“May I have the pleasure of another dance?” he says to Tabby. He even gives a little bow to make it real fancy. Then he says to me quick, “You don’t mind, Johnny?”
“Not at all, friend.”
This time Tabby knows what to do. Maybe she don’t like it, but she gets up and closes with Stovepipe.
Meanwhile, Fandango’s dancing with a skinny rat named Skippy, but his eyes is on Tabby and Stovepipe. That’s okay. Things is building up.
I go for another beer. China’s got a can and swigging at it. She sees me and says, “Johnny, you playing around. You shouldn’t do like that?”
“What do you mean, China?”
“I don’t know exactly. But you’re playing. What are you after?”
“Nothing but some more beer, baby.”
“Yeah, you’re kind of rushing Tabby.”
“That could be.”
“What for?”
“’Cause she ain’t the worse to be around.”
“Then why you hanging around me?”
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
“You figuring on playing both of us?”
“Naw, I only danced with you to make her jealous. I’m for Tabby, and that’s the way it is.”
“Yeah. I wonder.”
“You wonder what?”
“It ain’t like you to fall deep unless you changed your stripes.”
“Maybe I changed then, China. That could be.”
She laughs and lifts her can of beer. Maybe she’s believing me, maybe she ain’t, but who cares?
I leave her and go back to my seat. There’s another record playing, and Stovepipe and Tabby are dancing it out. That’s two in a row for Stovepipe. I look around and see Fandango. That cat’s fit to be boiled.
Seems like the time is ripe, so I move over to him, ask him what’s wrong.
“Nothing, Johnny.”
“Don’t give me that stuff. You’re ready to blow your stack. But I know what’s eating your heart.”
Fandango gives me this stupid look like nobody’s supposed to know nothing.
“Yeah, your friend, Stovepipe is hogging all the dances. What’s wrong that you don’t cut in on him?”
“You don’t mind if I do?”
“Why should I? It’s up to Tabby. You want to know something? She favors you over him. She’s kind of soft on you.”
This time he gives me a real stupid look, like he can’t believe his hearing. “Yeah? You’re jiving me.”
“The hell I am. That’s the truth, ’cause Tabby told me it herself. She don’t like Stovepipe’s guts. So, like I say, you ought to cut in and do her a favor.”
He laps that up like milk, lifts his shoulders and looks across the room at Stovepipe. Next second, he’s marching at him. Soon as he reaches Stovepipe, he taps him on the shoulder.
That’s the fuse going. First, I can’t hear what’s being said, but I don’t have to. I know. He’s trying to cut in, and Stovepipe don’t go for that. He’s still holding Tabby. That don’t last. He’s got to let her go. A lot of loud talk busts out. Everybody listens in.
Talk turns to action. Fandango is the maddest and hits out first. Both of them start punching but they’re kind of wild. Not much damage is done, ’cause Elmo and some others jump in and bust it up.
Elmo gives them hell for fighting in the clubhouse and boots both their cans. “You want to fight so bad, turn it on outside, not in here.”
Most everybody’s for that, including Stovepipe and Fandango. So they go out to the street. The rest of us follow. It’s a good fight, real wild. Yeah, they beat on each other till they can’t raise their arms no more.
A crowd of big people come around. This fat lady starts hollering fit to kill, so Elmo steps in again and stops the fight.
Stovepipe and Fandango is both busted up. They ain’t in no mood for partying now, so they take off.
The rest of us go back inside. Tabby comes to me and asks me what they was fighting about.
“You don’t know?” I say.
“No, Johnny.”
“’Cause of you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. You mishandled things, let one dance more than the other.”
“I didn’t mean for them to fight.”
“What you meant and what happened is two different items, girl. You ought to know better.”
“I’m sorry, Johnny.”
“It’s too late for that, baby. They’re my friends and you made them clash, so that’s it.”
“That’s what?”
“The finish. That means you and me go our separate ways like before.”
