A Taste for Violence

by Brett Halliday

  Mist was gathering in the valley, and as his car rolled slowly downward, Charles’ mouth tightened into a grim line.

  He reached an intersecting road leading east and west and turned east along the hillside contour toward the airport. He switched on the ignition and slipped the car into high gear. The motor took hold when he let the clutch out and he stepped on the accelerator. He was now travelling parallel to the strungout mining village, approximately half a mile above it, measured along the slope, and perhaps four hundred feet measured vertically. Lights of the village showed through the treetops, and were gradually left behind. Directly below were the shacks of the miners, clinging precariously to both sides of the gorge, rising on high stilts in front and sitting flat on the mountainside in the rear.

  The airport was a mile and a half farther on, where the gorge widened out into a flat meadow.

  The crackle of gunfire sounded below and slightly behind Charles’ car. He jerked as though the bullets were aimed at him and had found their mark.

  Braking the car and switching off the lights simultaneously, he leaned out the window and looked down anxiously. For a moment he could see nothing through the light mist. There had been only one burst of shots. Some of Chief Elwood’s imported deputies, he thought angrily. Tanked up and shooting at the moon because thus far they had been restrained from firing at more exciting targets.

  Then, there was a loud explosion, a sheet of flame rushing high into the air. It came from the far side of the gulch, from the string of shacks nearest the village which housed Roche miners. The ancient frame-and-tarpaper shack went up in a solid mass of flame that spoke eloquently of plenty of gasoline cunningly applied.

  Charles trembled violently as he drew himself straight behind the steering wheel. He could still vividly see the sheet of flame, though he looked only into the clean mistiness of the night. Sweat streamed from his face and he pounded his doubled fist futilely on the steering wheel.

  Why? In the name of God, why? There were other ways to settle such things. Better ways. But not in Kentucky, he thought savagely. Not in the bloody Harlan district. This was the pattern that had been laid down long ago… by his father, and by other rugged individualists like him. An inflexible, tyrannical pattern of force. He couldn’t make them see that times had changed. That the pattern was outmoded. Another striker’s home dynamited. Another sharp wedge driven between those who sought to reconcile viewpoints that had been unreconcilable for decades.

  The thought made him physically ill. He must see Brand now. But he had to go to the airport first. The letter in his hip pocket pressed against his sensitized flesh as though it had suddenly taken on measureable thickness. With that in the mail, he would feel better. Then he could go to Brand and try to explain.

  There were lights at the small airport, but no one was there. Charles was glad that no one saw him mail the envelope. It seemed better that way. It would be so much safer if no one knew.

  He drove away from the airport, down to the main east and west highway running through the bottom of the gulch, then west toward Centerville. The gaunt outlines of dark miners’ shacks on either side of the road were strangely distorted caricatures of misshapen animals crouching there sullenly to spring upon anyone unwary enough to pass them. They did not spring, but sat solidly upon the mountainside, as though they feared the flimsy stilts might break if they moved. They had the strength, Charles thought bitterly, if they but knew it. It would be so simple.

  When Charles reached the spot, the flames from the burning house had died down. There was only a mass of glowing embers on the hillside, nothing more. No curious crowds, no sign of any fire-fighting equipment.

  He drove on toward the village, a village patrolled by armed men, where miners skulked behind flimsy walls. The roadway was deserted, and the uniform rows of shacks gave way to a pleasing residential section where the road widened into a street with concrete curbs and gutters. These houses were dark, too, except for street lights shining dimly upon their painted exteriors. Here lived the shopkeepers and the policemen, the gamblers and the Rotarians, the pimps and the politicians, the ministers of the gospel and their flocks… all those who prospered and grew fat on the fruits of the miners’ toil, and many of whom were pleased with things as they were.

  Not all of them, Charles knew. He had witnessed the hauling into court of honest men and women who had refused to pay off when the strong arm of the law demanded it. He had seen weeping women shoved up the stairs to the filthy ward by fat cops to be locked in a dark and stinking room with nothing between their tender flesh and an iron cot upon which they had to sleep. He had seen men defy the authorities of Centerville, and beaten into unrecognizable pulps before being dragged up the same stairs to lie on a concrete floor until such time as they admitted guilt and were released, more dead than alive in body, and all hope gone from their minds and hearts.

  There were few people on the streets when he came to the business section of Centerville, a lone laggard now and then, hurrying past the groups of two or three deputies with guns displayed in open holsters at their hips. Always in groups of two or three. Clinging together for assurance and for safety. The lid was tightly clamped on Centerville, but it was likely to blow off with a mighty roar at any time.

  Charles parked his car at the curb in front of the Central Hotel beside three other cars. The lobby and the small bar-dining room were brightly lighted. Two local policemen stood outside the entrance to the dining room. They swung wooden clubs in their hands, their uniform coats were unbuttoned, and one of them was chewing tobacco. A dribble of brown sputum ran down his jaw.

  They stood there solidly and watched Charles Roche get out of his car and cross the sidewalk toward them. Their faces betrayed neither animosity nor friendliness, only the surly disinterest he knew so well.

