1957 - The Guilty Are Afraid

by James Hadley Chase

  He paused outside a door, rapped and waited. A voice as musical as a foghorn bawled, “Wadja want?”

  Candy gave me a weak smile and lifted his shoulders. He turned the doorknob, opened the door and walked into a small, drab office full of cigar smoke.

  “Lew Brandon, sir.”

  A mountain of a man sat behind a battered desk. He was getting on in years, but he was still in hard physical shape, and there wasn’t much fat on him. His thinning grey hair was slicked down in a cow’s lick over his low forehead. His face was massive, leathery and brutal. He rested two enormous hairy hands on his desk and glared at me while Candy closed the door as if it were made of eggshells and moved silently behind me and leaned against the wall.

  “Brandon?” Katchen said, reached out and viciously stubbed out his cigar. “Huh: the shamus. Yeah, the shamus.” He rubbed his face while he continued to glare at me. “To think we gotta have beetles like you crawling around our streets.” He leaned forward, screwing up his small eyes. “When are you getting out of town, shamus?”

  “I don’t know,” I said mildly. “Within a week I’d say.”

  “Would you? And what the hell are you going to do in this town for a week, shamus?”

  “See the sights, swim, take a girl out and relax generally.”

  He wasn’t expecting this and he hunched his shoulders.

  “Yeah? You weren’t planning to stick your snout into this murder case, were you?”

  “I’ll watch Lieutenant Rankin’s progress with interest,” I said. “I’m sure he can get along fine without my help.”

  Katchen leaned back in his chair, making the back creak.

  “That’s pretty white of you, shamus.” He glared at me for maybe twenty seconds, then went on, “I don’t like a beetle around the place. If I catch up with him I put my foot on him.”

  “I can imagine that, Captain.”

  “Yeah? Don’t kid yourself, shamus, you can pull a fast one on me. You start interfering in this case and you’ll wonder what’s hit you.” He lifted his voice into a bellow and yelled at me: “Understand?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  He showed his teeth in a big, sneering grin.

  “Not a gutty beetle, are you, shamus? Okay, don’t say you haven’t been warned. Keep your nose clean, keep away from me and you might possibly survive. If you ever come into this office again, you won’t forget the experience. Remember that. You put one foot wrong and you’ll be brought in. We have ways of softening beetles, shamus.” His little eyes glittered. “Okay, now you’ve been told and remember you ain’t going to be told again. One step wrong, and in you come, and, shamus, if you do come in, the boys will certainly give you a work out before they kick you into a cell.” He looked at Candy. “Take this yellow-gutted beetle out of here and lose him,” he snarled. “He makes me sick to my stomach even to look at him.”

  Candy pushed himself away from the wall and opened the office door.

  Katchen lifted a huge finger and pointed at me.

  “Keep your snout out of this case or else . . .”

  I took a step to the door, paused and said, “Could I ask a question, Captain?”

  He ran the tip of his tongue over his thick, rubbery lips.

  “What question?”

  “Did Lee Creedy call you up and ask you to talk to me?”

  His eyes narrowed and his great hands turned into fists.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Mr. Creedy hired Sheppey to do a job for him. While doing it Sheppey got killed. Mr. Creedy is anxious to keep that bit of information quiet. He reckons he would be called as a witness and he would have to tell the court just why he hired Sheppey. So he had a little talk to me himself. He produced a thug called Hertz and tried to scare me with him. I was curious to know if Mr. Creedy was losing confidence in his thug and had asked you to strengthen the threat to make sure it would stick.”

  I heard Candy draw in a quick breath.

  Katchen’s face turned the colour of a damson plum. Very slowly he got to his feet. Standing, he looked larger than life: a kind of Boris Karloff nightmare. He moved away from his desk and advanced slowly towards me.

  I waited, not moving, my eyes on his.

  “So there is a little life in you, shamus,” he said, and the words seemed to come through clenched teeth. “Well, here’s something to go on with.”

