by Jerry eBooks
One was the barman I’d had the trouble with. I knew his voice. The other belonged to a stranger, or at least I didn’t recognise it. The barman spoke, and it was all I could do to understand him because he was out of breath.
“The skunk got away. It’s the same guy, I tell you. The one I gave the heave-ho to this afternoon.”
The other one said: “You damn fool! How d’ya know that? And if it was, why didn’t you let him walk into something? What in hell did you start blasting at him for?”
The barman insisted: “It’s the same guy. He was snooping around tonight, too, I tell you. It was him talking to Mary.”
“It was probably some damn fool drunk wandering around the woods. Maybe some guy who ran out of gas and came up to the place looking for a borrow.”
“He wouldn’t come up through the brush, would he?”
The other man thought this over and finally admitted it wasn’t likely.
Then he said: “To hell with it! If the guy tries to pull the cops in they’ll laugh at him. He hasn’t got anything except an idea. If they come up and say anything we’ll tell ’em the guy must either be crazy or drunk. The place is clear.”
“It is not.”
“Why not?”
“Maury!”
The other man laughed. “Maury’ll be okay! Don’t you fret about Maury.”
They left, and I let down the hammer of my gun and looked around. I was in mud to my waist and in water up to my knees. But what I was looking at was the back end of a convertible coupé sticking up out of the water just under the overhang of the bridge. The car was just about on its nose, with the back end far enough out of water for me to see it was a new green car.
And Miss Bryce had told me her missing boyfriend was driving a new green convertible . . .
The cops took it as a routine case because I didn’t try to make anything else out of it. My story was that I had a leaking connection on my car radiator and stopped at the creek to fill up so I could limp into town and a garage. That I’d just stumbled on the convertible in that way.
That left the Bryce girl clear out of the picture, as far as the cops and the newspapers were concerned. The State Police sergeant said: “Anybody in it?”
I said I was afraid to look and that if there’d been anybody in the car they were certainly dead by that time. The car had been in the creek for some time.
“How d’ya know that?” he said.
“Because the creek’s muddy, as you can see by looking at me. The water was clear around the car.”
“Then why couldn’t you see if there was anybody in it?”
I explained again that the car was tipped. Of course by that time he’d sent a pair of troopers to investigate the thing. It was just a natural police suspicion that was causing the questioning. Not that it made me feel much easier, knowing this.
Then I really got sick. Another trooper came in and said: “They’ve checked that identification on the girl I found, sergeant. Her name was Ames, all right. She lived on West Seventieth at the same address as was on the letter in her purse. The city police just called in.”
I hadn’t said anything before and now I couldn’t. The cops don’t like it when you only tell half a story and sometimes they do things about your licence for the holding out. I looked interested, and the sergeant said: “We picked up a girl alongside the road about an hour ago. She’d been thrown out of a car, it looked like. Another damn fool kid who let herself get picked up by strangers.”
“Local girl?”
He shrugged and said: “New York. At least that’s where she lived. The cops there just checked on it and verified it.”
That was that. Darnell’s Tavern wasn’t even in the picture, though the city police would no doubt find out the girl had worked there. And when they found it out the people at the tavern would just say the girl left with some man they didn’t know. The cops would put it down as a killing and let it go at that. Which is all they could do, knowing nothing about what had happened.
About then the two troopers who’d been sent to look at the car in the creek came back. They told the sergeant the car was empty and that they’d looked around and seen no evidence of anyone being hurt.
The sergeant sent the police wrecker after the car. I went back to the city to get some sleep—and to try for an idea that would break the thing up and still leave me in the clear with the police. I’d made up my mind that I was going to tell the police what I knew about the mess, client or no client—promise or no promise—if I didn’t think of something by that afternoon.
The worst part of the whole business was that there was no proof of a thing. The Bryce girl had a screwy story and nothing to back it up. My story about having the date with the dead girl had no proof back of it—any more than my story about being shot at did. The cops would naturally think that young Harper had run his car off the road while drunk.
They’d believe he had left it rather than report it to the police. For if Harper went to jail on a drunken driving charge he would certainly have lost not only his licence but have spent a little time in jail.
The people at Darnell’s would just blandly deny the whole thing. And the cops would believe them, because there was a logical answer to everything that left Darnell’s entirely out of the thing.
There was a good chance of young Harper having been murdered. But there was no question at all about the Ames girl being killed to keep her from talking to me.
That’s why I put the blame for her death where it belonged—on my own shoulders.
I live in an apartment hotel, a small one where the doors are locked each night at one. That’s when the clerk closes up shop and the bell boys take over. Whitey Malone called me at four and said he was coming over—so Whitey gets credit for saving my life. He’d just walked in, looking very unhappy. I’d telephoned down for ice and soda to go with the whisky I already had when there was a knock on the door. Whitey was nearest it.
I said: “That’ll be the ice, now. Open it, will you, Whitey?”
Whitey opened it and Luigi, the one who’d first refused to serve a drink to the Bryce girl at Darnell’s, walked in. Back of him came the little man with the scarred neck, the one I’d seen with the barman the night before. Both of them had guns, and Whitey and I backed away.
