The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  Gard had done pretty well in the way of helping her find an apartment. It was a big luxurious duplex in the Garden Court on Kenmore.

  I said we wanted her to know how sorry we were about it all and that I had known Healey in Detroit, and if there was anything we could do— that sort of thing.

  There wasn’t much else to say. There wasn’t much else said.

  She asked Gard to forgive her for bothering him so much the previous evening with her calls, but that she’d been nervous and worried and kept thinking that maybe Healey had arrived in LA after the agency was closed and that she hadn’t been notified. They’d been watching the trains of course.

  Gard said that was all right and got red and stammered some more. He was stunned by the lady. So was I. She was a pip.

  She said she thought she’d stay in California and she told us delicately that she’d made arrangements for Healey’s body to be shipped to his folks in Detroit.

  Finally I said we’d better go and Gard nodded and we got up. She thanked us again for coming and a maid helped us with our coats and we left.

  Gard said he had to go downtown so I took a cab and went back to the hotel. There was a wire from Chicago:

  JEWEL MACKAY TWO CONVICTIONS EXTORTION STOP WORKS WITH HUSBAND ARTHUR RAINES ALIAS J L MAXWELL STOP LEFT CHICAGO WEDNESDAY FOR LOS ANGELES WITH RAINES STOP DESCRIPTION MACKAY FOUR ELEVEN ONE HUNDRED TWO BLONDE GRAY EYES RAINES FIVE SIX ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE RED BROWN EYES STOP MAY LOCATE THROUGH BROTHER WILLIAM RAINES REAL ESTATE SOUTH LABREA REGARDS

  ED.

  I got the number of Raines’ real estate office from the telephone book and took a cab and went down and looked it over. I didn’t go in. Then I told the driver to take me to the Selwyn Apartments on Beverly Boulevard. That was the place the telephone book had listed as Raines’ residence.

  It took a half-hour of jabbering about spark plugs with the Bohunk in the Selwyn garage to find out that Mister Raines had gone out about ten o’clock with another gentleman, and what Mister Raines looked like and what kind of a car he drove. The gentleman who had been with him was tall—or maybe he was short. Or maybe it had been a lady. The Bohunk wasn’t sure.

  I jockeyed the cab around to a good spot in the cross street and went into the drug-store on the opposite corner and drank Coca-Colas. Along about the fifth Coca-Cola the car I was looking for pulled up in front of the Selwyn. A medium-sized middle-aged man who I figured to be the brother got out of the driver’s seat and went into the apartment house. The other man in the car moved over into the driver’s seat and started west on Beverly. By that time I was back in the cab and after him.

  Of course I couldn’t be sure it was Raines. It looked like a little man. I had to take that chance.

  We followed the car out Beverly to Western, up Western. I wondered what had become of the blue Chrysler. Then we drew up close behind Raines’ car at an intersection and I nearly fell out the window. The man in the car ahead turned around and looked back; we looked smack at one another for five seconds.

  I’d seen him before! I’d seen him the night before in Miss Mackay’s room at the Pine Hotel in Caliente! He’d been one of the raft of people who’d busted in with the sheriff and stood around ah-ing and oh-ing. The man had guts. He’d come in while Healey and the girl were still warm to see what a neat job he’d done.

  The traffic bell rang and I knew he’d recognized me, too. He went across that intersection like a bat out of hell, up Western to Fountain.

  He lost us on Fountain. I talked to my driver like a father. I got down on my knees and begged him to keep that car in sight. I called him all the Portuguese pet-names I could think of and made up a few new ones, but Raines ran away from us on Fountain.

  On the way back to the hotel I stopped at the Hollywood Branch of the Automobile Club and had a friend of mine look up the license number of the car. Of course it was the brother’s car, in the brother’s name. That didn’t get me anywhere. I was pretty sure Raines wouldn’t go back to his brother’s place now that he knew I’d spotted him; and it was a cinch he wouldn’t use that car very long.

