by Bill Crider
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER
think he’d try to jump out. He was too dejected to try anything like that. But just in case he did, I was ready to grab him.
Barbara Malone’s house was modest, as was to be expected, a little white frame job with a tiny porch and a roof that needed replacing.
No doubt she’d had plans to find a much bigger house as soon as she won that Oscar and started getting big roles and plenty of them, a house that fit her image as a star. It was too bad, in a way, but her next accommodations were hardly going to live up to her expectations.
It was a quiet neighborhood, with small green yards, a few tiny flowerbeds, and only a few palm trees. Bogart parked at the curb, and we got out.
We were just about to start up the walk when the dark blue Packard pulled in behind the Caddy and stopped. The front bumper of the Packard was slightly dented from its run-in with my Chevy.
Mike and Herbie got out of the Packard. Herbie looked as if he’d grown another six or seven inches since the last time I’d seen him.
Maybe he’d been eating his spinach.
“Jesus, I thought you guys were never going to show up,” Randall said.
Well, now I knew who’d killed Dawson.
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Mike and Herbie had guns, and they were pointed at me and Bogart.
“You’ve been following me around, Herbie,” I said. “And too closely, at that. I hope your bumper’s not dented too badly.”
Herbie told me to shut up, and they marched us into Barbara Malone’s house. Mike didn’t say anything, but he was walking a little gingerly. From the way he was looking at Bogart I could tell that he’d welcome the opportunity to use his pistol. He was the kind of guy who held a grudge for a long time.
I was still trying to figure out who had told them what was going on when Randall asked them where Joey was.
“He’s still on the set,” Herbie said. His voice was oddly wispy and light for such a big man. Maybe somebody had hit him in the throat at one time. “He managed to get away long enough to call Mr. Orsini.
That was it.”
What was Charlie O. doing mixed up in this? I couldn’t figure it.
He’d implied that he knew what was going on, but of course he hadn’t let us in on anything.
As for Joey Gallindo, I supposed that the rumors tying him to the mob were all too true, at least if Charlie O. was considered part of the mob.
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“What are you going to do with these two?” Randall asked, meaning me and Bogart. “They know everything.”
I didn’t like the way he said it. And I didn’t like the ugly grin that spread itself across Mike’s face when he heard it.
“They don’t know everything,” Herbie said. “But they may know too much. Mr. Orsini will let us know what he wants us to do with them. Mike’s going to call him. Where’s the phone?”
“In the hall,” Randall said, and Mike went off to make his call, giving Bogart one last grisly smile over his shoulder.
“You’re looking good, Herbie,” I said.
Actually he didn’t look good at all. His head was about two sizes too small for his body, and with a hat on he looked like a cartoon gangster. His complexion was so pale that he might have just gotten out of prison, but I knew he hadn’t. As far as I knew he’d never served time, even though he was guilty of plenty of things, from mopery to murder.
“You can shut up, Scott,” he said.
I had no intention of shutting up no matter how many times he told me to. I said, “You nearly got us last night. If there hadn’t been a tree in front of us about a third of the way down, you’d wouldn’t have had to bother with us today.”
“I thought I told you to shut up,” Herbie said.
Herbie had eyes that were too small and set too close together even for his too small head, and they made him look mean and a little stupid. He wasn’t stupid, but he was definitely mean. Kindness wasn’t among his virtues, assuming he had any. In my acquaintance with him, I hadn’t discovered any. I was going to ask him why he’d killed Dawson when Mike came back into the room.
“Mr. Orsini says to bring them in. He wants to have a word with them before he disposes of them.”
He seemed to enjoy saying disposes entirely too much, so I said,
“Disposes? Disposes of Humphrey Bogart, the highest-paid star in town? Even Charlie O. wouldn’t do anything that stupid.”
“I hope he does,” Mike said. “But even if he don’t, he can dispose of you. Nobody’d miss you.”
He was right about that, but I didn’t want him to think so.
“Plenty of people would miss me, Mike. Mr. Warner, for one. If 206
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Charlie O. is planning to dispose of me, he’d better think again. He wouldn’t want Mr. Warner after him.”
“I told you to shut up, Scott,” Herbie said. If he was getting tired of repeating himself, there was no indication of it. “Let’s all go for a little ride.”
“Me, too?” Randall said.
“Not you. You can go back to the movie set.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“Take Bogart’s,” Mike said, grinning again. “He won’t be needing it for a while.”
“That wouldn’t be smart,” Herbie said. “You can call a cab.”
Randall looked relieved. He wouldn’t care if we were disposed of, but he didn’t want to be there when it happened. He didn’t have the stomach for it.
Barbara, on the other hand, did have the stomach for it. I wondered where she was, but I didn’t figure anyone would tell me. So I didn’t bother to ask.
Mike and Herbie took Bogart and me back outside. Randall stayed in the house. He didn’t even wave good-bye when we went out the door.
Herbie drove and Bogart sat in front with him. Mike and I sat in the back. That way Mike could cover both me and Bogart with his pistol, and Herbie could concentrate on the road.