  Charles said, “What happened out at the east end of the Roche line about half hour ago?”

  The tobacco chewer spat and asked, “Somethin’ happen out there?”

  “I heard gunfire, saw an explosion and a house burned.”

  The other man said, “You know how it is with them damn Commies, Mr. Roche. Allus makin’ trouble.”

  “Was anyone hurt?” Charles asked quietly.

  “It’s outside the city limits,” the first man told him. “Some of the deputies went out, I reckon.”

  Charles restrained his anger and asked, “Have you seen George Brand around tonight?”

  “He don’t show his face much around town at night.”

  “I want to see him. Pass the word around where he’ll get hold of it.” Charles started past them into the dining room.

  “Mr. Roche…”

  He stopped to look back, his hand on the knob. “Yes?”

  One of the men said, “Jimmy’s in there. Him… an’ some others. Kinda smoked up, I reckon.”

  Charles looked at him, puzzled. “Smoked-up” was a new expression. It smacked of dope… or a new kind of liquor. His muscles contracted, and he asked, “What do you mean?”

  “That gasoline,” the man said vaguely, “flings out a pow’ful puff when it’s mixed with enough powder.”

  Charles nodded slowly, his eyes hard and grayish in the dim light. He said, “Thanks,” and went in.

  There were a number of small tables huddled together at the rear of the dining room, the covers dirty, and eight dirtier men leaning upon them. Three of them had deputies’ badges affixed to their shirts, guns on their hips. Two others Charles recognized as local hangers-on at the City Hall. The others were strangers. All except his brother, who was second from the left. Half of the men had smudged faces and hands.

  Standing quietly by the door for a moment, Charles heard their animated conversation. It stopped abruptly when one man, roaring with laughter, looked up and saw him. He stopped with his mouth open and his bleary eyes gazing.

  The others turned to see Charles standing there.

  “Hello, brother,” Jimmy said mockingly.

  Jimmy’s fa
ce had a bloated look. His cheeks were round and sallow, his lips bloodless. His white shirt had been blackened, the sleeves rolled up under his armpits. His brows and lashes were singed off and his thick dark hair, the ends burned and crinkly, stood out ludicrously. He was quite drunk.

  Charles disregarded the stares of the men seated at the table. He went straight to Jimmy and said, “Let’s go home.”

  Jimmy didn’t move. He growled, over his shoulder, “If I had what you’ve got to go home to, that’s where I’d be.”

  One of the deputies chortled loudly.

  Charles took a step backward, his hands clenched. He asked quietly, “Do any of you know where I might locate George Brand tonight?”

  The men whom he faced across the table shook their heads. One of them grunted derisively and said, “That son-of-a-bitch is keeping out of sight tonight.” His grimy face fell forward upon his folded arms.

  Jimmy twisted his head and looked up at his brother. “Didn’t Elsa get home from the dance?” he asked drunkenly.

  “Of course. What has she to do with it?”

  Jimmy’s dark, clouded eyes wavered, and he turned his head away from Charles’ steady gaze. “Nothing,” he growled, “I reckon.” He picked up his drink and poured it down.

  There was a moment of heavy silence as the men watched the two brothers with a look of eager anticipation in their bleary eyes. Jimmy pushed his chair back slowly, his hands gripping the edge of the table. He pulled himself up and turned to his brother. He said, surlily, “Get out and leave me alone.”

  Charles ignored him. He moved around to the other side of the table and stood rocking back and forth on his heels. After a time he said, “If any of you see Brand, tell him I’m looking for him.”

  None of the men said anything. Jimmy eased himself back into his chair. Charles looked toward the door. The two policemen were standing just inside, watching him, and when he started out, they moved aside.

  Charles got in his car, started the motor, made a U-turn to drive back and climb to the nine-room house high above the village where Elsa waited for him.

  3

  IT WAS late in the afternoon three days later when Michael Shayne made the sharp turn on the gravel drive up to the wide veranda of the Moderne Hotel. There had been no signs along the highway warning him of the hill-top turn. There had, in fact, been no advertisement whatever to advise travellers they were approaching the Moderne. Both he and Lucy Hamilton had been watching for a sign for fifty miles or more through eyes salty with the perspiration dripping from their foreheads and brows. They had decided that the Moderne was not catering to tourists. They had seen the huge wooden board, probably lighted on both sides at night, on the north side of the grounds just in time.

  A half dozen elderly guests sat rocking in the chairs on the veranda, languidly waving fans. The hotel was a rambling structure, two stories high. To the left, a dozen or more modern cabins sprawled, separated some ten or twelve feet, all baking under the fierce rays of the Kentucky sun. There was not a tree in sight.

  Lucy Hamilton touched his arm as the car stopped with the bumper touching the concrete edge of the porch. “It says up there in the electric curlicues on the sign, ‘Centerville’s Finest’. I wonder what the others must be like.”

  “Hotter,” Shayne said, turning to grin into her wide and contemplative brown eyes.