  He didn’t know what I wanted. He might figure me for a dick and scram out of LA—out of the country. I sat in my room at the hotel and thought soft thoughts about what a chump I’d been not to go to him directly when he’d stopped with his brother in front of the Selwyn, and the speed of taxicabs as compared to automobiles— things like that. It looked like the Healey case was all washed up as far as I was concerned.

  I went out about five o’clock and walked. I walked down one side of Hollywood Boulevard to Bronson and back up the other side to Vine and went into the U Drive joint and rented the car again. I was nervous and jumpy and disgusted, and the best way for me to get over feeling that way is to drive it off.

  I drove out through Cahuenga Pass a ways and then I had an idea and drove back to the Selwyn Apartments. The idea wasn’t any good. William Raines told the clerk to send me up and he asked me what he could do for me and smiled and offered me a drink.

  I said I wanted to get in touch with his brother on a deal that would do us both a lot of good. He said his brother was in Chicago and that he hadn’t seen him for two years. I didn’t tell him he was a liar. It wouldn’t have done any good. I thanked him and went back down to the car.

  I drove down to LA and had dinner in a Chinese place. Then I went back by the Santa Fe and found out about trains—I figured on going back to New York the next day.

  On the way back to Hollywood I drove by the Garden Court. Not for any particular reason— I thought about Mrs. Healey and it wasn’t much out of the way.

  The blue Chrysler was sitting squarely across the street from the entrance.

  I parked up the street a little way and got out and went back to be sure. I lit a match and looked at the card on the steering column; the car was registered to another U Drive place, downtown, on South Hope.

  I went across the street and walked by the desk with my nose in the air. The Spick elevator boy didn’t even look at the folded bill I slipped him, he grinned self-consciously and said that a little red-haired man had gone up to four just a couple minutes ago. Mrs. Healey was on four and there were only three apartments on a floor.

  I listened at the door but could only hear a confused buzz that sounded like fast conversation. I turned the knob very slowly and put a little weight against the door. It was locked. I went down to the end of the hall and went out as quietly as possible through a double door to a fire-escape platform. By standing outside the railing and holding on with one hand and leaning far out I could see into the dining-room of Mrs. Healey’s apartment, could see a couple inches of the door that led, as well as I could remember, into the drawing-room. It was closed.

  There is nothing that makes you feel quite so simple as hanging on a fire-escape, trying to look into a window. Particularly when you can’t see anything through the window. After a few minutes I gave it up and climbed back over the railing.

  I half sat on the railing and tried to figure things out. What business would the guy who shot Healey have with Mrs. Healey? Did the blackmail angle that Raines and Mackay had held over Healey cover Mrs. Healey, too? Was Raines milking his lowdown for all it was worth? It was too deep for me.

  I went back into the hall and listened at the door again. They were a little louder but not loud enough to do me any good. I went around a bend in the hall to what I figured to be the kitchen-door and gave it the slow turn and it opened. I mentally kicked myself for wasting time on the fire-escape, tip-toed into the dark kitchen and closed the door.

  It suddenly occurred to me that I was in a quaint spot if somebody should come in. What the hell business did I have there! I fixed that, to myself, with some kind of vague slant about protecting Mrs. Healey and edged over to the door, through to the room I’d been looking into from the fire-escape.

  The door into the drawing-room was one of those pasteboard arrangements that might just as well not be there. The first thing I heard
was a small, suppressed scream like somebody had smacked a hand over somebody else’s mouth, and then something like a piece of furniture being tipped over. It was a cinch someone was fighting in there, quietly—or as quietly as possible.

  There wasn’t much time to think about whether I was doing the right thing or not. If I’d thought about it I’d probably have been wrong, anyway. I turned the knob, swung the door open.

  Mrs. Healey was standing against the far wall. She was standing flat against the wall with one hand up to her mouth. Her eyes were very wide.

  There were two men locked together on the floor near the central table and as I came in they rolled over a turn or so and one broke away and scrambled to his feet. It was Raines. He dived after a nickel-plated revolver that was lying on the floor on the far side of the table, and the other man, who had risen to his knees, dived after it, too. The other man was Gard.