  His open hand came up and exploded against the side of my face. I saw it coming and rolled with the slap, taking some of the weight out of it, but it was hard enough to make my head ring and send me staggering.

  He waited for me to straighten up, then he thrust his dark, blood-congested face into mine.

  “Go on, shamus,” he said in a low, vicious whisper, “hit me!”

  I was tempted to hang one on his jaw. Very often a guy of his build can’t take a punch on the jaw, but I knew he wanted me to hit him. I knew if I even threatened to hit him I’d be in a cell in seconds flat with three or four of his biggest men to keep me company. I didn’t move. The side of my face where he had hit me burned hotly.

  We stared at each other for a long moment, then he stepped back and yelled at Candy, “Get this punk out of here before I kill him!”

  Candy grabbed my arm and swung me out of the room and pulled the door shut. He let go of me and stepped back, his red, weathered face angry and scared.

  “I told you, didn’t I, you damned fool?” he said. “Now you’ve really started something. Get the hell out of here!”

  I touched my face.

  “I’d like to meet that ape up a dark alley. So long, Sergeant. At least I don’t have to work for him.”

  I walked down the passage, through the double swing doors and on to the street.

  It was nice to see the sun was still shining and the men and women coming back from the beach were still looking like human beings and still acting like them too.

  Chapter 4

  I

  Sam’s Cabin, at the unfashionable end of St. Raphael’s promenade, was a big wooden shack of a place, built out over the sea on steel piers.

  There was a parking lot and though it was only five minutes to six o’clock, there were some thirty cars already parked, and not a Cadillac nor a Clipper among them.

  The parking attendant was a fat, elderly man, who smiled cheerfully as he told me that the parking was free.

  I walked the length of the narrow jetty and into the bar room. The bar ran the width and one side of the room. There was also a snack bar equipped with twelve electric spits, which at this moment were busily roasting twelve fat chickens.

  About eight or nine men were propping themselves up against the bar, drinking beer and dipping into the dill pickle bowl.

  Beyond open double doors at the far end of the room I could see a railed verandah, shaded from the evening sun by a green awning. There were tables out there, and that’s where the crowd was. As I was hoping to do some serious talking with Fulton, I decided I’d stay inside and away from the crowd. I went over to the doors and looked the crowd over to make sure he hadn’t already arrived, then, not seeing him, I picked a corner table in the bar room by a big open window and sat down.

  A waiter came over, wiped the table and nodded at me. I told him to bring me a bottle of Black Label, some ice and two glasses.

  A few minutes after six o’clock Tim Fulton came in. He was wearing a pair of baggy grey flannel trousers and an open-neck, blue shirt. He carried his jacket over his shoulder. He looked around, saw me and grinned. Then he came over, his eyes on the bottle of Black Label.

  “Hey, there, buster,” he said. “So you’ve got the flag waving already? Couldn’t you wait for me?”

  “The bottle’s not open yet,” I said. “Sit down. How’s it feel to be a free man?”

  He blew out his cheeks.

  “You don’t know anything until you’ve been through what I’ve been through. I should have my head examined for staying so long with him.” He flicked the bottle with his finger
nail. “You reckoning to uncork this or do we just sit and admire it? “

  I poured him a drink, dropped a chunk of ice into his glass, then made myself one. We touched glasses as boxers will touch gloves and nodded to each other. We drank.

  After my interview with Creedy and then with Katchen, the ice-cold whisky certainly hit a spot. We lit cigarettes, sank further down in the basket chairs and grinned at each other.

  “Pretty nice, huh?” Fulton said. “If there’s one thing I like better than anything else it’s to sit where I can listen to the sea and drink good whisky. I don’t reckon a man could wish for anything nicer. Okay, there are times when a woman can take the place of pretty well anything, but when a guy wants to relax he doesn’t want a woman. I’ll tell you why: women talk: whisky doesn’t. This is a bright idea of yours, buster.”

  I said I was full of bright ideas.

