E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  When the job of sculpture was completed, he went back to the Iberville, and directly to the receiving room.

  Street sounds masked his approach. He vaulted to the dock, and jumped down to the floor; he passed the pigeon-holed cabinet on the wall before Moses Wilson noticed him.

  The old colored man started, slid off the stool which was in front of the desk on which the record book was opened; apparently he had been digging into the list of entries which showed the routing of luggage to the various guests, in and outbound.

  “Moses, ever see one of these?” Cragin thrust out the image of Frosty Burnett. “Pin jabs right where the slugs got him.”

  “Um. Uh. Yassuh. I see it. Ain’t never seen it befo’!”

  And he recoiled. He never wanted to see it again!

  “Montgomery Diggs put him in the trunk. He’s the conjure man. He made this ouanga. His fingerprints are on it. The same ones we found on the book where he signed for Miss Dalli’s trunk.” While this was on the fantasy side, Moses would not be up on the facts of fingerprint technique. Cragin went on, “Diggs put voodoo on Miss Dalli, and Diggs killed Mr. Burnett. And there’s more of the same going to happen to the rest of us. To everyone who knows anything about Diggs.”

  “Naw-suh! Ain’t Diggs. He got a good heart. He help Andy Jackson Cheney.”

  Cragin had expected some such answer, so he went into his act. His face twisted terrifyingly. He clutched his side, and gasped, “Someone’s knifing me. Lord—”

  He set the ouanga on the desk. Mose’s eyes widened. “White folks, get away from me; Ah don’ know nuthin’.”

  Cragin relaxed, as though the pain had left him. “You’re next, Moses. He’s getting me because I know a little, he’ll get you because you know more. Talk quick, or it’s too late.”

  “Naw-suh, naw-suh, I don’ know nuthin’.”

  “Moses, I want to know about—some other conjure man—to help me—against Diggs.”

  “Ain’t nobody kin help you. White folks, git away from me, I got a family.”

  “All the worse. He’ll hurt them. He’ll—ooooow!”

  Cragin lurched, groaned, staggered. He caught the pigeon-hole cabinet for support. It tore from the wall, as he had expected it to. The crash made Moses yell. Cragin produced the home-made ouanga he had palmed: a black man, with white hair, and a long, kinked pin thrust through the stomach.

  “See what he hid here for you? He’s after you already! Tell me—I’ll get him—before—something happens—to me.” That did it. Moses needed an ally. He was too flustered to stop and think that voodoo rarely if ever touches white folks.

  He blurted out, “Munkgomery Diggs, he live right near my sister, she done said to me, what kind of funny nigger rented de house nex’ door? Always going in, but ain’t nobody ever seen him coming out.

  “And when she told me what he look like and when he come home, I knowed it was Diggs. So I asked Diggs, what fo’ y’all living alone instead of boarding with colored folks? And he told me he was a conjure man. And now he’s fixing to finish me.”

  “Where’s he live?”

  “White folks, I ain’t saying. Put me in de jail house ain’t hurting me, it ain’t helping. I jest ain’t saying.”

  It was not at all clear whether Moses Wilson, shocked by the sight of the home-made ouanga, had blurted out more than he would otherwise have revealed, and now was making a desperate effort to pretend that he had not talked; or whether by some African quirk, Moses felt that he would not be suspected if Cragin, instead of going directly to the voodoo man’s address, had to fumble around a while.

  “Naw-suh, I ain’t saying!”

  And this time, he fairly screamed the protest. With agility incredible in a man his age, Moses took off with a leap and a bound; he seemed to skim the shipping dock. Landing beyond its further edge, he raced down the alley.

  A horn blared. Tires squealed. There was a hollow thump-thud; the sound of fenders and hood hurling a man. As Cragin clambered to the dock—his leg played him tricks and delayed him—a cab driver shouted, “Mister, you saw it! He ran right out in front of me, the dumb—”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  Moses lay in a huddle. Blood came from his nose and mouth and ears. Whether skull fracture or injuries to the trunk, the old man would not be saying anything for hours, for days, if ever. Cragin gave the driver his name and stepped to the baggage room phone to call the doctor. Then Cragin cleared out. There was nothing he could do for Moses Wilson.

