The Talmage Powell Crime Megapack

by Talmage Powell

  “I don’t think I ever really thought anything about it, Johnny.”

  “Who does?” he asked. He was silent a moment; then he laughed softly. “Sometimes we know more about you than you know yourselves. Waitresses overhear those bitter, whispered arguments of elegant people at dinner. A switchboard girl knows the origin of a secret phone call. A swimming pool attendant knows why a wife swims every afternoon while her husband is looking after his stocks. A bellhop delivers hangover medicine or more liquor to a falling-down, talkative drunk. Now do you know, Mr. Ramey?”

  My vision reddened slightly. Gervasi and I were going to take a certain hotel apart, if and when I got back.

  “How did you find out what’s in the overnight case, Johnny?” I asked thickly.

  “I don’t know. Not yet. ”

  I gave him a quick frown.

  He returned a smile. “I know about you and Mr. Gervasi,” he said. “I know about the phone calls to certain people in Dallas. I know you’ve hung onto the case like you were a bleeder and it held your spare blood. Finally, I know that you, personally, Gervasi’s top dog, are making the trip. It all adds up to something very big. Big enough for me. ”

  “I have to admire your nerve,” I admitted, although with reticence.

  “Not nerve,” he shook his head slowly. “I’m not so long on nerve. Just hungry, Mr. Ramey. I ache with the hunger. I wake up at night thinking about it I just can’t live with it any longer. I’m hungry, Mr. Ramey, for a place in that world I and the other spooks help keep afloat.”

  “And you think the case is full of bread?”

  “I’m absolutely sure of it,” he said. “Bread in one form or another. Bread I’ll never again have the chance to pick up so easy. What is it Mr. Ramey? Drugs? Hot jewels? Dough for a big gamble that’s been rigged? How about the key?” He snapped his fingers. “Give me the key, Mr. Ramey.”

  “I don’t have a key, Johnny. Gervasi has one. There is another in Dallas.”

  “Okay,” he said. “That makes sense. So I’ll have to blow the lock with the gun.”

  “Johnny, there’s two hundred thousand in that case.”

  His face went blank for an instant. Then a laugh of pleased surprise ripped out of him. “Even better than I thought!”

  “Johnny…”

  “Oh, no!” he said. “No deals. You’re not buying me off with peanuts. I’m a pig, Mr. Ramey. And my risk is no greater if I take it all.”

  “We’ll hunt you down, Johnny.”

  “Where? Hong Kong? Paris? Rome? Rio? Don’t talk crazy and spoil the picture I’ve always had of you, Mr. Ramey.”

  “There is something I must say…”

  “Please, please,” he gestured with his hand. “You’re spoiling that picture of a man who set his sights and never let anything stand in his way. Why, Mr. Ramey, you’ve been my idol, my inspiration! I wouldn’t think of harming you, unless you forced me. I’m not dumb enough to kill somebody and get the cops after me. After all, their organization is a little bigger than yours. They make it tougher for a man to hide.”

  “When you take the money at the point of a gun…”

  “When I take the money,” he said, “I’m damned sure you and Gervasi won’t go to any cops. If your deal was honest you wouldn’t be taking the risk of transporting the money this way. ”

  “You got it all figured, Johnny.”

  “I sure have. And we’ve talked more than plenty. I want to open the case. I want the fine, slick feel of the money against my fingers. I want to go someplace private and count it a couple dozen times before I start spending it.”

  He held the overnight case as if he were hugging it. “There’s a side road turning into those pines up ahead,” he said, giving the road a long look. “Take it.”

  “Johnny…”

  “One more peep, Mr. Ramey, and I’m going to start not liking you.”

  I slowed the car, turned the wheel. The shadow of the swaying, scraggly pines sent a shiver down my spine. We were on a sandy, rutted trail that led toward the distant swamplands, a little-used logging road. The narrow state highway fell behind. Now it was hidden from us by the piney woods. The world became very desolate, as if it were empty, deserted except for the two of us.

  His breathing was thinning out, beginning to rasp slightly. “Stop the car, Mr. Ramey.”

