Doctor Who - [New Adventure 29] - [Vampire Trilogy 2] - Blood Harvest

by Terrance Dicks

  Still, thought Ace, the room's former tenant had probably been more interested in the view than in the amenities. She went to the window and looked out, checking the field of fire with a professional eye.

  Down and to the right there was a pretty good view of the front of Schofield's flower shop. Unfortunately the front of the shop jutted out, shielding the actual door. Nevertheless, there was a clear view of the sidewalk and of the road in front of the shop. You could be pretty sure of getting someone arriving by car - the way the unknown machine-gunner had got Weiss.

  Even so the angle was awkward. You'd have to lean quite a way out, exposing yourself to counter-fire. Personally Ace would have been happier mounting the ambush from a vantage-point somewhere opposite. However the only building opposite was the cathedral - and there might be problems in setting up a machine-gun nest in a cathedral, even in Chicago.

  As Ace turned away from the window the door opened and a woman came into the room. She was small and plump with brassy yellow hair and red fingernails, and she wore a tatty-looking fur coat. She didn't look in the least like the conventional idea of a landlady.

  The woman glared suspiciously at Ace. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  "I heard there was a room vacant," said Ace innocently. "I thought I'd take a look at it."

  "Pull the other one, sister. A dame like you don't wanna live in a crummy joint like this. What are you after?"

  "All right. I'm trying to get a line on the guy who had this room. Do you know where he is?"

  "Who wants to know?"

  "What do you care who wants to know?" asked Ace. "So long as you get yours?" She took a roll of greenbacks from out of her bag and riffled through it.

  The woman's eyes fastened greedily on the money. "How much?"

  "Depends what you've got to sell."

  "The guy told me he was a musician. Okay, I knew he had a chopper in the violin-case that last day, but not all the time. I useta hear him playing sometimes. I reckon he really was a musician, maybe it was his cover."

  "What did he look like?"

  "Just average," said the woman hurriedly. "You wouldn't notice him in a crowd. I know the name of the place where he works. They called when he was out one time, left a message to call them back."

  "Where is it?"

  "It'll cost you."

  "How much?"

  "Couple of centuries." Ace peeled twenty ten-dollar bills from the roll, and held out the money. "Go on, spill it."

  "Palace Hotel on West Fifty-First Street," said the woman, snatching the money.

  Ace went to the door, struggling to remember the dialogue from late-night B-movies. "Okay, sister, but this better be the straight dope. If it's not, I'll be back." She went out of the room.

  The blonde woman struck the money into her coat pocket. "I don't think you will, honey," she said softly. She began to laugh.

  Ace came out of the boarding-house and saw that the old man was back in front of the shop, sweeping the sidewalk. He looked up and waved. "All right, missy?"

  "Fine, thanks. And you?"

  "Oh, I'm fine. Young Mr. Ricotti ain't too good though. He's gone off looking all bruised and battered. He ain't walking so good neither."

  "Dangerous places, flower shops. He must have trodden on a rake."

  The old man chuckled. "That rake sure beat the hell out of him."

  "Can you tell me where I can get a taxi round here?"

  "Well they usually goes right past the end of the street - say, there's one!"

  A taxi appeared on the corner and Ace put two fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle. The taxi drew up and the old man opened the door for her. Ace reached for her purse, but he shook his head. "You take care now."

  "You too." Ace leaned forward to speak to the driver. "Palace Hotel, West Fifty-First Street please."

  "You don't want to go there, Missy," said the old man. "That's a bad place..."

  But it was too late. The taxi was already drawing away.

  The Palace Hotel had a kind of faded grandeur, like a society lady who'd fallen on hard times. As Ace paid off her taxi, the driver said, "Hey lady, you sure you wanna go in there?"

  "Why shouldn't I?"

  "Well, it ain't the kind of place where ladies usually go."

  "You mean it's a men-only hotel?"

  "No, no," said the taxi-driver hurriedly. "There's ladies there all right, plenty of 'em."

  "So what's the problem?" The driver, a burly bald Chicagoan, actually managed to look embarrassed. "It's just that the ladies are there already, if you see what I mean, and the guys come to visit them - for a while..."