“Over against the window!” Luigi ordered.
My gun was on the dresser, out of its clip. The man with the scar picked it up and started to slide it in his side coat pocket.
“Nice gun, Luigi!” he said. “The dope knows guns, I guess.”
Whitey said: “I thought it was you, Maury! I thought it was you!”
The man with the scar looked Whitey over very carefully.
Whitey gave him a feeble grin and said: “If I was in trunks and didn’t have quite so much fat around my belly you’d know me.”
Maury said: “Whitey Malone, by hell!”
Recognising Whitey had taken his mind away from his business a second—and in that second Whitey moved in. Maury was handicapped by having one hand in his pocket and he’d dropped his gun muzzle a little in addition. And Whitey had always been fast. He slid in ahead and slammed the little man in the stomach. The little man expelled a whoosh and doubled over.
Then Luigi slammed his gun barrel against the side of Whitey’s head. Whitey went down on top of the little man with the scar, but by that time I had both hands on Luigi’s gun wrist.
4.
He was shouting: “Let go! Let go!” and was pulling away and trying to get his wrist free. At the same time he was hitting me in the face with his free hand. He was off balance and all that, but it wasn’t doing me any good.
My face was still sore from the beating I’d taken the afternoon before, and this was giving him too much of an edge. We wrestled around until we got close to where Whitey Malone and Maury, the scarred man, were on the floor. Then somebody got me by an ankle and yanked.
I went down to the floor, but I took Luigi’s arm down with me—still ho
lding to it with both wrists. Then I looked past Luigi’s leg and saw the bell boy standing in the door, with a trayful of ice and soda and with his mouth wide open.
I yelled: “Get help! Help!”
It was the scarred man who had me by the ankle, because he said: “Hold tight, Luigi: I’ll get him!”
I could also hear the bell boy out in the hall, shouting: “Help! Help! Help!”
If I’d let go of Luigi’s wrist I’d have been shot. I had to take a chance on what the little man was going to do, and what he did was rap me on the head with his gun. But he was about half lying on me and had to reach up to hit. So all it did was make me let go of Luigi’s wrist and fall on my face. I could hear, but I couldn’t move.
Luigi said: “I’ll get him right!”
The little man said: “Get the hell out of here! That hall’s going to be full in a minute.”
Then I heard them go out the door.
It seemed like it took me forever to get my face from the floor, but it couldn’t have been long. I twisted my head and there was my own gun in reach. Getting it, I reached the door in time to see Luigi and the little man just at the elevator. Luigi was half in it. The little man was the best target and so I picked him and let go. He went inside and the doors slammed.
I said: “I missed! Missed him!”
I got to the telephone to call the desk and could get no answer. The operator was probably listening to everybody on the floor telling her about the fracas. If she had any brains she’d probably already have called the cops. I put the phone down and Whitey Malone said: “Argh-gh-gh!”
Whitey was trying to sit up and wasn’t doing well at it. I got him up on the bed and felt his head, where the gun had clipped him. But I couldn’t find any sign of a fracture. Then one of the biggest cops I ever saw in my life dashed in with a gun in his hand.
“Hey, you! Hands up!” he commanded.
I said: “Don’t be a fool! I’m going to call a doctor for my friend.”
The cop said: “There’s one downstairs. You killed that guy, didn’t you?”
“I missed him, I thought.”
“You missed him like hell! You shot his guts out all over the inside of the elevator.”
“What about the other one?”
“He got away. You got a gun?”
“On the dresser.”
He backed away from me until he got my gun. Then he said, a little friendlier: “What in hell happened, boy?”
Whitey’s eyes opened then. He looked as if he was around enough to understand what I was saying.
I said: “I’m damned if I know. The two guys came in with guns. My friend here took a swing at one of them and then the battle started. I shot at one, but I thought I missed.”
“You hit centre. Who were they?”
“I don’t know.”
“What d’ya mean, you don’t know. A couple of guys don’t just walk in and start trouble with a strange guy, do they?”
“They did, didn’t they?”
“You’re a shamus?”
“Licence in my wallet. That’s on the dresser, too.”
He looked at my licence. I finally got the desk and told them to send the doctor up. By the time he arrived there were a lot more policemen, the manager of the hotel, two newspapermen inside, with a dozen others trying to get in.
It would have taken a hall to take care of the crowd that wanted to join us. But when I mentioned that to the cops they chased everybody out.
I thought that was so they could question Whitey and me with a little peace and quiet. But I was all wrong. That was to give themselves a chance for rough stuff, if they decided any was necessary—but Whitey and I fooled them.
We didn’t know either of the men. We didn’t know what they wanted to do a thing like that for. We’d never seen either of them before.
In fact, we didn’t know a thing.
We spent the next two days in jail and in different cells. But Whitey had the idea, and I wasn’t worrying about him saying anything. In fact there wasn’t a lot he could say. He knew nothing at all about the girl being found dead. I hadn’t had a chance to tell him about that.