  I braked, opened the door. He let the overnight case slide to the floor and moved across the seat behind me.

  I timed the passing seconds with the sensitivity of raw nerves. There was a rustle of clothing as the gun came down, aiming at the back of my head.

  I slipped to one side, lashing out with my foot, and dropping to the sandy carpeting of pine needles.

  A meaningless sound caught in his throat. My heel had caught his kneecap. He thudded against the car.

  Spinning and lunging toward him beneath the gun, I glimpsed his pain-contorted face. He forced the throbbing knee to support him, shifted his position, and the gun was swinging down again.

  I slammed into his middle, grabbing for his wrist. I had it momentarily, but he was sweating. He slipped loose as we fell.

  I tried to turn on him a second time. I had lost the advantage of surprise. He took a side step. A fresh look of viciousness was in his face. Halfway to my feet, I suddenly covered my head with my arms. The impact of the gun barrel made my right elbow feel as if it had dissolved.

  I stumbled backward, concerned only with defense now. He danced in and out, in and out. The third or fourth blow with the gun knocked me cold. I’m not sure which. Johnny had ample time for a clean getaway.

  * * * *

  I suppose an hour or more passed. The fog began to clear. I rolled over on the pine needles and sat up. The trees around me did a dizzy dance. I groaned, and cradled my throbbing elbow, lowered my aching head, and finally tried to brush away the swarm of sweat bees that made life right then even more hellish.

  Another thirty minutes passed before I staggered onto the highway. I looked up and down the road, aching for the sight of a car, or a farmer in a truck. The road was devoid of all movement, except for the shimmering heat waves that made the road look like black water in the distance.

  I started walking. A southbound car passed at last, but swooped by without even slowing for my frantic, waggling thumb.

  I was on the point of passing out again when I reached the motel. I needed a doctor, but that could wait.

  In an outside phone booth. I placed a call to Gervasi. He wasn’t in his room. I guessed a faceless bellhop had to page him.

  His cultured tones reached me at last, “Gervasi speaking.”

  “Nick Ramey here.”

  He took a breath. “You couldn’t be anywhere near Dallas yet. What went wrong?”

  “I lost the stuff.”

  He let the breath out. “Are you—confined?”

  “No.”

  “Can you return under your own power?”

  “Yes,” I answered him bereftly.

  “Then it wasn’t the police?”

  “No, Gervasi. It was a punk bellhop who followed me from the hotel.”

  “A what?”

  “Look,” I groaned, “I’m nearly dead. I’ll give you the details later. He got the money. He got away. I did the best I could, and I won’t apologize.”

  He gave himself a moment for it to sink in. When he spoke again, his voice was less strident “I know you always do your best, Nick. Did he take the car?”

  I looked across the motel parking lot where my car was still parked. “No, just the money. All of it. He didn’t give me a chance to tell him, either. He kept shutting me up. ”

  “Then you’d better get back here as fast as you can, Nick.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” I was practically weeping. “Better start winding up things right now. That bellhop is going to have Federal men like a dog has fleas, when he hits the first bright spot and starts scattering two hundred grand of counterfeit dough…”

  A HEAD OFF HER
SHOULDERS

  Originally published in Dime Mystery Magazine, August 1949.

  Maxie Bemelmens’ penthouse was like a huge nerve center in a state of morbid, quiet excitement. Atop a fifteen-story apartment hotel that Maxie owned, the penthouse was everything a penthouse should be, down to the last shrub growing on the terrace. I stood at the French doors, listening to myself breathe. Now and then the phone tinkled and Leon Myart’s smooth voice murmured into it. He was talking to the nerve-ends, men out scouring the city, putting little pieces of information into a pattern.

  Myart said, “He want to see you, Hilliard.”

  I looked at the closed door across the room. “I hate to go in there.”

  “I know, but you’d better go on in.”

  I went in the room. It was a kind of den. There was Maxie pushed back in a big club chair with that sad, sour, dead expression on his face. His thick lips looked grey. I wanted to yell at him to snap out of it. I have never seen anything like it happen before.

