A Taste for Violence ms-17

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne went to the telephone and read the hand-printed sign pasted on it, LIFT RECEIVER BEFORE TURNING CRANK.

  Shayne lifted the receiver and turned the crank. When the Centerville operator answered, he asked for number 340. She said, “Thank you,” in a sweet southern drawl, and rang the number.

  Shayne leaned against the wall with the receiver to his ear and massaged his left earlobe. His gray eyes were half-closed, his wide mouth relaxed. He glanced over at the fat clerk. He was leaning on the counter with his mouth open, as though he expected to eavesdrop through it instead of his ears.

  A soft, slurred feminine voice spoke in Shayne’s ear, “Yessuh?”

  “I want to speak to Mr. Charles Roche.”

  “Mistuh Charles Roche, did you-all say?”

  “That’s right. Is he in?”

  “Jest a minute,” the Negress said doubtfully.

  While Shayne waited, he glanced again at the clerk. His mouth was open a little wider, and a faint wheeze came from him as if he were about to snore. His eyes were nearly closed.

  Presently a man’s voice came over the wire. “Who is this calling?” His tone was gruff and slightly irritable.

  “Mr. Roche?”

  “What do you want with him?”

  “I’d like to speak to him personally,” Shayne said gently.

  “Would, eh?” the voice said. “What about?”

  “I prefer to tell Mr. Roche that.”

  “Where you calling from?” The tone was curt now, and definitely irritable.

  “Is Mr. Roche there?” Shayne asked.

  “No. Give me your name and…”

  “I’ll call back.” Shayne banged up the receiver and mopped his face. He stood for a moment rubbing his angular jaw, then felt in his pocket for some coins. His hand came out clutching several, and he walked slowly along the four slot machines looking at the combinations showing. He selected the half-dollar machine, inserted the fifty-cent piece and pulled the handle.

  The screen door opened and a man stepped inside as the tumblers whirred and the cylinders revolved. The first cylinder to stop showed a lemon, and he turned to the quarter machine. He fed it twice without getting a paying combination, and glanced aside with a shrug of his wide shoulders at the newcomer who was silently watching him.

  He was a tall, bony-faced man with leathery skin and white bushy brows. He wore a sweat-streaked gray cotton shirt, and denim trousers held up by faded suspenders. He met Shayne’s gaze and said, “That’s the price of a meal you’ve wasted, Mister.”

  “Or a couple of drinks,” Shayne agreed. He turned to the dime machine. It absorbed four dimes, giving him three lemons in succession, then gently slid off a five-pay combination after hesitating on it for an instant.

  Shayne knew, then, what he was bucking. He tightened his wide mouth and moved on to the nickel machine. Lemons showed on one or more of the cylinders, two pulls out of three, and twice more a paying combination slid off just before clicking into place.

  Stepping back with his hands empty, he said disgustedly, “Gimmicked to hell and gone. I’ve never seen worse in Juarez or Tia Juana.”

  “What did you expect?” asked the gaunt-faced man. “This is Centerville.” He spoke without rancor. Flatly. As though being in Centerville, Kentucky, explained everything. This was the first time Shayne had heard those three words, “This is Centerville,” spoken, but it wasn’t the last time he was to hear them, always with that flat assumption of dogmatic acceptance. He was to discover that it explained so many things which could not otherwise be explained.

  He shrugged and admitted, “One generally expects to get a little play from his money, even from these one-armed bandits. Thirty or forty per cent return, at least. It’s just good business. To have them pay off a little would encourage the suckers,” he went on irritably. “The people who gimmick these things so tight are just cutting their own throats.”

  The shabby man said, “Folks play ’em anyhow. Here in Centerville, they do. Some play ’em for fun… and some play ’em hopin’.” He trudged over to the desk and bought a package of rough-cut from the three-chinned clerk. He leaned both elbows on the counter and talked to him in a low voice while Shayne strolled to the screen doors and onto the porch where he watched and listened to the heavy traffic on highway 90.