Tabby looks at me stupid, like she don’t dig. I got no time to explain further, so I turn away. There’s a good record on. China is across the room. I walk over, grab her and start dancing…
A week later, things bust out between Stovepipe and Fandango again. That’s to be expected. Them two got to come to a decision, one way or another.
Nothing happens. They beat on each other and fight to a draw. It’s the same reason, too. They’re both after Tabby. Both want to own her.
By this time, Elmo’s kind of tired of all this crap. First thing he does is call a meeting and bring us all together.
We go to the clubhouse, and when everybody’s there, he calls for quiet and lays down the law, does it cool. “You all know why this meeting is called?” he says. Everybody knows but Stovepipe and Fandango. They’re too stupid, so Elmo tells them, “You two ought to know best of all. Seeing as you don’t, I’m here to tell you this. I don’t like fighting among ourselves. That ain’t no good for the club. But fights got to be—if they settle things. You two ain’t settled nothing, far as I can see. You been beating on each other for some no-decision stuff. Is that true, or ain’t it?”
Stovepipe and Fandango nod.
“Okay, since you two ain’t settled your differences, how about making it a showdown?”
“Whatever you suggest,” Stovepipe says.
“How about you, Fandango? You want to settle for good?”
“I don’t see why not, Elmo.”
“Okay, then you both willing?”
“Yeah, what’s the plan?”
“A fight to the finish.”
“I’m for that, Elmo.”
“How about you, Fandango. You in favor?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, this is it. Come on.”
We move out of the clubhouse and walk to the river. It’s five blocks over. Nobody’s talking.
Elmo looks around. “Okay, there’s nobody to interfere. Now’s your last chance to pull out.”
“Pull out of what?” Stovepipe says. “What are we supposed to do?”
“You going to have it out in the water. The loser don’t come back.”
“Hey, that’s kind of crazy.”
“It ain’t so crazy. This way, nobody gets blamed. It’ll look like an accident. Now, who’s chickening out, and who’s staying with it?”
Stovepipe is scared now. So is Fandango. They look at each other and look at us. We’re all around, waiting.
“Hey, both is chicken,” I say. “Look at them. They getting green.”
The others start jiving them, too. Yeah, they sick and scared to death, ready to pull out, but it’s too late.
“Ready?” Elmo says.
Stovepipe and Fandango look at him and nod.
“Okay, strip to your drawers and pop in that water. You swim out ten strokes and face each other. That’s the only rules. After that, it’s no holds barred.”
Elmo looks around again. There’s nothing to interfere. Stovepipe and Fandango stare at each other. They don’t look sore now. They’re just scared as hell.
Stovepipe makes the first move, starts unbuttoning. Fandango follows. They strip down, walk to the bulkhead and get set to dive.
“Okay, ready?” Elmo says. They nod, that’s all. “Ready. Jump!”
There’s a double splash, and all of us turn away. Nobody’s s
upposed to witness what happens, so we move off fast and hurry back to the clubhouse.
It’s kind of hot, so we send out for drinks. When they come, nobody’s in the mood for the stuff but me.
Everybody’s waiting, not talking. A half hour goes by, and the door busts open.
In walks Fandango. That’s a surprise to me. I figured Stovepipe to take him, but it didn’t happen that way. Yeah, that’s a blip, ’cause I bet a dollar on Stovepipe. That means I’m out a buck.
THE PATSY
by FRANK KANE
Johnny Liddell pushed open the frosted glass door that bore the gilded legend Seaway Indemnity Company and walked without haste into the lushly carpeted anteroom. A blonde in a tight-fitting green sweater sat tapping away at the keys of a typewriter, taking excessive care not to fracture the polish on her nails. She looked up as Liddell walked in.
“Mike Davis in?” he asked.
The blonde nodded. “Who shall I say?”
“Johnny Liddell. He expects me.”