  Right near Maxie’s chair was a large plush couch. On it lay a figure. The silk dress clung enough to show the lines of the body and the hands were at the sides in calm repose. But Melissa’s face was missing. In fact, her whole head was missing, severed just above her shoulders.

  “Steve,” Maxie said, “get Cecil Calhoun. Bring Calhoun here for the job.”

  “Calhoun, the sculptor?”

  “That’s right. He’s one of the best in the country. Promise up to fifteen grand if you have to.”

  He reached for a bottle. I saw that he was blind drunk. “Here’s the address, Steve.”

  I took the piece of paper and went out. Men were on guard at the top and bottom of the elevator shaft. Archie was the one on guard at the front entrance to the building. While I waited for the car to pull around Archie chatted with me. “Nothing showing down here,” he said.

  “Myart’s narrowing the time element down fast now,” I said.

  “I don’t like that Myart,” Archie said. “Colder’n a snake’s belly in zero weather.” He rolled his eyes up. “Maxie still in there with her?”

  When I nodded, Archie looked worried. “It ain’t right,” ‘he muttered. “It ain’t normal. Couldn’t you talk to him, Hilliard? Get him to tell the cops about this thing, the way he should?”

  “He’d let the cops dog Melissa’s murder the way he’d give his dough to charity.”

  “Nothing good’s going to come from it,” Archie said. “Somebody is really gunning for Maxie this time, sending him that trunk with Melissa in it that way. Maybe,” he added hopefully, “it ain’t Melissa after all?”

  “It’s Melissa, all right. Whoever did it wanted Maxie to know right off that it was Melissa. The shoulder of her dress was pulled down enough to show that birthmark.”

  Archie fogged smoke out of his nose and shook his head. “Somebody sure hates Maxie!”

  “And Melissa,” I said.

  Oldham pulled the car up to the curb then and I crossed the sidewalk. I got in and handed Oldham the piece of paper with Cecil Calhoun’s address.

  The address turned out to be an old gingerbread house. A card on the bell button read: “Out of Order.” I knocked.

  When nothing happened I knocked again. A woman’s voice, husky and impatient, called out, “All right, all right. I’m coming!”

  The door was jerked open. She was very good looking in a tall, rangy way, the kind of dame you imagine on an archery range or gracing a sleek saddle mount or floating down in a perfect swan dive from a high board. She had long auburn hair that glinted in the sunlight. Her mouth was red and wide, and her eyes were a liquid brown, capable of great expression. She was wearing a smock stained with clay and paint, and there was a clay smudge on her cheek where she’d brushed the back of her hand.

  “The Calhoun residence?” I said.

  “I’m Cecil Calhoun.”

  “I hadn’t expected to find a woman.”

  “Neither did my father,” she smiled, “and unfortunately named me before I was born. Would you come in?”

  She closed the door behind me and crossed the room to get herself a cigarette. The flash of her bare calves and ankles was easy to watch. When she turned she caught me peeking. It didn’t fluster her.

  The living room was filled with old furniture and cluttered to the point where you knew she didn’t care much for housework, or for a lot of servants getting in her way. She cleared away enough magazines from the sofa so I could sit down.

  “My name is Steven Hilliard,” I said. “I represent Mr. Maximillian Bemelmens. There is a job of sculpting he wishes you to do. But it must be done immediately. You’ll work in his penthouse. Anything you need will be supplied.”

  “Well, really, I—”

  “You can check Mr. Bemelmens in Dun and Bradstreet. He wants only the best, but there can be no delay whatever. A certain young lady will have to take a trip shortly, and Mr. Bemelmens wants—”

  “A keepsake? A reminder?”

  “You could put it that way.”

  “A bust?”

  “Just—the head. But you’ll have to go see Mr. Bemelmens now. He instructed me to offer fifteen thousand.” I wondered why I’d quoted that top figure right off the bat.

  Those eyes of hers expressed pleased surprise. She gave me a careful scrutiny, seemed to decide that I was not too long out of college, one of those young men in a solid business firm who wore a Windsor knot in his tie. It was evident she didn’t read the papers too much or she’d have known a little something about Maxie.