  "Are you trying to tell me this is a whorehouse?"

  "You said it, lady."

  "Oh well," said Ace, "there's a first time for everything." She went into the hotel.

  There was nobody about in the lobby, which held a few shabby armchairs and dusty potted palms and a wide staircase curving upwards. Still a bit early for the lunchtime trade, thought Ace, and was annoyed to find herself blushing.

  A door off to the right led to what had once been the hotel bar, and probably still was, despite the hand-scrawled notice "Coffee Room" tacked over the door. Ace went inside and found herself in a long room filled with a scattering of tables and chairs, all empty. There was a bar to her left. Behind it a seedy-looking little man in a grubby white apron was studying the racing page of the Tribune.

  Ace went up to the bar and perched on a stool. "Coffee, please."

  The man spoke without looking up. "Rye coffee or bourbon coffee?"

  "Just coffee coffee please."

  The man gave her a look of faint surprise, got up and went over to the coffee urn behind the bar. He turned away from her and Ace heard a hiss of steam and the chink of crockery. He turned back and put a steaming mug of coffee in front of her. The coffee smelled surprisingly good, and Ace took an appreciative swig. She realized she was hungry, and helped herself to a hardboiled egg from a bowl on the bar.

  "I'm looking for someone," she said. "One of your musicians."

  "Musicians don't come in till tonight," said the little man in his fiat toneless voice. "Guy comes in for a lunch-time quickie, he don't need to hear no band playing."

  "I suppose not," said Ace. She was surprised to find her head nodding, and took another swig of coffee to wake herself up. The little man had put down his paper and was studying her curiously. Ace looked back at him, and saw his ratty features beginning to blur. Realizing too late what was happening to her, she reached for the Browning in her shoulder-bag. It was on the bar, close to her hand, but as she reached for it, the bag seemed to move further and further away. Ace slumped forward onto the bar, her head between her arms.

  A door behind the bar opened and Tony Ricotti carne through. He had changed his clothes for another, equally garish outfit and dried his hair, but his upper lip was bruised and puffy.

  "Old Mickey Finn gets "em every time," said the barman with professional pride. "This the dame gave you the fat lip?"

  Ricotti didn't answer. He came around the end of the bar, scooped the unconscious Ace off the stool and carried her out of the bar and up the stairs.

  20 RESCUE

  I had to visit a lot of dives and spend a fair amount of Doc's money before I found the witness I wanted. I had to down a lot of drinks as well. Okay, so it's a tough racket, but someone's gotta do it.

  I started off with a visit to my old Precinct House, a much safer business since Captain Reilly had been moved up to the Mayor's new Detective Task Force. A couple of swigs from my hip flask and a few bucks from Doc's bankroll persuaded Sergeant Mulrooney to let me take a look at the McSwiggin file.

  I made myself comfortable in Reilly's empty office and had a good look through the file. It didn't take long. McSwiggin and a cop called Red Duffy had been found dead in a green Lincoln sedan in Oak Park. Car and corpses had been riddled with machine-gun bullets, but the detectives on the case reckoned both men had probably been killed
elsewhere, brought to Oak Park in the Lincoln and dumped.

  That's when I hit the speakeasies. Gangsters love to gossip, and everyone was ready to hash over the McSwiggin murder. I'd only met McSwiggin a couple of times and I didn't know Red Duffy at all. Now I'd officially left the cops the mob guys were a lot more willing to talk to me. I soon learned that Red Duffy had been crooked even for a Chicago cop, running booze for the O'Donnell mob as well as operating a barber shop on the side. It didn't leave him much time for police work.

  The O'Donnell boys ran a whole string of joints, but the biggest and best was the Pony Inn on Roosevelt. I decided to move on to there.

  The Pony Inn was a two-storeyed joint built from cream-coloured brick, on the south side of Roosevelt. As I parked the Buick I noticed the little tree in front of the building looked kind of bedraggled. I got out of the car and went over to look at it. The wood of the trunk and the lower branches was all chipped and splintered. That tree had been all shot to pieces.