  The noise was deafening. Coal trucks, one after the other, chugged up the steep hill, back-firing like small cannons exploding when they started down the hill on the other side. Cars honking, swerving in and out, struggling to pass before they lost momentum. Of all the places in the world, he decided, the Moderne had picked the noisiest spot for a hotel.

  He couldn’t hear what the men in the lobby were saying. He realized that they were discussing him, but he didn’t care. He was wondering whether Lucy would be able to sleep tonight, with the heavy trucks shaking the very earth, the horns, the backfiring and the chugging.

  Walking to the end of the porch, he saw Lucy standing in front of her cabin, looking around. He long-legged it across the rocky grounds, calling to her and waving. When he reached her he took both her hands and pushed her away at arm’s length. She had changed into a blue summer frock with short sleeves falling in soft folds over her upper arms, the bodice accentuating her slim waist and hips, then falling into graceful widening gores around the calves of her shapely legs. Her lips were freshly rouged, her face glowing and unpowdered.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I tried to powder, but it just stuck in cakes, so I wiped it off.”

  Shayne’s eyes twinkled. He said, “You don’t need powder.”

  “Have I kept you waiting?”

  “Not long. How’s your cabin?”

  “Hot as hell… when I left.” She chuckled, looking up at him.

  “Such language,” Shayne chided. “So was mine.”

  “Did you phone Mr. Roche?” She tucked her arm in his and they walked over to the car which was parked in front of number nine.

  “I called, but he wasn’t in.” Shayne frowned. He didn’t tell her about the obtrusive manner in which some man had tried to find out what his business was with Roche.

  They got in the car. Shayne backed around and headed toward the highway. It was easy to edge into the traffic on this side. The sun was sinking beyond the range of mountains, but the heat was stifling, giving no sign whatever of abating. The main highway was jammed with traffic, cars stalled trying to get up the hill without momentum.

  When they came to a turn-off at the foot of the hill, Shayne said, “I’m going to take this road. It must be the old one leading into Centerville.”

  “Are… you sure, Michael?” She laid her hand lightly on his bare arm.

  “Pretty sure.”

  The old road was free of traffic. It curved to the left continuously, and they could see the lights coming on in the village below. Dark came quickly to the canyon when the sun went down.

  The whiplash of a shot jarred the evening silence as they rounded a curve in the old, crooked road. Then, two more. The sound of a racing motor followed almost immediately. There was another sharp curve ahead, and before they made it they heard a crashing noise as if two cars had hit in a head-on collision.

  Lucy grabbed Shayne’s arm tightly. He put on the brakes and slowed. His gray eyes were troubled and the trenches in his face were taut. He didn’t say anything.

  “Was that… a backfire,” Lucy gasped, “or…?”

  “It wasn’t a backfire,” said Shayne harshly. “Get down low and stay there.” He eased around the curve, ready to step on the brake, or the accelerator, as circumstances required.

  A heavy car was parked on the gravel shoulder and on the wrong side of the road two hundred yards ahead of them. The left front wheel was not more than a foot from the crumbling edge of a steep cliff. The figure of a man was outlined in the middle of the pavement beside the car. He was waving to two cars approaching from the opposite direction. Shayne watched, surprised, as they sped past him, not offeri
ng to stop and give aid at the scene of an accident.

  He slowed his car a little more. Lucy was leaning out her window, looking over the edge of the embankment. “There’s a car over the side there, Michael,” she cried. “I can see a man pulling somebody out…”

  They were close enough now for Shayne to see a large silver star on the blouse of the man in the middle of the road. He wore a wide hat and riding breeches and puttees, and a cartridge belt supporting an empty holster on his right hip. He was waving a revolver at Shayne, and now the detective saw why the other two cars had not stopped to help. The armed man was waving him on, instead of signalling for help.

  Lucy Hamilton saw none of this. She was still leaning out the window, watching the wreckage on the slope below them. She cried out, “Stop, Mike! There’s a man… beating another man over the head with a gun… or a blackjack. It’s horrible! He’ll kill him. Aren’t you going to stop and help him?” She jerked around, her face white, her dark eyes frantic.