  He beat Raines by a hair but Raines was on his feet; he kicked the gun out of Gard’s hand, halfway across the room. Gard grabbed his leg and pulled him down and they went round and round again. They fought very quietly; all you could hear was the sound of heavy breathing and an occasional bump.

  I went over and picked up the gun and stooped over the mess of arms and legs and picked out Raines’ red head and took hold of the barrel of the gun. I took dead aim and let Raines have it back of the ear. He relaxed.

  Gard got up slowly. He ran his fingers through his hair and jiggled his shoulders around to straighten his coat and grinned foolishly.

  I said: “Fancy, meeting you here.”

  I turned around and looked at Mrs. Healey. She was still standing against the wall with her hand across her mouth. Then the ceiling fell down on top of my head and everything got dark very suddenly.

  Darkness was around me when I opened my eyes, but I could see the outlines of a window and I could hear someone breathing somewhere near me. I don’t know how long I was out. I sat up and my head felt like it was going to explode; I lay down again and closed my eyes.

  After a while I tried it again and it was a little better. I crawled towards what I figured to be a door and ran into the wall and I got up on my feet and felt along the wall until I found the light switch.

  Raines was lying in the same place I’d smacked him, but his hands and feet were tied with a length of clothes-line and there was a red, white and blue silk handkerchief jammed into his mouth. His eyes were open and he looked at me with an expression that I can only describe as bitter amusement.

  Gard was lying belly-down on the floor near the door into the dining-room. He was the hard breather I’d heard in the darkness. He was still out.

  I ungagged Raines and sat down. I kept having the feeling that my head was going to blow up. It was a very unpleasant feeling.

  In a little while Raines got his jaws limbered up and started talking. The first thing he said was: “What a bright boy you turned out to be!” I was too sick to know very much about what that meant—or care.

  He went on like that for some time, talking in a high, squeaky voice, and the idea gradually filtered through the large balloon-shaped ache that my head had turned into.

  It seems that Raines and the Mackay gal had juggled Healey into a swell spot. One of their angles was that Healey, in an expansive moment, had entirely forgotten about Mrs. Healey and married Miss Mackay. They had a lot of material besides; everything from the Mann Act to mayhem. When he’d made the hundred and fifty grand lick in Quebec they’d jumped him in Chicago.

  Healey had ducked out of Chi and they’d trailed him, first to Salt Lake, then to Caliente. Monday night, Raines had helped Mackay put on the act in the hotel that Healey had told me about.

  Raines hadn’t got off the train with her or checked into the hotel with her because they didn’t want to be seen together in case anything went wrong, but he ducked up that handy back stairway and they’d given Healey the act, showing him exactly the color and size of the spot they had him on.

  Then, when Healey came down to my room, Raines had gone down and planted across the street in case Healey tried to powder.

  Raines hadn’t been there five minutes before Mrs. Healey and a man rolled up in the blue Chrysler. Raines recognized Mrs. Healey because she’d spotted Healey with Miss Mackay and Raines in a cabaret in Chicago once and crowned Miss Mackay with a beer bottle. It seems Mrs. Healey was a nice quiet girl.

  They parked in front of the hotel and the man went in a minute, probably to buy a cigar and get a peek at the register. Then he came out and talked to Mrs. Healey a little while and went back in the little alleyway that led to the side door. He was only there a minute; he probably found out that it was practical to go into the hotel that way and came back and told her.

  Along about that time in Raines’ yarn I woke up to the fact that he was referring to the man who was with Mrs. Healey as “this guy.” I opened my eyes and looked at him and he was looking at Gard.

  Gard had stayed in the car while Mrs. Healey went back through the alleyway and into the hotel. After a couple minutes he got nervous and got out and walked up the street a little ways, and Raines went across the street and went upstairs to find out what it was all about. That must have been about the time I was checking out.

  Gard must have been coming back down the other side of the street and he saw me come out and finagle with his car and get into mine, and he stayed away until hell started popping upstairs and I went into the hotel.

