by Sam Roskoe
As I said the words I realized how much sense it made. Johnny Jackson couldn’t move in the same champagne and caviar set that Tarquin and Marla Donovan moved. I’d had to borrow a suit to get into the Blue Palm, Johnny Jackson would need to borrow a new face.
Personal vendetta and jealousy were all motives for those close enough to form them. But Johnny Jackson as a hired gun made the most sense of all as I sat there with darkness washing out the color from the day.
Kill Marla Donovan, frame Tarquin Meriwether then have him bumped off before he could be proven guilty or innocent.
A perfect setup and it wouldn’t take much to pull it off. A few thousand up front could buy you a lot of silence, whether at the end of a gun or as a promise. And that price seemed about right for a man like Johnny Jackson.
I was beginning to regret leaving him to sleep off the cold-cocking I’d given him. I should have dragged his sorry ass along for the ride and then tightened the screws a little later when I had him where I wanted him.
Just then I had a feeling that Johnny Jackson would blow the whole case open wide.
And it wasn’t too late in the day for me to make that happen.
“We’re going to make a quick stop,” I said as I gunned the engine and turned the car around. Just beyond the front gates of the mansion I stopped my Cadillac in the middle of the road.
“What is it, Mr. Finch, what is it that you’re looking at?”
“Nothing,” I said, “and that’s the trouble.”
“I don’t understand.”
Johnny Jackson’s gray Chevy was gone. In its absence there was a small pool of blood staining the ground.
Chapter 12
I was thinking about Johnny Jackson all the way back to Hollywood and I was thinking that sooner, rather than later, we would meet again. I was two for two with the man, but that kind of winning streak wasn’t anything I could maintain without a whole lot of luck.
I’d never been that lucky and I began to wonder if the next time might not be the last time for one of us.
That thought in mind, I parked the Cadillac a block from the motel and let the engine idle as I chewed over some new thoughts while Tarquin Meriwether tried his best to interrupt me.
“Correct me if I’m incorrect, but this is not a motel. We’re nowhere near a motel, Mr. Finch.”
“I know that already.”
“But there is a motel nearby? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“It’s close enough that you could spit and hit it.”
“Well then, that leaves me wondering why we’re not there right at this moment. I’m not a man who would gladly give himself over to a cold shower and abstinence from the bottle, but I’m not the kind of man who wishes to spend the night in a car, either.”
“And you won’t, I’ve just got to think some things through, is all.”
“What kind of things?”
“The man back there, the man who tried to kill you?” I said.
“Yes.”
“I put a bullet in that man and knocked him out cold but that didn’t stop him, not one bit.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Do you?”
Tarquin Meriwether wagged his head ‘no’.
“I’m afraid I’m not as clued up as you are on these matters. I barely remember meeting the damned fellow.”
“I’ll put it as simply as I can. He wants you and me dead. He’s tough enough to take a bullet to the leg and a pistol whipping to the face and still pick himself up off the ground. Do you think a man like that would go home and get a restful night of sleep or do you think he’ll come gunning for me and you?”
“If I was to make a guess, I would guess the latter. But would this man know where you are? Did you tell him, by any chance?”
“No.”
There was a simple joy on Tarquin Meriwether’s face, like that of a child who’d just put a round peg into a round hole for the first time.
“Then we have nothing to worry about, do we? I’ll take this cold shower you recommend and we’ll get down to business. After we’re finished, I will find myself a good stool and a bartender with a generous ear and all will be well in the world.”
I wondered how good it would be to think like a drunk. Everything made sense, all problems solved after a few thumbs of a favored tipple. But I wasn’t drunk, and I knew that if I could find Johnny Jackson in a morning, he could probably find me in a day. If he wasn’t already waiting for me in the motel room.
And if he was waiting for me?
Then it would be the perfect opportunity for me to ask some of the questions I hadn’t asked earlier.
Either which way, me and Johnny had an appointment that we’d have to keep sooner or later.
I put the Cadillac in drive and drove the block back to the Motel.
“Okay, slide over,” I said to Tarquin Meriwether as I opened up my door and stepped out.
“Excuse me, but why am I sliding over instead of exiting this automobile?”
He’d sobered a little on the drive back to Hollywood, but not enough to get rid of that lush’s bite as he spoke.
“Because you’re going to wait here with the engine running and you’re going to mind Steinbeck there, while I go have a look see in the room. That’s why.”
At the mention of his name, Steinbeck jumped from the back seat and occupied the space where I was sat moments before.
“Your dog here seems to think he should be in command,” Tarquin Meriwether said.
“My dog thinks a lot of things, most of the time he thinks I’m a fool, I suspect, but that’s got nothing to do with us in the here and now. Slide over, and get ready to hit the gas if anything goes wrong.”
Awkwardly, Tarquin slid across. He picked up Steinbeck by the belly as though he were handling something caked in filth, and placed him on the passenger side of the car.