  Wherever Diggs lived, it was certain that he would not return to the house. Finding the man was now a police job. It would require the slow, patient effort of police routine. Questioning Wilson’s wife or his sister would be a tough task; that the old man had bounded right into the path of a cab would be taken as conclusive proof that the Mysterious Montgomery Diggs had arranged the accident as a warning.

  The hotel’s clerical staff had long since checked out. The files were locked, and there would be no chance to get Wilson’s address and to talk to his wife before she heard of the calamity.

  Cragin took his time about dressing. It felt funny to wear a dinner jacket. The lingering smell of moth balls made him think of the first uniform equipment the QM supply sergeant had issued. The valet had done a lousy job of pressing and spotting. These irritating little details, together with the day’s madness, made him almost homesick for barracks.

  War, after all, was real, and you could understand it, whereas Nedra’s existence was the wildest fantasy. What made it even more unreal was the caress in her voice, the old time friendliness which had survived four years of Hollywood. But despite those flashes of her real self, she was an institution, not a woman. While he had always known that such must be the case, this, was the first time the realization had been beaten home, hammered home.

  As fumbling with the unfamiliar bow tie made him break into a sweat, he muttered, wearily, “Oh, to hell with it, I been a Grade-A sap! I read her letter and blow my top, it is a wonder I am not being groomed up for a special court.”

  The day’s tension had exhausted Cragin more than Tunisia’s nastiest shooting battles. The leg and the ribs he had considered all good again were beginning to remember their bullet drillings; the three missing toes, wherever they were, seemed to be wanting to come home again. Captain Howes was probably right about its taking a long time to shake off the effects of having been shot up. Maybe one does need rehabilitation.

  Then stubbornness took command. If he cracked a case, if he got Nedra to carry on with her schedule of appearances, he would prove that he was still good, still had a real bounce. And Nedra needed rehabilitation, needed it worse than any soldier! Come to think of it, bombing and machine-gunning were duck soup compared to a star’s existence. A soldier gets from thirty minutes to maybe ten or twenty days of hell, and then he’s headed for a rest camp, or maybe to a rehabilitation center—a star had to take it day and night, year after year, till she cracked up or retired.

  So he straightened up, and the Cragin grin came back, and his shoulders squared off.

  Finding a cab was not too difficult, but getting the man to take off for Jefferson Parish, where New Orleans plays, proved a chore. He wouldn’t turn a wheel until he found four others who were bound for the night clubs and gambling dumps on the other side of the parish line.

  “Look here, Mac,” the driver told him, “the army can draft more troops when the old ones wear out, nice new ones, too, but you should see the kind of rubber I’m getting, when, if, and as.”

  Cragin made a burping sound. “Civilian life is cruel as hell.”

  The man eyed Cragin, started to say something, then didn’t say it, until a minute later, he muttered, “Look here, Mac, I’da been over there, too, but they wouldn’t have me.”

  Club Montalban’s parking lot was jammed. In the discreetly dimmed-out area, long cars crouched like prehistoric mo
nsters. The club was jammed. Music wailed and sobbed and thumped and pounded. It was good to hear. Civilians lead a dog’s life, they have to let their hair down, Cragin told himself. I wonder if I can dance with missing toes.

  Lazily sweeping fans drove gusts of cigarette smoke and the savor of wine and cosmetics through the doors. Something had happened to the exhaust blowers, and they wouldn’t be replaced for the duration. Dance-floor dust hovered in the air.

  The lights were dim and eerie. They made an unreal splendor of bare shoulders and of white shirt fronts. Cragin handed Nedra’s card to the captain, and followed him to the ringside where Achille Meraux and the big politicos and their ladies chinned themselves at an orchid-plastered table. He did not see Nedra, nor Sinclair Boyles. Ignoring the place which was indicated he headed for Meraux’s spot.

  “You look like you got red ants on you, Achille.”

  “My God, she is driving me nuts.”

  “Where is she? The mike ain’t out yet, the floor show’s not on yet, what’s eating at you?”

  “She’s safe, only she says she’ll bite my heart out if I don’t let her alone to relax for a while. And when she gets out of my sight, I—my God, do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, you’ll be out of a job! Where’s she safe?”