  Raines stopped a minute. I got up and went over and rolled Gard over on his back. He groaned and opened his eyes and blinked up at me and then he sat up slowly and leaned against the wall.

  Raines said Mrs. Healey must have tried Healey’s door and then waited till Healey came up the front stairway after he left me, and she ducked around a corner and watched Healey go into Mackay’s room. By that time Raines was at the top of the back stairway and he watched Mrs. Healey take a gun out of her bag and go down and listen at Miss Mackay’s door. When Healey opened the door after whittling Mackay, she backed him into the room and closed the door. Raines said she probably told him a few pertinent truths about himself and relieved him of what was left of the hundred and fifty and then opened him up with the .38.

  It was a swell spot for her, with the Mackay gal there with a knife in her heart. Raines said he figured she’d intended to rub Healey from the start, before he could divorce her—Healey had said she’d sworn to kill him, before he left Chicago. A nice quiet girl—Mrs. Healey. A lady.

  She’d dodged Raines on the stairs and he’d chased her down to the car, but by that time Gard was back in the car with the engine running and they’d shoved off fast. Then Raines had come back up with the sheriff and his gang to look things over. That’s where I’d seen him.

  He’d taken the midnight train for LA and it had taken him all day Tuesday to locate Mrs. Healey. He’d been putting the screws on her and Gard for a split of the important money and Gard had gone into a wrestling number with him just before I arrived.

  By the time Raines had got all that out of his system Gard was sitting up straight with his mouth open and his hands moving around fast and that dumb, thoughtful look on his face as if he wanted to say something. When Raines stopped to breathe. Gard said that the lady had talked him into driving her up to Caliente because she said she was too nervous to wait for Healey in LA—she said she had to see Healey and try to make their scrap up right away, or she’d have a nervous breakdown or something, and Gard—the big chump—fell for it.

  He said he was the most surprised man in the world when the shooting started, and that when she came galloping down and they scrammed for LA she’d told him that she’d walked in on Mackay ventilating Healey, just like the sheriff said, and that Mackay had shot at her as she ran away. Gard had fallen for that, too. She had the poor sap hypnotized.

  Gard knew I’d been up at Caliente, of course—he’d seen me; so when I walked into his place in the morning he’d figured I had some kind of slant on what it was all about a
nd he’d taken me over to her place so they could put on their “comfort her in her bereavement” turn for my benefit.

  Then, Tuesday night, when I’d walked in on the shakedown and knocked Raines out, Gard, who had had a load of what Raines had to say to Mrs. Healey and who half believed it, calculated that his best play was to take the air with her. He was too much mixed up in it to beat an accessory rap anyway, so he’d sapped me with a bookend and they’d tied Raines, who was coming to, and he’d helped her pack her things. They were going to light out for New Zealand or some quiet place like that; only she’d sneaked up behind him and smacked him down at the last minute. A lovely lady.

  We all stopped talking about that time—Raines and Gard and me—and looked at one another.

  Gard laughed. He squinted at me and said: “You looked silly when I clipped you with the bookend!”

  Raines said: “You didn’t look particularly intelligent when our girlfriend let you have it.”

  Gard snickered on the wrong side of his face and got up and went out into the kitchen for a drink of water. He found a bottle out there— almost a full fifth of White Horse. He brought it in, I untied Raines and we all had a snort.

  I was thinking about what suckers we’d been, I’d popped Raines and Gard had popped me and Mrs. Healey had popped Gard—all of us. One, two, three. Tinker to Evers to Chance—only more so.

  I think we were all pretty washed up with La Belle Healey. It was a cinch Gard wouldn’t want any more of her. I don’t know about Raines. But I know I didn’t.

  We finished the bottle and Raines snooped around and found a full one and we did a little business with that.

  I didn’t find out I had a concussion till next morning. I was a week and two days in the hospital at twenty dollars a day, and the doctor nicked me two-fifty. He’ll get the rest of it when he catches me.

  The whole Healey play, what with one thing and another, cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a grand. I got a lame skull and about two-bits’ worth of fun out of it.