“If anything goes wrong, how will I know?” He said.
I pulled the .45 out of my jacket and then the .38. Both hands heavy with iron, I glared at Tarquin.
“I’ve devised a simple warning system,” I said.
“You have?”
“Yes. If you hear any gunshots, then you get out of here quick sharp.”
“Oh,” he said, the reality of the situation not penetrating fully through his drunken state.
“Gunshots, remember that. If you hear any gunfire at all coming from the Motel then you hit that peddle and don’t look back.”
He nodded.
“Forwards it will be, but forwards to where exactly?” He said.
“San Francisco and the Mermaid Café. Call Lucy, her number is in a book behind the bar. She’ll do what she can.”
“And your dog?”
I looked at Steinbeck.
He had a sulk on, his head turned away from me.
“He likes having his tummy rubbed of late, don’t ask me why. Just make sure it’s rubbed, that’s all.”
I didn’t let Tarquin say another word.
Guns in hand I crept toward my Motel room.
Chapter 13
A set of iron steps led up to the second floor of the Motel complex and the room I’d rented. A set of noisy, creaking, rusted steps that could wake the dead.
I wasn’t concerned with the dead just about then, only the living, and what the living wanted to do with me.
Both guns drawn I fixed on the door of the room.
I wasn’t expecting anything, no outward signs that Johnny Jackson had come to ruin my winning streak with him, and as I looked I began to wonder if Jackson would wait inside the room.
I knew I wouldn’t. If I wanted some payback for an injustice done upon me, I’d watch from a distance. Watch and find the perfect time to strike.
The thought sent a paranoid chill up my back.
I could feel eyes burning into me.
I whirled around, my fingers itching.
The lights still worked in the abandoned pool. They cast a blue sheen on the stagnant water colle
cted at one end. Everything was still. In the near distance, traffic hummed like a lullaby.
I instructed myself to calm down. Johnny Jackson wouldn’t be thinking straight, if he’d ever thought straight before in his life. He’d be angry, probably a little wasted on painkillers and booze by now. The only thing in his mind would be to catch me as I came into that room.
But he had to get into the room, I thought. And whatever Johnny Jackson was, he certainly wasn’t a locksmith. Those big hands of his wouldn’t be able to handle the delicate work of picking a lock.
That left only one option to my mind.
I pocketed both the guns, but kept a steady hand and a ready finger on the .38 just in case as I walked back away from the stairs and to the manager’s office.
A thin strip of buzzing light hung above the reception counter. Through a door in back the soft sounds of a female voice wafted through. She was singing about love being lost and never found again until someone came along and made her believe.
I interrupted the romance as I struck the bell on the counter.
The vulture appeared not a moment later.
He looked me up and down, his eyes as narrow as a paper cut.
“Problem, is there?” He asked.
“Depends.”
“And what would it depend upon?”
“On whether or not you thought it was a smart move to let someone into my room tonight.”
There was no fear on his face, but the corner of his lip twitched like the wings of a downed wasp. I’d said enough to cause that flutter.
“I think you must be mistaken,” he said.
“You do, do you?”
He looked up at the wall clock then back to me.
“I only arrived here an hour ago.”
“That means nothing. I think you let someone up there. I think someone paid you, someone say with a mad look in his eyes and a bullet hole in his leg?”
The winged edge of his lip stopped flapping. He’d gone through this routine before and he was about to go through it all again for me.
“Not a single wounded madman has passed me this evening, my hand to God. Not ever, in fact. If you would like to lodge a complaint or call the police, then you are within your rights to do so.”
“I think I’ll skip the law on this one.”
Satisfaction parted his thin lips.
“Good, good, then we are—“
I reached over and grabbed a fistful of his hair. I yanked his face down hard onto the counter. The .38 clear of my jacket pocket, I lay it flat next to his head.
“What you’re going to do is simple. You’re going to walk up to my room. You’re going to take my key and you’re going to put it in the door.”
His voice came out of the side of his squashed lips.
“What?”
“You heard me. If there’s someone in there just itching to ventilate that flimsy little door with bullets, then I’ll know you were lying to me. I’ll know because it’ll be you with the holes and not me. If the room’s empty, you’ll be fine, won’t you?”
He struggled underneath my grip, but he couldn’t free himself.
“You can’t do this to me,” he said, from the corner of his mouth.
“I am doing this to you, right now.”
“I’ll call the cops.”
“You can call whoever you want after you open that door to my room, now move.”
My hand on the back of his neck, I pulled him around the counter and out in front of me. I jammed the .38 into the small of his back.
The vulture raised his hands into the air without me saying a word.
So I said a word. Words.
“Put ’em down. This isn’t a robbery.”
“Feels like one,” he said.
“No, this is what you might call poetic justice.”
“Poetic? With a gun in my back you’re talking about poetry?”
“I figured a lilac wouldn’t be as persuasive. Walk.”
He walked.