As soon as I leaned back in the seat, I was reminded that I had a pistol, too. I’d forgotten all about it, and so had Randall. We’d had other things on our minds, I suppose. Bogart hadn’t mentioned it either. I didn’t know if he’d forgotten or if he was hoping I could figure out some way to use it. Because of its location, there was no way I could get to it before Mike shot me four or five times. I’d just have to wait and see what developed.
Nobody talked much during the ride to Charlie O.’s club. There didn’t seem to be a lot to say. I would have liked to scream at some of the people on the sidewalks to call the cops, but Mike would just have shot me. So I didn’t scream.
We’d gone several blocks when Bogart asked if it would be all right if he had a cigarette.
Herbie said all right, and Bogart used the lighter on the Packard’s 207
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dashboard. After taking a couple of puffs on the cigarette, he turned around in the seat and asked me if I’d like a smoke.
He knew better than that, and he knew I knew, so he had to be up to something.
“No thanks,” I said.
“What about you, Mike?”
Mike pointed the pistol at Bogart and shook his head.
“I could light it for you. You wouldn’t even need to put the gun down.”
“It’s just the condemned men that smoke,” Mike said.
He laughed as if he’d made a funny joke. I didn’t think it was funny at all. I kept my eyes on Bogart, ready for whatever he had in mind.
“Ain’t that right, Herbie?” Mike said. “It’s just the condemned men that get to smoke.”
“Shut up, Mike,” Herbie said.
Mike grinned, not looking a bit chastened.
“That’s pretty big talk,” Bogart said. “Of course you have a gun, and that makes it easier for you. If Scott or I had a gun, things would be different. The way they were in Charlie O.’s office at the club.�
��
We did have a gun, and Bogart was letting me know he was aware of it. But I still had no idea what he was planning to do about it.
“You hit me in the balls, Bogart,” Mike said, his tone peevish. “That was a dirty damned trick, but it got you out of trouble. Now you’re in trouble again, and this time you won’t be hitting anybody in the balls.”
“I don’t suppose I will,” Bogart said. “But do you know what I am going to do?”
“Not a goddamned thing,” Mike said.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mike. I’m going to do something, all right.”
“Little man, big talk. If you’re gonna do something, do it.”
“Fine,” Bogart said. “I will.
He took a drag on his cigarette and flicked the glowing butt into Mike’s face.
Mike knew, or would have known if he’d given it any thought, that there was nothing much a cigarette butt could do to him. Sure, it might give him a momentary sting if it hit him on the nose or cheek.
It might even burn a hole in his pants if it landed in his lap. But it 208
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wasn’t going to disable him permanently, even if it burned through to his skin.
However, most people, including Mike, don’t think about all that when someone flicks a burning cigarette into their faces. They react, instead.
Mike reacted by jerking his left hand up to keep the cigarette from hitting his face. He was successful at that, but it bounced off his hand and down to his crotch, which got him excited, maybe because the area was still tender from being hit earlier by Bogart or because the idea of having his balls set on fire didn’t appeal to him in the least.
He started digging frantically at his crotch with his left hand and waving the pistol around with his right.
Bogart lunged across the top of the seat and grabbed Mike’s fore-arm, forcing his hand up.
I twisted around in the seat, snatching at the pistol at my back.
Mike’s pistol went off and blew a hole through the roof of the Packard.
One place you don’t ever want to be is in an automobile, even a fine automobile like a Packard, not even if the windows are open, when a pistol goes off. Not if you value your eardrums and your hearing, you don’t.
For a second it was as if I’d gone deaf, but I didn’t have time to worry about it because Herbie lost control of the car, and it swerved off the street and started down the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered like frantic chickens, and people in the cars along the street must have been wondering if a bomb had gone off in the Packard.
Herbie fought the wheel, and Bogart fought to hang onto Mike’s arm. I struggled to my own pistol past my belt, but the sight was hung on something, maybe my shirt.
Herbie managed to miss a telephone pole, but he couldn’t avoid the corner of a newsstand. The stand didn’t collapse, but it moved a few feet and made about a quarter turn to the right. Newspapers and magazines flew everywhere, and I bounced into Mike, who was now trying to hit Bogart with his left fist. I just prayed that he wouldn’t pull the trigger of that pistol again.
I pushed away from Mike and back to the other side of the car, and as I did the pistol came free. I leveled it at Herbie’s head, holding it 209
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as steady as I could as the car rocked along with two wheels on the walk and two in the street.
I told Herbie to stop the car, but I was sure he didn’t hear me. I was sure because I didn’t hear myself.
Mike said something to me, and his lips peeled back from his teeth.
I didn’t hear him either. All I could hear was a kind of roaring noise, as if I was lying in the surf.
There had to be some way to get my point across, but first I had to relieve Mike of his pistol. Bogart was still hanging on to Mike’s arm, so I hit Mike on the wrist bone with the barrel of my pistol. I didn’t hit him hard, but then I didn’t have to. He winced and dropped his gun, and it fell to the floorboard on my side. That was a good place for it, as far as I was concerned.