  Shayne, his gaze glued on the sliver star before him, sped up. They were directly opposite the precariously hanging car. Shayne caught a glimpse of a black and white streamer pasted on the windshield as they raced by. It read: “SPECIAL POLICE.”

  A scream came through the open windows of the car as they went past. A high-pitched wail of pain and of panicky pleading.

  Shayne stepped on the gas. His mouth was tight, his teeth clenched, the muscles in his jaws working in unison with his teeth grinding together.

  Lucy collapsed against him, sobbing out her fright and her failure to understand.

  “That was an officer in the road,” he said gently. “He didn’t want us to stop. It would have been unhealthy for us to stick our noses into a private affair.”

  “You mean… you would’ve stopped if you hadn’t had me along,” Lucy stammered.

  “Maybe,” said Shayne harshly. “Maybe not.”

  “But that was an officer down there beating that man. He had on a hat just like that one who waved you on. I’ll bet they deliberately rammed his car and forced it off the side.”

  “Maybe. This is Centerville.” He didn’t know he was going to say the three words. They sounded ominous.

  “But… what kind of a place is this? Where policemen do things like that right out in the open.”

  “Maybe some desperate character,” Shayne muttered. “An escaped prisoner… or a murderer.” He knew he was just saying words for Lucy’s benefit. Cops didn’t beat men to death. Not even a murderer or a desperate criminal. Normally, they welcomed an audience to witness their triumphs.

  The thing that stuck in Shayne’s mind was the man with the revolver who calmly directed traffic, his gun in his hand, of course… This is Centerville… while his fellow officer went down to capture a man. Not dead or alive, but dead.

  Lucy shuddered and shrank back against the seat. “You didn’t see it the way I did,” she moaned. “The one who was being beaten and kicked wasn’t trying to fight back. He just cried out, begging for help. I can still hear him screaming, Michael. It’s terrible… when a man screams like that.”

  Shayne reached over to pat her hand. “We’re almost in town,” he said.

  The winding side road joined the main highway which stretched out into a level street leading into the heart of Centerville. It was well past sundown in the mountain-shrouded valley, and there were plenty of parking places on the main street.

  Shayne stopped in front of a dingy sign that read: “POOL amp; WHISKEY.” He got out of the car and said, “Sit here, and I’ll see what goes in this joint.”

  He went into a narrow room with a strip of a bar occupying the front portion and spreading out beyond with enough room for a pool table. The air was putrid with the smell of liquor. There was no window, and as he passed the half-dozen men standing at the bar, the stench of their unwashed bodies was stifling. They wore grimy overalls, and their faces were smeared with coaldust. All six of them turned sullen faces toward him, but no one said anything.

  The bartender was dark-featured and low-browed. He came slowly toward Shayne when he stopped at the end of the bar. “Any tables?” Shayne asked.

  “This ain’t no eatin’ place,” he answered in a surly voice.

  “Any place for a lady to sit and have a drink?” Shayne persisted.

  The bartender wiped the counter with a dirty bar-rag. “Can’t she stand up, Mister?”

  One of the men snickered. They were all watching Shayne.

  He said, “She could, but I don’t think she’d like the way this place stinks.”

  “Maybe you don’t like it either,” the bartender suggested.

  There was animosity in the atmosphere about him, an indefinable sense of sinister emotion. Shayne stood rigid and savored it with twitching nostrils. It wasn’t as much directed at him as a person, but at what he stood for. Something alien. A person from outside their own tight orbit.

  Shayne grinned suddenly and said, “It suits me fine. I’ll have a drink, anyhow.”

  “Beer?”

  “Hell, no. A slug of brandy if you’ve got it.”

  “No brandy.”

  “Whiskey, then,” Shayne said impatiently. “A double shot of Old Granddad.”

  “We don’t sell it here, Mister. It ain’t allowed.”

  Shayne looked at the row of sealed bottles behind the bar, then down the counter at shot-glasses in front of the customers. He asked, “Are these men drinking beer out of one-ounce glasses?”

  “Outta their own bottles,” the bartender explained apathetically. “You wanta buy a bottle, I’ll loan you a glass.”

