to thought it over without any hurry.
“This won’t buy you a thing,” he said gravely. “You’ll never get off the boat.”
“I thought of that. Then I thought how little you’d care.”
It was still a bum scene.
“You want what?” he said quietly.
“I have a loud gun,” I said. “But it doesn’t have to go off. I want to talk to Brunette.”
“He went to San Diego on business.”
“I’ll talk to his stand-in.”
“You’re quite a lad,” the nice one said. “We’ll go down. You’ll put the heater up before we go through the door.”
“I’ll put the heater up when I’m sure I’m going through door.”
He laughed lightly. “Go back to your post, Slim. I’ll look into this.”
He moved lazily in front of me and the tall one appeared to fade into the dark.
“Follow me, then.”
We moved Indian file across the deck. We went down brassbound slippery steps. At the bottom was a thick door. He opened it and looked at the lock. He smiled, nodded, held the door for me and I stepped through, pocketing the gun.
The door closed and clicked behind us. He said:
“Quiet evening, so far.”
There was a gilded arch in front of us and beyond it a gaming room, not very crowded. It looked much like any other gaming room. At the far end there was a short glass bar and some stools. In the middle a stairway going down and up this the music swelled and faded. I heard roulette wheels. A man was dealing faro to a single customer. There were not more than sixty people in the room. At the faro table there was a pile of yellowbacks that would start a bank. The player was an elderly white-haired man who looked politely attentive to the dealer, but no more.