I put my foot on it so Mike wouldn’t get any ideas. Then I leaned over and tapped Herbie behind the ear with my pistol barrel just under the brim of his hat and yelled for him to stop the car. He might not have heard me, but he got the idea. We came to a halt not far from an Owl drugstore. I thought about going in for a vanilla Coke at the fountain, but it wouldn’t have been a good idea. There wasn’t really time for an indulgence like that.
The four of us sitting there in a car halfway up on the sidewalk wasn’t a good idea, either. The cops were going to come along at almost any time now, and I didn’t want to have to deal with the cops, not right at the moment. Earlier, they would have been welcome, but now they’d just be in the way.
Bogart quit struggling with Mike. He gave him a shove and let go of his arm. Mike fell back against the door. He looked as if he might want to make a try for me, but the pistol in my hand discouraged him.
I kicked the back of the seat, and Herbie looked at me in the rearview mirror.
I mouthed “Charlie O.’s,” exaggerating the syllables. He got the message and drove the car off the curb and onto the street. We went away from there, and if there were sirens in the distance, I didn’t hear them.
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When we got to Charlie O.’s, the parking lot was deserted.
There would be a crowd there later on, after dark, but for now we had the place to ourselves.
Herbie parked the car around back, and we got out. I could smell the garbage that overflowed from a can near the wall. There was another new Packard parked back there, Charlie O.’s no doubt, and a Ford. I had a feeling I knew who’d driven it.
Bogart got Mike’s pistol from the back floor and put it in his jacket pocket. The jacket sagged to one side, but it didn’t look too bad.
My hearing had partially returned, and I told Herbie and Mike to lead the way inside. I had the feeling that I was yelling at them, the way a man who was hard of hearing might do. My voice echoed in my head as if I was speaking on the inside of a large bucket. I was a little punchy from lack of sleep, and the odd sound of my voice added to the surreal atmosphere that the day seemed to be taking on.
Mike opened a door and we found ourselves in the same hallway Bogart and I been in not so many hours before.
“You and Mike go up first,” I told Herbie. Loudly.
They looked at one another and then at the gun I was holding.
Maybe they were thinking that if they jumped me, I’d get only one of them and the other one would get me. If that was on their minds, Bogart put a stop to that line of thought by bringing the other pistol 211
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out of his pocket in one smooth motion. Playing a movie gangster had its benefits.
“You heard him,” Bogart said.
It was as if he were talking from the bottom of a deep well somewhere, and I wasn’t sure that Mike and Herbie could hear him. But they must have because after looking at one another again, they turned and went up the stairs.
They stopped outside the door to Charlie O.’s office. I knew this was the most dangerous point of the trip so far. For things to look right, Bogart and I had to go in first. If we didn’t, Charlie O. would know that something was up. And if we did, Mike and Herbie would be behind us. I didn’t trust them to be behind us.
So I decided that it didn’t matter one bit if Charlie O. knew something was up. After all, Bogart and I were the ones with the guns. I didn’t want to shoot anyone, but I’d shot people before, during my time in the Pacific, and I knew I could do it again if I had to. Bogart claimed to have shot a man, too, so that made us not only armed but dangerous. Mike, Herbie, and Charlie O. were merely dangerous.
“Go on in,” I said, and Herbie opened the door.
He went inside, followed by Mike. Bogart went next, and I brought up the rear. I closed the door behind me and looked around the room.
Orsini sat behind his rundown desk, and Barbara Malone was in a chair nearby. The chair had been brought in since my previous visit, and it was brand new. It looked out of place beside the shabby desk, but then Barbara looked out of place as well. Her kind of glamour didn’t belong in that room. Tank was nowhere to be seen. I hoped he was somewhere in bed, nursing his wound.
“Well, well, well,” Orsini said when we’d all trooped into his office.
“It appears that things didn’t turn out exactly as I’d been led to believe they had.”
I could hardly hear him, but I could hear well enough to get the gist of what he said.
“That’s right,” I said, or yelled. “You won’t have the pleasure of disposing of us after all.”
“I don’t think I ever said that. You must have gotten the wrong idea.”
I looked at Mike, who gave me a brutish grin and shrugged. I didn’t really believe Orsini, but then Mike wasn’t exactly a font of truth, 212
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either. I’d probably never know precisely what had been said, but it didn’t really matter.
“You never know who you can trust these days,” I said, too loudly.
“Is there something wrong with your hearing?” Orsini sounded solicitous, as if he actually cared, although I knew he didn’t. “Have you suddenly gone deaf?”
I told him what the problem was, trying to keep my voice down to a reasonable level.
“I’m sorry about the hole in the roof of the car,” I said when I concluded, though I wasn’t sorry in the least.
Orsini waved a hand in dismissal. He could afford to replace the car rather than having the hole repaired. I thought this might be a good time to bring up another point.
“The bumper’s damaged a little, too,” I said. “That’s also my fault.
Herbie here had to hit my old Chevy pretty hard to push me and Bogart over that cliff last night.”
Orsini didn’t wave a hand this time. He just looked at me as if wondering what I was talking about.
“Don’t worry,” I said, though it was clear that he wasn’t worried in the least. “I’m not asking you to replace my car. Not that I’d mind having a Packard, even if it has a hole in the roof and a damaged bumper.”