  I checked the front of the building behind the tree and found a neat line of bullet-holes stitched across the front. Someone had been loosing off with a tommy-gun at the front of the Pony Inn. Either we had a mystery tree-hater on the loose, or the unknown tommy-gunner's target had been something human - like Captain Duffy and District Attorney McSwiggin.

  I shoved at the door of the inn and found it was closed. I stepped back and looked up at the building. The shutters were up at the windows and there was no sign of life. That told me something screwy was going on. Why else would the O'Donnell's close down their most profitable joint? If they'd had any sense they'd have kept the place running normally, but then most mobsters are pretty dumb.

  I leaned on the bell-push till my thumb was sore, then started thumping and kicking the door just for a change. After a while I heard shuffling footsteps and a blue-chinned cigar-smoking thug opened the door a crack, releasing a cloud of smoke and a smell of bourbon. "G'way, we're closed," he croaked.

  I gave the door a shove that knocked him back off his feet, stepped inside the entrance hall and slammed the door shut behind me. "So now you're open."

  He scrambled to his feet, reaching for the gun in his belt, but by that time I had the .45 in my hand. "Just hold it."

  A voice from above me said, "You hold it, bright boy."

  I turned and saw a tall bony character in a light grey suit coming down the stairs. He was wearing a straw skimmer, smoking a cigar and carrying a pump-action shotgun which was pointing in my direction.

  I raised my hands. "Don't shoot, Colonel. I'm out of season."

  The shotgun man said, "Take his rod, Jake."

  Jake reached up and took my .45. Once it was in his hand he drew it back to pistol-whip me, but I kicked him hard in the shins and he hopped away howling.

  "Just the gun, Jake," said the man with the shotgun. "Fun and games later. This way, bright boy." He gestured ahead with the shotgun and I went through the door into the main saloon. I'd been to the Pony Inn before, and at this time of night the place should have been jumping, but the big room was empty, the roulette and blackjack layouts deserted.

  "Must be costing you a bundle, having this place shut down."

  "We're closed for redecoration."

  "Is that what the guy with the chopper was doing decorating the outside?"

  The bony hand waved me into a chair. He perched on a bar-stool, the shotgun cradled in his lap, its muzzle towards me. He held it with casual ease, like it was something he was seldom without.

  "Okay, bright boy, what's the pitch? Are you a cop?"

  "Private. The name's Dekker."

  He nodded. "I heard of you."

  "I heard of you too," I said. "You're Spike O'Donnell."

  Spike was the oldest and the toughest of the three brothers who ran the O'Donnell outfit. He was one of the few men in Chicago not afraid of Al Capone, and had once invited Big Al to "Step out in the open and fight like a man." Al turned down the invitation, but soon after that one of Al's boys opened up on Spike with a tommy-gun, while he was buying a paper. He missed. There were two other brothers, Bill, known for some reason as "Klondike", and Myles, the baby of the family.

  Spike gave me a hard stare. "So what are you after? Is this some kind of shakedown?"

  "I'm not after money, Spike. Just information."

  "What about?"

  "The McSwiggin killing."

  "Why come to me?" I took a gamble.

  "Because he was killed outside your joint."

  "You saying I killed him?"

  "On your own doorstep? Not hardly. But I think someone may be trying to make it look like you did."

  "Who? Why?"

  I told him about Doc's theory that someone was trying to stir up trouble, so as to take over when the shooting died down. "All Doc wants to know is who really killed McSwiggin and the others. We don't think it was you - but believe it or not, it wasn't Capone either."

  Spike O'Donnell sat thinking for a moment. He slipped off the stool and said, "This way; shamus."

  He led me out of the bar, up the stairs, along a carpeted corridor and into a comfortably furnished bedroom. A slim, fair-haired young man in striped pyjamas was lying in, or rather on top of the bed. The sheets were all twisted and tangled like he'd been thrashing about.

  "How's the boy, Myles?" asked Spike gently.

  "Oh, not so bad," mumbled the young man. "If I could just get some sleep ..."

  "Kid was in the car when McSwiggin got it," said Spike.

  "Right outside here, like you said. He ain't been right since. Says he has nightmares about battle and bloodshed and stuff."

  "Tell me what happened," I said.