  “But you said it would be cool here, Michael. For the last hundred miles you’ve been telling me…”

  “That it would be cool when the sun goes down.” He reached over and patted her moist hand. “Besides, we can buy a cool drink in Kentucky… I hope.” He pulled his long legs up, unlatched the door, and stepped from the car. He wore a polo shirt and light cotton slacks. He took a sweat-sodden handkerchief from his hip pocket and mopped his face and neck, running it along his hairy bare arms.

  Lucy had stopped a hundred miles back and freshened her face with cold water, combed her hair, and applied make-up. She looked cool and girlish in her white linen frock when she got out on the other side and went up the steps with him.

  The occupants of the rocking chairs stopped fanning and regarded them listlessly, picked up their fans and turned their faded eyes once more upon the thundering, chugging highway traffic.

  Shayne led Lucy into a small, dim lobby. An electric fan turned half-heartedly in the ceiling, ineffectually stirring the stale air exuding from cigar and cigarette butts in tall, open ashtrays, and the smoke rising from fresh ones puffed toward the ceiling by the men who were smoking in the four comfortable chairs. Except for a wall-crank telephone, four slot machines, an ancient cabinet radio and two spittoons, there were no other furnishings.

  In the rear, knotty pine separated a small office from the lobby. A wide archway on the right opened onto a large, many-windowed dining room. A heavy chain was stretched across the archway with a cardboard sign hanging in the middle of it which read CLOSED. Dinner 5 to 7.

  A portly gentleman with a rosy bald head and a sun-reddened face ending in three chins dozed behind the desk, the right side of his face cradled in a pudgy palm. He wore a wilted white shirt opened at the neck, the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. He opened one eye and looked up, startled, when Shayne said, “Good afternoon. What’s the chance of getting a room?”

  He got up slowly and came over to the counter. “Welcome, sir,” he said in a high, squeaky voice. “Only one room left. It’s on the southwest corner and so all-fired hot nobody else’d take it, but I reckon you’re mighty lucky to get that.”

  The detective had written “Michael Shayne and…” on the register before he finished speaking. He stopped with pen lifted and said, “Only one room? We want two.”

  “This is a large double room,” the clerk assured him. “Bath right across the hall. You and the Missus will be mighty comfortable if you can stand the heat.”

  Shayne said, “Miss Hamilton is my secretary. Haven’t you got a couple of singles.”

  “Secretary, huh?” He sighed and screwed his eyes up tight to look at Lucy. He shook his head doubtfully and said, “Well, I dunno. There’s a cabin. But I’d have to charge her for the double room and you the full price for the cabin, and I don’t reckon…”

  “Wait a minute… how about two cabins,” Shayne interrupted.

  “H-m-m. Just driving through?” he asked.

  “We might stay a few days,” Shayne told him. “If you have two cabins…”

  “Well, now, if you’re stayin’ a while, I reckon so.”

  Shayne finished writing in the register, “…Secretary, Miami, Florida.”

  The fat man turned it around and read the names aloud. “Shayne, huh? From Miami? Would you be a newspaper man?”

  Shayne said, “No. Can we see the cabins?”

  “No offence, stranger.” He struck a bell on the desk and a colored man came through a door in the rear. He took two keys from a hook and said to the porter, “Show these folks nine and ten.”

  “Just a minute… how about some ice and a drink?” Shayne asked.

  “Well, sir, we don’t have any ice and we don’t sell liquor here at the hotel. Plenty of that down in Centerville, though.”

  Shayne turned to Lucy and made a grimace of disgust and said, “Come on,” and they followed the porter outside. Shayne got in his car and started the motor. Lucy walked across the grounds behind the Negro while Shayne drove slowly over the baked and rock-covered distance from the hotel to the cabins.

  When they reached nine and ten, the porter handed Shayne the key marked “9” and went on to open number ten.

  Shayne got out and unlocked the door and was struck by a sickening and sultry blast of heat that had been accumulating all day inside the tightly closed cabin. He hastened to open both windows, looked behind a flowered curtain in one corner and found a concrete-floored shower stall and lavatory and toilet.

  He went out to get his bag from the car. The porter had already taken Lucy’s. He glanced over at her cabin to see the windows opened and th
e door ajar.

  Back in number nine, Shayne tossed his bag on the bed, opened it and took out a clean polo shirt and a fresh pair of slacks and clean underwear. He peeled off his sticky clothes and ducked into the shower. The water was lukewarm at first, and he felt slightly nauseated, but it ran cooler after a while. He came out drying himself with a towel which he gloomily estimated might dry the body of a debutante who had been dieting for six months in preparation for her coming out party.

  His rangy body was still wet when he put on his clothes, but he felt refreshed and cooler. He hastily ran a comb through his unruly stubble of red hair and went out. He hesitated about closing the door and locking it, decided against it on the chance that it would catch a little more of the evening air.

  He walked over to the hotel and appreciated the comparative coolness of the dim lobby when he stepped inside.

  The clerk looked up and said, “I reckon it’s almighty hot out there.”

  “It might help,” said Shayne, “if you’d leave the windows open so your guests wouldn’t be roasted before they could get to them.”

  He chuckled. “It don’t help. We tried it. When it gets hot in Kentucky, it gets by god hot.”

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