  “Go through that door—there’s a patio—”

  Cragin had not been in Club Montalban since its remodeling, just a week before Pearl Harbor. So he listened. “You can go in, she didn’t say not to let you in, the public’s barred, go and watch her.”

  “I’ll save your job, Frenchy. It’d be hell if they had to rehabilitate you!”

  He chuckled. Meraux was all right. A job is a job, whether it’s, soldiering or managing. Ease up, don’t go sour!

  He found Nedra in a pergola. Fountain spray, blued by synthetic moonlight, swirled about in misty glamour; the light played on the iridescent gown which had uncovered murder. It made her a length of shimmering splendor, it brought curious shade out of her dark hair and her splendid eyes. And her make-up, keyed to such light, made her glow, instead of making her weird.

  “You oughta be spanked, till your nose bleeds,” he said, and planted himself in a chair beside her. “Achille’s about wild.”

  “Cliff, I had to beg off. Right to the last minute. If I were anything remotely human, I couldn’t be here. Not after that.”

  The misery in her eyes, cheered and warmed him. She was human! He wasn’t a sap, after all. She was as human as Sergeant Blaise, who had grenaded and bayonetted enough Nazis to fill a dozen meat wagons, and then got morbid about his cocker spaniel, back home. Was meat rationing going to hurt the pooch?

  “So I butted in.”

  She caught his hand. “Cliff, I’m glad. I am so filled up, you’re the only one I could stand. It takes me back years—”

  He snorted. “Years! I’m older’n you, by plenty.”

  But the misery burned in her eyes. No, it didn’t burn; they were like dead, craters of the moon.

  “Honey,” he said, “did you—I mean, was he really the one and only—I mean, Frosty—Lord, I’ve felt lousy, thinking of having socked him.”

  “It was horrible, seeing him, but not the way—the way you mean.”

  Then it was, after all, just gossip. This time, he could believe her she was now a woman, and not an institution which had to be careful about being queued. And that did things to Cragin.

  From beyond the door which, separated the patio from the main floor, music bawled and brayed and blared. The drummer was going wild. The sound intoxicated Cragin. Rather, it stepped up what Nedra’s words had set in motion. He caught her in his arms.

  The quick move startled her. She rose, drew back, then yielded to his embrace. He kissed her, and for moments, she snuggled in his arms. Her perfume billowed up in tingling sweetness. Nedra Dalli, for the moment, became Julia O’Rourke of the Irish Channel.

  But it was too good to last. That door. Someone might barge in. Nedra Dalli must not be clinching except in front of floodlights and cameras. “Cliff—” she gasped. “You—we mustn’t—after today’s—”

  Bad publicity. Not the kissing, as such, but the embrace following the grotesque death of her boyfriend.

  He dropped her like a hot rock. He drew back. “Slips don’t—”

  Then came a thin, dry whack. The music almost muffled it. It might have been the crack of a stick. But Cragin had heard bullets at every stage of their flight, slugs of all sizes. The tug at his sleeve touched him off. He yelled, made a dive, driving Nedra asprawl on the bamboo lounge, so that the pergola lattice and shrubbery masked her, and there was no longer any target.

  “Cliff—you fool—”

  “Someone shot. Flatten out!”

  A second later, she realized what had happened. “Stay put,” he whispered. “I’ll crawl out. It wasn’t meant for you, but it might wing you by mistake.”

  CHAPTER VII

  He Knew Too Much

  Another whisper: “First principle of fooling a sniper: don’t move. Jiggle around, and he’ll nail you the next try.”

  “You ought to know.”

  Huddled in a fox-hole with Nedra Dalli. Wouldn’t that give the boys in Sicily something to holler about? If you want cockeyed situations, just come home. War’s prosaic.

  “My legs are cramped.”

  “Hold it. Yours haven’t been filled with slugs yet.”

  “But he can’t be waiting this long.”

  “Neither could Frosty Burnett have been gunned out and stuffed into your trunk. Only, he was.”

  That solidified her.