The blonde consulted an appointment pad on her desk, frowning slightly. “So you’re a detective?” She studied the heavy shoulders, the square jaw and the thick hair flecked with white. “I thought all private detectives were skinny guys like William Powell.”
She got up from her desk, and moved toward the small gate in the waist-high partition. The sweater failed to disguise the fact that she had assets like the Chase Manhattan Bank, and when she walked the sway indicated they were just as liquid.
“Davis’s office is the third door down the corridor,” she said. She stood so he had to brush past her to get through the gate. She held it open for him, grinning up at him saucily.
“Remind me to come peek through your keyhole sometime,” he told her in passing. “Right now I’m twenty minutes late.”
The blonde wrinkled up her nose, shrugged. “I’ll be around.”
Liddell walked down the corridor, stopped in front of a door that was labeled SEAWAY INDEMNITY—Investigation Bureau. He pushed open the door and walked in.
Mike Davis stood at the window against the far wall, staring down into 51st Street, twenty stories below. He turned at the sound of the opened door, his battered face twisting into a grin. “Better late than never,” he said. He crossed the room, his hand extended in front of him.
“You want people to be on time, you’d better get rid of that traffic stopper in the outer office,” Liddell said, grinning. He pumped the man’s hand, and tossed his hat at a coat tree. “It sounded important.”
Mike Davis had been an amateur boxer, and had made the early mistake of trying to trade his silver watches and medals for a regular Saturday night purse at the Ridgewood Grove. A scrappy little port-sider from Coney Island who showed a curious disaffection for ending the fight before the tenth round had changed his mind. The left hander’s hook had also changed the contour of Davis’s nose and eyebrows. He peered at Liddell from under lowering brows.
“How busy are you, Johnny?” he asked.
Liddell shrugged. He walked over to the leather armchair near the desk, and dropped into it. “The usual. We’ve been running down a Portchester kid who tried to parlay the fact that she was Ed Sullivan’s neighbor into a movie career. We just located her working in a drive-in in L.A. Soon’s we turn her over to her old man I’m finished.”
He dug a cigarette from his pocket, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth where it waggled when he talked. “What’s the job you’re peddling?” he asked.
“A weirdie, Johnny.” Davis walked over to the desk, jabbed at a button on the base of the phone, held it to his ear. “Pull the package on Robert Horton and bring it in, will you, Lee?”
He dropped the receiver back on its hook, and returned to his chair. “We had this one marked closed as a hit-and-run job. But now we’re not so sure. Before we pay off we’d like to be.”
A short, fat man walked in, and dropped an envelope on Davis’s desk. He favored Liddell with an incurious glance, and walked right out again.
“What changed your mind?” Johnny asked.
The insurance man emptied the contents of the envelope on his desk, scowling a little. “The guy’s sister-in-law—a Mrs. Sally Horton.” He picked a flimsy from the pile on his desk, ran his eyes over it. “She says it was murder.”
“She know who did it?”
Davis rolled his eyes from the paper up to Liddell’s face. “Yeah. She says it was her husband.”
“Any reason why Horton should kill his brother?”
“Two. First, he was the beneficiary of the insurance policy. Second, his wife says he knew she was trading him in for the brother-in-law as soon as she could get a divorce.”
Johnny Liddell followed the dusty looking hall carpet to the second apartment from the rear. A tarnished 2B was stenciled on it. He knocked, his eyes wandering idly up and down the dismal hallway as he waited for some sign of life behind the door. When it was finally opened, he was surprised by the woman who stood in the doorway.
She was strictly not the run-down apartment house type. Her burnished copper hair was piled on the top of her head, and her face was devoid of any make-up except for the sensuous red smear that was her mouth. She wore a sheer dressing gown that made only an indifferent attempt to hide her full-blown charms.
“You want something, or are you just taking in the sights?” she asked, staring at Liddell with bland eyes.
“I’m looking for a Mrs. Horton. A Mrs. Sally Horton.”
She permitted herself a brief inventory of the man’s thick shoulders, rugged face. “That’s me,” she conceded. “Who’re you?”
