Tough Bullet

by Peter McCurtin

  I dressed and pulled on my boots without making too much noise. The snoring stopped and started again as I went down the hall to the stairs, my boots making no sound on the thick carpet. I wasn’t being careful—didn’t see any cause to be. All I wanted was to get out of there without having to talk to anybody. To get back to the hotel and sleep till night, or the next morning if I felt like it. I still felt bad enough to shoot myself with my own gun, so it must have been a pretty good night.

  There was a big black sleeping in a chair inside the front door. Not the same houseman I’d seen the night before, not as big but big enough, bigger than I was. He was tilted back in the chair so that the pearl handle of a small handgun stuck out of his pants pocket. He didn’t stir when I stepped over his feet, opened the door, letting the spring lock click behind me.

  Out in the street it was early enough to be cool. A few hours later the July sun would bake the city, soaking the air with water from the lake. It was good to get the cathouse smell out of my lungs, at least for the time being. I walked for a while, then a horse trolley came clanking by, and I rode that back to the Hotel Lafitte.

  There were other hungover gents on the trolley. One of them was a cowman of some kind, leather-faced, eyeballs laced with red, about fifty. He didn’t look happy, and it wasn’t just the morning after blues. He uncorked the bottle riding in his hip pocket, and when he pegged me for a fellow Texan he shook it at me.

  “Want a snort?” he said.

  I told him thanks, no.

  He had one himself and put the bottle away. The drink made him feel worse, from the looks of things. He spat on the floor between his feet and said to me:

  “I tell you, brother, this New Orleans is a mean, low-down place.”

  The sway of the trolley went against the sway in my head I was feeling bad, but there were no complaints, not yet anyhow. I thought old Gertie had treated me fair enough by hell town standards—the whiskey, the cigars, the fact that I still had thirty-five dollars in my pocket.

  One thing I can’t stomach is a whiner. I ignored the son of a bitch. He kept quiet for a while, but before he swung down from the trolley he fixed me with his bloodshot eyes, and said, “This here is a rotten town.”

  I didn’t know how right he was until sometime later. It was about six when I carried my throbbing head up the front steps of the Lafitte Hotel. The Lafitte has real white-marble steps. My skull felt as if it had bounced from top step to bottom and back up again. The electric chandelier in the lobby hadn’t been turned off yet, and it was brighter inside than in the street. The night clerk was asleep behind the desk, and he didn’t wake up when I went around and got my key from the ring-board.

  The strongbox room was past the desk, between the main staircase and the manager’s office. It was long and narrow, and a guard with a sawed-off shotgun sat in a cage at the end of it. The guard had nothing to do with the strongboxes except to stand, or sit, guard over them. The manager rented out the boxes: The customer got a key to his box, and the manager had a master key to all of them.

  The guard was awake, and he watched while I walked down to No. 37, my box, and unlocked it. Suddenly my head felt worse. My rifle, gun-belt and .45 were right where I left them, but the money was gone. I didn’t swear, didn’t do anything except look harder inside that box. Hard or easy looking didn’t do any good: The money was gone, all eleven thousand.

  In my line of work you get used to surprises after the first few. The money comes and goes, and when it goes it’s because I spend it or someone gets the drop on me. Usually I spend it, but there have been the other times, and most of the other times I knew who’d done the taking, and went after them with a gun and took it back after I killed them. For me, this was the first time the money just up and walked away with somebody.

  The strongboxes were built into the walls, one on top of the other. The door of my box was level with my head. I put my forehead against the steel door, not because I was sick about the money; because my head was sick and the cold steel made it feel better. It didn’t make the guard feel better, it made him edgy.

  “Something wrong, mister?” he enquired, and brought up the shotgun to show he was worried about me.

  The money was stolen, in the first place by me, but I couldn’t let it go just like that. I thought of Gertie, the big black, Minnie Haha, too. It seemed reasonable to figure one or two or all had something to do with it. I looked into the close-set eyes of the double barrel in the guard’s hands. “Anybody open my box tonight?” I asked him.

  “What box is that?” he said.

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “How should I know?’

  There was no point in swearing at a man, even a dumb shotgun guard with a scattergun in his hands, a scattergun level with your belly.

  “I know,” I told him. “You just watch the boxes. You don’t ask questions.” I wasn’t as cool as I sounded, but I worked at it. Planning the Hot Springs job took a lot of time—the Flynn Brothers weren’t easy to rob—and now the proceeds just up and disappeared. For one reason or other the pickings had been thin the past few months and, damn it to eternal hell, I was looking forward to a good time in New Orleans.

  “I been cleaned out,” I told the guard. “You notice anybody in here tonight might have done it? My box is thirty-seven. You get what I’m telling you?”

  Now the guard was really edgy. He wasn’t all that old, but he shook the shotgun like an old man afraid of losing his job. “Stand right there, don’t do nothing,” he told me in a thin, rattled voice. He rested the shotgun on the bottom bar of the cage, and I could hear a buzzer sounding in the manager’s office when he reached under the desk with his left hand. I hadn’t moved. “Stay where you are,” he warned me.

  The night manager came out of the office sleepy and lemon-faced, a young man with a thin, yellow face on top of a fat body. The waxed mustache that separated his nose from his puckered mouth didn’t make him look anything but foolish. He needed something to improve his fever-sick face, but it wasn’t that mustache.

  I guess I didn’t look like anything special. He looked past me to the guard in the cage. “What is it, Cappy?” he asked. He forgot about his French mustache and frock coat. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  The guard didn’t explain very well.

  “What he means,” I said, “is my box is cleaned out. All the money cleaned out. I was asking Cappy here who might have cleaned it out. Not you, I don’t expect.”

  “I beg your pardon,” the fool said like a talking peacock. I guess he couldn’t think of anything else to say after that. So he said again, “I beg your pardon, sir.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that if you took my money,” I warned him. “I still have my key, and the box is empty. Maybe you can explain?”

  “My dear sir,” he blustered, dull spots of red showing in his yellow face. “I am fully bonded by the Holmes Protection Company. As I told you earlier, we cannot be responsible for the loss of valuables by fire, theft or natural disaster. We take certain precautions—the guard—but our liability does not go beyond that.”

  I wanted to rip off his little mustache like a corn plaster and stuff it down his throat. An explanation was what I wanted, not a sermon. The look on my face took some of the stuffiness out of him.

  “You have had the key in your possession at all times?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I guess you got a point.”

  The manager started to smile, then thought better of it.

  I turned to the guard. “How many people been in here tonight?”

  “Answer the man,” the manager told him.

  “Just three. One of them was Mr. Willis. I know him. He uses the same box here all the time. The other two were together, a man and woman. They were only here a minute or so.”

  “You aren’t getting paid by the word,” I snarled at him. “You can tell us what they looked like. If you ever saw them before.”

  The guard shook his head. “The
y had a key, and they looked all right to me. They opened one of the boxes—I guess right about where Box Thirty-Seven is—and then went out. They took something out of the box. I think they did. Maybe they put something in. I didn’t pay them much heed.”

  My head hurt like one big toothache, and it took some doing to keep my temper. “Look,” I said. “Were they old, young? Skinny or fat? Did they say anything? To you, I mean.”

  “I told you,” the guard complained. “They just came in and went out. I don’t know what they looked like. The woman could have been young. The way she was wrapped up I can’t tell you what she was. The man? The man was older. From the way he moved, not from his face. A big heavy man with a wide hat.”

  A man and a woman. The woman younger than the man. Gertie had called me Carmody when she wasn’t supposed to know my name. That didn’t have to mean much. The police knew who I was. Captain Basso knew who I was. Maybe he told Gertie. I had gone to sleep in Minnie’s four-poster, the strongbox key still in my pocket. Trying to put it all together made my head hurt like a son of a bitch.

  The yellow-faced manager stood by, not saying a word. The guard twisted the scattergun in his knobby hands. “The time?” I said to him. “What time was it?’

  The guard started off about Mr. Willis.

  “The man and woman came in about three,” he said quickly. “About three is right. I was eating my lunch. That’s how I remember.”

  The guard looked pleased with himself. The manager told him to get back to his post. He said to me:

  “I think I better call the police.”

  The last thing I wanted was the police. If I was feeling better the idea might have been funny. “No police,” I said. “I’ll take care of this myself.”

  The manager got some of his starch back, and the yellow face looked me over, decided I wasn’t much. “I’d prefer to call in the police,” he said.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” I said. “You just want to look good. Forget the police. You and the hotel are out of this. Unless you happen to be in it personally. If you are, friend, the police won’t do you any good.”

  The yellow face stiffened with indignation, and I expected him to beg my pardon again.

  “Go on back and go to sleep,” I told him when he didn’t say anything right away. “Could be we’ll have something to talk about later.”

  The manager went into his office and slammed the door, and I went upstairs to get a drink. I sat on the edge of the bed with the glass in my hand, cursing New Orleans to eternal damnation. When I got sick of that I corked the bottle, went down to the street, and rode a trolley back to Queen Gertie’s place on North Franklin. It was close to eight when I got down from the trolley and walked the extra two blocks to the cathouse.

  It was hot, the air full of dust and noise, the street backed up with wagons and buckboards. A teamster who looked like a dressed up gorilla was cursing at an old black woman with a basket of fruit who wouldn’t get out of his way. I crossed the street and went up the steps to Gertie’s place and pulled the bell. The cathouse was quiet, the shades pulled down against the heat. It took two more pulls on the bell to get the door open.

  It was the big black from the night before and there was no expression in his face, no sign that he knew who I was. “We’re closed, mister,” he said. “Today’s Monday and we’re closed. Come back tomorrow.”

  The big bastard tried to close the door. It wasn’t easy to keep it open. I had to use my shoulder hard, and when the door started to close anyway I reached into my side pocket for a .38 and showed it to him.

  He stepped back from the door, and I walked him backward into the hall. I kicked the door shut with my heel, and put the .38 inside the waistband of my pants where I could get at it in a hurry. The houseman had a polishing rag in one hand, and there was a strong smell of wax. The huge shoulders and the gun I knew he was packing didn’t go with polishing the furniture.

  He continued to back away from me. “Stay still,” I said. When he did that, I asked him if he knew anything about a key to a certain strongbox.

  Maybe I didn’t ask him right, or maybe he was dumb. I didn’t think so. The big man was too mean looking to be dumb. The meanness was all in the eyes: the rest of the smooth black face was just that—smooth and black.

  “We’re closed Mondays. We’re open six days but Mondays is closed.” Maybe he thought I was dumb. Maybe he was right, for other reasons. He told me again about Mondays. “Now, sir, you just got to wait till tomorrow. You stay here I just got to summon the police. Miss Gertie ain’t going to like this one bit.”

  “You got a name,” I said. “What might it be?”

  The big man’s dull eyes tried to be as blank as the rest of his shiny face. It must have been an effort because his powerful fingers gathered the polishing-rag into a ball and squeezed it. The voice was kind of high for such a big man. He asked:

  “What you want to know for?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Sam Nails,” he said. “Samuel J. Nails.”

  “I’m Mister Carmody,” I said. “You know anything about my key and my money, Mister Nails? You do recall who I am, Mister Nails? Now what about it?”

  “This is crazy talk, Mister Carmody,” Sam Nails said. “Sure I remember you. You had a good time here. Why, Mister Carmody, it was me carried you from Miss Minnie’s room so you could sleep it off. You ain’t got no cause to complain, sir. Miss Gertie told me to lay out the whiskey and everything. We do right by folks, Mister Carmody.”

  I asked him where Miss Gertie was, where Miss Minnie was.