He walked all the way out to the bottom of the stairs, and there he stopped as he looked up toward my room.
“Don’t make me do this,” he said, his voice lowered to a whisper.
“Tell me who’s in the room and maybe I’ll forget all about it.”
“There’s nobody there, I swear it.”
The words were surer than his voice.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
“What could I gain from letting someone into your room?”
“What would anybody gain from it, money.”
“And then I have the cops all over this place poking their noses in my business. I have too much to lose, mister.”
“You know the angles, you know the percentages. A flophouse like this doesn’t thrive on Boy Scouts. This joint runs by the hour and you get cutbacks on every dirty deal done here. You’ve probably done this before.”
“I swear I never let no man into your room. I’ll do whatever you want, but you got to believe me. I didn’t let no man into your room.”
Damn, but if his voice didn’t sound sincere. It was the first time since I’d met the vulture that I’d believed something he was saying to me. But that didn’t mean squat. Maybe he was just good enough to pull out a convincing performance when he needed to? Maybe I would be opening up the door to my room and that would be the last thing I ever did on this sweet earth?
I wouldn’t let my last act be the opening of a door to a cheap room in some lowlife dive in Hollywood.
I had too much to live for.
I had a Café to open sometime in the future.
“Lucky for you that there’s nobody in there,” I said and pushed the man forward, “so when you open the door, nothing is going to happen, is it?”
He risked a look over his shoulder.
“Don’t make me do this.”
“Tell me the truth and I’ll let you fly.”
“I already told you the truth. I didn’t let any man into that room. I didn’t.”
“Good for you, now move.”
I pushed him all the way to the side of my room, then pushed him again out in front of the door.
His hand shook as he put the key into the lock.
Jesus, I thought, he was taking all this way too far. He could have walked away when I gave him the chance, but there he stood in front of the door, ready to take a bullet. And for what?
I couldn’t figure out what the manager would gain from taking it so far, or why he’d been so reluctant in the first place, if he knew nobody was inside. It all seemed twisted in on itself, and left me feeling a little unnerved.
With a click, the door opened.
The manager looked to me for approval.
I nodded.
He opened the door a crack and stepped back away from it. He shrugged at me as if asking if I was satisfied.
Confused, I crept forward, the .38 out and ready to go if I noticed the slightest bit off with what was happening.
Nothing happened.
The manager stood away from the door. There was no gunfire from within. No angry shouts from a dazed and vengeful Johnny Jackson. Just what the hell was going on? Had I read the manager all wrong from the get-go? Was he telling me the truth and I’d just assumed that he wasn’t capable?
I had only one choice.
“Inside,” I said, waving the gun toward the room.
“What?”
“Get in there and turn on all the lights. Hurry it up.”
“I told you, I didn’t let any man in there. What’s it going to take?”
“You, inside there with all the lights on.”
He found some courage, despite my gun so near to him.
“Would you like me to check under the bed and in the closets too?”
“Yeah, make it snappy,” I said.
I followed him into the room as he turned on the bedside lamps, then the bathroom light. I followed and I checked where he checked, but there was nobody in the room. The only change from when
I’d last been there was that the bed sheets were tucked in at the corner and the trash bin had been emptied.
I pocketed the .38 and scratched under my hat where a new itch had grown.
“I suppose you wouldn’t take a simple apology, would you?” I said.
“No.”
“Anything you would accept?”
He backed out of the room, a smile growing as he did so. It was a smile I didn’t like. A smile that all vultures had around carrion.
Instinctively I reached for my jacket pocket, but it was already too late.
As he backed out, two well-dressed thugs as wide as the door and taller still, barreled into the room.
I’d met these boys the night before.
They’d been good enough to carry me out of the Blue Palm.
From outside, the manager’s taunting voice floated into the room behind the men.
“I said I hadn’t let any man into your room, but I didn’t say nothing about renting the rooms next to yours, Mr. Finch! Have a good night you dumbbell!”
I put my hands into the air long before the two well-dressed apes told me to.
“You’ll be wanting the nice suit back I suppose?” I said.
Neither of them answered.
They didn’t grab a hold of me either. They took a position at either side of the door as in walked Kay Martin.
She was dressed in a black pants suit made of right-angles.
“I already said you can keep the suit, didn’t I?”
“You’re all heart,” I said, “can I put my hands down now?”
She kicked the door shut behind her and walked over to the dresser. There she took a lean on the edge and looked me up and down.
“Nobody asked you to put your hands in the air, did they, Mr. Finch?”
I lowered my hands to my sides.
“I thought it only polite in the situation.”
“Politeness from a Private Eye, you really should write for the funnies, you know that?”
“I suppose that means you’re not going to break my hands just for the fun of it, or have your boys do it for you?”
She shot a glance to the two well-dressed icebergs book ending my only way of escape.
“They’re here for security, nothing more. I doubt either would want to do damage to you, they don’t hold grudges even if I do.”