  “I’ll shuck out of this smock,” she said.

  I relaxed. I had thought I would have more trouble. I watched her leave the room. The smock couldn’t quite hide the rhythm of her hips as she walked.

  * * * *

  When we got back to the apartment hotel she didn’t notice the guards scattered through the building. I wouldn’t have noticed them myself if I hadn’t known where to look. We rode the elevator up to the penthouse.

  Myart was over at the cabinet that unfolded into a bar, gesturing and mumbling at Dominick and Todd when I ushered Cecil Calhoun in. I wondered what Dominick and Todd had found out.

  Myart spun at the sound of our entry. His narrow eyes pulled together, and I said, “Cecil Calhoun.”

  He looked as if he didn’t much like the idea of a girl, but he said, “Maxie’s waiting.”

  I crimped my lips tight on a breath and steered Cecil into the room where Maxie sat. She looked at him and at the thing on the couch and turned back toward the door fast. She looked a little green. She said, “You’ll pardon me.”

  I caught her wrists, my back against the door. Her gaze flashed up into mine. I could feel the warmth of her, the lithe strength of her body. I wondered how expressive those eyes would get in soft darkness alone with some guy she thought a lot of.

  “I really am in no serious need of fifteen thousand dollars,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

  “Sit down!” Maxie said.

  She gave me an angry look and sat down.

  “Can you sculpt a head from photographs,” Maxie asked.

  “I suppose, with enough shots from enough angles.”

  “You’ll have enough. I’ve got dozens of them, from all angles.” For an instant Maxie’s sour, dead gaze lingered on the thing on the couch. “I won’t bury her like that,” he said. “She’s got to have a head. You make a head of wax and I’ll pay you fifteen thousand and then you’ll be free to leave.”

  She looked about the room as if seeking a way out. “I suppose this is one job any sculptor would never forget,” she said at last, squeezing a wry smile across her lips.

  “Give her the rumpus room,” Maxie said. “Get it cleared. Bring in whatever she wants.”

  I steered Cecil into the rumpus room. She saw me looking at the darts in the large cork board on the wall. She said, “You don’t think I’m a fool, do you? What good would a few darts do?”

  “I’ll send the photographs in. Make out
a list of things you’ll need.”

  She dropped in a modernistic leather chair. “It’s driven him crazy, hasn’t it, that thing in there?”

  “It hit him very hard,” I admitted. “When you think of Maxie you think of a guy with steel in his guts, slapping backs, laughing, taking what he wants. When he opened that trunk that she came in, it aged him a thousand years. He’s sitting in there like an old, numbed man.”

  “More like a plotting, insane spider,” Cecil suggested. “She must have been quite a gal.”

  “Honey, I wouldn’t even attempt to describe Melissa.”

  “She was beautiful?”

  “More than just that. Not the intellectual type. I guess the animal type would fit her. She was catty, mean, vicious. She’d fly into a rage and throw things. She’d pout. She’d sell you out without batting an eye, see your soul in hell, and suffer acute self-pity if you even suggested she had anything to do with it.”

  “Some fools go for that type,” Cecil conceded.

  “Not me.”

  “What’s your type?”

  “You.”

  “That’s flattering, considering the source. You must have had a lot of experience with women.”

  “Not so much so as you’d think.”

  “This Melissa—where’d she come from?”

  “I don’t know, before she came to the city. But she cut a wide swath here. First she married a cheap little bookie. He made the mistake of introducing her to Augie Feldman, who was the biggest bookie in town. After Augie there was a millionaire playboy, an aviator who got famous during the war, and then Roy Meek, who dealt in narcotics. None of them ever stopped loving her.”

  “She didn’t marry them all?”

  “No.” I laughed at the expression on Calhoun’s face. “Only one or two of them.”

  “After this Roy Meek came your boss?”

  “Look, why all the questions?”

  “Just interested—and if I’m going to do a head of her I have to know what she was like. There must be some character in the head, mustn’t there?”