  “I’ve another bright idea,” I went on. “After we’ve had a few drinks, it might be an idea to try some of that chicken cooking there.”

  “Yeah. Those birds are the best on this stretch of coast,” Fulton said. “Make no mistake about that. Okay, you can go to Alfredo’s, the Carlton, the Blue Room, or if you can get in, even the Musketeer Club. They serve chicken too. They give it to you with five waiters, silver forks and orchids. The bill will knock your right eye out. Here, they just throw it at you, but, brother, is it good. And it’s cheap.” He finished his drink, put down his glass and sighed. “I come here twice a week. Sometimes I bring my girl; sometimes I come alone. It makes me laugh to think of all the rich suckers going to the shakedown joints and paying five times what I pay and getting something not so good. The joke is none of them would dare be seen here because their rich pals would imagine they were economizing, and in this town, to economize is a deadly sin.”

  I made him another drink and freshened mine to give him the illusion that I was drinking level with him.

  “But, and there’s always a but,” he said, shaking his head, “this place is beginning to slip. A year ago we got guys and dolls in here who were friendly, nice and homely. Now the tough boys have discovered it. They are as fond of stuffing their bellies as I am, so they come. We’ve got this gambling ship anchored out in the bay: that attracts them the way rotten meat attracts flies. Sam’s worried. I was talking to him only the other week. He tells me the people who made his business are fading away and these tough boys are taking their place. There’s nothing he can do about it. Last month there was a fight here and a knife was flashed. Sam got it under control quick, but that’s the kind of thing that’ll scare people away. He reckons if there’s another knife fight in here, he’ll be owning just another racketeer’s restaurant.”

  I said it was bad and looked over at the group of men standing at the bar. They were big and flashily dressed, with the hard watchful eyes of men who don’t care how they make their money so long as they make it.

  “Bookies,” Fulton said, following my gaze. “They’re okay so long as they stay sober. The boys who cause the trouble don’t show until it’s dark.” He lit another cigarette and pushed the pack over to me. “Well, how did you get on with the old man: lovely character, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. That long room of his and his searchlight eyes. I’d hate to have to work for him.”

  “You said it, brother! I’ve got me a nice little job now driving an old lady to the shops, holding her shopping bag and generally helping to make life easier for her. She’s a nice old thing, and, after Creedy, I reckon she’s going to do my ulcer a lot of good.”

  “Talking about nice old ladies,” I said, “who is this character Hertz?”

  Fulton grimaced.

  “What are you trying to do—spoil my evening? Have you run into him?”

  “He was with Creedy when I blew in. He struck me as a pretty tough egg. Who is he? What’s Creedy doing mixing with a type like that?”

  “He takes care of people,” Fulton said. “Creedy employs him now and then as a bodyguard.”

  “What’s Creedy want with a bodyguard?”

  Fulton shrugged.

  “These rich punks get inflated ideas. They think people are going to shoot or stab them. Have a bodyguard and people imagine you’re important: window dressing, like the signs in his parking lot. Big-shotting himself to death. But you don’t want to get the wrong idea about Creedy. He’s tough. Maybe he doesn’t look like it, but he’s as tough and as dangerous as any of the gun-and-knife punks who come in here. He practically runs this town. It was his idea to have a gambling ship in the bay. He reckoned it would encourage the tourists and it certainly did. He couldn’t care less if it also brought the tough boys as well. He owns half the ship anyway, and takes half the profits.”

  “And Hertz is as tough as he looks?”

  Fulton nodded.

  “He certainly is. Creedy has no use for a phony. When he hires a tough guy that guy has to be tough. Hertz is that and more. He scares me. I reckon he has a bat in his attic.”

  If what he was saying was true, there didn’t seem much to choose from between Katchen and Hertz.

  “Did you read about the guy who was killed out at Bay Beach this morning?” I asked.

  “I did see something in the evening paper,” Fulton said. “Why bring that up?”

  “He was my partner. I have an idea he called on Creedy during the past few days and I’m wondering if you saw him.”

  Fulton showed interest.