  Lip to lip, and not kissing Nedra Dalli. They’d never have believed that one in Tunisia! He wanted to laugh. Damn that music, wouldn’t it ever end? Until it did, the sniper could risk another shot. As a dick, Cragin had always toted a gun. But now, back home, it had seemed absurd, carrying artillery. He did need some rehabilitation. He needed a new way of thinking.

  Captain Howes wasn’t nuts, neither was the general.

  “Nedra.”

  “Yes?”

  “How much longer can you stand it?”

  “It’d be nice if we weren’t so cramped.”

  “No, you little fool, I mean, Hollywood.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh.”

  “It has worn me down.”

  “You telling me. Who is the heart-throb?”

  “Cliff—are we in danger—or is this—?”

  “If this was a game, I’d get a better hold!”

  “Oh—my shoulder strap—”

  “Let it skid!”

  “Who’s the heart-throb?”

  “Are we under fire? Or—?”

  “I’ve been there before. Funny what things you think of.”

  Silence of three seconds. “I understand.”

  “Then tell me. When will I ever get you away from a crowd of maids, managers, flunkies, executives, sub-standard near-stars, 4-F’s, and—say, is it Harry Ormond? You two used to be—”

  The bitter intensity of his whisper made her answer, “That’s history, I laughed him out of that. This is new. And a secret.”

  “Oh, hell! That stuff is twenty years out of date; stars can marry and unmarry at will; they don’t have anti-matrimony clauses anymore; listen, darling, I been places, too!”

  “It’s not that, Cliff. There are reasons. Real reasons.”

  “Who is he, and what are they?”

  “Cliff, I have to sit up, I’m paralyzed.”

  “Frosty had to come from an oyster bar and he met something.”

  He felt her tighten; her nails sank into his arm. Frosty’s fate, rather than Cragin’s African nights, froze her. And he resented that. But she answered, “He’s in town. He doesn’t know, yet. I sent—”

  Whatever else she might
have confided was checked by the slamming of a door, and the tall man who bounded across the tiny private patio. Sniper or no sniper, Nedra Dalli and Cragin straightened up with a jerk.

  He moved by instinct, snatching the little table. Then by the eerie bluish lights he recognized Dayles Sinclair. The actor’s face was twisted with fury. “You damn tinhorn, so this’s your game, she’s relaxing, what?”

  Sinclair fairly yelled it.

  Cragin dropped the table. He forgot the rules for foxing snipers. He knew only that he faced a wild man who thought that this was a kissing bout. So he closed in, uncorked a one-two, and snarled, “Who the hell sent for you, you two-bit phony?”

  Sinclair wasn’t bad with his dukes. Nedra screamed, but no one listened.

  Cragin stopped a brisk wallop, and then he got the range. He knocked Sinclair reeling against the pillar.

  Meraux came dancing in. “First a murder, now it’s a riot!” He intervened, took a glancing punch. “You loafers, quit it, wait till I shut that door; what does this make?”

  Cragin dropped his hands. “Sinclair, keep your shirt on. Haven’t I been trying to give you the breaks?”

  “You can’t buy me off!” the actor yelled. “Go and tell the cops I went back to my rooms—and to hell with them—and you—” He turned on Nedra. “You hayride specialist, Frosty’s not in his coffin and you pick yourself this.”

  “Shut up!” Meraux screamed. “If someone hears—you fools—”

  “Let them hear,” Sinclair howled. “I don’t know a thing about the boy who brought the trunk to her rooms.”

  Nothing mattered now to Sinclair.

  Jealousy prodded him. Cragin and Nedra tried to tell of the sniper, who by now must have run out, since the whirling shapes made close shooting impossible.

  Sinclair, however, was beyond hearing. He shouted them down. He reviled Nedra, and he cursed Cragin while he tried to shake loose from Meraux’s grip. He whisked the Frenchman around. He was scarcely handicapped by the manager’s grappling and attempts to throttle him.

  And Cragin, as he tried to silence the raging actor, was more than half-convinced that Sinclair had killed Frosty Burnett. Burnett, perhaps entirely unaware of his friend’s devotion to Nedra, could with one casual word have touched off a fatal rage; rather, a long smoldering wrath, since the possession of Nedra’s pistol indicated a crime studied out rather than impulsive.