Whitey didn’t know about my early-morning trip back, and about me being shot at and having to hide under the bridge. He wouldn’t have talked anyway—he’s not the talking kind.
The dead man was Maury Cullen, and he was a bad one. Cullen had served time for everything from plain robbery to manslaughter. He’d spent more time in jail than he had outside, if you counted the time he’d spent in reform schools while yet a kid. That was the only reason there wasn’t more trouble about it—the only thing that kept my licence for me.
I left Whitey at my place when I met the Bryce girl. I’d called her house the minute I left the station. Finally I got the girl after going through a performance that made me think I was trying to talk with a railroad president.
I said: “This is Joe Shannon, Miss Bryce. I’d like to see you.”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” she said. “I’ve called your office at least a dozen times a day.”
“There’s been a little trouble.”
“You mean—you mean that George is in trouble.”
“I mean that I’m in trouble. Or don’t you read the papers?”
“Well, no. I don’t pay much attention to them. What happened?”
I told her I couldn’t talk to her over the phone and asked her to set a place to meet me. She suggested the Plaza. And when I laughed she told me she often met people there. I gave her the name of a halfway decent bar and restaurant on the wrong side of town. She agreed to meet me there in an hour.
And she did. She came in looking flustered. The minute we were in a booth, she leaned across to me and said:
“I’ve almost gone crazy. Haven’t you heard a thing about him?”
“You might as well get ready to take it on the chin, kid. I’m afraid there’s no news as yet. And this time no news is bad news.”
“I thought about that. I mean about George maybe being kidnapped.”
“That racket’s been out since the government men took over, Miss Bryce. I don’t mean that he was kidnapped. It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.”
The girl got white and asked me if I meant he was killed. I said that was it exactly, waiting for her to break down all over the place, but she did exactly the opposite.
She said: “But why?”
Her face was so white that the makeup stood out on it in patches. But her voice was even and no louder than it had been.
I said: “I don’t know. Did he have much money on him?”
“Very little. He just had an allowance, you know, and he was careless with money.”
“Then I can’t tell you, though I’m beginning to get an idea. It’s nothing I can go to the cops with.”
Then she said something that made me so mad I could hardly talk.
“If it’s more money you want, Mr Shannon, I can pay it.”
“There’s been a girl killed over this mess,” I said. “On top of that I’ve killed a man and spent the last couple of days in jail over it, even if I’m loose now. I damn near got killed myself, and a man who was working with me almost got the same. I’ve been beaten up and shot up and chivvied around by the cops, and you talk to me about money. Will your money bring back that girl?”
“I’m sorry,” said Miss Bryce. “What should I do?”
“If you’ve got any pull at all, or know anybody who has, you can find out who put that blind ad in the paper. The ad that started this. They’re not supposed to give out that information, but maybe you could get it for me. And if you’ve got the nerve you can go down to the morgue with me and look at all the unidentified bodies of men around the age of this George Harper.
“If he was killed and all marks cut out of his clothes, or if he’d been stripped, that’s where he’d be. If I knew him by sight I wouldn’t need you. Unless you want to tell his people the story.”
“Why b
reak it to them that way?” she asked. “And, besides, we’re not sure yet. George had two little moles on his chest, and he weighed one hundred and sixty-two pounds. He was twenty-two. His hair was blond and his eyes were blue.”
“That won’t be enough.”
She didn’t change the expression on her face a bit as she said: “He had a birthmark—a strawberry mark I think you call it, on his left thigh. It was very large. As big as that.”
She made a big circle on the table.
I said: “Okay, I’ll go down and look while you try and find who put that ad in the paper. I’ll phone you back in two hours, say. At your house. And listen! If I go through with this and get into trouble, will you tell the cops about it? I mean if I fix it so there’s nothing to kick back on you or on the boy?”
“Why of course,” she said, looking surprised. “It’s only that I don’t want to make trouble for my people and his.”
We left it that way.
5.
There was nothing doing at the morgue except that I damn near passed out while looking for the Harper boy’s body. I’d told the cop in charge that my brother was missing and that I was worried. I gave a vague description that tallied a little with the one the girl gave me. The attendant took me around and showed me every man they’d taken into the place during the last three days.
On the third tray they pulled out of the wall was Maury Cullen—the man I’d shot. They’d done a P.M. on him and sewed him up with a swell cross-stitch, but I could see what my slug had done to him. He’d probably been dead before the elevator got to the ground floor.
The attendant said: “I don’t suppose this one would be your brother, Mister, but to make sure you’d better look. He’s a little older than the way you say it, but it could be.”
I said: “No, but the guy looks a little familiar.”
He looked at me and said: “It gets you, looking at these stiffs. That is, at first. I’m sort of used to it. But at that I don’t eat my lunch in here.”
The place didn’t smell like any lunch room to me and I said so. It smelled of iodine and chloride of lime and formaldehyde, but all that wasn’t enough to kill the other smells. The attendant explained it with: “Some of these guys are taken out of the river after they’ve been in too long. Some of the others are found a little late. We freeze ’em and all that, but you can’t kill all of it.”