  Myles propped himself up on one elbow, eyes glittering feverishly. "Me and Red Duffy are bringing McSwiggin over here to meet Spike. We pull up outside and Red and McSwiggin get out. I'm just gonna follow when this Caddy pulls up and starts spraying lead, so I duck down in the car. The shooting goes on and on... I raise up and look and there's Duffy and McSwiggin laying out in front of the door, wriggling and twitching in their own blood. And there's this guy in the Caddy, standing up in the front seat and hosing them with lead from a tommy-gun. And he's laughing. He sees me watching him and swings round the gun, but the drum's empty. He kinda glares at me, then tosses the tommy-gun in the back seat and drives away."

  "You were lucky, kid," said Spike.

  Myles didn't seem so sure. "I keep seeing his eyes, red and glaring like fire. And I get these dreams, people screaming and dying and all this blood..." He fell back on the bed.

  "By the time I got outside it was all over," said Spike. "I brought the kid in here, had some of the boys put the two stiffs back in the Lincoln and dump it over in Oak Park. I don't want no dead D.A.s on my doorstep."

  I leaned over the bed. "This guy in the car, Myles. What did he look like?"

  "Long and thin," muttered Myles. "Long thin hands, long thin face. McSwiggin and Duffy were jerking and twitching and flopping around in their blood and he was laughing..."

  "And that's about it, Doc," I concluded. "I managed to convince Spike O'Donnell I was no danger to him, and got out of there in one piece."

  I was back in Doc's place reporting to my client. It was still early and the place was empty.

  Doc seemed to think I'd done a pretty good job. "Excellent work, Mr. Dekker. What's more, it ties in nicely with my own discoveries." He told me about the cop's description of the guy who'd gunned down Jake Lingle.

  "Even if we find this guy, it's going to be pretty hard to get a conviction," I warned him. "I doubt if Myles will testify even when he's recovered, it's against the gangster's code. And this cop sounds kinda screwy as well. Say, isn't it strange that both our witnesses seem to be cracking up?"

  "No," said Doc, "it isn't strange at all. And I'm not concerned about a conviction. When we find our - Quarry, I shall deal with him myself."

  In spite of Ace's warning, I just didn't figure Doc for a killer. "You're gonna knock him off?" />
  "I shall - neutralize him" Doc looked at me with his calm grey eyes and my blood started forming icicles. Maybe this little guy was a killer after all.

  "What about Ace?" I asked. "Has she turned up some tall skinny guy too?"

  "It wouldn't surprise me. But whatever she's found out, she hasn't been able to tell me yet."

  "You haven't heard from her?"

  "Not since this morning. And there have been no messages - Luigi has been here all the time. I'm getting rather worried about her."

  "You should be. I told you that flower shop joint was dangerous." I finished my beer. "I'll get over there and check."

  "Wait, I'll come with you." Doc turned to Luigi. "Can you manage here for a while? I'll leave you Happy on the door, in case there's any trouble."

  Luigi reached under the bar and pulled out a sap and a sawn-off shotgun, and an old Colt Peacemaker. "I can manage, Doc. There won't be any trouble."

  We grabbed our hats and coats and began to leave. "Just a moment, Doc," I said. "Are you heeled? I may need some back-up."

  "I disapprove of guns, Mr. Dekker, but I suppose under the circumstances ... Luigi, may I?"

  "Take the sawn-off, Doc," I advised.

  Doc picked up the shotgun, Luigi handed him some spare shells and we were on our way.

  Traffic was fight and we made good time across Chicago. When I pulled up outside Schofield's an old black guy was just putting up the shutters. "Hey, you," I yelled.

  The old guy ignored me.

  I was about to jump out and shake some sense out of him when Doc touched my arm. "Allow me."

  He got out of the car and raised his hat to the old negro. "Excuse me for bothering you, sir, I can see you're busy. We're looking for a friend of ours, a young lady, and we understood she was corning here." He gave the old guy a quick description of Ace. "Have you seen her, by any chance?"

  The old guy chuckled. "Oh, I seen her all right. Mr. Ricotti in there, he seen her too!"

  "Something happened?"

  "Mr. Ricotti he got a little fresh and the young lady she mashed him up pretty good."