  Shayne’s brow furrowed. “You mean I can’t buy a drink and pay for it and walk out. What is this?”

  “This here,” the man beside him said gruffly, “is Centerville. They figure a man drinks more iffen he buys a whole bottle. That a-way they sell more whiskey.” He didn’t sound bitter. He was merely explaining a fact.

  Shayne said, “All right. Where’s a place I can go and take a lady to buy a bottle and have a drink?”

  “Try the Eustis Restaurant,” the man in the middle of the row said. “That’s about the best…”

  “That son-of-a-bitch Hank Bellow and his old woman,” said the man next to Shayne flatly, “is working right with ’em, I’m tellin’ you. They turned in Pete Jonas t’other day.”

  “Pete shouldn’t’ve flashed that roll,” the man at the end of the line put in. “Ain’t a place in town won’t phone the cops once a man’s through spendin’ an’ got some left. Hank ain’t no worse’n any t’others.”

  There was a general mutter of agreement. Shayne was puzzled as to the exact meaning they were trying to convey, but he did gather that it was the consensus that the Eustis Restaurant was as good as any in Centerville. He got directions for finding it, and went out.

  Three uniformed deputies were in a group in front of his car, gawking at the Florida license plate and at Lucy. They all watched him silently as he crossed the sidewalk and got behind the steering wheel.

  Lucy said, “You took long enough. Was the cognac good?”

  Shayne said, “Fair,” and started the motor. “How long have those monkeys been standing there?” He backed away from the curb.

  “They came up right after you went in. Just stood there and stared at the car and the license plate and me. I couldn’t hear what they said. They were talking low.” Lucy put her hand on his arm. “Let’s get out of here, Michael. There’s something terribly wrong about this town. I can feel it all around me. Those men back on the road…”

  “They’ve been having a local strike here and have sworn in a bunch of special deputies,” Shayne interrupted soothingly, “that’s all.” But he knew it wasn’t all. He knew it went a great deal deeper than that. There were hatreds of long standing stalking the streets of Centerville, perhaps for a hundred years, handed down from father to son, pent up in their untutored minds, and now, with the new order of things, ready to come to the surface with disastrous explosi
veness.

  Shayne was not ignorant of the situation. He had kept in touch with the labor crises all over the country. But he had no acquaintance with the people themselves. He had been too busy with thieves and bums and murderers, and the bigoted wealthy men and women whom they murdered and stole from. He knew he had a lot to learn here in the Kentucky mountains.

  “I haven’t talked to Roche yet,” he went on quietly to Lucy as he turned onto a roughly paved sidestreet. “Chances are I’ll turn the case down and we can clear out after I do. But I do have to see him. I’ve already cashed his check.”

  He stopped near the end of the block in front of the Eustis Restaurant. Here, there was no bar, but an array of bottles on the shelves behind the quick-lunch stand. Square tables occupied the center of the spacious restaurant with a row of booths along the right-hand wall. A dozen slot machines were located strategically near the entrance… and exit… and a brightly lighted jukebox was playing a mournful tune.

  Shayne led Lucy toward a vacant table in the rear. When the waiter came Shayne said, “Bring us a bottle of the best brandy you have, two glasses of ice, a bottle of soda, and two glasses of ice water.”

  When the waiter went away Shayne said to Lucy, “I’ll try to get Roche again. Must be half an hour since I called.” He strolled to the cigar stand to get change for a dollar by purchasing a copy of the afternoon Centerville Gazette.

  He glanced casually at the front page while waiting for his change. He didn’t look up when the clerk said, “Here you are, suh,” but held his palm out, felt the coins drop into it, put them in his pocket and turned slowly back to the table.

  Lucy looked up to see the bleak expression in his eyes. “Michael! What’s the matter? You didn’t even go to the phone booth.”

  Shayne shook his red head slowly and sat down. “No, Lucy. I guess I won’t have to bother, about that… now.” He laid the paper on the table and ran a knobby forefinger along the headline sweeping across the page. There were two lines in inch-high type:

  PROCOMMUNIST LABOR AGITATOR ARRESTED IN MURDER

  They bent their heads together, leaning over the paper, and read: