Tough Bullet

by Peter McCurtin

  “You think Minnie and George killed Gertie?” I asked Basso. “George was in town on some kind of business. Could be that Minnie saw a clear chance to get hold of some big money. Enough to send the tax collector packing. The guard at the hotel did say a man and a woman opened my strongbox.”

  Basso took off his hard hat, touched his bandaged head, gave me a mean look, and put the hat on again. It was kind of embarrassing to see the bandages. Basso said, “The guard said a young woman and a big heavyset man probably older. George here looks about twenty-four. Not tall and thin as a rail. Anyway, how would Minnie know about the eleven thousand?”

  “Maybe Gertie told her,” I suggested.

  Basso shook his head. “Not Gertie. Gertie never gets friendly with the girls.”

  I had a thought. “Would she tell Sam Nails? Would she have?”

  “It’s possible,” Basso said slowly, eyeing me hard and not just because of the hurt in his head. “Yes, sir, it’s possible she did. That buck’s been with her a long time. As long as I knew her. Longer than that, I’d say. Got him out of the Parish Prison. Something like that, the best I remember.”

  “Well?” I said.

  “That’s all wet, Carmody. The black didn’t do it. Gertie was good to that boy.”

  “And they say Abe Lincoln liked actors.”

  Basso got up and walked around, and he had to step over the dead man to do it. Every time he turned his back on me I got ready to shoot him. But Basso was the kind of man who did one thing at a time. He was thinking now; maybe he’d try to kill me later. He stepped back over the dead man and put his wide backside on the edge of the bed.

  “It’s still all wet,” he said, not as sure as the words meant to be. “Now if Gertie was twenty years younger and it was rape along with murder—sure it could be the black. And even that won’t wash. You ever hear of a houseman in a cathouse having to rape anybody? Gertie had plenty of colored girls for customers liked dark meat.”

  I thought this new team of detectives, Carmody & Basso, was taking too long to come to the point. Any kind of point. “What’s all this bullshit about rape? Why couldn’t Samuel J. Nails decide to snag that eleven thousand for himself? The big bastard was smart. I know that and don’t tell me he wasn’t. Gertie could have told him—you said so yourself. They’d been together a long time, and she could have mentioned it. The way you see it, she was good to Nails. Gertie saw it that way, too. But what about Nails himself?”

  Basso said, “The black always looked okay to me. He had money in the bank. Some money. Not a lot. Enough for a black. I checked on him myself a while back. I tell you, the black was doing fine.”

  I wasn’t one bit sure that Nails killed Gertie. I said to Basso, “What were you doing when you were forty?”

  Basso didn’t put anything together, but he answered. “The same as now,” he said. “Chief of Detectives.”

  “You weren’t a forty-year-old towel boy and bouncer in a whorehouse. That’s what Nails was. Nails was forty, give or take some.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Carmody, where you from anyway? Nails was a black!”

  I started to put a smoke together. Basso said he didn’t want one. Didn’t smoke or drink. I began to wish I hadn’t given back his gun. “All right,” I said. “You’re the detective.”

  Basso took out a toothpick and chewed on it. It was a gold toothpick attached to his watch chain by another smaller chain. He snapped at the gold toothpick like a dog on a rat hunt.

  I waited.

  Finally, he said, “Could be. You never know in this job. Times change—maybe. The black could have done it. You were out cold, first in the whore’s bed.”

  Basso put a mean grin on his face. “You were out, not able to do a thing. I guess you aren’t so tough.”

  No answer was called for.

  “Then the black carried you to that other room where you woke up. You slept there most of the night. That gave the black all the time he needed to kill Gertie, before or after the money was taken from the strongbox. The shotgun guard said he didn’t get a clear look at the man who came in with the woman. Just he was big, older than the woman, and with a big hat down over his face.”

  “Minnie?” I asked

  “Sure looks that way, Carmody. She was there and the black was there. Gertie, say, told the black about the money, about you. What bothers me is why this woman, whore or not, would team up with a black? The black was doing all right for himself and the whore, the way you tell it, wasn’t interested in a goddamned thing. Just lay there like a dog in a basket. Why would they all of a sudden up and kill Gertie and rob you?”

  “Gertie was handy—that’s all. What they really wanted was the money. I was handy, too. They figured—somebody figured—how to take the money and sic the whole New Orleans Police Department on poor old Carmody. The law would kill me or catch me or I’d run back to Texas and keep going. The law would have me down on the books for a killing and they’d have the money. Only they robbed and framed the wrong man.”

  His feet clear of the floor, Basso tapped the dead man in the side of the head with his boot. Nothing mean was in the way he did it. Basso had seen a lot of dead men on dirty floors. The Chief of Detectives was thinking hard. He tapped while he thought, and not being dead long enough to stiffen up, George Verrier’s head rolled a bit.

  “Why would she kill her own brother?” Basso wanted to know. “That is, if he is her brother, and she is mixed up in this, and if she did kill him. What about that, Detective Carmody? I know, I know. George here wanted some kind of share of the money, and the whore killed him. Her own brother.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Basso stood up and groaned. “We’re not doing any good holding a wake over this dead meat.”

  “What’s the plan?” I enquired.

  “Plan!” Basso was fed up. “The plan, cowboy, is to get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter Eight

  We went back downstairs after Basso made a worse wreck of the room than it was. Nothing turned up. Nothing in the drawers of the rickety dresser, no sign even that the bed had been slept in. Except for his name and that he was dead, George Verrier had no more information to give.

  The Hotel La Hache didn’t have a telephone. Basso broke some more furniture trying to find one. He started slapping the unconscious fat man, and I had to explain why he was sleeping so sound.

  Basso’s temper came and went all the time. Now it went. “I’ll wake the greaser,” he said. He found a bottle of tequila under the desk and knocked off the neck. I didn’t have time to ask him to save some for me before he dumped it over the fat man’s head, broken glass and all.

  When the smell reached his hairy nose, the fat man began to mutter. “That’s the boy,” Basso said encouragingly. “Open those big brown eyes, you filthy bastard.”

  Reaching down, Basso pinched the inside of the fat man’s thigh, a painful place. The fat face quivered. Basso did it again. There was a yelp, and the fat man woke up. He gave out with some long Spanish curses. He doubled his fat fists, and Basso backhanded him across the face.

  It was not a good day for that taco eater, and he knew it for sure when he saw who was doing the slapping. I could understand why he closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

  Basso knew how to keep him awake and interested. It’s hard not to notice when somebody is doing his damnedest to break your thumb. Letting up on the thumb, Basso hit him again.

  A trickle of blood ran down the fat man’s chin, but the smile he gave Basso was beautiful. Like a reject from the poor farm trying to butter up his hard-hearted kinfolk. When he looked past Basso and saw me, he started to holler bloody murder. “Arrest this man, captain. He try to kill me!”

  Basso made a fist and got ready to deliver it. The hollering was turned off like water from a spigot. He smiled at Basso’s fist. I guess smiling came easy for him.

  “The girl upstairs,” Basso started, not lowering the fist. “Let’s hear every little thi
ng you know, Pancho.” The Mexican didn’t object to being called Pancho, not by Basso. “When she checked in. When she checked out. The visitors she had. The way everybody looked and what they said. You know the routine, Pancho.”

  A dribble of tequila was left in the broken bottle, and Pancho asked if he could have it. Basso said he could have it in the face.

  Pancho hurried up. “She check in about noontime, captain. By herself. No bag. No nothing. I make her pay in cash in advance.”

  The Mexican smiled. “I think it kind of funny she had no bag.”

  “I’ll bet you did,” Basso commented.

  “The man come to see her couple of hour later,” the Mexican went on. “Nice looking young friend of the lady, he say. I think it’s okay and let him go up. I don’t know what happen after that. I guess I get tired and take a siesta. I don’t seen nobody go in or out. Not till this gringo show up.”

  Basso slapped him.

  “Be polite, Pancho,” he said. “Always be polite when you’re talking to me.”

  Pancho never ran cut of smiles. “Sure, captain. For you I’m all the time polite.”

  Basso took his solid backside away from the edge of the desk. He hooked his thumbs through the armholes of his vest and drummed his fingers on his chest. The gold Chief of Detectives badge was pinned to the vest, over his heart. The badge meant a lot to the Mexican. He kept looking at it.

  “You sure that’s all, Pancho?” Basso asked in that slow dead voice. “Try to be sure before you answer.”

  “Sure I’m sure,” the Mexican said.

  “You’re really sure?” Basso asked again. “Because that nice young feller is lying upstairs with a knife in his chest. I’d hate to hang you for that.”

  This time Pancho had to work to produce a smile. He rubbed the back of his neck where my gun had bounced off the muscle. “Honest, Captain,” he said. “A stack of Bibles, I have no part in this. I sleep like I say. I tell you everything.”

  “Except how many times the woman was here before,” Basso said. “How many times was that? And who with?” She ever come here with a black, Pancho?”

  The Mexican looked sick. “You know I don’t run that kinda place, captain. Not a flop for no blacks. You beat me all you want, and I still say no black come here with a white lady. I do a lot of stuff, but I don’t do that. Beat me—I still say the same.”

  Basso put his hands in his pockets and jingled some coins. “Beat you, old pal? After all the years we been having these little visits? Why, Pancho, don’t you know I like Mexicans.”

  I had seen many the mean bastard do his stuff, but Basso was a real expert. The city trash he dealt with never knew what he was going to do next. The Mexican knew Basso better than most, I guess. He got set to take another belt in the face. And he got it.

  Now that he’d used up his bad feeling on the Mexican, Basso was in good humor again. “Sorry for the rough stuff, Pancho. You know how it is.”

  “That’s okay,” the Mexican said.

  I followed Basso out into the street.

  “We got to find a telephone,” he said, all business now, a real badge-toter.

  It didn’t look like he’d pried loose much information from the Mexican. I said so.

  “The black was there all right,” Basso told me. “Not today—we know that—but other times. How many times doesn’t count. The thing is, he was there with the woman. Pancho was scared to admit it. Even in New Orleans renting rooms to buck blacks and white women could get him lynched. I could beat it out of him if there was time. No point in that. Didn’t you see the greaser’s face when I asked him? The whore and the black used the hotel. I guess they had to pay plenty.”

  Basso was so pleased with himself he began to whistle. Where we were was the bad end of Girod Street, where it runs into the river, and the drunks and the pickpockets and the rat-faced pimps got out of Basso’s way when they saw him coming.

  “Why aren’t you in jail, Mikey?” he yelled at a one-eyed weasel in a cloth cap.

  “Just got out, captain,” Mikey answered, stepping off the sidewalk. “Couldn’t spare a handout, could you?”

  Basso dug out two-bits and flipped it into the middle of the street. The one-eyed man ran after it, blessing Basso and all his descendants.

  “You should have been a detective, Carmody,” Basso said. “It’s a fine dirty life.”

  A big brassy saloon made a lot of noise down the street. The name of it was Big Bill Gately’s Bar & Restaurant. A powerful smell of pickled pig’s feet came out into the street and, I guess, that took care of the restaurant end.

  With me behind him, Basso walked in like he owned the place. That was the way he walked and talked, and it seemed to work most of the time. The man behind the bar saw Basso and tried to make a run for the back room. Basso was quick for his size. He grabbed a beer mug off a table inside the door and used it to break the big mirror behind the bar.

  The bartender stopped running and turned around. He wasn’t half as good at smiling as the Mexican. But he did say, “Nice to see you, captain.”

  Basso was still in good humor. “Just want to borrow your telephone, Jimmy. Where would that be?”

  While the bartender was telling Basso where it was, Big Bill Gately, who was more big-bellied than big, came out of his office. Gately was wearing a yellow-check suit and a sour look. Having his mirror smashed didn’t go down too well with him. An old bare-knuckles prizefighter was what he looked like—the lumpy scars over the eyes, the thick ears, and flat nose. I guess he still thought he was pretty tough.

  “There was no call for that, Basso,” he said in a Yankee accent.

  Basso smiled at him. “Now you know that’s not true, Big Bill. Anything I do is called for. And you know why? Because I feel like it. Wouldn’t you say that’s a fact?”

  Big Bill didn’t want to back down. After a while, still sour-faced, he did. Yeah, he said, what Basso said was a fact.

  We went into Gately’s office. Basso told Gately to go and water the whiskey. While he was waiting for Central to ring him through to police headquarters, I stuck my head out the door and told the bartender to fetch some whiskey. Gately had gone to sit with some poker players. The man brought the whiskey and said it was on the house. I had the feeling it would be.

  “Hello, Frank,” Basso said into the telephone. “Yeah, Basso. Wait a minute, Frank.”

  Basso told me to close the door.

  “Fine, Frank,” Basso said. “What I want you to do. Check the files and see what we got on a black name of Samuel J. Nails. Did a stretch in the Parish Prison a long time ago. You’ll have to dig back some. While you’re at it, check on a whore goes by the name of Minnie Haha. Yeah, Frank, just like the poem only this is two words.”

  Basso spelled the goddamned silly name. “The real name is Frances Verrier. You won’t find anything. Check it anyway. Do it right away. I’ll wait.”

  I finished the first drink of whiekey and looked at Basso. He was having one hell of a good time. He said if the whiskey wasn’t good he’d kick Gately’s Yankee ass back to Boston.

  “Look, Basso,” I said. “You don’t have to put on a show for me. I’m convinced. You’re a big man in New Orleans and tough as a mule steak. A mosquito bites you—he dies. Fair enough?”

  Basso rubbed his wide belly with both hands.

  “Maybe I was overdoing it,” he agreed. “I just wanted you to be sure of your man. Nobody ever outsmarted Ned Basso.”

  “Fine,” I told him. “The same goes for me.”

  “By Christ, you’re all right, Carmody. You ought to be working for me. With a man like you to back me up I could own this town.”

  I said I thought he did.

  A whistle came out of the telephone. “Yeah, Frank,” Basso said, listening while the other bull at headquarters said his piece.

  I drank some more whiskey.

  “That’s all on the black and nothing on the whore. Neither name. Right, Frank, I got it,” Basso said.

&nbs
p; “Let’s go,” he said to me.

  On the way out, Gately came over and asked Basso if there was anything else he could do. Whiskey had put some courage back in the old prize fighter’s flabby frame.

  “Give me regards to your lovely wife,” Basso said.

  Gately looked offended. “My wife’s dead.”

  “That’s Nature’s way of telling her to slow down,” Basso said, in better form than ever.

  Outside, I asked Basso where in hell we were going.

  The big bull rubbed his hands together like a kid about to attack an apple pie.

  “Check your gun, Carmody,” he said. “You and me are going to Blacktown.”

  My gun was checked enough. Basso checked his.

  The thought crossed my mind that Captain Ned Basso was more than a little crazy. You know what he said? He said, “This way to the fireworks.”

  But that was all right. I felt a little crazy myself.

  Chapter Nine

  We walked up from the river to the nearest trolley line. Basso stood out on the tracks and stopped the first horse car to come along. “Right to the end of the line—no stops, Mac,” he told the driver. “Official business, get her moving.”

  The trolley operator knew Basso and wasn’t about to argue. “Everybody off, folks,” Basso yelled at the riders. “No back talk—get the hell off.”

  An old French gent with a spike beard shook his stick at Basso—at me, too. Basso told him something in pig French. He climbed down quick enough after that.

  It was getting dark outside, and the dirty streets looked better with the lights coming on. The driver laid the whip on the animals, and the car rolled along the street tracks about as fast as a man can run. The signs said we were on Rampart Street.

  Basso rested his big feet on another seat and rubbed the insteps, groaning as he did it. “It’s true about policemen’s feet,” he informed me. “You want to hear something interesting?” he asked me, dragging it out from habit, always trying to needle the other feller. “You know where the black was from originally? From the same town as your sweetheart—St. Phail. The arrest file didn’t say what he did there, but that’s where he’s from. Born there in 1854. That would make him thirty-seven or -eight. Arrested here in ’74 and did two years in jail for maiming another black. After that he worked for Gertie.”