“Name’s Liddell. I’m an investigator for the insurance company.”
“How nice for you.” She stepped aside. “Come in.” As she flattened against the wall for him to pass, her bosom jutted against the robe. “I wasn’t expecting company, but it’s no more gruesome than usual.”
The living room furniture made a pathetic effort to brighten the dullness of the small room, but didn’t quite make it. The carpet that covered most of the floor was beginning to show signs of wear. A pile of papers lay beside the couch, a half-finished highball on the coffee table.
Liddell tossed his hat on a small table in the foyer, and ambled into the living room. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“It’s a dump and you know it.” the blonde complained. She walked over to the table, and picked up her drink. “I was just having a short one. Join me?”
“Bourbon if you have it.”
Sally Horton headed for the small kitchenette, her full hips swaying smoothly against the fabric of her gown. When she returned with a bottle and glass, the effect was equally satisfying from the front. She set the glass down on the coffee table, and tilted the bottle over it. “You work fast.” She glanced up at him through her eyelashes. “Your company, that is.”
“I don’t get many complaints. The company, that is.”
The blonde grinned at him, handed him the glass. “Maybe you haven’t been dealing with very particular people.”
“Are you particular?”
Sally Horton shrugged and pursed her full lips wryly. “Very particular.”
Liddell held his glass up in a toast. “Then I’ll try to be extra good in your case.” He sipped the bourbon slowly, savoring its taste. “Now about this brother-in-law of yours. You don’t think it was an accident?”
“I know it wasn’t. My husband killed his brother.”
“You haven’t told the police?”
The blonde dropped into a chair. As she crossed her legs the gown fell away exposing a wide expanse of leg and thigh. “Not yet. I wanted to know where I stand. On the insurance, that is.” She sipped at her glass, giving him the full effect of her eyes over the rim. “Bob was insured for twenty-five thousand dollars at double indemnity. If my husband did kill him, do I get the insurance?”
Liddell considered that for a moment. Finally he said, “I guess so. Certainly your husband wouldn’t have any use for i
t where he’d be going.”
He dropped onto the couch, pulled a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket, found a pencil. “Suppose you tell me what you think happened and I’ll take it from there.”
“It’s like I told the man over the phone. George was violently jealous of Bob. When he found out I was going to get a divorce so that Bob and I could get married, he acted like a crazy man.”
She drained her glass, leaned forward with startling effect to place it on the coffee table. “He threatened to kill us both.”
“You intended to divorce him?”
The blonde shrugged. “Why not? You think I’m going to spend my whole life in a trap like this?” She stared around the room with a shudder of distaste. “He promised me the world and this is what he delivers.”
“Let’s get to last night—the night your brother-in-law was killed.”
Her eyes had returned from the survey of the room, and she was looking directly at Liddell again. “George and Bob went out drinking together. I thought they’d made it up. But the next thing I knew there were a couple of cops here asking George to go down to the morgue to identify Bob’s body. They said he had been killed by a hit-and-runner.”
She rubbed the palms of her hands up the sides of her arms. “As soon as they left, I went down to the garage. The whole right fender of the car is dented in. It wasn’t that way yesterday.”
Liddell scowled thoughtfully, scribbled a few notes. “You have a private garage?”
The blonde nodded. “Around the corner. It comes with the apartment. It’s got Two B on the door.”
Liddell transferred the information to the paper, replaced it in his jacket pocket. “I’d like to take a look at the car.”
“Why not? You’ll need the key.” The blonde got up, and headed for one of the doors off the living room. She disappeared inside. A moment later she called to him. “I can show you the garage from here. Come on in.”
Liddell drained the glass, set it back on the table. He walked to the door. It was a bedroom. The blonde stood by the window, the light outside silhouetting her full body.
She glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyes challenging. “What are you waiting for?” She watched him cross the room to where she stood. “How long does it take for a formal identification?”
Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve Page 10