  “Miss Gertie still asleep,” the black said. “Miss Minnie gone off someplace. The rest of the ladies gone, too. In the summer Miss Gertie let them spend Mondays out by the lake. Miss Gertie got a cottage out there. Nice and cool, they tell me.”

  Samuel J. Nails smiled at me, and he managed to blank out most of the meanness.

  I smiled at him. “Tell Miss Gertie I want to see her. Not later, Mister Nails—right now. Yes, I know you’re closed Mondays, and I should come back tomorrow, but I won’t. Now, Mister Nails.”

  Nails bunched the polishing-rag so tight I expected to see a handful of dust when he unclenched his big hand. The other hand he unclenched had nothing in it. The rag fell to the floor, and the two big hands turned into sledgehammers. Back where I come from a black man can get killed for a lot less than he called me. I didn’t mind ’specially.

  I told him to stay back when he started at me. When he didn’t listen, I pulled the .38 and hit him between the eyes with the thick, shortened barrel. It would have been easier to shoot him than to hit him. I hit him again on both sides of the skull, and that stopped him some but not all the way. The big hands reached for my throat, and I hit him again on top of the skull. That one didn’t stop him either—but it turned his head—and I belted him across the thick band of muscle where the neck joined the head.

  That stopped him but didn’t knock him down. Hands stretched out, clawing, he stood there solid on his feet, the eyes dull but not rolling, and I had to hit him again—once, twice—in the same place before he was ready to fall. There was blood on the face and head and neck and some of it dripped on me when I raised the gun again but didn’t use it. He fell back against a heavy chair and broke it before I had to.

  It was hot and quiet in the hall. Nails might have been dead. I didn’t think so. A bluebottle fly buzzed, and I slapped at it with my left hand, and didn’t hit it. The bluebottle buzzed away, and I listened for the black’s breathing. It was fast and light, peaceful like a man who needs his sleep.

  It was the only sound in the house.

  Chapter Three

  You know how it is when something is wrong. When something—everything—smells and feels wrong. Sometimes you get the bad feeling right away, sometimes it takes a while. Losing the money, knocking down the black, being sick with whiskey and whatever else was in it had sort of blunted me, and I didn’t get the feeling till after I checked the rooms on the secon
d floor.

  Before I got halfway up to the third floor I smelled death. I didn’t smell it: I felt it. There was no smell, but I knew death was up there in the hot, quiet, sweet-smelling gloom. There were no lights burning on the upper floors of the house, and with the shades pulled the air felt thicker and heavier than if the shades were up and the windows were open to let in a breeze.

  I remembered where Minnie’s rooms were. I drew the .38 and cocked it and turned the doorknob, and when the door opened I kicked it open the rest of the way. I went in not knowing what to find. I found nothing when I turned the switch-knob that started the lights. The big four-poster was made up neat as can be, and the closetful of clothes—dresses and gowns—was just as tidy. The bathroom was empty.

  There was only one other door on that floor. The smell of death came through the door. Gertie was in bed—she was on the bed—and she was dead. She wasn’t just dead: she was very dead. There was blood every place, on the floor, on the walls, all over the bed. So much blood had been beaten out of Gertie—she didn’t look fat any more. I knew it was Gertie by the dress, not by the face: there wasn’t much face left. Not much head either—the head was beaten in.

  My boots squelched in blood. I stepped back and wiped off the blood on the carpet, most of it. I didn’t think it would do much good, but I walked around the pool of blood on the floor and pulled out the drawers of the mahogany dressing table placed between the windows. All kinds of truck spilled out—but no money except some foreign coins electro-plated and made into a bracelet. No eleven thousand dollars.

  No eleven thousand dollars in Gertie’s clothes closet. Nor under the bed. No eleven thousand any place that I thought to look, and I looked all over.

  I went back downstairs and rooted through Gertie’s office off the hall, and didn’t find anything. Samuel J. Nails was still sleeping easy in a pool of blood, not a move out of him, and I got out of there fast. The polished stand-up clock tick-tocking inside the door said it was eight-forty-five.