  “Come to see the old man? Well, maybe I did. I was on the gate most of this week. What was he like?”

  I described Sheppey carefully. He had flaming red hair and I was pretty sure if Fulton had seen him he wouldn’t have forgotten him, and I was right.

  “Sure,” he said. “I remember him: big guy with red hair. That’s right. Logan passed him through. I was on the barrier and I didn’t get his name.”

  “Would you swear to seeing him? This is important. You might have to, and in a court of law.”

  Fulton finished his drink, then said, “Of course I’d swear to it. He came last Tuesday: a big, redheaded guy with a crew cut, wearing a grey flannel suit and driving a Buick convertible.”

  That was good enough. The car was a clincher. So I had been right. Jack had been to see Creedy. Now I had to find out why, and that wouldn’t be easy.

  “You say he was murdered?” Fulton said, looking curiously at me.

  “Yes. The police think he was fooling around with some thug’s girl and the thug fixed him. Could be: he was over fond of women.”

  “Well, what do you know? You had to go to the cops about it?”

  “I went. That Captain Katchen is quite something, isn’t he? Belsen missed a great boss in him.”

  “You’re right. Every so often he comes out to see Creedy: about four times a year. It’s my guess he comes for his rake—off. You’d be surprised at the number of nightclubs and high-toned brothels that stay open because Katchen looks the other way.”

  “What are nightclubs and brothels to do with Creedy?”

  “I tell you he owns most of this town. Maybe he doesn’t collect the gravy direct from the rats who run these places, but indirectly he gets the rents, and Katchen gets his cut.”

  “He’s married, isn’t he?”

  “Who—Creedy? As far as I know he’s been married four times, but it could be more. His present wife is Bridgette Bland, the ex-movie star. Ever seen her?”

  “Once, I think. If I remember rightly she was quite a looker.”

  “She still is, but she can’t hold a candle to her stepdaughter. Now there’s a beaut, about the loveliest dish I’ve seen, and I’ve seen quite a few in my day.”

  “Does she live at home?”

  Fulton shook his head.

  “Not now: she used to, but the other one couldn’t take it. Whenever the old man threw a party, Margot, that’s the daughter, took all the limelight, and the other one was left out in the cold. She didn’t like it. They were always quarrelling, so Margot packed and cleared out
. She has an apartment on Franklyn Boulevard. From what I hear the old man misses her. I miss her too. She was the one bright light in that lousy place. Bridgette gave me a pain: just like Creedy: never happy, always moaning, stays up all night and sleeps all day.”

  I was learning things. We had the evening before us and there was no point in rushing at it. I turned the conversation to the coming world championship fight and let Fulton sound off on why the Champ couldn’t lose. From that we went on to ball games and finally to the old, old standby: women.

  It was around nine o’clock by the time we had finished the bottle of Scotch. The sun had gone down, making a great red splash across the sky, and it was now dark. I waved to the waiter, and after a while he came over.

  “Let’s have two chicken dinners with all the trimmings,” I said.

  He nodded and went away.

  Both Fulton and I were a little high by now, but pleasantly high, as, after the first quick rush, we had been taking the Scotch slowly, which is the way good Scotch should be taken.

  I looked through the open window at the lights of St. Raphael City. It looked a pretty nice place from where I was sitting.

  “Does Mrs. Creedy get along all right with Creedy?” I asked.

  Fulton shrugged.

  “No one could get along with him,” he said. “Anyway, he’s too busy making money to bother with women. She gets her fun elsewhere.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “Well, the current favourite is a husky, curly-haired hunk of meat who calls himself Jacques Thrisby. He’s a French Canadian.”

  I became aware that a man had moved up to our table.

  For a moment I thought it was the waiter bringing our food. I was looking out of the window, listening to Fulton talk, so my reflexes were a little slow; besides, the Scotch had made me just that woolly in the brain.

  Then I heard Fulton catch his breath sharply, the way only a very frightened man will gasp, and I looked quickly around.